Chomsky
There's a nice Chomsky interview HERE from Germany. Check it out. Topics include, propoganda model, why the Bush administration and the press hates democracy and more.
Friday, July 23, 2004
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Fear and Deja Vu on the Campaign trail 1972-2004
I just finished re-re-re-reading Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972. It's one of my favorite all time political books, really cutting through the bullshit and laying open that year's race with a clarity that is belied by Thompson's "crazy guy" public image. More than anything I think it should be required reading for everyone voting in this year's election.
Nothing. And I mean nothing has changed since 1972. It's the same shit, only this time, instead of getting the McGovern (the only comparison this year would be Kucinichor to a lesser degree Dean) we got Muskie (Kerry), the Old Party Hack that McGovern's candidacy, had he won, was supposed to signal the end of. See, in spite of recent argument to the contrary, the Democratic party has long had a problem with being afraid of what it is. It's the alternative to the Republican Party. At least on paper.
That means it's unabashedly liberal. It is concerned with people over profits. Change and radicalism over stagnancy and fearful conservatism. It hates big business. And if big labor becomes another form of big business it should hate big labor too. The Democratic Party, at least on paper is supposed to be captured by the term "democratic" which means, for the people.
John Kerry is Muskie. McGovern got his clock cleaned by Nixon not because he was a radical candidate but because he was perceived as going to the middle and because of the disastrous mistake that was picking Eagleton as his VP. He was choked off by his own indecision. If McGovern was running now, they would've played an audio cut of him clearing his throat or something until he was the laughing stock of the world. The thing that freaks me out is, in the past the candidates had to hang themselves. In '04 the media has demonstrated it can kill of candidates over nothing (Dean's WHoo-AAH) or by simply pretending they don't exist (Kucinich) It's like the very vehicles that McGovern used back in 72 are no longer available. And that's a shame.
because Kerry will probably lose too. For the same reason only from the opposite end. McGovern lost because he was perceived to be a maverick and then looked just like another politician by the way he handled Eagleton. As a result, no one came out to vote for him. Kerry's gonna have the same thing happen, only he IS just another politician and everybody knew it from the start. No one is gonna come out to vote for him. He's worthless. He stands for nothing. He might as well be a republican. Like Nixon, Bush is gonna lay low. If he wins re-election I would bet anyone (and give YOU odds) that Bush is going to be impeached by the end of his four years. If not, we ALL are gonna get what we deserve, an America that is little more than a shell. A Christian corporate hellhole with us as serfs.
If John Kerry wins. It'll just be a corporate hellhole. What a choice. What a bummer.
The more I think about it I'm just gonna vote NO this November. No to Bush. No to Kerry. Even No to Nader who's getting 10 percent of his funding from W's inner circle and still doesn't see that at this point he's working for the Republicans.
If you didn't understand the bulk of this particular entry, read the F&L '72. Like Orwell's 1984, it's the truth for today, written decades ago and it's proof that history goes in circles.
I just finished re-re-re-reading Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972. It's one of my favorite all time political books, really cutting through the bullshit and laying open that year's race with a clarity that is belied by Thompson's "crazy guy" public image. More than anything I think it should be required reading for everyone voting in this year's election.
Nothing. And I mean nothing has changed since 1972. It's the same shit, only this time, instead of getting the McGovern (the only comparison this year would be Kucinichor to a lesser degree Dean) we got Muskie (Kerry), the Old Party Hack that McGovern's candidacy, had he won, was supposed to signal the end of. See, in spite of recent argument to the contrary, the Democratic party has long had a problem with being afraid of what it is. It's the alternative to the Republican Party. At least on paper.
That means it's unabashedly liberal. It is concerned with people over profits. Change and radicalism over stagnancy and fearful conservatism. It hates big business. And if big labor becomes another form of big business it should hate big labor too. The Democratic Party, at least on paper is supposed to be captured by the term "democratic" which means, for the people.
