The Eclectic African

Taking Stock

2012-01-03T03:07:00.000-08:00

"In Khazaria,sheep, honey, and Jews exist in large quantities."

Muqaddasi,

Descriptio Imperii Moslemici

(tenth century).

Dr. Ashraf Ezzatreminds us that the highest profile 'invented' people in history are the jews.Perhaps the highest profile 'invented' event in history is the holocau$t. Without an understanding of unvarnishedhistory, how can we understand the present?

Just in case we may see an end to theinternet as we know it, there are some pdf copies of important booksthat need to be saved for posterity. Buy themif you can afford it because they will be found in few libraries. If soinclined download while you can. Countering the myth of the 'chosen ones' is abasic tool in the battle to save humanity from the Khazarian deception.

Shlomo Sand and ArthurKoestler, both 'jews,' present impressive historical documentation refuting thetales of the Old Testament and any blood link between whatever Hebrews may haveexisted thousands of years ago to those of Israel today. One criticism of Sandmay be that he has not delved into the actual history of the 'holocaust' andperpetuates the zionist exaggerations as evidenced by his statement "Todaythe descendants of the Jews of "Yiddishland" live mainly in theUnited States and Israel. The remains of millions of others are buried beneaththe slaughterhouses constructed by Hitler in the twentieth century."{page 277} That said, his work remains a must read.

Full book downloads:

The Invention ofthe Jewish People by Shlomo Sand

The Thirteenth Tribe by ArthurKoestler

Excerpts from "TheInvention of the Jewish People"

National mythologydetermined that the Jews—banished, deported or fugitive emigrants—were driveninto a long and dolorous exile, causing them to wander over lands and seas tothe far corners of the earth until the advent of Zionism prompted them to turnaround and return en masse to their orphaned homeland. This homeland had neverbelonged to the Arab conquerors, hence the claim of the people without a landto the land without a people.

This national statement,which was simplified into a useful and popular slogan for the Zionist movement,was entirely the product of an imaginary history grown around the idea of theexile. Although most of the professional historians knew there had never been aforcible uprooting of the Jewish people, they permitted the Christian myth thathad been taken up by Jewish tradition to be paraded freely in the public andeducational venues of the national memory, making no attempt to rebut it. Theyeven encouraged it indirectly, knowing that only this myth would provide morallegitimacy to the settlement of the "exiled nation" in a countryinhabited by others.

History deals with books,not with things, a "patriotic" scholar might argue, having spent hisor her entire life interpreting religious, governmental and ideological textsproduced in the past by a paper-thin elite. This is true where the traditionalstudy of the past is concerned. But the advent of anthropological historybegan, slowly but surely, to corrode the simplistic Zionist metahistories.

The construction of a newbody of knowledge always bears a direct connection with the national ideologyin which it operates. Historical insights that diverge from the narrative laiddown at the inception of the nation can be accepted only when consternationabout their implications is abated. This can happen when the current collectiveidentity begins to be taken for granted and ceases to be something thatanxiously and nostalgically clings to a mythical past, when identity becomesthe basis for living and not its purpose—that is when historiographic changecan take place. For now, it is difficult to predict whether the Israelipolitics of identity will permit, in the early twenty-first century, theemergence of fresh paradigms for the investigation of the origins and historyof Jewish faith communities.

No Jew who livestoday in a liberal Western democracy would tolerate the discrimination andexclusion experienced by the Palestino-Israelis, who live in a state thatproclaims it is not theirs. But Zionist supporters among the Jews around theworld, like most Israelis, are quite unconcerned, or do not wish to know, thatthe "Jewish state," because of its undemocratic laws, could neverhave been part of the European Union or one of Americas fifty states. Thisflawed reality does not stop them from expressing solidarity with Israel, andeven regarding it as their reserve home. Not that this solidarity impels themto abandon their national homelands and emigrate to Israel. And why shouldthey, seeing that they are not subjected to daily discrimination and alienationof the kind that Palestino-Israelis experience daily in their native country?

To understand currentZionist politics, replace the word "aliyah" with"diaspora." Today Israel's strength no longer depends on demographicincrease, but rather on retaining the loyalty of overseas Jewish organizationsand communities. It would be a serious setback for Israel if all thepro-Zionist lobbies were to immigrate en masse to the Holy Land. It is muchmore useful for them to remain close to the centers of power and communicationsin the Western world—and indeed they prefer to remain in the rich, liberal,comfortable "diaspora."

But if it is senseless toexpect the Jewish Israelis to dismantle their own state, the least that can bedemanded of them is to stop reserving it for themselves as a polity thatsegregates, excludes, and discriminates against a large number of its citizens,whom it views as undesirable aliens.

The Jewish supra-identitymust be thoroughly transformed and must adapt to the lively cultural reality itdominates. It will have to undergo a process of Israelization, open to allcitizens. It is too late to make Israel into a uniform, homogeneousnation-state. Therefore, in addition to an Israelization that welcomes the"other," it must develop a policy of democraticmulticulturalism—similar to that of the United Kingdom or the Netherlands—thatgrants the Palestino-Israelis not only complete equality but also a genuine andfirm autonomy. Their culture and institutions must be preserved and nurtured atthe same time as they are brought into the centers of power of the hegemonicIsraeli culture. Palestino-Israeli children should have access, if they wishit, to the heart of Israeli social and productive centers. And Jewish-Israelichildren must be made aware that they are living in a state in which there aremany "others."

And now the last,perhaps the hardest, question of them all: To what extent is Jewish Israelisociety willing to discard the deeply embedded image of the "chosenpeople," and to cease isolating itself in the name of a fanciful historyor dubious biology and excluding the "other" from its midst?

In the final account, if itwas possible to have changed the historical imaginary so profoundly, why notput forth a similarly lavish effort of the imagination to create a differenttomorrow? If the nation's history was mainly a dream, why not begin to dreamits future afresh, before it becomes a nightmare?

Shlomo Sand

The Horn Sounds for MORE War

2011-11-12T18:46:00.001-08:00

So, Israel’s all-powerful lobby in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an organization composed of Israeli collaborators, infiltrators, and outright traitors to the United States, is steamrolling through the House of Representatives H.R. 1905, which would prohibit the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, members of the U.S. Foreign Service, or any special envoy from engaging in any sort of diplomatic contact, official or unofficial, with any member or agent of the government of Iran. Only when the President informs the requisite committees may he proceed with engaging on diplomatic contact with Iran. Israel has de facto control over the foreign affairs committees of Congress, so any White House notification of the need to contact Iranian officials would be instantly transmitted to Binyamin Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem and Israel would then circumvent any U.S.-Iranian contact. AIPAC, with its resolution, is further making the United States a vassal of the Jewish state.

Israel’s strategy is to make certain that its plans to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and, perhaps other targets, meet no opposition from diplomatic circles in the United States… Israel has placed its own interests well beyond and in contravention of those of the United States.

Faced with the prospect of an Israeli attack on Iran, backed by Saudi Arabia – Israel’s secret ally in the region – has had ripple effects across the Middle East and Asia.

Countries in Asia are scrambling to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as full members. Confronted by a belligerent United States, NATO, and Israel intent on toppling the governments of Syria and Iran, the economic, cultural, and de facto collective security pact that comprises Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan announced after its prime ministers' summit in St. Petersburg that SCO would soon be opening its doors for full membership for Pakistan, Iran, and India. The Asian nations want to freeze the United States out of interference in Asia.

Ahead of the St. Petersburg summit, Russia and China strongly warned the West against any military attack on Iran. The words being used in international diplomacy are reminiscent of the Cold War era, however, it is the West that is playing to role of the aggressor, albeit an aggressor led around by Israel and its intelligence spies and assets embedded in the upper echelons of governments in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and within the United Nations hierarchy.

Even America's vassal state of Afghanistan, eager to break free of the bonds of NATO and Washington, has attained observer status in SCO. Recent comments by the deputy commander of NATO training in Afghanistan, U.S. Army Major General Peter Fuller, that the Afghan government leadership is erratic, ungrateful, and isolated from reality because President Hamid Karzai said Afghanistan would side with Pakistan in an American war on Pakistan, resulted in Fuller’s firing. Fuller’s comments also resulted in Karzai asking for observer status in SCO as American aggression against the Muslim world and opposition to sovereignty for Palestine has seen Washington’s standing around the world plummet.

Another nation where the CIA, Pentagon, has their agents creeping and crawling, Mongolia, is also a SCO observer. There are also SCO "partners in dialogue" -- nations that could attain SCO observer or membership status in the future. Partners in dialogue nations include Belarus, Sri Lanka, and one that should worry Tel Aviv and Washington, Turkey, a NATO member. Moscow and Ankara agree that Turkey should eventually become a full SCO member. Turkey has close historical and cultural links with the Turkic nations of central Asia and with many of the autonomous Turkic republics of Russia, including Tuva, Bashkortostan, and Adygeya.

Turkey has grown tired of Israeli interference in its internal and external affairs, as witnessed by the vicious and bloody Israeli attack on the Turkish Gaza aid vessel, the Mavi Marmara; Mossad support for Kurdish PKK terrorist attacks in Turkey; and covert Israeli entanglement in the Ergenekon "deep state" network in Turkey.

Iran has now seen Israel's most-open secret ally, Saudi Arabia, appoint the former Egyptian intelligence chief and close Netanyahu friend, Omar Suleiman, as an adviser to Saudi heir apparent, Crown Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, who is also the Interior Minister. The Jerusalem-Riyadh axis is being further cemented as the Obama administration is shifting 4,000 troops from Iraq to Kuwait and beefing up other U.S. military assets in Bahrain -- home of the U.S. Fifth Fleet – and Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Oman. The CIA and Pentagon have set up Predator drone bases in Djibouti, Seychelles, Ethiopia, and, reportedly, Saudi Arabia.

The president-elect of Kyrgyzstan, Prime Minister Almazbek Atambaev, has announced he wants the U.S. and NATO to leave the Manas Transit Center airbase in his country after the current lease expires in 2014. Already, Soros-funded non-governmental organization (NGO) agents in Kyrgyzstan are attempting to suggest that under the new Kyrgyz constitution, Atambaev does not have the authority to close the base. It is this type of U.S. interference in the affairs of the nations of Asia that has SCO readying an expansion of its membership to include two nations that have received direct U.S. military threats: Iran and Pakistan. Suspicion of U.S. intentions and military plans has also made Washington’s request to enter SCO as a partner in dialogue a dead issue. Washington’s interest in attending SCO summits as a “partner” says more about the CIA’s inability to crack into the inner workings of SCO, even through erstwhile “allies” like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Mongolia, than in having any great desire to “dialogue” with SCO members and observers. After all, AIPAC and its minions have managed to jam through the U.S. House a law that prohibits any U.S. diplomatic contact with Tehran’s officials.

President Obama is under tremendous pressure from the Israel Lobby during an election year to support an Israeli military strike on Iran, action that will inevitably lead the United States military in the Gulf region into war against Iran on behalf of the Tel Aviv/west Jerusalem regime. At the G-20 summit in Cannes, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was overheard telling Obama, "I cannot bear Netanyahu, he's a liar." To which Obama replied, "you're fed up, but I have to deal with him every day."

The Sarkozy-Obama interchange is instructive. Obama did not disagree that Netanyahu is a patent liar who will do anything or say anything to advance Israeli and global Zionist interests over all else, even to the point of lying about a bogus Iranian nuclear weapons threat to promote a military attack on Iran.

Israel, using its agents of influence in the UN delegations of the United States, Britain, Germany, Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands, has ensured that International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Yukiya Amano has tainted his agency's report on Iranian nuclear developments in a manner that would have never been tolerated by his predecessor, Mohammed ElBaradei. Amano certainly took no interest in the fact that his own nation, Japan, was secretly producing nuclear weapons at the Fukushima nuclear complex in contravention of IAEA rules. The aftermath of the destructive earthquake in Japan laid open the secret work going on at Fukushima. Amano is perfectly willing to act as a cipher for Israel and the Israel Lobby in "discovering" IAEA violations by Iran.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientist's "Doomsday Clock," a measure of how close the world is to nuclear war, now stands at six minutes until midnight. With the machinations of Israel toward Iran, the internal meltdown of Obama's White House staff with the demotion of chief of staff Bill Daley, and the invitation by SCO to Iran to come under the protective security umbrella of Russia and China, the clock has just jumped ahead several minutes.

Peace …. LITERALLY!

UNDENIABLE FACTS ABOUT Gaddafi and Libya.

2011-11-08T23:01:00.000-08:00

LIBYA & GADDAFI... Facts That Cant be Denied...

As most of us would know by now, Col. Muammar Gaddafi passed away tragically.. Gaddafi has been my icon since I was a little kid.. My father named me after him because few weeks before I was born, which is on April 15 1986.. Operation El dorado Canyon takes place or the united states bombing of Libya.. Shortly after his inauguration in 1981, Libya was a strong priority for Ronald Reagan. Gaddafi was firmly anti-Israel and had supported extremist groups in Palestine and Syria. There were reports that Libya was attempting to become a nuclear power and his occupation of Chad, which was rich in uranium, was a major fear for the United States. Gaddafi's alignment with the Soviet Union and his ambitions to set up a federation of Arab and Muslim states in North Africa were also alarming to the US.. My father once told me that he heard from the news that the US bombed Gaddafi's house but he survive.. I cant imagine the heroic moment when Gaddafi came out from his house after the bombing.. It was an honor for me to be given this name and I shall protect it..

there is few facts that i think you guys should know despite all the news saying that Gaddafi is so cruel and bad... :-

1. There is no electricity bill in Libya; electricity is free
for all its citizens.

2. There is no interest on loans, banks in Libya are
state-owned and loans given
to all its citizens at 0% interest by law.

3. Home considered a human right in Libya –
Gaddafi vowed that his parents
would not get a house until everyone in Libya had a
home. Gaddafi’s father has
died while him, his wife and his mother are still living
in a tent.

4. All newlyweds in Libya receive $60,000 Dinar (US$
50,000 ) by the government
to buy their first apartment so to help start up the
family.

5. Education and medical treatments are free in
Libya. Before Gaddafi only 25%
of Libyans are literate. Today the figure is 83%.

6. Should Libyans want to take up farming career,
they would receive farming
land, a farming house, equipments, seeds and
livestock to kick- start their farms
– all for free.

7. If Libyans cannot find the education or medical
facilities they need in Libya,
the government funds them to go abroad for it –
not only free but they get US
$2, 300/mth accommodation and car allowance.

8. In Libyan, if a Libyan buys a car, the government
subsidized 50% of the price.

9. The price of petrol in Libya is $0. 14 per liter.

10. Libya has no external debt and its reserves
amount to $150 billion – now
frozen globally.

11. If a Libyan is unable to get employment after
graduation the state would
pay the average salary of the profession as if he or
she is employed until
employment is found.

12. A portion of Libyan oil sale is, credited directly to
the bank accounts of all
Libyan citizens.

13. A mother who gave birth to a child receive US
$5 ,000

14. 40 loaves of bread in Libya costs $ 0.15

15. 25% of Libyans have a university degree

16. Gaddafi carried out the world’s largest irrigation
project, known as the Great
Man-Made River project, to make water readily
available throughout the desert
country.

is this..who you call a monster? the news made him look like how most of us do.but the same source as to who the media belongs to are the same people that killed him.half of us could agree that the media's pure bullshit,don't we..i refuse to believe that cruelty is an attribute alongside humanity.today's day an age is an age we call ZAMAN FITAN,the age of LIES.

By: Rauuf Bajrai

One more thing, Gaddafi's son, Saif manage to escape and now at large.. the United Nations and the NTC did not manage to arrest him.. Do you really think that Saif can really escape just like that..?? Well.. think again.. for me.. it was the UN intentions for not capturing Saif.. He is not that reliable.. I make my assumptions with the facts that....

"In July 2008, Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam announced that an agreement was being negotiated with the United States whereby Libya would make any future compensation payments to American victims of terror attacks conditional upon the settlement of claims by victims of the U.S. bombing of Libya in 1986. On August 14, 2008 the resultant U.S.-Libya Comprehensive Claims Settlement Agreement was signed in Tripoli by Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, David Welch, and by Libya's Secretary for American Affairs, Ahmad Fituri."

This deal was done without Gaddafi's knowing.. Saif is the only Lybian who has a really good relationships with the US.. Educated at the London School of Economics and a fluent English speaker, Saif al-Islam was once seen by many governments as the acceptable, Western-friendly face of Libya. Before the rebellion, Saif al-Islam sometimes appeared genuinely at odds with Gadhafi senior, who ruled for 42 years through fear and violence.

Mainly through his charitable Gadhafi Foundation, Saif al-Islam pushed for reform, including more media freedom, acknowledgement of past rights abuses and the adoption of a constitution. He also oversaw a reconciliation with Islamist rebels who launched an insurgency in the 1990s.

But his efforts were stymied by opposition from inside the ruling elite and — some analysts say — from members of his own family. Last year the independent newspaper he helped to found was forced to mute its criticism of the authorities and his foundation withdrew from political activities.

One of his projects did succeed. He played a central role in negotiating the lifting of U.S. and European sanctions on Libya in 2004, in return for Tripoli ending its nuclear and chemical weapons programs.

This led to then British Prime Minister Tony Blair visiting Tripoli to embrace Gadhafi senior, long a pariah in the West.

Saif al-Islam owned a $16 million home in London, but his activities and friendships caused much embarrassment in the West when the rebellion broke out.

FREE MAN.

KENYA'S WANGARI MAATHAI

2011-10-03T18:35:00.000-07:00

Professor Wangari Maathai (Nobel laureate and environment ‎alist) was born in the central highlands of Kenya in 1940.

Back in the 1940s, her small village had clean water, rich soils, rich forests and plenty of food.

"It was heaven. We wanted for nothing," she said.

"Now the forests have come down, the land has been turned to commercial farming, the tea plantations keep everyone poor, and the economic system does not allow people to appreciate the beauty of where they live."

Maathai was educated by Catholic nuns. (environment ‎)
Maathai said: "After my education by the nuns, I emerged as a person who believed that society is inherently good and that people generally act for the best."

Maathai won a scholarship to study in the US, as part of the 'Kennedy airlift' in which 300 Kenyans - including Barack Obama’s father - were chosen to study at American universities in 1960.

After further study in Germany, she returned to a newly independent Kenya in 1966.

Her early work as a vet took her to some of Kenya's poorest areas.

She saw first-hand the damage that was being done to the environment.

In 1977, she set up the Green Belt movement.

She became critical of politicians in Kenya, the World Bank, the IMF, Britain and other former colonial powers.

Before the 1990s, the Mau forest (above) was a protected area. "But then senior officials in President Daniel arap Moi's government grabbed large plots of the highly fertile land for themselves." Website for this image
What began as a few women planting trees became a network of 600 community groups.

They looked after 6,000 tree nurseries, which were often supervised by disabled and mentally ill people in the villages.

By 2004, more than 30 million trees had been planted, and the movement had branches in 30 countries.

In Kenya, the Green Belt movement has become an agricultural advice service, a community regeneration project and a job-creation plan.

In the early 1990s, Maathai set up Mazingira, the Kenyan Green Party.

Maathai became a junior environment minister between January 2003 and November 2005.

