I just got done listening to a radio drama version of Tennessee Williams’ THE GLASS MENAGERIE. This version a 1951 THEATER GUILD ON THE AIR live radio production, as all radio back then was live, starring Helen Hays and Montgomery Clift is well performed if a little too heavy on the humor. I saw Malkovich’s version of it on TV a few years ago, and that captured it. A sense of… longing and loss.

But even on this radio version there’s that great final monologue. And that fantastic line…

“I descended the steps of this fire escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my father’s footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space.”

Attempting to find in motion what was lost in space.

That line haunted me when I first heard it.

It haunts me still.

Thanksgiving is a very Western holiday.

And I am increasingly… not western.

I’ll take the day off. Sure. But I’ll take it in my way.

The United American Indians of New England since 1970 have called Thanksgiving by perhaps a more apt name, ‘A Day of Mourning’ and have observed it as such. And being myself a son of colonial horror, I see clearly their stance. My aboriginal blood, always pulling toward aboriginal people. Be they Zulu or Wampanoags.

I find myself, somewhere between those two disparate camps of celebration and mourning.

I find for me, the day is one of rumination. A day of reflection.

************

More on Holidays.

I refuse to be dictated to, regarding what I should celebrate. I refuse to bury truths, beneath money making lies. The general purpose of holidays.

Be it Thanksgiving or Christmas, a pagan Roman Holiday to debauchery that became retrofitted to celebrating the Roman’s killing of, what they considered, a so-called Christ, and retrofitted again in the 20th century as a marketing tool, a tool for big business to get bigger. Selling toys, and cards, and trees and crosses.

And a word on the cross.

The cross long before Christianity was a Greek, then Roman, symbol of torture and terror, the very word has its roots as a device of torture.

And was perfected by the great Roman empire, going up and down, and to and fro the entire world, the sign of you crossing yourself, it is also how the devil is described. The cross was a symbol of terror before the coming of Christ, and remains so. Only it has become slightly more horrible, as they have added a crucified man to that symbol.

The cross is not celebrating Christ’s life, it is celebrating Rome’s victory. Who but the lyncher makes the lynching and the lynch rope their symbol? Who but the crucifier makes the crucifixtion their symbol?

Think.

The tiny cult of Christianity a long time ago was usurped, like everything else, by those who loved it not. They want to sell you the idea of a meek martyr and salvation paid by submission to the state.

But the man we wrongly call Jesus Christ (that is a Romanized name, surely not a name this dark man, with hair like lambs wool, ever heard in his life, more accurate would be Rome altering this African martyr’s name to their purpose, and labeling him with a play on their JC, Julius Caesar), he came not to bring peace but a sword. And if the idea of a Black Christ changes your relation to that Christ, or your comfort or belief in that Christ, then I say to you… your religion is a fucking sham.

And you should call yourself what you truly are… a son of the new Rome and proud eater of Christ.

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”
–Mathew 10:34-36

It’s the standing up of a man you want to make a symbol, not the falling down.

Think.

And you may realize, everything America does stinks of lies.

“And if you heard I was celebrating, it’s a world wide lie” – Public Enemy

Let me preface this by saying… I am not a tv guy.

If you’ve followed this blog any, you know that.

I can, and routinely do, go months without watching TV. I in fact do not own a tv. But I do own laptops and quite an extensive DVD collection. I keep abreast of what people are saying is hot or good in TV land, and eventually get around to trying the DVDs.

And usually all these hyped shows… I’m unimpressed.

LOST, 24, PRISON BREAK, HEROES all shows I’ve heard rapturous praise, and finally seen… they’re uneven at best, with some great episodes, but mostly a lot of filler, sub-par episodes.

THE WIRE is another show that I heard so much praise for, and finally watched it cannot hold a candle to its predecessor HOMICIDE.

Typically it’s the British Television shows that I think are currently knocking it out the park. Shows like HUSTLE and ULTRAVIOLET and JEKYLL and TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF EARTH. Because their seasons are tight, they avoid the filler and weak episodes so common to American Television seasons.

