Hey kids, remember these guys? I thought they were super fab, right around the time I became semi obsessed with Sister Of Mercy’s perfect masterpiece, “Vision Thing” and also Iggy’s “Brick By Brick”, an extraordinarily well written collection of excellent songs even if you aint into the mainstream production and prefer him skronkin round all bloody and peanut butter sticky in the basement of the funhouse broken glass. I liked their hit even better that it seemed to slyly make reference to “Heroine”, everybody’s favorite Dogs D’Amour song from back then. To me they were like a cool cross between the Cult, Julian Cope, and the Bolshoi and pop. I thought they wrote good songs and had a really great sound. It’s so hard to find people into this kindof music to start little nowhere garage bands with. I did see this really glorious pink light coming over the mountain at sunset tonight-for a few flashing seconds it kinda looked like a bomb pop, that was something nice in an otherwise pretty horrific week of alienation, high anxiety, punishment and rejection-rough stuff, just hope my babies are all okay, wherever they are. My father in law’s a mean old cowboy, he left ICU against medical advice, went home and mowed his lawn. My youngest turns 15 tomorrow, his mom went to get him some pizza as a prelude to the big day, he informed me last night he will no longer be permitting me to use “his” tv in the bedroom when I go to bed hours before the rest of the family-I sortof like to unwind with some dumb shit, so I can quit agonizing over my fuckedup predicaments, absent children, overall sense of helplessness and sick dread, before I fade into my dreamland, but you know I’ll do my best to honor his wishes. We’re in the midst of moving, who knows, maybe I can carve out some space for myself in the fuckedup overpacked garage, we’ll see.
Back when I was really immersed in Balaam and Sisters and Iggy, I met this dude somehow in Boston, I guess he found my fanzine at Newbury Comics and before he became rich and famous writing for all those bigtime glossy magazines, he wrote for my sordid, crummy Kinkos stapler in the middle of the night fanzines and I hosted his earliest foray into ramshackle, low budget cable access, grebo shockpunk freakout. I still have a Best Of episode on VHS. I was always hoping the old shows would make it to youtube, but last time I talked to him on the phone, maybe eighteen years ago, I think he said his sister threw all the old tapes out. Bummer. We had a lotta laughs. Articles by: Sleazegrinder | Louder (loudersound.com)
“You’re not a socialist if you have the same foreign policy as Dick Cheney.” (-Primo Radical)
“Liberals are not leftists. Liberals are pro-war. Liberals are pro-capitalism. Liberals don’t want power for the downtrodden. They want the downtrodden to accept their powerlessness.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Jesus H. Christ, man. Just when fauxgressives show some vague shadow of sanity or decency, they apologize for doing so! The #FraudSquad are NeoCons.” (-Primo Radical)
“Jayapal throws staff under the bus for the gentle suggestion of diplomacy to end a war, then pleads guilty to the greatest crime in Washington today: giving the appearance of agreeing with the other party. Letter suggesting diplomacy is “withdrawn”. (-Ryan Grim)
Oh my stars and garters, brothers and sisters and friends of the revolution, I have been getting so hammered psychologically by the rabid crowds of status seeker conformity, it’s hard to even think straight. I’m basically delirious from all their collective delusions, bullshit cover story scapegoat shams, and mine, all mine, power trips. It’s hard watching once good people being lured over to the dark side. I’ll be honest with ya, I could use a motherfucking cocktail or ten. Everybody I ever knew who aint dead yet seem to be clinging stubbornly to their preferred partisan media source, as if, the five pig media monopolies aren’t all owned by the same group of Wall Street elites-Vanguard and Black Rock are buying up every fucking thing not already owned by Gates and company. Let’s all do our little part and help elevate and amplify the voices of the people for peace and freedom and human rights and civil liberties. Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates should not be allowed to own the world.
“They say that the Illuminati is an “unhinged conspiracy theory,” yet the most powerful people in the world are all in Davos at the behest of this 84-year-old German conspiring on how to subvert democracy, steal our resources, and monitor literally every aspect of your existence.” (-Primo Radical)
“The U.S. is an oligarchy. The UK is an oligarchy. The EU is an alliance of oligarchies. If you think Russia is more of an oligarchy than these countries, then congratulations, you’re a victim of propaganda!” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Pro-war “progressives” call for pairing a diplomatic push with “unprecedented economic and military support” that enables more war. If they’re against the war, they need to stop the unlimited obscene funding that’s throwing gasoline on the fire. (-Dr. Jill Stein)
“The White House’s reaction to the letter was pathetic, saying that only Zelensky gets to decide. That might be true if we weren’t backing Ukraine with money, weapons and intelligence. But since we are, we should certainly have our own point of view.” (-David Sacks)
“This is important news. Democratic lawmakers who’ve 100% voted to fuel the Ukraine proxy war are now calling on Biden to negotiate with Russia on a way to end it. A credit to anti-war protesters and constituents, and staffers on the Hill who have a conscience.” (-Aaron Mate’)
“A lot of US politicians claim to oppose antisemitism but have no problem giving weapons to Nazis in Ukraine.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“We have a new Prime Minister in the UK, unelected by the British people or even the Tories. He didn’t give a single debate, interview or statement about what his “program” is. All we know is he’s stinking rich & worked for Goldman Sachs. But hey, he’s the first non-white PM! Lol” (-Richard Medhurst)
“Quick guide to American politics: Anyone who supports US imperialism — regardless of any other beliefs that they might hold — is at their core a good, normal & admirable person. Anyone who opposes US imperialism is an unstable conspiracy theorist who may be working for Russia.” (-Primo Radical)
“”Nobody invests billions to build this new colonized reality & then leave. Why 2 states? Why do the Palestinians have to live in different reality? Why not a single democracy with equal rights?” – @mikopeled arguing one state solution Israel Palestine” (-Katie Halper Show-she’s the journalist fired by the Hill for saying Israeli apartheid is not cuddly, cute, or peachy keen)
buff.ly/3sIYzdj Your friends don’t even know they’ve been heavily propagandized for years and facts are censored by a collaboration between the oligarchy owned secret police and a coalition of tech owning billionaires who meet in secret.
“So many people tell me they never see my tweets anymore. Really frustrating.” (-Rania Khalek)
“Same here Rania. I have a 120K followers & use to see hundreds & thousands likes & retweets. Now I barely see a hundred retweets. I understand the game. All of the “left” forces who give ideological cover to the colonial/capitalist project have not experienced any problems.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
GUTTER GOSPEL GENERAL LABOR RANTS ABOUT BALAAM & THE ANGEL, DR. JILL STEIN, REVOLUTIONARY BLACKOUT NETWORK, RAY McGOVERN, SMASHED GLADYS, REAL LEFTISTS OPPOSE EMPIRE & CENSORSHIP, STOP THE WARS/HOUSE ALL THE PEOPLE! BLACKROCK/WEF/ZELENSKY ARE NOT FOR PEACE OR DEMOCRACY! DAVID SWANSON “WORLD BEYOND WAR”, PRIMO RADICAL, AJAMU BARAKA, COVERT ACTION MAGAZINE, BOYCOTTING PRO WAR PIG-MEDIA, AMPLIFYING DISSIDENT VOICES OF THE REAL RESISTANCE, TRYING TO START A NEW WAVE BAND IN MY OLD AGE, ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
BALAAM & THE ANGEL
Hey kids, remember these guys? I thought they were super fab, right around the time I became semi obsessed with Sister Of Mercy’s perfect masterpiece, “Vision Thing” and also Iggy’s “Brick By Brick”, an extraordinarily well written collection of excellent songs even if you aint into the mainstream production and prefer him skronkin round all bloody and peanut butter sticky in the basement of the funhouse broken glass. I liked their hit even better that it seemed to slyly make reference to “Heroine”, everybody’s favorite Dogs D’Amour song from back then. To me they were like a cool cross between the Cult, Julian Cope, and the Bolshoi and pop. I thought they wrote good songs and had a really great sound. It’s so hard to find people into this kindof music to start little nowhere garage bands with. I did see this really glorious pink light coming over the mountain at sunset tonight-for a few flashing seconds it kinda looked like a bomb pop, that was something nice in an otherwise pretty horrific week of alienation, high anxiety, punishment and rejection-rough stuff, just hope my babies are all okay, wherever they are. My father in law’s a mean old cowboy, he left ICU against medical advice, went home and mowed his lawn. My youngest turns 15 tomorrow, his mom went to get him some pizza as a prelude to the big day, he informed me last night he will no longer be permitting me to use “his” tv in the bedroom when I go to bed hours before the rest of the family-I sortof like to unwind with some dumb shit, so I can quit agonizing over my fuckedup predicaments, absent children, overall sense of helplessness and sick dread, before I fade into my dreamland, but you know I’ll do my best to honor his wishes. We’re in the midst of moving, who knows, maybe I can carve out some space for myself in the fuckedup overpacked garage, we’ll see.
Big City Fun Time GirlProvided to YouTube by Universal Music Group Big City Fun Time Girl · Balaam And The Angel Live Free Or Die ℗ 1988 Virgin Records Limited Released on: 2009-01-01 Producer: Steve Brown Composer: Mark Morris Composer: Des Morris Composer: Jim Morris Auto-generated by YouTube.www.youtube.com
Goodbye ForeverProvided to YouTube by Universal Music GroupGoodbye Forever · Balaam And The AngelDays Of Madness℗ 1989 Virgin Records LimitedReleased on: 2009-01-01Composer…www.youtube.com
Back when I was really immersed in Balaam and Sisters and Iggy, I met this dude somehow in Boston, I guess he found my fanzine at Newbury Comics and before he became rich and famous writing for all those bigtime glossy magazines, he wrote for my sordid, crummy Kinkos stapler in the middle of the night fanzines and I hosted his earliest foray into ramshackle, low budget cable access, grebo shockpunk freakout. I still have a Best Of episode on VHS. I was always hoping the old shows would make it to youtube, but last time I talked to him on the phone, maybe eighteen years ago, I think he said his sister threw all the old tapes out. Bummer. We had a lotta laughs. Articles by: Sleazegrinder | Louder (loudersound.com)
Articles by: Sleazegrinder | Louder – loudersoundCame from the sky like a 747. Classic Rock’s least-reputable byline-grabber since 2003.Several decades deep into the music industry. Got fired from an early incarnation of Anal C**t after one show. 30 years later, got fired from the New York Times after one week. Likes rock and hates everything else.www.loudersound.com
Why the War Party Needed To Demonize Iran – Antiwar.com OriginalWhen the 77-Years War ended in 1991, the Shiite theocracy ensconced in Tehran was an unfortunate albatross on the Persian people. But it was no threat to America’s homeland safety and security, either.original.antiwar.com
“You’re not a socialist if you have the same foreign policy as Dick Cheney.” (-Primo Radical)
“Liberals are not leftists. Liberals are pro-war. Liberals are pro-capitalism. Liberals don’t want power for the downtrodden. They want the downtrodden to accept their powerlessness.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Jesus H. Christ, man. Just when fauxgressives show some vague shadow of sanity or decency, they apologize for doing so! The #FraudSquad are NeoCons.” (-Primo Radical)
“Jayapal throws staff under the bus for the gentle suggestion of diplomacy to end a war, then pleads guilty to the greatest crime in Washington today: giving the appearance of agreeing with the other party. Letter suggesting diplomacy is “withdrawn”. (-Ryan Grim)
My War Never EndsThis article also appeared today on TomDispatchchrishedges.substack.com
finding jesus SD 480p – YouTubea preview of Dan Denton’s second book ‘Finding Jesus & Prayers To My Saints.’ A book of prose and poetry releasing from Gutter Snob Books on November 1st. Or…www.youtube.com
In America, Democracy Can Simply Be Bought by the BillionairesThe Guardian reported this week on the efforts of tech billionaire Peter Thiel to influence U.S. politics.It’s an important piece about more than just this election cycle. Thiel’s power shows what Citizens United has done to our democracy. “Since Citizens United, just 12 mega-donors, eight of them billionaires, have paid one dollar out of every 13 spent in federal elections.”www.commondreams.org
POEM: There it is, Jayne Cortez, 2009 | Black Agenda ReportThe late Jayne Cortez spits fire, reminding us of the need to fight, resist, organize, and unify to seize power. You should read her NOW. Jayne Cortez (May 10, 1934–December 28, 2012) was a poet, a performance artist, an activist, a Black Arts Movement blueswoman steeped in free jazz and surrealism, a pan-African feminist and an anti-imperialist whose uncompromised voice and visiom stalked …www.blackagendareport.com
Oh my stars and garters, brothers and sisters and friends of the revolution, I have been getting so hammered psychologically by the rabid crowds of status seeker conformity, it’s hard to even think straight. I’m basically delirious from all their collective delusions, bullshit cover story scapegoat shams, and mine, all mine, power trips. It’s hard watching once good people being lured over to the dark side. I’ll be honest with ya, I could use a motherfucking cocktail or ten. Everybody I ever knew who aint dead yet seem to be clinging stubbornly to their preferred partisan media source, as if, the five pig media monopolies aren’t all owned by the same group of Wall Street elites-Vanguard and Black Rock are buying up every fucking thing not already owned by Gates and company. Let’s all do our little part and help elevate and amplify the voices of the people for peace and freedom and human rights and civil liberties. Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates should not be allowed to own the world.
Who is Kshama Sawant? | Socialist AlternativeKshama Sawant was first elected to the Seattle City Council in 2013 with over 90,000 votes, running as a proud Socialist Alternative member back before “Bernie” and “AOC” were household names. She was the first elected socialist in Seattle in nearly a century. Kshama used her 2013 election campaignwww.socialistalternative.org
PRIMO RADICAL #250: Noam Chomsky – YouTubeThe living legend, former MIT linguistics professor and political commentator Noam Chomsky returns for this monumental 250th episode! In this interview, we d…www.youtube.com
“They say that the Illuminati is an “unhinged conspiracy theory,” yet the most powerful people in the world are all in Davos at the behest of this 84-year-old German conspiring on how to subvert democracy, steal our resources, and monitor literally every aspect of your existence.” (-Primo Radical)
“The U.S. is an oligarchy. The UK is an oligarchy. The EU is an alliance of oligarchies. If you think Russia is more of an oligarchy than these countries, then congratulations, you’re a victim of propaganda!” (-Danny Haiphong)
Adbusters Media Foundation | Journal of the Mental EnvironmentAdbusters is a global collective of poets, punks and philosophers implementing radical design and media strategies to shake up complacent consumerist culture. We’re aiming at the stale systems suffocating society: the power-hungry forces that leave people and the environment in disarray; the toxic capitalism that creeps into our bodies and imaginations.www.adbusters.org
“Pro-war “progressives” call for pairing a diplomatic push with “unprecedented economic and military support” that enables more war. If they’re against the war, they need to stop the unlimited obscene funding that’s throwing gasoline on the fire. (-Dr. Jill Stein)
“The White House’s reaction to the letter was pathetic, saying that only Zelensky gets to decide. That might be true if we weren’t backing Ukraine with money, weapons and intelligence. But since we are, we should certainly have our own point of view.” (-David Sacks)
“This is important news. Democratic lawmakers who’ve 100% voted to fuel the Ukraine proxy war are now calling on Biden to negotiate with Russia on a way to end it. A credit to anti-war protesters and constituents, and staffers on the Hill who have a conscience.”
(-Aaron Mate’)
“A lot of US politicians claim to oppose antisemitism but have no problem giving weapons to Nazis in Ukraine.” (-Danny Haiphong)
The Jimmy Dore Show – YouTube“Jimmy Dore is outrageous and outraged, bothersome and bothered. A crucial, profane, passionate voice for progressives and free-thinkers in 21st century Amer…www.youtube.com
“It only took them 7 months of brutal war to figure out what true peace activists said from day one.” (-Lee Camp)
ANSWER Coalition HomeSaturday, Nov. 19 in NYC — The Real Path to peace in Ukraine: Negotiations, YES! Escalation, NO! Oct 31, 2022www.answercoalition.org
FBI COINTELPRO Is Back, And Worse Than EverElon Musk has opened the floodgates to expose the FBI’s latest war on Americans’ freedom of speech. The FBI massively intervened to pressure Twitter to suppress accounts and tweets from individuals the FBI disapproved of, including parody accounts. The FBI and other federal agencies also browbeat Facebook, Instagram, and many…libertarianinstitute.org
“We have a new Prime Minister in the UK, unelected by the British people or even the Tories. He didn’t give a single debate, interview or statement about what his “program” is. All we know is he’s stinking rich & worked for Goldman Sachs. But hey, he’s the first non-white PM! Lol” (-Richard Medhurst)
Rishi Sunak: The UK’s new, multi-millionaire prime ministerThe global financial oligarchy tanked the British economy in protest against Truss’s plans for massive government borrowing. In Sunak, they have engineered her replacement by one of their own acting on the dictates of the markets.www.wsws.org
“Quick guide to American politics: Anyone who supports US imperialism — regardless of any other beliefs that they might hold — is at their core a good, normal & admirable person. Anyone who opposes US imperialism is an unstable conspiracy theorist who may be working for Russia.” (-Primo Radical)
These Supreme Court Cases Could Spell Final Doom for US DemocracyDemonstrators hold up a sign as they participate in the Moral March on Manchin and McConnell, a rally held by the Poor Peoples Campaign, calling on them to eliminate the legislative filibuster and pass the “For The People” voting rights bill, outside the Supreme Court in Washington on Wednesday, June 23, 2021.www.commondreams.org
The Many Things Rishi Sunak Doesn’t Want You to KnowPrime minister Rishi Sunak—reportedly the richest MP in Parliament—will be a boon for the financial lobby, tax justice campaigners have warned. The man trounced by Liz Truss just weeks ago has been confirmed as her replacement with the exit of Penny Mordaunt from the Tory leadership contest. But …www.commondreams.org
“”Nobody invests billions to build this new colonized reality & then leave. Why 2 states? Why do the Palestinians have to live in different reality? Why not a single democracy with equal rights?” –
arguing one state solution Israel Palestine” (-Katie Halper Show-she’s the journalist fired by the Hill for saying Israeli apartheid is not cuddly, cute, or peachy keen)
buff.ly/3sIYzdj Your friends don’t even know they’ve been heavily propagandized for years and facts are censored by a collaboration between the oligarchy owned secret police and a coalition of tech owning billionaires who meet in secret.
“So many people tell me they never see my tweets anymore. Really frustrating.” (-Rania Khalek)
“Same here Rania. I have a 120K followers & use to see hundreds & thousands likes & retweets. Now I barely see a hundred retweets. I understand the game. All of the “left” forces who give ideological cover to the colonial/capitalist project have not experienced any problems.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
How the pro-Ukraine NAFO troll operation crowd-funds war criminalsCelebrated in mainstream US media for its anti-Russian trolling, the Twitter operation known as NAFO was founded by a Polish antisemite to raise money for a militia that has hosted war criminals, white nationalists and wanted murderers. Whether they know it or not, anyone who has checked Twitter for recent coverage of the Ukraine proxy war has likely encountered at least one of the thousands …thegrayzone.com
Whitney Webb, Author at Unlimited HangoutIn this first instalment of a new series, Iain Davis and Whitney Webb explore how the UN’s “sustainable development” policies, the SDGs, do not promote “sustainability” as most conceive of it and instead utilise the same debt imperialism long used by the Anglo-American Empire to entrap nations in a new, equally predatory system of global financial governance.unlimitedhangout.com
COLD MORNING
I gotta walk to the post office in an hour, ‘cross town, a gauntlet of speed freaks, Fentanyl zombies, pitbulls, and gigantic compound owning millionaire Hillary lovin’ new age heiresses. I’m depressed as fuck. Sometimes in this cold world you look around for your friends and you just see people immersed in these private world delusions. One’s on pills, one’s on crack, or gender studies egomaniacs. It’s like all class war, all the time, on every channel and I am on the losing team.
I know he’s friends with all my older Canadian punk idols, but Bart Lewis and me social media divorced each other over Hillary and the Democrats a few years ago when I was pissedoff Podesta and Wasserman Schwartz rigged those primaries against Bernie Sanders, the only one whose message could fill stadiums and appeal to a populist majority without corporate media repetition bullshit and hackable deep state vote counting software. Ken Foxx graduated from a Gene Simmons produced blues metal sleaze punk band to playing bass for the world’s greatest all night good times, feel good, right the fuck on party band of all the time, the immortal and untouchable FLESHTONES! Sally Cato, sadly has passed away, but Bart went digging through the archives during the Covid Clampdowns and assembled a really seemingly sensational compilation of seldom heard Smashed Gladys tracks. I’m excited about it even though I won’t probably be able to purchase a copy anytime in the foreseeable future as what little shit I have left is in boxes and my life is chaos with very little autonomy or sovereignty or getting a real vote. Main difference between me and all the other slaves is at least I know I’m a slave. Hard to sleep with that brutal awareness though, cause I never liked eating shit or following orders. I remember growing up I’d always read Gene Simmons in magazines, telling people, particularly women, that they should obediently suck up to rich people. He told his kid not to fix his own car-that’s for the little people. That kinda class bully shit is just not my bag at all. So yeah anyways when we were seventeen and eighteen the Cat Club scene was happening in NYC, the Ramones were having those Acid Glitter Trashball Extravaganzas in the city with the Oddballs, JT, Blonde & Blue. The Waldos were at their peak, just killin’ it, at every show, they just laid it down so righteously. I was Seventeen, Goin’ On Crazy. We’d take reckless road trips in unreliable vehicles we’d buy for $100 or $200 from farmboys who were going to the local mechanic trade school, and worked with us at the local Little Ceasers as delivery drivers, or from my friend, Big Frank, who ran the local speed parts shop. We’d go see every sleazy rocknroll band we could-Mike Monroe, Faster Pussycat, Iggy, Alice, Ace, the Dogs D’Amour, Circus Of Power, Cycle Sluts From Hell, the Ramones, the Heartbreakers, Cheetah Chrome, Pillbox, the Phantoms. I was really into Sally Cato at that age as you might imagine, she was one of my kind. Golden Robot records is releasing this glamtastic tribute to Sally’s very special brand of sexy, streetwise, bluesy soulpower. If you love down and dirty divebar glam rock, and obviously if you are reading anything I ever wrote, you obviously do, I encourage you to check it out. We might not share the same politics, but you out crowd dissidents and dropouts know I think politics are fake as fuck anyways, same billionaires with a puppet on each hand. So ya know, I still applaud and appreciate the high quality rocknroll Bart Lewis has made throughout the years. 18 fuckin’ tracks, just checkout how good this shit is. Ya know nothing gets me feeling like life is worthwhile like the sleazy from the heart rocknroll does. I’m a guy, but I identified with Sally, saw her as a female version of myself really, had a lotta the same personality traits, moves, style and passions, we were into all the same shit. Just look at her. God love her, God bless her. She was a little Johnette, and a little bit Texacala, too! You’d think after all these decades where I’m the only one still writing about summa these bands I’d be on summa these Demon Doll records, Easy Action or Golden Robot mailing lists by now, but you know the record industry is ran by people who are more like Gene Simmons than people like me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uRunEE2bh8 I had to go to Wal Mart last night against my own will and better judgement and their whole music aisle was just like Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift, Foo Fighters and the Eagles. You gotta be grateful for fucking youtube if you’re a dishwasher, I suppose. How is anybody supposed to have twenty bucks for a cd when the greedhead Wall street corporations and ruthless horrible utility companies keep gouging the fuck out of all us poor people at the bottom just because they can and just conveniently always using bullshit media to blame their greed on some foreign boogeyman-who is it this week? Hussein, Gaddafi, Chavez, Bin Ladin, ahh yes, Putin, that’s right. All purpose motherfuckin boogeyman. It’s supposed to freeze tonight. (RIP)
“I have learned my friend, the Bengali journalist A.U.M. Fakhruddin, has died from Covid, having been with me during the war that liberated Bangladesh. Every encounter with this poet of a man would lift my mood; I pay tribute to him in my book, Heroes, and here again I salute him.” (-John Pilger)
“Those who hate Russia the most are the ones who embody everything they claim to hate about it: they’re all pro-war, pro-censorship, pro-propaganda, pro-trolling operations, and support Ukraine in banning political parties and opposition media. They are what they claim to hate. Meanwhile those of us who oppose those things are told to “move to Russia”, even though we’re the ones advocating the supposed “western values” they claim to support while they’re doing everything they can to undermine them. THEY should move to Russia.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“In reality, US military aid has prolonged a disastrous proxy war with Russia that has claimed thousands of lives.” (-Aaron Maté on Ukraine, September 2019)
“Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams”.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
“Capitalism has turned housing, food, water and healthcare into luxury goods” (-MC Squared)
“The State is the pillar of capitalism, and it is ridiculous to expect any redress from it.” (~ Emma Goldman )
LOYAL MACHINES VERSUS ROBOT FIGHTERS
Good Morning, all my brothers and sisters and friends of the revolution! I can’t talk to nobody I used to know since the Tipper Gore PMRC hijacked the mean gentrification shitlb former pseudo left with their fun hating bullshit uncoolness. I still wanna sing and dance and be who I am and I will never support your fascist police state dystopias or evil richman wars for some fuckin’ crumbs of get drunk/control of channel changer privilege or a hallpass from the ruling class like my ex friends and former associates. “If I can’t dance to it, it’s not my revolution. (— Emma Goldman) I never thought I’d see the day when all the ex punks and former hippies would obediently parrot the lies of their higher up superiors and go after anyone who challenges the word of known liars like the Cheney family or Hillary Clinton. The corrupt as fuck art of war motherfuckers at the top all say the best defense is a good offense, which is why corrupt insiders who hold the power and fix the selections and lie us into richman wars came out and accused the left of being puppets, trolls, fake news, Russianbots, sexist, anti semetic-they throw every disingenuous smear in the book at the real resistance–of course their favorites are still conspiracy theorist, Trump supporter, anti science, manspreader, cys born, tankie-hell I don’t even know what some of the Klaus Scwab faux left latest lexicon insults even mean, man-the actual echo-chamber troll armies are the Nato operated big tech paychecks and enthusiastic propaganda reposters who censor and frame all online conversations, and savagely attack and slander anyone who ever breathes anything faintly like the truth. Stokey Carmichael/Kwame Ture was right about everything but particularly when he said the empire has no shame. You can call it what you like-the deep state, the ruling class, the Davos honchos, Reset billionaires, the Bilderberg Owl Cult, the oligarchy, the military industrial complex, the One Percent, the illuminati, the global elites, Nato, the permanent government, the cashless society microchippers, the inteligence agencies. The secretive bankster insiders of Vanguard and Black Rock and a few of their Saudi, UK, and Israeli billionaire collaborators own it all, just like George Carlin told us, way back in the better days. They program us in schools-just like they did all those kidnapped indigenous children, to hate ourselves and they train us to blame ourselves, even though we are lied to our whole lives, kept under boot, and most of us never get no sportin’ chance, the game was fixed, it was all fake as fuck, from the get, and most of our former peers are too invested in the house wins tilted tables, they can not even bring themselves to acknowledge there is a problem when techlords and oil plunderers and racist private prison forced labor profiteers own the entire media, the judges, the unaccountable cops and overmilitarized alphabet gangs, and now, even the fuckin doctors and college professors, who lose their good jobs and jeopardize their wife’s posh lifestyles if they ever tell the truth. We are sadly fucked, my people. Can’t believe so many rubes and dupes think the capitalist machine that eats bodies suddenly gives a real sincere fuck about Muslim women’s literacy or gay people’s rights-these are just useful divide n conquer hustles, donchu see the same ole good ole boy network still runs everything, even if they hired some token gay spy or pretty women of color or trans tv stars to tweet some meaningless pretty talk, or do some feelgood photo ops with some fat kids at the organic White House garden?
