I’m guessing we’re not winning…
Bob Morris @ Mar 31st 2004 14:40 - Category: Unfiled ;
Archive for March, 2004
Liberal Talk Radio available live…
Bob Morris @ Mar 31st 2004 12:06 - Category: Unfiled ;
Liberal Talk Radio available live on the Net
Right here, via Real Player.
Great line, as I listen live, “It’s The Godfather. The Bush family is the Corleone family, and George Bush is Fredo”.
Kerry and the Vietnam war
Bob Morris @ Mar 31st 2004 00:08 - Category: Unfiled ;
Kerry and the Vietnam war
I was of age during the Vietnam war, and opposed it (big surprise, huh?). I remember the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). I remember Ron Kovic, one of the co-founders of VVAW, the many demonstrations they played important roles in, and how they most definitely helped sway public opinion against the war.
However, I do not remember John Kerry. He may have been a player in VVAW (lots of people were), but as far as I can recall, he wasn’t a major player. In fact, I have no recollection of him at all from those years. So, the “antiwar leader John Kerry” rhetoric we’re hearing now seems overblown to me.
Kerry quit VVAW because of their stand that US soldiers had committed war crimes in ‘Nam. Kerry said oh golly that couldn’t possibly be true, because no US soldier would do that, so he quit VVAW. Well, as we all know now, war crimes did occur, just google “My Lai”.
Updates: After reading the comments here and researching more, I’ve learned Kerry was, for a time, a major figure in VVAW (Hey, “If you can remember what happened in the 60’s, you weren’t there”). And in the Winter Soldier testimony, he did mention war crimes. I’m looking for the cite, which I read a while back and recall being from a reliable source, that Kerry did resign over the war crimes issue. He was, by all accounts a politically ambitious moderate, and some thought he was using VVAW to advance his career. Here’s some other cites.
After Kerry became the national spokesman of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in 1971, he came under continued surveillance by the FBI.
By all accounts, Kerry was a moderate voice in the group, who took a grim view of even civil disobedience. Many fellow antiwar vets felt he was too traditional.
The anti-war group that John Kerry was the principal spokesman for debated and voted on a plot to assassinate politicians who supported the Vietnam War.
Mr. Kerry denies being present at the November 12-15, 1971, meeting in Kansas City of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and says he quit the group before the meeting. But according to the current head of Missouri Veterans for Kerry, Randy Barnes, Mr. Kerry,who was then 27,was at the meeting, voted against the plot, and then orally resigned from the organization.
Here’s two quotes, both quite illustrative I think, from a Boston.com article.
1)
President Richard M. Nixon takes a call from his counsel, Charles Colson.
“This fellow Kerry that they had on last week,” Colson tells the president, referring to a television appearance by John F. Kerry, a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
“Yeah,” Nixon responds.
“He turns out to be really quite a phony,” Colson says.
“Well, he is sort of a phony, isn’t he?” Nixon says.
Yes, Colson says in a gossiping vein, telling the president that Kerry stayed at the home of a Georgetown socialite while other protesters slept on the mall.
“He was in Vietnam a total of four months,” Colson scoffs, without mentioning that Kerry earned three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star, and had also been on an earlier tour. “He’s politically ambitious and just looking for an issue.”
“Yeah.”
“He came back a hawk and became a dove when he saw the political opportunities,” Colson says.
“Sure,” Nixon responds. “Well, anyway, keep the faith.”
2)
Some Vietnam Veterans Against the War leaders also viewed Kerry as a power-grabbing elitist, a source of internal friction within the antiwar movement. “There was no question but that the rift existed,” said Butler, who was with Kerry at the time and remains a close friend.
Kerry left the organization after about a year of participation and about five months after assuming a leadership role. Kerry says he quit partly to focus on a new organization that emphasized veterans’ benefits; others say Kerry was forced out.
August 29, 2004. New York…
Bob Morris @ Mar 31st 2004 00:07 - Category: Unfiled ;
August 29, 2004. New York City.
