Sigh:

Speaking mostly in French at a press conference in Algiers yesterday, Stone said he was shocked by the global financial crisis and “to see how money was venerated by America”.

Its middle class “is the biggest victim” said the US director, though nothing could be done to change a system that he called “undemocratic, even after the arrival of Obama”, he added.

But the 65-year-old had little sympathy for his compatriots.

“Americans are not really interested in problems abroad,” he said. “They have no empathy.”

The Occupy Wall Street movement would do better to move to “Washington and not New York, to have more impact”, said Stone[.]

[...]

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You have to see this to believe it. And yes, that’s a Palestinian flag Lupe Fiasco is proudly waving — which goes perfectly with the song lyrics posted below.

Big Journalism editor Dana Loesch, who watched the show, tells me that she found Erykah Badu performing in a “fashionable” burqa especially ironic when BET is the same network airing PSAs about black female empowerment.

As long as they look cool and are all multi-cultural, I guess symbols of female enslavement aren’t necessarily all bad.

“Words I Never Said” (lyrics)

It’s so loud Inside my head
With words that I should have said!
As I drown in my regrets
I can’t take back the words I never said
I can’t take back the words I never said

I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullshit
Just a poor excuse for you to use up all your bullets
How much money does it take to really make a full clip
9/11 building 7 did they really pull it
Uhh, And a bunch of other cover ups
Your childs future was the first to go with budget cuts
If you think that hurts then, wait here comes the uppercut
The school was garbage in the first place, that’s on the up and up
Keep you at the bottom but tease you with the uppercrust
You get it then they move it so you never keeping up enough
If you turn on TV all you see’s a bunch of “what the fucks”
Dude is dating so and so blabbering bout such and such
And that ain’t Jersey Shore, homie that’s the news
And these the same people that supposed to be telling us the truth
Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist
Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say shit
That’s why I ain’t vote for him, next one either
I’ma part of the problem, my problem is I’m peaceful
And I believe in the people.

It’s so loud inside my head
With words that I should have said!
As I drown in my regrets
I can’t take back the words I never said
I can’t take back the words I never said

Now you can say it ain’t our fault if we never heard it
But if we know better than we probably deserve it
Jihad is not a holy war, wheres that in the worship?
Murdering is not Islam!
And you are not observant
And you are not a muslim
Israel don’t take my side cause look how far you’ve pushed them
Walk with me into the ghetto, this where all the Kush went
Complain about the liquor store but what you drinking liquor for?
Complain about the gloom but when’d you pick a broom up?
Just listening to Pac ain’t gone make it stop
A rebel in your thoughts, ain’t gon make it halt
If you don’t become an actor you’ll never be a factor
Pills with million side effects
Take em when the pains felt
Wash them down with Diet soda!
Killin off your brain cells
Crooked banks around the World
Would gladly give a loan today
So if you ever miss a payment
They can take your home away!

It’s so loud inside my head
With words that I should have said!
As I drown in my regrets
I can’t take back the words I never said, never said
I can’t take back the words I never said

I think that all the silence is worse than all the violence
Fear is such a weak emotion that’s why I despise it
We scared of almost everything, afraid to even tell the truth
So scared of what you think of me, I’m scared of even telling you
Sometimes I’m like the only person I feel safe to tell it to
I’m locked inside a cell in me, I know that there’s a jail in you
Consider this your bailing out, so take a breath, inhale a few
My screams is finally getting free, my thoughts is finally yelling through

It’s so loud Inside my head
With words that I should have said!
As I drown in my regrets
I can’t take back the words I never said

—–

Why the good Lord gives such horrible people so much talent is a mystery to me.

Just as the anti-war artists of the 60’s expressed their political views through music, so too are an increasing number of artists of the TEA Party movement who refuse to keep silent about the destruction of this great nation by many who ironically subscribed to those radical, anti-government views of the 60’s counterculture movement.

