Flugennock, the Documentary

Total running time: 19:19
Music by: Rations and Utter Failure on 86'd Records

Ron Douglas, producer of this documentary, is an Assistant Professor of Multimedia Communications at Wesley College, Delaware; he was a student activist involved in the anti-globalization movement at the turn of the century (this one) and became a fan of my work while wheatpasting my posters for the 2000 Spring IMF/World Bank mobilization.

Fast-forward 15 years -- Ron has become an accomplished filmmaker and documentarian, producing films about police brutality, and about Native American boarding schools in the US and Canada. Last summer, he contacted me about being the subject in one of a series of documentaries on the emergence of citizen journalism on the Internet, and specifically the creation of the Independent Media Centers across the US and the world in the wake of the Seattle WTO mobilization of 1999, and the "A16" mobilization at the IMF and World Bank in the spring of 2000.

This film provides a brief history of my cartoon work going back to the Yipster Times in the late 1970s, and my art and media activist involvement with the antiglobalization and antiwar movements of the '00s, and my work with the DC Statehood and marijuana legalization campaign of 2014.

You can follow Ron Douglas on Twitter at @alchemicalmedia, and check out more of his documentary work on YouTube here.

Pretty Vacant

"There's no point in asking, you'll get no reply...!"

So, yesterday I'm watching and reading the ongoing coverage of the Brexit vote -- watching "Leave" win by something like 4% -- but what really got me going was the discussion of the ripple effect through the rest of Europe, as other countries watched the UK bail and thought "Hell, if the Brits can do it, why not us...?"

It's also worth noting here that the discussion couldn't really be broken down into a strictly either/or division, despite most media trying to forcibly break it down to "good Lefties vote Remain" and "only Rightist Trumpsters vote Leave". I started out buying into that because the mainstream US media were beating the living crap out of that riff, but the more foreign and dissident media I read, the more nuances became evident.

In the end, I think it might be a good thing, and that this might actually work out well for our side, simply because I can't think of a single kind of substantive, revolutionary change that didn't require chaos, tumult and upheaval -- the old "breaking eggs to make an omelet" thing. And man, am I ever hungry for a nice omelet right now.

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He Can't Say "Radical Islam"

Never mind that the stew of motives for the Orlando nightclub mass shooting pretty much includes everything but ISIS. Never mind that the shooter's attachment to ISIS was on the level of a metalhead's allegiance to his favorite band (Dokken RULES!). Once the media got the slightest whiff of an ISIS connection, they and the politicians were on it like a dog with an old shoe, pausing only briefly to pretend to care about gays and lesbians before returning to the ongoing ISISfest – which brings us to Donald "You're Fired" Trump.

Despite the shooter's ISIS connection being weak at best, it didn't stop The Donald from a spasm of self-congratulatory yelling and screaming about ISIS and Muslims and immigrants and kicking Obama's nuts by bitching about Obummer's seeming inability to say the words "radical Islam". Never mind that B.O. has bombed at least seven countries in his term in office, or that he's had this country perpetually at war in the Middle East, or that he hasn't lifted a finger to stop the wave of hate and discrimination against American Muslims -- dude can't say "radical Islam", and maa-aan, has it got The Donald's panties in a twist.

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Delete Your Account

So, anyway, about a week or so ago, Donald Trump had one of his usual bigoted Tourette's outburts on Twitter -- nothing of note, really -- to which the Clinton campaign responded curtly, "Delete your account". Obviously, it wasn't the Ice Queen herself, but some mouthy intern who probably thought she was being all cool and edgy n'stuff.

Delete your account, I thought... was it perhaps really a command to the People to forget everything they know about the Clintons? You know, like:

Delete your account of Hill'n'Bill's excellent adventures in Serbia, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Sudan?

Delete your account of Hillary's tenure on the Board Of Directors of Wal-Mart, whose reputation with workers has been in the toilet for years?

Delete your account of Hillary carpetbagging her way into a New York Senate seat, where she accomplished exactly nothing except to build out the infrastructure for a Presidential campaign?

Delete your account of Hillary's support for the Patriot Act, the War On Terror, and the disaster in Iraq?

Delete your account of Hillary's support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement?

Delete your account of Hillary's remarks to the board of Goldman Sachs, for which she received $670,000? An average speech, for Hill, considering how much she and Bubba get per speech on any given speaking tour. Six-seventy large, man -- in some parts of this country, that'd still buy you a house.

That's just a slice of the lies, deceit, betrayal, greed and hypocrisy that Hillary, the DNC, and the aging Liberal establishment would like you to forget, so you can be "united".

Delete your account. Hell, if there's anybody who knows how to work a delete key, it's Hillary Clinton.

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#HesWithUs

So, aaaanyway... Bernie and Obummer met at the White House this week to talk about the future of the Democratic party or someshit, but not before Obummer spewed out a ringing endorsement of the Ice Queen. Russia Today says Bernie's not dropping out, but the Washington Post says he is. Seeing what the Post has queefed out the better part of this year, I'll go with Russia Today on this one.

If you ask me, though, Obummer endorsed Hillary, and then when Bernie showed up, Obummer and the Ice Queen took him around back to the Rose Garden, offed his ass, then dragged him out in front of the cameras when it was time for him to drop that mumbling about how he was going to "work with Clinton against Trump".

Don't forget that he said right from day one that he'd support the Ice Queen if she won the nomination.

Hell, he's not dead; he's just resting. He's pining for the fjords.

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Surge!

This week begins WMATA's SafeTrack "surge" of massive, long-overdue repairs and rebuilding on the Metro subway, plagued over the past year or so with a rash of fires, derailings, and other accidents...