War As Spiritual Death
by MixMasterE

In war, truth is the first casualty. ~Aeschylus

The rhetoric of conquerors can be like a cool, soothing balm or fiery bromide inciting any given population to blindly support & acquiesce to the powers that be (the military-industrial-media triumvirate). This intent to deceive and furtively sabotage democratic principles is as old as empire itself, but in any given population, there is always a small minority that can recognize bullshit when they see (or smell) it. One of those people is Norman Solomon who produced the following documentary, "War Made Easy" which details a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin/hypnosis that has dragged the citizens of the United States along from one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq.

It's amazing how people can accustom themselves to chains, but I guess if you feed them junk long enough, they get used to it and feel it's God's or Nature's Law that makes things the way they are. Hitler once said, "All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach". How true.


War Made Easy Trailer:


Click here for entire documentary

MME's Jam Of The Day

One of my favorite Third World cuts, "Shine Like A Blazing Fire", still lights the skies of my hemispheres.


Sing a new song in the morning
Jah has done you no wrong
I awake and sing the rising sun
And like the birds fly free,
Human psychology and bad mind got to get a blow

Shine like a blazing fire, shine like a blazing fire

Just like the morning sun
Lord knows we got to shine, shine, shine
It’s not the love you take, it’s the love you give

Got your rightful place in this earth.....to live

-Third World



...and speaking  of shining like a blazing fire, check this out....

-MixMasterE

The Incredible Brain Pt 2

The Incredible Brain

The President Of The United States

A Nation Of Sleep-Walkers

"If you want to understand how a particular society works, you have to understand who makes the decisions that determine the way a society functions. In the U.S., the major decisions over what happens in a society (investment, production, distribution, etc.) are in the hands of a relatively concentrated network of major corporations, conglomerates, and investment firms. They're also the ones who staff the major executive positions in the government, and they're the ones who own the media, and are the ones who are in the position to make decisions. They have an overwhelmingly dominant role in the way life happens, what's done in this society. — Noam Chomsky

Licensed To Kill

Musings

"I who have cursed
The drunken officer of British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give back what they give?
How can I face such slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa and live?"

Derek Walcott

-MixMasterE

Strange Fruit by MixMasterE

Reading and listening to the events in Jena, Louisiana reads like a scene from one of Amari Baraka's plays or one of many American slave narratives. Although I am not surprised, I am very much aggrieved by how this whole mess came about. It reminds me of this bizarre viral video, Chocolate Rain, by Tay Zonday. Lyrically, it speaks volumes upon volumes of the state of race (& class) relations in the U.S (and elsewhere) :

"Chocolate Rain
History quickly crashing through your veins
Chocolate Rain
Using you to fall back down again...

Chocolate Rain
The same crime has a higher price to pay
Chocolate Rain
The judge and jury swear it's not the face

Chocolate Rain
'Cross the world and back its all the same
Chocolate Rain
Angels cry and shake their heads in shame..."

Strange how we all react and take sides ( O.J Simpson, Amadou Diallo...), yet nothing really changes. An appeal to the intellect (reason) is hardly enough and historically, has never worked on its' own. Change, especially socio-political change , lives in the streets, in the alleys and tenements, in the dense over-populated, over-stressed, undervalued sectors where battling multi-headed dragons (stress) has become a way of life. We are the agents, the provacateurs, the sharply-focused lens & glinting swords for the shaping of a different way of being and loving in this world. We owe it to ourselves and our children (all children)and it starts with taking a stand against injustice/inhumanity wherever it raises its ugly, ancient head.

Sign the Jena 6 Petition Now.


It is going to be interesting come September 20th, 2007.

"Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop."

-Billie Holliday

Poet's Nook: "Release" by Saul Williams

Inner breathlessness, outer restlessness
By the time I caught up to freedom I was out of breath
Grandma asked me what I'm running for
I guess I'm out for the same thing the sun is sunning for
What mothers birth their youngens for
And some say Jesus coming for
For all I know the earth is spinning slow
Suns at half mast 'cause masses ain't aglow
On bended knee, prostrate before an altered tree
I've made the forest suit me
Tables and chairs
Papers and prayers
Matter versus spirit
A metal ladder
A wooden cross
A plastic bottle of water
A mandala encased in glass
A spirit encased in flesh
Sound from shaped hollows
The thickest of mucus released from heightened passion
A man that cries in his sleep
A truth that has gone out of fashion
A mode of expression
A paint splattered wall
A carton of cigarettes
A bouquet of corpses
A dying forest
A nurtured garden
A privatized prison
A candle with a broken wick
A puddle that reflects the sun
A piece of paper with my name on it
I'm surrounded
I surrender
All
All that I am I have been
All I have been has been a long time coming
I am becoming all that I am
The spittle that surrounds the mouth-piece of the flute
Unheard, yet felt
A gathered wetness
A quiet moisture
Sound trapped in a bubble
Released into wind
Wind fellows and land merchants
We are history's detergent
Water soluble, light particles, articles of cleansing breath
Articles amending death
These words are not tools of communication
They are shards of metal
Dropped from eight story windows
They are waterfalls and gas leaks
Aged thoughts rolled in tobacco leaf
The tools of a trade
Barbers barred, barred of barters
Catch phrases and misunderstandings
But they are not what I feel when I am alone
Surrounded by everything and nothing
And there isn't a word or phrase to be caught
A verse to be recited
A man to de-fill my being in those moments
I am blankness, the contained center of an "O"
The pyramidic containment of an "A"
I stand in the middle of all that I have learned
All that I have memorized
All that I've known by heart
Unable to reach any of it
There is no sadness
There is no bliss
It is a forgotten memory
A memorable escape route that only is found by not looking
There, in the spine of the dictionary the words are worthless
They are a mere weight pressing against my thoughtlessness
But then, who else can speak of thoughtlessness with such confidence
Who else has learned to sling these ancient ideas
like dead rats held by their tails
so as not to infect this newly oiled skin
I can think of nothing heavier than an airplane
I can think of no greater conglomerate of steel and metal
I can think of nothing less likely to fly
There are no wings more weighted
I too have felt a heaviness
The stare of man guessing at my being
Yes I am homeless
A homeless man making offerings to the after-future
Sculpting rubber tree forests out of worn tires and shoe soles
A nation unified in exhale
A cloud of smoke
A native pipe ceremony
All the gathered cigarette butts piled in heaps
Snow covered mountains
Lipsticks smeared and shriveled
Offerings to an afterworld
Tattoo guns and plastic wrappers
Broken zippers and dead eyed dolls
It's all overwhelming me, oak and elming me
I have seeded a forest of myself
Little books from tall trees
It matters not what this paper be made of
Give me notebooks made of human flesh
Dried on steel hooks and nooses
Make uses of use, uses of us
It's all overwhelming me, oak and elming me
I have seeded a forest of myself
Little books from tall trees
On bended knee
Prostrate before an altered tree
I've made the forest suit me
Tables and chairs
Papers and prayers
Matter vs. spirit, through meditation
I program my heart to beat breakbeats and hum basslines on exhalation
::MME:::