Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Chef Ra Crosses Over



Friends, through our friend Adam Brook I have the sad task of posting this email about the passing of CHEF RA on to you all. Chef Ra was a good friend of THE PROCESS and a warrior in the fight for freedom. I will miss seeing him at Hash Bash and miss his laughter and keen wit. Perhaps where he is now he can let Jah know we need more help to change these unjust laws. Wherever Chef Ra is you can bet freedoms flag is flying HIGH!
Peace and blessings for the new year and please take a moment to say a prayer to the MOST HIGH for Chef Ra, David
www.theprocessonline.com
www.myspace.com/theprocessmusic


-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Brook [mailto:adamlbrook@hotmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 27, 2006 2:01 PM
To: minorml-talk@norml.net; minorml-news@norml.net
Subject: MINORML-TALK: Chef Ra Crosses Over

Well folks I had planned on having a Cannabis Cup at the next HASH BASH, I
have been in contact with a few growers and we were almost ready to announce
our plans but it will have to wait.....with the loss of my good friend CHEF
RA....aka James Wilson. My efforts will be going to remind people what an
activist and a friend of the HASH BASH this man was.
I am going to dedicate the next HASH BASH, #36 to the memory of CHEF RA, If
you don't know why he deservers this you should wait a few days, let us
mourn and then question my actions.......
I posted this at the High Times story on the passing of CHEF RA, so I would
expect a large crowd.
PLEASE JOIN US AT :
The CHEF RA MEMORIAL
HASH BASH (HASH BASH #36)
Saturday April 7th 2007
HIGH NOON
DIAG
U of M
ANN ARBOR, MI.
There will me a memorial at about the time RA would historically speak at
the event to honor CHEF RA.
Please send any photos or video of Chef Ra at past HASH BASHes to
adamlbrook@hotmail.com so that we can include them in our program.

Monday, December 25, 2006

Year In Review/Asher Interview

Hail Up THE PROCESS® Massive!

www.theprocessonline.com

Excerpt from Review Magazine:
www.review-mag.com
The Year in Music
By Scott Baker

And last (but certainly not least) The Process 'Weapons of Mass Percussion' became one of 46 releases in contention for a 2007 Grammy Award Nomination in the Reggae field. This group consistently has forged into creative and challenging terrain during the expanse of their two-decade career, so it is gratifying to witness such hard work and persistence paying off with national & international acclaim.
"It's been an exciting and challenging year, with the new CD being a departure from our usual releases, as well as it being a departure from standard dub or remix projects," commented Process avatar David Asher.


The Process Contenders for 2007 Grammy for 'Weapons of Mass Percussion'
by Lauren Davis

When the news hit that the reggae/rock warriors The Process secured a nomination contention in the Reggae Division for the 2007 Grammy Awards, it was the peak accomplishment for a driven band that has consistently developed new material and broken into new territory for over 20 years.

