Transmissions

A quick goodbye to my beloved grandfather (Pop Pop) a loyal worker for NASA (which poisoned his lungs with Asbestosis) a lifelong farmer, an all around good ‘ole boy, a recovered alcoholic and my only real father: Raphael S. Lowe.

And hello to the thousands of you still checking in from Google images. I left that last post up as a kind of welcome and hello.  Say hello in more detail at amovingtrain@gmail.com

Since my unexpected return to the suburbs I have been reminded of how seductive this insane culture is.

I was talking to my best friend a few years ago on the phone; we were talking about the stress of daily life. Something I often say when thinking about the stress of working jobs we hate, sitting in traffic and so on is, “I’m just going to run away and join the Indians.”

Which he responded within one second with, “Yeah, if you want to freeze to death in the winter or starve.”  As if indigenous people were just rolling around in near freezing mud eating their own finger nails before the glorious liberators of Europe came to “Civilize” them!

Another moment with my buddy was when we mutually witnessed the sight of automated check-outs at his local grocery store for the first time. I sighed and said, “Another job and life down the drain.” To which he said, “No. It’s progress. Things are getting easier everyday.”

And he’s right. Ish. It is more convenient…if you can afford to shop there. I’ll have to finish this train of thought tomorrow night.

Back to my slide back to the suburbs:

No matter how horrific the obvious reality of the world is, suburban, “middle class” culture spins it all as an undeniable, positive march towards a dreamland. Where, “WHAT APPEARS IS GOOD;  WHAT IS GOOD APPEARS.”–Guy Debord

So back while I was daily driving to work through Bethesda Maryland, I heard this song almost everyday and thought of my friend’s response to our moments together. Here is the song and after my response:

Everything is going to be OK, you see, suddenly I see

Sea to shining sea, a hill and a shining city, always new always free

To view the march of Progress everything is out of sight!

And out of mind. The experts say that there’s plenty of time so I’m gonna get mine

So suddenly I see, so free, just me; and you just me

Just “gimmie gimmie!”

Just don’t look in the periphery

MUCH more tomorrow.

Our official priority is above. More soon.

Don’t blame the actual, real dogs here.

This, uh, looks a little uncomfortable. Is this torture? Is this terror? Is this madness? Is this FASCISM?

Yes it is. Yes we can!!

So I was reading a great article on Znet.

It makes me quite sad to report that my worst writing (and new blogger period) was dead-on accurate. Here is what I wrote in 2007:

The Torture Is Propaganda

I want to take a step back for a second and talk about framing of issues, in this case about torture. I have heard liberals say the main reason to stand against torture is that “it doesn’t even work”. This plays right into the whole Jack Bauer flim-flam about a “ticking-time-bomb” scenario horseshit. I for one suspect there is not a time-bomb at all and would add that torture does work. It works just as it was designed to do: to get false confessions out of terrified people.

If we know that these “wars” are not about what we are told they are then we can also expect that our “leaders” might have a lot of difficulty finding “perps”. We also know that our “leaders” use terrifying myths about “others” that only they can protect us against to keep us in line. Well to keep us in line then requires that they produce these “evil conspirators” from time to time right? Of course the real conspirators, like say- Osama bin Laden, are too valuable as a propaganda tool to actually arrest. So instead we get low level operatives; and I suspect we also get a few totally and/or mostly innocent people who were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Question: If you were held in an isolated cell for months and months, then years and years, tortured and then viewed your child being molested by a soldier, would you confess to anything to make it stop? I don’t have kids, but I suspect I would confess to being Osama himself to make it stop. Guess what, this really takes place.

Whether it was torturing a “witch”, a Black Panther or some poor guy from Afghanistan in Guantanamo Bay, the propaganda of torture is the same and twofold. For those that believe the war is real, it acts as reinforcement for the belief that those in power have everything under control. For those that don’t believe, it acts as a warning. I think those in power want us to know what goes on in those dungeons or, in “the Brig”. It shows those of us who might resist these “wars”, what they are capable of, and willing to do on a whim.

They want us to know that any one of us could be Jose Padilla.

Keep in mind I wrote this using nothing more than my innate bullshit detector. With all of their resources why couldn’t CNN or The New York Times reach the same obvious conclusion?