John Kerry is Muskie. McGovern got his clock cleaned by Nixon not because he was a radical candidate but because he was perceived as going to the middle and because of the disastrous mistake that was picking Eagleton as his VP. He was choked off by his own indecision. If McGovern was running now, they would've played an audio cut of him clearing his throat or something until he was the laughing stock of the world. The thing that freaks me out is, in the past the candidates had to hang themselves. In '04 the media has demonstrated it can kill of candidates over nothing (Dean's WHoo-AAH) or by simply pretending they don't exist (Kucinich) It's like the very vehicles that McGovern used back in 72 are no longer available. And that's a shame.
because Kerry will probably lose too. For the same reason only from the opposite end. McGovern lost because he was perceived to be a maverick and then looked just like another politician by the way he handled Eagleton. As a result, no one came out to vote for him. Kerry's gonna have the same thing happen, only he IS just another politician and everybody knew it from the start. No one is gonna come out to vote for him. He's worthless. He stands for nothing. He might as well be a republican. Like Nixon, Bush is gonna lay low. If he wins re-election I would bet anyone (and give YOU odds) that Bush is going to be impeached by the end of his four years. If not, we ALL are gonna get what we deserve, an America that is little more than a shell. A Christian corporate hellhole with us as serfs.
If John Kerry wins. It'll just be a corporate hellhole. What a choice. What a bummer.
The more I think about it I'm just gonna vote NO this November. No to Bush. No to Kerry. Even No to Nader who's getting 10 percent of his funding from W's inner circle and still doesn't see that at this point he's working for the Republicans.
If you didn't understand the bulk of this particular entry, read the F&L '72. Like Orwell's 1984, it's the truth for today, written decades ago and it's proof that history goes in circles.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
“ALL GOOD GOES BAD”
William Hrdina
Commentary about the lot scene at the All-Good Music Festival 2004 at Marvin’s Mountaintop in Masontown, West Virginia.
July 9-11, 2004
I could write exclusively about all the positive aspects of the 8th Annual All Good Music Festival because there were a bunch. The grounds were beautiful- snuggled in the hills of West Virginia maybe 15 miles off the highway. The weather, infamously terrible for the past seven years, decided to cooperate and it didn’t rain until late Sunday night. The music was absolutely first-rate with Keller Williams, Medeski, Martin, and Wood, Dark Star Orchestra, the Grey Boy All Stars, and a whole bunch more. There was a Family area right next to the stage where people with children could camp without having to drag their toddlers a half-mile back and forth to the venue. On Sunday afternoon, when it got hot, the organizers started selling water for a buck out of the concession stand- a rare show of kindness in our modern corporate wonderland. All in all, I would say the organizers at Walther Productions did an absolutely fantastic job.
But there’s another side to the story. Dark and violent vibes were coursing under our feet, unseen until they lashed out in a single act of violence so heinous it put a pall not only over the festival, but my entire summer.
In the midst of what was otherwise a very enjoyable festival I had the dubious distinction of being an eye-witness to a very nasty pistol-whipping; possibly a murder. I never got word if the kid who got hit died and I haven’t been able to find any mention of the incident in the papers. I hope he’s OK, but I worked in an ICU for 3 years and if the kid can still spell his name I admit I’d be surprised.
Before you get feeling too sorry for this guy, you should know; he brought the gun he was pistol-whipped with.
I was sitting on the side of the road, selling my sci-fi novel Portal when I saw six guys walking behind another guy who appeared to be completely alone. It was immediately clear from everyone’s body language the six guys were pissed at the one guy, and the one guy, hunched over and walking fast- certainly wasn’t presenting himself as aggressive in any way. My first reaction was “What are these assholes doing?” My sympathy was with the guy walking alone. Six against one isn’t a fair fight in anyone’s book.
Then I began to hear what the six guys were saying and my anger turned to confusion.
“What the fuck are you doing with that gun on the lot man?”
“No guns on lot.”
“Why you got a gun motherfucker?”
Around this time the kid was passed directly in front of me and I got a clear look into his pocket. There really was a gun there. The matte-black rubber handle stuck out just a little bit. I remember thinking at the time, “I wonder what on earth possessed this guy to bring a gun to a show?”
The kid with the gun looked really scared. He kept repeating, “Leave me alone. I just want to leave. I’m leaving.”
Around this same time the language of the 6 increasingly frantic guys started to get a great deal more threatening.
“Give up the gun asshole.”
“Give us the gun motherfucker or we’re gonna kick the shit out of you.”
