ADVENTURES IN WRITING! Operating from Northern Indiana, this blog will cover aspects of culture with a bent on humor and the relentless belittling of the mainstream media, politics, and the syphilitic GOP (both major parties). News analysis happens. Put on your adult diapers, this gwine'-a'-be a bourgeois hoot. Some much needed hilarity for working class North Americans and international readers. I'm the part of this human world that bites back. Let's roll.
WWW--I will always remember the Patrick Swayze of Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders, Donnie Darko, To Wong Fu, and yes, even Red Dawn (but only in a "camp" sense). He was a great dancer and actor. Today, Patrick Swayze died of pancreatic cancer, and my heart goes out to his family, I know where they're at right now.
I'll never forget the first time watching The Outsiders and loving his big brother character because he was just so good, so real. When I went and saw Red Dawn he was just as great, not that it's a great movie, but we all have bills to pay, and so did he. The next time you watch Red Dawn, play songs from the Violent Femmes' first album every time a character dies, I swear to God it fits, it works. I nearly got into a fistfight seeing that one at the theater because I couldn't stop laughing since the scenario in it could never have happened logistically, it's literally a campy science fiction movie by the very closeted John Milius, a guy who likes to play with army toys in his advanced age. He should run for office.
But besides his role in The Outsiders, I have to say that the pinnacle of Swayze's acting career was as a motivational speaker/evangelist/closeted pedophile in 2001's Donnie Darko, a classic that I believe paints a fairly accurate portrayal in many parts of how unpleasant the 1980s really were. Yet, he was one of the good parts, and I'll remember him always for it. There will never be another actor quite like him. There are watersheds in everyone's life, and this is one of them. You made a very drab life and world a little more interesting, sleep well. What a cool dude he was.
It's been a crazy weekend. Managing editor Cheryl Biren and I went to the Franklin Mills Mall where a demonstration opposing the Army Experience Center was taking place.
It was certainly an experience. We met up there with another OEN editor, Elaine Bower who was there as a demonstrator and protester.
Elaine and I participated in the demonstration. But Cheryl, the whole time, was there as a reporter and photographer.
When the time came when police began arresting protesters who refused to move, Cheryl was there shooting pictures to capture the event. She was the only member of the media there at the time. All others had left already.
That's where the important story begins. Read these two reports to learn more:
This is a freedom of the press issue and story. Tell your local paper and TV news station to cover it. Contact your favorite MSNBC or Dailyshow or other host to cover it.
And support OpEdNews.com This is such a screaming example of how we cover the story that the mainstream media ignores. The Philadelphia Inquirer didn't even send a reporter to cover this. And the two mainstream media orgs that WERE represented hightailed out when the police said they were going to begin making arrests-- intimidated and bullied into not covering the story.
If you want to depend on weak, mainstream media, ignore this request. If you want to support a strong, independent progressive media, please send your contribution. I can't tell you how urgent our need for contributions is, in these hard times. Please click here to make a donation today.
I had a very warm and friendly chat with Michael's mother Elke Blair just last night--it was like talking with an old friend. I'm just two years junior to her son Michael, who was also born here in South Bend in 1966. My first experience noticing the club kids was in 1994 (I'm pretty sure it was the Joan Rivers show) when I saw some of them on a talk show. I also saw the Geraldo broadcast with Michael and Elke and was pretty impressed with the creativity of their look, their decadence, their style, the flippancy and devil-may-care side of it. It looked like a lot of fun. They seemed to be having a good time and a sense of humor about themselves, what more can a subculture ask for? Everything has a beginning...
South Bend/Michiana is a peculiar place, a hotbed of dysfunction. During the 1980s, South Bend had the highest unsolved murder rate in the continental United States, a little known fact. We created Dan Waters, the writer of the black comedy "Heathers"(1988). Waters went to Penn High School, the same place that Michael went to, and it was the same kind of brutal environment as depicted in the film minus the more fantastical parts of the plot. But the homophobia was very real during 1970s-80s when Alig and Waters attended Penn. I can attest to the fact that the other schools in the area were no different. In fact, if you were "different" from the clearly molested and physically abused rednecks and white trash that unfortunately populated the majority of the school bodies you were a target, it was up close and personal, and violence was always simmering beneath the surface.
Michael was harassed, I was harassed, and most all of my friends were too. I can literally remember witnessing a major fight every day of school from about 7th grade until my junior year in high school at John Adams (I graduated in 1986). Racism was also endemic and went both ways (but the black kids tended to like me).
