HANOI ROCKS FOREVER! RAR-RAH WAR PROPAGANDA STILL SUCKS, FEAR & LOATHING OF BIG R.V. GENTRIFICATION BRUNCHERS, ON BEING AN ANTI-SOCIAL GLAMARCHIST IN A DEADEND GHOST TOWN, AND CAN’T STOP FALLIN’ APART…

(-BY GENERAL LABOR)

“New church
Join the New Church
Be a Lord Of The New Church
Lords Of The New Church – now

Truth can’t be found on the television
Throwaway youth ya gotta take a stand
Music is your only weapon
Spanners in the works go start your gang…..

New Church…” (-STIV LIVES!)

“It should not be assumed that the strategies and actions being employed by Washington and its allies in their proxy war against Moscow will always be in the best interest of Ukraine or its people.

Yet too much of the media coverage of Ukraine comes with a steady drumbeat of agitation for Biden and other Western leaders to “do more” — including escalatory measures like a no-fly zone that would increase the likelihood of nuclear war or World War III.

The desire to avoid this scenario by advocating for a negotiated solution to the war is not a capitulation to Putin and it is not appeasement. Yet it’s consistently portrayed that way by chickenhawk pundits at outlets that rake in millions from the weapons industry.

In the fog of war, we need investigative journalism that goes beyond the propaganda of imperial powers to report on human suffering, profit motives, and the prospects for peace.” (-Jeremy Scahill)

If you get the feeling that all this Ukraine flag-waving is one more vapid mainstream propaganda initiative used to manufacture consent for an agenda that has nothing to do with what you’re being told, it’s because that’s exactly what is happening.

n this war Russia has killed many Ukrainians and Ukraine has killed many Russians and the US empire has killed many Ukrainians and Russians.

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It’s nuts that there are still grown adults who think Putin invaded Ukraine for no other reason than because he is evil and hates freedom.

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Focus less on the Azov Battalion and more on the fact that the US deliberately provoked this war with the goal of toppling Moscow and is threatening all our lives with increasingly reckless brinkmanship against a nuclear superpower.

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People who promote a US/NATO war with Russia are more dangerous and depraved than racists, homophobes, transphobes and antisemites, and they should be treated accordingly. They are the most dangerous extremists on earth. This should be completely uncontroversial and obvious to literally everyone.

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More Americans know Marge Simpson’s sisters’ favorite TV show than know their government is waging a deliberately provoked and profoundly dangerous proxy war against a nuclear superpower. This is because mainstream western media — all of it — is propaganda.

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Everyone should be able to say whatever the fuck they want about a proxy war instigated by the world’s most powerful government that could very easily end up sparking a nuclear war.

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If you’re on the side of the US empire on any issue you are on the wrong side. This doesn’t mean the other side is always necessarily in the right, it just means a globe-spanning empire that’s held together by lies, murder and tyranny will always be in the wrong. Yes, it is that simple.

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It must be the most soul-destroying thing in the world to go to journalism school, study hard, graduate in front of your whole family, work your ass off building up a resume, get a steady job, and then find yourself writing hit pieces about disobedient Youtubers for The Daily Beast.

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Twitter is nature’s way of dispelling the common misconception that liberals are smart.

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If I was the world’s biggest narcissist, I’d probably try to become the richest person on earth, and do everything I can to make sure everyone’s always talking about me, and convince everyone that I’m going to save the world with my technology so I get a weird cult to worship me.

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Twitter being biased in favor of one nation’s government is vastly more consequential than Twitter being biased in favor of one US political party. So far we’re only seeing emphasis on the latter, indicating that Twitter will continue functioning as a US propaganda/censorship apparatus. It should probably get more attention that it’s effectively impossible to have any kind of major media company in the US and not have it be absorbed into the US propaganda machine.

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The Assange case is very simple: the most powerful government in the world is trying to criminalize journalism about its nefarious behavior anywhere in the world. You can sum it up in a breath. It’s only narrative spin and smears that make it seem like some big complicated thing.

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Empires haven’t disappeared as the world grows more conscious of the evils of empire, they’ve just gotten sneakier and bitchier. They used to nail you to a piece of wood in public if you defied them, now they’ve got to go through this whole deceitful lawfare process just to kill one journalist.

Empires used to just openly conquer foreign territories because they want to own them. Then it became about “civilizing” them. Now they pretend it’s about “freedom and democracy”, and they don’t even make you change your flag to theirs.

Empires used to exterminate entire towns who dared to disobey them, now they have to launch these giant bitchy propaganda operations to psychologically manipulate populations into hating their enemies.