That’s the date for the protests at the Republican Convention in NYC. The buzz on this is big, and building. Dozens, no, make that hundreds of groups are already mobilizing to be there.
I think it’s gonna be huge. Several hundred thousand people is my guess. It might even be historic.
Liberal talk radio starts today
Bob Morris @ Mar 31st 2004 00:07 - Category: Unfiled ;
Liberal talk radio starts today
Al Franken, Randi Rhodes, Chuck D., and Janeane Garofalo are among the hosts with daily shows.
Some of the stations
New York, WLIB 1190 AM
Los Angeles, KBLA 1580 AM
Chicago, WNTD 950 AM
Portland, KPOJ 620 AM
Inland Empire CA, KCAA 1050 AM
XM Satellite Radio, Channel 167
UN ’stopping food aid to…
Bob Morris @ Mar 31st 2004 00:05 - Category: Unfiled ;
UN ’stopping food aid to Gaza ‘
Food deliveries to the Gaza Strip will be halted this week because of Israeli restrictions, the United Nations said. Peter Hansen, the UN chief responsible for Palestinian refugees, said his agency was no longer allowed to take empty food containers out of Gaza.
An Israeli spokesman told BBC News Online suicide bombers had used the containers for hiding in.
What, Israel can’t inspect the containers when they’re being shipped back? Oh heck, let Palestinians starve instead.
Playing Shell games with the…
Bob Morris @ Mar 31st 2004 00:04 - Category: Unfiled ;
Playing Shell games with the wealth of nations
From a CPA website
Royal Dutch/Shell’s troubling restatements of oil reserves around the world transcend business.
The case shows how accounting affects the lives of nations and people.
Take the case of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, the global oil and gas company. Back in January the company rocked the world markets in oil, currency, and securities when it disclosed that it had overstated its oil and gas reserves by 20 percent, or about 4 billion barrels of crude. The news threw into doubt the accounting methods and integrity used by every other oil and gas company, the world over. The markets are still reeling.
But now it appears that Shell may have been intentionally overstating its reserves for fear of its relationship with, and the stability of, the government of Nigeria, according to the New York Times.
Shell handles about half of Nigeria’s supply. Company officials were reportedly acutely aware that if they sharply lowered their estimates for Nigeria’s reserves, the country could suffer, and, of course, so would Shell’s relationship with the government. Shell is now cutting its payroll in Nigeria by a third, something that may spark protests in the streets.
It’s not just Bush. Clinton…
Bob Morris @ Mar 31st 2004 00:03 - Category: Unfiled ;
It’s not just Bush. Clinton deliberately ignored Rwandan genocide
President Bill Clinton’s administration knew Rwanda was being engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the infomation to justify its inaction, according to classified documents made available for the first time.
Senior officials privately used the word genocide within 16 days of the start of the killings, but chose not to do so publicly because the president had already decided not to intervene.
Is there oil in Rwanda? Didn’t think so.
Camejo endorses Nader
Bob Morris @ Mar 30th 2004 09:57 - Category: Unfiled ;
Camejo endorses Nader
Green Party advocate Peter Camejo said yesterday that voters have no choice without a strong third party and urged a crowd gathered in the District to support Ralph Nader’s bid for the presidency.
<Camejo stated> that the agonizing of Democrats over Mr. Nader’s candidacy was tantamount to denying the people the right to vote.
There also is a movement to draft Mr. Camejo as the Green Party’s presidential candidate, although he has said he will not accept, in deference to Mr. Nader.
“For the Green Party not to help him and back his campaign would be a huge mistake,” he said.
The Green Party’s presidential candidate will be selected during a national convention in Milwaukee in late June. The party might opt to back Mr. Nader.
And in other Green news,
Matt Gonzalez won’t run for re-election
Supervisors’ president decides to leave board
Matt Gonzalez, president of the S.F. Board of Supervisors, and who nearly became mayor of that city, will not run for re-election and plans to return to private law practice.
Will he be gone from politics?
