A brief history of aerial bombing in the United States of America

We fought gladly and to the last drop of blood for America

-WEB Dubois

  The history of aerial bombing in the United States of America is a history of racial tension and class struggle, like many of our histories. It is also filled with rumor and myth, another trait of American history.

The first incident occurred just months before the second in the year 1921. Aerial bombing had been invented just years before, in the rush of invention to create new technologies for slaughtering people, in what was then  referred to as the Great War or the war to end all wars. Left over armaments from that conflict played a role in both the first two incidents.  The first incident is what is called the Tulsa race riot. This incident at the end of May of that year resembled the “race riots” of two summers before, the “red summer” where murderous racial violence exploded across the country. The Chicago riot of “red summer” occurred the same week a dirigible exploded over the city, raining fire and bodies on office buildings below, but this similarity is accidental. But like many of the race riots before, a simple incident between a black male and white woman  got out of hand and fueled local racial tensions leading to a larger gathering of armed white men who assaulted the Greenwood district in Tulsa, then the richest black neighborhood in America sometimes called the “Black Wall Street”.  Both the besieged and the attackers were well armed, but the blacks were at the disadvantage as their businesses and homes were set on fire, devastating the district. Six biplanes left over from the world war were dispatched to fly over the conflict. White officials claimed these were merely spotter planes there to prevent a wider uprising. Eyewitnesses reported the planes were employed to drop firebombs on the district and to snipe at the besieged.

The catastrophe of the First World War and the extraordinary spiritual malaise that came afterwards were needed to arouse a doubt as to whether all was well with the white man’s mind.

-Carl Jung

The second incident was mere months later in West Virginia. This almost mythic event called the battle of Blair Mountain has been regarded as one of the largest armed civil conflicts in the United States since the Civil War. The United Mine Workers fought a pitched battle with local lawmen and Baldwin Felts strikebreakers for five days. This episode was one of many incidents in the bloody “Coal wars” of the previous decades. The strikebreakers hired private planes to drop bombs left over from the world war on the strikers, sometimes indiscriminately releasing them on villages.  When the army arrived to conclude the hostilities in the favor of the mine owners they also employed bombers as surveillance planes and some said intimidation. The miners captured one of the unexploded bombs the strikebreakers had engaged and later displayed it at a trial.

I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know all cops carry guns with triggers

-Ralph Ellison

The third major known incident of aerial bombing in the United States of America took place some six decades later. This third and final event under discussion involves the conflict between the city of Philadelphia and the organization known as MOVE. MOVE, a black liberation organization with back to the land overtones started by John Africa (all members of the group employed the surname Africa) had a previous violent conflict with the city in 1978 where the unsanitary nature of their compound and incidents with police led to a raid. A policeman died in the firefight under unclear circumstances and several of the members of the group were charged with his death. The even more embattled organization (as the founder John Africa insisted they be considered. Many argued convincingly that MOVE was a cult, some called them a terrorist organization) moved to a working class black neighborhood which they came in conflict with, setting up two bunkers on the roof of their house, occasionally gesturing with weapons, and blaring profane political speeches through loudspeakers at all hours of the day. This mixed with compost, feces, gathered wood that filled the compound, alongside concern for the treatment of the numerous children that MOVE had, all lead inevitably to another conflict with the city in 1985. The police moved in (many of who had been involved in the previous confrontation) and surrounded the house and then evacuated the area. They issued a communique to MOVE that had curious language.

Attention MOVE, this is America.

Soon tear gas and two high powered water jets were turned on the compound. At some point heavy gunfire started. There is been much debate which side did most of the firing, though the police at one point ran out of ammo. The police commissioner citing the tactical advantage MOVE had with the two bunkers on the roof decided to employ a drastic measure. He had a police helicopter drop a satchel bomb on the roof of the house. It failed to destroy the bunkers but started a fire.  A decision was made to let the fire burn. The water jets were turned off. The fire destroyed the compound; only two people left it and survived an adult and a child, five other children and six other adults died including John Africa. There were rumors that the police fired on anyone trying to leave the fire. One adult was seen by witnesses leaving and then running back in for an unknown reason. The ensuing blaze also destroyed three blocks of the neighborhood.

This for the moment is what we know of aerial bombing in America by Americans.

If this is Peace, it is peace with gothic undertones, as if the ghosts of the past might be appeased for a moment but never exorcised in their entirety

-Max Roach

Listening to the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime while driving down I-5

Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia

-Jean Baudrillard

The first sound is that of a car starting. If you have the actual album the cover shows Mike Watt driving a car down the highway looking in the rear view mirror. The title was a joke on Sammy Haggar’s “Can’t drive fifty five”, deciding that it wasn’t much of a rebellion to drive fast so they would drive the exact speed limit, or as better said in the words of Mike Watt, "the big rebellion thing was writing your own fuckin' songs and trying to come up with your own story, your own picture, your own book, whatever. So he can't drive 55, because that was the national speed limit? Okay, we'll drive 55, but we'll make crazy music." ( pg. 10.Fournier, Michael T. Double Nickels on the Dime 33⅓. Continuum, 2007.)

Speeding is ubiquitous in the life of our country. It is an agreed upon and excepted rebellion. One that you are punished for only if truly excessive. Originality is a much less excepted sin.

After the sound of the car starting inside the hollow vessel of your own vehicle the songs follow, over an hour of them, each usually around a minute or two long. Spindly post punk, hardcore, funk, jazz, poetry, Captain Beefheart, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Pink Floyd, Blue Oyster Cult, the noisy and politically fiery post-punk group The Pop Group, and other influences and sounds are chopped up and regurgitated in the stop start dynamics of the trio. Nervous energy of hardcore and post punk channeled into the art rock or classic rock concept of a double album. The band’s name was a three part joke like most things related to them (they loved in jokes), for the brevity of their songs and in irony for the right wing anti-immigrant militia groups and the silent white missiles that lay sleeping across the prairies of the United State, whose baleful existence continuing the standoff of the Cold War, that still continued in the 1984 of the album’s release. Saber rattling with Soviets had been renewed by the rubber faced actor in the president’s office as Central America, Iran and Iraq, and Afghanistan burned. The record is filled with references to the situation in Central America where the Guatemalan army burned village after village in an ongoing genocide (a word that appears in the lyric sheet), death squads patrolled El Salvador leaving bodies with crosses carved in their faces on the roadside every day, and cocaine dealing rebels fought the government of Nicaragua. It seems needless to say American money and arms fueled each of these conflicts.

Untitled song for Latin America

The western hemisphere and all inside

We know who's murdering the innocent

They are children playing with guns

They are children playing with countries

Mining harbors, creating contras

The games they play, the lives they take

They bank their money in this country

They steal from the innocent

A colonial trait that's much too old

The banks, the lives, the profits, the lies

The banks, the profits, the lives & the lies

I would call it genocide

Any other word would be a lie.

-D.Boon

I-5 is a strip of highway from the border of Canada to the border of Mexico. It travels through the belly of Washington, Oregon, and California State. It bears the car you are in. It can bring you to all the major population centers of the west coast. You hope the wheels of your car will hold together at a speed far exceeding fifty five. This is an everyday act of faith. The cities, the food, the trucks bearing goods, are connected and sustained by this highway, this artery. You heard once that not one of its bridges would survive an earthquake. The Juan de Fuca plate sits in the deep waters off the coast overdue to provide one. Silently like the hand of a god waiting to stir from its slumber.

You remember when you first heard these songs. You remember those roads. You remember abandoned factories. Cracked highways sweltering in the heat. Suburbs with parking lots fissured with rivers of grass and filled with hungry children waiting, and staring. You remember the basement shows solid with heat and sweaty comradery,   blaring punk rock, and cheap beer and wine. An almost vegetable stink of humanity. You remember the record and those times.

D. Boon, Mike Watt, and George Hurley make up the band. Watt and Boon provide most of the material. They have differences in style. Boon loves Creedance Clearwater Revival and he loves slogans for the working man and left wing politics, but he loves Beefheart so his songs twitch and zigzag, but they shout out for us. Watt always has a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses by his side, he spits out poetic obscurities over the twisting and rumbling racket of the band. The poetic and political, The Minutemen value both. They famously say “our band could be your life” They offered an alternative.

“Jam econo” was their aesthetic. Book all your own shows, practice all the time, and stay on people’s floors in the small town and cities of the country. Get in the van and drive. The country is crossed with a spiderweb of highways each of us individually or with our small family units hurtling down them. These spiderwebs leak a pall of invisible stink filling the atmosphere. Every road has claimed a life. We risk everything every time we enter the freeways.  The aesthetic of “jam econo” was one passed on for years up until your generation. You throw together a band with little hope of making a dime and you entered the roads. In a van with your equipment, homemade merch and a couple changes of clothes you traveled the highway. You had that spirit, your tour only took you down I-5, and you never left the west coast. You played music that was more discordant and unforgiving then the Minutemen. You remember how fun it was for a couple people to dance to it in a dingy galleries or punk clubs. You met kids who wanted to start their own bands, they wanted to get in vans and roll from town bearing the gift and curse of this tradition. You promised help when they came to your town. You remember when someone told you about I-5 catching fire once and they couldn’t drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco. You remember seeing fire on the side of I-5 as you drove north. Would the road soon be impassible? You wondered what we would do without our highways; our train tracks were too rusty to bear that weight. You remember your train pulling into Chicago once in winter and they had set all the switches on fire to keep them from freezing. You remember a house on fire while driving through Detroit. No one was around. There were no fire trucks. You remember a truck on fire alongside the Chicago highway. Memories of fire. Outpourings of light.

D boon died on the road. A van accident.  The van they toured in. His girlfriend fell asleep at the wheel. Boon was asleep in the back. He died in the California desert on highway I-10 far from the guiding light of his beloved hometown of San Pedro. The exit sign for San Pedro is visible on the album cover. One presumes the car pictured is about to take that exit.

The roads offered freedom for a while. But what are they now, a trap? They connect everything we know, they are everything we know. They let this great system we built hold together. Do they hold us to it also?

Highways leading to nowhere. Highways leading to somewhere. Highways the Occupation used to speed upon in their automobiles, killing dogs pigs and cattle belonging to the poor people. What is the American fetish about highways?

They want to get somewhere, LaBas offers.

Because something is after them, Black Herman adds.

But what is after them?

They are after themselves. They call it destiny. Progress. We call it Haints. Haints of their victims rising from the soil of Africa, South America, Asia.

-Ishmael Reed

Transmission from submarine #14 eighth transmission

One day everything will be as it should be –Albert Ayler

Justin Beiber baptized in NYC bathtub

Hi is Lester there?

No, I think maybe you have a wrong number, but I will take a message.

This is Louise. I want to return the computer I bought from you.

Wait…I will take a message.

Hi is Lester there?

Is this a recording?

This doesn’t have a writing program, and I’m a poet you know.

Okay, I’m hanging up.

Hi is Lester there?

What it means to say a dolphin committed suicide

The government is investigating why your Netflix is so slow.

She caught herself in the mirror for the first time in days. She just guessed that they were days. She had no measure of time in her apartment. The apartment was bathed in pearl light, the air slowly pulsing with piano music. In the mirror she saw a woman with hair pulled up into a bouffant held together with a jeweled tiara and pins. Was her face caked in white powder or was it the eternal pearl light?

The table contained fruit. Pears and apples in one silver bowl. Grapes in another next to it. She ate the fruit. She never remembered eating anything else. Jugs of wine and scented water. The pearl light on everything.

A man moved towards her down the hall sometimes. She would see him always walking, towards her. She never remembered him arriving. She never remembered him leaving.

The dog sniffed her fingers and licked her hand when she lay back on the bed. She remembered the dog then. But she didn’t remember the dog any other time. It was a poodle with a silver collar.

Through the windows the city was in red light. It was always that color. It was always those birds moving over those spires and domes and always encased in red.

We can’t believe how different the cast of Orange is the New Black look in real life

Bravest guy in the whole world wears mentos suit, drops into tank of diet coke.

I see myself as the big fat spider in the corner of the room. Sometimes, I speak when I’m asleep. You should both listen. Occasionally, when we meet, I might tell you to go to Charing Cross road and kick a blind man standing on the corner. That blind man may tell you something, lead you somewhere.

-Harold Wilson

The pressure increases. A man savagely kicked by a crowd while waiting for the subway. Protests blocking tour groups. Facts we love to share with outsiders about the wonders of this or that landmark, or what they can experience or buy at this location, is overpowered by cries of unfairness. The pressure grows the violence grows. Every food choice becomes political. A bunch of ingrates, nostalgia for other times. Don’t they know there are bomb strapped young men poised everywhere to shatter their precious genitals. Cries of we don’t torture. But why do they bomb? Seal the windows. Put down your sign.

The simplest surrealist act consist of going out in the street revolver in hand and firing at random into the crowd as often as possible

-Andre Breton

We love the need to protest, we love this right, our presence is merely to assure everyone can safely, and in an organized way and in the proper place have their right to raise their voice a little and declare their dissent. The tanks and helicopters are just to assure the safety of everyone and for the continuation of business. Raise your voice. Provided will be a map of approved locations.

The camera finds her. There are tears falling down her face. She walks with ponderous steps through the yelling, the gas clouds, the sign waving, the batons raising and falling. Her face is covered in tears. She walks with a different movement as if she has no right to be in this location. Removed, but a solid presence, almost superimposed. She is cross edited with the political bleeding out on the sidewalk.

A man seated at the piano plays music. People spread around, signs down. Snacks and drinks were being shared. The selections were sentimental fare. No one critiqued. Strands of tear gas wisped past. Gas masks were nearby. He played Goldberg variations.  The sound truck drowned out the changes.

“No”, said the priest, “you don’t need to accept everything as true; you only have to accept it as necessary.”  Depressing view,” said K. “The lie made into the rule of the world.”

-Franz Kafka, The Trial

Leaves cast through a century’s ending light. Pine branches littered on the ground like seaweed. Leaves poured through the window, coating the floor in their rotting bodies.

The tide turns and the computers fizzle away. She lay on the couch feeling her blood buzz. The leaves encased the phone. The aquarium was a dark mess. She used her fingers to slide leaves of the pages of the book. She continued to read Joyce.

The surrealists were not good with women. That is why, although I thought they were wonderful, I had to give them up in the end. They were, with a few patronized exceptions, all men and they told me that I was the source of all mystery, beauty, and otherness, because I was a woman- and I knew that was not true. I knew I wanted my fair share of imagination, too. Not an excessive amount, mind; I wasn’t greedy. Just an equal share in the right to vision.

When I realized that surrealist art did not recognize I had my own rights to liberty and love and vision as an autonomous being, not as a projected image, I got bored and wandered away.

-Angela Carter

I am painting. Painting women. I develop ideal situations for them to lounge in, to exist. I avoid the cheap and tawdry. There is nothing exploitive about my women in my mind except for maybe the fact, that I a man, am painting women. I make them attractive in ways I find ideal, doing tasks that seem to hint at the independence of these women, their need to express themselves in the world. Like me painting the women, they are performing similar tasks, such as smoking in artsy cafés perched over a typewriter, about to apply a brush to canvas, operating a camera capturing the world I imagine for them in a similar way to the way I capture them. The odd thing that occurs is that every time I finish the face, the face that looks back at me from each canvas is that of a face I know. It is my own face.

“They don’t call us anything. They forgot we fucking lived here!”

Artificial vaginas are on the way

The dark side of extreme anal porn

In the name of Family and Fatherland, you urge the sale of souls, the unrestricted grinding of bodies

-Antonin Artuad

Different forms of life spread through the city. Alternative rabbit holes to disappear in.

The transient:  A series of strung together vehicles, they must have been shopping carts, baby or dog carriers, and bicycles, but draped in the accoutrements of this new life they had taken on distorted and radical forms. How this operation moves throughout the town is unknown it arrives in various locations as if through advanced science or mystical art. Objects are removed and spread to mark out the location of arrival. The wagons are circled as old movie westerns depicted wagon trains. Radio is brought out. A book is removed from some spot. The radio blares, the book is read. Objects are laid out in a cryptic order. A small snack of some nature appears and is enjoyed. The king of this environment resembles an undead replicate of rock star from the era when rock produced stars. He resembles any person who has decided to claim a moment of leisure. Despite some moments of scavenging during the day he must lead a fairly sedate existence.

People move through the park like they are being fast forwarded. Blurs of desperation and sweat. He can almost see the radio grinding into their heads. Pushing babies, in tight exercise clothing, walking dogs never seeing radio penetrating them. Grandma, he remembered grandma.  She always let him steal smokes. That was grandma, always busy with food and cleaning, radio always on. He didn’t realize till later what it was doing to him. He saw the gods on the hill, giant towers glinting with red lights. Three of them. More on further hills. Glinting gods carrying messages from worlds beyond. He had notes, he wrote in them every day. He kept seeing grandma around. Smoking cigarettes and dripping with static she burned plants as she passed them.  Tapes. He kept his radio plugged with tapes. No one wanted tapes much anymore. He found them left in curious places. He found them cheap at stores. Did anyone manufacture tapes or did they exist preserved from the time before. The time of tapes. Tapes did not bear radio waves. Tapes contained trapped moments of sound, isolated and not able to infect. He had been driven from houses and jobs. He had been hounded everywhere. Over and over she would appear. Grandma, her veins rotted black with radio and her mournful stare. She would peel paper off the wall, she would try to hand him that object clutched in her hand. It looked like a dead rabbit, but it sometimes moved. He must never receive that object. Sunny days, holding a book with his tapes on he felt decent, he didn’t mind anything, a simple snack he bought and no worries, he felt peace.

The vaudevillians: They are seen juggling in outfits that sparkled like foil. High ropes cast between trees in the backyard tiptoed across to the cheers of a dozen or so. Their red bus trundling up the street leaking a pall of dim fumes. Sword swallowing and flame dancing practiced in place of lawn mowing and checkbook balancing. Stilt walking down streets. Oil paintings of clowns, shadowy figures holding torches, visions of dust bowl vaudevillians traveling landscapes of freak shows, work gangs, public hangings, ku klux rallies, mad preachers, and geeks biting the heads of chickens. Suspenders, bowler hats, flowers in lapels, and roll you own cigarettes ornamenting a lifestyle from a vanished era, the travelling circus life. Caravans of joy bringing entertainment for towns ripped by wild storms of over tilled lands, moving from drought to drought, barely clinging to existence in the void, with this one bright evening of juggling, flame swallowing, and stilt walking bringing smiles on starvation nights. Weather reports out of the plains imply parts of this idyllic past may be pushing obtrusively into the future.

I always hope to be able to make a great number of figures without a narrative.

-Francis Bacon

Daniel laid the roses in a circle. Red dripped off the petals and stained the floor. The white figure sat in the middle of the ring, its features blank. Daniel walked back to the others with red hands. Gabriel and Michael continued to drink from the bottle. Empty stomachs rebelled against the whisky but they couldn’t stare at the food for too long. The figure began to stand with shaky movements. Daniel followed a gulp of whisky with a chicken leg. The figure dripped out new eyes and began shaking his hands, almost swimming, almost clawing.

I have a son.

Birds began to worm through Daniel’s cloth. Claws tearing fabric, feathers leaking out of rented cloth. His clothes tore away and he was naked. He ran and threw himself into the circle.

Gabriel and Michael continued drink as they watched this unfold. They stayed in their seats and felt the urine warm their pants.

The murdered forfeit their right to love this city like the rest of us

-Sesshu Foster

Four bearing the two in makeshift stretchers. The two in the stretchers would probably be dead soon and were too wounded to be any good. Six others up and moving though mostly wounded. Xochitl took the count as her ears rang. The artillery had blown their positions to the wind and most of her patrol upwards as ash.

The lifter had cracked like an egg and its guts became fire. She didn’t regret the shot. But her men had suffered. She knew blood was flowing out of her ears. She didn’t know if she would ever hear again.

People came out of the woods as they marched. At first they raised their guns expecting an attack, but relaxed as they realized that it was people fleeing the city. Someone had given them all white powder to sprinkle on their faces. Each one already looked dead. Xochitl wanted to ask them why, but was afraid if she opened her mouth, she would not even hear the words she spoke.

Boy finds mummified body hanging in spooky abandoned house

The real threat of Japan’s elderly…

American exchange student pulled free from giant German vagina.

Jane saw them in the field again. Heads covered in bags knotted at the top, making their heads look like bulbs of garlic or onions. They always carried guns. Their clothes were covered in writing. The same writing had been sketched on the crude signs that had been left all over the forest. They told of a war that had already commenced, they told of dangerous times coming. They said the forest was theirs. Jane liked watching those men patrol. They had such determination in their movements. She didn’t like the signs appearing on her fences. She didn’t like the footprints in the yard. She didn’t like the masks or the frantic writing. All the waters of the world will turn to blood. Our guns are our holy tools, our divining rods. The skies bear fire and ash; we bear holy redemption and blessed water.

We can’t believe how different the cast of Game of Thrones looks in real life.

The sexiest people in the world come from…

We’re an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality

-Karl Rove

We were given shelter part 11

Why would you leave the house without money? Why even bother?

Mika didn’t appreciate the scolding tone that the blonde woman with dreadlocks and an ornate machine gun swung over her shoulders was taking with him, but there was little he could do but nod.

Do you want to end up like them?

She was pointing to a group of people sitting in a shelter just past the tank they had used to block the road. The tank was blurry and hard to focus on; there was some kind of visual distortion being employed. The checkpoint itself had seemed to emerge fully out of the drizzling rain, unseen before he stepped into it.  The people in the shelter looked bored at worst; they were drinking hot liquid out of cups and eating pastries. Mika kind of wanted to join them, but something in the blonde’s tone told him no.

I tell you what. You do a little favor for us and we will let this slide. How does that sound?

Good I guess.

Mika felt okay agreeing. He felt the need to be pleasing in this situation.

Take this and our man will grab it from you on the other side. You will even get a little credit for it.

In her hand was a neatly wrapped package. 

He nodded and took it. Depending on the next checkpoint this could mean death. But, he decided to be pleasing so he agreed to it.

The next checkpoint had two helicopters propped on the side of the road. Glaring blue lights shined from the bank of lights they had strung up over the road. Pilots encrusted in helmets and hoses sat still in each cockpit. Mika stood in the light and the drizzle and waited. He willed his body to not sweat, but it refused.

A child ran out from behind the helicopters and ran a scanner wand over him. The child paused after doing this, looked up at one of the helicopters, and then waved him through.

A man walked out of the shadows on the other side of the bank of lights and put his arm around Mika’s. The man’s face was blurred in similar fashion to the tank.

Just hand me the package and I will credit your mobile.

Mika complied. The man nodded his blurred head.

Okay walk away and don’t watch where I am going.

The third checkpoint cleaned out his mobile, but gifted him with a lumpy can of food cubes and a map to the nearest camp. They laughed when he asked if could sell the can for money but didn’t when he made a joke about their halftrack covered in pornographic graffiti. They just waved their guns and pointed in the direction of the camp in response to that.

Transmission from Submarine #14 seventh transmission

I say don’t worry. If there is a hell below, we are all going to go

-Curtis Mayfield

Rural Indiana Sheriff buys a tank.

Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.

-Kurt Vonnegut

Peru approves genocide for uncontacted tribes

“We apologize for the inconveniences, but this is a revolution.”

-Subcomandante Marcos, 1994

Indian Army mistook Planets for “spy drones”

China builds Stonehenge and Eiffel Tower in ‘Copycat towns’

The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living

-Karl Marx

Citizens strike back: Tiny, low-cost drones may one day assassinate corrupt politicians, corporate CEOS and street criminals

2 dead and three injured after woman drops cell phone in a toilet.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs that properly concern them

-Paul Valery

Xochitl observed the Lifter moving into position over the north side of the city through her field glasses. She and her squad were camouflaged on the hill. Should they reveal themselves to plunge a dagger into the belly of this beast? Large swathes of the city were on fire. She saw one of the public dirigible transports they had set up fall into the bay like a fizzled firework. If she revealed her position they would probably be shelled in minutes, most her troop dead minutes after. What decision to make? It was good shot though. She gestured with her hand.

They are all we have to fight off illness and death.

-Leslie Marmon Silko

A call came through. Probably the last call out of the city.

You were the last on my list but you answered

Yes.

The city has fallen. Bombs are landing. You are probably hearing my voice from the land of the dead.

 I will get there.

 Don’t come, just listen this last time.

I will listen. But you can’t stop me from coming.

You are probably coming to the land of the dead.

Dexter Filkin’s excellent book of reporting on the war of terror (or the 9/11 Wars some have called them) The Forever War has an early chapter describing the 9/11 attacks. He names this chapter “Third World” and I find it a beautiful touch. The empire that America has hesitantly created in post wars years, this Pax Americana has been built by the power of money but it has also been created by “death from above”. Our air superiority has enforced our position in Libya, Panama, Korea, Sudan, Iraq, Japan, Germany, and continued on in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Somalia. This sudden bolt from the sky that turns a mental and physical landscape to a world of rubble, smoke, and disappeared lives. We experienced “death from above” and it fractured our mind. The burning, bombing and destruction exited the foreign news section and appeared on an American landscape. For some American the idea of “third world” was already part of their lives, those of Detroit, Flint, south side Chicago, the Bronx, Compton and Watts, Pine Ridge reservation, coal country of West Virginia and Kentucky, Camden, Youngstown, tomato fields of Florida, and many others had lives controlled by corrupt politicos, men with guns, decaying social structures, poverty, and arbitrary violence. But for most, this idea had never even been pondered. Untouchable America had been a reality all their lives. To quote from Douglas Rushkoff’s Present Shock

The discontinuity generated by the 9/11attacks should not be underestimated. While I was writing this very chapter, I met with a recent college graduate who was developing a nonprofit company and website to help create relationships between “millennials” of her generation and more aged mentors of my own. She explained that her generation was idealistic enough to want to help fix the world, but they had been “traumatized by 9/11 and now we’re incapable of accessing the greater human projects.” Somehow, she felt the tragedy had disconnected her generation from a sense of history and purpose, and that they “needed to connect with people from before that break in the story in order to get back on track.” 

Was it severing, a realization, the end of a narrative, the waking from a dream, or an event that smelled convincing enough of history to shock us, or a rebirth? What was that day? What world did it create in its sacrifice?

Ikea know way too much about your sex and pooping habits

Harvard says library includes book bound in human skin

A place without gurus monarchs leaders cops tax collectors jails matriarchs patriarchs and all the other galoots who in cahoots have made the earth a pile of human bones under the feet of wolves

-Ishmael Reed

The Oued El-Had and Mezoura massacres were perpetrated by “strange guerillas” with shaved heads and eyebrows and flags that said “angry at god”.

“This is a revolution!”

I’m alright when I’m awake but sleeping I hurt my face. What do you guys do about drug itch?

Benedryl

My dick is begging me not to itch it again

Benedryl

It feels like fiberglass in my veins

Benedryl

Opiyum is your screen name?

Benedryl

On someone’s list you are already a casualty

-The Minutemen

Could this boob baring councilor be Labour’s answer to winning the election?

“This is a revolution”

Neil Young’s twitter hacked and filled with porn.

I’m going to show you how to get a slurpy with an ak-47

Mexican Kim Kardashian takes over drug cartel hit squad. Uses personalized pink ak-47. Nicknamed Emperatriz de los antrax. Check out these hot selfies from her twitter feed

A secret is what no one knows

-Moondog

We can neither confirm nor deny this is our first tweet

Wars and panics on the stock exchange,

Machine gun fire and arson,

Bankruptcies, warloans,

Starvation, lice, cholera and typhus:

Good growing weather for the House of Morgan

-John Dos Passos

Toussaint L'ouverture said burn the cities and retreat into the hills. Napoleon sending twenty thousand soldiers to reclaim Haiti for French revolution and slavery.

Could pooping in a box save the developing world?

The rocks made hollow sounds ricocheting off the rocket’s fins. The crowd had worked itself up to this action. Faedra wondered the source of their anger. She couldn’t place it. The cult had been unusual filled with deranged and wild ideas and dangerous to those in its orbit, but these were the actions of a long oppressed group of people not the neighbors of some weirdoes. She thought of her fellows now as just that, weirdoes. The rocket was missing its magnificent cone, and it looked sad and forgotten as the villager’s stones began to dent its golden sides.

Couches, pianos and other items were being pulled out of the mansion. She remembered the chants in those halls. Solid black paint on every surface, Red swastikas placed throughout the interior. She remembered the chanting and singing in the master’s language. She remembered it all and felt very little for the person she was who had participated

The master’s cats flitting between legs of the looters. They had made a greater claim to the house than any of its former inhabitants. Their kingdom was now being thrust upside down by the greedy ravagers. Some of the cats flood out into the yard and vanish into the bushes. Two men are trying to pull a piano through a door. Unmusical clatter comes from its interior as it was struggled over. A drum set is being tossed over those men’s heads.

Here the master had gathered them. In this hall they wore black clothes and bandied gold medallions. He told them of the return. A human would return from the stars. He was sent out so many years ago that the technology that sent him and even the civilization was lost to epochs of dust and forgetting. We would not ignore his message of disasters coming and the knowledge that we could use to escape it. The master had heard radio transmission from the man, and he knew everything that could be expected. We must gather funds to build the rocket.

The answer stands as kingdoms fall. There is no answer. None at all. None at all.

- Moondog

Art imitates Life: Replica of Van Gogh’s Ear created From Live Cells.

Gwyneth Paltrow makes people mad.

Christianity has never been worldly nor has it ever looked with favor on good food and wine, and it is more than doubtful whether the introduction of jazz into the cult would be a particular asset.

-Carl Jung

Bagged booze coffins straining the cart. She felt her muscles twitch with each journey. The trash sorter was growling and complaining to her. “Modest why so much of the same thing. Offer me something new.” Twenty years working with this machine and now it learns to complain.

Lying on the furniture at awkward angles, lurching around with menace, rambling incoherently, and lobbing abuse at journalists streaming on glimmering screens, and in general drunkenness and sorrow, are the men and woman who govern. The booze has become their meaning, their real purpose has been misplaced a couple cocktails ago. Paralysis and drunken sorrow curdling to rage. Something out in the world hurtled away at a frightening speed leaving these ghosts drunk at the wheel.

She was alone and ignored as usual in these corridor of power. In the shadows was the bear. All the staff had rumors of it and encounters spoken in hushed tones. She had never seen it, and never heard it. But, at the end of the corridor hauling another cart overflowing with empties she glimpsed its shadow. The bear was the shadows and she worried what it meant to be one who has witnessed it. Modest felt that sweet strain of muscles as she pushed the cart into the elevator.

I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know all cops carry guns with triggers

-Ralph Ellison

Grisly discovery inside Giant Alligator

An estimated ten thousand never returned to claim their shoes at the entrance to Darbar Sahib.

I see ten thousand chariots and they coming with no horses. The riders they cover their face

-Bob Marley

A man stretched out on torn sheets. His form a river through degraded fabric.

 Adobe town filled with flower sellers. Rumors of decapitation. Four rotting corpses trapped in a continually circling car. Windows covered with flies. Red grips the windshield in the morning.

 He was sick of seeing his brother walking through the flower stalls, peeking through the window in the door. Touching his hand as he walked to the car, he can’t see why his brother won’t stay dead. His sister’s voice on the intercom. The failing wires cutting into her words. Fragments pour out. He couldn’t leave the bed. Feedback squealing.

One of the common symptoms of depression is the inability to make day to day decisions.

“It’s like all the love is gone. So you see why comics have demons. You’re trying to fill that void until the next stage time you get where you’ll find your love.”

-Thea Vidale

This slideshow shows 20 cities running out of water.

 He felt pressure relieve as the song slowly was pulled into his web. Web of constant data. Data that represented music, music so rare it barely been heard beyond the people who recorded it. He felt he should own this music, let people know of its golden aura. But, then he would have to listen to it, he realized even though he was young the possibility of ever hearing every moment of music he captured would be impossible. It was data not music, it had no emotional resonance. Every song discovered, every artist read about, was a moment ripped away from him, a moment he couldn’t fill with another activity. Time was the enemy and space on his hard drive. Fat around the middle, seated, chewing junk food, bongs unloaded, rare soul funk track that hints at the future of hip hop found and squirrelled away. Some kind of sore forming on his elbow, black spot on his toe, elastic failing in his underwear. Job was becoming an illusion, a series of dream images of people telling to wake up, what did they keep wanting?

 Spittle rolled down his chin as he shouted give me evenings and weekends, get me out of this contract, I know no one of us have clean hands anymore, I have woken up to that years ago.

I ain’t got no one I can depend on

Ain’t got no one tengo a nadie

-Santana

Tim waked to the claw caressed across his cheek. The pram was moving through branches dripped in fog like ugly snakes. The clockwork hand moved away.  Papier-mâché owls hooted in the tree branches. The moon’s light bulb faded in the moist air.

They bumped a tree and it folded over.

Don’t worry little one we made the night for you. We can bring you anything in it. Penguins and icebergs are over the hill and a little blizzard. Then a nice desert oasis.

There were other figures walking with them. They ticked liked broken clocks as they walked.  One of the figure’s head fell off but it never slowed down. They continued to walk in the forest. Flurries of snow began to flutter by.

As a child he remembered peeking through curtains and from under covers. The blue of the TV light was lingering there in the hall. It moved around the house at its own accord. That blue light flickering through bushes in the yards as he walked to his friend’s house. He could see it there out of the corner of his eyes as they played board games. Cookies and milk were brought by the mother. He thought of those offerings as the flakes of the fake blizzard floated by the pram.

Oh the sea we forgot about the sea.

They walked down a stretch of white sand. One of the figure’s legs fell off. It made the motion to walk forward and then fell face forward into the beach sand.

We should introduce you to your new family.

This pram must be specially built to fit a twelve year old, thought Tim.

You are Tim’s new family. What became of the old one?

Tim is a name we won’t be using any more so you should forget that name.

This is Luna of the birds.

They had circled around the pram. Five of them. A possibly feminine figure moved forward with a pale bird mask covering her features.

Panda Bough

Panda mask outfit of leaves

Film.

Faces in cinema light moved in constant motion across the form that moved forward.

Cephalopod.

Drenched in rotten tentacles. Dripping water.

Behemoth

White face mask stained with black tears, red smears around the mouth.

I am Carrion.

Vulture mask covered in rotten feathers.

We will not name those we lost on the journey. They are abandoned like your name will be.

Carrion came forward with white paint covering his glove. He streaked a smear of the paint on each of Tim’s cheeks.

You are reborn with these marks. Rejoice in it, soon you will learn your new name.

The blue tiger will smash the world

Another land, without evil, without death, will be borne from the destruction of this one. This land wants it. It asks to die, asks to be born, this old and offended land. It is weary and blind from so much weeping behind closed eyelids. On the point of death it strides the days, garbage heap of time, and at night it inspires pity from the stars. Soon the First Father will hear the world’s supplications, land wanting to be another, and then the blue tiger who sleeps beneath the hammock will jump.

-Eduardo Galeano

Ariadne the threadbearer awoke alone in her house. She is American. America had become geology not reality. She thought of America and dreams as her oatmeal grew cold. America had beached itself on the chaos of the wild dreams it birthed.  It was proposed long ago that market forces produced happier lives then state centered societies. That American life let everyone freely traffic in dreams. Everyone’s dreams got shared and advertised and became museum pieces, got squirrelled away by rich collectors, disappeared in dust, watered down and sold in mass, or were met with a hail of bullets. The voodoo dances of Congo Square dreamed up jazz, electrocuted elephants helped dream endless loops of men and women frozen in immortal youth and love staring at the light, people dreaming on rafts crossing shark drunk seas warm as wine, churches dreamed up apocalypses of storms of light and souls plucked into the sky,  people crossing deserts singing and dreaming not fearing rape, pre-dug graves, and secret prison to slice tomatoes, take out garbage and stick together plastic junk for the dreamers, some dreamed of dignity and freedom from rat infested apartments, open air drug markets, feudal systems that said you could not drink water from this faucet, others dream of communities were they never saw a face different from their own, the sidewalks never cracked and the storefronts were always full, men with guns dreamed of false flags, black helicopters and fertilizer bombs, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, and  Jews dreamed of their own gods in this nation under god as others dreamed up religions and gods new to this world, some dreamed only of money, art, or that they could capture it all in a book, reach the stars, or of men with tights that could perform miracles, or of cities placed on floodplains, rifts in the tectonics, or in a desert, of computers reordering nature, some dreamed that we had lost Eden right here on these shores, dreamed that America would give back the land it stole and removed the strip malls from the mass graves, but all these dreams meant nothing to the dominant dream. The dominant dream was one that sold, one that moved units. All the nations of the earth began to dream this dream. This dream created a library of wonders where each of us could create their own dream. With so many dreams about, no bothered much with the dreams of others anymore. The earth moved, melted, warped and groaned under the weight of the dream. Nations and memories faded, technology followed its own logic, the weather got weird, the seas angry, so now Ariadne the threadbearer thought, now here we are, forever in these moments. Moments were you awake to house stuffed with clothing and furniture of someone else, where the box you get your cereal from is not even yours. Moments where the cereal curdles in your gut and it is impossible to breathe.

The only sin is the sin of being born

-Samuel Beckett

We were Given Shelter part 10

Melancholy scene in the park today. The singed hull of a boat hit by rocket in the night was bumping against the river wall. It emitted burnt smells and scraping noises in equally odious concert. A runner had begun to make a circuit of the park. The runner himself had succumbed to a stroke or heart attack while running, but the frame kept ambulating the body back and forth. The corpse was already decaying. Ones in the past had become skeletons before the frames broke down or were removed. This and a light drizzle.

There had been two checkpoints on the way from the office, only one had taken credit from him. Mika wasn’t sure if it was the local security force, drug gangs, or the army that had ran the check point, the equipment and uniforms were the same. He could check his mobile to see which of the three decided to scam him but he felt bored by the idea before he did it.

One of the local dogs had moved into the central area of the park and sat still, the army had set a security perimeter around it, so no one approached the dog. Its presence was a mysterious feature and constant buzz on the area’s newsfeeds.

Mika looked for Excena. Or maybe it was Excena’s clone. Or one of many clones. His head hurt a little thinking about it. Hopefully she was in a spot with a little shelter. He spotted her under a tree. He looked at the river past the burnt boat; a massive fallen bridge dominated the landscape, low flung clouds scudding through its girders.

Excena was dressed in a somber suit. There didn’t appear to be any cooler or basket for the picnic. Mika’s stomach growled, he only had a packet of awful crackers that he taken from work. Her face looked serious when she saw him approach. This was going to be a fun picnic he thought. He felt guilty having talked to the other Excena. Did this version somehow know?

Hi Mika. We usually do this by mobile, but you have been a steady client…

Where is the picnic? I can’t really afford to eat lunch. Wait what are you talking about?

We are reporting a negative balance in your account, so this contract will have to be cancelled until you can make further arrangements.

Mika paused, confused, and the again caught sight of the park’s dog, stock still and unmoving in its mystery.

I’m confused. First there is no picnic. Next we are treating this like a business arrangement, which in the back of my head I realize it is, and now you are saying that I have no credit even though I was just paid.

See I knew you were a reasonable man that would get all of this, thank you for your understanding.

Wait, I’m not being understanding at all, this is all nonsense.

I assure you this is correct. We at the House of Dreams cloning service would welcome you back when you are not at a negative balance. We provided your last request as per your order, but cannot proceed with the usual contract until you can make the proper arrangements.

Okay that has to be wrong. What request? Okay checking my mobile.

 I paid you guys how much and for what?

A son, you bought yourself a son Mika.

I did what? I don’t even have money for food or to get back through the checkpoints. This day is not working as I imagined it.

Good luck Mika. Your son awaits you at home. Any complaints contact us as usual. Hopefully we will see each other again. If not, maybe some other model. Goodbye.

Mika sat down under the tree and tried to finished his crackers. They were stale and hard to swallow. He watched Excena walk away without another word. As he ate he listened to the boat thump against the shore and watched the low gusty clouds continue to filter through the bridge’s broken girders. He had a son and no money for food or maybe to even get back to work. The crackers tasted so awful and were so unsatisfying that Mika pushed them back into his pocket, breathed in , and then stood up to make the walk back from the park.

Transmission from Submarine #14 sixth transmission.

Richard Pryor before the fire

If this is Peace, it is peace with gothic undertones, as if the ghosts of the past might be appeased for a moment but never exorcised in their entirety

-Max Roach

Tupac’s last words were “fuck you”

“If the night catches me I won’t pump gas in the city.”

This isn’t the first time a cruise ship has hit a whale and dragged its carcass.

The advice is to stay indoors. Something is causing shriveling across town. Clowns parachuted into town. They claim they are rocks stars and a labor dispute had halted their private dirigible in the air over town. We did hear something buzzing in the clouds, but Chuck imprisoned them in the café just in case. They mostly demanded liquor though one collapsed with shakes and chills and had to be brought to the hospital. Their pet chimp destroyed the coffee maker and they started sending flairs into the air, their loudhailer won’t stop.  Judy wonders why we gave it back to them. Judy wondered why Grandpa Miller’s head looked like that. We all wondered but the radio never told us answers.

He is lost in the wilderness

-James Brown

Killer tied to youtube video

Murder trial halted due to couple having sex

People looking for a plot in this book should go read Huck Finn

-Sesshu Foster

Veda kicked a piece of decorative armor aside with her sandaled foot. The Aztec militia that was still around had returned to the bland green that soldiers had worn for countless conflicts.

A line of the Aztec’s ironclads were grinding past her, away from the city, they were moving their resources into the hills and towns to the south.

The ATMs had gone haywire. They ate cards and delivered profane messages to anyone who attempted to use them. They announced the approach of the Orange Brigade. They announced that the city would soon be shelled. Veda chewed the bagel that a woman standing outside a restaurant had handed her. It was her first food in maybe a day. She wanted some coffee to dip it in. The woman apologized that they had no more.

People had just been wandering the streets since their money had stopped working. No had rioted yet, it was just a calm sedate wandering. Some restaurants had begun to give out plates of food. Veda looked desperately for coffee. Maybe the militia had taken most of it with them.

The screens of ATMs, phones, and computers kept flashing the warnings about the coming shelling and bombing of the city. The militia had abandoned all their fortifications around the city but still the warnings came. The flashes of light in the sky had been identified to Veda as a spotter plane. The Orange Brigade’s lifters hovered over the bay casting shadows over the dark green of the water. The dirigible transport the Aztecs set up that were still running made long looped transits around the gloomy hovering shapes.

A woman with a canteen of mint tea was Veda’s savior. She dipped the bagel in the liquid long enough for it to be chewable.  A streetcorner preacherbot had begun to emit messages from the Orange brigade instead of its usual exhortations against sins and promises of routes to salvation. It told them that they soon would be bombed.  Veda sat on the bench and finished the bagel. She was still hungry though.

Neo-hoodoo is the 8 basic dances of 19^th century New Orleans’ Place Congo- the Calinda the Bamboula the Chacta the Babouille the Conjaille the Juba the Congo and the VooDoo- modernized into the Philly Dog, the Hully Gully, the Funky Chicken, the Popcorn, the Boogaloo and the dance of the great American choreographer Buddy Bradley

-Ishmael Reed

The woman moved her hands left to right. Her feet did a dance and then the image looped and she did the dance again. Smoke curled out of her mouth and then receded. Her pupils were pulled back in her head and her eyes were pure white.

The claws of the patrol dogs clicked on the grated floor. Their skulls were hollow and their eyes cameras.

He held the child’s hand in his as they walked in the light of the screen. The child whispered to him as the dogs left the chamber.

You can’t bring back the sun.

Please don’t talk of these things Mara. Not here.

He looked at Mara’s eyes as they reflected the movements of the looped woman on the giant screen.

Not here Mara.

The hands move to the left. The hands move to the right.

There will always be mass murder, always

-Bill O’reilly

Church group removes Alabama billboard quoting Hitler

Scientist erase rats’ memories

The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets

-William S Burroughs

How much longer do we tolerate mass murder?

-Pop Group

First night I realized something was wrong was the night we first fully moved in. You know when there are no cardboard boxes in sight, and everything is in a strange new location that you have to figure out. Father was late at the plant and mom had fallen asleep in front of the television. I had stubbed out the cigarette for her. I was in the darkened living half paying attention to the flickering television set in the other, trying to figure what I thought I saw out the window. Then it came. It was like tiny pink snowflakes drifting down out of the night. Then it popped in the window and bumped the glass. It looked like a teenage boy except a pink bulbous growth had grown out or over his forehead covering his eyes. I moved away from the window, choking, unable to speak and staring. A van rolled up with no lights on. Men with gas masks and suits like silver garbage bags ran across the yard and tackled the boy thing and dragged it to van. It sped away vanishing in the dark. I didn’t start moving until I saw father’s headlights.

We are on the verge of the sixth extinction

Teen arrested in botched science experiment haunted by felony record

 Freedom is freedom from the need to be free. Free your mind and your ass will follow! The kingdom of heaven is within

-Funkadelic

The pop produced a manufactured gay. Drawing fires, rage, broken glass, lynchings and negative video montages in the middle country. Dance parties spread on the coast. The glow and heat caused nosebleeds. Clubs overflowed with forgotten wigs. Dancing conquered all other needs.

Court will decide if Guru is dead or meditating

Talk rot came down. Julia’s mouth crumbled away while trying to argue with the teenager who was improperly (in her mind) bagging her groceries. Jon, the teenager, of course never responded and only heard what his headphones allowed. Going a whole afternoon without speaking saved him from the talk rot that had descended and then just as quickly ascended. Julia had to keep her tongue and jaw nestled in with the frozen stuff.

Fuck this anchor. Go suck ur president’s dick. You are with the terrorists

They moved the figure to the center of the road. The figure had stark face with light emitting from its eyes. The neighborhood was wrecked, lacked compassion. People began to leave their houses. Tickling sensations filled their days. Sleep was barely attempted. Dead animals covered the ground. Green eyes glowed in the figure’s face. Sally was found frigid in the pool. No rain. Ceilings began to leak sludgy drips. Every house had a rotation of buckets. Bert and Nan’s house fell in like a crumpled bag.

We fought gladly and to the last drop of blood for America

-WEB Dubois

  The history of aerial bombing in the United States of America is a history of racial tension and class struggle, like many of our histories. It is also filled with rumor and myth, another trait of American history.

The first incident occurred just months before the second in the year 1921. Aerial bombing had been invented just years before, in the rush of invention to create new technologies for slaughtering people, in what was then  referred to as the Great War or the war to end all wars. Left over armaments from that conflict played a role in both the first two incidents.  The first incident is what is called the Tulsa race riot. This incident at the end of May of that year resembled the “race riots” of two summers before, the “red summer” where murderous racial violence exploded across the country. The Chicago riot occurred the same week a dirigible exploded over the city, raining fire and bodies on office buildings below, but this similarity is accidental. But like many of the race riots before, a simple incident between a black male and white woman  got totally out of hand and fueled local racial tensions leading to a larger gathering of armed white men who assaulted the Greenwood district in Tulsa, then the richest black neighborhood in America sometimes called the “Black Wall Street”.  Both the besieged and the attackers were well armed, but the blacks were at the disadvantage as their businesses and homes were set on fire, devastating the district. Six biplanes left over from the world war were dispatched to fly over the conflict. White officials claimed these were merely spotter planes there to prevent a wider uprising. Eyewitnesses reported the planes were employed to drop firebombs on the district and to snipe at the besieged.

The second incident was mere months later in West Virginia. This almost mythic event called the battle of Blair Mountain has been regarded as one of the largest armed civil conflicts in the United States since the Civil War. The United Mine Workers fought a pitched battle with local lawmen and Baldwin Felts strikebreakers for five days. This episode was one of many incidents in the bloody “Coal wars” of the previous decades. The strikebreakers hired private planes to drop bombs left over from the world war on the strikers, sometimes indiscriminately releasing them on villages.  When the army arrived to conclude the hostilities in the favor of the mine owners they also employed bombers as surveillance planes and some said intimidation. The miners captured one of the unexploded bombs the strikebreakers had engaged and later displayed it at a trial.

The third major known incident of aerial bombing in the United States of America took place some six decades later. This third and final event under discussion involves the conflict between the city of Philadelphia and the organization known as MOVE. MOVE, a black liberation organization with back to the land overtones started by John Africa (all members of the group employed the surname Africa) had a previous violent conflict with the city in 1978 where the unsanitary nature of their compound and incidents with police led to a raid. A policeman died in the firefight under unclear circumstances and several of the members of the group were charged with his death. The even more embattled organization (as the founder John Africa insisted they were. Many argued convincingly that MOVE was a cult, some called them a terrorist organization) moved to a working class black neighborhood which they came in conflict with, setting up two bunkers on the roof of their house, occasionally gesturing with weapons, and blaring profane political speeches through loudspeakers at all hours of the day. This mixed with compost, feces, gathered wood that filled the compound, alongside concern for the treatment of the numerous children that MOVE had, all lead inevitably to another conflict with the city in 1985. The police moved in (many of who had been involved in the previous confrontation) and surrounded the house and then evacuated the area. They issued a communique to MOVE that had curious language.

Attention MOVE, this is America.

Soon tear gas and two high powered water jets were turned on the compound. At some point heavy gunfire started. There is been much debate which side did most of the firing, though the police at one point ran out of ammo. The police commissioner citing the tactical advantage MOVE had with the two bunkers on the roof decided to employ a drastic measure. He had a police chopper drop a satchel bomb on the roof of the house. It failed to destroy the bunkers but started a fire.  A decision was made to let the fire burn. The water jets were turned off. The fire destroyed the compound; only two people left it and survived an adult and a child, five other children and six other adults died including John Africa. There were rumors that the police fired on anyone trying to leave the fire. One adult was seen by witnesses leaving and then running back in for an unknown reason. The ensuing blaze also destroyed three blocks of the neighborhood.

This for the moment is what we know of aerial bombing in America by Americans.

The catastrophe of the First World War and the extraordinary spiritual malaise that came afterwards were needed to arouse a doubt as to whether all was well with the white man’s mind.

-Carl Jung

I see the memes. These political memes. They say things like here is some truth for your day or have some slogan or quote smeared across an ironic image. I see the ones I agree with, those are the channels I choose to subscribe to. Some of my relatives subscribe to channels on the other side and I can see them via Facebook. The messages are different but the approach is the same. These seem like rituals or incantations against an encroaching future or reality. These are words and images to inspire action sold like product.

My mind wanders to the so called “ghost dance” rebellion of the late 19^th century. This apocalyptic Christian movement spread across many of the reservations of the Native Americans and in many ways was no different than various other apocalyptic Christian cults that appeared in America during that century (7^th day Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witness), the practitioners had a prophet who claimed to be Jesus Christ returned and he taught a dance. If this dance was done correctly a great flood would come and wipe away the invading white man and then all those who had died in the First Nations would return. The agents of the Indian bureau for some reason took this religion very seriously and a tragic series of events unfolded. The cavalry moved onto the Great Sioux reservation and soon after Sitting Bull was killed by tribal police in either a botched arrest or an assassination. Then Big Foot’s tribe moved without permission. The cavalry surrounded them and proceeded to disarm them. One of the tribesmen, a deaf man raised his gun in the air for an unknown reason. The surrounding cavalry opened up with Krag rifles and Hotchkiss guns. Some 300 people died, mostly woman and children and almost all disarmed. The causalities on the cavalry side were mostly from getting caught in their own crossfire. Many of the bodies were left to freeze to the ground.

These memes are mostly ignored, treated as part of the noise of the day. Being ignored is obviously not the violence that met Big Foot’s Minneconjous and it is self-involved and a failure to those who were treated so unfairly to compare in this way, but hope fades regardless. People keep sending their “ghost dance’, their rituals and spells into the ether hoping for some change from this reality, this ever present moment.

We are all hopeful farmers, we are all scared rabbits

-Rob Fisk

Transmission from Submarine#14 fifth transmission

Lord, have mercy on this land

We all gonna get it in due time

I don’t belong here, I don’t belong here

I’ve even stopped believing in prayer

-Nina Simone

 Police shooting frenzy raises concerns

“Mollock, whose buildings are judgment!”