I don’t talk alot about it in my writing, but right now, I’m kinda depressed, ya’all-mainly cause on toppa all the friend death I’m still struggling to process, or make any sense of whatsoever, one of my very cherished kids has gone missing and the other side of the family have no idea where she is-being as how they kinda socialized the kids to stay distant from us dirty poors and crazy anarchists, it was all in their hands to use their power and prestige to protect and guide and provide for the kids, keep ’em safe, and it is nothing but low throbbing to sometimes suddenly acute pain not knowing where your kids are, or if they are okay. Something happened that I’m not privvy to-I just know something’s not right. So I kinda worry night and day, just helplessly. Feels like I’m gonna have a fuckin heart attack cause the stress and anxiety and worry is relentless, almost unbearable here.
Meanwhile, I’ve been busy relocating and it can also be a stressful ordeal, reckoning with bureaucracies, impossible to please bliss bubble landlords, doing too much heavy lifting, fretting over wear and tear repairs, and an oversized broken window, especially with a bored teenager wanting constant attention, and two indoor cats and two outdoor cats we’ll need to catch-one of the main reasons I signed on to the move, even though I have personal reservations about the relocation, was we got some problem-neighbor who has insane manias and keeps kidnapping the outdoor cats and relocating them just cause he hates animals, owns nearby property, feels entitled. Also some registered sex offender developer is building these fuckedup Mcmansions all over the nearby fields so it’s non stop construction with all these leering jailbird criminal types he’s got working on his multiple job sites always stopping what they’re doing to give my wife the grossout hubba hubba wolf whistle harrasment business. All this with full women of city hall approval cause it aint their neighborhood being remade in his image. I got more work to do today, but it’s going to rain, and my wife is on an entirely different schedule, so I won’t see her until about two this afternoon. Other problem I have is I still wanna make music, I got songs galore, but can no longer afford the Agenda 21 reset rents in urban places-these godless pigs are even asking $900 a month for run down desert shacks out here in no man’s lands, with forty year old carpets inhabited by generations of pet owners and indoors crack, meth, and cigarette smokers, it’s a sick society-for us or against us, the oligarchy said. The ruling class run the schools now and their identity puppet fraud squad celebrities and faux woke white bourgeoise P.C. bullshit cult is just a big sham. Makes karens on the hill feel holier than somebody, but that’s it. Safespace grovelers and privilege debaters are not real power to the people leftists-they are cloistered campus, future management class shitstains not to be trusted. So yeah I want nothing to do with the dominant mainstream culture which just trots out some fraud squad lady models to help fund endless Dick Cheney imperial proxy wars and tells you what words they’ve decided to ban this week and which comedians have been cancelled for challenging oligarchy preferred propaganda narratives and which whistleblower heroes have been kidnapped by the state. There was a dude, not far from here, who had offered to record me, play guitar, whatever-collaborate, but he has his own merchandise line and I think I’ve been burned too many times by former collaborators who acted like they were gonna do me some favor, but instead just hijacked the material, wasted my time and money before jumping ship to play for better financed say-nothing karaoke clowns, or parlayed their association with me into some kinda monetized high profile gig, or copyrighted songs of mine they had no hand in composing, so I’m kinda loathe to get involved with people who have merchandise lines, ya know what I’m sayin’? Ruthless takers, users, plagiarists, exploiters and social climbers kinda kill the joy in everything, don’t they? Vampires and capitalists. Last time I spoke to my old ridin’ buddy/adventure sharing rhythm guitarist/songwriting cohort, he was having conflict with other folks at the homeless shelter. It is a fuckedup world, a dark time, but pig media keeps everybody in that Thank Obama, pig-pharma happyspell, they keep telling all the Amazon shoppers that Zelensky is winning and people are just critical of AOC because she is a misunderstood female-it’s not cause she helped fund actual nazis in the Ukraine, dropped the ball on freeing the kids in cages and reuniting families warehoused at the border gulags that she wept for under Trump in all her staged publicity photos, stopped fighting for universal healthcare when Inside traitor Pelosi told her to; she, like soldout sadsack Sanders always stops short of proposing a peace negotiation, or demanding the evil empire cease sanctioning and trying to coup Cuba or Venezuela, and after the Capital Hill cop lives matter psy-op, she even dropped all pretenses of defunding the racist police state-those meanies just won’t applaud all her celebrity red carpet Met Gala Eyes Wide Shut special privileges because they are….sexists. That’s the kinda dumb hustle most Murkkkans of the fauxwoke, college conditioning fall for. Nato-left new McCarthyite redscare Hillary Voters just wanna pivot back to how some celeb in a Met gala skirt is wokey woke for McWokeness or the token faces of false diversity are being unfairly treated because of “gender’, they only issue that matters at all ever to the they/them college programmed automatons. Gender is the only religion of the shitlibs, empty tokenism-same old patriarchy now in pants-suits, and obligatory skirts on all media males. They kinda even took all the fun outta flamboyant glam stardusted gothic androgyny, didn’t they? Meanwhile, the empire keeps slaughtering innocents, evicting families, and caging the poor. Pig media keeps repeating how all that shit’s woke n classy now, cause worshipping Obama, AOC and Lady fuckin’ Gaga is more important to shitlib bourgeoise pigs than any leftist egalitarian principle. All the college kids care about is winning. We found that out when Occupy Eugene tried to occupy the University Of Sports Patriotism for like a day-all those rich fucking white sports kids were all like, “go away-we love wall street!” Michael Moore used to fight the power, now he just fights Trump. That’s sad, man. Somebody told him it’s somehow different when Gender-Dems mass incarcerate or evict or drone or torture people for empirical profits. Fictitious times, indeed. I’m about to go on a walk to get away from the hypnoscreen, see some clouds, get some fresh morning air and birdsong. I’m having one of those days where I feel like just fucking hiking to the offramp and putting my motherfucking thumb in the air. The landlord class, trojan pony gender-gentrifiers and ten dollar cuppa coffee people and creepy Masonic developers are not friends of mine. It’s hard for me to stay somewhere when I really get no say. It’s rough business. All Power To the People, ya’all.
“If you side with criminal totalitarians’ pseudoscience, you’re an idiot & a whore whose entire life’s work is to generate catchy profound-sounding fluff to make totalitarianism appealing to cattle. How to become an intellectual: 1-Write a book of random noises on history, psychology, money, religion, Roman emperors, biology, or whatever, with no actionable information 2-Watch CNN 3-Explain how your book leads you to the same conclusion as CNN on The Current Thing.” (-Saifedean Ammous)
IN ONE OF MY REVCENT OVERCAFFEINATED MORNINGTIME RANTS, I SAID EDWARD NORTON WHEN I OBVIOUSLY MEANT EDWARD SNOWDEN. I THINK I WAS ALSO THINKING ABOUT THE GREAT JOURNALIST BEN NORTON. SORRY, ED. I’M A MULTITASKING DAD IN THE MIDST OF A MASSIVELY CHALLENGING RELOCATION EFFORT:
“The goal is to have an endless war, not a successful war” (- Julian Assange)
“today social media is almost entirely about getting engagement thru cheap manipulation – manufactured consent updated for the post-mass mediated age. people take the bait because they’ve been trained over the last several years to get rewarded by their own engagement thru numbers and cute symbols and animations.” (-Chelsea E. Manning)
“It’s alarming to see the term “liberal” has become a pejorative in multiple languages. “Conservative,” too, has become a meaningless epithet. People now hiss at philosophies they can’t even describe, collapsing flexible systems of belief into rigid markers of identity.” (-Edward Snowden)
“Can we hold political rally’s in parks and squares again and shit? Not protests but like marxist/anarchist/leftist/whatever speakers radicalizing a crowd irl? Impassioned spearhead? Emma Goldman type beat? I’m sick of podcast bros. Am I missing the scene?” (-Commie Quaker on Twitter)
“Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims . . . the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitionary period.” – Emma Goldman
““Am I really relishing my time here on this earth? Appreciating the thunderous beauty which surrounds me? Treasuring my encounters with my loved ones? Cherishing the sensory kiss of each moment? Adoring this world while it lasts?” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“Americans are conditioned to drop any leftist pretenses when the targeted country is one that the US government doesn’t like. Take Iran. US has been trying to overthrow that government since 1979 and now everyone is an expert. US imperialism is one big psyop.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“These people either live in another universe or they think everyone in the world is ignorant. Biden condemned everything that the U.S. has done to establish and maintain its empire. Crazy.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“Imagine living in a country that was as anxious to fix the Flint water crisis as it is to spend billions on Ukraine.” (-Black In The Empire)
“Hey Gavin Newsom,
Homelessness in California is even worse now than when you made this speech 14 years ago promising to end it. What’s sad is how many liberals continue to blindly support corrupt Democrats like you who pretend to care about the poor while you serve the rich.” (-Ryan Knight)
“The climate is not dying. It’s being killed, by fossil fuel tycoons, greedy developers, war profiteers etc – & the politicians they fund. Science clarifies the emergency & what we must demand of our elected officials. Join us!” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
“The US is occupying 1/3 of Syria, so invoking the UN charter is awkward. But White House speechwriters are crafty; they got around it by getting Biden to say that countries cannot take “territory *of their neighbors* by force.” (-Aaron Mate’)
“Remember, it’s crazy and conspiratorial to say the CIA likely is involved or will soon become involved in domestic uprisings in a US-targeted nation. The sane position is to believe that the CIA never does anything, and its officers are all sitting in Langley watching Netflix.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
STOP SUPPORTING IMPERIALISM, COLNIAILISM, GENOCIDE AND WAR PROFITEERING!
“In nearly 200 years of genocidal colonialism, the British empire stole $45 trillion in wealth from India (17 times more than UK GDP), killing millions The UK monarchy, Queen Elizabeth, the royal family are simply symbols of murder, exploitation, and theft.” (-Ben Norton)
“People really need to stop whitewashing the British royal family. They oversaw genocidal colonialism around the world, killing millions. They loved fascism. As a child, Queen Elizabeth was taught to Nazi salute. The monarchy should be abolished asapPeople really need to stop whitewashing the British royal family. They oversaw genocidal colonialism around the world, killing millions. They loved fascism. As a child, Queen Elizabeth was taught to Nazi salute. The monarchy should be abolished asap” (-Ben Norton)
A HEROINE WHO DON’T LOVE THE HERO IN THE END OF THE FILM
So yeah here I am looking out the window at the garbage truck and having some foo foo fancy coffee I pilloried from the wife, my nearest and dearest lifelong hombres and fellow travelers keep dropping dead in waves, or disappearing into the daytime control freak world of manipulative hustling and bullshit artistry and backstab competition, always racing to the next fuckin’ red light. They’ll kill ya for a drink ticket at the old people bar. While sorting through some boxes looking for long lost photographs of a bloved high school friend who died recently, I came across a cashe of old pix of another friend who died a couple years back, from when we were in the midst of our most devoted Dogs D’Amour years, he wore the dogstags, not I. We all wore the scarves and suitjackets and bone jewelry and cowboy shit, though. Hell, some of his still do, I’m all black flags and silver spurs until the bitter end, but an awful lot of white has started appearing in the beard which is weird as fuck for me, I’m starting to look like Uncle Motherfuckin Sam here. Tyla and Bam, Jo Dog and Steve meant everything to us at eighteen and nineteen and twenty and twenty one. Those songs never really faded too far from memory, either. Now who knows, what really goes on with bands, behind the scenes, behind clothes doors, it’s always something to do with control, or money-publishing, merchandise, usually someone’s wife is in control, just like in Spinal Tap: “my life was a cosmic shambles before I met…” whichever Nancy Spungon convinces whichever longhaired three chords knower that he no longer needs the original bandmates, that he is an island and an emperor and a merchandising empire unto himself, bands are like really complicated marriages, it was hard enough to get five people to agree to not grow mustaches or wear shorts or sweat pants onstage-next thing ya know, it’s ten people with opinions, now twenty. How did the big oaf flannel wearer with the pickup truck get a vote? I dunno what happened between the pirate king Tyla and all the other Dogs D’Amours, sometimes from afar it can be easy to conclude he just wants to hog the gold for himself like that shit hoarder dragon in those elf movies. We see a lot of shit hoarding nowadays-all the grasping gotmines certain they can take it ALL with them: “mine, mine, it’s mine, it’s all mine ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.” All I know is it’s not the same without the blokey blokes from way back when, man I miss the Dogs like hell somedays-that was our splendid time in the garden -our hour for magic-it was like recess all the time until the grunge was shoveled on us- but some of us still have those old albums and they were magical, wonderful, could take you away from the glum and dumb, the pain of the mundane. Jo Dog is a real extra exceptionally talented guitar player/artiste, Bam and Steve are all like the best of the best. It seems like no one told poor old Tyla, halfheartedly swashbuckling on sober stools with fill-in guys who do what he tells them. Just not the me, but I guess nothing will ever be the same, none of us can ever go back to our sunny youth when one lad shows up with his Marlboros and Mountain Dew, another comes by with his Cambridge Light 100’s and his Carling’s Black label 12 pack, then the lad with the Swisher sweets or New Coke or Jolt or whatevr the Latest Thang of the day is, here’s the day drunk sloshey guy already swingin’ the bottle and it’s not even three yet, here’s the kid with the two liter and the big box of cereal-and commence to get down like a crew of all for one yo ho ho, fill up your boots me hearties pirate lords. Can’t help it, I’m a diehard sucker for the happy ever after story, but it is seldom seen, ya know Izzy Stradlin said, “Bullshit. They don’t want to split the loot equally, moving on.” People who get assimilated by the sports bar popular kids rattrace forget how to share and play nice, a band is made of many different moving parts, without a committed dependable drummer, you aint goin’ nowhere no matter how good you think your songs or solos or dopey second hand Roy Rogers cowboy wardrobe might be, ya gott have all five guys willing to share the pie, rather than fucking hoard it all for themself, that is not easy to learn in a winner takes all brainwash culture. I myself have never had the leadership or people skills to effectively mitigate all those clashing agendas and ego trips and astologer girlfriends and desire to play ska. Greedhead culture kills rocknroll as frequently as any shadowy groomer horror story, anti rock secret society, Pussycat Doll explotation conspiracy. One of the best things about leaving the midwest back in the early nineties was escaping to a big town where they had like twenty five different Dogs D’Amour records and 12 inch singles always in stock, right there on the shelf! Posters! Fuckshit! Amazing! What bounty, what treasure-and then, some girl at Newbury Comics told us about the also marvelous Jacobites and Waterboys and Bounty Hunters! One of our lot got caught up going to the dark bar to get high and dance like Pan shirtlessly in borrowed without permission, too small for him really leather pants surrounded by a pickup harem of enthusiastic nymphettes who all mistook him for an indian cause he dyed his hair black, he kept having to fight off jelaous gorillas. One guy met some disciplined nerd academics and rich girls who Wanted More Stuff and got seduced by the dark side of the force abandoning the rock brigade to pursue better homes and gardens in the nine to five capitalist society. Me, I got distracted by some boozy women and unreliable drummers and shoved off my soapbox in the grunge years by some Long Goateed Malibu Grunge Kens. Jo Dog went on to join the crash and burn superstars, Shooting Gallery, who were fucked over by a record producer and going on tour opening for KISS, before breaking up in shambolic acrimony. Let’s focus even for a few minutes on the past though, shall we? It was glorious back then and wonderful to be young with the Dogs putrid green vinyl spinning in the background. “As you are now, so once was I…As I am now, so you shall be….”
SEPTEMBER GURLS
I’ve been in love with Chrissie Hynde for a real long time, since the third grade, probably. I used to try for her bangs, I got her eyeliner down pretty good. Pretenders are still my fave band along with Hanoi, Clash, Gen X, the Spiders From Mars, and the Stones. First song I ever sang with a full band was “Message Of Love”! She dedicated a song to me once in Boston. She totally gave me the icy freezout cold shoulder on another occasion, but of course I get it, now. She is adept at drawing boundaries cause she’s been super famous since what? 78? She was not some posh snob or anything-in fact, the first time I met her, she was walkin’ around by herself in Kenmore Square. So yeah she is my favorite female singer of all time followed by Sinead, Ronnie Spector, Patti Smith and Shangrillas-right? As a songwriter, she’s near the top of my list, with Stones, Easdale, Kristofferson, and Paul K . Farndon is my favorite bassplayer, along with Tregunna, James, Patricia Morrison and Yaffa. Martin’s my fave drummer besides Razzle, Nolan, Burke, and Ashton. Top 3 guitarists are Ronson, Honeyman Scott and Bob Derwood Andrews. Love Derwood like mad but he sez he does not like to jam or have any interest in discussing his old music, they cut him outta the publishing, so I can empathize. I’m also dead broke in the desert while other people are living at the top of ya know, neon lit eyeball pyramids and shit. Famous on the backs of complete unknown forgotten poors. So yeah it’s crazy that Chrissie turned 71 on September 6th, two of my three baby mamas have that same star sign, plus two of my favorite writers-John Easdale and Iris Berry. December Boy’s got it bad. Whenever I write songs I’m really just trying to capture some Polaroid from my own long gone past as vivid and alive as almost anything by John Easdale or Chrissie Hynde. They make it look alot easier than it is. I bled and bled for it and still dunno if I’ve really ever come close-certainly not in any kinda decent studio setting. “They just don’t make ’em like they used to-you shoulda just stuck with me!”
OZZY
Best lyric of all time: “Finished with my woman cause she couldn’t help me with my mind”. The ugly blue dragon tattoo. Pissing on the Alamo. Ya know? Poor boy from factories of Birmingham. When I was in detention hall, my beautiful new wave girlfriend sent me the handwritten lyrics to “Goodby To Romance”. When I was at the Oneida Baptist Institute in deepest Southeastern Appalachia, the US FEST was happening and all the heavy metal kids from all over the world who’d been sent to that Hitlerian reform school for behavior modification abuses was coveting that forbidden music which the superstitious authoritarians were making money offa making it taboo. Turned out Ozzy was a lovable nut, maybe less dangerous than a drunken Ringo Starr. He’s moving back to England and I can’t say I blame him. Wish I had a bottle. This song is going out to you.
“The “white lives matter more movement” co-directed by Zelensky & Joe Biden will be in high gear over next few days “whitewashing” history.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
OUR SEMI FERAL BOY CAT’S GONE MISSING
In the four or five years we’ve been here, multiple cat litters were birthed on our end of the street, in the back yard and “Cat Alley”, in between our street and our backyard neighbor’s since we lived here and we successfully homed about 14. The mama cat was captured by a grumpy old man and taken far away and we mourned her being gone for about five months and one day, she just reappeared-she had found her way home. My kid called her Mama Friday, and she was an expert mouser who kept our garage, trailer and porch area mostly free of mice and we fed her and got her one of those heated cat teepees for the porch in the winter, her last two kids were the runts nobody wanted so we named and kept them, got ’em all spayed and neutered and their ears are clipped, so local animal control can tell they are homed, too. My kid named the boy Skitzie and the girl Pepper. Pepper loves the porch and we keep a giant wooden painting up there so she can not bring dead birds and bunnies and leave them on the porch but at night she jumps the painting and sleeps on a wooden chair. Skitzie was the only outdoor cat you could really pet. Pepper and Friday stayed pretty feral, continued to eat lizards and birds and small snakes. Skizie got in fights with the neighborhood toms who’d showup to mooch off our cat’s food. Sometimes, they climb the tree and get on the roof at night. They are friends with a skunk who also eats summa their kibble and kinda hangs around. I don’t think thy get along with the raccoons but the racoons like the roofs according to a cowboy eccentric who lives in a hoarder trailer next door. Two days ago, my partner noted that Skitzie had gone missing and was absent from three meals straight. This morning marks his fourth meal when he is always here like clockwork, usually before the girls. He likes to hunt in the field across the street and the big machines have broken dirt to start building some development folly, sometimes he hangs out with the four indoor/outdoor cats that belong to the couple at the end of the street, three doors down, but I asked the lady and she has not seen him, either. So chances are coyotes got him, he got snakebit, or some asshole took him. It’s a bummer, all three of us feel a pang in our hearts. I also have an adult child I never hear from, so life is like a procession of insufferable losses, death, AWOL loved ones, cheap shot ripoffs, old pals who’d rather hang out with dumb, pretentious rich people, and we carry grief. I’ve been known to drink over that kindof stuff, but right now, I’m doing some part time ranch hand, jack of all odd jobs, outdoor laboring and I gotta stay wide awake and on call, between the work and parenting, there’s no time to cry. I can’t even tell you how bummed out I am, but I am endeavoring to keep my braveest grownup face on.
BILLY FUCKIN’ IDOL
In times of darkness, bullshit, deception, mass hypnotism and so much uncertainty, I still turn to rocknroll saints like Van Halen and Billy Idol for sustenance. I LAUGH at big city hipster mimosa dorks who think that having money or buying some nice shoes makes you somehow have even a glint of rocknroll authority or real genuine entertainer soulpower-these fucking gentrified cover band jokesters just get on my nerves, make me laugh almost, but these same fuckin dorks who can never shaddup about Johnny Thunders or some distant begrudging tie they have to somebody from D-Generation or Dictators or whoever, they can never recognize real rocknroll when it’s lookin’ ’em dead in the eye. BILLY FUCKIN’ IDOL is a punchline to those fakes and rubes and dorks and pay to play karaoke dorks because they find him threatening-not only is he pretty as a Presley, but he still has the hardest rockin’ band in the business and he STILL writes great songs, which none of those rich people in the booj cities can do. That’s why all their bands predominantly covers. All they really ever do is glaot about their zipcodes, their money, their pay to play privilege-nobody cares about their dork bands. BILLY FUCKIN’ IDOL still has all the real stuff of the heart-the charisma, the poetry. Now I am running through streets that are frightening… that shit’s as real as “Untouchables” or “Stars Look Down”. He’s as good as it gets in the business of playing real rocknroll. The greasy come lately kid bands with the expensive hats and stripper tattoos don’t even come close. rocknroll is about playing SONGS, from the heart, from the heart, I couldn’t tell no lies. Thankful as fuck I can still turn to the important and life affirming punknsoul of Billy Fuckin Idol. I hope to see him live before I die. I think we’re all sick to death of all those instafame pig-media juggernaut overnight fake meta celeb-bots they force feed us nowadays and when you see or hear real authentic passionate rocknroll, you remember there’s no comparison, either you got it or you don’t, and just cause some mama’s boy dickhead can pay for a fancy costume don’t mean shit. You can’t buy real rocknroll and when you experience the real stuff, it’s impossible to play along with that middle school dork shit. BILLY FUCKIN’ IDOL‘S been saving my lifea gain and again since I was about thirteen or fourteen or some shit. Dunno if it was true but an old associate once claimed he played a song of mine for Thommy Price and the dude was said to have really liked it. I love Steve Stevens, as well! Derwood’s probably my third fave guitarist after Ronson and Honeyman Scott. I wish I could find a guy like that to make new rocknroll with. As Giovanni Vitanza from The Coma-Tones sang, aint gotta fake it cause I know how. In the punk days he was derided for being plastic punk poster pinup prettyboy danceable, but now when Strummer’s gone, Ari Up’s gone, all the crazy wild eyed beautiful outlaws are dying off one by one, he is a testament to staying wild and free. I love him like a forefather, my brethren, God Bless Him.
