Chillin' with a heavy head cold ain't no fun but with some spiritual righteous vibes from Del Jones 'Positive Vibes' 1973 LP, re-issued in Japan, that's similar in vain to the legendary Gil Scott-Heron, helps ease the suffering! This is one of those top-notch albums that really needs your attention..seek it out..Njoy!
So the financial crisis afflicting Greece and the rest of Europe is spiraling out of control as our so-called leaders agree to a nearly $1 trillion, yeah you read that right, ONE FREAKING TRILLION DOLLARS rescue package of taxpayers money aimed at helping out the weak Euro economies..and as we keep printing money out of thin air the only result will be hyper-inflation on the same scale as Germany in the 3T's...It's gonna get rough out there people.
So what if we all just stopped funding our Governments who in turn are bending over backwards for the criminal banksters to shaft us some more?.....Just a thought!
Wow! The Man Gil Scott-Heron is Back. Monday night saw BBC Newsnight journalist Stephen Smith interview the legendary poet/musician and godfather of rap...see here, about his forthcoming brand new material to be released on XL recordings in early (10th Jan) 2010. To say i"m more than a little excited by the news, like a child waiting for Christmas is no exaggeration..Check here for a video of his new track "where did the night go"and a free download of the song....Big props to Richard Russell @ XL for pulling this off!....Can't wait.
As we`ve reached the 8th anniversary of the 21st century’s most defining event so far, something to ponder from a couple of years ago but still relevent today.
The Elephant in the Room is a documentary following British filmmaker Dean Puckett through his journey into the 9/11 Truth Movement: a global movement of ‘alternative thinkers’ who believe that the official explanation about what happened on 9/11 is totally or partially inaccurate.
(The majority of the 9/11 Commission members have now publicly gone on record to express their conviction that the Bush government agreed to lie about the official story.)
The filmmakers travel from middle England, across Europe and to New York for the six year anniversary of the attacks, where the film takes one final twist as we are introduced to the 9/11 first responders who are suffering from various grave health difficulties due to the toxic dust that they breathed in trying to help their country during the weeks after this tragic event.
Told with a personal hands on approach that avoids advancing any one position, the film asks the question: are these crazy conspiracy thinkers? Or is 9/11 Truth a credible political movement?
A very interesting and thought provoking presentation by a simple and humble London carpenter...It relates to the UK, but it is also relevent to most countries around the globe....Not going to spoil any more, but this simply is,
ZERO : Europe for an Independent Inquiry into 9/11 On Tuesday 26th February, Euro-parlementarian Member Guilietto Chiesa invited his colleagues and the press to attend the screening and debate of the Italian-produced documentary named 'ZERO, an investigation into the events of 9/11'. Object of the film screening was to create political awareness of the faulty official investigation into the events by the 9/11 Commission. Which they feel is an instrument to create awareness and a means to provoke a political debate in Europe.
You Decide!!
ZERO: An Investigation into 9/11, has one central thesis - that the official version of the events surrounding the attacks on 9/11 can not be true. This brand new feature documentary from Italian production company Telemaco explores the latest scientific evidence and reveals dramatic new witness testimony, which directly conflicts with the US Government's account.Featuring presentations from ; Gore Vidal, and Noble Prize winner Dario Fo, the film challenges assumptions surrounding the attacks. In the words of the Italian daily newspaper, Il Corriere de da Sera, "What results is a sequence of contradictions, gaps, and omissions of stunning gravity." The importance of this film can not be overstated. If its thesis is correct, the justification for going to war in Iraq is built on a series of outrageous lies.
This Docu-film Zeitgeist: Addendum, attempts to locate the root causes of the pervasive social corruption inflicting the planet , while offering a solution. This solution is not based on politics, morality, laws, or any other "establishment" notions of human affairs,but rather on a modern, non-superstitious based understanding of what we are and how we align with nature, to which we are a part. The work advocates a new social system which is updated to present day knowledge, highly influenced by the life long work of Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project.
A housing bubble, a mortgage bubble, an equity bubble, a bond bubble, a credit bubble, a commodity bubble, a private equity bubble and a hedge funds bubble are all now bursting simultaneously. Do you really think this economic disaster was unplanned? What might the objectives be? And who, as always, is pulling the strings? Qui bono? To whose benefit is this happening?
"In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way." Franklin D. Roosevelt
A musical hero of mine while growing up in 70`s London. His music resonated so much with me, right at the time i myself was becoming politicised. His brand of African American militant poetry sat prefectly with the UK in the throes of racial unrest. Best known for his poem and song "The Revolution will not be Televised"; and for writing "Home is Where The Hatred Is" an eerie account of drug use that was a hit for R&B singer Esther Phillips in 1972 and would later on in his life cause himself so many problems.
I had the great pleasure to meet the brilliantly gifted man at the Jazz Cafe in Camden Town in the mid 9o`s, where he performed without his long time partner Brian Jackson. I had gone there on my own and ascended to the top bar overlooking the stage from the right side. The show was outstanding as was to be expected, after he came up to the bar which is close to the artists dressing rooms and had a drink with the punters assembled....A great memory. The very first album i bought was "Bridges" in 1977 from Groove records and it is still my favorite LP.
