also: thick smoke, tuneless rackets, shirtless teenage goth ghouls, old fanzines, and still reminiscing about the eighties underground

“Morally there are a few states that could raise issues of state terrorism & violations of human rights. But the one state on the planet that should never be allowed to open its mouth on these issues is the U.S. state. The Russia is a State Sponsor of Terrorism Act’ is a sick joke.” (-Ajamu Baraka)

“If I Was President
by Alice Walker

If I was President
The first thing I would do
is call Mumia Abu Jamal
No,
if I was president
the first thing I would do
is call Leonard Pelteir
No,
if I was president
the first person I would call
is that rascal
John Trudell
No,
the first person I’d call
is that other rascal
Dennis Banks.
I would also call
Alice Walker.
I would make a conference call.
And I would say this:
Yo, you troublemakers,
it is time to let all of us

out of prison…””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)

“BREAKING: My sources confirm that Juan Guaidó has declared himself Interim King of the United Kingdom!” (-Alan MacLeod)

“We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” (-James Baldwin)

“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)

“BREAKING: The US government has just announced they will be giving free healthcare to every man, woman, & child in the country! …Just kidding. That’s every other developed nation.” (-Lee Camp)

“The US military has seven branches of service:

• Army
• Navy
• Air Force
• Marines
• Coast Guard
• Space Force
• Mainstream Media

❖

It’s hard to grasp just how badly humanity is handicapping itself by excluding all solutions that can’t generate a profit. There’s a whole vast spectrum of potential solutions to the troubles we face as a species, and we’re limiting ourselves to a very small, very shitty fraction of it. By limiting solutions to ones that are profitable, we’re omitting any which involve using less, consuming less, leaving resources in the ground, and leaving nature the fuck alone. We’re also shrinking the incentive to cure problems rather than offer expensive, ongoing treatments.

Or even a project as fundamental to our survival as getting all the pollution out of our oceans. The profit motive offers no solution because there’s no way to make a surplus of money from doing so, and in fact it would be very costly. So the pollution stays in our seas, year after year. People have come up with plenty of solutions for removing pollution from the sea, but they never get rolled out at the necessary scale because there’s no way to make it profitable. And people would come up with far more solutions if they knew those solutions could be implemented.

How many times have you had an awesome idea and gotten all excited about it, only to do the math and figure out that it’s unfeasible because wouldn’t be profitable? This is a very common experience, and it’s happening to ideas for potential solutions to our problems every day.

The profit motive system assumes the ecocidal premise of infinite growth on a finite world. Without that, the entire system collapses. So there are no solutions which involve not growing, manufacturing less, consuming less, not artificially driving up demand with advertising etc.

It’s hard to appreciate the significance of this artificial limitation when you’re inside it and lived your whole life under its rules. It’s like if we were only allowed to make things out of wood; if our whole civilization banned the entire spectrum of non-woodcraft innovation. Sure such a civilization would get very good at making wooden things, and would probably have some woodcrafting innovations that our civilization doesn’t have. But it would also be greatly developmentally stunted. That’s how badly we’re limiting ourselves with the profit motive model.

❖

A lot of the “Great Reset” environmental chatter comes from the capitalist class flailing around trying to reconcile impossible contradictions baked into capitalism like the premise of infinite growth on a finite world and the fact that there’s no way for saving the environment to be profitable. So they’re planning all these new models which won’t do anything to save the environment, but will yield massive profits.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)

https://rokfin.com/post/99443/Meet-Mark-Middleton-with-Ed-Berger

“When Columbus got off the boat, he asked us who we were. We said we’re the Human Beings, we’re the People.
Conceptually the Europeans didn’t understand that, it was beyond their conceptual reality. They didn’t see us. They couldn’t see who we were.

Historically speaking, we went from being Indians to pagans to savages to hostiles to militants to activists to Native Americans. It’s five hundred years later and they still can’t see us. We are still invisible.

They don’t see us as human beings, but we’ve been saying to them all along that’s what we are.

We are invisible to them because we are still the Human Beings, we’re still the People, but they will never call us that. They taught us to call ourselves Indians, now they’re teaching us to call ourselves Native Americans. It’s not who we are. We’re the People.

They can’t see us as human beings. But they can’t see themselves as human beings. The invisibility is at every level, it’s not just that we’re tucked away out of sight. We’re the evidence of the crime. They can’t deal with the reality of who we are because then they have to deal with the reality of what they have done. If they deal with the reality of who we are, they have to deal with the reality of who they aren’t.

So they have to fear us, not recognize us, not like us.” (~John Trudell)

Extended episode: Katrina vanden Heuvel on Gorbachev’s legacy and the Ukraine proxy war (substack.com)

“Feminism means girlbosses can be sociopaths too.” (-Katie Halper)

“The antiwar left that took to the streets in 2003 has virtually evaporated, replaced instead by woke progressives parroting neocon narratives. The modern left conserves the hell out of George W. Bush.” 

(-David Benner)

“It could cost $2 billion to make sure Jackson, Mississippi has clean drinking water. We currently spend over $2 billion a day on the Pentagon. “They Have Money For War But Can’t Feed The Poor,” Tupac Shakur.” (-Warren Gunnels)

“Liberals aren’t leftist.” (-Bike Mayor Of Lumpenproletariat)

“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)

KOMMUNITY FK

“I used to go see Kommunity FK at Scream in around ’87 with my friends. Later the singer started working at the CSUN bookstore, that was a trip. Because to us he was a rockstar. I never talked to him. But they were pretty great.” (-John Dissed)

Way back in my teens and twenties, I still wanted to be a part of society, but only like, the eighties underground college radio new music part of society-the ultra underground. I thought that perhaps my friends and I could collectively find the means to make some records together. Like ya know, the Ultras, Dogs D’Amour, Alien Sex Fiend, Replacements, Dramarama or Kommunity FK. Indie punks. That was my primary focus and only real dream. I never thought I was gonna become some bullshit Bon Jovi Foo Fightin’ Corporate Rawker, but seeing as how all these little bands had made it onto little labels and appeared in little magazines, I felt there was hope even for a smalltown hated Edward Scissorhands like me. My old girlfriend Steffani was goth as fuck and she got me into so much literature, old movies, death rock and subversive subculture, even though she was younger than me, she was smarter, she went on to become a bigtime radio personality. I hungout for years in bars and ya know you always get sucked into other people’s dramas, if you are always out and about, especially when grunge flooded the old college radio music scenes with all those loathsome capitalists, preppies, jocks and TMZ normies who just wanted to buy our after hours space, it was a real drag, seeing underground music stolen by really typical, mainstream monoculture highschool cafeteria gossip girl types, Jocks, mooks, LCD assholes prone to locker room behaviors and petty one upmanship, we were all subjected to this suburban sensibility we built our D.I.Y. performance spaces, radioshows, and fanzines to avoid. They become unavoidable during Grunge-particularly if you dated a succession of highly visible limelite seeking ultravixens who love being in the public eye. I’ve been done with all that for a long time now. Like Frida Kahlo said, I hope to never return.

I moved to the dead end nowhere desert to escape the Kompetitive Karens of Konformity, but now, ya know, I gotta reckon with different predators besides the Malibu Ken drug dealers and status seekers of my long gone past-now it’s like fuckin rattlesnakes and severely mentally ill old hermit bastards, transferring their rage against local politicians or their dead wealthy parents towards trying to control the natural environment, they are dangerous crazies, crackpots, meth head paranoids, rightwing militia anti-immigrant gun nuts, and exhausting to deal with. I’m still mourning the deaths of most of my close friends. Some old man stealing my kid’s outdoor cats…I guess it kinda triggers my bad memories of having my kids taken away from me years ago and moved across the country. It just kinda freaks me out, the powerlessness of it all. I know that most of this society, at least the tv watchers, are kinda consumed with revenge and trying to get power and control and acquire the most prestigious objects, shit like that. Not me, man. I wanted to make little recordings that would be released on cult labels for other People Like Me. I like new wave music and used to have some punk rock friends who shared my sortof anti-consumerist, dropout rebellious, conscientious objector philosophy, but like I said, they’re mostly all dead now, and it’s tough to bear. I feel like Ben Kenobi somedays, living out my elderly goth years in a cave on a lonely planet. This nutjob who keeps capturing our animals is pushing me to wanna retreat ever farther away from the ratrace culture of power trippers and backstabbers and mass hypnotized fauxwoke virtue signalers who worship politicians and phony P.C. college culture and learned to love endless wars based on lies. So tired of having to interact with psychos and control freaks. I’m not what you’d call a people person, anymore. I wrote a song in the eighth grade called “Antisocial Butterfly”. Now, I am old, I’m not as in to the modernday death rock or darkwave I think they call it now scene because it all seems a bit hijacked by Lady Gaga types for the corporate rulers Great Reset and police state dystopia agendas, and I’m not into those fascist fucks, at all, but I do have a soft spot for that old music from the eighties, even if it was already employing all the one eye, owl statue in the woods, Bilderberg-Bohemian Grove-Masonic-proto Davos/WEF-illuminati symbolism we were just oblivious to, back then…Anyways…this song still sorta speaks to me. ALL THE MUSIC I got hassled and beatup and bootcamped for liking as a teenager-Boy George, Adam Ant, Bowie, Prince, Cyndi Lauper, The Clash, Duran Duran, Bauhaus, Modern English, Flesh For Lulu, Psychedelic Furs…I still love all that stuff now. 

NEVER NEVER NEVER TRUST A BILLIONAIRE!