She died in September 2011. (Nobel laureate and environment ‎alist)

The Libyan war is fraud - Using Human Rights Organizations to Launch Wars

2011-09-29T20:52:00.000-07:00

So, the war against Libya is built on fraud. The United Nations Security Council passed two resolutions against Libya on the basis of unproven claims, specifically that Colonel Muammar Qaddafi was killing his own people in Benghazi and Libya. The claim in its exact form was that Qaddafi had ordered Libyan forces to kill 6,000 people in Benghazi and Libya. These claims were widely disseminated, but always vaguely explained. It was on the basis of this claim that Libya was referred to the U.N. Security Council at U.N Headquarters in New York City and kicked out of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

False claims about African mercenary armies in Libya and about jet attacks on civilians were also used in a broad media campaign against Libya. These two claims have been sidelined and have become more and more murky. The massacre claims, however, were used in a legal, diplomatic, and military framework to justify NATO’s war on Libya.

Using Human Rights as a Pretext for War: The LLHR and its Unproven Claims
One of the main sources for the claim that Qaddafi was killing his own people is the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR). The LLHR was actually pivotal to getting the U.N. involved through its specific claims in Geneva. On February 21, 2011 the LLHR got the 70 other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to sent letters to the President Obama, E.U. High Representative Catherine Ashton., and the U.N. Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon demanding international action against Libya invoking the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine. Only 25 members of this coalition actually assert that they are human rights groups.

The letter is as follows:

We, the undersigned non-governmental, human rights, and humanitarian organizations, urge you to mobilize the United Nations and the international community and take immediate action to halt the mass atrocities now being perpetrated by the Libyan government against its own people. The inexcusable silence cannot continue.

As you know, in the past several days, Colonel Moammar Gadhafi’s forces are estimated to have deliberately killed hundreds of peaceful protesters and innocent bystanders across the country. In the city of Benghazi alone, one doctor reported seeing at least 200 dead bodies. Witnesses report that a mixture of special commandos, foreign mercenaries and regime loyalists have attacked demonstrators with knives, assault rifles and heavy-caliber weapons.

Snipers are shooting peaceful protesters. Artillery and helicopter gunships have been used against crowds of demonstrators. Thugs armed with hammers and swords attacked families in their homes. Hospital officials report numerous victims shot in the head and chest, and one struck on the head by an anti-aircraft missile. Tanks are reported to be on the streets and crushing innocent bystanders. Witnesses report that mercenaries are shooting indiscriminately from helicopters and from the top of roofs. Women and children were seen jumping off Giuliana Bridge in Benghazi to escape. Many of them were killed by the impact of hitting the water, while others were drowned. The Libyan regime is seeking to hide all of these crimes by shutting off contact with the outside world. Foreign journalists have been refused entry. Internet and phone lines have been cut or disrupted.

There is no question here about intent. The government media has published open threats, promising that demonstrators would meet a “violent and thunderous response.”

Accordingly, the government of Libya is committing gross and systematic violations of the right to life as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Citizens seeking to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly are being massacred by the government.

Moreover, the government of Libya is committing crimes against humanity, as defined by the Explanatory Memorandum to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Libyan government’s mass killing of innocent civilians amount to particularly odious offences which constitute a serious attack on human dignity. As confirmed by numerous oral and video testimonies gathered by human rights organizations and news agencies, the Libyan government’s assault on its civilian population are not isolated or sporadic events. Rather, these actions constitute a widespread and systematic policy and practice of atrocities, intentionally committed, including murder, political persecution and other inhumane acts which reach the threshold of crimes against humanity.Responsibility to Protect

Under the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, you have a clear and unambiguous responsibility to protect the people of Libya. The international community, through the United Nations, has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help to protect the Libyan population. Because the Libyan national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their population from crimes against humanity, should peaceful means be inadequate, member states are obliged to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the UN Charter, including Chapter VII.

In addition, we urge you to convene an emergency Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council, whose members have a duty, under UNGA Resolution 60/251, to address situations of gross and systematic violations of violations of human rights. The session should:

-Call for the General Assembly to suspend Libya’s Council membership, pursuant to Article 8 of Resolution 60/251, which applies to member states that commit gross and systematic violations of human rights.

-Strongly condemn, and demand an immediate end to, Libya’s massacre of its own citizens.

-Dispatch immediately an international mission of independent experts to collect relevant facts and document violations of international human rights law and crimes against humanity, in order to end the impunity of the Libyan government. The mission should include an independent medical investigation into the deaths, and an investigation of the unlawful interference by the Libyan government with the access to and treatment of wounded.

-Call on the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights and the Council’s relevant Special Procedures to closely monitor the situation and take action as needed.

-Call on the Council to remain seized of the matter and address the Libyan situation at its upcoming 16th regular session in March.

Member states and high officials of the United Nations have a responsibility to protect the people of Libya from what are preventable crimes. We urge you to use all available measures and levers to end atrocities throughout the country.

We urge you to send a clear message that, collectively, the international community, the Security Council and the Human Rights Council will not be bystanders to these mass atrocities. The credibility of the United Nations — and many innocent lives — are at stake. [1]

According to Physicians for Human Rights: “[This letter was] prepared under the guidance of Mohamed Eljahmi, the noted Libyan human rights defender and brother of dissident Fathi Eljahmi, asserts that the widespread atrocities committed by Libya against its own people amount to war crimes, requiring member states to take action through the Security Council under the responsibility to protect doctrine.” [2]

The letters signatories included Francis Fukuyama, United Nations Watch (which looks out for Israel’s interests and according to Israeli sources organized the entire session against the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya), B’nai B’rith Human Rights Commission, the Cuban Democratic Directorate, and a set of organizations at odds with the governments of Nicaragua, Cuba, Sudan, Russia, Venezuela, and Libya. Some of these organizations are viewed with hostility as organizations created to wage demonization campaigns against countries at odds with the U.S., Israel, and the European Union. Refer to the annex for the full list of signatories for consultation.

LLHR is tied to the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), which is based in France and has ties to the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). FIDH is active in many places in Africa and in activities involving the National Endowment for Democracy in the African continent. Both the FIDH and LLHR also released a joint communiqué on February 21, 2011. In the communiqué both organizations asked for the international community to “mobilize” and mention the International Criminal Court while also making a contradictory claiming that over 400 to 600 people had died since February 15, 2011. [3] This of course was about 5,500 short of the claim that 6,000 people were massacred in Benghazi. The joint letter also promoted the false view that 80% of Qaddafi’s support came from foreign mercenaries, which is something that over half a year of fighting proves as untrue.

According to the General-Secretary of the LLHR, Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir, the claims about the massacres in Benghazi could not be validated by the LLHR when he was challenged for proof. When asked how a group of 70 non-governmental organizations in Geneva could support the LLHR’s claims on Geneva, Dr. Buchuiguir has answered that a network of close relationship was the basis. This is a mockery.

Speculation is neither evidence nor grounds for starting a war with a bombing campaign that has lasted about half a year and taken many innocent civilian lives, including children and the elderly. What is important to note here is that the U.N. Security Council decided to sanction the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya on the basis of this letter and the claims of the LLHR. Not once did the U.N. Security Council and the member states pushing for war once bother to even investigate the allegations. In one session in New York City, the Indian Ambassador to the U.N. actually pointed this out when his country abstained from voting. Thus, a so-called “humanitarian war” was launched without any evidence.

Wazza’s Note: U.N. Watch which actively promoted the LLHR statement has informal ties to the U.S. State Department. It was established during the Clinton Administration in 1993 under the Chairmanship of Morris B. Abram, a former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva. U.N. Watch is formally affiliated with the American Jewish Committee (AJC), a powerful pro-Israeli political lobby organization based in New York City.

The Secret Relationship between the LLHR and the Transitional Council
The claims of the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR) were coordinated with the formation of the Transitional Council. This becomes clear when the close and cagey relationship of the LLHR and the Transitional Council becomes apparent. Logically, the Obama Administration and NATO had to also be a part of this.

Whatever the Transitional Council is and whatever the intent of some of its supporters, it is clear that it is being used as a tool by the U.S. and others. Moreover, five members of the LLHR were or would become members of the Transitional Council almost immediately after the claims against the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya were disseminated. According to Bouchuguir individuals with ties to the LLHR or who hold membership include Mahmoud Jibril and Ali Tarhouni.

Dr. Mahmoud Jibril is a Libyan regime figure brought into Libyan government circles by Saif Al-Islam Qaddafi. He would undemocratically be given the position of Transitional Council prime minister. His involvement with the LLHR raises some real questions about the organization.

The economist Ali Tarhouni on the other hand would become the minister for oil and finance for the Transitional Council. Tarhouni is Washington’s man in Libya. He was groomed in the United States and was present at all the major meetings about plans for regime change in Libya. As Minister of Oil and Finance the first acts he did were privatize and virtually handover Libya’s energy resources and economy to the foreign corporations and governments of the NATO-led coalition against Libya.

The General-Secretary of the LLHR, Sliman Bouchuiguir, has even privately admitted that many influential members of the Transitional Council are his friends. A real question of interests arises. Yet, the secret relationship between the LLHR and the Transitional Council is far more than a question of conflict of interest. It is a question of justice and manipulation.

Who is Sliman Bouchuiguir?
Sliman Bouchuguir is an unheard of figure for most, but he has authored a doctoral thesis that has been widely quoted and used in strategic circles in the United States. This thesis was published in 1979 as a book, The Use of Oil as a Political Weapon: A Case Study of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. The thesis is about the use of oil as an economic weapon by Arabs, but can easily be applied to the Russians, the Iranians, the Venezuelans, and others. It examines economic development and economic warfare and can also be applied to vast regions, including all of Africa.

Bouchuguir’s analytical thesis reflects an important line of thinking in Washington, as well as London and Tel Aviv. It is both the embodiment of a pre-existing mentality, which includes U.S. National Security Advisor George F. Kennan’s arguments for maintaining a position of disparity through a constant multi-faced war between the U.S. and its allies on one hand and the rest of the world on the other hand. The thesis can be drawn on for preventing the Arabs, or others, from becoming economic powers or threats. In strategic terms, rival economies are pinned as threats and as “weapons.” This has serious connotations.

Moreover, Bouchuiguir did his thesis at George Washington University under Bernard Reich. Reich is a political scientist and professor of international relations. He has worked and held positions at places like the U.S. Defense Intelligence College, the United States Air Force Special Operations School, the Marine Corps War College, and the Shiloah Center at Tel Aviv University. He has consulted on the Middle East for the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. State Department and received grants such as the Defense Academic Research Support Program Research Grant and the German Marshal Fund Grant. Reich also was or is presently on the editorial boards of journals such as Israel Affairs (1994-present), Terrorism: An International Journal(1987-1994), and The New Middle East (1971-1973).

It is also clear that Reich is tied to Israeli interests. He has even written a book about the special relationship between the U.S and Israel. He has also been an advocate for a “New Middle East” which would be favourable to Israel. This includes careful consideration over North Africa. His work has also focused on the important strategic interface between the Soviet Union and the Middle East and also on Israeli policy in the continent of Africa.

It is clear why Bouchuiguir had his thesis supervised under Reich. On October 23, 1973, Reich gave a testimony at the U.S. Congress. The testimony has been named “The Impact of the October Middle East War” and is clearly tied to the 1973 oil embargo and Washington’s aim of pre-empting or managing any similar events in the future. It has to be asked, how much did Reich influence Bouchuiguir and if Bouchuiguir espouses the same strategic views as Reich?

The “New North Africa” and a “New Africa” – More than just a “New Middle East”
A “New Africa” is in the works, which will have its borders further drawn out in blood like in the past. The Obama Administration and its allies have opened the gateway for a new invasion of Africa. United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) opened the salvos of the war through Operation Odyssey Damn, before the war on Libya was transferred to NATO’s Operation Unified Protector.

The U.S. has used NATO to continue the occupation of post-Second World War Europe. It will now use AFRICOM to occupy Africa and create an African NATO. It is clear the U.S. wants an expanded military presence in Libya and Africa under the disguise of humanitarian aid missions and fighting terrorism – the same terrorism that it is fanning in Libya and Africa.

The way is being paved for intervention in Africa under the guise of fighting terrorism. General Carter Ham has stated: “If we were to launch a humanitarian operation, how do we do so effectively with air traffic control, airfield management, [and] those kind of activities?” [4] General Ham’s question is actually a sales pitch for fashioning African military partnerships and integration, as well as new bases that could include the use of more military drones against Libya and other African countries. The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) have both made it clear that the Pentagon is actively trying to establish more drone bases in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula to expand its wars. [5] In this context, the AFRICOM Commander says that there are ties between the Al-Shabaab in Somalia, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa, and the Boko Harem in Nigeria. [6]

The War in Libya is a Fraud
General Ham has said: “I remain confident that had the U.N. not made the decision, had the U.S. not taken the lead with great support, I’m absolutely convinced there are many, many people in Benghazi alive today who would not be [alive].” [7] This is not true and a far stretch from reality. The war has cost more lives than it could have ever saved. It has ruined a country and opened the door into Africa for a neo-colonial project.

The claims of the Libyan League for Human Rights (LLHR) were never supported or verified. The credibility of the United Nations must be questioned as well as the credibility of many humanitarian and human rights organizations that have virtually pushed for a war. At best the U.N. Security Council is an irresponsible body, but it has clearly acted outside of due legal process. This pattern now appears to be repeating itself against the Syrian Arab Republic as unverified claims are being made by individuals and organizations supported by foreign powers that care nothing for authentic democratic reforms or liberty.

Global Research

Main Stream Media Lies in Libya - "Mass Grave" discovery by Rebel TNC. "

2011-09-27T16:07:00.000-07:00

In April 2004, Gaddafi publicly acknowledged that, in 1996, killings had taken place in Tripoli's Abu Salim prison.

The Gaddafi government said that the killings took place during a battle between prison guards and al Qaeda's Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

Around 200 guards were killed.[8]

Human Rights Watch, said to be linked to the CIA, claims that 1,270 prisoners were killed.

However, this estimate is based on the account of a single former inmate. [6]

Now the BBC claims to have found the bones of people killed at Abu Salim prison.

But, "No excavation has taken place at the site."

And, "Members of the media were shown bones at the site, but medics with CNN staffers on the scene said the bones did not appear to be human."

So, onn 25 September 2011, at empirestrikesblack, we learn how the BBC apparently spun a story about a mass grave in Libya.

According to the BBC:

A mass grave believed to contain up to 1,270 bodies has been found in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, says the National Transitional Council (NTC).

The remains are thought to be those of inmates who were killed by security forces in 1996 in the Abu Salim prison.

Excavation at the site is expected to start soon.

The Re-Colonisation of Africa …. In my own lifetime … My Heart Bleeds

2011-08-27T21:37:00.000-07:00

So, some six months ago, the French and British governments frantically sponsored a United Nations resolution to “protect the civilians of Libya from their own government.”

Never mind that this sovereign government was facing an armed revolt by a dissident region of the country; never mind that these “rebels” had no legitimacy whatsoever; never mind that the so-called “democratic protesters” were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of black Africans in xenophobic racist pogroms in the year 2000.

None of this mattered. What mattered was that in the turmoil of the so-called “Arab Spring” a heaven-sent opportunity presented itself to the West to get rid of a political thorn in its side, one that was leading the African Continent dangerously close to realizing a greater deal of autonomy than had been afforded under the pretence of Western “aid,” economic advice and structural development.

Gaddafi, his personal flamboyance notwithstanding, has consistently sought to involve his country in unity with first the Arabs and then the Africans. When Gaddafi proposed pan-Arab unity, he was scoffed at, ridiculed as an ambitious madman and insulted and ignored by the Arabs. He finally and sensibly gave up and turned his eyes to Africa, believing that Africa held out more hope for unity.

While under sanctions by the West, the Africans unswervingly supported Gaddafi. Neslon Mandela upon his release from apartheid’s prisons defied Western sanctions and went overland to visit and thank Colonel Gaddafi for his moral and financial support during the long struggle against apartheid. Other African leaders followed and regular visits with Gaddafi made the sanctions totally irrelevant.

After the Iraqi war of aggression by the Bush administration broke out, Gaddafi cut a deal with the West, relinquishing his weapons programs, which included nuclear weapons, for re-inclusion in the global economic system. Still Gaddafi sought to develop African unity and to this end relieved Africa of the burden of paying for satellite usage $500 million annually to Europe.

At his encouragement Africa bought its own satellites and now the continent communicates without relying on Europe. Gaddafi also proposed a single African currency backed by gold which would have sounded the death-knell for the CFA and removed much of France’s influence and power in Africa.

An African Monetary Fund was also in the works, which would have further set Africa on the road to true economic and political independence. Then there was the Libyan leader’s mooting of a million-man African army. This was the red line where the West decided to checkmate Libya.

Events surrounding the so-called “Arab Spring” seemed tailor-made for Western plans. Overnight, armed groups showed up in Benghazi and an organized pattern emerged for the overthrow of Gaddafi. First there was the “concern” for civilian life, always a good tear-jerker.., then the French and British stepped in, forcing a UN Security Council vote.

Despite senior officials in the US administration dismissing Libya’s strategic importance to US interests, the Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, pushed her hawkish agenda and dragged the US president on board for this war of blatant aggression.

The coup was underway. The “rebels,” a motley band of weekend thugs were no match for the Libyan army which legally was bound to defend itself against armed insurrection, so Nato [the new mailed fist of 21st century neo-imperialism] unleashed its aerial might, special forces [French Foreign legion commandos, SAS and US Seals] against the legitimate government of Libya. It was inevitable that sooner or later this lopsided military power would take its toll as Nato bombed Tripoli and other parts of Libya on a daily basis.

When this conflict was forced on the Libyan people, the African Union insisted that there must not be any military intervention, but was soon sidelined and completely ignored by the coup-makers and a compliant Western press. While a sovereign nation, a member of the AU was being attacked, African efforts to find a mediated solution were completely ignored and ridiculed.

The leaders of Africa who should have denounced with one voice the aggression against an African country cravenly acquiesced with the Nato war, making lame token protests.

What happens in Libya is a harbinger of what the West has in store for Africa. True independence and African unity will not be tolerated. Africa is too rich in resources that the world needs to be allowed to control its own destiny. This war is not just about Gaddafi. It is an opening salvo in a war to reclaim the continent for foreign interests, just as it was in 1896 in the Scramble for Africa.

African leaders lack faith in their own abilities and in the power of their people. Libya could have been saved, had Africans united and spoken resoundingly to the world, voicing their opposition to this war of aggression. The AU could have called for the expulsion of diplomats from the Nato countries taking part in the war, they could have urged their citizens into the streets to demonstrate for “hands off Libya.” The oil-producing countries could have slowed down their oil taps, driving up the price of gasoline, they could have protested more loudly.

The same forces which broke Sudan in half are continuing the process of fragmenting Africa into even more manageable, weaker pieces. What will happen after Gaddafi is overthrown? All progressive programmes that he had initiated will be dismantled and the idea of Africa unity repudiated as the dreams of madman.

Foreign economic interests will come in to carve up the pie, instability will take root as in Iraq under the guise of multi-party democracy [which should be anathema to Africans since it has brought more chaos than comfort in its wake] the West will set up permanent military bases to control the Mediterranean Sea and a bridgehead for the re-conquest of Africa will have been established.