That did it. I knew at that moment something really savage was about to go down. The worst thing you can do to an outnumbered guy with superior firepower is back him into a corner. In another testament to the fact this kid wasn’t about starting a confrontation- he tried to run when the threats of violence started. He didn’t make it far, the six guys chased him and before I could even turn around in my chair to see what was happening the 6 guys were kicking the hell out of the guy with the gun. It was like Rodney King with feet instead of batons.
I clearly remember one guy yelling, “Someone take his gun. Take his gun.” He couldn’t take the gun himself because he was busy: kicking this kid in the head.
By this point I wasn’t sure who I wanted to have the gun less, the kid, who was by himself; or these crazy-violent morons who seemed hell-bent on getting somebody shot in the name of not having weapons on the lot. The irony was lost on me at the time. I knew they should’ve done what I was trying to do in the midst of keeping a close eye on what was happening, they should’ve yelled for Security, or even been smarter and got security on the sly. Instead they had to be heroes in their own puny minds and do the one thing that almost guaranteed something bad would happen. In a lot of ways they were just reflecting our culture, aping George W. by overreacting to a perceived threat that didn’t really exist. I don’t know the kid who had the gun, but from his demeanor and the way everything went down, I really doubt that stupid gun ever would’ve seen the light of day if those 6 guys would’ve used their heads.
After about ten seconds of getting kicked the kid with the gun managed to get to his feet. His face was a mixture of anger, pain, and most clearly, pure animal terror. Predictably, he went into his pocket and pulled out the gun. What happened next really shocked me. In what would’ve been a neat trick under very different circumstances, the kid closest to the gun reached out and yanked it out of the other kid’s hand like he was stealing candy from a kid on Halloween. You almost expected the guy to yell, “Yoink!”
It could’ve been over then.
Instead, the new guy with the gun turned it around so that he was holding it by the cylinder. He reached back behind his head and took a full swing at the newly disarmed guy’s head. The gun made contact pretty much right between the kid’s eyes. There was a corresponding crack/thud of metal on bone and blood began to flow. The pistol whipped and the pistol whipper then ran off in opposite directions. The entire incident took maybe 25-30 seconds from start to finish.
One minute I was having a very nice time, the next I was just happy to be walking away without any bullet holes in my body. On the grand-scale of violence, what I saw at All Good wasn’t really that big a deal. After all, no one was actually shot, so things went a lot better than one could’ve reasonably expected. But that’s out in the world. I wasn’t out in the world. I was at a show.
“We are,” as Jamie Masefield of the Jazz Mandolin Project said on the second day, “…like a secret society. We come out to these places out in the hills and just do our thing and it’s the greatest thing in the world.”
He’s right. But, the problem is, the wrong sort of folks are starting to find out about the password into our post-modern version of the Masons. They’re getting in with words like, “molly” and “coke” instead of Icculus or Gamehenge. Music doesn’t have a thing to do with why the hard-drug dealers are at the shows. They’re at the show to make a lot of money and that’s it. Gang-style violence and bullshit is inevitably going to follow. Once the first shooting happens, and we are on a definitive curve in that direction, it’s gonna be too late. Frankly, I resent the fact I had to witness these morons and their bullshit. I don’t particularly feel sorry for the kid with the gun- he shouldn’t of been carrying it, and even though I think they’re total morons- I don’t particularly blame the kid’s who tried to take the gun away. If I was a complete imbecile I probably would’ve done the same thing.
I don’t know why the kid brought the gun in the first place any more than I know how the six kids who beat the shit out of him found out he had the thing. But I’ve thought about the entire incident a lot and I think I can make a pretty good guess.
First, reasons the kid wouldn’t use for bringing the gun. It wasn’t self defense. If it was in any way reasonable to think you’d need a gun at a show this single act of violence wouldn’t be so shocking. It wasn’t because the guy was some aggressive bad-ass who shot people for screwing up his order at the drive-through. Those sorts of people don’t need to be kicked in the face to spur them into pulling out their pistol, and besides, he tried to run away; that’s just not what a bad-ass guy does.
Maybe the kid had a violent past and carried a gun out of a deep seated sense of paranoia. Possible, but unlikely. The most coherent reason a guy like the one I saw would carry a gun, is because he was dealing either Molly- so called molecular MDMA, cocaine, or heroin. Most likely it was coke. Unlike pot or mushrooms, you can carry highly valuable amounts of the powder drugs in your shorts pocket. Because hard drug dealers generally work on a fronted basis, if the drugs get taken from you, someone’s gonna want their money. Thus, the gun.
