McChrystal admits failure to cut civilian death

McChrystal admits failure to cut civilian death: "'We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,' the top general said."

Really? This is an astounding admission for a top US general. In this short blog post, we laud the general for saying something that hasn't been said out loud in America's history by Pentagon brass. But he isn't apologizing, and it doesn't change our sordid history of killing many civilians in many countries over many years. Plus this sure as hell doesn't help the "war on terror". If anything, America is creating more terrorists right now than at any other time in history. For those who've lost a family member or their entire families to the American military (killing most of one family seems to happen often), becoming a terrorist would seem to be the easy option borne out of the pain and grief they feel.

But for some reason we don't feel, as the general's words make clear ..

Haiti and the End of Poverty

Turn Your TV Off!

It's amazing how you can identify tv watchers just by their opinions. they're usually pretty conservative and fearful, and sound similar to other people who watch tv as their prime news source. many viewers will use the same adjectives to describe the latest horror they've witnessed: words like "they" (...want to kill us/ hate us for our freedom/ whatever) or the latest i've heard, "Obama and his henchmen forced banks to loan poor people money". this one is particularly hilarious since the banks control everything, including Obama.

Haiti

which brings us to the latest debacle: Haiti. i've heard even liberals defend Haiti (from the Rush Limbaughs and Pat Robertons of the world) by saying "...they just happen to be poor!" ... and so starts another argument. a little review of history, which they don't teach in school or talk about on television, will tell us that Haiti did NOT "just happen to be poor" -- they're supposed to be poor. this has been American and European policy for two centuries. ever wonder why Preval has been president for so long? (similar to Karzai in Afghanistan.) why are there no real elections in these places? why is Aristide currently in exile in S Africa? well the answer is simple: it's U.S. policy.

Why Do We Do This?

well this has another simple answer: money. which brings me to an amazing new movie called The End Of Poverty. "Poverty is no accident" -- you'll find right on their website (theendofpoverty.com). refreshingly honest, and very true. our supposed "aid" to the poorest countries in the world is literally robbing and killing them.

Charity Is No Match For Ignorance

there's been a lot of giving to the tune of $500 million for Haiti. although this aid does, i hope, help, remember that it is no match for what our governments and corporations are taking from the same people you're trying to give to. there's no way 20, 50 or even 1000 dollars is going to cover the literally billions in raw materials and cheap labor that places like Haiti provide for our companies.

Want To Help?

the greatest aid you can give to Haiti and most other incredibly poor countries (Somalia, Congo, all of Latin America until recently) is true democracy. sure you can give money to organizations like PIH.org, who know the roots of the problems of the Haitian people. but we have to battle television, which is in every household broadcasting nightly without any regard to history. when Americans, armed with this knowledge, care, then more than half the battle will be won..

Avatar, the Pope, China and general mayhem

A Shack Taking on the Bulldozers

Avatar: it's great to see a pop film that's so subversive. the storyline is a reminder of what humans do: covet the stuff they "find". whether it's Palestine, the Americas or Australia (and probably every other place on earth), humans take what they want and destroy a lot in the process. i mean seriously -- god forbid there was a life form on the moon who didn't have guns! we'd annihilate them and take their dirt.

so .. it's nice to see a film about such atrocities actually doing really well in the box office. it's obvious that JUSTICE, something we're denied on a daily basis, resonates with the people of the world. and of course the usual suspects are against it, like the Pope and China. the pope (i'm sick of capitalizing this word) thinks it's sacrilegious because the fictional na-vi people worship nature instead of god proper. and the chinese, well they're used to taking land from their own people whenever they want, since most property is owned by "the people", meaning the government. and if the real people of china found dragons to fly, well "the people" of the government would be screwed.

so chalk one up for the good guys. i mean, it's fiction, but we can dream, can't we?

ok back on track

no more show listings here, that's GG news only. this blog is where we rant, and we're back baby!