-Allen Ginsburg

He opened the door and the first thing he saw was his computer on fire.  He felt calm about it and a little glad. He would miss his documents, the ease of banking, the images of ex-girlfriends in the information feed, the music library a click away, but he felt he could walk back out the door and keep going. Up and down the street he saw similar glow in each window. A strange fire had spread through the internet and consumed everything. That invisible world that deranged reality was gone. He felt his hands; he felt his legs, he looked at the pink light of the fading day. He thought, I must be having a dream. When will I wake up? I love the way those trees move in the wind.

The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war –Hunter S Thompson

Americans will never have the right to be forgotten

Ten comics that can help you understand mental illness.

Bombings could hurt Kenyan tourism

There is a common thought amongst those who study these things that Jorge Luis Borges prophesized or predicted the internet in his library of Babel, his aleph, his book of sand, and Tlon, Uqbar, and Orbis Tertius. It is almost as if a dream he had one day in the library or behind his poultry inspector desk had materialized and merged with reality. You could continue this silliness and ponder whether it was a pleasant day dream or the product of indigestion. Consider these quotes from the short story “Book of sand”, “…a nightmare thing thing, an obscene thing, and that it defiled and corrupted reality”, and this quote about destroying the book of sand, “I considered fire, but I feared that the burning of an infinite book might be similarly infinite, and suffocate the planet in smoke.” We remain uncomfortable with the effect of the internet on our lives but fear its destruction, fear what would happen if it vanished. It is a place of cat videos and endless outlet for our sexual desires and a place where you can see a grenade tossed in crowd during a hospital attack in Yemen or beheadings in Iraq and Mexico, a market square full of body parts in Nigeria. You can run a business or hound a teenager to suicide with the same tool. Obvious points it is for sure.  Real infrastructure crumbles while this architecture of image and dreams grows.

It doesn’t matter if justice is on your side. You have to depict your position as just.”

-Benjamin Netanyahu

We are like those old gods of thunder.

You are such a dork Magda.

Trying to have fun

Fun is not what we are doing. Lights and radio will go out right before we exit the cloud. We have a couple of miles of clear sky. We will look like nothing but a dark patch of the heavens on our approach.

Won’t their lights be out too.

Why do you think we brought those heat googles Kali? I am going to need you out front on the observation post. The heat of their stoves and tanks will guide us in.

Oh there are the stars. Lights and radio out. The mission is on at this point. We never heard a thing from the scouts.

We never did hear anything, Shora.

I know we can talk freely on missions Magda, but I prefer to be called captain.

Okay captain. Do you think there are only woman and children in this village?

You know I birthed two beautiful children myself. Who knows, if you ever settle down maybe you will too. There is nothing like them in your arms. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to defend that, but the thought of the storm of shrapnel and fire we are about to unleash on children gives me pause. I wish we had heard from the scouts. Ballast dropping, radio, and lights out. Kali out front. Launch the flare when we are on target. Not before.

Who are we going to kill captain?

Keep your finger steady on that release trigger. Think of that picnic with Roni when you get back.

That boy is so dumb but sweet. He told me he could find strawberries.

No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumph of war

-Theodore Roosevelt

@tacocopter

Fleeing the tiny fists of panic comes our food to support people

@Jennshul

Tired from fighting fires all night. All the furniture is going. Bugs are pouring in.

@manimani

I’ve never felt like this before. I mean never

@freeamsara

Twelve months since the disappearance #freeamsara

@gopop

Is downloading music a sickness? Does anyone listen to what you download?

@portlandnews

Do not summon the taco copter. What it brings are no longer tacos. Something unknown has happened to it. No one has clearance to destroy it. Just ignore it. Let it roost in its solitude.

@milkshake

Look at these plates of tiny burgers and burritos

@heartlandpress

Amnesia plague spreads in prairies.

@manimani

I can no longer feel my hands

@monkeynews

Cyborg monkey loose in downtown office complex. Multiple injuries reported.

@scenetonight

Film of the singer’s breakdown

@truenewsfeed

What are these hands? What is being shown here?

The end of the world has already happened and we are living in that apocalypse together

-Yan Jun

We’ve been living in a panic ever since.

-Sjon

Corpse paint and lipstick. SS uniforms and saxophones. Genocide themed dance party. Robot dolphins in the waves. Making out in the bathroom stalls corpse paint running in their eyes. Bags of flour tossed with abandon. A policebot wandered through stunning people and issuing arrest warrants. No recognized names on the downloaded forms. The bot had gotten the wrong address. The party fizzled and the attendees wandered out in a night lit by burning palm trees.

Will power plants of future use humans for fuel?

You won’t believe what’s under these ordinary people’s clothes.

How to text on an Iphone like a fucking rockstar

Amsara was being moved again. She had barely leaned against the wall and shut her eyes when the two guards entered, handcuffed her and brought her to a new cell. In this cell she could see her own breathe. A plate of food was on the floor. They had just fed her but she picked the mold off it and ate what she could. A man was shouting the next cell.

I didn’t tell them I didn’t tell them I didn’t tell them I didn’t tell them

The light was glaring in here. The man kept shouting. She shut her eyes. The sprinklers pulsed and woke her.

Two hours later they moved her to a cell where static and animal noises were randomly pumped in on the overhead stereo. The heat was intense in this room and the lights flashed.

Amsara had yet to be asked a question. She had yet to be spoken too by another human.

Oakland is giving kids post-traumatic stress disorder

Martial law selfies are hip in Thailand

Attention MOVE, this is America

Of all of our studies, history is the most prepared to reward all research, the white man made the mistake of letting me read his history books.

-Malcolm X

Pleasurehead danced around the discorporated cars. Ghosts were appearing. Katy hated her husband for the last ten years of his life and she hated that he had returned to linger around the living room. Ghost robots appeared to perform their old tasks. They just managed to move stuff around and cover it with slime. A ghost blimp hovered over Grover elementary. The kids gave up on recess after some initial enthusiasm for slipping around in the ectoplasm. The bad feelings were too much. Ghost cocaine caused overdoses and battered hearts. Ghost heroin dripped out of bathroom stalls. City wide car crashes and traffic jams from haunted traffic.

It tears through the walls. It has metal dripping from its skull. The monkey lets a long drip of drool caress the carpet. There is screaming as it lurches back in forth, seeming to be on the edge of falling down.  Dave wonders about poker night. He thinks of the watch he gave Bill when Bill swept up after a sorry hand. The watch that was his fathers. Will he be able to retrieve it, reclaim his honor? Will this monkey quit punching him repeatedly in the chest? Will this agony end, is he about to die? Sue Ann knows the kids disrespect her. She knows they scorn her gifts and run to the neighbor’s house where they pretend they might in reality belong there by birthright. This neglect shadows her every moment her failure to receive respect for her endless hours spent here with computer files, phone calls, pen clutched in hand for the entirety of meetings. The monkey was ripping her desk to pieces in front of her eyes. Her computer skidded across the floor; the letter she was writing blanked out, unsaved it would vanish. Her cup of pens disappeared, a slice of the desk skidded across her forehead drawing blood. The blood dripped into her mouth and she deliberated on why. Paul was crawling on the floor watching the carpet be decorated with his teeth. The coffee stain on his pants the olive oil stain he found on his shirt walking to the office. The long ropy strands of jizz the monkey is whipping across his desk. The shriek of joy or pain as this task is exhaustively finalized.

I am actually absolutely sure that the great god Pan slipped through some sort of gateway into our world, on that day.

The writer Sjon in reference to 9/11