SCHMUCK OF THE MONTH: Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN

The scene of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointing to a crude picture of a bomb when addressing the United Nations this week had to be seen to be believed:

I was so gobsmacked when I first saw it on the news, that my first reaction was to burst out laughing.


Image courtesy of latinospost.com

The leader of the apartheid state of Israel was using it as analogy for the escalating ‘illegal actions’ of Iran as ludicrous excuse for Israel’s panting desire to justify attack of Iran. The bitch on heat of the Middle East is at it again.

The fact that he was using what was tantamount to a childish scrawl out of a primary school art project only made the entire affair even more laughable and ludicrous – if it were not over an issue so incredibly dangerous.

The drums of war by another rogue nation at the UN are being played yet again, as ominous prologue to what is fast becoming a certainty – war with Iran. And heaven help us ALL when Israel and its Master Muppet, the United States, decide to make that deadly and unbelievably stupid move.

One thing is for sure: this image of Netanyahu and his amateur-beyond-belief art project will go down as one of the most surreal moments in the too often insalubrious history of the United Nations General Assembly.  

RANT: The Strain of the Pain in Spain

Photo courtesy of The Sun online

So the streets of Madrid are awash in angry protesters and violent police. The protesters chant against the gross injustices of the austerity measures implemented by the Spanish government due to the ongoing eurozone crisis, whilst the police charge with batons and batter and beat away at the protesters with a viciousness that only neo-fascist police can muster.


The violent protests (made violent by the shocking actions of the police, by the way) on the streets of Madrid are a mirror to the entire financial crisis that has gripped the world in a sickly vice since 2008: the downtrodden, increasingly impoverished masses in supposedly democratic countries are met by police violence and violation that is so massively undemocratic that it makes the entire notion of democracy in those countries nothing but a sham. The actions of these authorities (read: authoritians) on the streets of Madrid, Athens, London, New York, Oakland and countless other Western countries is nothing short of neo-fascism.
The marches and violence of Madrid were inevitable. Gone is the welfare state that protected all with free healthcare, affordable education, generous (and just) unemployment and pension schemes and labour laws that protected those who needed protecting, i.e. the worker. All of that has been slashed due to the Eurozone crisis owing to ‘huge public debts’ due to ‘unlimited public spending’ and other such excuses pontificated by European leaders, the European Commission and other shameless liars. It’s all rubbish – we all know that the entire ‘crisis’ is due to the criminal and amoral actions of traders, speculators financiers and bankers and their political acolytes (read: paid out whores) and, instead of all being put out of business or even hauled off to prison, they’ve all been bailed out with huge amounts of public money. Simple as that, folks.

And someone had to foot the bill. Of course – the unemployed, the working poor, the elderly and the middle classes of Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, the UK and many other countries have had to pay with their hard-earned rights and safety nets so that the rich could get more obscenely rich.

The protests in the streets of Madrid and the violence with which they are being met are analogy to the times in which we live – cynical times in which we the people are being pillaged and our rights imprisoned by those who supposedly represent and protect us.

And it will only get worse if all of us do not keep vigilant. Forewarned is forearmed.

Do you get my point?

RANT: A Ruse About the Jews in the News

Photo courtesy of wina.com

Much fuss was made this past week of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanhayu, and his much-publicized and ‘controversial’ blitz through America. Turns out that instead of getting the usual Jewish-loving, Palestinian-hating, AIPAC-lobbied orgy of Israel loving that the Americans love to bamboozle Israeli heads of state and other minions of the Jewish apartheid state, he was actually ‘snubbed’ by no less than American President, Barack Obama.

The media was in a frenzy about how Obama had basically tut-tutted Netanyahu about invading Iran, with the rather stern caveat that the United States would not simply “attack” (invade) at the behest of Israel, and that “further dialogue” with the Iranians was needed. It was reported that Netanyahu was furious about this ‘volte face’ by Obama and people were analysing it to death, speculating that this was a ‘new low’ in US-Israeli relations, and that perhaps now Israel could not simply attack (invade) Iran with the full backing of the United States.

