old punks web zine

Gather 'round y'all for an ass-warming tale of angry, unwashed youth and the pedophilic adults who nurtured them with love, guidance and the occasional helping gland. It's a story told in part by the kids themselves, so stick around for the horrific, ironical ending!

From November, 2001 to April, 2003, in the unforgiving inner-suburbs of Long Beach, CA there existed a magical oasis of freedom and fellowship for state-smashers, whizz-diddlers and ugly, resentful nobodies from all economic brackets, from the idle rich to working class well-to-dos. On lice-infested couches you could slouch and watch TV for hours even though it's a sheep-minting tool of Big Brother, browse the literature racks for free anarchy zines paid for by loving yet worried parents, or hang banners that read "Honk If You Hate Pigs" or "You're Standing On Indigenous Land!", making passersby think for themselves for a change. No matter what you were extending a tall and proud middle digit to The Man, be he (or she) the cops, the military-industrial complex, the coordinated, the personal hygiene cartels or really anyone who fit more comfortably into society's narrow definition of what's not repulsive.

We, as the REACH Center collective, seek to liberate through unity, self-education, and community empowerment. We seek to work with people in the local area to build a real community, based on mutual aid and cooperation. A community where everyone has access to a healthy and non-oppressive life. Education is critical to empowerment and liberation, as it enables people to understand the history of oppression and stand-up to exploitation. However, we reject institutional, top-down education, which seeks to enforce hierarchy and conformity. In opposition, the REACH Center space enables people to empower themselves, which results in people being actively engaged in empowering the greater Long Beach community.

Society's very survival currently depends on corporations and government entities that exist to oppress, and destroy the self determination of our communities. We wish to counter this destructive cycle. As a space promoting community empowerment, we seek to help actualize a self-sufficient community, in which people rely on each other, not government institutions. This form of mutual aid helps all people in the community, as opposed to government programs which often only help the privileged. We want to help this community regain power over its own existence. We seek to further this goal through such programs as Food Not Bombs [an anti-militarism group that distributes free food to protest poverty and war], Community Gardening, Copwatch [an anti-police brutality network], community self-defense programs, wildlands restoration, and FreeSchool classes and workshops that promote mutual aid between community members.

This collective supports diversity and a respect for differences. This is promoted through mutual respect and support of differences. We do not label people for their beliefs and we support collective members' right to evolve and change their ideas. To ensure that all voices are heard, we work through consensus decision making which seeks to ensure that each member of the collective has an equal voice in the group, with no opinions being silenced. The way we organize ourselves mirrors how we would like society to be organized. As such, we support the development, creation, and advancement of all other infoshops and community groups that promote positive social change. We seek a society and a collective that is anti-authoritarian, culturally diverse, accepting of racial diversity, feminist, gay positive, biocentric, and worker and union supportive.

With these lofty, contradictory and unintelligible goals downloaded from a web site in both mind and hand, the broke, partially educated and pencil-limbed peace warriors took an empty and unrentable storefront and proceeded to drag in the contents of every open dumpster in the immediate area. How they obtained the space is still in dispute. Either the landlord was hoping to collect insurance when the place inevitably burned down, or the feds set a trap. Listen:

Since its opening, volunteers at the InfoShop say they have been targets of ongoing surveillance and harassment by the police and other authorities. A court order allows all e-mail entering their computer server to be intercepted by local authorities, there's video surveillance of people who come in and out of the store, and police routinely harass people who regularly visit the InfoShop by giving them traffic citations, jay walking tickets, and tickets for spitting on the sidewalk. A couple of youth have had their cars impounded, in one case a notebook with notes from political meetings was stolen from the confiscated car.

Undeterred, the Long Beach Infoshop soldiered on, loitering in a menacing fashion and not paying rent because other people's property is theft. The endeavor withered through collective ADD, the mechanizations of The State, the odd juxtaposition of nihilism and cowardliness, but mostly by not having two quarters to rub together. Still, as the headline screamed from every anarchy zine, "Why Work?" Meeting minutes from the Chicago, IL infoshop might as well have originated from 684 Redondo Avenue:

We recently had a(nother) collective meeting in Chicago to discuss the "focus" of our infoshop. After some discussion, i felt frustrated because our direction was still ambigous. Our present day paths were not being defined in the context of our future goals. This was because as a group we had not yet had a discussion of what our long term aspirations were, how to get there, and what that meant we should be doing now.

I felt a lack of long term goals was also present at the Detroit gathering. We had absolutely ZERO discussion on WHY we were doing infoshops, what our ideas of "the revolution" were, and what role infoshops play in achieving them. Not to slag off the gathering, it was definitely positive in many ways and served as a necessary point for us to meet, share experiences, trade knowledge & advice, and get inspired. But now that we've gotten the ball rolling, so to speak, we need to figure out what game we're playing, and what the best strategy is.

I feel very strongly that we need to start having more discussion and political advancement as a movement. I'm not saying that we need to define our political line as a collective entity (although working out some collective goals would be great!), but that we need to start bouncing more ideas off each other and thinking realistically about how we're going to go about changing this world. This means discussing our concepts of revolution, what kind of "movement" we need, what roles infoshops (and other counter-institutions) play in that movement, and how they relate to the projects we are doing/should be doing now. I'm raising these vision issues now because i want to see them discussed in the pages of this zine, over the aaa-web, and everywhere else. I'm also interested in seeing political discussion and advancement be an equal focus to networking and skill-sharing at our next conference.

Then, in April of 2003, a clarion call for help was met by the collection of $4.37 cents, a Snoopy coffee mug, an art supply and the promise to be punk F.O.R.E.V.E.R.:

EMERGENCY!

The R.E.A.C.H (Revolutionary Empowerment and Community Help) Center formerly known as The Long Beach Infoshop is in desperate need of funds! We need to raise $500.00 within the next few days to remain open!. We have been closed for the past week due to construction and remodeling to refocus our efforts to utilize our space to it's fullest potential. We believe this will help us achieve our goal of reaching out to the greater Long Beach community. We are striving to stay open so this goal can become reality. Various groups work out of, and rely on the REACH center , such as Food Not Bombs, which feeds the hungry every Sunday, POWER (People Opposing War Empires and Rulers), an anarchist anti-war group currently organizing for the upcoming anti-war conference this October 27th, the Anarchist Defense Committee, Cop Watch..etc.Long Beach Infoshop Wish List : WOOD (we need 2x4's preferably 6-8ft long, and panels of wood at least 2x8ft for a roof garden we are currently working on) Desk, foldingchairs, Plastic stacking chairs/table. Refrigerator, Lamps or lighting fixtures. Plants and planters. Keyboard. Small Tables. Coffee Mugs Good Coffee, Door knob Printer. Paint Political or history books for lending library. A safe with combo lock. Phone with answering machine Art supplies paint brushes, art paint etc Metal rack. Office supplies.

Soon though, despite minutes, hours, days and weeks of whining, the end:

On Saturday, April 26 there will be an "EVERYTHING MUST GO CLOSING SALE" along with a dance party.

And what of the adults who dedicated their lives to sitting young people down the paths of their straight and narrows? They moved on to new social security numbers and new disability claims.

