Dub dot dash

Arafat to Pope: Yo, nice Xtian bling bling you got dere,
my homie. Where can I get me sum a dat?
Pope: Yo, quit buggin'. can't you see I'm on da mic, homie?

Mo money.
So, Yasser Arafat died, and turns out he was a billionaire. He lived in bombed out buildings, when he coulda been high rolling.

... For 12 years, until 1996, Mr al-Ghussein was the treasurer for the Palestine Liberation Organisation. It was his duty to keep track of the billions of pounds that were donated to Yasser Arafat, the PLO leader, by sympathetic organisations, such as the European Union.
Eventually, Mr al-Ghussein realised that he had been handed an impossible task - tracing Arafat's billions required a detective, not an accountant. "I just hope he has left some sort of a will," he told The Sunday Telegraph, on the eve of Arafat's death on Thursday. "Or at least some detailed information about all the accounts and the assets, because that money belongs to the Palestinian people, not to him."
... Meanwhile, Mrs Arafat and the Arafats' daughter, Zahwa, allegedly spent an entire year living on a floor of the Hotel Bristol in Paris, at a cost of £8,700 per night, before buying an expensive flat in the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe. French authorities have discovered that Mrs Arafat, who moved to Paris in 2000 to avoid the second intifada, received $11.4 million in money transfers from Switzerland, between 2002 and 2003.
More news stories here.


Oh yeah, and Roger Harper - WTF?
"... we don't like the negative messages this particular product gives so we thought, 'How could we turn a negative into a positive?'
"We thought, 'Why don't we make a significant donation to Women's Refuge and youth suicide [prevention] because these organisations help the victims that suffer from Eminem's world view'.

UPDATE
Roger Harper, manager of the CD and DVD Store appeared on TV Ones nightly current affairs show Closeup on Monday night, talking about his actions. He was filmed outside his store in Vulcan Lane in central Auckland. The programme's host Susan Wood pointed out to Harper that the irony of his campaign against Eminem would have the effect of drawing even more attention to his album, which Harper agreed with, saying that the CD had already sold out in some of his 25 stores.

The Herald reported that Harper’s stores displayed a poster “in shop windows to discourage people from buying the new Eminem album, Encore. If people do choose to buy it from the store then it will donate $6 to Women's Refuge and youth suicide prevention charities. The posters claim Encore is more "verbal porn" from Eminem and his "annual pile of refuse" that he releases on record. It goes on to say: "We'd rather not make money selling you this stuff but if you do want this album, buy it here and we will donate $6 for every copy we sell."

The stores will not have the album out on display, but will keep it behind the counter. I went down there at lunchtime today, and they have albums of similar explicit lyrical content on display from the likes of Missy Elliot, Snoop Dogg, Lil Kim and Tupac, to name a few. There are 12 music retailers in the central city area - 5 of them focus mainly on chart CDs. Now what's interesting about the CD and DVD Store is it is the only one of the 12 music retailers to feature a Christian music section - it's right next to Punk/Alternative. Harper’s own religious views didn’t come up during his TV interview.

As one irate letter writer in this morning’s paper observed, “We cannot discriminate on ethnicity or gender, but this store is being allowed to judge on our choice of music. This is juvenile and unfair. I know that I would rather buy products where I am not being judged and criticised for being who I am, no matter what my choice of music.”

MO UPDATE: This story has made it offshore, and is getting coverage on Billboard, MSNBC and Allhiphop.com. We are a bunch of hicks.