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Thursday, March 14, 2013

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey challenges: Come together; change our not so WONDERFUL World

Waste in $ billions for wars, impunity, corruption amidst Abysmal Want begs action
Editing, excerpting, re-reporting by Carolyn Bennett

From Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey’s “What a Wonderful World” I don’t think this is what Bob Thiele wrote or what Louis Armstrong sang so wonderfully 

I see trees of green, red roses too / I see them bloom for me and you / And I think to myself, what a wonderful world 
 
I see skies of blue and clouds of white / The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night  / And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky Are also on the faces of people /   I see friends shaking hands, saying ‘How do you do?’ They’re really saying ‘I love you’

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow / They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know  / And I think to myself, what a wonderful world


If people of the world do not “come together, to network and to provide projects to gain back public services while guaranteeing their rights as human beings and as workers,” the abysmal conditions of permanent war, violence, corruption, lawlessness, the gaping economic divide  and desperate want will continue rising, deepening and widening  as Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey outlines in this  irony: “What a Wonderful World.”  

Rich 

Quoting the World Federation of Trade Unions and Forbes 2013 List of Billionaires, he reports “there are 1,426 billionaires” on Planet Earth. 

These are people who have amassed a net worth of 5.4 trillion U.S. dollars (five point four thousand billion U.S. dollars), an increase of 800 billion dollars in the last twelve months. 

Far from rich 

Eighty (80) percent of the world’s people on Planet Earth live on ten or fewer U.S. dollars a day. Fifty (50) percent of the world’s people subsist on fewer than two and a half U.S. dollars a day. 

“Millions upon millions of people,” Hinchey continues, “live in slums and have no access to education or to healthcare or even to drinking water.”  Since the Year 2000 ─ 

The gap between rich and far from subsistent, let alone rich, has been widening.  

International law has become nonexistent.  

Rights of workers have been swept off the table.
 

Money wasted
War without end
Lawlessness

The same powers that today aid and abet terrorist organizations in Syria hemorrhaged billions for NATO’s (U.S.) wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he writes. 

Spending billions on wars, murdering people, strafing civilians with bombs, conducting foreign policy based upon lies, deceit and breach of international law while failing to provide jobs or housing or education or decent healthcare programs, reliable public transportation ─ “those who control our economies today have placed themselves [beyond accountability] for their incompetence to govern, and for their crimes.” 

Proof of the disgustingly unacceptable place to which our planet has descended, Hinchey writes, is “the cynical manipulation of the law” and, from time to time, “a token sacrifice of some public figure,” an event choreographed with the catchphrase “‘in this country nobody, whoever they are, is above the law’ ─  all the while letting war criminals go unpunished. …”  

Changing the state of affairs, Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey concludes, will require work. It will require the world’s people coming together again (or for the first time) to network and to provide projects to regain (or gain for the first time) public services ─ while guaranteeing human rights generally and workers’ rights particularly. 
Next time around [we must] pay better attention to the reactionary forces lurking in the shadows. 
 
Today we know who they are. 
 
Achoice between something wonderful heard in the lyrics of Bob Thiele and in the voices of Louis Armstrong and others; or something sinister, now into the future: a not so wonderful world. 

 

Sources and notes 

“What a Wonderful World” (Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey), March 14, 2013, http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/14-03-2013/124060-wonderful_world-0/

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey 

Journalist Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey is director of PRAVDA.Ru Portuguese version and MoscowTopNews.com; editor of the English version of the Russian online journal Pravda.Ru and director and chief editor of the Portuguese version, which serves simultaneously as an online news resource linking Russia with the eight Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) and as a source of news among the CPLP member states. http://www.xing.com/net/moscow/please-introduce-yourself-stellen-sie-sich-bitte-vor-3976/hi-i-am-timothy-bancroft-hinchey-director-of-pravda-ru-portuguese-version-and-moscowtopnews-com-23645307/23645307/#23645307

 WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD 

The song “What a Wonderful World” was written by Bob Thiele (as ‘George Douglas’) and George David Weiss. It was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released as a single in 1967.

Thiele and Weiss were both prominent in the music world (Thiele as a producer and Weiss as a composer/performer).

A
rmstrong’s recording was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. The publishing for this song is controlled by Memory Lane Music Group, Carlin Music Corp., and Bug Music, Inc. 

“What a wonderful world” was the biggest-selling single of 1968 in the UK where it was among the last pop singles issued by HMV Records before becoming an exclusive classical music label. The song made Louis Armstrong the oldest male to top the chart, at sixty-six years and ten months old.  

In the United States, “What a wonderful world” was not initially a hit (fewer than 1,000 copies sold at the time of its release) because the ABC Records head Larry Newton did not like the song and so did not promote it. 

ABC Records’ European distributor EMI forced ABC to issue a “What A Wonderful World” album in 1968 (catalogue number ABCS-650) which did not chart in the U.S. due to ABC’s non-promotion, but it did chart in the UK where it was issued by Stateside Records with catalogue number SSL 10247 and peaked on the British chart at #37. 

“What wonderful world” gradually became a standard and reached a new level of popularity. 

Notable versions of “What a wonderful world” 

1968 – Louis Armstrong: million-selling original version 

1993 – Israel Kamakawiwo’ole: Hawaiian ukulele version (medley with “Somewhere over the Rainbow”) on the album Facing Future has sold more than 2.5 million copies in the United States and Canada 

2002 – Joey Ramone’s posthumous album “Don’t Worry about Me” 

 2007 – Katie Melua singing with Eva Cassidy’s version (fundraiser for the Red Cross) reached #1 in December 2007 on the UK Chart  

 2012 – Pat Byrne’s version reached #6 on the Irish Singles Chart after appearing on the “Voice of Ireland” [Wikipedia note]
 
I
srael Kaʻanoʻi Kamakawiwoʻole or Israel “Iz” Kaʻanoʻi Kamakawiwoʻole, Hawaiian pronunciation: [kaˌmaka,vivo,olay]): (b. May 20, 1959,  Honolulu, Hawaii, d. June 26, 1997, Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.); Musician, singer-songwriter; Instruments: Ukulele, vocals 

His voice became famous outside Hawaii when his album “Facing Future” was released in 1993. His medley of “Somewhere over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World” was subsequently featured in several films, television programs, and television advertisement commercials. 

Through his skillful ukulele playing and incorporation of other genres (such as jazz and reggae), Kamakawiwoʻole’s music remains a very strong influence in Hawaiian music. [Wikipedia note] 

K
etevan (Katie) Melua or /ˈmɛluːə/  listen (help·info) (b. September 16, 1984 in Georgia, grew up in Northern Ireland and England) is a musician, singer, songwriter; in 2006, the United Kingdom’s best-selling female artist and Europe’s highest-selling European female artist. 

In “Call off the Search” were two songs written by Melua: “Belfast (Penguins and Cats),” a song about her experience in the troubled capital of Northern Ireland; and “Faraway Voice,” a song about the death of Eva Cassidy. 

On July 7, 2007, Melua performed at the German leg of Live Earth in Hamburg and in December of that year, she released a cover of the Louis Armstrong song “What a Wonderful World” in which she sang with a recording of the late Eva Cassidy. All profits from the single, which entered the UK singles chart at No. 1 on December 16, 2007, went to the Red Cross. [Wikipedia note] 

P
at Byrne is an Irish singer and recording artist (b. Borris, County Carlow, Ireland). In 2012, Byrne was crowned the winner of the first series of “The Voice of Ireland.” 

Byrne entered “The Voice of Ireland” in 2011, singing Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” at the blind auditions. Before the final, his version of “What a Wonderful World” topped the iTunes charts in Ireland. On April 29, 2012, Byrne was crowned the winner of the first series. 

J
effry Ross Hyman or Joey Ramone (b. May 19, 1951, d. April 15, 2001) was an American musician, vocalist, songwriter; best known as the lead vocalist of the punk rock band “the Ramones.” Joey Ramone’s image, his voice and tenure as front man of the Ramones made him “a countercultural icon.” 

His solo album “Don’t Worry about Me” was released posthumously in 2002 and features the single “What a Wonderful World,” a cover of the Louis Armstrong standard. [Wikipedia note]

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1 comment:

  1. Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey is an extremely controversial writer. He often uses swearwords, insults his readers, threatens his readers, claims to write under 17 different names, and inspires large numbers of people to protest against him.

    ReplyDelete