Between March 12 and 13, armed gangs from the Viv Ansanm (Living Together) coalition attacked independent stations Radio Télévision Caraïbes (RTVC) and Mélodie FM, setting fire to both buildings, which had been previously abandoned due to insecurity in the area. No casualties were reported.

On March 16, heavily armed Viv Ansanm members also ransacked and set fire to the privately owned TV channel Télé Pluriel in the Delmas 19 neighborhood, according to staff members who spoke to CPJ and wished to remain anonymous out of concern for their safety.

Separately, at least 10 journalists were physically attacked and had equipment stolen during a large street demonstration on March 19, according to the Haitian Online Media Association (CMEL).

“Journalists, particularly those in radio broadcasting, have long played a vital role in keeping Haitians informed about what is happening in their communities,” said CPJ U.S., Canada, and Caribbean program coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “The arson attacks on these three radio stations are the latest attempt from Haitian gangs to sow chaos and destruction and weaken the media’s ability to work. The security situation in the country must be stabilized to allow journalists, and all citizens, to live without fear of violence.”  

Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé called the attack on RTVC “a despicable act” against freedom of expression and issued a statement promising to reinforce security for media institutions.

“The losses were enormous,” Télé Pluriel staff said in a report, adding that they have been unable to access the area due to ongoing violence. Télé Pluriel is owned by Pierre-Louis Opont, a former head of Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council, and his award-winning journalist wife Marie Lucie Bonhomme. They were each separately abducted and subsequently released in 2023.

RTVC is the oldest radio station in Haiti. Mélodie FM is owned by Marcus Garcia, a renowned Haitian journalist who was exiled during the Duvalier dictatorship in the 1980s.

Violence, instability, and impunity in journalist killings have plagued Haiti since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

In view of the Israeli Prime Minister, amid his own corruption trial, the truth about the Israeli-occupied territories seems to be equivalent to treason. Hence, his determination to destroy B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

The effort to decimate the last defenders of human rights in Israel cries for effective external intervention.

Why are Netanyahu’s autocrats after B’Tselem?

B’Tselem evolved in early 1989, when it was established by a group of Israeli lawyers, academics and doctors with the support of 10 members of Knesset, the Israeli parliament. The name comes from Genesis 1:27, which deems that all mankind was created “b’tselem elohim” (in the image of God); in line with the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As Jewish far-right extremism was spreading in Israel, B’Tselem reflected an effort to replace nascent Jewish supremacism doctrines with the original, universalistic spirit of social justice that had marked Judaism for centuries.

It was founded after two years of the First Intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories and in Israel. After two decades of futile struggle for decolonization and increasing Israeli repression, Palestinians resorted to protests, then civil disobedience and eventually violence.

Instead of taking a hard look at the causes of the uprising, the hard-right Likud government – led by Yitzhak Shamir, Netanyahu’s one-time mentor and ex-leader of the violent pre-state Stern group – deployed 80,000 soldiers in response, which started with live rounds against peaceful demonstrators.

The brutal repression resulted in over 330 Palestinian deaths (and 12 Israelis killed) in just the first 13 months. The objective of the newly-established B’Tselem became to document human rights violations in both Gaza and the West Bank. Amid a vicious cycle of violence, it sought to serve as the nation’s voice of conscience.

Today, it is led by human rights activist Yuli Novak who had to leave Israel in 2022 due to mounting death threats, and chaired by Orly Noy, left-wing Mizrahi activist and editor of +972 magazine. Despite mounting threats from the government, the Messianic far-right and the settler extremists, B’Tselem has insistently recorded human rights violations in the occupied territories earning the regard of rights organizations and awards worldwide.

In early 2021, the NGO released a report describing Israel as an “apartheid” regime, which the Netanyahu cabinets have fervently rejected. Yet, the NGO simply codified, with abundant evidence, Israel’s apartheid rule that had worsened over time. Several Israeli military, intelligence and political leaders had used the same characterization since the 2000s.

B’Tselem warned that Israeli governance was no longer about democracy plus occupation. It had morphed into “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea” – that is, apartheid. And the kind of military excess that led to the genocidal atrocities in Gaza.

How is the Netanyahu cabinet undermining B’Tselem?   