In 1979, Scott-Heron played at the No Nukes concerts at New York`s Madison Sq Garden. The concerts were organized by Musicians United For Safe Energy to protest the use of Nuclear Energy following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. (It was the most significant accident in the history of the American commercial nuclear power generating industry). Scott-Heron's song "We Almost Lost Detroit", written about a previous accident at a nuclear facility, was included on the No Nukes album.
Scott-Heron is known in many circles as "the godfather of rap" and is widely considered to be one of the genre's founding fathers. Given the political consciousness that lies at the foundation of his work. Gil played with some outstanding musicians in his time, Eddie Knowles and Charlie Saunders on conga and David Barnes on percussion on the 1970 LP "Small Talk at 125th & Lenox"
On the 1971 LP "Pieces of a Man" He was joined by Johnny Pate (conductor), Brian Jackson (piano and electric piano), Ron Carter (bass and electric bass), The great drummer, Bernand "Pretty" Pudie, Burt Jones (electric guitar), and Hubert Laws (flute and saxophone). Scott-Heron's third album "Free Will", was released in 1972 with Jackson, Purdie, Laws, Knowles, and Saunders all returning to play and were joined byJerry Jemmott (bass) and David Spinozza (guitar),Horace Ott (arranger and conductor). In 1974 saw another LP collaboration with Brian Jackson, the critically acclaimed "Winter in America", with Bob Adams (drums) and Danny Bowens (bass).
Scott-Heron and Jackson also released together "The First Minute of a New Day" in `75, "Its your World" in `76, "Bridges" in `77, "Secrets" in 1978, "1980" in the same year as well as "Real Eyes", "Reflections" in `81 and "Moving Target" in `82.
For the love of money people will do just about anything for that Almighty Dollar... Money can buy you lots of things, but two things money can't buy you and that is your happiness and it can't give you peace of mind.
People think that a banking or stock market collapse must be bad for everybody, but it`s not. If you know a stock collapse is coming (because you are going to cause it!!) then you sell at the highest price, crash the market, and buy back at a few pence on the pound. In this way, those who cause the crash can end up with vastly more stock, and thus financial power, than they had before the ‘crisis’ and they pay comparatively little to secure it. The certain influential bankers have famously, or infamously, used this technique endless times and they are doing so again today.
The thing to remember about banks, as with the business and financial world in general, is that there may be many names above the doors, but there are far fewer ultimate owners and manipulators. If you go high enough, at least most of them are called the same family names. So when public and media commentators talk about a terrible time for the banking industry they miss the point. Of course, it is bad for those who lose their savings, can`t buy a home,or lose their jobs. But that, to those without access to empathy like the Banking dynasty, couldn`t give a toss about you.
The Banking families, and their associated network of cronies, own the system – The Game - and however that system may re-adjust and re-structure itself from time to time The Game is still owned by them.
For example, Merrill Lynch may have failed, but it has been absorbed by the Bank of America, a bank owned by one banking family, if you follow the trail of hidden ownership, and so The Game just goes on under different, and fewer Banking family names. Lehman Brothers may have collapsed, but the vultures, like Barclays in Britain, are circling the corpse to seize the most profitable assets and the Game goes on. If you "Own The Game", you always win because you make the rules under which it is played.
Its a very long time to accurately remember the exact details of the day's activities, but it was on Saturday 13th August 1977.
We`d seen a Socialist Workers Party poster up at Camden Lock the week before advertising an Anti-National Front demo in Lewisham, with the slogan "They Shall Not Pass" reminiscent of the Anti-Fascists that stopped Sir Oswald Mosley`s British Union of Fascists walking the streets through the East End of London (Cable Street) in 1936...We thought, lets check this out!!
Previously the NF had gained 120,000 votes at local elections across London and running battles at NF rallies around the country would culminate in one of the most bellicose riots the capital has ever seen. This flexing of fascist muscle threw down a gauntlet to a number of groups that rarely encountered each other, a politicised student movement grew on the events in Chile and Vietnam, militant trade unionism, (at the same time supporting a miners' strike) and increasingly self-aware asian and black youth, facing down the police and propelled by the militant tunes of Reggae and the events taking shape in South Africa.
In the morning we jumped the tube from Gt. Portland Street to London Bridge and then on to New Cross...It was evident from the atmosphere on the trains that this day was not going to pass off peacefully. We really hadn`t much of a clue about who was who, as the train chugged into New Cross Station.
On the platform, scuffles broke out between people who looked like my ex-teachers at school and what looked like ex-military types to me...Once out on the streets of Lewisham the air was thick with emotion. We set off making our way down to the Clock Tower on Lewisham High Street. When we reached, the crowd was thousands strong, Trade unionists, students, local black and asian youth, a myriad of anti-racists determined to physically confront the Nazis and stop their provocative march through a predominantly Afro-Caribbean area of South-East London..