“I can assure you, Matt Gonzalez is still here, and he … will play a major role in the history of the Green Party and the history of California over the next 20 or 30 years,” said former Green Party gubernatorial candidate Peter Camejo. “We’ve only just begun to hear about Matt Gonzalez.”
However, this leaves a vacuum in S.F. progressive leadership, an odd move for someone who says he wants to build the same.
Zombies k.o. Jesus, get taken…
Bob Morris @ Mar 30th 2004 00:24 - Category: Unfiled ;
Zombies k.o. Jesus, get taken out by Scooby-Doo
So goes the moods of the movie ticket buying public, as the recent top grossing movies have been, in order, “The Passion of the Christ”, “Dawn of the Dead”, and Scooby-Doo 2″
However, what you might not know is, the ANSWER Coalition smacked down Scooby-Doo at the antiwar march and rally in Los Angeles on March 20.
ANSWER was granted the parade/street closure permit for the demo. However Disney, owners of Scooby-Doo, apparently were not pleased to learn this meant they could not get their permit for a Scooby-Doo 2 pre-opening party - which was to be held at exactly the same place and time as the antiwar rally.
Much gnashing of teeth ensued, Rumor has it an invitation was made to Scooby asking him to speak in support of Palestinians, which apparently - and tragically - was declined. Happily though, on the day of the event, peaceniks and Scooby fans co-existed peacefully on the same street, as Elvis impersonators wandered freely between both contingents. Hurray for Hollywood!
Making shit up, the saga…
Bob Morris @ Mar 30th 2004 00:19 - Category: Unfiled ;
Making shit up, the saga continues!
From Kos
Boy, Rice keeps digging that hole deeper and deeper. NBC doesn’t even bother to couch its language diplomatically:
“Although Condoleezza Rice says she must refuse to testify in public because of executive privilege, congressional studies have found 20 cases in which White House advisers did so anyway. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports.”
Windows annoyances: Reporting to Microsoft.
Bob Morris @ Mar 30th 2004 00:17 - Category: Unfiled ;
Windows annoyances: Reporting to Microsoft.
Here’s how to kill that annoying popup window that appears when something in XP crashes, asking you if you want to report this to Microsoft. Well, actually no, I don’t want to. Ever. And stop asking.
And if you also want this pointless nagware to go away.
Control Panel/System/Advanced tab/Error reporting/click “Disable error reporting”
It’s that easy!
“Freedom of speech, just watch…
Bob Morris @ Mar 29th 2004 09:17 - Category: Unfiled ;
“Freedom of speech, just watch what you say”
The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq on Sunday closed a newspaper sponsored by a popular anti-American Shiite cleric, accusing it of creating unrest and inciting violence against occupation forces.
To many Iraqi readers, however, the articles in Al Hawza seem more like shrill tabloid fare than dangerous rhetoric that would merit the serious step of closing a newspaper — especially given the potential backlash. Many Iraqi newspapers routinely publish articles that are blatantly untrue, although most avoid tangling with the coalition.
This is just another example of how the ham-fisted tactics of the Bushies backfire. Their forced closing of the newspaper caused demonstrations in Iraq - and was the front page lead story in the L.A. Times this morning.
And of course, you can’t pretend to be for democracy and freedom, then shut down newspapers because you don’t like what they say.
Makin’ shit up
Bob Morris @ Mar 29th 2004 00:12 - Category: Unfiled ;
Makin’ shit up
Much of the Bush “case” for invading Iraq came from a now discredited source the US never spoke to directly and didn’t even know the identity of. Yet Colin Powell trumpeted this “evidence” as a reason for war.
The Bush administration’s prewar claims that Saddam Hussein had built a fleet of trucks and railroad cars to produce anthrax and other deadly germs were based chiefly on information from a now-discredited Iraqi defector code-named “Curveball,” according to current and former intelligence officials.
<These reports> became a crucial part of the White House case for war — including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s dramatic presentation to the U.N. Security Council just weeks before the war.