There are exceptions, a few American shows, that are televison at its finest.

DAY BREAK is one of those shows.

To say it’s 24 meets Groundhog Day, gives you a crude and unwieldy signpost, and ultimately a lacking one. It is those two things, those two vague and well worn themes, but done right and brilliantly and strong for the whole season.

I have things to do, and places to go, and I cannot stop watching the bloody DVDs.

It’s BRILLIANT!

So of course it was canceled in one season.

I mean multi-ethnic cast, strong Black lead character… Oh please cancel me now, and let’s leave on crap like SMALLVILLE, or another CSI or LAW AND ORDER.

But while it may have only been one season, at least is was a GREAT FRIGGING SEASON!

Try it for yourself. And don’t forget to listen to all the commentaries, pretty great stuff.

“We love only heroes. Glorious
death in battle. Scaling walls, burning bridges behind us, destroying
all ways back. All retreat. As if
some things were fixed. As if the moon
would come to us each night (&
we could watch
from the battlements). As if
there were anything certain
or lovely
in our lives.”

— excerpt from “THE DEATH OF NICK CHARLES” by Amiri Baraka (available in the great anthology BLACK VOICES)

*************

I have been listening all day to an old time radio program called CRIME CLASSICS. From the 1950s it is absolutely riveting half hour based shows, that dramatize infamous places in history. It dramatizes our crimes. From Lizzie Borden to Billy the Kid to others who I have never heard of. It tells of places deep and dark and devious, that can only accurately be called the human heart. It is brilliantly directed/produced by Elliot Lewis, written by Morton Fine and David Freemen, and captivatingly introduced by Lou Merrill portraying Thomas Hyland and performed by some of the best radio actors of the day, from Paul Frees to William Conrad to Bill Johnstone.

I don’t know how to sell someone on audio dramas, anymore than I know how to sell someone on reading. To me it’s analogous to having to sell someone on breathing or sex. It is something people should be, of their own volition, racing toward… racing to do, racing to consume.

Audio dramas, the best of them, are such a pure medium. Such an interactive one, while still being a completely solid vision/narrative.

And Old Time Radio is a very reflective medium, it can teach, by that distance of time, of old oaths that we have turned our back on, and old follies that we have embraced.

I highly recommend this show. And you can find it here. I recommend getting it quickly as the shows have a tendency to disappear as greedy corporations and venal lawyers and their lobbying… erodes the concept of Public Domain… erodes the concept of The Public. It is a great show. Enjoy.

****************

“His name is…

Will it ever come to me? There is a grand lapse of memory that may be the only thing to save us from ultimate horror. Perhaps they know the truth who preach the passing of one life into another, vowing that between a certain death and a certain birth there is an interval in which an old name is forgotten before a new one is learned. And to remember the name of a former life is to begin the backward slide into that great blackness in which all names have their source, becoming incarnate in a succession of bodies like numberless verses of an infinite scripture.

To find that you have had so many names is to lose the claim to any one of them. To gain the memory of so many lives is to lose them all.”
—From Thomas Ligotti’s GRIMSCRIBE short story collection

I find Ligotti an acquired taste. I’ve read several of the stories in GRIMSCRIBE in his more comprehensive collection, THE SHADOW AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD, and I wasn’t particularly taken by them there. I thought the GRIMSCRIBE selections were the weakest part of THE SHADOW AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD (an uneven, but worth having anthology, because the stories that do work, four come to mind, are worth the price of admission). But I found the above excerpt from Ligotti’s introduction to GRIMSCRIBE quite compelling.