If the kid was, in fact, a dealer, it would also give a likely reason how the 6 guys found out about the gun. Maybe they bought some weight and the kid accidentally showed the gun in the transaction. Maybe one of their buddies saw it under the same conditions and passed the word along.
Anyone who’s seen a few shows this summer has noticed the ridiculous increase in hard drugs on the lot. I think it’s important to point out I’m not talking about pot or the hallucinogenic. I’m talking about the narcotics and the bath-tub drugs. I’ve even seen and heard an increase in “pharmies.” Come on people, that’s Rush Limbaugh’s trip. You want to do the drugs he does?
Let me break it down for you:
Hard Drugs à Much Money
Much Money àDrug Dealers who don’t give a flying hoo-hoo about music coming to our shows
{[(Drug Dealers) + (Much Money)] + Large Market of buyers} à Pistol Whippings and mayhem
Pistol Whipping and Mayhem à The death of the scene and nothing but Christina Aguilera on the radio to listen to.
The solution?
Don’t buy your hard drugs at shows. If you have to do Coke, get it from your dealer at home. It’s that simple.
It’s like shopping at Wal-Mart. Sure it’s convenient, the prices may even be cheaper, but those benefits don’t come without a flip-side, and that flip-side is packing guns and acting like total morons. Most importantly, that flip-side couldn’t give a shit less about the music, and when that crucial ingredient is missing, you get the Dead at Deer Creek in ’95. You get the disaster that was Corporate Woodstock. And in spite of a nearly perfect effort by the organizers and musicians at All Good, you get pistol-whippings and fights.
We don’t need cops. We don’t need anal searches or John Ashcroft. This is a self-restraint issue. The Lot is sacred, I know I’m not alone in feeling that my church and my God are best expressed in the music I see at shows and the kindness and coolness I see from people in the lot. I don’t want to lose that to a bunch of strung out shitheads or the leeches who supply them.
I’m not the only one who sees the dark clouds on the horizon. In Trey’s “Why Phish is breaking up for good” interview with Charlie Rose the following exchange took place:
CHARLIE ROSE: What do you regret about what Phish was and what it became and what it is, and if you look from the beginning to this last concert that will come up...
TREY ANASTASIO: OK. Do you want my honest opinion about that? I think you do. I`ll tell you what I regret. What I regret is that -- I don`t regret it, but I feel like in the last couple of years it started to become an excuse for people to show up in a given town and party. And it never was that for such a long time.
Our scene thrives because of the music not because of the drugs. If you’re at a show to get loaded first and see a concert second, do me a favor- stay home. You can watch the DVD and I don’t have to get shot.
William Hrdina
Commentary about the lot scene at the All-Good Music Festival 2004 at Marvin’s Mountaintop in Masontown, West Virginia.
July 9-11, 2004
I could write exclusively about all the positive aspects of the 8th Annual All Good Music Festival because there were a bunch. The grounds were beautiful- snuggled in the hills of West Virginia maybe 15 miles off the highway. The weather, infamously terrible for the past seven years, decided to cooperate and it didn’t rain until late Sunday night. The music was absolutely first-rate with Keller Williams, Medeski, Martin, and Wood, Dark Star Orchestra, the Grey Boy All Stars, and a whole bunch more. There was a Family area right next to the stage where people with children could camp without having to drag their toddlers a half-mile back and forth to the venue. On Sunday afternoon, when it got hot, the organizers started selling water for a buck out of the concession stand- a rare show of kindness in our modern corporate wonderland. All in all, I would say the organizers at Walther Productions did an absolutely fantastic job.
But there’s another side to the story. Dark and violent vibes were coursing under our feet, unseen until they lashed out in a single act of violence so heinous it put a pall not only over the festival, but my entire summer.
In the midst of what was otherwise a very enjoyable festival I had the dubious distinction of being an eye-witness to a very nasty pistol-whipping; possibly a murder. I never got word if the kid who got hit died and I haven’t been able to find any mention of the incident in the papers. I hope he’s OK, but I worked in an ICU for 3 years and if the kid can still spell his name I admit I’d be surprised.
