“Student debt doesn’t get bail outs but Banks & the rich do. The one sided class war. The working class and poor have no representation in the two party monopoly of politics in the U.S.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“Lindsey Graham calls for the US military to launch WWIII, shooting down Russian planes, in retaliation for the heinous attack on the US homeland that actually took place thousand of miles away over the Black Sea and cost zero American lives.” (-Max Blumenthal)
“I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” (—Senator Frank Church on Meet The Press, 1975)
“The truth is that the whole world is the enemy of the United States. The US has no friends. Just temporary tools in getting what it wants: permanent hegemony for its corporate masters.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Monbiot’s criticism of Brand for his choice of targets is laughable. Why is The Guardian columnist so keen to defend the World Economic Forum founder, Klaus Schwab; or former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; or the former U.S. chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci; or a World Health Organization financially captive to the Big Pharma lobby; or, even more bafflingly, the Covid-profiteering pharmaceutical giant Pfizer?
The truth is Monbiot has become just another advocate for managerial, technocratic liberalism — a liberalism that has been entirely discredited since the financial collapse of 2008, and is now the target of contempt and ridicule from that same younger demographic and figures such as Greenwald and Brand.
Monbiot is desperate to maintain his credibility. And he imagines he can keep it a little longer by widening the circle of people on the left he smears: from Noam Chomsky and Pilger, Fisk and Hersh, to Brand and Greenwald. But the only person he is damaging is himself, narrowing his relevance down to a group of liberal cultists, those who still believe that the very same people who destroyed our world are the ones who will fix it.”
” Sen Warnock is a moral leader and his silence on the police murder of Tortugita, at the very least, is DEAFENING. I am wildly disappointed in Georgia’s senators. A person was killed by police, many more rounded up and charged with terrorism (for many for simply attending a concert) and somehow the concern lies with the poor, defenseless construction vehicle. People over property.
I am not so naive as to think two sitting senators won’t condemn property damage. But to not also condemn the killing of a human being? Especially given all we now know about Tort’s execution? That is not moral leadership. What I can promise is that history will judge harshly the politicians in Georgia who looked around in this current moment and chose to close ranks with their peers, ignoring the people who gave them power in the first place. I promise that.” (-Hanna Riley)
Know anything about whatever happened to that groovy eighties Batcaveish gothic electrotrash band Jad Wio co starring Denis Bortek, and Christophe K-Bye? I think they’re really cool, I was playing their youtubes for somebody local I’m trying to work with, to hip him a little bit more to like what I consider cool old school subversive glam and punk trash. Suicide, Gun Club influences, cabaret, Soft Cell, Specimen, Berlin, Sisters Of Mercy. That kinda feel. My ole lady’s seen me have to teach so, so many woulbe bandmates everything from scratch, reminds me how it usually ends up with me missing some more old scratchy vinyl and more other people doing my songs, but I’m at a point where I feel like I’m supposed to be making original music again. Passed time/past time. These guys were so awesome!
One of these mornings when I dread the dentist, am gripped by anxiety, worry about the kids, the groceries, the car problems, the many moods of my oversized teenager. Whenever I hear from faraway people they want something fro me, usually like, help with their fame problems, or whatever. They feel like they should be entitled to more privilege, more prestige, more applause, more help selling more online swag. Their rental properties, airbandb’s or merchandise lines. No one wants to work, they never got enough respect from the little people, and it’s so hard to find good help these days. Always with this frenzied desire to own more, have more, keep more, mostly property, vehicles, objects, collections, but they even try to collect people, they wanna own the dead, their songs, my songs, your kids, my kids, all the drugs, all the credit. Capitalist celebrity classers are like fucking nutty King Tuts who think they can take it all with them in their pyramid, or maybe if they just keep repeating whatever it says on the WEF teleprompter, they can live forever with Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos in the transhuman space colony on Mars after NATO finishes ruining the planet with batshit wars of aggression and private plane emissions and “accidental” toxic fires poisoning the farmlands. I’m so bored with the gentrification hipsters and nothing to say model daughters ya know what I mean? I’m outta smokes, it’s makin’ me a bit extra surly today.
YOUR FORMER SHITLIB CELEBRITIES WOULD LOVE TO HELP, BUT THEY ARE TOO BUSY WAVING THE AZOV FLAG WITH PFIZER OR OR CHARGING FIVE GRAND A HEAD AND SIGNIN’ BOOKS & STAYIN’ SHITFACED DRUNK AS FUCK ON THEIR OWN FAME
You know I can’t really vouch for the revolving door lineup and comings and goings of many new and old members, but I will say, I always loved the Kim Fowley manufactured, vetted and recruited, Hollwood Stars, who toured with the Knack and were conceived as a sunnier power poppy West Coast answer to the NY Dolls with songs contributed by both Kim and Mars Bonfire, to me they are the perfect band to play in the car, not that I drive anywhere, okay so the perfect band to play on your Walkman, if only I still had such a thing. I looked for a Walkman and a boombox on Ebay but every fucking thing has gotta be a ripoff now in the Gates-Reset/Klaus New World Order where only billionaires have rights-from Biden/Walton family quadrupled groceries to $23 magazines to $13 spiral notebooks to $85 used copies of Duran Duran books to concert tickets to $2000 rents, I can’t afford any of it. When me and my stoner buds Dave, Dougie and Bryan Bastian and a smalltown rapper named Austin would bring my boombox with us on walks cause we had nothing to do, my friend Beefy’s dad Paul would hear us coming with thet “Vital Idol” cassette blaring “White Wedding” everywhere we went, he’d yell up the stairs, “Ant-kneee! That whiteboy who thinks he’s Prince and is gonna get you in trouble is here!” He’d say that everytime, kinda still makes me smile remembering that shit. Sometimes we’d walk through the wet leaves to the crap mall and sample Baskin Robbins flavors with their little pink spoons, loiter ’round the Musicland record store lookin’ at posters and 45’s. Loiter ’round Readmore bookstore lookin’ at “Creem” and “Smash Hits” and “RIP” magazines. We might hang in front of the arcade where some older dude named John hated our MTV era ragtag gang of bored teenagers for his own reasons I never knew. The other arcade attendendant was named PJ, all his shit was Playboy rabbit logo necklaces and shit. I think he was Puerto Rican, but PJ was cool. Sometimes we’d all get a table and empty our pockets and pool our resources and share a pizza at Parrason’s, we’d all get two pieces maybe, pour out half the parmesean and red pepper flakes on each slice and ask the waitress for more, those were good times. Anyways, if you like seventies power pop this Hollywood Stars stuff is undiscovered bubblegum gold. I think they are really rad and sortof like the Babys meets the Runaways or something. Raspberries influenced.
I need more rocknroll like this in my life. Especially in ripoff fuck you price gouge topdown narrative duplitious times as dark as these.
EMPIRE ESCALATING VIOLENCE ON THE POOR BOTH HERE AND ABROAD!
Oh, man, you got people whose go-to response to any state violence or exposed corrpution is to blame the poor people? I gotta stay away from people like that. One guy I used to know he was real inconvenienced during his commute home from work one time when the public were marching against those kkkops strangling that black guy in NYC for selling untaxed cigarettes on the corner in a neighborhood the Bloomberg elites wanted to gentrify. I used to love that guy who got inconvenienced but nowadays he makes alot of money, drinks expensive scotch, spews bigoted, hateful class war rhetoric about the lesser thans and hates the homeless, so…yeah, fuck him. Another guy who wanted me to care when his sports team patriotic, partisan political party were gettin’ the business from the media, he don’t care what happens when it’s “the others”. Bad shit befalls “the others”, he says that’s what they deserved for not obeying him. When did liberalism become about enforcing your private preferences on others against their will? That’s why I think all these college people were Cointelpro infiltrated and sold a false bill of goods by the permanenet rulers, via the universities… A dude where I live don’t care much when kkkops kill people, he blames the people, they should have been at home smoking pot and watching C-Span and growing their Youtube channel like him, rather than protesting. They shoulda been homeowners. Shoulda, shoulda, shoulda. That is the attitude of most Murkkkans. me, me, me, they shoulda, shoulda, shoulda. And only property is motherfuckin’ sacred to these people, oh yeah, and celebrity tears, celebrity preferences, celebrity feelings. Murkkkans are patriotic, rank and privilege seeking, hierarchy worshipping, consumerist bootlickers. Same way the ruling class killed California and made Manhattan into an elitist enclave for the worst rich people and their obnoxiously, unapologetically awful kids, man they seem to be destroying Canada, too, which is sad. Those davos technocrat creeps are doing a helluva job fucking up the planet and sealing off all the exits. I had one friend who escaped to France and I am happy for her. The politicians keep talking about bombing Mexico now, as if they are somehow responsible for big pharma created drug problems, conceived and developed, and distributed by the USA USA secret police and mercenary private contractor moderate rebels abroad. I think these war industry warpigs just like to slaughter innocent people and spend their big checks from Pfizer and Raytheon. Corporate media headlines screamed that 12 people died during the “insurrection, insurrection, insurrection” as if murderous violence was done by terrorizing protestors, gradually, it was walked back to seven guys, then four guys, then it was admitted somebody drug overdosed, somebody had a stroke later on, one guy died but not really cause he was beaten with a fire extinguisher but because of natural causes, a heart attack and shit. AOC repeated some shit for months about how Maga people killed a dozen innocents, but everyone who died were Maga people. Cop people. But I repeat myself. Who loves the cops more than the Magas, and vice versa, the proud boys and oath keepers are the cops. Watch how the chips fall. Now Erin Brockovich is even being called a terrorist. Something is wrong here. I think the copsucker Blue Lives Matter Maga capital hill protest was an inside job carefully coordinated and made for tv psy op engineered to manufacture consent for laws against protest and to superfund the kkkops after the prior four year BLM protests when everyone was calling to defund the kkkops. First of all, it’s sus ’cause AOC has shown us she is nothing but a corporate sellout with a pretty face recruited to tweet “Orange Man Bad” forever and forever.
