In what could be one of the most crucial dub reissues of the year, Greensleeves has just published the sequel to my favorite King Tubby production of all time, Dangerous Dub. Out of print since 1996, this 1981 LP is the kind of record that teaches you to appreciate an entire genre.

Much brighter sounding than other Tubby recordings (at times the treble sounds an awful lot like Scientist) amidst a sea of never-ending reggae re-releases, More Dangerous Dub most definitely stands out. The mix is so clear and expansive, I can hear even the tiniest of details on my MacBook's crappy internal speakers.

One of the principle points Charlie Bertsch and I put forth in our presentation on Burial at the Experience Music Project conference last month is that dub's political meaning inheres in the way it uses reverb to symbolically create space, to enlarge it, as though the effect is it's own metaphor for freedom.

Given how bleak things looked in Jamaica when this album was recorded, it's no surprise that it sounds as optimistic as it does, especially by Tubby's standards. It is as though More Dangerous Dub is an exercise in irony, particularly given how dark dub first sounded during it's heyday under socialist rule in the mid-1970s.

CEDAR: When you compare the rebels on Masada to the wise men in Yavneh, the rebels died as lions, and the wise men lived as dogs . But the dogs had puppies, and we are those puppies. So, there was something about blowing up Beaufort, blowing up the fortifications, blowing up the mountain, at the end of the film, that was also about blowing up a symbol of (the lion's) power. It's about our power to create something else that, at least for me, makes us different from our enemies.

ZEEK: It means that as Israelis, we can start over. That we have the ability to reinvent ourselves.

CEDAR: Not only that. It means that we have an identity without the geographical symbol, that we have an identity that is as powerful and as firm as concrete and fortifications, flags and pride.

To read the rest of my interview with director Joseph Cedar, check out the new issue of Zeek.

American defense concerns have always given weapons names that fit their function. For example, fighters such as the F-15, F-16 and F-18 were appropriately given names such as 'Eagle', 'Fighting Falcon,' and 'Hornet,' while the black-painted, radar-evading F-117 stealth bomber was dubbed the 'Nighthawk'.

As silly as these names can get, (Why not a Dayhawk? When is the Chickenhawk coming? etc..) you can see the cultural logic behind their specificity. They're meant to convey that such war machines embody the fierce, agile, even predatory qualities that define the brave birds that the aircraft were named after.

Hence the curious naming of the new 'Masada' assault rifle by it's manufacturer, Magpul Industries. Named after one of the first recorded incidents of mass suicide (in which 960 Jews besieged by Roman troops took their lives) the complexity of the rifle's title represents a fairly serious break with convention.

As though anticipating criticisms over having chosen such a potentially controversial name, in a PDF brochure for the weapon posted to Wikipedia, Magpul maintains that the company is neither "Jewish or Israeli backed," but that it has always found the story of Masada to be "a bold example of defiance."

If you want to get a sense of what informs so many American estimations of Israeli military prowess, you won't find a more revealing signifier. One people's loss is another's defiance. Or, one could conjecture that such takes on Israelis say more about American desires than what they...

Every weekday morning, I turn on the news as I pick up our bedroom before heading off to work. Last Friday was no different. Hoping to catch the all-too-brief snapshot of CNN's international channel that we get here in the US between eight and nine AM Pacific time, I switched on the TV, which, as I discovered, was already tuned to what looked like a European news program.

"Over ten thousand veterans have committed suicide since coming home from Iraq," I could hear an American-accented voice saying, as I folded my wife's puppy dog-themed red pajamas.

Unnerved by what I'd just heard, I looked up at our television screen wondering if the channel was tuned to CNN. My suspicions proved correct. It wasn't This was the morning broadcast of Russia Today, which, unsurprisingly, was covering America's Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan conference, a reprise of the similarly-named 1971 event, in which Vietnam vets such as Senator John Kerry spoke out against the war in Southeast Asia.

As inclined as I was to dismiss this broadcast as a polemical exercise by an anti-American news channel, these figures didn't seem all that far off. Our neighbor works as a physical rehabilitation specialist at a local VA hospital where the majority of her clients are soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. The stories she's told me about their state of mind, (and their bodies,) sound like obvious recipes for suicide.

Broadcast the day after the 5th anniversary of the invasion of...

As we approach the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, it is worth putting certain facts into perspective. Until the 2003 invasion, it was assumed that the 1948 Arab-Israeli war had created the region's largest and most significant refugee crisis, sending an estimated 750,000 Palestinians into exile.

According to figures made available by news agencies, over the past five years, the US occupation of Iraq has turned over 4 million of the country's citizens into refugees. In an article published by the Associated Press on Monday, it is estimated that two million of these refugees are internal, with the rest spread around the region.

Separated by 60 years, and different national contexts, there are as many reasons to not assimilate these events as there are for comparing them. From an Israeli perspective, however, given the tragic legacy that the Palestinian refugee crisis has bequeathed the region, the Americans would be well advised to learn from precedent.