Mandela And “Israel Bashing”

On facebook, my friend Bret Whitley? asked this question on a thread, and it’s something I have been wanting to discuss for a while and never got around to it. But the Mandela / ANC discussions had already brought the topic Bret cues up back into focus.

Thanks Bret for kicking this one off.

Here is his question:

” Why is Israel so trounced upon by the left or progressives when they are the ones being bombarded with terroristic attacks and only retaliate with reasonably appropriate response by the standards used in the case of Mandela, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, William Wallace or King David. I’ve asked before to be corrected if I was wrong and since then I’ve read that it wasn’t just racial equality Mandela was fighting for, he was after all an African nationalist, democratic socialist and co-founded the MK with the South African Communist Party. Not exactly an Abe Lincoln type of guy. And please refrain from the argument that Israel stole the land from the Palestinians. There hasn’t been a Palestine since biblical times. And the British Mandate doesn’t count. Palestinian primarily referred to anything associated with that region before 1948, Jews, Arabs, Jordanians, Syrians etc… Now the word Palestinian is used in reference to non-Jew Arabs. And to back up my Israeli question, I do have friends with family in Israel, the shelling and attacks have been directed at them first for a very long time and have only increased. “

I’m not a liberal, but I’ll share my thoughts on this topic.

First part of the question: “Why is Israel so trounced upon by the left or progressives when they are the ones being bombarded with terroristic attacks and only retaliate with reasonably appropriate response by the standards used in the case of Mandela, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, William Wallace or King David.”

Well, for one thing, it’s because we are witnessing in real time the persistent culling on a population from their native lands. The Israeli government is using a lot of the same tactics that the young United States did to slowly resolve the “Indian problem”. Though there are some differences, the same dynamics are in play, where the more technologically advanced peoples / culture is slowly but surly usurping the other by taking the land and making it their own. That is the reason Netanyahu, despite numerous opportunities to display good faith and show he is serious about a two-state solution, will not halt the construction of new settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. The ultimate goal is to build enough settlement so that the Palestinian people will be squeezed out… Problem solved.

Next – None of the leaders you reference in your comment are comparable to the Israeli side of things. The Israeli people are not being oppressed or subjugated or abused or treated like a second or third class of citizen by a more powerful foe. The Israeli government and far superior military, in this case, is the Goliath.

“And please refrain from the argument that Israel stole the land from the Palestinians.”

Well, first, the original “stealing” wasn’t done by the Israelis… It was done by the UN. I fully understand why it was done. But the land was taken from an indigenous peoples and a new country was created out of whole cloth on top of that stolen land. They used the same basic model that serve the Great Powers in the Treaty of Versailles, the taking and repartitioning of lands in the Middle East in a way helped them, but didn’t take into account the dynamics of the native cultures and civilizations that were already there. We are still paying the price for their lack of foresight.

“There hasn’t been a Palestine since biblical times.”

Irrelevant. There wasn’t a “state” of Palestine per see, at least by western standards. But there was a people. And that was their homeland.

By the way…. There wasn’t a United States in biblical times either, but you’re fine with our existence. Some even say God preordained this country, which is funny because this country was built by a slow but persistent European invasion coupled with a semi-genocide of the native peoples. Don’t get me wrong…. I’m not saying our country shouldn’t exist, or that we are “Evil” or anything like that. But the method we used to gain the land we now call the United States was hardly adherent to any religious principle I know of, unless conquering and dispossessing a population for your own benefit seems like something that is just and righteous.

It’s distasteful; it’s a stain on the American cultural tapestry… But it’s the way it happened. It’s history. It is what it is, and you can’t change it.

Now, what if we saw the same thing happening to another people? What if we could stop another country from making the same damning mistakes we did?

What Israel is doing now is as wrong as what this country did to it’s native population.

That is part of the answer.

“I’ve asked before to be corrected if I was wrong and since then I’ve read that it wasn’t just racial equality Mandela was fighting for, he was after all an African nationalist, democratic socialist and co-founded the MK with the South African Communist Party. Not exactly an Abe Lincoln type of guy.”

