War and Social Justice

White public intellectual Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States of America, in his first major address since this last year's historic presidential election. Courtesy of... you guessed it, Democracy Now!

He's actually more of a showman than you'd think. For example, check the bit early on about the meaning of the word socialism. I'm not gonna lie, I fell asleep listening to this the other day. But that was mostly because I was tired as a mofo. Where as most people spent the past few weeks eating like it's going out of style, getting wasted and watching TV, I've been working like a Hebrew slave at the BGM.

Well, fine, I have spent some time eating like it's going out of style, getting wasted, and watching TV. But still. I have been pretty tired.

On a semi-related note, I'll just point out this video, over at Nah Right, where Jay Smooth goes off on some guy in the comments section of Just Blaze's blog who went off on Jay Smooth because he's an Israeli, but he's yet to comment on the situation in Gaza. As Jay Smooth points out, he's not an Israeli, he's halfrican american (which is to say, emotionally crippled). In fact, he got his start in radio brushing Amy Goodman's wig. He just doesn't like to discuss issues like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because he doesn't consider that his role.

Which struck me as interesting, since I took it upon myself to do a post on the conflict at XXL last week, and the response to it has been remarkably positive. I've even got reason to believe I could have scored some nasty anti-war protester stank behind that post. If I wouldn't have been so busy this weekend, I might have hit up one of those rallies - both for the girls and for the cause. Sure, you run the risk of having your name put on some sort of list. But I figure I'm probably on some sort of list at this point anyway.

And I'm not the only one who's noticing that there does seem to be an audience for that sort of thing on the hip-hop Internets. Here's Ian the Canadian from Notes from a Different Kitchen in a post today on the response to a post he did the other day re: Israel-Gaza compared to most of the garbage he posts these days:

So lots of debate around the last video I posted on this issue. Maybe I should ditch the hip hop and post on the Israeli-Palestine conflict instead? People seem more engaged on that than the music stuff based on comment feedback volume, that's for sure.

What do you fruits think? Should bloggers avoid speaking out against the war, since we aren't experts on explosives or anything? Or is that our role?

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