Republican presidential (non-) contender Mitt Romney was quick to declare his and his party’s undying (and frankly sick and twisted) love and devotion to Israel, no doubt making it clear that if he were to become president of the United States that Israel would have his full support and backing, not to mention missiles and other hardware to rain down on Tehran. Like any good corporate scheister gunning for the ultra-rightwing evangelical vote would declare to the apartheid state of Israel.

Even Paul Lavelle’s talk show on usually America-sceptic Russia Today (RT) asked his panel, “Has bipartisan support for Israel become a Republican cause?”

I smell a rat.

And I’ll tell you why:

This is all a ruse by Barack Obama to placate (and clinch) the liberal vote come the election in November. Whatever pundits may say, Obama still needs the support and votes of the tree-hugging, anti-war, anti-Wall Street, educated, basically secular and very pissed off liberals of America, i.e. many of the very people who swept him to power in 2008. He needs their votes.

So, what does Obama the consummate devious, spineless politician do? He suddenly comes out all ‘peace-loving’ and ‘cautious’ and speaking the words of the ‘diplomat,’ none of which this warmonger par excellence is, of course.  And he uses a visit by the Prime Minister of Israel to cement this ruse in the public and media eye. Because it’s all bullshit, as anyone with a hint of memory will know. This ‘change of heart’ is coming from the same man that has been beating the drum of war against Iran for over two years now? This is now from the same man who is still heavily supporting ‘rebel’ forces in order to overthrow Assad in Syria, which everyone knows is a gambit to get at Iran?

Come on! It’s all a ruse – it has to be ruse.

So, here’s how I see it: behind closed doors, Obama has given Netanyahu his full assurances that come January the United States will fully back an Israeli attack on Iran on some trumped up charge or another, but until then Obama must play the ‘liberal, anti-war’ president just as he so effectively did as Democrat presidential contender in the 2008 election. So he asks Netanyahu to bide his time and even take one on the chin as Obama will have to ‘sternly rebuke’ him for now so that he can get all those peace-loving, war-hating liberal votes.

Netanyahu, being Jewish and genetically knowing a great deal when he sees it, grabs Obama’s hands with both hands and vigorously agrees to the whole charade. Elated, he walks out and in front of the world media and makes as if he has been royally snubbed by Obama and is foot-stomping furious about it. Nudge nudge, wink wink.

Come January or a few weeks thereafter, and just watch the newly re-elected Obama come out in full support of Israel as it forges an attack on Iran on some trumped up charge or another.

It’s the only ploy that makes sense. And I am sure that there are many others who have come to the same conclusion. Ironically, it makes the war with Iran now seem more inevitable than ever. And that is by far the scariest aspect of this entire US-Israeli-concocted and cynical charade.

Do you get my point?

RIP: Andy Williams

Andy Williams passed away this week at the age of 84. Williams was a charming crooner with a velvet voice and a ready smile. He was not exactly a voice of my generation’s and I was not even aware that he was the voice behind so many songs like the classic “Moon River” (the theme song from Breakfast at Tiffany’s), for instance.

Yet I feel compelled to honour him in my own very small way with this post on my blog because Andy Williams is very much part of my memory and conscience as a very young boy. When my family and I lived in Luanda, Angola back in the early 1970s I was barely at an age to have conscious memory. I do have very fleeting memories of those days in Luanda of which some of my family members speak so fondly. Slivers of reminiscence flit through my mind of playing with my Matchbox dinky cars at the front of our house, watching my brothers play football in a vacant field behind our house, sitting on the beach and eating clams opened right there or going on the breezy ferry ride across to the island of Moussulo.

But memory can play tricks on us. What we think is our memory can sometimes be the vivid reminiscences of others who were older or could better recall at the time, in the case of my life in Luanda the recollections of mostly my mother and, to a lesser extent, my brothers. Photographs also bear witness to what I sometimes think may be my own recollections when they are nothing more than that – witness to what occurred, not to what I remember.

Yet music has a funny, subliminal way of seeping into our sub-conscious and indeed being the means by which we do recollect, we do remember. At least for me it does, as I am sure it does for many others. A voice, a song, an album, a soundtrack – these are my aural memory collectors, especially of my youth. That much I do know.

