Abagond

Remarks:

I woke up the other morning with this ringing in my head, further proof that my brain is an attic full of New York dance music from 1975 to 1993. This one is from 1978. It was never one of the top-40 pop songs in either the US or UK, but in the US it did reach #32 on the R&B chart, #3 on the dance chart, and at least #24 in New York. There are longer versions of this songs – 6 minutes and 9 minutes.

The band from Nassau in the Bahamas. T is for Theophilus.

See also:

• songs: the 1970s
• Time Warp Radio: 1979 – from April 17th when it was #24 in New York, just above Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff”.
• R&B: a brief history: 1975-1979

Lyrics:

(Midnight, midnight
Midnight, midnight
Midnight, midnight
Midnight, midnight)

(Midnight)

Look into my eyes, tell me what you see
Do you see some possibilities?
Try and get away tonight, you can leave with me
It’s a golden opportunity

And when the sun goes down my fantasies run wild
When midnight rolls around I really come alive

At midnight (midnight), oh, I really come alive
(Midnight, midnight) oh, my fantasies run wild
(Midnight, midnight) I got so much energy
(Midnight, midnight) yeah, deep inside of me, girl

Come a little closer, girl, look into my mind
You would be surprised at what you find
There’s a roaring lion inside of me, waiting for the night
Comes out only when the time is right

And when the sun goes down my fantasies run wild
When midnight goes around I really come alive

At midnight (midnight), oh, I really come alive
(Midnight, midnight) oh, my fantasies run wild
(Midnight, midnight) I got so much energy
(Midnight, midnight) yeah, deep inside of me, girl (midnight), oh!

And when the sun goes down my fantasies run wild
When midnight goes around I really come alive

At midnight (midnight), oh, I really come alive
(Midnight, midnight) oh, my fantasies run wild
(Midnight, midnight) I got so much energy
(Midnight, midnight) I got so much energy

(Midnight, midnight) yeah, deep inside of me, yeah
(Midnight, midnight) yeah, at midnight, midnight
(Midnight, midnight) midnight, oh
(Midnight, midnight) while the world is sleepin’, people needin’

(Midnight, midnight) said I love my fantasies run free
(Midnight, midnight) at midnight, midnight!

(Midnight, midnight) I let my fantasies run free, yeah
(Midnight, midnight) talkin’ ’bout midnight!
(Midnight, midnight) midnight, come on!
(Midnight, midnight) at midnight, come on

(Midnight, midnight) oh, baby!
(Midnight, midnight) oh, baby, yeah!
(Midnight, midnight) at midnight, midnight!
(Midnight, midnight) midnight!

(Midnight, midnight) wow, oooh
(Midnight, midnight)

Source: letras.mus.br.

Remarks:

This came out in 2002. In 2007 it was one of my favourite Brazilian songs. It is a cover of an old Elis Regina and Tom Jobim song from 1974.

See also:

• songs: the 2000s
• songs in Portuguese
  • Brazilian songs I like
• Paula Lima

Lyrics: 

É,
Só eu sei
Quanto amor
Eu guardei
Sem saber
Que era só
Pra você.

É, só tinha de ser com você,
Havia de ser pra você,
Senão era mais uma dor,
Senão não seria o amor,
Aquele que a gente não vê,
O amor que chegou para dar
O que ninguém deu pra você.
O amor que chegou para dar
O que ninguém deu pra você.

É, você que é feito de azul,
Me deixa morar nesse azul,
Me deixa encontrar minha paz,
Você que é bonito demais,
Se ao menos pudesse saber
Que eu sempre fui só de você,
Você sempre foi só de mim.

É, você que é feito de azul,
Me deixa morar nesse azul,
Me deixa encontrar minha paz,
Você que é bonito demais,
Se ao menos pudesse saber
Que eu sempre fui só de você,
Você sempre foi só de mim.
Eu sempre fui só de você,
Você sempre foi só de mim.
Eu sempre fui só de você,
Você sempre foi só de mim.
Eu sempre fui só de você,
Você sempre foi só de mim

Source: letras.mus.br. 