Billy Idol Juni 1984 in München | Verwendung weltweit
❖You’re not jaded; everything really is just as phony and vapid as it looks.I say this because if you are reading this it’s likely the result of a personal quest for truth which has led to a gradual peeling away of the lies our society is made of. Your eyes probably found this text because you’re the sort of person who’s been trying to make sense of the world in a sea of propaganda and deception, which often results in a growing disgust not just with the power structures which oppress and tyrannize humanity, but with our entire civilization.This experience is very common for people like yourself, and it’s very common because it arises from a clear perception of reality. From the very beginning human civilization has been built around serving the interests of the powerful, from religion to philosophy to the arts to law. As the world has gotten smaller and it’s become possible to artificially manufacture culture with mass-distributed media, this has only become more the case.That’s why the more you learn about the world, the more fake and stupid our civilization looks. It’s because it is fake and stupid. Our news, our entertainment, our jobs, our legal systems, our political systems, our education systems, our financial, monetary, economic and commercial systems; the way our entire civilization is structured and organized has nothing to do with what’s true and good and everything to do with keeping human organisms compliantly turning the gears of capitalism and empire.#TheSimpsons#Simpsons#Ukrainepic.twitter.com/aWvgTUGJKP— The Simpsons (@TheSimpsons) February 26, 2022Mainstream culture is one giant psyop geared toward keeping people fueling the oppression machine. Not because of some grand conspiracy (though there’s plenty of that too), but because the manufacturers of culture have a vested interest in preserving our unwholesome status quo. The media are owned by plutocrats who have an interest in making sure everything they’re putting out sustains the imperial status quo upon which their kingdoms are built. The Pentagon has more influence over Hollywood than people like you or I ever will.Things get elevated to mainstream levels of attention and influence by the people with the wealth and power to elevate them, and they’re always going to elevate things which serve their interests by manufacturing consent for the status quo their wealth and power are premised upon, not things which harm their interests like material that expands class consciousness or highlights the depravity of the US-centralized empire.So mainstream culture presents a fraudulent image of reality. It’s written into the code of everything that’s mass produced — not just in Prager University lectures on the evils of socialism or propagandistic news stories about weapons of mass destruction, but in sitcoms, in advertisements, in clothing brands, in pop music, in textbooks, in trends. When it’s not constant messaging that capitalism is totally working and the world is ordered in a more or less sane and truth-based way, it’s manipulations designed to shape our values and measures of self-worth to make us into better gear-turners.If you’re noticing this ubiquitous fraudulence, it’s not because you’re becoming distant from the rest of society, it’s because you’re becoming more intimate with it. You’re getting in real close, so close you can see the nuts and bolts of it, see how the sausage is made.The Phoniest, Most PR-Intensive War Of All Time”Now, I know what you’re thinking: how is Zelensky making time for a Vogue photoshoot amidst his busy schedule of PR appearances for other major western institutions?”https://t.co/stflCQnrtw— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) July 27, 2022So if this is happening to you, don’t worry. You’re not turning into some kind of jaded hipster who’s too cool for what everyone else is into, you’re just seeing the bullshit for what it is. Sure a rejection of mainstream culture can just be pure ego-driven “look at me I’m so special” crap, but it’s also what happens when you sincerely move in for a closer look at the mass-scale psychological fabric of human civilization.This is what Terence McKenna was talking about when he said “The cost of sanity in this society is a certain level of alienation.” And it’s what Jiddu Krishnamurti was pointing at when he said “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” A lucid perception of reality today will necessarily be accompanied by the ever-present smell of bullshit.And that’s not your fault. It’s not your fault that you were born into this world where so much of everything is fake and stupid. So be gentle with yourself in your sense of alienation. And take comfort in knowing that others see what you’re seeing too.But mainly learn to take comfort in the fact that, just underneath the logos and screens and suburbs and Hollywood actors pretending to be people, reality is roaring. There’s a whole world of wonder and authenticity shining ferociously from just beneath the surface. It’s just got nothing to do with the artificial culture that’s been mass-produced by the powerful and funneled into our minds.Zelensky rings New York Stock Exchange bell, launching campaign to entice foreign investors while crushing labor rights of Ukrainians.His appearance coincided with the Euro’s collapse and economic crisis fueled by the Ukraine proxy warBy @RealAlexRubihttps://t.co/KAiwt94ECD— The Grayzone (@TheGrayzoneNews) September 7, 2022Underneath all the social engineering and power-serving control mechanisms, there’s a whole life of raw terrestriality that is much, much older and much, much stronger than the lies of the machine. You can see it crackling everywhere, even in the densest parts of the matrix.You can see it in the sky. You can see it in the bushes and the pigeons. But you can also see it in the bus billboards and skyscrapers, in the flashing signs and blaring screens. And you can see it in the giant-brained bipedal primates you’re surrounded by each day, hiding just behind the dance of imperial fraudulence in their heads. You can see it even in those who are most asleep at the wheel, the most enslaved to the mind viruses of the machine, if you look. Once you learn to see it, you can observe nature winking at you even from inside the most rage-faced pundits and most self-absorbed social natterers. It’s there.In reality this sense of alienation is just an awkward transition phase between buying into the imperial dreamworld and a deep, deep intimacy with humanity as it really is beneath all the obnoxious programming. Beyond the revulsion at the phony facepuppets, something ancient, authentic, and exuberant is dancing. And it is more real and more true than our disgust with this civilization.Look closer and you see the fraudulence. Look even closer and you see what’s real. Your sense of alienation is entirely valid and based in truth, but we’re not meant to stay there. Truth beckons us forward. Truth is beckoning us all forward. And these mind cages they have built for us aren’t real enough to hold us in for much longer. (-Caitlin Johnstone)
Angela: Angela Davis, that is. At the start of filming in 1969 she was an unknown philosophy professor at UCLA, but by the time the committed communist was imprisoned shortly thereafter, she was already an icon. The film shows Davis both in public and private: at seminars, at demonstrations for political prisoners and the Black Panthers and at …www.youtube.comThe Right to Be Left Alone – Activist PostABC Tried to Bury This James Baldwin Interview. Four Decades Later, It’s Blisteringly Relevant. – YouTube ABC Tried to Bury This James Baldwin Interview. Four Decades Later, It’s Blisteringly Relevant.Buried by ABC at the time, the segment has resurfaced over four decades later, revealing a unique glimpse into Baldwin’s private life—as well as his resounding criticism about white fragility, as blisteringly relevant today as it was in 1979. Video Credit: Sylvia Chase: Writer, interviewer, Narrator Joseph Lovett: Producer, Director Richard …www.youtube.com“Hey, bet you forgot about the Afghans who worked for the U.S. & West still in limbo while the West went all out for Ukrainian refugees. Can anyone help me understand the difference in treatment?” (-Ajamu Baraka)
Hiroshi Nakagome, the Japanese Johnny Thunders of the GOLDEN ARMS and World Famous Mister Ratboy from Pillbox, Motorcycle Boy and Sour Jazz have a cool new record out on Vicious Kitten, the Australian Label that used to be a fanzine in the early nineties. This is their new video!!!
“Ukraine was ordered to launch an offensive even though the military thought it was unwise. The military leaders don’t understand this is a PR war. With the offensive, ruling class servants are able to steal more of the peoples resources for MIC.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“As Zelensky outlaws labor organizing, he appeared on Wall Street to launch #AdvantageUkraine, a shameless appeal for the corporate plunder of Ukraine which promises rapid deregulation and features the country’s arms industry at the top of its “investment menu” (-Max Blumenthal)
MIKE’S SIXTIETH BIRTHDAY CONCERT IN FINLAND TO FEATURE HIS SOLO BAND, DEMOLITION 23, & A REUNION OF ORIGINAL ROCKS LINEUP! WOW!
One of the greatest bands of all time are reuniting the original lineup for One Night Only! Of course we all love and miss Razzle, but you know Gyp Casino played on the first three Hanoi Rocks classics and now they are getting back together! As my old pal Chaz Halo says, I also hope a lot of footage washes up on youtube since neither of us are in the money enough to fly to Finland, but this is real big news for all of us weirdo glitter/glam kids who grew up loving that band and their uniquely inimitable brand of original, amphetamine punk-rockabilly-ska-disco-psychedelic-honky tonkin-sleaze anthem, stardusted surf and scuzz, downtown gutter punknroll! Holy Smokes!! Ya know? I’ve been liking the Lordsy new MM group song, “Derelict Palace”, it’ a little post-punk or new wave. I’m pretty lit about the big show. History in the making. How awesome would it be if they came to the States? I know a Lords Of The New Church influenced guttersnipe goth gang that might be willing to reunite to open for ’em at the Whiskey or wherever. Lucky Sugarbuzz from the legendary Hollywood glam rag Sugarbuzz Magazine said: “WOW!!!!!!!” My new new wave starlet friend and idol Laurent Chopard from Other-ed, says, “I saw that earlier! Crazy and even crazier with Demolition 23 opening! I hope they’ll play at least one show in London on a weekend but I’m afraid it’s just going to be a one shot. This one is too short notice for me to go…” Evad Fromme from Moonchasers and 13 Knots said, “I saw this. I hope they play more shows. Would love to see them. I’d like it if they just played the Bangkok Shocks record front to back!” John Dissed, the free speech advocate and songwriting stalwart said, “That’s so cool. Mystery City is my fav too! Had that in high school and played the shit out of it. Great songs.” Brian Morgan NYC guitarist from The Carvels, Saviors, and Disruptors sez, “HA! I was gonna send this to you when I got home from work. Who’d have ever thought, yeah? So what HAS Gyp Casino been up to for, um, almost 40 years? I must say, Andy looks pretty bad. I keep seeing the rubber tip on his cane in this pic and thinking of puffy gray velcro tennis shoes and big visor sunglasses, a retirement community in Florida, yeesh. I guess a good reminder to at least try to keep up SOME sort of maintenance as we rock’n’roll into our dotage. Shame it’s in Finland, I’d go for sure. Then again, I’m planning to be up front center in Glasgow in November for the original Damned line-up’s gig. Bless ’em all! “
Up early listening to the big machines outside-this used to be a quiet deadend street, mostly empty old trailers only inhabited by elderly people for about two or three months in the winters-second homes. One guy down the block died and they never cleaned up his debris or resold his place-another guy died and it looks like they might be preparing it for resell, but most people don’t wanna live in this part of town because of the holy shit high heat and two or three obvious drug dealer houses-you know the vibe-all night traffic, shady lady, high fences, shifty customers with broken windshields, barking twin pitbulls. Also, the stinky sewage treatment plant and the stinky river both smell like shit, however some gentrifying home builder has built three pop up McMansions down the road and there are plans to build 100 new apartments in the field across the swamp ditch. So yeah, we are kinda feeling the need to imminently relocate looming over us like a shadow. We had to scrap our plans to move to Joshua Tree during the grueling two year long Covid clampdowns and now they’ve jacked the rents up even higher in that whole region, two small mom n pop greasy spoon restaurants closed last week in my ‘ville, ya know I’m a dishwasher, so it’s not like we are as mobile as we once were-even the notoriously bullshit mainstream media is having to admit that millions of Murkkkans are being evicted or falling to houselessness while the government gives always mor billionaire handouts to their proxy forces in the Ukraine and Israel and the big propaganda unreality tv silences real journalists and doctors and intelligence experts and historians and focuses mostly on glamourizing cults, cannibals, models who only ever vote for endless wars, and handouts to their billionaire police-stat donor class bosses, and glorifying the oligarchy. I have anxiety, where we’re gonna live, how we’re gonna keep paying these outrageous Reset gouger electric-grocery-gas-and rent bills. Honestly, man, I could use a fucking drink. Alas, I have to work today, doing some landscaping for a land baroness who may or may not give us the privilege of becoming on call servants, laboring at her whim, in exchange for renting one of her prohibitively expensive, rundown properties she bought years and years ago at auction in this dead end desert, end of the road ghost town, where people come to die. I finally heard from one of my talented, beautiful, long absent children, who seems to be thriving in the Big City Of Hipsters. It was thrilling to hear his voice. I live for those kids. Sadly, it’s just not viable for us to live in those overpriced, urbanized, legal reefer, rich people zipcodes anymore. All these tech platform purges of left activists and dissident journalists should have everybody fretting, but so many of my former roll call just stay in that Netflix N Pharma, cozy, NPR hypnospell, I can’t reach ’em anymore. they all just wannabe faux woke and Tik Tok famous. My outdoor semi-feral boy cat buddy, “Skitzey”, has missed three meals and while I know the cats tend to go into hiding, like under the trailer and stuff, during heat waves or when all the noisy machines are growling, it’s not like that fella to skip any meals, and while it’s premature to mourn, there’s been talk of coyotes eating yard pets in this town, and we had a kind cowboy artist friend wrangle a rattlesnake who was having a reckoning with the missing cat’s sister about a week ago, so I’m kinda upset by the little boy’s disappearance, he’s lived in our carport/garage/porch area for about three years now and rids the area of rodents. I keep goin’ outside, searchin’ the alley and the trail for him. My disabled teenager outside in the rocks calling his name would break your heart.
“Cuba exports doctors while the US exports war. It’s beyond time to pressure Biden to drop this outrageous terrorist designation as well as end the criminal blockade once & for all. Stop punishing this small country for charting its own path. Let Cuba live!” (-Abby Martin)
“When the U.S. & Europe finally decide to stop sacrificing Ukrainians & end the war Ukraine will have to be demilitarized & neutral. Yet, the psychos making decisions pretend that they will be able to avoid that inevitability.”
(-Ajamu Baraka)
“The majority of people in the US and millions more are at risk of eviction in the next month.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“I don’t criticize Democrats cuz I side with Republicans, I criticize Democrats Cuz THEY side with Republicans. Our fight is not Left/Right anymore, it is Us vs.Them. We have 2 corporate party’s that serve Wall St/War Machine/Corporations & crush everyone else.” (-Jimmy Dore)
“Even mainstream media outlets in Brazil and the US have acknowledged that fascist leader Bolsonaro and his multimillionaire capitalist oligarch backers have been discussing launching a military coup if he loses the election.” (-Ben Norton)
“100,000 Czechs protest their government’s support of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine and the controlled demolition of Europe’s economy. The rally brought together Communist party activists with members of right-wing Freedom & Direct Democracy Party.” (-Max Blumenthal)
“The very fact that these neoliberal corporate hacks can say this and get away with it is a graphic example of the corruption of organized labor & lack of class consciousness among working class.” (-Ajamu Baraka scoffing at pants suit hack Kopmala bullshitting about Biden support for working people on Labor Day)
“President Joseph Biden: “This is a nation that rejects violence as a political tool. We do not encourage violence.” Senator Joseph Biden: “I was suggesting we bomb Belgrade. I was suggesting we send American pilots in and blow up all the bridges…” (-Max Blumenthal)
It’s Not Okay For Grown Adults To Say The Ukraine Invasion Was “Unprovoked” On a recent interview with the Useful Idiots podcast, Noam Chomsky repeated his argument that the only reason we hear the word “unprovoked” every time anyone mentions Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the mainstream news media is because it absolutely was provoked, and they know it.”Right now if you’re a respectable writer and you want to write in the main journals, you talk about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you have to call it ‘the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Chomsky said. “It’s a very interesting phrase; it was never used before. You look back, you look at Iraq, which was totally unprovoked, nobody ever called it ‘the unprovoked invasion of Iraq.’ In fact I don’t know if the term was ever used — if it was it was very marginal. Now you look it up on Google, and hundreds of thousands of hits. Every article that comes out has to talk about the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.””Why? Because they know perfectly well it was provoked,” Chomsky said. “That doesn’t justify it, but it was massively provoked. Top US diplomats have been talking about this for 30 years, even the head of the CIA.”Chomsky is of course correct here. The imperial media and their brainwashed automatons have spent half a year mindlessly bleating the word “unprovoked” in relation to this war, but one question none of them ever have a straight answer for is this: if the invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked, how come so many western experts spent years warning that the actions of western governments would provoke an invasion of Ukraine?Because, as Chomsky notes, that is indeed the case. A few days after the invasion began this past February a guy named Arnaud Bertrand put together an extremely viral Twitter thread that just goes on and on and on about the various diplomats, analysts and academics in the west who have over the years been warning that a dangerous confrontation with Russia was coming because of NATO advancements toward its borders, interventionism in Ukraine, and various other aggressions. It contains examples like John Mearsheimer explicitly warning in 2015 that “the west is leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked,” and Pat Buchanan warning all the way back in 1999 that “By moving NATO onto Russia’s front porch, we have scheduled a twenty-first-century confrontation.”Empire apologists love claiming that the invasion of Ukraine had nothing to do with NATO expansionism (their claims generally based on brazen misrepresentations of what Vladimir Putin has said about Russia’s reasons for the war), but that’s silly. The US war machine was continuing to taunt the possibility of NATO membership for Ukraine right up until the invasion, a threat it refused to take off the table since placing it there in 2008 despite knowing full well that this threat was an incendiary provocation to Moscow.Most fascinating thing about the Ukraine war is the sheer number of top strategic thinkers who warned for years that it was coming if we continued down the same path.No-one listened to them and here we are.Small compilation of these warnings, from Kissinger to Mearsheimer.— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 1, 2022This is to say nothing of the US empire actively fomenting a violent uprising in 2014 which ousted Kyiv’s sitting government and fractured the nation between its more Moscow-loyal populations to the east and the more US/EU-friendly parts of the country. This led to the annexation of Crimea (overwhelmingly supported by the people who live there) and eight years of brutal warfare against Russia-backed separatists in the Donbas. Ukrainian attacks on those separatists are known to have increased exponentially in the days leading up to the invasion, and it has been argued that this is what provoked Putin’s final decision to commit to invading (which was a last-minute decision according to US intelligence).The US power alliance could very easily have prevented this war with a few low-cost concessions like enshrining Ukrainian neutrality, rolling back its war machinery from Russia’s borders and sincerely pursuing detente with Moscow instead of shredding treaties and ramping up cold war escalations. Hell, it could likely have prevented this war just by protecting President Zelensky from the anti-Moscow far right nationalists who were openly threatening to lynch him if he began honoring the Minsk agreements and pursuing peace with Russia, as he was originally elected to do.Instead it knowingly chose the opposite course: continuing to float the possibility of formal NATO membership for Ukraine while pouring weapons into the nation and making it more and more of a de facto NATO member with closer and closer intimacy with the US war machine, and then either ordering, encouraging or tolerating Ukraine’s aggressive assault on Donbas separatists.Why did the empire opt for provocation over peace? Congressman Adam Schiff gave a pretty good answer to that question in January of 2020 as the road to war was being paved: “so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.” If you relinquish the infantile idea that the US empire is helping its good friend Ukraine because it loves the Ukrainian people and wants them to have freedom and democracy, it’s not hard to see that the US sparked a convenient proxy war because it was in its geostrategic interests to do so, and because it wouldn’t be their lives and property getting laid to waste.Brian Berletic put out a good video a few days ago about a Pentagon-funded 2019 Rand Corporation paper titled “Extending Russia – Competing from Advantageous Ground,” which is exactly what it sounds like. The US Army-commissioned paper details how the empire can use proxy warfare, economic warfare and other cold war tactics to push its longtime geopolitical foe to the brink without costing American lives or sparking a nuclear conflict. It mentions Ukraine hundreds of times, and it explicitly discusses the same economic warfare tactics we’re seeing today like sanctions and attacking Russia’s energy interests in Europe (the latter of which Berletic points out is also being used to bolster US dominance over its vassals in the EU).The paper even explicitly advocates continuing to threaten NATO membership with Ukraine to draw out an aggressive response from Moscow, saying, “While NATO’s requirement for unanimity makes it unlikely that Ukraine could gain membership in the foreseeable future, Washington’s pushing this possibility could boost Ukrainian resolve while leading Russia to redouble its efforts to forestall such a development.”President Biden has made calls for regime change in Moscow that can’t even really be called thinly disguised, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has openly said that the plan is to use this war to “weaken” Russia, which other US officials have told the press is indeed the policy. Comments from the Biden administration continually make it clear that the US alliance is buckling down to keep this war going for years to come, which would fit in nicely with Washington’s known track record of deliberately drawing Russia into military quagmires against US proxies in both Afghanistan and Syria.So make no mistake, behind all the phony hand-wringing and flag-waving, the US-centralized empire is getting exactly what it wants from this conflict. It gets to overextend Russia militarily and financially, promote its narratives around the world, rehabilitate the image of US interventionism, expand internet censorship, expand militarily, bolster control over its European client states, and all it costs is a little pretend empire money that gets funneled into the military-industrial complex anyway.Which is why when it looked like peace was at risk of breaking out in the early days of the conflict, the empire sent in Boris Johnson to tell Zelensky that even if he is ready for the war to end, his partners to the west were not.Russia and Ukraine agreed to a negotiated settlement to end the war in April, but British Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened to stop the peace deal.The US and EU instead escalated the proxy war, as the Biden admin admitted, to try to “weaken” Moscowhttps://t.co/xsCvovq8Km— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 4, 2022So as you can see, the notion that this war is “unprovoked” is a fart-brained fairy tale for idiots and children; there’s no excuse for a grown adult with internet access and functioning brain matter to ever say such a thing. If China had backed a coup in Mexico and now had a loyal vassal in Mexico City who was letting Beijing distribute weapons along the US border while continually shelling English-speaking separatists in Baja California who are seeking US annexation, there’s no question that Washington would consider this a provocation and would respond accordingly. You can tell me that’s not true, but we’d both know you’re lying.But as Chomsky said, the press are still spouting this “unprovoked” nonsense anyway.”Russia is widely believed to have been taken aback by the West’s assertive and unified response to its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” reads a CNBC article published just minutes prior to this writing.”The diplomatic visit underlines the importance of the Russian relationship for China, even in the face of international blow back against Moscow after its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine earlier this year,” reads a new report from CNN hot off the presses.”It was an unprovoked attack on a sovereign country,” a source is quoted as saying in another CNN article published a few hours ago.It is, as Chomsky observed, really freaky how hard they’ve been hitting us with this line every time the invasion of Ukraine is mentioned. It seems like every time it comes up they’re obligated to say it, like how Michael Jackson had a quota for how often MTV hosts were obligated to refer to him as “The King of Pop Michael Jackson” when his name was mentioned.In the mass media you’re not allowed to talk about the known US/NATO/Ukraine actions which experts have been warning for many years would lead us to where we’re at. You’re only allowed to say Putin attacked Ukraine completely unprovoked, in a vacuum, solely because he is evil and hates freedom. And you have to do it while saying the word “unprovoked” at every opportunity.NATO chief admits that NATO allies have been training and arming Ukraine since 2014.Something to remember whenever Western media refers to an “unprovoked” invasion. pic.twitter.com/SGHF46yayz— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) August 29, 2022Empire apologists get upset when you talk about the fact that this war was provoked because a large amount of empire apologia in 2022 is built around pretending that provocation just isn’t a thing. By some trick of Orwellian doublethink, this concept we’ve all lived our entire lives knowing about and understanding is now suddenly a freakish and ridiculous invention of the Kremlin.We’re all guilty of doing the things we knowingly choose to do. If I choose to provoke someone into doing something bad, then they’re guilty of choosing to do the bad thing, but I am also guilty of provoking them. I’m not saying anything new here; this is the plot behind any movie or show with a sneaky or manipulative villain, and it’s been a part of our storytelling since ancient times. Nobody has ever walked out of Shakespeare’s Othello thinking that maybe Iago was just an innocent bystander who was trying to help out his friends.Most of us learn that provocation is real as children with siblings, kicking the other under the table or whatever to provoke a loud outburst, and we’ve understood it ever since. But in 2022 everyone’s pretending that this extremely basic, kindergarten-level concept is some kind of bizarre, alien gibberish. It’s intensely stupid, and it needs to stop.Empire apologists will also argue that saying Russia was provoked into invading by the US empire is like saying a rape victim provoked her rapist by wearing a tight skirt, or a battered wife provoked her abuser by disobeying him. And as a survivor of multiple rapes and an abusive relationship I must say I find it extremely offensive when people compare blaming the most powerful empire that has ever existed for its well-documented aggressions to blaming victims of rape and domestic violence. The poor widdle globe-spanning empire is not comparable to a rape victim, and if you find yourself thinking that it is it’s time to re-think your entire worldview.It’s not okay to be a grown adult in September of 2022 and still say the invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. You’ve got a brain between your ears and an entire internet of information at your fingertips. Use them.”The US military budget was already more than three times more than the next-largest spender (China), more than the next 12 countries combined. Just randomly toss another $45 billion onto the pile. The excuses: inflation and Ukraine. What about the living standard of Americans?” (-Glenn Greenwald)Immobility Plan 2035 – Activist Post
“Liberalism is not leftism. Liberalism is reformism. And capitalism and imperialism cannot be reformed.” (-Danny Haiphong on the red carpet diversity muppets who pretend to care about healthcare, eviction moratorium, universal housing, student debt forgiveness, demilitarization of police during election, then vote for more war and giveaways for billionaires when Pelosi orders them to)
“This monstrosity destroyed Libya”. (-Danny Haiphong on Hillary Clinton)
“Haiti and Honduras too.” (-Ahimsa Mediation)
“The U.S is not only waging a war on other nations via sanctions & interventions, it’s also waging an economic war on its own people. The sooner U.S Americans realize their enemy isn’t people in other nations but the fascists in power, the sooner they can begin to stop the empire.” (-Fiorella Isabel)
Maximillian Alvarez on Twitter“Keeping the #LaborDay solidarity going, ICYMI on @WorkingPod I spoke with Amazon worker & union organizer @AmazonUnionofKY. Matt was fired in suspected retaliation for his organizing. Help spread the word & donate to his survival fund if you can ❤️ ✊🏾”twitter.com
“YouTube has censored
@Action4Assange’s latest panel raising awareness about the plight of political prisoner Julian Assange. Viewed must sign in then pass through two baseless warnings about “inappropriate” content. https://youtu.be/acR0t6mjwAk” (-Max Blumenthal)
“Don’t let them fool you. The so-called richest nation in the world could fund healthcare and housing for all, but it doesn’t want to because then it couldn’t exploit poor and working class people.” (-Ryan Knight)
“If Julian Assange is silenced, others will also be gagged either directly or by the fear of persecution and prosecution.”—
“Biden is literally to the right of Henry Kissinger and people are trying to say he is ‘the most progressive president in history’ lmao.” (-Benjamin Carollo)
“Assange had a stroke in the courtroom and no court official even noticed. That tells you all you need to know: A victim of torture – suffering the health consequences of torture – should not be extradited or even tried. He should be freed.” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
Nelson Mandela:”No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails” Alleged #Vault7 source Joshua Schulte (whose retrial began on Tuesday), held in ‘barbaric conditions in US prison’, in an inhumane existence, “worse than death”
“Every person in the United States should be able to claim Raytheon as a dependent on their taxes.” (-Drop The MIC)
“The big winners of the Biden Presidency have been Pfizer, Moderna, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. If you think Biden is doing a good job you shouldn’t be mocking Trumpers”
(-Black In The Empire)
“At a Council on Foreign Relations forum about “fake news,” former Editor at Time Magazine Richard Stengel directly states that he supports the use of propaganda on American citizens – then shuts the session down when challenged about how propaganda is used against the third world…Ben Decker also labels the alleged leak of documents last year showing offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands associated with Emmanuel Macron as fake news, despite the fact that the leak’s authenticity has never been definitively confirmed or debunked.” (-William Craddick)
“Biden is spending money, but he is not spending money on the people. He is spending on the military and proxy wars in order to expand U.S. imperialism and enrich U.S. oligarchs at our expense.” (-Ryan Knight)
“That Biden is credibly called a socialist by electorally viable congressional candidates who clearly have no idea what socialism actually is, to me indicates that our Overton window is now centered somewhere between Genghis Khan and Mussolini.” (-mousdrvr on Twitter)
You might even find that expanding consciousness in one way helps your ability to expand it in other ways. You might find for example that expanding your awareness of how your own mind operates gives you more awareness of how other people’s minds operate, and how they can be manipulated by powerful people using propaganda. You may also find for example that expanding your awareness of the plight of people less socioeconomically and geopolitically advantaged than yourself expands your own personal awareness of the various socioeconomic and geopolitical dynamics which have given rise to the way your life is right now. You may also find for example that expanding your consciousness of your own inner processes gives you a serenity which makes it easier to look squarely at the horrors you encounter when expanding your awareness of what’s going on in the world, and gives you the humility to see that you are not fully separate from those horrors.
