Site Offline

Is the U.S. Currently Fighting 74 Different Wars? The paper referenced, from professors at Harvard and UCLA, notes that the U.S. is involved in five wars which involve “extensive military incursions”: in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. In addition to this, the U.S. has deployed special forces teams to engage in operations in at least 75 other countries. The paper notes that the trend is for wars to be fought through armed flying robots rather than personal contact.

“The pestilence of corporate totalitarianism is spreading rapidly over the earth. The criminals have seized power. It is not, in the end, simply Assange or Manning they want. It is all who dare to defy the official narrative, to expose the big lie of the global corporate state. The persecution of Assange and Manning is the harbinger of what is to come, the rise of a bitter world where criminals in Brooks Brothers suits and gangsters in beribboned military uniforms—propped up by a vast internal and external security apparatus, a compliant press and a morally bankrupt political elite—monitor and crush those who dissent. Writers, artists, actors, journalists, scientists, intellectuals and workers will be forced to obey or thrown into bondage.”

— The Death of Truth by Chris Hedges

Review of Jeremy Schahill’s Dirty Wars, book on the US global assassination policies, which are widely supported by the US populace. If you’re not aware of how it works, such as that most those killed have no known connection to any crime whatsoever (not that a connection to crime justifies preemptive brutal execution without arrest, trial or public evidence - it doesn’t, nor is killing every unknown random person that is walking down the road with you as well justified), or the large numbers of women and children killed, you should be, so you understand what you are supporting.

The Stanford/NYU study Living Under Drones has a lot of specific data about drone use in Pakistan. Most drone use in Pakistan is directed at indigenous tribal peoples there. The first drone assasination was done by the CIA against an indigenous tribal leader there who objected to the classist colonialism that resulted from his lands being taken over by the Pakistani regime, which is now closely allied with the US imperialists.

Perhaps there is no way to stop this given the vast majority of the public appears to support the terrrorist actions of the Bush and Obama administrations. Dissent is only a few people and those of us who complain about these war crimes are called anti-american terrorist sympathizers.

Has music been castrated as a force for social change and justice?

The DJ Alan Freed’s creation of the genre Rock and Roll on station WINS in the 1950s, which promoted black music to white audiences, was a threat to the establishment. The idea that black and white teens would go to a concert together and listen to music made by black and integrated groups was considered an attack against the myth of colonialist european white supremacy. Alan Freed was right, but he was destroyed nonetheless. He was arrested, labelled an anarchist, and charged with inciting a riot because Boston wouldn’t tolerate concerts with both black and white people in the audience. his reputation ruined with accusations of payola, and he died at age 43. Rock was then captured by the establishment, tamed, corporatized and made white friendly with white artists performing in the black music styles.

In the end Freed did more to push forward civil rights in the US than Martin Luther King. He got black and white youth together, to stop viewing each other as master/servant or enemies, and that is what became the generation that attacked the deeply entrenched racist US apartheid system. There would not have been a civil rights movement in the US without the unifying effects of rock music on youth, and its inspiration of rejection of the racist morality of their parents.

Does your music have any power at all? Or is it completely irrelevant?

Glen Greenwald, targetted enemy of the US regime, notes that the US now considers its “war on terror” (its term for the creation of a global corporate police state that particularly targets the extermination of tribal peoples), is a permanent state and this Endless War really will continue indefinitely.

"[T]his war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it is precisely this endless war - justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism - that is the single greatest cause of that threat.