F: SV Rodinghausen a

Started the BBC series on Hip Hop last night, Fight The Power : How Hip Hop Changed The World. I had previously watched, and loved Hip Hop Evolution and expected this to be pretty much the same, same story, told the same way. Nope episode one takes us through the deprivation and victimisation of blacks in the South Bronx and indeed America. Touching on the Black Panther movement, the burning of The South Bronx and COINTELPRO, this is all before we even got to Cool Herc. I am only an episode in and it tells a story in a different way to Hip Hop Evolution but already as good, episode 1 featured talking heads like KRS 1, DMC, Chuck D as well as names from the graffiti and BBoy movement. All in all shaping up to be an excellent series. On iplayer

Many thanks!

I always find it odd the the Jews were persecuted by the nazis (facism I.e. politically extreme right wing), yet Israel which has a predominantly Jewish population is also seen as an extreme right wing country. Am I missing something...?

There’s no excuse for any of this. You see heavy handed police action in other countries but it’s normally when there’s a protest that turns bad or a riot or something. You don’t see someone getting pulled over for something minor and then beaten to death in any other country. There’s clearly a racist element to it, although when you’ve got a bunch of exclusively black cops doing this to a black guy you will undoubtedly see some people (you may or may not have racist tendencies themselves) pointing to it and saying it proves it’s not about race. It’s always been my opinion that the primary cause for this kind of violence in the US is fear driven by the number of weapons in that country. Imagine being a cop and pulling someone over for having a brake light out. In the UK it’s a fair assumption that the driver isn’t locked and loaded. In the US it’s a much more real possibility that that stop is the last the cop can make. That fear combined with their obvious racial bias and lack of training (compared to the rest of the world) means they approach even the most benign stop ready to use lethal force. One of my vivid memories as a kid was going to Florida with my folks and some of their friends, one of whom had a brother working as a doctor in the states who drove down to see us for a few days. I remember him opening the “trunk” of his car and seeing 3 handguns in there. It only occurred to me in later life just how utterly mental it was that someone who was born in the UK, but emigrated to the US felt so unsafe that he needed 3 handguns in his car. He only has 2 hands! Why the 3rd one! I still don’t get it

An interesting development. Turkey has got 2 ships that act as mobile power plants to support their electrical grid. They have asked Romania and Moldova to host them and hook them up to their power grid. This will indirectly supply Ukraine with electricity from NATO protected waters. The long term aim is to site them in Ukrainian ports and hook them up directly.

If he’s as bad as Buendia, hells yeah I will

Can anyone find the scouting report John Gregory posted on twitter from when he went to watch JPA for River Plate? I know he had 5 stars for Aimar and Mario Yepes, but there were a couple of other guys he highlighted too...