Empires are just really sneaky, bitchy, gossippy, backstabby versions of what they’ve always been. They’re just as oppressive and violent, but the fact that there are more eyes on their behavior means they have to be so much more manipulative and covert about what they do.

The more visible things become, the more hard work and cleverness is required to run an empire. That’s why they’re working so hard to make things less visible via censorship, propaganda, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, and the criminalization of journalism.

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The biggest mistake you can make is to trust that your leaders’ actions would seem more sensible and appropriate if you knew what they know and understood what they understand. The wars really are as horrific and as pointless as they appear. The escalations in tyranny really are as bad as they seem. It’s not that you don’t understand what you’re looking at, it’s that you’re not a sociopath.

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Your thoughts and opinions matter. Know how you can tell? Because every single day the world’s most powerful people pour an immense amount of wealth and energy into trying to manipulate them.

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When a loved one is very self-destructive you can’t control their fate; at some point you’ve just got to let them make their mistakes and hope something in them wakes up before they wind up dead. That’s pretty much how you’ve got to be with the entire human species at this point.

The hyperbolic language westerners use to describe fairly normal modern warfare in Ukraine suggests they’ve invested exactly zero thought in what their own governments have been doing in the middle east for the last two decades.

It’s like, yes, killing, violence and destruction is what war looks like. You’re describing the thing that war is. It’s creepy that you’re only just discovering this now. What did you think your government has been using to conduct its wars this whole time? Dank memes?

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Before the Ukraine war I would’ve told you it’s impossible for me to despise shitlibs any more than I already do and impossible for me to have less respect for their foam-brained worldview. But I would have been wrong. Very, very wrong.

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If your understanding of world events doesn’t account for the easily quantifiable fact that the US is the most tyrannical regime on earth by a massive margin, nothing else in your understanding of world events will be fact-based.

There’s only one government that is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, continually working to destroy any nation who disobeys it, and has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions. It isn’t Russia. It isn’t China. One must account for this reality.

That’s tyranny. That is the thing that tyranny is. If it isn’t tyranny to bully and brutalize the entire world into obedience by any degree of violence necessary, then tyranny is a meaningless concept. The US just happens to export the majority of its tyranny outside its borders.

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The RAND Corporation has responded to the way people have been highlighting its Pentagon-funded 2019 report on strategies for crippling Russia by attaching an editor’s note declaring that people who do this are Russian propagandists.https://t.co/a4h0AhM5GX pic.twitter.com/o7QkfPkRc3

— Caitlin Johnstone  (@caitoz) April 20, 2022

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The fact that CNN+ couldn’t even get 10k people to pay for its content shows why Silicon Valley needs to tilt its algorithms to boost mainstream media content while hiding indie media: people only look at that bullshit when they’re forced to. If it wasn’t for Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation outlets like CNN would have died years ago.

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Journalism would greatly benefit from its practitioners becoming far more disdainful of the approval of their peers, rather than seeking that approval like crack fiends. In journalism when you were respected by all the other journos it used to mean you were probably doing something right; now it’s a sure sign you are doing something wrong.

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Can’t shake how weird it is that we’re hurtling toward nuclear annihilation and we’re still all babbling about Will Smith and face masks.

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Future generations, if there are future generations, will look back in horror at the fact that we just let billionaire corporations not only profit from war but actively lobby for more war via think tanks, campaign funding and other influence ops.

(-Caitlyn Johnstone Rogue Journalist)

To state the obvious, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a bald-faced war of aggression. And brave Ukrainian and international journalists have risked — and lost — their lives to bring firsthand accounts of Russian atrocities to the world’s attention.

But here in the United States, too many in the corporate news media have reacted by becoming propagandists for the U.S. and NATO — even as Biden administration officials privately admit that they’ve been intentionally manipulating reporters by circulating unverified intelligence.