“In a tweet on Oct. 24, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez referred to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6 as “a terror attack,” which she said resulted in “almost 10 dead.” She called for “any member of Congress who helped plot” it to be “expelled.”
Journalist Glenn Greenwald commented on Twitter that the claim of “‘almost 10 dead’ from the 1/6 riot is deceitful in the extreme. Four people died on 1/6: all Trump supporters.”
There is reasoned debate about the number who died as a result of the Capitol riot. Ocasio-Cortez is including law enforcement officials who responded to the Capitol that day and committed suicide in the days and months afterward. None of them have been officially designated as “line of duty” deaths, though there is some congressional support for it.
Ocasio-Cortez’s tally also includes two rally participants who died of heart failure — including one who died before other protesters had breached the Capitol. It includes a rallygoer who was initially believed to have been trampled to death in the mayhem that day, but was later determined to have died of an accidental overdose.” (-Fact Check Dot Org an establishment narrative control website)
Now, people protesting the assassination of a Cop City protestor are being held on terror charges and cops in Palestine are referring to Erin Brockovich as a terrorist for organizing sick people to file class action lawsuits against Blackrock who own all the politicians, the train company, and the media. The very definition of a shitlib is someone still Thanking Obama for this ongoing forever war nd imperialist police state he helped escalate and fretting over AOC’s feelings, but never the poor people in Palestine, or East Palestine, never the people killed by racist police, or drones ’cause some classy, dashing president’s donor class bosses wanna plunder more oil or minerals for their electric cars and cellphone batteries and cashless society microchips for Science. You know it’s no secret I used to be as smitten by AOC as anybody was. She blinded ME with shitlib shitlibbing.
“The US complained when Chinese jets flew near a US spy plane in the *South China Sea.*
Now the US is playing victim after Russia forced down one of its drones in the Black Sea. Maybe the US should get its weapons out of places thousands of miles from its shores? Just a thought.
Joe Biden has presided over an administration where inflation is rampant, the banks are collapsing, and the U.S. is moving head-first into World War III. This must be the the “normalcy” that people voted for in the 2020 election.” (Danny Haiphong)
I don’t know where one of my adult children are and honestly that makes it hard to sleep through the night even when I take some Melatonin which gives me crazy dreams. I got anxiety about losing my teeth, all the poverty related problems. No real communication is possible between me and all the people I used to know who became their moms or mother in laws, just dutifully reciting whatever it is they were told by the tv, only really caring about their personal celebrityhood and vanity brand bullshit, ya know? Who cares? Two things I can do without personally, are any more richkid Johnny Thunders coverbands or N.A. celebrity booksigner band dudes publishing more shit about how he beat up smaller people in some eighties parking lot. Sometimes, I’ll try to tell people that the wars are based on lies and just like four people control the whole media narratives, they all look right at me and tell me I’m crazy because Kamala Harris is NOTHING like DeSantis, blah blah blah. I’m like, they work for the same people. That’s why I became a dishwasher years ago, so I could stand in the back and not be involved with all the fulla shite white DJ hipster gentrifiers and doofus goatee, big dumb ugly piercing come lately tattoo shop owners. Whenever I get to feeling really blue about the state of things in this mad, mad world, if I can not find any freetime to get drunk and cry, or listen to old music, or howl up at the big old desert moon, I often turn to MINK DEVILLE, who always soothes my savage, restless soul, somehow. It’s in his decadent heartfelt croon.
“boy I feel so outgunned today, but I’ll get up and fight back anyway/you and I are not huge mainstream stars but unlike them, we’re really what we are…” (-Iggy Pop)
As a lifelong leftist who never changed his principles cause some soldout Tom or Mammy or They or Them was recruited by the deep state to sell wars and authoritarianism to the inattentive haves, I always laugh at people who call me or Caitlin Johnstone, or Dr. Jill Stein, or Black In The Empire on Twitter “Russian Trolls” jes cause all of us know that Trump was not some rare anomaly, and Biden is just as guilty as anything you can accuse Orange Man Bad of. The system is the problem, not one lone, all purpose boogeyman. They really fuckedup the college people with all that redscare safespace bullshit. Anybody who knows me knows I’m not even educated enough to be a commie, I’ve never read no Marx or Engels, I read Creem and Trouser Press, but I do agree with everything Eugene Debs and Fred Hampton stood for, and know I have more in common with the peasants of oil rich Nato targeted countries than I do any tech surveillance billionaires, or shitlib slogan reciting airbandb owners who wanna bore me with Latest Thing talk about Miley Cyrus or Taylor Swift. Rightwingers hate me cause I wear pink and love brown people. Shitlibs hate me cause I am antiwar and don’t believe the television. The ruling class keep trying to pivot to superficial divisions like your diet, or gender, or hue, or sexual preferences, I recognize we are in a class war and most of us don’t even know how bad the pathological super rich are fucking us all over.
FRANKIE DELMANE
Ya know I talk alot about how there’s not that many good songwriters around in the modern age and SUPER LEGEND Frankie from Teenage Frames and the Crazy Squeeze is an exceptionally rare, standout composer of badass rocknroll songs, prolific generator of bands, videos, fanzines, a total creativity volcano. I hope somebody buys him a new leather trench coat! His old fanzine “TRASH” featured some of the best rocknroll writing I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading! I salute him!
Dimestore Haloes drummer, Jimmy Reject was a good kid. I wish he was here to call on the phone right now. (RIP) When the Halos were busy makin’ these records, me and my own gang of debaucherous, excessive boozing, danger prone lords of late night damage and backstreet blackouts were writin’ some pretty good songs in a dank Cambridge basement and runnin’ riot in all those dark, loudly throbbing, ever seductive late night bars in Kenmore Square, and dirty old Allston, but while we found plenty of seedy temptations and wild women galore, we could never keep a drummer or locate anybody willing to record us….except for one guy…who just used some demos we made to learn our songs that he never stopped covering and claiming as his own, so that was a bit maddening and hurtful and frustrating…meanwhile we’d see guys like Jessie Malin getting all these great producers and record deals and nightclub investors and more, more, more opportunities forever and wow it felt like punishing, grueling torture for years, we just could not claw our way up and outta the gutter to the “make records” level, no matter how hard we tried. We had people tell us we were “promising songwriters” all the time, whatever that means and who knows anyway, maybe they were lying, I dunno man, but it made me bitter as a young man. Chaz describes the “Long Ride To Nowhere”, yeah, well. Ugh! Right? Fallen gutter punk angel, dear, sweet Jimmy Reject was a supportive comrade and was always nice to me, we did some laughin’ and cryin’ together, and I could identify with summa his struggles he detailed in his book. Our pal from across town, Chaz Halo who Jimmy always said was “Better Than Westerberg!”, undeniably wrote some smokin’ hot songs way back when, that still stand up today, and I’m glad I got to see him play at that bowling alley with A Streetcar Named Disaster when we were young, and I would like it if his old drummer Frank would will me his Alfred E. Neuman tie. I’d love to see all those guys again. Good lads, all. I gave poor Chaz a bit of grief in our early twenties cause I’m just a moody hateful embittered antisocial bastard sometimes, but when I saw him self referencing as Lux INFERIOR, ya know that kinda self deprecating charm is kind of hard to resist and over time, I came to really like that guy alot actually. He is smart, funny, overcame obstacles, did it on his own terms, plays a mean guitar, got what he wanted, won big, hit the bigtime if you ask me. I’m legit happy for him. Not that many people in this mediocre fakeass fuckedup meritocracy pyramid sceme ever earn anything on their own, but as a songwrier and performer, I can tell you Chaz earned his success and worked hard to get there and just keeps getting better. His modern day band, Cheap Cassettes are one of the best outfits goin’. I wish them all the best of everything. Good lads.
‘EVER WANNA GET A BIG BOTTLE AND A HAMMOCK AND A BOOMBOX AND JUST KINDA CHECK OUT OF THIS UNREALITY HORROR SHOW FOR AWHILE?
All my old pals who used to share my love for this kinda thing died or got indoctrinated at reconditioning camps but to me, this song’s still like a serenity prayer. “It’s all from havin’ somene knowin’ just which way your head is blowin…” Do you know what I’m talkin’ about? Can ya still hear me at all? Hello…hello?
“So, again, going on someone’s show-podcast-program doesn’t mean I am their “friend”, and I have no control who comes on their show before or after my appearance. I think my research is important and deserves the widest audience possible. If the world wasn’t so totally f-ed up right now, I would definitely be more selective, but – at this point – I will go on most large platforms to raise awareness of how bad things are about to get if more people don’t start looking at global power structures and their agendas.” (-Whitney Webb)
“You can never attack another country! Unless you’re Israel and the US. So now Blinken and his Israeli madmen want to get World War 3 going in the Middle East also. The US has been taken over by fascists. Time to face reality America. First Ukraine and now Iran. The fourth Reich is right here in foggy bottom. North Korea, China.. these people are the personification of World War 3.” (-Garland Nixon)
The Israeli apartheid regime just attacked Iran with drones. This colonialist rogue regime is waging a war on Iran, but if Tehran or its allies ever respond in self-defense, Western governments and media portray Iran as the supposed aggressor.” (-Ben Norton)
The NATO Association of Canada said during a panel discussion that the “weaponization of brain sciences” would be used to exploit “vulnerabilities of the human brain.” Of course ruling our minds is nothing new to the Military Industrial ComplexOne of the most notorious programs was MKUltra — a top secret CIA project in which they experimented with controlling minds through the use of various drugs & psychological torture. Many of those tested upon were unaware.The difference with NATO’s announcement & past efforts is how public it is & the scale of the attack on “the human brain.” One panelist said “the rapid evolution of neurosciences as a tool of war hinges on developments in artificial intelligence, big data, & social media.”