I can recall being stopped in the hallways at John Adams and being asked point-blank, "Do you like rap?!" You were supposed to answer "no," I answered "yes," and was rewarded with a swift punch to the arm. I'd say that was typical, but usually the response was significantly more violent. What I'm getting at here is that my and Michael's experiences weren't especially different, and I'm not even gay. In my case, I had the misfortune of being from a "broken home" (Michael was as well) in a Catholic town in the early 1970s. Notre Dame was literally just down the road from my house. Was I discriminated against? Was my brother and my family? You bet, and it's even worse than it reads, there was a lot to it.
I am going to be discussing some of these issues with Elke in the future on this site. When I first saw the "Party Monster" documentary on Cinemax in 1997 (practically fresh out of an extended college stint) I nearly fell off of my couch. Why was I seeing footage of downtown South Bend on television, and on Cinemax of all channels? Naturally, I was riveted. And then they showed Michael and the club kids and it all began falling-into-place...and it depressed me. I cannot say that it's a "bad" documentary, but it's too short and there was so much of the story left out that it should never been viewed as the last word on the decline and fall of Michael Alig and the club kids. At under an hour, this just wasn't going to be possible, so Randy Barbato and Fenton Bailey (originally of the techno dance unit the Pop Tarts who once worked for Alig) had to focus on what would fit easiest into the cramped running time, and it shows.
As crazy as it sounds, it's too sensationalistic and spends far too much time on Michael Alig when it should be focusing on why chaos came to the club kids scene at the Limelight and Peter Gatien's other clubs, their environs. Yes, it was drugs and misbehavior, but what about the role of the DEA, the FBI, and the NYPD? What was the role of organized crime? What about the drug informants within the scene? Why is Peter Gatien running around free and operating a new club up in Toronto (rumor has it that he no longer runs Circa)? What was their contribution of these players to the disaster? How many of the talking heads in the documentary were informants? We may never know, but I frankly don't think that the Party Monster documentary gave us much depth or understanding. Worse, it didn't show us much of the glory of the club kid scene, a movement that outlasted so many others by several years, a major feat.
Barbato and Bailey's films are more of a very brief overview of things, and that's not slamming it or dismissing it outright. What of Michael's childhood? That section lasts barely five minutes. They were "in love" with their subject? What of Michael's side of the story? Nearly all there is comes from James St. James and a little from Elke. It's not so much what's in the documentary as what isn't. But one thing's certain: the entire story is still untold.
Washington D.C.--Was it 2 million, as many--uh--parade goers and their tax-cheat backers want us all to think? Nope. Not even close.
Reasonable estimates coming from the police and even the conservative Washington Times has it at around 70-75,000. That's not the real problem. The numbers don't mean anything, it's the sprawl of yelling zombies, spouting terms they never learned anything about in civics class: "Socialist!" Yet--and to underscore their extremism--Obama's in-the-pocket of big pharma and the insurance companies anyway. No, it's because he's black and that their party lost the election, the Republican Party, that other party of big business. Also, they're incredibly ignorant individuals who are easily swayed by the message of fear. That's what we call an idiot, incidentally, a fool.
And who's paying to cart all the tards around? The aforementioned big businessmen and women who declared war on the average person, and therefore, the social contract, long ago. America's sinking, but these morons are too stupid to see the man on the hill running everything into the ground. No, instead, it's the "niggers," the "faggots," phantasm-like "socialists" (yet they never refer to Sen. Bernie Sanders as one, and he is), "communists," and a lot of other terms that aren't applicable outside of science fiction and The Turner Diaries. What supporters (70% of the public, easily dwarfing these loud-mouthed dunces) of single payer are waiting for is beyond me, I guess they're all on Facebook fucking around...ahem. The fact is, these crazies at the town halls are the minority, they're just very loud and they have corporate backing in many cases, if not having been pushed there by these same faceless forces through propaganda. Yet, where's the majority? Something needs to be done, and done now about these yelling geriatrics and racists, these fools.
In other words, if you support single payer, you need to get off of your collective dead-asses and do this: go down to your congressional representative's office and hold a vigil, and not just for one day, for a long, long time if necessary. Write them and call them incessantly until they start doing what we--the majority--want them to do on health care. These jackapes are being scared and even paid to come out and threaten, yell, and intimidate the rest of us into apathy and silence and it's working. They are the minority, we are the majority, and we want socialized medicine. Period. There is nothing left to say after you know that statistic of 70%, and some stats are higher than that.
