The Amount of Death and Destruction is Inconcievable

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10059.shtml

A story yesterday

http://laughingfish.blogspot.com/2008/12/gaza-massacres-must-spur-us-to-action.html






I'm not really sure what my reaction to this is supposed to be. Part of me wants to tear my hair out and run screaming into the streets... I think it's a pretty significant part. Another part just stares at the words and the pictures in disbelief. And a third part is totally numb and unsurprised. I suppose ever since the Jenin "incursion" in 2002 any atrocity Israel wants to unleash upon Palestinians just seems kind of "normal", and expected to me.

There are two sides in that conflict. But to say it is completely mis-characterized in the western media is a grave understatement. There is not a 'cycle of violence' in that conflict. There is not a "centuries old conflict" in Palestine. There is a conflict just over 100 years old between a people who were living in a certain historic area of the middle east, and a few million European colonialists who used British and American guns and bombs and barbed wire to drive civilians from their homes, destroy their villages, bulldoze their orchards, drain their aquifers, and then at last to construct elaborate fences around these areas to prevent a people of a darker skin and a different tongue from ever returning to them.

There is a persecuted and occupied people that the entire world has turned its back on who are not allowed to import food or medicine into the most densely population area of globe, where just last year the occupying force bombed the only power plant. There are kidney stones, with no medicine, because the water is contaminated and water filters are scarce. There are kids with arms and legs and eyes and noses, blown over sidewalks, into open windows, onto roofs, and into potted plants. And there is no United Nations "humanitarian mission" capable of making sure the correct pieces may ever find the right families in time for a "proper" burial.

Yes... "fighting terrorism".

Until yesterday, no one in Israel was killed since the ceasefire ended on Dec 19th from the dozens of homemade rockets desperately shot out across barbed wire fences and over concrete walls. In the past 24 hours over 200 Palestinians were killed by the bombs falling from US built F-16 fighter jets.

Would you please show me, where is this terror you speak so strongly of fighting? Where are these "weapons of mass destruction" you assert? And what of this race of men, who apparently value human life less that we do?

Because I need to know, how is it possible anyone could value human life any less than we do?

Gaza Massacres Must Spur us to Action

This is a little less funny than the stuff I usually like to share...

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10055.shtml

You Look Like Uncle Fester

Start Your engines...



terror ebm band



the pope



Bay area neo nazi Nigel Fovargue



Amy Winehouse



Boy George



Dick Cheney



Swimmer Katie Hoff



Mark Spoor



McCain



Steve Balmer



And... my personal favorite... the Emperor

Disillusionment with the Democratic Party

The cabinet appointments? The saber rattling against Iran and Pakistan? The continued support of Israel's occupation and blockade of gaza and the west bank? The manifestation of "change" as the re-animation of clinton era free market ideologues?

Usually presidents get inaugurated first, and then start to disappoint the people who voted for them. At least here, Obama seems to be blazing a trail of "change".

So someone on a forum said this:

No one really listens to what hes saying, and no one remembers that idol worship is dangerous, i saw the looks on those peoples faces after he won, they looked like they saw god himself drop from heaven. Also Joe Biden is one of the biggest crooks in Washington and a member of the CFR. Obamas whole cabinet is full of former Bush and Clinton people, including the female Mao Zedong herself Hillary Clinton.

Change indeed... :roll:

People talk about how great everything was during the Clinton years in terms of economics, well the fact is that we are living the results of those years today. All the excessive borrowing started under Clinton, the mounting debt we see is the combination of the Bush and Clinton years. Remember we went through a mild recession right after Clinton left office in 2001. In any case the president isnt supposed to be fucking with the economy in the first place.


And I may add:


Those are really good points. There was economic growth under Clinton, but there were also 40 million people without health care. Most of the new jobs from the 90s were low wage service jobs with few benefits and little security. Most of the 'hi tech' jobs they said we'd get in exchange for exporting our manufacturing sector were themselves exported. Bush accelerated this, but it started before him. Banking deregulation also happened under Clinton (1999)... and he killed over half a million Iraqi children with economic sanctions that caused two directors of the UN humanitarian mission in Baghdad to resign in protest.... Madelin Albright said this was "worth it" on 60 minutes... Oh, and let's not forget Clinton signing the "defense of marriage" act, or "don't ask, don't tell"...

I'm not saying clinton = bush = obama, because they are all clearly different. clinton and obama are more liberal here and there. But they believe in free market capitalism, they're reluctant to confront bigotry in any meaningful way if they think it will cost them votes, and they believe it's ok to use wars to keep the US the #1 power...

I think the point of trying to transform hillary and obama into these icons based on their gender and racial identities was to depoliticize their campaigns. People voted for whatever they wanted to think when they looked at either of these two people's faces.... people didn't vote for their actual politics.

and YES.... making Obama out to be the new che gueverra with this ridiculous iconography is nuts:



It's authoritarian.... I'm not saying Obama himself has bonapartist aspirations, but when you expect ONE MAN to "rise above everything" and fix it all for you, while everyone else in society shuts up and isn't doing anything... that's not what a democracy is.

Well... that's enough of me going off... but as a political friend of mine has said, "voting democratic and expecting it to end the war is like drinking lite beer and expecting to loose weight".


--

The French Revolution had pamphlets. We have blogs. They're not a revolution but they are a place to start.

In related news... Mark Steel talks well about the French Revolution:

The Ponzai Paradigm

"...the idea of paying interest out of new deposit inflows rather than actual earnings..."

http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson12232008.html

Talks about who the origional Ponzi was... this is very helpful I feel to understanding the recent economic collapse...

Exponential growth is can never be sustained over the long term. There is always a crash. Deer on a grassy island with no predators will simply overpopulate until all the food is gone and there's a mass die off... A great economic model, apparently...

--------------

December 23, 2008
And God Created Bernie...
The Ponzi Paradigm

By MICHAEL HUDSON

Last week the Good Lord evidently realized that not enough people had been reading Hyman Minsky’s explanation of how financial cycles end in Ponzi schemes – the stage in which banks keep the boom going by lending their customers the money to pay interest and thus avoid default. So He sent Bernie Madoff to dominate the news for a week and give the mass media an opportunity to familiarize newspaper readers and TV watchers with just how Ponzi schemes work. What Mr. Madoff did was, in a nutshell, what the economy as a whole has been doing under the moniker “wealth creation.”

If the media were able to wait until as late in the financial collapse as last week to provide helpful diagrams about how Ponzi schemes need to keep on growing exponentially, it is simply because bad foreign financial news is not deemed newsworthy in North America. But Europe has been having its own run-throughs, headed by Spain – which by no coincidence is now experiencing the biggest real estate bust outside of the post-Soviet economies.

The best case study occurred two years ago. On May 9, 2006, Spanish police raided 21 homes and offices of Afinsa Fienes Tangibles SA, the world’s largest postage-stamp dealer, and rival firm, Forum Filatélico. They charged eleven men with running a $6.4 billion pyramid scheme that (and Afinsa)took in some 343,000 investors – 1 per cent of Spain’s entire population, making the fraud one of the largest in Spanish history.

An economy either is in trouble or has lost its sense of balance when investors shy away from tangible capital formation in favor of buying postage stamps and similar collectibles. Unlike machinery and technology, stamps do not produce real goods and services. They have long since been printed and sold by the government, and will never be used actually to mail letters. However, stamps have shown themselves to be a great vehicle to attract savers who think that buying them can produce an exponential earnings growth – or more technically, “capital” gains, if we can stretch economic terminology far enough to call a stamp collection “capital.”

If value resulted merely from scarcity, then postage stamps, coins and master paintings all would seem to increase almost automatically over time, just like most land does. But these trophies of wealth do not promote rising production, consumption or living standards. As stamps do not earn money by employing labor to produce goods and services, their price gains are neither profit nor capital gains as classically understood. They are what economists call a windfall.

The Spanish postage-stamp scheme seems to have taken off in 2003, the year in which Spain’s free-market conservative government deregulated public insurance and oversight for non-financial investment funds. Afinsa Group bought two-thirds control of the New Jersey stamp and coin auction house Greg Manning and merged it with the Spanish auctioneer Auctentia to create Escala as the world’s third largest auction house (after Sotheby’s and Christie’s). Escala moved its operations to New York City and listed its stock on the Nasdaq over-the-counter market. Despite the stock market’s lethargic trend, the company’s earnings showed such rapid growth that in just three years its share price soared from under $5 to $35, tripling in 2005 alone.

Afinsa’s purchases accounted for 70 per cent of Escala’s profits, thanks largely to the fact that as its Spanish parent’s sole supplier, Escala marked up its stamps by a reported 1,150 per cent, out of all proportion to the usual 25 per cent. Afinsa thus was carrying stamps for which it paid 58 million euros on its books at €723 million, over ten times their catalog values – which are fictitiously high in any case, being published mainly for the benefit of stamp dealers to give their customers the idea that they are getting a good buy. But as Forum Filatélico’s chairman, Francisco Briones, explained to a reporter from London’s Financial Times: “It was ‘normal’ to charge clients such inflated prices because of the services provided . . . including the custody and conservation of stamps.”

