Great read from the Slate, outlining the current Pope’s complicity in the ongoing child abuse plague within the church/vatican:

Catholics – here is your leader

Tell me which candidate will represent “the people” now?

Next election will be VERY interesting.

Click here if you can stomach it.

We as hip hop artists – of a certain vintage – are at a cross-roads.

We have to decide what we want to do.  Do we want to make music, or make money?

I’ll be the first to admit – I probably couldn’t produce or write a pop-hop, super-mega, radio hit (maybe Booz and Ak could, but not me).  I don’t know what to draw from inside to inspire that.

I feel different things – and I try to convey those feelings in the tones and moods of the samples I chop, and synth sounds I use.

The sound I create does not seem destined to have a high earning potential, but it does reward me in other ways.  When someone feels the songs the way I feel them, that is the reward.

Hip hop has made so many people very rich, but it has traded it’s soul and direction for this fortune.

Nowadays, the ‘best’ hip hop sounds like old hip hop.  The new hip hop is pop, and the hip hop that is ‘pushing the boundaries’ is really just hip hop being done by a segment of people who never did it before (ie. middle class, educated people) – so the only the ‘progressive’ about it is a relatively milder, somewhat more Prep-school type of subject matter.

Musically – it’s still the same.

Ask yourself people – don’t you want more?

I am so tired of the ‘International Community’ trying to intercede in local conflicts to help ‘resolve’ the situation.

That shit has not worked ONCE in the history of local civil wars.

Consider:  Isreal-Palestine, Rwanda, The Balkin States, Kashmir, Tibet, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, South Africa.

This brings me to Sri Lanka. 

In Sri Lanka we have, apparently, a clear winner to this conflict.  It appears as though the LTTE has lost, and the government has won.  If that is the case, hopefully the country can move on, and work towards some kind of civil existance.

Contrast that with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  It continues to drags on and on and on because of the endless attempts at ‘peace’ talks.  Whereas, if they just went to full out war, the Palestinians (who are in my opinion the victims) would lose.  While that is unfair, even sad, someone has to win and someone has to lose.  And it would be over. 

Yes there would be bitterness, and there may even be scattered conflict afterwards, but with the drivers of the conflict gone (ie. the leaders killed – or officially surrendering) there is the possibility of the movement dying as well.

All we need to do is look at WW2.  Germany lost outright.  Japan surrendered outright.  And look at both of those coutries now – stable, contributing members of the global economy.  Yes there are still skinheads and neo-nazi’s – but not on the scale of global terrorists or rogue states.

So let them fight.  Let the civil wars start and end, and we can all help clean up the mess, tend the wounded, and help rebuild.  This way, we can focus on our own issues at home – poverty, healthcare, pollution, corruption.

Let there be winners and losers - I am comfortable with being the referees.

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So, in reference to my previous post, I recently saw a study published that analyzed data allowing them to rank the top schools in each district.

So, of course, I looked at the numbers for the district I live in.

Of the top 10 – 8 are Catholic Schools.  The public schools are in a different city (same district board, but different cities than I live in).

Now that is a joke.  I am no Catholic, I don’t want my children indoctrinated with fantasy stories about guys walking on water and doing magic tricks.

So here I am, paying taxes, funding the top schools in my district that are mutually exclusive to my kids UNLESS we join the cult.

Why are the public schools performing so shitty?  Why is the Catholic board performing so well?

I am planning to call my School Board to discuss these questions – I will let you all know what I hear.

In light of the recent revelations regarding A-Fraud and his steriod use from 2001-2003, I have had to re-think how I look at the game of baseball.

The players that I figured were the best I have seen in my lifetime – Bonds, Clemens, A-Rod – have now ALL had a postive test for banned substances.

At first, I was willing to cut these guys some slack, and to let their records (end eventual records) stand.  But now, I say NO.

Hank Aaron’s 61 homers in a season, and 755 in his career are STILL the mark – because he did it clean.

I say strike EVERY record from 1989 to today.

All the players who have had positive tests during that time should have a ZERO recorded for thier stats officially, and a side note outlining thier stats when during thier career.  All clean players stats stand as official in the MLB books.

So we in this model, we would lose almost 2 decades of stats for these guys….but I don’t feel sorry for them.  They still all have 100million dollar contracts, so they won’t be crying at home about it – in thier mansions.