********************

“Formal business has certainly decayed in the city centre, with empty shops, boarded-up office blocks. Maybe a Black guy will buy a shop and start selling pap, the local food, but there’s been no boom of Black businesses- prices are still high, and because of the Group Areas Act it’s mainly Asians who own the shops and warehouses. There are plenty of traders and hawkers in the streets now, ladies doing other ladies’ hair for money and services like that. There are big working-class taxi ranks because the public transport is so bad. But the general economic trend is very clear: the rich have got richer and the poor poorer. Under the ANC, South Africa has now surpassed Brazil as the most unequal country in the world. According to Statistics South Africa, the average African household has got 19 percent poorer in the past five years, and the average White household 15 percent richer.”
—Trevor Ngwane discussing the current conditions of South Africa, from Tom Mertes’ A MOVEMENT OF MOVEMENTS.

I have very little to say about the Fort Hood, Texas massacre.

Not because I have become numbed to massacres by dint of long sojourn in America, that bastion of massacres, though surely some of that is in my reaction and the reaction at large. I feel for the loss of life and loved ones in this atrocity, as I do every atrocity. Those we endure ourselves and those atrocities we impose on others.

I feel them all.

No I have very little to say, because it was largely said by better men than me, before me.

“I don’t know who I’m going to shoot, you put a rifle in my hand”

and

“This is chickens coming home to roost”

America for a while now, has worn herself thin declaring war on every darker, non-christian country from Haiti to Liberia. Waging what amounts to the bloodiest religious crusades in the history of the world, while being tactful enough to keep the idea of crusades and ethnic cleansings out of the television reasoning for such expenditure of lives and dollars.

At a time when America would be best served by shoring up her own crumbling economic, moral, educational and cultural landscape we instead invest our time in destroying these things for other countries. And the oddest thing is, we get other disenfranchised people to go out and disenfranchise other people.

It’s a cycle we’ve been engaged in since the Revolutionary war. Making of victims, our victimizers.

The Irish became the American police force, because Ireland had become a fucking killing ground. And disenfranchised soldiers flocked here to find something… better.

The Buffalo Soldiers, escapees of enslavement, won renown by being efficient cleaners of the plains, killers of Native Americans.

Latin Americans escaping in some cases decades of bloody totalitarian regimes, often supported by US Dollars, augment today’s dwindling American armed forces.

And the cycle continues.

Our victims today, America will turn around and make (when they have no other jobs to accept) her victimizers tomorrow. That type of duplicity and juggling act is no easy feat to keep going.

In fact it’s damn difficult and dangerous.

And the concept of diminishing returns being a reality, it is costing America.

America has by hook or by crook, pushed, grabbed, cajoled, threatened anyone it can…. to garner the manpower to continue its endless war. In many cases that has meant the armed forces being more than happy to augment its forces with the less than stable. From well documented cases of soldiers with Autism, to convicts, to out and out psychopaths.

America doesn’t care who they put on the front lines, as long as you will kill for them. It doesn’t care what you have to lose to go someplace and kill people you have no beef with, as long as you do it. As long as you will be their gun.

The problem with that is, every so often, people get shot with their own guns. Particularly irresponsible people. And America is an irresponsible nation.

It is an irrational nation, that breeds this in their subjects, demands it even. Demands that you accept the most irrational reasoning, the most irrational justifications… for that which can not be justified.

You ask of people to kill for your lies, to weigh the life of the other… cheap. For no other reason than you say so. To surrender personal moralities, religions, codes, ethics, humanities… to the ever shifting dictates of the state.

And at some point teaching people to weigh other lives cheap means the ability to weigh all lives cheap.

Do you understand?

You can not spit horror into the wind, and not ultimately end up swallowing it yourself.

I do not know this Officer Hasan, beyond the sound-bites that his life has been reduced to. But as a psychiatrist, he was obviously an intelligent man, more intelligent arguably than those who now debate him, and as a psychiatrist understanding of the strange landscape of the human condition.

So to try and right this off as a dirty muslim, killing good Americans would be inept.

No do not put that lie upon your soul.

Officer Hasan perhaps was never more American, than in his massacre of other Americans.

