Reading List: October.

Fiction: 

A.L. Kennedy: So I Am Glad.
A.L. Kennedy: The Blue Book. 
A.L. Kennedy: Paradise.
Sarah Waters: Fingersmith.
Baby Remember My Name. An Anthology of New Queer Girl Writing (edited by Michelle Tea).

Film: 

Dreileben (2011, Christian Petzold, Dominik Graf, Christoph Hochhäusler).
Red State (2011, Kevin Smith).
Melancholia (2011, Lars von Trier).
Drive (2011, Nicolas Winding Refn).
Barzakh (2011, Mantas Kvedaravicius).
August (2011, Mieko Azuma).

Shows:

Friday Night Lights, Season One, Season Two, Season Three.
Den som dræber, Season One.

ZOMBIES!!!

Modeselektor feat. Thom Yorke - Shipwreck

[via NPR]

Talking about NPR, WILD FLAG live in Chicago on Thursday last week (and a couple of months ago in Philadelphia, performing Racehorse).

Janet hates slow songs. She hates listening to them and hates playing them.

WILD FLAG - Electric Band




all we are is dust and air
play the part of the dragon slayer
dance all night or turn to sand

Linkliste unbehandelter Themen

Politics: 

Muammar el-Qaddafi was killed yesterday. Al Jazeera has an obituary highlighting his early political ideology. His death will probably put an end to NATO's engagement. Still remaining "under siege" from widespread protests in their countries are Bashar al-Assad of Syria and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen. Michael Hastings wrote a detail report about the decision-making that lead to the decision to intervene in Libya - Inside Obama's War Room. 

The White House has no illusions about the risks that remain in Libya: Even if the rebels manage to make a successful transition to democracy, the country could still be roiled by extremist jihadists or other Islamic factions hostile to the United States. "Qaddafi is going to fall eventually," a senior administration official told me shortly before the regime collapsed. "The question is: What demons are waiting that we don't yet know about?" But whatever demons lie ahead in Libya, America, for once, will not be solely responsible for having unleashed them – or for exorcising them.

President Obama also announced today a complete withdrawal of US troops from Iraq - “After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over".

Last week, Obama also announced that he had ordered the deployment of 100 armed military advisers "to help regional forces combat the Lord’s Resistance Army, a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity." The LRA emerged from an rebellion against the Ugandan government and has since been active both in Sudan and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and is responsible for massacres, rapes and the brutal recruitment of child soldiers. Or, as Rush Limbaugh put it, they are good Christians fighting against Muslims in Sudan (the article on boingboing links to this Human Rights Watch report on one of the LRA's massacres in DR Congo). 

Soldiers of the Al-Shabaab militia in Somalia might have killed more than 70 soldiers of the African Union currently employed in the region (the AU denies the claims). Kenyan soldiers moved into the territory after militia kidnapped two Spanish employees working for Doctors Without Borders. 

Herman Cain is the current frontrunner for the Republican candidacy! Good thing that foreign policy hasn't come up at all so far, even though that should be fun. 

Pop Culture: 

The Guardian has an interview with director Gus van Sant about his current movie Restless. 

Spin asks (and photographs) Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen about Rock's Great Clichés. "If you want to imagine a Bieber fan, you can just imagine Fred and me on a normal day." The second season of Portlandia will start airing in January 2012. 

Also, if you're not watching The Fades, DO IT NOW! The season finale airs next Wednesday and it hasn't been renewed. YET. Let us just say that it is currently battling Game of Thrones for best new show in my head and there is a chance that it might win. 

random mixtape - don’t remember what feeling sad was for.

[via tumblr]

janelle monáe | come alive (war of the roses). sleepy vikings | calm. manu chao | denia. gotye | somebody that i used to know. heartless bastards | all this time. santogold | shove it. eugene mcguinness | lion. sleater-kinney | everything. emika | professional loving. massive attack vs. burial | paradise circus. murray gold | onwards! sleepy vikings | nude as the news.

bonus: sbtrkt | bbc essential mix. 

Das Lied zum Sonntag

Sleater-Kinney's Last Show (August 12th, 2006; Crystal Ballroom in Portland, Oregon)

The Fox

The End of You | Wilderness | Jumpers | One Beat | Step Aside | The Hot Rock | Rollercoaster | All Hands on the Bad One | Night Light | What's Mine Is Yours | Stay Where You Are | Modern Girl | Let's Call it Love Pt 1 | Let's Call it Love Pt 2 | Entertain | Sympathy | Words and Guitar | Milkshake'n'Honey | You're No Rock'n'Roll Fun | Not What You Want | Steep Air | God is a Number | Oh! | Dig Me Out | Good Things | Turn it On | One More Hour

There was, of course, a dead bit, in between.

The Fades are coming; it's inevitable.

The Forever War

We didn't know enough and we still don't know enough," he said. "Most of us - me included - had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years," he said. 

Retired Army General McChrystal on the war in Afghanistan

The major attacks in Kabul and regular assassinations in 2011 show the Taliban's capacity to act with impunity even in the centre of international power in the country. But the more subtle reality is that the Taliban and other forces now have the capacity to dictate the terms of the war. The US and its coalition allies can claim to occupy far more territory, not least in Kandahar and Helmand provinces; but the paramilitary forces maintain their power by avoiding confrontation and operating on a different, non-territorial plane. 

openDemocracy: Afghanistan, the regional complex, October 6, 2011

TIME: Afghanistan: The Photographs That Moved Them Most

Meanwhile.... NY Times: In G.O.P. Race, Foreign Policy Is a Footnote, October 7, 2011

Das Lied zum Sonntag

Deerhoof - Secret Mobilization



This is not based on a true story.