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[songs that aren't very well known]

"Favourites" threads can be handy for discovering things you might never have come across otherwise.

We'll start with songs that aren't very well known

A few of my own favourites, all can be found on the YouTube obviously.

Letter to the 1% - Lowkey(it's not me, I'm just a big fan)  A rap/song about wealth and power inequality with a lot of historical references. I find it very powerful and it presents an anti-imperialist look at the world that we don't really get in our history books and documentaries in this part of the world. He has some very powerful songs about Palestine too.

Sunshine on Leith - The Proclaimers - The Hibs song, as sung after they won the Scottish Cup for the first time in over 100 years. Maybe everyone is aware of this one already though.

Red Army Blues - The Waterboys - song about a young Russian lad going off to fight in WW2

Happiness is a Butterfly - Lana Del Ray.
Macklemore - Hind's hall
      & Hind's hall 2
Immortal Technique - The 3rd World

Some great posts on Christy & some songs that I'll look up & give a go.  He's our Bob Dylan & should be lauded for it. Lowkey -  Dylan's Neighbourhood Bully is complex & was from the dodgy era Dylan when he was born again & his songs deteriorated lyrically & musically to make him practically unlistenable & nauseous.  I'm not getting into another Israel - Palestine row.  Saved, amongst others, is an album we could have done without. 

He's had decades to retract it and hasn't. I don't want to sidetrack a great music thread either. People can make up their own minds on it, but it's a red line for me and I just couldn't be listening to him anymore.

The lyrics are here if anyone is interested.....
https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/neighborhood-bully/

Double Down News have started doing their own news roundup showing the extent to which the truth is being distorted and turned on its head in mainstream media in relation to Israel, Palestine, protests, anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia. Would be a good one to share with people, it's very important journalism.

https://youtu.be/1kI9plI4l_Y?si=IpKjzExwIyDHV8WK

Just on the covers thing, Christy does sometimes alter the lyrics or add a verse of his own but said he'll check with the writer where possible to make sure they're ok with it.

Most of my favourites have already been mentioned but here's a few others-

Lingo politico, written by a man from the Aran Islands about Irish politicians, hilarious and true to life.

Does this train stop on Merseyside - written by Ian Prowse I think of the band Amsterdam, it's a history of Liverpool, beautiful and apparently John Peel's favourite song. I think Amsterdam's version is better but I'd never have found it without Christy.
"Can't conceive what those children done
Guess there's a meanness in the soul of man
Yorkshire policemen chat with folded arms
While people try to save their fellow fans"

The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll -
A Bob Dylan song based on a true story about there being no justice for a poor black murder victim killed by a rich white man. Great version on YouTube with Declan Sinnott. Much better than Dylan's version, even before I found out Dylan had written a Zionist song portraying Israel as the innocent victims(The Neighbourhood Bully) and couldn't stand listening to him anymore.

Also love Burning Times, Weekend in Amsterdam, The Well Below the Valley and the The Time has Come video from Martin McGuiness's funeral always moves me.

Most of all though, I just love Christy for always being on the right side of history when it wasn't always easy - Stardust, The Hunger Strikers, The Birmingham Six, Fighting racism against immigrants and travellers, Palestine etc.

The 3-part episode of the Free State podcast with Brolly and Dion Fanning are a great look back through his career.

Byrnes didn't get a yellow as the ref didn't think it was a free.

In real time and from the angle the ref was at, probably a bit unclear, but yes, I thought it was more chest than shoulder to shoulder.

There were a lot of loose hurls in the tackling, not sure if they were near a ball though and I'm no purist, for me a hurl should only be swung,flicked at a ball, but now it's just in the general direction, hitting arms, hands and anything in between.

Yeah its all getting a little bit much, if its not a chop down from the player entering the tackle to contact the tackling arm, it is a swing back on the way out of the tackle to break away. Neither are a great look and both technically fouls that we are never seen blown at this point.

The ref struggled in this game on a few of the big calls.

I think hurling has become impossible to ref properly though. There's so much ball-in-hand with teams playing the possession game. We have players routinely taking 6+ steps and throwing the ball so tackling becomes more about big hits and whatever spare-arm grabbing and grappling you can get away with, rather than the actual skills of hooking, blocking or flicking the ball away. Those skills are often redundant against teams running the ball up the pitch and throwing it to the open man.