James Kole - American Folk Blues Artist

One such patriot artist, whose musical style is reminiscent of the folk music of the 60’s, but with a contemporary blues/rock twist, is American Folk Blues artist James Kole.

We have been fans of James Kole’s for over two years since first stumbling upon his YouTube channel, impressed not only by his positive, pro-America lyrics, but also by his professionally produced videos, unique musical and vocal style, and his captivating delivery.

James is no newcomer to patriotic-infused songwriting promoting individual liberty and love of country.  His 1998 full-length release, Liberty, offered listeners a glimpse of what was to come over the years and culminate into his 7th full-length album (released July 4th, 2010):  Songs For Freedom in which he sings about the American Revolution, Frederick Douglass, the Constitution, U.S. Sovereignty, current uncertain times, and much more.

“Rockin’ the stage with a force like thunder”, James Kole’s musical talent is mesmerizing and his energetic aura commanding.  A singer/songwriter from Scottsdale, Arizona, Kole has impressed audiences with his unique blend of blues, rock, and American folk, earning him the title “Local Legend” in the 2008 edition of Perfectify Magazine.

Outside the local scene, his music has a long list of film and television credits, including projects for Miramax, HBO, Washington Square Films, MTV, PBS, and even Red Bull energy drinks.

In 2003, Kole was awarded the Best Original Song at the Saguaro Film Festival for his hit, Big Orange Sun.  James has shared stages with The Doobie Brothers, Nashville country artist Pat Green, SNL star Victoria Jackson, and many more.

India Arie and Idan Raichel

The concert had the feel of an intimate workshop. Though Raichel and Arie have been working together for many months, and performed together at the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, they were encountering some of each other’s material for the first time. Arie also premiered some of her new songs, many of which feature Hebrew lyrics. It is deeply moving to hear her set the language of the Bible to soaring R&B harmonies.

—–

Raichel, whose project includes 85 musicians in Israel of varying ethnic and musical traditions, often changes his arrangements from tour to tour. With Arie, he has found a musical partner who both complements and challenges his ideas. At times, the two sang or played along with each other; sometimes they joined the audience in watching and enjoying each other’s songs. They have room to grow together–and they surely will.

The Idan Raichel project emerged several years ago, during the depths of the intifada. Raichel’s music transcended the bitter political debates and highlighted the vitality and diversity of Israeli culture. For Arie, whose songs sometimes incorporate pacifist or left-wing themes, it might have been easier to avoid working with an Israeli artist. That she has done so is a subtle yet commendable rebuke to the radical boycott movement.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker will join the flotilla of ships next week that will try to break Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip. She says the goal is to bring supplies and raise awareness of the situation there. Last May, during a similar attempt by activists, Israel raided six ships. On one, clashes broke out and Israeli commandos killed nine people.

Foreign Policy reached the author of The Color Purple in Greece, where she is preparing for her departure.

Foreign Policy: Why are you taking part in the flotilla mission?

Alice Walker: In 2009, I was in Gaza, just after Operation Cast Lead, and I saw the incredible damage and devastation. I have a good understanding of what’s on the ground there and how the water system was destroyed and the sewage system. I saw that the ministries had been bombed, and the hospitals had been bombed, and the schools. I sat for a good part of a morning in the rubble of the American school, and it just was so painful because we as Americans pay so much of our taxes for this kind of weaponry that was used. On a more sort of mature grandmotherly level I feel that as an elder it is up to me and others like me — other elders, other mature adults — to look at situations like this and bring to them whatever understanding and wisdom we might have gained in our fairly long lifetimes, witnessing and being a part of struggles against oppression. …

FP: Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said the stated goal of “humanitarian assistance” was a false pretext for your mission — and it’s actually designed to serve an extremist political agenda, and that many of the groups participating in the mission maintain ties with extremist and terrorist organizations, including Hamas. Your reaction?

