“DEMOCRATS WE CALL YOUR BLUFF, VOTING BLUE IS NOT ENOUGH!!!” BALL OF CONFUSION, A COUPLE ROUNDS…, RONALD KOAL, THE RAT, FACTS ABOUT RATS, LOVE SPIT LOVE, PIG MEDIA INDUCED PERMANENT STATE OF TRAUMA, DODGING SNARLING DESERT DOGS, COPING WITH THE BIG FEAR, etc. (-communique from the underground by JD Stayfree & The Fix Is In, Kids!)
“Democrats are using the hearings investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol as one long campaign commercial. They believe that saying the name Trump often enough will inspire voters who are tired of their lies and failures.” (-Margaret Kimberly; Black Agenda Report)
“We’ve got to take seriously the possibility that a nuke may detonate due to misunderstanding or malfunction amid the chaos and confusion of careless brinkmanship between the US and Russia and that it will lead to a nuclear exchange that destroys our world.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“Democrats have nothing to run on in Nov having delivered war, inflation & escalating prices for basic commodities. So, Biden says Roe is on ballot! But democrats you control white house & congress what is stopping federal legislation now? You are playing games – again.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“To this very day, AOC has refused to explain why she voted to send $40 billion to Raytheon, Boeing and CIA ‘for Ukraine’ while people in her district are more deprived than ever. It was clear that much of Biden’s $40b war package for Ukraine was going to CIA without much idea what it was for. It’s hardly a surprise there are many CIA operatives on the ground in Ukraine but it does shows the true scope of the direct US involvement in war against Russia.” (-Glenn Greenwald)
“Ukrainian families is a weird way to spell CIA and self interests.” (-Coach Mystogan)
“The word ‘liberal’ was and is hijacked by Establishment rightwing neocon, neolibs who gave lip service to cultural and identity politics issues.” (-Albizu Vive)
“New studies have shown the US has killed 6 million people over the past 20 years with the ‘War on Terror.’ It’s a truly insane number. The US government has no moral authority to criticize any other nation. Stop listening to war criminals.” (-Lee Camp)
“I’m not “voting harder” for a party that responds to racial injustice by wearing Kente cloth and women losing their rights by reading poetry on the House floor. We need a real left party that will actually fight back against the GOP with substantive policies instead of theatrics.” (-Ryan Knight)
“Folks, the Ukrainian war did not create the energy & food price crisis. The illegal sanctions imposed on Russia by the U.S. & its vassal EU states created the shortages. We all have an interest in ending the war & dropping the sanctions. #IblameBiden” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“Nobody did more to kill democracy than @TheDemocrats when they rigged their primaries agains t@BernieSanders.” (-Ryan Knight)
“When @SecBlinken was asked by journalist @AbbyMartin to comment on apartheid Israel’s murder of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, he claimed he was waiting for an investigation. Well now the UN human rights office has confirmed it, and he’s still silent. Typical” (-Benjamin Norton)
“Do you think it’s an effective strategy, telling people they’re bigots or traitors or don’t deserve citizenship if they don’t vote for the right party?” (-Matt Taibbi)
DNC Lawyers Argue DNC Has Right to Pick Candidates in Back Rooms | Observer
“When pro-proxy war voices implore us to respect the Ukrainian people’s agency, this is the Agency they’re talking about: The New York Times on Twitter: “Some CIA personnel have continued to operate in Ukraine secretly, mostly in Kyiv, directing much of the intelligence the U.S. is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials. https://t.co/4VWdybmome” / Twitter” (-Aaron Mate’)
SHANE MACGOWAN AND THE CROCK OF GOLD
” If I should fall from grace with God
Where no doctor can relieve me
If I’m buried ‘neath the sand
Where the ANGELS WON’T RECEIVE ME
Let me go, boys
Let me go, boys
Let me go down in the mud
Where the rivers all run dry
This land was always ours
Was the proud land of our fathers
It belongs to us and them
Not to any of the others
Let them go, boys
Let them go, boys
Let them go down in the mud
Where the rivers all run dry” (-Pogues)
I was delighted to watch the Shane MacGowan movie. He’s who gave me the idea long ago that the secret of high quality song lyrics was more editing. I always loved his songs. So cinematic, his rebellious nature and uncompromising, outlaw poet way of life. In some moods, “Lucy” can make me weep, so many of ’em. The whole Popes lp. Heck, I even liked his cronies “Waiting For Herb” album and was thrilled when the Low & Sweet Orchestra featuring Mike Martt from Tex & The Horseheads covered, “the Drunken Boat” one wild night long time ago. Anyways, great movie, like Shane, I also probably started my drinking at about six. Always felt like I’d have fit in better, in some other space and time, like his family’s idyllic country place, that he describes in the film. If you’re anything like me, you’ll also wanna see this great flick. “I never shoulda turned my back on the old folks back at home!” You might know the old saw about the time when he showed up at my dirty divebar and sat on my stool in between my old disreputable hoodlum, twin sauce king friends, across from either one, or the other, of my most loved two dead bartenders, the gorgeous blonde-haired tragic hippie beauty who asked me to run away to Alaska with her and live in a teepee, or crazy jovial goodtimes, toothless young pool shark, dart team sharp, leather cowboy hatted, Westerberg worshipper whose house I squatted in while he was dragged away to jail for false or at least highly exaggerated charges, and all I got was a lousy autographed, size triple x t shirt. “WHERE WAS YA?” It said, in black sharpie. Babysitting.
HOPE YOU FIND YOUR WAY TO HEAVEN
I was only out there baking in the unmerciful, unforgiving heat for maybe forty minutes, tops. That was long enough to drench my homemade Motorcycle Boy shirt, which I don’t really like to wash much, cause these cheap iron on transfers only hold up two or three times. My Duran Duran one is missing John Taylor’s face. I went to the overpriced tourist book shop to look at their free box, nothing there. Passed a young meth couple sitting in the grass together in the drug park, they were blaring some vintage Biggie Smalls music on their I-Phone. Took me back, for just a flickering instant, to when it was me and my favorite gal almost forty years ago, making dandelion necklaces and listening to Echo & The Bunnymen on my boombox with all the cool stickers from Musicland in the mall and a broken speaker. Then I noted the peripheral presence of another Breakin’ Bad wannabe drug dealer kid kinda circling around me in the corner of my eye on another phone and I just calmly continued on my way. I learned in the last town that one can only pause to look at the reflection of the mirror fountain for about twenty seconds before the spare change “got a cigarette” street hustlers come towards you from one direction, and the gentrification cops are coming for you, from the other. They wanna see your paper cause while the street peeps think ya got somethin’, you can never pass as sufficiently compliant and middle class to these old rent a cops. All the people who talk about being safe, who have car alarms and security systems and cameras connected to their doorbells and all that, big trucks, tall fences, doormen?! I inhabit an entirely different realm. No phone, no car, no safety, no confidence in the system. I gotta keep moving. I’m not welcome in the Honkytopian Privilege Enclaves. Ain’t got money, refuse to memorize their rhetoric. I’ve always been an undesirable, an infidel, a heretic. The Rejected. There aint no safe spaces for poor people. We are on our own. No interest in joining any of their newfangled factions, no hazings or orientations, initiation rituals, or standing outside the red velvet rope waiting to be anointed or appointed for me. I gave up on all that fitting in shit when I was oh, fuck, maybe 25. The world had changed severely around me. The workaday dweebs with their ledgers and overhead projectors and charts and data hate anyone who aint groveling for permission or clocked in. They’re all looking to make a bust, have their gotcha moment, ala TMZ, see something/say something. Someone’s violating the Dress Code, or whatever. Even summa the ex music people were just visiting cultural tourists permanently embedded with the establishment, not to be trusted, you can’t free nobody who loves their biometric timeclock and prestigious badge, I gave up on communicating to the mad tv herd. The Burger Kings can not hear me over the sound of their televisions, so ya just gotta move on, stay mobile, keep moving, stay free. One more and I gotta go.