This is no fantasy. The West is not prepared to relinquish its hegemony and go quietly into the night. The neo-colonializing of Africa had begun immediately after ‘independence’ with aid programs that created dependencies, French military bases that never closed, structural adjustments, missionaries dividing and spiritually confusing the people, dumping of toxic waste and the signing and enforcement of economic agreements that were never in the interests of the African peoples.

Many African leaders for selfish, mostly pecuniary, reasons collaborated with this plunder of Africa, ignoring the will of its peoples. Gaddafi’s removal from power should not be anything to celebrate for Africans, but to mourn, for we are being thrown back into eras when we were truly without freedom. As this neo-imperialism and neo-colonialism intensifies, it would be ironic if twenty years from now Africans would have to fight all over again the bitter revolutionary wars that ostensibly brought them freedom.

What took so long?

2011-06-18T02:00:00.000-07:00

Why did it take so long for some in Congress to stand up to an administration for violating the constitutional mandate that it must be the one to declare war? Libya is bad enough but what about Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen? An army of Obama administration lawyers make lame excuses as to why the Libyan scam is not a war because American involvement fell short of full-blown hostilities. Perhaps we should just ask a child whose home and family has been full-blown to bits what is a war? A low ball figure of $9.5 million per day in Libya doesn't constitute a war? Just what is the dollar figure for saying, yes this is war? Not to mention the human cost.

The CIA has officially announced that Ayman al-Zawahr is their new man to head Al Qaeda. The asset Anwar al-Awlaki didn't make the cut but is waiting in the wings for when he's needed to fill the top spot. How long are we going to keep talking about this fake terrorist group? Probably as long as the American people will fall for it.

Destroying mosques and homes and wells so that Israeli 'settlers' can steal some more land in the occupied territories doesn't raise an eyebrow in the lame stream media. Not that very many in the US even care. The Weiner resignation and the trial of white girl Casey Anthony are so much more important.

A bonanza for a few means something altogether different for most of the rest.

Not everyone thinks the "winners" in the alternative news media are all they are cracked up to be. I'll drink to that.

Michelle Obama goes to Beverly Hills to insist that Hollywood do more for the war efforts. What's next, Sasha and Malia encouraging kindergartners to pledge allegiance to the bomb?

Are you heading to your own nuclear disaster? Just how many wake up calls do we need? Can you see the forest through the trees yet?

There is a long history of treason by the American bankers {original here}. It's still going on but no one seems to be getting arrested for it. Big money trumps the law almost every time.

So much for a few big questions. Without big answers that carry weight, we are just spinning around and getting dizzy. But getting dizzy may be the prelude to clarity. It's what we hope for.

War … Have we really Learnt what History has had to Teach?? If not, Why not?? …. MY HUMBLE LETTER TO AMERICANS AS AN OUTSIDER LOOKING IN..

2011-06-14T18:37:00.000-07:00

The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people

*Died some, pro patria,
walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;
usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.
Ezra Pound

Dear Americans,

The prospect of a 30 years war is not one to arouse mirth and hilarity even in a flighty, chicken headed and irresponsible people such as the United States of Americans.

You are in it, and Lord knows, who is a goin’ to git you out. The late Lord Rothermere, whose culture was nothin’, as you might say, to write home about, finally decided that the English public was wholly unteachable. I don’t know whether you can learn ANYTHING from history, I don’t know whether you are even yet in the state of mind where you want to learn any thing from history or from any other source whatsoever.

A way to get yourselves OUT, might be discoverable, it might be more discoverable if you first had the faint inkling of a curiosity as to how you got yourselves IN.

The Honor of the United States of America is NOT concerned with becoming an arsenal.
The men who wintered at Valley Forge did not suffer those months of intense cold and hunger with the design, or in the hope that Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, the union of the colonies would one day be able to stir up wars between other countries in order to sell them munitions.

Whether you intend to be slaves, lifelong slaves, hereditary slaves to machinery and whether you propose to sell your children and your grand children into long lasting slavery to usurers and to machinery. I mean you will have to make up your MINDS. YOU can not live on cold iron, you can not live on airplane spare parts, YOU can not live well without LAWS which even the officials obey.

Gold is a coward. Gold is not the backbone of nations. It is their ruin. A coward, at the first breath of danger gold flows AWAY, gold flows OUT of the country….. and every gun was a golden egg, for the Bankers in New York.

The war you ought to be fightin’ is NOT five thousand miles OUTSIDE Boston. Or five thousand miles outside New York, or even outside San Francisco. It is INTERNAL

You can then clear out the crap that journalists BELIEVE along with their fake news, along what the advertisers LET the OWNERS (so called), let the editors PUBLISH. There is a second layer of crap that newspapermen believe to be real. BUT it is not grounded on a real knowledge of ANYTHING. They have NOT gone into the documents. They have not read the real history. They chase one butterfly after another. NOW the facts are NOT wholly hidden. There are fifty authors whom you could read, Brooks Adams, among ’em. You could read the works of the men who fought for the making of the Republic, John Adams, Jefferson, Van Buren, hidden or kept in shadow by punk propaganda.

What are you fighting for? Fighting for the starvation of Europe? Fighting to spread famine in Asia? Fighting for vain boast proved false? Fighting for the Sassoonery? Are you fighting for the National Heritage? For the heritage of wisdom, the heritage of Washington, and of Monroe, of John Adams and Lincoln?
I’ll say you are not.
You are fighting AGAINST what all these men stood for. And it will take more brains than I got, to get you out of it prettily.

The Bolshevik anti-morale comes out of the Talmud, which is the dirtiest teaching that any race ever codified. The Talmud is the one and only be getter of the Bolshevik system. And if there ARE any Christians in the United State of America, they would do well to consider Renan’s warning. They would do well to consider the difference between the Greek and the Hebrew parts of the Bible. They would do well to look objectively at the record of Hebrew barbarism, and at the nature of Christ’s revolt, as recorded in the Gospels. I ask you WHY WAS CHRIST crucified? He was crucified for trying to BUST a racket.

Fake economists are one form of the journalist bacillus. Put out in front to lie, and rising on the wings or tin toes of ambition, permitted (on the leash and chain system) to get out in front and holler. Quoted from one press to another, NOT because they ever print anything useful, or tell the truth, or approach it. They are either men who KNOW NOT, or men who say not, and who put up a word screen, or esCHEW certain issues; who do NOT make revelations. And whose interest even when quoted internationally is NOT due to the INTRINSIC meaning of what they actually say. Their blather IS symptomatic, and is studied and quoted as a symptom of the diseases

The American has the head, evidently of a chicken, he is incapable of political revery. The existence of a secret and IRRESPONSIBLE government does not worry him. It has been there at least since 1863 and he takes it as a matter of course. It gets worse daily and hourly. All the means of intercommunication pass into the hands of the secret and largely Semitic control; and
the American dreams of Thoreau and says, “who am I to interfere in such muchness?”

That question can be put scientifically, just as well as puttin’ it in a hortatory form, or asking what is nice, or what ought a decent man do. No man will do anything WORTH doin’ till some sense of “OUGHT” enters his system. Profit motive is silly, in the sense that it ultimately kills the good life; makes the mare go, yass, makes the mare go, money makes the mare go. And then somebody wakes up crazy. And that takes JUST long enough, so nobody notices what is going on. Suddenly wake up and find American abundance has been chucked out of the window.

ALL purchasing power does NOT come from labor. All real wealth comes from natural resources PLUS labor. The shyster wants to hog natural resources, and sweat the hide of labor. That is the cause of unpleasantness. There is no wangle or dirty wheeze that the shyster won’t think up and use to get a monopoly, to violate the just price, to keep labor sweatin’. And the shyster is pizin’. He is the sworn blasphemer, false swearin’ and cheatin’ FOE to all labor, past, present, and labor to come. And you better discover this. You better kick him out of your hemisphere. You better invent some bug poison that will eliminate him from your system.

One kind of shyster succeeds another: shyster penetrates ANY organization, church or state for the sake of livin’ on the Purchasing Power that DON’t come from labor. Shyster joins EVERY new movement so as to be there when it gets big and to be at the exploitin’ position. Gangster shysters, medieval orders of chivalry rose to combat the gangster, to combat universal brutality and injustice in range of the individual knight. Or the body of chivalry rose to an idea. With these two forces, i.e., gangsterism AND chivalry, the feudal system developed. As law it was a RESPONSIBLE system. The DUTIES of the overlord were enormous. They required DISTRIBUTION of wealth. Naturally this annoyed greedy overlords, and weak overlords, and the shyster entered the system. Ready to sweat out taxes, to sweat the hide off of labor, and
to collect money interest. In fact the shyster is always a rent collector. And the worm ate into the fruit.

You are in black darkness and confusion. You have been hugger-muggared, and carom-shotted into a war, and you know NOTHING about it. You know NOTHING about the forces that caused it, or you know next to nothing.

You can keep the ole Constitution. Mostly sailors and landlubbers no longer care, but as a technicality (if no more than that) I am tellin’ you. Lots of folks want to bust it, so as to fish in the troubled waters, lots of folks want to keep it rusty and inefficient, so’z it won’t interfere with their various rackets.

You are at war to conceal the fact that a lot of purchasing power, a lot of capital comes from a hoax. Damn the hoax. But don’t go out and die for just bein’ idiots. Or for your tolerance of being run and ruled over by dumheads who are pushed on by shysters.

And the program of this ENEMY is known, and the action of governments in the hands of the
ENEMY SHOW the nature of the AIM of the enemy. Their aim is not to win war, but to make peace impossible. These bombings of towns are NOT military, they are done to rouse hate, to be causes of hate.

There is NO freedom without economic freedom. Freedom that does not include freedom from debt is plain bunkumb. Debt is the prelude to slavery. And you are now, I ’spose, arrived at the intermezzo. America WAS promises. America today is largely, shall we say, promissory notes that simply can NOT be honored.

It probably seemed very eccentric that a man, any man should suspend playin’ tennis and trying to understand the Confucian anthology, and after a long period of years return to America to protest against ANYTHING, or to offer suggestions to his fellow citizens about anything whatsoever.

The war is PART of the age old struggle between the usurer and the rest of mankind: between the usurer and peasant, the usurer and producer, and finally between the usurer and the merchant, between usurocracy and the mercantilist system. Goods are destroyed rather than exchanged against other WANTED goods, during war time. The ratio of units of currency, money, to things people want to eat and to wear is altered, i.e., there are more dollars
in circulation in relation to goods, or pounds or other monetary units. Debts mount up. When they have reached hitherto unprecendented size, the manipulators of currencies “return” to what they have called “sound money.”

Wars in old time were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is DEBT. Usury is an instrument for increasing debt, and for keeping the debtor in debt perpetually or at least for the longest possible period.

Quite apart from military operation, from the results of military operations, from the possible results of any military operations that may occur, the American people appear to have suffered crashing defeat, at the hands of the financiers.
There is no understanding of history without some understanding of finance. And nine people, at least nine people out of ten are ready to tell you proudly that they understand nothing about finance, and that they do not understand economics. It has become the hallmark of the end of the bourgeois era to proclaim ignorance of economics. Yet you can not allocate the responsibility for an event, for a crime, for an accident, until you know what has happened.

The world was to be enslaved according to plan. Slavery consists in having to do uninteresting work, at another’s bidding I suppose if I go on talking to you kids LONG enough I will get something into your heads. If I go on poundin’ from day to day, every day and in every way, I will finally teach you kids why you got drug into this war (if you survive it), and when you know that you will know more than your fathers did by the end of the last one, that is, more than most of ’em ever discovered.

Kind regards.

Wazza … (The Eclectic African)

* - excerpts from “Ezra Pound Speaking” [RADIO SPEECHES OF WORLD WAR II]

The Redress of Feudalism

2011-06-14T18:02:00.000-07:00

In 2005, 47% of the world's population was living on less than $2.50 per day.

To remove these poor people from poverty would cost $507 billion per year.

(Thomas Pogge on Global Poverty)

The US military spends much more than $507 billion per year.

Around the world, the military is often used to help the rich elite to increase their wealth.

Around the world, the military is often used to prevent the poor from increasing their wealth.

In January 2001, The Atlantic had an article by Chrystia Freeland on'The Rise Of The New Global Elite'

Among the points made:

1. In a 2005 report, analysts at Citigroup reported that the World is dividing into two blocs - (1)the rich elite and (2) the rest.

2. The rich elite have homes in places such as Mumbai, Moscow, Hong Kong, and New York.

3. Factors that have helped create certain billionaires include:

1. The revolution in information technology.

2. The liberalization of global trade.

3. Financial deregulation.

4. Tax cuts for the super-rich.

5. Insider privatization.

6. Monopolies given to certain individuals (eg rent-seeking in regulated industries in India and Mexico.)

4. In India and China, between 1820 and 1950, per capita income was basically flat.

Between 1950 and 1973, it increased by 68 percent.

Between 1973 and 2002, it grew by 245 percent.

China's and India's super-elite have grown richer.

5. Worldwide, executive pay has skyrocketed.

Hege fund manager John Paulson profited almost as much from the crisis of 2008 as Goldman Sachs did.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of U.S. workers have missed out.

Between 2002 and 2007, 65 percent of all income growth in the United States went to the top 1 percent of the population.

6. Mohamed El-Erian has an Egyptian father and French mother.

Mohamed El-Erian is the CEO of Pimco, the world’s largest bond manager, which is based in the USA but owned by Germany's Allianz SE.

Stephen Jennings is a New Zealander.

He co-founded the investment bank Renaissance Capital which has its roots are in Moscow.

In 2009 Jennings said: "The largest metals group in the world is Indian. The largest aluminum group in the world is Russian … The fastest-growing and largest banks in China, Russia, and Nigeria are all domestic."

7. A top man at one of the world’s largest hedge funds said that if changes in the world economy lift a large number of people in China and India into the middle class and and a smaller number of people in America out of the middle class, that's not such a bad trade.

A Taiwanese-born executive of a U.S. Internet company says the American middle class demands a higher paycheck than the rest of the world. He suggests that middle class Americans maybe "need to decide to take a pay cut."

Michael Splinter, CEO of the Silicon Valley green-tech firm Applied Materials, said that if he was starting from scratch, only 20 percent of his workforce would be Americans.

Thomas Wilson, CEO of Allstate, has said: "I can get (workers) anywhere in the world. It is a problem for America, but it is not necessarily a problem for American business."

8. The Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has admitted that he had "treated business exclusively as a game" and "did not care much about social responsibility."

9. "The lesson of history is that, in the long run, super-elites have two ways to survive: by suppressing dissent or by sharing their wealth."

- Chrystia Freeland on 'The Rise Of The New Global Elite'

China in the 1940s (multipletext.com/2009/9_china_1940s.htm) had a huge gap between rich and poor.

How do you explain the economic situation?

Parts of Detroit are like parts of Jakarta.

Here in Jakarta there is a large posh shopping mall.

But most of the visitors to the mall do not have the money to buy the goods on display.

For most people, whether in Detroit or in Jakarta, incomes are too low.

On 23 June 2010, in the Financial Times, Douglas Bruce explained thatwithout some trickle-down effect, any recovery will be stillborn‎

Douglas Bruce explains that "over the past few decades, the top earners in banking and other sectors have been increasing their share of a finite cake...

"Going back a generation or two... it was still possible for a middle-class father to support a family of four, but it now takes two earners to maintain most families, and that at a lower standard of living..."

Poverty in India

On 23 June 2010, Li Onesto wrote about: "Dying Detroit" - The Impacts of Globalization. Social Decay and Destruction of an Entire Urban Area

In Detroit:

Almost half of the children live in poverty.

The illiteracy rate is close to 50%.

Michigan state spends more on prisons than it does on higher education.

Many of Detroit's jobs have moved abroad, to where the wages are even lower.

India has palaces and paupers.

On 24 June 2010, at Global Research, Andrew Gavin Marshall wrote about: The Global Political Awakening and the New World Order

He points out:

1.2 billion people in the world live on less than $1 per day.

Nearly 3 billion people live on less than $2 a day.

The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of global household wealth.

The richest 1% of adults own around 40% of global assets.

The richest 10% of adults own around for 85% of the global assets.

The bottom half of the world adult population own around 1% of global wealth.

The top 6,000 people in the world own 40% of the world’s assets.

The top 600,000 people in the world control 85% of the world’s wealth.

The bottom 3.4 billion own 1% of world wealth.

Zbigniew Brzezinski explains that increased literacy means greater political awareness, increased use of TV means greater awareness of global disparities, and greater use of the Internet means more instant communications.

Brzezinski sees an increase in anti-Americanism and anti-globalization.

"From the point of view of the global oligarchy, the only method of imposing order and control ...is through the organized chaos of economic crises, war, and the rapid expansion and institutionalization of a global scientific dictatorship."

A London mansion worth over £100 million.

In the USA, roughly 40% of the population fall below the poverty line at some point within a 10 year time span. (Poverty in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Israel has many millionaires and many hungry children.

"Once idealized as a socialist paradise, the Jewish state is increasingly becoming a country of two classes...

"35% of children are living in poverty, leaving Israel with this unhappy distinction: It ranks among Western countries with the greatest percentage of poor children, according to the Insurance Institute."(Poverty in Israel: The divide deepens between the haves and have .../Israel will join OECD as its poorest member )

In 2006 it was reported that in the Calton area of Glasgow the average life expectancy of a male is just 53.9 years.

This is lower than in Bangladesh or North Korea or Iraq. (In Iraq, life expectancy is 67. Minutes from Glasgow city centre ...)

In January 2010, a report by the UK government's National Equality Panel pointed out that the gulf between rich and poor in the UK grew wider under Tony Blair's Labour Party than at any time since the Second World War.

In the UK, the richest 10 per cent of families have assets worth an average £853,000 - almost 100 times the £8,800 average wealth of the poorest 10 per cent. (Gulf between rich and poor grown under Labour and now widest since WWII - Daily Mail )

Glasgow slum

Our leaders would appear to be in favour of a feudal system where the upper class become very rich and the lower class become very poor.

Joe Stiglitz, formerly chief economist at the World Bank, told CNBC that "Market fundamentalism has eroded any sense of community and has led to rampant exploitation." (Stiglitz: America's Ersatz Capitalism Is A Joke )

The rich-poor gap has a lot to do with rotten leaders. (afrogeekchic.wordpress.com/.../)

According to the economists Howell and Diallo (2007), neoliberal policies have contributed to a US economy in which 30% of workers earn "low wages", and 35% of the labour force is "underemployed". (Neoliberalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

According to John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer (2006), "The U.S. economic and social model is associated with substantial levels of social exclusion, including high levels of income inequality, high relative and absolute poverty rates, poor and unequal educational outcomes, poor health outcomes, and high rates of crime and incarceration." (Neoliberalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Jews helped run the Moslem Ottoman Empire.

Who has gained from the policies of our rotten leaders?

"Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade's corporate mergers and reorganizations.

"Today, though barely 2% of the nation's population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews." (NEOCON FINANCIERS / BANKERS)

The use by feudal rulers of Jewish financiers has a long history.

In the Middle Ages in Europe, many kings depended upon Jews as financiers.

