MAILINGLIST:
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2006-07-25
Imagine
Imagine your nearest airport being bombed. Imagine bridges and roads around you being destroyed. Imagine power plants, electricity, hospitals, government buildings being destroyed and sewers that stop functioning. Imagine no water coming from the tap. Imagine no food or medicine or outside humanitarian help being allowed into your country. Imagine a rain of bombs falling over houses, churches and stores so that ten, twenty, fifty civilians are killed every day.
Imagine an army kidnapping half of your government and taking them out of the country. Imagine the same army every night firing sound bombs above your roof so your windows are blown open, nobody can sleep and your kids getting stomach pains from pure stress. Imagine having to pass through military checkpoints every day to get to your job. Imagine being refused to travel outside your country. Imagine a concrete wall, eight meters high, being built around and inside your city. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night and being told that you have five minutes to leave your house because it’s going to be demolished by the army’s bulldozers. Imagine international sanctions because you voted for the “wrong” political party.
This is what everyday life looks like in Lebanon and Palestine right now. This is just some of the ways that the Palestinian and Lebanese people are being collectively punished by the military supreme Israel. The latest weeks we have heard Israeli officials claim that what they are going to do is to “bomb Lebanon 20 years back” and to “make sure that no one in Gaza can sleep”. And this goes on right now, right before our eyes.
What would happen if let’s say Iran or Sweden or Russia invaded or occupied your country? What would the UN, USA or EU say and do? What is it that makes Arab lives – Palestinian and Lebanese – less valuable in the eyes of the world than your life and our lives? Why aren’t we doing anything? The Israeli occupation of Palestine and the attacks on civilians in Lebanon are serious and obvious crimes against international law and human rights.
Our thoughts are with our brothers and sisters in Palestine and Lebanon.
Peace in the Middle East! Justice for Palestine and Lebanon!
The (international) Noise Conspiracy
www.palestinemonitor.org
www.electronicintifada.net/lebanon
www.electronicintifada.net
www.palsolidarity.org
www.dci-pal.org
www.stopthewall.org
www.humanitarianinfo.org
www.hrw.org
www.zmag.org
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2006-02-28
The small victories that count:
The (International) Noise Conspiracy and the FBI logo
Sometimes things just don’t go like you planned them. I guess we didn’t really stop to think that we could become THAT band; the band that signs to a major label and all of a sudden there are all kinds of complications. In our case it started with our newest record being delayed in its release by about a year and a half. Labels wanted to be with other labels, lawyers wanted to talk to lawyers, money wanted to exchange hands, contracts wanted to be negotiated in a seemingly endless way that left us in limbo, having absolutely no idea what was going to happen to the one thing we really cared about in all of this; our record.
Fast forward about a year. We finally find out that everything is settled, everyone is happy, and things are moving along in the way they were supposed to previous to the holdup. Of course this was a great relief for us, and all the frustration we’d felt due to not knowing was gone. Until we got the suggested changes for the artwork, that is.
FBI ANTI-PIRACY WARNING – Unauthorized copying is punishable under federal law
The above deterrent was to be printed onto the back of the record in a size that was considerably larger than the label’s own logo. Of course there were several reasons why we couldn’t let this happen, and a few of them could be listed like this:
- This was something that we were supposed to just accept. There was no debate about this until we created it ourselves.
- This was a complete infringement on the aesthetics of the record, and the aesthetics of the band itself. The art very much becomes a part of the concept, and there are enough people that have opinions on how we visually present ourselves without the need for FBI involvement.
- The fact that we are an anti-capitalist rock group that very much supports the idea of filesharing as a viable way of spreading ideas and entertainment outside of the reaches of our current economy would have been completely undermined by having the logo of one of the world’s biggest institutions for popular control on the back of our album cover.