Remarks:

One of the few political songs the Stones ever did. I did not even know it existed till the other day. I found out about it through my Portuguese media diet from a book from Brazil. The song came out in April 1972, back in the days of “Free Angela Davis!”, two months before she was freed. It was on the B side of “Tumbling Down”, which went to #5 in the UK, #7 in the US.

See also:

• songs: the 1970s
• Rolling Stones:
  • Brown Sugar – also about a Black woman, maybe Marsha Hunt
  • She’s a Rainbow – about women in general, my favourite song of theirs
• Angela Davis
  • The trial of Angela Davis
• The N-word
• Programming note #48: Portuguese media diet

Lyrics: 

Got a sweet black angel
Got a pin up girl
Got a sweet black angel
Up upon my wall
Well, she ain’t no singer
And she ain’t no star
But she sure talk good
And she move so fast
But the gal in danger
Yeah, de gal in chains
But she keep on pushin’
Would ya take her place?
She countin’ up de minutes
She countin’ up de days
She’s a sweet black angel, woh
Not a sweet black slave
Ten little niggers
Sittin’ on de wall
Her brothers been a fallin’
Fallin’ one by one
For a judge they murdered
And a judge they stole
Now de judge he gonna judge her
For all dat he’s worth
Well de gal in danger
De gal in chains
But she keep on pushin’
Would you do the same?
She countin’ up de minutes
She countin’ up de days
She’s a sweet black angel
Not a gun toting teacher
Not a red lovin’ school mom
Ain’t someone gonna free her
Free de sweet black slave
Free de sweet black slave

Source: letras.mus.br. 

Remarks:

This came out in 2022, going to #1 on the Brazilian MPB chart. MPB (“Música Popular Brasileira”) is the sort of music she usually sings. It grew out of bossa nova in Rio in the 1960s. Marisa Monte is a sort of Brazilian Sade (who also has roots in bossa nova). I do not know Flor, but Seu Jorge probably needs to appear in this space in a post of his own.

See also:

• songs: the 2020s
• songs in Portuguese
• Meu mix: songs recommended by YouTube
• Marisa Monte
  • 1991: Beija Eu
  • 2001: A Sua
  • 2021: Portas
• Sade: her most “Brazilian” sounding songs:
  • 1984: Your Love is King
  • 1984: Smooth Operator
  • 1985: Sweetest Taboo
  • 1988: Paradise
  • 1993: Kiss of Life
• João Gilberto
  • Mina: Estate
• bossa nova
• MPB

Lyrics: 

Quando você pensa
Que está tudo errado e negativo
E que ainda vai piorar, piorar

Pra todo mundo a vida é difícil
Todos fazem seu sacrifício
Pra melhorar, melhorar

Lá vem o sol
Para derreter as nuvens negras
Para iluminar o fim do túnel

E a luz do céu
Para inspirar o seus desejos
Pra fazer você encher o peito e cantar

Quando você pensa
Que está tudo errado e negativo
E que ainda vai piorar, piorar

Pra todo mundo a vida é difícil
Todos fazem seu sacrifício
Pra melhorar, melhorar

Lá vem o sol
Para derreter as nuvens negras
Para iluminar o fim do túnel

E a luz do céu
Para inspirar o seus desejos
Pra fazer você encher o peito e cantar

Quando você pensa
Que está tudo errado e negativo
E que ainda vai piorar, piorar

Pra todo mundo a vida é difícil
Todos fazem seu sacrifício
Pra melhorar, melhorar

Lá vem o sol
Para derreter as nuvens negras
Para iluminar o fim do túnel

E a luz do céu
Para inspirar o seus desejos
Pra fazer você encher o peito e cantar

Source: letras.mus.br.

Marisa Monte singing “Pra Melhorar”, circa 2022. Song #1 on the list.