How Bill Gates and his partners took over the global Covid pandemic response – POLITICO

Why the Bill Gates global health empire promises more empire and less public health – The Grayzone

Meet US govt-backed regime-change guru Gene Sharp, mastermind of soft coups – The Grayzone

How big corporations and Bill Gates took over the UN food Summit – The Grayzone

“The most powerful people in the world don’t just rely on violence to maintain their power. Propaganda is another tool that they use to silence dissent and divide oppressed groups.” (-John Pilger)

“When the poor call for higher taxes on the rich, they call it “class warfare”. When the rich rob the poor, it is called “belt-tightening” and “economic common sense”. (-Alan MacLeod)

“Propaganda must not concern itself with what is best in man – the highest goals humanity sets for itself, its noblest and most precious feelings. Propaganda does not aim to elevate man, but to make him serve. It must therefore utilize the most common feelings, the most widespread ideas, the crudest patterns, and in so doing place itself on a very low level with regard to what it wants man to do and to what end. Hate, hunger, and pride make better levers of propaganda than do love or impartiality.” (~Ellu)

“”The political consequences of such a state of affairs: our socialsystem depends on coercion. The workers submit to it but they can-not accept it. Coercion does not go with democracy. It is obviouslyquite impossible for men to be treated like things in the labourmarket and in production and to be treated as citizens in public life.

In effect, freedom of expressing one’s views is subordinated tothe capital of machines; there are things which cannot be said inbourgeois newspapers, nor any longer in the newspapers whichappeal to workers, because one is not orthodox.There is no real freedom of speech.” (~Simone Weil)

America This Week, September 5-September 11 (substack.com)

SAYING FAREWELL TO THE HONEYCOMB HIDEOUT

Besides the hard truth that no one is going to help you if you ever get sick, one of the main things that suck about being poor, is that higher ranking, money havers get to fuck with you. They can rip you off, steal your cat, take your kids, ripoff your songs, stalk and assault you-anything, and not only is there nothing you can do about it, without ever escalating judicial retributions, but a Greek Chorus of middleclass authoritarians will always appear on cue, to sing some gloating harpie shit about how “you shoulda done this, or you shoulda done that”, if you wanted to have any human rights or civil liberties, or bodily autonomy, or food and shelter. The pigs of hierarchy have all been trained to say, if you don’t like being an abused and exploited slave, well, “maybe you should move to Russia or Cuba”. Even the tiktok faux-wokes and fake ex liberals say shit like that. AND they insist THEY are always the offended ones! The aggrieved and injured parties, perpetually triggered from having to see poor people’s off script and often coarse expressions on the internet, or unsightly and undesirable, unkempt presence in their Special Class zipcodes. I’m here listening to the wind battering the old trailer while doing some laundry. My heroic and saintly wife n frustrated, alienated kid are at a doctor’s appointment, we decided it would be in his better interest for me to not accompany them, because I am only ever like a distraction to these office professionals. One doctor in Oregon said, “so this must be your grandmother”, referring to me, of course. He was not joking. I’ve got a shit ton of packing to do before we move. My world traveling jetset gypsy sister in law advises us to skip all the gray plastic containers from Wal Mart that are twenty bucks a pop now and just move it all in heavy black garbage bags. Why not, I’m thinkin’, I already got like twenty of those grey tubs out there between my old letters and lyric notebooks, photographs and cassette tapes and stuffed animals and Nerf guns that belong to my son. It won’t be for another arduous month or so before can actually pack up the U-Haul, and move to Bev-er-ly, but I can’t wait to leave, particularly since the mentally ill cowboy neighbor captured and relocated one of our cats for the second time. He is angry with city hall, society, developers, and code enforcement who harass him for his yard full of rocks and after dark collected road signs and various other hoarded objects. I get where he is coming from, but he has kind of taken it out on my family by repeatedly stealing our cats. He hates wildlife, cusses at birds, feuds with the influential bureaucrat who lives behind us and has 5 barking dogs. He catches raccoons and skunks in trap cages and now, two of our semi feral outdoor cats. He’s too unstable for me to bother reprimanding, we just need to ease on down the road. He knows my kid is disabled though, and hears him walking around the fields, calling that missing cat’s name. Not nice, at all. He is obviously suffering from mental illness and the cop squads deployed by city hall to harass and intimidate him on behalf of creepy registered sex offending big developers aint helping. He is what the campus safe-spacers call, “problematic”. I don’t think he can help himself, though. He feels so powerless over being unable to fight city hall, he tries to control the natural environment on this street. The place we are moving to has a bit of green space but honestly, I’m not looking forward to the gardening commitment right now as of yet, because the parenting obligations already monopolize the overwhelming majority of my life force and positive energy. When my kids are struggling, I am, too. His mom finally found a doctor willing to try a couple of new prescriptions, it’s been a rough go of it, lately. One prescribing doctor moved his office to the big city two hours away and never wants to listen to his symptoms or situation, he was a right prick actually, and the other had a stroke after his second jab and is on indefinite leave.

Honestly when I’m under this much pressure, once I’m off the clock, I just wanna drink and smoke, listen to music, maybe have a real good cry. The heart yearns for escapism, a weekend pass back to paradise lost. Just not in the cards anytime soon. Some Andre Cold Duck and the Psychedelic Furs “Heartbreak Beat” on eleven.

I was confiding to one of my older sons that of the 100 most important people of my lifetime, about say, sixtyfive of ’em are dead, about ten or fifteen others sadly drifted into criminal enterprise or capitalist hierarchies but I repeat myself, and the rest seemed frightened I would somehow handicap their popularity status among their celebrity superiors which is the Only Real Religion of middle class hipsters. The podcast, the Tuesday night DJ gig at the gentrification bar, the book signing, the backstage selfie with Steve Conte. It’s why I call my band The Loneliness. Right now, it’s just me and my wife, every other month, we have an acoustic set of songs, our own private Lux & Ivy desert garage revue. It’s lookin’ less and less likely I’m going to be able to get my original songs recorded in an actual recording studio in this lifetime. Everybody I ever knew prefers playing Johnny Thunders covers in the company of obscenely rich people. Bummer.

Kiss This: Being on the outside with Jesus and The Mary Chain | Columns (i94bar.com)

EVER HEARD OF FUCKIN’ LIBYA???

Hillary Clinton Festival Appearances Are ‘Whitewashing’ History: Filmmaker (msn.com)

Telegram: Contact @alanmacleod

“Anyone accusing you of “repeating Russian talking points” is just saying you criticize the foreign policy of the US and its allies. That is always what they truly mean by that once you really drill down on what they’re saying and why they are saying it. The argument is that because Russia criticizes the foreign policy of the US-centralized empire, you never should. Which is self-evidently extremely moronic.

It’s literally impossible to be an aggressive critic of US foreign policy with a sizeable audience and not be accused of repeating Russian taking points. Literally every single high-profile person who does so gets accused of Kremlin loyalty, without a single, solitary exception.

❖

Those who tell you to “move to Russia” when you criticize the foreign policy of the western empire are the same people pushing for internet censorship and the silencing of unauthorised media and demanding retractions from any western outlet that forgets to parrot the official line.

“Move to Russia!” No, you move to Russia. You’re the one trying to suppress dissent and criticism of the powerful. I’m the one who is living by western values as they were sold to me and demanding normal scrutiny of the most powerful empire of all time. You don’t belong here.

❖

Hello we’re the westerners, we’re awesome because we live in free democracies with a free press where everyone is equal. Also, let’s spend weeks crying over a dead monarch at the urging of the news media because her blood makes her better than normal people.

❖

One of the many consequences of learning about how fucked things are is a growing frustration over wanting things to change while they only get worse. In my experience, which you may of course take or leave, the answer to this dilemma is contained in the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” A more secular version might read, “Make peace with what you can’t change in this moment, bravely make whatever changes can be made in this moment in your surroundings and in yourself, and learn to distinguish between the two.”

You’re only one human in a chaotic, confusing cacophony of eight billion, and there’s very little you can do to single-handedly effect the massive changes our species needs no matter how clever you are. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything. You can do little things to help make this planet a slightly gentler place every day, you can work to spread awareness of what’s true, and you can contribute in your own small way to the expansion of human consciousness (both in yourself and in the world).

Act to whatever reasonable extent you can act, then let go and relax into this beautiful existence. Make peace with what you cannot change in this moment, make what small changes you can, and learn to tell the two apart. The more you learn about our current plight the more necessary it becomes to learn how to do this.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)

LITTLE KINGS

When I was about 16, I made friends with these mohawked three guys I had not known previously cause two of ’em had gone to a different school system than me and the other one was way older, from another hicktown about 45 minutes away. They’d let me ride along with them to the big college town to look for magazines from the coasts like Forced Exposure, Re/Search, Flipside and Maximum Rocknroll. We’d also visit graveyards and take black and white pictures and stay in supposedly haunted old houses and years later I realized the older guys were taking the piss by scaring me with the spook stuff-I’d been broughtup in southern Kentucky, fear based, fire and brimstone, patriarchal authoritarian, puritanical theologies, sent away to Baptist boarding school at 12 and 13. Anyhow, the big collegetown record stores, Singing Dog, School Kids, and Magnolia Thunderpussy is where we found out about alot of great bands like Tex and The Horseheads,The Skulls, and The Little Kings. I always identified with Little Kings music and we also noticed they and Charlie Sexton were co starring on some Bomp! records 45’s with our idol, Stiv Bators. So yeah. Hooray for the Little Kings! One of the main bands that made me think I should move to Hollywood and start a glam band when I was eighteen to twenty. The Little Kings, Stiv Bators Disconnected Band,  and The Hangmen and Jeff Dahl Group. Stupidly, I fucked around in the midwest for a couple more years playing Alice Cooper and Gun Club covers for hillbilly audiences before even more stupidly moving to Boston right when the Sub Pop and Seattle scene was the next big thing and all those rich Harvard kids were only into like Evan fucking Dando and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. No drummers wanted to play for sleazy punknroll bands back then.

“It is a historical & theoretical mistake to characterize fascism in Europe & the U.S. as a neo-fascism. It is not. It is the second round of the ongoing colonial fascism re-imported from the colonies back to the colonial centers as a result of the crisis of colonial/capitalism.” (-Ajamu Baraka)

The Confluence of Surveillance and Censorship and Violence Against Journalists – The Project Censored Show

Kawsachun News on Twitter: “President @NicolasMaduro: ‘Sanctions imposed on Russian oil and gas are irrational, unjustified and illogical and have led the world to madness’ https://t.co/zRkEYTqnl5” / Twitter

 Here is the Updated List of US-Based Food Manufacturing Plants Destroyed Under Biden Regime — You Can Now Participate and Add More Incidents on the Interactive Map (thegatewaypundit.com)

Shared post – Just 100 Companies Sign Humanity’s Death Sentence (locals.com)

The Blue Collar Gospel Hour

The podcast is coming back in version 2.0. Bigger, better and with video.

Stay tuned. And help support a working class cause

The World Can’t Wait! Stop the Crimes of Your Government – World Can’t Wait (worldcantwait.net)

The Satanic World of the White House’s New Monkeypox Czar | The Vigilant Citizen

7 great but seriously overlooked albums from the 1980s – Metal Edge Magazine

“For instance, those who “violently oppose” “all forms of capitalism” or “corporate globalization” are listed under this less-discussed category of “domestic terrorist.” This highlights how people on the left, many of whom have called for capitalism to be dismantled or replaced in the US in recent years, could easily be targeted in this new “war” that many self-proclaimed leftists are currently supporting. Similarly, “environmentally-motivated extremists,” a category in which groups such as Extinction Rebellion could easily fall, are also included. 

In addition, the phrasing indicates that it could easily include as “terrorists” those who oppose the World Economic Forum’s vision for global “stakeholder capitalism,” as that form of “capitalism” involves corporations and their main “stakeholders” creating a new global economic and governance system. The WEF’s stakeholder capitalism thus involves both “capitalism” and “corporate globalization.” 

The strategy also includes those who “take steps to violently resist government authority . . . based on perceived overreach.” This, of course, creates a dangerous situation in which the government could, purposely or otherwise, implement a policy that is an obvious overreach and/or blatantly unconstitutional and then label those who resist it “domestic terrorists” and deal with them as such—well before the overreach can be challenged in court.

Another telling addition to this group of potential “terrorists” is “any other individual or group who engages in violence—or incites imminent violence—in opposition to legislative, regulatory or other actions taken by the government.” Thus, if the government implements a policy that a large swath of the population finds abhorrent, such as launching a new, unpopular war abroad, those deemed to be “inciting” resistance to the action online could be considered domestic terrorists. 

Such scenarios are not unrealistic, given the loose way in which the government and the media have defined things like “incitement” and even “violence” (e. g., “hate speech” is a form of violence) in the recent past. The situation is ripe for manipulation and abuse. To think the federal government (including the Biden administration and subsequent administrations) would not abuse such power reflects an ignorance of US political history, particularly when the main forces behind most terrorist incidents in the nation are actually US government institutions like the FBI (more FBI examples here, here, here, and here).

Furthermore, the original plans for the detention of American dissidents in the event of a national emergency, drawn up during the Reagan era as part of its “continuity of government” contingency, cited popular nonviolent opposition to US intervention in Latin America as a potential “emergency” that could trigger the activation of those plans. Many of those “continuity of government” protocols remain on the books today and can be triggered, depending on the whims of those in power. It is unlikely that this new domestic terror framework will be any different regarding nonviolent protest and demonstrations.

Yet another passage in this section of the strategy states that “domestic terrorists” can, “in some instances, connect and intersect with conspiracy theories and other forms of disinformation and misinformation.” It adds that the proliferation of such “dangerous” information “on Internet-based communications platforms such as social media, file-upload sites and end-to-end encrypted platforms, all of these elements can combine and amplify threats to public safety.” 

Thus, the presence of “conspiracy theories” and information deemed by the government to be “misinformation” online is itself framed as threatening public safety, a claim made more than once in this policy document. Given that a major “pillar” of the strategy involves eliminating online material that promotes “domestic terrorist” ideologies, it seems inevitable that such efforts will also “connect and intersect” with the censorship of “conspiracy theories” and narratives that the establishment finds inconvenient or threatening for any reason.” (-Whitney Webb, Last American Vagabond)

“The TV man is not your friend. I shouldn’t even have to say this. Do you know what happens to mainstream media figures who provide real resistance to empire agendas? They get fired. Ask Phil Donahue or Chris Hedges. The fact that Tucker Carlson is a top pundit on imperial media (Murdoch Media, no less) proves he’s an agent of the empire.” (-Cait Johnstone)

“There’s nothing remotely progressive, let alone ‘revolutionary’ in voting for $40 Billion dollars worth of funds for Ukraine, funds that end up in the hands of Neo-Nazis, especially while the economy is tanking. The left in U.S is dead.” (-Fiorella Isabel; the Convo-Couch)

“Fascism is a false revolution. It cultivates the appearance of popular politics and a revolutionary aura without offering a genuine revolutionary class content. It propagates a ‘New Order’ while serving the same old moneyed interests”. (-Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds, 1997)

“While the so-called liberal and conservative media – all stenographers for the intelligence agencies – pour forth the most blatant propaganda about Russia and Ukraine that is so conspicuous that it is comedic if it weren’t so dangerous, the self-depicted cognoscenti also ingest subtler messages, often from the alternative media.

A woman I know and who knows my sociological analyses of propaganda contacted me to tell me there was an excellent article about the war in Ukraine at The Intercept, an on-line publication funded by billionaire Pierre Omidyar I have long considered a leading example of much deceptive reporting wherein truth is mixed with falsehoods to convey a “liberal” narrative that fundamentally supports the ruling elites while seeming to oppose them.  This, of course, is nothing new since it’s been the modus operandi of all corporate media in their own ideological and disingenuous ways, such as The New York Times, CBS, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, Fox News, CNN, NBC, etc. for a very long time.” (-Edward Curtain)

“The shuttering of RT America is devastating news. It was one of the only alternatives to US centric corporate domination of our airwaves & it gave unmatched platforms to consistent anti-war voices like Lee Camp, Chris Hedges & myself. Every country’s state media is biased for their government. RT is obvious but US has a much more sophisticated propaganda apparatus. 5 corporations that control almost all US news are dutiful stenographers for American exceptionalism, capitalism & imperialism. Dissent against US empire is not allowed on corporate media, and anchors & panelists becomes vociferous cheerleaders for US wars when they happen, but it would be totally unacceptable if every country shut suddenly down CNN. I was in Gitmo & had detainees lawyers tell me they all watched Breaking the Set every day & thanked me for telling their stories. In the West Bank, Palestinians told me they appreciated my coverage of their plight. That perspective matters to many & I’m so proud of my work there.” (-Abby Martin)

“We were right all along. Even the mainstream media and the two corporate-owned political parties now admit this is a proxy war.” (-Lee Camp)

DISCONNECTED ALL THE WAY

In my early twenties, the most important record of my life besides “Into The Valley Of The Dolls” and “Back To Mystery City” was “Disconnected”. I felt like I was born to front a band like that. My post teenage fanzine was called “READY TO SNAP”.

Then, I discovered Jim Carroll‘s “Catholic Boy”, The Nymphs, Motorcycle Boy, and Manic Street Preachers. Good times while they lasted!

TOTALLY DIFFERENT HEAD, MAN

REPEATING THIS PART FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK: In the USA, USA, USA, USA, we common people have zero representation, the billionaires and their whore politicians and media liars are just running wild, completely disregarding the needs of us peasants in their rush to consolidate power and install puppet governments elsewhere. Whoever’s running shit in Amurkkka, the Divided Slaves Of Gitmo, man, they are some sick fucks. If you were subjected to their corporate artificial punk as often as us hostages are, through every torture camp crackling loudspeaker, you’d end up never, never wanting to attend some big arena rock show, again. That Machine Gun Kelly and Blink 182 toxic pop puke even ruined having tattoos. Corporate rock still sucks, probably worse than it did when they were first rolling all that fakeass “Grunge” off the assembly lines. Grown men talking to me about Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus and Harry Styles. No thanks. I’ve never been like a Foo Fighter fan, ya know what I mean? I’ve always been pretty outta step and alienated from what the midwestern Hamburglars proudly refer to as the mainstream. I did like Duran Duran an awful lot, though, still do. When I first discovered Duran Duran my so called peers thought that being into that band was like a PUNISHABLE OFFENSE. Especially if you were a dude in a rural area with a bit of makeup and styling product. I’ve not liked much of their more recent stuff without Andy Taylor’s hard rock Bolan influence that much, but their first few records will always have a place in my new wave kid heart. People don’t seem to understand how important a band like The Replacements or Dramarama were to a generation of dropouts and record store clerks and dress wearing drunkard custodians who looked at those wayward wastrel, gutter poetic garage-bands and thought, “Hey! Maybe we can do that, too!” Where I live now, it is a cultural dead zone, when I come across a used copy of Wall Of Voodoo, or Ramones “Subterranean Jungle”, that is like the Big Event for the whole week, then, it’s back to waiting for mail that never comes, or looking forward to like trips to the grocery store. Nothing to do, ever, but go on walks and breathe in all that insane white wildfire smoke that is so thick you can hardly even see the mountains. So yeah, my thoughts do seem to stray back to when we had crazy possibilities, as the old Viletones song goes.

