USA - USA - USA - USA - USA - USA - USA - USA

Fucking idiots. Glad there are people out there looking out for me and my interests. We would all be in Saddam Gorbachev's iron fist were it not for these wonderful patriots, just in time for Memorial Day:

MANALAPAN — More than 20 people, some carrying American flags, showed up at the Turkish American Community Center Tuesday to protest that an American flag had been hung upside down in front of the site.

The flag hung upturned next to flags of Northern Cyprus and Turkey, a largely Muslim nation – an insult to America, protesters said. Center President Mehmet Reyhan said he did not know who had incorrectly hung the flag; he only learned of it when a member notified him of protesters outside the Route 33 building this morning.

“Livid – I was livid that (someone) desecrated our flag and hung it upside down,” said Betty Bailey, a Millstone farm owner who helped organize the protest.

“You need people out there to watch these things going on, because we can’t just stand by and let our country be put down…I just think people are getting lax about (patriotism and vigilance),” Bailey said. “We’re standing up for our country.”

The reason the flag had been hung upside down – and by whom – remains unclear: Some questioned whether recent headlines about the killing of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden triggered it, or whether it had simply been an incident of vandalism or an accident.

Protesters said they believed the flag had been hung outside the site since Sunday night or Monday morning. They said the flag also had been tattered and incorrectly displayed in relation to the other two flags.

Reyhan said he didn’t believe a center member would have turned the flag upside-down. Two current members have to vouch for new members in order for them to join, he said, “and I don’t think any of our members would do anything like that.”

“I think every nation is very proud of their flag; if someone puts it upside-down, I look at it as an insult to the nation,” Reyhan said. “We are Americans. We love this country. We are here for 25 years and those flags are always flying in the correct way. This is the first time I have seen something like this.”

According to federal statute, the American flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of distress. The flag has beenflown upside down as a form of protest in the United States, according to published reports.

Reyhan said he reported the incident to township police and the Turkish consulate. He said he had all the flags taken down Tuesday morning because he’s afraid they could be rearranged again and cause problems for the center.

Bailey said she still had concerns.

“It was in front of their building and I really think if it’s your building, you should really kind of notice that the flag was hanging wrong,” Bailey said. “People have to start taking a stand, so we did. Hopefully, it won’t happen again.”

Reyhan said the center, in the township for 25 years, serves as a celebration hall for Turkish, American and Muslim religious holidays. He said the center also hosts Turkish language classes for youths and provides networking, employment assistance, transportation and translation services for Turkish immigrants.

The center has about 350 members from as far as New York and Pennsylvania, but with many in Monmouth County from Manalapan, Englishtown and the surrounding area, Reyhan said. None reported noticing the flag, he said.

As for bin Laden, Reyhan said Turkey, too, has been living with the horrors of terrorist groups, “So we don’t want any terrorists in this world. We want nothing to do with them.”

I like how people just started "protesting" instead of making any attempt to contact someone in the building. There was no attempt at discussion. Just some patriotic circle jerk, stimulating one another's hatred for Muslims. I also like how this passes for "vigilance." The Turkish are known for nothing if not their deep anti-American views and radical Islamic philosophy. Someone has to keep tabs on them.

I'm going with the bin Laden suspicion. Everyone knows that Muslims are plotting a secret overthrow of the government, in the interest of establishing a Western Caliphate. This should definitely be viewed as nothing else than the second phase of what began on 9/11. Now that this flag has been flown upside down, there is no turning back. We will all be worshipping Allah in a matter of months, no doubt. Christmas is canceled.

Sickening - care packages for Troops

Oh, how I loathe the cult of the American military.

Don't worry, there's "no political message, whatsoever." I guess "we love you, keep fighting, whatever you are doing is fine, we worship you, what you are doing is worthwhile and full of purpose" is not political.

Again, the troops ARE the war. They don't plan it, but they carry it out. They're the tools in the box. The people high above them are just the architects. You know that Obama wouldn't go shooting it out in Afghanistan. If it were really his war, it would be over immediately. So, yeah, fuck the troops. They do all the dirty work. Taking orders is not an excuse. Let us remember, no one is being drafted. If you don't realize that invading and occupying someone's country is wrong, then you should realize that kicking in their doors, blowing up their houses, creating a life of war for them and terrorizing their families is. And if you don't, fuck you. You've surrendered your right to live. I don't care what happens to you. You're being shot at because you are an invader. What would you do if Iran invaded the U.S.?

The American heroes in Iraq or Afghanistan are the ones who refuse to fight or turn their weapons on their commanders. Or someone like Bradley Manning. Taking it down from the inside. Resisters. They get put in jail and are remembered as traitors or enemy sympathizers. What else could they be when everything is so black and white? There is only right and wrong, with us or against us. What about "we don't want any part"? That is not an option.

