Raekwon Love to dress a lad, get rocked, hundred bags, black doorags Ski masks is on, G-wags
Don’t try to take pictures, relax, chill in the grass
You’ll learn respect, burst when I ask
Rhyme master busy, Rizzy on the subject
Love Deck, thug buried, drug vest, snub sets, iller than most
Night time toast, gorillas in boats, three boats
Realers is killa, gangsta feel notes
Hibernation yo, switch up, liver nation, fly information Vivid vacation, deliberation moments
Move like ’91 Romans, cloning everything
Gents only, the rent’s on the stove, I’m in Rome
Maxed out, Amex style, my team brand bandits
Make a move and get blown off the planet, baby
Hold that cannon, just understand we got the whole shit
Padlocked down, my niggas won’t have it
G’s know that “Time is of the Essence”, and therefore the display and measurement thereof is crucial to the life, and lifestyle, of a G. There are many (too many in fact) brands of wristwatches for men, and there are too many men who just don’t care what goes on their wrist. This discussion is not for those men.
So you’re a G, or a wannabe G. You’ve got the Kiton / Henry Poole / Brioni / Borrelli / Turnbull & Asser thing down. You’ve got the Cleverly/E. Greene/Gucci/Lobb thing down. You’ve even got the Zimmerli/Hanro/Calida/Sunspel thing down (if you don’t have this down the fly girls will be laughing at just the wrong moment of intimacy). We’ll assume you’ve learned the difference between a .45 and a 9mm, as well as between Benson & Hedges and Nat Shermans or A. Fuente and Romeo y Julieta. Be that as it may, you’re probably still working on how a G puts the time on his wrist. This primer should get you where you need to be.
You’re ready to leave your abode, suited up, and the penultimate accoutrement, after the steel-and-lead, is the wristwatch. Depending on the task, or tasks, at hand, you may be wearing one, perhaps one of many, timepieces. What separates a G from a Joe the Plumber? Exclusivity, Precision, Refinement, and Comfort in All Environments. The same should stand for the wristwatch of a G. While a $40 Swatch can tell time with the same accuracy as a quartz Patek Phillipe (and the only quartz Patek is for women), I wouldn’t suggest a quartz at all. Quartz is accurate, but cheap. Quartz is accurate but battery powered. Quartz is accurate but mass-market. Batteries die. Quartz is disposable. An haute-horlogerie mechanical movement will last forever with proper servicing. Quartz-powered timepieces are simply very expensive, or very cheap, adornment that should be shunned. No further discussion need ensue.
Jadakiss – Happy 2 Be Here
Now, to the matter of which timepiece should, or should not, grace the wrist of a G:
G-Shock – Despite the name, this is a plastic piece of mass-merchandise, albeit a durable and accurate piece of mass merchandise. Thor Hyerdal wore an Eterna mechanical timepiece on the Kon Tiki (quartz didn’t exist back in 1947). NASA’s watch of choice since 1964 through today, is the mechanical Omega Speedmaster chronograph. Paul Newman’s watch of choice – Rolex Daytona Cosmograph automatic Chronograph Chronometer. Enough said.
There are certain manufactures of watches that have stood the test of time. They literally manufacture the entire watch, and are known for designing and manufacturing the movement, or the guts that keep the time. Swatch Group is, believe it or not, home to a number of highly respected Swiss manufactures. Richemont Group, another Swiss conglomerate, owns several well-respected manufactures, as does LVMH (owner of Louis Vuitton and Moet). The independent manufactures are perhaps the most exclusive.
A note about chronometers: They are often confused with chronographs, timepieces that measure fractions of a second and other time segments (hours, 10-minutes etc.). Chronometers are certified by official agencies in Switzerland and always come with certificates. Typically a chronometer will imply a higher quality movement and higher accuracy, but I’d stack a Patek, Girard-Perregaux, JLC, Grand Seiko, or other haute horlogerie piece against an “official” chronometer any time at all.
A note about case material: Yellow gold, while suitably expensive and flash, is no material for a G’s watch. White gold is subtle, platinum is rare, both are easily mistaken for steel except by those who truly know. I recommend steel as it is durable and subtle. Yellow or pink gold should be worn only with a band of alligator, crocodile, or other rare skin.
Here are the brands that merit our attention: Audemars Piguet – Royal Oak Breguet – Type XX chronograph Girard Perregaux – Laureato IWC – Ingenieur Jaeger-LeCoultre –Master Control, Master Ultra Thin, Reverso Duo Omega – Speedmaster Chrono, DeVille Chrono, Aqua Terra, Railmaster Patek Philppe – Nautilus. Their other pieces are too delicate for a G’s day-to-day mission. Rolex – Rolex, while being known on every street corner from Washington Heights to East LA, and everywhere else called earth, is in fact a well-made and solid timepiece. They are, however, overvalued in the market due to self-aggrandizing advertising. Their movements are solid, but I would put Omega’s George Daniels movement head-to-head, with the price/quality ratio favoring the Omega. Nevertheless, Rolex makes a durable watch (600,000 per year, and no, they are not handmade). Get a Sea-Dweller, Explorer II, or GMT. Seiko – Do not confuse their Grand Seiko and Phoenix lines with the department store quartz varieties. Their high-end pieces are brilliant, but unavailable in the States. Swoop the Phoenix automatic chronograph if you can find it. Zenith – Chronomaster. This same movement powered the Rolex Daytona for years.
There are many other high quality watchmakers in Switzerland, Germany, and even the States, but these are the names I’d suggest at the outset. So with these watchmakers a G can find (not always easily) the right watch for the right circumstances. Remember, we are focusing on Exclusivity, Precision, Refinement, and Comfort in All Environments.
Any of the above are well made classic machines that will get you everywhere you want to go, but should I choose to rank the above it would be difficult. Yet here are my top 5 G timepieces: #1 Thee A-P Royal Oak
#2 The JLC Master Control
#3 The IWC Ingenieur
#4 The Omega Railmaster
#5 The Rolex Explorer II
A G does his homework, and I would suggest that you supplement your watch knowledge with information from none other than the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry at http://www.fhs.ch/en/
Mayor Gavin Newsom formally announced his candidacy for California governor on Tuesday, offering himself as an heir to the same groundswell for generational change that helped send President Barack Obama to the White House.
Entering a race that could see him competing against men 15 and 30 years his senior, the 41-year-old Democrat pointedly used YouTube and the social networking sites Twitter and Facebook to disclose that he would seek his party’s nomination to succeed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The move mirrors Obama’s early efforts as a candidate to identify and mobilize supporters through the Internet. But Newsom, who campaigned for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the presidential primary, described it as emblematic of the “intuitive” comfort with technology, transparency and consensus-building he says he shares with Obama.
Newsom For California
“There will be legitimate questions nationally – is change an affectation of the personality of Barack Obama and is it exclusive to Washington, D.C. and the occupant of the White House? Or is that change, that generational mind-set, going to take shape across the rest of the nation, starting with the most populous state?” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We’ll see.”
Newsom said that to broaden his appeal beyond the San Francisco Bay area, he plans to highlight his background as a successful businessman – before becoming mayor, he founded a wine store that he parlayed into a string of restaurants – and as a politician who has been fiscally responsible. For several months, he has been crisscrossing the state and meeting with voters in markedly less liberal areas such as Stockton and San Diego.
“I’m socially progressive, no doubt about that,” he said. “People know I will fight for the things I believe in. But they may not know that other side.”
Source
“We can’t afford to keep returning to the same old tired ideas and expect a different result,” the Democrat told supporters in his three-minute YouTube announcement, part of the unprecedented “virtual fly-around” campaign announcement done entirely in the new media.
The gubernatorial candidate’s announcement video, which premiered on his Web page, GavinNewsom.com, utilizes three languages – English, Spanish and Mandarin – as well as images of solar technology, schools and health care facilities. It argued that Newsom – now in his second term as the city’s mayor – has created jobs, helped San Francisco establish a rainy day reserve and budgetary “sound fiscal policy,” and has tackled the challenge of providing universal health care to the uninsured.
In his announcement, Newsom says his record on issues like environmental and green technology issues, health care and government spending “isn’t conservative or progressive. It’s just plain smart for everyone.”
Newsom is a smooth cat. This could be a big win for The Playboys of the World. I will definitely float some scratch his way. (Although his is a little too negative on Legalizing Prostitution.)
And his wife is an intelligent, classy woman. (And I don’t say that about a lot of women).