And young people: what the fuck are you assholes waiting for? Are you retarded? Stupid? I can assure you that you're not going to live forever. Just look at some of you coming back from the Middle East in body bags. And for what? Once again, to make some faceless investors richer. To do nothing about this and to just apathetically take it or buy into it is to be less than a slave. After that, one begins to deserve everything that flows-out of that arrangement. There literally are no words, because after that, widescale violence becomes inevitable with the collapse of the social contract, that agreement we all have to band together as a society to care for one another rather than to murder each other. What are societies for? I bet you cannot answer that question.
Now, that's how stupid you're all being by doing nothing. It doesn't get any lower than that.
But if you really want to get to the crux of this stupidity, it's the American South again, the old Confederacy of Dunces that was never able to function within a democracy and still isn't. If you look at the outlays of the elections since the American Civil War and the voting patterns that drag America into a jaded authoritarianism, it's the South doing it again and again and again. Stupid is as stupid does. We could very well end up with another Civil War, it will have been just as avoidable as the first, and the South will have created the majority of the mess once again. We're seeing the cost of this stupidity writ large and we will reap chaos and destruction from it if we don't start making this a participatory democracy. There's only one way to do it, we all know how, and it's time to get off our asses and into the town halls and the streets to counter these incredibly moronic assholes, there is no other way. Democracy isn't a microwaveable pizza. Do it, hit it, go, now. Quit playing with yourselves.
This whole deal is political theater to give you that golden opportunity to cop-out and do nothing--and I know full well you're all looking for it. Do it. Now. Go. Find your congressional representative's office this weekend and go to his office personally and tell them you want single payer. If they're not going to support it, tell them that not only are you not going to vote for them, but that you're going to campaign for their opponents, that you're going to tell all of your friends and family not to vote for them. Know someone who should run for office but hasn't ever bothered? Push them, get them to run as an independent who will support this agenda of single payer care for all. No excuses, do it. Do it now, otherwise you're also intellectually incapable of functioning in a democracy, and that's about as low as it gets. Obama's in their pocket, it's about race, ignorance, unwarranted fear, and lost elections:
WWW--You know...who gives a shit? He shot himself (or at least that's the story) with a shotgun sixteen years ago because, ultimately, he was a loser, Kurt Cobain. I loved a lot of his songwriting, but if you want to stop being a star, being famous, there are plenty of ways out, and he had the imagination to do it too.
Many careers in entertainment have been sabotaged, take your pick. It's funny: I recall hearing their first album before the hype and just thought they were so-so, just OK, nothing extraordinary. Did I mention that I hate Seattle and its weather and all the rich assholes that populate what was once a blue collar town? I'd do heroin too. But seriously--so you can "unlock" the avatar of Cobain and have him play other people's songs? Great! Kurt Cobain doing Bob Seger or Ted Nugent songs seems fitting to me since all of them were the death of rock as a mass movement phenomena anyway. Cobain was just that final gurgle, now it's a microcosmic affair when it's real, generally emanating out of garages in crumbling suburbia, less and less a sad spin-off of the American dream. Who cares? The believers, the fanatics, also known as "fans," the etymological source of the term.
And considering that Cobain's estate signed-off on the deal that Activision could use Nirvana songs and his image as an avatar--well, you do the math, they did. I'm doing the math too and finding that the surviving members of Nirvana strike me as disingenuous, and that's being nice, but I guess they're entitled. With Courtney Love...forget about it. As usual, she's the loud-mouthed tramp she always was, a washed-up starfucker and a nut, and these claims that she's going to "sue" Activision just sound good, they make good copy. She's ugly in every way and her music was never good, ever, not even for a moment.
And while I'm on the subject of Cobain being dead, why not take a casual look at the suicide? I have to wonder if Alex Constantine is saying he was murdered by the government since that also sounds good and makes good copy for the terminally stoned and paranoid. But no, I don't think Cobain was murdered by anyone at all, he was simply a loser. What I believe happened is that his dirty wife was his drug enabler; he was hiding from her as much as he could to kick; she found him; they shot-up together, "for old time's sake," and he died on her of an overdose. You do the math, my take.
Frankly, when someone's totally fucked up their life as he did, having an avatar of you singing Bon Jovi songs is an afterthought that cannot compare to the original disaster. Nobody had to remind me what a pathetic and embarrassing decade the 1990s were, it was. Jimi Hendrix is on one of the games. You can unlock all of the avatars. Get over it. As many others have astutely pointed-out, Cobain left behind a child and he was therefore selfish and dishonorable. Now he's part of the "too stupid to make it to thirty" club. Courtney apparently feels the same way but now just wants to save face with her stupid, feigned drama over this non-issue.