It is after all, the American past time. Ask any number of Post offices, or Shopping Malls, or Schools, or McDonalds.

No my dear beloved child, you lay that butchery at Fort Hood, where it belongs… with you.

And with me.

Hasan was the bomb, but we as America… were the lit and burning fuse.

Officer Hasan was by occupation aware of Abraham Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs, and Berger and Luckmann’s Social Construction of Reality so he understood better than most the foilbles and fallacies of the human condition, its pitfalls, and yet he himself fell into them.

Looked too long into the abyss, and found it sweet.

What hope have the rest of us?

If a man whose occupation it is, to deal with pressure, himself crumbled under the pressure of America, how much more these 18 and 19 and 20 year olds that we send into the killing fields?

How shall they come back to us? Us… we who gleefully do send them out to kill, in unjust wars to unjust ends, if not changed and ready to show us… what lessons they have learned at liberty’s great lap.

Oh yes, what they have sown abroad, we will surely in the fullness of time, reap the harvest of at home.

You and me and all of us.

Unless we stop this train wreck direction America is on, this rule by sociopaths… then our Fort Hoods are waiting for us.

All of us.

This is what is to be learned from all that pain and anguish and calamity of Fort Hood. That it is America… unplugged.

Chickens coming home to roost.

I’m really… happy that some of my old posts continue to find an audience and continue to be looked at favorably. And for those of you who took, and take, the time to comment… Thank You.

This will be a very brief post, I’ll just leave you with a recent discovery or rediscovery depending on your point of view:

I mentioned Bob Dylan a couple posts back, and how I’ve been a fan of his mostly from his singles, catching his music on the radio or in film soundtracks (such as his brilliant score for PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID) but having not really listened to any of his albums all the way through.

So this past week with the assistance of my local library I’ve been rectifying that.

I started with his BLONDE ON BLONDE, an album whose title alone makes my pornographic brain smile, but that aside I was (given the raves this album gets)… underwhelmed.

On first listen (with the exception of VISIONS OF JOHANNA which is an absolute masterpiece) I was pretty unmoved by most of the songs. And I realize you have to put what he was doing in the perspective of the times, I understand how revolutionary his blend of folk and rock was in a younger 1966 America, but importance is no substitute for timelessness and staying power, and I feel a lot of these songs lack staying power.

So I can understand the criticism to this album, because I had them, and to an extent still have them (particularly when it comes to the 2nd CD). But i would say to the detractors put the album on rotate on your CD-player and just live with it for a week.

Because that’s what I did.

I gave the album several more listens, I understand some albums have to grow on you, and I did grow to quite enjoy the first half of the 2CD album. Especially the zany fun of LEOPARD SKIN PILL BOX HAT and just the addictive beauty of JUST LIKE A WOMAN, and of course as mentioned the highlight of the album… VISIONS OF JOHANNA. You could spend a lifetime decoding the beauty and imagery and meaning of that song, and find new beauty and imagery and meaning everytime.

But for the winners the album had, there were still quite a few more that even with repeated listens I just didn’t like or engage with. So final verdict: an album definitely worth a listen for the ones that work, JOHANNA worth the price of the cd by itself. Just go in understanding it’s not a masterpiece (at least not an out the box one) and it will need to grow on you, and I think you’ll appreciate it. B/B-.

Some odds and ends I need to get on the blog, so I can make room for other items.

********
I just saw the short film GOD AND SHAKESPEARE courtesy of NZSHORTFILM.COM. Being a fan of hyperbole and florid language, I quite liked it. Irreverent, and humorous, while having some heart to it. Good stuff. Plus the woman who makes an appearance as Venus…. HUBBA HUBBA HUBBA. (Yes I am quite mature).

There’s another one called FLAT at GUERILLAFILMMAKERS.COM. While the site appears to be out of date, the short film is still available for download. A well done cautionary tale. Ladies you should watch this one.

*******

Site of the day: The Earchives. You gotta love that name, and the fact that it’s Microsoft free.

