“When I said that these politicians are a bunch of corrupt, lying, greedy, self serving criminals, I wasn’t separating them by Party” (-Black In The Empire)
“Military budget: $840 billion Semiconductors: $52 billion Police expansion: $37 billion Climate change: $2 billion” (-Adam Best)
“It was NATO and their allies that colonized and pillaged Africa. Not Russia If you are supportive of NATO you are supportive of white supremacy” (-Revolutionary Blackout Network)
“Gentlemen! Do not allow yourselves to be deluded by the abstract word freedom. Whose freedom? It is not the freedom of one individual in relation to another, but the freedom of capital to crush the worker.” (-Karl Marx)
“They’re not trying to protect us from misinformation, they’re trying to make it more difficult for us to find the information they don’t want us to know.” (-Black In The Empire)
“Russia on the verge of taking Donbas and then some. Russia economy ok but Europeans will freeze this winter. Billions of dollars going to Ukraine with no military victory. The people are told they can have nothing they want. Hence the war propaganda, I mean Vogue photo shoot.” (-Margaret Kimberly)
“We’ve watched members of the Squad vote to give more money to Israel, to police, to the military industrial complex to fund our proxy war, and to expand NATO. It’s not just that they refused to fight for us, it’s what they helped the Democrats do.” (-Black In The Empire)
“I can’t wait until Biden and Trump fight about who loves the cops more at the 2024 debates” (-La Befana)
Leslie Wexner’s Inner Demon (unlimitedhangout.com)
ALL US POOR PEOPLE
We already understand we got zero representation. No politicians fight for our rights, they do not care about our human rights or civil liberties, good health or quality of life, AT ALL. They’ve all surrendered to tech-surveillance/deep state, weapons manufacturers products, big pharma, and monolithic monopolies-Vanguard and Blackrock. They used to fool us into thinking some seemingly nice or well spoken Personality, like Obama, Bernie, and AOC were gonna come to our rescue, and protect us from those white haired old patriarchal, meanass money grubber, pro kkkop, racist and sexist Republikkkans, but then, we watched in horror as they broke every silvery tongued, pretty talkin’ promise and did even more rightwing shit than the Dick Cheneys and Mitch McConells so we undertsand now, with great clarity, that no bribe taking, blackmail compromised Murkkkan politicians give a flying fuck when we, the people get kicked out into the elements and wildfire smoke by greedhead developers or unscrupulous airbandb trendy hipster landlords, if we get laid off from our jobs because of Next Wave Death Plague clampdowns, or if we just up and mysteriously, “die suddenly”. They do not give a fuck. Media creates a manufactured meta unreality virtual world where middle class sheltered folks can cosplay as health and wellness fixating Kardashian-Jenners and are all free to worship and compliment Jay-Z and Beyonce, or Barack and Chelle Obama. That’s the modern idea of “freedom”. You are free to make believe you have representation and this is a democracy. Just don’t protest, OR ELSE. Ya know? Hillary will let you know when she says you can protest. You will need to bring your pink hat and suspend all critical thinking to the astro turf photo op event on the green.
“Hawks always say our geopolitical situation resembles that of 1938 so that any call for de-escalation, diplomacy or detente can be portrayed as “appeasement”. It’s never 1919, when the conditions which would give rise to World War Two were put in place, or any of the early 20th century years when the trajectory toward World War One could have easily been turned away from.
Our fetishization of World War Two has eclipsed from memory the fact that it was the single worst thing that ever happened on this planet. The trauma it inflicted upon our species still reverberates through our collective consciousness to this day, and avoiding it would have been objectively good.
Even if we fully espouse all the grandiose ego-stroking Anglo-American narratives about WWII, you don’t want to have a modern Churchill and FDR bravely standing against the forces of evil. What you want is for such a stand to be unnecessary, because the conflict was avoided.
But that’s not how you score political points in Washington and London. That’s not how you pull ratings as a news outlet. That’s not how you sell weapons as an arms manufacturer, and it’s not how you advance hegemonic agendas as an empire. That’s why peace doesn’t get a voice.
And, oh yeah, did I mention there are fucking nuclear weapons now? Even the dumbest of warmongers should want to postpone reenacting their favorite Hollywood WWII movies in the modern world, because it’s impossible to win a world war now. Stop buying this “it’s 1938” bullshit. It’s nothing like 1938, and a massive conflict can most definitely be avoided.
Like the Tao Te Ching says:
Prevent trouble before it arises.
Put things in order before they exist.
The giant pine tree
grows from a tiny sprout.
The journey of a thousand miles
starts from beneath your feet.
Or as we say in the west, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
❖
The only thing dumber than the risks our leaders are taking with our world is the reasons why they are taking those risks. It’s not for anything more noble or righteous than the desire to rule the world. Just stupid, garden variety power hunger.
❖
If Ukraine has taught us anything it’s that the US and its allies should definitely stage as many aggressive provocations as possible in Taiwan.
❖
Russia: Don’t cross our red lines in Ukraine or we’ll take action.
US politicians: They’re bluffing. Cross those red lines.
[Russia invades.]
China: Don’t cross our red lines in Taiwan or we’ll take action.
US politicians: They’re bluffing. Cross those red lines.
❖
Can’t believe we’re adding a whole new country to risk nuclear war with just because Nancy Pelosi’s too fucking old to care if she gets shot down over Taiwan.
❖
So it looks like Ukraine has begun using US-made weapons to strike Russian territory. At a time when dangerous escalations between nuclear superpowers is an almost daily occurrence, this one stands head and shoulders above most of the others and deserves special attention. There are many, many potential scenarios which could spark a nuclear exchange, but the US/Ukraine/NATO alliance continually pursuing a line of attack into Russia is by far the most surefire way to get there. Let’s hope that option remains off the table.