Looking at Barry Goldwater forty-five years later

Not a great guy. For example, he was brutally opposed to the Civil Rights Act.

Still, I would prefer this type of conservative greatly to those we have today.



At the time of the 1964 presidential campaign, people on the left, the entire range of the progressive/liberal/radical spectrum, viewed his potential election to office as some permutation of the second coming of Hitler. He was universally reviled, from people like Roy Wilkins, a man no one could ever argue was extreme, through the fledgling antiwar movement to radicals of all stripes, including Malcolm X, communists, socialists, anarchists and so on. Of course, this also includes Democrats.

What do we have now? A bunch of people who make him look like Bill Clinton - Bush. Bush II. Rumsfeld. Palin. Rand Paul and the entirety of the "Tea Party." These people fucking hate everything and everyone. At least Goldwater was readable. You know where he stood. This type of conservatism has largely died. I think people such as him are regarded as libertarians now, and substantially marginalized, fodder for late night talk show jokes. Conservatives vying for power now fashion themselves after Ronald Reagan, a man who was demonstrably and profoundly worse than Goldwater ever was. Goldwater reviled what conservatism had come to mean by the late 70s and early 80s. For the record, while not a supporter of gay rights, he also didn't oppose them - he thought it had nothing to do with the government. He hated the religious zealots who have become such a dominant force in our lives now.

It's no wonder that activism has died and drug use is high. What else could the people who fought against Goldwater in the 60s feel once they saw Reagan come into power and usher in a deep cultural conservatism that has been with us ever since? Talk about defeat.

One of the more offensive headlines I've read in quite some time

Not because of the subject matter, but because of what it proposes:

Maid's lawyer: IMF sex assault case no setup

The fact that this woman has to deny that she is collaborating with others to destroy this man is fucking appalling. Why does she have to deny this?

Because everyone knows that men don't really ever rape women and that for sure, powerful men don't do it. They don't have to, cause they already have what they want - money, material things, hot wives, whatever. Let's just forget that men like that develop an insatiable sense of entitlement and can never feel like they are adequately in control. It's always more, more, more, just like the drug addict.

Stupid women lying to destroy men.

Poor, poor men. Always the victims. It's hard being man.

Stupid bands (Jesuit) have stupid cover art (their discography)

Wow, so edgy. Women are evil and it's cool when they're dead. So original too. Let's go stab skinny bitches with big tits in the heart with knives and strip them except for high heels and some kind of lacy thing and wrap them in barbed wire and wait until they rot. It will be cool.

Here's their self-important description from Deathwish Magic Bullet:

JESUIT were an unrelenting, noisy hardcore band from Virginia Beach, VA. They existed from the mid-90′s up until the changing of the century. In their wake, they left a rather nice-sized dent in the intensely-PC witch-hunt/”safe space” era of DIY hardcore. Whereas events attributed to Charles Manson are often credited with bringing a savage and brutal end to the peace, love, and drug culture of the 60′s, events surrounding bands like JESUIT and GEHENNA not only elicited controversy at every tour stop, but pushed a movement toward hardcore finding its more violent, unpredictable, and entirely irreverent roots as the “Portlandia” cult of 90′s hardcore crashed to a halt.

Taking the old "controversy" route in an attempt to substitute for lack of substance. Style over substance, except I don't think Jesuit had that either. Zzzzzz....I like the part where they swipe at safe spaces (it's easy for men to not have to ever consider such a concept - what are those bitches crying about?) and refer to people trying to make their scene a better place, eradicating hateful manly shit as a "PC witch-hunt." Did Rush Limbaugh write this? Thanks to people like the men of Jesuit and their mentalities, hardcore is about as dumb as it ever was. Jacob Bannon, you should be ashamed.

In reality, this band was bad. I don't know anyone who ever liked them. They recently played a pointless reunion show and no one gave a FUCK that they were playing. For the whole time. People left when they played, I'm assuming cause the band was just that breathtakingly original. People went off for the band before them and the bands after them, but the room stood still when the mighty Jesuit played. I guess they were just awestruck.