Recently, the Knesset passed a preliminary reading of two bills. They are an integral part of a broader shift from democracy to autocracy. The ultimate objective is to eliminate human rights (and other rights) groups from Israel, including B’Tselem, and to marginalize the autocratic harsh-right’s critics.

In its efforts, the Netanyahu cabinet is relying on two proposed laws involving NGO taxation and the ICC. In the former case, the proposal slaps an 80% tax on donations from foreign countries, the UN and many international foundations supporting human rights. This will effectively cut off the NGOs’ funding. The proposal was approved in a preliminary reading.

The second bill, which has now also passed a preliminary reading, seeks to criminalize any cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC). It could be seen as the Israeli version of the US Trump administration’s sanctions to undermine the ICC, its activities and members.

With its diffuse language, the Israeli ICC bill can be exploited to criminalize not only active assistance to the court but the release of any information indicating the government or senior Israeli officials are committing war crimes or crimes against humanity. According to Israeli scholars of international law, “the definitions in this dangerous bill are so broad that even someone sharing on social media a photo or video of a soldier documenting themselves committing what appears to be a war crime could face imprisonment.” More precisely, half a decade in jail.

If the “ICC law” criminalizes the work of B’Tselem and other human rights NGOs by making human rights defense a punishable offense, the “NGO taxation law” is intended to drain the meager financial resources of these NGOs.

Whose “foreign subversion”?            

B’Tselem is an independent, non-partisan organization. It is funded by donations: grants from European and North American foundations that support human rights activity worldwide, and contributions by private individuals in Israel and abroad. These donors do not represent the kind of “subversion” that the Likud governments attribute to human rights NGOs. Nor do they possess major financial resources. Even right-wing NGO critics estimate B’Tselem’s annual funding at most about $3 million per year.

Things are very different behind the donors of the Kohelet Policy Forum, led by neoconservatives with US-Israeli dual citizenship, and its many spinoffs. These have served as the Netanyahu cabinets’ thinktanks and authored many of their policies, including the “judicial reforms.” Totaling several million dollars, Kohelet in particular benefited from multi-million-dollar donations made anonymously and sent through the U.S. nonprofit, American Friends of Kohelet Policy Forum (AF-KPF).

For years, these money flows originated mainly from two Jewish-American private equity billionaires and philanthropists, Arthur Dantchik and Jeffrey Yass, the co-founders of Susquehanna International Group (The Fall of Israel, Chapter 6).

With a net worth of $7.5 billion, Dantchik is an active supporter of neoconservative Israeli causes. And so is Yass, with net worth estimated at $29 billion. Between 2010 and 2020, his Claws Foundation gave more than $25 million to the Jerusalem-based Shalom Hartman Institute, the Kohelet and other right-wing causes. As the publicity-shy Dantchik and Yass began to suffer from Kohelet’s negative PR, they took distance, while other money flows offset the difference.

By 2021, more than 90% of Kohelet’s $7.2 million income came from the Central Fund of Israel, a family-run nonprofit that gave $55 million to more than 500 Israel-related causes. It was run by Marcus Brothers Textiles on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, which sponsors highly controversial settlement projects in the West Bank, while supporting the far-right activists’ ImTirtzu and Honenu, which is notorious for defending Jewish far-right extremists charged with violence against and killings of Palestinians.

Toward a unitary, autocratic Jewish state     

Given the present course, the ultimate demise of human rights in Israel is now a matter of time. The Netanyahu cabinet will decide when to bring the legislative proposals to hearings in the relevant parliamentary committees, to prepare them for final approval.

There is no doubt about the final objective: the creation of a state “from the river to the water,” but not the two-state model enacted almost eight decades ago. Nor the secular-democratic Jewish state with a vibrant Arab minority. The goal is a Jewish unitary state in which both the rule of law and democracy will be under erosion.

B’Tselem is the harsh-right’s scapegoat for its own international isolation, but only the first one. There is more to come. Under the watch of and military aid and financing by the Biden and Trump administrations, the protection of human rights in occupied territories will soon be treated as a punishable crime, while the economic resources of the remaining human rights defenders will be decimated.