BOZOS, BOOZERS, BASTARDS, AND BOSTON ROCKERS
“I’m not saying that all college students are subhuman-I’m just saying that if you aim to spend a few years mastering the art of pomposity, those are places where you can be taught by undisputed experts…” (-Lester Bangs)
This dude RAFE from Royal Pimps was in The BLACKJACKS, kindof a cross between Springsteen and The Heartbreakers, maybe, who also rocked like fuck. They were older than us, and sortof like the last remnants of Boston’s Aerosmith influenced sleazepunk. They were the Boston answer to those hysterically funny bands like Odin and London in Penelope Spherris’ “Decline Of Western Civilization: The Metal Years” film, unintentionally funny, like Nadir D’Priest or D’Molls, but providing some tawdry glamour, swagger, showbiz chutzpah, hotpants and big hair comedy relief and entertainment value and well deserved respite from all the bland coffeehouse, furrowed brow, folk shit that took itself oh so seriously, and actual entire armies of generic Beastie Boys imitating hardcore kids in their flight jackets and Docs who only liked to fight in a pack of ten or more, and mostly spoke in threateningly monosyllabic, wicked pissa Hahhdcuaahh quotes-you know, big imaginative fight talk like, “Ayy, you in da feathas! Dis is Bosston, not L.A.!”. I always said that growing up, I was never entirely sure if my name was “FAG!” , “DEVO!”, or “BOY GEORGE”. The Boston Beastie brigades did not like my sequins and makeup wearing anymore than their midwestern hick counterparts in the pickup trucks and baseball hats. We went to gritty bars almost every night of the week in those years and there were no uptight scolds or jealous spinster prudes trying to shame us for liking to rock. This was still Pre P.C., PMRC-Punque plastic pukes. It was good fun, all the time. We’d go see the Lyres or Cheater Slicks or Two Saints or Neighborhoods or Voodoo Dolls or Black Snake Moon at the Middle East. The pissy prissy killjoy straight edgers from the private schools would be arriving on the next train though, with their Alston Beat backpacks overstuffed with uptight encyclopedias of rules and updated lexicons and navel studies degrees and zealous coplike sensibilities, they have come to cancel your culture, your way of life is extinct, your diet has been reevaluated, your ways of dancing are henceforth forbidden, you must assimilate for sensitivity, vegan sobriety, and etiquette wokeness. Cause the world needs more male Tipper Gores snitching on the poor for thought crimes against the college fratboy clones and upper class princeling celebrity VIP rooms. Or something. Me, I unapologetically liked Faster Pussycat, and even “Gypsy Road” by Cinderella, I flagrantly wore black eyeliner and blue eyesahdow to work in Harvard Square and would not apologize, and Kathleen Hannah married a Beastie Boy, kinda capitalist power couple legitimizing all those mooks in the backwards baseball caps who always felt obliged to yell their ignorant abuse at me. At that moment of my history I think my primary sinspirations and influences were Smack-the Finnish band, you remember Claude? “Run Rabbit Run”? And Stiv Bators. Ya know? I went back to the midwest to be closer to my oldest kid but all the bands sucked so bad. There were only like maybe three good bands, and nobody liked them cause they weren’t fuckin rich, grunge was fuckin high school all over again.
CULTURE APPROPRIATION AND RICH PEOPLE RIPPING OFF POOR PEOPLE
Man I guess I only lived in Boston maybe five years but I totally miss the food, the bars, the book stores and record stores, the subway, and going to the Garment District on Saturdays for big garbage bags full of shiny clothes! Rosalitas was a Tex-Mex place where I could have lunch on the cheap-a big buffet where I could get mashed potatoes with extremely hot salsa which was good for absorbing all that alcohol I was consuming on the job at Tower Records. One thing I do like about otherwise nauseating sporto college towns is all the big cheap pizza and bad fried foods! My bad times in Boston were approximately equal to good times in the midwest. And they still had some fun garageland bands-not even counting me and my extended circle of fanzine making, nowhere glam kids. Facts About Rats – Full 3 Song EP (1992/Stanton Park Records) – YouTube These guys, Facts About Rats, were my fave live punk band back then and I told the label honcho at the record company I foolishly interned at he should sign ’em but nobody ever listens to me, they all wait for some dude with an inheritance to copy the idea and ONLY THEN do they ever do it. The record mogul supposed he already had a band like Facts, and a band like mine. Man I got so sick of inheritance bands-some suburban guitarist buys some old vintage space echo and his friend yells in it and they do a piss poor Lux Interior impersonation and act like they done something fresh and new-ya know? Cause they usually stayed in their parent’s zipcodes where the proles had never heard of the bands that they were so slavishly copying, they got to strut around like big visionary, creative kingpins, pretending they invented reverb and combat boots. College towns are just not my scene, at all, man. The trust funders were everywhere though, these awful, spoilt Fauntleroy’s throwing somebody’s showbiz uncle money around-Sub-Pop was rising and all the locals were going grunge, overnight, a million mediocre Mudhoneys every which way you looked. This guy Bobby here from Facts About Rats always delivered personality and gutsy feeling, even in a flannel shirt. That’s what I look for-originality, sincerity, intensity-he had all that. I liked where he was coming from, it felt true to me.
This guy, Joe was always nice to us, too. When we knew ’em, Greg and Simon were in the band. Interviewed him for my old fanzine at Axis one time.
This guy was a scream, always had fabulous winklepickers, what a character-he liked to do Iggy covers, or “Route 66” , any place and anytime. Def a kindred spirit of me and my hellion outsider pack! We were also known to invade the odd open mic night with our ghettofied screwtop wino glitterpunk anthems to love and glory. And second-rate Gun Club covers.
CRAZY EVER DARKENING FUCKEDUP TIMES THAT TRY THE SPIRIT
“We’re all fast breakers comin’ outta the gates, takin’ chances with the crash and burn…” (-David Lee Roth)
Yep that’s how it was for us, we started out like Captain Marvels of self reinvention, what with the rented from the local tux shop yellow capes and sparkly red tights and everything, the whole lightning bolt hit us on the rooftops overlooking the badlands like, “HUZZZAHHH!” and we felt hallelujah transformed, like we had seen the same light as Jake Blues, ya know but it was probably just the acid our lad Nas F. Bastard got from his affinity credit card peddling telemarketing job, so you can imagine how heart wrenching it stayed for some of us when all the big buzz, promising potential and dynamite momentum soon fizzled out, after a series of wrong choices, bad moves, wrongheaded fuckups, jumped ship mutineers, and drunken drifter sad sack buffoonery. I often said I felt like Rip Van Winkle, post Grunge. Like I woke up hungover underneath a tree in a foreign city with a long beard and a rusty gun and no one spoke the same lingo as me, no more. Our ways were outlawed and shadow banned by the man in the tower. We were shocked and awed. Demonetized and deplatformed from like, Day Three. First couple days in town, everybody’s glad to see us, buying rounds. Third day, everybody’s funny, now you funny, too.