*********

The diverse downloading options for video are drying up as sites increasingly accept itunes and youtube as defacto distribution standards.

**********

I just saw the preview for THE WOLFMAN and it looks… FANTASTIC. But I admit to being a werewolf fan, but that said it still looks astounding. Though the director issues do not fill me with confidence. The preview may be the best thing about the film, but we’ll see.

**********

Archive.org offers two great silent version of THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER. Both versions come highly recommended.

http://www.stephenkingshortmovies.com/ is a site, that true to its name is filled with trailers and links to Stephen King related films, interviews, etc.

************

Sidestepping into music for a second:

NO ESCAPE FROM THE BLUES:THE ELECTRIC LADY SESSIONS by James Blood Ulmer
I wanted to like this album more than I did. The strongest ones for me were tracks 3 (WHO’S BEEN TALKING), 4(GHETTO CHILD), 5(ARE YOU GLAD TO BE IN AMERICA), and #10 (SATISFY). But even these tracks were not a slam dunk for me, took a few listens on a couple tracks for me to give the thumbs up. The remaining tracks were even more problematic, the British have a saying,”taking a piss”.

Ulmer is an educated man, so there’s a sense of artifice, for me at least in his slurring words and making vocals unclear. It kind of takes me out of the moment. Though to be fair, Ulmer doing it is no different from generations of white musicians, from Elvis to Wolfman Jack to Eminem, making their careers adopting the sound of darker men, who paid dearly to forge such a sound.

So I don’t begrudge Ulmer the artifice, artifice perhaps being the wrong word, as Ulmer unlike others is of the same turmoil and tempermant that forged those who birthed the blues… however for me the songs failed for the most part to connect with me.

For me the strongest ones are the ones I mentioned, which he (with one exception) wrote. Which tells me there is some validity to my complaint. People write Blues songs for Ulmer, songs they want him to be someone else, Ulmer writes Ulmer songs. And it’s about his search for himself. And the difference is staggering.

When he sings his own songs, I believe them.

So all in all, It’s worth a listen, I mean it is sonically a well mastered CD, and the instrumentals are fantastic. Ulmer has some fantastic guitar work going on here. Ulmer’s skill is not open to question. But for me, after several listens, my reservations with the majority of the album remains. B-/C+.

I’ve recently ordered Ulmer’s debut album TALES OF CAPTAIN BLACK and really looking forward to it. I’ll provide a review just as soon as I can listen to it a few times.

When not… raging against the dying of the light, I enjoy the simple pleasures… like any other son of Africa.

One of those pleasures of late… is music, specifically instrumental soundtracks with a heavy funk/jazz vibe… and even more specifically, the early soundtracks of Quincy Jones.

I mentioned the IN COLD BLOOD album a few posts back. Well since then I have managed to get my hands on that 1967 record (My criticisms of Ebay aside, it can at times come in handy for buyers. Particularly for items like IN COLD BLOOD which are not available on CD) and the kindest and most succinct way to summarize my reaction to that 40 year old album is… it blew my mind.

I mean the sample of the IN COLD BLOOD title track, that I had heard on a music podcast (that started this whole soundtrack obsession. Thank you Ratso for making me broke! Proof positive that letting people share music actually HELPS sales!) had prepped me for the album to be good, but I didn’t dare to hope the whole thing would be great.

And it is. The IN COLD BLOOD soundtrack is a remarkable achievement that sounds devastating, inventive, original and ahead of its time today, so I can’t quite put in perspective what it must have been like hearing this score for the first time in 1967.

I can’t imagine it, back then, not winning Quincy Jones a nomination (which it did), and more deservedly the Academy award.

It is a brief album, I forgot the tight and effective pacing of LPs in the days before CDs. The score comes in at well under 36 minutes total.

But what a half hour.

All I can say is… once the album was done, I immediately had to listen to it again, and again. That is the sign of a masterfully constructed album.