❖
Western powers aren’t censoring Russian media to protect our minds from Russian propaganda, they are censoring Russian media because it interferes with western propaganda.
If we were being told the truth about this war there wouldn’t be such a wildly unprecedented push to censor, intimidate, troll and silence anyone who asks if we’re being lied to.
❖
People who are ideologically prohibited from seeing capitalism as the obvious source of society’s ills are forced to make up other things to blame those ills on like elite pedovore cabals, Jews, immigrants, the LGBT community, and Satan.
❖
Vastly outnumbering your rulers but choosing not to overthrow them because you think the status quo might someday make you wealthy is the same as having all the power in the world and trading it away for a lottery ticket.
❖
Love so hard it terrifies you.
Keep writing poetry after your twenties.
Dismiss anyone who tells you to get thick skin.
Master the art of seeing beauty in each moment.
Find enough inner stability to let life destroy you.
Learn that it’s safe to let go: there’s nowhere to fall to.(-Cait Johnstone)
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Remember growing up, before the Monopoly-Media/Netflix/I-Phone era, how all the moms used to get all misty eyed over the sixties? Martin Luther King Jr., the Beatles, and the Kennedys, and how all the older people just loved all the music from their time? Woodstock, “Freedom Rock”? Ha. “TURN IT UP!” That’s how I’ve become about the eighties new wave music era. It’s what I turn to when I need respite from this bogus meta unreality show. I can get lost in the ‘tubes, watching old Go Go’s and Fun Boy Three and Modern English and Sigue Sigue Sputnik vids for daze. I liked the clothes and hair and makeup and getting ready to go to the show, or the club in the nights before grunge killed glamour and frat dorks flooded back in with their ugly cargo shorts and baseball hats. I was just not into that moaning beagle grunge bullshit with the tribal tattoos and dumb goatees and carwash clothing, at all. I never got past Charlie Sexton and Hanoi Rocks and Generation X and Sputnik-ya know? We Atari babies even had a song, “Suicide Au Go Go” that went somethin’ like, “Gimee sci-fi sex in thigh high boots I’m smitten with the kitten in the latex suit, is that Betty Page in the go go cage guzzling Absolut?” I remember performing a buncha songs like that in our pink creepers and silver leather pants and makeup for some wonky grunge squares all lined up in the front row with their arms crossed cause we weren’t Alternative TM at all, we were still glammed to the hilt and channeling “Dancing With Myself” when the normies were all like wearing the Mr. Rogers sweaters and intentionally playing outta tune trying to be artsy Sonic Youths. Me and this older punk guitar player I knew with a big oversized black mohawk used to make cassette tapes using his like toy drum machine from the Sears catalog and one stray Bolan lick for hours at night when I was about seventeen and hiding from the truant officers. We thought we were gonna be as big as Suicide!
HAVEN’T GOT A CLUE
“”We cannot be sure of having something to live for, unless we are willing to die for it.” (-Che Guevara)
Jimmy Dore said it: Bernie Sanders killed his own movement. By shamefully endorsing Gropey Joe, who had no following, no real base, or support until the special bean counters with the deep state affiliated software worked their bad magic in Mayo Pete country on Super Tuesday and suddenly, ta-daaa, the guy who only came out of hiding with his wife from covid in the basement to insult workers in the heartland and assure Goldman Sachs and Les Wexner types that “Nothing Will Change”, the marketing strategists said he won, that a million elderly black people put their shoes on, drove to polls and stood in long lines in the pandemic, because they were supposedly, so moved and touched when Gropey Joe said the bit about how, “if you don’t vote for me, the guy who eulogized Stom Thurmond and wrote the Crime Bill and helped author the Patriot Act, who viciously attacked Anita Hill insuring Bilderberg fave sexist Clarence Thomas be seated to the frat boy Supreme Court, you ain’t black, Jack!” Then, came a flood of slow-mo videos of Kamala and Gropey walking real slow on the tarmac like men In Black Marvel comics characters…while wearing sunglasses. Ala Nafta Bill and Droner In Chief Obama. I laughed and wrote a parody song called “Joe Is Really Popular” I posted on Fascist Book. Bernie kept getting dispatched by the powers that be here and there to undermine support for populist movements, much like Reaganite-Obama to say things like, “Hugo Chavez was a communist dictator” or if we vote Republikkkan, we’ll be “on the road to fascism”. With the deep state spook takeover of our media monopolies, all significant news platforms, the sham debates and dubious hackable voting box hanging chad elections, and all social media, the alphabet gang gropers warehousing humans in for profit gulags, the alphabet gang gropers fondling people non consensually in our airports for Chertoff/Kerry profits and security theater and conditioning the population to conform or die, and the secret police monitoring and recording all our electronic communications, and arresting whistle blower journalists from embassies and indefinitely detaining them for years without trial with false outdated charges, all while rewarding traitor marketing brand politicians with plantation houses and libraries and big lucrative book deals and paying puppet propagandists millions a year to launch New Cold War us against them hysteria, I’d say we are already deep in the fascism, Bernie. Safespace shitlibs act like the two worst things that ever, ever, ever happened was Trump bragging to a legacy media Bush brat about how supposedly women will even let you blah blah blah if you’re rich and famous, which is something we’d kinda heard berfore from an awful lot of rappers and shitty poof metal dudes in the eighties, or that some psy op shaman in a Burning Man costume cried “freedom”, while somebody in an SCTV McKenzie Brothers “Great White North” outfit dragged a podium around, and an old redneck put his feet on Madame Jetset’s desk. Ho-hum, big deal, we saw way wilder protests of kkkops killing black folks at a steady rate of about three a day that “fund the kkkops” Gropey joe and Kopmala basically ignored after Pelosi and Schumer did their tacky take a knee photo op in the kenta cloth and gave the booj people Juneteenth, a holiday where working class black folks can not take the day off. KKKops still killin’ folks, black males are still mass incarcerated. They shrug and give us new Beyonce songs glorifying secret societies and weird temple on Epstein Island occult rituals.