You’re not wrong… But you’re not right either. The SACP, declare illegal in the 1950, was indeed an ally and founding partner of the ANC, but it wasn’t an alliance based on common views or agreement with Communist ideals. It was an alliance based on the common gal of ousting the Apartheid regime. Mandela was no more a Communist based on this alliance than the US was Communist based on their alliance with the USSR during World War 2. The struggles of war make for strange bedfellows. After the successful ouster of the white supremacist government, Mandela is quoted as saying:

“There will always be those who say that the Communists were using us. But who is to say that we were not using them?”

As demonstrated by your own information. Mandela was willing to make alliances with people of differing political views, which in fact does make him comparable to Abe Lincoln, as that was a hallmark of Lincolns leadership skills.

I do have friends with family in Israel, the shelling and attacks have been directed at them first for a very long time and have only increased.

This whole thing is a mess. There are no easy answers. But the reason Israel get so much blame is because the ball is firmly in its court. If they wanted peace, they could get it. The possibility was shown to exist by the cease fire and almost success of the Oslo Accords in the 90’s. And that was done with Yasser Arafat no less! Mahmoud Abbas is a much more malleable guy. But Israels refusal to do anything meaningful to demonstrate it really wants peace, refusal to halt its continued expansion of the settlements and blockades against the residence of the Gaza Strip, and pursue a peace deal in good faith, guarantees your friends will continue to have to live with the constant shelling.

Violence begets violence. This is a self perpetuating situation.

Again, Israel is the greater power by magnitudes. The ball is in their court. That is why they rightfully get so much of the blame.

I have more to say, but I have to got be on TV now.

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“After The Fall”. Old Song…. New Life.

Back in the early 90’s, in my first band Tribe Called Mike, we used to play two songs I had written years earlier. “After The Fall” was one of those songs. I don’t thinks it’s been played live since then. At the time, I had no confidence and just knew it was a horrible song and considered it filler for the more important things we played, which was everyone else’s songs.

Yeah, I had very VERY low self esteem back then. The thing about self esteem… No matter what you accomplish, you never see that it’s a real accomplishment. Low self esteem makes everything feel fake. It’s a filter that robs you of the bright and happy things in your life that are ripe for the taking and enjoying. Looking back, having my song played in this band was a MUCH BIGGER accomplishment than I ever was able to recognized.

The song has been in mothballs for twenty years now. It’s time to take it out of the closet, beat the dust off with a broomstick – or whatever is laying about – and get it ready for the solo album.

The lyric was written a year or two after I graduated from high school. The inspiration? I had a dream… or maybe a day dream… about a girl I had a crush on in high school, Debbie Sheffield. Good Lord she was HOT… And TOTALLY out of my league! Plus, she might have dated my older brother. The song is an alternate reality, where we had been a couple, but had broken up… For good! Final! Since it was two years in real life since I had even seen her, and I’m still thinking about her, can you imagine the idiot I would have been had we actually been in a relationship???? Can you say obsessive???? I’d break up with me too!!!

So, anyway, the song captures a mythical moment where I’m pining for the girl I lost, a girl in real life that I never even had….

Is that a bit psychotic????

Here is the lyric, which will be recorded for the solo album next year. BTW, This song is one of the ones that come to me as a complete thing, with both lyrics and music. For me, it’s usually only lyrics. I do love those magic moments where it all comes together at once:

AFTER THE FALL

it’s been a year or more
Since the prize fight
It was the worst fight
It was our last fight

Our friends were so concerned
They gave me advise (they said)
It would be all right
But I don’t buy it

(chorus)

After your fall from grace
I still long for your embrace
But you’re a memory without a face
Just a clue
I can’t erase

(solo)

They say time heals all woulds
They stop bleeding
But never neatly
Not completely

After your fall from grace
I still long for your embrace
But you’re a memory without a face
Just a clue

I

Can’t

After the fall
After the fall…. (repeated 6 more times)

The music on the chorus is going to be a bit different than the way I played it back then – I was genuinely not happy with that aspect of the song back then – But it will not stray too far from the original arrangement.

Mandela Wanted To “Kill The Whites!”….

Um… No. He didn’t.

That’s the claim being made by many lunatics on the web… I love the Mandela is “The Che Guevara Of Africa” bit… Can’t leave out World Net Daily… They just have to get their digs in… And probably now former supporters of Ted Cruz. To a person, they cite a video showing Mandela and a Jew singing the “MK National Anthem” that they say says this very thing.

Is it true?

