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.”
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.
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
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
|
“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
|
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
|
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
|
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
|
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]
________________________________________
Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
________________________________________
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