Now those praises heaped on this album, there are some downsides. While I have a very pristine album copy and the sound is great, this soundtrack is too important and too good not to get remastered and made available on CD; because while I respect and admire Mr. Jones’ staggering accomplishments and body of work to date, for me… these early instrumental soundtracks are (excuse my slide into 70s speak) where it’s at.

I mean I will not be surprised if my greatest audio discovery of 2009 turns out to be a 40+ year old record called IN COLD BLOOD. It is that brilliant.

However that raises other problems. Jazzed by the BLOOD score, I went looking for other early Quincy Jones scores. Let me tell you right now… a cheap past-time that is not.

And so far what I’m finding is the other scores while good, and in places brilliant can not hold a candle to IN COLD BLOOD. Now I say that having only tried DOLLARS and THE LOST MAN. A lot of people praise those two scores, but I was underwhelmed, particularly by DOLLARS. Your mileage may vary.

But as I said, I’m still waiting to receive THE PAWNBROKER, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, THE SPLIT, and THEY CALL ME MR. TIBBS soundtracks (CD when available, LP when not).

I’ve sampled online some of his THE SPLIT soundtrack and that one I think may be up there with IN COLD BLOOD, also i’m hearing good things about the THEY CALL ME MR. TIBBS score. So I’ll offer my take on those scores when they come in.

In addition researching Quincy Jones’ early soundtrack work has also put on my radar some of his early jazz albums as well as soundtrack albums by other composers. What can I say… I’m a compulsive dude, I can latch onto a few passions to the exclusion of pretty much all else. I can go years without watching tv or reading comics, and then something will launch itself on my radar and suddenly I’m consuming years worth of DVDs and Comics in weeks.

Currently I’m in my music phase, with a side compulsion in books. And boy is my wallet not happy with me.

Anyhow to help you also get in on this soundtrack kick (hey why should I be the only one going broke) I’m going to direct you to a few nifty links:

So who is this Quincy Jones cat?

Well for those of you asking that question, or for those just seeking more info, SOUL WALKING has put together a pretty darn comprehensive page, on the living legend that is Quincy Jones. Check it out here!

Now that you know who the man is, I guess you want to hear a little bit of what he brings to the table.

Well it just so happens that DJ Spinnas has put together a pretty awesome tribute/mashup to the work of Quincy Jones. You can check it out here!

It’s exceptionally well put together, though if I had to fault it for anything it is a little too heavy into Quincy’s later vocal collaborations, which is really not my cup of tea. Just stick to the crazy instrumentals and I’m there. But my personal bias aside, it is brilliantly done… and definitely recommended!

Moving on, here are two places that review soundtracks and records, I generally think their reviews are whacked (I’m joking– not!), but both are expansive sites and quite informative, so check it out for yourself:

BLAXPLOITATION

WARR

Have I ever mentioned I hate Amazon.com?

Well there you go. Anyhow as an alternative I’m always looking for other people to give my business to. If you can’t find the CD/record you are looking for through the usual suspects, you may want to give the following sites a look. I have not done business with them yet, so can’t speak on that, but what I can say is the below sites are a joy to browse though and offer detailed info on the products, and include sound clips. They had me at hello.

The sites are:

MOVIE GROOVES

and

BUY SOUNDTRAX

and

DUSTY GROOVE (doesn’t offer sound-clips unfortunately, but their excellent reviews help make up for it)

Well that’s it folks, you’ve been turned onto IN COLD BLOOD and been given places to learn, hear, and ultimately purchase more. So without further ado kiddies go out there and… listen.

Till next time… be safe, be free. And if you can’t be both, choose the latter. .

LAST MINUTE EDIT: Wanted to give some love to another Soundtrack Review site, perhaps “THE” Soundtrack Review Site, SCORE BABY! Just a stellar site from bottom to top, and if it doesn’t spur you to purchase copious amounts of soundtracks, than you have more willpower than I do. Swing by here to take a look!.

And tell them HT sent you!