And for all the music that I no doubt heard during our years in Luanda, there are only two songs that have stuck in my aural memory as being synonymous with our happy, lucky time in that humid, sub-tropical colonial Portuguese city of the early 70s – and they are “Killing Me Softly” by Roberta Flack and “Solitaire” by Andy Williams.

I even to this day remember so well the album cover to Andy Williams’ “Solitaire,” which I no doubt must have seen and even stared many times during that time, and which is as moody and perfect as any album cover of the 1970s:

So, Mr Williams, I may not have grown up with all your music or even known all of your hits. I may not even have bought any of your records. But forever more your smooth, rich voice will forever be etched in my memory of when I was very young boy and my family was intact and we lived in a grand house in a beautiful colonial African city. For that alone I am forever in debt, as no doubt are many millions for having had the privilege of hearing your sublime voice that defined entire eras.

RIP Andy Williams.

RAVE: Hail, Rodriguez the Poet!

This week I was so fortunate to see an excellent documentary called “Searching for Sugarman.” It was made riveting by the fact that the documentary unravelled like a detective story.

But this was no ordinary gumshoe detective story. The detectives in this enthralling ‘caper’ were two South Africans, one a music producer, the other a self-styled ‘musical detective,’ who embarked on a tenacious, topsy-turvy and quite brilliant quest to discover what had happened to one of the most enigmatic music geniuses of the 1970s. This was a musical genius who had galvanized the South African anti-apartheid movement and the conscience of countless white South African youth at that time, the time of apartheid’s ugliest nadir.

To South Africans in the early- to mid-1970s (and beyond), and especially white South Africans, this folk hero was bigger than Bob Dylan. Yes, Bob Dylan.

His name was Rodriguez.

And, suddenly, after two studio albums of his were released in the early 1970s he just disappeared. An absolute nobody in his native United States, it was here in South Africa that people started to seriously ask: ‘Who was Rodriguez?’ and, more so, ‘What happened to Rodriguez?’

Urban myths abounded including that he had shot himself in the head on stage or even set himself alight on stage. The documentary reveals in fascinating detail how it turned out that Sixto Rodriguez was not dead but alive and well and living in his hometown of Detroit. Rather, he was alive but not necessarily that well, at least materially speaking. Having spent most of his years doing hard labour in odd jobs like carpentry and carpentry, Rodriguez was living a very frugal life in a quite delapidated house in a decidedly rundown part of inner city Detroit.

Our intrepid detectives finally got hold of him and brought the soft-spoken, painfully shy and incredibly modest Rodriguez to do some concerts in Cape Town in 1998, back to the country which had loved him and his music like no other. His concerts were sell-out pop culture events in Cape Town, and the footage of the adoring South African crowds, almost all white, many in tears and screaming as Rodriguez strutted his inimitable stuff on stage, moved me to tears.

Watching how much effort the intrepid musical detectives made to track him down and how much love was poured at him in these shows made me proud to be a white South African. Proud that it was it was (mostly) due to white South Africa that this brilliant but obscure folk singer of Mexican heritage was at least loved and respected somewhere in the world. Make that adored – after all, it’s estimated that he probably sold half a million records in South Africa, the ‘money trail’ of which formed a central vein in this delicious musico detective story.

This profound poet, American though he may be, is ours.

What astounded me even more is how familiar I was with his music without even having realized or known that they were the songs of Rodriguez. I was quite embarrassed by that, let me tell you! The song “I Wonder” is foremost in my memory of a 1970s childhood in apartheid Johannesburg, and hearing it again has had me constantly humming it this entire week, so familiar it was to me. I know I heard and liked that and other of his songs as a young boy, yet I don’t think either of my brothers ever had his records, nor could I have heard it on the radio as it was mostly banned at the time. But I knew his music well.

When raving about the documentary to a good friend and colleague of mine the next day, she nodded her head vigorously and told me he was indeed “much bigger than Bob Dylan” in this country, and that listening to Rodriguez was what “all the cool high school kids did” back in those days. Such was his hold on South Africans yearning to be anti-establishment in whatever way possible.

