Kony, The New Bin Laden?

Kony2012 is a charity/intervention project, whose objective is to arrest Joseph Kony. Joseph Kony is the leader of the LRA, a Ugandan guerrilla group. He’s in the top 10 most wanted criminals in the world. Through his religious beliefs, Kony and the LRA, kidnapped thousands of children, forcing them to be soldiers and sex slaves. Those children are forced to mutilate others, and kill their own families. All of this in the name of a “God” that speaks through Kony.
In May 2012, his name traveled the Internet, mainly amongst teens. A 30 minute documentary was made, promoting a charity project called “Invisible Children”, and asking the public to make Kony famous, so the U.S.A heard about the story of those children, and sent american troops to arrest Kony, as fast as possible. The website of the project Kony2012 has different kinds of merchandising to sell, and teens felt immediately that they had to help, so thousands and thousands of Kony2012 products were sold.

The problem is that nobody questioned the cause, before they had bought  the merchandising to help this project. After some research, people can discover that only 30% of the money raised  from the selling of their products, goes to help the children in Africa. I don’t know where the rest of the money goes.
Another  information that all of the viewers of that documentary should know, is that, recently was found an immense quantity of oil, evaluated  in trillions of dollars. And taking advantage of a criminal for invading a certain region is not new, as we seen with the Bin Laden and 9/11 story, and the weapons of mass destruction, that never existed.

Unfortunately we live in a world where all of the stories, news and information that we receive have always to be checked more than one time. It’s really important nowadays, to not trust in anything until a good research is made before any kind of support or opinion. We usually have the urge to help those who seem to be helping, without even research the “back story”, the truth. And that, is being naive. In this world we cannot be naive, or we, or other people will die. And yes, it’s that serious.
Even if the Kony2012 project has good intentions, we and they can’t forget that there are always some guys that always take advantage of good people that really want to help. It’s good to be suspicious, but it isn’t good to alienate an idea  just because it didn’t work the first time, or the people couldn’t execute that idea well.

Fortunately, this Kony thing actually brought something good to the teens who watched the video. It grew an activist inside of them, that they didn’t know. And even some of them learned from U.S.A vs Middle East bullshit, and immediately questioned and researched, before taking any naive and early conclusions. And this the “big boys” (the fuckers with all of the money), weren’t expecting.
They should be scared, because, in the end, we are still animals. And when animals feel trapped and without an exit, they attack. And that is about to happen.
Be careful rich people! 

 

– Guilherme Pedrosa

Music, what it was, what it is, and what it will be…

Music traveled with mankind throughout it’s history. When society changed or needed a change, music changed too. Music lacks of spirit nowadays, and needs a transformation. What the fuck happened to music? What caused this?

1. The Past
Music was a form of expressing deep feelings, express anger, happiness, political views and philosophical views, unfortunately we lost that. Music was able to change minds and moods in matters of second. Music told the truth. It triggered the good and bad in each one of us, love, universe, society, feelings… It was ugly and beautiful.
Don’t get me wrong though. We always had lame bands and singers, but even those had some talent. They had morals, they felt what they were singing. Creativity was lost, experiences were always being done with instruments and new ways of expression. Music had a “boom” and you could fit anywhere you wanted. You had Punk, Rock, Grunge, Blues, Jazz, Reggae, Hip Hop and so much more. The Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Kids, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, Living Color, Rage Against The Machine, Radiohead, Cake, Anvil, Blur, The Flaming Lips, Jerry Lee Lewis, Joe Cocker, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, The Kinks, Mr. Bungle, The Pixies, Spin Doctors, The Pop Group, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, The Stone Roses, Sonic Youth, B.B.King, John Maher, Howlin’ Wolf, War, Cab Calloway, Nina Simone, Fred Anderson, Bob Marley, Sublime, Beastie Boys, Public Enemy and so many more, unfortunately I can’t name them all.
All of them had great musicians, and brought creativity and real and deep feelings to their songs. Why have we lost this amazing fucking bands? What happened?

2. The Present
The real reason music has lost it’s meaning is simple. Money and society. I believe this two things rotten music. Before this world crisis, we had money, everybody was happy and blinded by the capitalist dream, at least the ones that could actually hear music, because some had nothing. The industry of music changed, minds changed, and instead of personal expression and meaning for the music, we wanted money. Money caught music. It was the first priority, to make money. Adding that with the lazy fat and “puppetish” society, music started to die.
Music has no creativity and has a plastic false content. It’s all about, how you are not alone in this world and how you will be happy, we all know that is false. They don’t mean anything of what they say on their songs, they don’t care.
While music channels had music and accepted new music, nowadays MTVs and shit like that only have stupid reality shows, and only accept music that have boobs, or a guy with a six pack that looks like a girl and reads lyrics from a paper. We actually got to this sad point, where music is weaker than ever. Fortunately, there are some  bands/singers that actually can make good music. The Black Keys, Jamiroquai, Gorillaz, At The Drive-In, Bloc Party, Blood Red Shoes, Cage The Elephant, Das Racist, Dead Weather, Death From Above 1979, Death Grips, Efterklang, Every Time I Die, Johnossi, Justice, Lightning Bolt, M.I.A, Mumford And Sons, OFWGKTA, The Rapture, Seasick Steve, Streetlight Manifesto, Tom Vek, Willy Moon, The Subways, Tame Impala, White Stripes, Yeasayer and many more, but, once again, I can’t name them all.

3. The Future
What will happen to music? I strongly believe that music will not die, and will actually rise up again. We are facing the greatest problems of humanity, people are dying, people are changing, people are mad, and are getting tired of this capitalism bullshit we live in. All of this will be reflected in music, the anger, the agony, and all of this shit we are surrounded by.
I think we will face another “music boom” and music will be born again. Good, and real music, will be heard again.
With society (r)evolution, we will have a music (r)evolution.

– Guilherme Pedrosa

Suit Up

Believe it or not, people still have doubts on the subject that I’m going to analyse in here.
I was once watching the news on the TV, where top politicians were all together smiling and shaking each other hands, wasting time taking photos, instead of trying to find solutions. Back to the issue, I noticed that all of them have fancy suits, super shining shoes, and incredibly expensive cars.
So, I shared with my family that if they wore less expensive clothes, and had affordable cars, maybe that money could help their own countries. For my surprise, someone answered me that, they need to dress up nice, after all, they are representing our country. I was overwhelmed by such stupidity.

I came up with a simple question, would you prefer a president that had solutions but dressed up like a homeless, or a president that doesn’t do shit but is always “well dressed”?
Believe it or not, people actually stopped to think about it, when their answer should obviously be, the president that can actually solve problems. Instead, people told me that of course they would want a president that could solve their problems, but he had to dress up nice, a president can’t wear a t-shirt and some jeans. I couldn’t believe in what I was hearing! People actually cared about the looks of the president.

First of all, most of government representatives, that represent different parts of the population, don’t actually represent us, but themselves. Most of them just spend their time insulting other members of the parliament. Nowadays, government is just like football (soccer). They gain millions, and the only thing they do is just bitch about how they are better than others. Football stars gain millions and millions, for buying mansions and sports cars, and do they do? Run after a ball for 90 minutes.

I think a maximum wage could be a really good solution for this kind of problem. Money will be saved for important things, like the fucking country, not some rich people. Waste of money by the members of the parliament would be stopped, and minimum wage, could actually raise. We would have a more just distribution of money and people would learn how to behave with money on their hands, without spending everything in expensive cars and Armani fucking suits.

“Think rich, look poor” – Andy Warhol
This quote just resumes the whole message I am trying to share. You have to think and innovate and you don’t need to be dressed with a suit to do it.

– Guilherme Pedrosa 

Religion is a Fantasy

The beginning of mankind was so spectacular, as stupid. It was a complete paradox, one of the most fantastic evolutions and, at the same time, one of the most catastrophic known to this day. Knowledge was actually what distinguished us, from others.

The discovery of fire, tools, art. The passage from nomadism to sedentism, was probably  what changed us for ever. But something had a tremendous impact, felt even today, in our constantly changing society. It was the phase of fears and fantasies, not to call them something more aggressive like, ignorance. I am referring of course, to religion or religions. Just like in the present, we all go through a time of our life where we start to question everyone and everything. Death and birth, the land and the sky, us and others. All of our ancestors have been through that too. And because in that era, our knowledge was still small and limited, fantasies predominated.

Human mind has some kind of “hunger” to know and understand more. And it’s that will, that distinguish us from other animals. All living beings, those that have the ability to move, have the instinct to know the unknown, all animals want to see and learn about the territory where they live, but humans have an additional  instinct beside this one. Humans have the will and the need to understand and find an answer to what doesn’t seem to have an answer.
But not always that will bring the right answers, instead, it brings the answers we want.
Religion and it’s beliefs were born, from the moment that humans felt fear, and so, a need to know why they were afraid, and a way to overcome that fear. Fear emerged from the unexplainable and in what harmed both physically and psychologically these humans. Death, stars, universe and disasters, like natural catastrophes began to be represented by something bigger, by gods. Gods were created for good and evil, just like in a super hero movie. There were gods who harmed and scared humans, and gods who fought the bad ones and protected humans from these mean and powerful villains.

But these fantasies created different religions, despite all of them have the same base, ignorance and fear, that is what brought us here today.
Beliefs in something, or someone superior, formed the society in which we now live. The different ways of thinking, good and bad ones, the fantastic explanations to explain the unexplainable, the acts committed in honor of religion and art itself, were tremendously  influenced by religion.

But what we have to understand, is that religion is something from the past, we have more knowledge now, and we have to understand that religion is nothing but lies. It’s only false speculation to understand what humans couldn’t understand at the beginning of their existence. God doesn’t exist, we exist, humans exist, and praying will not solve our problems. We have to solve them. Humans worst enemy, are humans.

 

– Guilherme Pedrosa

Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth?

Here is the video that have been in the news, all over the world. It’s the video of a asian kid getting brutally attacked by seven other kids. This video is extremely violent, and you will see seven little fucks attacking a harmless kid, that has no choice but to wait that all the beating is over.

With this video, I can talk about a very interesting issue. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. This means that if someone commits a crime of any source, that someone’s punishment, is going to be equal to the crime made by that particular person. For example: If a man punched and kicked three times a guy, the punishment for that man would be one punch and three kicks as well.
This is what people feel when they see this video. We all see seven guys beating up only one kid who has no help, and it’s begging for mercy while draining blood all over his face. We see this disgusting act, as a coward one, where there isn’t any opportunity for the victim to defend himself and where the beating is unnecessary  and extremely violent. And we all feel the need that we should have been there to help, so we want to do the same to those seven guys. We want to apply our sense of justice, we don’t want the police to take care of this, we want to hit them as hard as we can, until they too, beg for mercy.

Although, this kind of public justice has lots of problems:

– This justice is a cycle, where revenge will prevail. If A hit someone and B, (giving the punishment A deserves), hits A too, A, or friends of A will want to hit B as well, and so on. Transforming this kind of justice into a violent circle.

– People have different tastes of value. If X has a painting that has great sentimental value to him, and Y ruins that painting, should X ruin a painting of Y that has no value to him, or something different of Y, that actually is important to him? The phrase “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” will not work in this case.

– Now we have a moral issue. If X rapes Y’s daughter, should Y rape X’s daughter? What if X doesn’t have any kids? And if Y raped X’s daughter, it’s a very sensitive subject, because we are talking about an innocent child that is going to suffer because of his father. And Y could be a moral person and didn’t want to rape X’s daughter, but then you couldn’t bring justice to X’s crime.

This is a very hard issue, that I wanted to discuss here, because when this videos unfortunately appear, everyone wants revenge, but as we can see, maybe the actual penal system is the most acceptable form of justice for now. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have problems too.