However the Bushies never got independent corroboration, never investigated themselves, and thus based their justification for war on second-hand reports from a mystery man now proven to be lying. One wonders if he ever existed at all. If he did, and they believed him without checking the facts, then they are bumblers. What’s more likely, if this mystery person actually exists, is his story was deliberate misinformation and propaganda designed to build a spurious case for war. Now, WHO could have wanted that to happen?
Meanwhile, Condoleezza Rice would just love to testify publicly, but darn it, she just can’t.
“Nothing would be better, from my point of view, than to be able to testify,” Rice told CBS’s “60 Minutes.” “I would really like to do that. But there is an important principle involved here: It is a long-standing principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress.”
What a bunch of evasive hooey. Even her allies think she’s shooting herself in the foot.
White House allies and Republicans investigating the Sept. 11 attacks pressed Sunday to hear open testimony from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice with one commissioner calling her refusal a “political blunder of the first order.”
And why doesn’t she want to testify? Well, there are those darned perjury laws, y’know.
It’s a trend! First in…
Bob Morris @ Mar 29th 2004 00:04 - Category: Unfiled ;
It’s a trend! First in Spain, now France
Socialists win big, conservatives get stomped.
From BOP News
The run off rounds in France are over - and the results are clear. As with Spain, the governing party has been soundly thrashed - the left attained an absolute majority of votes according to early counts, and almost complete control of the regional councils. The right lost 11, and perhaps 12 councils - from 14 down to 1 or 2.
From Reuters
Pressure mounted on French President Jacques Chirac on Monday to fire his prime minister and shake up the government after opposition Socialists dealt his conservative camp a humiliating defeat in regional polls.
Sunday’s election results were a worst-case scenario for Chirac and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, as the left won in nearly all of France’s 26 regions and trounced almost all of the 19 cabinet ministers running for regional council seats.
Israeli chief prosecutor recommends Sharon…
Bob Morris @ Mar 28th 2004 10:19 - Category: Unfiled ;
Israeli chief prosecutor recommends Sharon indictment
Israel’s chief prosecutor on Sunday officially recommended bringing charges against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in a corruption scandal that could drive him from office.
At the Israeli Consulate
Bob Morris @ Mar 28th 2004 00:35 - Category: Unfiled ;
At the Israeli Consulate
Several Muslim and Arab organizations called a demo Saturday at the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles to protest the assassination of Sheikh Yassin. Some people may have stayed away thinking this could be a tense affair, but it didn’t turn out that way at all. There were 300 of us and about ten counter-demonstrators across the street (the organizers asked ANSWER to help with security, which we were happy to do.) Last week, at the big antiwar demo, there were 20,000 of us, and maybe 3 dozen counter-demonstators. Given all the yap-yap the Right does, they seem oddly absent when it comes to getting in the streets.
One of the speakers, a Muslim, made the telling point that Sharon’s strategy backfired, saying (and I’m paraphrasing), “Most of you here are Muslims, and many of you haven’t demonstrated since 9/11 for fear of being arrested - and they are harassing us - but now that Sharon killed Yassin, you are in the streets here and everywhere. Sharon wanted to silence us but now more than ever, we are speaking out. His plan backfired.”
Later, I went to a fundraiser at a home in Culver City for a viewing of a documentary in progress, “GIve Peace a Chance”, by tireless LA activists Sally Marr and Peter Dudar. They screened 30 minutes of their 180 hours of footage on the antiwar movement which they are turning into a powerful, moving film.
There were about 200 people there. It occurred to me that if the powers-that-be raided the house and swept us all away, they’d have taken out a goodly chunk of the progressive activist community in LA. Had we been in Palestine, they might have attacked with helicopter gunships, then bulldozed the house. Am I being overly-dramatic? I think not.
Documents on FBI’s surveillance of…
Bob Morris @ Mar 28th 2004 00:31 - Category: Unfiled ;
Documents on FBI’s surveillance of Kerry stolen
Historian: ‘Odds are in favor’ of political motive in theft
Documents detailing government surveillance of John Kerry in the early 1970s have been stolen from the home of a historian in a suburb of San Francisco, California.