Why we didnt "go down fighting"
by Apparently, I am a sheep ( Wed May 21 12:28:02 PDT 2003 )

This is just speaking for myself here, not anybody else who lived at the space... Yes, it sucks that we were evicted.. and yes, it pisses me off that the pigs did all of this and our hands were tied. On one hand, there was the possibility of legal action. The s--t side of that is that we would need to find an attorney who would take the case for free (since we are all broke and EVERY effort made to get donations to save the shop showed that people were either not able to or not interested in contributing money). In addition, we would have had to stay there which could royally fugg up the credit of the person whose name was on the lease. The other option, which was presented in this forum, was to simply "stand up" and not let them take the space. As American activists (including activists who have engaged in actions in the LBC) have proven, we really cannot successfully stand up to the state. Sure, we could barricade ourselves in the house for a while and eventually get tear gassed, beaten, and thrown in jail...but I will leave that to the more masochistic of those in our movement. The end result is the same, we wind up out of the place. We just had to decide if we wanted to leave with or without injuries and more jail time. The shop is still there toting a large "CLOSED" sign. If all of you who are feeling brave would like to occupy it and not be a "sheep," then be my guest. Just don't say I didn't warn you when you are sitting in jail with cuts and bruises and that big closed sign is back on the shop.

The former Long Beach infoshop is now a college fraternity house! WHA Wha wha whaaaaaaaaaaa!

Wonder-Dimwits Power! Power of Sarcasm! Power of Resentment! Power of Androgeny!

Hey kids! How ya doin? Good, good, good. Me, I was seeing doctors to sort out my vertigo until I discovered by my lonesome that the ibuprofen I was taking for sports injuries made me sick. I switched to Tylenol and that made me dizzy, so now I take nothing, which made my knees and right elbow as sore and weak as Gnone Crapsky's entire academic career. Now I'm lifting weights like a yuppie to minimize the pain until I figure out if natural anti-inflammatories work. I was hack squatting 1300 lbs. and now I'm maxing out at 500 whilst praying I don't pop a gasket. Just to show you how stupid I am I damaged my knees through a years-long process of building up to walking five miles wearing 55 lbs. of ankle weights. I'm also in the process of a series of periodontal gum grafts that's like being slowly tortured, except they're nice enough to give me Novocain first. I was brushing my teeth too hard, of all things.

I don't update the site as often since I don’t follow new music and I've said what I've wanted to say too many times over. I copied the songs I like and traded most of my CDs and albums for store credit, which I use to buy DVDs. My 7" records sit on the shelf like artifacts. I'm too lazy to play them and most haven't aged well anyway. I'm a firm believer in the 10% Rule, which says only 10% of anything is really worthwhile. Only 10% of what I thought was great in my youth has aged well. I still own more music than I could ever listen to, and I’m happy to be off the wagon of buying everything I can to know what's happening and not miss out on something great. I've done more than my share.

I will say this. My gym is a chain, a money laundering operation whose name I change only slightly to L.A. Crapness. At various times they'll play all rap and hip-hop. To each his own but, my god, the KKK couldn't have come up with a better system to keep down minorities. Men are players/pimps and women are whores, except the one you screw and then she's your honey. Education is white and therefore wrong. I'm speechless.

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Schadenfreude \SHAHD-n-froy-duh\, noun:
A malicious satisfaction in the misfortunes of others.

It's been good days for the moderate and sane. The Nihilist-Stalinist-Dirty Hippie Axis didn't get their cloven hooves into the White House, and mass murderer Yassir Arafugg is dead after being dead for a while.

This being the disclaimer portion of our show, I’m neither a conservative nor a liberal. Presently I lean right because the left has been taken over by their worst elements. I've always registered independent and have mostly voted Democrat. The right hit a low with me in 1990 when David Duke ran for the Senate and wasn't disavowed by every corner of the conservative movement. Now it's the Democrats who march in "peace" protests sponsored by genocidal Stalinists. My god, it's like saying NAMBLA should be allowed to run schools because they love kids. To willingly do so is to invalidate your humanity, and to not know only means you're a dumb stooge.

Libertarians are ultimately amoral and indifferent, the worst of the left and right combined. I've noticed both China and Russia now combine the worst of both capitalism and communism. As it stands neo-conservatism is the only workable liberal, reasonable and responsible activist game in town, so for purposes of categorization I call myself an independent neo-con. I don’t have all the answers, but I can spot hypocrisy, duplicity and functional insanity a mile away.

The buzzword of this post-election season is “Moral Values”, the result of a faulty exit poll question. Dejected leftists are saying they have the high ground on moral values since they advocate PEACE, which might be true if their use of the term wasn't a hypocritical lie. They love humanity but hate people. Women's rights under the Taliban? Nope, too busy with social justice in Cleveland. Saddam's mass graves of children still clutching stuffed animals? Sorry, but Haliburton was given a no-bid contract! Support the troops by bringing them home? But you hate them for being illiterate rednecks and cheer when they get killed. How many ways does the left think they can have it?

Here's my big problem with the nutty left. They're crowded with lazy, smug, superior rich kids who live in egocentric worlds of untested theories. Everything they need to know they've learned in kindergarten, and when not cheering assholes and cretins they embrace nihilism as a just revenge for a world that will never be good enough for them. You don't mean well when you applaud the suffering of innocents and there is no nuanced shade of gray when it comes to genocide. So many morally indifferent fuggwads call themselves Buddhist, but when I worked concert security the worst crowds to control were the so-called peaceful hippies. Everything they wanted to do was their right and they turned ugly when told no. So many people are so full of crap, and the whole time they think they're clever.

Moral values don't exist only in a religious context. I’m a strong believer in moral values in the very secular sense that scumbags ruin anything that’s different and interesting. What consenting adults do is their own business, but adultery is wrong (get a divorce), theft is wrong (loaf of bread my ass), harming children is wrong (it’s not a sexuality), rape is not tough love, genocide is not population control – the list goes on. There are no larger truths that trump these, and the moral indifference of the Democrats this year is a major reason why I voted for a Republican president for the first time.

I would not live in a Christian theocracy, and I doubt that’s the goal of even the Evangelicals. I’m an agnostic Jew who's happy as a three-foot tapeworm in Michael Moore’s belly to be living in a tolerant nation that’s mostly Christian. People ask me if I’m offended when people celebrate Christmas all around me. Hell no, it’s paid days off, parties and cake filled with rum at work. You’ll never read about the Shlomo Who Stole Christmas!

Atheism is a religion too. It’s a faith based on science. Religion is a science based on faith. See the pretty symmetry? Too many atheists are consumed with hatred of religion and the religious. The humanism of their secularism gets lost in their bloodlust. The great murder machines of the last century were atheist, and the numbers killed dwarf any religious persecution or war in history.

Weighing the faith against reality-based communities, I prefer the faith-based because they at least operate with a moral compass. The left's Standard of None disgusts me. The far left loves fascism as long as artists are allowed to create the posters and stage the events. As long as you don't proselytize me, which I find condescending at best, I couldn't care less if you worship Alf or theoretical logarithms.

Secularists have no corner on the market of humanity, and maybe if they didn’t go out of their way to support murderous religious fanatics I’d take them seriously. Yeah, I know, all the cool kids and bands hate Bush, but I'm not a belligerent, amoral scumbag child. My liberal beliefs are not a stinking crap-sack of invalidating contradictions. My bigger truth isn't that everything I say is a lie and everything I do in the name of peace is actually an act of destruction.

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It's condescending telling people who they should vote for, so even though I'm voting for Bush all I ask is that you research ballot initiatives and, for the highest office in the land, vote not out of self-interest but for the betterment of the entire nation. Nihilists, scumbags and anarchists should all remember to vote on Super Wednesday, November third!

In 2000 I voted for Al Gore and was quite perturbed when Bush either won or was handed the election. At the time I wrote:

What do I have against George W. Bush? I'm sure he's a swell fellow who loves his kids and does the best he can to keep Dick Cheney from constantly smacking him on the back of the head and yelling he's a fugging idiot. Policies aside, and I don't disagree with everything he's tried to accomplish, he's simply in way over his head and can't even be trained to fake it.