Millionaires on Pig-Media and diabolical devil’s daughter, Lyn Cheney, all insist for hours a day, that USA torturing human beings at gitmo was no big deal, that the panopticon surveillance NSA revelations via Snowden are just how it is now, that the poisoning of Flint water and government coverup, whitewash, and ONGOING brazen failure to fix it were yesterdays news, the BP oil spill poisoning of the Gulf, the mercenary armies attacking water protectors was just the new normal, post Rumsfeld/Cheney, that soldiers collecting fingers as souvenirs in Afghanistan, Daddy Cheney’s toxic burn pits making all those veterans sick, the epidemic of veteran suicides, the debunked Colin Powell lies for war, the Democrat coordinated crackdown on last 3 significant protest movements and surveillance of civil rights activists, that USA, USA sending Rambo’s into Venezuela and trying to drone Maduro, still trying to overthrow Cuba on behalf of exiled sugar plantation grandchildren of mobsters and slave owners, brutally killing Gaddafi and laughing about it, slavery markets in Libya, Saudi slaughter of Yemen, Isarael killing and kidnapping innocents and reporters, all that’s just okeydokey and woke pro noun gender studies vegan translicious, according to see no evil shitlib suburbanites and P.C. wokewashed gentrification hipsters, but they are all still “traumatized”, supposedly, by bawdy Trump talk and Qshaman in the rotunda. Like they never been to a football game in Les Wexner’s hometown. Whitney Webb’s shown how all these events are connected to a shady blackmail operation being run by old man Maxwell’s worldwide spy and human trafficking operations, but the haves with the Amazon boxes on the porch, and Teslas in the driveway, already standing in front of Best Buy eagerly awaiting their fourth Monkeypox Boosters, all assure us everything is woke and scientific for feminism, and our biggest problem is like, Putin manspreading when he met Hillary. These bullshit narratives are crazy as fuck and anybody in their correct mind knows we are drowning in advertising lies, identity politricks empty marketing strategies, censorship and extremist propaganda from the top down. Stop worrying about black comics not being genderfluid enough. Start worrying about how the whole media is controlled by a shady elite and these multi billion dollar regime change wars and provocations for always more wars are gonna get us all killed. Organize your peers.
WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO?
Problem with these boomers is almost none of ’em remember what it was like, to not live in their upperclass cloistered V.I.P. compounds. They all got some story about how they earned all their shit with their special expertise and sweat of their brow hardwork, so they got no compassion for the vast majority of human beings who are being grinded into dust by their Big Machine. A close friend of mine works for an idle heiress who inherited her many millions and the employer spends all her time buying more properties and decorating them. Nobody lives in five of them, so they are like, just tricked out storage spaces for all the Stuff she and her parents acquired on their overseas travels. Statues and shit. The crazy part is how this heiress is incapable of maintaining any kinda relationship, cause in her ego-trip, there are no equals, she can only hire employees who have to endure her longwinded boastings about how creative she is and how she is the world’s Greatest ARTISTE when it comes to her better homes and gardens and forever remodeling and shit. She can’t even have like a pet companion, requires too much service. Closest she can come to caring for anything other than her self is her gardening, which she pays her employees to do, all that weeding from the roots and plant watering, while she talks and talks and talks and talks about how she deserves all her shit for being such a creative genius. Now the friend she is telling all this to is in fact, probably a lot closer to being an ACTUAL genius-a painter, a writer, a great humorist philosopher theologian caregiver and someone who is extremely talented in five or six different areas, but the Boss is so self involved, she has NO IDEA who she is bragging to. If you get to ever go to work for one of these maniacs, that might pay you above minimum wage for all the relentlessly demanding hard labors, you’ll never be allowed to clock out on time, they always gotta keep you an extra hour, as a captive audience hostage, but you are really mainly getting paid to be a captive audience, a shrink/listener, while she rants on and on about how her siblings don’t deserve any share of the millions, only she does, see, deserve in the favorite word of the rich people, she deserves all this and much, much more because she’s the genius and virtuous Special One. Dad loved her best. The shit she picks out to purchase is the best stuff that only she has the extra special good taste to select. It takes a special genius to buy all that shit. They really believe that shopping outta catalogs or online is some kinda “ART”. They all really seem to believe this shit on some level, but then again, why do they need to say it all out loud to the Help each and every day? Over and over again like a mantra. Had a girlfriend like that once. A big DESERVE-r. She determined I was less deserving. I used to know some rich people’s moms who were rich divorcees who stayed cosmopolitan sophisticated posh people daytime drunk like those broads on that daffy “AB FAB” tv show from the UK and they always drunk dialed shitfaced and took hostages and meddled in their children’s lives, but summa these rich people are so control freak crazy, they can not even have relationships with their own kids.