I'm not one to talk about what hardcore is "really about." However, at the very least, hardcore has historically been a rejection of "them" and "out there." It's a counterculture, or was. Shit like this is just aping the mainstream to the fullest. It's just one more round in the never-ending hail of bullets coming at women the world over. It's not that I hold out any hope, in the least, for hardcore or punk to become some revolutionary, redemptive or even benevolent force (more to come on that in a later post), but I do want to take the time to point out how fucking shitty this record cover and the concomitant (lack of) thought process are. This is worse than a Motley Crue record. At least those guys liked women (as well as looked like them). This is the kind of thing one should expect from Avenged Sevenfold or  Buck Cherry. This has everything to do with the mainstream. This challenges nothing. Women are put down at every turn. Women are sexualized constantly. They are told they are not good enough. Let me help you with that. Their efforts are "cute." Their bodies are routinely violated with impunity. I'll kill you if you fight back. Daily media blitzkrieg sensory overload says you are fat. Don't try, because you will likely fail. Give it up. Just take it. Know your place. Slut. If that's what you're into, stay in the fucking bar where you and your numbingly mediocre band belong. Offending people is not hard. In this case, it was a replacement for having anything worthwhile or creative to say.

I guess this record cover is their last hurrah, their final go at those PC Police. WE'LL SHOW THEM. YOU CAN'T SILENCE JESUIT. Sorry I'm such a faggot guys. I bet you'd never call me a nigger though. Cause that's just not cool, right?

Aside from the thoroughly anti-woman, misogynistic theme and aesthetic, the "art" just sucks. It's fucking stupid. Super trashy. Who likes this shit? It's about as cool as this:

Edit: Oops on the Jacob Bannon tip. I saw this listed in the Deathwish store and assumed it was from them. Made sense, with Nate Newton and all. However, as a commenter pointed out, it's on Magic Bullet. In that case, Brent Eyestone should be ashamed.

Sons of Abraham

About 126 people in the world would find this funny.

North Korea's "Massive and Growing" prison population is about the same, percentage-wise, as America's

How about that. Amnesty International recently released a report that is supposed to be some kind of smashing expose on North Korea's prison system. The New York Times reported on it with a sensational headline that seems to ignore the problem at home. The thing is, their imprisonment rate of about 0.8 percent is pretty close to ours of about 0.8 percent (3 percent if you count people on probation or on parole). They have a population of about 24 million, with 200,000 in prison. We have a population of about 309 million, with 2.4 million in prison. Ours is the highest incarceration rate, by far, in the "developed" world. It too, is growing. I guess theirs is maybe the highest in the world, but only slightly. North Korea is not a place to which you want to be comparable. In any way. But here we are.

I guess the big difference is that our prisons are supposed to be civilized institutions. We tell ourselves that everything is very orderly, efficient and coldly impartial. At least some of us do. North Korea supposedly has people eating rats and worms, witnessing other inmates' executions. Maybe that is true, maybe it's not, maybe it's overstated.

Regardless, American prisons are not places you want to be. They are overcrowded by about 60 percent (The Economist says so, no liberal rag for sure). People with inappropriately long, mandatory sentences for non-violent crimes fill them. Prison is a place that can teach many how to be better criminals. This is what happens when you throw people in cells and make little effort to reform them, or give them sentences so long that they don't care what happens when they get out. There is not even a mask of reform in American prisons. Some can go to school, but nothing is required of anyone. Drugs are rampant. Violence is routine. Guards are often nasty and brutal. Sadists seek such positions. These are thankless jobs, to be sure. There is no argument analogous to the one that people sometimes use to justify being a police officer - "I want to help the community." Ha. You are surely helping no one in that prison. You just maintain control by varying degrees of coercion. That is the kind of job that rots you from the inside out, presuming that there was anything to rot initially.

Prisons in this country are often referred to as the new plantation. They are disproportionately black and brown, to the extent of 60 percent of the national prison population. Here, people can be coerced to work for as low as 5 cents an hour where they produce an astonishing array of goods, from meat to furniture to dentures and lingerie. They even come with their version of the Klan. No, not just guards, but the even more crude Aryan gangs. Race war behind bars. Talk about divide and conquer.

As for inhumanity, about 25,000 inmates at any given time are doing their bids in solitary confinement. They stay in their cells (which always have lights on) 23 hours per day; they are allowed one hour of solitary "exercise" on a small fenced in on all sides concrete slab. Their visiting privileges are severely curtailed and they interact with no one except guards, through a hole in the door. This is medieval, at best. In fact, the United States has entire prisons devoted to such conditions. Google "supermax."  In North Korean camps, people seem to be able to interact with one another. As you may imagine, long-term solitary confinement has a great potential to break you down. Unfortunately, it often does. Which brutality would you choose, the silent controlled one that tells you it is not brutal or the blatant version?