We had a lot of golden moments scattered over the years, when everything seemed to briefly coalesce and we felt free as the bees, hollerin’ like wild wolves beneath the big pink moon, but it always came crashing down when the petty, spiteful daytime people put the screws to us. Strange how all those old John Trudell and Lenny Bruce and George Carlin quotes ring truer now than then! When I was a kid, free speech was a non negotiable cornerstone of what I understood to be radical leftism-we were anti violence, anti authoritarian, anti racist, and anti war-and always, always pro FREE SPEECH…remember that time? But I guess that was before they rebranded Reagan as Obama…before the neoncon con artists like the Clintons and Obamas pulled the Overton Window so far to the right of Reagan or Nixon and Oliver North that people SOMEHOW FORGOT the Bill Of Rights, Due Process, and Geneva Conventions mattered, and we ended up with all these fuckedup rube, fake liberal shitlibs, only caring about protecting their own pet’s rights, believing that censorship was okeydokey if somebody, somewhere, at some fucking rich college was ever “OFFENDED!” I always say you should see the list of shit that offends me. Murder, that’s right off the toppa my list, how about evicting poor people, or never raising the minimum wage to allow us to pay your bullshit jackedup big city rents? I’m offended by wicked billionaires killing journalists and whistle blowers and by all the soulless sold out shitlibs who write for Huffpost and Salon and shit who provide cover for their preferred party’s atrocities by focusing on culture war diversions and distractions, all the time, for big paychecks. The disposition matrix and all the fools thanking that dude for keeping it classy. That offends me. Lies for war, that offends me. Rockstars promoting war rather than resisting it. Offensive. Torture Gestapo’s and “overflow facilities”, censorship and death of the free press, non violent reefer offenders still being currently incarcerated…I’m just gettin’ started, here…Most Murkkkans don’t wanna hear that the intelligence agencies run the human trafficking and sex blackmail rings or that the country’s politicians are just manikins, window dressing.
Empire To Expand NATO In Response To War Caused By NATO Expansion (substack.com)
Twitter needs to start exposing the UK’s murky online propaganda | WIRED UK
“The Ukraine war is the single most aggressively trolled issue I’ve ever witnessed. As soon as it started this site was full of brand new accounts swarming anyone who uttered wrongthink about Ukraine, and now there are entire extremely coordinated troll factions. Very inorganic.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
It’s become “new normalized” for five or ten techlord billionaires to censor people online like the Free Thought Project, Convo Couch, Mint Press, Jacobin, Mnar A Muhawesh, Joe Lauria at Consortium News, Abby Martin, RFK Jr., James Corbett, Black Agenda Report, Louis Farrakhan, on and on. The social media monopolies rig the so called algorithms so as few as possible people can see what Dr. Jill Stein or Ajamu Baraka or Scott Bassman or Robert Ott posts. They just motherfuckin’ straightup locked my account for anti war posting. Middle class tv watchers keep telling me we still live in a democracy and that only “TRUMP!” voters like that dastardly mutant supervillain, Qshaman threaten that in any way, though we all see the whole thing being dismantled, incrementally in real time, right in front of our own eyes, and the WEF fascists openly brag about their agenda all over youtube speech after speech, in their own words, but See No Evilists don’t wanna know-they just harp on and on about whatever the “OTHERS” are doing wrong, and pro nouns and empty tokenism of five highly visible members of traditionally oppressed classes reading the same old same old, good ole boy, deep state teleprompter, but with fake diversity-even Trump and 700 Club always seat 5 token people of varying skintones in their front row, often paying one to nod along a lot, the shitlib wishful thinkers are drunk on their own comforts-they’re all stuck in partisan cheerleader mode, defending the indefensible, as long as their preferred partisan celebs are involved. They act like LIBYA never got overthrown by a black Pres and a female Secretary Of state. Corporations piss on us and tv millionaires say it’s raining. You stand outside in the elements and talk about the weather and the privilege havers tell you, “that’s just a CONSPIRACY!” Back in my day, Sonny, we did not suck up, or worship politicians. Certainly not based only on their fucking hue or gender or sexual identity or zodiac fucking sign. Or empty bullshit campaign speechifying. We were rebels though, we weren’t kissass gotmine social climbers like the millionaire fortunate sons, showbiz dynasty brunch bunch. I honestly can not stand those mimosa motherfuckers. You probably didn’t notice, but their over funded, paid for, formulaic/no soul imitator-muzak kinda sucks, too. Tribute bands with nothing to say except for look at my new status symbols. They might have some fancy Lewis leather coats on, but inside they’re all a buncha Huey Lewis’!
“Liberals are not progressive. Liberals are capitalists and imperialists.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Really interesting fact: apparently it’s President Biden who won’t support getting rid of the filibuster or packing the courts while the US descends into autocratic white nationalism not Susan Sarandon. Who knew?” (-Adam McKay)
“Instead of letting them corral you into an unjust political system that makes you feel the only power you have is to vote, we need to look at our own potential to organize & defend our rights” (-Abby Martin)
“These scholars, writers, intellectuals, and journalists, like those in Weimar Germany, bear much of the blame. They preferred accommodation over confrontation. They stood by as the working class was stripped of rights and impoverished by the billionaire class, fertilizing the ground for an American fascism. Those who orchestrated the economic, political, and social assault are the major donors to the universities. They control trustee boards, grants, academic prizes, think tanks, promotion, publishing, and tenure. Academics, looking for an exit, ignored the attacks by the ruling oligarchy. Most of those tasked with reporting on and interpreting history, social movements and religious beliefs have failed us. They spoke about the past, vowing “Never again,” but refused to use the lessons of the past to explain the present. It was not ignorance. It was cowardice.
The billionaire class, while sometimes socially liberal, dispossessed working men and women through deindustrialization, austerity, a legalized tax boycott, looting the U.S. Treasury and deregulation. It triggered the widespread despair and rage that pushed many of the betrayed into the arms of these con artists and demagogues. It has no intention of supporting social equality, which is why it thwarted the candidacy of Bernie Sanders.
In the end, even the liberal class will choose fascism over empowering the left-wing and organized labor. The only thing the ruling oligarchy truly cares about is unfettered exploitation and profit.” (-Chris Hedges)
Sidhu Moose Wala: Murdered India singer hit by 24 bullets, says report – BBC News
RONALD KOAL WAS A ROCKSTAR!!!
These lyrics are by Mark Eitzel. I briefly knew his muse, Kathleen: “I broke another promise that I would not write anymore songs about you…”. (RIP)
So beautiful and so world-weary
I met him when he was just nineteen
Around him I felt so dreary
And you know he was a living dream
Once I said he was far too Bowie
He said “Oh baby, you’re so tired”
He always had a better story
But you know he was always wired
Ronald Koal was a rock star
In ’81 he was the king
Ronald Koal was a rock star
In Columbus he was the thing
A nervous angel inside him waiting
He saw the world through its eyes
Saw the world’s not even worth hating
All it offers is goodbyes
Ronald Koal was a rock star
He was too big for this town
Ronald Koal was a rock star
Its the small pools where you drown
Were all going to be forgotten
Lets face it – it’s in store
The end is always gonna be rotten
And i hear its knock on my door
Ronald Koal was a rock star
Now he’s in the sky getting blown
Ronald Koal was a rock star
Its a life you live alone
Ronald Koal was a rock star
He was a true believer
Ronald Koal was a rock star
He was a true believer
He was not only a rockstar, but he was a rockstar’s rockstar! Guys like midwestern legend, Cowboy Bobby Cloyd, the Shine and Healers vocalist (RIP) used to follow him (and Happy from Howlin’ Maggie) around the town. One of the first things I really liked about my ole drinking buddy, Mark B. (RIP) the world traveling, frog voiced gutter poet from New Orleans, the one who used to say I looked like Rachel, Lou Reed’s jilted lover, that my band sounded like, “The Monkees if they were singing about shitting their wrists”, was that he had a vinyl copy of Ronald Koal & The Trillionaires upstairs in his seedy walkup in in the post riots urban wasteland, crack part of town. Goth kids used to take the two hour drives to MOTHRA goth boutique just to see if they could catch a glimpse of Ronald Koal, and maybe purchase a couple of Bauhaus and Joy Division postcards. He was the Peter Murphy of the Midwest. Man oh man, I love that cat! I always related to the guy and when most of my own death rock gang were in their big devoted Skinny Puppy and Ministry phase, I was fixated on Ronald Koal, Jim Thirwell, the Jesus & Mary Chain, and Sisters Of Mercy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfKJpIoSXp8 I wanted to be like Ronald Koal when I grew up, but alas, I just never grew up. BAM from DOGS D’AMOUR made a shirt years ago that said, “All My Heroes Are Dead”-you can probably imagine how much I coveted one of those! And that special issue impost magazine all about THE NEW ROMANTICS! I was just too broke back then, and you know that is one thing that never changed.
