Jul 31, 2008

Where Are You America?




America, was the grass greener in Columbia?
Or did you like the smell
of sand and oil in Iran?
Maybe Lebanon had better skies
or Haiti better coasts.
Cuba had better fields
and Laos had a better moon.
Where are you America?
Did Thailand cast the first stone?
Did Vietnam pay for the human cost?
Was the Congo worth your time?
Or was the Dominican Republic a better prospect?
Was Indonesia a vacation?
Cambodia was harboring ideas,
Chile was harboring civilians,
and Angola was harboring democracy.
Where are you America?
Did you train your enemies in Afghanistan?
Did Libya dare look you in the eye?
Were you trying to leech a living in Nicaragua?
Did El Salvador gun down allies?
The sky in Lebanon was better the second tour.
Grenada was a side project.
Chad was in the way.
Bolivia's produce tastes better stolen,
and Panama made a good port.
Where are you America?
Are you in the oil fields of Iraq?Did you spin the globe
And end up in Somalia?
Did Yugoslavia send out a war call?
Or was it Macedonia?
Iraq has a tendency of wanting freedom
while Bosnia stirs up troublw.
Iraq has a tendency of losing freedoms
while Sudan keeps us troubled.
Yugoslavia and Afghanistan
must have something you want.
Who knows why you're in Yemen,
And the Philippines must have been another vacation.
Where are you America?
Columbia wants to breathe
But you asphyxiate her .
Iraq wants to live
But you wound her.
Liberia has a voice too
But you silence her.
Haiti had faith in democracy
But you crushed her.
America where are you?
Are you amongst the coal and oil?
Was the war machine unleashed to roam free?
Are you that empire we all feared?
America,
You're everywhere but here.
You can try
But you won't silence me.
You can try
But you won't conquer me.

-Sergio Jimenez

Unmasking The Art Of Coercive Persuasion





In 1989, I read my first Noam Chomsky book, "Necessary Illusions:Thought Control In Democratic Societies". This book was impossible to put down as he meticulously researched the nature of the media in a political system where the population cannot be disciplined by force and thus must be subjected to more subtle forms of ideological control. He not only gives a blistering critique of the mass media but offers some correctives of how the media might be democratized in order to offer citizens broader and more meaningful participation in social and political life.




(Plato's allegory of the cave comes to mind: If we were inside a cave, we would believe what we see (the shadows) as real.....)

OneLove

:::MixMasterE:::

Jul 13, 2008

Information Deformation


We all are aware of the fact that there is simply way too much information out here for us to possibly absorb, far less reflect upon. I find it quite hilarious (and sometimes vexing) to view people who really think they know it all and who make it a point to prove themselves right (and you wrong). To quote T.S Eliot, "Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?". We have to learn to make distinctions between knowledge and information, knowledge and wisdom. As I've stated many times on this site, there are too many educated fools (& uneducated blow-hards with a chip on their shoulders) walking around who believe they can walk on water or pass wind beyond detection (these shits are truly doomed).

Check out this thought-provoking clip (and the clips that follow by clicking on "More"):




OneLove!

::MixMasterE::

Shards Of Sanity



Linton Kwesi Johnson is a voice for the voiceless, a modern day scribe who uncompromisingly levels the powerful with the fire and brimstone of his vertebrae-straightening poetry set to wicked bass drum-driven music. It was in the mid-eighties whilst browsing through records in a music store that I ran across a simple yet powerfully symbolic album cover entitled "Bass Culture" by Linton Kwesi Johnson. Equally intriguing were the song titles at the back of the album ("Inglan Is A Bitch", "Two Sides Of Silence", "Di Black Petty Booshwah", "Bass Culture" ). I was richly rewarded when I listened to it and have been a fan ever since. However,it was in 1991, after listening to his seventh album,"Tings An' Times", when I realized the profundity of LKJ's verse as this was the time when Rodney King was savagely beaten by the LAPD. "Tings An' Times" became (for me) the soundtrack of that highly-charged, despair-ridden and racially-divisive time as the searing contradictions that bubble beneath the patchwork fabric of this nation rose to the surface and exposed the open,unhealed wounds in full view of the international community.

Like Mutabaruka & Prince Far I, Linton Kwesi Johnson makes visible what has purposely been buried (i.e the shining diamonds of truth). That most people walk around sleep-walking/dazed'n'confused/uprooted/compromised & contained, is one of the tragedies of our times. Yeah mon! A good dose of LKJ can help heal the stupor of our times. As he so eloquently put it in "Two Sides Of Silence":

inside our ears
are the many wailing cries
of Mystery
inside our bodies
the internal bleeding
of volcanoes
inside our heads
the wrapped-in thoughts
of rebellion

how can there be calm
when the storm is yet to come?


Check out some of my favorites...

The Best of Linton Kwesi Johnson by EddieRockers

..& some interesting LKJ interviews:


MusicPlaylist
Music Playlist at MixPod.com
OneLove

::MixMasterE::

Jul 5, 2008

To Love A Woman




..it's late..a single candle flickers and casts entangled shadows against the drapes...between the stuttered breaths and the light drizzle outside, Quiet Storm melodies waft in and out of fields of recognition....no words are spoken..or needed...only surrender...

MixMasterE's Quiet Storm VolumeII by MixMaster E on Grooveshark



OneLove

::MixMasterE::

Jul 1, 2008

Critical Cleansing



Charles Johnson's poignant & immensely relevant essay in this month's American Scholar entitled, "The End Of The Black American Narrative" is a must-read for anyone interested in dissecting (and reconstructing/reimagining) the complex socio-cultural and political realities of contemporary African-American life. Although he is but one voice & despite my own critique of the piece, he does raise some very important questions and offers well thought out recommendations. That his initial inquiry was rooted in the work of another great American scholar, W.E.B Dubois, is of critical importance. He also expands upon another observation made by German scholar, Edmund Husserl, who revealed a hundred years ago that, "we almost always perceive and understand the new in terms of the old—or, more precisely, we experience events through our ideas, and frequently those are ideas that bring us comfort, ideas received from our parents, teachers, the schools we attend, and the enveloping culture, rather than original ones of our own".Indeed.

Check the piece out and draw your own conclusions...

OneLove

::MixMasterE::

The New Corporation

  The New Corporation ​is a 2020 documentary directed by Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan, law professor at the University of British Columb...