Here is the only source video I could find of him doing that. Now, I don’t speak but if you look closely at around the 35 second mark, you’ll see that no one is singing a word in the audio, but they sure are singing something, specifically a worded phrase, on the video.

So, in this case at least, the audio was spliced onto the video. The pictures of the before and after, where everything is destroyed after Mandelas rule… Who the hell knows if this is in South Africa or not.

UPDATE: Here is a better video:

Clearly it’s the same video. And as expected, the singing is quite different.

Now, as to WHAT is being sung. Again, I’m as clueless as the next average American on what they are singing. The source of the first video from Tru-Tube, judging from the “song” they spliced onto the video, is, to put it mildly, racist. The post originator “angry_white_guy” features this in the description of what is happening in the video:

Former leader of the ANC Youth League, Peter Mokaba, has been a major driving force behind the agitation among blacks against whites in South Africa, using songs that encouraged the murdering of whites. Mokaba, presently South Africa’s Environmental and Tourist Minister, was one of the most energetic song and dance leaders during the meetings held by the ANC prior to the elections in 1994 where slogans like “Kill the Farmer!” and “Kill the Boer!” were chanted openly:

“Hamba kahle mkhonto we Sizwe, Tihna Abantu bomkhonto Sizimisele Ukuwa bulala woma lamabunu”

—We members of Umkhonto are prepared to kill all the Boers.

“Khwela phezukwendlu Ubutshele umanishaya Ibhunu umama vyajabula”

—Get on the roof and tell them that when I hit the Boer, my mother becomes happy.

“Amabhunu ahlupha abazali Ekhaya bathi ziphi Izingane zabo Sizbashaya nge Nge bazooka”

—Whites and Boers are troubling our parents at home: we are going to hit them with our Ak-47’s and bazookas.

Though today he maintains that the songs were just a sort of “campfire songs”, these statements by Peter Mokaba made during a meeting with black students, published in The Johannesburg Star on the 25th of April in 1993, tell a different story:

—They are complaining that in our songs, in our chants, we have been saying “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer.” I repeat: “Kill the Boer, the Farmer, Kill the Boer, the Farmer. Shoot to kill—nyamazano” (Eng. the prey).

—Whether they like it or not, this is our chant. This is our song. This is our tradition. This is our culture, whether they like it or not …

This is our song. This is our tradition. This is our culture, whether they like it or not…

Gee…. Doesn’t that sound familiar.

The second video is offered from a blog that features some articles in English, some in what I presume is Afrikaans. The point of the site seems to be that all crime and bad things that happens against whites in South Africa, is, in fact, all Nelson Mandela’s fault.

Gee…. That sounds familiar.

Note: On the translation, a guy from South Africa says this:

the translation in this video is not really accurate. the song here in question is kill the ‘ama bhulu’= the boers=the afrikaners=the white supremacist government. so the translation is not entirely accurate. he’s not calling on genocide on whites but on ‘the death of afrikaner white supremacy apartheid’.

That certainly has a ring of truth to it. Certainly, Mandela’s actions, which are supposed to be much more important than words, especially words sung in a tribal / cultural song, do not support the claim that he’s a racist and wants a genocide to exterminate all whites.

One more thing about culture. Those who are going on about Mandela singing this cultural song… I wondr if you were upset about Trace Adkins wearing a Confederate earing and his response to the criticism?

As a proud American I object to oppression of any kindTo me, the battle flag represents remembrance of my Southern lineage [culture] — I am a descendant of Confederate soldiers who followed that flag into battle. I advocate for the preservation of America’s battlefields and honest conversation about our country’s history. To those who view the flag as a symbol of racism, that was not my message and I did not intend offense.”

Interesting which symbols of culture seem to offend some more than others.

(Note – that is a Huff-Po pol, so it’s accuracy can be questioned as far as the actual numbers go. But you will find more conservatives willing to defend the display of the Confederate flag, as was recently done “>at a Tea Party rally, than the display of the Rainbow flag)

Adventures in Songwriting – “Something Special”

So, yesterday I was contemplating the act / art of songwriting, and why I’ve have such a hard time in my 35 years of jotting lyrics down of finishing and crafting those things into songs. I love learning and performing cover songs. It’s, to my mind, the only wat to learn to play an instrument, in my case the acoustic guitar, which I’ve been banging away on for about 4 years now.