She authorized it, the surviving members of the band did not, they lost a lawsuit against her years ago and had no control over it, she did. At least their dismay is sincere. Face it: rock as a mass movement that's real has been dead for decades, over a generation. Now it has a video game. Long live music, rock is a corpse that's been humped dry. God knows the boomers have talked about themselves to the point that nobody gives a shit anymore.
Site Meter-You know, I and all the other watchdogs should be getting paid for this shit, just sayin'. So, they're still watching Vitter--as well they should, corrupt assholes like Davey are running amok these days. Meanwhile, Congress is shoving their own collective-thumbs up their own asses and doing barely anything-at-all, especially when it comes to cunts like Vitter.
I'm getting tired of this lack-of-accountability. If it continues I'm going to have to drag some of you fuckers into the streets with me to shout until these fuckers are tarred-n'-feathered, it's long overdue, we haven't had a good one in ages in America. With luck, Davey's still retaining Wiley, Rein and Fielding because he knows he's a dirty, greasy piece-of-shit and that he and his scumfuck counsel likely contributed to pushing the late DC Madam closer to suicide when they filed for attorney fees against her--that she'd have to pay for them once the smoke had cleared.
Here's to Vitter's continued legal expenses and him living in fear for the rest of his life because he cannot control himself, his member. It also wouldn't surprise me if his "peers" in the GOP knew he was a skirt-chaser and blackmailed him like many others in Congress and have forced him into servicing their nefarious agendas, really those of the ruling class at the end of the day. Sound like a system built on mud? It should.
These are the people YOU vote for, not me. So quit doing it, get smart, wise-up, use your dome. That's what it's there for. These dirty high powered law firms make a lot of this possible, with their revolving-doors in-and-out of the the corporate world and government. The time for radical reform has come. Demand it. Now. Quit waiting for someone else to do it, do it now, the time for waiting is over.
WWW--You'd think last night's speech took place on April 10, 1861. Huh? Yes, the moronic big health recipient shot his mouth off last night during president Obama's speech on health care reform as though he was Brigadier General G.T. Beuaregard, shelling Ft. Sumter--only this time, he didn't take four long years of fighting to "apologize."
"You lie," he stammered in crackerese, and it was the come shot heard around the world--or at least in the halls of Congress and the boardrooms of big pharma and the hearts of the insurance robber barons. "Render unto Caesar" never meant going down on him--after all--and Wilson's Caesar salad, his masters, are corporate and plutocratic ones. It really had nothing to do with immigrants getting health coverage at all.
A longtime friend said to me a few months ago something that I take to heart and consider very seriously (I'm paraphrasing him) : "Southerners--in general--are intellectually incapable of functioning in a democracy." I agree with this strongly. My family on my mother's side comes from Kansas and Arkansas--they left for a reason, and the aforementioned was a large part of that reason, or the lack thereof. There was nothing to stay behind for at the end of WWII, and it wasn't just about jobs, it was about a backwards culture that doesn't want to change. Wilson's inappropriate outburst was a pathetic violation of decorum and I believe strongly that its intent was symbolically racialist, not merely because he's a whore who's owned by the insurance and big health care-related corporations and trusts. I believe Wilson was put-up to what he did by his own party because of the state he's from, a place dear to the heart of sundry evangelicals and the emotionally retarded throughout America since it's where the American Civil War stupidly began, and it was over another lost election, what Marx called a "slaveholder's rebellion." The white-trash South is going to be that red-headed stepchild of America for as long as the air is breathable and before the planet really starts hitting back. But Marx was correct: the Civil War was childish, regressive, and anachronistic. Indeed it was, and there was nothing noble about it, the Confederacy-be-damned. There's a better word for what the firing on Ft. Sumter and Wilson's outburst constitute (or rather, don't): the childish throwing of a tantrum, a fit by the mentally-challenged. Apparently, South Carolingian didn't find their governor Sanford embarrassing enough, so they elected a whole gaggle of losers from the Fellowship. But wait, it gets better, much better. Wikipedia has had to put a lock on Wilson's page, similar to what happened with Sen. David Vitter's page when I and others were attempting to add pertinent information to it that was factually correct. I know, unfair, especially when someone's powerful, then it's heretical, a travesty. But, never mind, these pages of the unaccountable powerful have hired gatekeepers (some simply acting on their own) who act like sleeper agents to guard them and block further content that might be deemed (by them) "controversial." Before all that, I never cared for Wikipedia, never respected them, and never will, they're redundant, go use academic sites for information.