While I was out walking in the baking hot 106 degree sun yesterday trying to walk off all the calories I consume since I quit smoking, you know from stress/anxiety related emotional overeating, I noticed how even the CHURCHES have all closed down under Covid and Biden’s great reset war on Russia, with media hammering us with fiction headlines about how Wal Mart mercilessly gouging all us slaves by raising their prices by thirty percent, and the monopolies buying up all the rental property, and Bill Gates buying up all the farmland and taking control of the supply chain infrastructure and regulatory agencies, is somehow supposedly, something to do with Putin pushing Nato expansionists off his front porch, everywhere you look, shit is drying up and dying in the escalating heat. People are all on edge, nobody really wants to share any of their shit with anybody else, they are all angry desert loners, cause even a $4 pint of rotgut vodka has gone up to $5.85 at the gas station, since Biden started giving the Ukraine another eight billion dollars for more guns every few days to slow bleed Russian resources while corporate media and Pelosi start manufacturing bullshit reasons to also, go to great reset war on Iran and/or China. There are almost no women where I live, so all the crazy old men all seem extra Weinstein, if ya know what I’m sayin’, extra depraved, horny, hardup, inappropriate and aggressive, whenever a female is present. Nobody seems to have spouses around here, they all just have two big pitbulls and big white oversized trucks, tall rusty fences, and it’s a total redneck Moose Lodge gun culture. People are pissedoff and paranoid, cause air conditioning costs alot of money, all these big trucks require gas, which is really expensive since “Nothing Will Change” Gropey Joe took office, and pro-war, fake progressives like AOC stopped fighting for universal housing, higher wages, or healthcare for all, pivoting instead to stock old culture war issues-guns and abortion, and the donor class desire to outlaw public protest. Hence, the shitlib’s singleminded, media driven focus on Maga protest from years ago. The deep state does not want the peasants assembling anymore, bad for business, makes elites feel ikky. Rich people do not like poor people gathering in public. In the Pacific Northwest, they already got all these laws against demonstrating, being outside, being downtown, unlawful camping, loitering, they wanna see your papers.
I used to live in the Karen Capital of the world, Honkytopia, Where Every Pedestrian Is A Suspect: Eugene, Oregon. We got the loss prevention aggressive hospitality and stop n frisk class kkkops following us around for failing to present as sufficiently middle class in their downtown gentrified, exclusion zone, everyday. It was not fun, Karens Kalling Kops everytime my son had any kind of mildly disruptive Autism behavior, or got loud cause it’s always sad to leave the park or pool or library, right? And since all those booj Judge Judy know it all rich people just go to college professionally their whole lives, they ALL think of themselves as child development experts, we’d get these appallingly adversarial Rainbow Family/Country Fair/Gender Studies hippie stoners approaching our family in public while THEY WERE CLEARLY HIGH, demanding I show them some proof that my loud son belonged to me, because he yelled or whined, which is what kids do. None of these experts have kids of their own apparently, or they would know that. These are just uncredentialed, entitled, awful shitlibs, acting like gentrification kkkops. It was madness, almost everyday. I’ll never forget the woman who lived next door to the boozy live music venue who used to Kall the kops on people for smoking cigarettes outside the venue. If you kall the kops, particularly as your go-to conflict resolution strategy, or just because you don’t think some male can be a competent parent if they aren’t a member of your posh upper-class, you suck, you are a ballsout class warrior, and are no ally of the poor. You might as well be Mitch McConell or Lindsey Graham, or even (GASP!) ORANGE MAN BAD, himself…No matter how many candlemaker, jingle jangly ankle bracelets, tie-dye, patchouli, incense, reggae flags or pink triangles you layer on top of your privileged existence. I moved to an extremely poor place, after all that constant harassment in the booj-pig safe space collegetown, and I never get that treatment anymore, except at the town’s tourist trap gift shop where I buy cards for family on holidays, the owner oldsters never seem to remember me, always feel like they need to follow me ’round the shop while I look for the right card. I might have bought an additional object, a gift there today, had I found something affordable, before the old folks started getting in my space, giving me that “time’s up” energy. If you put the heat on people for shopping, they aint gonna give you as much money. Sometimes, they won’t come back. Not everybody is trying to rob you posh people. I can’t stand obnoxious “me, first”, entitled, know it all rich people. I just can’t stand ’em. I’m not impressed by any of their preferences, either: dietary, sexual, decorating, collecting, any of it. I avoid ’em as much as I can.
My friend Evad asked me if I heard the new Dramarama yet and the answer is no. I got nothin’. No record stores in a three hour radius from here. Extremely limited income streams and demanding kids wanting to purchase more stuff, that just ends up on the floor, everyday. We call it, “shit on floor”. I watched that “Reuniting The Bands” show on youtube with my computer screen headphones to block out some of the overwhelming sensory, loud teen media blare, and it almost made me cry a little. I guess it made me think of my old bandmates. I’m so glad Easdale got that group back together-they are this country’s last great uncorrupted institution, if you ask me, man can they play, and the songwriter is one of the alltime greatest, in my estimation. Cohen, Kristofferson, Chrissie Hynde, Paul K., John Easdale. When I went and looked for new songs by ’em on youtube, I discovered this one, “The Only Thing” and it reminded me, that all my messages to The People would probably be more potent and effective with a couple chords accompanying them. I wanna resume making music but where I live there are no punks, just me, and maybe like five or six money haver Faux hipster-bubble “alternative” musicians who are only into their own trip. If I ever do find some desert rat rocknroll collaborators, you’ll be hearing from me. Until then, enjoy some Easdale and his merry band of outstandingly talented and world class players, who never get enough credit for all their heartfelt pop and soul works of timeless value. Easdale’s the songwriter but man was he lucky to have found such stellar players, the guitarists are freakin AMAAAZING! Dramarama have so many fabulous glam and sixties psychedelic and seventies bubblegum pop and even punk influences, but there is something wonderfully heartlandish about John’s tunes. Little bit like Petty, Dylan, Seger, Mellencamp, Westerberg. All-Americana. He’s just flatout sensational. We used to argue about politics a bit but I get it, he lives with 5 women and Trump is an offensive oaf. I love the man Easdale and I know his heart is good, I’m just way more anti war radical leftist. Dramarama lived out a rare fairytale. Five lads from Wayne, New Jersey’s Looney Tunes record store basement ,who shook the world. They’re still at it, too! They’ve maybe even gotten better. I really like that drummer Tony Snow. They may have been one of the last bands to make it big in show business without having to sell their souls to the evil corporations. I remember watching “Work For Food” at my friend Jenna’s house in Ft. Wayne Indiana when we were raccoon eyed bighaired kids watching MTV on a Sunday night and really being moved by their hooks, sensitivity, coolness, and observational lyrics. They have many, many good songs besides the big hits everybody’s moms are all hip to by now.”Box Office Bomb”, “Cinema Verite”, “Vinyl”, “Hi Fi Sci Fi”, “Bright Side”, they just have so many all the way through fabulous records and let us not forget their fantastic side project, Bentback Tulips. I’m always jealous of all those chubby tourist type people who can afford to take those fancy vacations to retro weekend new wave islands and shit to see bands like Dramarama and Duran Duran and Berlin playing on cruises, but I’ll admit I had to laugh a little when I watched a big audience of nostalgic cruise line folks bopping around to Modern English all garbed in these identical, corny, white and turquoise t shirts with the concert brand on them, that kinda was so antithetical to the whole spirit of the eighties express yourself weirdo individuality we all eminated.
