Movie Time

OK. So what. I like this movie.

 

Funky Bedtime Stories

Some old school funk

 

Late Night Groove

 

It’s Still Black History Month

First off, to the handkerchief head negroes that ask “Just how many more black history Februaries do we need?” , I send you

this.

I know I’m late but at least I’m not like that clown.

Slave Rebellions

Very few, if any, African-Americans accepted their status as slaves. Most, if not all, slaveowneres were completely aware of this and, in general, they lived in fear of the African-Americans under the control. Not only did slaveowners expect slaves to run away, letters and diaries give strong evidence that slaveowners (and even non-slaveowners) in the south believed that rebellion was imminent. They had lived with this fear since 1792 when the Haitian Revolution proved unambiguously that slaves were ready to revolt and could do so with a passion that was awe-inspiring. Added to this mix was the fiery rhetoric of abolitionists, both black and white. The most frightening, to the slaveowners, of these abolitionists was Henry Highland Garnet who had escaped from slavery at the age of ten. In 1843 he called for a slave strike and suggested that it escalate to a slave revolt. By this point, the south had been rocked by three slave revolts which had struck fear to the very hearts of slaveowners.

Gabriel Prosser

The first major slave revolt in the south was led by a twenty-four year old slave named Gabriel Prosser. All of the major slave revolts in the south were led by people like Prosser, who were deeply Christian and were fired by religious indignation against slavery. Prosser was the first. In 1800, he began to lay plans to take the city of Richmond, Virginia, by force. He planned to invade Richmond, attack the armory, and arm his rebel slaves. By August of 1800, he had thousands of slaves enlisted and had stored up an armory of weapons, including guns. He was betrayed by two followers and, on the day of his revolt, with over a thousand followers ready to attack Richmond, the bridges into Richmod had been destroyed in a flood. The state militia attacked him the next day and he and his followers were hanged. Althought Prosser’s revolt ended in defeat, it terrified slaveowners throughout the south. Prosser had come very close to taking Richmond. If he had not been betrayed and if the bridges had not washed out, it is almost certain that he would have successfully taken the city of Richmond with his slave followers. Prosser’s revolt was the closest America came to a revolution on the same scale as that in Haiti.

Denmark Vesey

Denmark Vesey, like so many other African-American leaders of the nineteenth century, came from the “upper class” of slaves: the engineers and craftspeople who were given a high degree of independence and self-actualization, as opposed to field workers or house slaves. He purchased his own freedom and settled down as a carpenter in Charleseton, South Carolina. Despite the surface placidity of his free life, he was fired with anger over slavery and the situation of black slaves. Throughout his entire free existence, he planned and thought about freeing his fellow slaves. He was so full of anger that companions say that he could not even remain in the presence of a European-American. Like Prosser, Vesey was also deeply inspired by Christianity, in particular, the Old Testament. An integral aspect of slave and free Christianity was its emphasis on the delivery of the “children of Israel” from bondage in Egypt. This story was perhaps the most powerful religious and cultural influence on the world view of nineteenth century Americans. While most historians stress the passive nature of the Israelite deliverance, that deliverance was also yoked to the Israelite invasion of the land of Canaan. While this invasion was barely successful, the Old Testament books telling the history of the Canaan occupation and its aftermath are ruthlessly violent and present a warrior god with no mercy towards non-Israelites. All evidence we have suggests that slaves understood that these two events were connected and that deliverance along Israelite lines would be bought with human blood. Vesey, who went around quoting biblical texts to slaves to inspire them to revolt, particularly loved to quote Yahweh’s instructions to Joshua when he demands that Joshua kill every occupant of the cities of Canaan including women and children. His task, as he saw it, was to incite slaves into revolt. In 1821, that focus changed dramatically and he began to organize his own revolt. He organized a working group of lieutenants that included Gullah Jack, a sorceror considered absolutely invulnerable and Peter Poyas who was one of the great military and organizational geniuses of the early nineteenth century. Poyas organized the revolt into separate cells under individual leaders. Only the leaders knew the plot; if any slave betrayed the plot, they would only betray their one cell. By 1822, almost all the slaves in the plantations surrounding Charleston had joined the revolt. His and Poyas’s plan was brilliantly simple. The rebels would all station themselves at the doors of European-Americans and, late at night, a group of rebels would start a major fire. When the men came out their doors, the rebels would kill them with axes, picks, or guns. They would then enter the houses and kill all the occupants. Like Prosser’s revolt, they almost won. They were betrayed early in the game, but the cell structure prevented officials from finding out the plot itself or identifying any of the leaders. It was only the day before that a slave, who knew the entire plot, betrayed Vesey. He and his co-leaders were hung, but only one confessed.