How Corporate America Uses ESG to Polish Its Image (theintercept.com)
WHISKEY GLASS, DARKLY
“I never got my license to live, they won’t give it up so I stand at the world’s end, I’m trying to break in, but I know it’s not for me, and the sight of it all, it makes me sad and then, that’s when I want Some Weird Sin, just to relax with…” (-Iggy Pop)
“The day Home Secretary Priti Patel ordered Julian #Assange‘s extradition, guards at Belmarsh prison stripped him and threw him into a completely empty cell, Julian’s father has revealed. Consider this barbarity, Prime Minister Albanese, while you maintain a craven silence.” (-John Pilger)
They did that to me in juvenile detention hall-weeks and weeks in solitary cement slab closet with just my underwear and sometimes, glasses. For telling some cowboy counselor with a Napoleon complex to fuckoff. Somedays I can still get a bit salty about it.
Man, I kinda miss all the bad kids from the ghetto side of dirty old Boston. We never had the antique vintage apparatus or throwaway money or cars or diplomas like all the highrise patriotic college people on the hill, but back then, at least we still had our youth to throw at the wall. There was a silver sunglasses wearing, absolute genius, supernova brained writer we named Rattlesnake Jake, typing away on an old fashioned Henry Miller typewriter, he was a bit of a detective trying to solve old serial killer cold cases, when not furiously smoking cigarettes, or picking up abrasive, greenhaired gutter punk chicks from wherever. He put out a funny as fuck, satirical, National Lampoon like social commentary, highbrow fanzine called, “Backasswards”, and me n him would stay up all night yap yap yapping and yapping away about Hunter S. Thomspon and Joe Strummer lyrics. We all did a marvelous cover of “Spanish Bombs” on a 4 track with a drum machine. Time of my life. The greenhaired gutter punk chick liked to sing along and kinda helped us compose a haunting ballad that got rewritten as a kick in the teeth barbrawl song by a Motor City group we kinda grew up with. People seem to love it, but I remember the night we wrote it. The haunted demo version. With the disillusioned lyrics. We had a Bobby Keyes sax player who sang like Cash and wrote sad trucker songs-he was our roommate and unofficial member of our band the Bastards, but really always busy doing his own thing as a comic book illustrator, prolific songwriter and part time member of local band the Velcro Peasants. We called him Hollywood Bob. A Mick Jagger/Joe Perry lookalike guitar weedling, legendarily Ronsonesque heart throb…my sideman since we were I dunno, eleven or something, DCW-we had years of mischief and merry making fun together, he and the detective worked at a convenience store and basically lived on beer, cereal and Coca Cola, until he met some rich people and soon split for Fiona Apple style ingenue songstresses, a hokey House Of Blues style honkified blues band, and medical school. A glowering, black leather Billy Duffy street fightin’ man on lead chaos magnetics and Joan Jett style rhythm guitar named Nasty Bastard after an elderly lady said, “you nasty, boy” after watching him throwup on the redline,. Me on purple prose, Marlboro yelps and silver spangled trousers. A suicide werewolf music journalist, cable access tv honcho named Ken filming our frenzied spectacles. A couple of hard drinking Irishmen named Dermot and Barrie on tambourine, bass, and bottles clanking. ‘Replaced the flashy lead guitarist with a 12 string guitar playing, T. Rex and Love influenced, goth dude named Tony. The next door neighbors calling to tell us to turn it down everytime we tried auditioning a percussionist Nasty mighta met at the telemarketing job-they were all either jam band drum circle hippies or Lars Ulrich barnstorming speed metal monkeys. No drummer most of the time! We were trapped in unplugged mode even before that became the thing. Whenever we did briefly corral one, like somebody’s Crowded House loving, upwardly mobile, proper music school brother, or temporary ska kid, we were notorious for wild and crazy, out of control, star studded house parties and knockin’ down all the dirty divebars with our non stop barrage of two minute songs that other bands later added needless breaks and solos into covers of-you know the old Nashville adage, “add a word and steal two thirds”? That’s how it went with so many of the BUSINESS MINDED people covering our originals, but back then, it was all a brain battering procession of hard, fast, riff oriented, punknroll always shot through with adrenaline, coarse vocals, and caterwauling alleycat backup vocals with no attention paid to proper pitch or that much melody in the beginning, it was all about sweat, cheap whiskey, connecting with the crusty punks from Harvard Square’s subway pit and leftover, aging Johnny Thunders dudes from the 70’s music scene, loud laughs, protest lyrics and basically an awful lot of very rowdy, raucous, basement show, blind rebellion. If we coulda kept a drummer, it mighta gone different, I mean the Replacements got to have a long and successful career and they were not all that very fucking different from us, other than, maybe we were a little raunchier, but back then, all the drummers wanted to be in the Bosstones or Fugazi, and we were more like…the Action Swingers…meets the Babysitters. With a little Hollywood Brats. Times the Four Horsemen. I still believe in our kind of gutsy, heartfelt rocknroll abandon. Can’t get that stuff no more! We were young and still unbeaten enough to believe we could follow in the footsteps of our heroes the Clash and MC5 and affect the culture, shift the consciousness with our music, change things for the better, ya see? Have a positive impact. Contribute to the cause. Instead, we watched in confusion and helpless horror as all our former peers were steadily assimilated into the capitalist hierarchy the hut-two hut-two A.I. big bamboozle. People in Boston shared our enthusiastic love of the Pogues, but always considered us the bad seed hair metal dudes, we were too glam for their liking. Everybody else in that town had shorts and crewcuts except for us, a thrash band called Slaughter Shack, and crunchy granola hu-hum folkie Alternative pinup star Evan Dando, who had his own fey and precious rich kid scene we were no part of, except that I worked at Tower so I had to see him everyday strumming barefoot in the park shirtlessly crooning for all the chicks from Europe who sat at his feet batting their eyelashes in swoonful appreciation. It was Evanmania, man. Believe me. They CRIED on the day when he cut his hair. My own perfectly innocent first love who blossomed into a big bright, blindingly beautiful golden goddess with a smile like red velvet sunshine came to town to attend a posh university, I was hoping to escape a bad scene into her arms. We went for afternoon drinks at the House of Blues, and immediately she asked me…can I introduce her to Evan Dando. I just started guzzling doubles. Jesus loves him more than he will know, whoa whoa whoa. Nothing but the great big no, for me.
We could not ever even book one show at the Middle East-the lady there kept telling me, “try the Channel”, which was a not so subtle putdown, cause that’s where like Southie heavy metal guys played! That’s how come our widely circulated cassette demo-tape came to be called, “FLASH METAL SUICIDE!” They all thought we looked too much like Royal Pimps RAFE! The Juliana Hatfield crowd wanted nothing to do with loudmouthed, hard partying, midwestern white trash dudes in black leather pants and cop hats and sunglasses after dark. We thought the precious alternahunks and major label hipsters at the Middle East were snobs and squares. We didn’t know they were the ones who had all the good drugs. We didn’t know shit, really. Got involved with all the wrong people. Dysfunctional, unreliable types. God bless us, everyone. I made every stupid mistake in the book at least two or three times, just go down the list, check, check, check. The stories I could tell, but thusfar have not, discretion being the better part of valor and all, but ask me at the bonfire about the time we met Punkboy, the Preacher’s Daughter, and Gentleman John. Holy smokes, that was a night. But I digress.
