Paul Simon See America Changes Its Tune

The great musician and composer Paul Simon back on track and about to launch their new Album SURPRISE in the coming 8th of May. I was in Chicago the day before his You’re The One concert was held during Thanksgiving 2000 but too bad I missed the concert cause I couldn’t rescheduled my flight back to Jakarta. Paul is as always, a peace loving singer. Now is the lowest point in American history. The great America that used to be the champion of democracy, the fore front in promoting basic human rights, a country that respect civil rights has changed and moving to fascism. Legalizing torture in its detention centres, keeping terrorist suspects in Guantanamo concentration camp , spying their citizens, and American living in false paranoia . I bet that drives Paul Simon to write War Time Prayers in the upcoming album :

All that is changed now
Gone like a memory from the day before fires
people hungry for the voice of God
hear lunatics and liars,
Wartime prayers in every language spoken
for every family scattered and broken

This is certainly a softer allusions to Bush and his scumbag administration, compared to Green Day's American Idiot. Paul Simon has always been sensitive to social injustice. In 1997 he launched CAPEMAN ,a kind of protest to racial prejudice against Hispanic immigrants. Listen to what he said in Trailway Bus :

The border patrol outside Tucson boarded the bus
Any aliens here, you’d better check with us
How about you son
You look like you got spanish blood
Do you habla ingles, am I understood

Yes, I am an alien from mars
I came here from outer space
And if I traveled my whole life
You guys would still be on my case
You guys would still be on my case

Three decades ago in 1973 Paul Simon sang American Tune , another social commentary. without knowing that someday ,today, America changes its tune :

And I dreamed I was dying
I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hours
and sing an American tune
Oh, and it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest

Simon never fade away, his first debut Sound Of Silence was in 1966, 20 years later in 1986 he made another debut Graceland that won Grammy Award and another 20 years later , now in 2006 he is still brilliant with SURPRISE. He is 64 going 65 years old today. He must be doing something in 20 years from now when he is 85 years old. I hope he doesn’t live to see the American empire turn to dust.

Random Notes Part Two

Mahathir Mohamad said that Jews ruled the world and got others to fight and die for them .The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule the world by proxy. “They get others to fight and die for them," he said. They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy, so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so that they can enjoy equal rights with others. "With these they have gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power.



I am not surprised when a friend forward an email regarding two US professors John Mearsheimer of University of Chicago and Stephen M.Walt of John Kennnedy School Of Government , Harvard University ,become target of harsh criticism by Jewish lobby. The capital sin commited is their papers entitled The Israel Lobby And The US Foreign Policy in which they charged that US foreign policy doesn’t serve US interest, but served Jewish interest. As you can guess , the two were given anti semitic label, an attribute that may make the rest of their academic career difficult.

Nothing new for me, because it happens all the time when you criticize jews. One of the outrageous critics came from a Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz ,a Zionist watch dog in Harvard. This is not the first time for Dreshowitz to engage in crusade against academic thesis. He had before attempted to block the publication of Norman Finkelstein’s book Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History. What really surprised me , the last resort of intellectual freedom has become the victim of jewish tyrannical power. You can criticize God, but never attempt to say negative about jews. This further prove Mahathir’s thesis about the mighty power of jews.

Now come the lighter part of my post. I always believe in using decent words as much as I believe that Dirt Is In The Brain Of The Beholder. So I can’t help telling following story to you. My room mate has a good sense of humor. Too bad he doesn’t want to blog his jokes . One of recent rants he made in relation with Tony Blair visit is the way he called Tony Blair by a little bit wrestling his tongue to pronounce Tony Plair. For those with poor bahasa vocabulary, may I give a chestnote that plair is “ bag containing a pair of two round flesh that every normal male carry wherever they go”. He has the reason to change the name because as he said : “In that case, Bush make a perfect dick where plair attached, or shall I say, plair is the right surname since it is surrounded by bush “ .

Anyway, while Mr.Blair was in Jakarta, the great liberators as represented by State Secretaries Jack Straw and Condy Rice visited Iraq with a pocketful of complains to Iraq puppet leaders on how messy the situation is. They feel that they are entitled to press Iraq to form a government quickly because they liberated the country at great cost. "The United States and the United Kingdom are the people who liberated this country.American and British force blood has been lost in the cause of liberty.It's very important now that the Iraqis make progress, and I think we are entitled to say that the loss of American and British and coalition lives - and a huge amount of money has been spent here - is itself a reason for the Iraqi leaders to make swift progress”.
The logic that they are trying to sell is , the chaos and daily massacre in Iraq are the product of incapable Iraqi leaders. They want to wash their hand clean and put the blame to their puppets. Noam Chomsky analogize to the German general staff after Stalingrad: “ it’s not working; it’s costing too much; we made a mistake, we should get a different general; That’s the most shameful way to escape from their irreversible mistakes.

My room mate told me this morning that last night he had a bad dream watching CNN breaking news, Tony and Dubya were held hostage by Iraqi insurgent . Bad dream or good dream, I couldn't care less, I need reality show...