   Ya see, as a totally hated, weirdo, cowboy tie and bolero hat wearing teenager, back in the eighties, ‘pink After Six tuxedo shirt, red paisley smoking jacket and torn up jeans with rockstar pictures painted on ’em, I predictably fell, head over heels, in love with the first sensitive and artistic, Brigitte Bardot lookalike, Smiths, and Tears For Fears, and Cure and Depeche Mode, and Psychedelic Furs enthusiast I ever met, she was from the other side of the tracks, so you can already imagine how that went. Rocketship peak moments that imprinted permanently and a swift crash and burn that left me standing in the naked flames. At school, I was being hassled by all the rich, white suburbanite, Transmaro driving, Journey and Judas Priest cover band, older jocks, who never heard of punk rock and I became somewhat obsessed with bands like Sex Pistols, Flesh For Lulu, Generation X and Lords Of The New Church, before running away at 14 and becoming ya know a runaway gutter urchin loitering for about a year on St. Mark’s Place and the Bowery, before stupidly returning to the uncool honky hellhole, where my mom lived, to be near that chick I mentioned, but only ending up getting tortured in juvenile detention, and repeatedly beaten by actual mobs of dumb fuck, hick Ohio Males. Back then, I was an awkward and gawky, makeup/black lace/rosary wearing hillbilly freak with glasses and stupidly piled high with goop, Charlie Sexton hair, a severely, sincerely, depressed goth kid from smalltown Kentucky-but also, I was in love with the rocknroll whoa, and the getting stoned whoa, and the Jukebox Jury and Cathy MacGow-ooh-wow-ooh-wow-ooh-wow, ooh-wow-oo-wow-wan, ya know, so I was always in love with the whole Four Lads Who Shook The World, garage band from Garageland, we can fight our way out of poverty with loud punk songs and black leather dream, I was a night owl, “Night Flight” only child, so once I finally thought I had at long last, found a combat booted rock band to front, and some of ’em were older, and could buy me beer and smokes, and had those exciting seventies record collections, I was immersing myself around the clock in old Public Image Ltd. albums and the Mary Chain and Gun Club and Runaways and Slade, and Alice Cooper and NY Dolls, and that old Stooges covers compilation, “Hard To Beat” with all those amazing 80’s tear it up garage gangs, I only ever wanted to make records and stomp stages, like the Deadboys and Stooges, that was it for me. Everything, all of it. I had a job at an old hippie record store in a nearby country town that specialized in shit that had not sold in the sixties, seventies, or eighties. Old Michael Jackson shit-stuff like that. A secret basement stash of highly sought-after Bubble Puppy vinyl. Hadda cool old acidhead co worker turning me on to everything from Badfinger to Elvis Costello to John Lee Hooker and Blue Cheer. It was not really like a cool, big city store, but you could rummage through all the record racks of mediocrity and always unearth something very exceptional and unexpected like say, “the “Negative Girls” 45 by Brother Wayne Kramer. About once a year you might find a copy of like, “Trouser Press” or “Black To Comm” fanzine or something like that and get to read about older bands like Link Wray, Destroy All Monsters, the Barracudas. In addition to my band house’s front porch AC/DC bartender-roadie-future sideman and security man, I had a smalltown Michael Anthony on bass, a Larry Mullen Jr. on drums, a Johnny Thunder style guitarist and a Wayne Kramer style guitarist. We were like an underage, born too late, Gang War. I was forever determinedly plotting our escape to the big city, where I was certain we’d find fame and fortune on those spraypainted derelict streets that were my playground as a sleazy delinquent. My all time lifelong favorite live band, THE FLESHTONES blew my hair back, man, so that was the boozy blue-whale of a good time atmosphere I always tried to bring to the stage or at our stopless all night house parties. That was the vibe I was going for, ya know, when you work hard to show the people a fabulous time. No interest in joining the daytime, workaday people, whatsoever. No interest in that, at all. Monkey suits, clock punchers, straights, squares in swivel chairs, nahh. Not for me, never would be. After losing our first, much beloved, skinhead drummer to a girl who’d just started dyeing her hair after seeing that vampire movie, “The Lost Boys” and then, to a series of moddish, Jam like bands with Vespa scooters, we replaced him with one of the curmudgeonly old MC5 collectors who hung around our record store, telling us we sucked for being eighteen, and liking Faster Pussycat and Guns N Roses. He was a hard hitting drummer, who owned a lot of vintage gear that my lads were dying to play through, he taught me a lot about The Fuzztones and Sonics Rendezvous Band, and Dark Carnival and The Rationals, I guess, but kinda took over and shifted the focus away from the original mission statement of bringing raucous GoodTimes to the weary working class, and uniting all the black sheep, towards more of a get paid to play the usual covers at old man lodges, and eventually aspire to college town frathouse row, secondhand popularity among the mainstreamers, so ya know I was eventually seen as too contentious, flamboyant, provocative, and ugly drag queen, glam rock influenced. I got contacts for my eighteenth birthday, and was trying for a deep and edgy, Andrew Eltrich and Ian Astbury vibe, but probably looked more like those junk shop glam ghouls from Underneath What. We were mostly all about imitating Iggy and Alice, back then. For years upon years, I missed those nights with the new wave girls and smalltown punk lads I used to singalong to “Walk Among Us” with. We had so, so many loud laughs, like, on the floor and rolling, helplessly. I got a song lyric that asks the important musical question, “Who has laughs like that, now”? We were all the way alive, back then. My old lady does not always understand how I still have an abiding place in my heart for people who left me in the gutter to die years and years and years and years  ago, but most of us old eighties punks were dropout, latchkey kids from bad homes, had dead or divorced parents, experienced abuse from crazy siblings or step parents or school jocks, and were ceaselessly being paddled by school administrators, and humiliated by a corrupt, smalltown juvenile injustice system, some of us had mental illnesses, and not all of ’em were playboys when they were young, so when some of ’em saw their chance to hitch their wagon to some kinda pay to play popularity choo choo gravy train, I know WHY they never wanted to look back, or risk ever having to revisit those scary fuckedup basement shitholes and unheated garages we all used to live in. If you grow up with people from Hardknocks, Nowheres, and seen their not so glamourous backstory firsthand, it’s hard to be mad at ’em for running out. Poverty is no cocktail party. Aint no brunch ’round here. It’s hard to breathe.

   We were banned from the local heavy metal hole for being Anti Bon Jovi, and also by the richmen owners of the downtown preppie bar that our handsome first bassist was celebrity DJ at, for my backstage vomiting, so we played hit and run shows opening for thrash bands, country bands, and even some oi skinhead band at boy’s club and backwoods biker hog roasts. Under my scatterbrained, intoxicated leadership, we were kind of a solo Stiv Bators meets Hanoi Rocks type band, 1000 silver spangle bracelets and frilly shirts, and once I split for the coasts they went more towards, I dunno, maybe you could say, Social Distortion or New Bomb Turks influenced thing. Unbreakable combs and Murrays pomade. I had no interest in appealing to chicken wing and draft beer inhaling, university town, sports doofuses. Never cared for Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Green Day or The Offspring, at all. I did not have time to really fuck around or cater to dudes in baseball caps. I had to get the fuck outta Dodge, cause I was being singled out and day and night stalked by too many carloads of jealous psychos, stupid fratboys, obsessive devil worshipping, cat killing, arsonist metalheads. We had developed a large, respectable following (“so respectable!) and consistently attracted a diverse spectrum of rocknroll people to our shows and bandhouse rehearsals from three, and sometimes four states, every weekend, but summa those other guys in my little band had ties to jobs and hometown dames, and were not ready to relocate to the East Coast when it was time for me to go, so they replaced me with like, an Offspring preppie-punk dude, in the years the big corporations were permanently breaking punk, and we reformed our skuzzy bandido sleazepunk band with the AC/DC roadie guy stepping in as primary co-writer in the urban wasteland, blue collar deadend, of Dorchester, Ma. Our kindly downstairs neighbor almost immediately died from AIDS like our first month in town, the hits were fast and furious after that, the big city was no joke. We kinda fell into living out all the rocknroll cliches at that point. Roadie got his car stolen and a polka dot shirted glam guy we met in Boston who was auditioning to join our group taught him how to shoot dope his first or second week in town. Our original, home grown, flash as fuck girl magnet guitar hero started meeting rich people at his convenience store job in Harvard Square and thinking about giving up rocknroll to go to college. Shit went South after that, the girlfriends went home, we got evicted and a borrowed bass was stolen by the broken lease landlord. As Shane MacGowan sang, “me, I ruined my life on drinking, pills, bad wives and cursin’…” I was still publishing my dodgy home made fanzines back then, and advertising them in the back of “FLIPSIDE” magazine, which is how I made friends with a worldwide community of rockers, some of whom I’m still friends with, here in my elderly goth years. My fanzines served as a pre internet social media platform where we self promoted our own little shows and aspirations, tirelessly looked for a little 45 rpm record deal that never really came, and helped popularize underrated bands like Motorcycle Boy, The Ultras, Gunfire Dance and Hello Disaster. It seemed like it took forever for me to get hired on at Tower records, but once I did, much inebriated hijinks and prankster merriment ensued, and I finally had fulltime access to a lively array of cool as shit print media, from all over the universe-Bucket Fulla Brains, Doll, Lemon, NME & Melody Maker, Sonic Iguana, Motorbooty, Whiskey for Breakfast, Noise For Heroes Music For Zeroes by Steve H. Gardner-his zeen was one of the best and regularly waxed hell yeah and a Hallelujah about such underground bands as Celibate Rifles, the Jeff Dahl Group, Moral Crux, The Creamers, Radio Birdman, Gargoyles, Jetboys, all that fab kinda noise. You can go online right now and type in “NOISE FOR HEROES” magazine and order a snazzy compilation or four of that kickass holy relic. I personally think you should do just that. He’s also written a really soulful and thoughtful and insightful book about being a teenager, self expression, misunderstood rocknroll underdogs and making a joyful noise unto the lord, called “ANOTHER TUNELESS RACKET” (parts one and two) that I am currently soaking in. I urge you to check him out, he really gets it. Understands what real rocknroll is all about. He goes deep into the history of underground music, too. This is a scholarly and heartfelt appreciation that will take you a long time to read and every session is a pure joy. He accurately depicts what it was like to be a young punk back in the day and shines light on less celebrated artists like Dr. Feelgood, Eddie & The Hot Rods,The Vibrators, Pagans, Rubber City Rebels and a band I’ve never heard of ’til now-Jalla Jalla from Finland. Man, it’s just a fantastic read, so look for anything that guy publishes. He is excellent.