The game of humanity will keep improving as long as our consciousness keeps expanding. I’d go so far as saying that’s the only thing that can cause things to get better, and that failing to do it guarantees things will get worse.
Like a video game, I believe we humans are free to either win this game or lose it. We will either keep expanding our awareness of what’s really going on in this weird universe our mothers birthed us into, or we will wipe ourselves out via nuclear war or ecocide.
Either way, if you choose to accept what’s being said here, we do each have the power to make things better by exactly one unit of human effort. We can help spread awareness of what’s going on in the world by fighting the lies we’ve been told by the powerful and drawing attention to things the powerful would rather keep hidden. We can help spread awareness of the human condition with art and with empathy. We can expand our own consciousness by getting very curious about how we operate and what makes us tick, and being very real with ourselves about what we find in that exploration.
Whatever you choose to believe about all this, it’s your adventure. I wish you the best in your travels.
“Think about what scummy liars these Democrats are. They write books boasting about how they bullied Cuba not to let Snowden pass through, thus trapping him in Russia. Then they use his presence in Russia to imply he’s a spy: when they *know* he’s there because they forced that.” (-Glenn Greenwald)
“A virulent manipulator’s entire social existence revolves around influencing the narratives people have about what’s going on in their circle in a way that benefits the manipulator.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
has not only deleted my podcast “Moment of Clarity,” they have now deleted my artist profile and my 2 comedy albums from years ago. I was given no warning or reason for this. I also learned recently that a writer for a mainstream outlet personally tried to include positive mentions of me & my work in multiple articles & had them yanked out by her editor. Even just a positive sentence about me is forbidden in mainstream outlets.
Simply for being anti-war and anti-imperialist, I am the most-censored comedian in America. You can keep supporting my work by becoming a member at LeeCamp dot net.” (-Lee Camp)
“Joe Biden, don’t come to Los Angeles like you’ve been some vanguard for human rights!”
@CornelWest goes off on the crimes of the U.S. empire, and calls for democracy from the bottom-up rather than neoliberal identity politics.
“Biden did not send $54 billion in military aid to help Ukraine. He sent it to fight a proxy war with Russia “down to the last Ukrainian.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“The two established wings of the oligarchy, the old Republican Party represented by politicians such as Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the committee, and the Bush family, are now united with the Democratic Party elite into one ruling political entity. The ruling parties were already in lock step for decades on the major issues, including: war, trade deals, austerity, the militarization of police, prisons, government surveillance and assaults on civil liberties. They worked in tandem to pervert and destroy democratic institutions on behalf of the rich and corporations. They desperately work together now to stave off the revolt by enraged and betrayed white working men and women… (-Chris Hedges)
“The US-centralized empire is a giant macrocosm of this entire dynamic. It pours vast amounts of energy into narrative control in the form of propaganda, censorship, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, and the war on journalism. It weaves nonstop narratives about how great it is and how horrible its enemies are. And it fears being seen more than anything in the world.
The vast globe-spanning power structure that is loosely centralized around the United States is a powerful military force and a powerful economic force, but its most potent weapon by far is its ability to control the narrative about what’s happening in the world. The use of oligarchic media, Silicon Valley and Hollywood to manipulate public thought and thereby control the way people think, act and vote at mass scale all around the world is unlike anything ever seen in any empire in history.
Propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening. Censorship only works if it doesn’t draw attention to the information being censored. The US empire’s nonstop campaign to control the world’s dominant narratives only works if it isn’t in the spotlight of public scrutiny. This is why those who draw attention to these things are smeared, demonized, censored, marginalized, imprisoned and worse by the managers of empire.
Manipulators hate to be seen, but if you ever find yourself in a relationship with one, your ability to escape depends upon your seeing them. This extreme clash of interests often brings up white hot rage in the manipulator which can be frightening and dangerous.
And I think humanity is entering that stage of the relationship with the US empire. A manipulator who’s just beginning to be seen by a few more pairs of eyes than it would like, causing flickerings of panic to begin to surface. Because once those eyes see what’s hidden underneath the veil of narrative manipulation, they don’t often look away. If anything, they tend to point and draw more attention to it.
It’s a scary time to be alive. But it’s also fascinating. Unlike anything that has ever happened on this planet before.
I look forward to finding out if we escape.” (-Cait Johnstone)
The inevitable end to global white world supremacy is driving some in the West mad. It is not enough that the people of Ukraine are being sacrificed, the U.S. is making dangerous moves with China & Taiwan. (-Ajamu Baraka)
Over centuries of dynasties, upheavals and revolutions, powerful people have learned that the best way to dominate a population is to manipulate them into serving your interests while giving them the illusion of freedom and control. The invention of mass media has facilitated this new form of tyranny, as has the emergence of psychology as a field of study. These two factors have combined together to give rise to the steadily advancing science of modern propaganda.
This is why the world is as it is: because the people have been psychologically manipulated at mass scale away from using the power of their numbers to create systems that benefit them instead of a few powerful sociopaths.
This is the source of all our major problems. Understanding it, and finding ways to overcome it, is the solution. The only reason they’ve been able to control us in this way is because they understand all the many ways our minds can be manipulated better than we do.(-Cait Johnstone)
Call ’em what you want-the deep state or powers that be or one percent or oligarchy or permanent ruling class, but you gotta start admitting the shadow government and it’s media are going to crazy lengths to control our communications whether that’s through outlawing assembly, censoring dissident journalists, spying on our electronic conversations and phonecalls, deplatforming and demonestizing us for straying off their preferred narrative, or trotting Disposition Matrix Millionaire Obama out to talk pretty about need to “detoxify” the internet discourse, which is coded newspeak for clampdowns on anybody opposed to endless war and panopticon corporate wiretaps. People who go to college never heard of Cointelpro nd if they have, they can not seem to remotely contemplate that it still exists, they think the SQUAD is gonna save ’em with pro noun preferences, happy slogans, and empty justice tweets. Russiagate serves as all purpose ruling class cover story now. Same way they blamed everything on boogeymen Hussian/Gaddafi/Bin Ladin/Assad/ISIS under Bush/Cheney/Obama. Just tell ’em a boogeyman is coming for their freedom fries.
If you start researching the Davos billionaires, Bilderberg, World Economic Forum and the Klaus Scwab-Kissinger-Bill Gates transhumanist agenda being openly promoted by John Kerry, Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau and many others, of course it is horrifying that the wealthiest one percent of the one percent plan on enslaving humanity with microchips and cashless society control grid, surveillance-tech capitalism authoritarian one world government shit, and that it’s not just some whackjob Alex Jones hysteria being used to sell rightwing militia survivalist swag and vitamins anymore, but I’ll tell ya, between you and me, just us kids here, all my ex associates ALREADY seem like unfeeling, programmed droid, dystopian, transhuman cyborgs. They just obey the fucking tv, they never think for themselves, or read, and slavishly imitate whatever they watch on TV. Whatever “The Latest Thang” is. Netflix, which Obama and Chelle are involved with, is all some creepy, sick secret society programming-you can confirm that just clicking through their “programs”. I don’t watch tv or believe very much of what is firehosed at us via the mockingbird monopoly media. I think the emperors are having fun at your expense-telling you to go buy duct tape and shit. For freedom. Everytime I turn on the computer or flip through the tv hypnoscreen, I see the propagandists are still eager beaver milking the whole hog fuck out of that bullshit Thank a KKKOP capital hill psy-op story designed to manufacture populist consent for outlawing protests. Man oh man, how can people pat themselves on the back all day for their critical thinking skills supposedly cultivated at the prestigious, prohibitively expensive. posh sports university in the Pacific Northwest, and then, immediately fall for this dummy Qshaman HYSTERIA? All you hear on Pig Media nowadays, is “Putin!!!” is somehow, other side of the world responsible, not only for people disliking Hillary Clinton, but also, now for Murkkkans corporations price gouging inflation ripoffs and greedhead jackedup rents, or that Trump’s maga protest was an “insurrection” so Murkkkans should just give up their rights to protest and stand in line at Best Buy for the next round of programming updates and gadgets and obey the Davos techlords for science. All your AOC worshipping shitlib friends even love openly evil Lyn Cheney now cause she said “Orange Man Bad” and “insurrection” one million times. I thought the George Floyd protests where the undercover proud boys burned down police stations looked more like proper insurrections than when some love a man in uniform hillbillies broke a window and climbed a wall, painted their chest and messed up Pelosi’s desk, but I believe in free speech. These illuminati puppets they got infiltrating all the governments worldwide were trained at the Kissinger/Schwab Fascist School but people with Ukraine flags on their falsebook profiles never even heard of any of that. Would not believe you even if you tried to tell ’em. They got some headline today about how useless pants suit, Kopmala is gonna be “TACKLING ONLINE ABUSE”. Of course as Bill Gates and his World Economic Forum secret society friends keep changing definitions of words in the dictionary to promote their Reset plan, the meaning of abuse will be efficiently altered. “ABUSE” is when no soul bureaucrats like Kopmala keep forced-labor slaving, non violent drug offenders in for profit prisons as long as possible, to increase shareholder value. “ABUSE” is when you incarcerate black parents for truant teenagers skipping schools that are fuckedup target ranges nowadays anyways. “ABUSE” is when you send mercenaries to kidnap a publisher from a foreign embassy and lock him up in a torture gulag for years, causing him to have a stroke, for embarrassing the criminal enterprise of murderous imperialism. These shitlibs gonna change the meaning of the word “ABUSE” so it becomes anybody speaking truth about power. This is the kind of bullshit you have to resist. NOT some college asshole disapproving of a comedian. That vote blue no matter who bullshit mighta worked out for some people who were already rich and just worried about poor people disobeying some authority figure, but the majority of us are falling deeper and deper into dangerous poverty while the middle class people keep watching tv. As Ryan knight said, “Biden’s approval rating keeps falling because the people aren’t buying his lies anymore about how “great the economy” is when they can’t afford housing, healthcare, and groceries.” Matzo Ball Dan adds, “The embarrassing attempt at spinning this economic catastrophe by calling it ‘Putin’s price hike’ isn’t convincing anyone.” THESE are the kinda discussions Obama and Kopmala’s billionaire bosses have ordered them to help eradicate.
On a recent interview with the Useful Idiots podcast, Noam Chomsky repeated his argument that the only reason we hear the word “unprovoked” every time anyone mentions Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the mainstream news media is because it absolutely was provoked, and they know it.”Right now if you’re a respectable writer and you want to write in the main journals, you talk about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you have to call it ‘the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Chomsky said. “It’s a very interesting phrase; it was never used before. You look back, you look at Iraq, which was totally unprovoked, nobody ever called it ‘the unprovoked invasion of Iraq.’ In fact I don’t know if the term was ever used — if it was it was very marginal. Now you look it up on Google, and hundreds of thousands of hits. Every article that comes out has to talk about the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.””Why? Because they know perfectly well it was provoked,” Chomsky said. “That doesn’t justify it, but it was massively provoked. Top US diplomats have been talking about this for 30 years, even the head of the CIA.”Chomsky is of course correct here. The imperial media and their brainwashed automatons have spent half a year mindlessly bleating the word “unprovoked” in relation to this war, but one question none of them ever have a straight answer for is this: if the invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked, how come so many western experts spent years warning that the actions of western governments would provoke an invasion of Ukraine?Because, as Chomsky notes, that is indeed the case. A few days after the invasion began this past February a guy named Arnaud Bertrand put together an extremely viral Twitter thread that just goes on and on and on about the various diplomats, analysts and academics in the west who have over the years been warning that a dangerous confrontation with Russia was coming because of NATO advancements toward its borders, interventionism in Ukraine, and various other aggressions. It contains examples like John Mearsheimer explicitly warning in 2015 that “the west is leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked,” and Pat Buchanan warning all the way back in 1999 that “By moving NATO onto Russia’s front porch, we have scheduled a twenty-first-century confrontation.”Empire apologists love claiming that the invasion of Ukraine had nothing to do with NATO expansionism (their claims generally based on brazen misrepresentations of what Vladimir Putin has said about Russia’s reasons for the war), but that’s silly. The US war machine was continuing to taunt the possibility of NATO membership for Ukraine right up until the invasion, a threat it refused to take off the table since placing it there in 2008 despite knowing full well that this threat was an incendiary provocation to Moscow.Most fascinating thing about the Ukraine war is the sheer number of top strategic thinkers who warned for years that it was coming if we continued down the same path.No-one listened to them and here we are.Small compilation of these warnings, from Kissinger to Mearsheimer.— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 1, 2022This is to say nothing of the US empire actively fomenting a violent uprising in 2014 which ousted Kyiv’s sitting government and fractured the nation between its more Moscow-loyal populations to the east and the more US/EU-friendly parts of the country. This led to the annexation of Crimea (overwhelmingly supported by the people who live there) and eight years of brutal warfare against Russia-backed separatists in the Donbas. Ukrainian attacks on those separatists are known to have increased exponentially in the days leading up to the invasion, and it has been argued that this is what provoked Putin’s final decision to commit to invading (which was a last-minute decision according to US intelligence).The US power alliance could very easily have prevented this war with a few low-cost concessions like enshrining Ukrainian neutrality, rolling back its war machinery from Russia’s borders and sincerely pursuing detente with Moscow instead of shredding treaties and ramping up cold war escalations. Hell, it could likely have prevented this war just by protecting President Zelensky from the anti-Moscow far right nationalists who were openly threatening to lynch him if he began honoring the Minsk agreements and pursuing peace with Russia, as he was originally elected to do.Instead it knowingly chose the opposite course: continuing to float the possibility of formal NATO membership for Ukraine while pouring weapons into the nation and making it more and more of a de facto NATO member with closer and closer intimacy with the US war machine, and then either ordering, encouraging or tolerating Ukraine’s aggressive assault on Donbas separatists.Why did the empire opt for provocation over peace? Congressman Adam Schiff gave a pretty good answer to that question in January of 2020 as the road to war was being paved: “so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.” If you relinquish the infantile idea that the US empire is helping its good friend Ukraine because it loves the Ukrainian people and wants them to have freedom and democracy, it’s not hard to see that the US sparked a convenient proxy war because it was in its geostrategic interests to do so, and because it wouldn’t be their lives and property getting laid to waste.Brian Berletic put out a good video a few days ago about a Pentagon-funded 2019 Rand Corporation paper titled “Extending Russia – Competing from Advantageous Ground,” which is exactly what it sounds like. The US Army-commissioned paper details how the empire can use proxy warfare, economic warfare and other cold war tactics to push its longtime geopolitical foe to the brink without costing American lives or sparking a nuclear conflict. It mentions Ukraine hundreds of times, and it explicitly discusses the same economic warfare tactics we’re seeing today like sanctions and attacking Russia’s energy interests in Europe (the latter of which Berletic points out is also being used to bolster US dominance over its vassals in the EU).The paper even explicitly advocates continuing to threaten NATO membership with Ukraine to draw out an aggressive response from Moscow, saying, “While NATO’s requirement for unanimity makes it unlikely that Ukraine could gain membership in the foreseeable future, Washington’s pushing this possibility could boost Ukrainian resolve while leading Russia to redouble its efforts to forestall such a development.”President Biden has made calls for regime change in Moscow that can’t even really be called thinly disguised, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has openly said that the plan is to use this war to “weaken” Russia, which other US officials have told the press is indeed the policy. Comments from the Biden administration continually make it clear that the US alliance is buckling down to keep this war going for years to come, which would fit in nicely with Washington’s known track record of deliberately drawing Russia into military quagmires against US proxies in both Afghanistan and Syria.So make no mistake, behind all the phony hand-wringing and flag-waving, the US-centralized empire is getting exactly what it wants from this conflict. It gets to overextend Russia militarily and financially, promote its narratives around the world, rehabilitate the image of US interventionism, expand internet censorship, expand militarily, bolster control over its European client states, and all it costs is a little pretend empire money that gets funneled into the military-industrial complex anyway.Which is why when it looked like peace was at risk of breaking out in the early days of the conflict, the empire sent in Boris Johnson to tell Zelensky that even if he is ready for the war to end, his partners to the west were not.Russia and Ukraine agreed to a negotiated settlement to end the war in April, but British Prime Minister Boris Johnson intervened to stop the peace deal.The US and EU instead escalated the proxy war, as the Biden admin admitted, to try to “weaken” Moscowhttps://t.co/xsCvovq8Km— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 4, 2022So as you can see, the notion that this war is “unprovoked” is a fart-brained fairy tale for idiots and children; there’s no excuse for a grown adult with internet access and functioning brain matter to ever say such a thing. If China had backed a coup in Mexico and now had a loyal vassal in Mexico City who was letting Beijing distribute weapons along the US border while continually shelling English-speaking separatists in Baja California who are seeking US annexation, there’s no question that Washington would consider this a provocation and would respond accordingly. You can tell me that’s not true, but we’d both know you’re lying.But as Chomsky said, the press are still spouting this “unprovoked” nonsense anyway.”Russia is widely believed to have been taken aback by the West’s assertive and unified response to its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” reads a CNBC article published just minutes prior to this writing.”The diplomatic visit underlines the importance of the Russian relationship for China, even in the face of international blow back against Moscow after its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine earlier this year,” reads a new report from CNN hot off the presses.”It was an unprovoked attack on a sovereign country,” a source is quoted as saying in another CNN article published a few hours ago.It is, as Chomsky observed, really freaky how hard they’ve been hitting us with this line every time the invasion of Ukraine is mentioned. It seems like every time it comes up they’re obligated to say it, like how Michael Jackson had a quota for how often MTV hosts were obligated to refer to him as “The King of Pop Michael Jackson” when his name was mentioned.In the mass media you’re not allowed to talk about the known US/NATO/Ukraine actions which experts have been warning for many years would lead us to where we’re at. You’re only allowed to say Putin attacked Ukraine completely unprovoked, in a vacuum, solely because he is evil and hates freedom. And you have to do it while saying the word “unprovoked” at every opportunity.NATO chief admits that NATO allies have been training and arming Ukraine since 2014.Something to remember whenever Western media refers to an “unprovoked” invasion. pic.twitter.com/SGHF46yayz— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) August 29, 2022Empire apologists get upset when you talk about the fact that this war was provoked because a large amount of empire apologia in 2022 is built around pretending that provocation just isn’t a thing. By some trick of Orwellian doublethink, this concept we’ve all lived our entire lives knowing about and understanding is now suddenly a freakish and ridiculous invention of the Kremlin.We’re all guilty of doing the things we knowingly choose to do. If I choose to provoke someone into doing something bad, then they’re guilty of choosing to do the bad thing, but I am also guilty of provoking them. I’m not saying anything new here; this is the plot behind any movie or show with a sneaky or manipulative villain, and it’s been a part of our storytelling since ancient times. Nobody has ever walked out of Shakespeare’s Othello thinking that maybe Iago was just an innocent bystander who was trying to help out his friends.Most of us learn that provocation is real as children with siblings, kicking the other under the table or whatever to provoke a loud outburst, and we’ve understood it ever since. But in 2022 everyone’s pretending that this extremely basic, kindergarten-level concept is some kind of bizarre, alien gibberish. It’s intensely stupid, and it needs to stop.Empire apologists will also argue that saying Russia was provoked into invading by the US empire is like saying a rape victim provoked her rapist by wearing a tight skirt, or a battered wife provoked her abuser by disobeying him. And as a survivor of multiple rapes and an abusive relationship I must say I find it extremely offensive when people compare blaming the most powerful empire that has ever existed for its well-documented aggressions to blaming victims of rape and domestic violence. The poor widdle globe-spanning empire is not comparable to a rape victim, and if you find yourself thinking that it is it’s time to re-think your entire worldview.It’s not okay to be a grown adult in September of 2022 and still say the invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked. You’ve got a brain between your ears and an entire internet of information at your fingertips. Use them.”The US military budget was already more than three times more than the next-largest spender (China), more than the next 12 countries combined. Just randomly toss another $45 billion onto the pile. The excuses: inflation and Ukraine. What about the living standard of Americans?” (-Glenn Greenwald)Immobility Plan 2035 – Activist Post Immobility Plan 2035 – Activist PostOp-Ed by Gary M. Galles. In 2015, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced his Vision Zero plan to eliminate the more than 200 annual non-driver traffic fatalities by 2025. In concert, the City Council adopted Mobility Plan 2035, a 20-year initiative to remove automobile lanes and make more room for bus and bike lanes to upgrade pedestrian and cyclist safety.www.activistpost.comhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpASSqz1hGc Ukrainegate impeachment saga worsens US-Russia Cold WarPushback with Aaron Maté As the House opens impeachment hearings for President Trump, Professor Stephen F. Cohen warns that the US military assistance at the heart of Ukrainegate escalates the US-Russia Cold War. Guest: Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton University, contributing editor …www.youtube.com“Liberalism is not leftism. Liberalism is reformism. And capitalism and imperialism cannot be reformed.” (-Danny Haiphong on the red carpet diversity muppets who pretend to care about healthcare, eviction moratorium, universal housing, student debt forgiveness, demilitarization of police during election, then vote for more war and giveaways for billionaires when Pelosi orders them to) Autocracy, American-Style – Consortium News Autocracy, American-Style – Consortium NewsAs a deterrent threat and control it fails for two reasons. For one thing, the frivolous approach taken by many in Congress in recent years has tarnished its dignity and seriousness.consortiumnews.com“This monstrosity destroyed Libya”. (-Danny Haiphong on Hillary Clinton) “Haiti and Honduras too.” (-Ahimsa Mediation)”The U.S is not only waging a war on other nations via sanctions & interventions, it’s also waging an economic war on its own people. The sooner U.S Americans realize their enemy isn’t people in other nations but the fascists in power, the sooner they can begin to stop the empire.” (-Fiorella Isabel) Maximillian Alvarez on Twitter: “Keeping the #LaborDay solidarity going, ICYMI on @WorkingPod I spoke with Amazon worker & union organizer @AmazonUnionofKY. Matt was fired in suspected retaliation for his organizing. Help spread the word & donate to his survival fund if you can ❤️ ✊🏾” / Twitter Maximillian Alvarez on Twitter“Keeping the #LaborDay solidarity going, ICYMI on @WorkingPod I spoke with Amazon worker & union organizer @AmazonUnionofKY. Matt was fired in suspected retaliation for his organizing. Help spread the word & donate to his survival fund if you can ❤️ ✊🏾”twitter.com “YouTube has censored@Action4Assange’s latest panel raising awareness about the plight of political prisoner Julian Assange. Viewed must sign in then pass through two baseless warnings about “inappropriate” content. https://youtu.be/acR0t6mjwAk” (-Max Blumenthal) “Don’t let them fool you. The so-called richest nation in the world could fund healthcare and housing for all, but it doesn’t want to because then it couldn’t exploit poor and working class people.” (-Ryan Knight) “If Julian Assange is silenced, others will also be gagged either directly or by the fear of persecution and prosecution.”