As I wrote yesterday, I am establishing a new rule — For every two cover songs I learn to play, I MUST sit down and write or finish one of my originals. Next year, I’m going to sit down and record my solo album, and I kind of need to get those song finished and arranged.

Again, I’ve been writing lyrics and songs since I was 13, off and on for the last 35 years. Why haven’t I worked on my originals more???

I used to use my complete lack of skills on the guitar as a reason why I haven’t worked on the originals. OK. Can’t use that excuse any more. I’m not the best guitar player in the world, but, after about four years of guitaring, I’m at least competent enough where I can show others what I’m trying to do musically.

This is hard for me to admit, but I think I still don’t have much confidence in the material itself. The few originals I have presented to the world have gotten a warm welcome, but that hasn’t seemed to have motivated me to really start working toward getting my own material done and presentation ready.

With that in mind, I did sit down and finish the song “Something Special”….

My former bandmate Rick Calhoun may have a copy of the lyrics to that one laying around somewhere from my days with Acoustic Highway. I tried to bring it in, but I just never pressed the band to actually play it. It has an “ocean / stranded on a deserted island” theme, and starts out:

“””There I was alone, stranded on a seashore
Carried on a lifeboat of confusion
Bought a ticket on a sinking ship called fantasy
what i though was love turned out to be illusion

And the world opened up and saw her standing there…”

The song has one of my favorite cheesy lyrics I’ve written.

“””Now they say a love like our can move a mountain
Falling stars will land upon our curtains
And even if the world would end tomorrow
A love like ours will last and that’s for certain”””

The song was written when I was 28 or so, when I was working at the UA cinema in Horton Plaza in San Diego. I was not in love, and tht emotion was still a mystery to me, but Iimagined this is what love could be like if I were at that moment. The birth of the song was one of the rare instances where both the lyrics and the tune came together in one sitting. But it was never finished though because there was one single line in the bridge that was missing…

Yes… It was waiting on ONE SINGLE LINE!

One day a few years ago, I was looking through my lyrics, and I came across this one. I sat there and stared at it for the longest time. I slowly become more and more annoyed over the years that this song was THAT CLOSE to being done.

I had had enough. I grabbed a pen and just scribbled some fluffy nonsense in just to say I was done. Then I put it away. I didn’t think anything of it because it was a filler line. I didn’t think much of it.

Several months later, When me and Jim Rust formed Taylor Martin together, I was looking though my lyrics yet again to see if I could find something suitable to bring in. I stumbled upon the lyric.

Only then did I realize that the “filler” lyric was actually PERFECT for the song! The last line is the “filler” in the bridge:

“””And the world opened up
And I saw you standing there
Th seas that kept me lonely now send wave of love crashing on my shore”””

So, yes. I did get this one spiffed up. It will be performed this week. The guitaring seem a little weak on it, but that may be because it’s more of a bass-centric song.

Here’s the whole thing:

There I was alone, stranded on a seashore
carried on a lifeboat of confusion
Bought a ticket on a sinking ship called fantasy
What i thought was love turned out to be illusion

Then the world opened up and I saw her standing there

and in her sweet sweet voice
She said that falling in love
Was like waiting at the gates of heaven

Going through with you would really mean something special
The gates of heaven open for a love that is essential

1st solo

And the world opened up
And I saw you standing there
Th seas that kept me lonely now send wave of love crashing on my shore

Now they say a love like our can move a mountain
Falling stars will land upon our curtains
And even if the world would end tomorrow
A love like ours will last and that’s for certain

Going through with you would really mean something special
The gates of heaven open for a love that is essential
Going through with you would really mean something special
The gates of heaven open for a love that is essential
So lean back in my arms and we can make it happen
Lean back in my arm… I can make you happy…

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Setting The Record Straight… At Least Some Of It!

Late last night, when i got home from my awesome gig with my band Laurel Canyon, I was amp’d up as usual after a good gig, and roamed the intertubes for a bit.  I came across this Huff-Po bit concerning every liberals favorite punching bag, Sarah Palin:

Palin Crossed Border For Canadian Health Care

I bit, and shared it on my page, with the simple caption of “Oh My”.