Finally, to address the contention that North Korea's prisons are packed with political offenders, I am sure that in such a fucked up place, people commit a good number of social crimes as well. Beyond that, America certainly has its political prisoners as well. Several of them are or have been high-profile over the years - Huey Newton, Assata Shakur, Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal - while many more languish in obscurity, cut off from friends and family, all but forgotten about. These are people like Herman Bell, Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa. Then there are the countless faceless individuals rounded up for peaceful mass protest at such events like national political conventions, World Bank meetings and antiwar demonstrations. No level of American government, local, state or national, will ever acknowledge this. The official American line is that we have no political prisoners here, only "bad guys." Though the $4.5 million that Los Angeles and the FBI had to pay out to Geronimo Pratt says otherwise.

University of Missouri - St. Louis reactionary firings

There is a scandal a-brewin down in St. Louis. Basically, hyper-conservative "blogger" and regressive zealot Andrew Breitbart took some video footage of labor history lectures from an instructor there and his collaborator, an instructor at the University of Missouri - Kansas City, edited the crap out of it, and came up with some finished products that profess to show the lecturers gleefully advocating violence to their students. Shouldn't be a big deal, cause the guy is a lunatic, but instead, the guy at St. Louis, (a registered Communist, I guess it's the 1950s) has been fired. The chancellor of the school forced him to resign. I wrote the chancellor (chancellor@umsl.edu) an email, imploring him to reconsider his utter failure to support academic freedom:

Dear Chancellor George,

   I am quite saddened and a bit scared by the fact that you are allowing a piece of shit like Andrew Breitbart to influence who is permitted to be on the faculty of your school. He has "exposed" nothing. This man is a nihilist whose mission is the destruction of all things "liberal." He is already facing one libel suit for getting a woman fired through his favorite tactic, selective video editing. I'm sure you realize that if you have enough words from someone's mouth, you can edit them to say just about whatever you like. He despises difference and demands that all heel to his ultraconservative line or else. Just look at the comments on his website in reaction to these videos - it is a bunch of people calling for the violent deaths of liberals and communists, attacking Muslims for no discernible reason and calling Obama a "National Socialist" and a "Fascist." In short, his followers are extremists. They are far, far right-wing radicals who fear everything they don't know. And they don't know much. They don't want to. He panders to these people, and to great success. When you bow to people like them, you give them strength and power. They are enemies of democracy, progress and freedom. They will come for us all one day, unless people in power demonstrate real leadership and courage and stand up to them. They need to be stopped in the interest of free speech and the exchange of ideas. They would dismantle higher education altogether if given the choice. Please do the right thing.

I doubt it will do much. He's already on the run, for no apparent reason. I guess a couple of governors going after unions and teachers (Google Scott Walker) have got him scared. Pretty unfortunate. To put things in perspective, Inside Higher Ed reports that

"Late Thursday afternoon, Gail Hackett, provost of the Kansas City campus, issued a statement that backed the instructors' description of the class, based on administrators' review so far of the 18 hours of available video (of which Breitbart's two excerpts are together under 15 minutes). "From the review completed to date, it is clear that edited videos posted on the Internet depict statements from the instructors in an inaccurate and distorted manner by taking their statements out of context and reordering the sequence in which those statements were actually made so as to change their meaning," Hackett said. "Such selective editing is disturbing and the release of students’ images without their permission is a violation of their privacy rights." (University officials assume that a student either gave Breitbart a copy of the video of the class or provided access.)"

Ms. Hackett seems to be much more reasonable than her counterpart at St. Louis, having actually reviewed the lectures in question and all. She wanted people on campus to examine what was going on, trying to determine the veracity of Breitbart's accusations, which should have been quite dubious from the start.

This guy Breitbart embraces the most base forms of hatred and anti-intellectualism, herding them up for his own power. The fools who follow him are just getting used and are totally oblivious. Reading the first page of the comments section on just the first video he posted is astonishing. It's all a bunch of people talking about guns, killing liberals, stocking up on ammunition, having gun avatars, hating Arabs/Muslims and one person who calls President Obama a "National Socialist." Insane. The internet is rife with them though, given its ability to empower anyone to display their breathtaking thoughtlessness for all to see. The problem here is that the Chancellor of the school is doing what they want. He is empowering them. I don't know if he thinks he will shut them up, or if he really cares. I guess he just wants it to go away. Now that they have one instructor's blood, they are hungry for more. I know this.

90s-influenced straight edge band

The 90s were a great time for music. Why have straight edge musicians not embraced this period? There is a wealth of material here to mine. Here are some examples:

XI Don't Mind Stealin BreadX

XHe Ain't Gonna DieX

XFaster Than a CannonballX
XFound out about YouX
XDo You Have to Let It LingerX

On the other hand, these are not acceptable:

XTwo PrincesX
XRun-AroundX
XAnts MarchingX

However, XStayX would be cool.

Please let me know if you are interested in pursuing something along these lines. I would be up for multiple coterminous bands.