I'm voting Bush in 2004 as a 9-11 Independent because of his head-on tackling of the bloody and expensive business of saving the world ONCE AGAIN from its miserable failings. He's not appeasing murderers or resigning us to periodic slaughter like the nuanced and ineffectual Europeans. We're in a world war against religious fascists who love death more than free people love life. These same assholes tried to take down the World Trade Center in 1993 with a van full of explosives. Yes, it's a World War even if it's not yet fought as one.

I don't enjoy talking politics with people who don't already agree with me. It usually comes down to agreeing we both "mean well", which is a lie since we both believe strongly on who we're voting for and why. It's condescending to say "don't you think?" and "don't you know?" You bring up sex, religion and politics at your own risk and it's your fault if things go wrong. I learn nothing new and now I have to deal with someone who expects me to change my mind because of their excellent oral presentation. Agreeing to disagree usually leaves a bad taste.

As a Californian I'm surrounded by Anybody-But-Bush supporters, and if not for 9-11 I'd probably still be one. It's also condescending for me to think this person just doesn't understand that the so-called "allies" (France with Germany dragged behind) hate us no matter what we do, the "global test" means bowing down to European intellectualism incapable of protecting itself or to improve the lives of actual human beings, and that the UN is a criminal organization that winks at genocide, torture and starvation.

As someone who detests marxism, a mental disorder and the greatest intellectual failure-in-practice of modern times, I'm also voting against the far left who've taken control of the Democratic Party. Marxism only leads to suffering, poverty and genocide (or as leftists call it, population control to benefit Mother Earth). Social Justice is an inhumane and totally illiberal revenge scam. Even leftists realize this, but marxism tells them education, artistic ambitions or just being different make them royalty in the utopia of socialism. And of course, they wouldn't have to work.

Adults who embrace marxism are morons at best. I wish there was a nicer way of saying it. Kids get it drilled in their heads by political pedophiles in schools and popular culture (Bad Religion on line two) and it fits in well with their belligerence and childish ideas on good intentions. Marxism has failed so often and so spectacularly the old saying applies that the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over expecting different results. How many times does marxism have to fail for marxists to realize it's never going to work? Marxism is a bizarro world of contradictory intellect where war is wrong but armed struggle is right, and where the most innocent deserve to die while inhumane butchers are treated as victims. Only in the insanity of marxism are the Taliban equated with the Amish. Peace is not patriotic when the stated goal of your enemy is to rape, torture and murder you. Pacifism is death when murderers only want you dead.

I don't believe many people support John Kerry himself. I can understand being anti-Bush, but not pro-Kerry. The man's a dork, an Ivy League, born-to-rule snob who twice married rich women to support his Thurston Howell III persona. He's a superior prick who's better than everyone because of the money he marries. His children call Tereza their "Step-Money"(!). As far as she's concerned, do we really need Leona Helmsley in the White House?

Since birth he's aspired to be president, and all his political involvements are seen as clock-punching resume builders to that end. He's never apologized for his shameful involvement with the pro-communist and very so-called anti-war movement after scamming his way home by writing his own reports of bravery in Vietnam. He met with the enemy during war and presented their plan verbatim to the US government. He helped extend the war for two more years. Just for that he's disqualified himself. Kerry lied to help himself politically and not only did American prisoners suffer torture because of it, people died.

If the United Nations weren't so corrupt and impotent maybe I'd agree to care what they think. If the opinion of foreigners who hate us but love our money and would move here in a minute mattered to me maybe I'd vote for Kerry. If I was a coward, a pacifist, believed people are reasonable and only do things for valid reasons, or just morally indifferent, maybe I'd also feel differently.

Blogger and novelist Roger L. Simon wrote recently that professional political operatives use this revealing code-language for the two major parties - Republicans are the "Stupid Party" and Democrats are the "Evil Party". I'm voting stupid this year in order to defeat evil.

Warts and all America has to be America in order for the free world to survive. That's why I'm voting Reichpublican for the Bushitler. Gabba Gabba Heil!

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John Cummings died last week at 55 after a five year battle with prostate cancer. Douglas Colvin overdosed in 2002 and Jeffrey Hyman passed away in 2001 from lymphatic cancer, leaving as the only original Ramone Tommy Erdelyi, a recording engineer who filled in on drums until Marc Bell stepped in. My work-friend Dave, an edgificated man who likes the punk rock and had a member of Wall Of Voodoo rip out flooring in his house, told me he thought they were brothers and Ramone was their real last name. Silly Dave.

Read the obituaries for an obituary. Johnny was the guitarist for the best and most important band in punk history. Yeah yeah yeah, the Sex Pistols; their one real album was as good as Ramones, Leave Home or Rocket To Russia, but that's only one vs. three.

Johnny forced everyone to wear the dreaded Ramones uniform and went nuts when anyone was late for rehearsals. He insisted the eagle in the Ramones logo hold a baseball bat. He was the only guy with any concept of money and worth, and he was the cretin who kept the other cretins in line long enough to make a career out of playing three chords.

As I wrote when Joey died, it's not the end of an era and the world hasn't stopped spinning. A retired middle aged man I never met passed away from cancer and I'm sorry for him, his friends and family. Maybe if I knew him personally I'd feel the symbolic or personal loss many are experiencing, but all I can say is that's too bad and I hope he didn't feel a lot of pain. And, oh yeah, thanks for all that great music.

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I’d write more commentaries if I didn’t find blogs and other internet sources do it much better than I can. I have little interest in new punk bands and am off the wagon of buying whatever is new in hopes of finding the 10% that's not pure crap, so the best I can do on that front is edit my old pages and review things that have been out for a while.

When it comes to my own life I have a memory like a steel spaghetti strainer, yet I’m the king of useless information. If you need to know the clinical term for a fear of dust, it’s Amathophobia. Child labor laws in Hollywood were named after Jackie Coogan, who played Uncle Fester on The Addams Family. Ask me how old I am and I have to do the math, which involves mumbling and counting on my fingers.

The secret of my mastery of triviality was once the daily newspapers and alternative weeklies I read cover to cover. Since 9/11 I don’t do that anymore. In a time of world war, and this is what it is no matter how tightly you shut your eyes and scream lalalalalalala, I separate the world into those for us and those against us. There is no neutrality in times of war, and nuance is for those on the wrong side of the issue. Talk to the Swiss about neutrality, and how it profited them while millions died.

The mainstream media are not evil but they do lean left and show bias in a number of ways, from intentionally misquoting to avoiding news stories entirely, a prime example being the Swiftboat Veterans For Truth who have crippled the Kerry campaign. Fox leans right but they're only one boat in a sea of liberalism. In Editor and Publisher, a magazine covering the newspaper industry, James O'Shea, the managing editor of the Chicago Tribune says "There are too many places for people to get information. I don't think newspapers can be the gatekeepers anymore -- to say this is wrong and we will ignore it. Now we have to say this is wrong, and here is why." He says this in the perturbed tone of an intellectual superior inconvenienced by what his industry considers unqualified amateurs. The gatekeepers are doing a piss poor job so thankfully blogs are there as alternative avenues to the news.

Liberalism is a fine thing as long as it’s not propped up on a stick as the caring face of marxism, the greatest intellectual failure of the last few centuries. After 9/11 the far left pushed itself to the forefront of Democratic party politics, making a vote for Kerry a vote for pacifism in the face of 9^th century barbarism. The Washington Post and LA Times were on board with sanity until the beginning of the presidential election season, when they turned an approving eye to Michael Moore’s self-enriching brand of anti-Americanism and redefined everyone against us as either mature and worldly or aggrieved and justified. I gave up completely on the mainstream media in October of 2003 when the LA Times did a hit on The Governator just before the election.

I also lost patience with the mainstream media’s romantic embrace of ‘60s (and by extension today’s) radicalism, which views murder for a cause, if not justifiable, then surely understandable. My disgust with rich kid idiocy extends to alternative weeklies like the Village Voice, the Washington City Paper and the LA Weekly, who support any form of cretinism as long as it’s arty or fashionably nihilistic. It’s all fun and games as a leisure time activity but completely counter-productive when the poop hits the fan. It’s been raining poop for a few years now.

I now get all my news on the internet, and I let blogs lead me to stories of note. I also appreciate their commentaries, which I decide to be either worthy or off the mark. I like reading discussions of current events in addition to the source articles.

I deeply regret that I won't be amongst my progressive brothers and sisters as they suck teargas at the Reichspublikan National Kristalnacht in New Nuremberg City this week. It's truly breathtaking to see flora and fauna from all walks of life standing together against Der Fuhrer Bush - not only for his oil-stealing blitzkrieg across the Middle East, but for his ruthless crushing of our civil liberties under his blood-stained jackboots.

Kerry also spoke to Brad, a manager at an Olympia area K-Mart until store closures resulted in massive layoffs. After three years looking for work, Brad was finally forced to accept a position at his former competitor, Wal-Mart, for fifty cents an hour less than what he made before. To make matters worse, Wal-Mart requires that new employees be on the payroll for at least six months before they qualify for medical benefits, forcing Brad to temporarily discontinue his sex change hormone treatments. Not quite male, not quite female, yet both at the same time, Brad draws stares from his coworkers and fears for his own safety.

Former senator John Glenn (D-Ohio) took the defense a step further by comparing the Republicans' misleading statements to those of Nazi Germany. "You've just got to separate out fact from fiction. . . . Too often, too often, in this country, if you hear something repeated, it's the old Hitler business -- if you hear something repeated, repeated, repeated, repeated, you start to believe it," he said.

I guess we can't criticize Senator Glenn since he was an astronaut and we never served in outer space.

''I have five words for Americans,'' he thundered. ''This is your wake up call!''

Is that five words? Or is it six? Well, it's all very nuanced, according to whether you hyphenate the ''wake-up.'' Maybe he should have said, ''I have four words plus a common hyphenated expression for Americans.'' I'd suggest the rewrite to him personally, but I don't want him to stare huffily at me and drone, "How dare you attack my patriotism." Ah, yes. As usual, he has four words for Americans: I served in Vietnam. Or five words if you spell it Viet Nam. But how dare anyone be so impertinent as to insult John Kerry! No one has the right to insult Kerry, except possibly Teresa, and only on the day she gives him his allowance. If you want passivity and wallowing in victim culture, the Dems will do. If you want to win this thing, Bush is the only guy running.

As a parent, this story has had me seeing red. I haven't even tried to fully contemplate how I would react if something like this happened to me because I don't want to feel that kind of rage unnecessarily.

After this, 9/11, and all the other atrocities committed by these kinds of people, it's really not hard to imagine that the gates of hell have opened in the middle east and are spewing forth pure evil into this world. These people need to be stopped, not for country, not for ideology, but for civilization and humanity. It may cost us part of our souls to win this war, but the alternative is to lose everything. For the sake of my child, I'll do my best to see that never happens.

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I was going to write a longer rant on why I love this parody poster but its creator Jay D. Dyson did it for me on 10-12-2001. His comments are below. I'm still amazed Stalinist supporters of Milosovich's rape and ethnic cleansing campaign against the Muslims of Bosnia were allowed to run the American anti-war movement. I'm beside myself with disgust that the National Organization For Women were against deposing the Taliban in Afghanistan because they were more concerned with the marxist revenge fantasy of Social Justice than stopping women from being beaten when exposing some ankle while walking in the cloth prison of the burka. The idiot daydream of using murderous religious fanatics to torture and kill proselytizing religious fanatics who live in your town is a brilliant strategy except they won't allow you to be a godless hippie once they complete your dirty work for you.

It's not Art but a mental disease to think hate is love, slavery is freedom and death is life. Soylent Green is people and To Serve Man is a cookbook. In practice, marxism is nazism, yet over-educated rich kids flock to it because it promises them revenge against everyone they think they're better than and also assures them that after the revolution they won't have to work because their artistic and intellectual skills make them the new ruling class. It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous and sad.

This parody was done almost entirely out of frustration with all the mealy-mouthed moral equivocators who refer to terrorists as "freedom fighters" and then do nothing but badmouth our troops who risk their own necks to keep those moronic ingrates free.

It irks the living crap out of me when these Leftist chumps refer to genocidal human-rights violators like Saddam Hussein, the Taliban and al Qaeda in the romantic frame of "freedom fighters" and then bitch and whine at every accidental civilian casualty inadvertently caused by our troops!

I for one would like to see what "freedoms" those terrorists are championing. To date, the only thing they champion is theocratic dictatorships governed not by laws of liberty or justice, but by a creed of brutality that holds all who don't share their fundamentalist Islamic faith as second-class infidels.

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On Dennis Miller’s show a novelist on his Varsity Panel was asked for her reaction to the 9-11 Commission Report. Why swimmers, race car drivers and Country singers are asked their opinions on foreign policy is beyond me, but celebrities are idiot sheepherders who pay the bills. Anyway, she smiled the smile of the overly smug and replied that Americans must first ask themselves why a billion people around the world hate us so much. Dennis said nothing but my head popped off and rolled under the dresser.

Every time I think of how to respond to this a whole new angle comes up that will take up half the internet. I'll just jump in:

· How the hell does anyone come up with this figure, and is Hate the operant word? Does this include people who envy us or have a vested interest in our demise? Are all people in certain countries added because their governments are on our list?

· People vote with their feet and they come to the United States from every hellhole in the world. Let's ask how many of these so-called billion would move here in a heartbeat if given the chance. It's funny but citizens in marxists countries are not allowed to leave. Why is that? And why are immigrants from communist countries among the most patriotic Americans?

· How dare she sit here in America and make that statement? Go back to wherever your dumb accent originates if the US is so horrible. In a time of war if you can't pick up an oar and row at least don't throw the anchor over the side and sit there screaming your diaper needs to be changed.

· Everybody hates everybody. The world's full of miserable people. Friends are friends until they're no longer useful. 19th-century British statesman Lord Palmerston noted "there are no permanent alliances - only permanent interests." Exhibit A: France.

· Here's a list of some ongoing conflicts where people hate each other. Stop reading once you get the point: Catholics/Protestants (Ireland), Turks/Kurds (various), Palestinians/Jews (Israel), India/Pakistan, Basques/Spain, Indonesia/Timorese, Bosnia/Serbia, Tibet/China, Eritrea/Ethiopia, Islamofascists/The World.

· America can't become what that billion who hate us want us to be because somebody has the save the world from itself on a regular basis. If we become like France and Germany, who will save them from the Islamofascists who won't accept the superiority of the EU model? Let's be like Norway -- no, wait, it says here in the news they might consider banning Islam altogether.

On Amazon.com there is a book titled Why Do People Hate America? It comes with a recommendation from stalinist stooge Gnome Crapsky so you know it's been vetted for fairness and accuracy. One reader review sums up its four major points as follows. My comments are in the always sweet Comic Sans font and colored blue for your protection:

1) America presents a view of itself to the world via its cultural creations and political rhetoric that it fails to live up to.

America exports its culture just like everyone else. Sorry if we're so damn successful. Our political rhetoric is democratic backed by the military might to enforce it when the situation calls. Does it always succeed? No. Can it always succeed? No. Is it always our fault? No.

2) By tilting the global trading system in its favor America has not only impoverished the world but it has actively sought to destroy other cultures and to starve the world's people to death.

What a load of crap. Stalinist and failed marxist societies are where you find starvation and financial ruin, which is always somehow blamed on the United States.

