Heaven Help Us All...

Written upon the 50th anniversary of the engineered bombing of Pearl Harbor when fat red-faced martini soaked politicians were asking whether The Japanese should apologize for Pearl Harbor.

"Should the Japanese Apologize for Pearl Harbor?"

the Japanese were not the first
to bomb Pearl Harbor
we were

so i think the Japanese should apologize for Pearl Harbor

just as soon as we apologize to the Hawaiians
for bringing the mosquito and yellow fever
killing thousands

for bringing venereal disease

for the horror of sugar cane

and purple mountains travesties
above the looted plains

for sabotaging the beaches with kiawe thorn trees
to force the natives to drape their bodies
from the hot gaze

of their twisted
goddamned
christian missionary eyes


i think Japan should apologize for Pearl Harbor
just as soon as America
apologizes to the Japanese Americans
for interning them in concentration camps

and as soon as Richard Nixon's Quakers apologize
for stealing their properties

(which were left to them in trust to be returned upon their release
which they were not)


I think Japan should apologize for Pearl Harbor
just as soon as we apologize for Hiroshima and Nagasaki

(still simulated every year at a Texas airfield)


i will always remember how the blast fused their shadows
into the building walls

THEY DIDN'T GET ANY WARNING EITHER


i think Japan should apologize for Pearl Harbor
just as soon as we apologize to the Native Americans
for the ruin of their culture

the theft of their lands

the whiskey and infected blankets

the destruction of their hunting grounds

and for stripping them of all humanity and dignity

THEY DIDN'T GET ANY WARNING EITHER


i think the Japanese should apologize for Pearl Harbor
just as soon as America apologizes
to the African Americans

for slavery

beatings

emasculations

rapes

hobblings and brandings

pretended emancipations

segregation

lynchings

and

the slandering
imprisonment
and murder of their heroes


i think Japan should apologize for Pearl Harbor
just as soon as America
apologizes to Cambodia

for 3640 B-52 bombing raids
and 110,000 bombs dropped
during a war that never took place

and for backing Pol Pot
as the legitimate representative of the people

(i remember to this day
the pyramid mountain of skulls outside Pnom Phen)

THEY DIDN'T GET ANY WARNING EITHER


i think Japan should apologize for Pearl Harbor
as soon as Attila apologizes to Rome

Salome apologizes to John the Baptist

on the day that politicians become honest
bankers become generous

no fault applies to love

and the Pope shits in the woods


and should be delivered to the White House

by a woman on ice skates

ten minutes after Hell freezes over

---

Written after reading a piece of unispired shit by Ferlinghetti shortly after the war started.


With Apologies to Ferlinghetti


lost in the bushes
with the WMDs
and all that compassion
running like the clap from
an infected dick
and everybody lost and nothing got found
back in the day
when the lies seemed so real
but were not enough to win
so they let the court steal the country
and the heart and the mind
as the neo-cons got up as one
to kiss his red behind
spanked in private
kissed in public
and came all over himself
couldn’t remember where or when
hum a few bars
I’ll get back to you
Do lunch
Do your wife and kids too
If you
Fuck around
all the kiddies that got left behind
along with truth
justice
and the American Way
getting skull-fucked by
Spiderman
Cock-blocked by the frogs
On the Champs Elysses
lost in the bushes
and fucked behind the bushes
and discovered in the bushes
somebody needs to beat the bushes
till the tigers appear
♫and the beast ran away on the spear ♫
Halliburton
and Venell
up on the hooks
drying in the sun
Justice jerky
“Did it make your nipples tough?”
Got to be a Lecter moment
while the twins hit the bongs
could be from Laura’s dimebag
go to girl in college
dead man on the highway
and the Iraqi children bring the water home
that shimmering radioactive water
from the nuclear containers
that they found in the caverns
while we
were protecting
the oil ministry
and the museums were smashed and looted
and someone’s
having tea with Osama
on the beach at Tripoli
WMD’s sitting in sun-chairs on the sun blasted shore
of purple mountains travesties
Maui Jim sunglasses and
cocktails at six
with the great whore
of Babylon
who squats on the banks of the Potomac
where the necessary work gets done
and the vultures soar
over the looted plains
the blasted limbs of children
that will never dance again
in the streets of Baghdad
As Nintendo jet fighter pilot bush
lands on the aircraft carrier
with his sock stuffed crotch
packed like a Piñata
waiting for history
to kick him in the nuts

---

Written after an IDF thug shot a young Palestinian girl collecting the familiy's laundry on a rooftop. Then he shot her brother when he went to help. It happens every day. How about the IDF thug that shot a prepubescent girl from a hundred meters on her way home to school with her lonely bookbag on her back and then went over and emptied his rife into her- confirming the kill. My name is Les Visible and I approved this posting.