I don’t think anyone really expected us to fight this, because it seems that most artists are happy enough to have a record deal that they feel they can’t afford to rub anyone the wrong way. Obviously some people were aware of our politics when they went into the game of working with us, so the suggestions for suitable compromises started coming in. Throwing ideas back and forth we finally saw an option that, while it might not have been the most ideal of solutions, offered us a chance to at least have our say about this. We would be granted a disclaimer, printed right next to the FBI logo, saying that we did NOT agree with it being there and where to find further information as to why. This way the fact that we didn’t agree could be seen right alongside something that a lot of people have taken for granted, and we saw that as an opportunity. Funny enough it seems that someone else saw that too, and the next day we found out that our record was to be released, sans FBI logo.
So our disclaimer never made it out into the public eye, but not because there isn’t anything left to question. We’re writing this right now, outside of it’s original intent, as a way of trying to inspire and encourage others to take back the creative control of their work and to realize that many compromises don’t have to be made. Not letting the FBI onto our records is a way to begin regaining something that was entirely ours to begin with.
Let them know that we won’t allow these violations of our artistic integrity any longer. And tell them that The (International) Noise Conspiracy sent you.
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2005-11-12
GET HAPPY!
Everyone occasionally feels like an outsider. Everyone has moments of feeling alienated, alone, that feeling of not fitting in. This is hardly anything new. There are times when this in itself becomes a purpose, and it’s easy to dress the part of the outsider. So easy that everyone appears to be doing it.
Fact is there seems to be an entire industry that equips all contemporary outsiders with the proper attire and the proper sounds to make sure there is some streamlining in this struggle to voice why it is that you’re so different from everyone else. There is a new pride in being the loner and the martyr, and to sing songs about how my life can’t possibly be worse than yours. Do I ever feel like breaking down? Do I ever feel out of place? Like somehow I just don’t belong and no one understands me? Well, apparently not as much as you. Is that what feeds this industry - the constant struggle to show the world that I’m at least as, if not even more, miserable than the next person? It would certainly appear so, and cynically enough there seems to be no shortage of people wanting to get your money in exchange for faux-hawks, minor chords and teen-angst-bathroom-wall-poetry under the pretense of showing you that you’re not alone in your hopelessness.
This type of hopelessness is a privilege. This type of hopelessness is something that most people can’t afford. This type of hopelessness is pacifying and highly un-solidaric. This type of hopelessness will play its part in hurting others before it hurts you.
There are several reasons as to why this mindset is wanted, and besides the most obvious desires to cash in on insecurities we need to realize that by buying into this we become the most dangerous thing of all; completely non-threatening. No one’s going to throw a rock if they’re too busy feeling sorry for themselves, and if this mentality is perpetuated enough to make it feel comfortable surely no one is going to pose the questions of WHY we feel this way, and why we are WANTED to feel this way. Maybe there isn’t a conspiracy aimed at us through popular culture, but it would make a lot of sense.
So if no hope is given to us we’ll have to create it ourselves. If the tools of rebellion for sale aren’t really rebellious we will make them. We’ll start our own bands to inspire, write our own books to educate and we’ll build our own movements to lift us out of out of the artificial “outside”. There is a tremendous importance in doing this not only for us, but also for the people who border on being truly hopeless. Solidarity starts when we realize that we have the potential to be there for someone else, and with that only creativity sets the limits. The same means that are used to describe loneliness can also be used to instill togetherness, and to use those means in a way that matters is our responsibility.
The emperor’s music is alienation. Our music is inspiration. Power to the People!
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2005-10-18
> The Mission of World Can't Wait
World Can't Wait is organizing people living in the United States to take responsibility to stop the whole disastrous course led by the Bush administration. We seek to create a political situation where the Bush administration's program is repudiated, where Bush himself is driven from office, and where the whole direction he has been taking U.S. society is reversed.
We seek to mobilize millions to express their outrage, to speak the truth, to act with urgency and form an organized political resistance. We welcome any individuals and groups who agree that the Bush Regime should be driven out, whatever their political party affiliation or lack thereof. We reach out to people who have been fooled by Bush, and to those who have been most seriously affected by the outrages inflicted by the Bush Regime.
Get more info HERE
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