3) The US uses a double standard when it comes to international conduct; one for itself and one for everyone else.

As much as anyone else, and at least we get it right half the time. That's still 50% more than any country Crapsky supports.

4) The American people do not know about the world outside their borders and, furthermore, they do not seem to care to know.

That's us - fat, happy and stupid. We still somehow find a way to keep the world from becoming one big prison camp. It's the strangest thing.

5) American military intervention is unrestrained and devastates vast swaths of the globe.

Our fight against communism has been a gift to the world. I'm sorry if we backed local scumbags or fought by the same rules as our enemies. This thinking is marxist and therefore completely bankrupt. Go live in North Korea for a week, and not in the Potemkin Village they set up for useful idiots.

In the delusional grand narrative of world history held by advocates of anti-Americanism as pathology, every nation besides the USA once consisted of only peaceful, loving beings who wanted nothing more than to grow their crops, raise their children and live in perfect harmony with their neighbors and nature. Then came the evil Americans with their death machines, hatreds and oppression. Who will save these innocents from the evil empire of Amerikkka?

Why do people hate America? That's their problem, not ours. We're too busy saving us from them and them from themselves.

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Benjamin Beersheva is a college student who takes time from his studies to write a blog cataloging and dissecting Gnome Crapsky's countless intellectual dishonesties. His attack on The Crapper is in the rarified air of scholarly intellectual debate, which is important so it exists on the record, but is in its own way stagnating if not self-defeating. If you elevate discussion high enough the people and acts involved become almost secondary. It's a set of polite rules supposed to end with both parties agreeing to disagree. Gnome Crapsky is a sack of crap in human form because of the hateful, anti-democratic and even genocidal agenda he defends and promotes. To think of him on a more meaningful level than political pedophile and nihilist is giving him more credit and time than he deserves.

Here's my truncated response to an e-mail Benjamin and I were sending back and forth. He was assuming all punks were leftists and wrote I should elevate my own writings on Gnome to a higher level to make it more professional. I compare Gnome to child molesters - so don't miss it!

Not all people into punk music are leftists, but as an extension of bohemianism that's the worldview it operates from. Many older punks seem to be crazed working class, no sympathy for you gun freaks whose
liberalism is mostly libertarianism. Punks, and leftists in general, take advantage of teenage belligerence for many wrong reasons. That's why I call Bad Religion "political pedophiles".

There's a site called conservativepunk.com that needs to be updated more frequently and should be layed out better, but they've made news because one of the founders is the lead singer for The Misfits. They link to other sites of a similar nature so I know there's at least a small movement afoot.

Back to what I say is my place in the rhetorical world, remember the book Explaining Hitler? It's nice to explain things but any book that can humanize and therefore excuse a monster like Hitler is also a disservice. Hitler was a monster, the prime definition of secular evil. Sure it's nice to apply psychology even to Hitler, but at all times the monster/evil truths have to be flashing in big red letters.

You don't always want raging, blind hatred, but there's a danger when you elevate the discourse so above emotion that people and acts don't really matter anymore as much as the elevated discussion itself.

If you go to amazon.com and type in Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers, the reader responses from child molesters are disgusting. Joe writes "As a pedophile myself I found this book to be enlightening in my quest to truly come to terms with my own sexuality... Although it doesn't glorify child molestation it does attempt to shed the positive aspects of a healthy boy/male relationship... For anyone trying to understand this phenomenon that is fairly commonplace in society this brave book argues the point as well as any other..."

OK, do we need to debate these people on a lofty intellectual level or throw them in a pit so they don't rape small children? It's a tough call if you suffer from amorality of relativism, which uses conceptual language as a smokescreen.

Ben, what you're doing is vital because you're taking the time to rip apart Gnome's nonsense at the level on which he himself claims to operate. Still, at the same time, the man defended Pol Pot. That makes him better than a baby lover exactly how? (rhetorical question only)
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I don't think about Michael Moore in the first person. As a survival tool for living in the south of California I've learned it's better to avoid most people and treat the more flagrant characters as holograms. The bulk of stylized American dumbness is born here and exported anywhere an empty mind needs filling with packing peanuts. I've yet to say this out loud but my internal response to the crème de local cretin is the greatest third person quote from Buffalo Bill in Silence Of The Lambs ,"It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told." For you arty types, I grant Moore a huge aesthetic distance.

Below are links to anti-Michael Moore sites and articles. While I’m not going to rehash all their arguments I will say the accumulated evidence proves him to be a disgusting propagandist in the mold of Joseph Goebbels, who observed that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes truth. Yes, I am comparing Moore to Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, but I don’t think Moore is as much driven by political ideology than by the standard motivations of any megalomaniac scumbag. Everything he does is based on this set of personality defects, and I don't think being a clown makes you any less dangerous.

The stalinist dregs of the World Workers Party and their puppet front groups International ANSWER and NION are as evil as any neo-nazi organization, and Moore enriches himself by combining the original tactics of the latter with the innovations of the former. A black hole of capitalism when it comes to his own bank account, he’d be all for the nanny state as long as his own wages weren’t taxed any higher.

Megalomaniac scumbags are pathologically liars, hypocrites and egotists often immune to the regimens of hygiene and grooming, but strangely enough Michael Moore is also a cowardly bully. As a scare tactic he threatens the world with lawsuits and when confronted with his failures as a documentary filmmaker he falls back on claiming it’s just entertainment. Once again, a clown.

And what an entertainer he is! Yasmin Alibhai-Brown wrote in the London newspaper The Independent that at a speaking engagement called Michael Moore - Live!, "Moore went into a rant about how the passengers on the Sept. 11 planes were scaredy cats because they were mostly white," Alibhai-Brown also writes that Moore didn’t stop there, "If the passengers had included black men, he claimed, those killers, with their puny bodies and unimpressive small knives, would have been crushed by the dudes, who as we all know take no disrespect from anybody." Does this crap just fly out of his ass?

One of my favorite Moore-As-Asshole quotes comes from former NYC mayor Ed Koch, who recounted that before a panel discussion Moore said something like “I don’t know why we are making so much of an act of terror. It is three times more likely that you will be struck by lightening than die from an act of terror.” Ok, let’s declare war against lightning!

Another great Moore-As-Asshole line is when he said of the Saddam holdovers and foreign Islamofascists, "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win." Ouch!

Moore was born and raised in the wealthy white town of Davison, MI, not ten miles away in working class Flint as he constantly claims. I note this because I was born in Brooklyn, NY but we immediately moved to Long Island, 22 miles from Manhattan as the bullets fly. When I say I’m from New York without attaching a huge asterisk to it I know I’m a putz because my birth in the city was a technicality. You can only laugh when Moore throws on his hair shirt and pretends he’s from the multicultural rainbow of the inner city, an act he can’t carry off because he’s obviously not authentic.

The mind boggles that he’s taken seriously. Sure he’s destroyed documentary filmmaking as a truthful, objective art form -- but that’s what a megalomaniac scumbag does to make a living. He sells half-truths and lies to an audience driven mad by political hatred, and it’s to his advantage that his fans hold him to the same Standard Of Negative Eleven he holds for himself. The Standard of Negative Eleven is much worse than the Standard Of None as it expects and demands the very worst. Leni Riefenstal could at least claim to be making Art.

Megalomaniac scumbags are also pathological assholes, and Moore’s career is filled with stories of arbitrary cruelness to people who have to take it because of their jobs (he does this in his films by putting people just doing their jobs in uncomfortable situations). He lasted less than a year at Mother Jones before being fired for being unbearable both as a person and an editor. He then joined Ralph Nader’s organization but was also let go for being universally despised. A friend who has met him and had to take his condescending hectoring says he went well out of his way to be unpleasant to everyone.

Summing up Moore’s experience as a boss and co-worker, The Weekly Standard wrote:

“While most Moore critics stop at ridiculing him, since he is, both figuratively and literally, a fat target, I talked to his co-workers, acquaintances, and former employees, nearly all of whom made my editorial pronouncements look like a good-natured game of Slapjack. They called him ‘paranoid’, ‘mercurial’, ‘demanding’" and a ‘fork-tongued manipulator’. Though Moore's entire shtick is predicated on fighting the jackboot of corporate oppression, they detailed everything from his temper tantrums to his threatening to fire an assistant who sent a yellow cab instead of a limo to fetch him at the airport. They compared working conditions under Moore to ‘a sweatshop’, ‘indentured servitude’ and ‘a concentration camp’. One of his former producers said it was like ‘working for Idi Amin--without the laughs.’ Another staffer simply said, ‘My parents want him dead.’”

He literally demands limousine service. He pressured employees of his television show TV Nation not to join a union. He owns two million dollar homes yet dresses in a contrived uniform of the working class shlub. It takes a lot of effort to maintain The Standard Of Negative Eleven.

The internet is filled with people who actively despise Michael Moore and do think of him in the first person. I applaud the effort but lament that rational people have to waste so much time refuting so much dishonest nonsense. The best of it is below:

Moore Lies: clearinghouse for all truth and justice in reporting on filmmaker and pseudo-celebrity Michael Moore by the authors of Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man.

Moore Watch : dedicated to unearthing the truth behind the doublespeak and falsehood that spews from the mouth (and keyboard) of Michael Moore on a regular basis.

Centigrade 911: Clearninghouse for everything anti-Moore, modeled after the Drudge Report.

My political affiliation is now 9-11 Independent, and my relationship with National Public Radio (NPR) would be love/hate if I listened with any regularity. I enjoy Car Talk, A Prairie Home Companion, Marketplace and Scott Simon of Weekend Edition. I spent years glued to Washington DC’s WAMU Diane Rehm Show, The Big Broadcast and Hot Jazz Saturday Night. I commute on a motorcycle and at home prefer silence over the stereo or radio, so my NPR listening opportunities are limited to begin with. I’ve also had some bad experiences in the last few years with their slanted coverage of the post-9-11 world.

I’ve always known NPR as a home of cultural elites, and when I was more liberal I could always say my elites were better than the far right’s elites. You know, because our side always meant well and strove to be fair and honest. I don’t see that as true anymore. Al Franken went insane, Michael Moore-on destroyed documentary filmmaking as an objective art form, and stalinist front groups crawled out from under their rocks to rape the word Peace – all with the approval of NPR and the Democratic establishment. Maybe this creates equivalence for some with the Ann Coulters and Rush Limbaughs of the right, but at least these people are up front with what they think and don’t fabricate events and shill for real fascists. And aren’t the NPR types supposed to live on a loftier mental plain no matter what?

In NPR I now recognize an overbearing cultural and political superiority complex blind to the world outside an enlightened world of theories. Sure, their inbred world of politics, culture and ideas is more appealing to me than a redneck’s world of NASCAR, bible thumping and hunting while drunk, but in a time of war you need to know who’s serious and on your side, and who’s escaped to a happier place where everything bad can be traced back to root causes resolved through reason, money and dialogue. Not only does NPR’s enlightened, elitist stance coddle and appease terror, they find ways to slander the United States through snobbery.

Susan Stamberg provided a howlingly condescending and irrational commentary on Saturday in a piece called “European Leisure Time”. You can listen to it for as long as it lasts via this link:

Filled with names of exotic French and Italian locales, and visceral descriptions of fine dining and living, Stamberg laments that America has imported its stressful and money worshipping work ethic to the idyllic Europeans who live with verve, style and substance. She doesn’t imply but actually says their way of life is superior, and it’s a shame we’re ruining it for everyone.

That’s so wrong and big money elitist. Socialist democracies are under pressure to increase their workweeks because they both can’t afford their welfare states and compete in the world of business. They’ve ingrained in their citizens the belief they don’t have to do much and everything will be given to them. This only works until the ponzi scheme of your economy collapses. France will be the last to change because they think getting something for nothing is their birthright. If Stamberg wants to blame anyone for the accelerated workweek, look at the Japanese. If the US went to a thirty hour workweek it would have no effect on the European workweek.

Italy and France are lovely, I’m sure. I wouldn’t know because I’ve never earned the income to jaunt over to Paris and stroll down the Champs Elysees with a basket of local cheese and a bottle of good wine. That’s what rich people like Stamberg do with their four to six weeks annual vacation. Or their children, who travel on a budget but have money wired to them by their parents for expenses.

Aren’t Europeans so much better because they’re not us and they hate us, and isn’t over there so much nicer than over here because here sucks and Europeans hate us? Don’t we simply suck?

There are many, many nice places to visit in the United States, and Americans everywhere find time to picnic, enjoy each other’s company and stroll as a family with not a care in the world. I don’t have the time and money to visit many of these places here either, so when I listen to Susan Stamberg talk about travel like she’s Martha Stewart I can only nod my head and say it's nice if you’re rich enough and have the time. To say life over there is superior to here makes me wonder if that’s really true. To then blame the US for the failures of another country’s political-economic system under the guise of snobbery is contemptible.

I’ve had it up to here with people who think they’re better because of the things they buy, the places they go and the things they do. I also can’t stand people who keep on complaining about how bad it is where they are and how much nicer it is someplace else. Go there then. Bye!

Here’s a link to a chart detailing the general demographics of NPR listeners. They’re richer and more educated than the national average. Education is meaningless if you think and do dumb things, and money doesn’t make you a better person, it only makes you richer.

Susan Stamberg thinks the European way of life is superior to the American way of life. That’s great. Just don’t blame someone else when your snob’s heaven on earth realizes it can’t afford to be on vacation forever.

Americans and America are not perfect, but this is the land of opportunity and freedom in a world that offers little of either. The world votes with its feet, and their destination of choice for over a century has been the USA.

America offers opportunities to succeed but it doesn't, can't and shouldn't guarantee it. No country in practice does. Fairness is fair but there should be few rewards for not even trying. That's part of the much derided cowboy libertarian nature of this land, and if you don't like it the world offers a plethora of alternative socialist paradises.

Not everyone wins here but there is no utopia except in the minds of non-poor Americans whose lives have been carefree enough to believe everything they needed to know in life they learned in kindergarten. Leftists are allowed to live out their middle class dementias in peace, never having to experience what it's like in Cuba and North Korea but knowing somehow it must be better because they have no MCDonalds or monster truck rallies.

France and Germany slam the United States out of jealousy and self-interest backed by endless rivers of hypocrisy. The former French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin wrote a best-selling book glorifying the French imperialism of Napoleon (The Hundred Days, or the Spirit of Sacrifice). The most culturally chauvinistic people on earth, the French quarantine minorities in the slums of their euphemistically named "suburbs" while guaranteeing their own downfall by placating a religious fascism that despises them. Sure they may be back-stabbing cowards, but they're so much less judgmental about sex and love fine dining. And the Germans, do I really need to explain why they're the last people on earth qualified to talk about peace, even if today they're as individuals a very pleasant people?

White Europeans conquered native Americans and took Mexican land in war. That's history and history is filled with tales of conquest. Defeated countries and peoples have their own histories of conquest over others so spare me the tales of woe of people who still wallow in defeat they make no effort to rise above. History isn't written by the winners in a PC culture where everyone who claims victimhood gets to rewrite history, with America as the font of all their ills. The native Americans weren't the freakin' Amish. They fought their own brutal wars and took slaves. The Inca empire of our southern neighbors might have been the most oppressive in history, but because today their people are poor we have to pretend their heritage was as peaceful as a new age sect.