Before it is lost to the ages*, here are songs YouTube recommended to me on February 20th 2026:

Note: Links in italics go to YouTube and are subject to link rot. 

1. Marisa Monte, Seu Jorge & Flor – Pra Melhorar (2022, Portuguese) – the song was I looking for at the time.
2. Anitta, Ludmilla & Snoop Dogg: Onda Diferente (2019, Portuguese) – what an earworm!
3. Dan Fogelberg: Same Old Lang Syne (1980, English) – a nostalgic song about nostalgia!
4. Lana Del Rey: Video Games (2012, English) – Internet algorithms keep pushing this at me.
5. Slave: Just a Touch of Love (1979, English)
6. Olivia Newton-John: Have You Never Been Mellow (1975, English)
7. The Real Roxanne: Bang Zoom (Let’s Go Go) (1986, English)
8. Fanny: Butter Boy (1974, English)
9. Tony Orlando & Dawn: Knock Three Times (1971, English)
10. The Internationale (in Latin) (1888, Latin)
11. Marisa Monte: Calma (2021, Portuguese) – I did not know the name of this, but I have definitely heard it before.
12. Welcome to Retro Future World – 1950s Vision of Tomorrow (2025, instrumental) – looks like it was created by AI.
13. Disney’s Frozen: Let It Go (in Latin) (2013, Latin) – there are some Disney songs I like, but this is not one of them.
14. Missy Elliott ft Ciara, Fatman Scoop: Lose Control (2005, English) – when music was fun!
15. Marisa Monte: Portas (2021, Portuguese)
16. Marisa Monte: Feliz, Alegre e Forte (2022, Portuguese)
17. Cherrelle & Alexander O’Neal: Saturday Love (1986, English) – what a classic!
18. GA31 – Um Pouco Gótica (2017, Portuguese)
19. Average White Band: Pick Up the Pieces (1974, English) – this and the next one are okay but I would never consider posting them.
20. Freddy Fender: Before the Next Tear Drop Falls (1974, English)

By decade:

• 1880s  X
• …
• 1970s  XXXX#X
• 1980s  XXX
• 1990s  .
• 2000s  X
• 2010s  XXXX
• 2020s  XXXX#

By language: 

• EN  XXXX#XXXX#X
• PT  XXXX#X
• LA  XX

Remarks: 

I have heard all of these songs before except for those by Fanny (#8), GA31 (#18) and AI (#12). So as a source of new music it is not that great. But it did remind me of some old songs I like, so it was worth it for that.

I am in the middle of a Portuguese media diet and was looking for a Marisa Monte song at the time, so that seems to have skewed the results. But all the songs that link to this blog (those not in italics) are songs I genuinely like, if only for nostalgic reasons. So YouTube got it at least half right. But these songs are hardly my Desert Island Classics.

– Abagond, 2026. 

* Before it is lost to the ages: Of course this blog itself will be lost to the ages too. I think Western civilization is going to collapse (too many reasons why), taking the Internet with it. Meaning that we are already living in a dark age in history, one where not many records will survive. But, um, not counting that, this blog has lasted longer than most things on the Internet. Or even at the library! In both cases the half-life of content is less than ten years. 

See also:

• Programming note #48: Portuguese media diet
• songs
  • in Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian
  • from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, 2020s
• Brazilian songs I like
• Desert Island Songs
• time warps:
  • Time Warp Radio: 1979
  • Time Warp Radio: 1981
  • 1986 mixtape
  • music videos, 1985 to 1989
  • music videos, 2005 to 2009
• link rot
• The life cycle of a library book

556

Remarks:

Note: The video is not embeddable – click on the image above to see the official video at YouTube (after some ads).

Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show is easily the best since 2016 when Beyonce sang, back in her “Formation” days. This one featured not just Bad Bunny, but Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin, Latino pride and a short history of Mr Bunny’s native Puerto Rico under US rule (1898- ). It was full of symbolism and Easter eggs, with references to ICE, Hurricane Maria and so on.

