Propagandhi

September 3rd/ 2005

Well, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, i always say! In direct collaboration with the US Army, we offer you a new song from our upcoming record! Go to the US Army’s official Canadian website to hear it!

-glen

September 2nd/ 2005

Hello, People!

Well the day is here. The fart haters known as Propagandhi, are completely and utterly done our record. We are just waiting for the sucker to hit the streets now. It will be entitled "Potemkin City Limits". It ended up being mixed by Jason Livermore and Bill Stevenson at Blasting Room Studios. They did a great job. We had a good time mixing it. We played a few games of "Sniff-ball" in the down time racking up a high score of 52 sweets and many rotten snifftrocities. The record has been very well recieved by people who have heard the final masters. I believe it to be our best effort to date. It will be printed on recycled traf patties! The Cd features cover art by Eric Drooker, and Booklet art by Sue Coe. I have also put my dihrty brush to the canvas for the CD face. There is some suprises and maybe a few stinky little tricks. By all means check this one out!

My Dad said last night that he’d like to kick Jesus in the ass and flush him down the toilet… for once we agree on something. I wish we could agree on the fact that he needs to brush his teeth, wash his body and change out of my Moms army pants.

-the Rod

September 1st/ 2005

By now many of you will have heard about the passing of Voivod guitarist and legend. Denis (Piggy) D’ Amour. I was absolutely shocked when I heard he was gone. Now, as the days go by, I feel more and more saddened by this fact. I believe there to be no other band to be more of an influence on Me, Chris and Jord. Many times when we are jamming we want certain things to sound more like Voivod or we’ll try to get Jord to play something like Away from Voivod on drums. They are our heroes. True heroes who play with heart, passion and integrity. They stayed the course and Piggy lasted in the band until his life ended. When I first heard "Ripping Headaches" as a youung kid my friend Kenton and I ran down stairs in disbelief and proceeded to beat the living shit out of a table and pretty much trashed my guitar trying to go as wild as they were going in the song. I was so confused by them. I couldn’t believe they were real. It led to a facination with their crazy music that had us in junior high trying to emulate the dissonant chords of Piggy and play heavy and creative. In those days any wierd type of chord in metal sounded like Piggy. He was the pioneer of the progressive thrash Propagandhi plays our own version of. Of course in the true spirit of Voivod we do not come out sounding much like them but if you listen to both bands there will be an undeniable influence. I take this time to send out my broken hearted condolences to Vovod!

They always promised proudly…. "To The Death!!!!!!" Unfortunately that day has come.

We love you Piggy.

-the Rod.

August 27th/ 2005

May 5th/ 2005

A reminder that today commemorates Holocaust Remembrance Day. Recognize. Always keep it in mind.

-chris

(please excuse brag-master’s previous posts. He can’t hold his coffee and the ringworm eating him from the inside out probably isn’t helping…"pubic fire"?)

May 4th/ 2005

Well, people….

I’m so excited I’m posting again. This next record is going to kill! It will
blow the others out of the water. It is 100 times better. Hannahs vocals
sound like an angel that spits pubic fire, and Jords drums sound like
thunder coming from grandest of canyons. It is as outrageous as it is
Putrescent. There are some special suprises. Prepare yourself…. It might be a little while yet. You’ll thank your little Christ for the extra months you
had to live.? Could one talk like this if one didn’t believe the words to be
true? Yes, everyone does it, all the time. But I mean it!

-Le Raud. (Zapped to Christ on coffee from 15 hours ago.)

May 3rd/ 2005

Hello,people!

How’s it going today? Good? oh me too, me too..

Well, what’s new over here? We are truly finishing up the very last
snibblets of our record entitled "Scorched Melvis". A couple more vocals
left to go. If I had one shred of talent this whole record writing and
executing thing might be a lot easier. haha.. Lucky I have fallen into the
lap of two master thrashers.

You may also ask "Why does it take those Hurculean Stallions so long to make records?" well, I took 5 different buses today all over the place searching for remedies for the scorching burning nightmare that infests my arm. That sets me back another 5 or 6 hours on our record. But I’d hope that you understand that I burned the least amount of fuel possible on the journey and therefore our world will last another split second longer. I do it for you.

I would also like to point out that I am almost proud to be a diseased freak
who flinches in agony night after night . Though I am vile enough to keep
catching diseases through pure glorious stupidity, at least I am a scourge
to our society. Even the lowliest bus rider cringes at my smoldering skin.
I’m "keeping it real." eh? Nay? get lost, fool!

Check out a movie called "The Corporation". It is excellent. You’ve seen it
already? Soak your eyes in bleach and watch it again!

I would also like to reccomend the all time greatest book called "Human
Cargo" by Caroline Moorehead.This is a great reminder why I wrote the song "Fuck the Border" and why there is another song of similar theme on our new record. This book is an essential document of human cruelty and fear. I think it is vital reading for citizens of our world. It may be of extreme interest to people from Australia, as there is a huge section on Australias’ refugee policy. What a crock. Isn’t Pauline Hanson the biggest pile of crap to ever walk the earth? Oh yes.. What was she called again "The lady with crappy gitch from Ipswitch" or something?

O.k. Scrotes I’m going back to work on our tunes. Jordy will be back on
Saturday playing drums for the Greg Macpherson Band at the Royal Albert Arms Hotel, where we will see a very happy Sam Smith rolling in buckets of cash due to the full house. Then Jordy will sing a possibly hallitosed but thrilling set of back up vocals for our record.

Over n out, Flitz Crappers…..

As they say in Regina "Ceebo Sabo Mix-Max-Mo Bri-Yyiii Briii-Yiiiii
Brbrbrbr-Rriii-Yiiiiii! "

-Bo Bice (aka The Rod) live from "The Royal Academy of Fun"

March 31st/ 2005

(And now another installment random punctuatuion and free-style sentence structure!)

‘Hello again, people! It’s been a little while now, eh?

Well, last night I typed a huge update and then leaned on some button and
erased the whole thing. It hurt.

Right now I speak to you while being cursed with a case of Ringworm,
strepthroat, a cough, a cold and a pounding headache. Lucky me. Apparently Chris has ringworm (no, he doesn’t — chris) too despite not being out of his space station for a week.

So, what’s new over here, you ask? Well we’re nearing completion of our next record entitled… “Attack of the Trolobyte Nads” (not what it’s called — chris). We have a couple more vocal backups to do and maybe one more lead vocal. Jordyboy is going on tour playing drums with Greg Macpherson for 3 weeks, as soon as he gets back we go mix the sucker. We may be slow like a tortoise but when you fall asleep waiting we will come ripping by, win the race and leave you scorched and mangled!

An unfortunate event has occurred over here. Me and Chris accidentally
erased my emails (what? no, not true — chris) that I had piled up on my computer. These go back quite far, I had to take a break for a bit before we went to record in November. Now the emails are all gone. So if you mailed and didn’t get a reply i’m sorry. We have tried for years to answer everyone. Right now I’d say we’re about 1000 behind. Have mercy.

Anybody see that guy who killed a bunch of his fellow churchgoers and his
priest two weeks ago? I think somebody should look into that nasty violent
book he was reading and ban it. It definitley was the contributing factor to
the murders. I think it was called The “Holey Bibble” or something.∫∫∫∫∫

This week the Canadian music awards “the Junos” is here in Winnipeg.
Whoopedy-doo. The greatest and most classic Canadian records of ALL time have never recieved such awards. RAZOR “Violent Restitution”…No Juno, the last VOIVOD, or Any VOIVOD…No Juno, Legends SNFU have got No Juno in their long amazing existence and are not there this year despite putting out an unbelievable record, NOMEANSNO.. NOJUNONO…., SACRIFICE “Forward To Termination” recieved…..No Juno, Doughboys…No Juno.. These bands have got no awards from sad industry dweebs but live forever in our hearts. Get my meaning? I hope the sad Juno bands enjoy their two seconds of personal glory and understand as they bounce up to get their goofy award that the true greats are not there and never have been. This however is just one mans opinion. But I used to skip the school PEP rallys so what do I know?

On a sadder and final note I would like to extend sincere condolences to the members of Nasum and friends of Nasum frontman Mieszko Talarczyk who was one of the victims of the Tsunami that hit South East Asia in December. A true talent who will be sorely missed. He left many great things in his footsteps. Nobody dies alone.

Take care people….

-The Rod.

February 3rd/ 2005

Hello People!

I hope all is going well this lovely evening. A nice temperature outside here. -10 or so..

What brings me over to the keyboard tonight is to comment on the amazing documentary “Shake Hands With The Devil”. CBC sure plays good stuff sometimes. This movie follows Canadian General Romeo Dallaire back in Rwanda ten years after the genocide. It is absolutley devastating. If you get any chance to see this, please do. Dallaire has a way with words that will give you the chills.

I may seem like a broken record always talking about the same things on this webpage but to have millions of people dying endlessly and not mention it over and over would be an absurdity and would truly be a letdown to myself as a person. To understand Rwanda and the DR. Congo is to gain a hard, clear and painful insight into humanity, the way the world works, and the nature of “Humanitarian” interventions and failures. To look hard into Rwanda and then think the U.S is in Iraq to save people would be impossible. If the world can come together with all the aid money for the Tsunami (which is good) why is DR Congo burning away unnoticed by the world?

Check out the books on this webpage..

http://books.bankhacker.com/Rwanda/

I would suggest “Conspiracy To Murder”, “Land Of A Thousand Hills”, “Shake Hands With the Devil”, “We wish To Inform You That Tommorrow We will Be Killed With Our Families”, “Key to The Neighbors House”, and “The Bone Woman”. They are all really good (Maybe I have no quality meter!). I recommend them all! haha…

What else is new? My head is itchy….

BSE, the future’s plague, is making the price of milk go up. Drink hard from the doomed teat.

-Rodmin.

January 23rd/ 2005

Hello, people!

How’s it going out there?

All is good here. Tonight I’ll be checking out the movie “Hotel Rwanda” I
think it will be great, but have no real idea.

For anybody that speaks Portugese out there, check out this website made by our Brazillian Propagandhi friend Erica. She did a great job.
www.propagandhi.rg3.net .

If you’re giving money to the tsunami victims, could I recommend “Medecins Sans Frontieres” (aka Doctors Without Borders) . They are legit and very good.

The weather is a little nicer here in Winnipeg, the other night I caught the
bus at 1:30 am in a -30c blizzard. The wind was swirling snow downtown like a farking funnel. pretty cool.

That’s all for now!

-Le Raud.

January 8th/ 2005

I thought I’d drop ya all’s a quick line to tell you about this new movie out in theaters. it’s called “Hotel Rwanda” about the Rwandan genocide that killed nearly a million people and has spilled over to the DR Congo killing 3.8 million more. Nobody else in the world seems to give a shit but at least one movie maker did.

Why is there no world wide relief for the DR Congo? Where are the celebrity donations? Where is the countries coming together? Maybe they’ll be lucky and get belted with a tsunami. It would actually save lives. How’s that for the negative outlook on life? Fuck it all, pass me the mersyndol.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/mgm/hotel_rwanda/

And for a little reading from someone with similar thoughts, but likes typing more than i do…..

http://www.canada.com/news/world/story.html?id=51f778e6-8d3a-4f8a-8255-93f9f 5809e46

See ya, everyone. Happy New Year…

I also do urge you to give some cash to the tsunami victims, or get mommy to do it if you are under 12 years old. O.K! see ya!

-the rod

December 28th/ 2004

Record delayed due to Dave Mustaine falling asleep on my arm. Thanks Mustaine you fuckin goof.

November 7th/ 2004

So we leave tomorrow for recording. Me and Jordy and resident weirdo Jon Schledewitz will be piliing into a van for the journey. Todd the Rod has been banned from travelling with us because he ate Mee Krob last nite and we don’t want to die before we get to vancouver.