2009! oh 2009, where'd you go? hope and change bleeds into winter 2010 with scarcely anything going right: Iraq is treading water with a burning underbelly of violence that isn't covered in the news anymore. Afghanistan is looking at a 40,000 troop increase whenever Obama gets the balls to officially announce it (he's been unofficially announcing this for months to get us used to it). the middle east is the middle east, all the usual suspects doing all the usual things to each other. American drones blow something up in Pakistan once a week. And our tacit support for a Honduran coup is a grand old memory of the America we've always been: an America on the wrong side of justice.

many americans, actually most, don't know the history of their own country. our history is so convoluted that you'd think it's a government conspiracy not to teach it! but that's impossible in a land as free as ours. lets just say that our textbooks are faulty, as well as our news media. for real news we need to turn to fake news in Jon Stewart to give us the real information.

sure the economy didn't completely tank if you believe government GDP numbers. sure we have health care "reform" making it's way through congress. sure we're focusing on a "good war" in Afganistan. all these things are great, if you believe them. but we need real change in this country, which will take a complete break from everything we've learned to be. America's greatest contribution to the world is that of ultra-consumption. but that is no way to live if you want a future. our future without real wholesale change in the way we live, is no future at all.

and that's a sneak preview of our Guerrilla Manifesto album, out 2010..

2 shows

usually our blog is some kind of systemic rant, but today we'll simply announce our first 2 NYC shows:

Friday Oct 2nd at Pianos we're doing an acoustic set at 7.30 for our friend and amazing musician Cock Lorge. A lot of great artists and comedians will be on this night, headlined by Cock's own great band and cock-filled music: www.cocklorge.com

Saturday Oct 3rd we're playing full band to blow the windows out at Sidewalk Cafe in the East Village. An amazing hip hop lineup this night put together by the one and only Kid Lucky and featuring some of NYC's finest underground MC's. Free.

These shows will both be hot and polar opposites, so pick your poison and down the hatch!

-0- Guerrillas

.69 cents can feed who?

.69 cents can feed a family for a day.  or so the story goes from your favorite NGO.  so how many families would a trillion dollars feed?  the answer (everyone!) is blowing in the wind because THAT money is not for them.  it's for the people who need it least, because if you don't give it to them then the economy will fall apart.  or so the story goes.

the real story goes like this:  money does not exist.  it's simply been manufactured like any other product, but in this case the "product" is paper if you're lucky, or just a number in a computer usually.  it's unfortunate because we work really hard for our money.  but what is it exactly?  well it's always been a number punched into a computer by a banker.  something derived from something a value which creates a loan, which is then loaned out at least 10 times over which make a good portion of money absolutely baseless.  the part that has any value at all (the car for instance on a car loan) has long been forgotten by the time the rest of the loans, and money keyboard punched into the system

so what if we sent a trillion of these to feed every person in need of food.  why not, right?  or does AIG need this money more?  or hell, give em both.  we're just printing (or more likely typing) it up.  why not type up a trillion to feed every starving person in the world?  it'd take me all of 10 seconds to type a trillion into the computer -- 1,000,000,000.  whoops, that's a billion.  lets try again: 1,000,000,000,000.  much better.  wow that's $1000 for each of our starving billion in this world.  was that so hard?

so what exactly makes money tick?  and why did we create a system where it's based on .. nothing?  one word can sum it up .. greed.  if you could make money from nothing, wouldn't you do it?  all you really need is some computer terminals and a big, well-built sign that says "First (any word here) Bank" with some sturdy glass doors and .. voila!  you're in business.

but lets say we hit some kind of snag and the system starts shaking.  who's to blame then?  the people who created it.  but who needs the most help?  the same people who created it seem to need the most money to stabilize it.  ok, no problem.  a few keys into the keyboard should fix it.  10,000,000,000 -- there i did it!  system fixed!

there's a chasm between fact and fiction, between value and nothingness.  one would think (and as a child you grow up to believe) that society is firmly rooted in the former. but nothing could be further from the truth.  what is growing more apparent on a daily basis is that society is firmly rooted in fiction. the power of image, of the bullet proof glass windows, a well-pressed suit and an esoteric vocabulary.  THIS is our money system.  

as any good capitalist would disagree, "capital" adds no value to our system.  just because you HAVE money does not mean that you deserve to EARN money.  what then would you be doing for society?  nothing.  same goes for land (also capital).  just because you HAVE land does not mean you deserve repeated payments for it for the rest of your family's lifetime.  why should it?  because your great grandfather was smart enough to be a Rockefeller and take/buy the center of Manhattan?

i make music.  do i get a perpetual royalty for it until the end of time?  no!  we all own the great classical works that are in the public domain.  not even God collects on the bible, so why should landowners get this?  why should the owners of money not have to do anything more for society but make tons more money?

the system doesn't make a bit of sense.  the system was created by the first rich people who discovered it.  much like columbus who discovered america, it wasn't made to accomodate any newcomers.  it was made for these first people only, or as i like to say that the system is "first come first served".  sure you can live the "american dream" and become a millionaire.  who cares?  they don't.  but they DO want total control over the system.  a few millions don't mean a thing.