I'd love a zero tolerance campaign wrt possession rules like steps and the clear release & definite strike that's required on the handpass (not the freeze-frame "separation" that Donal Óg and Derek McGrath seem determined to redefine as the requirement). If players had to play the ball quickly and legally there'd be far less need for the big (dangerous) hits and more opportunity to dispossess someone skillfully.

If I want to watch big hits (ie. two lads crashing into each other) and people running around with ball-in-hand throwing it to each other, there are other sports that cater for that.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/05/05/keir-starmer-attacks-arts-council-england-anti-semitism/


Asked if he felt the Government should go further and ban marches as in France, Starmer said there were "instances" justifying it.

"Many people in the Jewish community have said to me it's the repeat nature, it's the cumulative effect. Now I accept that, which is why we intend to deal with cumulative effects," he said. "We need to look at what further powers we can take.

If you thought that hungry, traumatised, orphaned child amputees, living in wet, rat-infested tents in a post-apocalyptic concentration camp, with the constant hum of drones overhead and the threat of death raining down from the skies at any moment had it tough, just try to imagine being a Zionist living in the UK and having to hear people chanting about freedom between the river and the sea. Now, imagine the cumulative effect of that happening once a week. Puts everything into perspective.

Good analysis Marty.

Tikkun olam Jews

Peace and justice
https://x.com/DoubleDownNews/status/2051036285070983176/mediaViewer?

Brilliant video that. DDN are excellent. That lady spoke so articulately and truthfully. Much love and respect to her. ❤️✊

Very impressed with all the newer Limerick players who started yesterday. O Connor, O Brien, O Neill and English. There's not much dropoff with any of the older players either who were mostly excellent too. Tom Morrissey had a few sloppy moments if you wanted to nitpick. Most likely AI winners imo, especially with news of Cork's injuries last week.

Hard to call Tipp V Clare but Clare likely have 2 chances to get through, the second one against a Cork team who, if the Waterford game goes to form, will already be through.

Not to disrespect the gallant Waterford either, an excellent team who have to play in the group of death every year. It's a shame that we don't get to see more of the maestro Stephen Bennett. Something like the football system, a knockout provincial championship followed by drawn groups for the AI series would be fairer.

I've still not seen a shred of evidence that it's a hate crime, apologies if I've missed it. The airbrushing of the third Muslim victim out of so much of the reporting shows the real, dangerous discrimination at a political level.

Far from being marginalised, the Jewish community is hyper-protected and pandered to by Western governments and media. The contrast with Palestinians in their homeland who are regularly murdered (often on camera) while quite clearly posing no threat to anyone and their Israeli murderers enjoying total impunity, is stark. In the West Bank too, people can look up the conviction rates and sentences for Israelis who commit crimes against Palestinians and vice-versa. There's zero justice and almost zero protection from settlers.


Our media and political establishments talk all the time about "Islamic terror". Yet, we've had 2+ years of the most unimaginable terror being inflicted on people in a concentration camp, including the murder of 20,000 children and endless, indisputable acts of terror caught on camera, many by the IDF soldiers themselves, so confident were they in their own impunity, but I've not seen or heard the same media outlets/politicians once talk about "Jewish Terror".


I have nothing but admiration though, for the Jewish people speaking out against Israel and the work of people like Ilan Pappé, Norman Finkelstein and Gideon Levy is so important as a historical record of the injustice that's been done.

Getting back to the recent incident, the weaponising of that stabbing across the globe, and the lack of pushback on it in the media is genuinely frightening stuff. If any media outlets/journalists are brave enough, this story(or as it appears to me, the amplification and distortion of a non-story) is an opportunity to highlight the Ziofascism that's taking over the West.

More details may emerge later, but regardless, the parroting of the claim without known evidence that this was a terrorist attack, by media across the Western world, so that it could be weaponised by politicians to shut down protest against the Western-backed genocide, should be the huge story here imo.

It feels more and more like Orwell's 1984. Kemi Badenoch tweeted a photo of herself with Graeme Linehan a couple of days ago saying that Free speech must be protected. She also called for marches in support of Palestine to be banned. So, being charged with criminal damage because you grabbed someone's phone and threw it away is an attack on free speech but not being allowed to protest against a genocide led by a wanted war criminal isn't. Deeply sinister times.