—@StefSimanowitz@amnesty#FreeAssangeNOW#DropTheCharges “Biden is literally to the right of Henry Kissinger and people are trying to say he is ‘the most progressive president in history’ lmao.” (-Benjamin Carollo) Roger Waters begs Olena Zelenska to “stop the slaughter” (faroutmagazine.co.uk) Roger Waters begs Olena Zelenska to “stop the slaughter” in new open letterfaroutmagazine.co.uk“Assange had a stroke in the courtroom and no court official even noticed. That tells you all you need to know: A victim of torture – suffering the health consequences of torture – should not be extradited or even tried. He should be freed.” (-Dr. Jill Stein) https://nclalegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Joint-Statement-on-Discovery-Disputes-Combined.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m97-oPi5_rI SND Live w/Whitney WebbPowered by Restream https://restream.io/ Buckle up for another high test, wide ranging interview with the one and only Whitney Webb! We open the show by discussing two of Whitney’s latest articles at Unlimited Hangout- while being interrupted by a potential intelligence contractor with a leafblower. Whitney Webb: https://unlimitedhangout.com/www.youtube.comFREE THE PRESS!!!WikiLeaks@wikileaksNelson Mandela:”No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails” Alleged #Vault7 source Joshua Schulte (whose retrial began on Tuesday), held in ‘barbaric conditions in US prison’, in an inhumane existence, “worse than death”https://pix11.com/news/national-news/ex-cia-engineer-in-wikileaks-case-says-hes-incarcerated-like-an-animal/Ex-CIA engineer in WikiLeaks case says he’s incarcerated like an animal – PIX11NEW YORK — A former CIA software engineer charged with leaking government secrets to WikiLeaks says it’s cruel and unusual punishment that he’s awaiting trial in solitary confinement, housed …pix11.comIn Vault 7 Leak Trial Schulte Crosses FBI Agent On How Secret CIA Site Has Visitors Center, Pompeo (substack.com) In Vault 7 Leak Trial Schulte Crosses FBI Agent On How Secret CIA Site Has Visitors Center, PompeoBy Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Thread Song BBC – Decrypt – LightRead – Honduras – Pod Schulte Trial Tale on Patreon SDNY COURTHOUSE, June 15 – When jury selection was completed for the retrial of accused CIA Vault 7 leaker Joshua Schulte, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Jesse M. Furman told the jurors, Do not read or say anything about the case.matthewrussellleeicp.substack.comPriti Patel, hear this loud and clear: Julian Assange must not be handed over to the US | Duncan Campbell | The Guardian Priti Patel, hear this loud and clear: Julian Assange must not be handed over to the US | Duncan Campbell – The GuardianA Julian Assange supporter outside Westminster magistrates’ court where an extradition order was made on 20 April. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstockwww.theguardian.comJOHN KIRIAKOU: A Whistleblower’s Agony – scheerpost.com JOHN KIRIAKOU: A Whistleblower’s Agony – scheerpost.com(Vectorportal, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons) By John Kiriakou / Consortium News. A C.I.A. whistleblower languishes awaiting trial in a federal prison under inhumane conditions and almost nobody is paying attention.. Joshua Schulte is a former C.I.A. hacker, one of those computer geniuses whose job it is to work his way into the computer systems of our country’s enemies in support of some of …scheerpost.com“Every person in the United States should be able to claim Raytheon as a dependent on their taxes.” (-Drop The MIC)”The big winners of the Biden Presidency have been Pfizer, Moderna, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. If you think Biden is doing a good job you shouldn’t be mocking Trumpers” (-Black In The Empire)”At a Council on Foreign Relations forum about “fake news,” former Editor at Time Magazine Richard Stengel directly states that he supports the use of propaganda on American citizens – then shuts the session down when challenged about how propaganda is used against the third world…Ben Decker also labels the alleged leak of documents last year showing offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands associated with Emmanuel Macron as fake news, despite the fact that the leak’s authenticity has never been definitively confirmed or debunked.” (-William Craddick) “Biden is spending money, but he is not spending money on the people. He is spending on the military and proxy wars in order to expand U.S. imperialism and enrich U.S. oligarchs at our expense.” (-Ryan Knight)”That Biden is credibly called a socialist by electorally viable congressional candidates who clearly have no idea what socialism actually is, to me indicates that our Overton window is now centered somewhere between Genghis Khan and Mussolini.” (-mousdrvr on Twitter) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eB3kQCETjU ‘Quiet Quitting’ Is Rocking Corporate AmericaThe corporate media have taken up a new narrative in their constant battle to protect the business world from the demands of workers. Quiet quitting is the act of doing exactly what you’ve been hired to do at work and no more. The rich hate it and that’s why the talking heads in the media are working overtime to let the public know that it …www.youtube.comYou might even find that expanding consciousness in one way helps your ability to expand it in other ways. You might find for example that expanding your awareness of how your own mind operates gives you more awareness of how other people’s minds operate, and how they can be manipulated by powerful people using propaganda. You may also find for example that expanding your awareness of the plight of people less socioeconomically and geopolitically advantaged than yourself expands your own personal awareness of the various socioeconomic and geopolitical dynamics which have given rise to the way your life is right now. You may also find for example that expanding your consciousness of your own inner processes gives you a serenity which makes it easier to look squarely at the horrors you encounter when expanding your awareness of what’s going on in the world, and gives you the humility to see that you are not fully separate from those horrors.The game of humanity will keep improving as long as our consciousness keeps expanding. I’d go so far as saying that’s the only thing that can cause things to get better, and that failing to do it guarantees things will get worse.Like a video game, I believe we humans are free to either win this game or lose it. We will either keep expanding our awareness of what’s really going on in this weird universe our mothers birthed us into, or we will wipe ourselves out via nuclear war or ecocide.Either way, if you choose to accept what’s being said here, we do each have the power to make things better by exactly one unit of human effort. We can help spread awareness of what’s going on in the world by fighting the lies we’ve been told by the powerful and drawing attention to things the powerful would rather keep hidden. We can help spread awareness of the human condition with art and with empathy. We can expand our own consciousness by getting very curious about how we operate and what makes us tick, and being very real with ourselves about what we find in that exploration.Whatever you choose to believe about all this, it’s your adventure. I wish you the best in your travels.(-Cait Johnstone) I think we are constantly faced with the same decision. The decision to be blindly obedient to authority versus the decision to try and change things by fighting the powers that be is always, throughout history, the only decision.Abbie Hoffman Chris Hedges: Let’s Stop Pretending America Is a Functioning Democracy (mintpressnews.com) Chris Hedges: Let’s Stop Pretending America Is a Functioning DemocracyP RINCETON, NEW JERSEY () — There is a fatal disconnect between a political system that promises democratic equality and freedom while carrying out socioeconomic injustices that result in …www.mintpressnews.com ” Here’s how the US government built a fake Ukrainian “resistance” funded thru the Nat’l Endowment for Democracy, Solidarity Ctr & other CIA-linked orgs, & here’s why DSA members are promoting this “resistance” to justify imperialist war vs Russia.” (-Eric London) The Democratic Socialists of America and the invention of the pro-imperialist “Ukrainian resistance” – World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org)The Democratic Socialists of America and the invention of the pro-imperialist “Ukrainian resistance” – World Socialist Web SiteAshley Smith (Twitter) The claim that Ukraine is a “colony” of Russian “imperialism” is an intentional historical slight-of-hand. It bypasses the Russian Revolution of 1917, which …www.wsws.org“Think about what scummy liars these Democrats are. They write books boasting about how they bullied Cuba not to let Snowden pass through, thus trapping him in Russia. Then they use his presence in Russia to imply he’s a spy: when they *know* he’s there because they forced that.” (-Glenn Greenwald) “A virulent manipulator’s entire social existence revolves around influencing the narratives people have about what’s going on in their circle in a way that benefits the manipulator.” (-Caitlin Johnstone) “The censorship against me continues. It appears@Spotify has not only deleted my podcast “Moment of Clarity,” they have now deleted my artist profile and my 2 comedy albums from years ago. I was given no warning or reason for this. I also learned recently that a writer for a mainstream outlet personally tried to include positive mentions of me & my work in multiple articles & had them yanked out by her editor. Even just a positive sentence about me is forbidden in mainstream outlets. Simply for being anti-war and anti-imperialist, I am the most-censored comedian in America. You can keep supporting my work by becoming a member at LeeCamp dot net.” (-Lee Camp)
“Joe Biden, don’t come to Los Angeles like you’ve been some vanguard for human rights!”@CornelWest goes off on the crimes of the U.S. empire, and calls for democracy from the bottom-up rather than neoliberal identity politics. “Biden did not send $54 billion in military aid to help Ukraine. He sent it to fight a proxy war with Russia “down to the last Ukrainian.” (-Danny Haiphong)”The two established wings of the oligarchy, the old Republican Party represented by politicians such as Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the committee, and the Bush family, are now united with the Democratic Party elite into one ruling political entity. The ruling parties were already in lock step for decades on the major issues, including: war, trade deals, austerity, the militarization of police, prisons, government surveillance and assaults on civil liberties. They worked in tandem to pervert and destroy democratic institutions on behalf of the rich and corporations. They desperately work together now to stave off the revolt by enraged and betrayed white working men and women… (-Chris Hedges)
Usually when you ask somebody in college why they are there, they’ll tell you it’s to get an education. The truth of it is, they are there to get the degree so that they can get ahead in the rat race. Too many college radicals are two-timing punks. The only reason you should be in college is to destroy it.Abbie Hoffman “The US-centralized empire is a giant macrocosm of this entire dynamic. It pours vast amounts of energy into narrative control in the form of propaganda, censorship, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, and the war on journalism. It weaves nonstop narratives about how great it is and how horrible its enemies are. And it fears being seen more than anything in the world.The vast globe-spanning power structure that is loosely centralized around the United States is a powerful military force and a powerful economic force, but its most potent weapon by far is its ability to control the narrative about what’s happening in the world. The use of oligarchic media, Silicon Valley and Hollywood to manipulate public thought and thereby control the way people think, act and vote at mass scale all around the world is unlike anything ever seen in any empire in history.Propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening. Censorship only works if it doesn’t draw attention to the information being censored. The US empire’s nonstop campaign to control the world’s dominant narratives only works if it isn’t in the spotlight of public scrutiny. This is why those who draw attention to these things are smeared, demonized, censored, marginalized, imprisoned and worse by the managers of empire.Manipulators hate to be seen, but if you ever find yourself in a relationship with one, your ability to escape depends upon your seeing them. This extreme clash of interests often brings up white hot rage in the manipulator which can be frightening and dangerous.And I think humanity is entering that stage of the relationship with the US empire. A manipulator who’s just beginning to be seen by a few more pairs of eyes than it would like, causing flickerings of panic to begin to surface. Because once those eyes see what’s hidden underneath the veil of narrative manipulation, they don’t often look away. If anything, they tend to point and draw more attention to it.It’s a scary time to be alive. But it’s also fascinating. Unlike anything that has ever happened on this planet before.I look forward to finding out if we escape.” (-Cait Johnstone)You are talking to a leftist. I believe in the redistribution of wealth and power in the world. I believe in universal hospital care for everyone. I believe that we should not have a single homeless person in the richest country in the world. And I believe that we should not have a C.I.A. that goes around overwhelming governments and assassinating political leaders, working for tight oligarchies around the world to protect the tight oligarchy here at home.Abbie Hoffman The inevitable end to global white world supremacy is driving some in the West mad. It is not enough that the people of Ukraine are being sacrificed, the U.S. is making dangerous moves with China & Taiwan. (-Ajamu Baraka)Over centuries of dynasties, upheavals and revolutions, powerful people have learned that the best way to dominate a population is to manipulate them into serving your interests while giving them the illusion of freedom and control. The invention of mass media has facilitated this new form of tyranny, as has the emergence of psychology as a field of study. These two factors have combined together to give rise to the steadily advancing science of modern propaganda.This is why the world is as it is: because the people have been psychologically manipulated at mass scale away from using the power of their numbers to create systems that benefit them instead of a few powerful sociopaths.This is the source of all our major problems. Understanding it, and finding ways to overcome it, is the solution. The only reason they’ve been able to control us in this way is because they understand all the many ways our minds can be manipulated better than we do.(-Cait Johnstone)Call ’em what you want-the deep state or powers that be or one percent or oligarchy or permanent ruling class, but you gotta start admitting the shadow government and it’s media are going to crazy lengths to control our communications whether that’s through outlawing assembly, censoring dissident journalists, spying on our electronic conversations and phonecalls, deplatforming and demonestizing us for straying off their preferred narrative, or trotting Disposition Matrix Millionaire Obama out to talk pretty about need to “detoxify” the internet discourse, which is coded newspeak for clampdowns on anybody opposed to endless war and panopticon corporate wiretaps. People who go to college never heard of Cointelpro nd if they have, they can not seem to remotely contemplate that it still exists, they think the SQUAD is gonna save ’em with pro noun preferences, happy slogans, and empty justice tweets. Russiagate serves as all purpose ruling class cover story now. Same way they blamed everything on boogeymen Hussian/Gaddafi/Bin Ladin/Assad/ISIS under Bush/Cheney/Obama. Just tell ’em a boogeyman is coming for their freedom fries.The FBI knew RussiaGate was a lie — but hid that truth (nypost.com) The FBI knew RussiaGate was a lie — but hid that truthThe FBI knew the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was utter bunk even as it suggested otherwise to Congress, the courts and the public early in 2017. Evidence revealed by special counsel John …nypost.comBats Should Not Be Blamed for COVID, Say Israeli Researchers + More • Children’s Health Defense (childrenshealthdefense.org)Bats Should Not Be Blamed for COVID, Say Israeli Researchers + MoreThe Defender’s COVID NewsWatch provides a roundup of the latest headlines related to the SARS CoV-2 virus, including its origins and COVID vaccines.childrenshealthdefense.orgIf you start researching the Davos billionaires, Bilderberg, World Economic Forum and the Klaus Scwab-Kissinger-Bill Gates transhumanist agenda being openly promoted by John Kerry, Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau and many others, of course it is horrifying that the wealthiest one percent of the one percent plan on enslaving humanity with microchips and cashless society control grid, surveillance-tech capitalism authoritarian one world government shit, and that it’s not just some whackjob Alex Jones hysteria being used to sell rightwing militia survivalist swag and vitamins anymore, but I’ll tell ya, between you and me, just us kids here, all my ex associates ALREADY seem like unfeeling, programmed droid, dystopian, transhuman cyborgs. They just obey the fucking tv, they never think for themselves, or read, and slavishly imitate whatever they watch on TV. Whatever “The Latest Thang” is. Netflix, which Obama and Chelle are involved with, is all some creepy, sick secret society programming-you can confirm that just clicking through their “programs”. I don’t watch tv or believe very much of what is firehosed at us via the mockingbird monopoly media. I think the emperors are having fun at your expense-telling you to go buy duct tape and shit. For freedom. Everytime I turn on the computer or flip through the tv hypnoscreen, I see the propagandists are still eager beaver milking the whole hog fuck out of that bullshit Thank a KKKOP capital hill psy-op story designed to manufacture populist consent for outlawing protests. Man oh man, how can people pat themselves on the back all day for their critical thinking skills supposedly cultivated at the prestigious, prohibitively expensive. posh sports university in the Pacific Northwest, and then, immediately fall for this dummy Qshaman HYSTERIA? All you hear on Pig Media nowadays, is “Putin!!!” is somehow, other side of the world responsible, not only for people disliking Hillary Clinton, but also, now for Murkkkans corporations price gouging inflation ripoffs and greedhead jackedup rents, or that Trump’s maga protest was an “insurrection” so Murkkkans should just give up their rights to protest and stand in line at Best Buy for the next round of programming updates and gadgets and obey the Davos techlords for science. All your AOC worshipping shitlib friends even love openly evil Lyn Cheney now cause she said “Orange Man Bad” and “insurrection” one million times. I thought the George Floyd protests where the undercover proud boys burned down police stations looked more like proper insurrections than when some love a man in uniform hillbillies broke a window and climbed a wall, painted their chest and messed up Pelosi’s desk, but I believe in free speech. These illuminati puppets they got infiltrating all the governments worldwide were trained at the Kissinger/Schwab Fascist School but people with Ukraine flags on their falsebook profiles never even heard of any of that. Would not believe you even if you tried to tell ’em. They got some headline today about how useless pants suit, Kopmala is gonna be “TACKLING ONLINE ABUSE”. Of course as Bill Gates and his World Economic Forum secret society friends keep changing definitions of words in the dictionary to promote their Reset plan, the meaning of abuse will be efficiently altered. “ABUSE” is when no soul bureaucrats like Kopmala keep forced-labor slaving, non violent drug offenders in for profit prisons as long as possible, to increase shareholder value. “ABUSE” is when you incarcerate black parents for truant teenagers skipping schools that are fuckedup target ranges nowadays anyways. “ABUSE” is when you send mercenaries to kidnap a publisher from a foreign embassy and lock him up in a torture gulag for years, causing him to have a stroke, for embarrassing the criminal enterprise of murderous imperialism. These shitlibs gonna change the meaning of the word “ABUSE” so it becomes anybody speaking truth about power. This is the kind of bullshit you have to resist. NOT some college asshole disapproving of a comedian. That vote blue no matter who bullshit mighta worked out for some people who were already rich and just worried about poor people disobeying some authority figure, but the majority of us are falling deeper and deper into dangerous poverty while the middle class people keep watching tv. As Ryan knight said, “Biden’s approval rating keeps falling because the people aren’t buying his lies anymore about how “great the economy” is when they can’t afford housing, healthcare, and groceries.” Matzo Ball Dan adds, “The embarrassing attempt at spinning this economic catastrophe by calling it ‘Putin’s price hike’ isn’t convincing anyone.” THESE are the kinda discussions Obama and Kopmala’s billionaire bosses have ordered them to help eradicate.Activism Derailed, Drugs As Weapons Against Us, With John Potash (rumble.com) Punishing patients in pain won’t reduce opioid deaths – Chicago Sun-Times (suntimes.com) Punishing patients in pain won’t reduce opioid deathsThe Trump administration wants to cut opioid prescriptions by another third in the next three years. What could go wrong? We already know.chicago.suntimes.comCanada’s now going fully BIO-FASCIST right before our eyes (substack.com) Canada’s now going fully BIO-FASCIST right before our eyesThey’re vaccinating for monkeypox, phasing out free speech online, starving wayward doctors, and planning to impound the people’s guns (while making opiates, cocaine and MDMA readily available)markcrispinmiller.substack.comCanadians DON’T have an “absolute right to own private property,” says Fidelito’s Justice Minister (substack.com) Canadians DON’T have an “absolute right to own private property,” says Fidelito’s Justice MinisterJustin “Trudeau” may worship Queen Elizabeth, but his heart belongs to Daddymarkcrispinmiller.substack.comajamu baraka – Twitter Search / Twitter
Ya know I reached out to some people who’d known my teenage best pal, HIS ALSO PURPLE BADNESS, COWBOY BOBBY CLOYD in more recent years cause he was just one of the real right-on, supportive, lovely ole homies I never, never expected to leave the planet before I did, no one seems to have any demos by his old bands SHINE or THE HEALERS which is a real drag, but I met one of his local midwestern colleagues online and liked his band and thought I’d share it with you. Dandy – YouTube
The illegal and immoral US blockade of Cuba prevents food, medicine and essential goods from reaching the Cuban people. Canada should join Mexico and other states in calling for an end to this aggressive, unjustified violation of international law.
Police have been cosplaying for years as the “thin line between safety and complete anarchy” when we have countless studies that show the safest communities are the ones with the most resources and not police.
“Yeah I’m just starting to play again the had to move my ulnar nerve(funny bone) to the side of my arm and carpel tunnel procedure to unlock my right hand it has helped I can hold a pick again and my Rhythm generator is returning. I’ve been playing a 5string guitar tuned to Keith G and am just to the point where I don’t sound like a stones song so when I get another amp I’ll send you nasty riffage 2.0 lol the last 2 years have been brutal I had to sell my yellow guitar and amp truck and everything else of value you know back to zero…again.” (-Nasty Bastard of The Bastards)
“It’s shocking that a U.S. president would involve the FBI and Homeland Security in efforts to quash dissent. Has no one in the White House read Thomas Paine or Orwell or Huxley or Heinlein or Arthur Koestler or Hannah Arendt or Solzhenitsyn? What do they think the lessons were that we were supposed to have learned from Watergate? From McCarthyism? From Vietnam?”
I used to communicate with Susan Sarandon on Fascist Book-she quit and I got froze out. She remains an inspiration. Brothers and Sisters and Friends Of The Revolution, Stay Wild! Stay Free!
“Shitlibs once again melting down because Noam Chomsky is 100% right about Ukraine war propaganda and the hypocrisy of the west” (-Revolutionary Blackout Network)
“…the FBI once again interfered in a presidential election by bolstering the fabricated notion that Hunter Biden’s laptop was possibly ‘Russian disinformation,’ thereby justifying unprecedented censorship of reporting about it.” (-Aaron Mate’)https://mate.substack.com/p/in-fbi-vs-tr
CORPORATE DEEPSTATE FUCKERS FUCKIN WITH THE ALGORITHIMS
I guess I been Writing too much since getting locked outta Falsebook by Zuck and his Langley spook cronies, but I suppose I just feel a bit powerless about all the bad corruption and wars and shit I see goin’ down and the most I can probably do is gently shake summa my former associates from their big pharama numb hypnoslumbers, even that much is a long shot, but as Lennon sang, “we’re all doin’ what we can…” My old lady might help me put one of those Substack things together but for now, I just wanna say thanks to all our friends and fellow glamrarchists for giving me a mic and a soapbox, here. I feel like it’s just us damaged dropout malcontents and aging androgynes against the fatcat fascists and evil billionaires and all their baffled tv watching slaves.
Hey man I can’t believe I’m sayin’ this, but much like Ajamu Baraka, the social media monopolists have not only censored, Facebook jailed, and finally, locked me outta their platform for being Anti-war, but where I used to get hundreds of “likes” on every fuckin’ post, gradually, over the past couple years, it looks like I only get one or two likes or reposts. I get that the fix is in, but do me a solid, as the kids say, and if you agree with anything I got to say here, “like” and repost and subscribe just in case any of it might work, so my webzine homies can know you value my rebellious ravings on some level. Thank You Friends.