He continues to live his frugal, very modest life in Detroit. Many trips and concerts back here in South Africa have no doubt made him some money, but at the end of the documentary it was stated that he gave most of his money away to family and friends. Because this is what Rodriguez the poet and the musician is all about – the music, the poetry, and the pure love of it all. He is not about the money nor the fame nor the trappings of wealth and celebrity to which so many ‘musicians’ today so readily aspire. He is true to himself and he has chartered his own, very hard but very honest path. And he looks to me one of the most content men I have ever seen.

This man with a voice richer and far better than that of Bob Dylan, this lyricist easily on par in depth and poetry as Dylan – this man is nothing short of genius.


Photo courtesy of filmgordon.wordpress.com

Rodriguez is an unsung music hero and remains an underappreciated poet of undeniable talent. There is a certain sadness for me in the fact that he is still not as famous and revered around the world as he should be. However, it is in his unique contentment that I find much so much solace for his sake.

Rodriguez may not be as wealthy or well-known as he deserves, but he may very well be the richest man I have ever seen.   

Rodriguez, your contentment and truth to self is inspiration to me, as it no doubt is to so many others.

STUPID BITCH OF THE WEEK: Sarah Palin

Is there any woman more phenomenally stupid on planet Earth than that excuse for a 'politician' called Sarah Palin?

I know I've attacked this inane, frothy bitch on heat before on my blog, but, my word, does she make it easy.


Cariciature courtesy of paper-pencils-pixels.blogspot.com

Her latest little nugget of knee-jerk, soccer mom political wisdom? She's now urging Republican presidential (un)hopeful Mitt Romney to accuse Barack Obama of being a "socialist." Yeah, that's right, Barack Obama is a socialist, as according to this nincompoop of a boobs for brains.

A socialist? You're kidding, right, little Nanookette of the North?! Does this woman even know what socialism actually means? I would agree if one called Obama a sell-out, an opportunist, a wimp, a warmonger in sheep's clothing - any of those labels, yes, but a socialist?! Oh, please.

Obama wishes he would have the balls and the moral fiber to be more socialist.

Now, we all know that Americans foam at the mouth and get all rabid about the word 'socialism, ' it being a dirty, dirty, filthy word in Pax Americana; just one level up from that other dirty, dirty, filthy word in American words, 'liberal.'

It's so childish, so tiresome.

And for anyone who starts raving about the collapse of the USSR and the Eastern bloc countries, please kindly go and read your politics and history, and understand that there is quite a gulf of difference between socialism and communism. I would never consider myself a communist - far from it. But being labelled a socialist? Especially if is the socialist hybrid of social democracy that gave us the fair, just and inclusive welfare state systems of many Western European countries in the post-war period? Well, now we're talking.

A ditsy little twerp like Sarah Palin is the epitome of why the United States is an empire in the most pathetic of decline. She knows so very, very little, yet she flounces her false locks and bats her false eyelashes and espouses her non-opinions as if she were the modern equivalent of the Oracle at Delphi. 

No, Madam Nutcracker, Obama is not a socialist. He wishes he were. Whereas you, my dear, are beyond contemptible and should be spat upon by a thousand baboons on an hourly basis for perpetuity.

Do you get my point?

TINAWA: "Ironical"

The English language is under constant, full-blown attack. This is an increasingly dumbed down world in which people revel in being ignorant and uncultured. Where bad spelling and grammar were once the domain of the dyslexic or the suitably embarrassed, either of which was understandable, now the inability to spell or construct sentences properly is a badge of honour.

Typos and mistakes made in a rush we all make and I can accept, all-out hacking of a language I will not.

Enter my latest category, TINAWA = That Is Not A Word, Asshole.

Call it a rant with a twist.

So, which made up, nonsensical word grates me like George W. Bush opening his mouth?

"IRONICAL"

Huh?



Again and again I hear this gem, which simply must be a non-existent word. If it is one, then what, pray tell, of the word ironic?

Ironical? Nonsensical.

Ignorance is not always bliss, baby.

TINAWA!!!