Profound things I’ve recently read or reread:

“If we live all our life with lies, it becomes hard to see anything if it has nothing to do with those lies.”
- Amiri Baraka (writing as Leroi Jones at the time)

I met him today. Went to hear him speak. It is rare when the fact of a man, lives up to the myth. Mr. Baraka is such a rarity.

He spoke on many things, in his 70s, he spoke on many things, with wit and grace and humor, and something very few people fractions of his age have… with passion.

He was very much still, that young man who sought to, and to great degrees did… change worlds.

Still that Angry Young Man. And I use that phrase in its finest meaning. Not Anger that destroys, but Anger that motivates, that asks of the world to rise from burning beds. Conviction is perhaps the more accurate term, he had the conviction of that younger age of Panthers and Prophets. Of men who did, rather than discussed.

He had more energy in that 70+ year frame than in a whole city of young, confused , direction-less Black men, being herded, and in many cases running headlong, to the prisons and the graves.

The whole wheel of our society is designed around what DuBois called THE MIS-EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO, our schools, and entertainment and churches and urban centers and laws and fractured homes, geared to produce ignorant masses.

Why?

Control. Control has always been the fuel and the feast of the tyrannical.

A ruling class, maintains rule by concepts of supremacy and inferiority. A bigoted system doesn’t just prefer, but needs the stereotype of the thug, the menace to society, because that villain… is inferior and is easily dealt with, easily used, easily enslaved, and easily turned against his own and turned to the needs of the state.

But a Baraka, a Shabazz, this nation has fought internal wars of terrorism against the growth of such men.

Because such men, resist stereotypes. And not only do they give the lie to the concept of White Supremacy, not just by proving themselves the equals of their detractors, but they make a very compelling argument for being their betters.

The 1960s is when America, and the world was on the verge of a real… evolution. When we had in our sights the chance for growth, not of our technology, but our humanity, our conscience, our unity, our art, our peace.

And it all hinged on this idea of self determination, from China to Cuba to America to Senegal… the whole world was fighting to grow out of their fathers’ lives. And perhaps into their own.

From the Black Panthers to the Zapatistas, it was all the same fight. A fight against entrenched colonial evils, entrenched slavery. But more than that, it was a fight for evolution.

Instead of evolution however, powers and principalities won the day in the 60s, and crushed globally, but most notably in America that burgeoning social consciousness. And from that point to now, when the rule of law was put on hold, and assassination of the enemies of empire green lit, going on 50 years, we have not evolved. Our technology yes, but not our humanity, not our art, not our dreams, not our conscience.

We largely are stuck mired in the same entrenched hates, and economic folly, and capitalistic wars, of the 60s. In fact it’s worse, because our technology increasingly allows our hates and our ignorance a greater ability… to harm.

So in the 60s when we put down those Angry Young Men who spoke, before anyone else, of community based health care, and community schools, and self-love, and true community/tribal policing, and pan-national unity, when we stopped them because of their dreams and plans of Camelot… what did we stop them for?

Is the average American, whether white or black, any better than his father? I would say we are worse, sure we have toys, but we also have an America on the verge of economic, cultural and societal collapse. We are Germany, poised before the rise of Hitler.

We are poised again for Fascism. Again for Rome.

We have gone backwards since we turned our back on those young men, who pointed us to the future. We murdered them and caged them for life, and allowed the greed of the few, to condemn the many to failure.

Failure for the dream of America. Failure for the dream of something better for our children.

Your racism is a class construct used to make you a tool, make your children tools, and preserve a decaying power structure of Disney and Time Warner and Sony and Shell, to preserve a decaying, fabricated system of lords and serfs, that should have been demolished and strewn to the four winds, five decades ago.

Your racism keeps you… a slave. A nigger. That’s the war we fight. Not of name calling, or ethnicity, but of reason and ignorance. It is a fight to see the whole chess board, not just the piece you sit on. And ultimately it is a fight to evolve, and that cannot happen in a world run by multinational corporations and robber barons, in a world of unchecked capitalism/fascism.