Gerald Nicosia, who spent more than a decade collecting the information, told CNN in a telephone interview that three of 14 boxes of documents plus a number of loose folders — hundreds of pages — were stolen Thursday afternoon.
“It was a very clean burglary. They didn’t break any glass. They didn’t take anything like cameras sitting by. It was a very professional job,” Nicosia said.
Terror backlash hits Bush’s votes
Bob Morris @ Mar 28th 2004 00:30 - Category: Unfiled ;
Terror backlash hits Bush’s votes
The damning testimony of former terrorism adviser Richard Clarke has left the President’s team in disarray as their approval ratings begin to fall.
Link via the always excellent Blog Left.
Throbbing Gristle to re-unite for…
Bob Morris @ Mar 27th 2004 00:03 - Category: Unfiled ;
Throbbing Gristle to re-unite for one concert
The four original members of Thobbing Gristle are getting together for a festival in their honor, and a one-time only reunion concert, which will be the first time they’ve played together in two decades.
Throbbing Gristle, along with SPK and Cabaret Voltaire, began what later came to be called industrial music which, loosely, was deliberate aural and visual assaults on the theory that the culture so desensitizes people that it takes extreme shocks to wake them up. Plus, of course, it’s always fun to piss off the bourgeoise. A lot of people noticed them, and the influence of industrial music spread wide - and still does.
From The Guardian
In the second half of the 1970s, Throbbing Gristle waged war on British society. With songs about the Moors murders and the Manson killings, and riotous concerts that garnered front-page headlines and sparked debates in the House of Commons, the band did, as guitarist Cosey Fanni Tutti puts it, “disrupt things a little”. The MP Nicholas Fairbairn called them wreckers of civilisation shortly before he was arrested for indecent exposure.
It is hard to equate the polite, middle-aged people before me in the offices of the Mute record company with the infamous performance-art deviants of past years. Even if one of them is currently turning into a man/woman hybrid.
“What happened to Nicholas Fairbairn highlighted the value and accuracy of Throbbing Gristle,” says Genesis P-Orridge, who, with bouffant highlights and sparkling earrings, looks like a smartly dressed patroness of the arts, despite still technically being a man. P-Orridge and his wife are engaging in a project in which they are turning into the same person through surgery and hormone treatments. They celebrated Valentine’s Day by getting matching breast implants. “The hypocrisy that we were outlining was validated, especially as the people who decried us were later prosecuted for things far worse than anything we had ever done.”
Genesis P-orridge (that’s his legal name), to put it mildly, has always been, um, controversial - as a member of TG, as a founder of Psychic TV, in body modifications, magick, and lots of other extreme stuff. Not that the other members aren’t equally cutting edge, because they absolutely are. TG outraged many, they also had serious talent and were unfraid to push things to the limits.
The festival will be the first and only time they will play together since they split up. It’s hard to imagine the band waging the all-out assault they did back then. Have they changed?
“Well, I think I have,” says P-Orridge with a flutter of his/her lashes.
“After nearly 30 years, we can sit in a room and still follow the same processes that we did when we started,” says Christopherson. “But this isn’t going to be a Rolling Stones-like nostalgia concert. We plan to destroy our own myth very efficiently.”
All of them have continued to create some quite excellent music after TG broke up in the early 80’s.
Throbbing Gristle official site
Chris & Cosey, whose music in the late 80’s-early 90’s influenced and helped create the emerging electronica/tribal/dance scene.
Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson is in Coil.
And they all have a multitude of side projects.
Cabaret Voltaire is also active and continues to release music. Graeme Revell, founder of SPK, is a prolific soundtrack composer.
Middle Pillar is an excellent online source for music by TG, Coil, Chris and Cosey, P TV et al.
Our dimbulb President
Bob Morris @ Mar 26th 2004 00:30 - Category: Unfiled ;
Our dimbulb President
From Political Wire
“Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people.”
– President Bush quoted yesterday by the Associated Press.
On August 6, 2001, President Bush personally “received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane.” – NBC News, 9/10/02, via the Center for American Progress
Bush jokes about search for WMD
President George Bush sparked a political firestorm yesterday after making what many judged a tasteless and ill-judged joke about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
He narrated a slide show, described as the White House election year album, making hay of the administration’s reputation for secrecy and strained relations with European allies. But it was the joke about the war in Iraq that drew attacks.
A slide showed Mr Bush in the Oval office, leaning to look under a piece of furniture. “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere,” he told the audience, drawing applause.
Another slide showed him peering into another part of the office, “Nope, no weapons over there,” he said, laughing. “Maybe under here,” he said, as a third slide was shown.
HA … Ha … ha… Lord, what an ignorant yokel we have for President…
Hey Dubya, try laughing at this -
“Be afraid, be very afraid. Government warnings about our vulnerability to terrorism underline how badly its war on terror is going”
Say bye-bye to cheap oil
Bob Morris @ Mar 26th 2004 00:27 - Category: Unfiled ;
Say bye-bye to cheap oil
Surplus capacity is history. The jolts will start with $3 gas pump prices.
Despite the recent minuscule drop in gasoline prices, some forecasters believe prices will soon head back up and could crest at $3 a gallon by Labor Day — well past the point, experts say, when even oblivious Americans, and their elected representatives, start to pay attention.
Many motorists and some opportunistic politicians will reflexively point the finger at greedy oil companies and nefarious “foreigners.” But eventually, all of us, from the man in the Oval Office on down, may be forced to concede that the days of cheap oil are over and that the U.S. really does need an entirely new approach to energy.
I have a bit of a nest egg, and when the Dot Com bubble burst a few years back, I spent several weeks researching stocks, and then put most of it into high yield, deeply boring dividend stocks. And there that money has sat for a couple of years now. Most of this little basket of stocks are either companies in the mortgage business or in oil/gas. You’ve probably never heard of any of them. One of them, Nordic-American Tanker (NAT) is now at 24, and even with the big rise in the stock price this year, the yield is 20%. Yes, 20%. When oil prices spike, so do the rates for the three tankers they lease.
Bob, you cry, you sleazy hypocrite. You’re a Green, you drive a Prius, and you have stocks in oil tanker companies? Well, uh, yeah. My crummy couple hundred shares aren’t going to make or break anything, and I parked the money there thinking maybe I’d get a slow boring rise in the stock along with a dividend that, at the time, was about 13%.
But now these once deeply boring oil/gas stocks are soaring in value AND the dividend is increasing. Which should tell us all something unsettling about the state of the oil business today. Demand is rising, especially now with China industrializing so fast, while supply is dropping - in part due to Iraq being offline due to Bush’s invasion, and also because they just aren’t finding new sources of oil. Plus, of course, oil companies are greedy pigs, so prices may well spike higher - then stay there.
PS The tankers NAT owns are double-hulled Suezmax tankers, which, as someone said, makes them the closest to an environmental play you’ll find in oil tankers. So there!
MC5 members to tour!
Bob Morris @ Mar 26th 2004 00:24 - Category: Unfiled ;
MC5 members to tour!
The three remaining members of the legendary MC5 are going on tour. Plus a DVD of a reunion concert they did in 2003, along with rare stuff from the MC5 days, will be released shortly.
What can I say? I grew up along with the MC5 during the tumultuous sixties. They got busted, I got busted. They got tear-gassed at demos, I got tear-gassed at demos. I never met them then, but we were definitely fellow travelers.
I bought their first album, Kick Out The Jams, when it was released, and it remains one of the most astounding records ever. Dee-troit rock and roll bands always had a rep for high energy. The Five took that to whole new levels. Plus, they were political, very political. Their van was firebombed, the police tracked them relentlessly, they did a song about the Detroit riots called “Motor City is Burning”, with the classic, incendiary (in more ways than one) line, “Just might strike a match for freedom myself”. They played outside in the park at the ‘68 Democratic Convention where the police rioted (that was the official judgment of the investigating panel, it was a “police riot”), and with John Sinclair, founded the White Panther Party.
Most of all they were a great rock band. And with the Velvet Underground and Stooges, they were precursors to punk rock and influenced many bands, both punk and metal.
From their press release:
The MC5 were indisputably one of the most influential rock bands of all time, though only three years elapsed between their ridiculously controversial debut Kick Out The Jams and their demise in 1972. Over thirty years later, surviving founding members Wayne Kramer (guitar), Dennis Thompson (drums) and Michael Davis (bass) came together in March 2003 for a show at London’s famed 100 Club. Joining them were guests including Motorhead’s Lemmy, The Damned’s Dave Vanian, Ian Astbury and The Hellacopters’ Nicke Royale.
Now, that legendary concert—along with never-before-seen footage including an original master tape transfer of Leni and John Sinclair’s promotional video Kick Out The Jams, interviews, archival footage, home movies and old videos with brand new commentary by the Davis, Kramer and Thompson—is captured on a forthcoming DVD Sonic Revolution: A Celebration of the MC5, to hit stores July 6. The DVD even includes U.S. Dept. of Defense footage of the MC5, taken from the government’s investigation of the notorious rock group during 1968’s Democratic National Convention.
In celebration of both their music and their legacy, DKT/MC5 will begin a worldwide tour this June that includes a stop in their hometown of Detroit as well as Japan, Australia, Canada and Europe, in addition to major cities across most of North America. As they did in London last year, they will be joined by a rotating cast of guest musicians, making each show a singular celebration of the work of the MC5.
Their tour website is up, bare bones now, much content coming soon, I’m sure.
The MC5 Gateway has an amazing amount of info.
Wayne Kramer has a record label, Muscletone Records, in LA, and has released a number of excellent CDs the past several years. Dennis Thompson and Michael Davis are also active musicians.
And 31 years later in 2003 when they reunited and played the 100 Club in London.
“They rip the 100 Club to shreds with a force 50 gale of everything you love about rock n’ roll.” —NME
In other words, they still got it.
May one thousand signs appear!
Bob Morris @ Mar 25th 2004 00:13 - Category: Unfiled ;
May one thousand signs appear!
A missive from the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel of FreewayBlooger.com
In light of recent disclosures and testimony by Richard Clark, former head of Counterterrorism, I have no recourse but to call for the immediate impeachment of George W. Bush. This is not something I take lightly, particularly since it will require the painting and posting
Over the next ten days I’ll be posting up to one hundred of them in San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and points in between. You can help in this effort by asking your readers to join in by painting the word “Impeach” in large letters on cardboard and sticking it on their local freeway. Thank you for your help.
-Scarlet P. the freewayblogger of many, many signs like the one shown here.
George Bush, asleep at the…
Bob Morris @ Mar 25th 2004 00:08 - Category: Unfiled ;
George Bush, asleep at the wheel
Richard Clarke stole the spotlight at an extraordinary series of hearings into the Sept. 11 attacks, claiming President Bush hadn’t done enough to protect the country from terrorists.
A counterterrorism adviser to the past three presidents, Clarke accused the Bush administration Wednesday of scaling back the campaign against Osama bin Laden before the attacks and undermining the fight against terrorism by invading Iraq.
That’s the key point I think - that the invasion of Iraq has done nothing to stop terrorism but instead increased the possibility of it happening.
The picture emerging of the Bush Administration is that, under all their strutting machoism and belligerence, they are quite remarkably incompetent. Yet these hearings seem intent on various parties proving that By Golly, they are the toughest on terrorism. Meanwhile, it goes on. The Big Hammer approach doesn’t work, the Brits learned, or should have learned at any rate, in Northern Ireland.
To defeat terrorists, you must have a “better story”, a compelling reason for people to join your side, not theirs. Bombing them back to the Stone Age simply drives people to their side. Plus, you need to infiltrate them. And to do that you must 1) take them seriously and not think calling them Evildoers will accomplish anything and 2) learn about them, their culture, and what motivates them, because you can’t really stop them if you don’t understand them, can you?
