america adrift

Whatever the voters’ decision, the social make-up of the next Congress, like that of the last one, will be remarkably unrepresentative of the US as a whole.  

I’m often asked weather I’m a Democrat or a Republican and my response is always the same. It seems that most folks are overly optimistic about the recent mid-term elections.  

Go and read the whole article here.

THE QUASI-PRIESTLY ORDER
A Tribute to Richard Rorty

by Stuart Noble

Fuzzy Fallibilist we are not tolerant!

Open minded ancestors avoid explicit algorithms.

Great scientists seize solidarity.

Dew, blow up the optimism of imagined breakthroughs in reality.

What say the brand new Fuzzies?

Is anything really there?

Philosophers moan about matter.

Who on earth would enlighten our vocabulary?

The new rhetoric of poetry battling through the light of reason.

Veiled science boiling down the people.

I’ve posted bellow the video with lyrics to the Title track of the film, When We Were Kings. It should help make clear many of the concepts which we’ve been working with over the past few weeks. Perhaps, even some of the skeptics may find some small amount of appreciation for “rap” music and its social and historical context in American society.   I’ll let you draw your own conclussions about the lyrics.  I do want to note that each “rapper” performs in very different styles, with differents speeds and intonations.  If taken alone, or without the underlying beat they would appear as musically unrelated to each other.  This, I think, would be quite in line with Kouwenhoven’s argument about American music form.

Fugees, ATribeCalledQuest, BustaRhymes- Rumble in the Jungle

[Wyclef]
(Come on)
Root to the fruit
More bass than Bootsy Collins
You verses me
Thats like Ali verses Foreman (a-ha)
God’s act, stand back and watch
Devil’s time out
Can’t be timed with no swatch watch
Who I am, the black Abraham
Zunga zunga zang, yellow man, Vietnam
Add an extra bar as I spar with literature
Taking kingdoms from tsars
Winning more wars than the Moors

[Forte]
Hey, what’s the deal?
I seen the Devil spar with Allah
Mathematics was the key to set my whole race free
You might debate we, a refugee
No harm hurt me
Dying, thirsty from the struggle
To my own hustle bubble
On the low, woe is me
To show the Free Bob right
The righteous Asiatic thinker
While Satan rob light
Civilised like the Molly
Burgundy, wildy rocking
Seen the fifth when Ali clocked him
John Forte will keep you locked in

[Q-Tip]
People all around
You got to recognise and witness
The Mister who swift enough to knock you out with Mic fitness
Hands blistered from holding the mics tight
Some say it’s fright night
Well throw the R after the F ‘Cause I’m gonna take away your breath
The bell rings and now it’s just a daily operation
Yo, you saw my lubrication
You can see this occupation (The winner)
Eh, you know we’re from Q-Borough
L-Booie and Clef the trainers, Prazwell promote the throw

[Lauryn Hill]
We used to bite bullets with the pig-skin casing
Now we perfect slang like a gang of street masons (uh)
Scribe check make connects
True pyramid architects (yeah)
Replace the last name with the X (X)
The man’s got a God complex
But take the text and change the picture
Watch Muhammad play the messenger like Holy Muslim scriptures
Take orders from only God
Only war when it’s Jihad
See Ali appears in Zaire to reconnect 400 years
But we the people dark but equal give love to such things
To the man who made the fam’ remember when we were kings

Blocks on fire (Block’s on fire tonight)
Fiends getting higher (uh-huh)
Robbing blue collar
(Hey yo we rob them blue collars)
Killing for a dollar (Stick ‘em up)
Youths get tired (Ali ah yeah)
We’re dealing with them liars (Ali ah yeah)
(We’re dealing with too many liars)
From Brooklyn to Zaire (uh-huh ah yeah)
We need a ghetto Messiah (ah yeah come on)

Send me an angel in the morning, baby
Send me an angel in the morning, darling
Send me Muhammad in the morning, baby
Send me an angel in the morning, darling

[Phife Dawg]
Once the pen hits the pad it’s danger
To this I be no stranger
Step inside the ring and I’ll derange you (Come on)
I’m hearing no comments
Everyone looks dispondent
Dejected, rejected similiar to Liston
Catching lists
Beat it, sonny
My man is still the greatest in this
To hell with Frazier yappin’ about that negative shit
Now listen, you can try and escape if you want to
But ask yourself, who the hell you gonna run to
Like Sade Abu you got a punch that I can sleep to
Fugees, Tribe, Busta Rhymes forever coming through

[Prazwell]
We sing Amazing Grace over two dollar plate
One roll snake eyes like Jake The Snake
Many lies put up for stakes
Wash our sins at the Great Lakes
You and I cannot see eye to eye
So therefore we cannot relate
I’m here when I make myself crystal clear
You fled to Cape Fear when I laced you in Zaire
Tussle with a lasso in the Royal Rumble
Seperate boys from men in the concrete jungle

[Busta Rhymes]
I remember when Cassius Clay flipped the script
Taking trips to Zimbabwe
Africans started calling the God Ali Bumbaye (so bwoy)
It be the God stricken, God nutrition, lightly stricken (ha)
Blow that make you feel like you was poison bitten
Ha yo I’m ’bout to blister you and your sister
Predicting every ass whipping before my fights my nigga
This be your last warning once you walk past the doorman
Ali and Foreman gonna lock ass until the morning
Marvellous finances provided by Joseph Mobutu
Special guests of honour like the Archbishop Desmond Tutu
We watched the Rumble In The Jungle
To see who be the targeted uncle to be the first to fall and fumble
Nuff blows they gettong thrown, like solid milestones
Internally shaking up niggas, imbalance your chromosones
With the force of a thousnad warriors
When I bust your ass identify me as the lord victorious

Blocks on fire (You’re a star)
(Blocks on fire)
Fiends getting higher (You’re a star)
Robbing blue collar (You’re a star)
(Yeah rob them blue collars)
Killing for a dollar (You’re a star)
Youths get tired (You’re a star)
(Youths getting tired)
We’re dealing with them liars (You’re a star)
(We’re dealing with too many liars)
From Brooklyn to Zaire (You’re a star)
We need a ghetto Messiah

Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Sunday he sees his idea as a way to deter politicians from launching wars.

”There’s no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way,” Rangel said.

from Murrow to Olbermann

Asian businessmen are probably the friendliest conquerors the world has ever seen. But despite the politeness and the smiles, Western governments must act quickly to combat the rise of China and Asia. The West should discuss an ambitious project: a European-American free-trade zone.

Gabor Steingart’s argument for a Trans-Atlantic free-trade zone may a bit to Huntingtonian but that shouldn’t discount the discourse.

The idea of a Trans-Atlantic free-trade zone is not new but it would be prudent if we started some serious and open discussion about such a prospect.

From a European perspective (if there really is one) what should such a European-American free-trade zone look like?  What would be required of the U.S. in particular?  Do you believe American and European values are such, that differences can be reconciled or should Europe, “go it alone”?

I encourage your comments.

 

 INDIANAPOLIS — The number of family farms in America is dwindling, as is the number of young people who say they hope to take over their parents’ farms. So the National FFA Organization, once known as the Future Farmers of America, would seem doomed to a parallel fate.

But a swarm of blue corduroy jackets, not so different from the jackets the Future Farmers wore in the 1930s, seemed to fill every street corner of this city’s downtown in October for the FFA’s national convention, which the group says has grown into the largest annual student gathering in the nation.