Gentle Giant - Octopus

I think it was around 1971.

My musical interest had shifted from pop music with just guitars and drums to stuff that had more instruments and thus, hopefully, more flavours.

Having recently sampled the Moody Blues, ELP, and King Crimson, I continued looking for more.

One day, I was at the Miracle Mart store at Upper James and Mohawk, snooping through the bargain bin when I came across this album.

Checking through the list of musicians and their instruments, I noticed they had a mellotron.

I think, from a web source, that this was printed on the back,

Gentle Giant

Gary Green - electric guitar (tracks 1, 3, 4, 5, 8), percussion

Kerry Minnear - piano (tracks 1-5, 7, 8), Hammond organ (tracks 1-5, 7, 8), Minimoog (tracks 1, 3, 5, 8), electric piano (tracks 2, 4, 8), Mellotron (tracks 2, 7, 8), Clavinet (track 1), harpsichord (track 4), regal (track 6), vibraphone (tracks 4, 8), cello (tracks 2, 6), percussion, lead vocals (tracks 1, 4 and 7), backing vocals

Derek Shulman - lead vocals (tracks 1-4, 8), alto saxophone (track 5)

Phil Shulman - trumpet (tracks 1, 2), tenor saxophone (tracks 4, 5), mellophone (track 7), lead vocals on tracks 1, 4, 6 and 8, backing vocals

Ray Shulman - bass guitar, violin (tracks 2, 5, 6), viola (track 6), electric violin (tracks 4, 8), acoustic guitar (track 6), percussion, backing vocals

John Weathers - drums (tracks 1-5, 7, 8), bongos (tracks 3, 8), varispeed cymbal (tracks 4, 8), xylophone (tracks 4, 6)

Something not mentioned in the list above is the "variable coinspin oscillator," if my mind isn't playing tricks on me.

Since mellotron was on the list, I conjectured that maybe this was going to be another King Crimson or ELP type of experience. It was in the bargain bin so I decided to gamble got it real cheap.

Took it home.

I used to love tearing the cellophane off of brand-new albums in those days. Didn't you?

The old man wasn't home from work yet, so instead of putting the record on the 1950s era hifi in my bedroom, I dared to play it on his prize stereo in the living room.

It was a risk. We weren't supposed to play with that system because my old man was afraid we would break it. Looking back, I now realize he had good reason.

Anyway, I started playing this record and, I have to admit, I was kind of disappointed. My first impression was that it sounded like something composed as circus music. And there was some kind of shit in there that sounded like something from 16th century England. Or whatever.

I don't know why I kept listening to it. Perhaps because I had started to believe that the really good stuff required more than just one listen.

Plus I was pretty heavily into LSD and pot in those days. When it comes to music, that really helps sometimes.

Before long, they were my favourite rock band.

As I got older, their sound became to harsh for me. I very rarely listen to them at all anymore, but this morning I decided to take a trip down memory lane.

I can still see why I liked this stuff.

When it comes to music, pot really helps sometimes.

INVASION OF THE MIND SNATCHERS

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Copyright Claim Flattery

Pat Condell: A CRISIS OF FREE SPEECH

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Other Stuff

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Provincial government moving Hamilton into lockdown on Monday

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The case has been filed for Canada in Ontario by Michael Swinwood as part of the worldwide legal team of Reiner Fuellmich.

https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/472827d6-3b15-4c33-834a-970e550df358/downloads/Amikwabi%20vs..pdf

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TECHNOCRATIC TAILSPIN

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Hacked and sanctioned by the Chinese: Tom Tugendhat MP speaks out

What "They" Don't Want You to Hear

What "They" Don't Want You to Hear

Definition:

"They" - Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Junk News Media (if it bleeds, it leads,) corrupt politicians, (I.E. - most politicians,) Government Health advisers, pharmaceutical companies, mask manufactures, plastic shield manufacturers, sign companies, like Doug Ford's Deco Labels, hand sanitizer manufacturers, Bill Gates, Amazon, Walmart, and other exempt corporations,

and climate change cultists ("How dare you!"), etc.

In other words, concentrated interests for whom the COVID-19 scamdemic has been an amazing windfall, whether in pursuit of profits, grant money, destruction of the Western standard of living, or just naked political ambition.

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"The Lockdowns Are Creating a New Virus. Then We Have a New Epidemic." — Dr Knut Wittkowski

“We have to stop the nonsense. We have entered a vicious cycle. With every new wave, we’re starting a new wave of lockdowns. The lockdowns are creating a new virus. Then we have a new epidemic. We’re starting a new lockdown that creates a new virus.” — Knut Wittkowski (CEO of ASDERA/Epidemiologist)

Won't play?

Click here.

Dr Knut Wittkowski

Dr. Wittkowski received his PhD in computer science from the University of Stuttgart and his ScD in Medical Biometry from the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, both Germany. He worked for 15 years with Klaus Dietz, a leading epidemiologist who coined the term “reproduction number”, on the Epidemiology of HIV before. Around 1990, he was one of the few to predict that HIV would not spread among Caucasian heterosexuals. After teaching epidemiology at the University of Cairo and the American University of Beirut, he was for 20 years head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at The Rockefeller University, New York.

Dr. Wittkowski is currently the CEO of ASDERA LLC, a company discovering novel interventions against complex diseases from data of genome-wide association studies, including a nutritional intervention to reduce cellular support for virus replication and to improve cardiovascular and metabolic health as a natural strategy to reduce the burden and stop the continuation of the COVID epidemics.

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COVID-19 COLLATERAL DAMAGE REPORT FOR MARCH 19, 2021

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Ignore Science, Get Butt-Rammed

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"PANDA’s Nick Hudson in conversation with Sanjeev Sabhlok, moral philosopher and economist based in Melbourne, Australia. After many years in civil service in both India and Australia, Sanjeev left the civil service to protest the Victorian government’s pandemic policies."

PandaCast | A Conversation with Sanjeev Sabhlok

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Simpsons On Creating A Scamdemic - They Show You The Blue Print

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Worldwide demonstrations the utterly corrupt, utterly bought-off media will not cover: https://t.co/nYrSuwMbdN

— Ivor Cummins (@FatEmperor) March 23, 2021

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CHCH NEWS Lies to its Viewers

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Race-Baiting will Tear Canada Apart

Truth for Quebec:

“Denial is essential to keep any supremacist system running... By keeping the public discourse focused at the level of ‘does racism exist?’ denial demands no change, no reflection, no accountability. Denial is complicity.” @ShreeParadkar https://t.co/O8UhLrNt4d

— Amir Attaran (@profamirattaran) March 21, 2021

The real target of race-baiters like @profamirattaran and @ShreeParadkar are the core values of Western civilization which include:

- equal rights
- equal protection under the law
- diversity
- free speech
- free thought
- freedom of association
- freedom of movement
- the right to own property
- voluntary exchange
- self ownership
- the right to presumption of innocence

Definition

race-baiting

the act of intentionally encouraging racism or anger about issues relating to race, often to get a political advantage:

2021-03-21 THE WHY

Abundant Lives

Abundant Lives

Africa Seeks $777 Trillion as Reparations for Slavery

I wrote this about 20+ years ago. I am not surprised it is now gaining steam and has become a reality.

"The practice of slavery dates to prehistoric times, although its institutionalization probably first occurred in early historical times"

 
"Slavery," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 98 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

 
Should the rich nations of the West pay reparations to Africa and it's Diaspora?

African Reparations

 
Grab your wallet! Yet another group is on the prowl in pursuit of unearned cash. Calling themselves "The African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission" they blame the West for Africa's social and economic problems and feel the Americas and Western Europe should fork over some $777 TRILLION plus interest in reparations. The beneficiaries of this claim are to be the people of Africa and the Diaspora.

 
According to the declaration of the commission (the Accra Declaration), the money would be demanded from ''all those nations of Western Europe and the Americas and institutions, who participated and benefited from the slave trade and colonialism.'' Curiously, the other nations who participated and benefited from the slave trade, those of North Africa and the Middle East are not mentioned.

"Over the centuries, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 11 million people were shipped across the Atlantic from Africa as slaves, and another 14 million African slaves were taken across the Sahara Desert or shipped through the Persian Gulf and other waterways to the nations of North Africa and the Middle East."

 
Race and Culture: A World View by Thomas Sowell.

 
Evidently, it is not the slave trade that the commission objects to since slavery as an institution existed in Africa and throughout the world long before the Portuguese got in on the game in 1444. The commission seems to have made the observation that the West is rich enough to satisfy the claim and decided to conclude that the West is rich because of the slave trade.

 
The combined annual Gross Domestic Products of the 9 richest American and European economies amounts to a mere $15 Trillion^[1], hence, even if those nine countries were to surrender their entire Gross Domestic Product every year to Africa and the Diaspora it would take about 52 years to satisfy The African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission's claim.

 
Is the claim just? Well, yes and no, depending on your fundamental political philosophy. To individualists, the claim is ludicrous, to collectivists on the other hand, the claim is perfectly valid. The reason for the difference is quite simple... individualists insist that individuals are responsible for their own actions whereas collectivists subscribe to the more convenient belief that someone else is always responsible for those actions. That is why criminalists, close relatives of collectivists, are often heard to say "I am a product of society, that is why I robbed, raped and murdered. Society is responsible for my actions. It wasn't my fault."