In Gaza, the international community failed to halt the genocidal atrocities. If it fails to protect the last defenders of human rights in Israel, it is likely to become complicit in new atrocities in the West Bank.

• Originally published by Informed Comment.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Steinbock.

As one of his last acts in office, President Joe Biden issued a posthumous pardon for Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey, who influenced Malcolm X and generations of civil rights leaders. Advocates and congressional leaders had pushed for Biden to pardon Garvey for years, with supporters arguing that Garvey’s 1923 mail fraud conviction was politically motivated and an effort to silence the popular leader who spoke of racial pride and self-reliance. “This electrified a people around the world that were in the midst of oppression,” says Howard University law professor Justin Hansford. Garvey was deported to Jamaica, his birthplace, and died in 1940 in England. Hansford says his story is important to revisit amid Republican attacks on racial justice and Black history, saying the pardon is part of a larger reckoning with U.S. racial injustice. “More of our institutions need to look back and acknowledge the harms of the past,” he says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We find that you Romans have not got very good memories about the terms of treaties.

— Parthian general Surena, upon confronting Crassus and his invading legions.¹

Who was Marcus Licinius Crassus (ca. 112-53 BCE )?  Like a modern-day financier, he was a predatory (usurious) lender; like a modern-day oligarch, he acquired vast real-estate holdings at bargain prices; but ultimately, like a modern-day warmaker, he prospered hugely from the “spoils of war.”  The ugly truth, as the Greek historian Plutarch (ca. 46-120 CE) commented, was that “public calamities [fire and war] were his principal sources of revenue.”   ”No one could be called rich,” Crassus once candidly remarked, “who cannot keep an army out of his own income.”

In the last few decades of the Roman Republic, Crassus gained notoriety as “the most avaricious person in the world.” ²  (One might also consider the patrician moneylender Brutus–later the ringleader behind the dictator Caesar’s assassination in 44 BCE–who, during his tenure as governor of Cyprus, swindled the town of Salamis with an immense loan at 48% interest per annum. ³ Crassus’s underhanded financial expropriations included stealing other people’s inheritances: “in such a cause,” Cicero once joked, “Crassus would even have been prepared to dance in the Forum!” ⁴ Whenever his agents informed him of a fire or collapse of some ramshackle city tenement, Crassus would order them to race to the scene and quickly offer a lowball deal to the panic-stricken owner.  But his political ambitions were also advanced by the bribery and influence his extreme wealth could buy.  He thus soon emerged as a potential rival to the more popular military commander Pompey “the Great.”

The sudden outbreak of the Third Servile War (73-71 BCE) was ignited by the revolt of gladiator-slaves led by “the most intelligent and cultured” Spartacus, who successively routed every legion sent to quash his rapidly expanding slave army. Crassus, ambitious for the supreme reward of military glory, arranged with the Senate to lead such a large and well-trained force that the complete destruction of the slave-army would be a fait accompli.  Yet, after many months of resistance and retreat, his diminished forces finally trapped and under siege on the Rhegium peninsula, the battle-worn Spartacus ”made straight for Crassus himself…and though he did not reach Crassus…died fighting to the last.” ⁵

In the succeeding decade, as the wealthiest man in Rome, Crassus continued to augment his political advantage and influence.  So much so that, by 59 BCE, he informally joined the military potentates Caesar and Pompey in a power-bloc to force the Senate to pass legislation favorable to their joint interests.  During this five-year period, each was easily able to finance his own election to the supreme office of Consul (a one-year term).  Upon leaving office, General Crassus extracted from the Senate the highly lucrative provincial governorship of Syria (54 BCE).  But this power-base would merely serve as a springboard for another quest for military supremacy: the invasion and subjugation of neighboring Parthia (today the vast borderland regions of far northern Syria and southeastern Turkey).