So we’ve getting a bunch of emails from Americans asking how to go about moving to Canada since the U.S. election last week. I can sympathize, but all i can say to y’all is please stay where you are: if you have a progressive voice, you got to stay down there and get to work to make sure that "your" government stops steamrolling the rest of the world (not to mention your fellow citizens). If you think it’s bad now, imagine how bad it would be without anyone left to put any pressure on the psychos in power. Give it some consideration, at least.

November 4th/ 2004

…..an appeal to sane folks living in and around winnipeg. if you have time this saturday afternoon, please consider lending support to helping resolve this dire situation below.

when our own governments act in ways that will harm people, it is our responsibility to stop them. we can’t sit around on our thumbs for a few years and hope that the next set of fools in ottawa will make things any better. check out the info below……

(jordo)

Stop the Deportation of Ammar Khatib!

Winnipeg resident Ammar Khatib has been ordered deported to Syria. There he faces torture and imprisonment — just like Maher Arar and other Syrian-Canadians who have been jailed and tortured in Syria.  

Gloria Nafziger, a refugee coordinator with Amnesty International, has said "I have never seen a case, in my mind [with] such credible objective information that outlines risk that has been consistently rejected."

Ammar’s appeal to remain in Canada on humanitarian grounds has been rejected even though he is married to a Canadian citizen and has a 4 month-old daughter.  

We demand that federal Minister of Immigration Judy Sgro let Ammar stay.

Rally Saturday, November 6, 3PM at the Provincial Legislature, Winnipeg.

Help is needed to get the word out about the rally. Handbills and posters for the rally will be available by Tuesday November 2 at the Mondragon (91-A Albert St.) and the Islamic Information Institute of Manitoba (594 Ellice).  

To help make placards for the rally, come to the Canadian Federation of Students office on Friday November 5 at 8PM — phone 783-0787 from the lobby to let us know you’re there.

Get involved with the campaign to stop Ammar’s deportation!  The next organizing meeting is Sunday November 7 at 1PM at the Emma Goldman Grassroots Centre, upstairs at 91-A Albert St.

If you wish to make a donation towards’s Ammar’s legal costs, e-mail noii@a-zone.org or phone 783-0787 x. 3

November 3rd/ 2004

Yesterday was my birthday and I would like to thank America for the most revealing birthday present of all: the admission that, contrary to what the rest of the world tried to tell itself for the past 4 years (that the majority of Americans were a seperate ideological entity than their insane, rogue government), that America is indeed a freedom-hating, war-loving theocracy by popular decree after all. In the immortal words of the late GG Allin: eat my fuck. (christoph)

Hello, Everywang!

How’s it going today?

Well, well, well. If the puds of the greatest and brightest country in the
world didn’t re-elect Mr. Stupid again to lead them right back to the
toilet…

I guess now that the election’s over everyone can step back from these
things that "must be done" and notice that there actually was a reasonable
candidate running for president. He was shouted down at every turn in such a fine democracy. Way to go. Perhaps it’s time for some folks go and read one of Nader’s books. He actually has a brain.

Perhaps the American pubic saw through Kerry and his Bushlike war cry and
figured they’d go for the real thing. Hey why not? The system will go on,
don’t worry. In four years everyone can hold their nose once again and elect one of the two. Perhaps it’s time for the Democrats to step down for the Green party? Won’t happen, you say? No kidding. A long time ago the
Democrats and Republicans got together made a bunch of laws and hurdles to ensure they all stay in power as long as possible.

We’ll see if all the punks can switch gears now keep up the fight on a more
deserving campaign. Or will it all fizzle away back to where it all came
from?

O.K. Scrods… We have one week to go before we’re in the studio recording.

We have chosen our fellow Scrote and Mercyful Fate fan, Blair Calibaba to record this record. He is ready to rock and is coming out here today to hear what we got. We have 15 tunes, not one second of filler. It’s nice that
Blair gives a shit. a very good sign indeed. Wish us luck.haha.

Thirdly would like to say Go get the SNFU record "In The Meantime and in
Between Time". why do I say this again? Because they are great. Their new
record is what Punk music is about to me. Singer Mr. Chi Pigs delivery is
biting and funny. This record is abrasive, truly ripping, original, full of
personality, it makes me not know whether to laugh or pull my heart out of
my godamn chest. SNFU is a classic, classic band. The record is put out by
themselves, and exists in the same way the old classic SNFU records exist.
They rule in margins where puds fear to tread. the record cannot be easily
found in stores, at least in Winnipeg. Order it! www.snfu.com This may be
the greatest living punk band. Oh yes!

Finally One week til I Spy skin basher and all round wierdo Jimmy Juicepig
gets married and I’m saying the speech. hahah… you wonder now "How can this moron record in a week and be at a wedding in a week?" Well I fly to Vancouver the next day, of course! haha..

Adios everybody. Have a nice day. Enjoy your rotten world.

(the rod)

October 27th/ 2004

Another update?! I can’t believe it myself.

The people at Peace Not War over in the U.K. just sent us copies of the second volume of the Peace Not War CD series, upon which they have included our song "Albright Monument, Baghdad". Peace Not War CDs are being sold by local peace groups to raise funds for their campaigns, and at record stores everywhere. There’s a wildly diverse selection of music on this 2-album set, ranging from Sonic Youth to Jurassic 5, Michael Franti to Jane’s Addiction.

They have an online Peace Jukebox up at http://www.peace-not-war.org which has everything from the cd plus more available for free listening with no dumb ads littering the landscape.

They’re going to put up way more music soon, so if you got a recording you’d like to submit to the anti-war project, send it with full lyrics and info to jukebox@peace-not-war.org

-chris

October 26th/ 2004

Hello, people! How’s it going today? good…good..

One week from the U.S. election. Who will win this close race Warmonger 1 or Warmonger 2?

We record so soon it’s rediculous! haha………..

Aside from that check out the new SNFU record "In The Meantime And In Between Time". Now that’s a wicked record. True punk. They are coming across Canada in November make sure you go!

I would also like to congratulate another great singer/performer, Ashlee Simpson on successefully producing a great televison moment as her jackass lip-sync tpae started before the music then she droozled off the stage in shame. Hahhahaha… Thank you…. AAAASSSSSSSS!!!!!

Well, beyond that there’s people dyingeverywhere,possible war lurking in
Eritrea nd Ethiopia, 78 rioters killed in Thailand after being packed in a
bus by the cops,doom and death in Iraq, 40,000 women raped in Dr Congo,
Sudan still in genocidal crisis.. All looks well.. All looks well. Good night Irene.

Todd the Rod

p.s. Please save us Drew Carey, I mean Jim Carey, I mean Hare Kare, I mean John Larry…. Oh you know the guy from Skull and Bones, the rich one, Bush’s distant cousin.

Go get the SNFU and shut up. It will all be over soon. The Christ is on hims way. Yo Jesus man, don’t bite your nails.

October 20th/ 2004

Quote of the day, from Pat Robertson, founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition (can this douchebag not be sued for false advertising?), on warning that other famously violent "Christian", George W. Bush, about the war in iraq:

"I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, ‘Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties…I mean, the Lord told me it was going to be A, a disaster, and B, messy" (emphasis added).

Whoah! Run point B by me again? Messy? I mean, a disaster we can handle, but a mess? Now, are you sure you told Bush about that part of what the Lord told you about the war, Pat? Are you sure you remembered to tell him about point B?

Jesus frickin’ wept.

October 18th/ 2004

Do not walk, but instead run to see Team America: World Police in a theatre near you. Possibly the funniest movie of all time (after Captain Ron of course).

In other news, isn’t it cool how the Democrats are trying to stop other Americans from getting on the ballot for the upcoming U.S. election because they fear American citizens might actually excercise their freedom and vote for them instead of John Kerry? Now that’s democracy! That’s freedom! That’s the American way!

October 12th/ 2004

On October 20, Canada will hold its first hearing to determine the fate of an American Iraq-war resister in uniform: Jeremy Hinzman, who has applied for refugee status after refusing combat duty in Iraq. Hinzman, a North Carolinian, enlisted when he was just 17, when his father took him to the recruiting office, in part because of a promise of money for his education.

Hinzman also told Canadian television, "I also had a vision in my head of being a big guy and fighting for just causes." With the revelation that the reason for the U.S. invasion — Saddam’s pretended Weapons of Mass Destruction — was a lie, Hinzman decided the war was "a crime against humanity." That, he says, "is not part of defending your country and it’s not something I’m willing to kill someone else or lose my own life for." Hinzman applied for conscientious objector status after he received orders to go to Iraq, but was rejected while he was still serving in Afghanistan. He went to Canada while on leave.

Hinzman is not the only war resister in uniform to have sought refuge in Canada. Brandon Hughey, 19, fled to Canada from Fort Hood, Texas, in March because he doesn’t believe the U.S. war in Iraq is legal or moral; he has since become a prominent speaker at anti-war rallies there. Hinzman, Hughey, and the rest of the half-dozen uniformed war resisters seeking refugee status could face stiff prison terms if Canada returns them to the United States.

A petition has been launched in Canada in support of these G.I. War resisters. This appeal to the Canadian government has received important support from the Canadian labor movement. The petition recalls that, "during the period of 1965-1973 more than 50,000 draft-age Americans made their way to Canada, refusing to participate in an immoral war. At the time, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said: ‘Those who make the conscientious judgment that they must not participate in this war … have my complete sympathy, and indeed our political approach has been to give them access to Canada. Canada should be a refuge from militarism.’ (yeah, well nice one there trudeau, i give you that one, but fuck you anyways, spit on your grave - jeeord)… We call on the Canadian government to demonstrate its commitment to international law and the treaties to which it is a signatory, by making provision for U.S. war objectors to have sanctuary in this country." (taken from oct.10th znet commentary by doug ireland)

sign here, weirdos:

www.petitiononline.com/resister/petition.html

AND IN ENTERTAINMENT NEWS:
 
consider checking out either of these two quality evenings of fine tunage this weekend here in friendly manitoba……

sadly, it’s the last show for malefaction and head hits concrete…friday, the 15th at the albert, with the end, and ken mode….

also on friday the 15th (nice planning!), is the first hip-hop show to take place in that pile of  genetically modified potatoes know as portage la prairie……i hear that a bus is leaving from old market square to this quaint rural offering at 8pm…..details and tix available thru mondragon, the vinylist, urban bakery, kustom kulture, and music trader.

…..and to round out the good times here in winnipeg, consider participating in the following events:

"voices for choice" is a response to the pro-life freaks having their national conference at, you guessed it, the delta hotel….

thursday  oct 14th 4-5:30 pm  @  women’s hospital - 735 notre dame ave…a rally to celebrate and defend women’s reproductive freedom
    
friday oct 15th 7pm @ mondragon - 91 albert st.
panel discussion

saturday oct 16th noon @ delta hotel - 350 st. mary road (between hargrave and carlton)
rally and protest
 
ssseeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh….
 
jordy-boy half-head

October 5th/ 2004

"No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded — and nor would I — the right to preempt in any way necessary, to protect the United States of America" -John Kerry

"America is stronger when we are leading the world, and that’s how we are going to do it" -John Kerry

But don’t worry Baghdad! He’s a snowboarder and plays guitar! He’s rad!

October 4th / 2004

Yo, check this report issued last night by Amnesty International. Remember it the next time you hear some jack-ass (usually a white guy from the suburbs) complaining that women and aboriginals in Canada are "better off" than he is, and then feel free to do a somersault off the top rope onto his stupid starter-capped head.

September 22nd/ 2004

(Holy shit! It’s Jordy-Boy!)

Go friend go!! Go friend go!!

Hey, you know what?! if you happen to be reaaally, reeeeaaaaallly hungry at 1AM, i would not suggest having two cold bricks of tofu with garlic/chili sauce, followed by one litre of soy ice cream. i’ve apologized numerous times to my toilet, but it doesn’t seem to be it’s usually friendly self towards me these cold mornings…..

Aaahhhh…..on to more important matters.

Sorry, this is a bit last minute, but we just received the press release last night.if you’re looking for something to do in vancouver, victoria, cowtown, montreal, or the ‘peg tomorrow afternoon, consider this:

 

Thursday September 23rd is a national day of action and economic boycott againstSun Peaks and Delta Hotels in support of the Secwepemc fighting Sun Peaks Resort expansion on unceded territories in BC.

Demonstrations will be taking place simultaneously in Vancouver, Victoria, Winnipeg, Calgary and Montreal on Thursday September 23 as the Secwepemc people are fighting an additional $285 million expansion. Over
the last six years, the Secwepemc have attended various "stakeholder" meetings and clearly said no to the further expansion of the resort.

The Skwelkwek’welt defenders are currently occupying and building a physical structure adjacent to the Sun Peaks golf course as an assertion of their Aboriginal Title, reaffirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada
Delgaamukw decision. They have been served with a Trespass Notice and a Court injunction (sought by Sun Peaks) and face imminent forcible removal.

Former Chief Art Manuel writes, "The court order is kind of a BC form of legitimate apartheid. It is clear that the Secwepemc peoples have legal and
constitutional rights at Sun Peaks but they are being wilfully ignored by the federal and provincial governments and by Sun Peaks. The Canadian government has an outdated and internationally condemned Indian Aboriginal Title extinguishment policy."

Despite attempts by the province and Sun peaks to use a divide and rule tactic by stating that those fighting Sun Peaks are a marginalized group without support of their Indian bands, Chief Nathan Mathews of the Shushwap Nation Tribal Council said that the "Shushwap Nation Tribal Council supports the right of the Secwepmc people to occupy, use and enjoy the land."

Author of the best-selling book No Logo Naomi Klein recently visited the Secwepemc territories. She writes: "Let’s be clear about something: the massive expansion of the Sun Peaks Resort is an act of violence. The Secwepemc have never ceded this land, and their Elders have clearly said no to this development."

Three hundred people converged on Sun Peaks Resort on Sunday August 29, 2004 to protest the Sun Peaks expansion.

Protest locations are listed below:

VANCOUVER:
Meet at Victory Square @ 3pm
(Cambie and Hastings)
From there we will march to Delta Hotels (550 West
Hastings)
Contact: noii-van@resist.ca <mailto:noii-van@resist.ca> <mailto:noii-van@resist.ca>   or 778-552-2099

MONTREAL:
Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth Hotel @ 4pm
900 Rene-Levesque West
Contact: ipsm@resist.ca mailto:ipsm@resist.camailto:ipsm@resist.ca 

CALGARY:
Delta Bow Valley Hotel @ 4 pm
200 4 ave SE

Winnipeg:
Delta Hotel
350 St.Mary’s Ave downtown @ 3pm

 
Also, if you’re around winnipeg this weekend, be sure to check out the Canada Palestine Film Festival at Cinematheque……24th thru the 26th!!! Early word says there are some primo flicks to check out….

One last thang. Huge thanks to Fat Wreck for donating to the local No One Is Illegal fundraising efforts. The coinage was greatly appreciated, and was instrumental in helping establish a local chapter here in our city. Cheers to that.

 
p.s. i confirm that george soros was not among the cash donors……nay-buck…….no nay…

-Jordy-Boy

September 20th/ 2004

Well Hello, Hello!

How’s it going today? A nice rainy day here once again in Winnipeg. One month from recording. We’re hard at work in the last stages of record
making. It’s us against the clock now! We’re at it all day and all night to bring you our finest effort. In this last month I personally must get some more lyrics together, get better bass parts for Chris’ songs and get a few more exciting things happening in my own tunes. Easier said than done. haha…

As you can see on our intro page, weird-man is flying around the earth in his space turd trying to come up with hot riffs. haha…

Other than that, another weird, weird man.. Mike Rak (a.k.a. My Crack)
from Victorias Frog Eyes is due at my house any minute, so is local dork-boy "Biscuit" who wants to learn a guitar "lick" from me so he can impress his teacher at school. Who will arrive first? Reginas oddest man, or Winnipegs dirtiest kid? Frog Eyes will be playing tommorrow night here somewhere, if you want to watch Rak drift off into the realms of musical passion and oddity on his bass.. come on down. I’ll be throwing cups and what not at them. haha.. Hopefully no one will be upset this time!

O.k. dudes!!!!!! Take care out there in this dangerous world!

-Rodman!

August 26th/ 2004

And now, another installment of Todd Kowalski thinking out loud…

Hello, People!

I am pleased to update you today because I was sitting there listening to
a new song of Chris’s at my house and I’m totally excited by it. I think this
record is going to be Rad, it will have a nice mix between very hard worked
songs and the songs that come busting through here in the final stage of
writing and jamming. I am on a trip to space, travelling through tunnels,
beating the crap out of the Lord and then coming home. Other than that an average week…

I Spy drummer Jimmy Juicepig is getting married, my Moms softball team won the Austrian Championships, My brothers soccer team won the Provincial championships with him getting a shutout in net, Alice Cooper blew my head off live, my friend Joe got his nose broken in, believe it or not, The Ultimate Fighting Championships, and tommorrow we go to check out W.A.S.P. haha…

Surrounded by all these achievers and athletic superstars (lucky W.A.S.P.
is in there to lower the standard) {actually, blackie lawless was a semi-pro ball player, dawg –chris} no wonder I became an underachieving
headbanger/punk who lives on the planet Zenon. haha.. Oh wait I did get a
gold medal in Speedskating in grade 1. The glory lasted about a month then I was lapped by a kid named Igor Belevich which caused me to hang up my skates forever.

I still wait and hope to achieve my gold medal in the journey of life.

Nice talking to ya’s. If you read all that it’s safe to say you are you
are orbiting in your own pod somewhere.

Here are a couple good records if you so desire…Born Against, Crucifucks, Sticks and Stones (Theme Song For Nothing), and of course the new Voivod.

Peace, no fighting please.

(The Rod)

August 9th/ 2004

And now, ladies and gentlemen, a brief glimpse into the mysterious mind of Mr. Todd Kowalski…

Hello people!

How’s it going today? A little rainy here in Winnipeg. That didn’t stop my
little buddy Chris from coming over here and checking out my new vocal
attempts at a song for the next record. Apparently it was pretty hot stuff.
haha.. We also watched a crazy old video of my old band I Spy playing in
Barberton Ohio around 94 in front of 4 kids (three by the end). After that
we slapped in an Yngwie Malmsteen video from the "Marching Out" tour, pretty cool… but have no fear we won’t be out exchanging our diapers for leather pants any time soon.

So as you heard on the previous installment of our web updates, we’ll soon
be recording. This time around we’ll head to Vancouver and record with Blair Calibaba. It will be totally rocking, he seems ready to push it to the max!

After that we’ll begin touring again, I’m sure we’ll head your way. It will
be wicked, I can’t wait to play the new songs.

My friend Kenton from Fightthemontster, and Moral Panic was just here
visiting from Regina ( The Queen City!). He said Fightthemonster has 50
songs ready to record. haha.. What the???!!! If we had that we’d be set for
the next 20 years. haha…

Anyone listen to Hiatus? They were wicked.

Anyway that’s that! I gotta go back to my serious musical journey! hah..
pass the beans…

(Todd the Rod)

August 3rd/ 2004

Clann Zú back in Winnipeg tomorrow nite at the Academy Coffee
House. Lock up your fathers, River Heights. Check it, yo.

After
months of trying to figure out the where’s and who’s and how’s,
we have finally confirmed that we will start recording our
next full length record in november. This bastard will smoke
you fucks out of your holes. Good-night poser-bands of every genre.
Nice knowing you.

And finally, for anyone who remembers earlier
this year when the subject of a "popular uprising" in
Haiti flashed across our Tv screens for 3 nanoseconds while Canadian,
French and American
governments patted themselves on the back for their "peace-keeping" role
in it, you may want to check the ideas page for some additional,
perhaps new and possiblly utterly critical information and analysis.

June 11th/ 2004

Hey there people,

Christoph here. I just want to give people a chance to help a guy out. His name Anthony Jalil Bottom and he’s been in prison in the US for the past 32 years since being convicted in a politically-motivated and rigged trial for the murder of two NY police officers in 1971.

I had the opportunity to meet Jalil in prison in the late 90’s and he’s a fuckin good guy who has stayed strong and clear-headed through what I can only imagine continues to be a living nightmare.

Here’s a sample letter that people can print, sign and send off to Jalil’s parole board as his parole hearing is coming up in July. International support for Jalil carries weight, so don’t be dissuaded from writing if you’re not a U.S. Citizen.

if you can, you should also send a copy to Jalil’s attorney: Ms. Cheryl L. Kates, Esq., Edge ofJustice, 121 N. Fitzhugh St., Rochester, New York 14614.

This guy doesn’t deserve to be in jail. He should’ve never been sent there is the first place. He’s a political prisoner. For real. He should be let out. If you can, help him out by sending the letter as soon as possible.

(chris)

June 8th/ 2004

hey,

further to the Running Down the Borders fundraising event for No One Is Illegal - Winnipeg and the Ontario Coalition Against Povery. online pledges are being accepted now!!

that’s right! you can feel free to bust out your parents credit card for a great cause!! like i mentioned earlier, if the goal of raising $5000 in pledges is made before the run on june 19th, ol’ jordos’ creaky knees and hips will be decorated in a bumblebee costume for the entire 10K….

click below to ante up, fuckers!

PLEDGE!

(jordy-boy)

The Flames lost but Reagan is dead. I think that’s a fair trade. Here’s hoping he endured immeasurable suffering as the organ formerly-known-as his brain slowly transformed into a stinking husk of swiss cheese. Fuck you, Ronnie. Say hi to Hitler and Genghis Khan for us, you stupid bastard.

(christoph)

May 19th/
2004

howdy-doo stinkers!

there are a few local events going on here in the ‘peg that i’d
like to let ye all in on…

No One Is Illegal - Winnipeg is a new local committee of
a larger NOII network, which has active chapters in Montreal, Toronto,
Vancouver, the UK, and Australia. NOII represents what might be
called the "direct action" wing of immigration and refugee
rights work. In other words, NOII is involved not only in aiding
refugees in the filing of applications for status in Canada, and
in doing legal casework, but it is also involved in political activism
and public education to raise awareness about, and challenge systemic
racism in immigration policy.

NOII - Winnipeg are organizing three events over the coming
weeks.

On Friday May 21st, there will be a panel discussion titled "Systemic
Racism: Case Studies of Racism Affecting First Nations People, Refugees
& Workers on Colour in Canada". Place: Mondragon - 91 Albert
St. Time: 7:30 PM Admission: free, donations accepted. (note to
hockey geeks. if a game 7 happens between the flames-sharks, the
gametime is 9pm cst…….get your Dick Irvin impersonations ready.)

On Friday June 11th, again, at Mondragon, 7:30 PM, NOII presents
a panel discussion featuring representatives from the Ontario Coalition
Against Poverty (OCAP) and No One is Illegal - Montreal. The topic
is "Canada’s Racist Immigration Policies & the Current
Struggle for Justice". There will also be an activists’ workshop
on Saturday afternoon (June 12) for those wishing to get involved
in local organizing efforts - time and location will be announced
Friday evening.

Finally, on Saturday June 19th, NOII will be hosting "Running
Down the Borders", a 10 km non-competitive run, walk, skate,
bike, etc… Participants will collect $ pledges from friends, family,
and neighbours to help fund NOII - Winnipeg and OCAP.

For more info, to register, or send donations, contact:
Ph# 204-779-8984 email: noii@a-zone.org mail: NOII - Winnipeg, 339
Toronto St., Winnipeg, MB., R3G 1S4, Canada

Pamphlets and pledge sheets are available at Mondragon Bookstore
and Cafe - 91 Albert St.

The option to pledge on-line is in the works….more on that later.
We’re hoping to raise $5000, all donations will be most appreciated.
If the $5000 goal has been met in pledges by the 19th, jordy-boy
will run the entire 10 km dressed as a bumble-bee………methane
propulsion still in the works. pheeuuewf.

on another note, we’ve happened to receive a few emails from soldiers
involved in the present occupation of iraq. i’ve stuggled with responding,
not knowing what to say from my smelly hole way up here in winnipeg.

here are some words from former special forces officer-turned-author,
stan goff……please read, and feel free to distribute widely to
those currently in the military, and to their friends and family.

peace,

jordilix

Open Letter to Our Troops Stan Goff

In 1994, I was running an A-Detachment in 3rd Special Forces, ODA-354
to be precise, a team that specialized in free-fall parachute infiltration
and special (strategic) reconnaissance. 3rd Special Forces Group’s
area of operation encompassed sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean,
and our team was specifically designated for the Dominican Republic
and Haiti. So we had two language requirements on the team, Spanish
and French (even though most Haitians actually speak Haitian Kreyol).

I had a communications sergeant on my team named Ali Tehrani. His
father was an expatriate Iranian who’d married a German, and Ali
had been raised in extremely comfortable circumstances in Europe,
where his father and the society around him pushed him to fluency
in English, German, Spanish, and French. Ali also spoke decent Italian.
He was the most fluent French-speaker on the battalion, and a year
before we were sent to Haiti with the 1994 invasion, Ali had been
sent to the camps constructed by the United States military in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, for the purpose of detaining tens of thousands of Haitians
who were trying to escape the brutal repression and grinding poverty
of Haiti in ramshackle boats. Ali was needed there because of his
language fluency.

Ali was typical of many of the "non-white" members of
Special Forces in two respects. He was demonstrably patriotic –
compelled, it seemed, to prove his devotion to the American security
state — and he adopted the prevailing attitude within much of Special
Operations of Negrophobia — a kind of institutional disdain for
Black troops that served to bloc other "non-whites" with
whites in SF. It’s a peculiar mechanism of white supremacy where
there is not a master-race mentality so much as a deficient-race
ideology from which all others could self-exclude. This — along
with an anabolic version of masculinity — served as one form of
social glue in SF culture, though there were a few exceptions.

Ali’s Negrophobia wasn’t virulent like that I had witnessed in other
SF troops. In fact, he was willing to grant exceptions among individual
Black soldiers fairly easily. It was more part of his obsessive
desire to fit in.

Ali had spent six months "working the camps" at Guantanamo
in 1993.

When we received word of our mission to invade Haiti in 1994, he
reacted violently. His revulsion toward Haitians was visceral and
white-hot. Given that my own team’s mission might depend on both
Ali’s language capabilities ("my" language was Spanish)
and on our ability to establish rapport with local Haitians, Ali’s
outburst sent up a warning flare in front of me, and I made time
to sit down with him for a long talk.

Ali was, aside from his passive racism and the simmering rage that
one could always sense just below his surface, a very intelligent
and sensitive man. I always suspected that he may have suffered
either physical or psychological abuse as a child.

When we talked, we fairly quickly concluded together that his aversion
to Haitians had something to do with the role he had been thrown
into against the Haitians at the camps, the role of jail-boss, and
he agreed to keep that in mind and to subordinate his conditioned
reflexes on the matter to mental time-outs in order to assure that
he would behave appropriately while we were on the mission in Haiti,
which he did… most of the time.

But the point I’m getting to is this. The antagonism that Ali experienced
as an individual toward Haitians was structured by the institutional
antagonism built into the jailer-and-jailed relationship. Ali had
internalized the external reality that he was a prison guard and
they were the prisoners. His job was to dominate, to bend Haitians
to his will, and every exercise of human agency by the Haitians
threatened that. Their very humanity — that combination of independent
consciousness and will — was structured by the prison-camp phenomenon
to be an enemy force in relation to Ali and the other prison-keepers.

In 1971, Stanford University Professor of Psychology Phillip Zimbardo
designed an experiment that would come to be known as the Stanford
Prison Experiment. Subjects were recruited and paid a modest stipend,
whereupon they were separated into "prisoners" and "guards,"
and placed in a mock prison built in a Stanford basement. The prisoners
were stripped, deloused, shackled, and placed in prison clothes,
while the guards were given authoritative uniforms, sunglasses,
and batons. Long story short — within two days there was a near
prison riot, psychosomatic illness began to break out, white middle-class
kids in the role of guards became rapidly and progressively more
sadistic and arbitrary, and the two-week experiment had to be abandoned
after only six days… before someone was badly hurt or killed.

The experiment seemed to support the truism that "absolute
power corrupts absolutely." But that conclusion serves as a
description, not an explanation. It describes what happens to the
individual, but it fails to account for the role of rationalization
that legitimates the domination, and it completely fails to account
for institutional support of that domination.

When one uses the term "systemic," she is saying that
the source of this abuse is not individual moral failure, but a
predictable expression of the system and its structures.

The abuses of detainees, by US troops, by CACI International and
Titan Corporation mercenaries, and by the CIA in Iraq, is "systemic."
But in the same way that the system found an expression in the thoughts
and emotions of Ali Tehrani, in the same way that the structure
of domination and subjection pushed him to rationalize away his
shared humanity with his Haitian captives, we can now see in the
leering grins of the Abu Ghraib prison guards, who are regular people
– like the experimental subjects in the Stanford Prison Experiment
– who quickly learned to behave as sadistic torturers. The military
has admitted that 60% of these detainees are neither combatants
nor threats.

As this is written, the US military is about to release hundreds
of detainees who fall in that category, and there will be more horror
stories coming, because it was systemic.

People were not only humiliated and forced to pose in degrading
positions with each other naked. They were forced to masturbate
in front of taunting guards. Some were sodomized with foreign objects.
It appears that some were also beaten to death during interrogation
– one whose body was put on ice for a day then carted away the
next on a litter with a faked intravenous infusion in the arm.

Now the cover stories are being spun out like webs.

We are being asked to believe that:

(1) The only abuse that occurred against anyone detained by American
forces in Iraq was photographed and reported.

(2) No abuses occurred anywhere that were not photographed or reported.

(3) The one percent of US troops who are the "bad apples"
all happen to serve together in the same unit… the unit that is
the only one guilty, and that happened to get caught because of
the photographs.

(4) The aggressive investigation now being proclaimed by everyone
from George W. Bush to CENTCOM, about abuses that were already on
record in the military (an internal investigation had already been
launched in February by Major General Antonio M. Taguba, but was
kept from the public), would have happened had the photographs and
story not been aired on national television.

(5) The military was not attempting to cover up their own investigation,
and that they would have informed the public of these abuses even
had Seymour Hersh not put the whole miserable episode into print.

(6) The military did not cover anything up in the two weeks between
the time CBS warned them that they were going to air an expose and
when they actually did air it.

(7) No one in the chain of command above Brigadier General Janis
Karpinski is responsible for the failure to halt these abuses, even
though Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez was informed of the
investigation of these abuses, complete with sworn statements and
photographs, by General Taguba last February.

Other abuses and violations of the Geneva Conventions and Laws of
Warfare are already on record, some with videos available on the
web, such as:

(1) Shooting people who are clearly not armed and who are engaged
in no threatening behavior.

(2) Shooting into ambulances.

(3) Shooting wounded people who are not armed.

(4) Shooting wounded people who are obviously no longer capable
of fighting.

(5) Shooting into crowds.

There has never been a Stanford Military Occupation Experiment to
complement the Stanford Prison Experiment, unless we just count
the military occupations themselves. There is a structured, systemic
antagonism between an occupying military and the people whose land
they occupy. And there will be no investigations of any of it, because
there never are, unless and until the American public is confronted
with them.The National Command Authority and its cheerleaders cannot
say out loud… this is what we are doing, and it can’t get done
unless we dehumanize the occupied. This reality, this system, will
express itself in the thoughts and emotions of you, the troops who
carry it out, because this military occupation is in a sense making
a prison of Iraq and making you, the troops, its turnkeys.

It will only be those exceptional individuals among you in the military
who refuse to surrender their humanity — no matter how little you
may understand the big picture — and who will witness. You who
do break with the system and witness are very important people,
important to history, because your refusal to surrender your own
moral integrity to the system may lead to our collective salvation
by ending this felonious occupation. The troops who filed reports
about the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison were such exceptions.

So were Tom Glen and Ron Ridenhour.

In The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch wrote in 1979 about
US leadership during the occupation of Vietnam:

Success in our society has to be ratified by publicity… all politics
becomes a form of spectacle. It is well known that Madison Avenue
packages politicians and markets them as if they were cereals or
deodorants; but the art of public relations penetrates more deeply
into political life… The modern prince [an apt turn of phrase
for the current member of the Bush political dynasty] … confuses
successful completion of the task at hand with the impression he
makes or hopes to make on others. Thus American officials blundered
into the war in Vietnam… More concerned with the trappings than
with the reality of power, they convinced themselves that failure
to intervene would damage American ‘credibility…’ [They] fret
about their ability to rise to crisis, to project an image of decisiveness,
to give a convincing performance of executive power… Public relations
and propaganda have exalted the image and the pseudo-event.

What these images of the Abu Ghraib humiliation and torture have
done in the United States is collide with the "exalted image
and the pseudo-event" of the Bush propaganda apparatus, just
as the images of the My Lai massacre did in 1969. That collision
between the reality and the real image of war startles civilians
here in the La-La Land of wide screen TV and suburban SUV’s, and
it shakes them out of their opiated shopper dream-state.

My Lai is what General Colin Powell was remembering when he implemented
"the Powell Doctrine" for the military, which includes
a co-opted press and a vigorous attempt to keep things like flag-draped
coffins off of those wide screen TVs.

Most of you don’t remember My Lai.

On March 16, 1968, units of the Americal Division, to which Powell
was assigned as a staff officer in Chu Lai, entered a Vietnamese
village called My Lai and spent four hours raping women, burning
houses, then finally massacring men, women, and children — including
infants who dying women tried to shield with their own bullet-riddled
bodies. The massacre was stopped by a Georgia-born helicopter pilot
named Hugh Clowers Thompson who landed his chopper between the few
surviving Vietnamese and the blood-intoxicated soldiers, and ordered
his door gunners to open fire on the Americans if they failed to
stand down.

A few weeks later, General Creighton Abrams, then commanding general
in Vietnam, received a letter from a young Specialist-4 in the Americal
Division named Tom Glen:

The average GI’s attitude toward and treatment of the Vietnamese
people all too often is a complete denial of all our country is
attempting to accomplish in the realm of human relations… Far
beyond merely dismissing the Vietnamese as ’slopes’ or ‘gooks,’
in both deed and thought, too many American soldiers seem to discount
their very humanity; and with this attitude inflict upon the Vietnamese
citizenry humiliations, both psychological and physical, that can
have only a debilitating effect upon efforts to unify the people
in loyalty to the Saigon government, particularly when such acts
are carried out at unit levels and thereby acquire the aspect of
sanctioned policy… [American soldiers attack Vietnamese] for mere
pleasure, fire indiscriminately into Vietnamese homes and without
provocation or justification shoot at the people themselves… Fired
with an emotionalism that belies unconscionable hatred, and armed
with a vocabulary consisting of ‘You VC,’ soldiers commonly ‘interrogate’
by means of torture that has been presented as the particular habit
of the enemy. Severe beatings and torture at knife point are usual
means of questioning captives or of convincing a suspect that he
is, indeed, a Viet Cong… It would indeed be terrible to find it
necessary to believe that an American soldier that harbors such
racial intolerance and disregard for justice and human feeling is
a prototype of all American national character; yet the frequency
of such soldiers lends credulity to such beliefs… What has been
outlined here I have seen not only in my own unit, but also in others
we have worked with, and I fear it is universal. If this is indeed
the case, it is a problem which cannot be overlooked, but can through
a more firm implementation of the codes of MACV (Military Assistance
Command Vietnam) and the Geneva Conventions, perhaps be eradicated.

Glen’s letter was forwarded from Abrams’ office to the Americal
Division and ended up with Major Colin Powell in Chu Lai.

Powell never followed up by questioning Glen, and instead ended
his "investigation" of Glen’s allegations after accepting
uncritically the claim by Glen’s commander that Glen hadn’t been
close enough to "the front" (whatever that was supposed
to be in Vietnam) to have any knowledge of such alleged abuses.
Powell then began his career as a damage-control expert in the military
by writing a letter, dated December 13, 1968, in which he said,
""There may be isolated cases of mistreatment of civilians
and POWs… [but] this by no means reflects the general attitude
throughout the Division… In direct refutation of this [Glen’s]
portrayal is the fact that relations between Americal soldiers and
the Vietnamese people are excellent." He went on to impugn
Glen’s account for having been brought to light only reluctantly
and lacking sufficient detail.

This was, of course, horseshit. Abuses were systemic.

Glen had only heard through rumors about My Lai. It was another
GI, Ron Ridenhour, an infantryman who was not willing to surrender
his humanity to occupier-racism, who finally pieced together, on
his own initiative, the story of the My Lai massacre, and brought
it to public light. When the photographs of the massacre were combined
with Ridenhour’s account, and the American public was confronted
with the reality of an entire unit participating in a systematic
massacre of civilians, it marked a turning point in the loss of
political support in the United States for continued military occupation
of Vietnam.

Powell himself admitted war crimes in his memoir, My American Journey,
where he wrote, "I recall a phrase we used in the field, MAM,
for military-age male… If a helo spotted a peasant in black pajamas
who looked remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would
circle and fire in front of him. If he moved, his movement was judged
evidence of hostile intent, and the next burst was not in front,
but at him." Powell would also come to the defense of Brigadier
General John Donaldson who had the door gunners on his own helicopter
shoot Vietnamese for sport. Donaldson was exonerated, naturally,
in a military investigation.

Powell not only developed as a skilled cover-up artist, he would
eventually incorporate this ability to manage public perception
about war as a key element in the "Powell Doctrine," which
he imposed on the military and the press. He never forgot My Lai,
and he has always believed that exposure of My Lai and other atrocities
were responsible for the US defeat in Vietnam.

Donald Rumsfeld shares these beliefs with Colin Powell. They are
both wrong. The two phenomena that collide with this Powell-Rumsfeld
orientation were and are (1) the decision of their ‘enemy’ never
to quit, and (2) the inevitability that someone who is part of the
occupation force will be confronted with these contradictions between
"the exalted image and the pseudo-event" and the real
character of war — and that this someone will expose it in an attempt
to rescue his or her own humanity.

The war in Vietnam was lost by the French then the Americans because
they didn’t belong there, and the resistance endeavored to do whatever
was necessary to make that point. This is also the situation in
Iraq

So I’ll leave to others the analysis of whether the troops facing
courts martial are scapegoats (they are, and they are also probably
guilty as hell), and whether or not the military is letting the
officers off with reprimands and walking papers to prevent the fire
spreading (which it is). I’ll just emphasize that the war in Iraq
cannot be won. Not because of the inability of US troops to fight,
but because we don’t belong there. And since that’s the case (which
I firmly believe it is) every life — Iraqi, American, or otherwise
– that is lost or ruined… is wasted.

All this talk of whether Military Intelligence or the mercenaries
working for CACI International or the CIA or the MP commanders were
responsible is diversionary bullshit so we won’t see how Iraq itself
has become the Stanford Military Occupation Experiment.

Because if we conclude that the problem is systemic, then the only
thing to do to stop this is to walk away. And the Bush administration
sent troops there for the purpose not of building democracies, but
of building permanent military bases in the heart of oil country,
and if they walk away, they can’t rightly build bases, can they?

So we can either blithely obey and support our new Neros, or we
can continue to cling to the absurd notion that the vandal can rebuild
the house they just ravaged, or we can do what we might to make
them walk away. Troops that come forward will play a key role in
this moral imperative.

Every troop that comes forward with accounts of the inhumanity of
this war — while jeopardizing his or her career — is serving to
hasten an end to this criminal enterprise of the Military-Petroleum
Complex.

These troop/witnesses will serve to hasten an end to the suffering
of Iraqi families and the suffering of the families of the occupying
forces. They will serve to prevent more torture, more humiliation,
more suspicion and hatred, and more lives being thrown away on this
imperial folly.

Every troop who keeps his secrets, who faithfully serves the system
and never bears witness, can travel for the rest of his life.

She can go to Rio de Janeiro.

He can go to Bangladesh.

She can go to Lagos, or Montreal, or Tokyo, or Moscow, or Antarctica.

But no matter where he goes, there he’ll be — alone with the growing
weight of his own silence on his head, wrapping himself in his own
rationalizations, and restlessly turning away from the faces that
look back at him in the mirrors of his memory.

May 16th/ 2004

In a world of almost total bullshit and insanity, it’s often hard
to believe anyone has any power to change anything. But check out
the Ideas page for a story by Vandana
Shiva about a bunch of women in India who took on the Coca-Cola
Corporation (who were stealing and polluting their source of drinking
water) and won. They shut the fuckers down.

(christo)

May 10th/ 2004

Well, Hello, Hello! Le Rod here…

How’s it going out there, everybody?

In Winnipeg it looks like snow for the next couple of days, shocking!
So what’s new over here in our little camp? I’m trying like hell
to get back to all the nice folks who have sent emails, once again
i boycotted my internet company by not paying my bill and they shut
me down, so i’m done boycotting and am back in action. haha….

I would also like to take this time to say hello to all the people
who have done show’s for us in the past! Yo! HA. And what else?
We’re still going really hard on the tunes. The record will rock,
my brother says the next record sounds very good so far. if I’m
not mistaken he believes it to be superior to the other ones. haha…
Please don’t ask when it’ll be out, we’re working on it. haha..
get a job!

In other news..

In our pathetic country, 19 million chickens are now killed to due
the disease-spreading practices of unsafe and unhealthy factory
farming. It’s funny that these companies have a murderous business
and then when they spread plagues they get subsidized and reimbursed
by the government (yeah, and they use our tax dollars to pay
for it — chris). Way to go…

As we turn our microscope over to Africa, I would like to point
out the extreme crisis in the Darfour region of Sudan. There is
an ethnic cleansing of Black muslim people, which may kill up to
a million people, due to murder and starvation. Since G.W. bush
has attacked and wrought havoc in iraq no will join up with America
as a peace-keeper in Sudan, good work everybody!

It seems once again nobody has learned from the holocaust of Jews,
of Timorese, or of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. Check out
Sudanpost.com for some more details.

And then finally if you’re out checking out some movies here’s some
that I like that may be at a rental store near you.. "Dirty
Pretty Things", "Magdalene Sisters", and oh well..
that’s about it.. I’m busy making tunes!!

Well, that’s it! you may hear form me again.. I gotta go watch that
great show "The Swan"..and then go curling with "Dead
Steaming Chickens" it pleases me.. eat a beagle…
..sniff a drip. Take the bus…
ride your bike….jagel a star….
hahah.. yoink! hahaha!
slurp! ouch! Jord!

April 1st/
2004

Mar 31 2004 11:46AM
Soros soaked in Kyiv

KYIV. March 31 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Two unidentified individuals
hurled glue and water on financier and philanthropist George Soros
on Wednesday before a human rights forum in Kyiv.

The two young men got into the room where the forum was starting
and threw glue and water on the presidium where Soros was sitting.
The hooligans were shouting anti-Soros statements as they were being
led out of the room.
Commenting on the incident, Soros said he is sure that someone is
behind this attack. He could not say who, in his opinion, might
have organized it.

The conference continued as scheduled after the incident.

March 25th/
2004

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush poked fun at his staff,
his Democratic challenger and himself Wednesday night at a black-tie
dinner where he hobnobbed with the news media.

Bush put on a slide show, calling it the "White House Election-Year
Album" at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association
60th annual dinner, showing himself and his staff in some decidedly
unflattering poses.

There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating
search. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere,"
he said.

Ok, so now he’s making jokes about his patently false pretext for
invading Iraq while human beings formerly known as living and breathing
have paid for it with their lives. Is there really not one person
in the entire population of 290 million Americans with the nerve
to put a bullet through this stupid fuck’s face?

Ha, ha! That’s a funny joke i just made about killing another human
being! I’m just like George W. Bush!

March 20th/ 2004

Hello people. I would like to pay tribute today to my little buddy
Phantom B. Warren who died today of kidney disease. Days like today
remind me very strongly that the reason we do the things we
do isn’t to be radical or cool, it’s because there is someone at
the end of every descision we make and when we make choices that
kill others someone misses them the same way we miss our little
friend. Do your best out there everybody, we’re trying just as hard
as you.

Adios….
toilet-face (aka the rod)

March 16th/ 2004

"IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD" (Corrosion of
Conformity)

Life can be funny sometimes.

And by "funny", of course, i mean so horrifyingly absurd
that one becomes utterly paralyzed by depression to the point that
one considers choking one’s self to death with one’s own hands.

On February 3rd, we posted a reminder that Leonard Peltier
is spending his 28th year behind bars as a political prisoner in
the so-called "free-world". We also recognized the 10th
anniversary of the once-preventable genocide in Rwanda and
the lessons to be drawn from it. No one emailed us about it. Nobody
from the media called us or G7 or Fat Wreck Chords
with urgent pleas for details. Nobody flooded the punk rock messageboards
with expressions of outrage at the injustice.

On March 9th, we posted a call for action in defense of Mohamed
Cherfi, a community-activist and a real human being facing real-life
deportation from the so-called free world to face certain persecution
in Algeria. No one emailed us about it. Nobody from the media called
us or G7 or Fat Wreck Chords with urgent pleas for
details. Nobody flooded the punk rock messageboards with expressions
of outrage at the injustice.

Then 24-hours ago, after getting a string of emails asking about
our song on the upcoming "Rock Against Bush" comp,
i post some off-handed comment (see below, March 15th) about how
we won’t be on the comp and suddenly the sky is falling. Everybody
starts emailing us about it. The media is scrambling to get in touch
with us and berating Fat Wreck Chords with urgent pleas for
details. The punk rock message-boards are flooded with people expressing
their outrage at either Fat Mike or us.

"Sad" is a word utterly insufficient to describe what
volumes this speaks to where the modern punk-scene places its priorties.

CLARITY/PERSPECTIVE

Let’s get some clarity for starters. Look, if someone invites me
over to their house for supper and i start calling their mom a fuck-faced
fart-lover, it’s not censorship if they ask me to stop and it’s
not censorship when they insist i leave when i refuse to stop.

Yes, we thought being asked to remove the incredibly short and incredibly
vague allusion to George
Soros (who is, for the record, a fuck-faced
fart-lover…see Heather Coffins piece below) was lame, but nobody
in Propagandhi ever suggested we were being censored
by Mike or Fat Wreck Chords.

It just became clear that our respective perspectives on the US
electoral process and the strategies that could be undertaken to
effectively influence the US (and by extension, the world) political
climate towards something authenically sane had reached an
impasse. It became clear that our politics were incompatible with
goal of the "Rock Against Bush" project, which,
at least in the short term, is to get Democratic Party Leadership
Nominee John Kerry elected as supreme ruler of the planet…i
mean president of the united states.

That’s all. Nobody censored us. Anyone who says different
is tilting at wind-mills.

FAT MICHAEL SPEAKETH

Fat Mike phoned us today, visibly - well, audibly - upset
by the situation and reporting that the relatively innocuous post
i put on our site last night had exploded into some sort of media/internet
frenzy.

We were shocked as it is our experience that no one generally listens
to anything we say. Up until this afternoon, i thought the only
people who ever looked at our website were me and Kowalski (Hi Rod!
Nice dork ya got there!).

Nevertheless, through the course of my phone discussion with Mike,
we established that despite our important differences of opinion
that precipitated this pathetic melodrama, that people need to get
some perspective and that Mike deserves a chance to defend himself,
if only against the hyperbole and rubber-necking of the chat-room
set, who love to amplifly the least important aspects of meaningful
issues.

So here is Fat Mike’s contribution to perspective:

Hello everybody. Well this Propagandhi thing has gotten a little
out of hand when there really is no issue. A lot of people seem
to want an explanation, so here it is in detail. I asked Propagandhi
to be on the Rock Against Bush comp and they agreed. They also made
it clear that they didn’t want to be censored and that their
political views differ from ours. I said no problem and that I would
be stoked to have a different viewpoint on the album (as long as
it wasn’t pro-Bush). So they send the song which happens to
be a song off their last album, but with a different title.
The lyrics are about how both political parties in the US are totally
fucked and that it doesn’t really matter which one wins because
there will not be a significant change in the capitalist system
anyway. Here they are:

"Bullshit politicians. Bloated pin-dick motherfuckers. Bullshit
politicians bow and curtsey to the seats of power. We’ll never
learn and nothing will ever change if we stay this course of followers
and slaves. I can_t believe we’re still content just reshuffling
the same old deck of kings and queens and faux-democracies. I say
we hand it back to the bullshit politicians. Free John Hinckley.

This November, be sure to exercise your right to vote for either
the war-mongering, planet-raping, corporate-billionaire functionaries
or the other war-mongering, planet-raping, corporate-billionaire
functionaries!

Wake up for fuck sakes. The planet doesn’t need another U.S.
election. It needs an American Revolution.

This message not brought to you by George Soros"

Okay, so this is really not the message that I am trying to convey
because I believe that Democrats are a bit better than Republicans,
and I think that Bush is fucking the world worse than anyone possibly
could. But, I still want the song on the comp. So we get the liner
notes from the band and at the end it says, "This message was
not brought to you by George Soros". This is where the problem
starts. George Soros is a Billionaire who got his money from exploiting
the foreign currency exchange. He screwed a bunch of countries to
make his money. It is also important to note that he is also a member
of the Carlyle Group, which is a company that makes money from selling
weapons. Okay, that sucks. Meanwhile he has been giving close to
500 million dollars annually to progressive causes and has founded
a network of philanthropic organizations in over 50 nations throughout
the planet. He is spending a good part of his fortune trying to
get Bush out of office. Maybe he feels guilty or something, I don’t
know. The point is that he has given money not to us, but to many
great organizations such as Moveon.org and America Coming Together,
and these organizations help support us. I didn’t want an anti-Soros
message on the first Rock Against Bush comp, because I don’t
want to make enemies within our movement. I am trying to unite people
not alienate them from each other. So I asked Chris from Propagandhi
if he wouldn’t mind taking that last Soros comment out of their
liner notes. He said he wouldn’t take anything out. I said
okay, then asked if they would mind being on the Rock Against Bush
vol. 2 comp instead of the first one, which will be coming out 3
months after the first one.

There were 3 reasons why I wanted them on the second one. First
and most importantly, MoveOn.org is going to send a mass email to
their 3 million members encouraging them to buy the comp. Letting
them know that the more CDs we sell the first week, the more of
an impact it will make on the music scene. If it’s the number
one independent record in the country, CNN and other news sources
will report it. It will be a powerful message to Americans. MoveOn
did this for the "Uncovered" DVD and it sold 40,000 more
copies because of them. So I do not want to piss off MoveOn, not
to mention that they are doing fucking amazing work. They are leading
the online anti-Bush movement. Second reason; The first comp is
a little Fat Wreck Chords bands heavy. There are already 8 fat bands
on the comp. We had asked the Lawrence Arms to be on the second
one too. They said okay. The 3rd reason was that the Propagandhi
song wasn’t new. It was an old song with a new title. I thought
that this might piss a few people off.

So I ask Propagandhi to be on the second comp with all the lyrics
intact and with the George Soros comment and everything. NO CENSORSHIP.
Chris politely said no thanks. He said that the band has had cold
feet about the comp from the beginning, that their politics don’t
mesh with ours, and that he doesn’t want to be shuffled on
to the 2nd comp. I was bummed, but I felt that our message of getting
Bush out was more important than Propagandhi’s anti-Soros message.
There are no hard feelings between the band and I. Not only do I
think they are the most important band in punk rock, but I feel
that they are amazing people, and I am incredibly proud to put out
their records.

There it is. The whole explanation. Sorry no drama, but it never
was a big deal until it got all over the internet. Thanx for listening.

Sincerely,

Fat Mike

THE VERDICT

So there is Mike’s explanation. And here is my confirmation
that this issue of a song not appearing on a comp, like Mike has
said, is not some huge deal that required anybody to get their panties
in a knot over. It is not the important aspect of the otherwise
incredibly meaningful issue of ousting warmongering, planet-raping,
corporate-functionaries from political power.

Mike has been our friend for over 10 years. We’ve disagreed about
tons of things over those years. Fuck, back in 1993 we disagreed
about practically everything, probably including what year it was.
Never made us think twice about our friendship and never made us
question each others motives or sincerity. People can disagree,
even intensely, without one of the people having to be an idiot
or a sell-out. Disagreement doesn’t have to imply betrayal or animosity.
So everybody just chillax, for fuck sakes.

Allow me to quote Michael Albert of Znet,
another person who’s integrity i hold in high regard but also happen
to strongly disagree with on the issue of the upcoming farce known
as the US election:

"Reasonable people can disagree dramatically, even with
everyone broadly sharing the same progressive values. People should
follow the course that seems best to them, in light of their expectations,
and let others do likewise (everyone is going to do just that anyhow,
in case anyone has any doubts) and let practice reveal outcomes…
Meanwhile, let’s not overly aggravate one another and the process
itself, with endless vituperative debate that isn’t going to raise
consciousness, build movement organization, win any office, or propel
a better electoral outcome. Present our views compellingly, and
even passionately — of course, especially when they have broader
lessons, but let’s not question the integrity and motives of those
who see tactical matters differently. "

Words of wisdom, i think.

NOW THAT WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION…RAISING CONSCIOUSNESS, BROADER
LESSONS, INFORMED DECISIONS.

So with that in mind, what is important at this point is to turn
this narrowly-averted soap-opera distraction into an opportunity
for us to provide some serious context for anyone interested in
actually making informed decisions in a democracy, which
is one of the stated, but neglected, goals of the punkvoter.com
project, which in our opinion has evolved into a simplistic, defacto
pro-Kerry lobby by its glaring omission of hard criticism
of the other half of the corporate duopoly: the Democrats.
So allow me to rephrase my own questions from yesterday’s now infamous
post: "Anyone But Bush" on whose terms? "Anyone But
Bush" at what cost? (incidentally, isn’t Nader "anyone"?
Aren’t you, dear reader living in an alleged democracy, "anyone"?)

In our opinion, this restricted focus doesn’t actually "educate
today’s youth about what is really going on in Washington,
DC" (quote from punkvoter.com). Rather, it serves to encourage
fans of famous bands to cast votes based on half of
the story of what is really going on in Washington DC. That ain’t
democracy man. That’s a charade, no matter how preferable the outcome.

You’ve read this far. We appreciate that. It shows you’re interested
in this issue beyond the low-brow sensationalism of wanting to see
two good friends get into an arguement and square off in a playground
after school.

Don’t stop now. What follows is a small selection of food for thought
that if digested critically, may help at least sober up some of
y’all who’ve been getting drunk on the excitement of seeing your
punk-heroes "taken seriously" by the establishment media.

No one’s got all the answers. Certainly we don’t. But we offer
these perspectives in the meantime. Read on, sisters and brothers.
Read on.

George
Soros, Imperial Wizard Heather Coffin (scroll down on this
one)

If
John Kerry is the Answer, What is the Question? William
Blum

Anyone but Morningstar, Perry
and Beers Laura Flanders

Bush
or Kerry? John Pilger

Money
& Elections Charles Lewis

A
Brief History of the Democrats Mickey Z

Democratic
Party? Don Fitz

Presidential Candidates: Compared
to What? Norman Solomon

Sincerely,

Propagandhi

March 15th/ 2004

Remember last month when my fine feathered friend Mr. Todd Kowalski
informed you that we had recorded a song for the upcoming "Rock
Against Bush" comp coming out on Fat Wreck Chords? Yes,
that’s the one. You have an excellent memory.

Well, guess which band got booted from it because they refused
to remove a pot-shot aimed at international billionaire, global
financier, war-profiteer and all-around asswipe George Soros
from their liner notes? No, it wasn’t Good Charlotte. Good guess
though. Try again.

That’s right, it was us!

Next time someone comes knocking on our door hawking the virtues
of joining a unified front against something, we’ll be sure to ask
them this: unity on whose terms? At what cost?

This message not brought to you by George Soros.

March 9th/ 2004

Join Us in Winnipeg as Part of a NATIONAL DAY of PROTEST in Solidarity
With Mohamed Cherfi!

(Similar events are being organized in Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa,
Toronto, and Vancouver.)

TUESDAY, MARCH 9th, 4-6PM at IMMIGRATION & REFUGEE BOARD of
CANADA 391 York Avenue (Downtown Winnipeg) BRING BANNERS, PLACARDS
& NOISE-MAKERS!

BRING MOHAMED CHERFI HOME! Solidarity With Canada’s Non-Status
Algerians

Mohamed Cherfi was arrested in Quebec City this past Friday (March
5th, 2004). Mohamed had been in sanctuary inside the Saint-Pierre
United Church, on the invitation of the church’s pastor, the
Reverend Gerald Dore. This is the first time that Canadian police
or immigration officers have violated the centuries old tradition
of sanctuary.

According to eyewitness reports in Quebec City, at least 15 police
officers from the City of Quebec broke into the church at approximately
12:45pm to arrest Mohamed. The police claimed to have an arrest
warrant for Mohamed on a breach of a previous condtion of release
which apparently stipulated that Mohamed reside at the same address
in Montreal. Mohamed had taken sanctuary inside the church on February
18th in order to avoid an eventual deportation to Algeria where
he faces almost certain persecution.

Mohamed has since been deported to the United States where he is
in detention at the Battavia Detention Centre outside Buffalo, NY,
awaiting deportation to Algeria.

Mohamed has been an active member of the Action Committee of Non-Status
Algerians in Montreal. He has resided in Canada for close to seven
years, speaks fluent French, and has been a tireless advocate on
behalf of non-status refugees in Canada. He has helped hundreds
of non-status Algerians gain status in Canada, but he himself has
been targeted for removal due to his outspoken advocacy. Mohamed
has previously been arrested three times for his participation at
sit-ins and pickets.

Please call/fax the Ministers below and demand Mohamed be brought
back to Canada! Demand he be Granted Landed Immigrant Status!

The Solidarity Committee for Mohamed Cherfi (Quebec City), and Pastor
Gerald Dore (of the Saint-Pierre United Church) have both denounced
the summary arrest, kidnapping, and deportation of Mohamed Cherfi,
Algerian refugee and Quebec resident. The arrest breaks a long-standing
secular and ethical tradition of the right of sanctuary, the first
time such an outrage has occurred in Canada.

“The United Church, on whose ground Mohamed Cherfi had taken
refuge, considers it a moral duty to offer asylum to any person
whose life is in danger, if the state does not fulfill its responsibilities,”
said Pastor Dore.

Only a political decision could have prompted such a police intervention,
and such an undeniable miscarriage of justice on the part of the
authorities of Quebec and Canada. A warrant for arrest was issued
by the Municipal Court of Montreal, under the absurd pretext that
in taking sanctuary, Cherfi had changed his address without informing
the authorities! This warrant was then withdrawn immediately upon
Cherfi’s arrest and deportation. Cherfi was never given an
opportunity to defend himself in a court of law. It is clear that
his arrest, far from an “ordinary” police operation, is
an abuse of the rule of law, orchestrated by high-level officials
in order to silence a strong, outspoken, effective, and committed
defender of human rights.

If you are also outraged by the violation of sanctuary at the Saint-Pierre
United Church, we encourage you to express your outrage, politely
but firmly, to the following government ministers:

Anne McLellan (Minister of Public Safety & Emergency Preparedness)
Fax: (613)990-9077, Tel: (613)991-2924, McClellan.A@parl.gc.ca

Judy Sgro (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) Fax: (613) 947-8319
Tel: (613) 992-7774, Minister@cic.gc.ca

Michelle Courchesne (Minister of Quebec Immigration) Phone: (418)
644-2128 Fax: (418) 528-0829

A Solidarity Committee for Mohamed Cherfi is active in Quebec City.
They can be reached at: Tel: (418) 262-0144 E-mail: solimo2004@yahoo.fr
Website: www.mohamed.levillage.org

ORGANIZED BY: No One is Illegal - Winnipeg Contact: noii@a-zone.org
or 204-942-6994 (A-Zone)

February 23rd/ 2004

Hats off to Nader for having the nerve to run as an independent in the otherwise defacto corporate dictatorship also known as the U.S. presidency.

Shame on anyone, especially the “liberal intelligentsia” (Nader’s wonderfully candid words) who discourages *anybody* from rocking the boring, stupid, rich-man’s duopolist boat. The arrogance and hypocrisy of “Democrats” who lament Nader’s run for presidency as a “spoiler” is palpable. Clearly, they do not understand, let alone believe in, the meaning of the word “democracy”.

You can check out Ralph Nader’s reasons for running on his website: votenader.org Of particular interest is the FAQ under “Why Ralph?”. Check it dawgs.

On a darker note, there’s an article about a recently leaked Pentagon study on the ideas page that Jordy-Boy located in The Observer, a UK-based newspaper. Predictably, North American media has not yet found this horrifying report to be newsworthy.

Understandable, of course. After all, it’s only the fate of life on earth that hangs in the balance. Oh, well.

(chris)

February 3rd/ 2004

So here we are in 2004. There are two anniversary’s marked by this year that should not go unrecognized.

One is the anniversary of Leonard Peltier’s 28th year as a political prisoner in the penitentiary system of the United States. Amnesty International has been calling for his “immediate and unconditional release” for years now. Of course, he still sits in prison as an example to other native North Americans not to challenge the legitimacy of the state imposed upon this continent’s original inhabitants. You can read Leonard’s annual statement and learn about his case here.

The other is the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide. A web-site called Remembering Rwanda whose objectives are to commemorate and preserve the memory of this internationally ignored and preventable human catastrophe through public education.

Check it, yo.

P.S. anyone in the city of Winnipeg on Wednesday, February 4th may want to head down to Mondragon (91 Albert St) at 7:00 pm to hear a first-hand account of the situation in Occupied Iraq by David Pankratz, an aid worker and peace activist who returned in December after 6 months in Iraq with the Mennonite Central Committee providing humanitarian assistance.

(chrissy)

January 31st/ 2004

Hello, Doofus’!

A new month, a mere 32 days after my pop came to visit he’s struck off for home and I’m getting down to doing some recording here at my house…

Oh, wait I was wrong he’s still here..haha…wa.

Well, in the last month I have certainly been called a “doofus” more than usual. I have also never been better informed about a guys moment to moment activities, I’ve been updated about every 5 minutes.. “Hey look, I’ve put this paper clip over here now..” ” Hey look I’ve moved the pickles to the other side of the fridge”.. “Hey man, I’ve picked this piece of lint off the carpet, come and see how cool it looks now..”

Me and Chris (or Chris and I, for you scholarly doofus’) took the little man out for a very strange night of blues at the “Windsor Hotel”. Can anybody tame the crazy little freak? haha.. Jeezuz!

Oher than that we have been playing our instruments like crazy and we are marching onward towards our goals! We have high hopes and extreme visions this time! Success or death! See ya!

Le Rod.

January 12th/ 2004

A New Year Message from Todd the Rod (who takes full responsiblity for any comments regarding 33 year old Regals)

Happy New Year, Everydork!

I hope all is going smooth for you so far in 2004!

Over here we have big, big plans! We are bringing down the basement with new tunes. We just recorded a song for a Fat comp called “Free John Hinckley” who is, of course, the guy who shot Reagan. Haha… devilish, devilish! The song is a revamped improved version of “Bullshit Politicians”. I like it a lot better. We hope to record our next record in spring. Then we shall go on tour and whatever else it is that we do.

Right now I got my old Pops staying with me at my house for 2 weeks. All is going well, except for him pouring beer down my pants today as well as screaming, swearing,whimpering,moaning, snoring and coughing every night in his sleep. For a while it is terrifying but soon is a good indication he is still “in the zone” hahaha. He is being a good boy and making sure to put his “couch diaper” down before he sits down and leaves funny stinks.haha.. I must say it’s pretty funny over here right now. If he hits his head one more time we’ll have to lower his I.Q…. again! Despite all this the guy is a formidable force in the world of carpentry and electricity… When we go up in flames remember to mention at the funeral it wasn’t arson, we were in the middle of skirmish!

If any of you get the “Life Network” check out a show called “Crisis Zone”. It is a good window into the realities of life in some places. They follow people who work for “Doctors Without Borders” on their journeys. I find this show truly heartbreaking.

Check out www.worldhumanrights.com and the links that go all over the world. Any country you want to know about links to this. I find it really dudelike.

Alright, see ya! I have answered about 10 zillion emails and am crosseyed so I am on my way back whence I came, the land of Tools.

p.s. Propagandhi friend Sam Miller managed to pull himself away from his Transformers long enough to find himself a girlfriend on the net! I must congratulate him for that. Remember kids (girl and boy) love awaits you. Even old Propagandh roadie, inspiration and former singer for Corpus Vile, Derek Riel, found love at the age of 33 and has a beautiful christmas tree with an angel on it and his very own stocking!

December 3rd/
2003

OK people. I’ve went back to the drawing board on yesterdays update.(space)(capital
H)ahaha. Today I will take the timmy to use semi-correct speeling
and punchewshun.

So, like I was saying. Check out CBC’s new December television line
up. Starting with the unbeatable "Degrassi,the Next Generation"
and "Hot Type".

This months guests on "Hot Type" are tailored right to
my own viewing interests. First of all we have General Romeo Dallaire,
who was the general in the Canadian army during the 1994 Rwandan
genocide. They talk about his experiences in Rwanda and about his
new book "Shake Hands With The Devil". The interview was
played on Tuesday, and will air again on Sunday. It is a very intense
interview. I believe this guy to be a really direct and caring person.
His book is extremely good and should be read by everyone. Of course
there is some army crap talk that has to be edured for a moment
or two, but all in all it’s amazing. This genocide is in my opinion
one of the most horrific things the world has ever seen and General
Dallaire get’s right to the heart of it. In fact the co-author of
the book committed suicide while helping write the book, and general
Dallaire also attempted to kill himself. Heavy heavy reading.

Next week some old guy named "Norm Chumski" is on. Whoever
the hell that is. Some linguistics and political scientist geek.

Later in the month is Robert Kaplan, who wrote the amazing book
"The Ends of the Earth" in which he travels from Liberia
to Cambodia talking about the history and politics of each place.
I will warn you however, this guy has also wrote a bunch of books
that are worth checking out to see a different way of looking at
things but are not recommended philosphy in my opinion. I also think
he may say some absurd things in the interview. I’m glad I read
"The ends of the Earth" before his face started farting.
haha…

O.K.!!! What else??? We’re practicing very hard. The songs are going
really good. The next record will be the best one for sure! I hope
to have three of my tunes completed by Christmas. We want to record
in spring. Then we shall go on tour again!

O.k. Ho, Ho, Ho !!!

See ya Dorkshuns….

Le Rod.

November 14th/
2003

Yo, Winnipeg goofs, check it:

Alternative Radio with David Barsamian
Saturday, November 22nd 2003 – 7:30 PM till 11:30pm
West End Cultural Center

An Evening of Marginalised Information about the Worlds of
Bio-Tech, Nano-Tech, and Corporate Concentration

The West End Cultural Center, DWD Productions and CKUW are pleased
to bring Winnipeg a live recording of the internationally syndicated
radio program Alternative Radio with host David Barsamian and special
guest Pat Roy Mooney. The evening will also feature a talk by Mr.
Barsamian about Propaganda in the War on Iraq. Local radical hip
hop artist Gruff the Druid will also be on site.

Tix are $7 at Mondragon, fuckers.

November 8th/ 2003

Click here to watch The
Meatrix and free your mind.

November 11th/ 2003

Lest We Forget (by Paul Burrows)

This Remembrance Day, let us remember Canadians
who fought and died during the two World Wars and the Korean War.
Let us also remember those of other nations (Germans, Russians,
Japanese, Koreans and many others) who fought and died as our allies,
or our enemies.

Let us also remember that those who fought and died on both sides
were primarily working people, whether volunteers or conscripts.
They were not members of the privileged elites, whose class and
corporate interests (rather than their country’s alleged national
interests) sparked the wars in the first place.

Let us also remember those who fought against injustice without
the support of the Canadian government. Let us honour the brave
individuals (and entire brigades like Mackenzie-Papineau) who went
to Spain in the 1930s to defend the republic and revolution from
fascism. Let us not forget that these veterans of the Spanish War
fought and died despite our government’s threat to imprison
them upon their return.

Let us also remember those who refused to fight for unjust causes
and were called “cowards.” Let us for once acknowledge
their bravery — for standing alone with their principles, in
the face of ridicule, persecution, imprisonment, harassment, threats,
or violence from their own friends or family, from their own community,
or from the institutions of the Canadian state.

Let us also remember the combatants and civilian victims of a whole
host of other wars past and present — wars in which Canada
may or may not have sent soldiers, but Canadian arms manufacturers
made (and continue to make) huge profits through the sale of weapons.

Let us remember those who continue to fight and die resisting brutal
dictatorships — regardless of whether Canadian politicians
and our “free press” consider these dictators to be “enemies“
or ”allies.” Let us speak out against the exploitative
and repressive measures of these dictators, even while our government
helps to prop them up with money and military hardware. Let us honour
the dissidents who struggle to change these societies by any means
necessary. And let us honour, support and join those in our own
societies who work in solidarity with oppressed people the world
over.

And most of all, let us remember that one day a year is not enough.
The meaning of Remembrance Day is greatly diminished, even trivial,
if it is confined to wearing a plastic poppy every November. It
is meaningless if it is patriotic, as if our empathy and allegiance
should stop at a border that was itself constructed by conquest
and war.

Remembrance Day is also meaningless if it remains disconnected from
today’s struggles for peace and a better future, both at home
and abroad. The struggle to end war is literally the same as the
ongoing struggle to democratize our own country, to shift resources
from military to social spending, and to wrest control of our communities
and workplaces from corporations and private power. In Canada, we
must first acknowledge — and pay reparations for — historical
and ongoing crimes against First Nations peoples, and we must first
acknowledge — and completely reverse — our unsavoury,
immoral and profiteering role in foreign affairs, before we can
proudly (or accurately) claim to be a force for peace, freedom,
democracy or justice in the world.

This Remembrance Day, open your eyes and hearts to the ongoing,
daily, systemic class war against the poor in this country. Open
your heart to the fact that poverty is a form of violence (suffered
daily by thousands of Canadians), and we live under an economic
system that requires unemployment and poverty, in order to keep
wages low and private profits high.

Remember also the ongoing genocide committed against the Lubicon
Cree in Alberta and the Anishnaabe of Grassy Narrows (sadly, not
aberrations), as well as the daily racism and injustice faced by
First Nations peoples across the land. Remember, and stand in solidarity
with those who resist exploitation, torture, injustice, as well
as foreign aggression or intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, East
Timor, Haiti, Palestine, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Sierra Leone,
Zaire, Somalia, Burma, the former Soviet Union, Tibet, Sri Lanka,
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and on and on and on. Remember all these
struggles, at home and abroad, and work to change the structures
of power in your own community and country which give rise to war
and injustice in the first place.

This Remembrance Day, mourn your dead, and commemorate your fallen
heroes. But most of all, work for positive social change. Question
the pronouncements and rhetoric of your so-called “leaders.”
Become an activist for peace. Speak out against the racist attacks
upon — and racial “profiling” of — people of
colour in the wake of September 11. Join the fight against the wholesale
and racist deportation of Palestinians and other Arabs that is occurring
as we speak — merely the latest in a long line of shameful
bigotry and collective punishment in Canadian history, going back
to the so-called “reservation system” (which inspired
Apartheid), through the expulsion of the Acadians, to the internment
of the Japanese, and the closing of our borders to Jews fleeing
Nazi terror.

This Remembrance Day let us for once affirm that “No One is
Illegal!” This Remembrance Day, let us resist the criminalization
of dissent, and the attack on civil liberties in the name of a very
false security. This Remembrance Day, let us oppose the wars that
are now being waged, rather than simply buying a poppy to show how
mournful we are, while we fall in line behind the expanding American
Empire.

Oppose Canada’s ongoing intervention in Afghanistan, and any
Canadian participation in the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. Fight
to end these and every other unjust war! Anything else is hypocrisy.
Anything else is not only immoral, but also sows the seeds of future
terrorism. Anything else is lip service.

October 21st/ 2003

10 days until halloween! I’m pretty excited because it’s the one
day out the whole year that people don’t ask me why i’m wearing
a horrifying mask.

Check out the ideas page for additional, real-life horror parading
around in an uncle sam costume.

People in or around Winnipeg in the next month or so may be interested
in dis:

PEACE, PROPAGANDA AND THE PROMISED LAND

5 documentaries on Israelis and Palestinians

Presented by Jews for Just Peace- Winnipeg

Thursday, October 16, 7:30pm

Palestine is Still the Issue
By John Pilger (2002, 100 min,
UK)
University of Winnipeg (Room 4M31, 4th floor of Manitoba Hall)
Journalist John Pilger intersperses
analysis of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with interviews, ranging
from the father of a 14-year-old Israeli girl killed by a suicide
bomber to the senior advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister to a
Palestinian mother refused entry to Israel while giving birth. This
ambitious film serves as an answer to the fundamental question,
"What is the Occupation?"

Thursday, October 30, 7:30pm

Promises
By Justine
Shapiro, B.Z. Goldberg and Carlos Bolado (2002, 106 min, Israel)
University of Winnipeg (Room 4M31, 4th floor of Manitoba Hall) Promises
delves into the lives of seven Israeli and Palestinian children,
all living within 20 minutes of each other, but worlds apart. The
children talk about politics, religion, sports, family and life
before the filmmakers pose the question: Would you like to meet
kids from the "other side?" When these two groups meet
up, Promises becomes a powerful testimony to the innate human ability
to connect, in a region where so many people have failed to do so.

Thursday, November 13, 7:30pm

Palestinian Diaries
By Nazeh Adel Darwazeh,
Suher Ismael and Abdel Salam Shihada (1991, 60 min, Palestine) University
of Winnipeg (Room 4M31, 4th floor of Manitoba Hall) In 1990, an
international team supplied training and video cameras to three
young Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. These are their
stories. Footage includes a wedding engagement, a Palestinian day
care centre and interviews, particularly about the devastating curfews
imposed by the occupying army. Making no attempt to censor the anger
of the Palestinian people, Palestinian Diaries offers "a tiny
glimpse" of the Middle East conflict from a point of view rarely
seen in Western media.

The Right to a Home and Homeland
By Amir
Terkel (2002, 20 min, Israel) A refreshing look at the courageous
work of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, in co-operation
with Palestinian and International volunteers. All funds raised
this evening will go to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.

Thursday, November 27, 7:30pm

The Road to Rabin Square
By Michael Karpin (1997, 94 min, Israel) University of Winnipeg
(Room 4M31, 4th floor of Manitoba Hall) In 1993, Yitzhak Rabin and
Yasser Arafat made history when they shook hands on the White House
lawn. In 1995, Rabin was assassinated. By 2000, with the start of
the second Intifada, the Oslo peace process was over, taken by many
as proof that "The Palestinians don’t want peace," a false
and dangerous conclusion. The Road to Rabin Square traces the interlocking
roles of religious fundamentalists, Israeli West Bank settlers and
top political leaders from the Likud party in inciting the hatred
that led to Rabin’s assassination.

Thursday, December 11, 7:30pm

Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land:
American Media and the Subversion of Peace
(2003, 80 min, United States) Asper Jewish Community Campus, 123
Doncaster Street (Multi Purpose Room) Canadian Premiere This pivotal
video exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political
elites- working together with Israeli public relations strategies-
exercise a powerful influence over news reporting about the Middle
East conflict. Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land provides
a historical overview, insight into the nature of the Occupation
and examines factors that have distorted North American media coverage
and, in turn, public opinion. Features interviews with Noam Chomsky,
Hanan Ashwari, Robert Fisk, Rabbi Michael Lerner and Rabbi Arik
Ascherman, among others.

Admission to all films is free. Donations accepted.
All films will be followed by a discussion period. For more information,
call Louise Waldman, 772-9877

September 25th/ 2003

A sad day. We join in the mourning of the passing of Edward
Said.

Some words from Ali Abunimah:

"Edward Said was a fountain of humanity, compassion, intellectual
restlessness and creativity. At a time when the crude calculus of
raw power and fanaticism threatens to swamp global discourse, his
irreplaceable voice never needed to be heard more.

The most fitting tribute to Professor Said’s life and work is to
struggle with increased commitment for the vision of justice and
humanity that inspired all of his efforts."

I should also mention last week’s passing of local activist/colorful
character Ken Emberley. He was a passionate, vocal elder
of social justice here in Winnipeg and we can all only hope to be
as earnest and involved in activism as Ken was when we get older.

September 18th/ 2003

Hi fuckers. Fuck, have we been rocking hard in the basement, fuck.
We are going to destroy your heads with power and depth when our
new record is recorded next year. We’ll probably be charged with
multiple counts of manslaughter when these songs get released.

Hey, Todd the Rod was working security at a Bombers game here in
Winnipeg recently and the crowd was chanting "Nice facial hair,
you ass!" at him. Finally, someone had the guts to say it.

On a much more serious note and in the spirit of Fuck the Border,
please keep reading. A guy’s life is at stake.

NO ONE IS ILLEGAL!
STOP THE DEPORTATION OF AMMAR KHATIB

"Canada is party to the United Nations Convention against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
Under Article 3, no person may be returned to another State where
there are substantial grounds for believing he would be in danger
of being subjected to torture."
— Amnesty International Canada.

Ammar’s Story

Ammar’s family fled to Jordan and then to Saudi Arabia when
he was four years old to avoid persecution and death at the hands
of the Syrian Government. He has lived there for twenty years. He
was visiting the United States and without his parents’ knowledge
decided to come to Canada and seek asylum. He had heard that Canada
was a great country, was a beacon of hope for the hopeless. You
see, even though he was living in Saudi Arabia for 20 years, he
was not entitled to be a citizen of that country and so was not
entitled to the rights that Saudi citizens enjoyed. He wanted to
further his education. He walked to the Canadian border and surrendered
his passport and asked for refugee status. While his claim was being
processed, he lost his resident (not citizen) status to Saudi Arabia.
His refugee claim was denied. He appealed and decided to surprise
his boyhood friends who had settled in Winnipeg, with a visit. He
boarded a bus from Vancouver and made the long trek to Winnipeg.
For full details of his story, please read Lesley Hughes’ article
at:
www.islamicchamber.ca/article.jpg

Ammar has now become a man without a country. The Canadian government
wants to deport him to Syria on Monday, Sept. 15. If he goes there,
then we may as well have a funeral for him before he leaves. They
had given him an extension from his first deportation order date
(August 11) in order to find a country that he could stay while
his wife sponsored him. However, in order to get into a country,
he had to first get a visa from his country of birth – Syria.
The Immigration Officer does not believe that he will face torture
resulting in his demise if he is returned to Syria. Amnesty International
disagrees and has many cases on files:
www.web.amnesty.org/library/eng-syr/index

Syrian-Arab Republic

Scores of people were arrested during the year for political reasons,
including Syrian exiles who had voluntarily returned and others
suspected of membership of unauthorized political groups. There
was an increase in the repression of human rights defenders and
lawyers. Hundreds of political prisoners remained in prolonged detention
without trial or following sentences imposed after unfair trials.
Some were ill but were still held in harsh conditions. Ten prisoners
of conscience were sentenced to up to 10 years’ imprisonment after
unfair trials before the Supreme State Security Court (SSSC) or
the Criminal Court. For more info, www.web.amnesty.org/library/eng-syr/index

Who is a Refugee?

More than 140 governments have now signed the 1951 UN Convention
relating to the Status of Refugees (the Refugee Convention). This
Convention includes an internationally agreed definition of who
is a refugee. A refugee is a person who is outside her country of
origin and genuinely risks serious human rights abuses because of
who he/she is or what he/she believes. She cannot or will not return
because her government cannot or will not protect her.

Because of the persecution he/she would face, a refugee is entitled
to be protected against forcible return to his/her country of origin.

Even if he/she is not a refugee, Amnesty International (AI) would
also oppose the forcible return of anyone to a country where he/she
can reasonably be expected to be in danger of torture, execution
or "disappearance." Likewise, Amnesty International opposes
return to a country where a person faces the death penalty.

Is the Canadian Government Heartless?

Why can’t the Minister of Immigration issue a Ministerial Order
permitting Ammar to stay based on humanitarian and compassionate
grounds? Many lives are devastated by their decision: his young
wife, her parents, his parents and siblings, and all of his friends
here in Canada who have come to love and treasure him. He is a role
model for the youth and sending him to Syria to satisfy some bureaucratic
process is a reprehensible act.
One wonders: would an exception be made in his case, if he were
not Muslim? Is Canada a sovereign nation or the "new state"
of our next door neighbours?

Urgent Action Requested

Obtain the name and full contact information of your Member of Parliament
by calling (613) 992-4793, or by typing your postal code here.

Contact your local MP to convey your concerns. Ask him/her to contact
the Minister of Immigration to issue a ministerial order on humanitarian
and compassionate grounds to prevent the deportation of Ammar Khatib
who faces torture and possibly death should he be forced to leave
Canada for Syria.

September 8th/ 2003

"When they look at the forest,
all they see is money"

For anyone who was at the Grassy
Narrows Blockade benefit we played here in Winnipeg a little
while back, here is a picture of what Abitibi Consolidated
(a giant logging company) has done to the boreal forest in Northwestern
Ontario that the Anishinaabe (an aboriginal people here in
Canada) have traditionally depended on for survival since long before
Europeans arrived on this continent…

(photo: schled)

July 8th/2003

1. Tickets to the Grassy Narrows Blockade/ Palestinian Solidarity
shows next week are gone. If you snoozed, you losed. Rumour is there
will be some at the door at the Zoo. Beats me. I just work here.

2. Susan Sarandon, whose stolen costume-jewerly was found in a
3rd floor Royal Albert Hotel room along with a decapitated/dismembered
body here in Winnipeg last week, walked into Mondragon today and
bought a Propagandhi shirt. There is only one rational conclusion
to be drawn from this: Kowalski is a murderer.

July 7th/ 2003

Hahahahahaha!

What would summer be without some dough-head politician getting
pied in the fat fucking face?

Check out this picture of A