No doubt, Orchestra Baobab is one of my favorite bands. I discovered them long ago when I made my first trip to Africa in the late 1980s. Music was still on cassettes. Their style is a mixture of West African rhythms and Cuban ones. Beginning tonight, Orchestra Baobab is in San Francisco at Yoshi’s in the Fillmore. The music is infectious with joy.

Orchestra Baobab are one of Africa’s great iconic bands, creators of one of the world’s most sublime and truly distinctive pop sounds. Founded in 1970, Orchestra Baobab fused Afro-Cuban rhythm and Portuguese Creole melody with Congolese rumba, high life and a whole gamut of local styles – kickstarting a musical renaissance in their native Senegal, which turned the capital Dakar into one of the world’s most vibrant musical cities. They produced more hits in less than a decade than other bands in a lifetime. While Baobab found themselves sidelined by the revolution they helped create and disbanded in 1985, a huge groundswell of international interest led to their triumphant reformation in 2001. Orchestra Baobab are still very much in business today.

‘When I arrived in Senegal in 1968, there was only Cuban music,’ says Orchestra Baobab’s Togolese guitarist Barthélemy Attisso. ‘Back home, we were listening to Nigerian high life and Congolese guitar music, but if you walked past a club in Dakar, you would swear there were Cubans playing inside. Yet they were all Senegalese!’

If you want to get to grips with the Orchestra Baobab story, you have to get under the skin of their home town Dakar. Westernmost city on the African continent, former capital of France’s vast West African empire, Dakar has earned a reputation as one of the world’s most dynamic musical capitals, home to superstars like Youssou N’Dour, Baaba Maal and Cheikh Lô who have given Senegal perhaps the highest musical profile of any country in Africa. Yet in 1970, when Orchestra Baobab were formed, Dakar was still, in many ways like a French city, a tropical Marseille of art deco apartment blocks, showpiece modernist architecture and pavement cafes. And musically, the city was a backwater.

For more on Orchestra Baobab, please visit Bonnaroo. Tour dates for their June 2008 North American tour can be found at their MySpace page.

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The arrest of a gay Brazilian soldier, Sgt Laci Marinho de Araújo, happened just as Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was due to address the country’s first national gay rights’ conference.

Sgt Laci Marinho de Araújo and his partner, who is also a sergeant in the Brazilian army, featured on the front page of Época, a Brazilian news weekly magazine. They gave an interview in which they talked openly about living together as a gay couple. The two soldiers said they had been in a stable relationship for 10 years.

Here is the cover. It reads: “They are in the Army. They are a couple. They are gay.”

However, while they were taking part in a television interview on Wednesday, Sgt de Araújo was arrested by military police who surrounded the TV station until he came out. He has now been tranferred to an Army prison near Brasilia.

Here is the interview in Portuguese:

It’s an outrage and Lula needs to step in and resolve this. Brazil has a large gay population and it is a popular gay destination. I’ve been twice. I won’t again unless this matter is resolved. Being gay is not a crime, it’s genetic destiny.

The article in Época.

The story in English from the BBC and Made in Brazil, a gay Brazilian blog.

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This message from Hillary Rodman Clinton was sent today to her supporters.

Dear Charles,

I wanted you to be one of the first to know: on Saturday, I will hold an event in Washington D.C. to thank everyone who has supported my campaign. Over the course of the last 16 months, I have been privileged and touched to witness the incredible dedication and sacrifice of so many people working for our campaign. Every minute you put into helping us win, every dollar you gave to keep up the fight meant more to me than I can ever possibly tell you.

On Saturday, I will extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy. This has been a long and hard-fought campaign, but as I have always said, my differences with Senator Obama are small compared to the differences we have with Senator McCain and the Republicans.

I have said throughout the campaign that I would strongly support Senator Obama if he were the Democratic Party’s nominee, and I intend to deliver on that promise.

When I decided to run for president, I knew exactly why I was getting into this race: to work hard every day for the millions of Americans who need a voice in the White House.

I made you — and everyone who supported me — a promise: to stand up for our shared values and to never back down. I’m going to keep that promise today, tomorrow, and for the rest of my life.

I will be speaking on Saturday about how together we can rally the party behind Senator Obama. The stakes are too high and the task before us too important to do otherwise.

I know as I continue my lifelong work for a stronger America and a better world, I will turn to you for the support, the strength, and the commitment that you have shown me in the past 16 months. And I will always keep faith with the issues and causes that are important to you.

In the past few days, you have shown that support once again with hundreds of thousands of messages to the campaign, and again, I am touched by your thoughtfulness and kindness.

I can never possibly express my gratitude, so let me say simply, thank you.

Sincerely,

Hillary Rodham Clinton

(more…)

If voting for McCain ain’t your thing, there are other options.

The New American Independent Party is for one saying:

WELCOME HILLARY SUPPORTERS!

The New American Independent Party would like to welcome all of our new members. We admire your passion and look forward to a successful relationship together.

Now more than ever the American people need us!

We encourage all of you to get actively involved with our party. We have leadership positions and Presidential elector slots to be filled.

Now let’s get to work!

As I wrote yesterday, it is time to take the bull by the horns ladies. I encourage the women of America to start running for office, any office and keep on running until we get universal health care, a sound energy policy, environmental protections that stick, a tax structure that is fair, a responsible foreign policy that ensures our security and our freedoms, a manufacturing based-economy that provides well-paying jobs for American working families and sound family policies.