The goal according to the NATO report is “to make everyone a weapon” & “to harm societies.” They also said that this cognitive warfare is “potentially endless since there can be no peace treaty or surrender for this type of conflict.” (-Lee Camp)
“The Anglo-American elites have been robbing from other nations for centuries. It’s how they amassed their wealth & built their empires.
And they have done it since the days of their Viking forbears. Though they may wear a suit & tie today, they’re no less barbaric or violent.” (-Ni Mingda)
It’s fooking freezing cold where I am and I do not like it much at all. Makes me wanna take some Melatonin and crawl back beneath my electric blanket and hibernate until the winter ends. I was watching a Marilyn and the Kennedys documentary and did you know Bobby was at her place that day and the housekeeper was told to lie or else? I can still relate to so much of Marilyn’s story, ya know when I got on the Grayhound as a runaway kid, her paperback bio is all I had with me except for a Walkman, a couple of cassette tapes and some clothes in a gym bag my friend Shaun gave me to take with me on the road. Now there is no bohemian enclave to retreat to, ya know? They’ve all been erased and gentrified by the tech billionaires of the new world order. So I sit here sulking in my little hovel at the edge of town, the Last Outpost and the electricity went out suddenly while I was typing that last sentennce reminding me of Chuck D’s important question what are you gonna do when the grid goes down? It’s still too cold to grow a garden here but I’m starting to think about all I wanna grow this spring, even though ya know the Dr. Strangeloves in power wanna depopulate half the world and start WW3 for their Gates Rest agendas. Life goes on, we keep doing what we can, while we can. I still wish I could find a fucking band. They still have rock groups in the UK and Australia. Not here, not where I live. There’s a yuppie harmony duo who run a trendy Airbandb, but that’s it. Oh yeah, a cowgirl wailer, one dude with a synth and a beard, some elderly Mexican bands that play the Moose Lodge but I can’t effectively collaborate with any of them. My kid dreams of getting a degree in zoology, working with big animals, or something to do with the bang bang shoot ’em up world of guns and miliary, copping or cartels, all the same, really-they start programming our young to glorify war and authoritarian power trips from the cradle in this country. Makes me sad, but I am fully a Second Amendment Supporter and think we need to arm the poor and working class cause the people at the top are not to be trusted. This whole capitalist pyraimid scheme is just a buncha sociopaths who get off on tech voyeurism, killing, plundering, decieving, and hoarding their privilege. Man those evil tech-billionaire deep state fascists who kicked the antiwar movement offa the social media platforms really did us all a favor, it was nothing but a timesuck and a heartbreak when you had to see so many fall for the Current Thing, whatever the rulers assigned the media to program all the fools with this week. The war is always a big lie and the creeps who pull the Biden admin strings wanna up the ante and start shit with Iran and China on toppa their billions upon billions they’ve squandered trying to drive Putin from power with this fake ass proxy war in the Ukraine. I’m happy to see the new antiwar movement doing big demonstrations in every major city and I even saw a “stop the war” sticker on a street lamp pole goin’ up the sidewalk towards my new town from my last town and that was a big surprise cause out here in the desert Southwest, all the rich honky old ranchers tend to be conservative riflemen spewing anti immigrant, pro cop rhetoric and let’s face it, before rank n file Democrats were seduced by Obama and hillary into unconditionally supporting every war, the Republicans used to be THE war party, now the Dems and Republicans are indistinguishable aside from the Dems empty campaign promises and performative tweeting about social justice slogan while voting with Lindsey Graham for always more war funding, more coups on countries like Peru who have vast mineral reserves, more racist jackboot militarized kkkops, more spooks, more censorship, WEF mandates and centralized government control. I still listen to the old punk bands like the Wanderers and wonder how the fuck all those guys were ever able to fund their recording projects or have underground record labels willing to put their controversial, inflammatory, anti totalitarian records out. People I know make excuses for predator class oppressors and town bullies, ya know what I mean? No one is really afforded any significant space to say things like the Wanderers and Manic Street Preachers did just a generation ago. Only bands that get to make records are like the brunch motherfuckers who got awesome threads but nothing to say besides like, “look at my threads” or “give me drugs because I have such nice threads”. It’s been twentyfive years of trust funded fratboys with no message, no real tunes, some dumb suits and dope in their deep pockets. Isn’t anybody else getting bored with that trite, meaningless, cowardly bullshit, yet? Where are all the rebel rockers? I was never in to the thrash metal bands but I’d sometimes speak to the college kids who bought rage Against The machine cd’s at Tower Records back in the nineties and found them to be significantly more intelligent than your average grunge consumers. I also knew kids who became more radicalized by the Manic Street Preachers, but all that’s gone, now. Pink Hats and Blue No Matter Whos never really even stood with the Water Protectors at Standing Rock or frontline of the Floyd Uprisings. It’s just fuckin’ Harry Styles and Miley Cyrus and Foo Fucking Fighters and Thank Obamas all day, forever. Yeah, yeah, “Orange Man Bad”, you already said that. Blue Maga is Red Maga with Balenciaga ads. They just prefer more feminine tones and want to see a more diverse squad of friendly faced fascists, red carpet gala torturers, and imperialist warmongers. Last thing I heard by the Manic Street Preachers was probably “Rewind The Film” and man, could I ever relate to that one. I still can’t believe my time is almost up here. Joey and Bobby were my age. Died Suddenly. I wanted to spend more time with my children and accomplish so much more with my former friends. What a bummer it went by so fast and all got thwarted by the rich n phony hipsters, joiner-belonger-eagerbeaver-sellouts, adult cartoon tv people, and NPR gentrifed Karens, who helped push all us poors off the platforms and outta our old places. Fuck. It’s like ten bucks for a dozen eggs, five bucks for a head of lettuce. I used to eat black bean burgers when they were $6 for 8 but had to quit now they are 8 for four. Shitlibs and media millionaires just shrug and fall back on their all purpose, “Blame Putin”, which has almost even replaced, “Blame Trump”. None of their scapegopating ever helps the poor people though, does it? The Jimmy Dore Show and Glenn Geenwald’s System Update and Revolutionary Blackout Network are the only people talking about what a sham these bogus wars have long become, ‘how fake the progressive politicians are, and how the one two knockout punch of gentrification rents and superfinflation under Gropey Joe’s administration are killing the poor. Also the only people talkin’ ’bout all the sudden death. Turns out Mark Crispin Miller and Tessa Fights Robots, Whitney Webb and Max Blumenthal were correct all along. Nobody’s sorry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnrIC3H4m0Q ya know some people think Richie got Cointelpro’d. Like the Kennedys, the Panthers, Malcolm, Martin, John Lennon, Seth Rich, Dr. David Kelly, Prince, Michael Hastings, and Paul Wellstone.
Yeah I’m gonna link to the much loathed Spin magazine, which I generally detest here, ’cause somebody smart wrote an article about the astonishingly gifted and good humored and talented and intellectual supernova comic genius singer, Tammy Faye Starlite, one of the most incredible performers left in this gentrification ruined, war machine/psy op still halfassed masquerading as a country. She is so, so fucking smart. And good hearted and genrous and merciful-everything decent human beings should aspire to, but with all these guts and extraordinary improvisational abilities, AND a great voice and AND pretty AND married to an equally remarkable guitarist husband named Keith. They are some of the only people I miss from Falsebook. If you live in NYC, go see her whenever you can. Also, Phoebe Legere, of course.
Tammy Faye (facebook.com) tell her banned antiwar activist “Leonard Alfred Schneider” from falsebook sez hi.
PHOEBE LEGERE
Phoebe was an artist I discovered in the seedy streets of the Lower East Side way back in the good days of true melting pot diversity when poor people were still allowed to enter NYC, she was such an inspirational figure and remains so all these many years later, many have copied her, but she creates at suck a startlingly prolific pace that by the time ya know all those Dizney stylists and high paid industry people dress their imitation puppets up in Phoebe’s old songs or style or ideas or music, Phoebe’s usually long gone, moved on into some newer fresher realm of creativity and ever changing, magical aliveness. She’s good at everything-art, music, film, design but man I learn the most from listening to her talk, she’s been everywhere and is still a total futurist, not in a creepy NWO way, but she has always been finding the path and helping to co author a freer and more inclusive and groovier world beyond the usual elitist capitalist “just us” schemes. I really have always loved and admired her and think everybody can be enhanced by listening to her music and seeing her perform more often. An otherworldly treasure this McCulture does not deserve. For all her divinity, she stayed partly human, accepts the flaws and limitations of us dropout street kids, too. I really, really appreciate her so much. You should, too. ESPECIALLY if you live within striking distance of her shows. She’s one of those rare wild magical healing people who can make you feel like a million bucks by just basking in her light for awhile, seriously. I interviewed her at a hotel across the street from The Rat in Kenmore Square for my cheap cable access no budget, improvised tv show in the eraly 90’s and she was a total scream, a guru knower of things cosmic wise woman, a real encahnted medicine woman, you know what I mean? She makes you think about all theses perspectives you never considered previously, then, she’d asked me to light some candles and, we followed her across the street with her candelabra and train trailing behind her amazing self made costumery and accompanied by her whizkid backup band, she bedazzled everybody in that dirty nightclub, too-it’s who she is, she’s a Dazzler. A wizard, a true star, there is no other.