The NF march seemed to take for ever to reach, so the 3 of us decided to walk back up and take a closer look, about half way, we could see the union jack flags the fascists had adopted as their own fluttering in the breeze with Plod amassed around them 3 deep. It was then a red flare came shooting out from the sidewalk whizzing into the flags and those holding them..it seemed to be the catalyst, bottles and bricks rained down from the heavens...Stickmen in their snakeskin loafers, turbaned teenagers and scruffy students all getting in on the act...Mickey was the first, " have some of that"...more in frustration at Plod for his own experiences, it was payback time......It must have been a good 15 minutes of us enjoying ourselves lobbing any debris we could find lying around into the Nazi scum.....Soon after Plod got themselves tooled up with riot shields and batons - the first time such equipment was used on the mainland. The waves of police baton charges were cracking head indiscriminately.
It was a good idea of Timmy`s, " lets get back to the clock tower"...and off we went, to find the place more rammed than before... Well as history acknowledges, the Nazi`s march never reached the High Street.....The severity of the counter demo had the desired effect and Plod had had enuff , they stopped the fascists in their tracks and marched them back to New Cross station to be loaded on trains out of there.
The day had been a victory for black and white, standing together to paralyse the National Front who never really recovered after this event. In November of that year the Anti-Nazi League was formed and forged what was to become a crucial link with Rock Against Racism (RAR), a group of musicians, photographers and artists allied with the punk scene. Who organised bands with reggae artists in unprecedented mixed events....The RAR gigs culminated in two huge anti-Nazi carnivals and marches, one at Victoria Park, East London, in April `78 and another in Brockwell Park, Sarf London, in September that same year. The carnivals each attracted over 80,000 people to demonstrate their opposition to the NF and hear acts such as The Clash, Tom Robinson, Steel Pulse and X-Ray Spex.
They catapulted the ANL into national consciousness.
Forty five years ago today in 1963, Martin Luther King delivered his famous speech "I Have A Dream" At the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Assassinated on 4 April 1968 in the southern US city of Memphis, Tennessee, aged 39.
I know the music is about spreading and sharing the love, but back in '76-'77 there wasn`t a whole lot of loving going on!!
My own naivety with the social issues of the day was soon to be smashed and in a positive way... I`d always been brought up in an atmosphere of racial and religious tolerance. My father was a left-wing union negotiator in the printing industry and was involved in all the early CDN marches and Anti-Apartheid Movement, with my sister sitting on his shoulders on demo`s in Trafalgar Sq. Of course the events of `76 at the Notting Hill carnival, were still fresh in peoples memories. The anger young black men had been suppressing for years over the notorious "Sus laws" under which anybody could be stopped, searched and held, even if only suspected of planning a crime.....Exploded...(does it have any resonance for today?)
It was a milestone in race relations in Britain. For me, my own experience with the Queens Metropolitan constabulary was to follow...One evening strolling back with the boys to Fitzrovia, after an evening of playing tunes from my bedroom widow to the local urchins below, i used to get quite a crowd out front to the consternation of the neighbours!
Passing the White House Hotel on Osnaburgh Street, two huge PC Plods approached...."Oi, what the fuck you up to N**gers"....screamed one, I could hear Mickey D whisper "Oh fuck, here we go"..."Nothing Constable, just walking home" I Chirped..."Who the fucking hell was speaking to you, you little shit" came the reply from Plod..It was the first time i had had any meaningful interaction with Her Majesty's law enforcement, outside our local beat bobby who knew everyone's first names on the estate and was more like a tough patriarch in a uniform, than a real policeman..
Now i knew something was not right..They grabbed both Timmy and Mickey and threw them up against the side wall of the hotel and preceded to frisk `em...continually barking obscenities at them, me standing there in total shock..after a few minutes that seemed like eternity, i got up the courage to speak.."Whats going on, why arn`t you frisking me"..."cause you are not Black".....said plod, and immediately continued, "But if you fancy it, i can duly oblige, now fuck off and go home"....."No" i return the verbal, "I 'm not going anywhere, I'm going to watch you and report your actions to my old man", (who subsequently wrote a letter of complaint to the chief constable at Albany Street station a week later).....The seeds had been sown, my own education into the oppression the black youth of Britain were experiencing day to day was cemented...The indignation and humiliation felt by my spars overwhelmed me.....Plod, of course finding nothing on three 16 year kids after the shake down, gave a swift boot up the arse to Timmy and told us to watch ourselves.....Then waddled off towards Longford Street.
For a short while we just stood there staring at each other trying to piece together our emotions...Mickey broke the silence, "second time this week".
Racism was again on the agenda in British society, the economic climate of despair and discontent, so readily used by the National Front, the British fascist party of the time, to breed hatred and intolerance in the communities was soon to be challenged. The politics and music of a generation that came together as an outlet for change was to manifest itself in the Anti-Nazi League and the Rock Against Racism (RAR) concerts that pulled thousands and was crucial in educating young people especially the punks to anti-racist politics...But we knew the fight had to be taken to the streets and that's where we were heading to Lewisham..
As we`ve reached the 8th anniversary of the 21st century’s most defining event so far, something to ponder from a couple of years ago but still relevent today.