If the years since false flag shitshow, 9/11 have taught us anything, it’s that Big 5 Mockingbird corporate-media can sell any fiction to the gullible Murkkkan Public. How the fuck did they convince everybody that Cobain’s ex drummer was somehow a great artiste or songwriting equal to the Beatles or some shit? They can sell ANYTHING with their all day repetition, I think they take delight from seeing how awful they can set the bar, how low they can go, how dumbed down the public has become. They’ve made SUPERSTAR CELEBRITIES outta the dumbest people in the world. The most venal, shameless and corrupt. Right now they are selling Musk and Gates, Lyn Cheney, and all these think tank spooks for war. And the Kardashians. Perv Disney stars with secret compounds on faraway islands and high dollar yoga culture meditation retreats. How did people ever put up with Korn and Creed and Matchbox 20 and the feckin Foo Fighters? What punishingly awful shit we ben subjected to around the clock these last 25 horrific years! I think they play all that same grunge and Britney occult-pop shit to human experiment and torture frequently innocent Muslims at Gitmo, since Darkside Dick took over and did away with the Geneva Conventions. No wonder everybody is so fearful and traumatized these days-it’s the Pig-Media browbeating us non-stop with lies and bullshittery. And boybands and grunge, and techno Dizney sluts, oh my. Sad how pounding the people with fear all day causes so much depression, division, people turn on each other when they are under this much stress, working all the time and still struggling with planets of worry about paying the grocery bills or hospital bills and barely even getting by. Divorce, metal illness, suicides, domestic violence, addictions, all that shit skyrockets when the media juggernaut never ceases their relentless fear campaigns designed to make us think we need the Metaverse Reset Davos Billionaires to take away all our last few remaining rights and save us from the uncivilized, uneducated, “OTHERS”. They even trot out that cackling hag, mad sociopath ole Whasername, the one responsible for fixing primaries to sabotage the Bernie platform that almost everybody, certainly an overwhelming majority, really wanted, the one behind the bullshit McCarthyist, New Cold War “Russigate!” smear tactic and bear baiting hotwar bullshit narrative, the truly evil, amoral mastermind behind the murder of Gaddafi, she is the same vile creature who brought back slaves, yes, actual slavery markets to Libya, she’s being given the Pig-Media bullhorn to call someone else a “person of grievance”, I mean, why do people still make excuses for known blood thirsty liars, deceivers, and war criminals with a long trail of bodies and silenced leakers, whistleblowrs andd dissident journalists behind them? Oh, yeah divide and control sports team horse shit. If a Democrat does it, it’s okeydokey for science and feelings and diversity. Right, right. This is already a false-reality bullshit metaverse and you aint even Rockefeller chipped yet.
I dunno about you, my dear brothers and sisters and friends of the revolution, but days like these kinda get me down, so many conflicting internet disinformation streams have captured so many of my former allies and ex associates into impotent little marketing group false identity slivers where they all foolishly let the capitalists define them as like, one narrow label. Unable to see their common plight with the “OTHERS”, or to go anywhere near correctly identifying their actual oppressors. I find it harder to connect with any of ’em. I know I’m not that many of the labels they falsely try to impose on me. I mean, I probably been ALL OF ‘EM by now, a pontiff, a pauper, a puker, a painter, you know like the old Sinatra song, but most days, I’m just a wornout and discouraged dad whose cherished own children never, never call, or write, or even return an email, or a tired, weary old dishwasher. Remember that old Soul Asylum lyric, “Grandfather watches the Grandfather clcok and the phone hasn’t rang for so long”? That’s me. I’m not the guy doing a punch drunk strip tease to “Sweet Emotion” on the counter in the studded leather underwear no more. I don’t even get to be like, the record store guy no more-not since that movie “HIGH FIDELITY” came out and made that gig seem desirable to Republikkkans who wanted to meet a girl like Lisa Bonet. I certainly never saw myself as a writer or music journalist, whatever that means, guys who look more like Elvis Costello than David Lee Roth I guess, so maybe guilty as charged on that count, but certainly not a vocation I ever aspired to, if anything, I felt obliged to promote all these great underdog artists and complete unknowns, who were doing stuff at a much higher level than their corporation jelly roll mainstream counterparts. The “writing” probably all started as a misguided effort to appease some people in my life who were nagging me about not having any future. I was constitutionally incapable of becoming one of those kissass rock critics who make big money writing for Spin or Rolling Stone. I’d rather make my own low budgeted garage version of Duran Duran than interview Duran Duran. Fuck, I LOVE Suicide. I’ll probably end up taking another long walk in the hot scorching sun on these deadend desert foothills again today, sometimes I can take photos of beautiful white cloud heavenly masterpieces, or jackrabbits, or yellow breasted tiny birds but this ole camera a former facebook friend sent me in the mail has just stopped working about half the time. Feels like all I do now is play dodge ’em with leashless desert pitbulls that meanspirited old lady meth dealers and hateful rednecks deploy to steal more control of the land beyond their own property line. I’ve come to really hate them. I should not have to fear for my life if I just wanna walk to the stinky fuckin’ river.
“How did we miss this year-old Newsweek report about a secret and unaccountable Pentagon “undercover force” which “carries out domestic and foreign assignments” that include “campaigns to influence and manipulate social media”?” (-Cait Johnstone)
“If you think Ghislaine Maxwell’s 20 year prison sentence is going to solve America’s child trafficking problem, you have been duped. Intelligence agencies were/are involved and they are never ever held accountable for anything.” (-Whitney Webb)
Remember when hairsniffer Gropey Joe got Clarence Thomas appointed to the kangaroo court by attacking Anita Hill? No? Burntout Recluse remembers. I see Liz “The Snake” Warren is also back in the brainwash-media audaciously talking about the Supreme Court having no legitimacy but she is one of the ones who sabotaged the Bernie Sanders platform-remember? I do. Crazytimes when your professor who talks about critical thinking and drinks their teacher breath cold coffee from the READ BANNED BOOKS coffee mug supports online censorship of antiestablishment voices like Dr. Naomi Wolf, Lee Camp, Chris Hedges, Abby Martin, Jeremy Scahill, Glenn Greenwald or Mark Crispin Miller. Disney used to forbid punk rockers from entering their amusement park, as not to offend their conservative “family values” ammunition and apple pie visitors, now, they promote this kooky transhumanist, sell your soul to the debbil, Sci-Fi occultist agenda-every movie has like a central Lil Nas X debbil character. I used to write for a national punk rock magazine that did not want to print my first hand eye witness news testimonies about racist cops and civil rights uprisings. My columns in the entertainment weeklies seemed to generate some complaints from advertisers, cause I ain’t into fashionista copycat rawk, or brainless techno with dynasty models. Fascist Book locked me out for anti-war shit-posting. The Obama and Clinton worshipping pinkhats and blue no matter whos even turned on Robert F. Kennedy, when I was a kid, the Kennedys were loved by the college educated, middle class, property owners like the Squad is now. On the precipice of WW3, with billionaires and their deep state operatives taking over what’s allowed to be discussed online, the people have been so pummeled with fear mongering and phony identity politricks silencing techniques since the bullshit “for us or against us” of 9/11, everybody’s afraid to step outta line, ask childlike questions about profit motives, suspicious timing, and “who benefits” from official, empirical narratives. Of course there are consequences for opposing ruling class fictions, in my own little travels, I been shutout and slagged for not co signing some blank check for racist kkops and gentrification landlords and suckass, fake as fuck, private school, indie rawk, say nothing, trust fund muzak and big blockbuster comic book war propaganda. Like Tex Perkins sings in, “I Got No Reason”, “I know I stand alone”. Some of my former contemporaries are celebrating the release of their 35th full length cd. Me, I got nothin’. I got 4 rants in the pipeline waiting to be posted or published, 4 full length 500 page books and a compilation of lyrics as yet unpublished, probably 200 songs archived on cassette tapes, but various platforms and publishers have gotten gunshy about me having any soapbox at all, cause they fear the cancel culture wrath of the shitlib mobs. I don’t believe that the Squad is gonna help me, or that big business cares at all about my health, freedom, or prosperity, or that the secret police can be trusted to take the place of journalists. I believe Mickey Huff at Project Censored, Whitney Webb, Seymour Hersh, Max Blumenthal and Benjamin Norton way, way, way more than I believe Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson, who are both owned and operated by the same exact corporate entity. Follow the money. Also, I never assume whoever has the most money in the room is the smartest, wisest, hardest working or most scientific-just because some deep cocaine pockets, porky fratboy’s mama gave him a spring break forever tailgate partay high five sports bar don’t make him a saint or artiste. You don’t suck up to the powerholders and barowners or show bookers or recording studio owning fatcats because they are so “nice”, or because you genuinely think their goofy muzak is any good-you suck up to them cause you want summa their crumbs. As my wife says, you got your filthy hands in the cookie jar. I got sunburn from all my hours walking the deer trails in the desert sun, trying to avoid zombies of death and walk off all this anxiety and restless grief. My only joke is, people think I must be stupid just because I’m so handsome, but we all know I got no cred cause I got no moolah-wealth is the only virtue in this country-always backed by violence. The people I used to know were only ever in it for the free fucking drinks, at the end of the day. Now I like a free drink as much as anybody but I’m not willing to backstab and bullshit and suckup or sell my soul for the privileges of membership. I’ll go drink a pint under the motherfucking bridge before I’ll get involved with the hipster fakes and predator class. Revolutionary Blackout Network�� on Twitter: “Isn’t this what capitalist fear mongered would happen under socialism? An authoritarian state where freedom was stripped by the barrel of a gun” / Twitter
“Storm troopers from star wars? No. Just another day in the American empire.” (-Dr. Jill Stein)
Blue and Red Do Have Something in Common. They’ve Both Been Ripped Off, Repeatedly (substack.com)
“Assange was strip-searched and moved to an empty, bare cell after Patel’s decision to extradite him to the US. This is straight up bullying and humiliation. This is how we treat journalists in the UK. What a monstrous “justice” system.” (-Richard Medhurst)
“BEFORE THERE WAS HER THERE WAS THE FURS”. That’s a lyric from a song of mine about how The Psychedelic Furs have been a big part of my life since I was a wee slip of a wisp in my horrible dork glasses.