Over 130 million people in the US saw it, over a third of the country. The Super Bowl, the championship game of American football, is easily one of the most watched shows on US television every year.

Moral panic: This year the right-wing went into a moral panic, supposedly because most of the halftime show was sung in, gasp, Spanish. Whatever the real reason was, their reaction was right on brand with their narrow, hateful White nationalist vision of the US. It was right in line with their violent anti-immigration policy, which is killing even citizens. They want to “Make America Great Again” (MAGA), but their America is too narrow, too small, to speak Spanish?

Puerto Rico: Bad Bunny is from Puerto Rico. Like most Puerto Ricans, Spanish is his mother tongue. Puerto Rico is not a state (yet), but it is within the US border. Anyone born there is a US citizen. Puerto Rico is part of the US. So Spanish is part of the US too, like it or not.

Spanish: The US has more Spanish speakers than even Spain itself. In fact it is the fourth largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, probably third if you count the undocumented, second if you count those who use it as a second language. Only Mexico clearly has more Spanish speakers. Unless you count high-school Spanish! Is Spanish, like, a bad thing or something? It comes from Latin, the root of Western civilization. What am I missing?

So beautiful: Even if you do not know Spanish, one of the most beautiful parts was clear enough: at the 12:10 mark Bad Bunny says, in English, “God bless America” and then listed most of the countries of the Americas from Chile to Canada, while leading a parade of flags, ending with a football that said, “Together we are America”.

– Abagond, 2026. 

See also:

• Spanish
  • songs in Spanish
  • Mock Spanish
  • growing up Latino
• models of the US: cosmopolitan, diseased host
• The term “America”
  • estadunidense (United Statesian)
• Beyonce: Formation
• also Bad Bunny:
  • Cardi B, Bad Bunny & J Balvin: I Like It
• ICE
  • Renee Good
  • Alex Pretti
• White Evangelicals and the US border camps – back in 2019
• Puerto Rico
  • Hurricane Maria

Remarks:

This came out in 1972. Though little known in Anglo America, it sold over a million copies in Latin America. The band toured Latin America with an interpreter, but then shocked Brazil when the lead singer, Brian Anderson, answered an interviewer in perfect Portuguese! He was a falso gringo – someone pretending to be a gringo! His real name was André Barbosa Filho. He was just a plain old Brazilian. The band worked with the biggest fake gringo of them all, Maurício Alberto Kaisermann. His gringo name was Morris Albert, famous among real gringos for the song “Feelings” (1974).

See also:

• songs: the 1970s
• songs in Portuguese
• Fake Indians
• Rachel Dolezal
• Al Green: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart – compare and contrast!

Lyrics: 

Give me your smile again
I’d like to be with you
With the things I would like to know
Darling, be happy with me
And tell me once again
That you know that i’d die
For your love tell me why
Back to dream
Be careful with the words you say
My heart is open
But believe in the ways of sorrow
And try to find somebody like me
And tell me once again
That you know that i’d die
For your love tell me why
Back to dream

Sit on a chair near me
Or in a place you’ll like to be
I will tell you something new
About life and the things that we’ll do

And tell me once again
That you know that i’d die
For your love tell me why
Back to dream

Oh yeah… Yeah !

Source: Genius Lyrics.

US President Trump posted a racist video of the Obamas, the former Black president and first lady. It was put on the Internet just before midnight (05:00 GMT) on Thursday February 5th 2026. For hours even fellow Republicans begged Trump to take it down and apologize! He took it down, after 12 hours, but did not apologize. He said that he had not seen the whole 62-second video.

Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate:

“it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”

The video was mostly about the still-yet-to-be-proved voter fraud in the 2020 election. Near the very end for about a second it shows two apes in the jungle laughing. They have the faces of Michelle and Barack Obama (see above). The song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays in the background.

Trump being racist is not new – in fact, it is on-brand (see links at the bottom for various examples). Nor is Black-people-as-monkeys new – that goes back hundreds of years and is deep-seated among Whites. But even for Trump it seems to be a new low. Even some Republicans can see how racist it is. Or, rather, have the courage to call it racist or offensive.