Afinsa paid its stamp investors an annual rate of 6 to 10 per cent interest, beating most competing yields as the global financial bubble was pushing interest rates steadily downward. (Spanish government bonds paid only 3.5 per cent.) To build up trust, Afinsa gave its clients post-dated checks for the gains that were promised. It also promised to buy back the stamps it sold, at the original price. This gave an appearance of liquidity to the normally illiquid market in stamps, fine arts and other collectibles, where 25 per cent commissions to auction houses are normal. These ploys convinced the majority to simply re-invest the money to buy yet more stamps, which the company held in its offices ostensibly for safekeeping and preservation.

Money poured in, giving stock-market investors in Escala much higher returns than the stamp-buying customers nominally were receiving. As one news report remarked, why buy stamps and coins when you can invest in companies dealing in them? But within a week of the arrests, Escala’s stock plunged below $4 a share.

The denouement came shortly after Lloyd’s of London withdrew from a €1.2 billion policy to insure Afinsa’s stamps. One of its experts noticed that if $6 billion really had been invested, it would have bought up all the investment-grade stamps in the world many times over. The fact that stamp prices did not reflect any such extraordinary buying implied that few bona fide stamp transactions occurred at all, and there had been a massive over-billing.

As matters turned out, most of Afinsa’s stamps had no investment value. This explained why there were no receipts for transactions with Escala. The police found €10 million in €500 banknotes (worth about $650 each at the exchange rate of $1.30 per euro) by breaking open a newly plastered wall at the Madrid home of Afinsa’s main stamp supplier, Francisco Guijarro. What they could not find were any receipts for the stamps that he allegedly bought. And despite the remarkably high markups charged for curating the stamp collection, it was rife with phonies, as Lloyd’s had suspected. Concluding that the bills Senor Guijarro had sent to Afinsa were just a cover for a money laundering operation, the prosecutors charged the family members and officers who controlled Afinsa with embezzlement, money laundering, tax evasion, fraudulent bankruptcy, breach of trust and forgery.

The arrests recalled memories of a more famous U.S. fraud involving postage stamps some 86 years earlier, in 1920, by Charles Ponzi – the man who bequeathed his name to history in the form of Ponzi pyramid scheme. He is reported to have arrived in Boston in 1903 with only $2.50. Not speaking much English, he took menial jobs. Fired as a waiter for shortchanging customers, he moved up to Montreal and became an assistant teller in an Italian immigrant bank. It grew rapidly by paying double the normal 3 per cent rate of interest on savings accounts, but failed when its real estate loans began to go bad. The bank’s attempt to give the impression of solvency seems to have given Ponzi the idea of paying interest out of new deposit inflows rather than actual earnings. As long as clients felt they were receiving interest regularly, they tended to be calm about the principal balance.

Ponzi was sent to a Canadian prison for forgery, and then was jailed in Atlanta for trying to smuggle Italian immigrants into the United States. After his release he moved back to Boston and got a job selling business catalogs. A Spanish customer sent him a postal reply coupon, which allowed its holder to buy stamps in foreign countries for return mail rather than using domestic currency to buy a stamp.

Prices for these coupons were long out of date, having been set in 1907 by the International Postal Union. World War I drastically shifted exchange rates, enabling buyers to pay a small amount in Britain – or even less in Germany with its depreciated currency – and obtain a return stamp order that was good in the United States.

The markup on these tiny postal orders was large. An American penny could buy foreign stamp orders that could be converted into six cents in U.S. stamps, for a 500 per cent profit. The problem was that it would take a truckload of such postal orders to make serious money. A million-dollar investment would involve a hundred million penny coupons – which then would have to be converted into stamps and sold in competition with the U.S. Post Office, presumably at a discount, mainly in immigrant neighborhoods.

Focusing on the principle of arbitrage rather than such laborious implementation, Ponzi explained that he could make a 400 per cent gain after expenses. He promised that investors could double their money in 90 days, pretending to take due account of the costs and shipping time from Europe to America. When his Securities Exchange Company paid early investors the high returns he had described, they spread the word to others. Ponzi’s inflow of funds rose from $5,000 in February 1920 to $30,000 in March, and $420,000 by May. By July an estimated $250,000 a day was flowing into his firm, mainly from small investors who let their book credits build up rather than taking out their money. Some people put their life savings into the plan, and even borrowed against their homes.

Ponzi spent most of the money on himself, buying a mansion and bringing his mother over from Italy. The financial reporter Clarence Barron (publisher of Barron’s) noted that if he really had invested the money as he told his investors he had done, Ponzi would have had to purchase 160 million postal reply coupons. Yet the post office reported that few were being bought at home or abroad, and only 27,000 were circulating in the United States.

Federal agents raided Ponzi’s offices in August, and did not find any postal reply coupons, just as Spanish police did not find investment-grade postage stamps in the scheme’s 2006 replay. Ponzi was sentenced to prison yet again, but jumped bail and tried to make some quick money selling Florida real estate. He soon was recaptured, and was deported back to Italy upon his release in 1934.

What Ponzi sold was hope, pandering to peoples’ unrealistic desire to believe that a new way to make easy gains had been discovered, with no visible upper limit as to how long gains can persist in excess of the economy’s own rate of growth. It is a measure of how much harder it is to make returns in today’s world – and hence, how little hope needs to be excited – that whereas Ponzi promised to double his investors’ money every three months, the Spanish stamp scheme paid only a 6 to 10 per cent annual return. Neither fraud actually made any trading gains or profits, but simply paid investors out of new money coming in from fresh players. New inflows were treated as earnings. That’s how pyramid schemes work.

It was almost as if the Spanish operators had read one of the biographies of Ponzi that began to appear as observers noticed the common denominators between the global financial bubble of the 1990s and earlier bubbles. These bubbles provide a classic contrast between the real wealth of nations and what the business press these days calls “wealth creation” that simply takes the form of rising asset prices – “capital gains,” most of which are land-price gains.

No doubt stamp collectors would have viewed the bidding up of stamp prices as wealth creation if it actually had occurred. But all it would have achieved was to inflate the price of old stamps, much as the world’s growing ranks of billionaires were bidding up prices for master paintings and modern art, designer furniture and beachfront homes. If all the economy’s savings went into Rembrandts and Picassos, their price obviously would soar, just as putting $6 billion into postage stamps would have established higher plateau levels for stamp prices.

The flow of funds into any category of assets bid up their prices. This is true most of all for land, one of the most universal economic needs and conspicuous-consumption status measures. But does this really “create wealth”? Do market prices reflect use values, living standards and the progress of civilization?

The requisite characteristic for such price gains is indeed scarcity, but not so much that there is not enough for large numbers of buyers to make a market. If psychological utility is the key, “scarcity” has value only as a compulsive acquisitive character – wealth addiction. It means having what other people lack, with connotations of denial. Most money in search of mere scarcity is not going into trophies of the nouveau riches, but into the world’s most abundant yet also most universal scarce resource: land. Nature is not making any more of it. Yet everyone needs land to live on, making it the object of personal and business saving par excellence. Even in today’s postindustrial economies, land and its subsoil wealth represent the largest components of national balance sheets.

But inasmuch as land cannot be manufactured, savings cannot increase its supply by active investment. This poses a traumatizing problem for economists. National income statistics count any money spent that is not consumed as saving. Following John Maynard Keynes, they define saving as equal to investment. This sows the seeds of confusion with regard to the character and preconditions of economic growth. Can we really call it “wealth creation” when society directs its savings merely into speculation rather than into building up productive powers or living standards?

Classical economists vacillated over treating land as a factor of production or as a legal property right to extract a tollbooth around a given site and levy an access charge much like a user-tax. A factor of production contributes to production and income as more income is invested in it. A rent-yielding property reduces the economy’s flow of income. In the latter case land is part of the institutional property system, not the technologically based production sector of the economy.

What is beyond dispute is that real estate is highly political at the local level. Urban development tends to be shaped by insider dealing and public infrastructure spending to increase local property prices and lobbying to obtain low tax appraisals. It is axiomatic that the more economically powerful a source of wealth becomes, the greater its political power to lobby for special tax advantages. At the national level, real estate uses part of its revenue to back politicians who give it a widening wedge of special income-tax favoritism.

In the financial sphere, every bubble has been led by governments. Bubbles need to be orchestrated by opinion makers, topped by public officials giving a patina of confidence. The “madness of crowds” is a euphemism designed to divert blame away from governments onto the public. In the United States, Alan Greenspan played the role of public bubblemeister similar to that which Walpole had played in England’s South Sea bubble and John Law in France’s Mississippi bubble nearly three centuries ago, in the 1710s.

Today’s balance sheets confuse bubble wealth with real capital formation. “Investment” has become whatever accountants say they are. So have asset and debt values, given today’s leeway for financial fiction. The practice of “marking to market” permits accountants to project hypothetical gains at astronomical rates of interest, or trivializing by discounting, applying purely mathematical functions that have lost all connection to realistic rates of growth. The result is that the financial sector itself has become decoupled from the “real” economy.

The tragedy of our time is that saving today is being diverted in ways that are decoupled from real capital formation, but merely add to the economy’s debt and property overhead.

Suppose that Ponzi actually had bought International Postal Orders, and that the Spanish stamp companies actually had invested $6 billion in rare philatelic items and coins, driving up their price to create paper gains for the investors. To whom would they sell, in order to take their gains? (This is the proverbial “greater fool” problem.) More to the point, how positive would have been the broad economic effect of such asset-price inflation?

The recent stock market and real estate bubbles are much like pyramid schemes in the sense that what is bidding up stock and property prices is an exponential inflow of new money from pension plans and mutual funds (for shares) and bank credit (for real estate). Venture capitalists are “cashing out” while corporate managers exercise their stock options.

Suppose that mortgage-packaging companies are honest in their appraisals of current price trends. The real estate bubble is nonetheless speculative and postindustrial. The analogy is found when financial managers endorse government policies that encourage the inflation of price for stocks and bonds, stamps and coins, Rembrandts and modern art by claiming that this creates wealth and hence, by definition, pulls living standards and culture onward and upward.

What is wrong with this picture? For starters, it fails to define value as distinct from price, windfall and capital gains as distinct from earned income. It also neglects the fact that market prices rise and fall, but the debts remain in place. And when debts cannot be paid, savings are wiped out.

On May 9, 2006, the price of Escala shares fell by half as news of the police raids spread. By Friday its stock was down almost 90 per cent. On Monday it jumped by 50 per cent, from $4.34 at Thursday’s close to $9.45 a share. Hedge funds were making and losing money hand over fist, dwarfing the gains and losses made from stamp trading. A veritable market in crime, punishment and beating the rap was in play.

What does this have to do with true capital formation? Individuals are getting rich while the economy is polarizing between creditors and debtors, property owners and rent-payers. Unproductive investment occurs when it takes the form of windfall “capital” gains, and when it involves going into debt for real estate, stocks or bonds, or “collectibles.” Unproductive credit occurs when commercial banks make loans that merely finance the purchase of property, companies or financial securities already in place.

Two centuries ago, French followers of Count Henry St. Simon outlined an industrial system that was to be based mainly on equity financing (stocks) rather than debt (bonds and bank loans). Their idea was to make industrial banking a kind of mutual fund, so that claims for payment (and hence, the value of savings) would rise and fall to reflect the economy’s earning power. The industrial banking that developed largely in Germany and central Europe differed from the short-term Anglo-American collateral-based trade credit and mortgage lending. But since World War I, global financial practices have been more extractive than productive.

The consequence has been that debts on the economy-wide level have grown more rapidly than the ability to pay. Instead of reducing this debt overhead by earning their way out of debt, economies have sought to inflate their way out of debt. However, the mode of inflation is not the familiar rise in consumer prices, much less wage inflation. Rather, it is asset-price inflation, emanating largely from the United States. Since the gold-exchange standard gave way to the paper dollar standard in 1971, the U.S. economy has become unique in being able to create credit – and foreign debt – without constraint. The result has been an unparalleled growth in debt relative to income, production and wages. This “debt pollution” has been likened to environmental pollution.

We have entered an era in which financial markets resemble the stamp-buying funds. Governments have replaced industrial growth with purely financial wealth creation in the form of a real estate and stock market bubble. This has turned the economic universe upside-down relative to what the classical writers expected to result from the technological progress unleashed by the Industrial Revolution and its parallel agricultural, commercial and financial revolutions. Property and credit have become costs instead of a benefit, institutional forms of rent- and interest-extracting overhead rather than helpful inputs.

Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist. A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be reached via his website, mh@michael-hudson.com


See Wikipedia, “Charles Ponzi,” based mainly on Mitchell Zuckoff, Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend (Random House: New York, 2005).

Sleepwalking Through the Days of Cotton

You were attached to time
But as little more than an illusion
You feel pain with folktales and religion
That you do not know
For the Sweet, Long-Ago
Is most often described
In really beautiful optimism
To correlate the Nation's
Rehabilitation.

The reality should be arrested
It's a story you may not remember
There's villains more of a problem than you know
And corruption spread
Through the police and government
So throughly with growing mechanism
You could be shocked
The product of the preindustrial era was
The risk of death

Sleep walking through the days of cotton
Is dangerous work.
It's a story
That's not ever
Going to stop.

How to be a Ghost Town Explorer

I've really dug the desert for a while, and lately I've become big into ghost towns. I've taken advantage of some recent free time by engaging in an extensive ghost town and desert reseach project...

The point of this is that while there is a lot of desert, desert mountains, and 'ghost towns' on maps and websites like ghosttowns.com, there are many different kinds of desert, many different kinds of mountains, and MANY fake ghost towns. These include towns with old buildings where people are living in newer buildings nearby (Belmont, NV, Apex, CO), ghost towns with active mining where industry and other ghost tourist might make you feel less comfortable (Chloride, AZ and Manhattan, NV), and ghost town "sites" with nothing left at all. I suspect ghosttowns.com has several such enteries just to generate traffic and thus get better ranking in google searches (for ex, check out their listing for Roosevelt County, NM. There's a rediculous number of enteries, and almost all of them have no information at all).

There are ghost towns like Rhyolite, NV, where many buildings are fenced off and signs tell you not to picnic after dark. Others like Henson, CO, have decently trafficked forest roads going right through them and "no tresspassing" signs all around- not exactly the most comfortable place to lounge around.

Also, there are ghost towns in more inaccessible places, and some just off major interstates. Some have good conditioned roads going to them and others may require a hike over mountains or a desert. Choosing either to visit may be important if your car likes to break down a lot, is only 2 WD, or you don't have lots of extra water with you...

So the point is to find the ghost town that is right for you. Here is a method.

You need:

1) a computer with fast internet and tabbed browsing

2) the websites images.google.com, ghosttowns.com, and http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ is helpful too.

3) maps. If you have two different atlases, ideally made in different years and/or by different companies, that's the best. If you have an atlas and also a state specific map that's good too. Also, the satellite imagery on maps.google.com is helpful to find starting points if you like different terrian (Ex: the new mexican forested mountains of the Sangre de Christos are a way different environment than the desert badlands of the Northwest poriton of that state)

Method

I start with the name of an alleged ghost town. Today I click on a county on ghost towns.com and I open a new tab for all the ghost towns listed in that state. A lot of the entries on that site are essentially blank and I soon close those. For the places that look real, have pictures, and say there's no one living there, I do another search on images.google.com to learn more about it. I also check the location on my map. If it looks interesting I make a note of it in the wordpad document that's on my computer. If it looks super interesting and I may actually try to go there I'll mark the spot with a pen in my atlas.

A lot of ghost town themed websites have incorrect or contradictory directions. Open up mapquest and google maps in their own tabs and type in the name of the town and state. Even though the towns maybe abandoned, those sites still have data on them and you can find good directions that way.

Also, looking at your atlas you will notice a lot of very small roads, and perhaps unpaved roads, that seeming lead to nowhere or have a lot of empty space between their begining and end. On Atlases I have it's rather interesting that some of the "towns" marked on there are actually ghost towns (ex: Rhyolite, NV, Midas, NV, Cisco, UT, and Ancho, NM all appear on my atlas but are actually ghost towns). This kind of research is also rather practical, as for instance, it's over a hundred miles on I-70 without a single gas station between Grand Junction, CO, and Green River, UT. If you were planning on gassing up half way in between at Cisco, you'd be in for quite a shock when you found it was a ghost town!

Now that you have a few interesting places marked down, you can plan a more rewarding trip. It can sure be a drag to drive rather far only to find a place is not quite what you thought it would be- so being this methodical helps eliminate that margin of error.

To keep things organized I started a word document for each western state I'm interested in visiting. Then I divide it into NW, NE, SE, SW sections, and list the towns by county, and add any useful data there.

Lastly, it's cool to share your stories and photos about where you've been.... but I'm almost starting to think it's best to leave the names of places out of your stories... I'd hate for my favorite middle of nowhere spots to become too popular or get vandalized or looted. Except maybe for Cisco (not the looting part though), because Cisco is totally awesome, and everyone should go there.

Have fun!

Of What Standards Fall Short?

Two cut and paste poems from this past month. They're nice, on canvas, with some old cloth border and paint + pastel backgrounds.



Of What Standards Fall Short?

Poor white folklore
In a frayed stereotype.
The debilitating conditions of
Memories.

The twists and turns of the
Past and Future
Being blended into the
National monotone
of 20th-century culture.

The boll weevil
Witness
Stuck in its habits
Of Suspicion

Edging toward forgetting
That there
Red clay path
To the Deep South
Herself.



Happiness Levels

Happiness levels don't
Collapse
In shock
As you might expect...

Stomping through the mud,
Not sleeping soundly through the night,
Shifting careers on the run
Has become a way of life.