 Meanwhile, starting in the early nineties Alternative-hoax era, when fiendish corporate interests killed rocknroll, or at least kept it buried in obscurity and made it real hard to find, some of the other people I formerly knew, lived out that other cliche, you know the one-about the halfhearted hippies of the boomer generation, ‘stupidly deciding to join the system and become consumerist yuppies who liked the Eagles, or disco and shit, many of ’em even, eventually like, voted for Reagan, like too rich, for too long, to ever know what’s really going on, status quo preserver, Neil Young. The real hippies, the radicals and yippies and hardcore weather undergrounders died or were C.I.A. fake suicided, or fled to woodsy communes, I guess some of ’em still smoke pot and get misty eyed about the fuckin’ Beatles, but few involve themselves in direct action, organizing or protesting, or fighting the war machine and evil corporate rulers, anymore. ‘Same thing kinda happened with my hard drinking, dropout poet, sons of no one, Replacements soundtracked, eighties-generation, only a few kept at it, many of our gang died young, and the ones who still fuss over their elaborate displays of punk rock belongings, the collectors, they don’t really adhere to even one rebellious punk rock value, or tradition, anymore, unless they are one of those always insufferably annoying, college edumacated, “Experts In Minor Threat Shirts”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDEcv5tM4B8 obnoxiously pontificating about their own moral superiority, or straight edge sobriety, or fucking vegan wokeness or pink hats, Gina Haspel feminism or whatever-forever needling some coarse, or less cultivated, drunky street people for breaking the P.C., D.C. rich kid, puritanical, Temperence League, crunchy granola, wannabe the boss, classroom rules. I never got along with those management class people. They’re like the bitter spinster P.M.R.C., just mad they are too uptight to have any REAL fun. To me, they are nearly indistinguishable from the cargo shorted, sports bar jocks I could never stand in honky midwestern white suburbia. I used to read “MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL” as a kid, and always appreciated TIM YO fighting the good fight for the D.I.Y. underground. For me, it was a heartbreak when all the pop/punk sellout wankers kinda hijacked his Gilman Street scene where racists broke Jello’s leg and five dork bands got overnight popular and made a million selling booger rawk to sports fans, but I carry some of TIM Yo’s righteous example and ethics and and D.I.Y. solidarity in my ole black heart. 

My next band was Boston based, totally underground, outcasts from the “AlternativeTM” scene, we only played like, real wild down on the street, backyard barbq, rooftop luaus, in the subway for liquor store quarters, and rowdy street punk basement shows, ya know, we were making a real ugly, primordial blues punk racket ala The Stooges, Cramps, Action Swingers, and Scientists, and the rich ska and grunge lovin’ college kids, with the backpacks from Alston Beat and Fugazi shorts just did not get what we were doing, at all, they thought we were horrible, ugly, dangerous, white trash, ghetto thugs, volatile, emotionally unstable, blackout prone, motorcycle crashing, bar fighting hellions, in leather pants and mirrored sunglasses, which, you know, maybe we were. One of my favorite reviews my bands ever got was one where some Jawbreaker emo kid was just savagely attacking us for being too rocknroll. We were trying to be like The Coma-Tones and Gun Club, but all the Cambridge Middle East, Lemonheads, poshly polite, ska, Juliana Hatfield crowd saw us as cock rock L.A. Guns feral metal dudes. They could not get past our black hair. Ironically, the safe as milk, trust funders I mentioned earlier all steadily started looking more and more like us Bastards, using alot of primitive echo, wearing all the second hand suit jackets, and newsboy hats, singing about drinking and addictions and mental illnesses, and doing like mimeographed impersonations of our first hand experiences as genuine lower class outcasts, mimicking our whole thing. When rich people do their imitation of our kinda atmospheric and raunchy lowdown gutter music, but with all the studio wizardry and spooky sound effects, the highbrow academics and rock critics all think of it as somehow acceptably camp, or like, sexy and exotic indie-film soundtrack scores, as profound social commentary, but we were living the wild lives those gentrification clones just read about. We did not get to ever record some of the songs about what was happening to us back then, that have been recorded by multiple, very well-known bands from different cities and even a couple of bona fide major label rockstars. We had the most shite luck everywhere we went-brokedown vans, bloody skirmishes with racist boneheads, suddenly dead collaborators, our old glam rock drummer getting stolen by more famous group, you name it. We were spiraling a bit. I was still confident, cause these older guys: a shag headed, leather clad duo who’d just sold a big hit song to a super famous commercial artist were buying me drinks at the bar all day and telling me they were gonna make me famous. A fanzine from Milford, Ma memorably referred to me around that time as a “wasted, wandering, wanton, rebel without a band”. Wow, the truth hurts, still hurts. Girls would ask us if they could take our pictures at the big bars on Lansdowne Street. We attracted some famous females and stormy bombshells. Best of times, worst of times. Mighta been some drinking.

ALL OF THE HEARTBREAK STORIES

While some of these initial setbacks were disappointingly first underway, like I said, my girlfriend from the midwest and also, one of our best friends and trusted advisors who relocated with us, both became understandably discouraged by their shit jobs as restaurant slaves and our lazy boy gang’s drunken bozo unemployment, and luckless lack of drummer, and stolen vehicle and mechanic tools that were the rhythm guitarists stock-in-trade that were in the back of the lost El Camino, the big hole he punched in the wall of our new pad that first night he showed up unexpectedly when his car was stolen after he left it running in Roxbury while he went in to a convenience store in the deep hood for a Mountain Dew and pack of Camels, and living in rundown blue collar squalor on cans of beans and bad beer and ramen and all the bad side blight related heartaches and slow goings and lice from my kid’s daycare and went back to Indiana, where she was one of the prime movers behind the Fort Wayne punk scene, that we all grew up on the fringes of, and right now, somebody’s making a movie about it-Ft. Wayne’s legendary Seventh Level punk scene, and I can’t wait to see my dear friend’s appearance in it. A lot of our friends and girlfriends came out of that core scene. Back in the midwest, we lived like an hour and a half away from that Sunday night Holiday Inn parking lot, and the Primitive Baptist Church wild house, but travelled there in our unreliable $100 cars on Sundays for a couple of years to spend time with these two goth gals we loved. “Bands that today are regarded as pioneering and crucial were at the time regarded as no talent deviants and societal nuisances, often even by the music press, who should have been their champions…” is a pull-quote from “Another Tuneless Racket” by Steve Gardner that really resonated with me for reasons that should by now be obvious. It seemed like everytime we ever played a show, anywhere, me and my ever changing lineup of whiskey hardened bikers and sensitive goth poets, an ever rotating temporary on the drumstool, and a yeehaw Bobby Keyes style saxophonist…some minor rockstar, mini-mogul, or bigtime DJ would approach us and kinda pretend like they were gonna help us record our shit, but it was always just a hustle to steal our material, meet our more famous friends, pinch the ever elusive glam drummer I mentioned, or get near our long series of talented and attractive former girlfriends. It was always a false hope heartbreak and some kinda ripoff. I stopped fraternizing with gentrification people entirely cause all they do is assimilate all your shit into their vanity brands, you see other people’s names on your life story, your creations, and nobody’s sorry, they’d all do it again if they got the chance. If you don’t record, publish and copyright your own art, there is always a good chance some business dude will. Nobody cares who has sincerity, or lived it, or did it  first. No one, nobody. I think it was Chris Isaak who sang, “nobody loves no one.”

That disreputable and notorious hoodlum Boston blues punk and torch and twang band, the Bastards, we could never find a permanent drummer, they all wanted to be ska or Nine Inch Nails rich people industrial, and we never got to record much, though we did appear on a tribute to the Boys and Hollwood Brats on some little Italian label called Desert Inn records, because we were always dead poor living in a rodent infested Allston ghetto apartment and got involved with some real dark and negative influences, but man, we wrote a lot of songs that got circulated all over via cassette tapes while we were still sending cassettes out to other fanzines to be reviewed and begging little labels like Sympathy and Dogmeat and Dionysus and Get Hip and all the little labels to record us, and what happened was several other bands in different cities started doing our tunes, and copying us, our whole style, without always acknowledging who the real writers were. So yeah, these other bands got to do stuff, be on the cover of magazines, selected by our former allies to appear on big UK glossy magazine compilations, opened for our own idols, and like, we never got any credit from all the people we influenced, so yeah, you know, that’s been frustrating. We’re still dishwashers, janitors, forgotten, but not gone. Rich kids who came second look n sound just like us and kinda bought their way in to relationships with our idols. Ya know how Cobain saw to it that The Melvins got a piece of his fame train? All the porky, pink pants, brat pack, Kendoll richkids we directly and personally influenced did just the opposite-they stole our whole thing but then pretended that they never even heard of us. “Who?” We still have ta see these guys online being applauded by our former cohorts while mostly trading on our work, it’s sometimes still real painful, summa our gang are Already Gone to the gin-joint beyond the clouds, summa us are just barely gettin’ by. It’s often said that it’s helpful to have some kinda trust fund, if you wanna make records, but in this greed is gawd, post grunge era, it’s like, mandatory. If you aint got big money, you aint goin’ nowhere. Take a seat on the bleachers and watch the idle heirs steal your act-same shoes, same haircuts, some of our tunes, and even summa the copycat cloned, in between song fucking banter. It’s like having your own tribute band. First, it all started with that collegetown chain wallet, copycat Offspring, plain white t shirt guy, but then, it kept happening, again and again. I was reading that Killer Kane book where he suffers all his life over Aerosmith and KISS and I totally get it.  

