In 1972, Randy Newman put out an album called Sail Away and on it was the song Political Science -- the blackly humourous railing of a patriotic American against the state of the world and the negative perception held by the rest of the inhabitants of the planet about his "great" nation:

Randy Newman - Political Science (1.87 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Here're the lyrics, in case you're hard of hearing:

No one likes us-I don't know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let's drop the big one and see what happens

We give them money-but are they grateful?
No, they're spiteful and they're hateful
They don't respect us-so let's surprise them
We'll drop the big one and pulverize them

Asia's crowded and Europe's too old
Africa is far too hot
And Canada's too cold
And South America stole our name
Let's drop the big one
There'll be no one left to blame us

We'll save Australia
Don't wanna hurt no kangaroo
We'll build an All American amusement park there
They got surfin', too

Boom goes London and boom Paris
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it will be
We'll set everybody free
You'll wear a Japanese kimono
And there'll be Italian shoes for me

They all hate us anyhow
So let's drop the big one now
Let's drop the big one now

Comical stuff, huh. Laugh? I nearly cried.

So today's comment to America, the so-called "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave": 35 years later, do you think anyone likes you any more? Any less? Got any ideas why?

Labels: freedom-hating, misanthropy, music

Fuck me, it just gets better and better. Appalled to read on Uncommon Sense that apparently, lethal force can be used by cops in America to end low-speed chases that follow from minor traffic infractions.

Appeals Court Authorizes Lethal Force in Low Speed Chases
A cop got away with murdering a motorcycle rider -- by chasing him down, ramming him and then driving over him when he refused to stop.

After turning onto Mount Shepherd Road, however, Deputy Sheriff Rodney Coe rammed the motorcycle a second time, knocking Gerald "Tiny" Abney off his bike and killing him. Abney's family filed a lawsuit claiming Coe used unreasonable force. In its July decision, the federal appeals court rejected the family's argument by asserting the low-speed chase was, in fact, dangerous.

Awesome. Truly awesome. "Don't Ram Me, Bro!"

Labels: freedom-hating, misanthropy

We've had Albert Kuvezin and Yat Kha, his Tuvan throat-singing rock band, before -- but that's no reason not to have him again.

Albert Kuvezin and Yat Kha - Orgasmatron (1.76 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Like I said:

.. at least is as comical as a drunk Irish pub band featuring a retarded Rumanian vampire/Dr. Frank-N-Furter-wannabe on vocals. Or something ..

...

And now for the rest of the news:

"Don't Tase Me, Bro!"
University of Florida student Andrew Meyer barges in line to harangue Massachusetts senator John Kerry during a campus talk that day; he refuses to pipe down after being asked to by the forum's organizers, police haul him off, force him to the ground and taser him.

Tom: Someone (I think it was either Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert) apparently described the incident as "a unique combination of police brutality and student douchebaggery". While it's an appalling example of the taser-happiness of the US police (here's another example: a guy tasered for the unforgivable crime of riding a bike), it's hard not to be reminded of Eric Idle in The Holy Grail: "Help, I'm being oppressed!", "Come see the violence inherent in the system!"

God Bless America!

Art or Bio-Terrorism? Justice Department makes big mistake
When a New York professor called 911 for his wife's heart attack, they mistook his science equipment for bioterrorism supplies. He was detained for 22 hours, they cordoned off his block, and searched his house in hazmat suits. When they realized there was nothing harmful there, they decided to prosecute him for "mail fraud" for buying the supplies!

No, god Bless America!

...

Busty tourist 'humiliated' at casino
A night of celebration turned to humiliation when an English tourist's "offensive" breasts upset fellow punters at the Christchurch Casino.

In all seriousness, though, DO bless women with colossal boobs -- god knows they don't have an easy time of it.

...

There's been another installment by The Commonsense Nihilist to his graphic novel, as well as some more notes.

Labels: comix, freedom-hating, Friday farce, misanthropy, music

Street poet Gil Scott-Heron (wikipedia) gets a lot of props for being a right-on brother and so on; his 'song' The Revolution will not be Televised is played and covered and referenced and quoted often, and rightly so -- it's a cute li'l slice of invective -- although to be honest it has become a little too much like a Ché Guevera tshirt/poster to carry too much cultural significance any more.

The album that track is taken from -- Small Talk at 125th and Lennox (allmusic) -- was recorded live in a New York nightclub with only bongos and conga as backing, and it's regarded as "a volcanic upheaval of intellectualism and social critique". However it is blighted by the inclusion of a stupid, confused, and rancidly homophobic track called The Subject Was Faggots.

Gil Scott-Heron - The Subject Was Faggots (1.91 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using player below)

...