2 examples we can take:  banks and healthcare.  so you're walking down the street and need some money.  go to an ATM and pay 1.50 for a $20 bill.  worth it?  why did you just have to pay that to get your own money out of the bank?  what did they actually do for you?  is this a service to society?  or take the healthcare bureaucracy:  a huge administration hellbent on making you ineligible for your benefits.  banks are 20% of our economy.  but what are they actually doing for us?  what percentage of our economy is "landowners"?  or healthcare?  which is projected to be 20% within 10 years.  add all of these up, add in many extraneous government agencies and you have a whole bunch of people that do absolutely nothing to add to a productive society.   America is stuck in traffic, and these people are the toll we all pay just to exist.  

and for the poor who only need .69 cents a day to survive, it seems we can't punch a number into a computer that is less than a billion anymore ..

Who elected Rush Limbaugh?

Why is this guy still talking? Why is he addressing the nation on Fox news? Why is he the de-facto head of the Republican Party?

As if we weren't tired as hell of tired right-wing rhetoric, they just keep coming. Complaining about welfare states and Obama's spending, they are a true testament to the short attention span that allows history revision to happen. Who spent this country into ruin? Not the Democrats -- Bill Clinton was the only president in 30 years to balance the federal budget.

Here's what a bitching Republican likes to do: cut taxes while waging as many wars as possible, create whole new agencies that duplicate the work of other agencies (Homeland Security), not tax the wealthiest corporations AT ALL, provide subsidies for the largest corporations like agri-business (which is destroying our health) and oil companies (which is destroying our planet).

Now he's challenging Obama to a debate. What's to debate? the Right has failed America. Oh wait, they want another chance? the free markets weren't really free enough to do their magic? Let the people decide what to do with their money? let them pull themselves up by their bootstraps while we carry the largest corporations on our hands?

More and more aggravation. These guys are still here and going strong, ready to pounce on any misstep. They want and got the peoples money, now all they need to do is convince us that it will trickle BACK DOWN to us. "Thanks for the money, maybe we'll employ a few of you down the line some time. Bye!"

It's the American Dream. It's socialism for the top, capitalism for the bottom. America was built by the rich for the rich. And for all their bitching about welfare spending we're about to give more money out to the richest 1% of the population then all the welfare spending of these last decades. I'm sure we won't even have a number until it's too late, thanks to geniuses like Geithner, Bernanke and Summers, who are all part of the problem. Unchecked they will bankrupt America and the American Dream will be what it's always been: hope that one day we'll live like them.. (echo, echo, ech..)

one war down

one war down and the people of Gaza can really relax and let their hair down.  only (1 x googleplex) to go.  actually it's googolplex.  i had to google that to find out, while really it's google's fault in the first place for displacing the word they were word-playing in in the first place.  lots of places goin nowhere .. 

ANYWAY.  what was i talking about.  ahh WAR, yes war.  all kinds of wars happening, it's an exciting planet.  mama never ever told me there'd be days like this.  the latest war, or MY latest war, is economic.  cause we got all kinds of people making all kinds of money in all kinds of ... well really it's mostly in banking, weapons and lobbying.  and guess who gets the IRS audit?  me.  yes, me.  it's like some kind of a joke:  when 200 of America's biggest companies pay NOTHING in taxes, companies that are worth more than most countries, they come after me instead.  why?  because they define the system.  and they'd rather come after me for a few hundred dollars that i don't even owe them.  but from now on, from the money i DO owe them, i will deduct my own "war tax" a la Thoreau.  do i want to pay for dead lives across the globe?  i think not.

then there's the banks.  ooohh the banks.  the same people charging 20% interest, $35 late fees, and the poorer you are, the higher the fees.  these same people get BILLIONS in bailout money.  

