Blue-Collar Swagger

Chitown's Rhymefest recently dropped a gem of a hip-hop mixtape entitled, "Mark Ronson presents Rhymefest: Man In The Mirror" which contains some very interesting interpretations of Michael Jackson's songs/samples interspersed with humorous mock-up conversations between Jackson and Rhymefest. Oddly, this mixtape can bring Michael Jackson from the shadows and resurrect his career after his tumultuous fall from grace.

Rhymefest ranks up there with Talib Kweli, Common, Immortal Technique, Guru and Mos Def although he is not as famous as they are (outside of the hip hop sphere, that is). If you enjoyed Kanye's "Jesus Walks", then much of the credit goes to Rhymefest for writing/co-producing it.

My favorite cuts on this joint are:

Maybe Tomorrow

Breakadawn

Set The Mood

All That I've Got Is You

Coolie High

Sunshine Skit

Man In The Mirror

Download the album for free

Also check out this interesting interview.
OneLove~MixMasterE

BILLS! BILLS! DAMN BLASTED BILLS!

Check out Bob Sullivan's, "Gotcha Capitalism: How Hidden Fees Rip You Off Everyday".
Companies have spent a long time investing billions of dollars on extensive research, learning just how to confuse us and take away our rights to a fair deal. This book will highlight their crafty methods and strategies we can implement to reclaim both our hard-earned dough and fundamental rights to a fair deal. Ballantine books writes:

"Coughing up $4 fees for ATM transactions.
Iron-clad cell phone contracts you can’t get out of with a crowbar.
Paying big bucks for insurance you don’t need on a rental car or forking over $20 a day for supposedly “free” wireless internet.

Every day we use banks, cell phones, and credit cards. Every day we book hotels and airline tickets. And every day we get ripped off.  How? Here are just a few examples of how big business can get you:

• You didn’t fill up the rental car with gas?
Gotcha! Gas costs $7 a gallon here.
• Your bank balance fell to $999.99 for one day?
Gotcha! That’ll be $12.
• You miss one payment on that 18-month same-as-cash loan?
Gotcha! That’ll be $512 extra.
• You’re one day late on that electric bill?
Gotcha! All your credit cards now have a 29.99% interest rate."

Listen to his NPR interview here

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up and bear witness to one of the biggest corporate rackets the world has never known...& please guard your wallets and sensibility.

~MixMasterE

Musings

And the leaders of the world today talk eloquently about peace. Every time we drop our bombs in North Vietnam, President Johnson talks eloquently about peace. What is the problem? They are talking about peace as a distant goal, as an end we seek, but one day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. All of this is saying that, in the final analysis, means and ends must cohere because the end is preexistent in the means, and ultimately destructive means cannot bring about constructive ends.


--Martin Luther King, Jr., "A CHRISTMAS SERMON" 24 December 1967



Your spirit lives~~MixMasterE

Rising Inequality (or How The Rich Pimps The World)

Ocean Blues

It's hard to think seriously about anything on a sunny day at the beach. Sitting in a cool shade as the light salty air massages one to sleep or to a trance-like state of mind, one is simply transported from the terrestrial.

This changed one day while vacationing in St Lucia. On my way to visit relatives, I saw these two impressively enormous cruise liners heading towards the pier. What an amazing engineering feat, I thought. It was the following thought that left me deeply troubled: "I wonder where all the waste from all those toilets go?"

Alas, what I found out about the state of our oceans left me in a dizzying state of hopelessness. Here are some disturbing facts:

(1)The oceans are home to 95% of the living space for the Earth's plants and animals. Human activity over the centuries has depleted 90% of marine species, eliminated 65% of sea-grass and wetland habitat, degraded water quality 10-1,000 fold, and accelerated species invasions in 12 major estuaries and coastal seas around the world.

(2)The number of oxygen-starved “dead zones” in coastal waters has doubled over the past decade to nearly 150 worldwide and is projected to become the greatest threat to marine ecosystems, according to a report from the UN Environment Program (UNEP).

(3)Corporate fish operations that use bottom trawlers use enormous nets that drag along the ocean floor destroying anything in their path. It has been estimated that 70% of ocean life scraped up by these nets is unusable--this "bycatch" includes unwanted fish, turtles, seabirds, marine mammals, coral reefs and sponge forests. 18 -40 metric tons of sea life is destroyed PER DAY due to corporate over-fishing.

(4)7 billion tons of trash is dumped into the world's oceans each year

(5)The worst abuse of our oceans comes from the emissions from cars and factories that drive the insatiable appetite to consume. This in turn has lead to the coming catastrophe of climate change. Almost half the carbon dioxide from the past two centuries of human industry has been absorbed by the oceans. The impending tragedy is that the acidity (thought to be the most profound change in the chemistry of the oceans in 20 million years)of the oceans is rising which is expected both to disrupt the entire web of life of the oceans and to make climate change worse.

(6) The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is so loaded with carbon dioxide that it can barely absorb any more, so more of the gas will stay in the atmosphere to warm up the planet.

(7) Sea-lions, seals, whales, salmon, sturgeon, silver sharks, Steelhead trout, Asia's giant catfish, Atlantic bluefish tuna amongst other sea creatures, are on their death-beds due to human activity.

How can I look at the ocean again without thinking about these dire facts? Although there are a number of proposals out there to save our oceans such as setting aside 40 percent of our oceans as marine reserves, I question the political will of various governments to do anything substantial as long as the the God Mammon holds sway and blinds them all.

And to the answer to the question, ""I wonder where all the waste from all those (cruise ships') toilets go?" I discovered that hundreds of thousands of wastewater and sewage are dumped into the sea once beyond a legally-defined distance beyond shore.

(Check out this short documentary).

Development at any cost? I'll take that topic up at a later time.

:::MixMasterE:::

MME's Jam Of The Day

Peter Tosh

The lips of the righteous teach many

But fools die for want of wisdom

The rich man's wealth is in the city...

Oh..

Vexation of the soul is vanity

Destruction of the poor is their poverty

The poor man's wealth is in a holy, holy place

Oh..

Why do you fight each other?

Why do you kill your brother?

Then your reward will be the cemetery

...

We got to build a better nation

Clean up, clean up Jah creation

Or there will be no future for you, you and me

No truer words spoken~MixMasterE

A Gift

My Winter's Solstice Reading List

I highly recommend checking out the following books I had the chance to read during my annual winter break. Let's all continue the Socratic quest of constantly questioning and, like Ghandi and King, becoming the change we wish to see in our world.





100 Ways America Is Screwing Up the World by John Tirman





Rogue State: A Guide To The World's Only Superpower by William Blum




Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken




Static by Amy Goodman and David Goodman

I also selectively re-read the classic, "Burning All Illusions" by David Edwards which was revelatory to me when I first read it and it still has the same effect 10 years later.

Peace and Love~~MixMasterE

Probing Faith: A Thought Exercise

Did Jesus Really Exist?