(more…)

So, I’ve been looking for this video I stumbled across in the middle of the night months ago and am so happy (ish!) that I rediscovered this pile of festering ruling class propaganda! It is so freaking subtle, but if you can read between the lines is so obvious and evil. But first, Wikipedia on Civilization:

“A civilization is a society or culture group normally defined as a complex society characterized by the practice of agriculture and settlement in towns and cities. Compared with other cultures, members of a civilization are commonly organized into a diverse division of labor and an intricate social hierarchy.”

Hmmm, this sounds familiar.

“Civilization is often used as a synonym for the broader term “culture” in both popular and academic circles.^[1] Every human being participates in a culture, defined as “the arts, customs, habits… beliefs, values, behavior and material habits that constitute a people’s way of life”.^[2] However, in its most widely used definition, civilization is a descriptive term for a relatively complex agricultural and urban culture. Civilizations can be distinguished from other cultures by their high level of social complexity and organization, and by their diverse economic and cultural activities.

In an older but still frequently used sense, the term “civilization” can be used in a normative manner as well: in societal contexts where complex and urban cultures are assumed to be superior to other “savage” or “barbarian” cultures, the concept of “civilization” is used as a synonym for “cultural (and often ethical) superiority of certain groups.” In a similar sense, civilization can mean “refinement of thought, manners, or taste”.^[3]

Further now..

“Compared with other societies, civilizations have a more complex political structure, namely the state. State societies are more stratified than other societies; there is a greater difference among the social classes. The ruling class, normally concentrated in the cities, has control over much of the surplus and exercises its will through the actions of a government or bureaucracy. Morton Fried, a conflict theorist, and Elman Service, an integration theorist, have classified human cultures based on political systems and social inequality. This system of classification contains four categories:

• Hunter-gatherer bands, which are generally egalitarian.
• Horticultural/pastoral societies in which there are generally two inherited social classes; chief and commoner.
• Highly stratified structures, or chiefdoms, with several inherited social classes: king, noble, freemen, serf and slave.
• Civilizations, with complex social hierarchies and organized, institutional governments.^[9]

Economically, civilizations display more complex patterns of ownership and exchange than less organized societies. Living in one place allows people to accumulate more personal possessions than nomadic people. Some people also acquire landed property, or private ownership of the land. Because a percentage of people in civilizations do not grow their own food, they must trade their goods and services for food in a markettribute, redistributive taxation, tarrifs or tithes from the food producing segment of the population. Early civilizations developed money as a medium of exchange for these increasingly complex transactions.

“Writing, developed first by people in Sumer, is considered a hallmark of civilization and “appears to accompany the rise of complex administrative bureaucracies or the conquest state.”^[10] Traders and bureaucrats relied on writing to keep accurate records. Like money, writing was necessitated by the size of the population of a city and the complexity of its commerce among people who are not all personally acquainted with each other.”

Ok, nothing against the written word obviously, but I think anyone can see the alienating effects (and alienating intentions) of modern commerce and  civilization. Right?

Speaking of THEIR Intentions

What do the Ruling Class want exactly? To borrow from Michael Parenti: EVERYTHING. They want the whole fucking world (and, as we’ll see, the universe.) They don’t just want every measurable piece of land, sea and air. They don’t just want all of the fresh water, minerals, oil, uranium and everything they covet inside of the earth. Here is what they really want and have always wanted: immortality. They want to become GODs.

Does this sound a little crazy to you? I feel pretty sane for bringing it up. Now check out this “scientist” in the video. He is probably a respected professional in his field. In his political and personal life is probably considered a “visionary progressive” with a “commitment to human rights.” But if you break down his words, he basically concedes that this culture is going to destroy everything. Everything! He basically says that “our” culture is going to consume everything, but we should not worry because we are going to colonize space!

I’m sure to some science fiction fans that sounds fine, maybe even thrilling! However, to the sane (or even semi-sane!) uh, this guy should be considered a Benetton ad for the Apocalypse. [I wish I took better notes and could provide a link. But NASA and mainstream publications admit that if “we” accumulate even a little more “space junk” not even the old school Space Shuttle type operations could continue.] And with the space war intentions of “our” governments and corporations, more “space junk” is inevitable.

Meet your “savior”

Buenos Dias Putos! No doom and gloom to report today. The whole world is still totally fucked but at least it stopped raining in DC!  Lets celebrate with some Stevie Wonder.

We’ve all seen the video by now. Was he reaching for his Taser? Probably not. Was he startled by Oscar’s “struggle” or “resistance”? Not so much. So why did he take out his gun, stand up and execute Oscar Grant?