TROUBLE BOYS
I guess it was my sixteenth birthday, when my arty downtown high school girlfriend brought these two hardcore/goth mohawked punks over to meet me. Some asshole local stoner heavy metal guys had crashed my no alcohol attic party and stomped loudly down the step dad’s stairs kicking or knocking heirloom Christmas decorations down the steps and disappearing an old bass amp on their way out, so my stepdad threw me out again, and I was happy to be free of him. I started hanging out with the mohawked guys who had a crappy goth band. I say crappy, cause that’s how I felt about it back then, but now, I see how creative and innovative they were with such limited technology. They were doing like a Ministry/Skinny Puppy thing on a no budget, D.I.Y. level and we would convene nightly in the older guitarist’s nasty rodent infested, loudly clanging furnace basement studio apartment nightly and he’d play us old seventies imported punk vinyl and we’d drink beer. I was already on my second make believe bullshit garage band with the metalhead guitar players and we could never find drummers where we lived cause we were not into Bon Jovi or even Led Zeppelin. I got along with a pothead drummer who went to the Catholic school and we used to walk home together, but he was friends with some real sadistic heavy metal goons, and burnt somebody’s house down and got away with it, and was afraid to be seen with me by the metalheads, so I never really trusted the kid, and looking back, I’m glad I chose to stay away from him. The older mohawk was really fascinated with Charles Manson so all his artwork always had like a visual reference to say, Barker Ranch, or something. I had grown up loving the Doors so I had always felt a calling to the desert, and now I live in the ghost town South West, I get to see stuff like a skunk just chilling with my outdoor feral cat friends on the side of our disintegrating trailer this morning. Some pimp named Red was said to have burnt down the guitarist’s low income housing apartment, but I had become good friends with the mohawk kids. One went to the downtown high school with me and my arty girlfriend but was given a wider berth for dresscode violations than me because he was honor roll and his mom sold real estate. He grew up and got into real estate. I’m still violating the dress codes.
Being an empty pocketed pauper with many responsibilities, it is seldom that I am able to indulge in some selfish purchase like a book or hat or something, but I’m aware of those Alvin Gibbs books-I know they’re out there, and the “Trouble Boys” book about The Replacements, and yeah, of course, I am kindof coveting those tomes. I often say that as a crazy kid, it was Dramarama and The Replacements who gave false hope to me and my gang of underage beer drinking record store clerks and alcoholic janitors that if we composed a diverse oeuvre of songs we might also be discovered and recorded and able to make a living performing shows, making record albums, and selling black skull t shirts from the back of our scuzzy black van-that was the popular mythology, anyway, pre Nirvana. There was a whole network of basement show and bandhouse venues, college radio stations, and medium sized magazines about underground music like CMJ and Alternative Press and Flipside and Maximum Rocknroll. Soul Asylum and the Goo Goo Dolls were two other examples of Replacements inspired garage rockers who broke into the mainstream. I loved the whole Replacements story because it was so easy for us to identify with all those characters-they were so much like my lot. I had an older guitar player who was living like a crusty punk, not bathing very often, kinda being a little antisicial and self destructive, who drank alot, but I knew he had real potential and artistic ability that bled out when he played guitar. I remember the first time hearing he had learned the Brian James solo from “I Never Believed” rather than just letting our other kid, the flash “Young Wayne Kramer” learn the part.
When half my band fled the Midwest and got convenience store jobs on the East coast, we met a kid named Jake who was a writer. In the words of the Great And Terrible Heavy Metal Impresario, Sleazegrinder, “he’s an even better writer than US!” Jake never officially joined the band but my lead guitar hero taught him how to play bass and he joined a more popular local band, but contributed many lengthy screeds to my subversive fanzines back in the day, before joining the nine to five world in later years. He shared my love of The Clash, The Replacements, and Hunter S. Thompson, we’d stay up all night long talking about resistance subcultures and him and his gutter punk girlfriend Theis would sing background vocals for me and my dueling guitarists in their big Park Drive bachelor pad. Summa the songs we wrote back then have been covered by other people. Even after those guys were on their way into proper adulthood, me and the crazy rhythm guitar player were still stubbornly trying to get discovered with our heartfelt garage punk Songs About Drinking! I kept trying to encourage the lost lads back into our broken dream, but they were already gone for good. The Replacements pissed all the Adult World people off at “Saturday Night Live” and on some Tom Petty tour. They drank. So many of their songs spoke so deeply to my generation, ya know even the squares who followed the prescribed path to cubicles and cable and purchasing Glade Air Fresheners and Dyson vacuum cleaners from Target on Sunday loved shit like “Unsatisfied” and “Answering Machine”. I’ve seen Joan Jett bring everybody at the county fair together-from the pink haired LGBT kids to the old bikers singing, “Androgynous”, which everybody now thinks she wrote. Of course I relate to Bob Stinson, many of my closest friends were tortured clowns and soulful guitarslingers. I was not as wild about the stuff they did without Bob Stinson, though all the tunes Paul wrote about band breakups and shit like say, “When It Began” and “Happy Town” and “Rocknroll Ghost” all got tattooed on my heart n soul.
I could always identify with The Replacements, until Paul started phoning in stuff like a professional pandering power balladeer. I liked all his early insecure romantic shit better than his overconfident actress wooing stardom shit. Me and a guy named Brett Milano, I think he was some bigfish Boston Rock critic, were both actually pogo jumping for joy in the front row, when we saw Westerberg with Dave Minehan from the Neighborhoods covering “Daydream Believer” at a tightly packed sweaty show in Central Square. By the time all those Professional Replacements Imitators came along-you know, like half the bands in “Big Takeover” magazine and EVERY band in “No Depression”, I was becoming increasingly cynical about the value of showbiz and celebrity and even the songwriting itself cause it was all becoming so rat race-y. People I grew up with just wanted to become “popular” and ride that fucking awful, loathsome, fuckedup alternative hoax grunge train no matter where it went-they’d join generic bands with dudes who had nothing to say. Whoever had access to pay to play “popularity”, post Nirvana, all the bands became so contrived and formulaic and insincere and eventually, every band was consolidated into just the fucking Foo Fighters, all that was left of rocknroll on the airwaves was Foo Fighters-the ultimate triumph of goober mediocrity. An emo kid band came out and called themselves Plain White T Shirts. They did a really overtly precious tribute to Westerberg and company, not only were all the middle class college people in the ya’allternative public radio world imitating Westerberg like those Wilco and Uncle Tupelo dudes, but now all these horrible fucking suburbanite emo kids were, too. I made friends with a crazy alcoholic bartender we’ll call A2-he’s dead now, but he used to wear this leather cowboy hat I gave him that made him look like a real pirate, and he had a dart team called the Whiskey Dicks, was something of a pool shark-he was the biggest Replacements fan I ever met, he’d always give me quarters for the jukebox and want me to play “Here Comes A Regular” at the little old man, dirty, dark divebar where we were both artists in residence for a couple of years, in our mid to late twenties. Like 25-27. I sure have missed that guy and most of our common friends who have also long since passed. I say my youth ended in ’95 when my high school friend overdosed like two weeks before he was set to graduate from a prestigious college way out in Seattle, but the next two years after that, I spent it with about seven or eight hard drinking, hard living, extremely soulful, kind, misunderstood, and extremely talented people at a disreputable hoodlum bar in the Midwest, all of us were kindof haunted and traumatized, embittered and broken hearted but making each other laugh through the tears and even dance in the streets. One by one, they all disappeared from this world but I still write songs about all of them that nobody ever hears. My wife told me the one I wrote a couple weeks ago was not as good as the stuff I used to write about ’em. I guess I never got over it. Any of it. And yeah I used to be better than I am now. Don’t you know who I think I used to be?
WHAT KINDOF EVIL CORPORATE OVERLORDS WOULD INTENTIONALLY ASSASSINATE THE REBEL SPIRIT OF REAL ROCKNROLL
Sorry Slaves, dude in the tall hat and the dress and rhinestone slippers who never holds any of his big cult child abusers accountable and lives in a city of gold is not more important than any truth teller with soul. One thing I always loved about Sinead is how she always insisted we can all sing undermining the whole Simon Cowell proper pitch Olympics. I kinda objected when she eviscerated Aerosmith for goin ‘down in the elevator but free passed Eazy E and Ice Cube, but now I am old, I see where she was coming from. Sinead got me into Public Enemy actually. Kristofferson was one of my favorite lyricists so when he came out onstage to defend her when Dylan failed to, made me like him even more. In the years since they killed Tupac, ya know all we’ve had are these dumb model robots like “Marky” Mark Wahlberg and Katy Perry and Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber and Harry Styles and Miley Cyrus who they pummel into superfame with their bullshit mockingbird media first, and then pay Rolling Stone and Spin wankers to artistically legitimize later. I think they all suck so bad. Man I miss real artists with soul power like Tupac and Sinead an awful lot. I said it before, Fuck Dr. Phil and all assholes like him.
Man, I miss my old teacher-mentor-filmmaker-girlfriend, Lisa, sometimes. Don’t even know if she is alive or dead, she took me in off the street and protected me and I’m still sorry about the shit I did wrong under her watch. The Lower East Side was still a magical world back then.
HIPSTERS SUCK!
We had such a good staff at Tower Records-the mgt. were even decent. I don’t think I could befriend loss prevention people nowadays, but back then, Sam, Mike, Dave and Tim were all goodfella close pals of mine. Old dude Jim M. was a manager, Thom was the indie/import guy. Michael Dow, Noah from New Orleans, Chris who did his big college paper on the NY Dolls. Danielle who used to do my reg shift so I could sneak out the side door to Charlie’s Cheeseburgers. Mark O’Connor, Barrie and Dermot from Ireland. A chick named Erica who bleached my hair Warhol white in my wannabe Jeffrey Lee Pierce phase and sang the fuck outta Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” with a townie band uptown.
A real cool teacher from Missouri got me into Dramarama who were the best band besides The Replacements in the era we grew up in. My bands were way more glam than Replacements or Dramarama, like we were equally as in to Hanoi Rocks and Generation X as we were these song oriented bands, we wanted to put on a big blinding backlit Rock Show as well as write so many sad slow songs about drinking in small towns, but yeah it was hard to find an audience because we were too sincere and sentimental for the Guns N Roses mobs and too silvery trousered and pink winklepickered for the college peeps. The lady who booked the Middle East at the time, I don’t think she ever even listened to out tape because we had long black hair she wrote us off as headbangers. I met John Easdale at the Coconut Teaszer when his side project The Bentback Tulips were playing. He was so, so cool. I loved all his lyrics and the highest compliment I ever got from somebody besides Bebe Buell or Phoebe Legere was the underground music journalist who compared one of my shortlived dead end crash and burn bands to Dramarama. When Clem Burke was in the band they probably became the best band in the world and I am glad they are still around.
SCUM LIVES ON
When Billionaires And The Government Work Together To Control InformationFacebook restricted visibility of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in the lead-up to the 2020 election after receiving counsel from the FBI, according to Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.“So we took a different path than Twitter,” Zuckerberg said during a Thursday appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. “Basically the background here is the FBI, I think basically came to us — some folks on our team and was like, ‘Hey, um, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert. There was the — we thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump of — that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.’”Zuckerberg said a decision was made to restrict that information on Facebook’s multibillion-user platform. He said that unlike Twitter, which banned the sharing of the article entirely, Facebook opted for the somewhat subtler option of censorship by algorithm.”The distribution on Facebook was decreased,” he said, adding when pressed by Rogan that the decreased visibility of the article happened to a “meaningful” extent.As we’ve discussed previously, censorship by algorithm is becoming the preferred censorship method on large Silicon Valley platforms because it can be done to far more people with far less objection than outright de-platforming and bans.BREAKING: Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that Facebook algorithmically censored the Hunter Biden laptop story for 7 days based on a general request from the FBI to restrict election misinformation. pic.twitter.com/llTA7IqGa1— Minds (@minds) August 25, 2022In addition to being censored across social media platforms, the Hunter Biden laptop story was first ignored and dismissed by the mainstream news media, then spun as a Russian disinfo operation. Those media outlets eventually came around to admitting that the leaked emails were probably authentic, and Hunter Biden tacitly authenticated them himself when he acknowledged that the information “could” have come from his laptop. Nothing that came from that laptop was anywhere near as scandalous as the unified front presented by the news media and Silicon Valley in reducing the political impact of an October surprise before a presidential election.And now we know that the reason the world’s largest social media platform censored that particular story was because they were cautioned by the FBI against allowing such information to circulate. How many of those other institutions suppressed that news story because they were told to by the FBI or other government agencies? How often are US government agencies involving themselves in the act of censorship? What other information is being suppressed in this or similar ways? What other information will be suppressed in the future?Because of the veils of government and corporate secrecy which obscure our view of the behaviors of power, we don’t get to have answers to these questions. All we get to have is what oligarchs like Mark Zuckerberg choose to tell us, in whatever way and to whatever extent they choose to tell us about them.But even what we’ve been told is pretty ugly. A government agency and a social media platform of unprecedented influence teaming up together to silence impactful political speech is censorship by any sane definition. Mainstream liberals can come up with all kinds of arguments for why the continuallyexpanding justifications for online censorship are fine and normal and not really censorship, but are they able to maintain those justifications when government agencies are actively involved? Is it really better when political speech is being censored by a collaboration of government operatives and billionaires than censored directly by the government alone?ThreadTwitter is hiring a TON of FBI agents. Searching employment websites, it is clear Twitter has been extensively recruiting from the FBI, employing a dozen former feds.My new @mintpressnews investigation explores why and what this means for us.https://t.co/15hZwFz8X8— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) June 21, 2022Alan MacLeod has been putting out a number of reports with Mintpress News documenting the way many veterans from the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies have been recruited to work for tech companies like Google/YouTube, Facebook/Meta, and Twitter. The intimacy with which these government and corporate entities are working together is growing closer and closer, and they’re making less and less effort to conceal it.In a power structure without clear boundaries separating corporations from the government, corporate censorship is state censorship. The mightiest power structure on earth is growing more and more brazen and shameless about this reality.You know you are living in an oligarchy when Mark Zuckerberg has more political influence over your country than any elected official. Democracy is an illusion. Those who live under the US empire are a propagandized and politically impotent population who only think they are free because they’ve been given the illusion of freedom, and less and less effort is being made to sustain that illusion.We are ruled by unelected sociopaths who have no wisdom, no compassion, and no intention of ever relinquishing their rule. This will continue unless and until enough of us wake up to what’s going on to stop them.
WEEDS
“People often ask me where I stand politically. It’s not that I disagree with Bush’s economic policy or his foreign policy, it’s that I believe he was a child of Satan sent here to destroy the planet Earth. Little to the left.” ― Bill Hicks
“They lie about marijuana. Tell you pot-smoking makes you unmotivated. Lie! When you’re high, you can do everything you normally do just as well — you just realize that it’s not worth the fucking effort. There is a difference.” ― Bill Hicks
People I’ve known in real life have actually told me they now love Lyn fucking Cheney just because she goes on tv and says she dislikes all purpose bad sexist boogeyman Donald J. Trump, like that is some kinda feminist forward leaning position. Still blows my mind how many rich white zipcodes have legalized reefer boutiques just operating out in the open, while other poorer peoples are still in fucking jail or on slippery slope probation or parole for non violent so called drug offenses. I never really liked reefer, personally, but obviously, believe no one ever should have gotten shot by cops in bed, or beaten to death, or mass incarcerated. for smoking a medicinal herb. I’ve been outside trying to cutdown my frontyard desert weeds, post monsoons, before the fanatical gentrification zealot fascist code enforcers show up again in their shiny black, new, tank like vehicles to fine us or whatever. I got blisters on both hands and it feels like I been workin’ on the railroad all the livelong day. I do my work with a very primitive garden tool my ole lady bought at the farmer supply store-we had an actual working and more realistic weed whacker from Wal Mart but it fell apart first time I used it. I know you’re REALLY smart having gone to college. You heard of planned obsolescence. So yeah, my hands hurt, my clothes are wet, I’m ill tempered alot of the time. Arthritis, depression, anxiety, PTSD,bitter about the band stuff, about being banned, but no relief is forthcoming. Burroughs said he had to write his way out of the hole-maybe that’s what I’m trying to do, too, against my better judgement. Man, I miss Bill Hicks, Paul K., Paul Mooney, Tattoo Mark, and Glen Ford. (RIP)
“The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it’s very brightly colored, and it’s very loud, and it’s fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, “Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?” And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, “Hey, don’t worry; don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.” And we … kill those people. “Shut him up! I’ve got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real.” It’s just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn’t matter, because it’s just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It’s only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here’s what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.” ― Bill Hicks
MARTIN TRUTHER AND PAUL WELLSTONE AND AARON SCWARTZ AND MICHAEL HASTINGS AND SETH RICH (RIP)
Mainstream media really is a fear factory, aint it?! One of my former Facebook friends was a fearless seventy something lady activist from California who died last year, she was a good soul who’d gardened and demonstrated and organized, she endured much in her lifetime including having her kids taken away from her by a richer former spouse, which is something I know about, and I’ll miss that good lady who would always give me courage, spur me onward, advise me, “fuck fear”, that’s how the sick sociopaths at the top of the ivory towers control us serfs and peasants. With fear. Fear they’re not gonna sign your band, or let you work at the record store, or steal your original work, or not let you ever record your original works, or blacklist you from all begrudgingly even desirable jobs, or offer all your girlfriends high paying easy jobs, or use their rich parent’s money to monopolize the Scene or take away your kids, or dispatch oversized, brainless mooks with dumbfuck Lollapalooza tribal tattoos and cargo shorts to pound you into the sidewalk again, or whatever. I’m not sure if it was Burroughs or Thompson who said that paranoia is just knowing a little about what’s really goin’ on. Bravery is doing the next right thing, in spite of your fear. Imagine being Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who saw his cousin put out that magazine, the title of which is said to have dimed his father’s killer. How frightened would you be, if you’d seen your uncles and cousins and nieces and nephews exterminated by shady powers and secret societies? He knew what happened to Paul Wellstone. Bernie Sanders promised to fight for The People, but apparently received the Dick Cheney memo and got in line and endorsed rightwing corporate police state Gropey Joe. Another Facebook friend, Martin Truther, talked about all this stuff before dying when the cops showed up and assassinated him in his home for failing to pay back taxes. I personally got no space in my life for people who cheerlead for the Cheneys or Pompeo or Clinton or Kissinger or Gates or Zuckerberg or Bezos or Musk or Bloomberg or Obamas or Bush family. I can’t even get past the Benie Sanders betrayals. But yeah, the secret police probably threatened him or his loved ones, and Lockheed Martin is the biggest employer in Vermont. I never believed that it was just another oopsy daisy, whoopsie coincidence when JFK Jr. died in a small plane crash so Hillary got to become senator from NY instead of JFK Jr. There are documentaries about it. Look for ’em. Same way Jackie O sought refuge and safehaven with billionaire super yacht owner from Murkkkan deep state, post hit, so did Princess Di, post jockey’s son Harry, post divorce, ya know?
Your shitlib friends all say the one and only thing that ever threatened Murkkan “democracy” is Trump lovers convening in the rotunda of the Capital insisting that elections were rigged, when Clinton and Wasserman Schutz had already admitted in court(!!!!) the DNC private services corporation fixed the primaries. The Dems argument was they have a right to fix the primaries, because they are a private corporation. Similar argument shitlibs have been taught to repeat ad nauseum is supposedly, how it’s not censorship, if big tech in bed with the soldout government, buries big stories for big pharma, big oil, the deep state, the DNC, or other power grabbing shock doctrine disaster capitalist billionaires. Everytime someone has a big audience and is critical of the USA, they have an accident-from Hugo Chavez to Gaddafi. Fred Hampton and the Kennedys. Bill Hicks to Seath Rich, they always mysteriously die young. Always an oopsy daisy coincidence, say the shitlibs. A random burglary. Pancreatic cancer. Small plane crash, suicide with two bullets to the back of the head. All these scientists, investigative reporters, almost all the people who made films or who wrote books about 9/11—just youtube that shit, Ferguson and Baltimore uprising activists, vault #7 and drone whistle blowers, Dr. David Kelly said that Iraq had no WMD’s, found dead. Shitlibs think Epstein killed himself and the fact that monarch mind controlled Hinkley, a Bush cousin, is free, is just another whacky, zaney, oopsy daisy coincidence. Um-hummm.
“There are so many things going on re 9/11 that just don’t make sense”.
— Senator Paul Wellstone
“I asked him how his week had been. He said, ‘it’s been tough. Vice President Cheney called me in and told me to get on their bandwagon or there would be serious ramifications in Minnesota. ‘And stop sticking your nose into 9/11; there are some rumors going around, but we are going to get to the bottom of this.’ When Paul made this statement, there were about 10 military veterans standing around us, and he spoke to them about 9/11…’There are so many things going on about 9/11 that just don’t make sense…’ Wellstone knew 9/11 was staged. Wellstone was after 9/11.”
–Pat O’Reilly, Wellstone’s close friend.
Although warned by Dick Cheney to “tow the line”, Senator Paul Wellstone questioned the official version of 9/11. For that he paid with his life. What follows are interviews with eyewitnesses, first responders and friends on his fatal “air crash”…
“The Joint Operations Command (JSOC): It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on.”
“Here is my final point…About drugs, about alcohol, about pornography…What business is it of yours what I do, read, buy, see, or take into my body as long as I do not harm another human being on this planet? And for those who are having a little moral dilemma in your head about how to answer that question, I’ll answer it for you. NONE of your fucking business. Take that to the bank, cash it, and go fucking on a vacation out of my life.” ― Bill Hicks
“Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here’s American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!” ― Bill Hicks\
Even though top US officials admit that US troops are in Syria for “leverage” (a fancier way of Trump’s admission that US is there to steal oil), US outlets never report that. (-Aaron Mate’)
“Some 40% of Black DC public school students 12-17 will be refused education under this policy, which aims to coerce them into taking an injection that does not prevent viral transmission or infection, and which requires constant boosting. Welcome to actual vaccine apartheid”. (-Max Blumenthal Gray Zone)
DC’s NAACP chapter complains, “Mandatory vaccinations may negatively impact attendance, and attendance impacts school funding, resources and students’ academic success.”
“Billionaire Jared Kushner got PPP loans that were forgiven in full—meanwhile small business owners like Jamie, a Philly bar owner, will be paying off his PPP loan of $32,700 for the next 15 years.” (-Staus Coup News)
THE ULTRAS
By the time I made it out to L.A., glam was kinda dead, except for like the Last Call dregs who lived with strippers and played cattle call concerts at the Coconut Teaszer on like Thursday nights. Those Motley Crue babies were all way more into living out some kinda Tommy Lee party lifestyle than they were into songwriting, which was sorta my thing. My old girlfriend Steffani tried to introduce me to some famous locals and gave me phone numbers for people like Kristy Krash Majors who I had not that much in common with but I thank her for endeavoring to help my search for the right group of players. Another cat she hooked me up with was Alistarr from The Ultras who was dead cool and funny and generous and sweet to me. I was surprised by how open and accessible he was because having herd his Bruce Duff produced EP, I had already sortof put him on a pedestal. I felt like he was far and away the best lyricist in the whole glam scene. He had accomplished what I had set out to do, which was to form a larger than life spacedout seventies glam rock band with the showmanship and panache of old Ziggy Stardust and Alice Cooper but also writing vivid and lyrical SONGS! He was one of the only people I took seriously that I met in my hard times year and a half or whatever starving on the Sunset Strip. I was living on this horrible fortified wine they only sell in black neighborhoods called Cisco-the ingredients are classified as a trade secret. That shit makes people crazy. Alistarr was different from all the Aqua Net blackhairs who lived with my ex girlfriend because he was smart and cool and kind.
Most of the metal years people were just kindof fucking dumb. Alice was hip to stuff like, the Only Ones. The rest of ’em never got past Poison, Skid Row and the Crue. I liked all that shit when I was like fourteen and even seventeen, but by the time I made it out to California, I was 22 and kinda past “I Want Action” and “Same Old Situation”.