Though I didn’t specifically criticize Palin or claim to know the details behind this story, I still posted the piece as a newsworthy item. A very good friend who is a conservative cried foul…. And yep, he was right to protest, though maybe not for the reasons he stated. He said:

I just found the article she was between 1 & 5 years old and this was in the 60’s the nearest Dr was in Canada and this at the time was the second least populated state next to So Dakota, this was not a very researched blog.

Here is the whole Huff-Po article:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — who has gone to great lengths to hype the supposed dangers of a big government takeover of American health care — admitted over the weekend that she used to get her treatment in Canada’s single-payer system.

“We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,” Palin said in her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska. “And I think now, isn’t that ironic?”

The irony, one guesses, is that Palin now views Canada’s health care system as revolting: with its government-run administration and ‘death-panel’-like rationing. Clearly, however, she and her family once found it more alluring than, at the very least, the coverage available in rural Alaska. Up to the age of six, Palin lived in a remote town near the closest Canadian city, Whitehorse.

Officials at several hospitals in that area declined to give out information on patient visits.

Sounds pretty damming…. Until you, you know, actually DO just the littlest bit of, you know, journalism. As my friend stated, Sarah was indeed quite young when this happened: in fact, the Palin family in question is actually the Heath family, her parents, and took place in the late 60’s and early 70’s, when little Sarah Louise Heath was around six or so. She was a kid, and her parents took her and the family apparently because the medical facility in Yukon was closer than the next facility in the Untied States.

Sounds reasonable to me.

She was a kid. It’s not like she had any say in the matter of where to go to get medical treatment..

And here’s the more damming part… This is old news. Not only was it covered in a 2010 Politico article, but the reason why it became a newsworthy tidbit then is because Palin herself wrote about it in her 2010 book Going Rogue.

This Huff-Po piece is completely devoid of any journalistic effort or merit. Yes… It’s fun to make fun of FOX News when they screw up… But the Huffington Post, which often does quite a bit of that piling on, isn’t any better. The Huffington Post, at the end of the day, is a political rag. They are as much a liberal mouthpiece, willing to feed those with Palin-Derangement-Syndrome as FOX is eager to do the same for those with the Obama obsession. Sometimes both do good work. But often, their political leanings take precedent over better judgment, accuracy, and quality control.

NOTE: There are some who are saying the Canadian system was not single payer during the period in question, that it only became “socialist” in the 1980’s. Though the entire system came under singular control of the Canadian Fed in 84, the entire country’s health care was, in fact, under state or regional control during the late 60’s – Details are here. But, again…. Sarah Heath was a kid.

And on that note, I wrote this:

The Palin family in question is actually the Heath family, her parents, and took place in the late 60’s and early 70’s, when little Sarah Louise Heath was around six or so. She was a kid, and her parents took her and the family apparently because the medical facility in Yukon was closer than the next facility in the Untied States.

She absolutely deserves a pass because it was her parents who did this action.

But this should give Conservatives a point to ponder. If Sarah Palin doesn’t deserve to be punished because of the actions of her parents, why do children who were brought to this country illegally by their parents, with no say of their own, have to suffer undue hardships, perhaps even get deported even though this is the only country they know, because of our out-dated big government draconian immigration rules and regulations, much were written to placate the xenophobic fears of the lawmakers of the day.

Lets get this fixed and install a more humane set of immigration rules that doesn’t leave out the human factor in the immigration equation.

New Song… Whiskey Dick Blues!

Inspired by a facebook conversation between my friends and wonderful musicians Mike Whitten and Pieter Moredyk. Yeah, it’s a blues thing, and yeah… It’s kind of naughty!

“””Couldn’t get it up this morning
To keep my woman satisfied
Couldn’t get it up this morning
To keep my woman satisfied
That juice last night it zapped me
Laid low my fleshy pride

My girl well she’s a beauty
But the whiskey’s done weighed me down
My girl well she’s a beauty
But the whiskey’s done weighed me down
Now my junction it won’t function
And take my girlfriend for a ride.

Now my girl she’s gone and left me
Found a rigid young thing
Now my girl she’s gone and left me
Found some rigid young thing
And now I do remember
The reason why I gotta drink

So here’s to my friend Whiskey
You know she’ll never let me down
So here’s to my girl Whiskey
You know she’ll never let me down
Cause unless I run out of money
I know she’ll always be around!”””