so ... lets break this down.  the IRS comes after me, someone who lost a bar business (thanks Hillary) and now works freelance in music and other odd occupations and clearly rests in the lowest income bracket possible.  they audit and come after me, i pay my measley hundreds of dollars in taxes (but there are millions of us), they then GIVE the money to the bankers who make millions and caused the crisis + bailout in the first place.  hey free market! -- nice lesson learned!  millionaires who fuck up get bailed out!  great.

so my broke-ass money goes to millionaires who now have incentive to not only NOT fix a thing, but to create another crisis!  alright, but if that wasn't bad enough, these same bankers come after my debts, adding charges, increasing interest rates, basically kicking a man when he's down.  is that right?  is that just? all those billions they took from us and they still come back for more?  they really need to get paid from all sides?  so that they can compensate themselves $20 BILLION?  wow!  

there is, as usual, no justice in the system.  in a free world, money rises to the top.  this is not a free world, thank god, or we would all be enslaved, quite literally.  we are still all enslaved though, figuratively.  because the system couldn't possibly sustain all of us -- it's not meant to.  wealth = debt = slavery.  only those at the top will survive, the rest of us will hang on for dear life while some will randomly fall off of this machine powering itself into the darkness.  this is the way it is.  and until the rest of us rise up and demand a new system, this is the way it will remain.

bye bye Bush

America has a shameful foreign policy record, but her history could get no worse than these last 8 years. In the past, her horrendous actions were mostly covert. But Bush didn't give a damn. he rewrote and re-interpreted the laws to execute atrocious policies that brought America's dirty behavior out into the open for all to see. "Of course we need to torture these people and deny them any rights to a trial, they're terrorists". "Of course we tapped all your phone calls, domestic and foreign, we're at war here".

So it's fitting for this same guy to leave office in a fireball. Yesterday, in his farewell address, he spoke of "America's moral clarity" and that "murdering innocents to advance and ideology is wrong every time, and everywhere". (choke-cough!) what?? was there a day in your entire presidency that you DID NOT murder innocents to advance your ideology? maybe in the beginning, before 9/11, when all you did was play golf and vacation. we were outraged back then, but boy did we have it good. it amazes me that this man, whose vision is so parochial that he cannot see that he is all that he hates, got voted into power. twice!

Meanwhile, back in Gaza, a starved people are being bombed into oblivion. this is no war, this is an American supported massacre. and while supporters of Israel repeat the mantras of the Israeli media campaign about rocket fire and terrorists hiding among civilians, it's mostly innocent civilians that are dying. As usual, nothing can seem to stop this. it's a sort of black comedy when Israel denies using white phosphorus on the ground (illegal and melting their victims to the bone) but then hits a U.N. building with it, causing 3 injuries and burning their supplies of food, water and medicines. I was in Lebanon in '06, and this current war in Gaza makes that other war look like a disney film.

Power is everything, and America has the power. We have the power. and while our congress voted 390-5 in favor of a resolution supporting this war, i find it hard to believe that 99% of Americans support it. especially any informed American who get their news from the BBC or better. if you're one of these Americans who does not support this war, then you should tell your congressmen. here is a link from Amnesty Int'l to do just that: TakeAction.

If you do support this war and stumbled upon this page, i will need to say to you that i am NOT anti-Israel. I am anti-war. Unfortunately, this sound-bite nation requires that i say this. And if i learned anything from Bush and Israeli leaders, i should probably repeat this over and over again. i am anti-war. i am anti-war. I AM ANTI-WAR!

goldi

OBAMA NOW!

here at Gshack it all seems the same these past years.  America says:  "we're for peace, freedom and democracy, but we like this war, which is for the greater peace of the (fill in region) region".  Funny how war is always the answer towards a "lasting" peace.  

Amnesty International was kind enough recently to email me Condoleeza Rice's address, and i was delighted to write her an email.  Actually i've been DYING to write her an email for years. My question to her:  "How can you say the same thing year after year and cause so much bloodshed without feeling guilty to the core of your existence?  How can you cause so much suffering?  If I were in your shoes, I'd try to do the right thing for once in these last days in office."

I'm not expecting a reply anytime soon, but i am expecting many civilians to die in the latest western-declared free-fire zone called Gaza.  It's the modus operandi for the USA (and by extension, Israel), and there aren't any things on this planet more disgusting than killing everything in your "free-fire zone".  Drop a pamphlet, warn the people, then kill them.  Nice America.

Our only hope is a sensible Obama administration.  Maybe, just maybe sense will be restored to this bloody planet..