AW: I think Israel is the greatest terrorist in that part of the world. And I think in general, the United States and Israel are great terrorist organizations themselves. If you go to Gaza and see some of the bombs — what’s left of the bombs that were dropped — and the general destruction, you would have to say, yeah, it’s terrorism. When you terrorize people, when you make them so afraid of you that they are just mentally and psychologically wounded for life — that’s terrorism. So these countries are terrorist countries.

FP: How is the United States a terrorist country?

AW: It is. Absolutely, it is. It has terrorized people around the globe for a very long time. It has fought against countries that have tried to change their governments, that have tried to have democracies, and the United States has intervened and interfered, like in Guatemala or Chile. I feel that it is so unreasonable, and I don’t quite understand how they can claim everyone else is a terrorist and they are not when so many people right this minute are terrified of the drones, for instance, in the war in Afghanistan. The dropping of bombs on people — isn’t that terrorism?

Read the full piece here.

As a citizen of Israel, he also had a strong opinion about Obama’s markedly anti-Israeli foreign policy.

The interview began with Varney pointing out that Obama had admitted he overshot on his predictions for job creation, to which Simmons responded: “[Obama] is a man that I voted into political office and…I want my vote back. …I don’t think the man is unqualified to know the structure [of business] and what business needs.”

Varney next pointed out that although Simmons owns and runs a number of businesses, he isn’t hiring at the moment. He looked at Simmons and asked why he wasn’t hiring, to which Simmons responded: “There are so many barriers. The Government means well, but it’s become our mommy and daddy.”

And from there Simmons simply unloaded: “We never gave our kids an allowance, because in real life when you train your children [that] at the end of the week [they’re] going to get an allowance… when [they] grow up…[they’re] used to getting entitlements,” and to asking, “where’s my money?”  

Simmons intimated that such kids eventually become conditioned to look to government with their hand out and say: “Mom and dad [used to] give me my money every week.”

Let me just say that by this point in the interview, Simmons was rolling so hard and fast that I thought Varney might cue up “Dr. Love” or “Shout it Out Loud” and flash the studio lights on and off for a KISS-like ambiance. Instead, Simmons just kept unloading on Obama:

“What we were hoping for was a man who would surround himself with business leaders, not professors from Berkeley. …Our president had two years of local experience, was born in Hawaii, and never ran a business in his life. …I am ashamed to say I didn’t look at the resume long enough. …Greece here we come.”

At the end of the interview, the subject of Israel came up, and particularly Obama’s call for Israel to return to its 1967 borders. Said Simmons: “It’s the height of lunacy.” He also pointed out that Obama can say these things because “he doesn’t live there,” so it doesn’t affect him.

I concur wholeheartedly, and would only add that Obama is able to say alot of what he says about America because “he doesn’t live there” either. Rather, he has lived a federally subsized life — both as a Senator and now as President — wherein  expenses are covered by tax payers and every luxury is afforded him.  The man has absolutely no idea what it’s like to try to make ends meet by spending a hot July afternoon working a field in Kansas or facing the cold of a winter night to break ice for cattle in West Texas or the agony a family of four faces as they try to figure out if they can afford the gasoline needed to take the family vacation they’ve taken every year till now. 

 Simmons put it best when he said of Obama: “The man is unqualified.”

Leonard Nimoy has called for a two state solution for which, in deference, several notables (amongst them Israelis), have called.  Nimoy does make a telling statement about the whole idea of two separate states.

“In fact, there is an end in sight. It’s known as the two-state solution – a secure, democratic Israel as the Jewish State alongside an independent Palestinian state.”

He does deserve some credit for seeing Israel as a Jewish state but, if you notice, there is only one democratic state mentioned here. It isn’t expected that another Muslim Arab state will be democratic. As a matter of fact, as always, Israel is expected to remain multicultural andrespect the rights of all its inhabitants, yet the proposed Arab state would, like all the other Arab states, not be open to Jews. Not that many Jews would like to live in an Arab state, considering the centuries of slaughter and pillage that have been the lot of Dhimmi Jews in Arab lands.