At The Intercept, we refuse to accept the neo-McCarthyist herd mentality that it’s traitorous for U.S. journalists to question the actions or motivations of our own government. Reporting the truth about U.S. foreign policy doesn’t make me, or anyone else, “a stooge for Putin.”(-Jeremy Scahill)

“Neoliberals continue to expose their true right-wing totalitarian character. Look at the freakout from another U.S. oligarch taking control of another social media platform who claims to be committed to “free speech.” When did free speech become a threat? Oh- under neoliberalism.” (-Ajamu Baraka)

WAS THE MEANEST DUDE ON THE MEANEST MACHINE

   I loved when Sami Yaffa memorably said, “Hanoi Rocks weren’t really a hair band, we were more like a hat band”. When we were wild teenage hoodlums from the Midwest, we heard songs like “Sweethome Suburbia” and “Teenangels Outsiders” and totally vibed with the Hanoi Rockers, even into their solo careers. “Dead, Jail, Or Rocknroll”, which Mike wrote with Little Steven really was a working class anthem for blue collar kids like me and my old rhythm guitarist, N.F. Bastard, who still lives in a rightwing hellhole that locals proudly refer to as “Flag City” and “Handcuff County, USA”! The eighties generic metal bands who copied Hanoi mostly sucked so bad. They just had nothing to say. I can admit to liking a couple songs by L.A. Guns and Cinderella, I guess. Absolutely Love Junkyard and Circus Of Power who were goodtime hell yeah rocknroll bands. I obviously love The Cult, the earlier, the better. I LOVE SMACK, but never considered them a hair band, though they were a bit more sleaze metal than Hanoi. Spookier, too, maybe you could say they were darker, almost more goth. All the dumbfuck heavy metal posers just seemed to be writing “Partytime” by 45 Grave over and over but with wanky metal solos and cheesy keyboards. I tried to play a song by Autograph yesterday, just because almost all those guys are dead, and that eighties slick radio production was just so horrible.I tried watching some snippets from the Rainbow Bar & Grill parking lot party and just none of those bands were really very good at all-the joke band playing covers were almost indistinguishable from the brainless eighties cock rockers. Hanoi Rocks, and Michael Monroe, in particular, were always a lot smarter than their spandex lifeguard imitators. They had a social conscience like The Lords and The Clash and Disciples Of Soul and made music with smart lyrics about real stuff us hardknocks guttersnipes could all really relate to. Can’t wait to hear their new full length cd. I also really wanna hear that new record that Paul Black from The Joneses and L.A. Guns made with Jo Dog from Dogs D’Amour. Jo Dog is one of the most underrated guitar players around. I spend most of my time outdoors these days, because I can not stand the bullshit nonstop corporate media war propaganda and wealth worshipping of thee evil Davos billionaires and their private mercenary, black ops proxy armies, and dystopian surveillance-tech profiteering. When we were younger, music was our medicine. MTV used to show “Boulevard Of Broken Dreams”, “Around The Bend”, “Dance With Me”, “Open Your Eyes”, “Smokescreen”, and “Man With No Eyes” on motherfucking TV! can you imagine what that was like, to see that stuff when we were thirteen and fourteen and eighteen and nineteen? The bad men in the shadows have tried to snuff out real rocknroll for years and replace it with creepy, manufactured, artificial capitalist rap and slutty techno pop, all toxic and poisonous to the soul, really, but there are still a few last real rocknrollers out there making genuine music from the heart with brains and guts and soul and style. Mike’s one of the Best Rockstars who ever lived! Like Lemmy or Little Richard!

LONELINESS LOVES ME MORE 

Everybody in my neck of the woods is stoned on the legal white people reefer. I never liked weed. It might be the heat, I’m just exhausted all the time. Sheesh. Maybe the monotony. Not even that easy for an independent lone wolf like me, I can only do so many hours with the electro-screens or chair sitting and then, I have to move. It’s something in me. I still call it Rock! Ain’t nothing to do in the desert except go on long walks on the mountain, look for stuff. Been here four years, never found an arrowhead, it’s all been ransacked 100 years ago. All those old miners, “gold in them thar hills!” Whiteys still got goldrush fever, only now, it all has to do with reefer. Healthfood boutiques, airbandb’s. Aint no music, really, some sad folkies and yuppies all play techno at any gatherings. All lame. Offroad yeehaw ATV’s blow by on dirt roads blaring commercial country, Shadies blast corny, commodified capitalist occult rap. Yuppies have invaded.