While the rest of you were busy with all that insufferable nasal warbling of Grunge/Alternative, all those fat fake rich kid cocaine bands, I was already retreating back to my beloved and forever cherished eighties new wave. One of the only decent records I heard in the early nineties was LOVE SPIT LOVE-Richard Butler’s cool as fuck side project. Listen to these killer diller HITS!
“I can’t believe it’s been so long…17, follow meeee….”
Kinda makes you wanna hear this, don’t it?
LIONS AND GHOSTS
Another band me and my gypsy caravan always resonated with who never got enough press or praise were Lions & Ghosts. These are the kind of talented artists I would like to collaborate with because it is self evident they would empathize with and understand my kind of music. Michael play with my friend Joe Normal, Aimee Mann, and Fiona Apple. They were so great. Thanks to my friend Angela for turning me on to them when we were seventeen or eighteen.
BAD NEWS FOR HUMAN BEINGS, THE BORED SUPER RICH TED TALKERS WANNA TURN YOU INTO A C3PO PROTOCOL DROID…THEY’LL SAY IT’S FOR A GREEN ECONOMY AND SCIENCE.
“While the US gov’t has sent $54 Billion to war in Ukraine, new numbers show there are 100 Million Americans drowning in healthcare debt. People’s lives are crushed while our gov’t lines the pockets of weapons contractors. Our ruling elite are actually at war with us – you & me.” (-Lee Camp)
“It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it.” (-John Pilger)
Barbara Marx Hubbard: Godmother of Transhumanism and Synthetic Spirituality (unlimitedhangout.com)
https://www.activistpost.com/2022/06/brzezinskis-proxy-war-playbook.html
Epstein – Investigative Series (unlimitedhangout.com)
The New York Times reports that Ukraine is crawling with special forces and spies from the US and its allies, which would seem to contradict earlier reports that the US intelligence cartel is having trouble getting intel about what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine.
This would also, obviously, put the final nail in the coffin of the claim that this is not a US proxy war.
In an article titled “Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say,” western officials inform us of the following through their stenographers at The New York Times:
As Russian troops press ahead with a grinding campaign to seize eastern Ukraine, the nation’s ability to resist the onslaught depends more than ever on help from the United States and its allies — including a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training, according to U.S. and European officials.
Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the massive amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials.
At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine.
Some CIA personnel have continued to operate in Ukraine secretly, mostly in Kyiv, directing much of the intelligence the U.S. is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials. https://t.co/4VWdybmome
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 25, 2022
The revelation that the CIA and US special forces are conducting military operations in Ukraine does indeed make a lie of the Biden administration’s insistence at the start of the war that there would be no American boots on the ground in Ukraine, and the admission that NATO powers are so involved in operations against a nuclear superpower means we are closer to seeing a nuclear exchange than anyone should be comfortable with.
This news should surprise no one who knows anything about the usual behavior of the US intelligence cartel, but interestingly it contradicts something we were told by the same New York Times not three weeks ago.
“American intelligence agencies have less information than they would like about Ukraine’s operations and possess a far better picture of Russia’s military, its planned operations and its successes and failures,” NYT told us earlier this month. “U.S. officials said the Ukrainian government gave them few classified briefings or details about their operational plans, and Ukrainian officials acknowledged that they did not tell the Americans everything.”
It seems a bit unlikely that US intelligence agencies would have a hard time getting information about what’s happening in a country where they themselves are physically located. Moon of Alabama theorized at the time that this ridiculous “We don’t know what’s happening in our own proxy war” line was being pushed to give the US plausible deniability about Ukraine’s failures on the battlefield, which have only gotten worse since then.
So why are they telling us all this now? Well, it could be that we’re being paced into accepting an increasingly active role of the US and its allies in Ukraine.
Hawks in April: Don’t call it a proxy war!
Hawks in May: Of course it’s a proxy war!
Hawks in June: It’s not their war, it’s our war!— Daniel Larison (@DanielLarison) June 20, 2022
The other day Antiwar’s Daniel Larison tweeted, “Hawks in April: Don’t call it a proxy war! Hawks in May: Of course it’s a proxy war! Hawks in June: It’s not their war, it’s our war!”
This is indeed exactly how it happened. Back in April President Biden told the press the idea that this is a proxy war between the US and Russia was “not true” and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said “It’s not, this is clearly Ukraine’s fight” when asked if this is a proxy war. The mainstream media were still framing this claim as merely an “accusation” by the Russian government, and empire spinmeisters were regularly admonishing anyone who used that term on the grounds that it deprives Ukrainians of their “agency”.
Then May rolled around and all of a sudden we had The New Yorker unequivocally telling us that the US is in “a full proxy war with Russia” and hawks like US congressman Seth Moulton saying things like, “We’re not just at war to support the Ukrainians. We’re fundamentally at war, although somewhat through a proxy, with Russia, and it’s important that we win.”
And now here in June we’ve got war hawks like Max Boot coming right out and saying that this is actually America’s war, and it is therefore important for the US to drastically escalate the war in order to hand the Russians “devastating losses”.
We need to understand that this isn’t their war in Ukraine—it’s our war—and we need to do more to defeat Russia’s attack on the West. Speaking on @Morning_Joe about the subject of my new @PostOpinions column: https://t.co/URNFXiKo1o pic.twitter.com/jG1VZChRth
— Max Boot
(@MaxBoot) June 20, 2022
So the previously unthinkable idea that the US is at war with Russia has been gradually normalized, with the heat turned up so slowly that the frog doesn’t notice it’s being boiled alive. If that idea can be sufficiently normalized, public consent for greater escalations will likely be forthcoming, even if those escalations are extremely psychotic.