ShutDownDC on Twitter: ““If [prosecutors] are successful, protesters across the country could be facing similar speech-chilling ‘domestic terrorism’ charges. We must strongly reject this extreme level of repression… before it becomes the norm for activists in every movement.” https://t.co/P7Wpub5JjO” / Twitter
“This has to be the most pathetic group of leaders in the history of the West.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
ALICE COOPER & ROB ZOMBIE
Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper during the 2007 Spike TV Scream Awards at The Greek Theater on October 19, 2007 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
I was never into White Zombie really, I mean maybe “Dragula” was alrite kinda in a “Jesus Built MY Hot Rod” or “Stigmata” sorta way. I knew Ena Kostabi and saw that Sean Y. chick around at shows in my teens and early twenties, but I was probably more into their clothes than their music, Spyder 5000 worked at the downtown Tower when I worked at Harvard Square so I knew him mostly just from his delivering in store art displays. One thing I appreciated about Rob Zombie was at least he made every effort to be entertaining, same with KISS, I was never a fan of the Fangoria horror biz gore, but the lights and drama and costumery were always a welcome reprive from the slummin’ slacker lazy carwash flannel of buzzkill grungers. All these fucking moping rich kids who thought they were being deep and edgy by smoking some weed, stinking like bongwater, not taking baths or washing their hair got on my nerves. I don’t even remember what Filter sounds like, the 90’s post grunge scene were so faceless and generic, they all just kinda warbled and moped, I did not like any of that shit. While White Zombie were on the rise, I was still hosting like a non stop ghetto freaks on parade blacklite party of my own in the pregentrified neighborhood of Allston. There was a lotta hardcore psychedelic drugs and pageantry and feathers and sequins and flashing lights and wild womken and booze galore but we were already starting to fracture as a team. Our audio visual club guy wanted to become like the Howard Stern of Horror Punk or something and started confusing the rest of us for his fanclub whackpack. The broads all split for whiter pastures. The guitar heroes got pressured by family into upward mobility seeking. The genius writer/social commentator/bassist/Clash fan took a prestigious job working for the government which some of us still find far more shocking than anything Rob Zombie’s ever done. The peripheral boomer started covering our tunes. Me and the all night hellion indestructible motorcycle cowboy foolishly revisted the hellhole midwest where he was immediatly lockedup for ancient warrants from his farmtown youth, meanwhile in his absence I was smeared by spinster temperance leaguers about which loud divebar pole dancers I was allowed to kiss, dragged over the coals by big brute bouncers hoping to impress the ex girlfriend’s sister, punked around by a prep school network of clique wicked richkid drug dealers, nearly killed by nazis. So it remained an elusive mystery to some of us how one successfully organized theatrical rocknroll events without having like Serious Adult Investors of some kind. We tried different things over the years, we owned two big p.a.’s the guitar player took one with him to med school, dunno what happened to the other one, probbaly pawned by AC/DC guy, we charged $5 a head at crazy keg parties, rented some bubble machines AND smoke machines, painted some elaborate schoolplay backdrops and utilized some seriously blinding white dramatic backlighting, but we could never inspire any kind of real loyalty from our ranks which I take full responsibility for, it was clearly a failure of leadership. We saw so many other people come and go and do everything that eluded us like, easy breezy covergirls, in a weekend. It all started with Alice, ya know that was the band that united me with my much older punk friend who grew up in the seventies and my eighties metal friends, who first all got together doing Alice Cooper and Gun Club and Cramps and Lords Of The New Church covers, while me and the wild one were still learning how to write songs. I got like 150 originals on tape and that old stuff still haunts me cause a lot of it deserved to be properly recorded by a competant lineup in a decent studio. Instead, we always got stuck with these clock milking hustler studio owning shysters and mercenary wouldbe collaborators who’d kinda hit n run, splitting with some of our ouvre. Not always giving us any credit, Hunter S. Thompson was seldom wrong ya know and certainly right on the money when it came to his descriptions of the music industry. Iggy, too, when he said, “the DJ is a conman, the music sounds like dead ham.” That was an immaculate description of all the genric brunch grunge alternative types who hassled me when I was alone in hostile terrain, still sticking out like a dayglo middle finger, after all those wasted years. I’m not really surprised White Zombie and Alice Cooper are doing a big summertime festival with that grunge band Filter I can’t remember and everybody’s fave early industrial crossover dance metal band, Ministry. When I was between the ages of 14 and probably 26, Everyday Was Halloween. After that, I lost a job working for an abusive record store conservative, ditched by a longtime partner, and got evicted, and could no longer really even stay afloat, I was like semi homeless, lost all my cherished scrapbooks of photos, my velvet wardrobe, records, books, everything. So those hard years on the streets kinda altered my worldview, I could no longer imagine going to some big concert event. I’d been manhandled out of a Jesus & Mry Chain show by big dumb oafish bouncers when my wallet was stolen and I was marked low, even though everybody in that town including the businessowners on both sides of the venue, and multiple bartenders employed by the same bossman, could all vouch for my age. I got in some conflict with college drunks at an outdoor Human League and Duran Duran show, I started understanding that events people do not distinguish between appropriate behavior whether it’s a Chris Isaak concert or fucking monster truck rally. Events people go to those shows to act out their Woodstock 99/pro wrestler aggressions. So obviously, I won’t be attending the Alice Cooper shows, but I do love Alice and appreciate Ryan Roxy and wish them well. I heard a rumor he was bringing Kane Roberts back since Nita Strauss split to work with Demi Lavato. What happened to Orianthi?
“Fewer than 50% of Americans support further US funding to Ukraine according to poll released today. Time to use the money to take care of people here at home and push for a negotiated peace in Ukraine.” (-Prof Zenkus)
“The Biden administration is losing a war in Ukraine so clearly the move is to start a war with Iran and destroy the world’s access to Middle East oil because if you’re a sociopath, that’s just another weekend…” (-Garland Nixon)
“Victoria Nuland: Putin has committed war crimes.
The truth: Victoria Nuland is a war crime.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Tyre Nichols’s brutal murder by the cops shows once again how police in America are nothing but a tool of social control over the oppressed.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Remember when we were supposed to be terrified of Trump cuz he was crazy & would start World War III? Now Biden is starting wars w/two nuclear powers at same time! And pro-war corporate news gets Americans to cheer it on. America is the world’s terrorists.” (-Jimmy Dore)
“Hey, here is an idea that Black people who think they are “Americans” & liberals & latte-left never think about when it comes to state repression & killing of Africans in the U.S. – Support self-determination for Africans. We will take care of our business but you can support us.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
BEAUTY SECRETS AND PRO TIPS FROM FITNESS EXPERT AND TOP BEAUTY INFLUENCER GENERAL LABOR
Listening to “Choose To Lose” by Throbbing Purple while sucking down some morning rocket fuel in the frigid desert morning thinkin’ about people I used to know, fretting about some loved one’s safety and wellbeing and feeling uptight and permanently frustrated I have no way of knowing if they’re okay or if they even know how to contact me in case of emergencies. I guess we all gotta live and die alone ultimately, but like the Panther Parties and Alan Watts and Terrence McKenna and Winona LaDuke all taught us, it did not have to be that way. Community is important to social creatures-the oligarchs know that, why do you think they worked so hard around the clock these past six years and since 9/11 to keep the people divided, arguing over phony culture war divisions and sports identifications and fearful the others are gonna give you the Cooties Of Death. We shoulda stuck together. Problem is most of my old cronies and former girlfriends wanted to please their mother in laws and “get in” with the golfers and the bookies, the Stepford Wives remodeling the vacation property, and the elite “Less Than Zero” country club providers of soughtafter white powders. So there ya have it. Read ’em and weep. I’m still a conscientious objector and I want no part of their bullshit, repeat the lie, protect the powerful, gossipey suckup, asskiss cults. Kinda excited about some UK band Laur hipped me to cause they were a scuzzy D.I.Y. outfit way back in the Manic Street Preachers era, much like my own too late nonstop to nowhere, crash n burn bands, and after breaking up before putting their work down on tape, they reunited like thirty years later, and did it, and man, it rocks like a motherfucker. The guitars are great. Snaky duelling Thunders/Jeff Drake/Whoever Really played on the Faster Pussycat lp’s great. So yeah, I’m in the process of interviewing that character for my other online magazine and I’m all ginned up about it cause you don’t see people putting their differences aside and leaving their coveted nine to five world titles and ego trips at the door long enough to have fun and make wild music in times of unprecedented sci-fi dystopian darkness, like these. They must have really cared about each other as teenagers. My peeps were more like “just visiting” the underground world, or as Sinead sang in “Feel So Different”, they were just stalling. Fuckin around before going back to the grind house floor timeclock. I really like that sleaze punk band from South Wales, Sister Morphine a lot more than I expected to. They remind me of bands like the Dogs, Zodiac Mindwarp, the Crybabys, the Saviors, the Bastards, and the Naked Flames. I went to see a friend of mine yesterday, he’s a pretty traunmatized and sometimes uptight, decorated combat veteran and wide awake about a lot of the corrupt shit happening in the world today and tells me how we are being pummled around the clcok with psy ops and ballsout propaganda, he stays stoned suring the day, only drinks at night, has a new puppy and a bunch of chickens, he’s had a hard life and I feel for the brother. I think other people are better at sitting still than I am. I always wanna rock, I need to move, to get it on, to shake some action. I’m living in an elderly ghost town where oldsters come to die but I aint really ready for the rockin’ chair yet, ya know? I look at Gaz from Sister Morphine, IGGY FUCKIN’ POP, BILLY FUCKIN’ IDOL, Charlie Harper and Peter Zaremba, if they’re all still rockin’, I figure I should be too. Hell, I even tried to get the angry veteran to pick up his guitar! I’m ready.
“At times like these, I do fear that our ragtag rebel alliance is going to have a very hard time getting the truth out to the broader public.” (- John Leake)
“The corporate press in the U.S. is not helping the public to understand that the continued escalation of weapons to Ukraine is only creating the conditions that will compel the Russians to have to remove the U.S. puppet govt. In other words, the necessity for an expanded war.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“Israel raided Jenin and slaughtered 9 Palestinians, wounding 20 others. The videos are horrific. They bulldozed their youth center and prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded. If only the victims were born Ukrainian, perhaps the world would care more and send them tanks.” (-Richard Medhurst)
“The Israeli apartheid regime just attacked Iran with drones.