 
Collectivists apply the same thinking to the economic realm... where the criminal insists someone else is responsible for what he did, the collectivist insists someone else is responsible for what he didn't do. For example, the skillful, ambitious, energetic, intelligent, hard-working person must bear responsibility for the material sustenance of those who are not skillful, ambitious, energetic, intelligent and hard-working.

 
The West's peculiar instition: the welfare state, rests on this premise. I.E. the modern version of slavery, where the government owns the people but lets them keep a portion of the value they produce so they will keep on producing. The other portion of the fruits of that labour, that part-owned by the government (tax evasion is stealing it's advocates claim), is extracted via taxation and doled out to various groups in accordance with the degree of political clout those groups manage to muster. Some of the recipients of this dole do not produce but, through welfare eligibility, (a legal claim to the fruits of other's labour) benefit from the coercive transfer of goods and services from those who produced them.

 
In the same way, those clamouring for reparations for slavery insist they are entitled to the entire life's labours of every man, woman, and child in the West mainly because Africa never did produce the factories, transportation infrastructure, markets and technologies the skillful, ambitious, energetic, intelligent, hard-working people of the West produced. Far from having any fundamental aversion to slavery some advocates of African Reparations explicitly endorse modern taxation slavery as a means of obtaining their booty. (see below)

 
According to Pan African Congress (PAC) deputy president Motsoko Pheko in an article from from MISAnet/PANA

The labour of Africans was used in the Americas, Europe and West Indies to build the foundations for today's wealth of the so-called developed countries.

 
Does Mr. Pheko honestly believe we in the West would still be living in log cabins if not for the labour of Africans? Does Mr. Pheko really think that there would be no pharmaceutical industry in the West if not for the labour of Africans? No electronics? No automobiles? No jets? No central heating and air conditioning? No flush toilets, washing machines and refrigerators? Are we seriously expected to believe that the vast new computer industry and the internet would not have existed in the West if not for the labour of Africans? Were the great bridges, dams, and skyscrapers of the West built on African labour?

 
Anyone possessing the merest scintilla of economic sense would reject this whole idea out of hand. The great wealth of the West is due to capitalism, not physical labour. Unfortunately, the proportion of the populations of the Western democracies in possession of said scintilla is dangerously small, hence the possibility that the proposed victims of this reparations idea remain susceptible to myriads of specious claims.

 
It is difficult to believe that Mr. Pheko is serious in making this claim... indeed, the claim is so preposterous that only one conclusion can be drawn.... the true basis for the African reparations claim is precisely that African labour had nothing whatsoever to do with the massive wealth of the modern West, and that therefore, in accordance with standard collectivist/criminalist thinking, Africa is morally entitled to own it - or at least fifty-odd years of the entire economic output of the nine richest Western nations.

 
A more reasonable approach to the question of reparations might be to identify the heirs of those specific institutions and individuals who profited from the slave trade and colonialism. Having done so it would be necessary also to determine exactly which proportion of the current wealth of these institutions and individuals was due to the exploitation of the descendants of modern African and the Diaspora.

 
A fair-minded individual could hardly object to a request that these legitimate assets be returned to the heirs of the original owners. Yet according to the essay The legal basis of the claim for Reparations By Lord Anthony Gifford, British Queens Counsel and Jamaican Attorney-at-Law at the Africa Reparations Movement (ARM) website,

It would be possible to identify individual companies that could be proved to have made vast profits from slavery. There are plantation owners in Jamaica, and titled families in England, whose living heirs owe their wealth to slaving.

 
... but this approach would involve too much work and the defendants would reject it. Lord Gifford believes that instead, all citizens should assume collective guilt because governments have "reserves" and "taxation powers" and that it is "governments who must in the end be persuaded that reparations are to be paid" by everyone regardless of the culpability of their specific ancestors. Imposing the burden on innocent third parties^[2], many of whose ancestors were hardly better off and often worse off than many slaves does not seem to deter Lord Gifford in his pursuit of what he calls "justice".

 
[back]

 
The key point here is Mr. Gifford's specific rejection of going after those who today can be identified as direct beneficiaries of the slave trade in favour of the more lucrative prospect of going after those whose ancestors were not.

