As expected, a host of rappers have already begun to speak their minds on the unfortunate and unjustified slaying of Oakland resident Oscar Grant by BART police.
Here’s the first wave.
Mistah F.A.B. Feat. Jennifer Johns & Codany Holiday – My Life (Oscar Grant)
DJ Green Lantern Feat. Avery Storm & Uncle Murda – Crazy World
Novel – Mad World (Oscar Grant Tribute)
Previously Posted — Video: Riots In Oakland | “Overkill…” – The Murder Of Oscar Grant
CATEGORY: AUDIO, GENERAL, LOOSIES, MUSIC | TAGS: DJ Green Lantern, Johannes Mehserle, Mistah F.A.B, Murder, MUSIC VIDEO, Novel, Oscar Grant, Police, Sean Bell, Tributes
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I know I shouldn’t be…but I must admint that I am still surprise by the lack of press on this from the National Media outlets.
The officer that shot Oscar Grant is 27-year-old Johannes Mehserle.
I wouldn’t mind seeing some retribution and street justice served.
^Yeah…they said he and his family had to move twice since the incident….looks like street justice is trying to creep up on him from behind
Rappers trying to garner some attention from this whole incident? Tsk, tsk, tsk.
BTW, fuck the motherfuckers doing the killing in the Gaza Strip.
^ obviously you mean hamas
^ don’t know if you came across this yet, but it’s about Gaza:
http://dallaspenn.com/weblog/?p=3136
The problem with USA is that you’ve got too many idiots running around with guns. Idiots shouldn’t be carrying guns, in fact it’s a shame people need to carry guns fullstop and a big fuck you to the studio gangsta’s and cash in on a tragedy rappers also.
Forest ill, not just hamas but the Israeli forces carrying out the murder of the incidents, in case you missed it, civilians are getting shot and blown left right and centre, so a fuck you to the bloodshedders also, whether it’s hamas or the Israeli (want to keep the press out) forces also.
sorry i meant to type innocents.
I’m against war, violence and especially the situation in Isreal, but if you’re firing rockets from the dance floor of a wedding party, or giving guns to women and children to shoot at soldiers, or specifically targeting civilians with rocket attacks, or sending suicide bombers to ride busses you are hardly playing fairly. It changes the counting of innocent civilians.
That’s not to say Isreal has been liberal with their targeting of rockets, just that this war is messy on both sides.
sorry ‘not to say Isreal hasn’t been…”
Point taken on board Forest, but drives an individual to the point where the Palestinians are doing what they are doing?
From the pictures that I see on the news I can’t see much targetting of Hamas, all I see is bystanders killed left, right and centre.
They showed 5 or so Palestinian children starving for days when they found em they were by the side of their dead mother, who they were waiting upon to wake up.
Somehow I don’t think Israel respects the rights and privledges of the Palestinians, I agree to a certain degree that hamas needs to stopped but this is not the way, dropping bombs on innocents and putting a bullet people who have no where to run.
I sure hope that the new President of the USA does something productive with his time in terms of the peace process in the middle east, the outgoing President is a war mongering jack ass and it will be a great day indeed when he leaves office.
So like I said Forest what drives Palestinians to do what they are doing?
Forest you must be watching a different channel to me, I don’t see much targetting of Hamas and their weaponary.
I’m watching BBC, SKY News, Al Jazzera, ITV News, Channel 4 news and they are all showing the same thing, innocent Palestinian men, women and children suffering and dieing because it looks like a campaign of genocide is being undertaken upon them.
Isreal has more spys in the west bank then mcdonalds has franchises in the u.s.a.; they’re working with pretty solid intelligence, they are absolutely not firing all willy nilly, they can ill afford another Jennin massacre. And please remember, three children sitting next to a dead mother is a great (powerful, not good) visual to show on television. and come on, watching al jazzera for news on isreal, is like watching cnn, to see how the u.s.a. is doing in afganistan…completely one sided and biased reporting.
yeah. some rockets get fired, and 900 palestinian civilians are murdered and massacred by air strikes. that sounds totally proportional.
Forest and what BBC, Channel 4, ITV and SKY they’re also one sided and pro Palestine?