 So somedays, I think about my long lost THE CURE crew, and wonder if any of ’em are even, like, anti-war, anymore, if they can even recognize when they are being propagandized by the roar of the big machine. I’m pessimistic, they all seem devotedly invested in social life, celebrity fame hierarchies-and all that Net-Flix get rich/asskiss programming, ya know what I’m talkin’ about? Just nodding along with whoever has amassed power or celebrity. Sucking up to the richest person in the room, in any social situation. That’s not for me, so when my youngest kid, a brilliant in his own way, but lonely teenage child, who struggles with his own lack of peers, howls from the heart, because he knows he is not really accepted, or likely to ever be embraced by the neurotypical, general ed. hype beats, designer label obsessed, most hits, youtube kids, because of his many autism ticks, but he knows he is way smart and funny and good looking and capable of memorizing entire encyclopedias, so he understandably has no interest in forging any alliances with the disability classroom kids, he has all my empathy and compassion. I’m kinda in the same boat, at 53. The former punks and Delta House I used to know, are, in no way, rebels or misfits or activists or outsiders, anymore, and me, I can’t pretend to be anything BUT those things. I never found my people. Closest I’ve come is like, blasting a band like The ComaTones or Tex & The Horse Heads, who were nothing but soul, or listening to the mighty BEASTS OF BOURBON, who are too famous where they came from, to like, really befriend, but whose music and lyrics are always so, so, so instantly and intimately familiar to me. I lived through so many of their songs, first hand, it was like I knew them and grew up with ’em, but obviously, not in real life, I’m from Kentucky, but their art speaks to the deepest heart of me. When I was twenty one, I met this freaky dude in Boston who used to buy my fanzine at Newbury Comics and he wrote me a real sweet letter (that I still have) about how much my writing resonated with him, he is slim and trim and clean and sober now, but back then, he still looked just like a fucking drunk Hell’s Angel-a big beard when nobody, except maybe ZZ Top, Santa Claus, and that nerd bongwater guy from the Spin Doctors had beards. Black leather, silver skull and monster rings on every finger, a million silver bracelets like Axl Rose, a buncha crucifixes and junk jewelry like Mister T. He was a big cult and horror movie aficionado, and I think he was an aspiring movie maker, himself, back then. Mindwarped style and primo taste in music, right? He was a cool cat and somehow, he just knew I had a lot in common with the Beasts Of Bourbon, and that my connection to old school outlaw country music and trucker culture was no joke or parody, but my roots, ya know, so when he brought me my first copy of “The Low Road”, it was a big deal to me, that was some powerful stuff. The songs, “Low Road” and “Can’t Say No”, especially. Just works of imperishable genius, really, exactly what I aspired to, in all my ceaseless vainglory, in the words of the sleazy leather dude with the beard. I dunno why Australia has all the real rocknroll bands and USA USA is all just banal, creepy, toxic, gutless garbage pop, and fake fuck commercial country, but ya know, my heartfelt heroine, Chrissy Amphlett, was one of the most amazing rocknrollers who ever lived, and I’m told that Brody Dalle chick from the Distillers was from her same town. Lately, I’ve been jamming to Amyl & The Nitrates, there’s a couple of formulaic punk bands with scantily clad, hot pants and bleached blonde girl singers over here in Amerikkka that everybody always loves, like Barbed Wire Dolls, who stole their name from a truly dangerous and exciting Smack and Doors influenced gutter junkie midwestern garage band, who were probably my own gang’s only real rivals, way, way, way back when, but the fake Barbed Wire Dolls totally lack the Amyl & The Nitrates chick’s energy and anger and fervor and passion. They always seem like ho-hum, Hot Topic, popular girl, cheerleader gone stripper, Barbie World,Gwen Steffani mall posers to me, whereas, the edgier rockers from Australia really lay it down, deliver the raw goods, leave it all on the stage, MC5 style! I love that. That’s my whole thing, my true religion, my way of life, so it always seems like my real rocknroll people are in Australia. The ones I knew a long tim ago, who were anything at all like me, over here, are dead and gone. I’ll exchange e-mails with a couple people once or twice a year who are, what I call, the “Thank Obamas”, all they seem to know, or care about, is vicariously, second hand, “identifying”, with empty suit, identity politricks, Colors Of Bennetton models and gentrification Democrat, feelgoodist see no evil propaganda-they’re always so stoked about their college degrees and self referential pro nouns,  but if you talk to ’em for five minutes, they never heard of the World Economic Forum, or disposition matrix, or Vanguard or Black Rock, or anything, that impacts the sacrifice zone, little people’s lives. They aint hip to no real rocknroll no more, either-they STILL try telling me about like, Green Day and Smashing Pumpkins and Miley Cyrus and Foo Fighters, and I’m just so, not interested, at all. Nowadays, I only ever hear from like slummy cultural tourist, wouldbe plagiarists looking for something to steal. Greedy copyright thieves, outright vampires and time sucking, attention seekers. People I’ve loved and cultivated and nourished and promoted for over half their lives don’t even send me a postcard from paradise no more, cause, they are so terrified I’m gonna ask ’em for money, cause, that’s what they think poor people do, or out them in front of their fancy wives, or guilt trip ’em over some fuckedup shit they did wrong, thirty years ago. In my country, nobody knows anything about what’s goin’ on in this world, cause we are hypnoscreen bullshitted, and played for suckers, all around the clock. So even the music sucks, SO BAD now, and I can’t even find a fucking guitar player who gives a fuck about anything besides ya know, the Standard Amerikkkan Dream, which is, of course, a big fat, fucking lie. They’re all strung out on pig-media and the government pills. So you take the high road and I’ll take the Low Road.

“The thing about being a journalist in the West Bank is that the Israelis tend always to know where you are and where you are going. During my years of reporting throughout Palestine, I could only gain access to flashpoint areas with an Israeli-issued press card. This insight is critical to understanding the tragic killing of veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on Wednesday morning in the West Bank city of Jenin. Immediately after the killing, Israel’s well-rehearsed public relations machine went into hyperdrive to divert responsibility, confuse the narrative, and blame the Palestinians. How Israel and the international media have handled this horrific event speaks volumes about the way the narrative over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict obfuscates reality and denies Palestinians their humanity. According to several journalists at the scene, the Al Jazeera Arabic journalist was hit by a live bullet below her ear. An Israeli sniper fired the bullet during a military operation in the city. Initially, the Israeli army claimed that the bullet was fired by “Palestinian militants,” but witness accounts quickly refuted this. Moreover, the Israeli army must have been well aware that Abu Akleh and her crew were operating in the city.” (-Joseph Dana)

“Looting is a natural response to the unnatural and inhuman society of commodity abundance. It instantly undermines the commodity as such, and it also exposes what the commodity ultimately implies: the army, the police and the other specialized detachments of the state’s monopoly of armed violence.” (~ Guy Debord)

“She was killed by the Israeli military, after making her presence as a journalist clearly known. We provide Israel with $3.8 billion in military aid annually with no restrictions. What will it take for accountability for these human rights violations?” (-Ilhan Omar)

“Abu Akleh was fatally shot while covering an Israeli raid on a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday. Fellow journalists who witnessed the shooting said Israeli forces had fired on them. Israel’s prime minister and other senior officials initially said Palestinian militants were ‘likely’ to blame, but the Israeli army admitted on Friday that one of its soldiers might have fired the fatal shot. The assault on the mourners, who were beaten with clubs at a hospital in East Jerusalem, stunned viewers who watched it unfold on live television, further enraging Palestinians and the dead journalist’s colleagues and fans.” (-Robert Mackey; the Intercept)

“According to the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, about 80 percent of complaints filed against soldiers for harming Palestinians are closed without a criminal investigation. Of the few investigations that are undertaken, only 3.2 percent result in the indictment and prosecution. Palestinian and Israeli civil society organizations have documented the deaths of 155 Palestinian children from live ammunition or crowd-control weapons since 2013, but only three indictments on criminal charges have been issued against Israeli soldiers for those killings.

There is more of an outcry when journalists are attacked, but even then, Israel acts with impunity. According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, there are hundreds of Israeli attacks on journalists every year.

Some have said that Abu Akleh’s case is different. She wasn’t only a journalist for a well-respected news outlet; she was also an American citizen. But Abu Akleh is far from the only Palestinian American to be killed by Israeli soldiers.

Sixteen-year-old Palestinian American Mahmoud Shaalan was shot and killed in October 2016 at a checkpoint near the Beit El settlement. Responding to an Israeli soldier’s instructions to stop and turn back, he had attempted to lift up his shirt and hands to show he was not a danger when he was gunned down. Upon requests by his family for an investigation, the Israeli military informed the US State Department that there had been no criminal wrongdoing by the soldiers involved.

On January 12 of this year, seventy-eight-year-old Palestinian American and Milwaukee grocery store owner Omar Assad died from a fatal heart attack while being detained, bound, gagged, and left of the ground, his face blue from lack of oxygen. Following a call for investigation by Assad’s family and some members of Congress, and the Biden administration asking for “clarification,” Israel responded that the incident had resulted from “Assad refusing to cooperate with troops operating in the area” and that it was “a grave and unfortunate event” due to “poor decision-making on the part of the soldiers.” Two officers were dismissed and a battalion commander was reprimanded, but no one went to jail.

After US peace activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2003, the Israeli military’s investigation, done at the request of the Bush administration, concluded that her death was a “tragic accident.” In a civil suit brought by Corrie’s parents, the court found no fault in the military’s investigation and ruled that the state of Israel was not responsible for Corrie’s death.

The Israeli military’s knowledge of its impunity has been on full display since the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh. The day after the journalist was killed, they raided her family’s home and forcibly removed the Palestinian flag flying outside. While the family was accepting condolences, Abu Akleh’s brother, Anton Abu Akleh, was summoned to the police station and warned that the funeral proceedings would be dispersed if there was an “escalation.” In perhaps the grossest display of impunity, the day that Abu Akleh was laid to rest, Israeli forces attacked the funeral march, firing stun grenades and hitting pallbearers with batons, almost causing them to drop her coffin.” (-Ariel Gold/Medea Benjamin of Code Pink For Peace in JACOBIN MAGAZINE)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONjFZqRFjJA&feature=emb_title Mnar Adley and Mint Press are under attack, support their work and read Mint Press while you still can.