“If we live all our life with lies, it becomes hard to see anything if it has nothing to do with those lies”

That’s why I go out and listen, and hopefully learn from these women and men who still speak the truth.

I have some hopes, that the word, in an age of orbital nuclear weapons and designer diseases… I have hope… that all of it, all of it, all the lies, all the powers, all the principalities, can begin falling like dominoes. Knocked down by men and women… who will never cease speaking… a few true words.

[p.s. Many of Mr. Baraka's books and plays have long been out of print. He's making them available for purchase through his recently setup website. I of course highly recommend supporting him, and owning his books. You can view his site here.]

They are killing people with robots, and no one has a problem with this.

They… our military.

They… our government.

I’ve long thought saturation bombing was a… crushing evil. But at the very least you knew there was still some human hand, some awareness, some accountability, some weight held if only by one pilot’s soul, regarding the snuffing out of unseen hundreds and thousands.

But now, technology, we have not even that. Drone planes. We kill people with drone planes. Not even a human eye, to capture the horror of their end. We kill them like cockroaches. Our enemies. Because— technology— we can.

I wrote a while ago, about machine men with machine minds killing in… these machine times.

It’s wrong. Bombing people. Always has been, always will be.

From Germany’s carpet bombing of England, to Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor to our ultimate bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to all the fucking bombings since. Bombing has been called the terrorism of the rich.

Rich nations.

Rich interests.

I agree.

And I know the excuses. Dropping bombs saves lives that would have been lost in an ugly ground war.

That is some bullshit. If our governments were really that concerned about saving lives, how about trying to solve your border disputes without starting wars that young men have to fight for you.

So don’t give me it saves lives. The fuckers who send young men to die are not concerned with their fucking lives. No it’s about conquest, by barbarians. It’s about old men playing games of life and death, with the newest and shiniest toys they can find.

It’s about control. And the only thing of more importance than the death of our enemies’ young men in times of overpopulation, is the control and death of large numbers of our own.

War is that ultimate ground, where tyrants perpetuate themselves. And bombing… their flavor of choice.

It is the act of cowards, to drop fire from the sky, and burn to death flora and fauna, men, women, and children, people.. to burn to death people you do not know, nor now never can. To end good lives and bad, righteous and wrong, from afar, without ever looking at those lives.

It’s wrong. And these drone planes make it easier to be wrong. Makes it a video game, makes it… unreal. Just targets in a distant land.

There’s always the hope that with a pilot, the mission can be scrapped based on changing situations in the field. Just more discussion involved with briefing men for a bombing mission, more people in the loop, more chance that the need of the mission may be weighed… well. But in our new automatic, pushbutton, drone plane America, there’s less level of oversight between thought and bloody action. Technology, drone planes, makes killing something it should never, ever be. It makes it… routine. It makes it easy. It makes it… forgettable.

Forgettable.

But nothing is forgotten. Not the blood rich men spill with impunity. Not the lies and crimes the press (owned by the same conglomerates that are getting rich selling bombs to the military)… conceal. Not even the people who devoid of graves do die.

All must be answered for.

I’m not a religious man, but I believe that. Every hair you have harmed in darkness, in your final hour will challenge you in the light.

I do believe that.

That there will come, to every Rome and every good Roman… their Fall.

[p.s. As an aside: Ray Bradbury decades ago in fiction, wrote of a future America where the streets were policed with zero tolerance, by forbidding and merciless drone helioplanes. It's nice to know Big Brother is committed to making fictions fact. It has been announced that various US cities are seeking to deploy these Israeli made Drone planes to police their suspect areas. Isn't it enough we have Israeli cameras blanketing every inner city. I get it Israel, you want to help America setup her own Palestine. Thanks but no thanks. You see, the atrocities we don't speak out against in distant lands or to under-represented people today, becomes our cross to bear tomorrow.]