Not strongly familiar with rap, but if this is the essence of the genre, I'd be willing to learn. As I mentioned to another poster, I think it's exceptionally thoughtful to place a YouTube link alongside the post, although the embed played perfectly fine for me.

-R-

Stuart, I am loving lowkey! thanks!

just posted this on mark's blog. have you heard?:

If you really want your hair to stand on end, read Glenn Greenwald today on a just released Washington Post revelation about Obama's "disposition matrix". all I could think of was IBM colluding with the Nazis to keep statistical track for oppression and annihilation.

Try to "lesser evil" that, America!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-terrorism-kill-list

sorry, sky, didn't get time to figure out and apply the link stuff yet.

I will quote some of it:

"Based on interviews with "current and former officials from the White House and the Pentagon, as well as intelligence and counterterrorism agencies", Miller reports that as "the United States' conventional wars are winding down", the Obama administration "expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years" (the "capture" part of that list is little more than symbolic, as the US focus is overwhelmingly on the "kill" part). Specifically, "among senior Obama administration officials, there is broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade." As Miller puts it: "That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism."

"In pursuit of this goal, "White House counterterrorism adviser John O Brennan is seeking to codify the administration's approach to generating capture/kill lists, part of a broader effort to guide future administrations through the counterterrorism processes that Obama has embraced." All of this, writes Miller, demonstrates "the extent to which Obama has institutionalized the highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war."

"The Post article cites numerous recent developments reflecting this Obama effort, including the fact that "CIA Director David H Petraeus is pushing for an expansion of the agency's fleet of armed drones", which "reflects the agency's transformation into a paramilitary force, and makes clear that it does not intend to dismantle its drone program and return to its pre-September 11 focus on gathering intelligence." The article also describes rapid expansion of commando operations by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and, perhaps most disturbingly, the creation of a permanent bureaucratic infrastructure to allow the president to assassinate at will:

"JSOC also has established a secret targeting center across the Potomac River from Washington, current and former U.S. officials said. The elite command's targeting cells have traditionally been located near the front lines of its missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. But JSOC created a 'national capital region' task force that is a 15-minute commute from the White House so it could be more directly involved in deliberations about al-Qaeda lists."

"The creepiest aspect of this development is the christening of a new Orwellian euphemism for due-process-free presidential assassinations: "disposition matrix". Writes Miller:

"Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the 'disposition matrix'.

"The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. US officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the 'disposition' of suspects beyond the reach of American drones."

"The "disposition matrix" has been developed and will be overseen by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). One of its purposes is "to augment" the "separate but overlapping kill lists" maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon: to serve, in other words, as the centralized clearinghouse for determining who will be executed without due process based upon how one fits into the executive branch's "matrix". As Miller describes it, it is "a single, continually evolving database" which includes "biographies, locations, known associates and affiliated organizations" as well as "strategies for taking targets down, including extradition requests, capture operations and drone patrols". This analytical system that determines people's "disposition" will undoubtedly be kept completely secret; Marcy Wheeler sardonically said that she was "looking forward to the government's arguments explaining why it won't release the disposition matrix to ACLU under FOIA".

"This was all motivated by Obama's refusal to arrest or detain terrorist suspects, and his resulting commitment simply to killing them at will (his will). Miller quotes "a former US counterterrorism official involved in developing the matrix" as explaining the impetus behind the program this way: "We had a disposition problem.""

end of quote

I don't know about you but I am getting chills and the term "final solution" is suddenly haunting me.

And the apologizing apostles of the American Judas are marching us all there, to the exponentially expanding kill and detention lists.

I wish I were being hyperbolic, but the obama regime defies that.

God, he even calls it the "matrix"!

best, libby

ps, I needed the link!

I love rap with a social justice message. Lowkey is of Iraqi descent. His mother is Iraqi. He is very anti-war & anti-zionist and has performed concerts in the West Bank. I think he tried to perform one in Gaza, but was detained by Israel.

This is from 2009, but Lif has kinda always been way ahead of his time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz9kYH1qJYo

This is from 1989, but Chuck has kinda always been even farther ahead of his time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WHe5fxS3dA

I could literally go all day long, so I'll leave it at that instead of blowin' up your comments.

Great links, Malcolm. I've always been a big fan of Public Enemy. Rap really seems to resonate with the desperate situation so many people face in their daily lives.

Thanks for the link, Libby. I've tried to comment twice on Mark's blog - the first time OS ate my comment and the 2nd time I just got a lot of error messages. Obama's kill list is unadulterated, undisguised fascism. There's no 2 ways about it.

What a world. Koyaanisqatsi

So about this kill list: based on the rationale of the hard left it would have been illegal and inappropriate for FDR to put Martin Bormann, Karl Dönitz, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Hans Fritzsche, Walther Funk, Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Alfred Jodl, Ernst Kaltenbrunner,Wilhelm Keitel, Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Robert Ley, Baron Konstantin von Neurath, etc, etc, etc, in a kill list and not publish that list in the New York Times? And that, had he had the opportunity to take them out, FDR should have waited till after the war and given them a public trial? Sorry, I just don’t get that.

Brilliant analogy, Francois. Thanks for that.