Dick Cheney is a sensitive soul. Are you?

Dick Cheney, who I thought was beyond such things, claimed today that he was offended by Amnesty International's report on US conduct at Guantanamo Bay. It's nice to see that he still has the capacity to be offended...usually someone as shameless as him feels no offense or scorn.

My favorite part of Cheney's rebuttal to Amnesty was this statement: "I think the fact of the matter is, the United States has done more to advance the cause of freedom, has liberated more people from tyranny over the course of the 20th century and up to the present day than any other nation in the history of the world," he said. "Just in this administration, we've liberated 50 million people from the Taliban in Afghanistan and from Saddam Hussein in Iraq, two terribly repressive regimes that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of their own people." As usual, Cheney response to overwhelming evidence of US misconduct is to ignore it. Independent contractors who conduct torture sessions at the behest of the Oval Office aren't necessarily American, it's just statistically a 95% chance that they are--so the Bushies have their plausible deniability.

His claim of "hundreds of thousands" of Iraqis and Afghanis slaughtered by Saddam and the Taliban is absolutely laughable. Since 1991, more people have died in Iraq due to the US than any other dictator, catastrophe, or natural disaster. Between the two Gulf War exercises alone nearly 200,000 Iraqis have died, and the economic sanctions imposed after the first Gulf War have purportedly been involved in the deaths of 500,000 more citizens. The liberation that Cheney champions will be enjoyed by a nation of corpses.

Amnesty International characterized Gitmo Bay as the "gulag of our times"; perhaps a bit excessive in terms of hyperbole, but still accurate nonetheless. At least it's warm in Gitmo, not like Kolyma, Karaganda, or Vladivostok...also the death rates have to climb by about 5000% before the comparison is truly warranted. So in that regard, Cheney does have a viable complaint...but political violence is political violence, no matter how you spin it. It is immoral regardless of what scale it is conducted upon.

In today's America, Cheney and his cohorts have stolen the last two elections while sewing up billions of dollars in no-bid governmental contracts to "rebuild" Iraq after we're done destroying it. My wish is that someone brings Dick Cheney home to his undisclosed location strapped to a board with a blindfold around his head. Then they can make him drink menstrual blood while burning his favorite parts out of the King James Bible. Perhaps at that point in time he might see why Amnesty International views the US as a country badly in need of regime change.

The purple thumb and the war, unwon.

Purple thumbs dominated the front pages of the US press back at the end of March when George W. Bush was actually permitted to oversee an election (and amazingly, his candidate of choice won! What a democratic result!). Naturally the illiterates in the administration were proud of the photos, since their constituency cannot read or think critically due to years of TV ads and too much sugar...so images of burqa-clad veiled women were broadcast around the world to show how imminent the arrival of a "western-style democracy" was in Iraq. Notwithstanding the irony of veiled women celebrating any sort of political or social liberation, even reasonably committed lefties in the mainstream media (like Richard Cohen of the Washington Post) seemed illogically impressed with the scripted events. The last 4 weeks have left no questions as to who is really in charge in Iraq, and it isn't the Oil Raiders of Texas and Wyoming.

While Iraq has sunk further into the abyss American reporters have preferred to concentrate on steroids in baseball, Martha Stewart, a dying person on a respirator, and celebrity divorces. The infamous "10 Downing Street Memo" has been public knowledge for 3 weeks and no major media outlets have reported its existence, let alone its content. The mainstream media has lost what little credibility it had--imagine if any single one of Bush's crimes had received the same nonstop TV coverage that Lewinsky or O.J. or Laci Davenport had? Would the morons in the red states be as fooled as they are now if TV even reported 25% of the truth? The revolution will not be televised...

The final irony of the purple thumb is that a man who has stolen two elections in his home country is now responsible for maintaining the integrity of a destabilized society's election process.

Zeus and thunder? the Brians of Lightning Bolt....

I have seen the fire and the fury, the precision and the power....the face of the gods obscured by smoke and thunder and sweat. Lightning Bolt is the best band in the world right now. This is not an exaggeration. This statement has been empirically proven on the floors of rock clubs all over the planet. On Tuesday night at Northsix it was proven even further by contrast, as the Brians shared the bill with Metalux and Mouthus and sprayed the sellout crowd with their musical love.

I'd never seen Mouthus before and was looking forward to their set. Lots of good online reviews from reasonably trustworthy webzines along with a release on TMoore's Ecstatic Peace label had led me to believe that there was something cool going on in the land of Mouthus. Their performance was horrendous, however--to the point where it almost ruined the whole fucking night for me. Now, I like noisy bands--Sightings, Wolf Eyes, Hair Police, the Youth all are awesome by my lights--but Mouthus was just unbelievably unskilled at generating any interesting sounds or textures. Literally the worst guitar playing I've ever seen in the genre. The funniest part of their set was when the guitar player came out with a fucking violin bow for the first tune and proceeded to saw it across the fretboard for 5 or 6 tuneless minutes...the drummer was getting a cool sound going with a contact mic against his floor tom but was completely unable to keep time with the band's sampler/beatbox, which provided the substance of each tune's drumbeat. For a 6-song set the guitar sound didn't change once; the true lowlight of this shitty-ass band's set was the second song where the guitar player played one note for an interminable period of time. Other low points featured the drummer, his beatbox, and his struggle to keep up with his prerecorded beats. I know at least 5 guitar players that are better drummers than this clown.

Fortunately Metalux was pretty cool, with short pieces instead of typically lengthy noise opuses. Two gals, two racks of pedals, and occasional guitar use along with heavily effected vocals. They kept things short and texturally interesting and sounded great in contrast to the total bullshit put forth by Mouthus.

Lightning Bolt saved the day. They saved my life too, as I felt all excitement and desire to live slipping away from me during Mouthus' horrible set. Instead of the stage (of course) they played in the left corner of the Northsix main room and turned everyone's focus towards that corner. Bouncers were up on the stage, along with good guy Joly from Punkcast filming the show, which made for an odd sight. They started the set with 7 new songs that were all excellent, showing even further refinement of their maximalist minimalism...I couldn't have been happier, but some of the stupider people in the crowd were waiting for the songs they knew by heart. They were rewarded by "Dracula Mountain" and "Ride the Skies" to close out the set. Utter beauty by the best band on the planet. The crowd was loving it and the bouncers were getting upset.

I wish the new Bolt record was out already...I need to hear it. This is music to scare the gods, to fry the laurel upon Apollo's head, and tear out the black-blooded heart of Loki before the wolf makes his move to swallow the sun. When the world ends (which of course it will soon) I will be listening to Lightning Bolt as the oceans rise and the sky collapses....

irritant?

yes, another blog...big fucking deal, right? someone else who feels a need to spew, someone else with a need to rank and rate and analyze the events in their lives. this blog will concern itself with anything I concern myself with...music, history, philosophy, religion, general culture, excretions of various smells and sizes, hatred of the USA and its jingoistic murderous ways, and the general absurdity of living in the most oppressive allegedly free country in the Western Hemisphere.

I will start by saying I'm not that interesting, but then neither are you. of that I am sure. I am sure of little else. or nothing else.