“Biden just authorized a ~$200 B bandaid for the gaping wound of student debt. But every year the president authorizes ~ $ 1 trillion for the bloated military that impoverishes us at home & endangers humanity the world over. The duopoly has plenty of money, just not for us.” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
“Just one of the ways the US security state manipulates domestic politics behind the veil of democracy. Another example: the high election season Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot manufactured by the FBI.” (-Max Blumenthal)
“Nothing to see here, just a billionaire with a monopoly on information was censoring accurate news stories at the behest of the FBI to favor a political party & outcome.” (-Jimmy Dore)
“Epstein was the mastermind of that Ponzi Scheme and, while Hoffenberg went to prison for that and related financial crimes, Epstein instead got involved with Clinton presidential fundraisers.” (-Whitney Webb)
“I don’t care what shitlibs say. Joe Biden is still a terrible president and a servant of oligarchs.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Still in Syria…. Getting rockets shot at us so Centcom can pull in a war budget, defense contractors can get paid & senior brass can have combat commands. And maybe we can bumble our way into a fight w/Iran/Russia/Turkey/Assad. What a scam.” (-Joe Kent for Wa-3)
“New documents show the US & EU plans to plunder Ukraine have been in the works for years. They plan to sell off public infrastructure, destroy worker rights, & secure massive giveaways to billionaires. Much of this has already begun.” (-Lee Camp)
“Ron DeSantis was the lone legal oversight for US Special Ops in Fallujah during the brutal troop surge, tasked with ensuring “fair & humane treatment of detainees and military compliance with law”—he previously had that same job at Guantanamo Bay during the Bush torture program.” (-The Empire Files)
Unless you count, say, Joe Strummer & The Mescaleroes or Hello Disaster, to me, the Last Band that mattered was the Manic Street Preachers. I had a girlfriend who was still in love with me back then who would go to the record store and buy me a stack of English tabloids and music papers, a fiddle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes and bring it all home to me tied up with a purple ribbon. I read all the early hype from UK critics but was pretty skeptical, was not into the idea that the guy who wrote all the good lyrics could not play guitar, so that was already kinda weird, then the singer had that high Freddy Mercury vocal range but was shouting slogans like that first Clash album, spraypainted clothes, ehh. I was still trying to get my own band together in the Generation X/Hanoi Rocks vein, part glam and part punk, and I had been talking to and working with these guys from deep Massachusetts smalltown suburbia hoping they would become our fulltime rhythm section, but the bassists was a lyricist/songwriter and they were a package deal, so they ended up doing a very Manics influenced band with the shorthair and skinny ties and stuff called Bang Bang Satellite while me and my two faithful longhaired guitar cronies from the Midwest in the scarves and black leather pants continued to stockpile originals and have no reliable drummer for years on end. It was those Bang Bang Satellite guys who got me into the Manics. One of their wives published a cool fanzine called “Machine Gun Etiquette” and that gang collectively made me reassess the Manic Street Preachers. I had bought “New Art Riot” from Newbury Comics but dismissed it as Clash copycats. We had songs of our own I figured were every bit as good as “Suicide Alley'”. “Stay Beautiful” was what won me over, I played those four songs like a million times a day and yeah my old friend, the Famous Rock Critic, is telling the truth when he says I did not keep up with popular music or get into Crystal Pistol or Robin Black & The Intergalactic Rockstars From Mars or Whatever, or Brides Of Destruction or Velvet Revolver. The Last band that Really Mattered to me were the . They wrote about matters of the heart AND social commentary AND fought the empire and the forces of conformity AND wore makeup when they felt like it. They were the People’s Choice, the last real motherfuckers. I love ’em.
Cut your hair in front of businessmen Kill yourself and censor health
Destroy words and ignore their truth Wanna die and have never worked
I feel like falling, feel like falling I feel like falling, feel like falling I feel like falling, feel like falling
I can’t feel no need to care Narcotic of ambition poisoned my air
Wearing hate like they wear money Sucking down vodka, spitting out Perrier, huh
I feel like falling, feel like falling I feel like falling, feel like falling I feel like falling, feel like falling In hate
Oh, the road is beautiful You live stoned in obedience Your vanity kills people, paint your ego in blood Oh, the road is beautiful
The wall is a reason for you to believe Is there too many numbers for us to sleep? The wall is a reason for you to believe Because there are too many numbers, numbers, numbers
Oh, the road is beautiful You live stoned in obedience Your vanity kills people, paint your ego in blood Oh, the road is B.E.U.T.I.F.U.L.B.E.U.T.I.F.U.L Beautiful
(Manic Street Preachers)
GOOD NIGHT & GOOD LUCK, BROTHERS & SISTERS & FRIENDS OF THE REVOLUTION! STAY WILD! STAY FREE!
“The Story is old, I know, but still it goes on…” (-The Smiths)
“We’re not allowed to know who’s calling what shots behind the veils of secrecy. All we’re allowed to see is our governments continually advancing the same imperial policies over and over again regardless of who’s in office. They never let us see who’s actually making those calls.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“The Democratic Party rehabilitated George W. Bush. The Democratic Party rehabilitated Dick Cheney. The Democratic Party rehabilitated the FBI and the CIA. The Democratic Party has used Trump as an excuse to bury the anti-war movement after Obama killed it.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“The US regime continues to show its blatant neocolonialist practices, ordering sovereign countries in Africa not to trade with Russia. Imagine being this arrogant. The US empire truly thinks the entire world is its property.” (-Benjamin Norton)
“Starting when it investigated Trump for a fictitious conspiracy with Russia, the FBI has given media outlets a lot of free content, and profit. I don’t understand why FBI brass don’t just cut out the middle man and launch their own news network.” (-Aaron Mate)
“Your US tax dollars are paying to flood Europe with heavy weapons and one of America’s top networks regrets investigating the issue. With special apologies to Raytheon and the Ghost of Kiev. Look how desperate neocons are to enforce silence on the Ukrainian military’s copious crimes, including dumping petal mines on Donetsk civilians Zero attempt to debunk our entirely factual report on the many opposition activists kidnapped and/or murdered under Zelensky’s watch Many Americans were upset that $90 million of their money was spent on Pelosi’s reckless junket to Taiwan, which deliberately escalated conflict with China and accelerated the process of unification, but consider this: that’s $90 million that won’t be spent on Ukrainian neo-Nazis.” (-Max Blumenthal)
TRAGEDY! TEENAGE HEAD WERE ONE OF MY TOP 5 CANADIAN BANDS! (RIP)
MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS OF PEOPLE BELIEVE DICK CHENEY HELPED FIX THE BUSH SELECTION, BUILT GITMO, HIRED BLACKWATER REGIME CHANGE MERCENARIES, AND STARTED ENDLESS WAR BASED ON LIES AND FALSE FLAGS, HE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES HIS DAUGHTER SAYS TRUMP IS BAD!
“Following a coordinated freakout by the Ukraine lobby, CBS self-censors a report stating the obvious. Amnesty International has also issued a bizarre half-apology for issuing a single report (out of 40+) on well-documented abuses of civilians by the Ukrainian army.” (-Max Blumenthal)
President Barack Obama weaponized the Espionage Act to prosecute those who provided classified information to the press. The Obama White House, whose assault on civil liberties was worse than those of the Bush administration, used the 1917 Act, designed to prosecute spies, against eight people who leaked information to the media including — Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake,Chelsea Manning,Jeffrey Sterling and John Kiriakou, who spent two-and-a-half years in prison for exposing the routine torture of suspects held in black sites.
Also under The Espionage Act, Joshua Schulte, a former CIA software engineer, was convicted on July 13 of the so-called Vault 7 leak, published by WikiLeaks in 2017, which revealed how the C.I.A. hacked Apple and Android smartphones and turned internet-connected televisions into listening devices. He faces up to 80 years in prison. Assange — although he is a publisher and not a U.S. citizen, and WikiLeaks is not a U.S.-based publication, was indicted by the Trump administration under the Act
Obama used the Espionage Act against those who provided information to the media more than all previous administrations combined.
My first imaginary band consisted of me, and about four other middle school heavy metal hoodlums I met in the special needs behavioral classroom named Deke, Dustin, his older brother “Don’t Fuck With…” Danny who was like my main protector back then; J.R. who was also sometimes known as “The Rat”-not because he snitched on anybody but he had one of those halfassed Joe Dirt mustaches and wore a satin jacket from Spencer Gifts in the mall with the RATT logo on the back of it, him n Deke were inseparable chainsmoker metalheads, like Bill N Ted-twin Spicolis talking about the Michael Schenker Group and Gary Moore, Carlos Cavazo and Warren Dimartini. They were both like deedle deedle guitar heroes in training. I was mostly into like Adam Ant, Culture Club, Prince and Duran Duran who they thought were gay, and I wore glasses which were a real no-no in the Future Villain Bands of young Amurkkka. Also, Deke probably wanted a better looking blonde haired guy with a Robert Plant or Bruce Dickinson vocal range. There was some older guy in town like that, I think he wanted to join like, the older rich kid dickhead bully cover band who played like KISS and Zeppelin and stuff, I think they were called Attack? Anyways, it was us, and sometimes, a kid in a Member’s Only jacket named Chris, who was the school psychiatrist’s son but his dad refused to buy him drums, Dustin was forbidden from hanging out with me or Dekan and used to have to change his clothes on the bus-he wanted to wear rebellious spiked bracelets and checkered Vans and parachute pants and black concert t shirts like the rest of us, but was forced to wear the preppie pink Izods that were the unofficial school uniform at the rich white suburbia school we went to. Mostly we walked around on the dirt trails, went to Music Land to look at records, loitered in front of the arcade, smoked Marlboros, sneered a lot. Dekan impressed everybody with learning “Eruption” and “Crazy Train” before the older rich and popular kids did. We played covers mostly, like “Livin’ After Midnight” and “Round And Round” and “Aint Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” out there at the Ross family, ranch style home when the parents were gone. Oh yeah, then we brought in Dave, cause Dustin and Dan were not allowed to come around that often and always got in some kinda trouble if they did. Dan had to sneak his guitar out of the house, he ran a stolen BMX chop shop in my basement. Those guys came from these strict military families that wanted them to hunt, and gave ’em guns and crossbows, but did not like them making music, cutting and pasting together homemade xerox art, anti-school fanzines with grotesque caricatures of admin and coaches and wrestling team dickheads, or painting crazy logos on t shirts. I wore feather earrings, string ties, homemade punk shirts, painted on jeans, was always like crazy gluing broken bits of mirror onto my suitjacket lapels, you know like an even lower budget Duckie from “Pretty In Pink”. Total new wave loser with the paisley suspenders and old man dress shoes. You probably already heard the one about how I told the army recruiter my career goal was the become the male Patti Smith. You shoulda seen the horror and dismay on the faces of the army guys when they saw my big Pegasus Trapper Keeper overflowing with pinups from Smash Hits magazine of Iggy and Ziggy and Flesh for Lulu and Pete Burns and Marilyn and Boy George and all that New Romantic Blitz Club & Batcave shit. I was always being after school detained, paddled, Saturday Schooled, or suspended, or having to get pink notes signed by my parents for dress code infractions, it was really the eyeliner they were mostly just nuts over. You know that’s when I discovered “Scary Monsters & Super Creeps” and “Hunky Dory” and “Ziggy Stardust” and had less and less patience for those fucking authoritarians who worked so hard to belittle me and mock all my creative endeavors and hassle me all the time. I got in trouble for drawing Flesh for Lulu and Cure logos in my textbooks, they sent me to bible school, detention all, juvenile probation, diversion, curfews, special extra dresscodes, haircuts, the whole nightmare, just Dr. Phil’d me for years on fucking end. When I got contacts, that’s when it ALL CHANGED. Girls. More than a couple, more than a few. Girls galore. Deke looked like a cross between Billy Idol and Colin from GBH, as we got older-his mom gave him some kinda flash sports car and he started dating a goth chick named Diane, who’s only friend was my goth girlfriend, Steffani. We were already drifting apart. They were almost all recruited into the military at 18. We never even got anything really off the ground, but that was where it all starts, guys in jean jackets with little Billy Idol and Van Halen and Guns N Roses and Hanoi Rocks buttons and black leather jackets hanging around each other, listening to Ozzy and Van Halen and saying they’re a band.
Me and Dave stuck together and eventually found some other guys. First we got this popular kid who was older-him and me were like the town’s token new wavers-but he was a star for being a DJ and was really good looking, whereas I was like a punching bag for being strange and really not so good looking. That guy showed up at my apartment one day with a scarf on and a Dogs D’Amour record and a big bottle of Jack Daniels and he was in. He loved INXS and Duran Duran and Prince and Circus Of Power and Mother Love Bone and played with us for about a year and a half, but then he left the band to play with all these guitar teacher, mainstream Journey type guys, who had real equipment, and he became the singer of Who’s Drivin’, a lame top 40 cover band that played at a pizza place called Parrason’s in the mall. So we had to find a replacement for him. The unlikely next bassist was sortof a jock, but not really, he played sports but did not have the same dumbfuck sensibility the others did-he hung around some guys who weren’t really rednecks and weren’t really jocks, they were like the John Goodman character on that sit-com, LARGE men who drank beer and played poker. Bowling team type of personalities. He became our bassplayer. We drank a lot of beer together and I got him into the Deadboys and Iggy. Kid from Catholic school marching band came in on drums, an older guy from a nearby town was the second guitar player and he knew all about old music so we started sponging up all kindsa diverse new influences from his elaborate closet filled with records. Bands we’d never heard of back then, like Theater Of Hate and The Fast. I had become obsessed with Hanoi Rocks and Generation X by then. Those characters really imprinted on my damaged teen psyche. I kinda never got over any of ’em. Some of ’em are dead now, it’s really heartbreaking.
MORE ON DEADEND BANDS IN NOWHERE TOWNS
I had these metalhead friends named Ron n Kelly, they were troubled youth. They were both really into horror movies, combat boots, dead cats, serial killers, the occult, anything offensive or shocking to squares and prudes. Remember that cat from “Bloom County” comic strips-Bill the Cat? We all used to draw him on our school folders and shit. We used to ride around in Kelly’s shitty hatchback car with all the stupid bumper stickers on the back, playing WASP, really loud. I remember them liking Dangerous Toys and Alice Cooper, too. They were super psyched when they got a copy of that old Charles Manson record, “Lie” from a record store in Columbus. You know those really dumb looking, whole forearm spiked leather bracelets some death rockers used to wear? That was Kelly, and the River’s Edge trailer park vermin obligatory army surplus coat with heavy metal pins on it and pentagrams drawn with black sharpie that reeked of cigarettes and reefer from across the street. Ron was a bit more sensitive cause his mom was gone, he was a painter, painted big portraits, my mom still has one he did of me in a graveyard. Ron also got a guitar and dyed his hair black like ours and attempted to join one of our many punkroll garage ruckus beer bands. We were both really into that first L.A. Guns record back then and I remember very vividly jamming to “One More Reason” and “Electric Gypsy” with him up in my infamous purple apartment while drinking 12 packs of Budweiser, back in the day. We had a big poster of the Hendrix experience in one room, a big poster of Bowie‘s “Aladdin Sane” in the other, a vintage mirror with pink flamingos from my grandmother’s basement that sadly got broken, a zebra print chair, a stinky couch and a boombox and a record player. We also had that first White Zombie lp borrowed from a grumpy older dude down the hall. They were a little bit like Beavis and Butthead, like Kelly always sorta picked on Ron, and for some reason, Ron being a sweet natured, good egg, he just kinda took it. I think Kelly later ended up goin’ out with my witchy death rock girlfriend for awhile. He eventually had a mohawk after graduation and a pet rat and was actually pretty fuckin’ radical for that town, back then. Poor Ron, he got better and better as an artist and guitarist, but like so many of our blue collar brothers raised by one parent in the deadend Midwest, he was fed into the military by the system. He was one of the few who joined the army who did not seem to regret it, he learned some technical photography skills and now, he has his own thriving adult-world, commercial photography business with his wife, God bless him.
Penelope Spheeris mighta intended her “Decline” movies as cautionary tales, but when me and my friends watched them, it just made us wanna relocate to Hollywood. We could all identify with Guns N Roses and Faster Pussycat, esp. “Out To Get Me, they were just like us. Burntout little Hanoi Rocks fans. We were all a little bit punk and a little bit metal, there really was no punk scene where we came from, just some misfit kids who liked Suicidal Tendencies and The Dils and New Order and those first two Motley Crue records. I don’t know what happened to Kelly but it usually went bad for anybody who stayed in that town. Several of my teenage new wave friends killed themselves, or were murdered there. The town screws really went out of their way to bootcamp and humiliate me until I had no real choice but to flee that part of the country-they just never let up, once they get you on their list. It was the anti-rock PMRC era, and the rich suburbanite sports moms were hysterical about my corrupting, corrosive new wave influence upon their lily-white children. I gave everybody books and records and shit. At least one friend who made in big in straight society has said I was a crucial part of that. When I stupidly returned to that part of the country years later, it was the same exact shit, all over again. You can not change that fortunate son ruling class sports hierarchy in the flyover states. The Kendoll rich boys in their big white mama mansions will always be above the law celebrities, and the working-class weirdos will always be targets of the screws. Of course, the ones who got the hall pass from the ruling class, or who were assimilated into the corrupt sham never even wanna know the truth of how things are for their “uneducated” or “dysfunctional” former peers, but I saw how that injustice system broke more than a few of my allies. The ones who weren’t herded into the marines or married into wealth went through a never ending gauntlet of multi-generational alcoholism and depression, factory life hell, probation, piss tests, DUI’s, 12 steps, psych ward, holy roller churches, back to the assembly line, sixteen hour days, meltdowns, pressure, judgement, evictions, crackpipe, freakout, suicide. Of what survivors remain, I’m not really in touch with any of ’em. I think a couple might still have some kinda Louie Louie Wild Thing Animal House garage band. None of ’em seem at all activated or radicalized. Probably one or two of ’em say they Dislike Trump, that’s as punk as they get, but are conspicuously silent when Biden does all the exact same shit, caging kids, sucking up to Israel and the Saudis, drug war, gutting social safety nets and just blaming it on rotating villains. Censoring the internet, escalating the warpig provocations. I’m still anti war, anti racist, anti fascist, pro free speech, pro working class, pro creativity, pro human rights. I get a sad pang inside when I think about my lost lads who are dead now.
They were basically hounded into the grave by the same system everybody pretends is so fair and peachy keen, s’long as they get to keep their own special-class privileges.
I know the college safespace shitlibs cancelled Dr. Seuss, like they do everything in their cloistered elitist shitlib feelings, special preference gentrification world, but he got it all right on the money with the Starbellied Sneetches. The same exact people who retroactively disapproved his racist WW2 era cartoons, they are all jumpin’ up n down like drunk Buckeyes fans cheering for Zelensky, blaming all their personal shit and inflation on “RUSSIANS!” The Republikkkans been similarly trained to Blame China. They keep saying China took our money or China took our jobs, when in fact, Wall Street stuffed shirts gleefully sent all the manufacturing to Chinese sweat shops and Murkkka never even paid ’em what they are owed, so now the Murkkkans want war on everybody-even their own people Twitter cop accused of pre crime or Wrongthink. All madness, all the time, and Israel wants to steal Iran. End the wars. Rich people suck.
I’m on a different schedule than my family so I’m probably spending too many hours alone everyday which always kinda causes me to drift back into the past since any kind of groovy future was stolen by the billionaires and neo-cons. Had a friend named Mike Mindless, he sadly is dead (RIP) but anyways he was really into alot of the same stuff as me-Misfits, Deadboys, NY Dolls, Mexican wrestling and comic books and thrift store retro black velvet painting type garbage and like Godzilla flea market subculture. He was also kindof a progressive activist, maybe not as radical leftist as I was, but he understood how we were all being played by the good cop/bad cop bullshit culture war duopoly. Mike had so many good stories about kinda roadieing for the Deadboys and shit. He had a band called The Skulls and my older guitarplayer, BAM, friend used to buy all the $1 vinyl from the cutout bins and we played that record to death and also, “Keeping Up With The Joneses” and the Little Kings. Man, the eighties had such a cool underground scene, you know? NYC was still like a bombed out Mad Max counterculture anarchist paradise! You could just hangout in the park all day and meet cool people. Hollywood had that whole goth and cowpunk scene with The Gun Club and Horseheads and we used to read all those punk magazines from the coasts and dream of relocating there and signing to Slash records. Many of my local pals from that horrible town were less hated and maligned than I was, like a couple of my friends had brothers who were jocks, or mainstream popular status quo catholic school girlfriends, or just fit in, more than I did because they did not wear black leather pants or makeup and shit. It took them longer to wanna leave that place. We did road trips whenever we could in these rundown, unreliable vehicles we bought cheap from Little Ceasers delivery guys from small farm towns who all went to this mechanic trade school. Also, one of my heavy metal girlfriends, the female bassist of a Metallica covers band, her mom’s boyfriend ran the speed parts shop. I remember when we got that Smack cassette from an Indianapolis record store. That really was a major moment that totally electrified me. That singer and that sound, was at once urgent and haunting-kinda goth, kinda glam, little bit punk and as Viv on “The Young Ones” jacket said, “very metal”. I knew that was what I wanted to do. Like I said, summa my collaborators were more orthodox, one guy was into like, the Chili Peppers, one guy was into Minor Threat and Fugazi. I think my best pal Dave was still really into Steve Vai and just discovering that first Peter Murphy record, “Love Hysteria”, which we all thought was pretty fantastic. The older geezer down the hall was digging Big Black and the Amphetamine records bands. All I knew was I wanted to get the fuck outta that place. Groups of older jocks would follow me outta the mall, ya know, and knock the Icee outta my hand, knock me on the pavement, “fag! fag!” It was old hat by then, I’d been sorta traumatized by these same suburban assholes since the fourth grade. I was really getting sick of it. Some of those other guys liked to talk about being some kinda hooligan street gang tough guys, but some of ’em RAN anytime they saw my usual wouldbe assailants. Anytime I set foot out in the public eye, these brainless karate kid fuckers in the rising sun muscle shirts and big boofy Bon Jovi hair would stop their Transmaros and get out to chase me around or insult or assault or otherwise slander, smear and intimidate me, it was becoming real psychologically torturous, but my more popular friends with like the pretty relatives and shit, just did not get it, the desiore I had to escape, cause they weren’t really sharing the same experience. I hated those fratboys. I did not want to win their acceptance or learn how to fit in with them, which was the main diff between me and summa my former bandmates. I wanted to runaway to California and meet The Ringling Sisters. I wrote letters to people I found in the classifieds of “Maximum Rocknroll” and “Flipside” magazine. I had a lotta pen pals from outta state-we’d write each other pained letters about our outcast status as weirdo punks from nowhere places, all us no ones making crazy xerox art and trading heartfelt compilation tapes. “Psychocandy” was a real big influence. Then, “Darklands” came out and made us want to write better songs that were more introspective and melodic instead of just loud fast complaining about the juvenile authorities, dummy sports people, Reagan, the malls, and Tipper Gore.
JOHN DISSED
If you aint already hip to his stuff, you need to checkout this guy, John Dissed, he’s sort of a modern day Billy Bragg.
“Zelensky’s immaturity & fascist tendencies are once again on display with his irrational call for stigmatizing all Russians. But this is the morality of the “collective West.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“If Trump broke the law then he should face the consequences but I am so tired of one man being a bigger story than the corrupt capitalist system that we live under which puts the endless greed of corporations and billionaires over the basic needs of the people and planet.” (-Ryan Knight)
“Westerners think they are free because they can criticize their president or PM, when a small amount of research quickly reveals that those officials aren’t the ones calling the shots on any issue of importance. Westerners aren’t even allowed to know who their real government is.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“There’s no Russian imperialism. There’s no Chinese imperialism. There is only ONE imperialism and it’s led by the United States.” (-Danny Haiphong)
t all just keeps vanishing! Wish I had some whiskey! (RIP)
LOW LIFE
Yeah you know, me and all my friends liked The Smiths and The Cure and Echo and Sisters Of Mercy and all that stuff, but FOR YEARS, this New Order record was such a big part of our teen subculture, it would be difficult to overstate it’s importance, ya know when they threw me into that cold cement solitary confinement closet at J.D.C., it was playing in my mind from start to finish. When I was alone at various older people’s apartments in NYC running up phone bills and eternally missing and mooning and swooning over some beautiful blonde first crush Smiths chick, this was always playing in the background and in our hearts. “Oh how I cannot bear the thought of you…” I’m sentimental about all those kids and all that music.
“Westerners say “In that tyrannical regime over there they’re not even allowed to criticize their government!” Okay, but at least they’re allowed to know who their government IS. They get to know who’s calling the shots in their country. In that sense they’re freer than you are.” (-Cait Johnstone)
JOHNNY THUNDERS MEMORIAL, ENTER THE WORLD FAMOUS MISTER RATBOY
I met Ratboy at the Thunders memorial and we became fast friends, we even had a band for a minute and a half, in some low rent rehearsal space in alphabet city he played, I sang, his Piss Factory ex wife played bass and so did a French guy I think and a drummer who may have been from The Lunachicks. Then he got Chris Barry and I went back to Boston and did the Imitations who became The Bastards. Jim Rinn just found some old basement demotapes of me and The Bastards from back then that were shocking to hear after so many years have passed. But Yeah, both Motorcycle Boy and Pillbox had a huge impact on me and all my closest friends. I loved everything about both of those bands. I learned so much from Chris Barry and Ratboy, they will always have a special place in my heart.
Another band I was really into were The Nymphs, it felt like Inger Lorre was a real kindred spirit, we were both into the same kinda vibes. And hats. and feathers.
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/a4h0AhM5GXpic.twitter.com/o7QkfPkRc3
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.
Razzle was the heartbeat of HANOÏ ROCKS, the perfect drummer for the most flamboyant band. Unfortunately, Razzle is also famous because of is tragic death in a car crash in 1984 while MÖTLEY CRÜE’s Vince Neil was driving. Ari Väntänen already wrote about HANOÏ ROCKS and Michael Monroe so he probably was the right person to write about Razzle. We asked him a few questions about this extremely well documented new book…
When did you start working on the book?
I think it was around the late 2018. I was personally interested to learn about Razzle’s life, and around that time it really started to bug me that most people only remember him as the guy who died while someone more famous was driving. The more I looked into it, the more important it felt to write this book. Razzle was all about life, and his life made a great story.
My original plan was to write the book in English only, but then my Finnish publisher Like heard about it and wanted to make a Finnish version as well. So, I translated my own text to my own language, and the Finnish book came out first in September 2020. Svart put out the English version in January 2022.