Greedhead conquistador, money seeking competitor/predator personalities with voracious appetites and something to prove to their family of origin, always follow us dropout gypsy, nomadness people wherever we go, not because they really want to be here, they just sense our quiet lives and humble serenity and moments of happiness and gotta find a way to destroy that, somehow. I always almost begrudgingly feel somewhat sorry for these dudes who have wealth, multiple recreational vehicles, brand new shiny status symbols, two motorcycles, a legal reefer card, an all day spot at the bar in the window, pix from their vacation safari, all the glamour shots with the big shit eating grins holding the big gold trophy who still can not be contented, because there is an abandoned slum down the street, or some litter on the river. The controlling types who need to feel victorious and ever dominant over some kinda totally disadvantaged poor people. What tortured animals they must be. I know dudes whose greatest accomplishment in life is always repeating to their wife or brother how they got more than I do. I’m an eighth grade dropout, no car, no property, and that’s what they’re proudest of, must always find ways to emphasize and broadcast. Who cares, man? Really? Myself, I’m like Spicolli, some waves and a cool buzz, and I’ll be fine. I take pictures of rabbits, am mostly content to watch the river of life pass by, but then again, that’s probably only after three action packed lifetimes worth of hard road escapades, getting ripped off, thrown out, beatup, impersonated, having the companionship of many dynamite women, genius roadhog brothers, all night rocker hellions, ya know, family, parties, shows, fun. Even in our peak moments of glory days small pond popularity though, when young kids would wanna shake our hands as we strutted down the street like drunk cowboys, there were just always, the capitalist private school competition-weasels, ever present on the fringes watching, like male Karens, snitch-squads, safety patrol, worrying that we were tasting too much freedom by embracing the day, all the jealous and bitter fortunate sons on the phone with their moms and lawyers and unattractive gossip groupies, just hissing spite and venom our way. That’s how I came to see my fellow Murkkkans, as really petty and hateful, class bigoted, popularity chasing, gotta have it, me, firsters. They need to update that juicer again, forever demanding a bigger hot tub! I wrote a song about ’em when I was 22, I’m over ’em, only time I seem to start feelin’ bad in this life, is when I get involved with the ratrace shit-havers, they are not sincere people. Just out for themselves, they just throw everything on the pile. They could never slow down and stop consuming long enough to sit with the deer outside at dusk, or see the morningtime flickers on the river. They are usually ready to leave these nowhereland desert ghost towns by the third day. 

Hell, one of my newer tunes is called “The Nine To Fivers Always Lie”, it’s a reminder to myself to not get involved. The ambitious grifter builder types who keep hyping how they are gonna put this place on the map and make a million dollars overnight have not even been here for the summer yet. Ha. 120 degrees in the shade, makes you laydown flat, ain’t no drive fast, look at me, showboat, rat-racing. They’re all in the wrong place. I think they meant to go to Austin. Or Portland. They wanna be seen holding their paid for trophies, being winners. Try again. I don’t get all that uptight about the booj pig invasions no more cause out here “where the real winds blow”, it’s a much, much slower pace, and all these buy low sell high eaters of culture, they can’t stand it, after a few days, they all go nuts here, almost overnight-even the couples who come to town with big Dollar Signs in their eyes, after enough nights of having to socialize with bitter elderly folks, they start goin’ stir crazy, can’t get enough Amazon boxes delivered to their doorstep to still feel connected to wealth or ratrace consumersim, they start begging their friends to follow them into the boonies because there is no nightlife, no shopping, no touring bands, no news-stands, no Chipotle, no indian food, no falafels, they start calling outta state DJ’s asking them to come spin at their private parties, but even if you’re the Fonzie-est Fonz around, the Fonzie-est Thunder Road Grease Lightnin’ stud in town, you know, it’s still just some old new age spinster psychic widows who live with two pitbulls and hear transmissions from aliens who they are at the bar  impressing. The old men all hate big talkin’ city slickers. Can’t wait to see them fail, smiling to their face, betting against ’em behind their back. You ain’t got enough money to turn Tombstone into Brooklyn. Gentrifers are hot on our trail, but you know, they can’t stand the monotony for long, it even gnaws at me, sometimes, and I been poor all my life-even when I lived in big cities, it aint like I really ever had money to buy fancy hats or go to fancy shows or restaurants or nightclubs that often.

There’s a guy down the street who lives in an aluminum garage, has a rocking chair, does not say hi when we pass each other on our multiple daily walks. I think he might have a disability. Used to be another old dude with blonde hair who sat at a desk all day with the door open in his brokedown purple house down the street until he died. Wife and I were appalled by all the rescue workers loud and jovial, non chalant, partytime laughter while they removed him on a gurney zipped up in a bodybag. Her sister’s a nurse though, says it’s all like that.