His Rachel Corrie Moment (In Memory of Asma al-Mughayr)

the cross-hairs fix
across the rooftops

wind from the south-
....five knots

and leading
across the space where birds
have flown

but now
in the cold Ashka-Nazi eye

the young girls form
moves in laughing dance

arms gathering the laundry
she dreams
and surely she must hope
of a world and a life beyond today

as finger tightens
upon trigger...

when it came
the explosion was

of such a force that...

he came too

like Romeo's ghost upon
the imagination's palanquin of night

the bearers of the darkness
they toiled
underneath the thrust

of bullet and finger touching
the silenced heart

and
blood like a fountain
sprayed upon the sheets...

....some secret code
that she read as
she fell dying to the roof

this...

his Rachel Corrie moment come
round at last.

---

I am sorry to say these things. I am sorry for the soldiers who believe they fight for freedom but fight only for coporate profits. There may have been righteous wars and here is what I think of the honorable soldier... those few, not the ones who tormented the young boys chasing their half track after the water they held out while mocking them, not the ones who rape and jerk off to the carnage with bloody hands on their dicks, not the ones who think the righteous insurgents are terrorists, not the ones... the ones... the ones...not them.

"Tommy" by (Rudyard Kipling)


"I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o'beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:

O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins,'' when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you, Mr. Atkins,'' when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide,
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy how's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints:
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;

While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, fall be'ind,"
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind,
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country," when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
But Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!"


"Heaven Help us All" by Stevie Wonder


Merry Christmas.

It isn't What it is. It's What You Think it is.

I have been remiss in my cultural reflections. I haven’t been short of glass slides or things to smear on them, just short of time like so many people are these days. Time has sped up. Have you noticed that? The more time saving devices that appear, the faster time moves. Of course there will come a time (grin) when there will be no time. For some that is going to prove to be painful, for others it will be “eternity in a grain of sand” and you’ll still get your “Heaven in half an hour”. I don’t know if the quotes are right but the point has been made even if you don’t get it.

After all the screaming and yelling from a small band of people who enjoy, and want to perpetuate, the types of atrocities that inspired the people in the film, ‘Paradise Now’ did not win the Oscar. Gee am I surprised. You could knock me over with an IDF sniper’s bullet. And after all the press made about the protest concerning the film, protests that ate up a bunch of media space, there wasn’t a single mention about the film not winning.

Alan Rickman just produced a play about the murder of Rachel Corrie and it wasn’t allowed to open in London. I just love the freedom of expression and even handedness that seems to prevail these days. It seems like from the top to the bottom there is a definite pressure to conform to the ideologies of some small section of the populace that somehow, some way got control of all you see and hear. It reminds me of some section of the play Cui Bono, which never got written but is getting performed everywhere to the deafening applause of a clueless multitude in a penury of existence and imagination.

Bring out the penguins!

I’ll probably be on a similar train wreck of thought for some time in my musings here. That train of thought concerns the continual watering down of everything into a tepid mélange of mediocre sensationalism. The world has gone tabloid. It’s all bread and circuses now with not too much of the former. The carnival has not only come to town it is the town. It’s American Beauty meets Moulin Rouge meets Dukes of Hazard meets Teletubbies on the Reeperbahn meets Seven Days in May meets Desperate Housewives meets American Idol meets and greets you at the Wal-Mart entrance on your way to get something, you’re not sure what it is but you’ve got to have it so you might as well stock up and get half a dozen of them. Most people don’t know that due to increasing obesity in America Wal-Mart is going to widen their aisles and pass the savings on to you.

Everywhere you look there are people on cellphones, kindergarten kids are chatting away on them. If it’s not cellphones it’s Game Boy’s, if it’s not GB’s it’s Blackberries, if it’s not them it’s ipods, if it’s not them it’s some variation on the theme of “Leave me the fuck alone, I’m engaged.” Or, “if you really wanted to talk to me you’d go around the corner and call me on my cellphone.” Meanwhile, the culture is sliding into the entropic sink where it will fester and pulse with hideous life and glow a radioactive green that looks like the urine of soldiers returning from Iraq; “I got those mean old low down depleted uranium in my pee pee blues.”

And everywhere, everywhere, on the streets, in the malls, on the television, on the radio, transmitting from microwave dishes high atop denuded mountains, screaming along oceanic fiber optic cables, whispering up and down the street where you live in the paranoid air, everywhere, lies, lies, lies. My father used to say, “You can’t piss in my ear and make me think it’s rain.” And although, I might not have been lying, and although that wouldn’t have mattered and though I wish I had gotten the chance to piss in his ear, that isn’t the point.

I’m looking at the highway over which humanity is traveling. I am noting the direction of the highway, from which I can compute the country ahead; due to my inner GPS. I am looking at the faces of the people and measuring what they are expecting against the country ahead and determining that their expectations and the country ahead are not a good match. I am looking at the rest stops and exits and scrutinizing the scenarios and material that are available. I am noting the people living under the underpass. I am inhaling the essence of the atmosphere of the city streets and what it is at night and what it is in the day. I am noting the various disparities in the lives of the many in comparison to the few and I am wondering. I am not hearing “zipidee do dah.” Someone is pissing in my ear and I feel certain it is not rain.

Thomas Wolfe once wrote a brilliant essay entitled, “Oh Rotten Gotham, Sliding down the Behavioral Sink. I’m recommending that you read it. It is certainly available in the library and, no doubt, somewhere on line.

We have lost our connection with the essential meaning of life. It’s possible to have that connection and not be able to define it. You know what it is though, if you have it. If you don’t have it you don’t realize it’s gone, you’re just uneasy about something. However, there are so many things to be uneasy about that you won’t be able to single that out in the crowd.

I think there might be some metaphysical reality to the heat generated by the movement of machines and people in a close space that is getting closer and larger all at the same time. It seems to imply the potential for spontaneous combustion. It makes me think of ‘the fire next time’. It makes me think of whirlwinds and flames leaping across prairies and things exploding from the heat. It makes me wonder if the metaphorical Hell might not have a parallel existence in what is accomplished by a descent into the material; deeper and deeper into the compression of things and the temperature rises and rises and.

The vanity of things and appearances has reached the grotesque. Genius is in hiding, somewhere in the mountains, somewhere far away and something masquerading as genius is writing bad music and bad stories and designing bad clothes and condominiums and cooking bad food and turning your children into a place where there is no vision and making them into little whores who mimic the example of those who learned all there is to know about life from their TV sets.

You’d like to get out of it, some of you; a good portion isn’t asking any questions except “how do I get more of it?” You might like to get out of it but you can’t. Why can’t you? Because of this and because of that which all comes down to the fear of losing something that has no value, or the fear of being alone outside of the action and the comfort of the surroundings and the idea that life is defined by your surroundings and that the things worth having are the things you see on shelves and in movies and that it can’t be as insane as it looks because that means everyone is crazy. Even though history and old books tell you what happens under certain circumstances you can’t believe that it can happen now. Even with the stink of brimstone in your nostrils you can’t believe that the environment is actually changing into something that most perfectly represents what happens to the human mind when materialism triumphs. Even the religions have managed to put materialism on the altar but they do it in different ways; by suppression of basic instinct and behavior on the one hand or by embracing everything and anything in the spirit of a grand irrational tolerance.

And it looks like I’ve run out of time or space. Certainly this essay is at the point where they usually end so let me just say, “Alas Babylon” and have done with it.

How they Hi-jacked the Music and the Minds of Youth

It's not a big secret that the CIA got into the drug biz in the '70's. they got into the drug biz for a couple of reasons, maybe more but only one of them concerns me in terms of this essay. Of course they got into the drug biz for the cold hard death dealing cash. But they also got into the drug biz to hi-jack the course of the '60's and the message therein.

When you think of the CIA you probably think of the guys who work in that building across the river from Washington D.C. in the Virgina burbs. You probably think of faceless trenchcoats moving through romantic locations, slipping down alleys and sipping drinks with their opposite numbers- often of the opposite sex... bedable and wet and willing to clamp lamprey-like upon the body by Bond of America's intrepid heroes in the cold.

The reality is quite a bit different. Although you would imagine that these super fly break dancers wear red, white and blue underwear and dream of home and hearth they are really the SWAT teams for corporate intent. Government serves at the pleasure of corporations; at least they do in the West and just as surely in the developed East. Their job is to protect the Yankee dollar and the American Dream as it benefits the minority controlling interests of the American Dream. Concerns about spying and the loss of secrets are secondary. Certainly nobody cared very much about hundreds of Israeli art students wandering the halls of government a few years ago. Certainly the machinations of AIPAC were of no interest. It could be said that on continental turf these are the concerns of the FBI. However, the planning of these things is initiated abroad and in that respect; who cares? Certainly not them.

These days the job of the CIA is to fabricate information that will serve the interests of the corporations that dictate policy to the government.

But... back in the day; speaking of not operating on domestic soil- the CIA was given a job whose purpose was to hi-jack a culture, to polute a culture, to discredit a culture. So the CIA and their comparative numbers in the entertainment business/security end were obliged to flood the counterculture with speed and heroin to offset the LSD mind set that was seeing right through the bullshit and funhouse mirrors. Understanding that the most important and effective voices of the counter culture probably wouldn't take speed, they were also empowered to poison the acid and distribute it widely; anyone remember Altamont?

The music of the '60's got away from the guardians and it set a lot of people free, for a little while. God what a time the music business had reigning that in. For awhile it was clear that the artists were setting the tone and there was far too much joy and freedom just running around. Enter disco and coke. This wasn't an accident.

Boy bands and the Disney crew of Aquilera, Spears and Timberlake among others, along with Rap/Hip-Hop for the darker set was put together as a soundtrack for the coming of fascism intended through the Bush presidencies. It's fascism alright. When the corporations openly rule government policy (Cheney's energy meeting/Enron's assault on California and many other things)that is fascism. If you throw in the fact that Bush has YET to be elected you can pretty much presume the rest.

Constant war and apprehension also help with the control medium of maintaining the population within enforceable parameters. Ecstasy hit the scene. I had the original ecstasy that was being used by the California university system and I have had the ecstasy of today. It's not that complex a chemical and maintaining a standard shouldn't be a problem... but there is very little similarity between the ecstasy of old and the ecstasy of today.

Music molds the moods of the public. If you can give the public mindless bimbo's spouting drivel you can dumb down the populace. If you can control the composition of the drugs you've got a potentially strong grip on the consciousness. Most of the world is into the alcohol thing and that's good from the standpoint of the fascists. Alcohol produces guilt and guilt can be worked.

Along comes Fox Network which, rather than reporting the news, manufactures it. Then, my oh my, we see that all of the other networks are doing the same. But they do it a little different so it looks like they might be reporting but they ain't reporting shit, or should I say they ARE reporting shit. The FCC with the brown Pillsbury Doughboy helped to put control of the airwaves in the hands of a few criminals who all have dinner with each other. So, your news, your music and, of course, your drugs as well are all tailored to give an image of a world that benefits the interests of those who are providing you with the treacle and cotton candy for your distraction while death and disease and ruin are moving through the lands picking and choosing, raping and slaying at will... with the tacit permission of the victims. It's a sort of lottery thing. "Well, I've got as much chance of being struck by lightning as being offed by the cats that brought us the Oklahoma Bombings and the WTC smoke and mirrors game." they say to themselves and each other and they keep their heads down and don't wear controversial t-shirts.

Those few individuals who can still think for themselves knows full well who was behind these events and how they profitted from it. Many others know but don't want to know and then there's that really large group that is too stupid to know much of anything or is so self-involved it doesn't matter if it happened or didn't happen.

Well, I'm just riffing here, although everything I have said here is true and going on as my words are appearing and continuing for as long as it continues. I needed to put something up on this blog or look dumb for creating it. I have other things I can already look dumb about. Hopefully this makes you think and hopefully you can realize that the entire culture is geared toward controlling your attention and making you into a form of ambulatory Soylent Green.

Were it not that I know for a fact that there is another force at work that the corporations dismiss out of hand I would possibly be despairing of a positive outcome. But since I know that this other force is actually in control at all times it is just a matter of time before these object lessons wind up in the dictionary with their pictures next to bad words.

If you don't take the initiative to turn away from the broadcast you will be sucked in. If you don't swim upstream against the current you will be swept downstream into the shredder. And you'll be hearing about 'ho's and pimps and bitches' all along the way. It's like that old reincarnation song, "Whoops, I did it Again."

Visible and The Critical List: ♫ Rap Sucks ♫
'Rap Sucks' is track no. 7 of 12 on Visible and The Critical List's 1992 album
'Not Politically Correct'
About this song (pops up)

Welcome to the Daily Smear on the Glass Slide

I've been pingponging back and forth between my other two blogs and neither of them offers me the opportunity to address cultural issues. One blog being about metaphysics and one being about politics, they preclude an option I have been missing. Often I want to address other matters but they don't fall into these categories. So, let's just make another blog. I'll be getting into it as soon as the moment surfaces. Until then... wait.