Royal power worked alongside Jewish money. (NEOCON FINANCIERS / BANKERS )

"1922: King Abdulla Ibn Hussein of Transjordan sits under the watchful eyes of his Jewish bodyguards, Habanni Yemenite brothers Sayeed, Salaah, and Saadia Sofer." (mochajuden.com/?tag=ruth)

Jews also played a major role in the medieval Muslim world.

Jews played a major role in the running of the Ottoman Empire.(NEOCON FINANCIERS / BANKERS)

"In late 19th-century Britain, the Jewish-dominated press championed imperialism, which benefited Jewish finance.

"And during the early stages of the Soviet regime, Jews were numerous in leadership positions, especially in the secret police...

"It was with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal that Jews gained long-term power in the United States...

(Benjamin Ginsberg's The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State.NEOCON FINANCIERS / BANKERS )

Some people believe that Masonic Jewish bankers pull the strings.

In his book, "Under the Sign of the Scorpion" (2002), the Estonian Juri Lina says about 150 million people died as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution, subsidized by the Masonic Jewish banking cartel. "The West pretended to oppose the Bolsheviks but in fact defended them."(savethemales.ca - USSR - Experiment Was "Social ...)

Jewish folks have been important in Latin America.

Around 300,000 Jews live in Argentina, mostly in Buenos Aires.(Argentine Jews Struggling with Money Problems and Security Fears)

In 2001, the economy of Argentina collapsed due to neo-liberal policies.

The feudal system, with its gap between rich and poor, is not unique to any one country or any one religion.

India has many millionaires.

But in 2006 it was reported that 35% of Indians live on less than $1 a day, which is much worse than Pakistan’s figure of 17%. (India - Rich and Poor)

Louis XVI

Is the situation today to be compared to that in France in 1789?

Norman Gash, at the National Review, 14 July 1989, wrote:Reflections on the revolution - French Revolution

(Norman Gash was a former Professor of Modern History at theUniversity of St Andrews)

1. According to Norman Gash, in 1789 France was the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful state in Western Europe.

In 2010, the USA is said to be the most powerful state in the world.

2. Norman Gash asks: What reason was there for revolution in France in 1789?

Gash relates that, according to Napoleon, there was revolution becausethe middle class wanted more power for themselves and less power for the aristocrats.

It could be argued that, in the USA, the middle classes are getting restless. They see a corrupt elite enjoying too many privileges.

Louis XVI

3. Gash points out that in France, in 1789, "the climate of opinion was rational, liberal, and optimistic, the monarchy not averse to reform, the aristocracy itself permeated by ideas of the Enlightenment."

Why then was there a bloody revolution?

Gash explains that the 'system' appeared to make reform difficult.

Edmund Burke said that "a state without the means of some change is without the means of its own conservation."

In the USA in 2010, the constitution appears not to be protecting the USA from disaster.

America's institutions seem incapable of preventing wars, discontent and hunger.

Bastille

4. Gash points out that the French revolution was a long sequence of events, stretching from 1789 until 1799.

There was "an extraordinary series of political improvisations:

constitutional monarchy,

republicanism,

single-party rule,

dictatorship of the proletariat,

oligarchy,

and finally military despotism."

If there are to be dramatic changes in the USA, the end result might be military despotism under an American Napoleon.

Napoleon was a fascist.

He attempted the total military domination of continental Europe.

He tried to have a New World Order, or as Gash writes "a new international order".

Napoleon

5. According to Gash, the French Revolution, Napoleon's Empire and the 1815 Congress of Vienna "foreshadowed the Europe of the future."

That means both good things and bad things.

Americans seeking revolution should study Europe's history.

6. Gash implies that bloody revolution was not necessary to bring about change in Europe.

Gash writes:

Even if the French Revolution had not taken place, "common sense suggests that the main lines of European evolution would have been much the same, though perhaps the pace might have been slower."

Gash lists the products of European society which would have come about either by gradual evolution or by fast and bloody revolution:

A. Liberalism based on representative institutions.

B. Nationalism based on linguistic unity.

C. The rise of the sovereign state.

D. The centralization of administrative power at the expense of provincial.

E. The increasing responsibility of government for the welfare of its subjects.

F. The ability to mobilize a whole society for war.

G. military defeats in consequence giving rise to revolution and revolution to tyranny.

H. International conflicts followed by international institutions to preserve harmony.

America is changing.

The changes will be a mixture of good and bad.

The changes will happen, even without a revolution.

French Empire 1811

7. According to Gash, the French Revolution helped to shape European society in two notable ways.

A. Force was used to bring about change. "Liberalism and reform marched behind French bayonets."

The ideas of liberalism and reform had many of their origins in England.

B. The awakening of nationalism.

Gash writes that: "ideas that march behind bayonets are rarely popular; reform at the hands of a conqueror earns little gratitude. French rule brought not only enlightenment but hardship."

It was not long before there were nationalistic revolts against the French.

In Germany, later in the century, "Bismarck exploited the German national feeling first evoked by Napoleon I."

Any attempt by an American dictator to bring about a New World Order would result in nationalist revolts.

When They Tell You To Love Israel …….

2011-05-18T00:50:00.000-07:00

Show them this :-

“The state of Israel must invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the methods of provocation and revenge…. And above all, let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space.”

— From the diary of Moshe Sharett, Israeli’s first Foreign Minister from 1948-1956, and Prime Minister from 1954-1956

“Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered, but never before have I watched as soldiers enticed children like mice into a trap and murdered them for sport.”

— Christopher Hedges, American Journalist on assignment in Gaza

“…The Israeli soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children’s slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos. Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of who were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they killed an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of who are under eighteen.”

— Christopher Hedges, American Journalist on assignment in Gaza

“Arab Palestinian Christians and Arab Palestinian Muslims lived side by side for the past 1400 years, and for anybody to say that the Arab Palestinian Christians have been persecuted recently by Muslims is absolutely another big lie, like the big lie that spoke of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.”

— Riah Abu El-Assal, Christian Bishop of Jerusalem

“The big winner today, intended or not, is the state of Israel. There is no question that as a result of these attacks the Israeli leadership is feeling relief.”

— George Friedman, director of www.stratfor.com, a pro-Israeli intelligence think tank, commenting upon the attacks of September 11th.

“Regarding what took place on September 11, well it’s very good… Well, it’s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy for Israel.”

— Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the attacks on America as reported in The Jerusalem Post, September 12, 2001.

“Why should they, the Americans, have trusted us? We were a bunch of Russians, socialist Russians.”

— Isser Harel, former head of Mossad, speaking of the unlikely union between America and the Marxist state of Israel.

“Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East.”

— John Sheehan, S.J. (a Jesuit priest)

“It is interesting, but not surprising, to note that in all the words written and uttered about the Kennedy assassination, Israel’s intelligence service agency, the Mossad, has never been mentioned. And yet a Mossad motive is obvious. On this question, as on almost all others, American reporters cannot bring themselves to cast Israel in an unfavorable light -despite the fact that Mossad complicity is as plausible as any of the other theories.”

— US Representative Paul Findley, March 1992

“Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.”

— Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli journal Hotam, November 24, 1989.

“Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay ours…Everything we don’t grab will go to them.”

— Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of the Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, Nov. 15, 1998.

“Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.“

— Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in BBC News Online

Recollections of My Life: Col. Mu'ummar Qaddafi

2011-04-16T22:15:00.000-07:00

In the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful...

For 40 years, or was it longer, I can't remember, I did all I could to give people houses, hospitals, schools, and when they were hungry, I gave them food. I even made Benghazi into farmland from the desert, I stood up to attacks from that cowboy Reagan, when he killed my adopted orphaned daughter, he was trying to kill me, instead he killed that poor innocent child. Then I helped my brothers and sisters from Africa with money for the African Union.

I did all I could to help people understand the concept of real democracy, where people's committees ran our country. But that was never enough, as some told me, even people who had 10 room homes, new suits and furniture, were never satisfied, as selfish as they were they wanted more. They told Americans and other visitors, that they needed "democracy" and "freedom" never realizing it was a cut throat system, where the biggest dog eats the rest, but they were enchanted with those words, never realizing that in America, there was no free medicine, no free hospitals, no free housing, no free education and no free food, except when people had to beg or go to long lines to get soup.

No, no matter what I did, it was never enough for some, but for others, they knew I was the son of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the only true Arab and Muslim leader we've had since Salah-al-Deen, when he claimed the Suez Canal for his people, as I claimed Libya, for my people, it was his footsteps I tried to follow, to keep my people free from colonial domination - from thieves who would steal from us.

Now, I am under attack by the biggest force in military history, my little African son, Obama wants to kill me, to take away the freedom of our country, to take away our free housing, our free medicine, our free education, our free food, and replace it with American style thievery, called "capitalism," but all of us in the Third World know what that means, it means corporations run the countries, run the world, and the people suffer. So, there is no alternative for me, I must make my stand, and if Allah wishes, I shall die by following His path, the path that has made our country rich with farmland, with food and health, and even allowed us to help our African and Arab brothers and sisters to work here with us, in the Libyan Jamahiriya.

I do not wish to die, but if it comes to that, to save this land, my people, all the thousands who are all my children, then so be it.

Let this testament be my voice to the world, that I stood up to crusader attacks of NATO, stood up to cruelty, stood up to betrayal, stood up to the West and its colonialist ambitions, and that I stood with my African brothers, my true Arab and Muslim brothers, as a beacon of light. When others were building castles, I lived in a modest house, and in a tent. I never forgot my youth in Sirte, I did not spend our national treasury foolishly, and like Salah-al-Deen, our great Muslim leader, who rescued Jerusalem for Islam, I took little for myself...

In the West, some have called me "mad", "crazy", but they know the truth yet continue to lie, they know that our land is independent and free, not in the colonial grip, that my vision, my path, is, and has been clear and for my people and that I will fight to my last breath to keep us free, may Allah almighty help us to remain faithful and free.

c: Col. Mu'ummar Qaddafi, 05/04/2011

……… Enjoy ……...

The Pipeline to Paradise from Uwe Behnken on Vimeo.

It's time to wake up

2011-01-28T16:10:00.001-08:00

So, the title of the post sums up my sentiments and the content of this post explains it all

……… enjoy ………

………………………………….

Your thought process and perception through cognitive dissonance via TV, music, movies ……… Your governance and social virtues through control of trends, education, international politics, policies and war ……… Your daily finances through greedy profiteering in banking, markets, general resources and usury …………… and …………...

YOUR FUTURE through their undying need for their own self-preservation through population control.

I DON'T HATE SEMITISM OR THE JEWS (in fact, I commend their unquestionable solidarity and prosperity) …. BUT I DO DESPISE THE ACTIONS OF THE ZIONIST REGIME ….. and ….. THE BLATANT APARTHEID OPENLY PRACTICED BY THE STATE OF ISRAEL.

I am not a radical or extremist by any stretch of the imagination nor do I have a need to act on any of my beliefs(just for the record), besides expressing them in writing. I am well aware that very little can be done about this 'elephant in the room", BUT, I can at least, with the benefit of "somewhat" free speech and the internet(through this blog), reflect and testify my awareness of it and hopefully make whoever reads this aware too … no more, no less.

……….. One ……….

A Modern Aparthied Travesty ….. Seek Truth!!!.

2010-10-09T19:29:00.000-07:00

So, I consider Noam Chomsky a legend …. an advocate of true socialism and champion for, .. at best, .. "minimal honesty in international foreign policy". The only way to demonstrate such a moniker or status given to any individual is to let the product speak for itself. Again, my objective is not sway thought by forcing my opinion on anyone, but rather to force honest critical thought. Note well, that Chomsky is himself Jewish. I must stress too, that as a somewhat free thinking individual myself, I CAN and WILL always question what even Chomsky dialyses.

YOU BE THE JUDGE.

Part1

Part 2

……….. Enjoy …. One ………...

Jewish role in the African and global slave trade

2010-09-03T02:41:00.000-07:00

So, here I will purposely not write up a commentary and again, leave it up to you to make your mind up. And again, I must stress that this is by no means an attempt to either buck pass nor jew bash. In fact, its a well known fact that perpetrators of slavery were NOT only jews, but arabs, europeans e.tc. including Africans themselves. My main focus has always been on the MAIN facilitators and merchants in this vile trade. Slavery as we know it, is historically an almost universal institution and I would suspect that there must be very few societies that have not at one time or another experienced slavery. Karl Marx argued that slavery was one of the basic stages that western european society went through after what he called primitive communism and preceding feudalism.

If anything, I'm glad that someone, a historian at that, can back and better articulate on a subject that I've been perusing with interest for many years …. many of my own findings rely almost 100% from jewish sources, especially The Encyclopaedia Judaica. This is the main reason why ….. as soon as I found out Speilberg was involved ... I categorically refused watch the movie "Amistad"……. sentiments echoes by Prof. Tony Martin.

- Please note well, to all those that rightfully concerns and promptly brought to my attention there-with …. please be safe in the knowledge that :- I am well aware of who David Duke is and what his role is as a member of the KKK, as well as, his role in his deplorably undeniable past. I'm simply using Dukes direct video interpretation of Tony Martins lectures because of its superior production and conciseness.

.….. enjoy …….

Part One

Part Two

Prof. Tony Martin

…………. One ………….

Landmark Interview with Former Pakistani ISI Chief, Hamid Gul

2010-08-28T17:09:00.000-07:00

So, the whole interview, should you choose to watch it, is pretty much self explanatory. I think its worth noting that nothing Hamid Gul says is revelation …. especially if you are one of the "two" people(hehehe) that have followed this blog over the years, or, if you have enough of your own common sense. Not withstanding the fact that Alex Jones conducted interview, (and I'll reiterate, as I have in past, I'm very weary of Alex Jones even though a lot of his work is honourable, he is too sensationalist for me to take serious) its definitely worth the time.

My only misgiving with this interview is that the issue of the Trillion Dollars worth of Lithium in Afghanistan(the stuff that all our modern day gadets can't exist without) wasn't touched on. Thats a blogpost for another day but for now ……….. dare I say it, enjoy………...

You be the judge!

……… One ……...

THREAT!!! … or call the Bluff

2010-05-24T23:24:00.000-07:00

So, again, the difficulty with this particular post will be governed by my ability to demonstrate how well I can put my point across without portraying it as anti-semitic or to put it simply "jew bashing". As I've always tried to explain to those closest to me .... I am more envious with regard to the solidarity and pure reserve of the Zionist movement(not Jews per-say) rather than jealous or disdainful.

Lets face it. The Zionists own the media, they own the bank industry, they even own the porn industry and control the drug market.

As the poor shill Powell said the weapons we have been hunting for years claiming "Sadaam was preparing to use at 45mins notice", the same nukes "sent to syria by ambulance". They could be anywhere, anyone would be able to use them. However, there's only ONE possible culprit capable of doing this though, ONE country with something to gain and the willingness to act. My case in point solidified by this quote by Dutch-Israeli Military Historian; Martin van Creveld:

"we have hundreds of nuclear warheads and missiles that can reach different targets in the heart of the european continent, including beyond the boarders of Rome, the Italian capital. Our armed forces are not the 13th strongest but however they are the 2nd or 3rd (strongest), we have the capability to take the world down with us"

Today America for example could be facing the nuclear Holocaust that van Creveld describes. Theres no reason reason to trust that the military intelligence, law inforcement or the dozens of beaurues and agencies tasked with defending America, will be willing to do so if the attack comes from Isreal. In fact some leaders, even a former head of Homeland Security, "could" be on a list of those that might be one of Americas greatest terrorist threats. How can perceptions differ so much???? If those perception are based on information and such information is based on pure propaganda thats continual and consistantly presented - not only in news format but also reinforced in movies, television series and anyone questioning this format is attacked and destroyed with their perceptions assumed to be false.

Then even I might be at risk here on this modest blog for saying and expressing my views.

Bad Week

2010-05-16T02:59:00.000-07:00

So, I launch into an extended rant about the recent BP exploision, I wanted to highlight something that I thought was very important.

At a recent Washington Correspondents Association, President Barack Obama made an off-handed joke about using predator drones to keep the Jonas Brothers off his daughters. I know that this is one of those many times where I’m going to be told that I’m overreacting. But let’s think for a second about the record of Barack Obama. A man who ran for office on promises of “hope and change” quickly proved that he was the same type of establishment hack as the man who sat in the chair before him. This was proven, above all, by maintaining the status quo in the Department of Defense, despite being elected in large part due to a massive backlash against American involvement in two imperialist wars.

There are real victims of American attacks on Pakistan with predator drones, many of them children. Over a thousand civilians are known to have been killed by predator drone attacks since they began in Pakistan. Further, Barack Obama has ordered not just predator drone attacks that kill civilians in Afghanistan. He is also the first President in world history to order an assassination against an American citizen.

This is a truly “teachable moment.” One where you realize precisely how glib and cavalier the attitude of our overlords are toward us. I strongly urge everyone reading this article to read the full article on the dinner. Anyone who can continue to defend Barack Obama is an active agent of deception. Those with even a moderate level of intelligence are deceiving themselves most of all. What will it take to make you realize that there is no hope in supporting the left-handed puppet of an ultra-right-wing financial aristocracy?

There’s little doubt that BP is at fault. Further, how they conducted themselves after the incident isreprehensible in the extreme. However, BP (who have, in a sickeningly ironic fashion, tried to rebrand themselves as “Beyond Petroleum” in the last several years) is not without its accomplices.

First, there is the capitalist media, who have reported on the capping of a single part of the leak–which, like a Dutch boy sticking his finger in a dike, does absolutely nothing to ease the total flow of oil into the ocean–as if it were some heroic and Herculean effort on the part of BP. The New York Times has, in its role as the leading organ of American capitalist thought, rushed to the defense of BP to assert that the spill is “not that bad.”

But more importantly, there are BP’s accomplices in the federal government. Last year the Department of the Interior was warned that they were dangerously underestimating the potential damage of extant (to say nothing of proposed) offshore drilling. The warning came from those green revolutionary kooks at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. Of course, Barack Obama is playing the expected role ofattempting to assuage public anger and outrage against BP. However, he has been implicated in a far more direct and relevant crime. Barack Obama personally issued a special exemption for the rig in question, effectively leaving the fox in charge of the hen house. This wasn’t an exemption for a BP rig in the abstract. It was an exemption for the rig that is currently destroying the Gulf of Mexico.

Guess which 2008 Presidential election candidate got the most money from BP? Sickened yet?

Maybe you will be when you realize that there’s no real solution to the problem on top until at least next week. The only solutions being offered at that time are only temporary. Did I mention that the oil spill might get sent up the entire east coast by the Gulf stream?

This is the worst thing that has probably ever happened during my life time. Considering that I’m old enough to remember Chernobyl and ten years of genocidal assaults on Iraq, I’d say that means it ranks pretty fucking bad. But the question ultimately is–what are you going to do about it? I hope desperately that the answer for you and others is to organize outside the confines of our corporate-dominated electoral process, a process that is designed to mislead people behind one of two political parties that serve the interests of America’s financial elite.

The proof is in results. The Obama Administration has shown itself to be merely a continuation of the policies of the Bush Administration, albeit with a minor makeover in public relations.

Nobel Peace Prize ...... PEACE!!!! ..... Really? I must've missed something.

2009-10-11T18:18:00.000-07:00

“for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”

So, I don’t really need to get into why this is insane, Orwellian, and farcical. But I’m going to anyway. The refusal to dawn down troops in Afghanistan, the continued threats against Iran, the expansion of the War on Terror Truth into Pakistan (using tactics at home in Pinochet’s Chile) and Somalia (while simultaneously cutting food aid), continuing Bush-era police state operations, defending Bush-era torturers while leaving the framework of their policies in place, attacking health care for working class Americans, offering no relief to unemployed workers while giving the bankers who caused the crisis whatever they want at the expense of you and me, and generally fiddling while Rome burns.

Yeah. Dude is really doing his bit to increase the peace.

But all you have to do to rally liberals to your cause is mouth the correct series of stock phrases, apparently. The fact that he has largely continued Bush’s assaults on the third world and pissed in the face of his anti-war base means nothing. What is meaningful is that he occasionally gives a good speech, filling the selfish and privileged middle class elements who still support him with “YES WE CAN!”

Imperialist in Chief has taken this as a “call to action.” Um, I know I’m not on the Nobel Prize Committee or anything, but I thought the award was supposed to be given to people who have actually done something to increase world peace, not who promise to do so after they receive the award. In this regard, President Obama joins other totally fucked recipients of the award as Henry Kissinger, Woodrow Wilson, and Tenzin Gyatso. Stay classy, Nobel Prize.

Unsurprisingly, the White House and its toadies in the liberal press have tried to smear all criticism of this award as belonging to the right. Sickening. But what else do you expect from the Administration that killed 80 people in a cowardly unmanned drone attack on a fucking funeral?

I will leave you with three things. First, the ostensible criteria for the award:

“to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

Second, the alternative presented by the deceased degenerated workers’ state, who had among its recipients Paul Robeson, Bertolt Brecht, W.E.B. DuBois, Pablo Picasso, and Angela Davis. Fuck, I think Fidel Castro has done more to increase world peace and tolerance than Barack Obama.

Finally, I ask everyone to list people that they think would be worthy of a prestigious international prize for fostering peace. I would ask that people keep their focus on those who have done the most to increase peace and social justice.

This is a dark day for the Nobel Peace Prize, which so far as I can tell has lost all credibility.

...................enjoy.................

Beholden to the Military Establishment.

2009-10-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

So, there is a clear trajectory of the American ruling class away from normal, democratic rule. Increasingly, over the last fifteen years, there has been a tendency to move towards naked authoritarianism. I have spoken on The Eclectic African previously on the subject of nascent American Fascism. While I don’t wish to downplay the significance of obviously fascist figures such as Glenn Beck(Fox News) receiving a hearing in the mainstream media, perhaps this is not the form that dictatorship in the United States will take when democratic norms finally collapse. Indeed, America’s history is arguably closer to and more intimately intertwined with that of Latin America. Perhaps the model for the catastrophic end of American democracy is not the lumpen thugs of Europe, but the Latin American military strong man, and his throngs of tanks “disappearing” all potential opposition. Dictatorial rhetoric, increased saber-rattling abroad, and a clear short-term historical trajectory away from electoral normality add up to a chilling picture for the near future.

Of particular interest is the constant, steady march of America- no matter which party occupies the executive branch or has a majority in Congress- towards an increasing number of wars abroad. While Iraq has been out of the news, the President early on spit in the face of his anti-war base by reappointing Bush-era butcher Robert Gates to the position of Secretary of Defense. The President (the most relevant party, as he ultimately commands the entire American military) has intensified attacks on Afghanistan, and expanded the war into Pakistan in the most disgusting way possible. Indeed, the military tactics being used by Obama’s war machine and its toadies in the Pakistani officer caste increasingly resemble that of a military dictatorship over its own people. If recent history tells us anything, it tells us that which is used against enemies of the regime abroad is quickly brought home to be used against enemies of the regime domestically.

In the United States, attacks on democratic liberties almost necessarily go hand in hand with imperialist aggression. See also: The Espionage Act of 1917, the Smith Act of 1940, McCarthyism,and the Patriot Act. It should raise concern then, not just among radicals, revolutionaries, and socialists, but anyone concerned with democratic liberties, that the military-industrial complex has not let up on Iran, despite the change of drapes. The current drive against Iran started with the hysteria over th e allegedly stolen election in Iran. Of course, nothing pushes the buttons of American liberals like claims of electoral irregularities- except when they happen domestically. In particular, the “left” (such as it is) in America whinged like children with mock moral outrage. The corporate media continues to do its part in spreading total bullshit about Iran in the service of the American ruling class’ ambitions there.

As usual, the nakedly pro-corporate press is a little more honest with us. They call Obama out for what he is- Bush III (ok, ok, Bush 2.0, but they forgot about Poppy). The man certainly uses highly aggressive language when talking about Iran’s totally legal nuclear energy program. Those who live in countries with media sources not controlled by American corporations know that the U.S. claims about Iran are (again) total bullshit- to speak nothing of the hypocrisy of the only country to actually use nuclear weapons (and against civilian populations at that) lecturing a small, impoverished country on what weapons it can and can’t have to defend itself. There is also the rising threat of trade war between the United States and China.

But most troubling? The increasing conflicts between Obama and the military. I’m not even sure that they can be called conflicts. It’s more like an international version of what happened to Clinton. To summarize: Clinton wasn’t quite kicking the ass of poor and working class people hard enough, so the ultra-right sought to cripple his Presidency. But this isn’t 1996 and Obama isn’t Clinton. The military brass seems increasingly brazen in their critiques of the President. In particular, Defense Secretary Gates recently had to remind top military brass that they are even subordinate to civilian authority at all.

Upon assuming the Presidency, Obama had thr ee recently retired Four Star Generals in his cabinet. This is unprecedented, and highly unusual for a Democrat who ran, at least initially, on a heaping dollop of cynical criticism of the Bush Administration’s policies in Iraq. It’s an attempt to placate the far right and the military establishment. But it is also highly dangerous, as it puts the military-industrial complex very deeply in the current establishment. The specter of military dictatorship in the United States has been raised quite sharply. For those who say “it can’t happen here” I say, show me the data. Do not confuse the unprecedented with the unlikely or the impossible. Now more than ever, it is important to remain vigilant. The imperial presidency of Bush is little more than the other side of the coin of an impotent presidency, entirely beholden to the military establishment.

Byzantine Theories

2009-09-11T05:17:00.000-07:00

So, believe it or not, I have comparatively little to say about 9/11. But what I have to say I’m going to take the opportunity to say.

There is no point in getting bogged down in Byzantine theories about what happened on 9/11. Simply put, short of a political and social revolution we will never know. There is literally no way to tease out information from disinformation without having access to the full archives of the American intelligence community. But really, what actually happened isn’t the point. At least not yet.

The point is that we, as a global nation, were lied to, either by omission or commission. I would like to remind everyone that most of the official narrative of 9/11 comes from Condi Rice, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and George W. Bush. The “cave dwellers with box cutters” theory was eaten early on by the corporate media, and no meaningful, independent investigation occurred or would be allowed to occur.

And what were the results of this intense propaganda campaign which provided no evidence for its claims? The deaths of thousands of Americans, nearly a million Iraqis, scads of Afghani peoples, and increasing numbers of Pakistanis. Oh, and let’s not forget trillions of dollars in the pockets of war profiteers and mercenary armies.

It seems worth pointing out that the current administration accepts the claims of the Bush Administration on 9/11 without question. Just like like they accept the “right” of the United States to intervene militarily wherever it deems fit without question.

So on this 9/11, I would encourage everyone to reflect about the various and sundry American military adventures since World War II. And while I think that something far more nefarious than the official story of 9/11 went down that day, I urge all people to keep the discussion on the important and substantive issues: mass media manipulation, the military-industrial complex, and the right-wing march of American politics. Stick to what you know. Because it may have been lasers on the moon that brought down the buildings, but until we have all the information… we’ll never really know anything.

........enjoy.......

Why is Africa Poor?

2009-09-10T17:34:00.000-07:00

So, conflicts between Africans, with non-Africans and sometimes with the land itself continue to make too many people on the continent among the poorest on earth. Though the question "why is Africa poor?" is a straightforward one, the answers are not. Sometimes I wander what Africans may be doing to themselves to keep them the poorest people on earth.

Now I obviously wouldn't be doing the title of this post any justice if I didn't offer up one or two countries as examples ...... so like a lamb to the slaughter I give you my first "case in point" South Sudan.
You'd be hard pressed to find many places poorer than South Sudan, a big country thats semi independent from Northern Sudan. South Sudan is bigger than Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi combined. South Sudan also has tremendous land, very fertile, good rainfall and an enormous water supply which is key to exploiting a successful agricultural resource. South Sudan is also very mineral rich with OIL and GOLD amongst its repertoire of precious minerals. Yes, South Sudan is the burgeoning resource territory of Africa today and yet its people are terribly, terribly poor and are carving out an existence that seems to almost have been left behind in the stone age. The only asset with financial value that the people of this region can possess is cattle, the traditional stower of wealth and power in South Sudan . About 200 soldiers have been deployed there to try and stop a deadly wave of inter-tribal fighting, most of which centers on disputes about cattle. Cattle raiding is historic and has been around in this region and certainly Africa as a whole since the colonial era but in the past the raiders used simple weapons like the spear and bows and arrows which had a limited impact on civilian lives.
The blue helmets of the UN originally came to Sudan to police a shaky peace agreement in the long war between the north and the south of the country, but now they find themselves also trying to stop wars between southern tribes. As a result of the conflict over the past 21 years(and to date), most of the families possess firearms and use them as one of their livelihood strategies to manage the cattle that allow them to survive. This has created an environment not conducive to the development of South Sudan.The cattle raids have recently escalated into deliberate attacks on villages in which sometimes hundreds of people including women and children have been slaughtered ........ THEN, the cycle of reprisals begin. It hardly needs pointing out that this makes poor communities even more destitute ............. WAR MAKES AFRICA POOR.
The only solution to the problem as proposed by the south Sudanese villagers themselves is to separate! which to me is the silliest of any proposals. How can you be separate when you are all part of one country. If you start separating different tribes ..... then Sudan will cease to exist completely ...... right?!. If this part of Africa or Africa in general is to develop and join the modern world, then surely we should be talking to each other instead of arguing over which tribe should do what .... There will never be any progress if this continues.

But tribalism and blinkered tribal leadership are not limited to remote tribal parts of Africa. It really baffles me!, being an African and having lived in Africa I can testify that Africans look after their families well and still have a strong, honorable sense of community AND YET, somehow, it DOES NOT translate into our politics ........ people will still vote for somebody who they know is a thief because that's what communities do. They tend to look out for their own rather than serve the greater national interest. So even if he/she is a thief, you will vote for him because he's "yours", even if you don't benefit from him at all. You ask most people on an African street whether they've benefited from their politicians, all I know is the answer won't surprise anyone. At the moment in Africa there is endless corruption, a far cry from the way the west works where the citizens make sure the system works, that their votes count, that they pay taxes and that their leaders are always liable to be held accountable. In Africa on the other-hand, corruption has consumed everybody and nobody is ready to take on the "difficult" solution, nope, we still want the "easy" option, which is:- complain and do nothing ..... typically African.
But never-the-less my indictment of corrupt leaders is a harsh one, and one, I'd have to say I've encountered in my limited, modest travel across Africa's poorest sub Saharan countries. CORRUPT LEADERS MAKE AFRICA POOR. This is a message that you'll find comes most strongly from Africans themselves not foreigners living on the land.

However, some ex-patriots do have a take on "Why Africa is Poor". In Zimbabwe, a couple of years ago, I went to a dinner hosted by the Chinese Ambassador to thank my dad for his help in the construction and renovation of their embassy there. China, in our time, has lifted more people out of absolute poverty than any other country, so I took it upon myself to broach the subject with the ambassador as I thought he might know a thing or two about this subject matter. Slowly walking down the the hall of the brand new Embassy building with my dad, Ambassador Zhou showed off and explained some Chinese artifacts and replica treasures. His main message was that China might have something to show Africa in the field of Agriculture and part of that conversation went something like this ......... as far as I can vividly remember:

"You know ... China has a history of Agriculture .... for thousands of years, it's a strong tradition, maybe in our blood there are cells of agriculture and we know how to do it, we know how to work very hard." ... Mr Zhou proudly remarked.
"Soooo, you're saying Africans are lazy and don't work hard ...." I immediately replied ... in a joking manner although genuinely taken aback. I also quickly added "on their land I mean"
"Well, maybe not as hard as we do" the ambassador said in search of clarification.
"The reason is not that Africans are lazy , but that their conditions are too good."
I attentively listened on. He went on to use a few rural provinces in China located somewhere in the south-east (names fail me) near the boarder with Russia.
"If you do not work, or you do not work hard enough in the summer time, you'd definitely be dead come winter, because nothing there is edible in winter, except ice!!! ....... but here in Africa, the conditions are so good that even if you don't work, you can go outside and pick mangoes, you can get some bananas, you can easily grow root vegetables here and there. So life is so easy."
So his take on it was that life is easy ..... too easy ..... not something you hear too often about Africa. No, the dominant image(outside the continent at least) is: the dramatic, the exotic, the war, the famine, the magnificent lions and statuesque warriors. The fact of the matter is that, in many parts of Africa, the soil is good, the rains do come and the sun does shine. The sense of community too is often strong. Life for many Africans is good but there is still no getting away from the fact that many of them are poor, and, taken as a whole, the continent is the worlds poorest.
We've lived too good a life in the tropics and our brains almost tend to work in a slower gear. Life is too easy and too good and I'm not joking, as many of you might think I am. I think we as Africans are not using our brains maximally and this is a situation that we have to treat seriously, all jokes aside. I think everyone needs to contribute their optimal mental and intellectual capacity to the greater good of Africa. COMPLACENCY MAKES AFRICA POOR.
So now we have three themes, three answers perhaps, as to why we ourselves as Africans are keeping Africa poor (1) The kind of tribal distrust which stokes the conflict in south Sudan (2) The corruption that is now a part of the fabric of our politics all over Africa and ...(3) Judging by my little discussion with Ambassador Zhou, well, a sort of complacency has arisen from living in the fertile tropics that has ultimately discouraged innovation.

Is there any one single thing that keeps all these three: Tribalism, corruption and complacency going? Maybe its the lack of justice in Africa. I mean you do what you can to make a living .... but if there is no justice, how are you going to make that living? You have to live in peace, how do you live in peace? you need justice. Yes, there will always be poor African people and countries but how are those people and countries going to make their lives better? The fact of the matter is Africans want to pull themselves out of poverty but are being tripped up all the time. Africans ARE eager to work honestly but someone else is always exploiting them ... that's not justice, if the people are paying their taxes and some minister is taking this money, putting it in his pocket and drinking it every night, how will those people get rich ..... eventually those people will start to speak of justice. So maybe justice is the key. Perhaps in true justice, many of the ills that I as an African have described in this post might be solved. Answers to the question "Why is Africa Poor?" could perhaps begin to be addressed ... i - tribal conflicts could be resolved through the courts ..... ii - corruption would be prosecuted. But the question still hangs there, why hasn't there been justice????? Why are so many Africans as we have discussed before in other posts content to complain and do nothing??????

"Why is Africa poor?" .... Yup, I think we ARE a large part of the reason, but having spoken to T (a good friend and astute debating buddy of mine), I came to realise, through his adamant insistence, that our history is also a large part of the reason too. As much as I've tried steer clear of it, the colonisation of Africa cannot be ignored. Colonisation was all about TAKE, not BUILD and for years we have been told what to expect or what we are going to get. It's a mindset that exists in Africa till today, if you try to engage fellow Africans as I have recently while trying to design a program that was inclusive. We sat around a table and I asked THEM what THEIR needs were and what THEY wanted to see in their community ........ and got an absolute blank ..... no answer at all as if I making unreasonable demands on them. We are too used being told what we are going to have that even the ability to engage fails us. Don't get me wrong, there is great discipline in African schools but the counter side to that is children are learning by rout or show of respect. The problem is learning by rout doesn't help because Africans tend to get some of the highest marks if they have to cram, but, the minute one is asked to apply that knowledge in different situations or scenarios we fall apart.

I've tried to classify all aspects of why we as Africans may keeping ourselves poor, the tribalism, the corruption, the complacency and lack of justice, but now suddenly, a phone call with my man T has taken us back to colonial history and the undoubted influence of outsiders.
Colonization is a sensitive issue, but while we are on sensitive issues I might as well address what is a prevalent attitude towards Africa by outsiders .... "Most of the world is moving forward, including Asia which, like Africa, also has colonialist history ....... SO THERE MUST BE SOMETHING WRONG WITH AFRICANS". This attitude definitely boarders on the racist and is usually swiftly summed up with "Well, they're Africans, what do you expect". Well I think its that communal thing again. Not so much that its holding us back, but the very aspects that help develop the modern world like Transparency, Accountability and Rule of Law and so on, are what Africans are struggling to come to terms with without losing the all important Communal aspect of African life. Its modern protocols vs. the communal way. I think it's fascinating because it brings us back to why we are sometimes prone to vote for a politician of the same ethnic group, language/dialect etc. just as a communal "reflex" BUT we almost always expect to be disappointed by those very politicians ....... because after all, we DO read the papers and know perfectly well what's going on.

In writing this blog I've realised that before anyone even tries tackle the solution to this huge issue of poverty ..... defining the problems is in itself overwhelming. AFRICAN POVERTY IS AN ENORMOUS PROBLEM. If someone as insignificant as me (coupled with the other Africans whom I speak to somewhat regularly who are happy to share their thoughts freely) can appreciate the enormity of the problem and still somehow analyse it, and to some extent at least, explain it ....... then poverty in Africa can perhaps also be tackled.

Judging by the length of the post I must say ..... I got a little carried away with this one. For that I apologise, but, it was a fun, serious topic to blog about too.

.............enjoy.............

May Day ... opps sorry, I mean Labor Day Reflections and Perspective

2009-09-08T21:42:00.000-07:00

So, Labor Day in America, traditionally regarded as the beginning of the fall season. Labor Day is another consequence of a conservative American labor aristocracy. The holiday began under President Grover Cleveland as a token gesture toward the conservative craft-based unions of the latter half of the 19th Century. The rest of the international working class celebrates International Workers’ Day on May 1. Perhaps the main reason for keeping Labor Day at the end of summer rather than on May 1 is to break, at least psychologically, connections between the American labor movement and the labor movement around the rest of the world. While May 1 represents a meaningful date in the history of the American and international working class, so-called “Haymarket Riots,” the first Monday after the first Sunday in September doesn’t mean shit.

The interesting thing to me is not the strides that America has made, but everything that has been taken away from America. In 1964 Lyndon Baines Johnson, the butcher of Hanoi, said that it ought to be the job of the government to eliminate poverty throughout the entire world. Americas current corporate masters, and their mouthpiece Barack Obama, are timid about even offering a weak public option for universal health care coverage. Left out of the entire debate on health care is the idea that everyone ought to have access to affordable, quality care.

The Economic Policy Institute released something today called “Labor Day by the Numbers.” Its data seems horrific, but isn’t going to come as much of a surprise to most people I know who are bearing the brunt of the current economic downturn. The Center for Urban Economic Development, the National Employment Law Project and the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment recently conducted a study which showed that, among lower-income workers, violations of wage, labor, and break laws were the norm, and not the exception. The corporate bankers who created this crisis aren’t bearing much of the burden. On the contrary, they are profiting quite handsomely.

