Beatnik Holiday Special

Bob Dylan & Allen Ginsberg - Vomit Express

You can take an ancient vacation

America By Allen Ginsberg With Music By Tom Waits

Spoken word excerpt of the poem "BOMB" by Gregory Corso, animated by Shannon Larratt of Zentastic.com

A Supermarket in California - 1956

Read in 2009.

Beat generation poet Gregory Corso reads his classic poem "Marriage" from his book, The Happy Birthday of Death, first published in 1960.

CIA Dope Calypso

by Allen Ginsberg
January 1972

In nineteen hundred forty-nine
China was won by Mao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai Shek's army ran away
They were waiting there in Thailand yesterday

Supported by the CIA

Pushing junk down Thailand way

First they stole from the Meo Tribes
Up in the hills they started taking bribes
Then they sent their soldiers up to Shan
Collecting opium to send to The Man

Pushing junk in Bangkok yesterday
Supported by the CIA

Brought their jam on mule trains down
To Chiang Mai that's a railroad town
Sold it next to the police chief's brain
He took it to town on the choochoo train
Trafficking dope to Bangkok all day
Supported by the CIA

The policeman's name was Mr. Phao
He peddled dope grand scale and how
Chief of border customs paid
By Central Intelligence's U.S. aid

The whole operation, Newspapers say
Supported by the CIA

He got so sloppy and peddled so loose
He busted himself and cooked his own goose
Took the reward for the opium load
Seizing his own haul which same he resold

Big time pusher for a decade turned grey
Working for the CIA

Touby Lyfong he worked for the French
A big fat man liked to dine & wench
Prince of the Meos he grew black mud
Till opium flowed through the land like a flood

Communists came and chased the French away
So Touby took a job with the CIA

The whole operation fell in to chaos
Till U.S. intelligence came in to Laos

Mary Azarian/Matt Wuerker I'll tell you no lie I'm a true American
Our big pusher there was Phoumi Nosavan

All them Princes in a power play
But Phoumi was the man for the CIA

And his best friend General Vang Pao
Ran the Meo army like a sacred cow
Helicopter smugglers filled Long Cheng's bars
In Xieng Quang province on the Plain of Jars

It started in secret they were fighting yesterday
Clandestine secret army of the CIA

All through the Sixties the dope flew free
Thru Tan Son Nhut Saigon to Marshall Ky
Air America followed through
Transporting comfiture for President Thieu

All these Dealers were decades and yesterday
The Indochinese mob of the U.S. CIA

Operation Haylift Offisir Wm Colby
Saw Marshall Ky fly opium Mr. Mustard told me
Indochina desk he was Chief of Dirty Tricks
"Hitch-hiking" with dope pushers was how he got his fix

Subsidizing the traffickers to drive the Reds away
Till Colby was the head of the CIA

US Schools Trail World In Child Soldier Aptitude

Humor from The Onion: A shocking new study finds U.S. children lag far behind their international peers in subjects like rifle assembly and mine defusing.

Mad Lucas

A dream sequence by Derek Norman with "Mad Lucas" by the Breeders.

Waiting for Superrich-Man

“So who’s the greedy one here? The unemployed, who have not failed to notice their unemployment check is larger than the paycheck they would get if they took a job? Or the rich, who want to take the money the government does not seize and put it into the economy where it will magically produce a job, for someone who will get off the couch and take it?”

Fox News commentator John Gibson, in the passage taken from his blog above, frames billionaires as superheroes, as those who will save us from this recession, who will – as we heard repeated ad nasuem in the last few weeks – create jobs for the unemployed, and kick start our economy by investing in America. They are the ones who take the risks, who have the insight, ingenuity, talent and discipline to make America exceptional, and thus, the billionaires will lead us to a better, more prosperous country for all. And while the billionaires are our economic heroes, the victors of the free market, the government is the villain, an evil, Stalinist Robin Hood who steals from the deserving rich, and gives to the Maury Povich watching couch potato poor (See David Sirota’s Why the “Lazy Jobless” Myth Persists”).

And thus, the recent – and unsuccessful – “assault” on the wealthy was greeted by the Wealthy Whiner, the Rich Victim, the Penthouse Punk, fighting the evil, totalitarian government on behalf of the common man. The Penthouse Punk has been the symbol of the new, “counterculture” Republican Party amid the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

And what’s most frightening? Many in the middle and lower class are buying it. And like it or not, many in the American public – on both sides of the aisle – have come to side with Gibson, and see billionaires as our heroes in this economic disaster, and the government as our foe, demonstrating a dramatic shift in our values, and a serious danger to the public.

Hitler Liked Taxes!
Paul Krugman shines a spotlight on the “Angry Rich,” who see government regulation as tantamount to a Nazi takeover – literally. He tells us the story of billionaire, Wall Street magnate Stephen Schwarzman, who compared Obama’s proposal to close a tax loophole to the “the Nazi invasion of Poland.” And, as the New York Magazine article “The Wail of the 1%” points out, Schwarzman is not alone in playing Poland, as many of the rich on Wall Street who bankrupted the economy feel that they have been “mugged” by Obama’s modest government intervention.

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Simple Card Tricks For War

Ancient Human Metropolis Found in Africa

By Dan Eden for viewzone.

They have always been there. People noticed them before. But no one could remember who made them -- or why? Until just recently, no one even knew how many there were. Now they are everywhere -- thousands -- no, hundreds of thousands of them! And the story they tell is the most important story of humanity. But it's one we might not be prepared to hear.

Something amazing has been discovered in an area of South Africa, about 150 miles inland, west of the port of Maputo. It is the remains of a huge metropolis that measures, in conservative estimates, about 1500 square miles. It's part of an even larger community that is about 10,000 square miles and appears to have been constructed -- are you ready -- from 160,000 to 200,000 BCE!

The image [top of page] is a close-up view of just a few hundred meters of the landscape taken from google-earth. The region is somewhat remote and the "circles" have often been encountered by local farmers who assumed they were made by some indigenous people in the past. But, oddly, no one ever bothered to inquire about who could have made them or how old they were.

This changed when researcher and author, Michael Tellinger, teamed up with Johan Heine, a local fireman and pilot who had been looking at these ruins from his years flying over the region. Heine had the unique advantage to see the number and extent of these strange stone foundations and knew that their significance was not being appreciated.

"When Johan first introduced me to the ancient stone ruins of southern Africa, I had no idea of the incredible discoveries we would make in the year or two that followed. The photographs, artifacts and evidence we have accumulated points unquestionably to a lost and never-before-seen civilization that predates all others -- not by just a few hundred years, or a few thousand years... but many thousands of years. These discoveries are so staggering that they will not be easily digested by the mainstream historical and archaeological fraternity, as we have already experienced. It will require a complete paradigm shift in how we view our human history. " -- Tellinger

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