Category: Society

“The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Anglicanism, animism, atheism and assessments. In Nigeria

News of my atheism seems to have spread.  I’ve not exactly been evangelical about it – in fact I’ve barely mentioned it.  But when a colleague with whom I have never even...

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iconAclass: Powers that be interview

Powers that be: Will Brooks, hip hop’s transgressor and previously dälek, steps into the light as iconAclass.  Hip hop that referenced musique concrete and My Bloody Valentine,...

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Rome Wasn’t Burned In A Day: Wall Street 2011

Replacing Liberal Timidity With Leftist Passion Why is it that self-termed progressives are in full retreat (and have been for decades) from the witless army of angry clowns and hack illusionists of...

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Occupying the Heart of the Beast: Wall Street Protest 2011

Occupying the Heart of the Beast: Observations, Amid the Multitudes in Liberty Plaza where both the winged spirit of commitment and the rag and bone shop of the heart abide. The ongoing exercise in...

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Features and Speeches of Nigeria

“The matriculation ceremony really isn’t about the students,” David said, and boy, was he right.   The whole thing took around 3 hours and of that their part took about two and...

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Fliers for Nigeria

Last Saturday I was supposed to hand out fliers for my university to students taking their JAMB tests.   This is the Nigerian equivalent of SATs, and you have to take it to get into college....

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The Deer Tracks – The Brevity Interview

Sweden’s Deer Tracks are one of those bands that are nigh-on impossible to pin down. The dynamic duo of Elin Lindfors and David Lehnberg are purveyors a magical, colourful swirl of melodies,...

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Ultra-Thatcherite Ultra-Violence

As even Britain's kleptocratic party leaders have now been forced to admit, various modes of corruption and anti-social criminality are not confined to gangs or underclasses. Context There's...

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Life in an Age of Looting: London 2011

Life in an Age of Looting: "Some Will Rob You with a Sixgun and Some with a Fountain Pen" As the poor of Britain rise in a fury of inchoate rage and stock exchanges worldwide experience...

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Damned Mosquitoes, Damned Frailty

Ill again. After 2 and a half months I hadn’t been sick once, and now it’s twice in two weeks. This time I think it’s a mixture of something I ate and the fact that I got eaten...

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The Arts of Life They Changed Into the Arts of Death

As of late, Pat Robertson has been waxing apocalyptic regarding mankind's imminent reckoning with wrathful divinity… …while liberals have been sharing scary bedtime stories by the...

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Matriculation and the Turning of the Soil

We are having a matriculation ceremony on Thursday, and suddenly the university is a hive of activity. I swear more has been done in the last week than in the previous two months.  Most if it is...

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Purity and Purpose: Dillinger Escape Plan interview.

Dillinger Escape Plan get set to rock UK audiences. For a significant number of heavy music fans there are only two bands that really mattered over the last ten years; Meshuggah and Dillinger Escape...

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The Passing of the Amy Winehouse Object 1983-2011

Remembering Winehouse as either the tabloid-splashed mental wreck or as the misunderstood musical genius archetype the press is already constructing, is unfair and ultimately disrespectful....

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Suicide Silence – The Black Crown, London.

"I don’t want to sound like a fucking dinosaur or a pig for 45 minutes and no one know what the fuck I’m saying" Trebuchet magazine interviews Mitch Lucker...

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The ‘13’ Rules of Left and Learning.

When strange rituals become rules, and rules become superstition.  I have a list in my head of things that make a good man.  The ability to play a good F chord, all frets barred, no muted...

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Generation Genocide: John Sinclair (MC5)/ Bermondsey Joyriders

Generation Genocide: Punk doesn’t nurture it preserves! The word ‘Punk’ must retire. Dispossessed from its ancient zeitgeist it bitterly refuses to die, refuses to compromise, and continues to...

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Architects of Rage: Godflesh on Streetcleaner [Interview]

Extreme music godfathers Godflesh reunite after 15 years to play the Streetcleaner album for the eager HMV Forum crowd in Kentish Town....

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Slum

The university hostels back on to a slum.  This is in the “Life Camp” area of Abuja.  I have no idea why it’s called that, but apparently it’s where all the workers...

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Patrolling the Edges of Panic Town

An academic navigates the great and small encounters of Ex-Pat life in Nigeria. Yesterday, I loaned my car to Joy and Julius.  She said it was her birthday, and it seemed like a good idea at the...

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Self-image is the beginning and the end of living [Henry ‘Fonzie’ Winkler]

Known to many around the globe as The Fonz from the US TV Sitcom Happy Days, Henry Winkler has struggled with dyslexia his whole life and was recently in London supporting the First News education...

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The Loneliness of a Long Distance Academy

The university is open, and the experience has been, somewhat predictably, a mixture of the shambolic, the absurd, the vaguely promising and the outright perplexing.  We have a programme for the...

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A Casual Bombing in Nigeria

On the 16th of June there was a bomb blast in Abuja, at the police headquarters.  At the time of writing this they had not released the figures for the number of dead yet, except to confirm that...

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On “The Issue Of Character” And Empire

Late last month, poet, musician, and self-termed "bluesologist," Gil Scott-Heron exited the hologram and returned to the source…to begin chanting, eternity will not be televised. In...

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King Creosote and Jon Hopkins – Union Chapel

Acoustic unions in an electric chapel, I beheld the evolution of folk music and it was divine. Rocking it was not. Communion. A series of flashbacks occurred as I walked down an aisle of the Highbury...

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Ducktails – live photos 31st May

It's weird that photographers spend years or even a whole lifetime, trying to capture moments that added together, don't even amount to a couple of hours. – James Lalropui Keivom...

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Kurt Gluck Speaks ‘Ohm Resistance’

Anger fuelled techno label Ohm Resistance have described their sound as “the price of revolution”. So with this rebellious streak in mind, Trebuchet Magazine interviewed owner and...

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René, Can We Begin A Dream Collaboration Project?

Human language is like a cracked kettle drum on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity. -Gustave Flaubert Descartes,...

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Running in the Dark

Having lived a drug-free life, I sometimes wonder if I'm missing out. Is there really an experience only a substance can provide? I'm standing in a field in the English countryside. I can...

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Leaving The Church of Free Market Miracles

Where does one find succor and seeds of renewal in times such as these? Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism, which we don't want to admit; the...

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