REMEMBERING THE SHUG! ANTIQUATED GLORY! CLASSIC FANZINE KICKS GALORE!~
Uncensored (sugarbuzzmagazine.com)
On The Record…. (sugarbuzzmagazine.com)
Two Saints | SugarBuzz Magazine
COMING TO JESUS MOMENTS
It’s gotta be a bitch, even if just in the quiet hours, once you consciously decide to visit the proverbial crossroads and align your fortunes with people who seem to really, really like doing douchey things. Harder to ever admit wrong or walk away, or change directions on the road if you believe your special privileges all come directly from being in cahoots with the straight up evil nine to five, porky, dayjob bad guys, I dunno man, I got to a point where I had to distance myself from unrepentant, remorseless predators and even their suckup hangers on personal assistant entrouges. Every once in awhile, at least a couple times o’ year in a sentimental mood, like when David Lee Roth releases some unheard tracks about fun and friendship, growing up, having a ball all the time for years, loyalty or lack thereof, he’s writing those tunes about choices, about standing for something having character, courage and integrity, and almost involuntarily, I’ll find myself still sending the songs to my old sentimental favorite long lost cronies even though they made their bargain with the devil, some part of me’s always popping through a hole in the wall, maybe a little like Aerosmith in the RUN DMC video, peering in, hoping they might wanna change their mind. It’s just my teenage dreamer self always rushing out to meet the rejection. Well, even if those other guys can’t hear the message of these David Lee Roth songs, like “Low Rez Sunset” and “Damn Good”, you know I sure as fuck still can. All the way to my core. I think David writes songs at a Dylan level now. Don’t believe me, do ya? Listen to “Things Have Changed’ and “Not Dark Yet”, then go ahead and throw in some Leonard Chen “Closing Time” and “Boogie Street”, maybe even, “You Want It Darker”, THEN play some “Giddy Up” and “Pointing At The Moon” and “Nothing Could Have Stopped Us”. Me, I just ASPIRE to writing songs like all those cats, after all these years of trying and failing, squatting here in the wet, stinky basement of the “Tower Of Song”, I am pretty confident I have attained the acrobatic showmanship of Leonard Cohen along with a little bit of David Lee’s highbrow philosophical haiku religious prose. Some of those long gone cats these ancient pirate lords ole songs remind me of just continue to haunt me cause a couple of ’em really had something once, coulda been part of something greater than perpetual middle school high fiving of former sports assholes at the old man fratboy bar. I regret summa their poorer choices more than my own poor choices, which were notoriously, ridiculously bad, sometimes. “Wrong kind of non conformist”-that’s me. I’m just passing through this life, but man, the old times was good times, weren’t they!?! Aw well, see ya in the songs.
DON’T BE A STUPIDLY COMPLIANT PROPAGANDIZED SUCKER FOR WARS BASED ON LIES AND NEEDLESS WALL STREET GREEDHEAD RESOURCE PLUNDERING GLOBALIST AGGRESSIONS!
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has continued to pour gasoline on the foreign policy dumpster fire that is her planned visit to Taiwan next month, now reportedly encouraging other members of congress to come along for the ride.
“Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has invited a small group of lawmakers on her official trip to Taiwan, including the top Democrat and Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee,” NBC News reports.
This trip, which Beijing perceives as an egregious transgression of Washington’s longstanding one-China policy, is already so incendiary that the Pentagon is now planning to send in fighter jets and other war machinery to protect Pelosi’s plane in case of attacks by the Chinese military.
While already waging a war on Russia, the US empire is also really trying to start a war with China:
The US military is considering sending *fighter jets* to accompany a top US official as she meets with secessionists in China’s province of Taiwan, who are armed with US weapons. https://t.co/WV1azGMEdR
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) July 27, 2022
AP reports:
While U.S. officials say they have little fear that Beijing would attack the U.S. House speaker’s plane, they are aware that a mishap, misstep or misunderstanding could endanger her safety. So the Pentagon is developing plans for any contingency.
Officials told The Associated Press that if Pelosi goes to Taiwan — still an uncertainty — the military would increase its movement of forces and assets in the Indo-Pacific region. They declined to provide details, but said that fighter jets, ships, surveillance assets and other military systems would likely be used to provide overlapping rings of protection for her flight to Taiwan and any time on the ground there.
This risk alone would be reason enough to cancel the trip, but adding to the concern is the fact that the Chinese government has begun warning against it using the same “red line” language that Russia was using in the lead-up to its invasion of Ukraine.