So today, the MLB has a chance to start fresh – year zero.  Any player now can start to chase 61-755 – but judging how guys numbers have come down to reality – we might be waiting a looooong time.

This just highlights how amazing Hank Aaron was.

Spread the movement – 61-755.

Over the last few blogs I have posted I have been covering and exposing people to different views to hopefully expand our minds. So I am going to continue, today I will post something from Bobby Hemmit. This clip is basically talking about the power of GOD being within us. This is something I have told many people but it is funny to me that a lot of people need to hear the same thing from several people before they realize what the first person was saying.  Anyway Bob Marley told us, “We know and we understand that mighty GOD is a living man. You can fool some people sometimes but you can’t fool all the people all the time”.  With that being said enjoy the clip and as always I encourage discussion. PEACE!

Somebody explain to me why the people ‘elected’ to lead the nations of the world are so blind to what is really going on.

So – we have LARGE corporations who greedily acquired over-valued assets at record rates, expecting record growth.  Of course, reality kicked them all in the ass.

None of these companies had the REAL finances to do this, it was all created money, loans and re-financing deals based on their own over-valued assets.

So to put it simply, my house is worth say 100,000 in a normal economy – but in the hyperinflated economy that existed in 2007 – I could sell it for 200,000 – and some idiot would buy it because his/her idiot financial institution figures its all good – finance this guy, even though he has no biz buying anything other than a 50,000 house.

Than the market crashes, my house that the idiot bought is now REALLY worth 100,000 and he has a mortgage of 190,000.

Now inflate these numbers to millions and billions and you have the need for a bailout. 

Here’s the joke – its not the guy who bought the house that is getting the bailout – its the fucking greedy bank that gave him the 200,000 to buy the house that is getting bailed out?!?!

So the bank still gets to squeeze the peoples balls on over-valued loans for under-valued assets, but they get cash to hold them over while John Q. Public has to now work a second or third job just to keep the banks off thier ass.

Now for the bullshit.

By just throwing money at the banks, and spending money trying to create jobs with a ‘stimulus package’, the problem is not going to be fixed.

The money for ‘new jobs’ is only going to create maybe 200,000 jobs in Canada – over a 2-3 year span.   But when jobs are being cut at big companies (some of whom were part of the problem initially), you are not replacing those jobs – you are replacing manufacturing jobs only.

And – the rate of job loss is incredible.  Companies are slashing by the thousands…76,000 in one day….you can already see that the rate of job creation will not keep up with the rate of job creation.

The system is itself is collapsing,  and the system of Money as Debt is finally bearing its rotten, poisoned fruit.

We are all going to suffer in some capacity or another – just hope you can hold your income steady for the next 4 years.

Don’t believe me?  Look into what happened in Iceland, and what’s happening in Britain.

Here is yet another clip for you to take in. I think it is important for us to know the effect our words really have on other people. Every word we speak carries a vibration to it (that is the sound) and that vibration carries energy rooted in the thought that you have when you speak. As an emcee, artist, speaker, our responsiblilty to the words we say is huge. Too many people ignore this responsibility and it is poisoning our people. We all want positive change so lets all start speaking about it first, then watch those words manifest. I put this clip up to break down the chakra’s and the power of words to energize them. As always I am encouraging discussion, and take it all in with an open mind.  PEACE!

Ak 7

As always I like to drop some things that are not discussed out there in the world of our listeners, fans, and people just finding us. So I found a clip from a person I actually know, “Black Dot”. First off, I must give respect where it is due cause DOT pushed “Concrete Kings” for us on a dvd in Atlanta at one of his lectures and to have your work respected by people like him is an honor. While I am at it I must give the same respect to KRS-1 for plugging “Concrete Kings” at a show in Toronto.

Back to the topic of this blog, I am putting this out for people to gain a better understanding of the power of our words, and the sounds we make while expressing ourselves. In music this power is amplified TEN fold easily because of the reproduction of sound through cd’s, mp3′s, dvd’s, radio, etc. Dot touches on this topic in this clip as well as giving you something to think about. As always I ask that you keep your mind open, I am not going to tell anyone what to think but I will always encourage people to think for THEMSELVES.

Peace, Akim