This colonialist rogue regime is waging a war on Iran, but if Tehran or its allies ever respond in self-defense, Western governments and media portray Iran as the supposed aggressor.” (-Ben Norton)
“Reminder the US recently gave a Grand Funeral celebrating the life and accomplishments of a woman whose most famous quote was “Killing 500,000 Iraqi children was worth it”
Spare the world the fake concern for Human Rights and respect for International Law.
I don’t hate people falling for this giant Psyop.
I used to be one. I used to believe I was watching real News, thought the Dems cared about Blacks and all working people, and America was a democracy. Thought some war was for good.
I’m sure I’m still in, but try to pay attention. Imagine the brainwashing it took to convince over 300 million people that over half our budget should go to defense when we have no real military threat and that the greatest economic system imaginable is a few people having more wealth than the entire nation. I can’t get how Americans can’t see that when your Gov’t spends half our money on defense then war becomes a self fulfilling prophecy
Don’t blame the death and destruction on me, I wanted to spend the money on us to be truly free. If the Russian military is so weak and incompetent why hasn’t 9 rounds of economic sanctions, $100 billion in cash and weapons from the West and all the help NATO can offer been able to get them out of Ukraine? Zelensky says all he needs is a 1000 tanks, 500 F-16’s, 300 HIMARS, a million more trained troops, unlimited ammo like a cheat code in a video game and some alien technology.
Put it on his tab! If the Russian military is so weak and incompetent why hasn’t 9 rounds of economic sanctions, $100 billion in cash and weapons from the West and all the help NATO can offer been able to get them out of Ukraine? The US Gov’t said they would destroy Russia’s economy, military and turn their people against their leader and are actually doing all those things to Europe. There might be too many leaders of countries talking about trying to move off dollar dependence for the US to coup or murder.
Oh Americans don’t know how this works in the real world yet? No, I’m not as pissed at Republicans because they are who I’ve always none them to be, I despise the Democrats because for years they made me believe they were better. For all that have not only yet to figure out you’re embracing nazism but are stupidly cheering on the provocation of the country with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, remember that the psychos in the US doing this have a plan for when the nukes fly. My Dem friends still insist there is nothing wrong with Biden’s mind. I still find it hard to believe that our Gov’t presented Liberals with real Nazis and got them to demand we give them tanks and missiles. Our own Gov’t called the Azov neo-Nazis in legislation. Sadly for our psychopath Oligarchs, I think that the majority in Taiwan is watching Ukraine and doesn’t want to end up like that to help the US achieve their geopolitical goal of maintaining their hegemony. The war in Ukraine is not a Left/Right issue in DC or in the media.
They all agree that Americans money should go to support this proxy war that the US spent 8 years trying to start.
“How much cash has Big Pharma and our weapons manufacturers raked in since Biden became President? It is not possible that in America a Drug company would put profits over our health and our Gov’t would help them. I really triggered some people when I said Chappelle was my favorite comedian and that I do watch Joe Rogan when I like his guest.
Wow….Quick way to determine if somebody is in the Matrix
Talk negatively about their political team and they automatically assume you are on the team they hate
The fact that you don’t support any of the criminals never crosses their mind. I will never stop exposing who Joe Biden really is, because people close to me are dead because of him and I will never let Liberals act superior because they voted for that piece of garbage. When Black people show Liberals how the president worked with Segregationists on mass incarcerating Black people, helped kill our middle class with NAFTA, tried to cut SS, said more racist things than Trump could dream of, and lied just as much as Santos, they don’t care. Left out Busing, Anita Hill, being so corrupt his own colleagues mocked him as the Sen from MBNA, how he helped the Banks stick us with Student Loans forever
Saying we don’t know how to raise our kids these elections and if we don’t vote for him we aint Black.
Have lots more. How many innocent children do you think die around the world a day because of US sanctions? They’ve been lying to us from the time they embedded the phrase ‘totally unprovoked’ in our brains. Mitch McConnell and Pelosi don’t hate each other, they’re paid to make us hate each other. I see that Nuland who helped create the 2014 coup in Ukraine was briefing the Senate on Ukraine” (-Black In The Empire)
“We live in a death spiral. This system cannot continue as is without collapse. Yet every incentive for the largest, most powerful corporations in the world is to keep the status quo humming along. Spaceship Earth is being driven by a brain parasite.” (-Lee Camp)
“Everybody knows I’ve only got one song and it’s much too slow and it’s much too long…” (-Rowland S. Howard)
IF YOU’RE ALONE AND YOU GOT THE FEAR
“Be an adult and engage your critical thinking. Does a madman who goes around invading countries solely because he’s evil and hates freedom sound like a real-life human being to you? Or does it sound made up? Like something you’d see in a Hollywood movie? Like something that was concocted by people responsible for controlling the dominant narratives of our society and funneled into your mind using media?
Marvel supervillains have more depth and complexity than the one-dimensional characters the imperial spin machine concocts to represent its official enemies. Thanos was a more believable character with more understandable and nuanced motivations than the propaganda machine’s fictional representation of Putin. That representation has been overlaid on top of the actual government official who you might not necessarily agree with, but can definitely understand and engage in diplomacy and negotiation.
People who believe the empire’s narratives about its official enemies have fewer critical thinking skills than your average Marvel movie viewer. Think. Be a grown up and think. Someone’s benefitting from the aggressively promulgated narrative that peace is impossible and war is the only solution. And that someone isn’t you.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
PLEASANT STREET
Man, me and my two guitar players met some big haired record store chick and ended up emptying many bottles of wine and spirits with her, playing acoustic guitars and singing in this grand old, Dagwood & Blondie, fifties style, rent controlled, second floor, Central Square kitchen with the big picture windows and red metal table and Rolling Stones posters and fabulous echo. She had a marvelous record collection from working at Newbury Comics and taught us about the Immortal Souls, Waterboys, Jacobites and Snatches Of Pink. We’d stay up all night talking about merry pranksters, yippies and beat poets and Bob Dylan lyrics. I was finding so much inspiration and starting to get more serious about songwriting: “There was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air”. It was one of those golden hours that could not last, every autumn, my thoughts drift back to that place and the people who used to drink with us and bang on tambourines and sing along. A famous cartoonist/sax player/country music singer named Bob Starker got me into the Jim Carroll Band during a memorable blizzard one winter. Some college girls named Hope and Ashlieng started hipping me to more modern hip hop culture. A girl named Melissa who married the sax player taught me about indie film and underground cinema. It was good, I did not know how blessed we were. That place stayed real cold in the winter. but it was big as hell, and filled with laughs when we made music and it’s a melancholy feeling when you can’t go back home cause everybody’s supposedly grown up now and scattered off to different parts of the world with their careers and bigfish in the mallpond status thing and and spouses and kids and properties and personal agendas. I guess that is what the dreams are for, revisiting all the magical places. Those of us who’d grown up on like, The Pretenders,Lou Reed,Stiv Bators, and Patti Smith were never gonna be that impressed with Evan Dando, Dickie Barrett, Greg Duuli or Taylor Swift…God bless Mike Scott!
YOU ARE NOT IN THE MIDDLE SCHOOL BLEACHERS, ROOTING FOR THE HOMETEAM AGAINST THE CROSSTOWN RIVAL CATHOLIC SCHOOL, SO YOU HAVE TO CARE ABOUT MORE THAN A FLAG, OR UNIFORM, OR GENDER, OR POLITICAL PARTY.
“NATO has blamed the attack on Nord Stream pipelines on “some unknown actor.” This actor was not named but NATO threatened a military response against this “some unknown actor.” (-Lowkey Online)
“Two administrations ago the US had a president who mocked the idea that Russia was a primary rival and said Ukraine was a core interest to Russia but not the US. After four years of intelligence agency-driven narratives marrying Russia to Trump, liberals are now braying for WW3. Before 2016 Dems saw those who spent energy freaking out about Russia as weird, archaic cold warriors. Now they see anyone who doesn’t want war with Russia as a secret agent of the Kremlin. All because they were trained that Russia = Trump and fighting Russia = fighting Trump. Everyone’s anti-war until the war propaganda starts.” (Caitlin Johnstone)
“Since taking over from Trump, Biden has drastically ramped up ICE detention by 45%, increasing the number of migrants in cages from 14,195 to 25,776. Yet the issue has virtually disappeared from mainstream discourse…”
(-Holding Biden Accountable Twitter page)
“Four regions in Ukraine voting to join Russia is called “annexation” but the U.S. militarily occupying one-third of Syria and stealing 80 percent of its oil is called “democracy.” This is American exceptionalism on steroids.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Asked about Nordstream, Biden waited until the end of a presser to offer a half hearted non-denial denial You’d think there’s be more bluster and outrage over one of the worst acts of industrial sabotage and environmental disasters in recent memory.” (-Max Blumenthal)
“Western journalists are completely free to express their opinions. Unless they are the wrong opinions. If you haven’t heard, @kthalps
was fired from The Hill this week for expressing the same view as the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Watch here and support her work!” (-Alan macLeod)
“Rayan Suleiman, 7, died today after being chased by Israeli soldiers. Following his death, the home of his family was raided by the occupation forces.” (-Lowkey Online)
“The bad news: I was censored and fired by The Hill over defending Rashida Tlaib & labeling Israeli apartheid “apartheid.” The good news: I shot the censored video with an actually independent media outlet (see below)” (-Katie Halper)
“People think they’re really smart when they say “censorship is only done by the government.” Nobody intellectually serious or honest believes that. It’s unconstitutional when it’s the government. It’s still censorship when it’s not the government.” (-Katie Halper)
“I saw the war machine against Russia start with Snowden. Then they got people to think that Wikileaks = Russia. Hillary pushed anti Russia on everyone that disagreed with her.” (-Kazza Frazza)
“As Noam Chomsky has been pointing out repeatedly, the political/media class have been continually indoctrinating the public with the completely false narrative that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked”. Every time the war comes up the imperial spinmeisters utter that slogan, in much the same way Michael Jackson had a quota for how often MTV hosts were obligated to refer to him as “The King of Pop Michael Jackson” when his name was mentioned.
