All The News That’s Fit To Flip, by NaXaL

It’s a sexy byline with a good head on it’s shoulders and body to boot. 

This blog is based on headlines from the New York Times newspaper, commonly referred to as the paper of record for U.S. news.  The blog is an artistic and crafts based exercise in poetic translation of what’s being said on the page and, more importantly, what’s not being said on the page.  I flip status quo, big business journalism into independent, poetic analysis with soul.  I churn through the day’s headline stories and use ‘em to spit my hip hop based blues.  Sometimes I wax poetic on my life, in a continuing attempt to embody a broader definition of what constitutes, “news.”  Is news just a glorified neighborhood and global crime report?  Or is it what communities want to, need to, deserve to know about each other?

These days we in the U.S. are bombarded with distractions while others are bombarded with bombs.  This blog attempts to reunite feeling with news in an era of justifiably bruised feelings and continued state based abuse.

Breaking Down The Terms

I. “All The News That’s Fit To Print”: New York Times byline, slogan, theme, banner.

II. “Flip”/”to flip” (transitive verb): oft used business term in U.S. based street economies

1: to cause to turn and especially to turn over <flip that pancake over> <flip this product into a profit> <flipping the pages of ones life from oppression to success>;

2: slang

a : to lose one’s mind or composure — often used with out;

b : to become very enthusiastic;

c : to take one thing and make it into something else, namely a profit <like taking goods you have (goods for the purposes of this blog including access to the new york times, analytical ability, political context, and a poet’s pen) and selling them for profit (profit for the purposes of this blog being an increasingly fruitful marketplace of ideas in which to trade ideas and participate in shaping our world as we know it-a primary goal of our first amendment protections) in a way that keeps you going economically and keeps the next human being going physically or spiritually.

III. ” All The News That’s Fit To Flip”:  That’s the byline I’ve created to describe what I report on and under.  It is an umbrella statement satirizing the New York Times while embodying a new, Hip Hop based era of independent journalism.

 IV.  NaXaL: This is a pseudonym I write under, a nod to history, an area of intellectual and political curiosity.  More on on the Naxalite movement:

Naxalite or Naxalism is an informal name given to radical, often violent, revolutionary communist groups that were born out of the Sino-Soviet split in the Indian communist movement. Ideologically they belong to various trends of Maoism. Initially the movement had its epicentre in West Bengal. In recent years, they have spread into less developed areas of rural central and eastern India, such as Chattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh through the activities of underground groups like the Communist Party of India (Maoist).^[1] The CPI(Maoist) and some other Naxal factions are considered terrorists by the Government of India and various state governments in India.^[2]

The term Naxalite comes from Naxalbari, a small village in West Bengal, where a section of Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) led by Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal led a violent uprising in 1967, trying to develop a “revolutionary opposition” in opposition to the official CPI(M) leadership. The insurrection started on May 25, 1967 in Naxalbari village when a tribal was attacked by local authorities over a land issue. The tribals attacked the opposing landlords and the violence escalated. Majumdar greatly admired Mao Zedong of China and advocated that Indian peasants and lower classes must follow in his footsteps and overthrow the government and upper classes whom he held responsible for their plight. He engendered the Naxalite movement through his writings, the most famous being the ‘Historic Eight Documents’ which formed the basis of Naxalite ideology. In 1967 ‘Naxalites’ organized the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR), and later broke away from CPI(M). Uprisings were organized in several parts of the country. In 1969 AICCCR gave birth to Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).

The past few years has seen the insurgents spreading Naxal influence from 76 districts in nine states to 118 Districts in 12 States. The Communist Party of India (Maoist) was formed on September 21, 2004 through the merger of two prominent naxalite outfits - the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People’s War (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI).The Research and Analysis Wing alleges that many Naxalites have tried to maintain links with groups like the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, with whom they have engaged in weapons transactions. The president of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Rajnath Singh, alleges links between the Naxalites and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence. The CPI(maoist) has been banned in Andhra Pradesh, a ban that they have protested. They have also been attacked by anti-Naxalite paramilitary groups.  One such group is Salwa Judum , active in Chattisgarh.

The Naxalites intensified their insurgency in 2007 and are now active in half of India’s states, mostly in rural areas, in an attempt to encourage a peasant revolt in response to a government plan to expropriate large tracts of peasant land in eastern India in order to create special economic zones to attract industry.  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the Naxalites pose the biggest internal security threat to India since Independence (excerpted definition from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite).
Peace,

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