Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Joel Stein: Fuck the Troops!

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-stein24jan24,0,1803125.column?track=hpmostemailedlink


Finally! Somebody makes the obvious and similtaneously unspeakable point that, if you think that innocent civilians are being massacred in Iraq, as they have for the past three years, it means that somebody, namely the troops, has been massacring them. All those families shot to pieces at checkpoints were killed because there were people willing to invade a foreign country and shoulder rifles at those checkpoints. I really don't know how much moral responsibility "the troops" hold for what is happening in Iraq, but I do now that the current situation: in which the actual perpetrators of the war are completely off-limits from consideration as moral agents, is morally untenable. And watch as Joel Stein is destroyed by pundits of the left and the right, in order to maintain that ridiculous taboo.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

The Red King

I know Martin Luther King Day was Monday, and I'm writing this on Wednesday night, but that's one of the benefits of being an anarchist: you can tell federal holidays to go fuck themselves.

Martin Luther King gives me mixed feelings. Part of me chaffes at honoring him because of the fact that he has been officially sanctified as a secular American saint. I hate the way that messy, complicated, vastly multifaceted history is denatured by defining social movements by one man's actions. Whenever I hear people blandly praise MLK in the knee jerk fashion customary to dead figures of symbolic history, I feel the need to mutter "he plagarized his thesis!" or "he humped everything that moved!" And part of me is repelled by the fact that every jerkoff in America, no matter what their political persuasion, is pretty much legally required to offer hosannahs to King's memory. It makes you wonder, what else can be said?

There is one thing that can be said. Martin Luther King was astoundingly left wing. I mean, hard core. And his prescription for healing America's racial divisions went far beyond intergration. He envisioned a full scale revolution in American economic, political, and ethical values. That vision is most startlingly illustrated in his controversial 1967 speech "Beyond Vietnam."

Here are some snippets:

"The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality [applause], and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. [sustained applause] So such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution.

During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." [applause] Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin [applause], we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [applause]

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it haseverything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. [sustained applause]

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. [applause] War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy [applause], realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low [Audience:] (Yes); the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.""

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

All you need to know about Ambassador L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer III's book "My Year in Iraq"

In case you don't know, "Jerry" Bremer* was the incompetent ass put in charge of Iraq for the first year of the occupation. He was responsible for such winning strategies as disbanding the Iraqi army, sending the marines into Fallujah to destroy the entire city, trying to arrest popular radical shiite cleric** Muqtada Al-Sadr, not to mention somehow losing nine BILLION dollars in reconstruction funds. Anyway, this idiot has written a book trying to divest himself of responisiblity for the Iraqi clusterfuck, like every other douchebag in the Bush administration. I haven't read the book, and don't intend to, but I still know enough about it to impart to you the exact value of said book. The index has all the answers.

Not in the index:

Halliburton

In the index:

Hitler, Adolph, Saddam compared to


* full disclosure: I don't trust anyone with a nickname.

**Band Name.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

My Hump.









The aforementioned hump.


It occurs to me that, with my impending return to Cream city, this here blog may well cease to be in the near future. Now don't get me wrong, I love spewing half-informed profanity at my friends and loved ones. However, since I will shortly be able to spew said half-informed profanities to said friends and loved ones in person, and since said friends and loved ones are the only people who read this thing in the first place, the blog reaches a point of existential crisis.

Now, I'll probably keep the blog active to occasionally post the occasional fevered apocalyptic vision, but the frequency of posts will be drastically lower. As such, I think I should get the most out of this last month, instead of letting whole weeks go by without posting. The only problem is that I don't have anything to say, really. I know that this fact has never stopped me before, but it's been a slightly larger problem lately.

I do have one thing to say, though, and it is somewhat controversial.

It is this: the Black Eyed Peas My Humps is the single dumbest song in the history of the world. Without a doubt. If you don't believe me, take a gander at the lyrics, in their entirety.

What you gon’ do with all that junk?
All that junk inside your trunk?
I’ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,Get you love drunk off my hump.
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely little lumps. (Check it out)

I drive these brothers crazy,
I do it on the daily,
They treat me really nicely,
They buy me all these icies.
Dolce & Gabbana,
Fendi and NaDonna
Karan, they be sharin’
All their money got me wearin'
flyBut I ain’t askin,
They say they love my ass ‘n,
Seven Jeans, True Religion's,
I say no, but they keep givin’
So I keep on takin’
And no I ain’t taken
We can keep on datin’
I keep on demonstrating

My love, my love, my love, my love
You love my lady lumps,
My hump, my hump, my hump,
My humps they got u,
She’s got me spending.(Oh)
Spendin’ all your money on me
and spending time on me.
She’s got me spendin’.(Oh)
Spendin' all your money on me, up on me, on me

What you gon’ do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
I’ma get, get, get, get, you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.
What u gon’ do with all that ass?
All that ass inside them jeans?
I’m a make, make, make, make you scream
Make u scream, make you scream.
Cos of my hump, my hump, my hump, my hump.
My hump, my hump, my hump, my lovely lady lumps. (Check it out)

I met a girl down at the disco.
She said hey, hey, hey yea let’s go.
I could be your baby, you can be my honey
Let's spend time not money.
I mix your milk wit my cocoa puff,
Milky, milky cocoa,
Mix your milk with my cocoa puff, milky, milky riiiiiiight.

They say I’m really sexy,
The boys they wanna sex me.
They always standing next to me,
Always dancing next to me,
Tryin’ a feel my hump, hump.
Lookin’ at my lump, lump.
U can look but you can’t touch it,
If you touch it I'ma start some drama,
You don’t want no drama,
No, no drama, no, no, no, no drama
So don’t pull on my hand boy,
You ain’t my man, boy,
I’m just tryn’a dance boy,And move my hump.

My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump,
my hump, my hump.My lovely lady lumps [x3]
In the back and in the front.
My lovin’ got u,
She’s got me spendin’.(Oh)
Spendin’ all your money on me
and spending time on me.
She’s got me spendin’.(Oh)
Spendin' all your money on me, up on me, on me.

What you gon’ do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
I’ma get, get, get, get you drunk,
Get you love drunk off my hump.
What you gon’ do with all that ass?
All that ass inside them jeans?
I’ma make, make, make, make you scream
Make you scream, make you scream.
What you gon do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
I’ma get, get, get, get you drunk,
Get you love drunk off this hump.
What you gon’ do wit all that breast?
All that breast inside that shirt?
I’ma make, make, make, make you work
Make you work, work, make you work.

She’s got me spendin’.
Spendin all your money on me and spendin’ time on me
She’s got me spendin’.
Spendin' all your money on me, up on me, on me.

It's breathtaking, seeing it in print like that. Reading that, how can any self-respecting person who has ever owned a Black Eyed Peas record not fight the urge to commit ritual seppukku. Where to begin? The rhyming of "sexy" with "sex me" and "next to me" with "next to me"? That "milky milky cocoa puff" business? You know what, it's just too baroque an atrocity to even begin to parse. The one thing that really, really boggles my mind about this song, though, is the insane conviction of it's authors (to sully the word) that the words "hump" and "lump" somehow connote sexiness. Frankly, I can't think of two less sexy words in the English language. You know what I think when I hear the words "hump" and "lump"? I think abnormal growth, tumor, goiter, cyst. In short, something that they find inside of you on a disturbing X-Ray, then have to have surgically removed. Something dense and sweaty, pulsing with deadly energy, maybe with hair and teeth growing out of it. That's David Cronenberg's idea of sexy, but not mine.