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
AKA The Sly, Slick and the Wicked
AKA The Voodoo Child
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com
As the first pirate attack of a U.S. ship in 200 years comes to a climax, I’m re-posting an essay I solicited and received several weeks ago from K’naan, a Somali-Canadian singer and activist. A video of a performance by K’naan that I filmed at the All Points West music festival last summer appears below. — Michael Vazquez
Why We Don’t Condemn Our Pirates
by K’naan
Can anyone ever really be for piracy? Outside of sea bandits, and young girls fantasizing of Johnny Depp, would anyone with an honest regard for good human conduct really say that they are in support of Sea Robbery?
Well, in Somalia, the answer is: it’s complicated.
The news media these days has been covering piracy in the Somali coast with such
lop-sided journalism, that it’s lucky they’re not on a ship themselves. It’s true that the constant hijacking of vessels in the Gulf of Aden is a major threat to the vibrant trade route between Asia and Europe. It is also true that for most of the pirates operating in this vast shoreline, money is the primary objective.
But according to so many Somalis, the disruption of Europe’s darling of a trade route, is just Karma biting a perpetrator in the butt. And if you don’t believe in Karma, maybe you believe in recent history. Here is why we Somalis find ourselves slightly shy of condemning our pirates.
Somalia has been without any form of a functioning government since 1991. And although its failures, like many other toddler governments in Africa, sprung from the wells of post-colonial independence, bad governance and development loan sharks, the specific problem of piracy was put in motion in 1992.
After the overthrow of Siyad Barre, our charmless dictator of twenty-some-odd years, two major forces of the Hawiye Clan came to power. At the time, Ali Mahdi, and General Mohamed Farah Aidid, the two leaders of the Hawiye rebels, were largely considered liberators. But the unity of the two men and their respective sub-clans was very short-lived. It’s as if they were dumbstruck at the advent of ousting the dictator, or that they just forgot to discuss who will be the leader of the country once they defeated their common foe.
A disagreement of who will upgrade from militia leader to Mr. President broke up their honeymoon. It’s because of this disagreement that we’ve seen one of the most decomposing wars in Somalia’s history, leading to millions displaced and hundreds of thousands dead.
But war is expensive and militias need food for their families, and Jaad (an amphetamine-based stimulant) to stay awake for the fighting. Therefore, a good clan -based Warlord must look out for his own fighters. Aidid’s men turned to robbing aid trucks carrying food to the starving masses, and re-selling it to continue their war. But Ali Mahdi had his sights set on a larger and more unexploited resource, namely: the Indian Ocean.
K’NAAN – Somalia
Already by this time, local fishermen in the coastline of Somalia have been complaining of illegal vessels coming to Somali waters and stealing all the fish. And since there was no government to report it to, and since the severity of the violence clumsily overshadowed every other problem, the fishermen went completely unheard.
But it was around this same time that a more sinister, a more patronizing practice was being put in motion. A Swiss firm called Achair Parterns, and an Italian waste company called Achair Parterns, made a deal with Ali Mahdi, that they were to dump containers of waste material in Somali waters. These European companies were said to be paying Warlords about $3 a ton, whereas to properly dispose of waste in Europe costs about $1000 a ton.
In 2004, after a tsunami washed ashore several leaking containers, thousand of locals in the Puntland region of Somalia started to complain of severe and previously unreported ailments, such as abdominal bleeding, skin melting off and a lot of immediate cancer-like symptoms. Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environmental Program, says that the containers had many different kinds of waste, including “Uranium, radioactive waste, lead, Cadmium, Mercury and chemical waste.” But this wasn’t just a passing evil from one or two groups taking advantage of our unprotected waters. The UN envoy for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, says that the practice still continues to this day. It was months after those initial reports that local fishermen mobilized themselves, along with street militias, to go into the waters and deter the Westerners from having a free pass at completely destroying Somalia’s aquatic life. Now years later, the deterring has become less noble, and the ex-fishermen with their militias have begun to develop a taste for ransom at sea. This form of piracy is now a major contributor to the Somali economy, especially in the very region that private toxic waste companies first began to burry our nation’s death trap.
The toxic truth
Now Somalia has upped the world’s pirate attacks by over 21 percent in one year, and while NATO and the EU are both sending forces to the Somali coast to try and slow down the attacks, Blackwater and all kinds of private security firms are intent on cashing in. But while Europeans are well in their right to protect their trade interest in the region, our pirates were the only deterrent we had from an externally imposed environmental disaster. No one can say for sure that some of the ships they are now holding for ransom were not involved in illegal activity in our waters. The truth is, if you ask any Somali, if getting rid of the pirates only means the continuous rape of our coast by unmonitored Western Vessels, and the producing of a new cancerous generation, we would all fly our pirate flags high.
It is time that the world gave the Somali people some assurance that these Western illegal activities will end, if our pirates are to seize their operations. We do not want the EU and NATO serving as a shield for these nuclear waste-dumping hoodlums. It seems to me that this new modern crisis is truly a question of justice, but also a question of whose justice.
As is apparent these days, one man’s pirate is another man’s coast guard.
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
AKA The Sly, Slick and the Wicked
AKA The Voodoo Child
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com
Be very wary of Western Media. My best college Professor told our class: “Half of what you read in the Newspaper is a lie”. Too which I said, “Well, then why don’t you read half the paper?”. Which in turn made everyone in the class laugh, including a fly girl that became a San Diego Charger Cheerleader. I swooped her. But that’s neither dope Champagna nor Tony Montana.
Anyways, the point I am trying to make is don’t believe everything our country is telling you about the Somali “Pirates” and how horrible they are.
Following the collapse of the Somali regime in 1991 The “International Community” (Italy, France, Spain, Greece, Russia, Britain, Ukraine, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, India, Yemen, Egypt and many others.) has been illegally poaching and destroying the Somali Marine Resources.
This Illegal, Unregulated and Unlicensed fishing is destroying fish stock, marine life, and the habitats.
Illegal, Unregulated and Unlicensed fishing are using trawlers in even the inshore areas of reserved for artisanal fishing.
These illegally caught fish are “laundered” with legitimately caught fish.
Since Somalia has not had a functioning “Coast Guard”, the rest of the world has taken advantage of the situation as they have vastly over fished their own seas.
Many Somali fisherman have been killed by trawlers and had their fishing nets destroyed over the last 18 years.
In 2005 there were over 800 illegal fishing vessels At One Time in Somali waters.
Over $450 Million in fish annually, have been taken illegally from Somali waters with out paying tax or royalties to the Somali People. And since it is unregulated, they have not paid attention to conservation or the environment.
A bunch of other complicated license scams have been run, which I can’t explain because even I think the shit is confusing.
The Somali’s have complained to the UN at least three times. No one listened.
Shyne – That’s Gangsta
Industrial, Nuclear and Toxic waste have been dumped in Somali waters. The waste has caused deformed babies and killed many people.
Somali fishermen in various regions of the country also complained to the international community about the illegal foreign fishing, stealing the livelihoods of poor fishermen, waste dumping and other ecological disasters, including the indiscriminate use of all prohibited methods of fishing: drift nets, under water explosives, killing all “endangered species” like sea-turtles, orca, sharks, baby whales, etc. as well as destroying reef, biomass and vital fish habitats in the sea.
Now, who are the “Pirates”?
So what do you expect the Somali Fisherman to do?
Lay down?
Imagine what would happen if you fished illegally and dumped waste off the coast of San Diego?
Ill tell you, you would have every San Diego Fisherman and Surfer blowing up your boats.
Try dumping toxic waste on The North Shore. Or try dumping chemical waste on Maroubra Beach and see what The Bra Boys do.
If nuclear waste was dumped on your beach you’d grab a cutlass, too.
And you would stop him in his tracks and show him you are Ruthless.
A couple more points to bring up:
Piracy is the result of one thing: Rebellion to unjust activity.
Sure the Pirates are living it up, smoking hashish, boozing, swooping mad girls, and chowing down stimulants. Who can blame them? I would too. In fact, they sound like some cool cats to roll with.
Now that we killed a few Somali “Pirates”, the Somali people are completely backing the Pirates. So are the Islamic Militants.
The Hornet’s Nest has been stirred.
And we cannot fight another war on another front (See The Art of War).
Remember one thing: What did America do, in the days of George Washington, before we had a Coast Guard?
We used Pirates.
The Somali Pirates: The Most Radical Revolutionaries of our Generation.
Let’s make peace in Somalia. Then we can go over and swoop Fly Somalian Girls.
The Rest is Up to You…
Michael Porfirio Mason
AKA The Peoples Champ
AKA GFK, Jr.
AKA The Sly, Slick and the Wicked
AKA The Voodoo Child
The Guide to Getting More out of Life
http://www.thegmanifesto.com
