Incendiary Material:
1)The Catcher in the Rye By: J.D. Salinger
2)Our Band Could Be Your Life BY: Michael Azzerad
3)A People’s History of the United States By: Howard Zinn
4)Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas By: Hunter S. Thompson
5)Bill Hicks: Agent of Evolution By: Kevin Booth With Michale Bertin
Goes back and forth again. You don’t like what you see. You must not care for me.
1) VIOLENT BOMB THROWING FREAKS!– We live in a violent society period. From schoolyard bullying all the way up to big fucking bombs being dropped on a schoolyard of Iraqi kids. So, are anarchists violent? Some of them are, some of them aren’t, but look around you, there are far more violent institutions such as the Police, the Military, and the entire United States Government. But, do we label said institutions as “violent?” Of course not, whenever they use force it’s to “protect” you and me. We grant such vultures(not all participants of the former organizations fall under this label) at the political top the means and tactics to abuse the rest of us from the middle to the bottom. You see, anarchists question and seek to abolish this authoritarian system and that logic is seen as violent by those at the top. The real question, as veteran anarchist, Alexander Berkman once posed: Is Anarchism violence? and the simple answer is, HELLLLLLL NO! In short, anarchism in itself is just a political theory that advocates overthrowing violent systems and replacing them with more suitable institutions, and since the violent criminals that run society disagree with this logic it is violence. Out of all the political philosophies/theories it has caused the least amount of violence, but that’s a whole other story.
2) NO SOCIAL ORDER!– It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant people are of this very vital and quite appealing political philosophy. Even some History/Government/ Political Science teachers cannot formulate a proper definition of what anarchism really means. Often they just say it means: no government, no laws, no order! Technically, they would not be completely incorrect, but to offer that simple response as a serious definition of anarchism is ludicrous, silly, and especially misleading. When anarchists profess that they would like to see NO GOVERNMENT they mean NO CENTRALIZED STATE POWER. We, anarchists, seek a society without state power. Like all political theories there are numerous variations and different beliefs/ideals. Some anarchists, such as Noam Chomsky, promote big government, for the people of course! Chomsky, particularly refutes the idea that a possible, envisioned, anarchist society would be chaotic or lawless and goes on to say that he believes society should be “highly organized.”
3) ALL ANARCHISTS HATE AMERICA!– Those sick, brainwashed fucks bad mouthing America! some Neanderthals might holler. Well, it is true that many Anarchists hate America, but not ALL. In fact, we have seen several highly patriotic Anarchists, such as Abbie Hoffman, Edward S. Abbey, Howard Zinn, and yours truly! I love America. I hate Amerikkka. There’s a big difference.
4) ALL ANARCHISTS ARE AGAINST RELIGION– Ok, many and perhaps most are. Emma Goldman, a prominent anarchist and personal favorite (well, one of them) often preached that religion was one of the three biggest evils dominating society (the other two being government and property). On the other hand, Christian Anarchism exists and two of the greatest anarchists to ever live are Phillip and Daniel Berrigan, both ordained priests and 100% BAMFs.
5) ANARCHISM FEEDS ON DESTRUCTION OF SOCIETY– This is only partially true. If you’re speaking of Anarcho-Primitivism, then this would be spot on, but most other forms or anarchism preach building society today for a better tomorrow. Emma Goldman noted that this is what made Anarchism distinctive from Socialism/Marxism/Communism, that the latter was based on DESTRUCTION of society and that the former was based on CONSTRUCTION. Then some anarchists, such Jello Biafra and myself claim that we should “destroy society.” This basically is the equivalent of Emma’s points. Simply, out with the old, in with the new. In other words, destruction as a form of creation: abolishing the old traditions that have failed us or are no longer relevant and instituting new ideas to take them over to create a better, peaceful, and more harmonious world for everyone.
Chris DeCarlo – ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!
Our tax money…wait for it…goes to private corporations!
You may or may not be aware that approximately 54% of our income tax money has gone/goes toward military efforts; the military has long been thought of as a public service that protects U.S citizens with national security. Private contracts, at least since the Iraq War began, have been outrageously ubiquitous. The military is no longer as it once was.
A good chunk of our income tax money also goes toward Social Security and health care. Compared to the military, these entitlements are great uses of income tax money! But…let’s not forget that your tax money, dispersed through government funds, is going to the mammoth major league sports industry. I’d surely support a system that was 100% private funding and 0% public funding, since tax payers wouldn’t have to pay for something that does not benefit them or interest them. This hasn’t been the case for the most part. Recall the George Bush, Texas Rangers affair. Only five teams in the MLB receive 0% government funding. Below are corporations who own the naming rights to stadiums AND are funded by the government.
MLB
J.P Morgan Chase – Arizona Diamondbacks – 76% public funding
U.S Cellular – Chicago White Sox – 100% funding
American Financial Group – Cincinnati Reds – 17% funding
Progressive Corporation – Cleveland Indians – 87% funding
Coors Brewing Company – Colorado Rockies – 75% funding
Comerica Bank – Detroit Tigers – 50% funding
Anheuser Busch – Florida Marlins – 3% funding
The Coca-Cola Company – Houston Astros – 67% funding
Miller Brewing Company – Milwaukee Brewers – 64% funding
Citigroup – New York Mets – 31% funding
Citizens Bank – Philadelphia Phillies – 50% funding
PNC Financial Services – Pittsburgh Pirates – 71% funding
Petco – San Diego Padres – 70% funding
AT&T Inc. – San Francisco Giants – 5% funding
Liberty Mutual – Seattle Mariners – 76% funding
Pepsi Co – Tampa Bay Devil Rays – 100% funding
Rogers Communications – Toronto Blue Jays – 63% funding
Thank God there are a few teams out there like the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers that have resisted a corporate name change and have come up with stadium funds entirely on their own.
Ted Nugent in the Wall Street Journal
Common sense is alive and well in America if you’re not stoned, drunk, greedy or just plain stupid. To think that anyone could even argue that Napster [or any other file sharing program] has the right to give away an artist’s product is ridiculous. Hey, I have a good idea! I’ll just stand outside the local grocery store and offer its food free to the public. It doesn’t matter if the owner took the risk, pays all the taxes and overhead, struggles with a bureaucratic land mine field of regulations and laws, invests his warrior work ethic in bucketsful of sweat day after day, and basically busts his butt to provide a quality service and jobs for the community. Hell, no. I’ll just make that decision for him, thank you, and give away his products and hard-earned money. Who does he think he is anyway? The same applies to recording artists. We invest sweat and blood and millions of dollars creating musical products. It takes years of insane sacrifice and grueling tour schedules and intense effort. To think a third party should be allowed to give away our product for zero compensation in brain-dead and un-American.
I think a pretty good point is made here. The term “Un-American,” though, is always a silly conclusion and in my opinion should be avoided at all costs.
I’ve often thought to myself: why am I majoring in business if the corporation is something I so much despise? Business is not just the corporation. Business is everywhere. It exists in many forms and is hardly avoidable. There are good businesses and bad businesses, necessary businesses and unnecessary businesses. Wherever there is a (potential) market for something, there is a business. There’s very little that can stop business. There are government regulations placed on businesses and there are third party watchdogs monitoring business activity, but when it comes down to it…business is often inevasible and free of regulation, for at least some period of time. Maybe you’ve thought about business’ impact on you. Business has made you healthy, fat, smart, entertained, and a bunch of other adjectives too abounding to enumerate individually. Business is not God, even though the corporation, through branding and excessive marketing, tries to make itself appear omnipresent and omnipotent. The corporation is an enemy to business because of this. Business is not its own legal entity. A business is a human run operation that involves humans providing goods and services. We mustn’t let a particular organization take on certain human characteristics. This is where profit kind of fucks everything up. Because profit must be delivered to shareholders in a corporation, that’s a corporation’s only “obligation.” But, in essence, the humans running these organizations owe their earnings to a lot more people, or at least they should. Earning money for X corporation alone does not really allow for humanity to function sanely. The incentive to, for example, improve the livelihood of employees is usually not present because improving the livelihood of employees is a business expense, instead of a true “profit” to society. Most things that would otherwise help society economically or otherwise are corporations’ enemies. With small and midsized businesses, they have grassroots level focus; most customers, employees, and products consume, work, and are manufactured in a small bubble of area, as opposed to jobs and products that are outsourced. This way people will be less prone to exploit other people and/or the environment around them; the powerless (the poor, the working class, the non-corporations) are more likely to become self-sufficient and treated with dignity. I’ve kind of diverted, but what I’m trying to say is that I’m fully in favor of business. I love business and the potential value it serves to humanity. We (future business leaders) have to find feasible means of intimately bringing good to the entire world by scaling back so called “global” operations. It can be done. Just give us some time.
Glen Maganzini
This is from David Marsh’s incendiary work, 50 Ways to Fight Censorshoip. It’s a bit out of date, but nonetheless important to those who love and want to preserve one of our greatest rights: free speech. This is merely an outline of Marsh’s book courtesy of semantikon.com:
1. SPEAK OUT!
2. Register and Vote!
3. Send Your Senators and Congressperson Letters or Mailgrams.
4. Teach Your Children How to Know When Censorship Appears in the Classroom, or Elsewhere.
5. Oppose De Facto Censorship of the News Media by the Wealthy and Powerful.
6. Get Involved With Your Library.
7. Make Art That Fights Censorship.
8. Speak Out About Freedom of Speech at Schools, Churches, and to Youth Groups in Your Town.
9. Write a Letter to Your Local Paper in Defense of Free Speech.
10. Call Your Radio Station Talk Show.
11. Support Those Retailers Who Fight Against Censorship.
12. Read Banned Books. Read Everything About Censorship and First Amendment Issues.
13. Gather Information and News Clippings on Censorship and Send it to a Central Clearinghouse.
14. Buy Banned Records.
15. Write and Perform Songs About Free Speech and the Perils of Censorship.
16. Write Movie Moguls and Tell Them to Eliminate the MPAA Ratings Code.
17. Watch “The Simpsons” and Other Controversial TV Programs.
18. Contact Your Local Cable Outlet to Find Out if It’s Being Pressured to Censor Its Programming.
19. Join the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
20. Join the Freedom to Read Foundation.
21. Stop the Attack on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
22. Join Article 19.
23. Support the American Booksellers Association Foundation for Free Expression.
24. Get to Know the Censorship Groups. Study Their Literature, and Expose Them to Public Scrutiny.
25. Investigate the Tax-Exempt Status of Pro-Censorship Lobbying Groups.
26. Find Out Your State’s Requirements for Purchasing Textbooks.
27. Run for Public Office On a Platform Supporting Freedom of Expression.
28. Write to Your Favorite Artists; Find Out What They’re Doing to Help Preserve Freedom of
Expression.
29. Make an Anti-Censorship Home Video Showing the Various Benefits of Free Speech in Your
Community
30. Write About Your Positive Experiences with Art.
31. Become a Voter Registrar. Organize a Voter Registration Drive.
32. Form a Group That Establishes a First Amendment Litmus Test for Politicians.
33. Start an Anti-Censorship Petition Campaign.
34. Boycott Products Made and Marketed by Companies That Fund the Censors.
35. Start a Grassroots Anti-Censorship Organization.
36. Start an Anti-Censorship Newsletter.
37. Contact Local Arts and Educational Organizations; Persuade Them to Stage a Free Speech
Events.
38. Set a Good Example by Starting a Parents Group to Combat Censorship.
39. Contact Local TV Stations and Propose a “Censored Films Festival.
40. Use Community Access Cable or Community Radio to Raise Awareness of Free Speech Issues.
41. Stage a Mock Trial on Censorship.
42. Sue the Bastards!
43. Create a Public Service Announcement to Be Aired Over the Radio.
44. Make Sure Local Schools Have a Course on Freedom of Speech.
45. Contact Others Concerned About Censorship–Use the Classifieds!
46. Talk to Teachers About What They’re Doing to Ens ure Free Speech.
47. Picket the Censors.
48. Have a Moment of Silence to Keep Speech Free.
49. Have a Speak Out Day.
50. Make the Real Obscenities the Real Issues.
Chris DeCarlo
Grow the fuck up, Harry. They’re still making movies out of a set of books by a literary profiteer by the name of J.K Rowling? She’s done more brainwashing to the little-uns than commercials. Yeah, yeah, maybe there are more child readers because of Harry Potter, but real books, you know…non-fiction, are being marginalized thanks to a homo-erotic wizard. She’s pretty hot, though, so I’ll give her a pass this one last time.
Carnival Cruise Fountain Fun Cards
Step One: Purchase a Fun Card, which allows you to keep buying soft drinks/juice every day on board for a price of $5.50 per day, on the first day of your cruise.
Warning: In order to prevent you from exploiting the system, the card states that only one drink may be ordered at a time. That makes sense. BUT the system can easily be exploited….
Step Two: Buy drink #1 at bar #1. Buy drink #2 at bar #2. Buy drink #3 from a waitress/waiter walking around the pool area. Have somebody else in your group/family buy drink #1 at bar #1, drink #2 at bar #2, and drink #3 from a waitress/waiter. Repeat this process with as many different people as possible.
Quick Note: In case you are worried about being caught…you won’t be! As long as you clearly show that you have a Fun Card, the bartender will not check the back for a name.
This isn’t really a thorough, ground breaking analysis but…profit maximizing corporations suck. There is no excuse and here’s why: Dell, maybe you own a computer made by these guys, utilizes a strategy called 3-7. It’s pretty simple, three out of ten computers are efficiently produced and are expected to be immune from any major problems. The other seven computers will be prone to problems and will require some kind of repair work. This business model works out wonderfully for Dell because people who encounter a computer that requires repair will send it back for service (back to India where the repair will be incredibly cheap) OR buy another computer (Dell hopes it’s one of their “3” models that costs only $500) all together, figuring it’s too much of a hassle to wait for a repair. Dell doesn’t mind repairing computers or assisting people in their difficulties. Their cheaply manufactured products will make them a shit load of money in sales and cost them only slightly in expenses and production. This kind of profiting off of bad things happening is not uncommon. It’s been around for years — the automotive industry has been a consistent example over the years of purposely making shoddily and unsafe parts and accessories. That’s because the cost of repair (paying damages to victims of an “accident” OFTEN subsidized by the government through TAXPAYER monies) is minutely important relative to profit, which will always be there. It can and has been argued that many industries make money off of bad things happening. And honestly I don’t feel like I am in the business to propose a lasting solution to this terrible problem. Social business is a start, perhaps most feasible in an industrial age like ours.
Kids Like You & Me (KLYAM) 