Even if you think of yourself as a sensitive Che Guevara friend of the people, when you actually live with an extremely poor, proletariat population of desperately lonely old age people seeking attention from every postal worker-cautiously, indecisively, perusing the various stamp options, and weighing their many options, having trouble deciding…it gets hard to be patient…all the lonely widowers, and black masked Elanor Rigby’s, belaboring the unhappy chainsmoker pharmacist who smokes out back all day with their heavy rotation grandchildren stories…the meth culture lower class crazies who ride around on bicycles playing gangbang rap music, cause they wanna be like Badger or Combo on “Breaking Bad”, names I only know about because my teenager’s former classmates are all neckdeep in low level gang culture vaping fetishism. We were at the dollar store a week ago, and outta town travelers were LOSING THEIR MINDS that there was only one cash register open, they are pissy middle classers not used to having to wait, and every customer is problematic, has a handful of expired coupons, or needs special help, there’s a line to the back of the store-a pissed off lady cop, a buncha old women with full shopping carts because this is where they buy their groceries, they live on this total gas station quality shitfood, two massively obese, overweight people dripping with sweat profusely, an angry drugsick druggy mom buying a six dollar Easter basket with her EBT card, slow witted people asking each other why the foodstamps have not been replenished for a month and there’s no chatter about it online. Ya know this is how it is for the majority. Some crazy old bastard man comes in yelling, cuts to the front of the line, starts bellowing about where’s the vitamins, won’t shutup, nobody knows what he’s talking about, macho lady cop getting unhappier. Restlessly putting her hand on her taser, gun, nightstick, while touristy, entitled, outta town karens wanna speak to the manager. Even me, man, I’m like, “let’s just leave”. I got a lot more compassion for retail shitworkers than middle classers do because I’ve been the basic math incompetent lone cashier trying to accommodate white trash crazies buying scratch off lotto cards while the me, first people behind them are screaming at me, belligerently, AS IF I have any say about how many people are scheduled by management. Maybe the lack of math skills are my fault, but Target shoppers screaming at minimum wage earners has never made any of us smarter. 

When I was a kid, I first saw some pictures of Hanoi Rocks in grocey store news stand heavy metal magazines around the time I was first sent to reform school, man, I loved those leopard skin creepers and winklepickers, cowboy ties and gold lame suits, beautiful Doc Holiday hats and concho straps. Eventually, I got ahold of a used cassette copy of “Back To Mystery City” from a road trip record store in Indianapolis. It became one of my fave records along with Generation X “Into The Valley Of The Dolls” and the Pretenders first two albums and “London Calling”. Changed my life, really. They were the zenith of rocknroll back then, when it peaked, the high point. “Mystery City” had it all. It was like a psychedelic surf, amphetamine driven, fun house carnie, decadent and dangerous, rockabilly roadhouse, highway storming, seedy latenight, Alice Cooper and Aerosmith and Deadboys influenced, summertime love song, adolescent drinking, highway antheming, rocknroll rebel rousing celebration. To my mind, nobody’s ever come close to revisiting that hour of epic awesomeness, certainly not Guns N Roses, though I do still like, “Night Train”, “Rocket Queen”, “Mister Brownstone” and “It’s So Easy”. Lotta people seem to prefer “Two Steps From The Move”, but for me, “Mystery City” was their main masterpiece. Then we got the “All Those Wasted Years” VHS video and holy smokes. Mike was like a cross between Bowie and Idol, just so impossibly larger than life with that oversized Warhol white shock of Johnny Thunders hair! Andy was all Chuck Berry duckwalks and evil Keith Richards sneers. Razzle was the lovable Neil Smith jungle beat. Nasty and Sami were also stars, it was like a band of five frontmen, you never see that anymore. Five major talents sharing space, creating something much bigger than anything we’d seen since The Stones or The Clash. They were everything I loved about the Stray Cats meets everything I loved about the NY Dolls and Generation X and the Rolling Stones. Their anthems were as triumphantly inspiring as “Born To Run”. “Tooting Bec Wreck” was a total theme-song for all us lonely planet boys and misunderstood weirdos from nowhere places. Once we heard those songs, all we wanted to do was get lost in the city and meet the lone star queens! About a year after that, I ran away to NYC and discovered Lords Of The New Church and met people like Stiv Bators and Martha Quinn. Rocknroll was always in my blood, I grew up on Alice and Iggy, The Cramps, the Pistols and Bowie and T. Rex,  but it was mainly Hanoi Rocks, Lords Of The New Church, Flesh For Lulu, The Alarm, Godfathers, and Generation X that made me wanna start my own bands. They say never meet your heroes, met Andy and he was ya know, kinda wornout, met Mike twice and he was exactly everything you would ever hope he would be. Still a punk, still with the people. Just lovely and gracious, like Stiv. So here we are all these decades later, and I’m still always excited to hear all his new jams. He’s got a song called, “Can’t Stop Falling Apart” you’re probably gonna love, if you’re anything like me.