History Through The Eyes Of Gil Scott Heron

Many moons ago, I came across a poem entitled "Winter In America"which burrowed deeply within upon its first reading and has resided there ever since. As I grew in depth and maturity, I came to understand & appreciate Gil's work in a broader sense. As an avid fan of Hip Hop, I have seen how this man's influence is still rippling across the cultural landscape. Artists such as Dead Prez, Talib Kweli, Common and Shihan owe a tremendous debt to Gil Scott Heron, considered by many cultural critics as the forefather of rap music.

Selected Poems

OneLove~MixMasterE

John McCain:"It Would Be Fine To Keep Troops in Iraq for a Hundred Years"

Seven years
into the idiot's reign,
grass on the graves
of wasted lives.


~Poets Against War

Musings

A historical moment of unprecedented proportions--Thanks Bush!

The Beauty of The Bhagavad Gita

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For years I have always had an interest in reading the Bhagavad Gita. I became aware of this great work while passing through Puerto Rico years ago (given away for free by a young lady walking in the middle of a busy street). The content of this book is amazing.


The Bhagavad Gita is a Sanskrit poem that is part of the Indian epic known as the Mahabharata . It describes, in a dialogue between Lord Krishna and Prince Arjuna, the Hindu path to spiritual wisdom and the unity with God that can be achieved through karma (action), bhakti (devotion), and jnana (knowledge). The Bhagavad-Gita was probably written sometime between 200 B.C. and A.D. 200.


A few choice quotes to whet your appetite:


“The wise sees knowledge and action as one; they see truly”


“The power of God is with you at all times; through the activities of mind, senses, breathing, and emotions; and is constantly doing all the work using you as a mere instrument.”


"When a man dwells on the objects of sense, he creates an attraction for them; attraction develops into desire, and desire breeds anger."


"There are two ways of passing from this world - one in light and one in darkness. When one passes in light, he does not come back; but when one passes in darkness, he returns."


Deep...



The Bhagavad Gita: The Divine Song Of God


The Bhagavad Gita in Audio


OneLove

~MixMasterE

What is Love?

Yesterday, I told a friend, "Hey! Don't forget to get the wife a bouquet of flowers "
His response: "I'll wait until the 15th to catch a good sale!" Hilarious as that sounded initially, I thought about it and questions about the nature of love--what it is, how it changes, the types of love, the beginning and end of love, the endurance of love, the quality of love, the lack of love--swirled within.

Indeed, Valentines Day is a commercial bonanza built on great expectations. It can symbolize one's love, but the truth is really in the days before & after. Buying flowers and whispering sweet nothings are best appreciated when least expected. Love is an action, its' roots running deep, far removed from the derived, often confusing feelings that can blind.

Pablo Neruda sums up this beautiful conundrum we call "love":

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the
perfumes of spring.
I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands;
how did your lips feel on mine?
Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks,
the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.
I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten
your eyes.
Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of
you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
do me irreparable harm.
Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.
I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every
window.
Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because
of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting
stars, falling objects.

~~MixMasterE~~

From Bud Light to iPODs: The Manipulation of The American Mind

"We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man's desires must overshadow his needs."
- Paul Maser-Wall Street banker (1920)


How easy it is to cater to Man's emotions/instincts and make us believe in/do things that, rationally speaking, make no sense. Sub-prime mortgages, Black Friday department store rushes ( buying shit that we just don't need), celebrity/money worship, the fetishizing of the flesh, etc are all carefully crafted objects concocted by corporations/PR firms to engineer the consent of masses. And how well it works!! Check this out:




Be Real!

~MixMasterE

..a moment of silence...

Pass Me Over - Anthony Hamilton

Another day
Chance to make another chance
A fragile place
Running on empty
A smile so faint
Barely even breaks the space
World’s on shoulders now

Don’t be afraid
He who knows will make a way
His word alone is what has kept me
Born the Son, King of eternal peace
Lay your burdens down


If you catch me dreaming
Please don’t wake me till I'm done
Just leave me sleeping
Until the morning comes
Just pass me over
Make believe that I'm not there
Just leave me be
Until the Savior comes

Another night
Makes a way to the morn
Sleep in peace, joy come early
A covered child, steps away victorious
Salvation holds joy for all of us..

One Love

::MixMasterE::

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?

Musings

A Racial Con Game
by MixMasterE


So let me get this right:

Asians and Whites are the brightest while..."Hispanics" and "blacks" struggle to keep up academically.According to the stats I read in the major dailies and scholarly journals, the outlook is grim. A few scientists have even labeled such dire statistics "inevitable" & the results simply prove that genetically(once again)
"blacks" and "browns" just don't have the mental hardware to change
this imbalance anyway as it is simply Destiny/Evolution.../God that makes it so.

((ahem))

Something doesn't add up, Mr Watson/Mr Murray/Mr Brand:

If "blacks" just don't cut it, how come African and Caribbean immigrantsare beating both whites and Asians academically? Are we not also "black"? Are we (I'm from the Caribbean)purposely left out of the statistics so that some twisted agenda/mind-set can be perpetuated? I think so. Racism is such a stubborn beast, but the simplest truth can inflict mortal wounds in its' ancient flesh. The truth is the "Asians" are no "model minority"--only selectively so as African/Caribbean peoples trump them in the very things that make them "model minorities". White people have no higher standard as a birthright--there's nothing inherent in their genetic coding that makes them smarter. And who are they to designate who a model minority is?

I've always said, any group that had the means & mentality to brutally enslave another group of people for close to 400 years then institute laws (post-Emancipation Proclamation) to prevent them from getting educated, voting & living with decency and dignity, then that group would have a hell of a head start in terms of a legacy of educational achievement & socio-political power (and all the benefits that come from this, such as wealth/assets passed on from generation to generation, overall health, housing and a legal framework that sweeps otherwise corrupt and illegal actions under the rug). And to think that historical currents can conveniently be swept away and forgotten & to pretend now that everybody is on the same playing field in this country, is just retarded. Of course, who benefits from this deception are the very ones whose ancestors profited handsomely from the dehumanization of Africans (who, paradoxically, are now trouncing their children in school) Indians and Chinese.

Frantz Fanon's observation that "...the fact of the juxtaposition of the white and black 'races' has created a massive psycho-existential complex.." is a fascinating one and fits right into the thick of this complex I will detail the life of this very important historical figure at another time.

Bullshit theories about white intelligence and superiority have been part and parcel of Western societies for ages. Why does this nonsense persist? As stated earlier, there is a vested interest in keeping this delusion alive as it justifies so many things and keeps things moving along (white/black sentencing differences for the same crime, income disparities, red-lining, etc ) without having to expend the time,energy and resources to acknowledge & implement correctives for this dark tide of this nation's history.

What is nothing short of miraculous is the fact that in spite of all the hits that White Supremacy has hurled against "blacks" in particular the world over, we are still standing. Our artistry and genius still bubbles to the surface in dance, song, literature, science and religion. Take it away Bob Marley:

We're the survivors
In this age of technological inhumanity (black survival),
Scientific atrocity (survivors),
Atomic misphilosophy (black survival),
Nuclear misenergy (survivors):
Its a world that forces lifelong insecurity (black survival).


OneLove!

Cornel West on Knowledge

Cornel West on knowledge
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