But what does it mean if the war is “unprovoked”? It means Putin didn’t invade Ukraine because of anything the western empire was doing, so it couldn’t have been prevented by the western empire behaving less aggressively on Russia’s borders. It means Putin necessarily invaded because he is some kind of evil lunatic who loves to commit war crimes, or a megalomaniacal tyrant who wants to conquer the world because he hates freedom and democracy. Which means he will keep attacking and invading other countries unless he can be stopped. Which means the only answer to the Putin problem is more war.
This is why empire apologists get angry at those who advocate the only sane and rational position toward nuclear brinkmanship by calling for de-escalation and detente. It’s because they’ve been aggressively indoctrinated into the belief that war is the only answer.
The moronic narrative that the invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked” poses a massive obstacle to peace, because if Putin is just attacking and invading countries solely because he’s crazy and evil it means detente is impossible and he won’t stop until he’s decisively crushed. If it’s accepted that the US empire has played no role in provoking Putin’s actions, that means there’s nothing the empire could do to make continued Russian aggression less likely apart from regime change, or at least severely crippling and punishing Russia militarily.” (-Caitlin Johnstone)
“Resistance to radical evil is the pinnacle of human existence.“ (-Chris Hedges)
HELLO DISASTER
were a perfect band that became the rough blueprint for the more pop side of what me and my friends were trying to do, tell stories about shit that mattered with a little melody and a lotta sneer.
“at least I’m not another parody in style or not…”
SHITLIBS ARE FAKE AS FUCK. IDENTITY POLITRICKS IS JUST EMPTY TWEETING FEELGOODIST TOKENISM.
This here column won’t be seen until ya know, Christmas, probably, at the earliest, cause I got a backlog of seven or eight columns archived and it is the first day of October as I write this. If the corrupt powers that be have not blown up the planet by then, we oughta be crowded into a little house nestled way back in the trees by then. I just keep trying to retreat deeper away from this vicious ratrace world where all the middle class people battle for middle school popularity well into their middle and even old age. I don’t think anybody really ever grows up, least not the people who adapted all those affectations of adulthood, the cars and keys and big screen tvs. Evil behind the scenes forces continue to censor all truth telling whistle blower journalists while teachers(!!!) who should know better, and safespace feelings fraud squad programmed college people stupidly repeat shit about how it aint censorship if Gates and Zuck and the CIA and the IDF and Aipac or an industry captured regulatory agency, does it. Anyone unwilling to stick to preferred Davos/Pentagon/Nato/WEF script is branded by these tedious shitlibs as “commies”, or “conspiracy theorists” or “Trump voters” or “anti semitic” or “anti vaxxers” or “cysborn heteronormative pass privileged”, or “tankkies” or whatever. It’s the “educated” classes who most often resort to playground namecalling because the truth does not support their preferred Thank Obama “see no evil”, privileged positions. The think tank/ spook media whores are trying to escalate wars rather than engage in thoughtful diplomacy. Hillary and the Cheneys and Kyrsten Synema and Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Podesta and Pelosi are dangerous. NOT just the white haired, elderly dinosaur Southern, Republikkkan males who take big checks from coal companies or pipeline builders or big pharma or surveillance tech. ALL the pro war politicians who think everyone must die who does not obey the empire, and some who do obey, too. Stop making excuses for election rigging warpigs and police state billionaire, class warriors.
Sunshiny Saturday in my deadend desert ghost town-about five lots down, developers have commenced building yet another new house for some winter months part timer from outta state. Up on the hill to my right, a third Dollar Store is being constructed. You know you live in a deadend ghost town when they only ever build more fucking dollar stores. I spoke to a surprisingly upbeat and cheerful veteran in one of those motorized wheelchairs this morning, and an eccentric dude who works at one of the tourist trap, overpriced stores on the main drag, who was complaining about immigrants at the border coming in to do farm labor. Some RV outta towners are walking around smiling about the bright weather in their big sunhats and shorts, locals are overwhelmingly poor and freakishly hostile about the inflation and the outta town fly by night developers who seem to be making the new rules here and controlling these dumb winebox people on the city hall. I had three cups of coffee and now I’m crashing a little bit, dread my afternoon obligations of the day. I have to interact with more humans later on and anticipate some of them doing their seemingly obligatory moodswinging drama queen theatrics, because they can. You know how people with money all love to hijack any moment, break commitments, cancel or postpone appointments, carry on about their conditions? I’m gonna have to deal with that kinda thing, try to fake a smile through it, and then, probably will have to move some heavy appliances. Now between you and me, what I’d rather be doing on one of the last indian summer beautiful days we’re gonna see for a long time probably would be convening in the garage with some fellow leather clad bandanna wearing rockers and making a loud ruckus that’s a throwback to another time. Where I live now, if I say, “The Stooges”, they’re all thinking, “n’yuk, n’yuk, n’yuk, why I oughta…!”
Last night I dreamt I’d found my band and even woke up with a few lines for a song. Sometimes, it seems like that day just aint gonna come. I got some stamps and still send postcards to my estranged loved one’s other relatives so at least they know I never stopped looking for ’em, waiting for ’em, keepin’ my faithful vigil, praying for their safe return. My life is a whole lotta waiting around on other people. Hurry up and wait some more, the fucking waiting room. take a number and grow some cobwebs, “stare at each other, wait til we die”. That’s the tension between the rich and the poor, when the rich want to move shit, make shit happens, they just pay for it to happen, make a call, pay somebody off, snap their fingers just like that. Like Samantha on “Bewitched”. That’s why some dumb rich Ashlee Simpson/Harry Styles model motherfucker jumpin’ up n down aint art, it’s just access. Why you think that show’s called “Access Hollywood”? It’s like a fraternity hazing, the casting couch aint the half of it. They use their monopoly juggernaut to ram these Taylor Swift rich kids into our consciousness, mostly against our will and better judgement, then, they pay Spin magazine and Rob Sheffield to talk about their fifty greatest songs later on, like any of these lapdancer robots have even five good songs, say it enough and some idiot morons will believe it. Rich people want you to listen to them recite their false narratives, they like it better when you’re off the clock. They can’t have friendships because of their superiority complex delusions of grandeur, so they only have minions, assistants, salaried suckers who have to pretend to agree with their mirror mirror on the wall who’s the fairest of them all bullshit. It’s crazy getting involved with them, believe me, don’t do it if you can avoid it-hold out, find another way. Their over confidence astounds me, how they tell each other, “everything will come to you”. They say it’s all their lifetimes of accrued good karma, and artsy designer redecorating vision. Megachurch prosperity gospel. In my hometown church they are all about the soldiers, cause one in three families got people in the military, so wave the flags and fill the gold plate and they’ll pray for the imperialist invaders killing families overseas and plundering their oil, lithium, and opium. The peachy cheeked Kendoll church goin’ boys draw big fifty thousand dollar a year salaries to be youth group praise leaders at these rightwing evangelical churches preaching the capitalist prosperity gospel, the gospel of nepotism and money, military and Murkkka, they marry off these underaged little blonde haired goldilocks girls, put ’em in big white McMansions, closets overstuffed with Gucci bags and little white dresses and say it’s all for Jesus. Oh man, it’s tough to take, listening to all that shit. Ya know that Hanoi Rocks line, “And Susie, I just can’t listen tonight…” Whoo! I gotta go interact with people and move some major appliances today, definitely not my idea of a good time. People have become so disingenuous in this culture, it’s hard for me to bear it and nod along, none of them even seem to believe their own media induced scripted garbage, they just been programmed with this superstition that some privilege is gonna trickle down on them if they mindlessly repeat the slogan of the day some more. I used to try to be nice and diplomatic with the coffee shop owners and rent gouging liberal know it alls, middle class tv watchers, but they wore me down with their stubborn, willful, devoted blindness. Now I just stay as far away from them as often as I possibly can. There is no negotiating with plagiarists and gentrification brunchers. All they care about is their selfie, their tiktok, their vanity brand, and their mimosa. Launching their monochromatic home accessory collection, and competing with the meanspirited sisters for the inheritance. I can’t be around that shit. In Eugene, Oregon, activists would tell the shitlib politicians about the way their gestapo cops were abusing the homeless people and they would respond with some bullshit story about how they remember having to share a bathroom at the dorm when they were in college in the sixties, so they know how it feels to be homeless, shit like that. The Mayor used to moan about people sitting around and not doing anything-that’s EXACTLY what she and her colleagues drew big salaries for doing-just rubber stamping anything the unelected city manager and diabolical hotel owners and sports tourist college told them to do. Same exact shit where I live now, but on a much smaller scale.
Before fake progressive controlled opposition empty suit brand remodel Obama ushered in the whole fake identity politics sensitivity studies woke bullshit, people mobilized against wars. They all knew wars were based on lies-even the boomers who are the biggest Ukraine flagwavers nowadays still remembered John Lennon, “Fortunate Son” and “Born On The Fourth Of July”. Now anti war movies do not get made. The war profiteering autocrat billionaires own all the media and weaponized it for propaganda purposes. They coup whoever they want to and tell you to your face they want to depopulate the so called third world. Mostly they just hoodwink everybody with narrative control and puppet celebrities. How else you think they could get so many dumbfuck know nothings to recite their evil bullshit new world order eating bugs and worshipping Hillary, Gates and Fauchi scripts?
“Let me guess. They will conclude that Russia did it.” (-Margaret Kimberly)
“Democrats are actually weaponizing upcoming midterms as a referendum between continuing the U.S./EU/NATO proxy war in Ukraine (democrats) & those who are questioning and/or opposing the war ( some forces in republican party). This why I say democrats are primary threats to peace.” (-Ajamu Baraka)
“NATO is an instrument of imperialism. By applying to NATO, Zelensky is proving that he was nothing but a puppet willing to risk nuclear winter over a proxy war that is harming Ukraine and Europe more than it’s helping.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“Do not start WWIII & risk nuclear war by supporting #Ukraine‘s application to join #NATO. Slam on the breaks before the world breaks apart. Call for a ceasefire & a negotiated peace now.” (-Marcy Winograd)
“House passes stopgap funding bill, including another $12b for Ukraine but stripping funding for health emergencies. Warfare not healthcare?!?! #peaceinukraine” (-Medea Benajmin)
“Cuba, struck hard by Hurricane Ian, fights to recover. But @POTUS
continues with the illegal US blockade, the sanctions & the addition of Cuba to the US state sponsor of terrorism list. Those of you who live in the United States CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES and say #ByeByeBlocade.” (-Vijay Prashad)
“Its a disgraceful thing. Biden seems more right wing than Trump on some issues. How can a blockade of Cuba be progressive?” (-Phillip David Dexter)
“Dear The Daily Show, sorry Trevor Noah is leaving. I’m ready to take over. Just know you’ll have to be fine with me: – Calling Israel an apartheid state – Pointing out the US has killed 6 million people since 2001 – Pointing out the US is the largest prison state in the world.” (-Lee Camp)
“Yes, Trevor Noah is no longer at the Daily Show but did you know that the U.S. has passed another $12 billion for Ukraine while Flint, Jackson, Chicago, and dozens of cities still don’t have clean drinking water?” (-Danny Haiphong)
I had to leave my family of origin at a young age and while I’d always return to my original hometown in Kentucky to see my old fashioned grandparents at Christmas, I could never have become one of those 4-H cattle showing, golf playing, Kentucky Wildcats basketball watching automobile salesman like all my cousins, that just was not my bag, at all-my mother married a dude and moved to a really horrible town in Ohio where I was targeted and harassed all my life by boojie baseball cap wearing shorthaired suburbans, so I had to relocate-I had many good adventures. One of my dad’s friends, Uncle Eric put me up in an old apartment on 11th Street and 2nd Ave. in Lower Manhattan and started teaching me about jazz and Lenny Bruce and shit. I met some chicks named Lisa and Minkie and lived with them for awhile on Rivington Street-they were teaching me about Edie Sedgwick, Jean Genet, David Bowie, and William Burroughs and introducing me to people like Nick Zedd and Ena Kostabi and John Spacely. I had a badass pad back in the midwest when I was 18 that felt like a home and family with my bandmates and their girlfriends and rowdy all night drinking buddy band of brothers for awhile. Then, like I said, it was glorious for a couple years in Cambridge, Ma, me and my main man were still trying to find a drummer for a permanent band, but we got distracted by various hard partying girlfriends and it never panned out. Now that guy is on the road again and that’s a hard life if you ask me, being a ramblin’ man who never settles down, his home is the highway, but I’m glad he’s out there, keeping the gypsy road alive. You know what Willie Nelson says: “the life I love is making music with my friends.”
I used to be, now I’m not what you see, Lord, I try…
Shitlibs cheered when Twitter and other fascistic deep state affiliated techlords started censoring offensive speechifier Trump, but now, they have also all come for every anti war, pro worker voice on the left. Every real civil rights organization, human rights group, research study-scientific method-facts based scientist, every free speech whistle blower advocate supporting Assange or Daniel Hale, they are all getting silenced, too. I know you’re mostly and mainly mad that Trump said grab their pussy when he was bragging to Billy Bush years ago. Biden is on camera in countless videos grabbing people inappropriately, many underaged. If you hashtag “believe women”, you gotta believe Tara Reade and alla Bill Clinton’s accusers, too. Trump always sucks up to kkkops because he recognizes they are the ones who stand between oligarchs such as himself and Cheneys and Bloomberg and Pelosi and the pitchforks of the working class. Biden and the squad superfund the same racist kkkops they do their meaningless tweeting about. What I’m trying to tell you, again and again, is there is not that much difference between the political parties anymore. Mostly just marketing hoaxes and superficial skin deep stunt-casting. I aint mad at Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) for telling the truth about inhumane, ballsout apartheid thuggery. History will show that mass murder and kisnapping and poisoning second class citizen’s water and sanctions and torture and burning down houses and shooting kids and stealing land arent okey-dokey, cute or cuddly, jes cause the “specials” are the ones doing it. That’s how the establishment turned the former left into shitlibs-by convincing them at the university that they are the special ones, the anointed, the cuddly folks who deserrve more special privileges, but it’s just some Sneetch ass bullshit. Stars upon ours. Starbellied sneetches. When trends change, the specials will be lasering the tattoo off to stay on trend, ya know? My wife reminds me how I am a sentimental fool for certain people from my past who operate in my own tiny personal life, as sheepdogs, like Bernie and the squad. They always talk me into going back around the herd, the popular kid clique, the oppressor gentrification pigs, and I always get burned, everytime I do. I love some folks who love their popularity so they kinda always make me think it’s gonna be okay this time, we’re just all gonna have some friendly mimosas, but then they put me around the sadists and the bullies, the pay to play posers and showbiz sharks and it goes bad again. Stay away from joiners and belongers, asskissers and wannabe insiders. The in crowd are always gonna love their special parking places and cushy jobs and backstage passes and music festival vacations more than they will ever love some errant dropout black sheep,rebel diehards, no matter how far they go back together. Even if it’s the motherfucker they modeled themselves after, who taught ’em half of what they play act they know, they love their privileges more. I’m persona non gratis with lotsa motherfuckers… except when they wanna have some sexy hardknocks cred, or peddle some vicarious streetwise, been around survivor image. Mostly they all love to pose like streetgangs in combat boots and skull tattoos, but in real life, they’re all about safespaces, cowering, never offending the powerful, and sticking to official narratives. Not punk at all. They believe in nothing and brag about it, they stand for nothing but their own special privilege. They don’t give a fuck about the little people, the outsiders, the lesser thans, and never will. Dead Kennedys who’d be cancelled nowadays by these sniveling shitlibs said it perfectly: “Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death”. Their own convenience, play acting like they did something extra fancy or high brow or hard working to earn all their piles of property, prestige, and privilege. AS IF you and me couldn’t do all that and more outta bed with a hangover standing on our head all day long, while chewing gum and telling jokes.
Am I well aware that summa my former street kid ex friends have assimilated and joined the system and swan around with the fat fratboys who wear the gold jewelry and cologne and throw the rich bassplayer’s money around on cocaine and studio time? Yeah, I know. That’s the worst part about social media-all your sold-out ex amigos are right there with the dickheads and the grunge era douchebags.
“Zelensky is a puppet of the NATO. Ukraine is its pawn. NATO has declared that it won’t stop its suicidal proxy war until Russia is in ruin and the world at the brink of nuclear war. The age of Western imperial decline is also the age of madness.” (-Danny Haiphong)
“The US oil and gas industry intentionally releases fossil methane into the atmosphere through their normal operations at a rate of approximately 1 Nordstream-sabotage every two and a half weeks.” (-Ketan Joshi)
Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, and Alice Walker React to the Assange Extradition Sign Off: “It is a sad day for western democracy.” http://ow.ly/hBbF50JAenU
This record changed my standard of what a song could and maybe should be. People say my lyrics are “too long”, ya know, but they said the same shit to Patti Smith and Rowland S. Howard, Nick Cave, and Jim Carroll. Jim Carroll showed me that pop songs did not have to be stupidly repetitious and banal, Jim Carroll was a divebar, hobo jungle, Stanton Street oil drum campfire, true story tellin’ man just like me. Jim Carroll showed me how to do it. Jim Carroll set me free. I met an artist named Corazon at Rounder/Ryko who played this record when I visited her once. She was really somethin’, sang for a band called Sugar Bitch. I have felt a real love for her.
It’s too late There’s no one left that I even wanna imitate You see, you just don’t know I’m here to give you my heart, and you want some fashion show
But it ain’t no contribution To rely on the institution To validate your chosen art
And to sanction your boredom and let you play out your part
Things got weird for people like me in the nineties-ya know all those preppie fuckers we left the midwest to get away from had infiltrated the underground music scene with their parent’s money for drugs and high school bully popularity clique bullshit, all of ’em imitating fucking Kurt Cobain and Mark Lanegan, but poorly. Musicians in my age group, a lot of ’em quit music, hopped on trends, or just no longer understood or remembered the kind of subversive poetry that had the power to really make people want to come alive and live more fully.
Mine and the late great Tony Coiro’s (RIP) mutual associate, Brother and Comrade Michael Volgare, who I may have met at a Gunfire Dance show, used to hangout with Jim Carroll, they’d go have breakfast together and talk about old movies. That’s pretty sweet. I never met Jim Carroll in real life but his music set my imagination alight, I could always identify strongly with everything he was singing about. I also wrote her name in vain.
Way, way back like 21 years ago or something, when I first met my longtime companion, I would get her to read my song lyrics aloud to me so I could hear how they flowed and I would read Jim Carroll and Leonard Cohen lyrics to her, now we are older and busier and everything is a tough hustle, we don’t get as much time together for shit like poetry and paintings.
Like I said, I used to live on the Lower east Side, pre gentrification, hadda lotta wild adventures, the stories I could tell, it is crazy, being me…. Jim Carroll “City Drops Into The Night” – YouTu
STOP BEING FOOLED BY GENDER-DEMOCRATS WHO OFFER YOU NOTHING BUT A TOKEN PANTS SUIT AND ENDLESS WARS. RICH FASCIST WARPIGS STILL SUCK, NO MATTER HOW THEY SELF IDENTIFY.