We’re experiencing censorship unlike anything we’ve faced before, and MintPress and other antiwar media have been facing 5 years of algorithmic shadowbanning by Big Tech.

In the last month alone, independent antiwar journalists have been targeted in organized smear campaigns, de-platformed, given “state affiliated” labels on their accounts, and even outright purged off of social media platforms. Youtube has deleted hundreds of thousands of historical videos from prominent antiwar journalists and activists including Abby Martin, Chris Hedges, and Lee Camp, and is demonetizing political content everywhere in an effort to defund antiwar efforts. Our very own Gofundme fundraisers were taken down without reason or an opportunity to appeal.

What this amounts to is little more than a modern-day book burning. The work of the most important dissenting voices of our time is being discredited. Division is being sowed and any information that challenges the corporate and military establishment’s agenda is censored. Meanwhile, the bank accounts of executives at Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are being filled at a record pace.

For the last several years, MintPress has been at the forefront of sounding the alarm about the deep state working with silicon valley tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to control your news feed and ensure that any alternative narrative is algorithmically disappeared. But we’re not backing down because the future of our planet and the prosperity of peace and justice depends on our reporting.

This is why I consulted with anti-censorship, pro-free press, and human rights experts on our nonprofit board– including Mickey Huff, president of the Media Freedom Foundation and the director of Project Censored; FBI whistleblower, Coleen Rowley; and international human rights attorney, Todd Pierce– to create a new video reporting project called Behind The Headlines. To help us build this project we will need your support.

We need to raise $400,000 in the next year, so we’re creating our first phase fundraiser to be stated for $200,000.

Join us here: We’re LIVE on Indiegogo!  (-Mnar Adley)

“It is a contradiction Democrats are unable to reconcile so they will continue to rehabilitate or deny white supremacists in Ukraine. For some of us that has been even more dangerous because it disarms people from understanding scope & global reality of white supremacist movement. So Democrats with Republicans support send 40 billion worth of guns to Ukraine but are trying to take the moral high road on weapons & violence in the U.S.” (-Ajamu Baraka)

“This is a de facto proxy war between the West and Russia. The goal is to bleed Russia dry. Russia will destroy Finland before they allow Finland to join NATO. Ukraine is gone. There’s got to be an off-ramp.” (-Scott Ritter)

WHAT’S LEFT OF THE LEFT?

I’m only here to help! At this sad juncture all I really got to offer my kindred spirits and fellow travelers and brothers and sisters and friends of the revolution is drawing some half conscious rocknroll rebels attention towards what few real news sources and truthteller websites like www.realnews.com and Black Agenda Report and Mintpress and Jacobin magazine still exist. I wake up pretty mortified each morning by all the big earth moving machinery on my street tearing down the trees and digging for hotsprings, everybody in this deadend place is dreaming they’re gonna find gold in them thar hills by flipping the crummy old houses built in the fifties into airbandb hot tub tourist resorts. We been watching the multiple McMansions go up a couple blocks away while the secretive local politicians use code enforcement to target old hermits for removal, I’ve been defending the old hermits because I know it’s a domino theory at work, here-once those first couple of eccentric old timers with the eyesore hoarder encampments and brokedown old RV’s and backyards full of old mattresses and chickens go, we’ll be next, and it ain’t that easy to find freestanding houses that aint two grand a month, anywhere, anymore and we can’t do apartment living because of family disability issues. I’m so anxious and fretful about it all, I wanna call my muddah but she is suffering from cognitive impairment issues after a tragic fall and brain bleed about five months back, so she’s still recovering and does not need my stress added to her load, I’m just explaining that shit to you, my underground rocknroll comrades, cause I have been writing more than I used to since the techlords locked us anti war activists out of social media, and the town started the gentrifying process that keeps reoccurring everywhere we go. Shitlibs think Klaus Schwab and his Future Leaders School are warm and fuzzy shitlib cuddly, special pinup friends. The office classers and landlorders will tell you there is no such thing as a Great Reset or Agenda Twentyone, New World Order rollout happening all around us, but those same people told us the US government would never spy on our phonecalls without warrants, or makeup slanderous lies to ruin popular opinion about heroic whistle blower journalists, or plant a Dick Cheney proxy army on Russia’s front door for a regime change war with a nuclear power, but they’re doing it. You know that old sixties song, “Nowhere To Run”? That’s how I’m feeling this morning. I could use a good stiff drink to calm my nerves but I don’t drink in front of the kids and I’m almost always on the clock nowadays.

How US meddling arm Creative Associates International destabilizes Washington’s adversaries – The Grayzone

Activism, Uncensored: A Weekend of Californians Screaming and Flailing at Each Other (substack.com)

The Fed’s Secret Plan to Suck Workers Dry – YouTube

“After we had to fight the political establishment to get on the ballot, now they’re trying to keep me out of the debates.   Sign our petition to tell them: #LetMattDebate and let the voters decide!   Please retweet to support the fight for real democracy! https://matt4senate.org/letmattdebate” (-Matt Hoh For Senate)

“Your debate is anti-democratic because it excludes all of the candidates who are on the ballot. Why did you exclude the @GreenPartyUS

 and libertarian party candidates from the debate? The people deserve to hear from more than just the two corporate party candidates.” (-Ryan Knight)

“In one sense, Nina Jankowicz – the new head of Homeland Security’s new ‘Disinformation Board’ – is a despotic maniac. But she’s an utterly banal expression of modern-day establishment liberalism. The entire “anti-disinformation” industry is a gigantic fraud: funded by the same small set of liberal billionaires, US/UK/EU security agencies, Big Tech and Gulf State monarchs: designed to masquerade their propaganda as Official Truth, to justify censoring any dissent from it. Nina Jankowicz, above all else, is a creature of this security-state-controlled-and-funded “anti-disinformation” industry. That’s why Homeland Security chose her.” (-Glenn Greenwald)

“The next war in Europe will be between Russia and fascism, except that fascism will be called democracy.” (-Fidel Castro)

“democracy

by bukowski

the problem, of course, isn’t the Democratic System,
it’s the
living parts which make up the Democratic System. the next person you pass on the street,
multiply
him or
her by 3 or 4 or 30 or 40 million
and you will know
immediately
why things remain non-functional
for most of
us.

I wish I had a cure for the chess pieces we call Humanity…

we’ve undergone any number of political

cures
and we all remain
foolish enough to hope that the one on the way
NOW
will cure almost
everything

fellow citizens,
the problem never was the Democratic System, the problem is you.” (-BUKOWSKI)

SATURDAY NIGHT PINK

It’s Eight Ten in the morning on another gloomy Monday and after perusing what few semi-reliable Leftish news sources remain on the internet in the shadows of all the fascist as fuck, Biden administration rollout of ever more censorship via the fiendish foes of truth and justice-the Atlantic Council and meta-world unreality, pro war, fake liberal, partisan ping-pong, Always Blame Some External Boogeyman For Capitalists Crimes Against The Poor, nothing changes, virtue signaling, middle class feelgoodist narrative-manufacturers, like Abby Zimet and Rachel Maddow, Jen Psaki and Nina Jackowicz, I naturally feel tired, resigned, sad to see how so many fakeass war cheerleader shitlibs are willing and even eager to sell out all the poor people for a little fame, prestige, a paycheck, and some special privileges as consent manufacturing agents of the Empire. Do ya think they still tell themselves they are righteous, intersectional, correct pro noun respecting do-gooders, or behind closed doors, do they laugh at how gullible all the tv watching poors are? I suspect Obama and Hillary laugh their asses off, but summa the Squad might not be on the inside of these incremental, dystopian police state, Klaus Schwab rollouts, I dunno. I do know that none of them, nor Bernie, fight for any part of the platforms they all ran on-eviction moratoriums, housing the homeless, medical care for everybody, forgiveness of ridiculous student loan debt that keeps so many middle classers on the helpless biometric timeclock hamster wheel. Freeing every non violent reefer offender. Ending the Bush/Cheney world wars for weapon manufacturers and oil companies. Breaking up the big tech and media monopolies. Reeling in the surveillance state. Providing dental and optical to old people who did not have money to go to college. Instead, they co sign giving unfathomable amounts of money to their proxies in the Ukraine and Israel, while their own constituents die young, cause they can not access adequate dental/healthcare, medicines without crazy dangerous and secretive side effects, affordable housing, decent food untainted by Gates and Bayer/Monsanto, etc., etc. Yeah, it gets me down. Remember when the DNC admitted in court they fix their primaries in smoky back rooms and fuck you? Remember when it was shown in courts of law that they lied about Trump working for Russia? Special Counsel John Durham’s probe proved that Hillary Clinton herself and her top foreign policy advisor, Jake Sullivan, spread a phony “Primary Colors” style, dirty tricks, Trump-Russia “collusion” narrative, featuring the fabricated bullshit about a pee pee blackmail video from the lyin’ and spyin’ Christopher Steele distraction dossier. They just edit out any shit they find uncomfortable as “fake news”. Try talking to a shitlib about the Tuesday Morning Disposition Matrix. They do not care to know, just which Beyonce songs Barack likes best, seeing Chelle talk about niceness with Ellen and the clueless, rich ladies of “The View”, shit like that. How Lyn Cheney is basically another Bloomberg Democrat now. Blue-Maga.If you wanna know who exactly REALLY blackmails and controls western politicians, go to Whitney Webb’s Unlimited Hangout website and start learning about Mossad and the Mega Group. It ain’t Russia. Find out who Jared Kushner’s dad is. I mean, I don’t like Trump, obviously, but how do shitlibs just numbly, blindly filter that stuff out? That Madeline Albright was part responsible for the deaths of over a million people and when asked about all those murdered kids, she said “it was worth it”, and there are all your rightwing Wall Street Democrat Pinup Oster Faves at her funeral singing her praises. How do they just ignore that shit? Hillary LAUGHING about her proxies brutally killing Gaddafi? MF’s still cheering for her psychotic ass. All my ex associates who love their special privilege status, always singalong with whatever current advertising slogan CNN assigns them, that’s so sad to me. Most high salaried college people live in big pharma bliss bubbles until shit affects them personally, don’t give a shit about their brothers and sisters exiled in the sacrifice zones, gulp, gulp, gulp, they just stay fucked up so they don’t have to think about anything that makes them feel ikky or uncomfortable, which is why they despise homeless people, it’s so fucked, and then, mass media gets ’em all worked up and frenzied about stories they can manipulate them into hating their neighbors over. Ugh! The narrative managers have been so well trained, all these Ivy League spook-state and fuckedup Anderson Cooper and Billy Bush and Tucker Carlson multi- millionaire kids spewing their eager-beaver propaganda for the one percent, while couching it all in populist lingo, and sensitivity lexicons. “They think they’re so clever, they think they’re so right…” (-The Clash) I personally can’t stand being held captive by the hypnoscreens all the time, so I venture outdoors multiple times each day but I can’t find anybody who is really willing to engage in real life activities that don’t strictly involve amplifying their master’s voice on the I-Phone twitterverse, or Tik Tok hate towns, or whatever. The main advantage of not having an I-Phone and being locked out of False-Book by Zuckerberg for anti-war postings and links to credible indie media reposts, sternly frowned upon by the capitalist war machine, is now I have many, many hours to fill each day, but I still mainly wanna do music, make new rebellious rocknroll with truth and soul, and not many of my former peers have any interest in that, unless, of course, as they say, there is a fortune to be made. I can’t work with brand builder gentrifiers or micro-empire wouldbe celebrities. I gotta go find some other guttersnipes, and few of them can even afford instruments, or primary shelters, nowadays, let alone, secondary rehearsal spaces. “I keep on searchin’…” (-NY Dolls) Scary times for low income tenants when city hall is in bed with big money developers building million dollar homes on the same block as 53 year old trailers. Where do we go?

