The Bush administration won an important victory Tuesday when the federal appeal court in Richmond, VA, ruled in favor of allowing the executive branch indefinite military detention of civilians captured on United States territory. The decision was 5 to 4.

The decision focused on Ali al-Marri, a Qatar citizen currently held as an enemy combatant on suspicions of terrorism and charged with credit-card fraud and lying to federal agents. A second decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that Marri must be provided with an “additional opportunity to challenge his detention in federal court,” the NY Times reports.

“This decision means the president can pick up any person in the country — citizen or legal resident — and lock them up for years without the most basic safeguard in the Constitution, the right to a criminal trial,” said Jonathan L. Hafetz, Marri’s lawyer.

The decision was an overturn of a decision slightly over one year ago in June 22, 2007, when the same court ruled that president Bush did not have this kind of detention authority.

“Because he was not captured on a foreign battlefield or foreign soil,” wrote Judge Wilkinson III in a majority opinion, “is akin to a judicial declaration that Congress and the executive may fight only the last war.”

On behalf of the dissenting judges, Diana Gribbon Motz wrote “this does not mean that al Marri, or similarly situated American citizens, would have to be freed. Like others accused of terrorist activity in this country, from the Oklahoma City bombers to the convicted September 11th conspirator they could be tried on criminal charges and, if convicted, punished severely. But the government would not be able to subject them to indefinite military detention.”

According to the NY Times, all of the judges who voted for the detention were appointed by Republican presidents and all those who voted against it were appointed by Democrats.

- Igor Kossov

On 125^th Street near the Metro-North Harlem stop, I hear a hefty thumping. Towards the end of the block, it grows into a discernible rhythm over the Harlem traffic. That is the Saturday drum circle in Marcus Garvey Memorial Park, which has ferociously beaten out rhythms since 1969.

Babakhunne, dressed in a yellow dashiki and matching kufi, speaks close to my ear over the rhythmic sounds behind us. He started the drum circle nearly 40 years ago on April 26^th , after arriving in the states. “People was just in the park,” he tells me, “and I just started grouping them.” At 72, he no longer plays as much as he used to, but still presides silently over the event, absorbing the music and gazing into the crowd of dedicated and new drummers, young and old immigrants, Harlem born New Yorkers, and commuters just passing through the area.

When I ask Babakhunne why he started drumming, he says, “It was in me.”  Barbara from E 120^th Street, a white woman standing behind some benches and clacking sticks together, replies happily, “It puts me in this completely peaceful trance.” Dwayne from the Bronx contemplates a moment before responding, “There’s a connection with music in everybody.”  

Drum circles in general hold an important part in jazz. In fact, they represent the origin of jazz: while each drummer beats out a different rhythm, the whole circle creates ‘polyrhythm,’ a number of overlapping single rhythms. This idea was carried over from Africa hundreds of years ago, and is one the foundational elements of all jazz.

Back in the day, the circle would gather amidst filth and crime to drop their cultural anchor. Nowadays, conditions in Marcus Garvey park have vastly improved. Some residents credit the circle with helping to improve the area by providing a safe haven of sound for peaceful and constructive community gatherings. But not everyone is equally enthusiastic.

Forty yards from the circle’s now official site (as designated by a Parks Department plaque) is 2002 5^th Ave, a luxury co-op full of young urban, mostly white professionals who find the booming drum blasts a serious nuisance. A resident was quoted by the NY Times as saying “No one told me there would be unremitting noise every Saturday for the rest of my life.”

The resident complaints highlight the gentrification problems in New York, where constantly fluctuating communities tend to disrupt tradition and neighborhood ties. The drummers have moved within the park before, both of their own volition and due to Parks Department regulations.

Story by Joshua Fishbein. Igor Kossov contributed reporting. Photo by James Nova.

When Sub Pop, Jon Poneman and Bruce Pavitt’s Seattle-based indie record label, released Green River’s Dry As a Bone EP in 1987, "grunge" peeked its head from the depths of the underground. After Green River/Mudhoney's Mark Arm apparently coined the term in 1981, Everett True, a journalist writing for the UK music magazine Melody Maker, picked out the word “grunge” from Sub Pop’s description of the album’s sound as being “ultra-loose grunge that destroyed the morals of a generation” and, at once, an emerging genre of music was named. A year later, in 1988, the label came out with Sub Pop 200, two years after their first release, Sub Pop 100. 200 was a three-EP box set with a twenty-page booklet of photographs and was raved about by one radio DJ as being “a testament to regional music." Through such a marketing strategies, Pavitt and Poneman made a cultural statement and created an identity for Sub Pop itself. As stated by Rocket managing editor Grant Alden, Sub Pop wanted to “create [the] trust that if it’s on Sub Pop, it’s worth owning, even if you haven’t heard the band."