I don’t think he planned it. I don’t think he went to work that night hell bent on killing yet another black man. And I’ll admit, the video shows his surprise. So why did he do it?

Here is the answer: because he wanted to. Because that’s what they’re trained to do.  That’s what this culture is; what it does.

What that fucking cop did was no different than what the well trained and well groomed bigot does when he/she blurts out a racial slur in “polite” company. He/she acted on their conditioned nature and played out this societies program for so-called normality. However, the second after the racial slur (or bullets) come out, the agent is immediately aware of the ramifications of their actions.

The husband that hits his wife knows within one second that he has fucked up. Do we forgive? We should not.

Cops are trained to (and do) loath the general public. Us. Think about how cops are trained to hate people like me: anarchists.

We need to understand that cop’s bullet as him blurting out “nigger.” Or “thug.”

To say it again: he did it because he wanted to. Programmed to. For one second (in his sick mind) he had “justice” with those “thugs.” It doesn’t matter what Oscar’s human story was anymore than the story of a slaughtered family in Gaza. The people that pay for the bullets also “pay” for “education.” And journalism. And Research. And science. And industry. And media. And “Defense!” And so on.

None of the words matter. They call it “law and order” and/or “progress.”  I call it Occupation. And we play out the tragic, pathetic and horrific script written for us by the rich and powerful each day.

I feel like a time bomb.

Judge for yourself:
Have you ever heard of Surplus Labor/a>

They didn’t the day this picture was taken, but better late than never! Yippee! Finally an ethnic cleansing we can get into! Check it out: Die You Fucks!

Listen to Bill Hicks you destroyers of everything! “Kill yourselves.” Seriously. You know people are going to start picking you parasites off soon anyway, so just take care of business with your little imagined idea of “dignity”: kill yourselves on golf courses, (that we’ll soon reclaim/re-wild) suck the tailpipe of your limos, jump off of the Swiss alps, fly your Lear Jets into the NYSE (and save of us the trouble of dismantling it ourselves!) Just take you and the other one to ten percent of you parasites anywhere in the universe but here. Perhaps you could take your Space Shuttles to Mars and play with your Rover. Perhaps you could just put pistols to your black hearts. It doesn’t really matter: just go away, hide or die. Preferably die. Man, that felt fucking great!

Speaking of Bill Hicks and fuckfaces killing themselves, here he is doing his thing.

And Hicks again: sometimes the “sinner” is really the saint.

Speaking of the word “fuckface,” here is me making an ass of myself on Zed’s front stoop.

And here is why I can’t write a political word right now. Because blogging seems besides the point once you witness this (yet armed struggle seems to make so much more sense):

Hey Israel:

Eric Stoltz sez: “You’re Over.”

Hey Max, what in the fuck are doing yacking about your sex life in the 90’s and shit?

Good question. Which I will answer more directly over the weekend. In short: the “holidays” are usually pretty rough for me. Certain emotions sneak their way back and skeletons start dancing in closets and so forth. Actually, if anyone wants to go to my archive, one will notice a missing month. At least this January I’m trying!

Now, I need to write the greatest advertisement in human history for a certain event. Hasta Manana!

I and my former best-friend, Jonah, were so in love with this band (Archers of Loaf) that we actually followed them from a DC show at the Black Cat to a show in Louisville Kentucky. A bonus of this show was that we got to see a little unknown band called Spoon. The singer of this band ended up sleeping with my long term roommate.

The two of us loved talking philosophy and thinking about new ways of existing. We took the album title “The Speed of Cattle” seriously. We decided to spend an entire week of our suburban lives moving at this speed: of cattle.

We never drove above thirty miles an hour: even if on the highway. We walked slow, ate slow, thought before we spoke, were chivalrous, polite, kind, patient, loving and were just calm.

It was a good week. Of course we went back to normal and eventually fucked each other over. Our egos, sex drives and vaginal turf wars took place between “my” ex-girlfriend and “his” new girlfriend which wrecked us as mutual revolutionaries. And as friends. That three-way probably wasn’t such a good idea was it!? She ended up cheating on her boyfriend with her ex-boyfriend: me. Such a waste.

They were both wonderful. He’s in Ireland, she’s in England and I’m here in shit town USA.

It’s only Rock ‘N Roll!

Archers of Loaf:

Sebadoh: