“SKINTIGHT COMEBACK” … a rocknroll column by Pepsi Sheen

“Everyone’s a fink in the new America.” (-Falling James)

“Be wary of those who are more concerned about the expression of your pain than they are the condition of your suffering!” (-Heber Brown III, Baltimore leader)

“The country’s moved so far to the right…..on domestic policy, Obama is to the right of Nixon. That’s just fact. So the center keeps shifting…” (-John Cusack)

“But by this time I was acutely conscious of the gap between law and justice. I knew that the letter of the law was not as important as who held the power in any real-life situation.”
(-Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times)

“As long as you’re scared, you’re on the plantation.”
(-Dr. Cornel West.)
“If there isn’t a sea change soon, then we really are fucking doomed. Unless of course, total compliance with authority at all times is your bag. It ain’t mine.” (-Ray Gange)

“TV in America created the most coherent reality distortion field that I’ve ever seen. Therein is the problem: People who vote watch TV, and they are hallucinating like a sonofabitch. Basically, what we have in this country is government by hallucinating mob.” (-John Perry Barlow)

“Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival….”
(– Frederick Douglass)

“There is a huge body of evidence to support the notion that me and the police were put on this earth to do extremely different things.” (- Hunter S. Thompson)

“Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.”

(-Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces)
“Dr. King’s policy was that nonviolence would achieve the gains for black people in the United States. His major assumption was that if you are nonviolent, if you suffer, your opponent will see your suffering and will be moved to change his heart. That’s very good. He only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.” (-Stokely Carmichael)

“The essence of capitalism is to turn nature into commodities and commodities into capital. The live green earth is transformed into dead gold bricks, with luxury items for the few and toxic slag heaps for the many. The glittering mansion overlooks a vast sprawl of shanty towns, wherein a desperate, demoralized humanity is kept in line with drugs, television, and armed force.”
(― Michael Parenti, Against Empire)

“Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war.” (-Lindsey Graham)

“My home is not threatened by ISIS, my home is threatened by the police. The police are licensed to kill us, children, old people…Nobody from ISIS terrorized us as a people as the police do daily and they get away with it.” (-Senator Ernie Chambers of Nebraska)

“FaceBook postings on the subject of the Baltimore uprising are being blocked; peaceful protestors in New York City are attacked and 300 demonstrators are arbitrarily arrested during a march against police violence by irony-impervious cops; the corporate press arrive on scene in Baltimore and display an obsessive focus on the sensational sans a scintilla of deepening historical and social context.
Yet we, in the U.S., are exhorted to show gratitude for our freedoms. Accordingly, you have the freedom to consume and submit to wage and debt slavery. You have the freedom to admire or loathe the celebrity of your choice. And to post pictures on social media of kitty cats positing positive affirmations or, if you dare to be so bold, bandying a bit of snark.

You have the freedom to express any opinion or work for any cause that you desire as long as said actions in no manner threaten (or even annoy) established corporate, police, or military power.
Withal, you have the freedom to shut your malcontent gob.” (-Phil Rockstroh)

“I fail to understand how so many Americans don’t seem to see that this country is now fully fascist aka corporatist or is now a government by corporate interests.
How can so many manage to deny so much reality?! We are spied upon continually with our tax money paying the surveillance industry; whistle blowers are prosecuted, but CIA torturers and bankers guilty of fraud are not prosecuted. Corporations are allowed to use this country’s huge prison population like slaves – simultaneously undermining labour standards for every working American. A new study by the IMF reveals that global fossil fuel subsidies come out to $10 million every minute, and there are also Big Agri business, and Big Pharma subsidies. You read that right, every minute.TPP is not going to benefit any American except the 1% and their corporate interests and to hell with the rest of us! We have a president who insists upon his ‘right’ to assassinate American citizens without benefit of a trial – a right no western monarch-has been able to claim since the 13th century, but – don’t worry, be happy – this country is still democratic and not at all fascist!

How more obvious can it be that when a Montsano exec is appointed to head the FDA, a cable lobbyist heads the FCC, a vocal proponent of fracking has been appointed energy tzar, and Wall St people run Treasury – this country is ran of by and for corporations. Americans have been lied into oil war after oil war. It is time to acknowledge that our political system has been the victim of a coup; it is now ran of, for and by corporations.” (-Kathleen Bushman)

“Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.” (-Derrick Jensen)

“Respectability
Rage
Righteousness
Ratchetness
Code of laws
Code of the streets

It doesn’t matter. You will kill us and justify our murder.

You see no humanity in us. You only see a window into your greatest fears and worst nightmares.

Therefore, is not our duty to convince you that we are worthy of life and protection under the law. That’s not our case to make. You are not God. It is instead our duty to hold you accountable to the reality of our power when you have let the fantasy of white supremacy consume you.” (-Rahiel Tesfamariam)

“If middle-class Americans do not feel threatened by the slow encroachment of the police state or the Patriot Act, it is because they live comfortably enough and exercise their liberties very lightly, never testing the boundaries. You never know you are in a prison unless you try the door.”
(― Joe Bageant, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War)

“I’d rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.” (-Jack London)

“I can’t support her because I don’t support war, more war, Wall St. bonus bailouts, the NSA, the TSA, the drug war, asset forfeiture, for-profit prisons, drone bombings, domestic spying, militarized police and torture and I won’t support those policies no matter how they are packaged or marketed to me. She is as hawkish as any Neo-con on a bad day. Her record speaks for itself and is against the true core beliefs of most of those who support her as well as most Americans.” (-Bruce Fenton on Hillary Clinton)

“The poor in America are unorganized and largely mute. They are the least revolutionary proletariat in the world.” (-Gunnar Myrdal)

“The escalating deaths and sufferings in Black and poor America and the marvelous new militancy in our Ferguson moment should compel us to focus on what really matters: The life and death issues of police murders, poverty, mass incarceration, drones, TPP (unjust trade policies), vast surveillance, decrepit schools, unemployment, Wall Street power, Israeli occupation of Palestinians, Dalit resistance in India, and ecological catastrophe.
Character assassination is the refuge of… those who hide and conceal these issues in order to rationalize their own allegiance to the status quo. I am neither a saint nor prophet, but I am a Jesus-loving free Black man in a Great Tradition who intends to be faithful unto death in telling the truth and bearing witness to justice. I am not beholden to any administration, political party, TV channel or financial sponsor because loving suffering and struggling peoples is my point of reference. Deep integrity must trump cheap popularity. Nothing will stop or distract my work and witness, even as I learn from others and try not to hurt others.

But to pursue truth and justice is to live dangerously. In the spirit of John Coltrane’s LOVE SUPREME, let us focus on what really matters: the issues, policies, and realities that affect precious everyday people catching hell and how we can resist the lies and crimes of the status quo!” (-Dr. Cornel West)

“The corporations have taken over. Even in the recording studio. Actually, the corporate companies have taken over American life most everywhere. Go coast to coast and you will see people wearing the same clothes, thinking the same thoughts, eating the same food. Everything is processed.” (-Bob Dylan)

“That nothing is more insincere than purported U.S. concerns over political repression is too self-evident to debate. Supporting the most repressive regimes in order to suppress and control their populations is and long has been a staple of U.S. (and British) foreign policy. “Human rights” is the weapon invoked by the U.S. Government and its loyal media to cynically demonize regimes that refuse to follow U.S. dictates.” (- Glenn Greenwald)

“That said, my greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle class and working class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China and others, plunged tens of… millions of good, hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.
The innocent working families of all backgrounds whose lives and dreams have been cut short by excessive violence, surveillance, and other abuses of the Bill of Rights by government pay the true price, and ultimate price, and one that far exceeds the importances of any kids’ game played tonight, or ever, at Camden Yards. We need to keep in mind people are suffering and dying around the U.S., and while we are thankful no one was injured at Camden Yards, there is a far bigger picture for poor Americans in Baltimore and everywhere who don’t have jobs and are losing economic civil and legal rights, and this makes inconvenience at a ballgame irrelevant in light of the needless suffering government is inflicting upon ordinary Americans.”(-Orioles COO John Angelos)

“What I began to see is that the drug war is totally about race. If we locked up everybody, white and black, for doing the same drugs, they would have done the same thing they did with prohibition. They would have outlawed it.” (- former DEA agent Matthew Fogg)
“It’s not that I’m rebelling. It’s that I’m just trying to find another way.” (-Edie Sedgwick; Sixties Pop Art Youthquaker)

“Regarding White people, squinting through the gauzy confines of their bubble of privilege, and bandying words such as ‘thugs,’ ‘savages,’ and ‘animals’ at the denizens of the uprising in Baltimore who damaged a bit of property, yet the same White people remain (revealingly) silent when Blacks die at the hands of police —what else do you expect from the favored race of a nation created by a cabal of powdered wig-bedecked aristocrats, the so-called Founding Fathers, who, from the nation’s origins, made property rights paramount to human rights, and, in particular, the ‘right’ of White’s to deem African slaves and their progeny property?
In the White supremacist cosmology, internalized by the White majority, property is more valuable than the lives of African Americans. Such is the White mindset. This is the USA — a nation born in racism — a nation with a history that reeks of racism, and its present is defined by the mindset.
And, sadly, most White people are not going to change. They were born into a noxious, racist culture, their willfully and belligerently ignorant minds are marinaded in its fetid juices, and their shriveled, dead souls reek of it. There is no sense in trying to discuss the situation with them, for they will simply play victim when the evidence of their privileged racial status is laid out before them.
Deep down, they do not feel revulsion, rage, nor regret for the defacto lynching of US minorities by police, because they harbor this secret, that they do not dare reveal, even to themselves: Their privileged status was created and is maintained by acts of intimidation, enslavement, incarceration, and the outright slaughter of US minorities.” (-Phil Rockstroh)

“It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard.” (- Martin Luther King, Jr.)

“Business associations, chambers of commerce, professional boards — don’t these work very much like the Soviet Party apparatus, an organizational parasite living off of the government and the people while claiming to be morally superior to it? What do these organizations do but create policies to further elite rule? Who has influence but those who nepotistically rise to the top?
What business, exactly, does *business* have in a democratic society? (Not commerce, mind you, which seems a general social exchange, but this culture of commercial interests organized around capitalism we call ‘business’.)
Business schools in particular — what exactly are these but training centers for the next generation of *managers* for global capital?
A business school is an empire management school.” (-John Monroe)

“Kanye represents all that is wrong with the current Zeitgeist. There is no substance, art or credibility to the man. To hear students defend the facile shit makes me want to weep.” (-Joseph Niven)

“All these beefy Caucasians with guns. Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed they’d grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place ain’t what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that four-wheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.” (-Snow Crash )

“Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that, one magical day, good luck will suddenly rain down on them – will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down, yesterday, today, tomorrow or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day on their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms. The nobodies…: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no-ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way. Who are not, but could be. Who don’t speak languages, but dialects. Who don’t have religions, but superstitions. Who don’t create art, but handicrafts. Who don’t have culture, but folklore. Who are not human beings, but human resources. Who do not have faces, but arms. Who do not have names, but numbers. Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the crime reports of the local paper. The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.”
(— Eduardo Galeano, “The Nobodies”)

“Hillary Clinton is a ruthless neo-con warmonger and a heartless neo-liberal corporate operative. And no, she is not the lesser-of-two-evils (as if existence was… a binary phenomenon). She is the very embodiment of political arrogance, corporate despotism, and militarist imperium.

Any liberal/progressive who votes for her is as self-deluded about the nature of US cultural/social/political reality — and their own complicity in the fraud of the extant system of High Dollar owned-and-operated political duopoly — as is the Republican base that is peopled with country club elitist bigots and their low-end, sub-cretinous ranks of Teabag Party neo-Know Nothing dupes. And, no, the system isn’t broken; it was designed that way. Moreover, the economic/militarist elites who own and operate US political duopoly are pleased with the set-up. And they would thank you for your vote, that is, if they were not a cabal of psychopaths incapable of gratitude…..Obama has been worse than Bush/Cheney on human rights and civil liberties; has jailed more whistle blowers than all previous administrations combined; helped BP cover-up the Deep Water Horizon disaster; Obama has bombed seven nations — and drone murdered on three continents, and brags about his “Kill Lists” (Bush Jr.-style); He, Hillary and NATO were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands in Libya and left the nation a failed state. He bailed out Wall Street to the tune of more than a trillion dollars as he allowed Main Street to languish. He is, as we speak, attempting to implement a neo-liberal trade pact (Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement) that is even worse than corporate/bankster bagman Bill Clinton’s so-called free trade pacts that wrecked the US economy by shipping US jobs offshore. Obama restarted the Cold War by funding and setting into motion a neo-Nazi coup d’etat in Ukraine i.e., a single action worse than anything Nixon/Reagan/Bush 1 or 2 ever perpetrated. Yes, nice liberals, Democrats restarted the Cold War, and your complicity therein evinces a Tea Party level of political delusion. In short, Democrats are the more effective Republicans. ” (-Phil Rockstroh)

“The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.”(― bell hooks)

“Jill Stein should also be suing the thugs who arrested her in 2012, tied her to a chair in a black site for 8 hours, and then dumped her on the side of the road at night, without her cell phone. What was her crime? Trying to be included in the presidential debates, in which she had every to participate, being a legitimate candidate, on enough ballots to win the election, if people had the sense enough to quit being scared into voting for evil.” (-Paula Densnow)

“When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is ‘correct’ or ‘wise,’ any more than a forest fire can be ‘correct’ or ‘wise.’ Wisdom isn’t the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the rioters themselves.” (-TaNehisi Coates)

“I think that if you think things are better under capitalism than say, feudalism, you’re coming from a white, middle-class perspective in terms of privilege. Capitalism requires slavery and exploitation to function, and capitalism in America would never have taken off without the slave trade. Those who have suffered greatest under capitalism undoubtedly are people of color, both historically and in the modern day. The exploitation of white people (save or perhaps the Irish) has nothing on the exploitation of blacks under capitalism, and Asians as well in the 1800s. Our current system would not function without an undocumented immigrant underclass that holds up the capitalist pyramid and are treated little better than slaves for it while those who benefit do everything to try to have them kicked out, not understanding how the system works in the first place. Its not a state vs private ownership matter. What most people call ‘communism’ is actually state capitalism and it doesn’t work any better than private capitalism. You can have private ownership and private commerce without the system we have today. And its not like the church/state issue. I strongly disagree that ‘the problem today isn’t capitalism.’ The problem today is ABSOLUTELY capitalism. Capitalism is literally threatening our very extinction as a species right now. We’ve gone through 90% of our natural resources in less than 200 years under capitalism. I’m not opposed to a market system – I’m opposed to a market system where some can become ridiculously wealthy while doing next to nothing for it while others underneath them are being abused and exploited to produce that wealth. We do not need to exploit and enslave others in order to survive. I also don’t know if an ‘anarchist’ system is the answer. I do think that worker-owned enterprises are a crucial and necessary first step. The issue is who controls the surplus value. When its controlled by capitalists, workers are exploited. When its controlled by workers, those who actually WORK can actually enjoy the fruits of their labor.” (-Alley Valkyrie)

“No one else in Western media has covered the fact that five peaceful Palestinian protesters were shot in their lower bodies by IDF and are hospitalized now …. How on earth is that not news ?” (-Naomi Wolf)

“There is an underside to every age about which history does not often speak, because history is written from records left by the privileged”.”(-Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States)

“The Democratic Party’s apologists like to call it a big tent with room for Blacks and browns and gays and labor and peace-loving people. But it’s actually a huge trap designed to contain and politically neutralize the folks who might otherwise turn against the rich. The Party has always been a scam, but at least in the old days it put on a populist show to fool the rank and file into believing that they could actually influence the party’s direction. However, Wall Street is determined that there will be no serious Democratic deviation from the corporate agenda set by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton would represent the third Clinton presidency – which, for Wall Street, is just as good as the two George Bush presidencies. Maybe better, because labor and Blacks and that fuzzy cohort called liberals will all think they won the election, when nothing could be farther from the truth. Rank and file Democrats will see the fait accompli of Hillary’s nomination as a sign of unity among Democrats, when in fact it is the triumph of filthy rich campaign contributors. The rich have shown great solidarity in uniting behind a Democratic presidential candidate. Later on, they will unite around a Republican candidate, too. After that, it won’t matter who wins.” (-Glen Ford)

“So weird that French political leaders now, as US leaders have before, claim that by ‘declaring war on radical Islam’ they can forestall rather than foment more terrorism. What about declaring love, declaring peace, declaring openness, declaring engagement with the ideas of radical Islam in peaceful open democratic forums if you really want to win over young peoples’ hearts and minds? History shows that open debate kills off bad ideas and that censorship and violence just make them grow…also do we declare ‘war’ on radical Christianity or radical Judaism that can be just as violent and blind?” (-Naomi Wolf)
“Let’s remember that the United States bombed Al Jazeera in Afghanistan very early on after 9/11, then bombed the Sheraton Hotel in Basra, Iraq, where Al Jazeera journalists were the only journalists. Then they killed one of the most famous Al Jazeera correspondents in Baghdad in April of 2003, when Victoria Clarke, George Bush’s Pentagon spokesperson at the time, basically said if you’re an unembedded journalist, you’re with the terrorists, and if you die, it’s not our fault. They shelled the Palestine Hotel, killing a Reuters cameraman and the Spanish cameraman José Couso. So, yes, we should be condemning any and all attacks, especially when they’re killing journalists, no matter who the perpetrators are, but let’s not act as though the West’s hands are clean and that any one of those world leaders marching yesterday, that their hands are clean on these matters.” (-Glen Greenwald forgets to mention the tv station in Serbia, too)

“They have the guns, we have the poets. Therefore, we will win.”(-Howard Zinn)
“If Americans were honest with themselves they would acknowledge that the Republic is no more. We now live in a police state.” (-Ron Paul)

“I do not admire, respect, nor even believe in the utility of cops. Their only use…is to act as a coercive force to protect class inequity and White privilege. My enmity towards the police is both visceral and intellectual. I detest their hyper-authoritarian bearing; I become enraged at their bully boy modus operandi; and I can see the noxious effect of the police state upon this nation and its people.
I didn’t believe I could evince any less respect for cops…until I witnessed them — witless mass of blue arrogance that they are — turn their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio. Moreover, nor can I evince a scintilla of respect for Bill de Blasio — spineless, ass-suck liberal that he is — for allowing, sans a word of rebuke, these fascist cretins to proclaim to all concerned their noxious and obnoxious belief that they deem themselves above and beyond accountability. ‘Fuck you, Mr. Mayor and the citizens of NYC,’ this klavern of mouth-breather brutes in blue raged en masse, ‘for we will kill anyone we want to and whenever we want to.’

Their snit-fit was an egregious act of disrespect, a metaphoric jackboot to the face of civil liberties and even human decency. Only corrupt to core cultures countenance lawless cops. In short, if we do not struggle to end this reign of police terror, it will end us.” (-Phil Rockstroh)

“So 24 hours of fearful media catastrophe warnings and redundant superlatives add up to 24 hours of NYC commerce getting completely snowed under. I’m really tired of fear broadcasting. Mainstream media programming is obsolete, manipulative, costly and dangerous. Is there anyone here who has an alternative point of view to mine, that the U.S. news media is essentially dead and non-existent?”(-Danny Ray)

“One percent of the nation owns a third of the wealth. The rest of the wealth is distributed in such a way as to turn those in the 99 percent against one another: small property owners against the propertyless, black against white, native-born against foreign-born, intellectuals and professionals against the uneducated and the unskilled. These groups have resented one another and warred against one another with such vehemence and violence as to obscure their common position as sharers of leftovers in a very wealthy country.” ( -Howard Zinn; Chapter 24 of A People’s History of the United States)
“If you want something, you had better MAKE SOME NOISE.”
(-Malcolm X)

“America has some really annoyingly shit names. Tucker, Channing, Tag, Beau, Noah, Jeb, Mit… Irksome Republican white trash names synonymous with lies, drunk driving, fraud, coke dealing, tax evasion, menthol cigarettes, insurance scams, eyes like dead clams, bad breath, black nylon socks, erectile dysfunction and firearms.” (-Phil Staines)

“I don’t really care much what Hillary Clinton did with her State Department e-mail. I care that she is a violent authoritarian warmonger who supports bombings, drones, wars of aggression, the DHS, TSA, failed drug war, NSA, Gitmo, torture, bank bonus bailouts, corporatism, violations of human rights abroad and at home and now she wants to run for President of the United States on the “Ready For Hillary” campaign marketing plan which seeks to focus on gender rather than her track record of destruction and failure.” (-Bruce Fenton)

“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.In effect, the people who change our lives the most begin tosing to us while we are still in darkness. If we listen totheir songs, we will see the dawning of a new part of ourselves.”(-Rabindranth Tagore)

“The reason why Dick Cheney is able to go on ‘Meet The Press’ instead of being where he should be — which is in the dock at The Hague or in a federal prison — is because President Obama and his administration made the decision not to prosecute any of the people who implemented this torture regime despite the fact that it was illegal and criminal.” (-Glenn Greenwald)
“The authoritarian culture of the US and the despotic, political jerk-rockets and media blowhards who are its public face are revealing their true nature, by their relentless and reprehensible — but agenda oriented — media pronouncements regarding the gunning down of two NYPD officers in Brooklyn by a lone assailant.
Their agenda is obvious: Cops should possess unquestioned power; those donning law enforcement uniforms should never be held accountable for their actions; and the public is hereby ordered to kneel before the boot of unchecked authority.

Also: In in typical, lickspittle liberal accommodation to authoritarian demagoguery, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has requested that anti-police violence activism be self-kettled and ceased. In a word, I say to these hyper-authoritarian despots and their liberal capitulation artist lackeys: No. In two words: Hell no.
If we back down and allow the officials of thugdom to rule the narrative and police to believe they have carte blanche to wield their vicious truncheons of unaccountable power — then the ongoing coup d’etat will continue unabated. And only willfully ignorant dupes and fascist-minded tools will deny that what we have witnessed in the US has been a police/national security state junta, with cops often outfitted in military garb and brandishing weapons of war.” (-Phil Rockstroh)

“Alcoholism is an infraction of social rules. Everyone tolerates it because the violation confirms the rules. This case is analogous to prostitution: neither the drunk nor the prostitute and her clientele call into doubt the rules the break. Their acts are a disturbance of order, not a criticism of it. The use of hallucinogens, on the other hand, implies a negation of prevailing social values. … We can now understand the true reason for their condemnation and its severity. The authorities aren’t suppressing a reprehensible practice or a crime. They are suppressing dissidence. … Prohibition is a battle against the contagion of the spirit – against an opinion. The authorities reveal, in their ideological zeal, that they are pursuing a heresy, not a crime.” (-Octavio Paz)

“We all get our chance to beat the odds–but who beats the odds?” (-Johnny Thunders)

LONG LIVE THE NEW FLESH….

Gutted by the passing of Nick Marsh. He was one of my favorite singers and I never stopped listening to his songs that had played in the background as I fell in love with new wave beauties, or applied eyeliner alongside my Gene Loves Jezebel wannabe glam gang, or road tripped with now absent friends. I used to “sing”, perhaps poorly, for a long succession of deadend glam bands and borrowed liberally from the example of Nick and Rocco. Nick was like some kind of perfect new wave action doll–immaculate hair, tight trousers, black leather, Creepers, big Elvis microphones. He was the cat’s pajamas. It’s alarming how steadily death is coming for my friends, heroes, and loved ones, now. There seems to be some truth to the idea that the good ones die young, and the Bush, Kissinger and Cheney types all live to be like, 125.
Flesh For Lulu were one of the groups that inspired me to want to be in bands-they were gothic, poppy, post-punk, melodic, rocknroll. I love all those old songs: “Golden Handshake Girl” which Nick resurrected onstage as per my suggestion in recent years, “Seven Hail Marys”, “I May Have Said You’re Beautiful”, the impeccable protest song, “Decline & Fall”, the sweetly shimmering and eternally rippling bubblegum anthem, “Time & Space”, “Postcards From Paradise”, “I Go Crazy”, on and on. Great band. Lovely bloke. So sad. Nick was involved with the heart, while most everybody else is in hot pursuit of the math puzzle, the strategy, the hustle, the will to conquer, the usual lie. I’m at that age where I know whatever anybody says to me is mostly bullshit, now. It’s all gotten real “Cats In The Cradle”, for me, at this age. “Let’s do lunch…” Probably won’t see too many of those faces again and when we talk of recording music together, or vacationing with each other, or going camping, or horseback riding, or getting together in real life to listen to scratchy old vinyl, any shit like that, it’s all just smoke rings and half hearted wishful thinking, at this age. We had our time together–I guess we had our chance, though it never really felt like much of one to me, and now, that time has gone. Amerikkka is like a high school popularity contest, everybody is desperately following the followers, even in our fat forties. Once, I had a rich, privileged girlfriend, just like in that Pulp song “Common People”, so it may have appeared to some people like I was also rich, and I could not beat the fake friends off with a stick, they showed up at my doorstep, uninvited, all the time. Guys who had kicked me out of bands, and like, my ex girlfriend’s sisters. Had some famous friends, as a kid–people just ruthlessly used me to get close to them. They are all still high school social climbing. If you ain’t currently seeming like you can “do something” for people, they vanish. If you work for a label, or a magazine, or have a a cool band, hot girlfriend, radio or tv show, D.J. night, or new toy, every eyebrow is raised. If you have some bad luck, or get hurt, or get sick, nobody wants to know. I spent like ten or fifteen years chasing yesterday-the hairspray and harmonicas, painted leather, and french kissing on the roof, before I realized people move on. Chickenwings on gas-grills and health insurance-watching sports and wraparound sundecks. No one’s alive, anymore. It’s just a blip, waaayyy to brief. Shattering how fast it goes by. When all my influences and favorite drinking buddies and intimates keep falling off, my own dumb youth flashes before my eyes. It was sortof a white trash trailer park version of an eighties John Hughes film; and like I always say, I went from relating to the Ducky character in the hip shoes, paisley suspenders, and funny hats, trying to get the girl from the far side of the tracks, “with poetry, bloodshed and guitars”, to feeling like the washedup, tragically abandoned, old geezer in a dirty bathrobe with zero ambition and a brokenheart, like Andie’s dad, as played by the masterful Harry Dean Stanton. It happened overnight. Whizzbang. That was a dud firecracker youth, if you ask me. A wet bottle rocket. “Poof”. Anti-climactic. Never really got off the porch. Nick Marsh was a roman candle. I’m grateful to have his music. It still sometimes consoles me, in this darkening period, where everything beautiful just incessantly recedes into the faroff horizon. He is still lighting up the sky.

WE CAN’T CONNECT TO OUTLOOK DOT COM RIGHT NOW. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER.

Bob Dylan‘s right when he sings, “people are crazy and times are strange…” ‘Had some Slim Shady assbags throw a projectile out the car window at me and loop back around, hoping to start more shit. Had not been hassled by ignorant, testosterone drunk males in quite some time. Used to be a daily thing in my teenage wildlife androgynous Pete Burns years. Now, it’s mostly the suburbanized dames that object to my unmilitarized appearance–ponytail, overweight, plumber’s butt, no car, in ill fitting black clothes, and usually, the males are no longer threatened by my flagrant, middleaged, non conformity, but when the cops act that way everyday, when violence is all over tv and every video game, when the government does all that non stop rah rah flagwaving and fearmongering in the pig-media, it’s no surprise when dumbfuck little pricks in shitty automobiles imitate those behaviors and lash out at random, targeting any symbolic other. As Alice Bag has suggested, jocks wanted to turn punk into a mixed martial arts sport, (“go play football, motherfuckers”), so I endured a lot of static from all those jarhead buffoons and hockey-playing fortunate son cocaine-oafs, back in the post-punk, hardcore, and grunge-Tarzan eras, but it’s been awhile since some young, dumb fuckwits aimed anything metal at my face. The night a black President was elected, some good ole boy tweekers spotted me alone in a grocerystore aisle, ruining my knees for minimum wage while merchandising on the night-shift, and came up from behind abruptly jerking my braided hair as a gesture on misplaced anger, because racists in that part of the country had no respect for personal bubble space when they’re wired up on all that farmboy meth they manufacture in their rich daddy’s barn.
David Letterman taped his last show, it’s the end of an era, and millions are crestfallen I was not chosen to be his replacement, perhaps as Little Steven expands his broadcast empire, I will find a new talk show and reunite Circus Of Power to be our houseband. (Ha. Since I first wrote that last sentence, weeks ago, Circus Of Power frontman Alex Mitchell has announced he will be hosting his own on-line talkshow called, “The Guest List”! Great Minds.)

I dunno, man, it’s hard not to get bummed out about all the suckiness that surrounds us. I still can’t afford that extravagant box-set, but If The Clash were around today, they’d be profiled by gentrification-pigs, stop and frisked, ticketed for mary jane possession and have their boom-box confiscated for disturbing the yuppie fucking vendors. If Richard Pryor was to perform his seventies material in my neighborhood, dozens of outraged and offended life coaches and grad student liberals would be clutching their pearls like Nancy Grace and admonishing him for not conforming to their p.c. prohibition squad sensibilities. Had some worn out ex rockstar tell me to quit talking about racism so we can get back to focusing on fame hags and glam blouses complimenting his twenty five year old songs. Bummed me out. The elites keep us competing and debating manufactured scandals and relentlessly keep scaring us with pharma-eyed boogeymen while they pass laws that undermine human rights, civil liberties, and basic protections from warmongers and corporate predators. While we squabble about second hand smoke and dirty jokes, the Pentagon quietly announces it will be assassinating “belligerent journalists” and the President and sold-out Democrats conspired with Republicans, billionaires and oil barons to pass this evil TPP secret “trade agreement” into law, just like they did with the Patriot Act and NDAA. We’re arguing about naughty language and whether there are racists in the South, meanwhile, we’re all getting fucked by the man. People seem oblivious to the N.W.O. corporate pact that undermines national sovereignty and forgot about the bogus wars, broken promises, warrantless wiretaps, extrajudicial executive kill-lists, indefinite detention, and stolen elections. I’m so bored with Kanye and the Kardashians.

There’s all these social programming shows on cable that demonize “hoarders”-people who reuse and recycle and repurpose objects rather then constantly dumping more shit into land-fills and incessantly “upgrading” and buying new shit every five minutes. Makes me appreciate my hillbilly upbringing, where we valued what we had, kept it organized, took care of things, and found ways to make old stuff new again, rather then waste money buying and throwing away every househould appliance every six months. I do remember how the old time answering machines were a great example of planned obsolescence because they were designed to break every ten minutes. Some vcr’s, were like that, too. And printers-what a ripoff with the sixty dollar ink cartridges. Had a relative visit who watched all that tv shit, and they were digging through our closets insisting we throw our used vinyl and old books away to make room for new electronic gadgets, trendy furniture from Ikea and shoe organizers. Turns out, shitloads of people we know still watch tv and obey it’s orders. You won’t find me at the sports bar with the big screen tv’s a-watchin’ the game and making dog woof noises on Sunday. I won’t be hanging around watching adult cartoons on a Friday night. I don’t play video games. I don’t hate gay people like the Republicans, or even smoke the Democrack like the sellout double secret Republicans, in the other wing of the two faced war party.

I ran away to NYC to make it in show business when I was 15. I had some promising bands, got some great reviews, accolades from my heroes, but never had the budget to self finance recording and pressing and manufacturing and touring, or the people skills to keep a beat combo together, long-term. Now I’m 45 and in bad shape, but will keep writing songs until I croak. Fame means nothing in the age of consolidated media. It’s not like authentic voices are heard anymore. Gil Scott Heron, ya think he’d have made it on American Idol? Or Chuck D., or Poly Styrene, or Kathleen Hannah, Or Phil Ochs? Patti Smith? Ari Up?? Mark E. Smith or Rowland S. Howard? Jim Carroll? Johnny Rotten? Think the judges of “The Voice” woulda turned their chairs around for Joe Strummer, or Billy Bragg, or Texacala Jones, or T.V. Smith? In this moment in time, being underground is a good sign. We all think money would improve our lot, but the problem with money is once you get it, you got to try to keep it. I know plenty of rich people who will tell you point blank they are miserable. White knuckled, uptight, uncool, no time to fraternize with the little people who are probably just after their lucky charms. Rooms and rooms full of unused exercise equipment and unplayed vintage jukeboxes–wouldn’t you rather stick with the truth?

Motel 6 is handing over lists of their customers to the man. Other hotels, too. It can be a tough lot traveling with all these hateful crackdowns on the poor and bigoted laws criminalizing homeless folks. TSA fondling your junk. NSA recording your calls. DEA gunning people down for being suspected of having weed. This country, the USA, is fucked beyond belief.

BE LIKE YOU….

Joey Pinter‘s distinctive guitar playing can be heard on Jungle Records’ boss reissue of The Waldos epic, “RENT PARTY” that also featured that suave old charmer,”Uncle” Walter Lure, who’s currently preparing a U.K. tour backed by various cult heroes from Gunfire Dance and Black Bombers, and even sharing at least one stage with the killer-diller, rakish dandies, The Bermondsey Joyriders. Old-school punknroll die hards also cherish Joey Pinter‘s 1977 punk band, The Knots. His brand new solo debut can be compared to solo debuts by Brian James (The Damned, The Lords) and Mister Ratboy (Motorcycle Boy, Pillbox), as it is an unexpectedly solid array of highly listenable songs from a talented songwriter who is primarily known for his outstanding guitar playing, with subject matter drawn from various chapters of his storied history, a stranger than fiction tale of hard livin’, frenzied performances, bitter disappointments, a flawless lp, bottles, dope, jail, sin and salvation, dames, kids, cigars, loud guitar, the whole a.m. sloppy, taco waco enchilada. His bluesy singing is somewhere in between David Johansen yelling at the kids to get off his lawn, and George Thorogood refereeing a little league game, sometimes reminding one of old Alice Cooper, even. His Chuck Berry/Johnny Thunders style, raunchy guitar playing and power-pop songwriting sensibilities drip with soul and his self titled cd is a must have for anybody who is serious about rocknroll. Planes, trains, automobiles, Vespas, magic carpets, or cardboard signs that say, “Bowery Or Bust”, punk rockers from all over are travelling back to New York City on Wednesday, August 26th to be present and accounted for at the JOEY PINTER RECORD RELEASE PARTY at the nightclub, Bowery Electric. He’ll be backed up by his friends The Hipp Pipps. Doors open at 7 p.m., showtime starts at 7:30. Tickets are $9 in advance or $10 the night of the show, and that’s a helluva lot of entertainment value for a ten spot. You got the mischievous lads, The Sweet Things, The Martinets, The NY Junk, The Waldos, and Joey Pinter. That is an awful lot of “ACTION”. Buy your tickets early, and come to dance, this is going to be a jam packed good time.