 
More stuff:

• Reparation Tax Claims Denied

 
[1] Annual Gross Domestic Product of Selected Nations

Country	Annual Gross Domestic Product (1996) in Trillions
U.S.	7.66
Germany	1.7
France	1.22
United Kingdom	1.19
Italy	1.12
Mexico	.777
Canada	.721
Spain	.593
Netherlands	.317
Total	15.3
Source:	The New World Almanac and Book of Facts 1999

 
[back]

 
[2] The population of Western Europe, North and South America is currently about 1.3 billion people. $777 TRILLION US represents a mere payout of $597,692 for every man, woman and child living in the "guilty" countries. This is about $70,636,364 for each of the roughly 11 million Africans who were shipped accross the Atlantic.

 
[back]
 

More Links

 
Slavery Reparations Argument Based on Greed

 
Are reparations proper way to right slavery?

 
Reparation Tax Claims Denied

 

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HOW DID WE GET TO THIS POINT?

But first, today's COVID-19 Collateral Damage Update for March 19, 2021.

HOW DID WE GET TO THIS POINT?

Twitler blocked the Mark Dice video that was on BitChute, but I was able to post the exact same video from FuckYouTube.

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Dr Lee Merrit Interview

If the video doesn't play, click here to watch it on NewTube.

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Covid-19 Vaccines Are Weapons of Mass Destruction - and Could Wipe out the Human Race

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From the Tickerguy,

Smart Young People .vs. Stupid Jackasses

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DEGENERATE DR@G QUEEN STORY HOUR MONSTER ARRESTED

OpenPrison Entries for March 18, 2021

WORLD WIDE RALLY FOR FREEDOM

Vaccine passports: evil, necessary or necessary evil?

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The Woke Mob Wants YOU! (Recruitment Video)

Fuck YouTube

Below is another video that the Twitler Reich won't let me upload. I get around Twitler's censors by embedding the video here on my blog and posting its URL to Twitler. So far, so good. I don't know how long this will be allowed to exist considering that openprison.ca, for the time being, is being hosted by the Google behemoth.

It also contains footage that YouTube has removed, claiming it violates their hypocritical "standards." I have been expecting that for a while even though, I rarely put any of my political video blogs on their corrupt platform, and even when I do they get almost zero views.

Fuck YouTube

If the video doesn't play try watching it on the BitChute site.

Or on NewTube.

As a triple backup, I also posted it to Brighteon.

I have spent most of my adult life trying to figure out ways to avoid or evade the malevolent tentacles of the state. It wasn't without cost. I even got caught once smoking in my cab. That cost me about $300 which I calculated to be about $15 for each year the cocksuckers didn't catch me. I could have done a lot better materially if I had just settled down and been an obedient, productive cow.

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COVID Response Collateral Damage Update - March 16, 2021

I wonder what the idiots calling the shots are going to do to take the pressure off of the hospital system now?

How will they "flatten" THIS CURVE?

The link below takes you to a typical typical Junk News report, so you will need to extend your BS detection antennas to get some value out of it. As an aid to understanding this report, whenever you see the following terms, mentally replace them with my translations.

Term	Translation
COVID-related	lockdown-related
pandemic	lockdowns

McMaster Children’s Hospital reports ‘unprecedented’ spike in eating disorders

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I saw this disaster unfolding almost from the start and I wrote about it in my May 7, 2020 report.

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Professor Warns Post-Corona Society is a “National Obedience Contest”

WE MUST NEVER FORGIVE POLITICIANS WHOSE LOCKDOWNS HAVE SO BADLY DAMAGED OUR YOUTH

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Some comparison Charts

Florida - No Lockdowns

California - Locked Down

Sweden - No Lockdowns Since the Start of the Panic

Ontario - Lockdowns

Cases

Deaths

Conclusion

The Chinese variant of the Coronavirus farts in the general direction of pompous politicians and their hired minions.

Oops! Something Went Wrong in Twitler's Reich - March 16, 2021

BLM THREATENS TO BURN DOWN AMERICA DURING GRAMMYS AWARD SHOW!

WE MUST NEVER FORGIVE POLITICIANS WHOSE LOCKDOWNS HAVE SO BADLY DAMAGED OUR YOUTH

Warning: Blocked by Twitter - DIVERSITY TEARS APART THE ROYAL FAMILY

DIVERSITY TEARS APART THE ROYAL FAMILY

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OLD JOE STAYS UP PAST HIS BEDTIME

WARNING! Canadian Doctors Speak Out

Portions of this video violate YouTube's terms of service.

That does not necessarily mean that the video is 100% true or correct.

In a free society, it is up to you to make that determination.

Also, Twitter is imposing a warning label to anyone who clicks on the link to this video on BitChute. They say, the "link may be unsafe." As in dangerous. Let me set your mind at ease, there are no viruses, malware, or fishing scams attached to the video. It is only "unsafe" or dangerous to those who want to control the things you see and hear.

YouTube version, while it lasts,

Newtube version.

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