The United States kept the world from destroying itself at least twice and is the only force willing and capable of stopping religious and atheistic fascists from imposing absolute intolerance on entire nations, just like we contained and defeated the toilet clog known as communism. If you think America isn't free, please spend a year in a land of the enemy of your enemy.

There are a number of things about America I'm happy about, and there are whole categories of Americans I'd rather avoid. Still, I know the US has been an overwhelming force for good and a beacon of hope for legitimately oppressed peoples. I feel exceedingly patriotic this year but that's not an endorsement of the jock/preppie/religious fanatic/uneducated jingoism that turns off liberals. It's an affirmation of what's good about this country. It's a realization that this nation, warts and all, is worth protecting, since, forgetting all the jealousy, condescension, competition and political disagreements aimed against it, we fat, stupid, obnoxious Americans are the only reason the world enjoys any freedom at all. Nobody has to love the United States but every sane person should at least in their heart know to not get in the way while we once again save the world from itself, wipe its ass for it, give it a job, build it a house, and raise it to hopefully be a responsible adult.

It’s all fun and games until 3,000 people lose an eye. Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt wrote that there are two Americas – Serious America and Silly America. To this I add a third America – Sick America. Serious America sees 9-11 as a mass murder and declaration of war against not only western civilization but civilization itself. Silly America says war never solves anything and it’s all about oil anyway. They cry when gas prices go down. Sick America wishes only death for all who stand in the way of religious fascists who wish us dead. I am a proud member of Serious America, treat Silly America as a partly well-intentioned spoiled rich folk leisure-time delusion, and have only contempt for the Sick America. US News and World reporter Michael Barone writes of a Hard and Soft America, applying ying/yang principles to social/political discourse. Both are needed but Hard America allows Soft America to exist. Freedom isn’t free and the alternatives are ugly in practice. Canada is the perfect example of a Soft country that is allowed to be so only because they’re next to a Hard country. Canada has an army only as a function of national identity, and when anyone from Canada complains about the USA in this time of war I must remind them if they were 4,000 miles to the right they’d now be called The Former Republic Of Canadastan.

My politics haven’t changed as much as they’ve grown to include more people and causes on my Worthless Idiot list. In the punk (and especially death rock) world you’re an optimist as long as the list of things you like is longer than the list of things you don’t. My like list has grown longer along with my don’t like list because I now also appreciate more of what’s important. You learn who your friends are in a crisis, and 9-11 was huge. Those who vowed never to let this happen again earned my respect while who said we brought it on ourselves and deserve it became those I at best avoid. The most insane thing I read was this quote from Prozac Nation author Elizabeth Wurtzel from an interview in Toronto's The Globe and Mail: "I had not the slightest emotional reaction [to watching one of the World Trade Center Towers collapse]. I thought: 'This is really a strange art project.'... It was a most amazing sight in terms of sheer elegance. It fell like water. It just slid, like a turtleneck going over someone's head. ... It was just beautiful. You can't tell people this. I'm talking to you because you're Canadian. ... I just felt, like, everyone was overreacting. People were going on about it. That part really annoyed me." I’m amazed one so morally bankrupt is allowed to wear shirts where both arms aren’t strapped tightly down the back. Michael Moore waddles between the Silly and Sick, serving as a court jester for elites who love any fat, rich white American male who makes his living insulting fat, rich white males. Gore Vidal and Susan Sontag will also dance for pennies on short notice.

I was sad to learn that in a time of war the liberal media have actively worked to undermine American resolve and endanger American lives. I used to read The Washington Post every damn day no matter what. I differentiate between liberals and leftists but liberal media have been promoting a suicidal leftist agenda since 9-11 to an extent that’s treasonous. I’ve stopped reading print newspapers entirely and now get all my news on-line. Some I believe more than others, and others are only good for laughs, but center-right sources take themselves and their subject matter seriously, and they make efforts to be professional and rational. They have standards beyond shrill insult. The New Republic is the only left-leaning publication I find not constantly wallowing in conspiracy theory. Most traffic heavily in raw communal hatred. Salon was great until they turned hard left as they neared bankruptcy. I find liberal sites that look and read like White Power pages, and it reminds me that Hitler was a socialist. Blatant media bias also comes out in how some stories are given prominence, others hidden on page A18 while others are nonexistent. Even though I find Fox News to be as slanted as any other media, their success is not proof the media are dominated by conservatives or that its viewers are dumb. There’s a large market for what they offer.

Liberal media are ubiquitous and often driven by aggressive political agendas. The Los Angeles Times ran a review of a film about the radical Weather Underground that called it “The story of how people so right could be so wrong.” What these hippie hacky sacks of crap were right about will forever be a mystery. When the L.A. Times relentlessly attacked pre-Governor Arnold while they sat on stories that Gray Davis beat up his own staff, I stopped reading it altogether. Which reminds me - moveon.org formed to say Clinton’s alleged sex crimes were groundless, yet years later they come out of nowhere to scream Arnold is a sexual predator? It takes balls to be that hypocritical. I was an NPR fanatic but turned it off for the last time when I heard an announcer speak of the Palestinians as having “their” right of return instead of the neutral “the” right of return. The Right Of Return is code language for destroying Israel through a human flood of Jew haters followed by elections.

Sadly there’s no Hippocratic Oath when it comes to journalism. Activist journalism is the norm, and your statement that there’s a moral equivalence between left and right journalism is a lie when the issues are freedom vs. slavery and life vs. death. Life isn’t about ideas alone; it’s about people who exist outside the world of theories

President Bush didn’t get my vote in 2000, and if I could I would have voted against him twice, but damn has he stepped up to the plate since 9-11. He takes the terrorists at their word and knows this a war they’re fighting to the death. When it comes to Islamofascism leftists believe the enemy of their enemy is their friend. I imagine they feel they themselves won’t be sublimated and murdered because of the inevitability of their own cultural, philosophical and political superiority. I call it The France Complex. Or, as nihilists, they don’t care. In Germany, socialists and communists might have stopped the National Socialist Hitler in his tracks, but the communists instead took the opportunity to crush the socialists. The nazi rise to power wasn’t itself important because of what communists felt was the historical inevitability of marxist doctrine. If Al Gore won the 2000 election the US response would have been to bomb an empty urinal cake factory in Afghanistan, and there would still be a 9-11 level disaster every month. Bush isn’t a wordsmith and he don’t speak too good, but he’s serious and knows what’s at stake. Reagan was the same way, and the world’s much better off with a neutered Russia, a free Europe and a US military that can save the world from itself like it must do every now and then.

The success of 9-11 created a thousand more Bin Ladens. Screw the inevitable Bin Ladens created after we attacked Afghanistan and Iraq.

I call myself a 9-11 neo-conservative. A neo-conservative is a former liberal who realizes the left is incapable of bringing about traditional liberal goals. They’re too busy pursuing the revenge fantasies of social justice. They prefer their minorities poor, uneducated, hapless, helpless and very, very angry. Neo-cons aren’t afraid to kick ass to promote liberal democracy, and we have no time for victim cultures and ineffectual whining. Guilt and innocence cannot be based solely on race, and alleged victims of discrimination surely can be guilty of racism themselves. The far left, which is to liberalism what the Klan is to conservatism, has taken hold of the Democratic Party since 2000 and are accepting of the stalinist Worker’s World Party (WWP) front groups that organized most of the anti-war protests. Stalin=Hitler, and to march under their banners is as corrupt as approving of NAMBLA’s elementary school mentoring program. Any association with International ANSWER or NOIN negates all your enlightened words and actions. The WWP mouthing platitudes of caring is as bizarre as a rapist asking what anyone could possibly have against love.

