Today is Tuesday, Janurary 13th, 2009 and it is now 4:34 AM here in the Philippines.
Music wise, I have been listening to my Ofra Chaza CDs, so no beating you in the head with Youtube videos this time around. In the West she is know as "Ofra Haza," is very famous in Alternative circles.
She has had all kinds or collaborations, and has been sampled by everyone from the EU Trip Hop group "Mars" to the American rapper "Rakim" (Oaid in Full).
Her family were Yemeni Jews, she was very dark skinned, and she is said to have had the finest voice of anyone living in her generation with the widest Register ever recorded. She married a rich businessman by the last name of Aloni, whose family I know. Sadly, he was a junkie who injected.
He gave her HIV and both are long dead. She died many years ago.
Book wise, reading"Freedom at Midnight" by Larry Collins and Dominique La Pierre, and it is a non-fictional book about the Independance of India, from right before it to the Partition of India and Pakistan with Ghandi figuring prominently.
I always find it very interesting to note how lionised public figures are always considered to be these virtuous superheroes, these paragons of strength and morality.
Ghandi for example, he had some strong points certainly, but his same strong points were his weakest features. A religious Hindu, he tried to force the very large Muslim minority to accept One Stare Rule whether they cared to or not. For the record, they abhorred the idea almost universally.
He believed in eating only minimal amounts of food, manipulating the media and pointing to his caloric consumption while using it as a selling point, as if to illustrate the depravity and corrupt nature of British Rule in India.
He was very much the Hindu however he advocated negation of the Caste System. At the same time that he fought so strenuously for his own land's freedom, he disparaged any other groups who fought for theirs, if he personally did not care for the group or its aims.
One of those groups happens to be the Jews. Ghandi had gone to S. Africa as a youth and while Aparthied was not yet codified, it was very much practiced and Ghandi, in between Blacks and Whites ( in fact one step up from Coloureds), saw that Jews OFTEN (not always depending on skin tone but he remained ignorant of this) treated as Whites.
For this he was in contempt of them. He most often met dark skinned Arabs and so in his mind he equivocated the Israeli struggle with Imperialism and Racism when in fact Jew and Arab are the same as a Calucttan and a native of Madras. BOTH are Semitic.
In the end old Ghandi ate a lead lunch when some Hindu extremists who thought his attempts at doing away with the Caste System were an affront to the very basis of their Culture, blew him to bits after he stepped off a train.
Good book, not the first one I have read on the subject but one of the better ones for sure.
Other such "paragons," are people like MLK (Matrin Luter King of the US Civil Rights Movement). A married Baptist preacher and a family man to the bone - PUBLICLY - in reality he loved to smoke, drink, and joke but most of all to play the ladies' man.
This does not take away on iota from his legacy as far as I am concerned. He struggled to end a horrid system, against great odds, and lost his life in doing so. That is not somehow different just because he had untold affairs.
I am espeically taken aback by the likes of 2 Anti-Apartheid figures, held to be saints by many.
Nelson Mandela. who has not held him up as an ideal? Much less known though is the fact that he is no different than Osama Bin Laden except that he kept his terrorisn only in and around his country. Babies heads getting blown off, black as well as white proves that he is among the most vile of men.
During his imprisonment on Robben Island he then became a snitch and was moved to a split-level suburban type home, given run of the roost, and had his own fax machine, private visits with women, and so on. This is where he spent most of the imprisonment which has sadly been held up as an example of his moral fortitude.
His fellow ANC members who were on Robben Island with him though had no such luck. Unlike Mandela, they were only in the organisation's political organisation. Mandela was the founder and leader of the "Spear," the armed wing. When you know ALL these facts things look might different to say the least.
But a special person on my litle list is Arch-Bishop Desmond Tutu. This man is a hate mongering Jew-Hater of the worst kind. Among his many gems was the time he told the Jerusalem Post (7/26/85) how Jews lied about the Holocaust just to make money, and that Israel is nothing but a business venture for them. Pretty amazing about being so Capitalist in nature given that Israel was hardcore Socialist/Communist until the end of the 1980s!
Comparing America's "Jewish Lobby" to Hitler, Milosevic, Stalin...Saying Israel is WORSE than S. Africa under Apartheid...Jews should forgive Nazis and Nazis have no reason to say sorry to Jews...Jews are an arrrogant People...When accused of being 'snti-Semitic' his answer? "TOUGH LUCK!"
Asked another time whether he is an "anti-Semite," his response: "My dentist is Dr Cohen."Among choicer things he has said: "Jews thought they had a monopoly on G-D, Jesus was angry with them (wait? Was Jesus a Jew as well genius?), "Jews are a peculiar People," "Jews should be judged be a different standard,"
and on it goes.
There was a time, in an unrelated thread in CE and P (Politics) Forum where someone began lionising the man and I had the audacity to question this depiction of Tutu as some moral super hero.
