Chaka wears yellow on Thursday · Jun 22, 04:48 PM by Chaka
Wanna know what really sucks? Changing the diaper of a toddler who’s been up all night drinking Pabst.
I’m stealing the following from Talking Points Memo, but I feel obligated to post this excerpt from Ron Suskind’s new book, The One Percent Doctrine, in which the twice-elected President of the United States discusses the inability of his intelligence organization to beat any useful information out of newly arrested Al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah with CIA director George Tenet.
>> “I said he was important,” Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. “You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” “No sir, Mr. President,” Tenet replied. Bush “was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?” Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety—against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, “thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target.” And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”
“Lose face”. “Harsh methods”. Water-board. These are the leaders of the party in control of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the United States at work, the most powerful people on the planet. Really, when I read this kind of shit, I don’t know what to do or what to say. Best to let D. Boon to do the talking for me.
mp3: Minutemen – Themselves
I can’t wait for the DVD release of We Jam Econo next week. I missed the Chicago screenings of the Minutemen doc and blew a second chance to see the movie when I was in London last October. Much more on the Minutemen after I check out the DVD.
Am I the only one who hated Thank You For Not Smoking? HATED it.
I can honestly say without hyperbole that this summer is shaping up to be the greatest summer of live music of my entire life. And it’s happening in MY town to boot.
The party train leaves the station this weekend with the Intonation Festival. I’m guardedly geeked about seeing Ghostface Killah, with my fervent digging of his new record tempered by the realization that every live hip-hop show I’ve ever seen has been a disappointment at best. That leaves Lady Sovereign and The Streets (key contributors to my live hip-hop cynicism) in the same boat. I’m quite excited about seeing Enik fave Jose Gonzalez but I’m a little concerned about his act bumping up against the frequently ruinous behavior of the typical Chicago rock show audience. Roky Erickson and The Boredoms are also on my dance card for Saturday at Intonation.
Next week brings the rare Chicago Parks District free show actually worth the price of admission with Amadou & Mariam and Seu Jorge at the bandshell at Millennium Park. Then comes another hen’s teeth rock experience – a day at Summerfest featuring acts actually worth looking forward to, with Ray Davies, Kings of Leon, and Joan Jett all throwing down on Sunday, July 2.
Then there’s the Pitchfork Festival and Lollapalooza on back-to-back weekends in late July/early August, certainly to be the most live rock dense nine days of my life. The actual Lollapalooza schedule is out today, and it’s pretty great from my perspective, with the only serious conflicts being Common vs. The Flaming Lips on Saturday at 6:30 and QOTSA vs. Wilco on Sunday at 6:30. And peep this sick 10+ hours of rock to be had on Lollapalooza Saturday:
12:30 Wolfmother
1:30 The Go! Team
2:30 Built to Spill
3:30 Calexico
4:30 Sonic Youth
6:30 Common vs. Flaming Lips
7:30 New Pornographers
8:30 Kanye West
Then the whole summer omikase is topped off with the red bean ice cream of the Hideout Block Party, commandeered this year by Touch and Go Records in celebration of their 25th anniversary. This lineup is yet another embarrassment of riches featuring a host of reunited acts like Seam, Killdozer, Negative Approach, and Scratch Acid(!), plus current T&G artists I dig like (!!!) and Quasi, with more to be announced (where are the Meatmen? or Die Kreuzen? or maybe the reunited backing band from Tesco Vee’s solo LP, Dutch Hercules – Lyle Preslar, Brian Baker, and Ian MacKaye (I’ve always wondered if he wished he could have that one back))?
Timedoor’ll be digitally spilling the beans about all of these live shows over the course of the next few weeks. Drop us a line if you’re headed to any of these events so you can share your observations or arrange to buy me some beers. Til then, soak up some 1983-1984, when oil was $24 a barrel and we still let the brown ones torture the brown ones.
mp3: X – The New World
mp3: Suburban Mutilation – Daddy Was A Nazi
mp3: Die Kreuzen – All White
mp3: 7 Seconds – Fuck Your Amerika
mp3: The F.U.s – Young, Fast Iranians
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maybe that saves your mamas life, left wing j/o
— shells kirby Jun 22, 07:15 PM #