In the decree which was passed giving him his command there was no reference at all to a war with Parthia.  Yet everyone knew that this was what Crassus’s mind was bent on….There was a considerable party who objected strongly to the idea of a man setting out to make war on people who, so far from having done any harm to the Romans, were bound to them by treaties of friendship…. A large crowd was all prepared to raise a disturbance and try to prevent Crassus from leaving. ⁶

But his massive legions, including several thousand cavalry, nonetheless marched.  Their trek finally led them to the Euphrates River, which they followed as a geographical reference-point.  Meanwhile, scouts, sent ahead to assess the military situation, returned to report a conspicuous absence of any signs of the enemy.  And Crassus soon met up with the Arab chieftain Ariannes, favorably regarded by Pompey and thought to be a Roman ally.  Claiming familiarity with a clandestine route across the desert for a surprise attack on the Parthian general Surena’s forces, Ariannes, in fact, led Crassus and his legions further and further into the desert until a few exhausted scouts suddenly arrived with the startling news that Surena’s army was, in fact, advancing rapidly toward their position.  “Crassus himself was absolutely thunderstruck.” 

Within a short time their position was surrounded on all sides. An endless shower of arrows descended on them, maiming and killing thousands outright.  After his son Publius’s head was brought to Crassus on a pike, he must have realized that his outsized ambition to surpass the military triumphs of Pompey and Caesar had led to this blood-drenched nemesis.⁷ Killed and decapitated, Crassus received a final, symbolically mocking tribute to his life’s degraded obsession: the Parthians poured molten gold down his throat.⁸

END NOTES

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by William Manson.

Until recently, a close confidante of former US President Donald Trump and his pro-Israel circle, Haley wants to be the next United States president. On February 14, she officially declared her candidacy and, starting February next year, she will be officially competing against her former bosses in the Republican primaries.

It is true that her popularity among Republican Party supporters hovers between 3-4 percent, but Haley still feels that she stands to win, if she plays her cards right. Though a victory in a party that is neither keen on women nor minority politicians, she has enough success stories to give her the needed confidence.

“Even on our worst day, we are blessed to live in America,” Haley said in her campaign launch video. Though such a statement may appear somewhat typical by US politicians on such occasions, Haley’s statement carries hidden, if not troubling, insinuations.

Haley considers her life a testament to the ahistorical claim that “America is not a racist country”, a chant she led to the cheers of thousands of her supporters at her first campaign rally on February 15 in Charleston, South Carolina.

For Republicans, the Haley profile is critical because it is uncommon. They understand that a Black candidate will not perform well among their constituency or that of the Democratic Party. Still, they desperately need any ‘person of color’ who would appeal to disenchanted minority voters, if that candidate reaffirms the pre-existing beliefs of most Republicans: that America is a great country free of racism and inequality, with many dangerous foreign enemies and that Israel is its most trusted ally. Haley, for years, has enthusiastically played that part.

“I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. Not Black. Not White. I was different,” she said. This seemingly innocuous statement has served as Haley’s central message in her political career since she left her family’s Exotica International clothing business in 2011 to run for the Governor’s office in South Carolina, and won.

In 2017, Haley’s success story continued. She became the US Ambassador to the UN. This position has historically been far more relevant to Israeli interests rather than the US’, because the UN is one of a few international platforms in which Palestinians and their supporters attempt, though often in vain, to hold Israel accountable for its illegal practices in occupied Palestine.

For decades, the US has opposed any attempt by Arab and other countries to punish Israel for its military occupation and continued human rights violations in Palestine. The dozens of vetoes used by the US to block any attempt at condemning Israeli colonialism or war crimes at the UN Security Council only tell part of the story.

Within the relatively short span of two years of diplomacy that catered mostly to serve Israel, Haley managed to successfully help in the blocking of US funding of the UN Palestine Refugees Agency (UNRWA). She also engineered her country’s exit from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) due to its criticism of Israel.

She is also credited for being part of the decision that led to the US’ abrupt withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and was a crucial member of the Trump team behind the so-called ‘Deal of the Century’, which has ultimately fizzled into empty rhetoric.

Now Haley is hoping to cash in – literally – on her dedication to Israel and to her country’s hawkish foreign policy in the Middle East. One claim that she has repeatedly made to her donors, who consist mostly of pro-Israeli billionaires, is that she has kept all the promises she made to Israel at the 2017 AIPAC conference. Indeed, she has.

Her performance at the lobby group’s annual policy conference ‘thrilled the crowd’, the Times of Israel then reported. In her speech, Haley, intoxicated by the political potential of winning standing ovations from 18,000 AIPAC conference attendees, declared herself a “new sheriff in town”, who will make sure that “the days of Israel-bashing at the UN are over.”

As far as Israel was concerned, the sheriff delivered, ushering in Israel’s golden age at the UN, and forging lasting friendships between Haley and top Israeli officials and donors.

Haley became a “source of pride for hawkish supporters of Israel for leading the fight against anti-Israel resolutions,” the Jewish weekly newspaper, the Forward, wrote on February 14.

Notably, a four-second footage in Haley’s campaign launch video was in Israel, specifically near the fence with besieged Gaza. Walking alongside her is the former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon. While at the UN, they developed a “unique working relationship – and a lasting friendship”, the Forward reported, citing Danon, currently a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

Significantly, the former Israeli ambassador believes that if “Haley was running for president in Israel she would have won easily”. Considering her poor performance among US voters, one must raise the question: why would an American presidential candidate be far more popular among Israelis than Americans?

Haley’s strategy, however, is paying dividends, at least financially. Jacob Kornbluh elaborated on the sources of funding for Haley’s super PAC, Stand for America. Much of the $17 million raised in the last election cycle came from “prominent Jewish donors”. They include Miriam Adelson, wife of late pro-Israeli casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, along with money from Paul Singers, Bernie Marcus and Daniel Loeb, among many others.

It may seem strange that such funds are invested in a candidate who has, at least for now, little chances of winning the Republican nomination, but the money is not wasted. Tel Aviv is simply rewarding Haley’s many favors, knowing that, regardless of her exact position in government, Haley will always continue to prioritize Israel’s interests in her political agenda, and, if needed, even ahead of her own country’s.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

I see myself as a scrappy upstart. I still see myself as a guy everybody’s sleeping on. Like, “I wrote this thing and nobody’s paying attention to it. I’ll show them with the next piece.” It’s probably not healthy, but that’s how I’ve always governed myself, as the guy who’s looking to get better with each piece, whether it’s a 200-word thing, whether it’s a 50-word thing, or now, with a book, 80,000 words.

In terms of having a moment, I don’t know if I fully embrace it. I don’t know if I can. I get asked the question “tell me how you made it” all the time, and every time I’m asked it, I feel weird because I don’t feel like I’ve made it. My response is always, “I walked down the street today and nobody noticed me, nobody knew who I was. I’m not Jay-Z or anything like that.”

As far as having a moment, I feel like it’s a result of me putting everything into the work. I’ve never been one of these music journalists that felt like my work was law, or when I write a review that it’s the only take on the record. If people read my work, hopefully they see the integrity, and see that I’m coming from my own personal vantage point. If you have a totally different vantage point, that’s fine as well.

That’s part of the reason I’ve never slammed a record—I just don’t believe in that. In terms of having a moment, I think it comes from all these years of working at this radio station, and at a newspaper, and then writing for Pitchfork, etc. I’ve always been the guy who wanted to cover things on the come up. Everybody else can cover Drake and Kanye and the like. They don’t need my voice on that. I want to write about Quelle Chris. I want to write about The Breathing Effect.

Really, I still feel like I’m trying to get better. A part of it is me not being entirely comfortable being the guy on the new Beyoncé record, or whatever, because why would anybody listen to me talking about that? But there’s this other record that no one’s talking about that I can write a thousand words on. I decided to stay there, and I think that’s how I got the Bandcamp gig, because I’ve always been the guy that lives on that road less traveled. It’s worked out so far. I think I’m just going to stay there.

Maybe this moment stems from the fact that people know they can come to me and that I’m always going to shout out people who need the shout out and not necessarily the people who’ve already been shouted out several times. I’ve never understood writers who wanted to make their name by covering whatever everybody else is doing.

You forged your own path and have your own taste. How did you come to end up writing a book about arguably the most popular rapper in the world?

It’s funny. Long before I do anything, I think about it for several months. One day, I’m in the office. It’s a hot summer day in 2016. I’d just gotten the Bandcamp gig. I’d been there maybe two months. I ran the idea past a good friend of mine, Jason Reynolds, who has now become arguably the hottest author in the world. He’s on every show. I ran the idea past him to write about Kendrick, because he’s been a friend forever, and he told me straight up, “Write that. I’m going to put you in contact with my friend. Run the idea past him, he’s honest, he’ll let you know.” I ran it past his friend, who was a book editor at Atria, and he tells me “Oh, I think there’s something there. Let’s refine it.”

I’m a sucker for fly-on-the-wall stories. At first I wanted to write about how To Pimp a Butterfly came together, Thundercat came in the room and then Glasper came in the room. I wanted to write that. But then in speaking with people, it made me realize I needed to present Kendrick in the broader context of Black America and of culture, and so I wrote a book proposal.

I was finishing the proposal the night of the most recent Grammy’s when he opened up with Chappelle, I was like, “I need to hurry up. I need to hurry up before somebody swoops in.” I finished the proposal and then the rest, as they say, is history. I had a bunch of meetings. I had seven meetings in two days. And we got a deal in place.

Even though I’ve never been the mainstream music guy, I’ve always loved what Kendrick stood for because I love how if this is the popular sound—if it’s trap or if it’s whatever—he has no problem going the opposite way, which is the way I’ve governed myself. And with To Pimp a Butterfly, it was such a left-of-center record. It almost reminded me of the old Roots albums and it made my job a lot easier because I’ve always been the guy jumping up and down like, “Robert Glasper is great!” Or “Thundercat is great, and Kamasi!” And he had all of those guys on one record.

In listening to that album, I was like, “There’s a book in here.” I had already thought about writing books anyways, so I just decided to give it a shot. And the idea was scaring me to death. That’s how I knew I had to do it.

I imagine it was exciting getting that book deal, but was it also stressful? Because, now you have to write the book, and there will be a lot of eyes on it.

I’m totally naive when it comes to writing, because I’m one of these guys where it’s just me and a laptop. I’m just pecking away. I don’t pay much attention because I’m always focused on the next thing. Like, “Let’s finish this thing so I can get to the next thing.” Even when I put the tweet out, “Hey, some exciting news to share,” I just figured it would be 10 likes, 20 likes, and that no one would care. But then I turn my phone over and it was just a steady stream of, “Oh my god, you’re the right person for this.” And that was what stopped me, because I’m like, “No, I’m not. Come on. Get out of here.”

I didn’t think people were paying attention. Writing is such an isolating art form that you never know who’s paying attention. That’s when it hit me: “Oh, I’m writing a book about Kendrick Lamar.” A friend of mine woke me up with an email and said, “Hey, did I just hear on the Breakfast Club that you’re writing about Kendrick Lamar?” And I’m like, “Uh, I guess you did hear that.” Another friend of mine, a publicist, emails me randomly, “Hey dude, I just read on Pitchfork that you’re doing the Kendrick thing.” That’s when I was like, “Alright, this is going to be a thing.”

It was scary at first. It’s not scary now that I’m actually conducting interviews, and I’m talking to people and I’m writing. And now that the heat of the announcement has cooled a bit, the people I need to interview are more receptive because they see the place that I’m coming from. They’ve seen the other things I’ve done. I hope that they know I’m coming at it from a good place. That’s the main thing I wanted to explain to people: that this isn’t some tell-all, “You won’t believe what…” clickbait-type things. It’s about how he influenced Black America, and it also goes into the rise of spiritual jazz in LA, the rise in gangsta rap in LA, and how those things helped shape his perspective.

A couple week ago I was in LA and it’s like, “Well, let me go over to south LA and actually talk to the old-school jazz guys.” And the other thing, as you know as a reporter, where you talk to this set of people, and they say, “Well, you need to go over there and talk to that set of people.” And then you talk to them. That’s how it’s been. When I come back and I dive into the notes that I have, I realize I actually am getting a lot. I’ve been writing it now and it doesn’t seem as daunting. At one point, I was scared. I was like, “Oh, I hope people say yes.” But everybody has said yes so far and it’s been great.

Do you have a system for trying to write a certain amount every day? Do you have a deadline for the book?

My deadline is actually a year from Saturday. They want it then. But it’s funny, when you assign something it’s like, “Okay, well this record is coming out Friday. We need the review to go up by Monday at the latest.” I’m still operating from that mindset where I want to get everything in. And my editor, who has been great, he’s been the one calming me down. He’s like, “Dude, you have a year. And 80,000 words really isn’t a whole lot. It sounds like a lot. But trust me, you’ll do it. It’s going to get done.” He’s also kind of been a therapist where it’s like, “Look, we don’t just give book deals to anybody.”

So, I have a system where I try to write at least 500 words a day. Sometimes that’s tough because of the full-time job. I’m there from 9—well, in total, like 8 to 6, because I start from home. And then when I get home, I’ll try to bang out about 500 words or so.

But I’m also one of those crazy people where I have Google Docs on my phone. I’m always in thinking-emoji pose (), and I’ll just write. If I’m on the G Train, I’ll just write whatever comes to mind. And then cultivate it when I go home.

When I break it down and treat it like a big feature, it’s cool because for a while, the word “book” freaked me out. It’s like, “Oh, I’m writing a book.” But now it’s okay. I’m not as concerned about it because I can slowly unpack my thoughts.

Has your background as an editor and a freelancer been helpful to writing a book?

It really is. Even before the book, these things informed each other. I still freelance from time to time, and I know now as an editor what drives me crazy. I never, ever, ever want to turn in bad or late copy, or anything else that makes an editor walk around the block huffing and puffing. When it’s time for me to write a review or turn in a Q&A I’m like, “Okay, I know what I like. I know that I shouldn’t have run-on sentences,” etc. Not that I did any of that stuff anyways, but now I’m extra mindful. It’s like, “Alright, when I turn it in, I know there are going to be certain edits.” But I don’t want it to be where I have to totally rewrite this thing.

Being an editor has really helped with my writing overall, and it’s totally helped with the book because I find that a lot of writers—and I used to be guilty of this, too—just use all of these words. Like even if you can say it simply, you don’t say it simply, and instead you use all these fifty dollar words to make it seem poetic. You don’t need to do that. That’s just one example where when I’m writing the book, I try to slowly build the narrative, put the reader in the scene, etc. And my wife reads a ton of books. She’s always at the bookstore. She’s been helping me as well.

I’ll ask her, “What style of writing do you like?” She’s like, “I love simple, punchy writing, maybe it will have a complex word here and there but I don’t always want to be looking at the dictionary on my phone when I’m trying to get through this thing.” That approach has been truly helpful in enabling me to communicate who Kendrick is and what he means, because I realize that the music journalist community is really small and I’m writing for people who may not even know who Kendrick is, or who Thundercat is, or who any of these guys are. I’m writing for those people. Even in the moments where I feel like I can just say, “Oh, experimental jazz musician blah, blah,” I have to go back in and explain, “He came from this scene and that scene.”

This book is a serious history. A lot of people in our general age group who are writing books these days are writing memoirs, or thinly veiled memoirs. You’re writing a history, not piecing together your tweets.

I wanted to do this on purpose. Maybe this is just me having low self-esteem. I’ve had a couple of people say, “You should write a memoir, or you should write about the D.C. scene or yourself, or how you navigated the scene.” And I’m like, “I don’t think anybody’s going to want to read that. That’s not interesting.”

But it’s vitally important to place someone like Kendrick within this context. Going from around 2014 until now, you have this surge of alternative Black creativity that he is at the center of in many ways. He helped usher this in. You have Kendrick, and nowadays you have the HBO show Random Acts of Flyness. You have Black Panther. Insecure is another one. We’ve finally reached a point where, no matter what your art is, there are ears for it, and people are going to find it, and people are going to seek it out. That’s why I felt it was important to write about Kendrick. There’s already a curriculum being written about him, he won the Pulitzer. This is a guy who people are going to be talking about years down the road.

I’m always going to be a music journalist. I’m always going to find a record that I want to write about, but I also plan to be a full-time author where I’m just going down this road of writing about Kendrick and then writing about whomever else. I already have other ideas that I’m trying to sharpen. I feel like those types of things help build a legacy. It’s building a legacy without having the attention being solely on me. I feel like that’s probably the best way to go. A book is such a beautiful, tactile thing that you can pick up and put on your table. I look forward to having that. I look forward to coming home and being like, “Is that my book on the coffee table?” That’s crazy.

You didn’t necessarily have a strategy for getting this book off the ground, like, “I’m going to do this, this, and this.” You just kept working. One thing led to the next thing.

That’s it exactly. I’ve been covering stuff that I like and thankfully people have paid attention. It’s never been systematic, like, “Okay, I’m going to write the first Kendrick book and then I’m going to write this and then I’m going to blow up.” I always do this thing where if there is a record I like, I find a way to cover it and I write about it from the heart. The rest is going to be what it is, so whether it’s a review that people get behind, or whether it’s a feature story, or like now doing speaking engagements, I do things that I really like. If somebody can get with it, that’s amazing and that’s a blessing. I just keep doing that. I have no plan. I wish I had a plan. But I have no strategy. It’s just writing about stuff that I really love. That’s it.

You’ve already given some advice—forge your own path, write clearly. Do you have any other advice for young writers? Anything you’ve learned from editing so many people?

Younger writers should do more studying of previous works and how those works help inform what they’re listening to now. Everything out here now is a version of what came out in the ’70s and ’80s. There’s nothing entirely new.

What I tell writers from all backgrounds is this: Let’s say you’re a hip hop guy, you like hip hop. Go to a rock show. Go to a punk show. Go to every other kind of show—metal, what have you. Stand in the back and study. Don’t go there as a fan. You can go there as a fan, obviously, but you can also just go and study what you’re seeing. Study how fans interact. How do the notes hit you? Study that, then go home, dig through liner notes, and do a little bit of crate digging, whether it’s going through YouTube, or whether it’s going through Spotify, or Bandcamp, or whatever. Just broaden your palette as much as possible.

I get a lot of writers who say, “I like this specific sub-genre of hip hop,” and they don’t go outside of that. If I had any plan, it was, “You won’t be able to box me in.” I grew up as a rap head, but I also like folk, I also like electronica, dance, whatever.

If you’re a freelancer and you discover you’re the rap person at an outlet, go somewhere else and be a jazz person for that outlet. This way you have different outlets and you’re not writing the same thing for each one. You’re always tricking yourself into doing something different, or to write differently for every publication.

That’s advice I always give: Broaden yourself as much as you can, because as publications dry up, there are fewer opportunities. Have genuine curiosity. You have to be naturally curious and present yourself as a journalist who wants to learn.

With publications drying up, it’s important to do different things, even beyond writing. Look to curate playlists, write bios, whatever. There are different ways to get your name out there. Nine times out of 10, the old way of just thinking, “I’m going to write at this place, then I’m going to write here, and then I’m going to get a full-time gig at Pitchfork,” is not going to happen. You need to be able to vary yourself in different ways.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Brandon Stosuy.

After a three-day jury trial, Maurício Borges Sampaio was sentenced to 16 years in prison for masterminding the killing. Found guilty of participating in planning and carrying out the crime, the court sentenced Ademá Figuerêdo Aguiar Filho to 16 years in prison and Marcus Vinicius Pereira Xavier and Urbano de Carvalho Malta to 14 years. A fifth accused individual was found not guilty.

“The decision by a Goiás jury to convict those responsible for the murder of Valério Luiz de Oliveira is an encouraging sign, although it should not have taken 10 years,” said Natalie Southwick, CPJ’s Latin America and the Caribbean program coordinator. “Murders of Brazilian journalists rarely lead to the convictions of the masterminds, and we are relieved that the Oliveira family’s decade-long quest for justice has not ended in impunity. We hope this sets a new precedent for Brazilian authorities in bringing the killers of journalists to justice.”

Oliveira was shot and killed on July 5, 2012, in the city of Goiânia. In March 2013, the Goiás state public prosecutor charged the five men. Since then, multiple appeals from defense attorneys and decisions by the Goiás Court of Justice have postponed proceedings, as CPJ documented.  

Brazil was ninth on CPJ’s 2022 Global Impunity Index, which ranks countries where journalists are regularly murdered in retaliation for their work and their killers go free.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The post Bob Dylan Lives (and Greil Marcus is Still Writing About Him) appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ron Jacobs.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Josh Frank.

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