But don't despair
Opiates bring a
economically viable alternative
to Corporate America

GLÖGG ! A Swedish traditional Christmas drink

(from Mercy Sandberg's cookbook)

How to make:

GLÖGG

(pronounced "glug")

a Swedish traditional Christmas drink




2 bottles of red wine
10 peeled whole cardamom seeds
10 whole cloves
1 piece fresh peeled ginger
2 cinnamon sticks
1 1/2 cup sugar (or to taste)

For serving:
1 1/2 cup blanched almonds (white)
2 cups raisins

Mix everything in thick-bottomed pot. In good time, so spices can do their job.
Warm the glögg slowly. don't let it cook, just simmer, and serve it hot from small containers with holding ears.

Each person adds almonds and raisins. so small spoons ought tp be available to.

Enjoy!

--

Some tips from my own research:

You can fortifying the glögg by using Port Wine as part of the wine, and adding liquors such as aquavit, cognac, brandy, or (not spicy) vodka. If you add too much sugar you can un-sweeten it by adding more wine or spirits, though spirits can be left out all together if you want a drink that won't be so strong.

Also, white heating (and according to wikipedia), "The temperature should not rise above 78.4° Celsius (173.12° Fahrenheit) in order to avoid boiling off the alcohol." Alternately, "Glögg can also be made alcohol-free by replacing the wine with juices (usually blackcurrant) or by boiling the glögg for a few minutes to evaporate the alcohol."

After making the glögg, you can store it in a bottle for a week or so, and reheat and serve. The best way to serve is to have it in one of those plug in, hot water dispensers with a spout that people use for tea or coffee at conferences.

Here's a nice picture of a table complete with glögg, ginger breads, and saffron breads!





ALSO

I've always been a big fan of hot drink cocktails. A lot of people know about Hot Toddies, but there is a lot more you can do. Even good ol "whisky water" (bourbon + hot water) is good on a cold evening. Likewise, adding a splash of bourbon to a hot black tea can both lightly sweeten and spike it up for you. Here's a drink of this type I invented that's based on glögg, and in a shorter time with fewer ingredients attempts to replicate it's basic character.

Glögg (Cowboy style)

This isn't really technically glögg, but it is very similar. It's advantages are that it's quick to make. I call it Cowboy style after the way they call just throwing a water- flour mix in a pinch into soup "cowboy style", when there isn't time or energy or fat enough lying around to make a proper roux. This method of thickening soups doesn't taste quite as good (it tastes more floury) but it sort of works... Anyways...

-Take a shot of brandy in a mug. Fill it with hot water. Top off with a good dash of port wine. Throw in a few cloves (3 is good) and a dash of powdered cinamon. If you happen to have fresh ginger lying around, cut some up (small pieces or thin is best because there is more surface area for the flavor to get out quickly) and throw it in.

-Stir good, and drink. If you take longer to drink it can taste better because the cloves have more time to give off their flavor. That's another reason to use a larger, well insulated mug, because the extra volume of hot water helps keep the heat longer. I also used cheaper spirits (Christian Brothers' Brandy and Taylor Port), because you're diluting and altering the flavor anyhow so it doesn't make sense to use the good stuff.

This works because Port is a reduced wine. It was designed that way to be transported easier and when arriving at its destination water would be added to make it 'wine' again. Well people liked it how it was so it stayed as port. But when you use it this way to add to hot water you're basically diluting it into a more wine like consisantly again, and the sweetness of port makes it so you don't have to add sugar. You can also refill the same cup with the spices in it more than once to give them more life (powdered cinamon settles to the bottom), or you can just make a bunch real quick in a coffee percolator and keep it near the campfire. Just don't let it get too hot or the alcohol will be gone.

Musician Notes Bad Things Myspace Does to Music

Myspace replicates a lot of the worst features of the crumbling fake economy

It creates a web of fake identities, particularly among musicians, whose tiny bit of exposure allows them to delude themselves into thinking they might actually become "rock stars", rather than waiters, refrigerator repairmen, sandwich makers, and IT-workers, for the rest of their lives. Through the illusion guitar center and Ebay become as much of a predatory lender as was Citibank, or any casino. Getting kids to spend all their money on music gear trying to replicate at home the quality of a real studio is about as big a hustle as the sub prime mortgage was in getting people who couldn't afford homes the illusion (for a while) of having one finally.

People can delete all the bad comments they get, creating a false impression of only positive praise for themselves or their bands.

Everyone can have an rock band's ego now, even if they have never played a show or even released a full album. Everyone becomes more pretentious and stand offish from one another. The friendliness and welcoming nature of a scene is eroded.

Bands seem to be less special. People used to have to work a lot harder on their sound and proving their ability in live shows in order to be part of your life and get talked about by you and your friends. They were a lot more special, and knowing about them, and being able to wear a t shirt or a patch of theirs felt really special. Now everyone's in a band, and instead of your first experiance with them being one of getting blown away by a great live show, it's seeing their desperate self promotion and listening to their songs in a highly compressed, low quality format with bad laptop speakers or itunes headphones that don't even convey most of the song's actual sound (its low end in particular). Music becomes less special, and has less value, for all involved.

Band websites all look the same. This is efficient and "easy" for you the consumer in the same way that soft serve ice cream and drive through fast food restaurants are "easy". In both cases convenience brings with it monotony, boredom, and a predictable degradation of quality (myspace audio compression is the sonic equivalent of McDonald's mass production foods' unhealthiness). When a band designs its own website, on their own server, THAT shows of the band's own creativity. Each page or frame is a new layer to explore and be impressed with. Very little of this exists on MS. Actually visiting a band's own self designed website today is about as rare, exciting and carries with it as much novelty as does eating at a non-chain restaurant for once!

The principle of myspace is that through repetition, and people seeing your name over and over ( you uploaded a picture, you have a new song, you have a bulletin, etc...) they have the name of your band implanted in their heads more firmly, and thus people are supposed to be more likely to see your concert play or buy your album when you announce it. The problem is that this rewards people with nothing better to do than hang around the internet all day with greater "status". Thus the geekier you are, the more well known you'll be. If you spend more of your time actually having a "life", or- heaven forbid, playing shows, or writing music, you get less MS exposure.

Friends quantities and profile views and song plays are generally poor indicators of how "big" your band is. It's really quite sad how many of those friends are directly solicited by bands' themselves. There are bands that have toured twice or more times a year for more than 6 years who have loyal followings in different cities and put on fantastic live shows, who have less "friends" than people who've never played a concert but who sit at home on a computer and "friend whore" all day. DO YOU ever talk to or listen to most of the bands that YOU are "friends with"? I almost never do. There are maybe 7 or 8 different band profiles I've visited more than once and actually interacted with in the past 6 months. Two of those are bands I'm in.

All bands are now sellouts. We sell Batman films, Coca Cola, Match.com, Will Smith's new movie, and whatever else advertisers want to put on there. Rupert Murdock gets a lot of money in his bank account from you unsuccessfully trying to fill your bands SNOCAP account when you generate more online traffic.

MS can help artists get exposure, and it can help local scenes to get the word out about their events. But it also reshapes the way we perceive music and bands, and the way bands perceive themselves and their fans. In my opinion has a detrimental effect on the demeanor of most aspiring musicians that use it.

Hmm

It's being snowing, snow is nice...

I made some snowshoes because I was curious whether or not I could make snow shoes. The hardest part was bending the frame around, because you want to use strong, thick enough wood, but if you bend them too hard and fast where they are thicker they snap easy. I found aspen saplings work better than pine... I think tomorrow I will try and hike up to the continental divide around Rollin's Pass and see if they work.

I've also discovered that it sucks to not have waterproof hiking boots while hiking in the snow, but if you duck tape 30 gallon garbage bags around your shoes, leaving only the treaded bottoms exposed, and up your legs (tie em tight so they don't slip down), it keeps you water proof.

Of course the only problem with this is that it makes it hard to change in and out of layers on your legs if you're hotter or colder. If, say, you want to put another pair of pjs or long johns on under your jeans then you gotta take everything off and you'll probably have to destroy the garbage bag to take it off.

There are a few things you can do here to help, like have baggier pants or cutoff shorts that hang somewhat long to slip over if you get a little colder. Also if I have an errand to run somewhere around town I'm walking to it rather than biking or driving, while taking note of the temperature, so that I can get a general sense of how many layers are good for what temperatures under what wind conditions. I'm not systematic enough to be writing this down yet but I have a general idea in my head.

to be continued...

Terror EBM is Dead

Suddenly it hits you... like, the perfect constellation you've never seen before but on a clear night suddenly aligns in full view before you in the cloudless sky of the late arrivial camping area in Palo Duro Canyon State Park.

Let's see....

Number 1: I get a friend req from this band because I'm on the friends' list of another band they also like but sound nothing like

Number 2: sounds like: "Terror EBM/ Harsh Industrial"

Number 2: This band has three songs on their MS, they are all clips, and not full songs

Number 3: This band has only one blog and it is letting the world know they are ready to get signed by someone

Number 4: The only picture on their site is some generic dark spooky album cover that isn't really scary or anything. No live or promo photos or anything.

Number 5: Background is spooky bloody splatter, and white and black colors... yup.

Number 6: So this band isn't signed, doesn't do live shows, their sound has zero originality, is randomly friend whoring people off more well known band's sites, they haven't got any new or interesting ideas, stories, blogs, or theories about anything... yet I can buy their album with a credit card.


What's worse, the fact that this band exists, or the fact that I could probably be describing any of a couple hundred bands?

Terror EBM is fucking dead.

There are no terror ebm bands with any originality... or at least there haven't been any for as long as I can remember. Mindstrip was a pretty cool album for me as 16 year old to find out about but that came out in 2000! Since then it's only been downhill... and that's really not saying much considering how repetitive and vocally uncreative suicide commando is.

T-EBM vocals all sound exactly the same (distortion + pitchshifter + reverb), and you can't even make out any lyrics, which sadly is usually a blessing because they generally would only suck worse clean... drums are repetitive and uninspired, synth lines are boring and repetitive, synth sounds are un-interesting (at least suicide commando had interesting sounds, though they were repetitive as hell). Oh, but there are some scary sounding movie samples about violence.... OOOOOHHH I'M REALLY SCARED! THAT'S SO SCARY!

Image? Nothing new. Art? Played out imitations of concepts that were beaten to death (better) 10 years ago. The songs? You can predict exactly how it will sound half way through, mostly done, and at the end, within 15 seconds of listening. Fashion? Give me a fucking break... your suburban surplus BDUs and fake blood scare no one in a world where every day real soldiers, refugees, terrorists, and civilians are covered in real blood, victims of real war, and actually traumatized and driven insane by it all to the point of suicide, domestic violence, or whatever else you want to read about in the newspaper every day.

As a consumer of music and an industrial music fan that sucks to see and I am disappointed. As a human I'm saddened, that someone's musical ambitions, and financial aspirations, are so thoroughly mediocre.

Yet they are "available" to get signed! Even worse is that they probably will be. I've seen worse...

Show me ONE terror ebm band to come out in the last four years that is in any way origional, genuinely creepy, or fresh sounding, and is actually enjoyable to listen to in a car or at home. I dare you. I'll buy any of you a can of Dr. Pepper if you can.

Vote First, Ask Questions Later

Piece by william blum, a very smart and well informed person. Are you all keen on the cabinet appointments yet? Is it too early to be saying this?

from counterpunch.org

--
December 3, 2008
The Obama Bummer
Vote First, Ask Questions Later

By WILLIAM BLUM

Okay, let's get the obvious out of the way. It was historic. I choked up a number of times, tears came to my eyes, even though I didn't vote for him. I voted for Ralph Nader for the fourth time in a row.

During the past eight years when I've listened to news programs on the radio each day I've made sure to be within a few feet of the radio so I could quickly change the station when that preposterous man or one of his disciples came on; I'm not a masochist, I suffer fools very poorly, and I get bored easily. Sad to say, I'm already turning the radio off sometimes when Obama comes on. He doesn't say anything, or not enough, or not often enough. Platitudes, clichés, promises without substance, "hope and change", almost everything without sufficient substance, "change and hope", without specifics, designed not to offend. What exactly are the man's principles? He never questions the premises of the empire. Never questions the premises of the "War on Terror". I'm glad he won for two reasons only: John McCain and Sarah Palin, and I deeply resent the fact that the American system forces me to squeeze out a drop of pleasure from something so far removed from my ideals. Obama's votes came at least as much from people desperate for relief from neo-conservative suffocation as from people who genuinely believed in him. It's a form of extortion – Vote for Obama or you get more of the same. Those are your only choices.

Is there reason to be happy that the insufferably religious George W. is soon to be history? "I believe that Christ died for my sins and I am redeemed through him. That is a source of strength and sustenance on a daily basis." That was said by someone named Barack Obama. The United States turns out religious fanatics like the Japanese turn out cars. Let's pray for an end to this.

If you're one of those who would like to believe that Obama has to present center-right foreign policy views to be elected, but once he's in the White House we can forget that he misled us repeatedly and the true, progressive man of peace and international law and human rights will emerge ... keep in mind that as a US Senate candidate in 2004 he threatened missile strikes against Iran, and winning that election apparently did not put him in touch with his inner peacenik. He's been threatening Iran ever since.

The world is in terrible shape. I don't think I have to elucidate on that remark. How nice, how marvelously nice it would be to have an American president who was infused with progressive values and political courage. Just imagine what could be done. Like a quick and complete exit from Iraq. You can paint the picture as well as I can. With his popularity Obama could get away with almost anything, but he'll probably continue to play it safe. Or what may be more precise, he'll continue to be himself; which, apparently, is a committed centrist. He's not really against the war. Not like you and I are. During Obama's first four years in the White House, the United States will not leave Iraq. I doubt that he'd allow a complete withdrawal even in a second term. Has he ever unequivocally called the war illegal and immoral? A crime against humanity? Why is he so close to Colin Powell? Does he not know of Powell's despicable role in the war? And retaining George W. Bush's Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, a man against whom it would not be difficult to draw up charges of war crimes? Will he also find a place for Rumsfeld? And Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, a supporter of the war, to run the Homeland Security department? And General James Jones, a former NATO commander (sic), who wants to "win" in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who backed John McCain, as his National Security Adviser? Jones is on the Board of Directors of the Boeing Corporation and Chevron Oil. Out of what dark corner of Obama's soul does all this come?

As Noam Chomsky recently pointed out, the election of an indigenous person (Evo Morales) in Bolivia and a progressive person (Jean-Bertrand Aristide) in Haiti were more historic than the election of Barack Obama.

He's not really against torture either. Not like you and I are. No one will be punished for using or ordering torture. No one will be impeached because of torture. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says that prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set future anti-torture policy. "The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it. I don't see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable."

As president, Obama cannot remain silent and do nothing; otherwise he will inherit the war crimes of Bush and Cheney and become a war criminal himself. Closing the Guantanamo hell-hole means nothing at all if the prisoners are simply moved to other torture dungeons. If Obama is truly against torture, why does he not declare that after closing Guantanamo the inmates will be tried in civilian courts in the US or resettled in countries where they clearly face no risk of torture? And simply affirm that his administration will faithfully abide by the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, of which the United States is a signatory, and which states: "The term 'torture' means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining information or a confession ... inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or any other person acting in an official capacity."

The convention affirms that: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

Instead, Obama has appointed former CIA official John O. Brennan as an adviser on intelligence matters and co-leader of his intelligence transition team. Brennan has called "rendition" – the kidnap-and-torture program carried out under the Clinton and Bush administrations – a "vital tool", and praised the CIA's interrogation techniques for providing "lifesaving" intelligence.

Obama may prove to be as big a disappointment as Nelson Mandela, who did painfully little to improve the lot of the masses of South Africa while turning the country over to the international forces of globalization. I make this comparison not because both men are black, but because both produced such great expectations in their home country and throughout the world. Mandela was freed from prison on the assumption of the Apartheid leaders that he would become president and pacify the restless black population while ruling as a non-radical, free-market centrist without undue threat to white privilege. It's perhaps significant that in his autobiography he declines to blame the CIA for his capture in 1962 even though the evidence to support this is compelling. It appears that Barack Obama made a similar impression upon the American power elite who vetted him in many fundraising and other meetings and smoothed the way for his highly unlikely ascendancy from obscure state senator to the presidency in four years. The financial support from the corporate world to sell "Brand Obama" was extraordinary.

Another comparison might be with Tony Blair. The Tories could never have brought in university fees or endless brutal wars, but New Labour did. The Republicans would have had a very difficult time bringing back the draft, but I can see Obama reinstating it, accompanied by a suitable slogan, some variation of "Yes, we can!"

I do hope I'm wrong, about his past and about how he'll rule as president. I hope I'm very wrong.

Many people are calling for progressives to intensely lobby the Obama administration, to exert pressure to bring out the "good Obama", force him to commit himself, hold him accountable. The bold reforms of Roosevelt's New Deal were spurred by widespread labor strikes and other militant actions soon after the honeymoon period was over. At the moment I have nothing better to offer than that. God help us.

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.

He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com

Rock N Roll McDonalds

Lately...










You can look forward to The Story of Thanksgiving, Canyon Explorers, Merit Badgering, A Corgi, New Live Show?, Appalachian Mountains, The Clairmont Lounge, Mulch, and much, much more....

Also, go here to read the review of Alter Der Ruine + Nachtmahr I did.

:)

Looks like

Looks like myself and a passenger will be driving to Atlanta and Back for thanks giving. The selected route should take us through NE New Mexico to Palo Duro Canyon State Park near Amarillo, then to Little Rock, and through Tupelo and Alabama to ATL. We should have a camera so expect cool pictures :)



Until we meet again, I must leave you with these words.

Millions More Given to Criminal Bankers

This came to my attention so I am sharing it with you. I believe it is written in a tone of righteous indignation which I feel for this subject is entirely appropriate.

On November 19th, at the bottom of an article about the economy, Yahoo News Reported ( http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081120/ap_on_bi_ge/financial_meltdown ) that,

"Elsewhere, the governors of Connecticut, New York and New Jersey asked the federal government for a $48 million emergency grant to help thousands of financial industry workers who are losing their jobs.

The governors say preliminary estimates show that 82,000 financial services jobs in the New York City metro area will be lost by the end of next year because of the global economic downturn.

The governors say the emergency grant would allow the states to give each laid-off worker $12,500 to help them find jobs and relocate, and provide them with other services."

I guess the billions already given out wasn't enough? Now $48 million more?

I recognize that financial workers are by and large technically "proletarians", and it may be against the broad solidarity of working people in an abstract sense to say this, but I have absolutely no sympathy for anyone who lost their job in the New York financial sector.

The first reason is that these people are generally well paid to begin with and are going to be hurting a lot less than a lot of people who are getting no special handout from the government.

The second reason is that in a more or less direct way, these people played a role in facilitating the crisis. Every day they obediently followed orders, pushed papers, said "yes, please, and thank you" to executives who ought now to be in prison, and for years they drew their daily bread off the wildest, unregulated, and even criminal speculation.

The failed experiment in Free-Market Capitalism, which they most intimately and directly facilitated the downfall of, has at this point so screwed up the entire global economy that Wall Street financiers have manged to speculate themselves out of their own jobs. They are now to be rewarded with $12,500 of taxpayer money, why?

All I got was a check for $600, back in June... and that was mostly spent before it got here. I guess the food I'd like to buy to eat, and the apartment I live in, and the places I'd like to relocate to are all just supposed to be of "lower" quality because I work in a different industry than finance?

And what about those "other services"? Wasn't it the influential, capitalistic, Wall Street types who during my entire life have been convincing world governments to privatize every social service they can, and who lecture from every pulpit that "government handouts" for various "social services" just lead to waste and abuse and are really better off done away with? Oh, well, I guess that was just a lot of made up crap then, wasn't it?

$12,500 is well over half to 75% of what a lot of folks make in an entire year. Folks like those who were laid off at Bennigians' when they had to shut down every restaurant nationally, or baristas at the 600 Starbucks that closed. Yet should I or anyone else propose in a legislative body that service workers be given at taxpayer expense over half of their annual wages to "ease their transition" into joblessness they'd probably call in strong men in white uniforms to put me away for lunancy.

This might sound like an angry rant, and if you think so, you are right. It is. At this point in time I wholeheartedly endorse the angry ranting of anyone who must choose between which bill they can't afford to pay, and who is scratching their heads every time they fill up the tank, trying to figure out exactly for *what pressing reason* was gasoline $2 a gallon more just three months ago.

The worst part about it all is that I generally like Yahoo news. But it's an article like this which confirms that even they may exhibit that troubling characteristic of the American corporate press whereby the most revealing and important facts can be quickest obtained by starting at the end and reading articles backwards.

Lets hear it for ending the war, and using that money to give *everyone* a $12,500 stimulus check!

---------------------------------

EDIT, Nov 20, 2008:

Damn, Yahoo edited the actual statistic I used out of that link. It was an associated press article though, and is also viewable elsewhere:

http://www.northjersey.com/business/Conn_NY_NJ_seek_aid_for_Wall_Street_workers.html

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/11/governors_seek_aid_for_wall_st.html

http://www.rep-am.com/articles/2008/11/20/business/380837.txt

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/business/12792-dow-slips-below-8000-on-growing-fear-of-deflation

http://savannahnow.com/node/620255


crazy, huh?

Recap

Best Halloween Costume:



DR ROXO THE ROCK N ROLL CLOWN!

Sweet Political event:

Boots of the Coup and Camilo Mejia speaking at CU in Boulder, brought there by Haymarket Books and Students for Peace and Justice

After the talks, Q&A, and Camilo signing his book, the sfpj brought us out to eat at a really good restaurant in boulder. We ate buffalo! I got to meet some of the sfpj people and they seemed to be a pretty nice and smart bunch.

Then we found ourselves getting into the Tom Morello show. Tom Morello's solo stuff isn't the kind of thing I'd usually go see on my own, but it was good to see. He does a mix of very, very, crazy electric guitar stuff, and folksy acoustic stuff, sometimes with a band backing him up, and sometimes not.

Even cooler, boots performed on a few songs, and Tom has IVAW doing security for the tour. He brought them on stage and introduced them which I think is a great way to get them some publicity.

Here's Tom, Boots, and IVAW (including camilo):




All in all a pretty sweet evening of activism & music.

Meanwhile in Denver, this squirrel is eating a pumpkin



I somehow snuck into the offical democratic party election night party at the sheraton in downtown. They had free food(!) and I smuggled in beer. The crowd was pretty excited when obama won



Here's me scandelously infiltrating this rather official political event



Across town a heavy set, middle aged man with glasses, receding hairline, and a saddam hussien mustache viciously "reserves" a seat at the Bar of a rather busy Pete's Kitchen at approximately 2 am.




I almost instigate a fight when I tell the third person he's shooed off while I was sitting there that he probably has no right to "reserve" a seat at a bar that long and if he complains to management he can probably take over the seat.

The sun sets purple on Colfax



And I've gotta go, as there's a protest against the gay marriage bans about to happen. This site talks about it but they just re-designed their site to look worse and be harder to navigate. You may also be interested in reading this interview that SW did with Oskar Vidaurre, an organizer of one of the first major post election pro-gay marriage demos in SF.

Musician- Writer Interviewed for Project on Fetish Ethnography

Dj Panic got to do a project on Fetish Ethnography. I was rather flattered to be included in it, during which I was asked to respond to a series of questions about goth-industrial music and the fetish scene. It's not really an official 'interview', but it's close enough, so here you go:

"for informational purposes only"


----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: DJ Panic
Date: Nov 4, 2008 12:07 AM


Hey everyone
I'm currently taking a music Ethnology class. I have decided to make my life easier (or more difficult) by becoming research team leader on the final project and doing our presentation on Fetish culture within the Gothic industrial scene. Please look over these questions and answer if you can. Thank you


Ethnography Questions
Fetish Culture and the Gothic industrial scene


Basics

Name:

Christian Wright

Position:

Production, drums, synthesizers, guitar, vj, and occasional singing for bands Bajskorv and Savage Ideal, also, staff writer for Wounds of the Earth magazine.


Hobbies/interest:

Making art out of newspaper cut outs, watching strange movies and old tv shows and sampling them. Political activism, social history, socialist politics, fishing, hunting, climbing mountains, road trips, campfires, national forests, seldom traveled state highways, deserts, and of course, industrial music.


History (of self, band, event etc.)

Here is a promotional bio I made.

Something more origional:

I grew up in Atlanta, was part of a punk rock gang there, liked industrial music and made friends at shows like Ohgr in 2001 and Vevlet Acid Christ in 2000 (when I was 17 and 16, respectively), who introduced me to more older bands. Also, at Fantesyland Records in Atlanta they had a good CD and vinyl selection of old wax trax stuff, which I purchased all of. Later I moved to DC to go to GWU, where I spent at least as much time doing political stuff, learning to make music, and working to save up to buy gear, as I ever spent studying. Bajskorv happened...

Then I got really tired of DC and I made plans to save up and travel around and learn about different places. Also a close friend killed himself in june 07 which really hit home the point that it is stupid to stay somewhere you are unhappy. The song 'No Escape' came out of this experiance.

From August 2007-May 2008 was probably the best time of my life... I got to see my family in Sweden, I got to drive across the US four times coast to coast, and I got to meet awesome people and see beautiful mountains and forests and deserts... I stayed in New Orleans for a month and worked there and dated someone I liked, but the town wasn't for me. At the end of Bajskorv tour I was going to move either to Denver or Portland, which I think are the two best places to live in the US, but I settled on Dever, because it is more sunny, the mountains are taller, and it's closer to a lot of really cool desert states, and it has the biggest goth-industrial scene of any city I've ever seen.


What is your experience within the Gothic/Industrial Culture?

Seeing touring national acts play shows in Atlanta in venues like the Masquerade, meeting goths and rivetheads there, hearing their stories, getting to know them, trespassing on railyards in Atlanta at night, hanging out there under a bridge with campfires and punk rockers and cheap horrible Big K Red Cream Soda from Kroger we smashed with golf clubs, making independent films about strange Atlanta phenomena and music videos on high school editing equipment...

Spendings lots of time and money in dc at goth nights like alchemy, midian, midnight... forming bands buried electric cable and bajskorv there, self producing albums, hanging out with Kelly and Juan and Gerald from Commander Salamander, playing live shows around the mid Atlantic, later around the country...

