Sic Semper Tyrannis

12 Comments

1. 

   palaverer on February 12, 2011 at 10:34 am

   They will get a beatdown, but it will be interesting to see where things go.  I read this in Al Jazeera which is on balance positive.  I think it’s at a point where people generally do what is really necessary for an actual revolutionary situation, which is to stop believing that the government has power.  Observers of the February Revolution, 1917, noted that the Tsar’s power more or less evaporated into thin air, as if people woke up from a dream.

   As an aside, I think it might be appropriate to note that, excepting Yemen, we are talking about Africa.  Egypt is an African nation.

   Last aside: I’m listening to “Chasing the Trane” from Live at the Village Vanguard.  I encourage everyone to go listen to it now.  It’s the single best live recording I’ve ever heard.

   • 

     Arthur Gilroy on February 12, 2011 at 2:08 pm

     Yes, palaverer, things happen like that. Suddenly a lot of people wake up. Would that it would happen here.

     However…they then eventually go back to sleep. Sleep is the natural state of mankind, on the evidence of all of human history. And western civilization has found a sleep aid that is hundreds of times more powerful than any other known to man.

     Mass media.

     Stronger than religion.

     Stronger than military/police dominance.

     Stronger than anything.

     That track to which you are listening? John Coltrane playing live at the Vanguard in 1961? That is the result of an awakening that happened here amongst the black population from the early part of the 20th century right through the time that it was effectively put down by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Those events were followed by tolerance of…better said, encouragement for…the massive distribution of heroin and then later crack into America’s urban ghettos, essentially ending the awakening process at the street level. At the same time the techniques of mass hypnomedia socialization were becoming stronger and stronger, and they were used to make damned sure that such an awakening didn’t begin again by the immediate coopting of nascent cultural movements like rap music as they appeared within that segment of society.

     Was this a “planned” tactic? I dunno. Maybe it jes’ grew, like Topsy. Or maybe several middle-aged white men sat down in a room and planned the whole shebang.

     Or…most likely…it was a combination of the two plus the law of accident.

     Also known as “Shit happens.”

     Whatever.

     Algeria?

     Not so advanced media-wise as to be able to coopt movements before they start. So they’re going to do it the old-fashioned way.

     Watch.

     Security Forces Halt Protest in Algeria

     Demonstrators, inspired by popular protests in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, protested here in Algeria’s capital on Saturday before security forces moved in to break up the demonstration.
     Related

     Gathering in the central May 1 Square, demonstrators chanted “Bouteflika out!” in reference to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has ruled Algeria since 1999. Organizers said thousands had taken part, but news agencies gave vastly differing figures, from a few dozen to thousands.

     The protesters were hemmed in by thousands of riot police officers and blocked from embarking on a planned march through the capital. Many were arrested, although there were also conflicting numbers for those detained.

     A witness said the police had far outnumbered the protesters.

     “There was a march of police, not demonstrators,” said a man standing near the square in the afternoon, and who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The marchers had asked to conduct a peaceful march and it was refused. This is how power here acts.”

     By Saturday afternoon, no protesters were evident in the area around the square, which was lined by riot police officers and armored security vehicles. A police helicopter circled overhead. Principal roads into the center of the city also remained blocked, and far fewer people were on the streets than would normally be on a Saturday.

     Stop it before it starts.

     The old-fashioned way.

     Billy clubs upside the head.

     Terror.

     Bet on it.

     AG

     P.S. I heard ‘Trane live. At the Vanguard and other places. It was a life-changing experience.

     Here’s the “jazz” deal in a sociological sense, if you don’t know already. And if you do, maybe someone else will benefit from the info.

     John Coltrane was the inheritor of the music of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie; they were the inheritors of the great swing era jazz movement which was in turn the inheritor of the breakthroughs of New Orleans musician like Louis Armstrong. All of those movements needed an audience with enough money to pay for music and enough spirit to be able to tell the difference between bullshit and the real deal. The rising black working class, rising both in terms of earnings and also in terms of understanding…”awakening” if you will…both provided the necessary audience and were also moved by that music to even more awakening. It became a feedback system, one that finally produced the great post-bop movement that was essentially its last real achievement. After that? No more urban black working class. Not really. The ghettos got too nasty due to the heroin and crack epidemics; most of the smarter people…you know, people who were capable of “awakening” on some level?… moved on out and a gene sink situation began to take effect.

     The End.

     Did you know that the compositional genius Duke Ellington wrote and widely performed a  “protest piece” as early as 1943?  In Carnegie Hall? Unless you are a real student of the music, you probably do not.

     Did you know that Louis Armstrong and the white trombonist Jack Teagarden worked together from at least the mid- ’20s on? Publicly? During a time when you almost never saw white and black people together in America unless the black people were working in a white situation as servants of some kind?

     Did you know that the amazing white clarinetist and bandleader Artie Shaw was a long-time pupil of the great Harlem stride pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith in the ’30s?

     Jazz was the spinning point off of which some sort of racially equality was eventually thrown. Not sports. Not Jackie Robinson 30 years later.

     Jazz.

     It reached right down into unlikely places like Davenport Iowa and Vernon Texas (The birthplaces of Bix Beiderbecke and Jack Teagarden), into the Jewish neighborhoods of Chicago (Benny Goodman) and many other other white neighborhoods, and it rang the bells of thousands of white people.

     Myself included in the late ’50s early ’60s.

     Nothing of the sort will ever happen here again as long as the corporate-owned media hold the reins of the culture.

     Too dangerous.

     Bet on it.

     Real music?

     Too dangerous.

     • 

       Arthur Gilroy on February 12, 2011 at 2:12 pm

       I went to your site, palaverer. Wonderful. Good to meet you.

       AG

       • 

         palaverer on February 12, 2011 at 2:24 pm

         Thanks for the compliment, and yes, I have that 1943 Carnegie Hall recording of Black, Brown, and Beige.  Liked the Ishmael Reed reference to jes’ grew, too.  Always good to meet a fellow hipster.

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on February 12, 2011 at 3:20 pm

           Topsy predates Ishmael Reed  by about 100 years. Harriett Beecher Stowe-“Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Pg. 36.

           The “young un” alluded to heard all these comments with the subdued and doleful air which seemed habitual to her, only scanning, with a keen and furtive glance of her flickering eyes, the ornaments which Jane wore in her ears. When arrayed at last in a suit of decent and whole clothing, her hair cropped short to her head, Miss Ophelia, with some satisfaction, said she looked more Christian-like than she did, and in her own mind began to mature some plans for her instruction.
             Sitting down before her, she began to question her.
             “How old are you, Topsy?”
             “Dunno, Missis,” said the image, with a grin that showed all her teeth.
             “Don’t know how old you are? Didn’t anybody ever tell you? Who was your mother?”
             “Never had none!” said the child, with another grin.
             “Never had any mother? What do you mean? Where were you born?”
             “Never was born!” persisted Topsy, with another grin, that looked so goblin-like, that, if Miss Ophelia had been at all nervous, she might have fancied that she had got hold of some sooty gnome from the land of Diablerie; but Miss Ophelia was not nervous, but plain and business-like, and she said, with some sternness,
             “You mustn’t answer me in that way, child; I’m not playing with you. Tell me where you were born, and who your father and mother were.”
             “Never was born,” reiterated the creature, more emphatically; “never had no father nor mother, nor nothin’. I was raised by a speculator, with lots of others. Old Aunt Sue used to take car on us.”
             The child was evidently sincere, and Jane, breaking into a short laugh, said,
             “Laws, Missis, there’s heaps of ’em. Speculators buys ’em up cheap, when they’s little, and gets ’em raised for market.”
             “How long have you lived with your master and mistress?”
             “Dun no, Missis.”
             “Is it a year, or more, or less?”
             “Dun no, Missis.”
             “Laws, Missis, those low negroes,–they can’t tell; they don’t know anything about time,” said Jane; “they don’t know what a year is; they don’t know their own ages.”
             “Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy?”
             The child looked bewildered, but grinned as usual.
             “Do you know who made you?”
             “Nobody, as I knows on,” said the child, with a short laugh.
             The idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes twinkled, and she added,
             “I spect I grow’d. Don’t think nobody never made me.”

           “I spect I grow’d. Don’t think nobody never made me.”

           Deep shit.

           AG

           P.S. Please…don’t label me a “hipster.” I am sure you did not mean it to be insulting, but to me, it is redolent of empty-eyed Willamsburg boys and girls chasing the latest foodie truck.

           I was hip before the hippies.

           Bet on it.

           The last of the beatniks, if anything.

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on February 12, 2011 at 3:25 pm

           By the way,,,did you know that Ishmael Red is a Monk-influenced pianist?

           <iframe title=”YouTube video player” width=”480″ height=”390″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/JyaDndDAP6M” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe&gt

           Yup

           Not a pro, maybe…but dead serious. Playing all the important notes

           Nice.

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on February 12, 2011 at 3:26 pm

           That’s “Reed”, of course…and the embed code didn’t work right.

           So it goes.

           <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyaDndDAP6M&gt;

           AG

         • 

           palaverer on February 12, 2011 at 7:48 pm

           Really impressive playing actually.  I love the man.

         • 

           palaverer on February 12, 2011 at 7:45 pm

           You know, I meant it in the truest sense of the word and then realized how there are so many negative connotations after I hit send.

           Thanks for the Topsy tip.  Another Ishmael Reed reference that got by me.  I do get some, though.  Consider me a student.

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on February 13, 2011 at 1:57 am

           Consider us all students.

           Some pretty good, some not so good.

           So it goes.

           Keep on studying.

           AG

2. 

   anarchronarchist on February 12, 2011 at 12:36 pm

   Looks like another of our tyrants is going to get his?

   http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102×4730959

   “Arrest warrant issued for Perves Musharraf.” It’s for conspiring to assassinate Benezir Bhutto.

   I’m sure our presence there will continue to be welcomed when a connection is made to our own CIA (real or not)?

3. 

   bankseized on March 8, 2011 at 1:54 am

   Thanks for the compliment, and yes, I have that 1943 Carnegie Hall recording of Black, Brown, and Beige