Back in March when I said the only “agency” Ukraine has in this conflict is the Central Intelligence kind, empire loyalists jumped down my throat. They couldn’t believe I was saying something so evil and wrong. Now they’ve been told that the Central Intelligence Agency is indeed conducting operations and directing intelligence on the ground in Ukraine, but I somehow doubt that this will stir any self-reflection on their part. (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“I’ve spent my career reporting on the U.S. national security state and uncovering some of their dirtiest secrets and lies. In that time, I’ve been targeted by the FBI. I’ve been spied on. I’ve even been threatened with jail time for refusing to reveal my confidential sources.
And all of that happened under Democratic administrations, not just Republicans.
In fact, I’ve recently uncovered new information about a 2014 FBI scheme — signed off by the Obama Justice Department — to arrest one of my sources by using an informant to ambush one of my meetings.
When Donald Trump left office, some people expected the dawn of a new age of press freedom. At The Intercept, we know better than to trust that a Democratic president will respect the freedom of the press.” (-Jim Risen, the senior national security correspondent at The Intercept)
BOYCOTTING THE PIG MEDIA AND THE MANUFACTURED UNREALITIES OF THE NATO ONE PERCENT
Our concerns are not their concerns. Our interests our not their interests. You are only free to “identify” with some pretty talkin’ justice tweeter who always votes against you. That ain’t real representation, the whole vote is fixed, every which way, plus loose. If you think private jets aint subject to TSA gropers Nancy Pelosi is your Special Friend because she went on RuPaul’s Drag Race and said, “Can I Get a Hallelujah”, you doubtlessly think Lyn Cheney the Muslim torture advocate, is your Great Blue Hope, cause she said we should ban public protests, cause Q Shaman yelled “freedom” in the Capital Hill Halls Of Lobbyist Bribery And Endless Corruption. If they were against guns, they would NOT be giving all your health care and housing and education billions to white power proxy army, mercenaries and nationalists in the Ukraine. They love Vanguard and Blackrock, Goldman Sachs and Lockheed Martin. They are sponsored by Pfizer and Raytheon. They do not love you. They call you a hackable rat and a useless eater, but you think they just mean, “THE OTHERS”. Strange days we are living in. The mass media psy ops are so manipulative and diabolical, they might end up just dismantling the Supreme Court entirely, and just ballsout sitting Gates or Schwab on some occult temple throne. I would not be surprised if they ran Her Turn Hillary Clinton and Lyn Cheney for president. Or Chelle/Cheney or some shit.
People who’ve never been punched in the face or stomped into the cement by big bruisers before always like to say that speech is violence as a not so subtle form of nuspeak, Great Reset culture, narrative control. You know what’s violent? Unleashed motherfucking growling animals that both shitlib blue no matter who, vegan, sensitivity Karen’s and big white truck with a gun rack on the back militia man Republikkkans they all got the barky leashless dogs out front as a way of discouraging pedestrians from walking down the street. Hot day, sick of hypnoscreens, me n my boy tried to walk to the river but some lady let her two dogs outside the fence, they start carrying on, next thing you know, that gets more dogs running out into the street. I’m starting to hate these dog owners who obviously take delight from their dangerous and intimidating weaponized animals. That’s some abusive shit nobody talks about. All these same motherfuckers are online right now crying about firecrackers traumatizing their pets. I’m so sick of people and their bumper stickers and selfish, privileged hypocrisies.
“Western “leaders” continue with their irrational drive toward WWIII. NATO is a criminal enterprise, an instrument of white power & threat to global humanity. Join anti-NATO protests around the world.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
There’s little hope of ever waking the “Got Mine, Jacks and Jills” who think they are already Net-Flix and Trader Joe’s “WOKE”TM cause they reposted some trite shit Kamala Harris said about Trump or whatever. Fraud-Squad never fought for us cause they were another fake fucking marketing hoax like WMD’s, Mad Cow, Bird Flu, Y2K, Obama, and Grunge-AlternativeTM. Bernie got in line and endorsed hair sniffin’ “Nothing Will Change” crime bill candidate, Gropey Joe. Pig Media told us a million elderly black folks in MIchigan put on their shoes and drove to the polls and waited in line for hours in the Pandemic on Super Tuesday to vote for Gropey Joe. Nothing to do with Mayo Pete affiliated shady software company. Eager beaver tv believers say that if tv says a W or Biden won, that’s that. So now, the Fix Is In Kangaroo Supreme Court are diverting everybody’s attention with the old guns and abortion reel back red herrings. Shitlibs celebrate gun grabs, rightwing act like they ever cared about children. Meanwhile, all important discussions about FREEING WHISTLEBLOWER JOURNALIST JULIAN ASSANGE, the shit economy caused by predator corporation’s unchecked greed, but laughably blamed on Putin; the empire’s no lives matter stormtrooper police state, and worldwide wars based on the usual regime change mercenary army proxies playbook lies, all that is off the table, not being discussed. Big pharma’s shareholders are still gleefully rubbing their hands together, while puppet politicians and tv heads predictive program us to prepare for “more pandemics”. The schools are gutted, the mental healthcare system is a crooked pipeline for prison profiteers and human traffic swindlers. Great Reset billionaires have bought up the farmlands and own the regulatory agencies, outright. The pig-media’s been grooming Evil Lyn Cheney to run as some kinda feminist Democrat. Partisan rubes act like everything’s as simple as lesser-evilism and vote blue no matter who for LGBT rights and scientific feminism, but the globalist Bilderberg powers that be just love messing with you. They got the fake progressives of the Squad greasing the wheels of forever wars and a permanent dystopian police state, while kooky crackpot rightwingers like Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson pretend defend traditional liberal positions, like freedom of the press and an end to blind-for-profit military expansionism. AOC does almost nothing about any of our real legit issues, but her middle class supporters don’t care or wanna know, it’s enough to have a token celebrity tweeting against Trump. Remember when all the shitlibs kept insisting Hillary was (supposedly) no longer in office calling the shots, so we should never speak of Libya, Seth Rich, or her rigging the primaries against Bernie twice, but here we are two years into Biden admin, and all he’s done is start a war with Russia, build up Africom to control that whole continent militarily, continuing Obama’s “pivot against China”, and allow his donor class corporate executives to rip us all off. The 24/7 ongoing hyper-exaggerated Capital Hill Pig-Media Psy-Op Nonsense keeps all the middle classers focused on boogeyman rotating villain, big bad wolf, badguy wrassler, Trump. I don’t believe anything the tv or government tells me anymore. They been lying since Kennedy, and eviscerating the Constitution incrementally since Bush. Even the Hinckley assassination attempt on Reagan is real suspicious. You know they let him out and off probation, right?
“For Eurocentric white supremacists, the U.S. & Europe are the world.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“The U.S. corporate media refused to cover the BRICS Summit despite nearly half the world’s population and 30 percent of its GDP being represented by BRICS countries. It also ignores Julian Assange’s fate even though it will determine the fate of journalism itself. Terrible.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Good to hear your voice yeah we have had some epic times over the years and, we survived! We are a dying breed rock n roll is otherwise dead if it weren’t for some of us old heads still carrying this torch of summertime hits.
Hopefully everything works out and I can slide thru your nape of the woods and we can bang out some new hits.
I think the two of us have managed to marry glam punk pop and sleeze rock together and you kept me from full metal and I kept you from going full Duran Duran it mixed together and Shazam you have the splatter twins and our unique sound and those in the know knew we were the real deal so they did the only thing they could do try and steal it haha I mean I always thought it was funny a Berkeley school of music grad copped my stupid three chord barrage riffs and your words and vocals and the legions of idiots that couldn’t play “Ultra Violet Girl” or “Back To Zero” or the local Pantera knock off metal band here that so wanted to do the “Dazzling Casualties”, but I wouldn’t show them how it was played.
