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Beyoncé Knowles, freedom fighter
Why "booty popping" will do to Islamic fundamentalism what rock 'n' roll did to Stalinism.

By Thaddeus Russell
Aug. 31, 2006

Soviet soldiers returning home from the western front after World War II brought the virus with them. Within a few years, it had infected large portions of the Soviet and Soviet bloc populations. By the late 1940s, the Communist Party leadership feared it would destroy the socialist fatherland from within. But it was not a biological disease that threatened communism. Joseph Stalin and his commissars called it an "amoral infection" in the minds of Soviet youth. It was "American primitivism," "capitalist cultural imperialism" and "bourgeois cosmopolitanism." But it was really African-American culture. It was the same infection that today is spreading underneath the police, the laws and the censors of Islamic regimes.

This month, Beyoncé and Jay-Z's "Déjà vu" is No. 1 on the top 40 of the biggest Muslim nation in the world, Indonesia. Nine of the top 10 songs on the United Arab Emirates singles chart are hip-hop or R&B. Earlier this year Egyptian rappers MTM -- whose hit song "Ummi Musafra" ("My Mother's Away") is about a teenager who holds a dance party while his mother is away on holiday -- were voted best modern Arab act at the first Arabian Music Awards. Several journalists have reported on the vast Iranian black market in Western music and movies of all sorts. And everyone seems to agree that youth in Iran are engaged in widespread rebellion against Islamic sharia law. Tattoos, sneakers, platform shoes, belly rings, and public displays of affection are ubiquitous in the most militantly Islamic republic.

Muslim leaders are -- rightly -- up in arms over all this. Even the relatively liberal cable channel Al-Jazeera has run several denunciations of rap in particular and of Western cultural penetration in general. Iranian authorities have removed hundreds of illicit satellite dishes that constantly reappear. Earlier this year, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad banned Western music and the "social corruption" it caused, but was recently forced to call off his crackdown. Meanwhile, according to a memoir just published by Osama bin Laden's former paramour, the al-Qaida leader might have lusted after Whitney Houston, but he considered her music to be the work of the devil.

It's all very familiar. In 1946, soon after Stalin's chief aide warned that jazz would "poison the consciousness of the masses," the Central Committee of the Communist Party ordered all state orchestras to stop playing the music. Also banned were saxophones, wah-wah trumpet mutes, the plucking of bass strings, the deliberate lowering of tones to create "blue notes," and the playing of drums with too much rhythm. Brigades of music patrols monitored theaters and dance halls to ensure that nothing jazzy was being played. Couples caught dancing anything other than the waltz, the polka, or Russian folk dances were subject to arrest. Members of jazz bands were rounded up and sent to Siberian prisons.

Soviet authorities were right to fear jazz, but they could not stop it. Bootleg recordings were sold by the millions on the black market. Stiliagi, or "style hunters," appeared on the streets of all the major cities in the Soviet bloc, wearing zoot suits and ducktails if they were male or tight dresses and bouffant hairdos if they were female. They refused to work and loved to drink, "hang out" and listen to black music. Swing and boogie-woogie were early favorites, then bebop and rhythm and blues.

Unfortunately for the Communist leadership, the emergence of jazz fans in the Soviet bloc was only the beginning of a process that ended in 1991. The historian Julia Hessler has written that, "in a real sense, the stiliagi heralded the advent of an individualistic, self-expressive approach to consumption characteristic of the consumer societies of the postwar West." Not only did this "vulgar" and "decadent" culture continue to spread, but as the '50s ended it mutated into something even worse -- rock 'n' roll.


Article continued here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature...nce/index.html
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Great article. It brought back memories of when the USSR imploded and the boomer generation of exSoviet leaders were interviewed, what I remember was a lot of them saying how much the music of the Beatles had an effected on them as youth.

For those race-supremacists, political & religious extremists: Your totalitarian ideas pale in comparison to what a multicultural tolerant society can achieve. Totalitarian ideals only offer something for one particular tribe or one political system or one religion.. we offer hope for all of mankind.

To the neocons in the US administration... Projection of power is not only about the application of military strenght and brute force. Learn this. Victory and freedom for all of humanity depends upon it. The world looks to americans for ideas and leadership. If the only thing they see our government exporting is death & destruction then we will surely lose that leadership role in the long run, no matter how hightech our weapons are.



"To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence is breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good.

The skillful leader subdues the enemy's troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field. With his forces intact he disputes the mastery of the empire, and thus, without losing a man, his triumph is complete." --Sun Tzu, Art of War

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"When I'm in command, every mission is a suicide mission!" -Capt. Zapp Branigan
The United Church of the Latter Day Tangential Tarts

Exactly.
Before we can overthrow the leaders of unfree nations without pissing off the locals we need to win over the people... even if we must stoop so low as third-rate pop music.

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"Man lives in the sunlit world of that which he believes to be reality. But unseen by most is an underworld, a place that is just as real... but not as brightly lit... A DARK SIDE!"
-opening from Tales From the Darkside

Yeah, well, you can try selling them on Death, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Faith No More, or Ministry; I'm not so sure, however, that they'll catch on as quickly.

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WARNING: In the unlikely event of an accidental agreement with any or all points made in the above post, contact a clinical psychologist immediately.

The views expressed in the above post are not necessarily those of Joker and/or any of his affiliates.

Woot.. bomp for AfroAmerican History Month




editawwwcrap I missed it by a day. ohwell..

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"When I'm in command, every mission is a suicide mission!" -Capt. Zapp Branigan
The United Church of the Latter Day Tangential Tarts

Yay wedding bells!




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Jay-Z And Beyonce: It Sure Looks
Like They Got Married On Friday


After reportedly securing a marriage license earlier in the week, guests poured in for what could have been the power couple's nuptials.

Apr 4 2008 11:48 PM EDT By Shawn Adler


After six years of will-they-or-won't-they speculation, celebrity power couple Beyoncé Knowles and Jay-Z might have finally said, "I do," in a private wedding ceremony at Jay-Z's New York apartment.

On Tuesday, the pair were rumored to have secured a marriage license in Scarsdale, New York, a short distance from their Manhattan home. That report was met with some incredulity, given that it was April Fools' Day.

However, speculation that the couple were finally tying the knot began to ramp up early Friday morning (April 4) when a tent was erected at the top of Jay-Z's building. Soon after, a large delivery of flowers and candelabras was made to the downtown locale, according to People. The mag also reported that waiters could be seen on the swank pad's roof practicing service. At 8 p.m. ET Friday, a reverend and his wife were spotted outside Jay's apartment, according to Us Weekly.

Did wedding bells ring? If not, the duo might have a lot of explaining to do to a slew of guests who arrived Friday night, including Jay's mom, Gloria Carter; B's father, Mathew Knowles; her sister, Solange; Coldplay frontman Chris Martin and wife Gwyneth Paltrow; and Beyoncé's Destiny's Child bandmates, Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams, all of whom were spotted by TMZ.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/158..._beyonce.jhtml
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"When I'm in command, every mission is a suicide mission!" -Capt. Zapp Branigan
The United Church of the Latter Day Tangential Tarts

99 problems...