Again, I am sure that none of this comes as much of a surprise to anyone reading this. And that’s part of the point. The working class has become so accustomed to getting kicked in the ass that it seems to know little else anymore. It is also undeniable that American political discourse and legislation is directed toward a very narrow, very privileged layer of right-wing bent (PROTIP: the Democratic Party is a right-wing party. Don’t believe me? Compare the American political spectrum to any other in the developed world), and only represents the interests of the working class accidentally, if at all. Our political process is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the most powerful corporations and people in the country.

President Obama will address schoolchildren tomorrow and explain to them that their schools are not failing because trillions of dollars which could be spent on education is completely flushed down the toilet of the Pentagon’s budget and the golden parachutes and bonuses of CEOs. Their schools are definitely not failing because public schools are little more than holding tanks for young working class people which make little to no attempt to actually educate them. No, sir. You see, kids in school in the poorest neighborhood in Detroit have just as much of a shot at becoming a “success” as kids going to school in Beverly Hills. It’s all just a question of personal responsibility. Someone get this guy a Cosby sweater.

While unemployment is going way up, so is the stock market, and the two are not separate. Nor is the economic situation of waning American hegemony unrelated to attacks on the living standards of the working class or their democratic rights. Americans have seen over the last decade, an attempt to cripple a democratically elected President with a sex scandal, a popular election invalidated, and an election stolen in a style that would make Uncle Joe Stalin proud. To make matters worse, there seems to be a layer of the ruling class who have become so mad that they don’t even consider Americans people anymore.

Now that I’ve given you the bad news of the current situation, let me give you the good news of historical precedent. Do people fight back? Do they ever. You see, while right-wingers and their apologists have tons of narratives about how greedy, stupid, and reactionary most working class people are (particularly Americans, apparently), these narratives have a whole lot more to do with propagandizing than they do with a reality-based assessment of the facts. America will take a back seat to no other country in terms of its labor movement. The struggle for the eight-hour day began there, as commemorated by the international working class on May Day. The Industrial Workers of the World, one of the first labor unions to attempt breaking the iron grip of conservative craft unionism on the minds of the working class was founded in America. The 1930s- and I think that we are currently entering a period of American history which will be perhaps most comparable to 1914, but has many elements of 1929- were a period of almost constant labor unrest, even after the election of FDR. In fact, it was the mass strikes across the midwest in Minneapolis, Toledo, Flint, and other cities far removed from the coasts who forced FDR’s hand. He originally took office preaching fiscal restraint and personal responsibility.

“People” (always a totally useless term when discussing mass sociological phenomenon) may or may not be apathetic about things like Guantanamo and not being able to take cologne on a cross-country flight. However, this is an entirely different issue from how working class people will react when faced with homelessness, starvation, naked police state tactics (which, with apologies to Alex Jones and his ilk, America have not even come close to yet, only inched steadily toward), and further military entanglements whose only conclusion is a draft. The repression in Europe in the 1920s and 30s was brutal, to be sure, but it is nothing compared to what is coming up on the horizon. American capitalism in 1930 is not American capitalism today. If Marx was right about the crisis of overproduction, and I think that the last 50 years of American history have proven him all too correct about it, there are finite limits to which capitalism can expand. After it reaches those limits, it needs to find someone to bomb, because there are only so many iPods and Hummers you can sell to keep the economy going. America, from its current weakened position is not in the same position to offer the reforms of the 1930s or the 1950s and 60s. The reforms of the 50s and 60s, as well as the generalized economic prosperity took place on the back of a massive American military victory, and unipolar hegemony over the entire capitalist world under the auspices of the Bretton Woods Agreement. It further seems worth pointing out that almost to the nanosecond that this hegemony broke down, the right wing assault on the living standards of the working class and the ideological assault against even the very notion of social justice went into earnest.

The choice confronting the international working class isn’t a game of who can be most radical, nor is it the pragmatic politics of “movement building.” The time period in which we can actually turn things around before a waning capitalist class destroys the entire planet in a nuclear conflict or wanton disregard for the environment is perhaps rapidly approaching. Nor do I think that the paranoid conspiracy theorists of Alex Jones’s ilk too far off in their predictions of an impending police state. There’s one really easy way to deal with massive unemployment, labor unrest, and a diminishing level of return on investment:

Think I’m nuts? Use the world’s leading source of information as an entree into the field of the prison-industrial complex. Look at the graph below and ask yourself what’s going on in America in 1980 and who was leading it. Ask yourself what most people in prison in America are there for, what, the color of their skin is, how much money they make, and how great their education was?. Then read this article about the concept of the carceral state. Finally, ask yourself how many snotty, middle-class assholes you know who would be easily impressed by a shiny black uniform, limited social power over those they perceived as “less than,” and an opportunity to save their own skin at the expense of others.

I’m tired of being lectured by liberals and radicals on how out of touch with reality I am when I generally have a greater breadth of historical knowledge than they do, particularly as pertains to working class history. The issues confronting the American and international working class are not petty or trivial. They are of the utmost importance for the survival of humanity. Ask yourself what the last fifty years have been like in America and around the world. Now ask yourself if the world can take another fifty years of not just business as usual, but an intensified attacks on the working class and developing world, including even further disregard for the environment in pursuit of increasing the rate of profit for a small, privileged layer of parasitic elites who become even more superfluous with each passing day.

..............Enjoy.............

Whose fault is it.

2009-09-07T19:17:00.000-07:00

At the first sign of political and economical down-heaval in the country, what did Zimbabweans do .... run to as many countries overseas as they possibly could in a guise as political/economical refugees, skilled immigrants and students. The best minds in a whole array of professions and trades left the land in droves for so called "greener pastures". When everyone from the bank teller to the bank manager, the nurse to the the doctor, the boilermaker to the engineer (I could go on) leaves, its any wonder the country is in the state its in today. The people left to run beautiful Zimbabwe are nothing but those that where scrapped off the bottom of the barrel in each field ....... oh and dealers. Although most peeps back home would argue that, for survival, everyone left in zim now has to be a dealer by default.

WHY, not just stick around a little longer. Long enough at least to stand up and stare back in the face of our government and show them that they can't just do what they want, when they want. Long enough to show them that they can't rule a country on whims just because they are in power ....... that they can't make silly decisions for a whole nation of people because they singularly feel a particular way.
As a nation we are known to be a resilient yet passive people but this is gone beyond a ridiculous joke.
A good example is Kenya, as soon as a suspect election result is announced an immediate, powerful and reactive response in demonstration is seen, albeit violent. But, the point here is that the people are showing the government that consists only of one tribe (kikuyu) which represents 20% of the Kenyan population, that they cannot continue to hold government and run business as if they own the country which is largely made up of the luo tribe.
So, before this becomes an essay I'll just say this, a lot of us Zimbabweans both at home and especially in the "diaspora" whinge and wine from afar that the state of everything in the country is gone to pot when we know full well what the problem is. The whole country is simply being run by incompetence on every level, from the highest to the lowest......simply put...... the BRAINS HAVE BEEN DRAINED

But, hey, now we're all out of the country, lets just continue to hope that everything changes so that we can all go back and live happily ever after again. Especially us "diasporans", We'll just let them at home fix it all eh, we'll go back when its done. Besides, what can we do from here besides send foreign currency to our families back home and fuel a much needed black market eh. Problem is, the very people we've left at home to do the fixing are either in the jobs they are doing because the right people for those jobs have upped and left, or, they are too busy trying to get the hell out of the country themselves. The rich get richer and poor get poorer. The rich damn sure ain't going nowhere fast, why, they are to busy trying to get rich, how, waiting for those very pounds and US$ we are sending to our families.

Zimbabweans eh, the best way to sum us all up is:- "Blind in one eye ...... Can't see through the other"

One

Pulp non-Fiction: Hollywoods take on History

2009-09-06T21:28:00.000-07:00

So, most of us know that Hollywoods version of history leans towards fiction not fact.
But someone needs to remind the children as they believe everything that they see on screen. In my experience I've found that pupils retain the dodgy history in films as the truth even though they've been taught the real version of events.

When information in a film tallies with reality I think it improves recall, whereas, when the film contradicts the facts, children will carry those mistakes into exams. And sometimes this occurs even when teachers explain before hand about which "facts" are not true.

Here are some examples I can pull up off the top my head. All of them are historical facts because I tend to pick those out easier:

AMISTAD (1997)
The African slave(Djimon Honsu) who led a mutiny aboard the Spanish ship Amistad is shown in a US court in shackles, when in fact he was actually in jail in another state throughout his trial.

Elizabeth (1998)
Queen Elizabeth I(Cate Blanchett) is shown forcing her adviser William Cecil into retirement, when really he stayed with her till her death.

U-571 (2000)
American troops retrieve a Nazi Enigma code machine by boarding a german submarine in disguise. In fact, the British captured the Enigma ...... and broke the code which eventually played the biggest part in winning the war.

Last Samurai (2003)
US soldiers were brought in to train the Japanese Imperial Army when in actual fact it was the French who trained them.

Marie Antoinette (2006)
As the mob attacks Versailles, the French Queen goes onto the balcony and they fall quiet out of respect. This didn't happen at all as the people absolutely despised her.

Asinine Argument or Not ........ Shit Sticks!!!!!!

2009-09-03T18:50:00.000-07:00

So, I was a student of History. I read a book once. It had very few pictures, none of them pornographic, and it told me things. It told me things about this Strange Place called Europe, and about Her People.

I’d like to share a story with you. It begins way back before World War I, in a galaxy far, far on a Continent about 6 hours away . . .

Once upon a time there was Imperialism. Europeans traveled around the world to spread Christianity, smallpox and syphilis. While they were at it, they discovered that foreign colonies could be extremely profitable.

Through trial and error, Europeans learned that it was best NOT to obliterate the indigenous populations (as the Spanish did in South and Central America). This was a feat only the United States managed to make profitable, with Manifest Destiny. Instead, Europeans realized that the natives could be impressed into hard labor and forced to mine and farm raw materials.

These materials were then shipped back to the Motherland (only Germany, Finland and [I think] Austria refer to their country as the Fatherland) where they were used in Industrial Manufacturing processes. Goods were produced, and then sold BACK to the colonies at exorbitant rates for the profit of the Mother Country in Europe.

For an excellent example of scholarship on the best way to enslave an indigenous population, read Macaulay’s "Minute on Education", submitted to British Parliament on 2Feb1835.

Eventually European states began to war for control of each others’ profitable colonies. Africa was carved up in a land grab after the Berlin Conference of the mid 1880s. Europeans chasing diamonds, gold and ivory were known to commit all manner of atrocities.

King Leopold of Belgium turned the Congo into his own personal piggy-bank. Child laborers had their hands cut off if they failed to meet their quotas.

The struggle for control of the Third World broke into the rash that was World War I.

The problem with a World War is that it’s bloody expensive! European states abolished the hard-and-fast Gold Standard in favor of a Gold Bullion Standard. This allowed the Europeans to devalue currency and print all manner of Monopoly Money to fund a war none of them could afford.

After World War I, Europe was devastated, its Empires in ruins. The European economy was so badly damaged that the United States abandoned its Gold Standard for a similar arrangement to those of European states. This de facto fiat system allowed the US to devalue its own currency and print boatloads of money to prop up the British economy. In fact, most of Europe based the value of its currency on the US Dollar, as americans helped to fund its reconstruction.

This, of course, led to the collapse of the global economy and the Great Depression . . . which led to World War II. After WWII, America emerged as the dominant western power. They vied for global control with the Soviet Union for a few decades before that eventually collapsed. Left to their own devices, they fumbled with their own spiraling debt (produced by the imperialist wars of the early 20th century) and completely dropped the ball.

Which brings us to this “foul Year of Our Lord,” 2009 – when America is (apparently) the biggest bag of dicks on the planet, despite European efforts.

All hope is lost ........ or is it

And just as an aside, I still don’t understand what they are getting at in Afghanistan anyhow? I thought they wanted OSAMA BIN LADEN? How did that mission morph into war with the entire country? Especially since no one has ever beaten these dudes on their home court, which is a cave. The Russians couldn’t tame the Afghani in the 1980’s and neither could the British 150 years before them.

THE AFGHANI'S ARE JUST AS HARD-HEADED AS THE SOMALI'S

K'NAAN

Please explain this to Mr Obama?

Health Care vs Fascism ....... American-style Fascism

2009-08-19T02:17:00.000-07:00

So, Health Care yeah!!! ..... I know I've steered well clear of "Obama's Beast" on this site till now ... haven't I??? Well, I've finally decided to broach the subject once and for all simply because I've been asked for my opinion on it one too many times. But, in order for me to even attempt to tickle the belly of the beast I must first draw your attention to what I'd call American-style Fascism and it's contribution to this knock-down-drag-out cogitation on Health-care .... of all things.

On the one hand, fascism seems to be an entirely subjective morass of nonsense and bullshit. Root races, hollow Earth, utopian socialism, military cults, sun worship, and just about every middle class prejudice and neurosis one can imagine. Conversely, it seems to be a very clear aestheticization of politics (per Walter Benjamin) and that aesthetic is violence. Simply put, fascism is the politics of kicking in the head of people you don’t like the look of, and not much else. However, I would like to propose, without claiming to be staking any new ground, that fascism, as a social movement and not a political epithet, consists of the following essential elements:

* Social base in the middle class and chronically unemployed, particularly former mid-level military officers.

* Disdain for parliamentary procedure, democratic norms, and the very idea of intellectual debate.

* Reactionary idealization of “The Good Old Days.”

* The scapegoating of one or more “others.”

* Street-level violence directed at workers’ and leftist movements- i.e. Brownshirts.

Of the above, the last is what I shall concentrate most on today. However, I find that the second and final points are more intimately related than the rest, and clearer signs that something beyond the normal ultra-right is being dealt with. Before moving on to the meat of the matter, I wish to preface this exploration of nascent fascism in America by saying that the people who rule in the United States have increasingly abandoned even the pretense of regular democratic forms in an assault on democracy running from the Clinton impeachment through the 2000 and 2004 elections. It seems prudent to consider what I am about to discuss in this broader social context.

Over the last several days and weeks there has been a non-debate on health care in America. The “debate” has largely consisted of the current administration trying to contain what the media has called “pitchfork rage” against the health insurance companies. Health insurance companies are an easy and legitimate target for mass working-class rage because they literally make decisions about who gets to live and who gets to die in the only industrialized Western country to not have universal health care. On the other hand, insurance companies carry a lot of water in the United States government, some states being more in the pocket of the insurance industry than others.

In conjunction with this debate- again, largely, just a propaganda assault by the current administration to get the American working class to accept getting screwed once again- there have been, across the country, a number of “town hall meetings” designed to provide a forum to listen to America (or some other such nonsense) on the topic of health care. Recently, these meetings, widely attended by labor and left / liberal forces, have come under explicit, direct, and violent attack by right-wing mobs who, by all accounts, are being organized by right-wing and corporate elements at the highest levels of power. If there is anything which can be considered fascism, these hooligans count better than anything since Lyndon LaRouche’s Operation Mop Up.

Some media links to give you a clear picture:

Healthcare debate gets uglier (LA Times)

Tampa Town Hall On Health Care Reform Disrupted By Violence (Huffington Post)

Dem Congressman’s Office: His Life Has Been Threatened Over Health Care Bill (Talking Points Memo)

This isn’t any laughing matter, and clearly signifies a sharpening the the political and social crises in America. These people are showing their will to use physical violence to shut down a debate on health care in this country. This is right-wing thuggery at it’s lowest and worst. And how are the Democrats, the AFL-CIO, and other cheerleaders of the Obama Administration handling this? Urging you to write strongly worded letters to your Congressman.

If you like how Democrats and liberals defend the lives of women’s health care workers, you’re going to love how they protect America from fascism. If you like how the Democrats fought the open theft of an election in 2000, you’re going to love how they protect your family from fascist thugs. If you like how the Democrats exposed massive electoral fraud and intimidation in 2004, you’re going to love how the Democrats defend your rights against increasing police state and extra-legal political violence. In the first place, laws drafted to fight such right-wing threats are inevitably turned against labor, youth, and the left. Think about how diligently cops protect Klansmen compared to how they act around anti-war protesters. Cops are there to protect the rich and powerful, and when the shock troops of the ultra-rich take the streets against the working class the cops are always going to use their guns in the service of the side that butters their bread. Reliance upon the capitalist state to protect you from fascism is foolhardy, on the level of suicidal stupidity.

What is needed are mass, independent mobilizations of workers, students, and other people with the strength of will and person sufficient to meet fascist mobs with direct confrontation, including physical violence in defense of workers’ movements. In the context of the increasing attacks on democratic forms in the United States over the last decade-plus, the conspiracy theories which consider America’s first non-white President an illegitimate citizen, and people like Glenn Beck wildly spinning Coughlin-like paranoia yarns on national television, the need for armed defense brigades for the working class could not be more urgent.

A final thought: The racist “birther” movement which suggests that Barack Obama is not a legitimate citizen should also be the concern of every person seeking to defend democratic rights in America. This racist movement is intimately tied with the same ultra-right elements which are involved in the so-called “tea bag” movement, as well as the current right-wing assaults on workers demanding health care, not to mention a host of other ultra-right forces. They must be militantly opposed, with no concern for their “democratic rights” which are merely a cover by which fascists use to maneuver against workers and the poor.

Charmaine Bingwa - ajouté une toute nouvelle dimension au musique

2009-06-29T01:51:00.000-07:00

So, my bad french aside, her debut marks the auspicious "return" of the Afro-Aussie female singer(songwriter) a la Marcia, Deni et al. However, Charmaine is indeed anything but average: her crossover sound and appeal delivers itself as a mixture of groovy, funk, rock and pop with an acoustic "bent", almost in the vein of a Tracy Chapman, Dionne Farris, India Arie, Des'ree or more recently, a Res. If you like their music, with thoughtful lyrics and layers of instrumentation, you'll love this EP. Her use of funk, soul, alt-rock, lush melodies and "down home" sass, make for a necessary combination. Although I feel a little more grooming will go a long way, her voice is soulfully beautiful and her acoustic guitar skills are sublime, simple but entirely appropriate. Worth noting is that one doesn't have to strain to make out the lyrics; she actually enunciates without detracting one bit from the content(except for a niggling tendency to put a yank twang on the odd word ... hehe, sorry Cuz).
It's early days yet but with a bit of luck, Chaz will be with us for many years to come, especially in the current crop of "overemphasized electro-synth" pop, rock and hiphop for that matter, Charmaines music is never strident or grating, but always ample.
In an Aussie market, it'll be interesting to see were Ms. Bingwa's jazzy, delta-bluesy, "rock-inflected R&B/soul" (how's that for a compound phrase) places itself. I'll take a punt here and say Neo-soul fans will immediately understand this music as there is a sophisticated urban element to it, just don't expect rap solos (well I hope not, please Chaz, pretty please).
Although Charmaine and her more than competent six piece band can hardly be described as an Acid Jazz outfit, I can't help but be thrown aback to the days when N'dea Davenport headed "Brand New Heavies" when ever I hear some of the tracks off this EP...... and I loved the The Heavies, who knows Australia might have an answer to them on its own shores..... now that's a good thing ...... just a thought!. Judging by the boundless show of talent on the EP, one can only be left with high expectations for the album, which I know, will be a challenge easily met by the sheer drive that Charmaine has .... and she has bucket loads of it.
For what this is worth as a "review", its particularly difficult to put across without a certain degree of bias, but, as a blog post, Chaz and her group get a huge "MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED" stamp branded on their foreheads from me.