CODEPINK – Women for PeaceCODEPINK is a women-led grassroots organization working to end U.S. wars and militarism, support peace and human rights initiatives, and redirect our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs and other life-affirming programs.www.codepink.org
“52.3% of Puerto Ricans live in poverty. Blackouts were constant after the US privatized the electrical grid. Today, 2 weeks after a hurricane, more than 250,000 people still have no electricity. This is the daily violence of US colonialism. The only real solution is independence.” (-Ben Norton)
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
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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)
“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)
“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
“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.
“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)
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.
“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.
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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.
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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.
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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)
“Oh my God. It happened. I can’t believe it really happened.During a speech in Dallas at Southern Methodist University’s George W Bush Presidential Center on Wednesday, the man himself, George W Bush, did the best thing ever. I am pretty sure it is the single best thing that has ever happened. I do not believe I am exaggerating when I say that.While criticizing Russia for having rigged elections and shutting out political opposition (which would already be hilarious coming from any American in general and Bush in particular), the 43rd president made the following comment:“The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean, of Ukraine.”Former President George W. Bush: “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/UMwNMwMnmX— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 19, 2022And then it got even better. After correcting himself with a nervous chuckle, Bush broke the tension in the empire-loyal crowd with the words, “Iraq too. Anyway.” He then quipped that he is 75 years old, leaning harder on his “Aw shucks gee willikers I’m such a goofball” persona than he ever has in his entire life.And Bush’s audience laughed. They thought it was great. A president who launched an illegal invasion that killed upwards of a million people (probably way upwards) openly confessing to doing what every news outlet in the western world has spent the last three months shrieking its lungs out about Putin doing was hilarious to them.There are not enough shoes in the universe to respond to this correctly.As comedian John Fugelsang put it, “George W. Bush didn’t do a Freudian slip. He did a Freudian Confession.”One of the many, many interesting things about this occurrence is the likelihood that Bush’s words tumbled out in the way they did because he’s either heard a lot of criticisms of his invasion or has been thinking a lot about them; a familiar neural pathway would explain why his brain chose the exact worst word he could possibly swap out for “Ukraine” in that moment. This would be a small light in the darkness for we ordinary folk who oppose war and love peace, because it suggests that even the worst empire managers cannot fully insulate themselves from our criticisms.Speaking of George W. Bush and Iraq, the current president was also instrumental in bringing about that war — not just by voting for it, but by using his pulpit as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to advocate for it. But today he’s got Ukraine all figured out— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) May 19, 2022The bullshit doesn’t get any more brightly illuminated than this, folks. While the western political/media class constantly rends its garments over “disinformation” about the Ukraine war even as US officials openly admit they’ve been using the media to circulate disinformation about that same war, and even as the Biden administration imprisons and persecutes a journalist for exposing US war crimes, we get a square admission that the US is no better than Russia and that the only thing obscuring this is the fact that we are all swimming in a sea of disinformation and propaganda provided by that same political/media class.And this admission comes not from any low-level empire lackey, but from the man himself. The guy. The man whose name alone serves as a one-word debunk of every claim made about how uniquely nefarious Vladimir Putin is on the world stage and how uniquely depraved is his invasion of Ukraine.If you really look at what just happened, really truly ingest it, this one incident just by itself is enough to show you that we are swimming in a sea of lies designed to give us an upside-down and ass-backwards perspective of what’s going on in the world. If Bush himself can’t always tell the difference between the invasion of Iraq and the invasion of Ukraine, then this means our news media and our politicians are lying to us constantly. They lied to us through 2002 and 2003, and they never stopped lying, and they are lying now in the year 2022.The entire mainstream worldview is a perceptual distortion filter which obscures the public understanding of world events so severely that Bush has been not just forgiven for his crimes but actively rehabilitated in the public eye, while the enemies of the United States are continuously compared to Adolf Hitler and condemned throughout the US-dominated world.In reality the US is the single most tyrannical and destructive government on this planet, and it is only because the public is fed a nonstop deluge of propaganda that this isn’t universally obvious. Even the worst empire managers know deep down that this is true, and, in their less guarded moments, sometimes the truth slips out.” (-Cait Johnstone)REMEMBER WHEN I TOLD YOU ABOUT THIS FASCISTIC ICE SPYING & KIDNAPPING BULLSHIT YEARS AGO AND HOW PINUP QUEEN AOC WAS PART OF THE COVERUP?”Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology uncovered this dragnet after filing over 200 Freedom of Information Act requests and reviewing ICE’s contracting records from 2008 to 2021.In its report, released May 10, the Center found that ICE has spied on most Americans without a warrant and circumvented many state privacy laws, such as those in California. The authors conclude: “ICE now operates as a domestic surveillance agency.” (-Farrah Hassan)
“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)
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.
“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.
“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.
“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”.
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!
1983 was the year we first formed our goth gang. We were dirty and sweet untamed youth, a loose collective of much hated misfits, new wave poseurs, Smash Hits magazine readers, and Baby Bowies, discovering new music and makeup and styling products, just kissing to be clever. The only thing more unforgivable than androgyny, in the macho midewestern culture of rigid conformity, non-stop violence, and sports competition was, poverty. We were condemned for both, from an early age. The Lords Of The New Church were outside of society sovereign kings unto themselves, and their songs taught us about history revisionism, propaganda, psy-ops, and the true nature of authentic rebellion. That post-apocalyptic poster that came with the first Lords record made an indelible impression upon our tortured little psyches. We knew there was no place for us in the fix-is-in mainstream world and that we’d eventually have to create our own subcultural kingdoms and take up residency in the bonfire light of no man’s sand. My old sidekick gave me my Dead Boys skull tattoo the year before he went to med-school. “Disconnected” is still my favorite record besides “Mystery City” and “Into The Valley Of the Dolls”. The Lords Of The New Church taught us to see through the smokescreens of goose-stepping totalitarianism, perverted religious zealotry, and controlled-media propaganda. They made us believe it was possible to create a new society away from the bigotry, hate, paranoia, and us versus them social control, programmed into us since birth, by the honky death machine. Everything Stiv warned us about in 1983-a dystopian police state, and Orwellian torture gulags, and endless war, has long since come true. Gimee some of that old time religion! “I’ll recruit a ragged army/why let your hatred scar me?” He was like a time travelling messenger from the future.
I was a sucker for all that lively and colorful MTV escapism-I loved it all-Boy George and Cyndi Lauper, Prince, Psychedelic Furs, and Flesh For Lulu, but when my space pirate new romantic icons Duran Duran started glamourizing the Reagan/Thatcher lifestyle of safaris and acquisition, cocktail parties on yachts with coked-out models and pink pastel Miami Vice suits, the Lords Of The New Church were already prophesizing about secret societies, totalitarian regimes, the deep state permanent government, and the one percent elite’s ominously secretive movements towards global slavery and corporate prison states; while pointing us towards a more righteous and free, alternative vision of truth and soul, steely-eyed clarity, and egalitarian values. While Bowie and George Michael were making big cash grab commercials for Diet Coke, the New Church were sermonizing that television is nothing but lies, the prison’s filled while the rich still rob, to be here now, throw-away youth you gotta make a stand, no one’s gonna help you but yourself, start your gang, etc. I answered his call. When many of my former peers were into RATT and Mötley Crüe, or grunge, or unreality tv lifestyle programming, I was a down in flames detention hall sonic reducer, already ready, anytime, ready to snap! A choirboy at the New Church. He informed my core values, entire belief system, and life’s work. Sometimes it’s felt like not enough people really heard the message. For a mighty long time, it felt like the congregation had dwindled to almost nothing. Most of my lunatic fringe dancing old friends are long dead. I mean, me, I’m still seething with sedition, my old lady’s anointed with wisdom, and my old fun hog, road buddy just wants to duck walk on the rubble of shock doctrine, shock and awe, imperial disaster capitalism, but very few gadget guided I-Phoners and rah-rah warpig consumerist zombies of rightwing Murkkka really seem to have any desire to open their eyes, anymore. Like I said, nearly every grim and dreary thing Stiv warned us about-the dystopian police state and military and prison industrial complex and Orwellian torture gulags and panopticon surveillance has all come true. There are brown babies in cages. Racist gestapo. Poison in the water. War all the time. Robot muzak. It is harrowing to behold. Most of my countrymen are too bamboozled by cable tv diversions and too busy Keeping Up With The Kardashians to even notice, let alone, give a fuck. Luckily, this crucial, must-have DVD, and some of his old pal’s various other projects have created a renewed interest in his music that is probably more important and meaningful now, than ever before. A whole new generation of black haired scarf wearers are discovering his always heartfelt and provocative and thoughtful songs. Stiv lives in the hearts of the musicians and outlaws, the artists and rastas and dreams.
The impeccable and sensitive film-maker, Danny Garcia shines through, once again, with a really lovely and poignant and often hilarious valentine to our beloved alley Bator. If you are anything like me, you will only wish it was a ten part series. I never get tired of hearing first hand Stiv anecdotes from his intimate apostles, loves, and collaborators. Many of my favorite rocknroll super heroes, like Ray Hanson, Neal X, Nicky Turner, Dave Tregunna, Frank Secich, Jimmy Zero, Cynthia Ross, Nina Antonia, and Eddy Best share unseen photographs, rare music, and intimate reflections about the King Of The Brats. If you ever loved the Stiv Bators band on Bomp!, Dead Boys, Wanderers, or Lords, you will want to own this dvd and watch it again and again. To my little crew of merry pranksters, lostboy mischief makers, and snotty glam kids, Stiv was like Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, Bill Hicks and Joe Strummer rolled into one. Join The New Church!
Veglam 