“We have repeatedly made clear our our firm opposition to Speaker Pelosi’s potential visit to Taiwan. If the US side insists on making the visit and challenges China’s red line, it will be met with resolute countermeasures,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijiang said Wednesday. “The U.S. must assume full responsibility for any serious consequence arising thereof.”
“We have repeatedly made clear our firm opposition to speaker Pelosi’s…visit to Taiwan. If the US insists on…challenging china’s red line, it will be met with resolute countermeasures. The US must ensure full responsibility for any serious consequence arising thereof.” pic.twitter.com/1gV59GwRtF
— Fiorella Isabel (@FiorellaIsabelM) July 27, 2022
China has been using this same language since news first broke about Pelosi’s planned trip, with Chinese state media Global Times saying last week that “visiting Taiwan is definitely a red line that Pelosi must never cross.”
During the lead-up to the invasion of Ukraine, Russia was issuing similar warnings using the same phrase. Putin warned over and over again that the west was taking Moscow’s “red lines” on Ukrainian neutrality too lightly, and Washington brazenly dismissed those warnings while continuing to float the possibility of future NATO membership for Ukraine.
“I don’t accept anybody’s red lines,” President Biden told the press in December of last year when asked about the warnings.
Weeks later Putin made good on his threat, launching a horrific war that has killed thousands and which could easily have been prevented with a few low-cost concessions.
Was it worth it?
Of course not.
Joe Biden Tells Vladimir Putin Where to Shove His ‘Red Lines’ https://t.co/upLip4Sz9r
— Hal Sparks (@HalSparks) December 8, 2021
Failing to learn from history is one thing; failing to learn even from the last five months is quite another. Pelosi and whoever’s orchestrating her trip should abort those plans immediately, because the dangers that are being toyed with here are not worth the moral victory of being able to say that China didn’t make you swerve in the stupidest game of “chicken” that has ever been played.
And that’s exactly what’s happening here. China’s “red line” warnings make it clear that Pelosi landing in Taiwan will at best kick up brinkmanship between the two nations another notch, while Republicans are aggressively pushing the narrative that if the trip doesn’t happen it will mean that “Communist China is winning.” The political pressure is on the side of escalation, with even progressive Democrats supporting Pelosi’s move and calls for de-escalation and detente becoming increasingly relegated to the sidelines.
We shouldn’t have to deal with this. We shouldn’t be watching a whole new country added to the potential flashpoints for nuclear armageddon just because some octogenarian in congress is too old to care if her plane gets shot down. We shouldn’t be risking another deadly conflict which stands to benefit no ordinary person over what amounts to nothing more than petty egoic chest-pounding.
If Pelosi does not go to Taiwan, Communist China is winning.
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) July 26, 2022
We shouldn’t have to hope that the world’s most powerful people don’t take some idiotic risks for no good reason which could hurt us all or even end up getting us all killed. We should not have systems in place which can allow the worst things imaginable to happen if the tyrants who rule over us don’t happen to make the wisest decision on any given day.
Our futures shouldn’t depend upon the better angels of the worst monsters. Those with power have far too much of it, and the ordinary people of this world have not nearly enough.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“The pandemic era was the biggest money transfer scheme to the rich in history. And we are paying for it again with the cost of living crisis. It’s like a giant Ponzi scheme. And still millions of people appear to be either in denial or meekly accepting this gigantic swindle.” (-James Melville)
National Security Search Engine: Google’s Ranks are Filled with CIA Agents (mintpressnews.com)
“Still waiting for MSM to cover the clear evidence (which I put out 2 years ago) that Bill Gates’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein began before 2001, at least ten years earlier than Gates has claimed.” (-Whitney Webb)
Leaked Docs: Facebook ‘Bot’ Adviser Secretly in Pay of US Regime Change Agency (mintpressnews.com)
BIG STAR AND THE ORIGINAL SUFFERING BASTARDS
Man, I got to see that Big Star documentary and was so sad for Chris Bell, really. I grew up in Kentucky and Ohio and was bible school programmed with a lot of the same shame and fear and guilt, and fire and brimstone, uptight control theology, as he was. Hell, nowadays, it feels like corporate media has kinda even injected that same old intolerant judgment and fear mongering garbage into the wokewashed faux left. I always understood Alex Chilton. When everybody wanted him to just keep rewriting Beatles songs forever, he decided he wanted to get weird, instead. I kind of love that about him. My longtime friend and pen pal, Bobby Durango and Ringo Jukes from Rock City Angels, worked with Jim Dickinson and I wish I would have gotten a chance to. That was one guy who woulda understood what me and my old jungle-instinctive soulman rock savage guitar player Nasty Bastard were up to in those stinky basements and cold as fuck abandoned pool hall squats. At first we even had a Bobby Keyes style sax player roommate honkin’ on all our no budget garage raunch and some cool chicks shakin maracas and goin’ do da do da do ad do to all our Dogs D’Amour and Hollywood Brats derivative songs. It was hard to keep a steady lineup in those years because everybody was getting older and being squeezed to get careers and make money and our brand of Dollsy punk was just so NOT in style at all. We had a very charming Irish bassplayer for awhile but he could never be relied upon to show up for band practice because he was simply just too good looking and every girl in town stood in line to date him. We had just started writing good songs in a basement bunker of a rent controlled apartment where about eight adults lived and loudly sang and all night drank. When one of the guitarists was off chasing some foxy chick, me and the other one would sit there and write a catchy pop song that people still play covers of in more than one faraway city. For awhile In Allston, Ma, we had these brothers from Walden Pond who were like our very own backup musician studio whizkid Flo & Eddie-they’d lend their note perfect Crowded House/Everly Brothers harmony singing to our budget rock junk shop glam offerings and that would instantly elevate the whole show. We’d been fortunate to find them at my Tower Records job, having lost two lead guitarists in one year-our first, sadly, tragically fucked off to go to college and become a bigtime NYC doctor, God Bless ‘im, and