Black History Month has just begun in the US. But probably way less coincidentally, Trump is in the middle of his worst scandal yet:

The Jeffrey Epstein Files names names and shows pictures of people who seem to take part in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking operation of underage girls. Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump appear. Trump is losing support within his own Republican Party. It is just the sort of thing that can bring down a strongman leader like Trump. Underage girls are a red line for many people. Just ask Berlusconi. If Trump can make the issue his racism he is on much safer ground. Most White people seem to be perfectly fine with it.

Reactions to the racist video among fellow Republicans:

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC): “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME): “Tim is right. This was appalling.”

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY): “The President’s post is wrong and incredibly offensive — whether intentional or a mistake — and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered.”

Rep Mike Tuner (R-OH): “I do not feel the need to respond to every inflammatory statement made by the White House. However, the release of racist images of former President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama is offensive, heart breaking, and unacceptable. President Trump should apologize.”

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE): “Even if this was a Lion King meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this. The White House should do what anyone does when they make a mistake: remove this and apologize.”

The White House called criticism “fake outrage”. Most Republicans remained silent or made excuses, like this:

Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY):  “President Trump has made tremendous inroads in the black community and I can’t imagine that sharing a one-minute video the last second of which was pretty racist wasn’t a sloppy oversight by staff.”

– Abagond, 2026. 

See also:

• Black people as monkeys
• Donald Trump
  • 2011: Birthers
  • 2017: “very fine people”
  • 2018: “shithole countries”
  • 2019: White Evangelicals and Trump’s recent racism
  • 2024: Kamala Harris “became a Black person”
  • 2024: “they’re eating the pets”
  • 2024: Somali immigrants are “garbage”
  • Trump is an average racist
• Strongmen

541

The map of Black people

February is Black History Month in the US and on this blog. Below are some posts I am thinking of doing (or did) this month on the history of Africa and the Diaspora. Since I am on a Portuguese media diet till Easter, the posts will probably centre on Lusophonia, the Portuguese-speaking world, particularly Black Brazil and Angola.

Proposed posts (those that I did are linked):

• Zumbi
• Angola
• Benguela
• Monjolo
• Cabinda
• Mina
• Rebolo
• Kingdom of Kongo
• Alfonso I of Kongo
• Dum diversas
• Baquaqua
• rice and beans
• Lusophonia
• Angolanidade
• the Angola-Brazil axis of history
• Madeira
• Cape Verde
• Cape Verdean Americans
• Sao Tome
• Mozambique
• creole language
• Amilcar Cabral
• racial democracy
• slavery and the Catholic Church
• Brazilian slavery
• Brazilian racism
• Treaty of Tordesillas
• candomble
• orixas
• Yemanja
• Abdias do Nacimento
• Milton Santos
• languages: Kimbundu, Kikongo, Yoruba
• Bahia
• the Golden Act (Emancipation in Brazil)
• Fon-Ewe

Others that I did:

Suggestions are welcomed!

– Abagond, 2023.

See also:

• Black history months past: 2015 2016 2018
• Mariana Baltar: Zumbi (Jorge Ben Jor)
• Black Brazil
  • Black Brazil in the black gringo gaze – something to avoid!
• Portuguese empire
• African Diaspora
  • Afro-Latinos
  • Black Americans

Image via SmallAdvantages.

Estadunidense, also spelled estado-unidense, is a Portuguese word meaning someone or something from the Estados Unidos da América (EUA) – the United States of America (USA). Spanish has a similar word, usually spelled estadounidense. 

United Statesian: When I was eight I was greatly disappointed to find out that “United Statesian” was not a real word. In English it is instantly understandable, but no serious person uses it. No grown-up, certainly. But in most Romance languages it is a real word!  At least in:

• Portuguese: estadunidense, estado-unidense
• Spanish: estadounidense, estadunidense
• Catalan: estatunidenc
• French: états-unien
• Italian: statunitense

But it is mainly seen as pedantic or picky.