This is pretty par for the course, but what is even more egregious is his call for the division of Jerusalem.

“Their plan includes a Palestinian state alongside Israel with agreed-upon land swaps. The Palestinian-populated areas of Jerusalem would become the capital of Palestine; the Jewish-populated areas the capital of Israel.”

Anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the demographics of Jerusalem would see this as being very “Pie in the Sky.” Without discussing the merits of the argument, the city is a patchwork of neighborhoods, with communities which are impossible to separate without a mass transfer of population. In the eyes of the world, this means kicking Jews out of their homes. There is also the historical precedent set by the last time parts of Jerusalem were under Arab control, between 1948 and 1967, when Jewish holy sites were used as places to corral animal and the headstones from Jewish graves as flooring in bathrooms. Lest one think this is a relic of a bygone era, recall what happened to the Synagogues left behind following the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif in the Gaza strip.

“Peace Now’s activities and programs… keep peace on the world’s agenda… Like those Israelis who issued the peace plan, the members of Peace Now have their boots on the ground. “

Peace Now keeps one thing on its agenda, and that is the expulsion of Jews from their ancestral homes in Judea and Samaria. They have no other platform except returning Israel to its 1949 borders, otherwise known as the Auschwitz borders. The group has never called for any change to the maximalist demands of the Arabs, nor acknowledged the plain facts that the entire Arab-Israeli conflict is based on the desire of the Arabs to return the Jews to the degraded state they were in when they were under Muslim rule, where they could be beaten, robbed or killed with impunity.

Bringing his extensive resume to the forefront, Nimoy then compares the situation to an episode of Star Trek. “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” in which the two remaining survivors of a planet continue their battle fifty thousand years after every other inhabitant on the world has died in the war. This would be a strong political statement, were it not hopelessly naïve.

Israel and the Jewish nation have two options: fight for survival or return to the time when they were at the never tender mercies of the nations that lorded over them. The Muslim Arabs, following the precepts laid down by the Koran, were historically amongst the worst oppressors of the Jews. This is something worth fighting to prevent, even if it lasts for fifty thousand years. Giving in to evil does not bring peace, it only brings more evil.

The bottom line is there is no solution to the conflict in Israel as long as the Arabs demand everything and still see themselves as the rightful rulers, not so much of the land, but of the infidels who reside upon it.

British band’s Facebook page invites fans to listen to music video created by various artists in cooperation with pro-Palestinian organizations

Coldplay for Palestine – a message on the popular British band’s official Facebook page invites fans to listen to the song “Freedom for Palestine” – a musical collaboration initiated by the OneWorld organization.

[...]

The fan page quickly filled with hundreds of political comments by web surfers hailing from all over the world. The clip, which features musicians Maxi Jazz from Faithless, Jamie Catto from 1 Giant Leap and other members of British rock bands, shows images of the security fence, Palestinian residents and the different artists performing the song.

The website that features the music video lists the organizations involved in the project, including Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, A Just Peace for Palestine, Friends of Al Aqsa, Stop the War Coalition and War on Want.

Full article here.

A big thanks to Hot Air Pundit for finding this gem. Gene Simmons speaks so much reasoned clarity in this clip that he deserves curtain call.

How about a little “Detroit Rock City”?

UPDATE: By popular demand… “Rock & Roll All Night and Party Every Day”:

Danish film director Lars von Trier stunned his audience at the Cannes film festival on Wednesday by saying that he sympathized with, and understood, Adolf Hitler. “OK, I’m a Nazi,” he told a news conference, which reacted with nervous laughter and surprised silence.

Actress Kirsten Dunst, sitting next to Von Trier, seemed very ill at ease with the comments of the director, who has a history of provocative and controversial comments. In 1989, Von Trier discovered that his his biological father was a German, Fritz Michael Hartmann. Von Trier, who is presenting his new film ‘Melancholia’ at the Cannes film festival, also said that Israel was ‘a pain in the ass’.