sexta-feira, 24 de agosto de 2012

The unmistakable Uncle Sam

"Look what they did to my song!"
"This could be the unburden of the dying european music of the XXI century. In half of a dozen years, Europe, as a fruitful music power, was completely deleted. The production of songs that once jumped borders well known world wide - french songs, italien songs, spanish songs and even portuguese songs are reduced to scrapers to domestic consumption.
A phenomenon with the signature of the unmistakable Uncle Sam.
USA really has a very subtle way of neutralizing any culture that threats them. But they do it in a diplomatic and elegant way almost like community property of a marriage. So, USA invented the terminology of World Music, to make only "picturesque" some musical focus that could become serious threats to the market, like saying: "we allow you to play with sounds, yes we do, but do that in your small corner, because we don't want our nephews to discover that your music is better than our!".
Another example is that so called "latin music". The rubbish that America foist to the world like "latin music" provokes a reaction of rejection ("un pasito para tras...") in any person with the minimum of musical sensibility. The plan workd like a charm! Firing in all their directions its artillery of latin icons like Shakira, Ricky Martin, etc- America hits the bullseye, causing a generalized allergy to "latin music" and hiding and drowning the true latin music that- and the plan never fails- nobody heard. I can mention, for instance, the classic "El Cantante", of Hector Lavoe or "Pedro Navaja" of Ruben Blades...and I bet you never heard about them!
However, Uncle Sam knows very well that "la musica latina es la mejor/ musica americana no tiene sabor" (words of Kid Kreole). And we not even got to Brazil..Tom Zé or Xangai always were as or more feared that the Bin Laden itself, and all their movements must be controlled from space by CIA satellites.
Back to the old Europe: who knows that exists an annual festival in San Remo, Italy, that has been one of the most popular music competitions ? And what about the french example? How is it possible that the offspring of the numerous batallion of welsh artists world-renowned has been silenced by the ruthless exterminator? An authentic cemetery! From Leo Ferré to Yves Montand, from Gilbert Bécaud to Jacques Higelin, nobody left folowers! And if they left them, they are lost in the banlieues, without find a way to the internationalization.
And Sam smiles satisfied! Mission more than accomplished!"

I translated this chronicle review of the musician Gimba from the portuguese magazin of music "BLITZ" of july of 2011 (nr 61)

quinta-feira, 23 de agosto de 2012

Free Assange!



Today I went to a manifestation (if I can call it that way) of" free Assange", in Lisbon, in front of the United Kingdom embassy...well it was not really in front of because the street is narrow and by law, we have to be at least 100 m far so we just stayed up the sloping street, also, by law, we only can manifest from 7 o'clock PM...well when the embassy is closed! It's interesting to see that the laws are made to protect the rulers...we can manifestate of course but as long as we don't distrurb them!
Needless to say that if we tried to pass the 100 m line separated by the police we would possibly get arrested or be beated. Well still, I am not afraid of the police, I like police, I am afraid of the criminals not the police! And well the police just applies the law, and are the few honest persosn working in Portugal, they suffer a lot and are underpaid but still they are honest and their purpose is to keep the safety of the citizens. And police I think that agrees with us too, we talked to them and gave them papers of our manifest...contrary of the persons passing by with cars, they just ignored us.
To that manifestation, summoned through facebook, slightly more than 300 people (and that's too few for a major subject like this) signed up (on facebook) but only about 30 showed up...this only shows the indiference of people from everything that doesn't reach their silly normal lives! In fact there were more cops than protesters!
 It's just sad not to realize that the freedom which is being threatened is not only Assange's but the freedom of everyone!
I don't really understan the virtual phenomenon of saying you are going to a manifestation or mobilize to do something and then don't appear in person...I think the definition for this behaviour is slacktivism, some stupid people must believe that a simple click changes the world...

How can we accept wars based upon lies and chase and ignore the persons who dared to speak the truth? For example, Bradley Manning, the american soldier that was shocked by the brutality of the NATO's militar interventions and how naive he was to think that saying the awful things he saw he could stop that horror! Now he faces a lifetime imprisionment or death penalty for treason to the USA because he revealed inconvenient truths!