Only in Spanish has it taken off. Since 2006 it has become more common in print in Spanish than americano or even norteamericano (the most popular term in the 1980s). Even the Royal Spanish Academy, the top authority on the Spanish language, recommends it!

Eduardo Galeano of Uruguay in 2009:

“the grandchildren of the Pilgrims seized the name and everything else. Now they are the Americans. And those of us who live in the other Americas, who are we?”

In Brazil there are several terms applied to things US:

• americano – by far the most common, even among those who would never dream of calling the country América (considered one of the six continents in Latin America). It still has a pan-American meaning, so professors, journalists, Wikipedians and other sticklers prefer estadunidense or norte-americano:
• estadunidense – sometimes seen as lefty.
• norte-americano – does not include Canada, much less Mexico. Just the US. How disappointing. More common than estadunidense.
• ianque – from “Yankee”. Not a neutral term!
• gringo – means any foreigner, not just those from the US. Not always meant in a nice way. More spoken than written.

The Portuguese model of the world.

The pedantic argument: The whole trouble starts with the official name of the country:

The United States of America

The US does not take up all of North America, much less America as a whole. The “America” it is talking about, what the word meant in 1776, is not a country but a huge part of the world. “The United States of America” is at best (worst) aspirational, a mission statement, not a description of reality, not now in 2026, certainly not in 1776 (when the US was just part of the east coast of North America).

Spanish and Portuguese preserve the original meaning of “America”. So do terms like “Latin America” and “North America” in English. But the power of the US has so distorted English, at least outside of Canada, that “America” (since at least 1938) now just means the US!

But calling it just the “United States” runs into trouble too, because you also have:

• The United States of Mexico
• The United States of Colombia
• The United States of Brazil (from 1891 to 1967)

So even estadunidense, my beloved “United Statesian”, is a logic fail!

The pragmatic argument: “American” as meaning people from the US has become so common, not just in English but in many other languages, that almost no one is confused or misled by the term. They know exactly who you mean.

– Abagond, 2026. 

Update (February 10th 2026): Just three days after I wrote this post, Bad Bunny at his halftime show at the Super Bowl, said “God bless America” and then listed all the countries from Chile to Canada. The US was not “America” but the “Estados Unidos” (United States). So beautiful.

Sources: Globo, Wikipedia, Google Ngram.

See also:

• yet more hegemonic geography: America, Europe, Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Asian, Indian.
• style guide: names and capitalization
  • Burma or Myanmar?
  • Why I capitalize “Black”
• “The dictionary was written by White people”
• Manifest Destiny

547

Alex Pretti (1988-2026) was a White American shot dead on January 24th 2026 by agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the US immigration police. Pretti was a native-born US citizen. He did have a gun, but he did not draw it – instead ICE took his gun and then shot him dead. It has all been caught on video. The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.

This comes just weeks after Renee Good was shot dead by ICE in the same city, Minneapolis. Trump has sent thousands of ICE agents there, supposedly to crack down on fraud by Somali immigrants. Pretti, like Good, was filming their activities – completely legal. Like Good, the government is calling him a domestic terrorist.

Anti-ICE protests have only grown.

Citizen video: As singer Bruce Springsteen tells it in song:

Trump’s federal thugs beat up on
His face and his chest
Then we heard the gunshots
And Alex Pretti lay in the snow dead
Their claim was self-defense, sir
Just don’t believe your eyes

Pretti was filming their activities with his mobile phone, shouting at them, trying to protect women that ICE shoved around. ICE pepper sprayed him, and, after they surrounded him and got him on the ground, took his gun and then shot him dead. Some ten shots were fired.

Eleven days before (January 13th) Pretti was caught on film being shoved to the ground by ICE after kicking out a tail light on one of their vehicles and shouting at them, calling them “trash”.

He had a gun in both cases, but he is never shown drawing it. Instead in his hand is a mobile phone, which in no way looks like a drawn gun.