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As soon as the verdict in the Antonin “Tony” Rezko corruption case was announced today, the Republican National Committee was ready to start firing away on Obama’s relationship with the now convicted Rezko. This ad is scheduled to run on national cable channels.

Here’s a video report on Tony Rezko’s conviction from the Associated Press:

The story in the Chicago Tribune on likely implications for Illinois state politics. The San Jose Mercury News writes on how it might complicate Obama’s Presidential aspirations.

The problem for Obama is not Rezko but rather that Rezko is but one in a series of questionable relationships that he developed as he sought to rise in Chicago’s rough and tumble political arena. The GOP will do what Clinton did not do in her advertising and tie Obama to the Reverend Wright, the Reverend James Meeks, Father Michael Pfleger, Louis Farrahkan, William Ayers and Rashid Khalidi.

These relationships call in to question Obama’s judgment and character. The GOP will paint Obama as “out of touch” with mainstream American values. Unfortunately, they’re right. Obama thinks Clinton roughed him up. Actually he did the damage to himself because in the world of Barack Obama every relationship is worth cultivating until it becomes politically expedient to throw it away. It’s all about Barack.

View RNC Ad Number One: Democrats on Obama
View RNC Ad Number Two: Obama’s Résumé

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This is the second of three ads released yesterday by the Republican National Committee that will begin running this week. Again, it is hard to argue with the facts.

View RNC Ad Number One: Democrats on Obama
View RNC Ad Number Three: Obama & Rezko

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Here is the Thursday, June 5th, 2008, edition of interesting reads from around the world.

Energy Consumers Gather in Japan
Eleven nations that guzzle nearly two thirds of the world’s energy will hold talks in northern Japan this weekend, seeking ways to secure enough supply and reduce consumption as oil prices hit record highs. The June 7-8 ministerial meeting in Aomori, some 600km north of Tokyo, brings together China, India, South Korea, and the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations.

California Drought
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed a statewide drought Wednesday, warning that California’s water supply is falling dangerously low because of below-average rainfall and court-ordered water restrictions aimed at protecting fish. Administration officials call the governor’s move a first step, intended to put Californians on notice that rationing could be coming if the situation does not improve. More from the Los Angeles Times. We have been through this before, it is not much fun.

Mugagbe Tightens His Grip
Poll harassment continues as opposition leader held and government orders halt to independent food relief. More from the UK Guardian. Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was held for nine hours by police Wednesday and formally warned for allegedly breaching a security law after a campaign visit to a small provincial town. More on this aspect of the story from the BBC.

Fighting in Sri Lanka
A wave of new fighting between government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels across the Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged northern region killed 35 guerrillas and one soldier, the military said Thursday. Details in the International Herald Tribune.

Hungarians Miss Their Welfare State
Fistfulofeuros reports that “a recent poll showing that most Hungarians preferred life under communism caused a mild shock in the foreign community, but provoked little more than a characteristic shrug from Hungarians. After all, under János Kádár Hungary was one of the least repressive regimes in the Soviet bloc, the “Goulash Communism” of the 1980s allowed a certain amount of private business, inflation was unheard of, while the state was able to borrow on Western markets to fund a generous health and welfare system. As the number of Hungarians feeling nostalgic for those simpler times has risen from 53% in the last such survey in 2001 to 61% today, it’s clear that Hungarians are having trouble adjusting to modern-day reality.”

Dutch Must Improve Conditions for Europe’s Sole Female Islamic Terrorist
The Netherlands must end the ‘irresponsible’ conditions which Holland’s only convicted female terrorist is living under at the high security prison in Vught, according to prison inspectors working for the Council of Europe. The story from Dutch News.

Singaporean Dissidents Jailed
Singapore Democratic Party leaders opt for jail time for contempt of court because they’re too broke to pay the fine. As expected, Singaporean Democratic Party leader Chee Soon Juan and his sister, Chee Siok Chin, said Wednesday that they would go to jail for contempt of court because they could not afford an appeal of the sentence, which probably would have been futile anyway. The story from the Asia Sentinel.

Brazil and the United States Clash Over Bio-Fuels
Participants at a U.N. summit on the world’s food crisis differed this week over a key issue: how much the rush for environmentally friendly biofuels is contributing to the rocketing prices that are causing hunger and unrest in much of the globe. Fuels made from sugar cane, corn and other crops have been seen as a way to combat climate change and rising oil prices. The United States has been heavily subsidizing corn-based ethanol production. Last year, the 27-nation European Union endorsed a plan calling for biofuels to make up 10 percent of the fuel for road vehicles by 2020. However:

”It is frightening to see attempts to draw a cause-and-effect relationship between biofuels and the rise of food prices,” the president of Brazil, whose country’s sugar cane has long been used to produce ethanol that fuels cars and trucks, said Tuesday.

The story in the Miami Herald. I will provide a wrap up to the Rome Summit on the Global Food Crisis tomorrow. The summit ends today.

Russian Military Shake-Up
On June 3, 2008, a serious reshuffle took place in Russia’s military establishment: General Yury Baluyevsky stepped down as chief of the General Staff to become deputy secretary of the national Security Council. He was replaced by General Nikolai Makarov, who had until now held the post of chief of procurement, to which he was appointed in April 2007, soon after Anatoly Serdyukov was made defense minister. The story from IntelliBriefs. I have been remiss on covering East European events but I am working on getting two friends to contribute more on Russia and Central Asia. One is an American living and working in Moscow on gay health issues and the other a former Russian peer from business school who lives in Vladivostok in the Russian Far East.

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