As a neo-con I still don’t like dumb rednecks, yuppie scum, jock bullies and proselytizing religious fanatics, but now I see the people who wish only the worst for these stereotypes are no better. Exact opposites are pretty much the same thing. Good intentions are meaningless when the assumptions and results are so wrong. Intentions are defined by word and action, not rationalizations. Leftists also hate neo-cons because they are considered traitors who know all their dirty lies and tactics.

People laughed at George Bush when he said his favorite philosopher was Jesus. They wagered he couldn’t name one real philosopher, and maybe Bush doesn’t know the difference between Soren Kierkegaard and Captain Kirk, but he isn’t a eunuch when it comes to taking charge in a crisis. Marxist intellectuals care about ideas as extensions of their own egos, not how these ideas actually affect people. They love humanity but hate people. I imagine they fancy themselves like the Greek gods who interacted with humans for entertainment. They’re actually for suppression, war and genocide, as long as the herd of the idiot masses are thinned and their own superiority assured. Like neo-con icon David Horowitz says, leftists are motivated by resentment and retribution.

Most of my voting has been for democrats, but only because I saw them as being more moderate and realistic than the Republicans, who really hit bottom with me when Klansman David Duke was elected to Louisiana's House of Representatives in 1989. Some of the national conservative media said sure he’s a Klansman but he does represent a huge chunk of voters. A major reason why the Democrats must now lose this election is to defeat the radical leftists who rose up after 2000. The Dems must fall back into the moderate center, or at least scoop liberalism out of the marxist crapper. You can't let pathological buffoons like Michael Moore dictate national policy.

Another reason is to affirm to the world that Bush’s tough approach against terror is America’s policy. To repudiate it will just encourage more attacks against the US.

So, what’s changed since 9-11 is everything. If 9-11 didn't change you, you're dead inside.

With Kurt to murder, I mean time to kill, I sat at Tower Records and read the Allen Wrench sections of the latest Kurt Cobain mystery thriller Love & Death, by Max Wallace and Ian Halperin. Written in the come-join-us-won't-you communal first person, Max, Ian and a bodyguard (not needed) met Allen Wrench to ask if he truly ooly gosh honest murdered the 90's Elvis of Flannel for $50,000, and oh yeah, did he also kill El Duce for ratting him out in Kurt & Courtney? As he always does for promotional and entertainment value, Wrench denies and winks at guilt, treating the matter mostly as the hypothetical situation it is.

I've met Allen Wrench and have followed this story mostly for yucks and to follow the weirdness of cult worship and conspiracy theories. The angles of the case are actually quite engaging, and aspects of it might be true, yet Allen Wrench probably didn't do it unless he's Keyser Soze from The Usual Suspects. (JusticeForKurt.com has a lot of good info, including the theory that Kurt was murdered by the Illuminati. As a rule, sane people run once the Illuminati are mentioned).

I met Allen Wrench four years ago at a Kill Allen Wrench show in Riverside, CA, Los Angeles' desert version of rural Arkansas. He had mailed me the great and funny CD My Bitch Is A Junkie, and wrote to stop by early. In person he reminded me of Drew Carey, physically and otherwise. On stage he became a massive scary person, which as a one time standup comic who did characters I understood completely. Is Allen Wrench the maniac he is on stage or the intelligent, friendly guy with whom I spent thirty minutes? Maybe both, maybe neither. He didn't come across as dangerous or mean like your average SoCal stereotype. He knew how to fight and probably liked to more than he should, but Riverside is a dangerous place where trouble looks for you, desperately. Allen and his music remind me of Tesco Vee, whom I've also met a few times.

· First and foremost, the police cleared Wrench in their investigation. He's said that but the nuts won't listen. If Allen received and spent $50,000 to kill Cobain it would have been obvious to investigators.

· Just because you know Judo and fight in aage matches doesn't make you an expert or willing assassin. Neither does being a gun nut. It's very difficult to make murder look like suicide. Don't you watch TV?!

· Why did El Duce mention his friend "Allen" as the hitman? I bet Courtney did offer El Duce money to kill Kurt. She's the Nancy Spungen of her generation. Duce was an alcoholic hobo who would dance like a fool for drinks. Maybe he mentioned Wrench because he knew Allen as an ultimate fighter. Or maybe he did ask Allen to do it and Allen's afraid to admit it. Duce is said to have passed a lie detector test on the subject. It still doesn't mean Allen Wrench actually did it.

· If he was going to kill El Duce, Allen wouldn't have chosen a time when he was seen as the last person to be with his victim. Allen gave Duce a ride home, whatever that means to a guy like El Duce. If Allen was the cold calculating killer he's accused of being he wouldn't have done something so stupid.

So that's it kids. Allen's not the killer unless he's a super genius crazy killer psycho dude. Which I highly doubt.

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Watching his followers line up for execution, Waiting to be fed into a tree shredder, Dreaming of life beyond the gulag walls

Litter artist Robbie Conal's posters have been scrapped off walls by municipal cleaning crews for twenty years. By his own admission and to his own horror, he has made a career painting grotesque caricatures of people he despises. After 9-11 he painted these three grotesque posters of people he does admire, and created some of the most disingenuous art of all time.

Conal's not dumb. He knows the context he created is a lie. Civil disobedience only works in democratic societies where leaders back down if given a choice between granting freedom or running a true police state. There was no Gandhi in Pol Pot's Cambodia, no Dali Lama in North Korea and no Martin Luther King in Saddam's Iraq. Why, they'd be dead on day one of even expressing the heresies of Watching, Waiting and Dreaming.

Conal knows this damn well yet he lies for its own sake. The lie is the art and art is getting away with the lie. These posters are dishonest on every level and that appeals to the funhouse mirror world leftist art promotes. Lies are Truth, Hate is Love, Submission is Freedom, Violence brings Peace. Sure it's a cruel joke using these great men as tools, but doesn't it make you think? About how icons of freedom can be used to push cruel yet arty fascism?

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I considered writing a blog but gave up on that because in the process of putting it together I decided I don't want to immerse myself in the insanity and unpleasantness going on in the world and then rehash it for others. I've screamed into that void for too long. It's all out there for you to see and I'll provide links to great news and article sites, along with a glossary and mission statement. Besides, there's a zillion blogs out there.

After 9-11 I become and still am a neo-conservative who believes we are engaged in a war to save liberal democracy from both barbaric religious fascists and their western leftist cheerleaders. Sadly, many want to see us fail for political, economic and pathological reasons, and I fear this possibly last chance for classic liberalism to take hold the world over may fail. If all goes wrong at least we tried.

I distinguish between liberals, who may mean well, and leftists, who revel in the truth that marxism is nazism when put into practice. Sadly, the majority of the media, academia and the punk universe is infected with a leftist ideology that encourages teenage belligerence and adult pathology. It's hypocritical, nihilistic and ultimately suicidal.

Paul Krassner, author and co-founder of the Yippie movement, chronicled his descent into the madness of bottomless conspiracy theories. I find it maddening that genocidal stalinist front groups run the anti-war movement, and artists declare the murder of 3,000 Americans a work of performance art. Supposedly anti-racist, pro-sexuality, pro-feminist, pro-art, pro-peace and anti-religious leftists embrace the world's most racist, sexually repressive, women hating, culturally barbaric, murderous and theocratic regimes as agents of revenge against the people around them they don't like. These people build walls to knock over on homosexuals. What else do you need to know?

There will be no punk rock under Sharia no matter how many Gnome Crapsky books you read. If you're a nihilist who wants everyone to die, kill yourself now as a last act of honor. I will rewrite the zine over the next few months to reflect the person I am now and will add reviews and commentary as I see fit.