Why is all this fuss about Julian? Well he revealed dirty secrets and exposed how "democrazy" works and the purpose of wars! The rulers don't want a population who thinks about their actions and demands to know the truth...I think we cannot accept to be blinded by greedy bastards, so I trully want to believe that the whole world stands by Julian!

Now if Assange leaves the Ecuador's embassy he will be arrested by UK militar forces, then they want to extradite him to Sweden because he is accused to rape two women!
Face it! Always the same cheap and dirty trick! A rape? Assange recognises he got involved with the women but it was not a rape, well I believe him, there are women capable to do anything for fortune and fame, and let's not forget "the groupies" phenomenon, if you don't know I expalin: a bunch of crazy bitches offers "free sex" to famous people.
When Assange was hidden in England he says that groups of girls found him! He refuses to call them groupies, but some of that fans are crazy girls who want to do that, it's grouse and several bands like My Chemical Romance compalins about it and say "give yourself the respect!".
Even if the rape was true...why would the whole wide world care about this? there are bigger motivations behind, of course, we talking about someone who exposed the dirty secrets of the powerful ones...and for them it's quite annoying!
If Assange goes to Sweden, then he might face the extradition to USA, that's what he fears, there he could be arrested like Bradley Manning and condemned to a lifetime imprisionment or death penalty!
It is ironic to see that UK justice that now is persucuting Julian Assange is the same that protecetd on its land the mass murderer dictator Pinochet (well I remeber this year, during their beloved jubilee Queen's birthday, she invited dictators to her party too...it's recurrent I see...are they really proud of being bristih? how!?).


"A different world cannot be build by indiferent people" Dr Peter Marshall

Sign the petition to save Assange in: causes


segunda-feira, 6 de agosto de 2012

What the hell was that?



In Denmark, today I went to the Greenlandic House, a house that explains the culture of the people from Greenland.
Greenland is the biggest island on the world, it is 50 times more bigger than Denmark and belongs to Denmark although having a parliament too.
Greenland has 56 000 inhabitants and receives billions of dolares from Denmark each year.
A greenlandic woman just told us they wish to be independent from Denmark, and she hopes that happens in 40 years...by now it can´t be, but with the oil extraction on Arctic she really hopes Greenland does great and wins lot of money and becomes a very wealthy country like Norway, the nation who owns the biggest superavit of money on Earth but a few years ago was one of the poorest ones...and all of this hanged because of the oil.
She added: "due to the climate change it´s been easier to extract oil and we are attracting oil companies there", I told her it was not good for anyone if that thing becomes true, she said that we had other Ice Ages and Climate is always changing and we don´t actually know if it´s from human activity or natural activity (we know it, but it´s so scary that we deny it...).

So will it be handy to extract oil when we probably dive in another Ice Age for thousands of years and humanity disappears due to its own greed?...but hey, at least Greenland will be independent! -.- 

In the end she even said that whaling in Greenland is allowed but not for commercial purposes, that people actually eat at home whale but you need a registration in the system, because it´s a sustainable hunting. I said that whaling is supposed to be illegal and she just got annoyed and said that we had to respect their culture, and their culture has to do with whaling and wearing seal fur, and due to our fuss about fur lots of people in Greenland lost their job...that was basically beat seals to death and skin them alive to sell their fur to rich and cruel people.

I wanted to tell her I understand why their culture is like that, after all there is no climate to plant food and they fish and whale to survive and wear seal fur because of the cold...but she didn´t want to listen.
Instead of shut up my mouth I talked of Faroé Islands, that belongs to Denmark too, where it is maybe a VIKING tradition: be a man and kill whales!!!!well she said whaling is a tradition too that must be respected...and they also eat the murdered whales...see by your eyes, this has a name: cruelty and stupidity.

Be a viking, to make yourself a man you have to kill whales? some traditions are cruel and stupid and they cannot be tolerated or respected.


In the end she told us we could go to their gift shop and buy traditional things like...seal fur!
Well I just got in and watched it: it was real fur...and a girl just said about a baby boots made of fur: "oh so cute", and I asked her "but it is real fur", and she naturally said "yes, real", and I: "real suffering so you shouldn´t find it cute", and left the place.


http://celta-universe.blogspot.dk/2012/05/bloody-denmark