Wilson is the poster child of a dysfunctional democracy, but then, so is the entire GOP and most of the Democratic Party. Their constituents? A foregone conclusion, but at least most of the dumbbells out there are going to get a very painful civics lesson. No, Joe Wilson never lies, and he never chopped down that cherry tree, since it never existed anyway. To be sure, the GOP and morons like Wilson are speaking in a coded language predicated not only on plutocratic criminality, but also a regressive race-baiting. In other words, Wilson's going to be "out-niggered" before long, expect the language to coarsen. Racism is flushing itself out behind the facade once again, which is a good thing. It's easier to hit it once it's out in the open, the tipping of the hand, the curse of the terminally stupid.
Site Meter--This time, this time, they decided not to leave a slime-trail. Anyone know what "max results" means? I'd assume they're downloading like a bandit. I've had many of these over the last couple of years. It's pretty obvious that they're trying to obscure their identities.
Domain Name
(Unknown)
IP Address
174.70.112.# (Unknown Organization)
ISP
Unknown ISP
Location
Continent
:
Unknown
Country
:
Unknown
Lat/Long
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unknown
Language
English (U.S.) en-us
Operating System
Microsoft WinXP
Browser
Internet Explorer 7.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Qwest 1.0; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; Qwest 1.0)
Site Meter--This one's very interesting and had me perplexed until I realized that Qualcomm and SAIC are frequently mentioned in the same breath as government contractors.
Here's the score: SAIC has been around before reading about the DC Madam scandal and what I've been posting and writing, and now Qualcomm's doing likewise, snooping around. The other commonality? San Diego, that point-of-intersection that kept cropping-up again and again during the scandal and in my own research into it. San Diego was also where Jeffrey A. Taylor served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney from 1995-1999, possibly where he became familiar with other players involved in the DC Madam scandal. People like Brent R. Wilkes, convicted briber of former California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, now sitting in the federal pen where the majority of politicians in America belong.
Unsurprisingly, Taylor connects the megafirm of Ernst & Young to Qualcomm since many of its founders and past executive partners have gone on to Qualcomm, almost an interlocking-network of the same names. Keep in mind that I discovered these connections very casually, thanks to whomever this reader was. Interestingly, Taylor is going to be doing the same kind of work as the peculiar Sam Deskin at his new job:
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeffrey Taylor will join Ernst & Young as the Americas leader of the Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services area, the Blog of the Legal Times reports. Taylor announced his resignation today, effective tomorrow, and will reportedly join Ernst & Young’s Washington, D.C. office next month.(Securities Docket, 05.28.2009)
The question that I have is: why would someone at Qualcomm want to do a search on Montgomery Blair Sibley, Palfrey's former counsel who was fired at the 11th hour by his client? Who exactly persuaded her to do this? My money's on Preston Burton and Federal Judge James Robertson, but that doesn't mean others weren't involved in this.
Say what you want, but I would have loved seeing the circus that would have come out of his defense and would have applauded it. But no, journalists seem to fixate on things like kilts, small offices on K Street, acrimonious divorce proceedings, but nothing to do with the former clients they allowed to get off scot free. Pathetic, but one of numerous reasons why I couldn't care less that the newspapers are dying. Another final question for the day: has Mr. Deskin ever communicated with Jeffrey A. Taylor either personally or professionally? I'd really like to know. Sammala? Jeff? And what of Mr. Burton and his gigantic firm, Orrick, Herrington, and Sutcliffe? Do they all know each other? I wouldn't be surprised...
Oil. Both the DRC (The Democratic Republic of Congo) and Uganda (Idi Amin's former stomping ground) are fighting over Lake Alberta's Rukwanzi island, a region where Ireland's Tullow Oil has been doing geological surveys early this year that have discovered between 400 million-to-1 billion barrels of oil, one of those fossil-based substances that we're supposed to be putting behind us to endglobal warming. Ho hum, there's money at stake, so no dice, the planet stays imperiled so someone can make more money than God. Note the proximity of the Sudan.
The DRC and Uganda have recently stopped their resource/tribal war that raged over most of the last decade and their militaries are now cooperating thanks to...money. The Ugandan military are now stationed in parts of the Eastern Congo fighting against militias there who want autonomy and probably their own piece of the action. In sum, Tullow is just making matters worse and future conflict is all-but-inevitable, like Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's 1874 geological survey into the Black Hills that sparked more Indian wars and rapidly consumed him and many of his own troops.