Congrats on an awesome effort Cuz, the world is your oyster. Make us proud.

visit www.charmaine.com.au/blog/music/ for samples off the self titled EP

Charmaine - 'Please Please'

Africa Hiteck

2009-06-29T01:15:00.000-07:00

So, dub heavy Africa Hitech is a side project of British-born beat artistes Steve Spacek and Mark Pritchard (both now based in Australia). HARMONIC 313 a.k.a. MARK PRITCHARD is the latest in the very long line of musical aliases of beat wizard Mark Pritchard. Coming to fruition this year on the album "When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence", released on the almighty Warp label, this project melds Pritchard’s love of sci-fi soundtracks and hip-hop with heavy doses of Detroit techno and 8-bit Atari samples. The result has been something completely unique: electronic, bass-heavy, new and old at once, deep and extremely danceable.

In recent years Pritchard has been producing and touring with neo-soul vocalist and outer-galactic MC Steve Spacek. Since his debut solo album “Space Shift” on K7 Records featuring collaborations with the late and forever great J Dilla, Spacek has worked with Australia’s own Katalyst, and with his brother D-Bridge of Bad Company fame on the Black Pocket project. Most recently Spacek and Pritchard have been working together on their new project Africa Hi-tech, which is set for release on Warp records. Expect a heavy, diverse set from Harmonic 313 alongside Spacek on the mic as they present their music “soundsystem style”. Mark delivers the beats, bloops and basslines, while Steve laces the sound with his unique soulful vocals and Jamaican toasting styles.

Afica Hiteck - Too Late (feat. Rio)

Playing for Change

2009-05-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

So, Playing for Change is a spectacular spin on my other pet love, the "true" global music social initiative, 1 Giant Leap. Not dissimilar to 1 Giant Leap this collaboration is courtesy of the team at PlayingforChange.com to benefit worthy causes including AIDS charities in Africa. It also similarly features a dizzying array of performers including street musicians as far flung as the Netherlands, France, Brazil, Moscow, South Africa and the Congo. Check out the clip below for a dose.

enjoy...........

One

Playing For Change: Song Around the World "Stand By Me" from Playing For Change on Vimeo.

M.L.K. is Overated!!! ....... No Seriously, I mean it.

2009-05-20T07:04:00.000-07:00

So, my apparent general distaste and lack of respect for the Reverand Martin Luther King has been brought to my attention in more than one tet-a-tet a la debate on the Civil Rights Movement over the years. How this philandering suck up to the American ruling class and possible stoolie for the CPUSA became the go to guy for a while guilt will never cease to confuse and bewilder me. There are a number of not immediately obvious Black people to name things after whose contribution to the civil rights struggle in America is arguably equal to or greater than that of Martin Luther King. I will now present you with five of them.

Malik Al-Shabazz

Today marks the 84th Birthday of Malik Al-Shabazz, the unpretentious know him as Malcolm X. Often touted as the “angry” version of MLK or some kind of “Black racist,” Malcolm was neither of the above. He was a militant fighter for Black civil rights who never flinched, never accommodated, and never kowtowed to the prevailing winds of opinion even within his own community. He was an advocate- as were many who went before him- of armed self-defense, and of community as well as political organizing. He was also the straight-shooting, brutally honest family man that Martin Luther King only pretended to be. While his time spent in the Nation of Islam is subject to legitimate question, it seems far less important than his brief time after taking the Hajj. Upon returning from Mecca Malcolm changed his name, embraced men of all races committed to justice, questioned the Nation of Islam’s tactics, structure, and theology and then got his ass shot likely by NOI and FBI men working in concert together.

Muhammed Ali

You don’t ever think of this man as Cassius Clay. His name flows off the tongue. Muhammed Ali. If you think his main achievements in life are in the ring you’re dead wrong. While Mr. Ali was able to turn the second toughest man in the world into a steaming pile of dog shit in under five minutes, he also led a life that is a study in resistance to the Man. At the height of his fame, Muhammed Ali refused induction into the U.S. Army, famously quipping “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger” risking a $10,000 fine and five years in jail. He was stripped of the world heavyweight boxing crown, as well as his license to box for refusing to be carted off to an imperialist meat grinder. His “I’m so pretty” rhetoric was a way of saying “Black is beautiful” long before it was fashionable. He currently has his fingers in about 25 different pies, perhaps most notably the Muhammed Ali Center which displays his boxing memorabilia but also highlights its core themes of peace, social responsibility, respect, and personal growth.

Medgar Evers

Medgar Evers was sort of a John the Baptist figure for much of the Civil Rights Movement and its offshoot the Black Power movement. Evers dropped out of high school to volunteer for the then-segregated U.S. Army. After returning home he attempted to register to vote but was brought to a room with over a dozen armed white men and firmly warned against pursuing such a course. Such was Medgar Evers radicalized, like many Southern Blacks of his generation, by not-so-subtle indignities following service in the second half of the Thirty Years World War. He is emblematic of the new generation of Blacks who were no longer content to just work extra hard and count on the good will of white folks. He was shot in the head by a Klansman who was also a member of the White Citizens Council AKA the Conservative Citizens Council AKA a group that Southern Republicans kiss ass to every election cycle.

W.E.B. Du Bois

Elected, by consensus, the “Father of Pan-Africanism,” Du Bois was perhaps the earliest Black thinker to connect the struggle of emancipated slaves with their colonized cousins across the sea. W.E.B. Du Bois is sort of the anti-Marcus Garvey (Du Bois on Garvey: “Garvey is, without doubt, the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America and in the world. He is either a lunatic or a traitor.”) Where Garvey urged the community to link up with the anti-colonial struggle in Africa by going there, Du Bois argued that Blacks should take what was theirs at home in America and help the struggle from the ghetto Chicago and the sharecropping communities of the Deep South. Godfather of the Encyclopedia Africana, Du Bois wanted a body of knowledge that was both Afro-centric and historically accurate. He was chased out of the United States and died in Ghana.

The point of this, again, is not so much to slag off on MLK. And this list, by itself is woefully incomplete. The idea that there is only one, or two, or five Black Americans worth naming streets after is representative of the failure of the Civil Rights Movement to really get the message across to white America. Every city has an MLK, generally situated in the worst part of town. Where is the Jackie Robinson Street, the Harriet Tubman Lane, the Sojurner Truth Avenue, the Coltrane / Ellington Highway (a great replacement for the Lee / Davis Highways that besmirch the South)? Black Americans have been at the center of American (not just Black) life since Crispus Attucks took one for the team at the Boston Massacre. It’s about time that our place names caught up.

James Brown

One could be forgiven for thinking that James Brown is “just” an entertainer. With a flashy, flamboyant on stage persona it is easy for those who know little about the man, his works, and his influence to dismiss him as a mere popular singer. But those of you who like Boston intact might want to thank James Brown for being a voice of calm in the racially tense city the day after Martin Luther King’s assassination. Soon after he released the “Say It Loud - I’m Black and I’m Proud” single which dropped like a bomb in the Black community. Cartoonist Linda Barry has said that it was the first time she had ever heard of people being proud to be Black. Outside of the recording studio and the stage Brown did fundraisers for Rainbow PUSH and the Black Panther Party’s breakfast program. The week before his death Mr. Brown was giving out Christmas presents at an Atlanta orphanage.

The point of this, again, is not so much to slag off on MLK. And this list, by itself is woefully incomplete. The idea that there is only one, or two, or five Black Americans worth naming streets after is representative of the failure of the Civil Rights Movement to really get the message across to white America. Every city has an MLK, generally situated in the worst part of town. Where is the Jackie Robinson Street, the Harriet Tubman Lane, the Sojourner Truth Avenue, the Coltrane / Ellington Highway (a great replacement for the Lee / Davis Highways that besmirch the South)? Black Americans have been at the center of American (not just Black) life since Crispus Attucks took one for the team at the Boston Massacre. It’s about time that their place names caught up .......... African Americans stay losing, sometimes I'm proud to be a "motherland" African, at least we have our own sanctified yet misguided sense of identity.

One

The 'Sibilant' Zaki Ibrahim ...... Eclectica (episodes in purple)

2009-05-17T21:41:00.000-07:00

So, this morning my Zaki Ibrahim cd arrived direct from soulbounce.com. Man, this girl is tight, her rich, ripe, chesty sound is edgy yet comforting. Though neo-soul and its various incarnations has helped to redefine the boundaries and contours of black pop, often the most popular of these recordings like India.Arie's Acoustic Soul and Musiq Soulchild's Aijuswanaseing exist comfortably alongside the trite blah, blah, blah of the Beyonces and Rihannas of the world. And even when artists break the mold, as Maxwell did with Urban Hang Suite and D'Angelo with Brown Sugar, they are expected to remain true to that formula lest they risk the critical backlash that botH faced in the aftermath of artistically compelling projects like Embrya and Voodoo, respectively.

But I digress ...... Lets talk Eclectica and Zaki Ibrahim, this young Vancouver-born, Toronto-based singer has already been nominated for a Juno for best R & B/soul recording, on the strength of her King Britt–remixed club hit “Money”. Go figure. Although Eclectica benefits from the presence of several guiding hands, including King Britt, Chin Injeti, and Khalil, its genesis is in Ibrahim’s somewhat experimental methodology. As the EP’s “Computer Girl” indicates, Ibrahim has no fear of technology, and she happily uses her digital workstation as a means of generating song and arrangement ideas. With her as-yet-unfinished full-length debut, Every Opposite, Zaki will continue to steadily cultivate a cult following. Her sound is a unique mix of hip hop hop, r & b, soulful jazz & spoken word not dissimilar to the likes of J*Davey, Res and Yukimi Nagano of the group Little Dragon.

Enjoy ..............

Zaki Ibrahim - Grow Again (snippet)

Corporate Bosses are more fun .............!!

2009-05-17T19:58:00.000-07:00

So, Corporate life. Plastic people. They sit surrounded by their shotgun sprays of clever clutter. Interoffice e-mails, cute poems and motivational bullshit. Pictures of the family. Coping mechanisms. The necessity of all of it a subliminal reminder that they are deeply miserable.

Growing slowly diabetic by the doughnut. Every tap on the key another click closer to carpal tunnel. Gazing longingly, desperately at the clock watching minutes of their life grow mouldy and rot. Masturbating in the bathroom, marking time until the dead-sprint jailbreak for the door. Evacuation to The Barco Lounger and a whole box of Low-Fat Something, waiting for re-runs of Sex and the City on regular cable. Check your E-Bay for the lame fucking knick-nack shit you buy.

Shopping online for the limp-dick vacation that’ll wipe out the Savings Account. Shopping online for bathing suits that fit less well with every Cheesey Crumpet. Score a $99 flight on Tiger Airways to spend four hours in utter misery with a screaming infant in the next row and your spouse half a plane away, reading a hobby magazine and not trying to ignore the tits on the bouncy uni girl with the hickupy laugh and ten pounds of freshman beer pong on her waist.

Corporate Bosses are more fun. With their little Yes-Men in tow. Half of them are jackasses, bloated to the man-tits with their own arrogance. The other half, bound for the highest success, have dripped dry of any fraction of personality. With their IBM smile, carefully metering every PSI in the grip of their handshake for just the right impression. Oh, he’s a real down-to-Earth guy until you start acting like a real person and let slip with a gripe about the company. He’ll give you that patient look like you’re only a child and calmly explain the whole business model down to your very position and make you realize that every mistake that passes your cubicle is actually your fault. Your fault for doing it. Your fault for being indifferent to it. Your fault for not chastizing your neighbor. Your fault for not showing up early and putting in the Extra Effort. If you want to succeed, you have to show that what you REALLY want is for the Company to succeed.

. . . And in the end they’re right. You’re there by choice. Maybe you’re at the coercion of your bills and your belly, but it’s all just hopes and dreams. You’re there to feed the monkey. Little Debbie and Lane Bryant. K*Mart. Every day you hate your job, farting smugly into your office chair, the constant press of your widening ass is making you less a person and more a miserable signpost on the road to Hell, a victim of nothing but gravity . . .

Enjoy ...... I think

Those Pesky Pirates

2009-05-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

So, those pirates are born out of nothing more than necessity. They are made up of mainly coastal tribes who are subsistence fisherman. Their main source of income is the money they make off of selling fish and seafood amongst their own tribesmen or inland. Over the past few decades, these so called pirates have seen their native marine life go from depleted to just about deleted or non-existent ........ why? ...... because a)Large Fishing-Trollers from mainland Asia, Europe and the Subcontinent have fished the regional waters dry despite numerous appeals to the UN and especially GREEN-FUCKING-PEACE ..... but who cares about a few thousand members of fishing communities along the Somalian coast right? ...... and b) The use of the passage as a trade route for massive freight-ship liners that for years cruised unnecessarily close to the coast of Somalia against all maritime laws causing untold pollution to the whole coastal area of Somalia ..... but why enforce international maritime laws for a country like Somalia that can't afford to run and maintain its own Coast Guard right?......

Anyhoo!, why "Hijack" the ships you ask? ..... it's simple ..... The Somali pirates themselves have said they have always been "peaceful"[I see the irony in that being Somalia and all but I know what they mean] and have only turned to piracy because fishing was and always has been the life-blood of all the coastal tribes of Somalia.

"Now that there is no fish ...... we are starving .....you can't watch you're family starve to death without trying to do your best to feed them ...... If you take away our food we lose the will to live, we did not chose to become pirates but the fact is ..... we have no choice, that money gets distributed throughout all the families in these towns. So really, we don't care whether we live or die as long as we can be successful with any amount of money, we know at least others will survive to eat another day. We have asked for help but the world didn't care to help us because maybe Somalia is a poor country"

So I agree ,the media reports have missed the mark on the pirates scoop and has again failed to get down to the root of the problem ...... no one in this day and age would go into to such a brazenly brutal business without good reason ....... in this case the pirates just don't give a fuck because they have been robbed of everything to give a fuck about ....... namely the food that feeds their families and their whole communities.

The 'Red Ground' Scene!!!

2009-05-12T11:39:00.001-07:00

So, continuing the "nothing like a good video discussion to kick off the week" theme, I've posted this clip below of my favorite scene from the documentary, The Color of Fear which I know was widely viewed globally but some on this site may have missed the boat on it. This is just to tie up my first Video discussion post a couple of hours ago which can be found HERE What are your views on this, do YOU feel that they have and continue to mystify the whole process so that it seems like there not systematically brainwashing (or that's too strong a word, gently massaging and skewing our perception of history) us. Enjoy the clip

UPDATE ....... THEY HAVE DISABLED EMBEDDING OF THIS VIDEO BUT YOU CAN STILL VIEW IT ON YOUTUBE BY CLICKING HERE OR CUTTING AND PASTING THIS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vAbpJW_xEc

Is the Obama Administration worried about its global image as an overwhelmingly Jewish backed Government

2009-05-12T11:32:00.001-07:00

So, its no secret, I think, that Obama's economic team is overwhelmingly Jewish in background. To me (and I do stress ... to me, so make due note of personal opinion) this is a major problem. Can anybody say .... CONFLICT OF INTEREST........

How will Obama maintain a role as a powerful, influential and respectable peace broker in the worlds single most volatile region ..... The Middle East????.
We all know that the Jewish community as a collective are still fighting a personal global war to keep their annexed country, Israel, intact by any means necessary.
Is Obama setting himself up for failure in the Middle East even before he takes office by surrounding himself with a powerful core of advisers and economists that overwhelmingly possess Jewish backgrounds ..... devout or not????.........
I ask these questions because I've been following each of Obama's recruitments quite closely and I've managed to read up on quite a few of his possible considerations way before they are made public and I shall continue to do so as a matter of interest. What I've found disturbingly interesting is the fact that on November 21, 2008, Wikipedia had an unambiguous line that Timothy Geithner, secretary of treasury to be, is Jewish, but today it has been removed... how convenient!!!! The same goes for Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker who is said to be a Jew according to reporter Roni Sofer of the reliable Israeli source YNet. Volcker will serve on the Obama economic team.

So, I'm not the only one concerned about The Obama Administrations global image ...... "apparently" the Obama Administration itself is concerned too ... and "apparently", it's doing its best to blur the strong Jewish backing with smoke and mirrors. Lets face it, it's not a good look when you are trying to fight terrorists whose main bone of contention is Americas unweilding support of Israel and how it was created in 1948.

In the last century there has always been a strong Jewish influence in American Arts and Economics. However, since the 1930's that strong influence crossed over to American Politics, particularly after WWII when the Jewish community vowed that the only way to prevent another holocaust and protect the newly established Homeland of Israel was to have global influence through political power.
The problem is ...... will the U.S. and now Obama, suffer for what is now being called a "pseudo Jewish" administration. Warning shots have already been fired by the al quaeda 2nd in charge through the release of his latest "mixtape" and lets not forget that we are in the wake of last weeks Mumbai bombings in India where the culprits were from a YOUNG, NEW ISLAMIC terrorist group(next generation) who particularly targeted British and Americans.

I'm not Jew bashing here ..... I'm just stating what I think is being played out before my own eyes ...... most importantly ..... WHAT DO YOU THINK??????

The Smokey Room ..........

2009-05-12T11:29:00.000-07:00

Some classic Bill Hicks

Bare in mind that Bill died back in 1994.

Discuss ...............

Francofile Style

2009-05-12T11:16:00.000-07:00

So, I love my french speaking hip hop artists. Hip hop from the francophone countries especially those in Africa is mostly exceptional. So my intention here is to introduce whoever is unfortunate enough to waste their time reading my blogs to french hip hop. My first installment is an artist by the name of Rhoff. Rhoff is somewhat successful in France as a hip hop artist but his biggest appeal is his willingness to do colabos with other international artists. these two clips feature Roldan from Cuba and Natty, a young rapper from France.

................... enjoy ....................

Zone Internationale - Rohff ft Roldan

Le Son Qui Tu - Rohff ft Natty

Dare To Be a Digital Darkie

2009-05-11T19:14:00.000-07:00

So, having been once upon a time been an avid gamer, I thought I'd post this little number by CELESTINE ARNOLD at the New York PSFK conference. I'd give my perspective on it but hey, Celestine gives a full on presentation that pretty much says what I wanted to and more. Although attitudes in gaming are changing now and have certainly improved since the time when I was immersed in the culture, I'd say there IS still a long way to go.

Enjoy ...........

The IKEA Relationship

2009-05-11T02:12:00.000-07:00

So, with the new huge Ikea opening in Sydney pretty soon I thought I'd slip in this little gem that pits a direct comparison between some(move in) relations and those first furniture purchases that almost consecrate the new living arrangements. If your anything like me, I'm almost certain some of you out there might have come across or been in such relationships yourselves ........ Oh, anyone who buys from Ikea is a "wannabe" ...... don't worry, I used to shop there once upon a time too ..... *KERPOW.
Anyway, I'm pushing 30 now, been married for a few years and(screw the t-shirt) I've got 2 lovely kids for my troubles, BUT, I can watch the clip below and still have a chuckle about once upon a time ..... still got the BOLIDEN Armchairs though!, somehow they've withstood the test of time.lol.