Come on man, you can only say hand on heart that the massacre of innocents isn’t going down there?
Sheesh, I don’t know what else to say Forest, I guess your code of conduct is by any means necessary huh?
you CAN’T fight fair (and expect to win) if you’re fighting the ones who MAKE the rules….an al jazeera is the other side of the coin my friend, all U.S. news outlets are on the pro-Israel propaganda march as usual….
Forest if Israel has more spies in the West Bank and McDonalds in the USA, then how come they haven’t spied out the specific Hamas individuals and weapon hide outs?
If they have spied it out, then the intelligence they must have reported is blanket bomb them all and wipe them all out, because that’s how it appears to a lot of ppl around the world.
Bomb them all, and hit them with white phospherous, that’s chemical weapons dude.
How do you justify them bombing and killing of innocent men, women and children?
Is that small strip of land worth all of this bloodshed?
no, you’re right, the bloodshed makes absolutely no sense…there is no reason two cultures of people, basically cousins, can’t live together…but when “1,571 rockets and 1,531 mortar bombs fired from the Gaza Strip have struck southern Israel since the beginning of the year (Jan-Dec 2008). ” it is probably easy to be drawn into combat. I don’t support the attacks taking place by Isreal, but i definately can not condone the attacks by the Palestinians either. Maybe we can look forward to renewed peace talks with Barrack, ideally though they can come to their senses sooner and stop the violence.
Editor’s note: As if to underscore the points below, consider the comments of Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai back in March. The following is from the Adamite blog:
Vilnai, a former general, was interviewed by army radio as Israel was in the midst of unleashing a series of air and ground strikes on populated areas of Gaza that killed more than 100 Palestinians, at least half of whom were civilians and 25 of whom were children, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.
The interview also took place in the wake of a rocket fired from Gaza that killed a student in Sderot and other rockets that hit the center of the southern city of Ashkelon. Vilnai stated: “The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they [the Palestinians of Gaza] will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.”
Shoah is widely used as a reference to the Nazi plan to exterminate European Jewry.
Nearly everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.
THE GAZANS
Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.
THE OCCUPATION
The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.
THE BLOCKADE
Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.
The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.
THE CEASE-FIRE
Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.
WAR CRIMES
The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.
This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”
I probably commented on this too late to get a legitimate response from anyone but I’ll say my piece.
I think we can all agree that all of this killing is really fucked up.
However, let’s get off this “proportional response” bullshit. Who determines proportional response? What is proportional response? Why are some actors held to proportional response standards while others are not? Most importantly: when has proportional response ended violence ever? I’ll wait.
The answer is that it hasn’t and never will. Hamas will not stop fighting because they oppose the very existence of Israel. Thus it’s up to Israel to find an end to violence by their own means with a disproportionate response.
Disproportionate response does NOT automatically mean more violence. Less violence is also a disproportionate response. Israel is justified in a military campaign against Hamas. Israel is not necessarily RIGHT in their military campaign against Hamas. Justification requires an adequate argument (and with the constant rocket fire from Gaza, no matter how ineffective, constitutes an adequate argument). All the same, I will reiterate that Israel is not necessarily right in their campaign.
So if Israel is justified in A military campagin, are they carrying out the right military campaign? Are they carrying out an effective military campaign? Abso-fuckingly-lutely not on both points.
Hamas does not have the means to be anything more then a terrorist organization. Terrorists attempt to strike sharp fear in the entity they are fighting and cause an over-reaction in response to gain support for their cause.
Israel’s response to Hamas’ terrorist actions are an over-reaction and through media coverage, Hamas gains sympathy from the global community and gains support from moderate Palestinians and Arabs who are affected by Israel’s over-reaction and become radicals.
Israel is playing directly into Hamas’ hand which is what Hamas counted on. Hamas will never be able to destroy Israel on their own. Yet Hamas undermines Israel’s global credibility, garners support from other Arab nations and exhausts Israel in fighting phantom enemies. At this rate, violence will only increase.
As a Jew, I hope that there is some solution. Preferably a permanent solution, but at this point, even a temporary solution that gets people to stop killing each other would suffice if a permanent solution could be worked out.