Stay alive we’ll get our record!” (-Nasty Bastard; The Original Suffering Bastards)
Watch The Assassination and Mrs. Paine Online | Vimeo On Demand on Vimeo
READ CAIT JOHNSTONE EVERYDAY!
All of our world’s worst problems are created by the powerful. The powerful will keep creating those problems until ordinary people use their superior numbers to make them stop. Ordinary people don’t use their superior numbers to stop the powerful because the powerful are continuously manipulating people’s understanding of what’s going on.
Humans are storytelling creatures. If you can control the stories humans are telling themselves about the world, you control the humans, and you control the world.
Mental narrative plays a hugely prominent role in human experience; if you’ve ever tried to still your mind in meditation you know exactly what I’m talking about. Babbling thought stories dominate our experience of reality. It makes sense then that if you can influence those stories, you’re effectively influencing someone’s experience of reality.
The powerful manipulate the dominant narratives of our society in approximately five major ways: propaganda, censorship, Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation, government secrecy, and the war on journalism. Like the fingers on a hand they are distinct from each other and each play their own role, but they’re all part of the same thing and work together toward the same goal. They’re all just different aspects of the US-centralized empire’s narrative control system.
1. Propaganda
Everyone’s Anti-War Until The War Propaganda Starts
“Nobody thinks of themselves as a warmonger, but then the spin machine gets going and before you know it they’re spouting the slogans they’ve been programmed to spout”https://t.co/lLnPVlfyfK
— Caitlin Johnstone
(@caitoz) April 27, 2022
Propaganda is the empire’s narrative creation system. While the other four elements of imperial narrative control are geared mostly toward preventing inconvenient narratives from circulating, propaganda is the means by which the empire generates narratives which benefit it.
That foreign leader is a dictator and needs to be removed. That inconvenient politician is sinister in some way and must not be permitted to lead. Your government loves human rights and all its wars are humanitarian. Voting works. Capitalism is great. You can trust us, we’re the good guys.
You’ll see variations on these and similar narratives churned out day after day by the corporate media and Hollywood. The wealthy media-owning class protects its own class interests by hiring media executives whose worldview matches its own, and those executives hire underlings with the same worldview, who hire their own underlings with the same worldview, and before you know it you’re looking at a media conglomerate full of people who all support the status quo politics of the media-owning class whose kingdoms are built upon that status quo.
In fact these giant media institutions are so invested in protecting the status quo that they have a very large degree of overlap with other institutions responsible for maintaining the imperial status quo, like the US intelligence cartel. News punditry is now full of “former” intelligence officials, and anytime there’s a narrative an intelligence agency wants printed it simply has an officer or a proxy whisper it to a mainstream news reporter who then uncritically repeats that narrative disguised as a news story.
Reporters within this system are not explicitly told to generate propaganda to protect status quo power. Rather, they develop a sense for what kind of reporting will get published and earn them attaboys in the newsroom and what will get spiked and cause their career to stagnate. If they fail to learn to navigate the system in this way, you simply never hear about them, because their careers peter out.
2. Censorship
More Escalations In Online Censorship
“YouTube has been deleting videos disputing the US government narrative about Russian war crimes in Bucha”https://t.co/M7zupF8AMa
— Caitlin Johnstone
Propaganda is geared toward putting narratives favorable to the oligarchic empire in front of people, while censorship is all about keeping unfavorable narratives away from public vision. We’ve long seen this expressed in the way the mass media simply refuse to give any platform or voice to critics of capitalism and imperialism, but imperial narrative management has required a whole new order of censorship since internet access became widely available.
Because the widespread ability to share ideas and information poses a major threat to imperial narrative control, empire managers have been working toward normalizing and expanding censorship on internet platforms like Google/YouTube, Meta/Facebook/Instagram, and Twitter. Any online space where a large number of people gather will find itself pressured by the US government to remove a wider and wider spectrum of content in the name of public safety, election security, containing a virus, or just keeping people from thinking wrong thoughts about a war.
Every few months since the US election in 2016 we’ve been fed a new reason why more internet censorship is needed, which is always followed by a giant purge of the newly-banned content and the accounts which created it. This trend has escalated dramatically with the Ukraine war, where for the first time there’s no pretense being made that content is being censored to protect the public interest; it’s just being censored because it disagrees with what western government and media institutions tell us.
3. Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation
Silicon Valley Algorithm Manipulation Is The Only Thing Keeping Mainstream Media Alive
Recent statements by YouTube’s CEO highlight the way Silicon Valley tech giants use algorithms to boost mainstream media propaganda and suppress independent content.https://t.co/rJRkSmydUG
— Caitlin Johnstone
This one relates to both propaganda and censorship, because it facilitates both. Silicon Valley officials have admitted to manipulating their algorithms to make sure that independent media doesn’t get seen very much while artificially elevating the online publications of mass media outlets on the basis that they are “authoritative sources” of information, despite the fact that those “authoritative sources” have lied to us about every war.
Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation does more damage than overt forms of online censorship, because its consequences are much more far-reaching and because people don’t even know it’s happening. When Google changed its algorithms to ensure that leftist and antiwar media outlets ranked much lower in search results than they used to, it influenced the way millions of people gather information about the most important issues in the world. And hardly anyone ever knew it happened.
If it weren’t for tech giants artificially directing traffic toward empire-approved media outlets, those outlets probably would have shut down by now. We saw a clear illustration of how disdainful the public is of mass media outlets when the paid streaming service CNN+ was forced to shut down just 30 days after its launch when it failed to maintain even ten thousand daily viewers. People don’t consume mainstream news media unless it is foisted upon them.
4. Government secrecy
The Only Obstacle To A Healthy World Is Government Secrecy And Propaganda
“If people in power were no longer able to hide secrets and spin lies about what’s going on in the world, all of our major problems would come to an end.”https://t.co/NIWdBpY4Jn
— Caitlin Johnstone
Like censorship, government secrecy is another way the empire prevents inconvenient narratives from entering public awareness. By classifying information on the basis of “national security”, the empire prevents unauthorized narratives before they even get off the ground. As Julian Assange once said, “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.”
The amount of power you have should be inversely proportional to the amount of privacy you get. In a healthy society, ordinary people would have full privacy from the government while government officials should have to be fully transparent about their lives, finances and behavior. In our society it’s exactly reversed: the people are surveilled and monitored while those in power hide vast troves of information behind walls of government opacity.
They hide everything they’re doing from the view of the public, then when people start taking educated guesses about what they might be up to behind the veil of government secrecy they get called “conspiracy theorists”. There would be no need to form theories about conspiracies if there was complete transparency for the powerful, but of course this would greatly hinder the ability of the powerful to conspire.
They claim they need government secrecy to avoid giving an advantage to the enemy in times of war and conflict, but really they need government secrecy to start wars and conflicts.
5. The war on journalism
Assange Is Doing His Most Important Work Yet
As important as his WikiLeaks publications are, none of them exposed the depravity of the empire as much as forcing them to look us in the eye and tell us they’ll extradite a journalist for telling the truth.https://t.co/Qr3KVqH0TP
— Caitlin Johnstone
Lastly, in order to effectively control the dominant narratives about the world, the empire needs to wage a war on disobedient journalism. We’ve seen this unfold in various ways over the years, but right now none are so clear as the US empire’s persecution of Julian Assange.
The goal of the Assange case is to establish a legal precedent for extraditing any journalist or publisher anywhere in the world who tries to get around US government secrecy. Once a precedent has been set and consent has been manufactured, the war on journalism can really get going.
All of these five points are used to control the way people see, think about, and talk about their world, thereby controlling how they act and how they vote at mass scale. This enables the powerful to maintain an entirely enslaved populace which never tries to escape its enslavement, because it thinks it is already free.
(-CAITLIN JOHNSTONE)
Passed biggest military budget in history of $840 billion/year 
Veglam 