Recently I caught up with main-man David Asher to glean his reactions to this accomplishment.
Lauren: first, tell me on how you feel about the recognition:
Asher: It really is a thrill to receive recognition from the recognized establishment of the industry. After being on it's periphery for so many years, it's just a good feeling. Also knowing that we were able to achieve this as an independent artist with no major label backing is a satisfying feeling. To be fair we are well represented by a Madison Ave Law firm in New York, Jacobson & Colfin P.C. www.thefirm.com
Lauren: Had you not done music, who would you be right now?
Asher: "Can't image it. If I hadn't been commissioned by the Most High to do this work, I'm sure I would be somewhere tropical. Because it is a commission and it does involve sacrifice which most people would not be willing to deal with, in terms of free time and family."
Lauren; What is the key to staying in love with your music?
Asher: "The key for myself in staying in love with music and the creative process is the wonderful musical brothers I have been blessed with surrounding me, Garrick Owen, Bill Heffelfinger, Gabe Gonzalez and Sam Metropoulos and our fans, friends and families. I also should mention our fantastic producer Gee "Genius" Pierce. What keeps it fresh for us over the years is our creative process. We never write the same way twice in the way we approach the music. We have a formula for preproduction and production but the creative process used in writing is nearly always unique. Sometimes I write alone, sometimes with Garrick. Sometimes I write on the guitar, sometimes I plunk the melodies out on the piano. The best stuff comes to me when I'm walking around or driving in my car. Bill always brings a unique approach to the arrangements as well, so we mix it up with out too much thought about it.
Lauren: What is the most ridiculous idea you have had, that worked?
Asher: To make a remix album using bits from the news and found sounds (which became Weapons Of Mass Percussion)".
Lauren: What is the coolest aspect of the nomination, and tell me your thoughts on, (if you'll pardon the inference) the process involved?
Asher: Well it was a nomination "consideration" where we were one of 46 contenders. The coolest part for me was getting an email from Grammy Chairman (reggae) Roger Steffens wishing us good luck. Roger is one of the most knowledgeable people in the world about reggae music and I admire him a lot.
I would just like to thank our friends, fans and families who have supported us through good and bad times over the years. They are truly the ones who have enabled us to continue doing what we love. God bless em.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Former Ethiopian dictator is convicted

By LES NEUHAUS, Associated Press Writer

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - Former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam was convicted Tuesday of genocide and other charges in a rare case of an African strongman being held to account by his own country.
Mengistu, who lives in exile in Zimbabwe, was tried in absentia. He could face the death penalty at his Dec. 28 sentencing, but Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said he won't deport Mengistu if he refrains from political activity.
The trial focused on Mengistu's alleged involvement in the killing of nearly 2,000 people during a 1977-78 campaign known as the Red Terror. A panel of judges, sitting in a packed courtroom, convicted the former dictator of instigating genocide, committing genocide, illegal imprisonment and abuse of power.
Mengistu had taken power in 1974, when his military junta ended Emperor Haile Selassie's rule in a bloody coup.
Mengistu was tried along with 72 of his former aides, although there were only 34 people in court Tuesday. Fourteen died during trial and 25 were tried in absentia. All but one man were convicted of at least one charge Tuesday.
Most of those in the courtroom were family members of the defendants, and looked sullen after the verdict.
"I am very happy he has been found guilty," said Tadesse Mamo, 32, a businessman in the capital. "He killed so many of our intellectuals and our youth, most notably our emperor."
Selassie's cousin, Mulugeta Aserate, said Mengistu's men came to his family's home in June 1974 and took his father away. He was a young boy at the time, and never saw his father again.
"They told us that they were taking him to an interview, but I found out later he was summarily executed with 60 others," Mulugeta, 55, told The Associated Press.
Some experts say 150,000 university students, intellectuals and politicians were killed in a nationwide purge by Mengistu's Marxist regime, though no one knows for sure how many suspected opponents were killed in the Red Terror.
The case has been closely watched in Africa, where dictators have been known to harbor colleagues from other countries and to stymie attempts elsewhere to bring despots to justice.
It was seen as a watershed when, in March, former Liberian President Charles Taylor was brought before a U.N.-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone on charges of backing Sierra Leonean rebels, who terrorized victims by chopping off body parts during the 1991-2002 civil war.
The rebels who toppled Mengistu, however, were determined to pursue him in the courts, and began planning for trials almost immediately upon taking over in 1991, producing 8,000 pages of evidence.
When he was deposed in 1991 by rebels led by Meles Zenawi, now Ethiopia's prime minister, Mengistu fled to the protection of Mugabe's authoritarian regime in Zimbabwe, where his army had helped train guerrillas in their struggle for independence from white rule.
The trial, which began in 1994, has been complicated by requests from both sides for long breaks. Hundreds of key witnesses have also died, making it difficult for prosecutors and defense lawyers to present their cases.
Ethiopia's courts have convicted more than 1,000 people since 1994 for participating in the Red Terror, but thousands more live in exile.

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Remember Love

This Christmas I find myself, like every Christmas, thinking about peace on earth. I also find myself thinking about John Lennon, who was cut down in his prime 26 years ago, just before Christmas.
Heres a review of the film "The US vs John Lennon, in the UK online rag the Independant.
It is followed by my response:
Click here to read the review online.

Reviewed by Anthony Quinn
Published: 08 December 2006
"Even as a lifelong devotee of John Lennon's music, I would have to concede that the man himself really did talk the most prodigious amount of balls. This much is confirmed in the course of The US vs John Lennon, a documentary that seeks to lionise him as peace activist and spokesman for a generation, but inadvertently has the effect of making him look a pious, publicity-crazed bore. Film-makers David Leaf and John Scheinfeld concentrate on Lennon's life in the aftermath of The Beatles' break-up in 1970, when he and Yoko Ono moved to New York and established themselves as gurus of the counterculture. Ever keen to play the rebel, Lennon spoke vociferously on behalf of the anti-Vietnam movement and black radicalism, or staged publicity stunts like his notorious "bed-in" for peace. The film interleaves contemporary news footage with a selection of talking heads - Walter Cronkite, Angela Davis, Carl Bernstein, Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky et al - to reminisce about the political and social convulsions of late-Sixties and early-Seventies America. It is the thesis of Leaf and Scheinfeld that Lennon's involvement in this revolutionary spirit so rattled the likes of Nixon and FBI boss J Edgar Hoover that he was secretly declared an enemy of the state and put under surveillance. No hard evidence of this is brought to light, but the merest suspicion of it supposedly underpins the idea of Lennon as one of the unacknowledged legislators of the world, a role he himself was happy to endorse. Indeed, the cumulative impression you would glean here is that, before Lennon, nobody had ever picked up a guitar in protest. Dylan, a hero to Lennon and his fellow Beatles, is conspicuously ignored throughout. The most significant interviewee is Ono, whose approval of the film should strike an ominous note. While it would be too easy to blame her for the self-absorption of Lennon's post-Beatles career (no mention is made, incidentally, of his 18-month separation from her in 1973-74), it does appear that, artistically, they brought out the worst in each other. Ian MacDonald said it best, as he nearly always did concerning The Beatles, in his seminal book Revolution in the Head: "Under the ostensibly selfless holy foolery [Lennon and Ono] indulged in during 1968-70 was a core of exhibitionistic self-promotion. Behaving as if they had personally invented peace, they jetted round the world in first-class seats selling it at third-rate media-events. This was arrogant as well as silly, and the news media's derision was not only inevitable but, in the main, justified." Such perspective will be a tonic after watching this remorseless hagiography."


The word hagiography is used to describe this Lennon pic. I guess what John and Yoko did for peace really did suck and wasn't worth a damn. Yeah the war machine can just roll right on and it's a beautiful thing. It's a shame they ever even called attention to the stupid idea of peace at all. What a stupid idea "peace". "Behaving as if they had personally invented peace", that WAS arrogant. They should have just ignored the whole idea and went along with the war which did so much good for everyone. Just like the war today is so beautiful and good for everyone. Peace on Earth: this Christmas season flush that idea, war is a much better way to go! Right everyone? Since we can't bring Richard Nixon back lets re-elect Mr. Bush again. He is even better than Nixon and his war is a better one too. Bush and Nixon both did so much to make the world a better place, not like that dirty hippy John Lennon and his "hag" wife Yoko Ono, "artistically, they brought out the worst in each other". Now Bush and Cheney, they bring out the best in each other. Money, greed. oil. Those are the things that are really worth dying for. Not the silly idea of peace. What a stupid idea, who would die for that?
Happy Christmas, War is Over If You Want It.
David

Friday, December 01, 2006

Weapons Of Mass Percussion Available Online


Weapons Of Mass Percussion the new CD by THE PROCESS is now available online: