Let us not forget those civilian heroes who have opposed the American military machine in the name of peace and freedom. School textbooks often detail protests at Berkeley and Washington DC as pivotal moments in the anti-war movement. But I am just now learning about Father Philip Berrigan.
 
Berrigan returned from army service in World War II “sickened” by the unjustified violence and institutional racism he frequently encountered while on the force. A victim of the corrupt, “nationalistic propaganda” that favors white Europeans over everyone else, Berrigan was a bold participant in the American civil rights movement, whose participation in sit-ins and bus boycotts earned him his first stint in the clink. By his death in 2002, Berrigan had spent a total of 11 years behind bars.
 
Philip Berrigan became a Roman Catholic priest in 1955. In the mid-Sixties, while serving an impoverished African American parish in Baltimore, he founded Peace Mission, an anti-war advocacy group. They declared their displeasure in the “American Empire” by picketing the homes of Defense Secretary Robert S McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. But people were still dying overseas.
 

Father Phil in 1960
 
On October 17 1967, Berrigan and three others, later to be known as the “Baltimore Four,” entered the Baltimore Customs House, where Vietnam draft cards were being issued. After distracting office clerks, the protesters splattered blood - made partly using their own - on the Selective Service records. While they waited for the police to come arrest them, the group passed out Bibles. Berrigan stated that the action was committed with dissent to “the pitiful waste of American and Vietnamese blood in Indochina.” It earned him six years in prison.
 
Six months later, Philip was out on bail and along with his older brother, Jesuit priest Rev Daniel Berrigan, the two formed the “Catonsville Nine.” A more grandiose version of what happened in Baltimore, the Catholic demonstrators set hundreds of draft cards ablaze in the parking lot of a Catonsville, MD board office using homemade napalm. Unified around the fire, they proceeded to recite the Lord’s Prayer. The press was given the following statement: “We destroy these draft records not only because they exploit our young men but also because they represent misplaced power concentrated in the ruling class of America. We confront the Catholic Church, other Christian bodies, and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in the face of our country’s crimes.”
 

The Catonsville Nine
 
There is no proof on whether any lives were saved by the actions of the Catonsville Nine. It is known, however, that it inspired several similar pacifist movements across the US: the DC Nine, Milwaukee 14, Boston Eight, Camden 28, etcetera. Out on bail once more, the Berrigan brothers soon “went underground,” which earned them placement on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list. Their actions would also land them on the cover of TIME.
 

Catholic Anarchists: Philip and Daniel Berrigan
 
Philip Berrigan was eventually excommunicated from the church. Ironically, it wasn’t because of his activism, but rather a love affair he developed with a nun while incarcerated. Government screening of their letters also revealed new schemes to commit the “citizen’s arrest” of Henry Kissinger. Berrigan was acquitted of all major conspiracy charges in 1972.
 
Even after Vietnam, Philip and Daniel Berrigan would dedicate their lives to exposing the injustices within our country. With six others, they formed the Plowshares Movement, an anti-nuclear operation that is still active today. Its inception was marked by the raid of a General Electric plant that produced warhead nose cones. It was reported that the group hammered on two of the noses, poured blood on documents, and performed prayers for peace. They were held on ten different felony and misdemeanor charges.
 
Let us pay a moment of silence for those brave American heroes who have fought before us.
 

News footage from Catonsville Nine’s draft card burning, May 17, 1968
 

 
America doesn’t need another Wally George. He was host of the Hot Seat - a reality talk show that ran locally on Southern California cable network KDOC between 1983-1992. Best known as the “Father of Combat Television,” a sensational form of tabloid programming that would eventually be emulated by the likes of Jerry Springer and Morton Downey Jr, Wally was a right-wing, god-fearing extremist with a sleazy white combover and a profound admiration of President Ronald Reagan.
 
Every Saturday night, Wally would invite those with opposing viewpoints—adult entertainers, satanists, punk rockers, human rights advocates—onto his “hot seat” to discuss topics of old-school patriotism, invigorated by a raucous studio audience of suburban teenage degenerates. People like Timothy Leary, rape-rock band The Mentors (led by El Duce), Angelyne, GWAR, Rick Dees, Night Flight’s Stuart Shapiro, and countless other “ludicrous liberal lunatics” have all taken insults from the farcically contrarian Wally George. Revisiting old episodes of the Hot Seat on YouTube, it’s almost painful to find pleasure in its psycho-babble, given the shitty climate of Trump’s America. But for what it’s worth, the show was often brilliant.
 

‘Wally! Wally! Wally!’
 
An incident in 1983 saw special guest Blase Bonpane, an alleged pacifist, overturn Wally’s desk during a crossfire argument on the invasion of Grenada. The incident received national attention and as a result, the Hot Seat gained syndication. It was a period of peak acclaim for the small budget talk show, so Wally George did what many low-brow personalities were doing at the time, he put out a novelty record.
 

 
 
Wal-ly! Wal-ly! was a four song “mini-album,” released in 1984 by Rhino Records. Running at just twelve minutes in length, the record is seething with conservative agenda and nuances of sexism, homophobia, racial stereotyping, and other laughable qualities of nationalist scum. The title track, a “Louie Louie” parody named for the show’s anthemic crowd chants, is a reaffirmation of Wally’s commitment to exposing the liberal conspiracy and making right for our beloved country. What type of music do you think Sean Hannity would make, if given the opportunity?
 
Listen up you liberal loonies, stream Wally George’s 1984 novelty record, after the jump…

 
I remember watching George W. Bush deliver the State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, on the TV of a tiny barroom in the East Bay. No cocktail was strong enough. This was the speech that denounced the “axis of evil,” a coinage of Bush speechwriter David Frum, who has lately been rehabilitated as a true friend of democracy and stalwart defender of the realm. Perhaps when the professional eulogists are finished carving the likenesses of Poppy and W. into Mount Rushmore, they can squeeze in this august son of Canada, who believes the problem with the Iraq War was the people of Iraq.

With every patriot face now awash in tears for these old-fashioned Republicans, the kind who could, when the occasion demanded it, speak in complete sentences, let us remember “Qaeda, Quality, Question, Quickly, Quickly, Quiet,” the artist Lenka Clayton‘s alphabetized cut of the address, which blasted those sentences to rubble and sifted the bits. Marc Campbell posted this vid on DM many moons ago, but it’s worth revisiting now. On one hand, it is a cognition-destroying mindhammer that smashes illusions about the stimulus-response theory of government. On the other, even alphabetically reordered and condensed to 18 minutes, W.‘s oratory sounds like Pericles next to the barnyard squawks and grunts that will comprise the phonemic index of the 2019 State of the Union address, which I understand will be subtitled “A Case Study in Lycanthropy.”
 

Detail from the soundtrack LP cover

If you like the movie, you’ll love the soundtrack LP (side one: “A - My,” side two: “Nation - Zero”) and accompanying flip-book.
 

via Reddit

‘Thomas Jefferson’ by N. C. Wyeth

“Ideas of justice are as timeless as fashions in hats,” the philosopher John Gray writes. Consider a bill submitted to the Virginia Assembly in 1779, proposing some liberal reforms to colonial laws: Bill 64, “A Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments in Cases Heretofore Capital,” penned in Thomas Jefferson’s own hand. Seeking to make murder and treason the only capital crimes, it was progressive legislation for its day. Bill 64, a product of two years’ deliberation by the Committee of Revisors, grouped rape, polygamy and sodomy together, and prescribed the same punishment for each:

Whosoever shall be guilty of Rape, Polygamy, or Sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro’ the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least.

The bill’s extensive footnotes review legal authorities from antiquity through the 18th century on criminal law’s greatest hits, such as arson, robbery, counterfeiting, manslaughter, murder and treason, along with some old standards known to very few of today’s felons, like asportation of vessels and horse stealing. When it comes to the rationale for drilling holes in women’s noses, the footnotes are silent, but there is a lengthy disquisition on buggery. Properly considered, Jefferson writes, buggery subsumes two distinct crimes: buggery of people and buggery of animals, the first of which is a serious transgression, the second a hilarious indiscretion.

Buggery is twofold. 1. with mankind, 2. with beasts. Buggery is the Genus, of which Sodomy and Bestiality are the species. 12.Co.37. says ‘note that Sodomy is with mankind.’ But Finch’s L.B.3.c.24. ‘Sodomitry is a carnal copulation against nature, to wit, of man or woman in the same sex, or of either of them with beasts.’ 12.Co.36. says ‘it appears by the antient authorities of the law that this was felony.’ Yet the 25.H.8. declares it felony, as if supposed not to be so. Britton c.9. says that Sodomites are to be burnt. […] The Mirror makes it treason. Bestiality can never make any progress; it cannot therefore be injurious to society in any great degree, which is the true measure of criminality in foro civili, and will ever be properly and severely punished by universal derision. It may therefore be omitted. It was antiently punished with death as it has been latterly. Ll.Aelfrid.31. and 25H.8.c.6. See Beccaria §.31. Montesq.

Jefferson wrote Madison that the bill’s punishment for rape was a hard sell in the Virginia Assembly, where his colleagues found it “indecent and unjustifiable.” He also would support changing the punishment for rape, but only because, as written, “women would be under [the temptation] to make it the instrument of vengeance against an inconstant lover, and of disappointment to a rival.” I think both reasons amount to anxiety about what women might do with the power to hand out gonadectomies like jaywalking tickets, a development that certainly would have made high school U.S. history textbooks more interesting.

None of these considerations seems to have affected the fate of Bill 64. When it was defeated in 1787, Madison attributed its failure not to the brutal penalties for sex crimes, but to the current “rage against Horse stealers,” who would have faced hard labor rather than the gallows under its permissive code.

Laws come and go; below, Charles Manson dispenses timeless wisdom in his song “Don’t Do Anything Illegal.”
 

I hope you kids are all as grateful for the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) as I am. Thanks to FOIA, we get to read, see and have access to all kinds of things that THE MAN never wanted us to see. He probably still doesn’t. But…fuck that noise, right?

Now me? I’m a poster, propaganda and advertising junkie. Most nights these days, I can be found at my film bench building reels of 16mm TV commercials, prepping them for night of film fun with friends. I also have a healthy size collection of campaign ads and weird political films on 16mm. What can I say? Somebody’s gotta do it, right?

Propaganda of all kinds peaks my interest. My book collection is rife with volumes on political ads, posters on disease prevention from the 1950s, and domestic marketing campaigns. It’s a wild time over here.

So when I discovered that the NSA (National Security Agency) had responded to the person who requested access to the motivational security posters from the ‘50s and ‘60s, well…I was pretty damn pleased. As it turns out, I had every right to be. They are massively cool. One of my fave things about these posters? How tight Santa Claus’s relationship was with the NSA. Who knew that he was in so deep with government secrets, right?? Damn, Santa! Next I’m gonna find out that Rudolph’s nose was blinking Morse code!

Now, if you want to go have a look at all the posters yourself, you can. But it’s a hefty download of approximately 140 pages that can be found here and all the posters are on one PDF. I have taken the liberty of grabbing a collection of many of what I consider to be some of the best ones. The public hasn’t seen these babies in a grip of years so you are getting a nice glimpse of how our world has changed…or hasn’t.

Enjoy! And remember folks—security is up to you!

 
Many more after the jump…

 
Charles Manson wasn’t the only rock & roll cult leader. As you may have learned from watching the Paramount Network’s new miniseries Waco, David Koresh of the Branch Davidians was also known to pick up the axe from time to time…

In an era plagued by gun violence and incessant mass murders, the siege at Waco remains to be one of the most memorable shootouts in American history. As several sources have depicted the tragedy, the situation at Mount Carmel could have been handled more delicately by the ATF and the FBI, who conclusively relied on force as a method of negotiation. What began as a federal search warrant for a suspected cache of illegal weapons, erupted quite literally into a gun battle between religious cult zealots and the United States government. The standoff lasted 51 days, until the iconic conclusion on April 19th, 1993, when a tear gas attack by the FBI prompted a fire that would engulf the Mount Carmel Center. By the close of the standoff, a total of 76 people would die—including leader David Koresh.
 

 
The Branch Davidians arose in 1955 from a rupture within the Shepherd’s Rod, a derivative of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The original sect was led by self-proclaimed prophet Victor Houteff who, twenty years prior, had established its headquarters at the Mount Carmel Center near Waco, Texas. When Houteff unexpectedly passed, many disagreements within the church brought about splinter groups like the aforementioned Branch Davidians, now led by the quasi-prophet, Benjamin Roden. Similar to the doctrines preached in the Shepherd’s Rod, the Branch Davidians believed they were living in the final period of Biblical prophecies, right before absolute judgement and the second coming of Christ.

David Koresh joined the Branch Davidians in 1981. Known then as Vernon Howell, the Koresh of his early-twenties seduced Lois Roden, the now-widowed leader of the commune, who was in her late sixties. The following year, Koresh declared himself to be the true prophet of the group and relayed that he had been instructed by God to bear a child with Lois, who would be considered the “Chosen One.” Upon Lois’ death, her son George Roden took over leadership of the Branch Davidians and exiled Koresh from the compound in fear of his rising influence. This was up until 1989, when Roden was convicted of murdering follower Wayman Dale Adair because he was believed to have been sent by Koresh. The former Vernon Howell then changed his name to that of celestial significance (after King David and “Koresh” being the Biblical name of Cyrus the Great) and he, along with his followers, raised enough money to buy-back Mount Carmel from the US government. From that moment forward, David Koresh became the final prophet of the Branch Davidians.
 

David and the Bros
 
Besides stockpiling weaponry, Koresh lived above the law through his teachings of the “New Light Message.” The men who practiced at Mount Carmel, even those who had committed alongside their wives, were to now lead a celibate life. The women, however, would be sexually and reproductively committed to Koresh, who insisted upon a harem of available women known as the “House of David.” The reasoning was, you guessed it, because of God’s commandments, that Koresh was to hold “spiritual weddings” with any woman that their Lord had instructed him to. Many of the women of the Branch Davidian cult became wives of Koresh, several of which had already been legally married—or were underage. At least one follower in particular, Michelle Jones, had her first child with Koresh when she was fourteen years old. The two had begun a sexual relationship years prior while her older sister, Rachel Jones-Koresh, remained the prophet’s only legal wife (whom she also married when she was fourteen). The parents of Michelle and Rachel Jones had been lifelong Branch Davidians and had given David permission to bed & wed their daughters.

It is believed that Koresh had fathered over fifteen children with the women of the group. He expected his children to be perfect and that they would eventually become the ruling elders after the apocalypse and the alleged second coming of Christ. The ideology of the Branch Davidians was heavily focused on Judgement Day and it was Koresh’s prophesy that only he could open the “Seven Seals” as foretold in the New Testament’s Book of Revelation. This action would bring about the calamitous end of times, wherefore those devoted “Koreshians” would be led into the heavens by their divine leader. Koresh and his followers’ reaction to the standoff at Mount Carmel was that the Seven Seals had been opened and mankind’s decimation was upon them.
 

 
Just a day before the initial raid at Mount Carmel, the Waco Tribune ran its shocking, multi-part expose’ on the cult of David Koresh titled “The Sinful Messiah.” Among the story’s heinous depictions of child abuse, statutory rape, polygamy, paranoia, and a heavy artillery, another persona of David Koresh had also been characterized—that of a rocker. At 22 years of age, Koresh was kicked out of his mother’s Seventh-day Adventist Church in Houston for trying to marry the pastor’s daughter. An aspiring musician, Koresh then moved to Los Angeles in hopes of becoming a rock star. His attempt was considered an “utter failure,” and this is what led Koresh to Waco, Texas.

It could be said that David’s rock ambitions were what led him to literally try to become Jesus Christ. Plenty of rock stars regard themselves in self-idolatry, so the career trajectory checks out.

Continues after the jump…

“We’re gonna start saying Merry Shitmas again.”*

—Donald Trump

*Or at least that is what I think he said

A couple of years ago I wrote here about the turd-related Christmas traditions of the Catalans.

Each December 8th, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, families in the Catalonian region of Spain bring out Tió de Nadal or Caga Tió  (which means “shitting log”). The log is painted with a smiling face and stands on two tiny stick legs.
 

 
Every night until the 24th, as tradition dictates, the children are instructed to give the Tió a little bite to “eat” and cover him with a blanket to keep him warm and cozy. On Christmas Eve, the Tió is placed partly under his blanket and the children order it to defecate. The children beat the log with sticks, while singing the Tió de Nadal song, in order to make it shit presents.

Parents place presents under the log’s blanket while the children close their eyes and pray for the really good shit.

The children’s song to Caga Tió is absolutely adorable:

“Caga tió,
caga torró,
avellanes i mató,
si no cagues bé
et daré un cop de bastó.
caga tió!”

Translated:

shit, log,
shit nougats,
hazelnuts and mató cheese,
if you don’t shit well,
I’ll hit you with a stick,
shit, log!

Coaxing turds from Caga Tió is a wonderful Christmas custom, but not the only scatalogical Catalonian tradition. Even more popular and beloved is the Caganer, whose name literally translates to “the crapper” or “the shitter”. The Caganer is a figurine, traditionally in peasant garb, who is bent over and taking a dump. This figurine is placed among the other figures in the Nativity Scene. The figure is hidden away in the Nativity and the children are instructed to try and find the Caganer.
 

Traditional Caganer
 
It’s not known for certain why the pooping character has been added to the Nativity, but it seems to have been around since at least the 18th Century. Some claim that the character represents fertilization of the Earth and others believe the Caganer represents “the spoil-sport we all have within us.” No one is really sure, but the character maintains a massive popularity despite some governmental attempts to ban the public display.

The Caganer statuettes are sometimes fashioned in the likeness of well-known figures from pop culture or politics, including what is certain to be this year’s hottest selling nativity-shitter, Donald J. Trump.
 

 
The Trump Caganer is available HERE for $24.97.
 

 
More after the dump... er, jump

“Mammon.” A painting by Alex Gross.
 

“Past success is no guarantee of future success, and anything is possible. It’s something that I try not to forget.”

—Artist Alex Gross on what keeps him going.

 
You may already be familiar with the work of New York-based artist Alex Gross as his striking surrealist pop creations have been seen in many publications including The Los Angeles Times. His warped, hyperrealistic artwork was also compiled into a couple of books—one in 2008 by Bruce Sterling, The Art of Alex Gross: Paintings and Other Works, and another published in 2014, Future Tense, Paintings by Alex Gross, 2010-2014.

It’s clear from Gross’ take on modern times that, like many of us, he may have already abandoned hope for the future. And his most recent gallery show, “Antisocial Network,” his first in nearly ten years back in February of this year, is a perfect example of his perhaps dim outlook on our collective existence. The work featured in the show was the result of two years of observation and reflection while the world began its downward spiral and the U.S. somehow ended up with a “president” that says shit like this.

Many of the paintings I’ve featured in this post involve people interacting with their smartphones while mayhem ensues behind them, unnoticed, which seems entirely plausible as it happens every goddamn day. I mean, people are so attached to their smartphones that they have panic attacks when they can’t find them and quite literally fall into holes in the sidewalk because they can’t bear to not stare into them while simply walking down the street. Despite perpetuating the notion that we all might end up in a hole in the sidewalk never to be seen again, Gross says that he hopes that his work helps people connect with each other. I’m all for that.

If you’d like to add some of Gross’ artwork to your collection, you can pick up limited edition prints at his website.
 

“Android.”
 

“Service Industry.”
 
More after the jump…

 
Like many of you reading this sentence, I have spent nearly 100% of my waking hours so far this year feeling like I wanted to run out into the middle of a cornfield and scream my fucking head off as loudly as possible until I passed out from exhaustion or simply got bored of this activity and decided to stop. (Never underestimate the cathartic value of DIY primal scream therapy in Donald Trump’s America. If it worked for John and Yoko and it can work for you, too.)

But yesterday and today, the Senate votes on repealing the ACA has left me feeling especially sickened, angry and utterly drained. My hatred for “them” has grown by leaps and bounds. From Donald Shit’s remarkably idiotic “Obamacare is death” rant to watching John McCain vote, not once but twice, to revoke poor people’s ability to fight back against cancer, it’s all just gotten so goddamned nauseating. So grotesque. A brain-addled billionaire bully who doesn’t even know the difference between health insurance and life insurance who wants to upend 20% of the American economy and mess with people’s lives because he hates the superior black man who preceded him in office. Trump doesn’t even know what health insurance IS. Not even in the most general sense. But it’s named after the black guy, so… Sorry sick people!
 

#donaldshit

I mean my Twitter feed zaps me of much of my will to carry on. I’m glad I don’t bother much with Facebook, I’d have given up a long time ago.

But having said all that, I read something on The Onion just now that made me LOL and smile again in my heart. I didn’t think that was possible anymore.

An item, appearing sans the byline of the satirical genius who wrote it, takes aim at West Virginia’s GOP Senator Shelley Moore Capito who only a week ago forcefully rebuked her party’s plans to repeal the ACA without a backup plan:

“As I have said before, I did not come to Washington to hurt people. For months, I have expressed reservations about the direction of the bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. My position on this issue is driven by its impact on West Virginians. With that in mind, I cannot vote to repeal Obamacare without a replacement plan that addresses my concerns and the needs of West Virginians.”

Despite this “brave” statement—some Republicans just LOVE to get brave before they cave—we all know how she actually voted. Which is why this Onion item is such a perfectly cut diamond of truly incendiary political satire served with such a heaping helping of “fuck you, lady”:

WASHINGTON—As legislators gathered Tuesday for a critical vote that would go a long way toward finally repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) was reportedly struggling to weigh the interests of her entire constituency against absolutely nothing. “Honestly, it’s a tough call—on one hand, you have opposition to the repeal from a majority of Republicans, virtually all Democrats, and the entire healthcare industry, while on the other, you have not one sound argument or credible opinion,” said Capito, admitting she was, even now, having difficulty balancing her desire to keep as many West Virginians insured as possible with there being no reason whatsoever to do otherwise. “This is an agonizing decision. Sure, there are sound justifications for voting no on ‘repeal and replace,’ but then there’s emptiness, literal emptiness, when you look for reasons to vote yes. All I know is, I have to get this right somehow.” At press time, Senator Capito had resigned herself to the fact that both sides had valid points and she would just have to go with her gut when the time came.

Standing ovation to the uncredited author of this, one of the single most impressive paragraphs ever composed in the English language, I reckon.

If you know someone from West Virginia, be sure to send this to them or post it on their Facebook wall (especially the Republicans, it will go right over their pointed lil’ heads). And if you feel like tweeting it at Shelley Moore Capito just to make triple sure that she’s seen it, have at it, her Twitter handle is @SenCapito

 
I have often dreamed of a career naming novelty fireworks. How do you describe one particular sparkler that looks almost identical to all the rest of ‘em, in one snappy title? By use of a great stretch of creativity, of course. I’m sure some of you are familiar with much of the web’s “best of fireworks brand names” collections, including clever titles such as the Psycho X-Girlfriend, Nuclear Sunrise, One Bad Mother-In-Law, The Golden Shower, Uncle Sam’s Answer, Forced Entry, and one for the entire family, the Poopy Puppy.

The latest from this year’s Independence Day collection arrives with one for the nation’s imaginary population of patriotic punks. Produced by a company out of Osage City, Kansas (but made in China, natch), the Rebel Yell novelty firework (obviously) packs much of the same punch as Billy Idol’s hit song of the same name. Its description reads:

Three stage whistle cake will leave you screaming more, more, MORE!

It seems pretty obvious that they thought this logo was meant to represent Billy Idol. While this is not the first novelty firework with this name (another contains Confederate flag imagery because there’s a market for that), it is perhaps the first ever to utilize the explosive logo of first-wave Los Angeles electropunk band, The Screamers. The iconic image, which was designed by artist and cartoonist Gary Panter, is almost too perfect for use on a firework that I’m actually surprised it took someone nearly forty years to rip it off!

More after the jump…