As I wrote, we know how that ended, he had it coming, and history has a way of repeating itself (rendering reincarnation unnecessary). Once they fought Native Americans and now unaccountable power and their representatives fight and pit Africans against one another over valued resources. Similar dynamics are at play in Nigeria where the U.S. has been constructing AFRICOM for future military adventurism, now training Rwandan troops, but it's all driven by greed rather than actual need, capitalism at its worst.
Yet, Tullow's Business unit manager has recently conceded that Sudan is currently off-limits because of political pressure over human rights abuses. There are limits to power--meaning some have limited power:
Asked if the company would work in countries like the Sudan where oil money is suspected of fuelling the war, he said: "There are certain countries we could not work in because of human rights issues and environmental concerns." (AllAfrica.com, 07.01.2009)
But Tullow is a small, independent firm, not a Chevron or a Shell. Their pull is significantly smaller. However, that doesn't mean that they don't want to meddle or that those other oil firms have any such qualms when the ability to do so is present.
With the ever-shrinking supply of oil and China's and India's ever-increasing demands as the factories of the world, it was time to look elsewhere, although it was known that there were oil-deposits in the region long ago.
"We finally found a location outside the Kabwoya Game Reserve. Another reason for the delay is that we found a lot of oil elsewhere. With the discovery of more oil, we have more options to choose from."
Asked why the oil in Uganda was found so late, he said when it was first discovered by Shell in the 1930s, it was considered not significant.
"They were looking for significant finds such as in Nigeria and Saudi-Arabia. But the world has moved on. Now is the time when oil has become scarce and the prices have gone up. So countries like Uganda come into consideration."(ibid)
Now the world (power) "wants" the remaining oil reserves in these African nations, regardless of the grade. Most of the wars of the 20th century were resource wars. The same is likely to be the case in the 21st century, imperiling the future of the species along with the directly-related effects of global warming.
And now we have the arrest and charges of murder against two Norwegian mercenaries who were in the DRC, ostensibly to set up their own private security firm. Both are former members of the Norwegian military, possibly from an elite unit. Private Military Herald is reporting some very curious facts about the Norwegian duo of Tjostolov Moland and Joshua French:
Evidence seized recently at the apartment the two men shared in Uganda could play a large role n the eventual outcome of the trial. During the police raid authorities found Norwegian military ID cards, counterfeit United Nations hats, employee ID badges with both the correct and false names of the two men. The employee badges are from a heretofore little known security company namedSpecial Interventions Group(SIG)which is owned by and mostly staffed by Norwegians. During the raid on the apartment authorities also confiscated at least one rifle and a camera containing pictures of the two men on their recent travels in Africa. In one grainy image, believed to have been taken by Mr. French, Mr. Moland is seen smiling as he washes the blood believed to be that of Mr. Kasongo from the inside of the hired car.(Private Military Herald, 08.11.2009)
Additionally, Mr. French has been coy about his real identity until recently, allegedly going under the name of "John Hunt," an equally nondescript name. Both men are being charged with murder and it appears the death penalty will be expedited soon. They were apparently scouting the region where the oil is. The Congolese authorities could very well have caught the duo and the Norwegian government (and maybe even forces unknown) red-handed. One thing's certain: Africa is still the frontier of the Wild, Wild West (and China).
This guy is a laugh-riot. Ever since I began this site I've had a link up to his, and he's just genuinely funny. Not only are his cultural observations usually spot-on, but his fictional routines are simply hilarious. You won't be disappointed, trust me, he's got the funny gene! (he's on my linkroll to-the-left, hit it!) Fuck you, I wish I was half as funny as you are, Eric! ;0)
“We aren’t interested in show business, so shut the fuck up.”--Genesis P. Orridge
Ihad the extreme pleasure of seeing both sets of the April 25th show in Chicago this year. There were several Chicago musical "luminaries" there--most incognito--but I recognized a few here-and-there, just as I had at Psychic TV's 2004 Empty Bottle gig where I literally bumped into Genesis P. Orridge on the way out the front door for a smoke.
The Logan Square Auditorium concerts were the first time that TG had ever played the windy city on what was a four city tour (major ones only) of the United States. The last time Gristle played America, that rough beast heading towards Bethlehem was...residing in the White House, but that era's finally coming to a screeching halt as many of us suspected it would. America looks-the-grimier for it, maybe we'll avert ecological catastrophe, maybe not, but besides ourselves, we'll know who to blame: industrialists, and not the kind that play concerts. Logan Square Auditorium is a pretty old room and it was becoming apparent just a few minutes into the set that the structure of the building was never going to be the same, ever again. If you loved extreme music, this was going to be your night, and I spotted people in "Coil," "Can," "Kraftwerk," and even "Popol Vuh" (the last three being "krautrock" groups) t-shirts, something I'm certain to never see again in one place.