His family says the gun was legal, that he had a gun-carry permit for the past three years. He has no police record. He took part in the George Floyd protests. He was anti-Trump.

Congresswoman AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez):

“Donald Trump [is] accusing a Veteran Affairs ICU nurse (Alex Pretti) as being a terrorist against the United States. A man who was treating services members to our country, who was dedicating his life to serving Americans. Who in his final act on this earth was helping a woman pushed to the ground. And they are calling him a Domestic Terrorist, in order to defend their gross abuse of power, their absolute breaching of the law and in order to precipitate greater conflict.”

President Trump, who likes to talk about the Insurrection Act, also called Pretti an “insurrectionist”.

Pretti’s masked killers have been unmasked: Jesús Ochoa and Raymundo Gutiérrez, both Border Patrol agents from the south of Texas. They have been suspended.

In the wake of huge protests, Trump has backed off somewhat. He demoted Gregory Bovino, the Nazi cosplayer (pictured above) who was in charge of the ICE surge in Minneapolis. Trump also told ICE not to go after protesters. But the surge of ICE agents in Minneapolis, the largest ever in the nation, remains in place despite requests by the governor for them to leave.

– Abagond, 2026.

See also:

• Bruce Springsteen: Streets of Minneapolis
• Renee Good
• ICE
• Trump 2.0
• TDS
• AOC
• The term “terrorist”
• The George Floyd protests
• Rekia Boyd – shot dead after police mistook a phone for a gun
  • Phantom Negro Weapons

536

Remarks:

A protest song against the ongoing ICE occupation of Minneapolis in the winter of ’26, where Renee Good and now Alex Pretti have been shot dead. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is supposed to just round up and deport immigrants, but now they have taken it upon themselves to shoot dead US citizens who legally film their activities. Law enforcement as an instrument of terror: it isn’t just for Black and Brown people anymore!

See also:

• songs: the 2020s
• ICE
  • Renee Good
  • Alex Pretti
• Bruce Springsteen
  • Streets of Philadelphia
• more songs about police brutality:
  • Childish Gambino: This Is America
  • Marsha Ambrosius: Old Times
  • Common ft Stevie Wonder: Black America Again
  • Langston Hughes: Kids Who Die

Lyrics:

[Verse 1]
Through the winter’s ice and cold
Down Nicollet Avenue
A city aflame fought fire and ice
‘Neath an occupier’s boots
King Trump’s private army from the DHS
Guns belted to their coats
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law
Or so their story goes

[Verse 2]
Against smoke and rubber bullets
In the dawn’s early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringin’ through the night
And there were bloody footprints
Where mercy should have stood
And two dead, left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pretti and Renée Good

[Chorus]
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our home, they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

[Verse 3]
Trump’s federal thugs beat up on
His face and his chest
Then we heard the gunshots
And Alex Pretti lay in the snow dead
Their claim was self-defense, sir
Just don’t believe your eyes
It’s our blood and bones
And these whistles and phones
Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies

[Chorus]
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Crying through the bloody mist
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

[Harmonica Solo]

[Verse 4]
Now they say they’re here to uphold the law
But they trample on our rights
If your skin is black or brown, my friend
You can be questioned or deported on sight
In our chants of “ICE out now”
Our city’s heart and soul persists
Through broken glass and bloody tears
On the streets of Minneapolis
[Chorus]
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
Here in our home, they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

[Outro]
ICE out (ICE out)
ICE out (ICE out)
ICE out (ICE out)
ICE out (ICE out)
ICE out (ICE out)
ICE out

Source: Genius Lyrics.

Remarks:

This is by far my favourite Tom Lehrer song. It came out in 1959 but never seemed to have charted. Gilbert and Sullivan fans will know the tune – it comes from the “Major-General’s Song” (1879) from their musical “The Pirates of Penzance”. Lehrer lists all the chemical elements known at the time, all the way up to nobelium (#102). Since then 16 additional elements have been discovered, up to oganesson (#118). Lehrer does not list the elements in order but arranges them to fit the meter of the song.