You say that there was something Dickensian about Razzle that sparkled your interest as a kid. Can you explain?
I guess there was something larger than life in him, you know, the top hat and the striped suit and all, and at the same time he seemed so streetwise. I guess he had to be, because the more he concentrated on his music, the less money he had, before joining Hanoi. Like Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist, he was a kid inside but had learned early to take care of himself.
Was it easy to choose who you were going to interview and get all the photos and documents?
It would have been difficult without the Facebook group Remembering Razzle. That’s where I found many of his friends, band mates, and relatives. Most of the group members were happy to contribute with stories, photos and stuff. I wanted the book to be like a gathering of people who knew him and wanted to reminisce his life, so the more the merrier. What I found curious was that very few people ever argued with him about anything. I even tried to ask people how can it be, but it seems like Razzle just was really easy to get along with.
Is there anyone you would have liked to interview but couldn’t because they didn’t want to get interviewed, you couldn’t find them or because they are not part of this world anymore?
There were a few people who rather kept their memories personal, which they had every right to do. For example, I would have liked to hear Nasty Suicide’s stories because they were close and even shared a flat in London, but he’s not really into dwelling in the past and politely declined. After the book came out he messaged me that he had read it and liked it, which I was happy about.
I also would have liked to chat with Seppo Vesterinen, Hanoi‘s manager, but never heard back from him. Then I found out he hadn’t been well, and he passed away some time later. It was the same with Shaun Newnham of Thin Red Line and Scott Bushburt of the Fuck Pigs, who also died during the writing process. I never got to talk to them, but they or their families sent me some photos for the book. I did a great interview with Timo Kaltio and was in disbelief when I heard he had suddenly passed away, too.
So many people leaving this world before the book was finished made me think that it was high time to tell this story.
Razzle always looked like he should be famous and it seems like everybody loved him. Was it something that also motivated you to write about him?
Definitely. He was a star and very much down to earth at the same time. He had natural charisma but wasn’t arrogant or looking down on anybody. It’s a good combination and made me feel I wanted to know more about him.
Were you familiar with his previous bands before HANOI when you started working on the book?
I knew the bands’ names and I had The Dark live album The Living End, but I didn’t know much about them. For me personally, writing about the pre-Hanoi years were the most fascinating part of the project. I was already very familiar with the latter part of the story, but what did Razzle do before Hanoi Rocks? What were Thin Red Line, The Fuck Pigs and Demon Preacher like? How did he end up joining The Dark? Who did he play with?
Demon Preacher featuring Nik Fiend (Alien Sex Fiend)
It seems like Razzle played an important role when it comes to keeping HANOI ROCKS together through the dark times…
Yes, he got along with everybody in the band even when some of the other guys had issues with each other. They told me Razzle was the glue that held Hanoi together, and they all love him dearly. Like Michael Monroe says in the book, Razzle saved Hanoi Rocks. He kept the band’s spirits up until the end, and it wasn’t easy for him.
Razzle’s drumming really fit HANOI ROCKS’ music. The stories about recording with Bob Ezrin are very interesting.
Ezrin really made him and the whole band work hard. It seemed like the producer tried to bring out the best in Razzle as a drummer instead of trying to turn him into someone he wasn’t as a musician. His playing had a lot of personality and character and I think Ezrin respected that.
It’s funny that he mentioned he would love to play with HEART although his roots were more punk and early hard rock’n’roll. Can you imagine how HEART would have sounded with him behind the kit?
Honestly, I can’t! More punk and rock’n’roll, I guess. Or maybe he would have rehearsed a lot to adapt to their style, like he did when he joined The Dark and Hanoi Rocks. I know he liked Heart a lot, but maybe talking about joining them was his way of saying he wanted to make it big as a musician, like a mainstream big time. Having said that, I have no doubt he would have joined Heart if he had a chance!
Razzle seemed to be very open minded when it comes to music; We also learn that he loved The BIRTHDAY PARTY and a lot of different styles…
Yes, he was and did. Besides the obvious punk and rock’n’roll stuff like The Damned, Johnny Thunders, New York Dolls and Alice Cooper, he liked heavier bands like Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Van Halen and Anvil, and listened to Frank Zappa and The Birthday Party as well.
Have you managed to get more information about this Rebel Yell flyer no one seems to remember?
No! It’s the weirdest thing. Usually, some people online at least claim they know what these things were about, but not in this case. For those who don’t know, there is a mystery gig fIyer about a band called Rebel Yell featuring Razzle of Hanoi Rocks playing a show in London. If someone reading this was in Rebel Yell in London in 1984, please come clean!
Have you ever thought about what Razzle could be doing now if he was still alive?
Pure speculation, of course, but to me he seemed like someone who might have become a family man. I’m 100% sure he would live in some warm and sunny place. He really hated cold!
At the end of the book, we get to think that this story could really be a movie. What did you think of the Razzle scenes in The Dirt?
Yeah, I agree, with all its comedy and tragedy Razzle’s life would make a great movie.
The Dirt… Depends how you look at it. I think Max Milner did a good job portraying the character that was written in the movie script. HOWEVER, I don’t think the character captured who Razzle really was. I believe the real Razzle seemed more friendly, funny and gentle.
But I guess it didn’t really matter who Razzle actually was in the context of that movie. He was just a casualty. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to write this book. I wanted to show the world what he really was like. Full of life and living life to the full, a fun-loving guy who was and still is loved by many.
Not trying to spoil anything, but Cyndi Lauper is mentioned a couple of times in the book. Do you know if they actually met?
I don’t know if they did, but they may have, as Hanoi was on CBS like Lauper.
You wrote a book about HANOÏ ROCKS, the authorized Michael Monroe biography and this book about Razzle. Do you plan on writing on the other band members or related musicians too? Any idea if the Michael Monroe biography will be available in English some day?
I have no plans to do so, but I probably wouldn’t say no if someone asked me to, if I just had the time. I know of a couple of people in the London rock scene in the 80’s who are currently working on their memoirs, so there might more stories on the way without me being involved. And I heard Sami Yaffa’s (& Tommi Liimatta’s) book will be available in English this spring. Yes, I do believe the Monroe book will be out in English some day!
HANOÏ ROCKS’ biography All Those Wasted Years is finally available in English. We thought it would be interesting to ask author Ari Väntänen a few questions about the book and how it all came up together. He also tells us about his everlasting love for one of the best rock’n’roll bands ever!
When did you first hear HANOÏ ROCKS?
Hmmm… The first song I remember hearing was “Up Around the Bend”. I think I saw the video on TV in 1984, when I was ten. I couldn’t believe they were Finnish. Unlike most of the bands from my country at the time, they looked cool. But then I heard my parents were acquainted with Andy McCoy’s dad and that our neighbours were related to him, so I had to believe it.
Growing up in Scandinavia must have been quite different from the rest of the world when it comes to HANOÏ ROCKS. What do you remember about them from those days? Were they considered as a famous band there?
Oh yes, they were famous. To us Finnish kids they were real rock stars, and they looked and sounded the part. We’d read about them in magazines. The cover stories were often about them. I had a Hanoi poster on my wall. I used to read “Michael’s Adventures”, a column he wrote for a Finnish teen magazine. Unlike their Finnish peers, they were international. I don’t think they even saw themselves as being a Nordic band or whatever. They’d tour wherever they could, Finland, Japan, the US, the UK, India… They were a wild bunch, strange boys, and I’m sure many didn’t know what to make of them, but they also had a lot of devoted fans. I was always fascinated about Hanoi, but unfortunately too young to catch them live.
How did you get the idea of a HANOÏ biography?
Well, I became a music writer, and I always took writing seriously. I did a lot of work for music magazines, and writing a book was a dream of mine. I was wondering why no-one had written a proper biography of Hanoi Rocks. It was such a fantastic story with all kinds of adventures, and I was certain that soon someone would make a great book out of it. But time went by, and nothing happened. So, I decided to do it myself. I worked on it for a few years before I told anybody. Finally, the Finnish version was released in April 2009.
Can you tell us about the American release of the book?
One day I got an e-mail from Jyrki 69 of The 69 Eyes, whom I know a bit from work. He told me that his friends at Cleopatra Records were putting together a Hanoi Rocks vinyl box called Strange Boys Box. He asked if I’d write the liner notes for it, since I knew the story. Then one thing led to another, and suddenly me and Michael were working on the English version of “All Those Wasted Years” with Cleopatra. The Strange Boys Box liner notes are excerpts from the book. The book was translated by my English friend Andy Stowe. He is a musician himself, a good writer and he even saw Hanoi live back in the day, so he was really on the case. I’m really happy how it turned out. Cleopatra put a lot of love into it.
You co-wrote the book with Michael Monroe and Andy McCoy, how did it all happen? How did you do it, was it based on interviews?
I wrote it all by myself, but the book project was a co-operation. When I had the first version of the manuscript ready, I showed it to Michael and told him what I was up to. He liked what I had written, and we got a publishing deal for a official Hanoi Rocks biography. Then I continued writing and started doing interviews with band members and people who were there when the magic happened. To name a few, I spoke with Michael, Andy, Nasty Suicide, Gyp Casino, Bob Ezrin, Tyla, Ginger Wildheart, Dee Snider, Duff McKagan, Overend Watts… I had a job in a music paper back then, which made it easy to reach people in the music business.
So, to answer your question, the book is based on interviews, but also on all kinds of other materials, like print articles, recordings, TV appearances… whatever I found interesting. A British Hanoi fan named Xan sent me her whole huge Hanoi Rocks articles collection, of which I’m eternally grateful. And Mr. Monroe went through his vast archives and found a lot of interesting photos, documents and other stuff that we could use. He also commented on the text, made corrections and gave me many in-depth interviews. Michael put a lot of effort into both the Finnish and the English version.
So it wasn’t too difficult to find never seen before photos, or other things that haven’t been online before?
Not really. My Finnish publisher Like has been around for a long time and is really well-connected, and like I said, Michael had a lots of material at his place. Hanoi’s Finnish record company Johanna also had stuff to share. Seven years ago not a lot of it was online yet. But now it is.
Have you learned a lot of things you didn’t know before about the band when writing the book?
When I started writing, I had a pretty good idea of how the story went. But when you write a book you dig deeper. Of course you have to tell what happened, but when you start writing about why things went the way they did, you’re onto something. I feel like I learned a lot about their personalities, and those explain a lot of what happened. The guys in the band were very different from each other. In some cases, total opposites. But when they made music together, they really clicked. Their chemistry was just out of this world.
Do you have any favourite HANOÏ ROCKS albums or songs?
I used to, but now they all seem like crucial parts of the story. For example, people say that “Oriental Beat” doesn’t sound very good (which is true) but in my ears it captures the mood the band was in back then. They were going through tough times in 1982, and the album is a reflection of all that. I love that record. I love all of them.
Favourite rock’n’roll books?
There’s lots of good stuff out there. I love The Dirt, Neil Strauss did a great job with it. The latest Jerry Lee Lewis book by Rick Bragg is brilliant. Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain is a classic. The writers interest me, obviously, but sometimes you don’t even know who actually wrote the great book you’re enjoying. Even the “autobiographies” are often not written by the stars themselves, even if they’re narrated in the first person. You need a writer to write a book, just like you need a songwriter to write a song. I think Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young write great songs and great books.
What about HANOÏ members’ other bands/projects, have you been into them?
Always. I have pretty much all of their records. I just bought a copy of Cheap And Nasty’s second album “Cool Talk Injection”. It’s hard to find and I’m happy to have it. The Suicide Twins’ “Silver Missiles And Nightingales” is one of my all-time favourites, and Sami Yaffa’s band Mad Juana is great. Michael’s solo career I know through and through. His current band is fantastic.
The HANOÏ ROCKS legacy is very important, and they paved the way for GUNS N’ ROSES and many other bands. Have you ever thought about how they would be/sound nowadays if they could have been still around since the 80s with the same line-up?
That’s always the question with Hanoi: “what if….?” But that’s impossible to answer. All I know is that many things would have had to change to keep them together. There were problems and drama there even before Razzle died. I think it was a good decision to stop when they did, in 1985, because the band was dying or dead already. It would be great to have Razzle here with us. I never got to meet him, but apparently he was a great guy. Everybody loved him and still does.
What would you think if somebody came up to you with the project of a movie based on the book?
Well, it’s not my story at all, it’s Hanoi’s. The book is just my interpretation of it, just like the movie would be the director’s version. If there was a movie project and somebody asked me to, I’d be happy to read the script and say what I think. It’s a brilliant story that could very well be adapted into a brilliant movie. But it also could end up being very corny and silly. There are so many things that could go wrong. You’d have to understand who they were and what they represented. Not many actually get it. That’s one of the reasons for writing the book.
What other books have you written, and are you working on other projects? What other bands would you like to write about if you could choose a few?
I wrote the authorized Michael Monroe biography that came out in Finnish in 2011. It was updated in 2014. That one really should be published in English, too. Then I wrote a book about the band Apulanta, they’re huge in Finland. Who I’d like to write about? I don’t know… I write in Finnish, so I guess it would have to be someone from here. A band with some soul and a story to tell.
“Every day, I feel like running away… much as I did as a teenager in Vermont in the ’50s. But now, there’s nowhere to run to. All the cool places have been ruined. Soon, we will all be evicted from the planet, and so the world will end just as I leave it.
What will emerge from the polluted, radioactive primordial soup that’s left [after all the higher life forms are extinct] remains to be seen, but the gods have infinite time to come up with something more interesting than what’s left of the human race.”
(-Peter Crowley)
Quick! Tell me the best remaining rock band on the planet. You probably said Motorhead, Jim Jones Revue, Beasts Of Bourbon, or Michael Monroe, right? Maybe a couple of you thought Morrissey, Manic Street Preachers or Primal Scream. I’m partial to Tango Pirates and Captain Zapped. Best frontman? Did you say Iggy, Idol, Tyler, Jagger, or Michael Monroe? If you like rocknroll, and you ain’t talkin’ ’bout AC/DC, Joan Jett, or the Stones, chances are, you’re usually most likely still yappin’ on about ageless glam rock peacock, Michael. We always come back to Michael. He never sold out, never cashed in, never gave up, never crapped out. Michael Monroe endured it all ten times, overcoming every setback and tragedy known to man, kept coming back again and again, a constant inspiration to millions, worldwide. On solo lp’s like “Nights Are So Long” and “Peace Of Mind”, Monroe has always made category defying rocknroll music that shocks, rocks, and shakes us. Powerful originals like “Dead, Jail, Or Rocknroll”, “Loneliness Loves Me More”, “Make It Go Away”, and “Smokescreen” have soothed our broken hearts, stirred us to form our own glam bands, sound tracked our love affairs and long lost nights of drunken debauchery. He made a couple of awesome comeback records with Hanoi Rocks that produced more memorable hits-“People Like Me”, and the chilling, “Center Of The Universe”. He’s always surprised us with the coolest covers by artists as diverse as the Damned, Hoyt Axton, Alice Cooper, the Deadboys, and Leonard Cohen. The man’s got fabulous taste, tons of heart, and seems to eat well, because while the rest of us age, he still high kicks and jumps around like he’s twenty. “Classic Rock” magazine voted his last record “Sensory Overload” album of the year and “Little Steven’s Underground Garage Radio Show” listeners voted his song, “Trick Of The Wrist” coolest song of the year.
His latest guitar bender, Steve Conte, has already co-written timeless anthems like, “Temptation To Exist” and “Plenty Of Music” with the surviving members of NY Dolls, and has similarly shattered the long odds and even managed to win over the majority of impossible to please Cult Of Thunders die-hards. Sami Yaffa, you all know as the living legend from Hanoi Rocks, Jetboy, Smack (briefly in L.A.), NY Dolls, Mad Juana, and the Compulsions. Dregen from the Backyard Babies and Hellacopters replaced Ginger from the Wildhearts, and since Dregen’s got his own album and tour to do, Rich Jones from the Black Halos, Yo Yo’s, Ginger, Neil Leyton, Yo-Yo’s, Amen, etc., has stepped up, to fill-in on theis new tour. Karl Rockfist, you know from Chelsea Smiles, Danzig, and Dizzy Reed. This is an unparalleled revolving door roll call. The best of the best, so expectations are high. The smash hit single, “Ballad Of The Lower East Side” rocks like “78”, their last smash debut single, it cribs a line from one of the Rolling Stone’s best 45’s and takes us on a crash course tour of the gritty, industrial, burntout backstreets of beautiful, badass, bohemian NYC… before far right extremist Mayor Rudolph Giuliani closed the after hours pubs, 9-11, the surveillance state, media-monopoly fed, mass consumerism and conformity, stop n frisk, NYU landgrabs, the billionaire nanny state, the perversely jacked-up rents and gratuitous ongoing Disneyfication of the city formely known as the melting pot, by despicable one percent mayors and their thug police that billionaire Mayor Bloomberg proudly refers to as, “the world’s sixth biggest army”.
Even dapper old rich guy David Byrne groans about how the global elites and their trust funded children have squeezed all the egalitarian heart and artistic genius out of Lower Manhattan. Patti Smith says “Don’t Come Here”. The gilded age banksters and war profiteers want us all dumb and running on the hamster wheel, competing with one another, and focusing numbly on idle heiresses, video games, diet products, marrying-up, plastic surgery, divorce and pre-nup’s. Waving flags and chanting “Woof, woof” like dogs, rooting for war like it’s merely sports. We’ve had to all, at least, contemplate the hard fact that the people on top of the capitalist pyramid are actively eviscerating our civil liberties, building internment prisons while closing our schools, groping us in our airports and chemical spraying us in our public squares, spying on us, crackingdown brutally on free speech, and pushing us out of our traditional bohemian enclaves, actively depopulating with their Monsanto toxic foods and bad medicines, pollution and nuclear radiation. In uncertain times, we deserve real rocknroll with a rebellious spirit, that reflects the reality of our situation and encourages the young to resist the inhumane injustices. Dregen delivers “Child Of The Revolution” to “Horns & Halos”, and it, too, is outstanding. It’ll remind some dedicated listeners of “Teenage Revolution” from “Street Poetry”. Michael and his glorious gang of eternal teenagers always pay homage to the old school cool of Downtown, when even us working class libertines and punk rockers could still find a rat’s nest squat, or share a rundown hovel with other runaways, musicians, film makers, drug dealers and hookers, before the hedge-fund managers and lawless white collar criminals overthrew our justice system, and drove everyone away from NYC except for the Olsen Twins and Lenny Kravitz, and those bridge and tunnel white shirted bullies of the enforcer class. Who the fuck has four grand a month for a shoebox apartment in a neighborhood full of shitty chain stores and jet-setter designer label garbage? For what? Even our historical landmarks are systemically being erased and replaced with awful shit for horrid, rich, slave owning pigs. Corporate music sucks beyond belief. Way worse than it did, even in the insufferable, 90’s black days of phony “alternative” marketing and moaning grunge Tarzans. Meanwhile, Mike and his dizzyingly energetic crack team of swanky, quick draw artistses keep the authentic gutter soul and delinquent spirits of Stiv Bators and Johnny Thunders close-by, even as their explosively epic aural assaults also bring to mind stadium pop of Cheap Trick, and the F.M. radio rawk of Golden Earring, Mott The Hoople, Nazareth, and Rose Tattoo. Michael’s always excelled at the rebel songs-think back to “While You Were Looking At Me”, “Smokescreen”, and “Too Rich To Be Good”, etc., and “Horns & Halos” does not disappoint.These cats are stylistically all over the place, as usual, sounding like fifties Little Richard, or the Heartbreakers one minute, or Guns N Roses, or 69 Eyes, the next. Hopefully, his also talented, sometimes songwriting collaborator, Ginger is making a cool mint performing alongside Courtney Love, so he won’t always have to resort to relying on the fanbase to finance his frolics with Kickstarter campaigns. You know the economy has really nosedived when even bigtime marquee, namebrand artists, of Ginger’s caliber are apparently struggling to record and release their own independent music. Ginger co wrote the exquisite “Superpowered Surperfly” and other class tunes on the last Michael Monroe album, before returning to his own headline making songwriting juggernaut and well known crowdsourcing approach to fundraising. Monroe only works with the top guns in the music biz. I’ve still never heard the Jerusalem Slim cd he and Sami recorded with Steve Stevens and Ian McLagan, but I hear Stevens has started a new band with Duff and Sebastian Bach. I have very much enjoyed Monroe’s collaborations with Slash, which are probably, next to Izzy’s albums, the best work we’ve heard from Guns N Roses alumni since Michael guest starred on their punk covers album twenty some years back.
Andy McCoy remains one of the world’s premiere rocknroll guitar virtuoso’s, but has chosen to pursue his painting, and television shows in recent years, introducing us to his Finnish gutter rock hellions, Greasy Helmet, who are the throwback essence of nasty comic-book metal, a bit like Buck Cherry without the brains, and while there’s obviously no replacing an artist of McCoy’s musical stature, Mike Monroe’s carousel of creative collaborators like Nasty Suicide, Jay Hening (R.I.P.), Stevie Klasson, Slash, Dregen, Ginger, and Steve Conte have all done a heroic job of maintaining that top-notch quality level that fans of glam rock’s favorite frontman take for granted. Some fans say Michael Monroe’s current line-up are providing an infinitely more satisfying rocknroll experience, than most any of their former peers, by not limiting their songwriting to a narrow subject matter, and by avoiding tiresome, eighties adolescent, formulaic themes, like so many stunted hairband veterans. Michael Monroe has never been the least bit inhibited about exploring various musical sub-genres, it’s all punk rock to him, his last platter co-starred Lemmy and Lucinda Williams, that vintage Hanoi Rocks stardust always glinted with sparks of surf, disco, reggae, echoes of the Cramps, the Clash, etc. The same holds true now, as probably my favorite song on the last Michael Monroe l.p. was almost Gram Parsons style Americana, more cosmic cowboy, than cosmic ted. His latest side has bits that will call to mind everyone from Aerosmith to the Waldos to the Alarm to Joe Strummer & The Mescaleroes.
Wealth inequality and shock doctrine austerity have made real street rock an endangered species, just like Mike sings on Demolition 23. Alley brats, like most of you and me, can’t even afford a rehearsal space or new guitar strings in the darkening age of eight twenty five an hour, that’s minimum wage here in the states, so we deeply value these last few, precious, real rocknrollers who still have something genuine to communicate, more and more with each passing year, even as we keep ailing icons Little Richard, Billy Rath, Henri Paul Tortosa, and Bootsey X in all our rocknroll prayers. Michael Monroe and his scrappy lads still dress like they always did, they still make music like they always did, with nary a concession to any of the soulless mousepad muzak the corporations have pushed on us all, against our will, for these past twenty odd years.
I like that “Horns & Halos” comes with a handsome booklet and lyric sheet. Album opener, “TNT Diet” kicks off with an audio assault against gloomy grunge poseurs and insincere hipster types who pay top dollar for fashionably distressed attire to make it appear as if they worked in the carwash all day. Pure UK Subs style punk aggression. Somebody pissed him off. “Eighteen Angels” is lyrically elegant with a slinky groove, sure to move the hips of your favorite bombshell barfly, it’s cool, Stones-style funk with a helluva harmonica hallelujah rousing the ghost of Little Walter, or at least sayin hi to ole Sugar Blue. “Saturday Night Special” is a blazing little number about the ill advised perils of self destructive tendencies, penned by Mister Steve Conte as a bit of a cautionary tale, and a reminder to us all. Michael really sings the glitter offa this one here. “Stained Glass Heart” is another one that really impresses one, with Michael singing exceptionally well, at the top of his game. Looks like Dregen and Steve co-wrote that one, it’s the best new song I’ve heard in quite some time. It’s pretty, poetic, with an essential and uplifting message to the real rocknroll people: “Love remains and we will carry on!” Brilliantly played guitars. “Stained Glass Heart” is a #1 hit in this aging desperado’s ultra-underground. Just this much would be more than most lingering rock revival acts could still deliver, but wait, the best is yet to come. “Horns & Halos” is a sneering, philosophical rabble-rouser, about how we all have darkness and a sinister side, but also, always the infinite, and instant capacity for forgiveness, truth, and being COOL, anytime, we so choose. “Child Of The Revolution” is really touched with grace, and makes me want to hear Dregen’s new solo album. “RISE UP! YOU’RE A CHILD OF THE REVOLUTION!” is the song I’ve been waiting to hear from these guys, since the brownbag corner gang favorites, “Scum Lives On” and “Hammersmith Palais” set the bar so high. “Soul Surrender” has an urgent chorus and a skanky reggae tinged vibe, shot through with more of Michael Monroe’s trademark positivity and pure white light. “Half The Way” is driving rock with gutsy vocals and sleek musicianship. “Ritual” is another highlight, it’s really unique, a thing of gothic beauty and noir sensuality, like the Lords Of The New Church meets Mick Taylor era Rolling Stones. Artistically, a triumph. “Ritual” is kinda…well, mystical. “Hands Are Tied” is an anti-drug anthem. And thus ends another classic from an unstoppable band that just can’t fail. Well worth your investment.