This was one weekend I was damned glad I'm no longer living in Philadelphia. The Fourth of July weekend is normally pretty bad there anyway, what with the usual summer swelter and the extra crush of tourists come to see the Liberty Bell. Add in the Live 8 concert and you've got a recipe for sheer hell.
Mocking the pretensions of Live 8 is like shooting fish in a barrel. The empty bombast is perfectly summed up by Madonna's query to the assembled throng in London: "Are you fuckers ready to start a revolution?" Yes, Madge, we are. And when we do, we'll burn down your little castle and stick your bullshit-spouting head on a pike.
For those of us who are fed up with star-studded spectacles of bogus rebellion, the Scottish Socialist Party is offering a nice trinket: red rubber writsbands stamped with the slogan "Make Capitalism History". You can order one here.
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."
--James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Ensure a Free and Fair Election (Ban Paperless Voting Machines
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."