Well they ran with that of course. It got so bad with personal insuults that I just ignored the thread, ALWAYS a smart idea. Which brings me to another very related subject: The situation in Gaza.
There are at least 4 current BL threads on it, one of which is in the European and African Drug Discussion Forum (why there, I do not know). Some concerned member let me know that I should look into what they were saying, and I did.
The result? The usual personal insults, calling ALL Israeli brutal, racist, and oppressive without realising that their doing so makes them guilty of THOSE things while still failing to even remotely prove their claims!
Then today, a former Mod and now one of the "BL Crew" chimed in on how repulsive it is that Israel is doing what ti is doing, etc. He remarked that a picture in the Guardian of a dead Arab girl, supposed to have been killed by an Israeli artillery shell made him cry. Nothing at all wrong with that and indeed, admitting that you cried is quite poignant in my book and gives you points.
However, doing so, in response to a manipulative photo in a periodical that is 100% biased (actually worse than most Arab media if you can imagine, has not had even an objective, let alone pro-Israel slant in at least 20 years, in ANY articles), is another issue altogether.
I remarked that it is good that he cried but why is he NOT crying for the children in S'derot Israel, in Sha'ar HaNegev, Be'ersheva, Ashkelon, and dozens of other places to the tune of more than 100,000 Israelis who have had to live within 12 seconds of a bomb shelter for the last 36 months?
I asked him if he had cried when that 15 year old Israeli girl in S'derot, who was walking home her 7 year old retarded brother when the Alarms went off -and knew she could not make it within 12 seconds- thew the boy down and laid atop him before having her body torn in half by one of those "harmless" Qassams. I asked him if he had cried seeing the pictures of that 7 year old Mongoloid wailing over her decapitated head.
Well , this poster sent me a PM. The PM was very, very short, just 2 lines. It said that I was a fucking asshole who he wanted to punch in the jaw, and that he had never felt that way about any other BLer in his 9 years on the site. He ended it by
calling me a "condescenging asshole."
To his credit he relegated this to PM, which I fully support. I took the time once again to explain the disparity in his reponse, and also offered that he should not feel frustrated in wanting to hit me because I alone perhaps, of all BLers give my actual full name and address in my info here!
Anytime, anyplace, anyone. I do not like cyber-tough guys using ridiculous screen names, making threats from their PCs. I would rather all people could act mature and rational AND discuss things. However, if it moves beyond that, I have no problem and would rather confront a threat head on. Anyway, like 99.9 percent of internet tough guys it will all come to naught. Too bad. With the stress I have here it might be uplifting.
I will continue later...
Music wise, I have been listening to my Ofra Chaza CDs, so no beating you in the head with Youtube videos this time around. In the West she is know as "Ofra Haza," is very famous in Alternative circles.
She has had all kinds or collaborations, and has been sampled by everyone from the EU Trip Hop group "Mars" to the American rapper "Rakim" (Oaid in Full).
Her family were Yemeni Jews, she was very dark skinned, and she is said to have had the finest voice of anyone living in her generation with the widest Register ever recorded. She married a rich businessman by the last name of Aloni, whose family I know. Sadly, he was a junkie who injected.
He gave her HIV and both are long dead. She died many years ago.
Book wise, reading"Freedom at Midnight" by Larry Collins and Dominique La Pierre, and it is a non-fictional book about the Independance of India, from right before it to the Partition of India and Pakistan with Ghandi figuring prominently.
I always find it very interesting to note how lionised public figures are always considered to be these virtuous superheroes, these paragons of strength and morality.
Ghandi for example, he had some strong points certainly, but his same strong points were his weakest features. A religious Hindu, he tried to force the very large Muslim minority to accept One Stare Rule whether they cared to or not. For the record, they abhorred the idea almost universally.
He believed in eating only minimal amounts of food, manipulating the media and pointing to his caloric consumption while using it as a selling point, as if to illustrate the depravity and corrupt nature of British Rule in India.
He was very much the Hindu however he advocated negation of the Caste System. At the same time that he fought so strenuously for his own land's freedom, he disparaged any other groups who fought for theirs, if he personally did not care for the group or its aims.
One of those groups happens to be the Jews. Ghandi had gone to S. Africa as a youth and while Aparthied was not yet codified, it was very much practiced and Ghandi, in between Blacks and Whites ( in fact one step up from Coloureds), saw that Jews OFTEN (not always depending on skin tone but he remained ignorant of this) treated as Whites.
For this he was in contempt of them. He most often met dark skinned Arabs and so in his mind he equivocated the Israeli struggle with Imperialism and Racism when in fact Jew and Arab are the same as a Calucttan and a native of Madras. BOTH are Semitic.
In the end old Ghandi ate a lead lunch when some Hindu extremists who thought his attempts at doing away with the Caste System were an affront to the very basis of their Culture, blew him to bits after he stepped off a train.
Good book, not the first one I have read on the subject but one of the better ones for sure.