Before you get feeling too sorry for this guy, you should know; he brought the gun he was pistol-whipped with.
I was sitting on the side of the road, selling my sci-fi novel Portal when I saw six guys walking behind another guy who appeared to be completely alone. It was immediately clear from everyone’s body language the six guys were pissed at the one guy, and the one guy, hunched over and walking fast- certainly wasn’t presenting himself as aggressive in any way. My first reaction was “What are these assholes doing?” My sympathy was with the guy walking alone. Six against one isn’t a fair fight in anyone’s book.
Then I began to hear what the six guys were saying and my anger turned to confusion.
“What the fuck are you doing with that gun on the lot man?”
“No guns on lot.”
“Why you got a gun motherfucker?”
Around this time the kid was passed directly in front of me and I got a clear look into his pocket. There really was a gun there. The matte-black rubber handle stuck out just a little bit. I remember thinking at the time, “I wonder what on earth possessed this guy to bring a gun to a show?”
The kid with the gun looked really scared. He kept repeating, “Leave me alone. I just want to leave. I’m leaving.”
Around this same time the language of the 6 increasingly frantic guys started to get a great deal more threatening.
“Give up the gun asshole.”
“Give us the gun motherfucker or we’re gonna kick the shit out of you.”
That did it. I knew at that moment something really savage was about to go down. The worst thing you can do to an outnumbered guy with superior firepower is back him into a corner. In another testament to the fact this kid wasn’t about starting a confrontation- he tried to run when the threats of violence started. He didn’t make it far, the six guys chased him and before I could even turn around in my chair to see what was happening the 6 guys were kicking the hell out of the guy with the gun. It was like Rodney King with feet instead of batons.
I clearly remember one guy yelling, “Someone take his gun. Take his gun.” He couldn’t take the gun himself because he was busy: kicking this kid in the head.
By this point I wasn’t sure who I wanted to have the gun less, the kid, who was by himself; or these crazy-violent morons who seemed hell-bent on getting somebody shot in the name of not having weapons on the lot. The irony was lost on me at the time. I knew they should’ve done what I was trying to do in the midst of keeping a close eye on what was happening, they should’ve yelled for Security, or even been smarter and got security on the sly. Instead they had to be heroes in their own puny minds and do the one thing that almost guaranteed something bad would happen. In a lot of ways they were just reflecting our culture, aping George W. by overreacting to a perceived threat that didn’t really exist. I don’t know the kid who had the gun, but from his demeanor and the way everything went down, I really doubt that stupid gun ever would’ve seen the light of day if those 6 guys would’ve used their heads.
After about ten seconds of getting kicked the kid with the gun managed to get to his feet. His face was a mixture of anger, pain, and most clearly, pure animal terror. Predictably, he went into his pocket and pulled out the gun. What happened next really shocked me. In what would’ve been a neat trick under very different circumstances, the kid closest to the gun reached out and yanked it out of the other kid’s hand like he was stealing candy from a kid on Halloween. You almost expected the guy to yell, “Yoink!”
It could’ve been over then.
Instead, the new guy with the gun turned it around so that he was holding it by the cylinder. He reached back behind his head and took a full swing at the newly disarmed guy’s head. The gun made contact pretty much right between the kid’s eyes. There was a corresponding crack/thud of metal on bone and blood began to flow. The pistol whipped and the pistol whipper then ran off in opposite directions. The entire incident took maybe 25-30 seconds from start to finish.
One minute I was having a very nice time, the next I was just happy to be walking away without any bullet holes in my body. On the grand-scale of violence, what I saw at All Good wasn’t really that big a deal. After all, no one was actually shot, so things went a lot better than one could’ve reasonably expected. But that’s out in the world. I wasn’t out in the world. I was at a show.
“We are,” as Jamie Masefield of the Jazz Mandolin Project said on the second day, “…like a secret society. We come out to these places out in the hills and just do our thing and it’s the greatest thing in the world.”