Enjoy ............

*KERPOW = self inflicted uppercut

F#%@ TWITTER

2009-05-11T01:26:00.000-07:00

So yeah, I'm serious, FUCK TWITTER. There you go, I said it, my sentiments on this ridiculous bubblegum application are quite clear .......... and just for the record ........... fuck twitter and all the pathetic TWITS using it ........... that goes for all you annoyingly frequent facebook status updaters too

Enjoy ................

The Boy Got More Skills than a Video Game

2009-05-11T01:25:00.000-07:00

So, Danny MacAskill rides for The Bicycles Team. Now this man has just got to be the tightest "thing" on two feet to ride a trail bike ever. I doesn't hurt that the soundtrack(The Funeral by Band of Horses) for this clip(taken over a few of months of filming in Edinburgh) kicks some serious ass too.

Enjoy ................

Even MLK is not immune to the hipsters Autotune

2009-04-27T18:35:00.000-07:00

I must admit, I kinda feel it ..... totally ...... I'll give myself an uppercut for that.
Damn Hipsters .......

Enjoy ..... if your not offended

Durban II ....... My Rage at Obama's Sick Note ...The US won't Attend(UPDATE).....Muammar Gaddafi : Lunatic or Genius(UPDATE)

2009-01-23T21:02:00.000-08:00

So, another sad moment for the U.S. to have been a part of.

Obviously, the Zionist lobbyists at the power core of the Obama Administration are hard at work to continue to protect the prized acquisition that is Israel. How can the creation of Israel not be called racist or likened to racism, xenophobia and intolerance. This is just another attempt to wipe out the truth about how the state of Israel was established from the history books.
Because the Zionist lobby fears they will lose too much of the already illegally established Israel, they continue to influence the U.S. to undermine the U.N.'s attempts to come to a fair, pragmatic solution in Gaza (you can call the U.N. a useless toothless tiger as much as you want but at least now you know why).
The poor American people not of jewish decent were unceremoniously drawn into the center of this selfish Zionist opportunist ideal when the twin towers fell. I think people forget that 9-11 happened because of Americas support for Israels failure to compromise over land that was taken away from the Palestinians. That attack had nothing to do with American way life and most of all it had nothing to do with religion which is what the media led people to believe in order to simplify the need for conflict and rally support for an attack on Iraq ...... where strangely enough the U.N. was again ignored when they told the world and especially the U.S. that were no WMD's, which, lo and behold weren't found. The rest of the world believed the proof and evidence that there was nothing but strangely ..... Bush didn't ...... mmmmm.

This doesn't surprise me at all ...... the only thing that bothers me is that now there will be very little "opposition to" or "support against" Americas boycott of this worthwhile summit simply because ..... wait for it ..... Obama is black ..... "Our President is the first BLACK president in U.S. history so how can America be either racist or supporting racists" ........

The Stone/Free Masons got nothing on the Zionists ... oops, I forgot, they're practically the same entity

My worry is that Obama may have signed a contract with the ..... well you work it out, I may be wrong here

......enjoy......

UPDATE 1, MARCH 3, 2009 :-

Unbelievable, this is infuriating ...... the Obama administration gets the UN to change the wording/language in the paper so that it's more favourable with regards to Israel and they still don't want to attend the conference.

Why won't they attend? ..... well here's their excuse ..........."Under a worse-case scenario, the United States wouldn't attend the conference, only to be caught in the diplomatically embarrassing position of watching other nations level criticism at Israel or America. This too, was at the forefront of the administration's mind."

WHAT A JOKE ...... a pathetic excuse!!!!!

I'm guessing the real reason is this:
"We recognize the right of refugees to return voluntarily to their homes and properties in dignity and safety, and urge all States to facilitate such return;"
There's no way Israel is going to allow 4.3 million Palestinian refugees to come home, not a single one of them.

Man, doesn't Obama remember what racism is? Or was he born too late for that? Seems to be, this administration, like its predecessor, is more concerned with placating 2% of America's population because of their unconditional attachment to "defending Israel at all costs".

If the conference alluded to APARTHEID South Africa, I'm sure Mssr. Obama would be the first to attend, but since Israeli policies are mentioned (but not the state); even that was too much for a man criticized by that very group and their neocon supporters for a symbolic gesture of respectful bowing to the Saudi king.
In American media and politics, Symbolism = News; ..... Concrete Action & Conference = no story. I'm very disappointed with this Administration's decision NOT to send anyone ....... no not disappointed ...... I'm pissed off about this.
Get used to it: Israel is running the US ....... and now they are openly showing their true colours.

And to my good jewish friend and work colleague who had this to say while we were thrashing out the politics behind this very subject over the water dispenser:-

"1 more thing, if the people(Palestinians) who "settled" the land after Rome cast out the Jews, want their own land, then at least change the name of the land to something other than a title given to them by an bunch of evil Pedophile, gay rapists known as The Roman Empire"

- The Palestinians didn't just suddenly start to exist or come into being after or because the Romans started persecuting the Hebrews. The Jews(Hebrews) coexisted peacefully with the Palestinian Arab farmers for centuries, way before Christianity and Islam. In fact, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the "real" jews are actually arabs.
This whole situation became a mess when exiled Zionists took advantage of The Balfour Declaration. The declaration was made in a letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Baron Rothschild(Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild), a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland organization. The letter reflected the position of the British Cabinet , as agreed upon in a meeting on 31 October 1917.
Ironically, highlighted in the formal statement is the following:

"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
- a stark contrast to how the so called transition has taken and is still taking place today. Interestingly enough, it is further stated in the declaration that this is a sign of "sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations."

This declaration was doomed to failure in itself because in the words of JEWISH writer, Arthur Koestler :

"it was an impossible idea, one nation offering another, the land of the third"

.......enjoy......

UPDATE 2, SEPTEMBER 25, 2009:-
So, there was a major boycott with the Obama administration refusing to attend, claiming the conference would unfairly target Israel. Critics say the controversy over Israel could have been an excuse to avoid dealing with the conference’s key issues, including addressing the legacy of slavery.

Now Muammar Gaddafi is a bit of a hot potato depending on which way you choose accept him ..... to some he is a visionary and genius and to others he is nothing but a stark raving fruitcake lunatic. I heard just now on Democracy Now! that he was trying to get $7.77 trillion in reparations for Africa. So, seeing as I'm taking a hiatus from talking about Africa for now, here is Naomi Klein's cover story in Harper's which breaks down how Israel has stood in the way of Africa getting reparations for the slave trade. I posted the abridged version that appeared in the Guardian the other day ......... what do you think about what Klein has to say??? .... I think it all has an interesting relevance considering the topic behind this post.

.......enjoy.......

UPDATE 3, OCTOBER 22, 2011

On Thursday October 20, 2011 Muammar Gadaffi was executed.

I've always known they were going to attack Gadaffi and Libya and why, especially when he kicked out Western oil companies after goldman sachs misappropriated the $1.6million he wined and dined to bailed them out with and simply refused to pay him back. When he started to bring in the chinese to take over the oil contracts, thats what really pissed the west off because they were expecting Gaddafi to give them a second chance and bring them back into Libya. And he was willing to bring western oil companies back in and even forget about the 1.6bil lost by goldmann sachs BUT only on the condition that the west pay for Libyas oil in gold which Western countries if you didn't already know, don't have much off. This was the final straw, the western countries said fuck it, we'll take your oil, your gold, destroy your country and kill you for trying to be so smart.

The biggest issue with Gaddafi and Libya is that, if he had continued to do beneficial business with the chinese, issue the gold dinar as a the national currency and been able to prosperously run his interest free economy without being a member of the IMF, Libya's economic and governmental system would've become a shinning example to the rest of the world - a threat to democracy and the international "usury" banking system. THATS A BIG NO NO.

This invasion also happened so quickly because Gaddafi had plans to empower the african union by starting an interest free AMF(african monetary fund) - which he had already sured up $6billion ready to kick off in november of this year 2011, so the west were pressed for time. Lets not forget as well, that Gaddafi also fully funded the launch of Africas first and only telecoms satellite which made European Telecoms companies very angry because African calls didn't have to go through their satellites meaning lower prices african international calls and a substantial over night drop for European Telcoms.

If thats not enough for you, in the last few years Nestle, Perrier and Coca Cola have been going around the world buying up water supplies. They had been eyeing Libyas great manmade water project for the last few years. Gaddafi flat out refused to even come to the table for a deal saying that water was only to be supplied FREE for his people. As you'd imagine, they weren't too happy with that - Now it's theirs for the taking. Ironic, seeing as the west laughed at Gaddafi when he first started the project calling it an impossibility and calling him insane for even trying. That project would have been completed by end of this year.

Yes, he was a dictator, he commited atrocities BUT with his dictatorship, he brought evident stability and prosperity - as his atrocities, I task ANYONE to name a single big, influential state today WITHOUT a history of atrocities that marrs it's past AND I guarantee that Gaddafi's atrocities will PALE in comparison to those committed by most, if not ALL, other dictators or western states.

Think about it!.

………… PEACE …………

HIP HOP, AID, A.I.D.S. and Africa ..................................

2008-12-03T14:47:00.000-08:00

So, seeing as the 1st of December saw the beginning of International Aids week and the African continent has obviously been grimly affected the worst by this fatal disease ............. I was just wondering how much the Home of Hip hop(the U.S. of A of course) has done in contribution to basic awareness or even minor aid for African countries.
There is obviously no obligation to any artist or group to do so and I know for a fact that a very small number have actually taken the initiative to do so ..... but ..... given the enormity and to an extent, prosperity of the hip hop community, is it too much to assume that a lot more could be done???.

In Australia for example, where I'm currently working, every year the comparatively tiny hip hop community try and raise funds for various NGO initiatives in Africa. They do this by choosing one hip hop artist or group to hold short tours in any number of African countries to raise as much funds as possible and shoot one music video in the process.
I was lucky enough to be involved in last years campaign(with the hip hop duo BLISS & ESSO) which I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed and found extremely eye opening and heart warming. We also managed to shoot a video that I personally was very proud of (which I've embedded below .... hope you enjoy it).

Which brings me back to the question ....... given the modest example of my own experience ....... do you folks think the HIP HOP Community could or should do more for Africa?.

....... your thoughts please.

BLISS & ESSO - Bullet and a Target ..... enjoy

**** BONUS ****

SNOB SCRILLA(Aboriginal Artist) - Chasing Ghosts

The Chickens Come Home to Roost

2008-11-18T06:37:00.000-08:00

One of the best speeches I've ever heard. A lot of Americans are ignorant or totally oblivious to exactly what the rest of the world knows about the United States and its deplorably manipulative foreign policy.
How did such overwhelming respect and influence come about in the first place you might ask? Well, the U.S. provided the much needed hardware, weaponry and manpower for the Allies to finally gain victory over the Axis powers. In providing that "final push" that won the war and brought peace to Europe and the rest of the world, America solidified itself as a "the" major world power giving them the license to broker deals for influence and mineral resources the world over. This obviously resulted in the rapid industrial boom especially during the fifties that allowed the States to become an almost unrivaled world power.
Anyway, since the end of WWII, U.S. foreign policy has typically been marred by greed, bullying and instigated violence by the M.I.C. solely for global economic and political gain resulting in the destruction and plight of many a people and many a nation.

The saddest thing about Jeremiah Wrights little speech is that unfortunately, a lot of what he has says is:-
a) factually true (you can read about Americas involvement on each and everyone of the examples he gives) and,
b) there is a lot more global cases that can be added to the list.

I know it's a bitter pill to swallow and maybe this Obama scenario is a new chapter. Not because of Obama himself, but because this may be an opportunity for the whole world to give the U.S. that initial respect and even a second chance ..... lets face it, America is still a terrorist and economic target. With this new chapter opened, time has been bought. And the purchase of time is essential as potential enemies take time out of their vengeful schedules to sit back and observe how things unfold in the torrid world of foreign politics. I'll end by saying that anyone would have found it rhetorically difficult to explain U.S. foreign policy better than J. Wright did ... in the time he did it in, the mans a toast master genius, lol ........ enjoy ..........

One

The Southern Strategy

2008-11-18T06:33:00.000-08:00

It should be obvious that Obama's campaign was run and his election succeeded purely on white terms. Maybe the terms of the center-left white populace, but nonetheless on white terms. Obama ran as a black man, not as a Black Man. Else he would not have been elected.

Obama's feat is not to be understated. However, it is only on the day when a Black Man who does not "allow that black anger about past and present wrongs [is] counterproductive", only on that day we can look to the white paradigm to have changed. Only on that day white people will have begun to leave the white paradigm behind, cease being white and begin the journey to universal humanity.

Until then, but not today.

The implications for the white paradigm are quite clear. The essence of the same is alive and well.

If nothing else, Obama's campaign is proof.

What Is Race?

2008-11-18T05:46:00.000-08:00

What is race? Anyone that knows me well will tell you that I have a tendency to struggle with the concept of race. Especially coming from a family where all my siblings are 100% blood but represent a spectrum of varying skin tones e.g. I, like my father am dark, my brother like my mother is light and my sister is almost exactly somewhere in between. This variation in skin tone has inevitably gone on to manifested itself in my two beautiful children with my son being dark and my daughter reflecting my wife's lighter complexion. Interesting to say the least. I must add in passing that the way the world perceives and judges individuals on the basis of their skin tone leaves a lot to be desired. However, thats a subject for another post. For now, I'll let you lament solely on the subject of race and its validity as a meaningful concept....... enjoy.........

One

Yvonne Chaka chaka - princess of africa

2008-10-14T17:38:00.000-07:00

So, I'm into now and really feelin' this early 80's African Disco Queen theme. After my las blog on Brenda Fassie, I'm going to prevent a potential crisis by making this post about Yvonne Chaka Chaka, because a lot people would by up in arms with the fact that didn't mention Brenda and Yvonne in the sentence. Yvonne emerged around the same time as Brenda. Actually Yvonne became the first Black child to appear on South African television. In 1981 "Sugar Shack", a talent show, introduced her to the South African public. Since then she has delivered numerous musical gems. Like Brenda, her infectious early 80's disco anthems echoed through the airwaves making a lot of africans dance in shebeens(makeshift township bar), pubs and clubs all over Southern Africa. However, most unlike Brenda, Yvonne portrayed the typical "African Queen" with a lot more poise, elegance and self-respect. She was more the type you could bring home to mama as opposed to the wild, unabashed image that Brenda had. Yvonne continues churn out good music but for me ..... these are some of her memorable hits. The first one is titled "I'm burning up" a hilarious look at early 80's African videography. The second, called "Umqombothi" is her tribute to the African brewed beer(Umqombothi) and ejoying it after a long hard week of work. The last song, "Mama Land" is responsible for giving the Yvonne Chaka chaka the nickname "mama Afrika".

............. enjoy ............

Brenda Fassie, our African Rockstar

2008-10-14T16:36:00.000-07:00

So, Brenda Fassie ...... ah yes Brenda. Our African popstar who lived and died like a rockstar, widely considered a voice for disenfranchised blacks during apartheid. Brenda had this uncanny ability to turn raw emotion in to powerful exuberant audibility. She was Africa's own Madonna, transcending musical genres and eras effortlessly from late 70's and early 80's disco to African House music in the 90's and beyond making music about good times as well as politics and social ills. She lived a torrid and tumultuous life which was often reflected in her music. She finally succumbed to the "Rockstar lifestyle" and died at age 39 on 9 May 2004 in hospital without returning to consciousness after a cocaine overdose. To me she'll be fondly remembered in the following clips. The first is "Weekend Special", which a very early 80's disco hit rippling across the airwaves of the southern African region. The second song was a sort of social call to bring attention to the plight of African woman in africa and aptly called "Too Late for Mama", her a true testament to raw emotion and how it came across in the music. R.i.p. Brenda, THE QUEEN OF TOWNSHIP MUSIC

............ enjoy .........

as a bonus here is one of here the last songs she did and will remembered for especially well because of its electric vibe and beautiful message.

Cashless Society

2008-05-13T02:24:00.000-07:00

So, Heres a group thats composed of a mixture of South African, Botswana and Zimbabwean emcees. Their modus operandi is of course consciousness as is the case with the lyrical content of most African hip hop. The nice thing about their music is that they rap mostly in English so their appeal is mostly universal.
On show are two songs, the first is titled "Hottentot hop, Bantu 1,2" which is simply a play on names of two of southern Africa's tribes, the "Hottentots (traditionally know as the Khoisan)" and the "Bantu" tribes from the western Cape. This is just a fun, well put together tune with a good video and bit of the history of the two tribes thrown in.
The second song is titled "Taxi Wars" which is a lighthearted description of the cut-throat and violent competitiveness of the Taxi industry in Africa especially South Africa.

So, without further ado, here's Cashless Society ......... enjoy ..........

One

Cashless Society - Hottentot hop, Bantu 1,2

Cashless Society - Taxi Wars

Kataklizm to Metaphysics

2008-05-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

So, since my last post was on the budding talent in Zimbabwe, I thought as a natural progression it'd be only right to once again showcase veteran Zimbabwean talent, or should I say pioneers. What ever you chose to call them, their contribution to Zimbabwean hip hop is honorable to put it modestly. Special mention goes to the evolutionary group Metaphysics whose growth only added more potency to their art form. Beginning as the 5 strong group Peace of Ebony (late 80's) evolving into the duo Kataklizm (early 90's), Metaphysics is still going stronger than ever without selling out on their original Conscious Movement vibe which they embraced 15 maybe 20 years ago, geez seems like a life time ago now. Here's a nice, simple clip shot on 8mm film that they did in Jamaica, for those that know him look out for Laygwan Sharkie ...... enjoy ....

One

The Era of Innocence in Hip hop

2008-05-06T16:02:00.000-07:00

So, I feel like harping on about the early nineties era in hip hop, again, just because I can, dammit. Wow, hip hop just had so much more soul back then. I remember being at the back of the bio class trading real mix tapes of anything from the Fu-schnickens, Camp-lo and Wu-Tang to Chub-rock, Heavy D and the Boys and Das-FX (too many more to mention) with Cyrus and Itai.

Anyway,what brought this on you might ask?, well, Uptown Saturday Night by Camp Lo (as well as a few other old R&B cuts) were on cd rotation during my usual pre-game(Rugby) ritual over the weekend (which is good ol'skool music and good Tasmanian beer), when my daughter accidentally flicked over to the local hip hop radio station. Man was I annoyed, almost shocked, at the quality and content in todays hip hop compared to the late to mid nineties era, it's like chalk and cheese to honest.

So, here is something for you oldies to reminisce over ..... enjoy ....I will

Camp Lo, Coolie High

My mother actually used to love this song by Brotherhood Creed. I remember she used walk in the room while we were watching MTV videos and sing a long to it.

Brotherhood Creed, Helluva

And this one by Shinehead just made you want sing along word for word every time you heard it.

Shinehead - Try My Love