   Walking home from the post office, past all the dog walking, standoffish, stoned in the morning, MSNBC boomer rich people, who live on the giant four block compounds with the big high silver fences, security cameras and dogs, mosaiac tiled OM patios and hot tubs and super yacht RV’s, remembering conversations I had decades back with former friends about the importance of real music….but once they started their transition, self identifying as middle class people, haves high on the hill, they kept repeating how there was not enough money in it. Huh? What?!! I remember telling ’em all, that’s the right time(!!) to make wild music with authentic rocknroll authority and real heart, especially, when nobody else is doing it. In all the stories those D-Gen guys have been telling since the sad death of Howie Pyro, you know the one thing they never really mention, is where they got all their money to do all that shit. Rents and recordings and big city living costs money, last I knew. If you listen to all the Gentrification-Hipster music, you’ll notice how little of it ever addresses real life issues, ya know? It’s just like that rich models with big hats, who know more rich people in Joshua Tree, singing sad rich girl songs about folksy sunsets and Vogue sundresses, and more big hats and Ibiza trip music festival vacation airbandb rentals, and shit. The politics of Amish beard growing. I noticed that Spin magazine has been emphasizing all the occultist rap and Kardashian debbil Tik Tok punque lately, rather than just their usual millionaire model-duos, with ukeleles, synthesizers, or fifteen piece Americana, cos-play orchestras. I only liked one of those good lookin’ kids with big hipster hats kinda bands. Hound’s Tooth, or something like that. Kinda like Jacob Dylan Juniors. They got a real cute song called “Sedona” where they yell, “SATURDAY NIGHT KINDA PINK!” and I can’t help but be somehow charmed by that, possibly because my girlfriend mentioned how that band vaguely resemble a couple of my own beautiful but sadly estranged adult children.

Let me know if you like it. Houndmouth – Sedona – YouTube

“The more I study the history of the subject, the more I realise that the USSR defeated the Nazis and the western powers absorbed them.” (-Ben Norton, speaking about Operation Gladio and Operation Paperclip.)

“Americans have now paid a total $53 B for a proxy war that’s blowing military expenditures out of the water & nuclear endangerment off the charts. All without a word of debate. Democrats are not just caving to the military industrial complex. They are leading the charge.” (Dr. Jill Stein)

“The one single time the US had a monopoly on nuclear weapons at the same time it was at war, it used them. Not because it needed to, but as a show of force. That was the dawn of the US empire. That’s how it was born. And it never got any saner from there.” (-Cait Johnstone)

“The fact that both major parties in the US and UK support Israel and Zionism “without qualification”, as Keir Starmer puts it, is everything you need to know. These are the last people on earth to talk about anything related to “human rights”. (-Richard Medhurst)

“Bernie Sanders and the Squad should be ashamed of themselves for voting to fund this ongoing proxy with Russia while our own people are struggling to afford housing, healthcare, and food.” (-Ryan Knight)

DREAMS ARE MADE OF EMOTION

    I just got an email from Culture Club, saying they are going back out on tour, which is thrilling news, as far as I’m concerned. Boy George, Cyndi Lauper, Prince and Billy Idol, that was my whole LIFE when I was a strange kid watching “Night Flight” and thinking about Human League and Dexy‘s songs, hiding from suburban sports assholes in my bedroom, listening to my purple Prince vinyl and reading Creem magazines, drawing band logos and cartoon pictures of imaginary bandmates, putting on Adam Ant makeup in the mirror. I still go down the Culture Club rabbit hole some nights and listen to him serenade his still very passionate audiences with all his old classics, mixed up with fucking just exquisitely beautiful covers of old Bowie tunes. If you know the Culture Club story, you know his bandmates and producers used to ridiculously complain that he was not a technically qualified to win a perfect pitch competition, unreality tv contest, as a big note hitting Bette Midler vocalist, but these brainwashing Faux-Olympics illuminati judges can go fuck themselves, because he gracefully evolved into an incredible, timeless, beautiful entertainer, with total control, mastery, and true feeling and effortlessly commands a giant room with so much soulful feeling and it’s not just his gay audience who still show up dressed like him and get lost in the memories and songs, he brings everybody together, like, unites all the people. I love him. Nowadays, I only get email from Culture Club, Blondie, and Sunglasses Hut. I’m 52, feeling 53, but might as well be back in that basement room on Lakewood Drive with all the Smash Hits magazines on the floor and Duran Duran posters on the wall. “WAR IS STUPID AND PEOPLE ARE STUPID AND LOVE MEANS NOTHING, IN SOME STRANGE QUARTERS…” Of course old wornout dishwashers like me will likely never witness another big ticket, major rock show and have to find contentment from watching Amyl & The Nytrates and Sleaford Mods videos and any live concert, eighties new wave stuff, or old concerts of SMACK from Finland, anything cool that washes up on youtube, but in crazee heat like this, I just kinda gotta hunker down and be grateful for cold water and a swamp cooler and this computer, cause otherwise, I’m just walking aimlessly among the rolling plains of cactus. My old amigo, the Late Great Billy Ray Bogart, died a couple Christmas Eves ago basically, but man, we used to watch all his old VHS of pro wrestling from the eighties, back when we lived together in a one bedroom purple apartment and were too poor for cable, my teenager who is reading headlines from the internet out loud just informed me my fave wrestler, Ric The Nature Boy Flair, is about to perform his final match at 70 years old. I wish my main man, Billy Ray, was still here to chat with me about crazy feather boa wearing pro wrestlers in David Lee Roth sparkly “Panama” robes; and crackly vinyl old blues gutbucket whiskey sippin’ bastards, and skinny tie new wave music. This afternoon it’s just too hot for another walk so I found myself watching some “Legends” concert with James Brown, Bo Diddley. Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Fats Domino, and I think Chuck Berry kinda as a tribute to my main man Billy Ray. I’m crazy bored and depressed but do not drink around my kids so the monotony is grinding. Find myself talking out loud to all these absent homies. I avoid humans whenever possible, cause I just don’t speak College Feelings like they do, but man, I do kinda miss my lengthy roll call of rocknroll motherfuckers who’ve Already Gone. Out here where the crazy hot winds blast, we are all like the slow lumbering living dead, just some of us have more BMW motorcycles with sidecars for dogs, than others. I’m obviously the others. A nice elderly artist lady made me some real cool seventies Aerosmith style, feather earrings though, and that’s as delightful to me as a lotta updated flash appliances probably are to the property caressers. My wife bought me a real cool bandanna, also. Mondays in dead end desert ghost towns are like study hall at Catholic school, cause the whole town is still closed, it’s Sunday part 2. Time moves real, real slow in these places. I wakeup between 5 and 6, by the time 1:12 rolls ’round, on a hot day, you’re already ready for a siesta. Most of my friends who got the gum rot were not long for the world, after that, ya know? My bro Mark, he was a genius, his teeth turned black and like, poof, that was it, he was a goner. Periodontal problems cost thousands and if you aint got it, fuck you. BYE! For some reason, it seemed like the good motherfuckers who weren’t trying to just covertly compete with you, or use you as their cover story, or backstab you and steal your shit, are always first to leave the planet. What’s up with that shit? Meanwhile, they DOUBLED the price on all the empty real estate since last year. Shit is crazy, man. Smoke is so thick it burns your eyeballs and a neighbor two streets down came outside to tell me we can use her spare truck if we have to evacuate because of the wildfires. It’s getting scary here, real “ROAD WARRIOR”.

empirical dissent – Home | Facebook

Brothers & Sisters & Friends Of The Revolution, I don’t know what’s gonna happen next, I’m kinda hoping to get it together to go offline and get off the grid, as they say. I hope you all do your part to resist and reject the New World Order! Stay Wild! Stay Free!