the second one who Nasty had found at his telemarketing job, had fallen in lust with my ex girlfriend and gotten sloppy around her, so we had to give him the boot. Both losses were painful for me, cause the first guy, was my original guy, the metal head kid who Jaysin B., my poofy haired new wave keyboardist I met at bad kids school, when we were like 12, had introduced me to-we were both in a diversion program for wayward punk delinquents-me, for using too much styling product and defacing my history textbook-him, for stealing cars and goin’ to Los Vegas. Our metal head pal in the shorts and Iron Maiden t shirt had somehow managed to avoid getting put on juvie probation in spite of setting Faurot Park on fire with lawnmower gasoline, I love that kid and really, really wish we could all get it back together and like the Beachboys sang, “Do It Again”, but I fear we’ve lost him permanently. “I didn’t see the time and I waited half my life away”, in the immortal words of Leonard Cohen. I don’t think he’s gonna show. He was perfect for us, could conjure magic out of any old Casio. His name was Dave, he looked like an androgynous cross between Mick Jagger and Joe Perry. Could drink for days. Girls loved him. As kids, we’d both been sortof adopted by this straight up dangerous hillbilly biker gang of notoriously volatile Viet Nam vets, so we might have been a little rowdy as kids, we would trash our instruments like the Who at out little Boy’s Club punk shows, ‘were known to sortof outrage and offend the status quo. He had a whole cult following of girls from his senior year in Missouri, who would follow him all the way to our bandhouse in Ohio and our front yard was always full of cars with outta state plates-they were mostly all our lead guitarist’s many groupies. The other guy, his replacement, was a witchy warlock goth dude named Tony, Arthur Lee’s godson, played 12 string guitar, had a feel like James Calvin Wilsey, helped us co write some of our best songs and always made me laugh like when I play back this old cassette and he says, “we’re too high to record”. Our stuff from back then might remind you of that band, The Front, from the late eighties, or even Mother Love Bone, had we properly recorded those songs, but on my shitty cassette tapes, it’s all noisey and I’m still doing that abrasive Taime Downe caterwaul, cause I had not yet affirmed my own voice to sing from, ya know what I mean? The songs were good but I sound like a cackling witch. That guy Tony, who really was a witch, used to play the Middle East all the time with a drummer named Hector and they were totally like T. Rex. Black Snake Moon, brooding, exotic goths, with like India influenced rhythm instruments. I really actually miss him, too, don’t know if he’s dead or alive. We spent a weekend with Arthur Lee at his old place, used to do speedballs and trip on acid, drink, and write, and he was really talented, but I made the mistake of letting him move in to a weird little room half way up the stairs and he put the moves on my ex old lady. He knew I really loved her back then, so that was not cool at all. I genuinely liked that cat, too. A shame. I can even forgive motherfuckers but they gotta be sorry, and none of ’em are. Man, I still play our old cassette demo tapes from that era. We were shaping up to become like our Australian torch n twang and blues punk idols, the Scientists and Beasts Of Bourbon, we just needed to get it on tape, preferably with some heavy Cramps echo, ya know? That was what I saw in the Big Star doc-that access to recordings studios offers a real potential for ageless, timeless magic to take place. I often blame my good buddy and longtime cohort, incorrigible and unruly all-night hellraiser and crowd pleaser, Nasty F.B. for alienating collaborators with his reckless motorcycle crashing hypermasculinity and bar brawling fuck you authenticity, but really, most of our creative obstacles were just class based. When he came through the one time with some kinda meager ($200?) recording budget from a reefer sale once, we went into this country music dude’s studio. He was a crackhead, which was why he only charged us $25 an hour. We recorded our little hearts out, Big Star style. Just purged our pure emotion onto the tape, kept the first or second take. This is how it is supposed to be done. All emotion, not photo shop, auto tune, redub, asskiss, fake as fuck, sterilized, emotion free bullshit. You ever hear The Replacements? Yes, we’ve established I do not sound just like Robin Zander. Yes, you already said that. Fuckface. Neither does your rich friend, you asskissing, money worshipping, say nothing sycophant. Those original songs we laid down were oldies but goodies, people covered ’em. Fanzines loved ’em. One of your favorite band’s lead singer said he wanted to cover one of our songs, actually. True story.
The crazy crackhead sound engineer even laid down some honky tonk piano on one of our pop tracks, really giving it a Jim Dickinson/Jimmy Miller kindof appeal. You could hear my lyrics, the snare was poppin’, the guitar was like all shiny Harley Davidson chrome and black leather. Everytime we get to do it, it always rocks like a motherfucker, we just never really get to do it. In our twenties, when people from all backgrounds are partying, having their last brief moment of freedom, wildness, slumming, cultural tourism, whatever, still willing to consort with us lowly peasants from the bad side of the tracks, we’d attracted a lot of way richer people into our all night rocker hedonism hell, yeahs, underground subculture. We coulda, woulda, shoulda done so much more, but I was always getting sucked into dysfunctional Sid N Nancy codependency’s and my main man was always being dragged off to jail every time I’d summon the poor sucker for another punishing go of it, one of our amigos would always die, or he’d get arrested, or the van would break down and his girlfriend would use that as an excuse to cheat on him, or whatever, some stupid tribulation would always ensue. I quit saying anything about putting the band back together cause it really felt like some evil gypsy put a curse on us, every time I started a band, somebody died or went to jail. That’s why I used to roll my eyes at all those Junk Records bands, cause man, oh man. They sang about fast times, but motherfuck, we lived ’em. We confused people back then cause we had our catchy summertime pop side, we loved stuff like Flesh For Lulu and The Pretenders, the alarm and even The Beachboys, We were perceived as a metal band cause we sorta dressed glam, but we were always more STOOGES derivative than anything like, you know-Poison. The Middle East told us, “try the Channel’ cause we wore makeup and red vinyl trousers. We were certainly not anything like the fucking Lemonheads. We were there to tear the place up, knock the tables over, make the old drunks cry, go home with the waitress, not everybody got it. We were a wild band outta time. In more ways than one.
