My all time favourite vocalist is the wonderful Al Green. Still killing ‘em on “Later with Jools Holland ” http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#

Al doesn’t come on until 55 minutes into the show.

He’s the king, which is really saying something, because there are a lot of great singers I admire. But someone has to top the list and it’s still Al after all these years!

Image by talkradionews via Flickr

Here’s an extract from his historic address Thurs Sept 24th 2009 (courtesy ICJS Research):

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.

For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks. We heard nothing - absolutely nothing - from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one.

In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis. We didn’t get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv.  Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare. You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent.

Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond. But how should we have responded? Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country’s civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II. During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties.  Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians - Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers.

That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in ambulances. Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas.

We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave. Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy’s civilian population from harm’s way.

Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel. A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.

By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth. What a perversion of justice.

Delegates of the United Nations,

Will you accept this farce?

Movie footage and full speech here: http://www.icjs-online.org/index.php?eid=6999&ICJS=5855&article=2069 at ICJS Research.

Perfectly put, this is the inconvenient truth for the Israel bashers in our midst.

The President of Afghanistan, famous actor Ben Kingsley (pictured right), who sometimes goes under the stage name of Hamid Karzai, is facing an election this week in the war torn country.

Juggling his two careers in Hollywood and Kabul, Kingsley has to choose his movie projects very carefully these days, so that they will not clash with his presidential duties in the Transitional Islamic State.

The pressure sometimes shows, as his movie career has slowed in favour of his political career. Wow! I wouldn’t like to have to deal with his work commitments!

Ahmadinnerjacket

I was going to mess about with this typical picture of the re-elected in a landslide Iranian president in Photoshop, but I decided to leave it alone.

I heard a snippet of the title song from the old musical Hare on my car radio the other day. You know, the one that goes “Give me an Edward Hare” (right)

“long, beautiful Hare” (below)

Remember when the English vocabulary used to contain the word “international”?

This quaint olde worlde word has now been replaced by the term “global”.

Global, relating to the planet, as in “global warming” (ugh!) and international, relating to the nations existing on the surface of that planet. So, instead of the”International Financial Crisis”, we now have the “Global Financial Crisis”.

As if the globe itself (see right) is out of money, which it doesn’t need and has never used, being a heavenly body and all.

Nope, it just isn’t right.

Speaking of international global misconceptions, if you’re the type of moonbat who worries about Climate Change, well, you don’t have to worry anymore. If you don’t like the way the climate is going, stick around, because if it’s changing, it’s bound to change right back to where you liked it! It’s called Climate Change, right? Not Climate Not Change!

I remember way back in school we were taught that the climate of a region is measured over a period of 10 years.

That’s the definition of the word climate. One decade only. It is a dynamic thing, not static. One decade.

I would like to take this opportunity to announce that I have made a major geophysical discovery in my laboratory.

I’ve figured out the scientific reason for this Global Warming and Climate Change claptrap!

In recent months the world has suffered a major tilt to the left, with the election of the crazed Democrats in the U.S. and Kev’s Labour Party in Australia, as well as lefty governments in many nations and lefty thinking in the universities and news media.

This severe left tilt has caused the globe (see picture) to tilt on its axis and has changed the orbital pattern around the sun. Either that, or the moonbats are loose again.

What do you think, gentle reader?

From the wonderful old t.v. series “Father Ted” (right). Hilarious YouTube clip featuring Ted’s highly toxic colleague Father Jack Hackett

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvmA_7pMlX4

If you’re connected to the internet – and you more than likely are if you’re reading this post, you could do a lot worse than install Firefox as your browser.
The add-ons and customization possibilities are great. I am writing this post using ScribeFire, another free Firefox add-on. Hat tip to Noach for that one.

After being introduced to the Mac by the aforementioned Noach, I must admit to being a life long fan.
Macs are expensive, but they just work! After many years of Windoze, I love the Mac.

I still run a Windoze pc for certain unavoidable tasks. I have the Crashmaster 2000 model.
It is very reliable. I can rely on it to crash and reboot and crash and reboot all day.

At the office I have a more modern, higher spec machine. It doesn’t crash, it just runs slower and slower with every Windoze update. It still runs because it’s running XP Professional.

The Mac has Bootcamp and has Vista Business running on it’s own separate drive.
Vista is so smart, it can’t even recognise the keyboard and mouse – and they’re also made by Microsoft!
The drivers installed easily and show up happily in control panel. They just don’t work! Grrrr!
And don’t even ask about the audio interface issue! I said don’t ask! Anyway, who needs it? I’ve got Mac!

(Apologies to Bill Gates – anyone who gives that much money to charity has got to be a good guy.)

Two great and very useful little toys – both Firewire audio interfaces and both terrific value for money.

Presonus FireStudio Project

I use the Presonus on location when I need up to eight mic preamps and it performs beautifly. Just this baby and a laptop and you have a recording studio to go. Just add mics and a pair of monitors.

Great sounding mic preamps, easy to set up. It comes with a free copy of Cubase LE and other software to complete the studio. Nothing else is needed.

Presonus FireStudio Project

MOTU Ultralite Mk 3

I use the Ultralite in my home rig. It has only two mic / instrument preamps, but there are six more line inputs and I have more mic pres available around the studio. The outstanding feature of this little box, apart from the audio quality, is the Cue Mix software. This is a great software mixer, plus really useful DSP effects for use on each channel, like 5 band parametric e.q. with 2 filters, modelled after the best classic consoles, reverb, compression and an emulation of the classic LA2A optical compressor of vintage fame. If your computer is struggling to run a lot of plugins, this outboard DSP power can be extremely useful. Even if your computer does have the grunt, it’s still great to have the option of using these very nice tools.

Motu Ultralite Mk 3

Both boxes have plenty of ins and outs, and they do their jobs extremely well. There are many other products out there, but I really only have practical experience with these two.

Well done, the gearheads at Presonus and Motu!