Traveling around the country and stopping at goth nights in different cities. In Portland I invented the trick where during the day I'd make free demo cd's at an internet cafe of music I wrote, and then I'd go to goth clubs at night and walk up to strangers, and give them out. That was a great way to make friends. I can't remember all the clubs, but the Fez and Mt Tabor Legacy in Portland were good, Sadisco in Phoenix was good, NOLA had very little (left) to go to, but Denver rocked. The Milk Bar on wed and sat are really big nights, and Sunday at The Church is bigger than Alchemy in DC usually was. The Church in Dallas is also ok.

Lately I've been doing writing more, for Wounds of the Earth, Laughing Fish, and a local Denver paper called Insight has exposed me to more music and people, and has, in reviewing live shows and albums, gotten me to meet a lot of interesting people and feel a more relevant part of this scene. It's also great because instead of just feeling a certain way about a certain album or band, I can ask them about it, get them to respond, and share that back and forth with the whole scene, or at least as much of it that shows up to read. I think that such music writing is a really important, democratizing force that every scene needs. And if music writing is done by actual musicians, it tends to be a lot smarter.


What attracted (or brought you in to) this scene?

I learned to play guitar at a young age but by middle school I was like, "wait, there's only so many strings and so many frets, so pretty soon every song you could make with one of these will already be written and copywritten and for sale". I liked the idea of synthesizers, multi f/x, and samplers, which I felt opened up a lot more creativity to people. Also, before I was even really into punk rock, my favorite band was Pink Floyd. I bought all their albums before I ever bought another bands', and I think the synth work they did was really innovative and attractive. A Momentary Lapse of reason is still one of my favorite albums.

Later, I supposed, as I got more angrier and depressed about the world, goth and goth-industrial was more attractive to me, and the sound I liked more than punk, too much of which I felt all sounded the same. I also really liked the fashion aesthetic- not necessarily the 'club clothes' that get sold, but I like how it was all very dark, but like punk, industrial to me had more of an edge to it. Gas Masks, tall boots, leather jackets, torn jeans, and dark coats, are just cool!

Moping around and being depressed and crying about yourself or the world is fine for goths. But for rivetheads it was about going out into the fucked up world, sneaking about and fighting it, and making good art out of it all to deal. Luckily when I was 14 they were playing VAC on the Georgia State University's 88.5 radio in Atlanta that I'd listen to while playing computer games at home, and I really loved it. That was probably my first real industrial band. Afterwards I got really into puppy, controlled bleeding, 242, fla, and the wax trax stuff.

At the VAC show apparently a girl who likes other girls named Christin saw me and thought I was a hot girl (I was pretty goth then), and began fantesizing about me. Later we randomly met at a Dennys at about 4 am and she found out I was a guy, but we became friends out of that weird experiance. She was living with some older guys who were all about "Skinny Puppy back in the day", and I think she owns every puppy release on vinyl and CD as well as most bootleg videos... so that was a great person to meet, and learn about music from. I also met some cool folks from Pensacola, FL who had driven up for that show. I'd hang out with them now and then and visited them once and picked up a little more. Somone named Tainya in Penscacola introduced me to funker vogt. Two albums of funker vogt is awesome, cause you don't really know how repetative theY are yet :)



What appeals to you about this scene over more conventional lifestyles?

When you meet a goth-industrial person you already can tell a bit about them and know that you have a lot in common. I don't know any other scene you can do that with. Hip hop is rotten with sexism and the glorification of money and violence... good political hip hop tends to be confined to obscure margins. A lot of 'punks' also have terrible attitudes... I can't really stand guilty rich kids who think that sleeping in the street, dumpster diving, and sleeping on my couch, eating my food, and enjoying the central heating I work for while they don't have a job makes them anything other than a leech. Of course that's not all punks, but there are quite a few sexist punks, or punks who just want to fight, or punks who in a few years abandon the politics with the fashion and grow corporate. A lot of them are so busy trying to be 'extreme' they don't know how to incorporate politics, art, and creativity with an ordinary life in a way that is sustainable...

And of course I'm a bit weird, and attracted to the darker sides of things... so for my money goth-industrial folks have been among the nicest and most intelligent people I've ever met.



What keeps you involved?


I like the music, and I like the people, and I like to write the music. I'm also pretty shy usually around people, but around goth industrial folks I'm a lot more comfortable. I did become rather confused during a recent spate of poverty when I got laid off, checks I'd write would bounce, yet I have thousands of dollars in gear in my apartment. It's like, "fuck, why not sell all this and give it up?" I don't really have an answer. I just sort of accept now that it is my fate to write music few people will hear, and spend years and thousands of dollars perfecting it, and then just live broke. If I became a father that would change my perspective a lot, but for now, that's sort of what I am resigned to. As long as I can get out of the city in the mountains now and then, and PBR is still cheap and clubs are free before 10 pm, I don't really mind too much.



What is your experience within the fetish culture?

Some of it is cool, some of it I just don't get. I went to bound in DC because they played better music than any of the other clubs around. Obviously attractive people wearing skimpy clothes and spanking each other is pretty hot, but I never really got into that side of things too much at clubs because I figured if you couldn't go all the way what's the point?

Fetish sex and bdsm and bondage and wild sex are all fun and good, and I enjoy them as much as the next person when they are available, but for me it's more of a personal thing than something I need to be out in public with. Also, regarding fashion, I don't usually wear 'fetish clothes'... usually my fashion these days is somewhere between punk and normal, but then again what is normal these days would have been looked at rather oddly 20 years ago. I guess a lot of it is because I am a political activist, and if I'm trying to build events, groups, and movements, and if I want people to take me and my ideas seriously, I think that dressing in the most outlandish way possible will just push people away before they even get to hear what I say. I think being able to make friends and have intelligent conversations with ALL types of people is way more important than just looking particularly weird.



What (if anything) do you feel ties these three seemingly unrelated elements together (Goth industrial fetish)?

Well there are clubs that do it... but then you have to ask why do people go to those clubs? I guess a lot of it has to do with the fact that people who like goth and industrial- they're very interested in what is dark, or forbidden, or what we're told is bad or sinful. A lot of such people are also rather progressive/left/libertarian, and many of them are bisexual, so I think that combined with an interest in going beyond mainstream music, art, and mortality, makes an interest in "deviant" sex natural.

Of course calling fetishes, or anything sexual that "fetish-goth-industrial" people do "deviant" is really messed up, because people who give into and explore their fetishes and make them part of their sex lives have freer, happier sex than most people who accept getting berated constantly by society to repress what they really want. Closeted homosexuality is an extreme case, but more likely are the far more common examples of people who really want to try something sexually with their partner but are afraid to ask them about it because they don't want to come off as a "freak". This of course is another great reason with rivetheads and goths date each other- they generally have very little to fear about this... I mean, if you met someone at a club where people wear electric tape over their nipples and spank each other, it becomes a heck of a lot easier to, say, suggest to your girlfriend that you try something new and interesting.



Do you feel fashion plays a significant role in this culture?

It can, and it can be helpful because if someone's wearing a Bauhaus t shirt or spikes or has weird hair it's a lot easier to go up and talk to them, ask them where the cool clubs are, and if you think they're cute you can ask them on a date and know that for starters you've already got a lot in common. So that's pretty cool. Some people get really obsessed with fashion though and I think that can be sad and a bit shallow, though some of it I guess is just a matter of what your hobby is. If your favorite thing to do is to look 100% goth industrial and go out to the club, I guess I should appreciate that. For me though, I always used to tell more fashionable goths that, "Unfortunately I can't afford too much nice clothes to look like I listen to goth-industrial music because I spend all my money on things like keyboards to actually *make* goth-industrial music." That usually works. But in other matters I'd rather have, say, 1,000 miles worth of gas money to go on some cool adventure than I would have a shiny new pair of vinyl pants.



How important do you believe community is within the G/I/F culture?

It could be better... you have to understand though that a lot of people attracted to that world are hyper-individualistic, and 'community' isn't something they really consciously prioritize. In Denver for example there are A LOT of people who are friendly as you've ever seen. People here actually talk to strangers at bars, or when a stranger on the street passes you they look you in the eye and ask how you are doing. Even stranger, they expect and wait for an answer! Oddly though, in the goth industrial scene, where there are a lot of nice people, such random acts of friendless that makes people feel included and valuable are a lot more sparse. People just tend to be more gloomy or depressed, and are naturally more introverted. On the worse side of things there are some big egos, and cliquishness, and a lot of stupid gossip that goes on... Promoters, DJs, and Bands do this a lot, and often only talk to each other, and make newer or younger people who patrionize their clubs feel inferior somehow. Of course that's terrible and destroys a scene. Nothings more sad than a bunch of mis-understood "freaks" from all across a city who all like the same music and art that almost no one else knows about, and they all come to the same club on the same night, and none of them talk to each other.

Of course not everyone is like that. There are good promoters out there who not only like having people show up with money in their pockets but who actually like and care about and want to get to know these people. Todd of Bound in DC and Mark aka Dragzilla in Dallas are probably the friendliest goth-industrial promoters in the United States, who actually hang out with people who show up, get to know them, and drink with them, etc...