The Original Suffering Bastards were legends in our own grime. Last time we went to record, for a compilation album tribute to one of our idol’s bands, Nasty the Bastard, the Steve Jones like riffmeister extraordinaire, our very own Malcolm Young figure, got waylaid on the side of the highway, his came to the rescue associate put me on a bus a couple blocks from the famous Alice’s Restaurant, and I found our former backup bandmates playing a crummy show in a second floor bar in Harvard Square just like that. From the bus station to the subway to the payphone and somebody’s wife told me they were playing across the street from the payphone, so I went and sat at the bar right behind the lead guitarist and started drinking from his glass. Elbowed him all casually and he was shocked to see me after several years of being stuck in the hellish streets of the nineties grunge makeover, fratboy Midwest. Me and him immediately commenced making demos in his fancy recording studio and some of it sounded like the Beasts Of Bourbon. Ringo Kidd compared one of our tracks to Nikki Sudden. We wrote a tune that sounded like The Pretenders but my vocal was not good at all on that one, was still doing a cheeseball Ian Astbury impression outta simple lack of self worth, poor self esteem cowardice, unfortunately, if you wanna know the truth of it, so I seldom play it for anybody. We were waiting for homeboy to get his Sin-Mobile van repaired to join us in our recording endeavors, but he kinda took too long and after a couple weeks, I’d worn out my welcome with our former collaborators. They were posh private school people and while we had bonded in our early twenties over our mutual love of pop songs and heavy drinking, they were sorta getting ready to get married and do the whole real estate and home improvement and culinary institute hokeypokey. They were good guys, fun when they were drinking, but also under incomprehensible pressure from their parents and wives to start bringing in A LOT MORE MONEY. When they said they were going to be gone for a few days, on their parent’s yacht, I took that as a message. It was kindof a bummer cause we had laid down about six songs working towards a releasable album. I still stand by two of the tunes from those sessions. 25 years later. I was stuck there in the drummer’s big empty house with a flash recording studio in the basement just sitting idle and alone and going through their ratty college dorm couches for quarters to buy malt liquor and calling my old hombres from Boston to come hangout. One was busy going to recovery meetings and getting ready to wed some chick from M.I.T. he never really wanted me to meet, cause everybody saw me and Nasty in our blue leather jackets and mirrored sunglasses as savage undesirables back then. One was busy working at a health food store, he’d been one of my best friends and contributed absolute genius writing to all my early fanzines, was roommates with Dave n Nasty on Park Drive. Only local I could really find, who was still in a punk rock mode of consciousness, was Jimmy Reject an author and wild boy and drummer of Dimestore Haloes. He never made it to the studio, but we stayed up all night drinking “together” and talking on the phone. I ended up loving that kid. (RIP) Jimmy Reject. Before he joined the Haloes, he wrote me a crazy letter on grocery bag paper with pink crayon once. Like I said, wild boy. Look for his book, “The Enemy Within”. It’s a classic. Those brothers we used to play with both became successful entrepreneurs and joined their retired college professor Dad’s alternative band, which is really pretty sweet and romantic, if you think about it. I got along good with that guytheir dad, -he was a big Pogues fan and had not always been rich, we’d drink and tell each other stories. Nasty had some hard times, I got broken up with by my baby mama. Killed me, went on the spiral for awhile. The track that came out on that compilation tribute sounds kinda forced and there was not enough cowbell. You can’t make this shit up. I still dream of reconvening with my Bastards brothers and making more music before we die. We’re pretty good songwriters and performers, really. I love all those former bandmates of mine. Well…most all of ’em. God bless us, everyone.
Biden Administration Expected to Soon Declare Monkeypox a Health Emergency
The Biden administration is expected to declare monkeypox a public health emergency in the coming days, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
The declaration, which is made by the Department of Health and Human Services, would follow a similar decision made last weekend by the World Health Organization. By designating the outbreak an emergency, HHS could then take a slew of actions, including accessing new money and appointing new personnel, according to the law that dictates how and when the federal government can declare such an emergency.
The people with knowledge of the matter said the declaration is expected as soon as the end of the week. But the decision is not yet final, and a spokesperson for HHS said the agency “is continuing to explore options.”
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra is scheduled to hold a press conference on monkeypox Thursday morning.
Pfizer Quarterly Sales Surge to Record High, Driven by COVID Vaccine and Antiviral Treatment Paxlovid
Pfizer’s second-quarter revenue and profit beat Wall Street expectations, driven by sales of its COVID-19 vaccine and its antiviral treatment Paxlovid.
Pfizer booked $27.7 billion in revenue, a 47% increase over the same period last year and its largest quarterly sales on record. The pharmaceutical company reported $9.9 billion in net income, a 78% increase over the second quarter of 2021.
Pfizer’s COVID vaccine brought in $8.8 billion in revenue for the second quarter, while sales of Paxlovid totaled $8.1 billion. The company maintained its 2022 sales guidance for the vaccine of $32 billion and is still expecting $22 billion for Paxlovid.
The company also reiterated its overall 2022 revenue and earnings guidance. Pfizer is expecting $98 billion to $102 billion in sales this year and earnings per share of $6.30 to $6.45.
HAPPY TRAILS TO YOU UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN….
Veglam 