A guy called Chris Crocker got pretty (in)famous pretty damn quick for his Youtube video slating the critics of Britney Spears after her MTV VMAs debacle.



God, check out some of those comments. 40 years older, nothing's changed. (It was even worse in the comments on the follow-up video, which was pulled down by Chris after only a few hours.) And even worse was that when Fox news covered it, a good deal of time was spent making derogatory remarks about Chris' sexual androgeny.

My comment to America, the so-called "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave": shut the fuck up about freedom, until gay people are safe from your hateful "freedom-loving" "christian" "patriots".

...

Check out and even download the Gil Scott-Heron album here.

Labels: christian-baiting, freedom-hating, Friday farce, misanthropy, music, youtube

From Scoop -- Twenty-Two Things We Now Know Six Years After 9/11.

I've summarised the article; the actual text is much more thorough. Read it at your own peril; sometimes ignorance really is bliss.


1. Iraq Plan Preceeded 9/11
Planning for an attack on Iraq already had begun at the first cabinet meetings after Inauguration Day in early 2001; after 9/11, those plans proceeded apace...
2. Unanswered 9/11 Questions
There still are unanswered questions about the horrific events of September 11, 2001...
3. The Facts of 9/11
Bush & Co. had to be dragged kicking and screaming into agreeing to the appointment of the official 9/11 Commission, and they named one of their own 'made' men as the executive director...
4. PNAC & the Neo-Cons
The key neo-con leaders in charge of U.S. foreign/military policy were founders of, and affiliated with, The Project for The New American Century (PNAC), a Far Right segment of the conservative movement was dedicated to using America's sole superpower status to move aggressively in the world while, they believed, no other country or international force could put up much resistance...

The Iraq Invasion and Occupation
5. Sexing Up the Intel
Among the first moves by Rumsfeld following 9/11 was to somehow try to connect Saddam to the terror attacks. The various intelligence agencies reported to Rumsfeld that there was no Iraq connection to 9/11, and that it was an al-Qaida operation, but those findings were merely bothersome impediments...
6. The Big Lie & the Downing Street Revelations
Advisers warned Tony Blair that he was about to involve the U.K. in an illegal, immoral and probably unwinnable war that would put U.K. and U.S. troops in great danger from potential insurgent forces...
7. Iran Is Beneficiary of U.S. Policy
The real reasons for invading Iraq were to do with American geopolitical goals in the region involving oil, control, support for its ally Israel, hardened military bases and keeping Iran from having free rein in the region.
8. Iraq As a Disaster Zone
Bush's war in Iraq has been a thorough disaster, built on a foundation of lies, and bungled from the start...
9. The Stretched-Thin Military
Bush's Middle East agenda is suffering because the U.S. military is spread way thin in Afghanistan and Iraq, the desertion and suicide rates are high, soldiers are not re-enlisting at the usual clip, recruitment isn't working and deceptive scams are being used to lure youngsters into signing up. In short, there are no forces to spare on the ground...
10. Hiding Facts from the Public

11. Perilously Close to Dictatorship
Legal philosophies devised that permit Bush to do pretty much what he wants -- ignore laws on the books, disappear U.S. citizens into military prisons, authorize torture, spy on citizens' phone calls and emails, declare martial law and rule by decree, etc. -- whenever he says he's acting as "commander-in-chief" during "wartime"...
12. Torture As Official U.S. Policy
Bush-loyalist lawyers devised legal rationales that make torture of suspects official state policy, greatly widened the definition of what is acceptable interrogation practice -- basically anything this side of death or terminally abusing internal organs -- and authorized the "rendering" of key suspects to countries specializing in extreme torture...
13. The Bill of Rights Goes "Quaint"
The Bush Administration has been able to obtain whatever legislation it needs in its self-proclaimed "war on terror" by utilizing, and hyping, the understandable fright of the American people...
14. Outing CIA Agents for Political Reasons
The Bush Administration, for its own crass political reasons, compromised American national security by revealing the identity of two key intelligence operatives...
15. Do You Know If Your Vote Is Counted?
Sophisticated statistical analysis along with wide-scale exit-polling suggests strongly that the 2004 election results were fiddled with by the private companies that tally the votes -- companies which are owned by far-right Republican supporters...
16. No Privacy Anymore
Shortly after 9/11, CheneyBush authorized massive data-mining of Americans' phone calls and emails, along with other domestic spying operations, many of them in clear violation of the FISA law establishing a separate, secret court to rule on requests for eavesdropping warrants...
17. Purging the Body Politic
CheneyBush, angered by the unwillingness of the intelligence analysts at the CIA and State Department to cook the intel books for political reasons, conducted purges of recalcitrant analysts at CIA and State...
18. There Is No Real Economic Plan
The Bush Administration paid off its backers (and itself) by giving humongous tax breaks, for the next 10 years, to the already wealthy and to large corporations. In addition, corporate tax-evasion was made easier via offshore listings and by laying off thousands of IRS auditors of high-end returns...
19. Drowning Government In a Bathtub
The HardRight conservatives who control Bush policy don't really care what kind of debt and deficits their policies cause; in some ways, the more the better since they want to shrink government "down to the size where they can drown it in the bathtub"...
20. Privatizing Government Functions
In addition to trying to privatize Social Security and other government programs, CheneyBush have begun privatizing the military, partially through its all-volunteer army and by employing mercenaries ("independent contractors")...
21. Who Cares What You Drink or Breathe?
Bush environmental policy is an unmitigated disaster, giving pretty much free rein to corporations whose bottom lines do better when they don't have to pay attention to the public interest...
22. It's Faith Over Science, Myth Over Reality
How science is disregarded by the Bush Administration in favor of faith-based thinking...

I really, really do not want this horrowshow to be anywhere even approaching the truth.

Labels: freedom-hating, misanthropy

I wondered how long it would be before I saw some kind of 9/11 culture-jamming:



As it happens, it wasn't very long at all.

It was a beautiful spring day just like today -- and a Tuesday, too -- that six years ago I wandered down Aurora Tce and into the Terrace post office to post some LPs to the USA, and had to get the increasingly incredulous (!) shop-assistant to spell out why there would be unforeseen delays in getting the parcels to their destination. And then hurried home again, to spend the next few hours watching people jumping out of tall buildings; and so on.

And believe it or not, it was an utter coincidence that yesterday I posted some song-lyrics containing the following:

They wanna have a war to keep us on our knees
They wanna have a war to keep their factories
They wanna have a war to stop us buying Japanese
They wanna have a war to stop industrial disease
They're pointing out the enemy to keep you deaf and blind
They wanna sap your energy incarcerate your mind

... which frankly I find quite uncanny.

Labels: freedom-hating, miscellany, photos

More about the Judas Priest suicide thing..... on the left is how Ray Balknap and James Vance looked some time prior to this:

Two days before Christmas in 1985, 20-year-old James and 18-year-old Raymond Belknap spent hours listening to Stained Class in Raymond's room. They drank a twelve-pack of beer and smoked marijuana. They made a suicide pact, then went on a rampage, tearing at the room's walls and smashing belongings.

"The only things not broken in the room were the turntable and the albums," says Phyllis Vance.

Near dusk, the two went to the playground of a local church with Raymond's sawed-off 12-guage shotgun. Raymond Belknap, seated on a merry-go-round, placed the end of the shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger, killing himself. A few minutes later, James pointed the same gun at his chin and fired. Somehow, the blast missed his brain and he lived.

On the right is what James looked like after surgeons had tried (and failed) to reconstruct his face.

Apparently he would ride his bicycle around town shocking people with his grotesque disfigurement. He later died in somewhat mysterious circumstances before the trial reached court.

Somewhere in the middle of this colossal page (scroll down to JULY 1990: Metal on trial), there's a comprehensive and entertaining account of the trial.

Some choice quotes:

It was originally about the track Heroes End - they tried to say the band were saying you could only be a hero if you killed yourself, till I had to give them the correct lyrics which is "why do heroes have to die?"... Then they changed their plea to subliminal messages on the album.

We had to sit in this courtroom in Reno for six weeks. It was like Disneyworld. We had no idea what a subliminal message was - it was just a combination of some weird guitar sounds, and the way I exhaled between lyrics. I had to sing Better by You, Better Than Me in court, a cappella. I think that was when the judge thought, "What am I doing here? No band goes out of its way to kill its fans".

It's a sad that two people died -- even though they wanted it that way -- but it's quite offensive that these retarded Americans tried to hoist blame on to someone else. Americans and Christians should fuck off and leave heavy metal alone. Bah.

Labels: christian-baiting, freedom-hating, misanthropy

I was trying to remain calm and positive in the face of reports from the U.S. that (1) Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama warned that he'd invade Pakistan in order to strike against al Qaeda, and (2) congressman Tom Tancredo suggested that the U.S. should "take out" Islamic holy sites, including Mecca. Way to go, retards. Way to stir up the ol' hornets nest even more. Could you guys just fuck off and leave the rest of us to get on with it? D'ya think?


I was struggling to remain chipper despite the encouraging reports that Venezuelan prez Hugo Chavez is continuing his peaceful economic revolution, and gathering support from other nations in the process. Holy shit. Harvesting a country's natural mineral wealth and, umm, funneling the proceeds back into the betterment and sustenance of the country and it's population? Outrageous.


I was fighting -- and failing -- to quell the urge to be WAY impressed at the Commonsense Nihilist's new project, a graphic novel involving himself, several artistic heroes, a time machine, and changing the course of history -- including the discovery of America. Not only does his idea rule, but he said he's going to do something and bugger me if he doesn't up and go and do it. Inspirational.

So it's not all bad news, is it.

Labels: comix, freedom-hating, heroes, misanthropy

He's popped off to the planet Tralfamadore for the last time and I will miss him. Not that I ever knew him personally, dig, but I will feel an absence, a void in the fabric of the universe -- the space which he previously inhabited. Perhaps not so much actually on a personal level, for the resonance of his work lingers on and on and on and on and so on... but more the idea that if the human race could produce such a fine fellow -- as a humanist, the ultimate collision of sadness and magnanimity -- will it ever bother to do so again? Could it, even?

And I think the world will be a poorer place -- and we will probably struggle for some time to examine ourselves as effectively -- without his intelligent, forthright sagacity.

My favourite Kurt Vonnegut moment? Encountering his drawing of an anus while reading his novel Breakfast of Champions for the first time at about age 14. It looked something like this:

Some possible reading:

Custodians of Chaos: an excerpt from his memoirs A Man Without a Country

Kurt Vonnegut's Blues For America

Salon interview and profile from 1999

Wikipedia entry

Labels: eulogies, freedom-hating, heroes

It's a new sport and possibly one that should be considered for the next Olympics. I invented it. (Well, I didn't really). Anyway, when you have a moment, cruise around the directory on BlogExplosion looking for right-wing/conservative/Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coulter-wannabe muthafunkin' dumbass muthafucker blogs. Once there, use all the skills in your possession to write short, literate and explosively-aggravating remarks in their comments sections; then sit back and wait for follow-up responses to arrive.

Of course, you're right, it's infantile and petty... but I did my first one earlier today and, hot-damn! it felt good. And I'm not talking about plain abuse here. Slay 'em with the power of your argument, guys.

Note: I was actually going to call this post Nigger-baiting, but I couldn't find a definition on the interweb that justified it...

Labels: freedom-hating, misanthropy

We have to rely on the circumstantial, anecdotal evidence. We have no other choice. Aside from the circumstantial evidence, there's no Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

Iraqi bandits decapitate an American captive live on worldwide satellite. American MP's commit bizarre acts of cruelty designed ostensibly to subjugate Iraqi prisoners-of-war. We know, because we saw the pictures. We have no reason at this point to suspect that we are being lied to by the world's media. In his film on the aftermath of the first Bush vs. Saddam shooting match, Lessons of Darkness, Werner Herzog documents extensive war-crimes committed by Iraqi troops against large numbers of men, women and children in Kuwait. We know, because we saw the pictures. We have no reason to suspect that Werner Herzog and the documentary's producers are deceiving us.

Tit for tat. So we are - if not so much being lied to - being bullshitted; by the accusers, by the accusee's, by the media circus, et al.

American jailors [possibly in the process of publishing the inaugral issue of new Middle-East edition of Bawdy A5-photocopy grub-'zine] humiliate their charges in an astounding display of finely-tuned depravity. Cue eruption of indignant outrage in the West. Cue anguished brow-beating across America.. "This couldn't happen" etc.

Heard the one about the New Zealand forces in the World War II? Conventional colloquy has it that the most brutal captors, the ones responsible for far more deaths of prisoners-of-wars than any other Allied group, often in a variety of brutish and callous means, were the Kiwi boys. Somewhere up next to the Japanese, supposedly, in their cruel and inhumane ways. But devotees of any religion - soldiers - are always steeped in the mythology of the sufferings of their martyrs. I suspect that Mohammed, in the holy wisdom of his writings, offers his disciples many exhortations on ways to counter the slings and arrows, possibly sticks'n'stones, possibly purty lacy knickers, of the infidel.

It's beside the point. Let's not pretend this is new, or that there's not actually a war being fought. This shit always goes on in the wings while two groups of people are rushing around trying to kill each other. The technology has improved a bit - who knows what delightful snaps Ghenghis Khan would have put up on his website if he had been armed with a digital camera.

If they's going to be fighting, let's let both sides get on with it - and if they're going to do it they might as well do it properly. 'To the victors the spoils' and all that, articles of the Geneva Convention relating to treatment of prisoners-of-war or no; mandate to be there in the first place or not. These liberal displays of liberal angst are boring, and a convenient distraction from the more pertinent point of whether the US and it's mates should be there at all.

And so let's also take bets on how long it will take for that little album of 8x10 colour glossies currently doing the rounds in the Washington old-boys clubs to be 'leaked' onto the web somehow.

Labels: freedom-hating