What do you feel the future holds for this subculture?

It's challenging... Things like the internet and free downloading have made labels more confused than they have even hurt sales. Some people, like TommyT from DSBP, have good rants about how the internet was bad for music. Yet that guy can be really elitist. He didn't sign my band when I approached him about it because he said he wasn't signing "new bands", yet he bashes people who give away free downloads. A recent myspace bulliten of his literally started out, "Ever notice how bands with free downloads have more spam?" and then went on to list the DSBP catalog and encouraged you to buy from it... I see that and I'm like, "fuck, well if you're not signing me, I have to get exposure some how, and giving out free songs is a pretty effective way to do that if you are on your own." The bit about spam of course is ridiculous. I know bands on that label who have had more spam and obnoxious daily self promotional myspace bullitens. I won't name them though out of respect for their music, some of which is nonetheless quite good.

In a similar vein the "new school" of industrial I think sucks in most cases. Most newer artists on Metropolis suck, and are boring, repetitive, and predictable... If you ever go to someone's house who says they are really into "industrial", and their itunes is there playing on random and it's all just the same thing you heard at the club, it's usually a pretty sad experiance that doesn't really impress... Of course that goes over well on the dance floor, as bands understand that if a song is easy to dance to and not too hard to think about, more people will dance to it. Then the DJ is happy to keep playing such songs over and over because it keeps him in a job, and the label keeps pumping out such artists... But the net result is that music gets worse. Nothing like old controlled bleeding, or skinny puppy, or YelworC, would have much chance of getting signed or played by DJs if those bands were starting out today, in my opinion.

There's also an alternative, musically... Go to http://www.bugscrawlingoutofpeople.com/store.htm (the Bugs Crawling Out of People label's list of other goth industrial and ambient labels). Many are small, some are only on the internet, and they don't have the distribution networks or promotional captial that something like Metropolis has. But they do have way better music. Obviously the nature of capitalism tells us that some of them might consolidate and eventually repeat the same downward spiral that metropolis did, but for now that is where the best new music is.

A lot more people are able to start making this music than ever before... it's easier to get started producing at home, and synthesizers, including vintage ones, are way more affordable now than when they came out. Cynics only see that now there's a lot of poorly produced, 'clutter' on the internet, which is true, but it's only half the story. If there's 1,000 mediocre myspace bands now where kids in their dorms or mom's basement use fruitiloops and soft synths to produce, in five or ten years that might translate into 25-50 pretty good bands with some awesome records, and maybe like 5 or 10 bands that are GREAT. Even 10 years ago you had a much narrower pool to start out with, so there was a lot less that was possible.

If that trend continues I think it will make local scenes, and live shows, a lot bigger and a lot more important than they are now. That's a struggle that plays out at the local level though, as a lot of club goers might dance to a band but be upset if the same band is booked for a live set at the same club. In most towns there are ONE to FIVE people who have the final word on whether or not there will be a venue for live, goth-industrial music. Even more scary is the prospect of promoters giving bands their first few shows, because the odds are there will be more technical problems and people won't just dance right away.

More reasons Denver is cool: We have our share of "dance club nights", but one thing I really like is the Backwards Records' night at the Cosmos lounge, where it's pretty much always a local band playing. Sometimes it's good, sometimes they suck, but it's always interesting, and it's a great starting point. Other cities have similar minded people, like the part of Denver Backwards' Records that moved to Seattle, and is doing the same sorts of nights there. We're also lucky enough to have Vendetta music here, which is a very small store, but they have great music, and Dave Vendetta and his people do a good job of having shows that bring in good national acts, but they also have smaller local bands playing. The recent two day "Vendetta Festival" had *a lot* of local acts on it... some for better and some for worse... but I think events like that really show a lot of what the future could look like.


Can you share any other experience that might be of interest?

If I answered that right you'd have a book and I don't think that's really the point of this questionnaire ;) Maybe the last thing is just about live shows. There will always been dark and angry and sad people who look at fashion and music for ways to express themselves, be heard, and meet cool people. Sadly, goth industrial is such a hole in the wall genre in this country, you pretty much have to trip up over it or have some one hand you a mixed tape to find out about it. Thus we have emo.... which is bad music for sad people... and it's really a shame.

Anyways, I think promoters should re-think they way they promote. If they want the scene to grow, putting flyers for your events at clubs already very similar to your event, isn't going to cut it. There needs to be more all ages shows so kids can find out about this stuff before they've already bought in to some other genre. Young people should feel welcome; and not be looked down on because they're not generating enough booze revenue. When it becomes more about liquor sales, and dumb laws where club owners and promoters can be sued if kids do something foolish or tragic and get hurt while at a show, the scene starts to die because promoters feel paranoid and impotent to stand up to the booze pushers and the legislators. The scene started with music and needs to prioritize it. If you have good music, and outreach, and people are generally friendly and respectful to each other, the rest will follow.

The one other thing is that bands really need to work on their live shows. Live shows are becoming more important, but goth industrial "live shows" are some of the worst of any genre I've ever scene. By now everyone who books clubs probably knows and needs to admit that NO ONE WANTS TO SEE ONE PERSON BY THEM SELF ON STAGE BEHIND A LAP TOP. Even worse is having your backing tracks on itunes on a laptop, singing over them, and calling that a band (see my review of the Unter Null show on WOTE for more on this). Just one keyboardist helps, but if they're not playing melodies or different, harder parts, you can't tell if they're even playing at all. Also, without live drummers there's about 70% less energy than with one. Guitars used too much can drown out the interesting synth stuff but used a little they can add a lot of energy and really broaden a band's appeal.

Another musician who also lived in a car in a parking lot for a while after his first tour was Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins. For that and other reasons I think he's an interesting person and there's a lot of lessons you can take from his career. One of the best is the story about him trying to get a show, and him not getting one unless he replaces his drum machine (the laptop of his day) with a live drummer. It took a promoter actually confronting him about what he's doing live to make that happen. We need more people like that promoter, to push bands to be interesting. Of course, for individuals who write all their music themselves at home, it doesn't come naturally for them to find other people to work with musically, and of course it's harder to find other people to coordinate practice times and all the rest of it with. But I really do feel that if there's not more interesting stuff going on on stage than one person singing, itunes playing, and someone else that no one can tell whether or not they are actually playing a keyboard, shows will continue to suck.

Pilgrimage to see Ohgr

http://www.myspace.com/bigohgr

12.18.2008 — Dallas, TX / Granada Theatre
12.21.2008 — Albuquerque, NM / Launchpad
12.22.2008 — Tempe, AZ / The Marquee



Sucks that Ohgr will be in Denver on thanksgiving when I'm not here, however, I will be making a vehicular pilgrimage to one of the following places (most likely Albuquerque, because I've never really hung out there, and it is pretty). However all these drives are nice, though the drive to Tempe would be way cooler than the drive to Dallas because we could drive through Monument Valley to get there.

If you'd like to come, let me know :) Company and gas money would be great. Also if you can get a day before or after off from work that might allow us to climb that big mountain in Albuquerque, look around, and then climb back down.

Colorado in the Great Depression

There is a very good book in the Central Denver Public Library called "Colorado in the Great Depression" by James F Wickens (1979).

To my knowledge there are at least 2 copies that library has. One copy is located in the Western History Reading room on the 5th floor, which can there be photo copied but cannot be removed from the library. The other copy is in general circulation and has a call number of

330
.978803
W632CO
1979

It is currently checked out by me and in my possession.

I'm finding it very interesting because I think it is very important in a general way for radicals and activists to know their local political history (see my article on this subject here: http://laughingfish.blogspot.com/2008/11/know-your-social-history.html ), and specifically in our present position, of activists, with an incoming liberal president (though he is rather bad on foreign policy), and a very bad economy, I think we need to know that story and have it as a frame of reference as we approach local organizing today.

This specific book does a good job of combining a survey of economic conditions, official political responses, yet taking a great deal of time to point out "ordinary citizens'" own responses. Mentioned in just the bits I've read have been the formation of unemployed councils around the state who provided work for their members (often on a barter basis), community gardening programs, rather angry demonstrations at the capitol, including one which stormed it in 1933 and drove out the representatives for a day, generally futile illusions in a revival of a gold mining past, among others.

I also think it's very interesting to know the different proposed solutions from various sections of the establishment, whether they be calls for tax cuts or increased highway constructions, to see how well they worked, and to compare them against those calls the establishment is suggesting today.

Anyways, if any of you are interested in such things, swing by the Western History Reading room and you'll find their copy over on the left on one of the shelves that you face north to look at. The staff there can of course help you find it better. There are photocopiers at the library, or, if anyone would like, this thing is 448 pages including the index, and for kinko's $.09 a page I could make anyone a copy for $20.16. The price of course would be different if you know a cheaper printer.

Alternately, there are 4 copies currently on Amazon, but they're starting at 100 bucks a pop ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0824036433/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used ) I assume this thing is rather rare and long out of print.