He passed away last year at age 97!

Requiescat in pace. 

See also:

• songs
• other singers who passed away in 2025:
  • D’Angelo
  • Angie Stone
  • Roberta Flack
  • Sly Stone
  • Jimmy Cliff
  • Sonny Curtis

Lyrics: 

There’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium
And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium
There’s yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium
There’s strontium and silicon and silver and samarium
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium
There’s holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium
And lead, praseodymium and platinum, plutonium
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium
There’s sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium

These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard
And there may be many others but they haven’t been discovered

From now till Easter (January 20th to April 5th 2026) I will be on a Portuguese media diet. It will include all of Lent (February 18th to April 2nd) but start almost a month early.

The diet: All private media consumption outside of this blog – books, news, music, Internet, etc – will be in Portuguese or one of its forms, including creoles, dialects (like Galician), and ancient forms (Latin). Unlike in the past, even research for posts will be limited to Portuguese. If that makes my blog less US-centric or Anglocentric, all the better.

The masthead: The picture above of Lusophonia (Portuguese-speaking countries) will be the masthead while the diet lasts.

– Abagond, 2026. 

See also:

• media diet
  • 2024: Portuguese media diet review
  • 2018: Programming note #34
  • 2007: My thing for Brazil – this became a Portuguese media diet of sorts
• Jhumpa Lahiri: In Other Words
• The Vast Talking Machine
• Portuguese
  • Galician
  • Latin
    • Vulgar Latin
• books I read in 2026
• advice:
  • A Guide to Anglos
  • How to be more Brazilian
• resources:
  • music: Portuguese, Latin
  • Wikipedia: Portuguese, Latin

“The Trumpet of Conscience” (1968) by Martin Luther King, Jr came out soon after his death. It contains a foreword by his widow, Coretta Scott King, four talks he gave on Canadian radio (and thus to the world), and his last Christmas sermon at his church:

1. Impasse in Race Relations
2. Conscience and the Vietnam War
3. Youth and Social Action
4. Nonviolence and Social Change
5. A Christmas Sermon on Peace

All of these are from 1967. It is a quick read, only 80 pages.

In brief: He says that the Civil Rights Movement had moved from non-violence to riot and repression, and thus a dead end! On the Vietnam War he covers much of the same ground as his Riverside Speech of April 1967, which I have already done a post on. Excellent! He also talks about the youth, both Black and White, which gave him hope for the future since many of them were trying to change society for the better – not just their protests against racial injustice, poverty and war, but even the counterculture of the hippies. There is also a wonderful defence of non-violence – that violence can only bring further violence, that the ends do not justify the means. In fact, the means mould the end.  To create a just society you must begin to live it. Cutting corners undermines the very thing you are trying to do.

It may sound kind of pie-in-the-sky, but it was not like the worldly, materialistic, might-makes-right values were working out so well.

Some of my favourite quotes (with keywords bolded):

“The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.”

“The hippies are not only colorful, but complex; and in many respects their extreme conduct illuminates the negative effect of society’s evils on sensitive young people.”

“It is ironic that today so many educators and sociologists are seeking methods to instill middle-class values in Negro youth as the ideal in social development. It was precisely when young Negroes threw off their middle-class values that they made an historic social contribution. They abandoned those values when they put careers and wealth in a secondary role. … they challenged and inspired white youth to emulate them.”

“If just two countries, Britain and the United States, could be persuaded to end all economic interaction with the South African regime, they could bring that government to its knees in a relatively short time.”

“… to planetize our movement for social justice.”

“But we will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree.”

“I’ve seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I’ve seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many white citizens’ councilors, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate, myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear.”

– Abagond, 2026. 

See also:

• Martin Luther King, Jr
  • Riverside speech against the Vietnam War
• 1968 media diet – I read this as part of my 1968 media diet
• Vietnam War

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