He’s right. But, the problem is, the wrong sort of folks are starting to find out about the password into our post-modern version of the Masons. They’re getting in with words like, “molly” and “coke” instead of Icculus or Gamehenge. Music doesn’t have a thing to do with why the hard-drug dealers are at the shows. They’re at the show to make a lot of money and that’s it. Gang-style violence and bullshit is inevitably going to follow. Once the first shooting happens, and we are on a definitive curve in that direction, it’s gonna be too late. Frankly, I resent the fact I had to witness these morons and their bullshit. I don’t particularly feel sorry for the kid with the gun- he shouldn’t of been carrying it, and even though I think they’re total morons- I don’t particularly blame the kid’s who tried to take the gun away. If I was a complete imbecile I probably would’ve done the same thing.
I don’t know why the kid brought the gun in the first place any more than I know how the six kids who beat the shit out of him found out he had the thing. But I’ve thought about the entire incident a lot and I think I can make a pretty good guess.
First, reasons the kid wouldn’t use for bringing the gun. It wasn’t self defense. If it was in any way reasonable to think you’d need a gun at a show this single act of violence wouldn’t be so shocking. It wasn’t because the guy was some aggressive bad-ass who shot people for screwing up his order at the drive-through. Those sorts of people don’t need to be kicked in the face to spur them into pulling out their pistol, and besides, he tried to run away; that’s just not what a bad-ass guy does.
Maybe the kid had a violent past and carried a gun out of a deep seated sense of paranoia. Possible, but unlikely. The most coherent reason a guy like the one I saw would carry a gun, is because he was dealing either Molly- so called molecular MDMA, cocaine, or heroin. Most likely it was coke. Unlike pot or mushrooms, you can carry highly valuable amounts of the powder drugs in your shorts pocket. Because hard drug dealers generally work on a fronted basis, if the drugs get taken from you, someone’s gonna want their money. Thus, the gun.
If the kid was, in fact, a dealer, it would also give a likely reason how the 6 guys found out about the gun. Maybe they bought some weight and the kid accidentally showed the gun in the transaction. Maybe one of their buddies saw it under the same conditions and passed the word along.
Anyone who’s seen a few shows this summer has noticed the ridiculous increase in hard drugs on the lot. I think it’s important to point out I’m not talking about pot or the hallucinogenic. I’m talking about the narcotics and the bath-tub drugs. I’ve even seen and heard an increase in “pharmies.” Come on people, that’s Rush Limbaugh’s trip. You want to do the drugs he does?
Let me break it down for you:
Hard Drugs à Much Money
Much Money àDrug Dealers who don’t give a flying hoo-hoo about music coming to our shows
{[(Drug Dealers) + (Much Money)] + Large Market of buyers} à Pistol Whippings and mayhem
Pistol Whipping and Mayhem à The death of the scene and nothing but Christina Aguilera on the radio to listen to.
The solution?
Don’t buy your hard drugs at shows. If you have to do Coke, get it from your dealer at home. It’s that simple.
It’s like shopping at Wal-Mart. Sure it’s convenient, the prices may even be cheaper, but those benefits don’t come without a flip-side, and that flip-side is packing guns and acting like total morons. Most importantly, that flip-side couldn’t give a shit less about the music, and when that crucial ingredient is missing, you get the Dead at Deer Creek in ’95. You get the disaster that was Corporate Woodstock. And in spite of a nearly perfect effort by the organizers and musicians at All Good, you get pistol-whippings and fights.
We don’t need cops. We don’t need anal searches or John Ashcroft. This is a self-restraint issue. The Lot is sacred, I know I’m not alone in feeling that my church and my God are best expressed in the music I see at shows and the kindness and coolness I see from people in the lot. I don’t want to lose that to a bunch of strung out shitheads or the leeches who supply them.
I’m not the only one who sees the dark clouds on the horizon. In Trey’s “Why Phish is breaking up for good” interview with Charlie Rose the following exchange took place:
CHARLIE ROSE: What do you regret about what Phish was and what it became and what it is, and if you look from the beginning to this last concert that will come up...
TREY ANASTASIO: OK. Do you want my honest opinion about that? I think you do. I`ll tell you what I regret. What I regret is that -- I don`t regret it, but I feel like in the last couple of years it started to become an excuse for people to show up in a given town and party. And it never was that for such a long time.
Our scene thrives because of the music not because of the drugs. If you’re at a show to get loaded first and see a concert second, do me a favor- stay home. You can watch the DVD and I don’t have to get shot.
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