Other such "paragons," are people like MLK (Matrin Luter King of the US Civil Rights Movement). A married Baptist preacher and a family man to the bone - PUBLICLY - in reality he loved to smoke, drink, and joke but most of all to play the ladies' man.
This does not take away on iota from his legacy as far as I am concerned. He struggled to end a horrid system, against great odds, and lost his life in doing so. That is not somehow different just because he had untold affairs.
I am espeically taken aback by the likes of 2 Anti-Apartheid figures, held to be saints by many.
Nelson Mandela. who has not held him up as an ideal? Much less known though is the fact that he is no different than Osama Bin Laden except that he kept his terrorisn only in and around his country. Babies heads getting blown off, black as well as white proves that he is among the most vile of men.
During his imprisonment on Robben Island he then became a snitch and was moved to a split-level suburban type home, given run of the roost, and had his own fax machine, private visits with women, and so on. This is where he spent most of the imprisonment which has sadly been held up as an example of his moral fortitude.
His fellow ANC members who were on Robben Island with him though had no such luck. Unlike Mandela, they were only in the organisation's political organisation. Mandela was the founder and leader of the "Spear," the armed wing. When you know ALL these facts things look might different to say the least.
But a special person on my litle list is Arch-Bishop Desmond Tutu. This man is a hate mongering Jew-Hater of the worst kind. Among his many gems was the time he told the Jerusalem Post (7/26/85) how Jews lied about the Holocaust just to make money, and that Israel is nothing but a business venture for them. Pretty amazing about being so Capitalist in nature given that Israel was hardcore Socialist/Communist until the end of the 1980s!
Comparing America's "Jewish Lobby" to Hitler, Milosevic, Stalin...Saying Israel is WORSE than S. Africa under Apartheid...Jews should forgive Nazis and Nazis have no reason to say sorry to Jews...Jews are an arrrogant People...When accused of being 'snti-Semitic' his answer? "TOUGH LUCK!"
Asked another time whether he is an "anti-Semite," his response: "My dentist is Dr Cohen."Among choicer things he has said: "Jews thought they had a monopoly on G-D, Jesus was angry with them (wait? Was Jesus a Jew as well genius?), "Jews are a peculiar People," "Jews should be judged be a different standard,"
and on it goes.
There was a time, in an unrelated thread in CE and P (Politics) Forum where someone began lionising the man and I had the audacity to question this depiction of Tutu as some moral super hero.
Well they ran with that of course. It got so bad with personal insuults that I just ignored the thread, ALWAYS a smart idea. Which brings me to another very related subject: The situation in Gaza.
There are at least 4 current BL threads on it, one of which is in the European and African Drug Discussion Forum (why there, I do not know). Some concerned member let me know that I should look into what they were saying, and I did.
The result? The usual personal insults, calling ALL Israeli brutal, racist, and oppressive without realising that their doing so makes them guilty of THOSE things while still failing to even remotely prove their claims!
Then today, a former Mod and now one of the "BL Crew" chimed in on how repulsive it is that Israel is doing what ti is doing, etc. He remarked that a picture in the Guardian of a dead Arab girl, supposed to have been killed by an Israeli artillery shell made him cry. Nothing at all wrong with that and indeed, admitting that you cried is quite poignant in my book and gives you points.
However, doing so, in response to a manipulative photo in a periodical that is 100% biased (actually worse than most Arab media if you can imagine, has not had even an objective, let alone pro-Israel slant in at least 20 years, in ANY articles), is another issue altogether.
I remarked that it is good that he cried but why is he NOT crying for the children in S'derot Israel, in Sha'ar HaNegev, Be'ersheva, Ashkelon, and dozens of other places to the tune of more than 100,000 Israelis who have had to live within 12 seconds of a bomb shelter for the last 36 months?
I asked him if he had cried when that 15 year old Israeli girl in S'derot, who was walking home her 7 year old retarded brother when the Alarms went off -and knew she could not make it within 12 seconds- thew the boy down and laid atop him before having her body torn in half by one of those "harmless" Qassams. I asked him if he had cried seeing the pictures of that 7 year old Mongoloid wailing over her decapitated head.
Well , this poster sent me a PM. The PM was very, very short, just 2 lines. It said that I was a fucking asshole who he wanted to punch in the jaw, and that he had never felt that way about any other BLer in his 9 years on the site. He ended it by
calling me a "condescenging asshole."
To his credit he relegated this to PM, which I fully support. I took the time once again to explain the disparity in his reponse, and also offered that he should not feel frustrated in wanting to hit me because I alone perhaps, of all BLers give my actual full name and address in my info here!
Anytime, anyplace, anyone. I do not like cyber-tough guys using ridiculous screen names, making threats from their PCs. I would rather all people could act mature and rational AND discuss things. However, if it moves beyond that, I have no problem and would rather confront a threat head on. Anyway, like 99.9 percent of internet tough guys it will all come to naught. Too bad. With the stress I have here it might be uplifting.
I will continue later...