Nat Turner

Vesey’s revolt was immensely frightening to southern slave-owners. Not only was it difficult to crack the plot, despite the fact that thousands of slaves were involved, but the sheer thoroughness of the violence planned chilled the hearts of even the most confident slaveowners. That so many slaves would be willing to exterminate any and all European Americans regardless of gender or age brought home the depth of feeling, anger, and resistance that surrounded slaveowners all day long. Neither Prosser’s nor Vesey’s rebellions actually succeeded; despite their fear, European-Americans believed that, in the end, God had protected them. This would all change, however, when a man that slaves simply called Prophet, Nat Turner, led a short revolt in which God did not protect slaveowners. Turner, like Vesey, was from the “upper class” of slaves. He had grown up deeply hating slavery; his mother, an African, so hated slavery that she tried to kill him when he was born in 1800 to prevent him from living the life of a slave. He, too, was religious, in fact, far more than Vesey and Prosser. His Christianity was a religion of visions and mystical experience. By the time he was a young man, Turner had become unofficially the major religious leader in Southampton county in Virginia. Unlike Vesey, Turner’s Christianity emphasized not the Israelite deliverance, but the latter days of Christ in Jerusalem and the apocalyptic promise of a New Jerusalem. His rhetoric had a place as well as a spiritual meaning: Jerusalem, Virginia, which lay nearby. All his disciples, seven of them, were fired by anger and religious passion. One, Will, had been so abused by his master that he was covered with scars. On the appointed night on Sunday, they left Turner’s house and entered the house of his master where, with only one hatchet and one broadax between them, they executed all the members, including two teens, with the exception of an infant. They then moved from house to house throughout the night and executed every European-American they could find with the exception of a white family that owned no slaves; Will chopped up his master and his wife so passionately that Turner called him “Will the Executioner.” As they went from house to house they gathered slaves and weapons. By Monday, they were approaching Jerusalem but were turned back by a regiment of European-Americans. Turner dug a cave and went into hiding, but when troops arrived they scoured the countryside and executed slaves by the hundred. Turner, however, was never caught for over two months; during all this time, Virginians were seized with panic. Hundred fled the county and many left the state for good. Turner, however, was eventually captured and hung. This was the last straw; from this point onwards, no slaveowner lived comfortably with slavery now that they understood the anger, the resistance, and the vengeance that boiled beneath the burden of slavery.

The Amistad

Although no significant revolt occurred after Turner’s death, his passion and success escalated the conflict between the states over slavery. One more revolt, however, would seriously change the entire issue of slavery and slave revolts: the Amistad incident. In general, Amistad is overlooked by historians in favor of the more lurid and more deliberate revolts in Haiti and in the southern United States. The Amistad incident, however, dramatically changed the European-American idea of slave revolt and the moral constitution of slave revolts. The year is 1839. Slave traffic is officially illegal in every country in the world. Despite this, a Cuban boat, the Amistad, is still trading in human lives kidnapped from Western Africa. On this trip, however, led by a powerful African, who speaks no European language, named Cinque, leads a revolt against the crew and kills everyone except the captain and first mate. He demands that the Africans be returned to Africa but instead the captain sails to New York. Claiming that the Africans are Cuban slaves rather than Africans, the United States put them on trial for murder and revolt. The result, however, was a stunning reversal in European ideas of slave revolts. Defended by no less than John Quincy Adams, the court declares the African revolutionaries to be justified in their murder of the crew. For the first time, Americans applied to slaves the same right to revolt as they believed they had. The southern revolts, from Haiti to Turner, suddenly shifted in the minds of many Americans as representing what they really were: freedom wars. To many Americans, it was becoming increasingly evident that the answer to slavery in the south had to be violent. http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/DIASPORA/REBEL.HTM

 

Afternoon Music Break

 

Obama With A Whip

First off, I’m back. I was on YouTube watching an old movie, Ann-Margret in Kitten With A Whip, and I started thinking(yeah I know, I’m dangerous when I start doing that) it’s time President Obama started leading with a whip and a clenched fist.

I am so sick of reading about why The Obama Administration is afraid of this and how the don’t want to upset that. They lost and it’s time to pay the butcher’s bill.

If McCain had won and the republicans had the numbers we have, don’t you think…wait, we know how the would lead. And it’s not about getting even.

If what we think is true about the economy, if what we know is true about our position in the world, if what we know is true about the condition of our education system, and on and on, we don’t have the luxury of massaging hurt egos of the Republicans. Think about it, they have Governors who are actually posturing about the stimulus money. They, politically, don’t have a clue. They never have cared about the state of the American people, and now in their frenzy to get power back, they show everyone just who they really are.

“Booby” Jindal Governor of Louisiana, one of the top states as far as poverty is concerned, I believe, and where folk are still trying to recover from Katrina, ACTUALLY said he might refuse the stimulus money. Keep giving us campaign commercials “Booby“.