You didn't need to be on drugs to feel your consciousness being altered at the show, it was riveting, devastating, and in a way that's beyond rare. From the first set, which was an improvised soundscape to the late Derek Jarman's "In the Shadow of the Sun" (1980) made expressly for the group to score, to the second, comprised of a mix of oldies and new material, it was very much as the accounts of TG had always said they were: they were so powerful that they will change your consciousness forever, a completely immersive and subversive experience all around. Nietzsche said that there were only two Christians: "Jesus and St. Francis." Many have said that there was only one industrial group ever, Throbbing Gristle, and I would be hard-pressed to disagree with them. There's an unmistakable feeling when one bears witness to artistic truth, and like some kind of religious experience, it's irrefutable, and likewise, immutable. The occasion was truly historic, like having the good luck of catching the Velvet Underground.
The speaker columns were possibly some of the tallest I've ever seen and with every air-molecule vibrating violently, and the sensation within the crowd was akin to what it must be like to swim in a pool of jello, you could literally feel your innards moving. Beyond that, there was the sensation of something much bigger than the people creating the music, the sounds, and the people witnessing it, something you cannot put a price tag on, nor something you can sully with money. It was a shared and communal experience.
The link below will take you to a downloadable file of the second set, enjoy (or don't). Play at as high a volume as possible. It won't be exactly the same, but it should give you a pretty good idea of what it was like. TG allowed audience members to come into the Logan Square Auditorium without any searches. Read the quote above, and it will all make sense. Public music is public. You put it out there, or you do not, because once it is out there, it's no longer entirely yours. If money is all an artist is concerned about, it's no longer about the music or connecting with people anymore, it's just more business-as-usual, over-the-counterculture, commodified and dead at your door. Downloads don't seem so evil after that, but please support your favorite artists anyway.
It was in the winter of 1991-92 that I first listened to the music of Justin K. Broadrick, onetime drummer/founder of the legendary Napalm Death, and I've never looked back. The album was the extraordinary "Streetcleaner" (1989), and it was percolating its way through college campuses and neighborhoods across North America, seeping its way into the minds of incredibly angry, nihilistic youth.
Broadrick has had his ups-and-downs over the years with the decline of Godflesh, numerous side-projects, a series of personal crises, but has survived the crash of the conventional music industry and come back with a real vengeance since 2005 and the first release of Jesu on the Hydrahead label, run by the inimitable heavy rock group Isis.
Broadrick is a real gadfly in the music world, crossing genre boundaries and conventions while pushing the envelope and creating new styles and approaches that are rapidly imitated (think the band Korn, a group whose style he doesn't want credit for) poorly, such as the hybridization of hip-hop and intensely heavy rock-stylings. But if there's a thread running through his music, it's the psychedelic, the ponderous, a gazing into the abyss of our common era, and that shines through more brightly in this new project than ever before. If you're a real aficionado of unforgivably heavy rock, layered, dense, and brutal, this is going to be your new fix for a very long time to come. It's projects like this that keep rock--barely living--alive in a microcosmic sense, and that's fine by me.
What's so shocking and exciting about this release, however, is that Broadrick has returned to playing drums once again, and it's been a long-time-coming. Other than possibly some playing on the "Sweet Tooth" project, I don't believe he's played drums on a recording in such a direct way since his time in Napalm Death in the 1980s, so this is a real historic occasion, and he's great on it. Reenlisting Dave Cochrane of God and Head of David was going to be a logical move as was the bass and electronics of the great Diarmuid ("Dermot") Dalton of Cable Regime and Jesu, while the inclusion of Isis guitarist and visual artist Aaron Turner compliments the general wash of sound you'd expect from a Broadrick-fronted project.
Layered doesn't even begin to describe the sound, this is a real feat of music engineering here where noise, heaviness, and the psychedelic create a very satisfying admixture that recalls Ornette Coleman's "harmolodics" theory. "Vultures Descend" is one of the more interesting and exciting tracks, but if I were to pick a favorite, it would have to be the destroying "Sweatshop," a cut that's going to please the most purist of Godflesh fans who've been wondering if Broadrick lost it after 2005. He hasn't, this was well worth the wait. It's strange, but in a way, he's cycled back to his Napalm Death days, the days of the legendary "SCUM" LP (1986), a heavily-layered affair awash in noise, now with the inclusion of discreet electronics, sampling, and few vocals at all. We got a taste of what was to come in 2003's final Techno Animal project, "Curse of the Golden Vampire," a project that was also reminiscent of ND in several areas and a good taste of how close drum and bass sounds to speed metal rhythmically!
Like the very best of JB's output, this album is going to be impossible to define. Every member but one rooks-in electronics, looping, sampling, and even the occasional synthesized sound that creates quite an onslaught. Imagine the layering and looping approach of electric period Miles (think "Bitches Brew") applied to a rock band and you're getting closer; guitars are subsumed by drums; drums are subsumed by the roar of the overall sound, fighting their way to the top; vocals occasionally fight their way up; synths and samples cut their way through the mix, while the bass keeps chugging. If it sounds like war, that's because it is, this, our common era. Disconnected couldn't be more timely or timeless.
Washington D.C.--This has been perplexing me for months now, but recall that when George W. Bush entered office, one of the very first things he did back in 2001 was to fire virtually all of the 93 standing U.S. Attorneys. What was he thinking? He didn't want anyone who wasn't on the same page or loyal to him--that's not legitimate, incidentally, not in the public interest.
That's why President Obama needs to fire every single standing U.S. Attorney now, but he won't. That speaks volumes about him if it continues much longer, that he's no different than George W. Bush and his administration. But it's possibly worse than that.
But why do mass firings and what's the problem? Very simple: It's becoming obvious--for example--that embedded appointees within the DOJ are working against the new president as well as at the Pentagon and even within the confines of the CIA and throughout the federal bureaucracy, working against him, his party, and the public will. This doesn't appear to concern President Obama.
Is he crazy? Is he nuts? Is he stupid? No.
I think the 2008 revelations about Attorney General Eric Holder and his connections to the Chiquita Brands International Inc. corporation as an attorney representing their interests in a recent civil suit states-it-plainly: the Obama administration is riddled with the same kinds of scumbags from the corporate world and the realm of the political operative, the corporate gutter. Oh yeah, and included many of the very same scumbags that were there in the bureaucracy under Bush II. This is unacceptable and shows so far that the Obama administration has no problem with politicizing law enforcement, a very dangerous road to go down in a democracy. But it's all about money, isn't it? Yes it is.
For years, Chiquita was paying off right wing paramilitaries (AUC, listed as terrorists at the time by our government) not to attack their banana plantations in Colombia during their "dirty war" with Marxist guerrillas, FARC. In the interest of fairness, both sides (the paramilitaries are generally allied with the drug-smuggling oligarchs in the North) sometimes run cocaine to fund their activities. So, Chiquita was breaking the law--did I mention there have been allegations that they were also reported running cocaine in some of their shipments? It appears that they wanted to pad their bottom line, but this is still unconfirmed.
At the time--March 2007--I and most of the nation began noticing the DC Madam scandal and her prosecutor, the moronic U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor who'd been unethically appointed through a provision of the Patriot Act as an interim U.S. Attorney by George W. Bush while Congress was out of session, sometime in late September 2006. Just a few months later, Taylor was expediting the plea agreement for Chiquita...and bringing an indictment against Palfrey (no, I'm not drawing a connection here). Jeffrey was very busy during those months, covering-up for a gaggle of corporate bigwigs, Bush II appointees, government contractors, and not just with the DC Madam scandal--he had his work cut-out for him, but he's a rock, a skilled sycophant. Well...not exactly: he's also been known to file under the wrong statutes, but that's another story for another time.
And so, many other names that will be familiar from the Bush II years that never really ended were also involved in the Chiquita settlement; even the DOJ's/DHS's Michael Chertoff, but it was Holder and Taylor who brokered the deal that gave Chiquita a very tiny fine considering that they were paying off terrorists for several years, basically giving them material support. Holder has a lot to explain as their former attorney, and fine, he's going to claim attorney-client privilege so he's going to have to be investigated eventually if it ever even happens.
No criminal holding public office has ever been known to allow the prosecution of themselves, other than Richard Nixon, and he didn't go down quietly. Obama isn't going to fire these standing U.S. Attorneys from the Bush II years soon because he answers to the same bosses, and so does his Attorney General. Why fire the appointees after that? The current president is just another fraud. Power concedes nothing without a demand. Beware these businessmen who come at you with knives: they're you're businessmen.