This administration needs to follow their gut and do whats right for all of us. Ignore ignorance. Ignore backward thinking. Ignore the Republican party. Hitch them up to your wagon and run them until they bleed from every orifice.

Just one man’s opinion.

 

Proud of Yourselves?

 

What Caribou Barbie Will Have Tomorrow

THE BLUES, baby
John Mayall with Eric Clapton

After her debate with Joe Biden She’s gonna need bourbon and some good Lovin’

Taaaaaaaaaaahd!!!!!

 

Otis Redding

Back at it. I have been busy doing some composing and writing on my next project.

Listening to this piece, it reminds me of  more violent time in this nation. But at the same time a much more creative period. This gentleman was one of the most prolific songwriters of our time. His music still stands alone in a time of great copying and emulation.

Gone too soon, but what he left will outlive us all.

 

The Georgia Crisis Turns Dangerous

by Eric Margolis

PARIS – Pipsqueak Georgia’s harebrained and disastrous attack on tiny South Ossetia has produced a full-blown crisis pitting the US and NATO against Russia.

In an act fraught with danger, US and NATO warships are delivering supplies to Georgia, watched by Russian men of war. The US Congress may soon vote $1 billion for America’s embattled Georgian satellite.

The western powers have resorted to fierce Cold War rhetoric. They are playing with fire. Russia has some 6,600 strategic nuclear weapons, mostly aimed at North America and Europe. Besides, the US, which invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and whose air force just killed 90 Afghan civilians, 60 of them children, is in no position to lecture Moscow about aggression.

France’s conservative president, Nicholas Sarkozy, blasted Russia and will shortly hold a European summit over Georgia in Brussels. As usual, the Harper government faithfully echoed Washington’s words.

Poland agreed to emplace a US antiballistic missile system only 184 km from Russia’s border, provoking Moscow’s fury. Ukraine and Poland are loudly backing Georgia.

Russia’s chief of staff, Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, warns his nation has the right to launch a “preemptive nuclear strike” against enemies, in line, he tartly noted, with the Bush administration’s own policies.

Topping off this war of words, two of Sen. John McCain’s closet rightwing allies, senators Joseph Lieberman and Lindsay Graham, went to Georgia and called for “tough” measures against Moscow. They urged isolating Russia for “aggression” and admitting Ukraine and Georgia to NATO.

McCain’s allies give a good preview of what his foreign policy would look like. Lieberman and Graham, leading proponents of the US occupation of Iraq, had the chutzpah to insist, “Russia must not be allowed to control energy supplies.”

This ugly mess recalls how the great powers blundered into both World War I and II over obscure locales like Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Danzig Corridor. The obvious lesson: act with extreme caution. But few are listening as rhetoric sharpens.

The Bush administration – most likely VP Dick Cheney – almost certainly planned or knew about Georgia’s attack on Russian-backed South Ossetia launched under cover of the Beijing Olympics. Whether the White House was trying to inflict a quick little military victory over Moscow, or whipping up war fever at home to boost John McCain’s prospects, is uncertain.

This crisis over a mere 70,000 South Ossetians and 18,000 Abkhazians could have been quietly resolved by diplomacy. Instead, the Bush administration turned it into a major confrontation by accusing Russia of aggression. Washington, which rightly recognized the independence of Kosovo’s Albanians from Serb repression, denounced Russia’s recognition of Abkhaz and South Ossetian independence from Georgian repression. Meanwhile, Moscow, which crushed the life out of Chechnya’s independence movement, piously claimed to be defending Ossetian independence.

Things may get worse. The US is pressing Ukraine to join NATO, though half of its 48 million citizens oppose doing so. Ukraine’s constitution mandates a neutral state. Russia allowed Ukraine to decamp from the Soviet Union with the understanding it would never join NATO, and allow Russia’s Black Sea Fleet operate from Crimea.

Russian political expert Sergei Markov rightly notes that Washington and NATO see Ukraine as a rich new source of troops for Iraq and Afghanistan, wars from which he says NATO leaders cannot withdraw their soldiers without committing “political suicide.”

“Old Europe” is trying to avoid a clash with Moscow, while “new Europe” – Georgia, Poland, the Czechs, and Balts – frightened of Russia’s growing power, eggs on the US-Russia confrontation.

Not only did the clumsy US attempt to expand its influence into Moscow’s backyard backfire badly, Washington’s childish, petulant response is as inflammatory as it is powerless. The Georgian crisis and empty threats against Russia have aroused strong nationalist passions in Russia, which sees itself increasingly isolated and surrounded by the US and NATO.

Nationalist hysteria, jingoism, and fevered rhetoric are coming from both sides. We saw such lunacy before: in August 1914, and September 1939.