Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Middle East. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 04, 2015

US and THEM or Mykel's Post MRR Column 23

YOU'RE STILL WRONG
POST MRR COLUMNS
POST MRR COUMN 23

Mykel Divides the World
by Mykel Board



At one extreme, a person might step into a social identity and BE it. Another might step into the same one and surprise you because they struggle against it or play it down in light of their unique biography. --Michael Agar

Ah, finally, he's here... visiting from Morocco... my pal El Habib. We met in Agadir, a city on the North African coast. He's coming to New York. In Agadir, he took me all over the place... cooked for me... great guy. All he gets in return is my couch.

When he told me he was visiting in July, it hit.

Uh...” I profoundly start my email. “That's Ramadan. Isn't it going to be tough for you to hang out and not eat? In New York... in America... everything goes around eating and drinking... all day... every day. Ramadan? Most Americans think Ramadan is a city in India.”

He sends me back one of those laughing “stickers” that facebook uses to disgust readers.

I'm tired of Moroccan culture,” he says. “I'm tired of Islam. I'm sick and tired of the whole thing. Let's eat!”

What about drinking? Are you gonna drink alcohol?” I ask.

Mykel, I'm gonna get drunk with you!” He says.

There is no facebook sticker with a grin wide enough to react. I love drinking with Muslims as much as I like eating ham with Jews... and that's a lot.

The plane was due at 3:30. I figure it'll take an hour to get through immigration. They won't know he isn't celebrating Ramadan. Then, if he comes by subway, that'd be another hour. He should have rung my doorbell around 5:30... It's coming on seven... no sign of him.

BEEP BEEP... the doorbell!

I buzz him in... take the elevator downstairs to meet him.

He's there... in the lobby... with someone else... two someone elses... each with a huge backpack... and instruments... a large conga drum... animal skin, Senegalese style, a guitar, and bags... half a dozen of 'em... two as big as my stove. They're all staying here... in my tiny apartment. We squeeze into the elevator and I reach around to push the button.

My apartment is now so crowded I have walk ON suitcases to get from the couch to the bathroom. The drummer sets up the drum in the only 2 square foot open space. It's the table for their stay.

Hey guys,” I say. “I want the perfect photo. Mykel and 3 Arabs eating pork together. You up for it?”

They look at each other. I wonder if I went too far. [ASIDE: Actually, I NEVER wonder if I go too far.]

Mykel,” he says, “I guess you forgot. We're not Arabs. We're Amazighs. You might call us Berbers. We were in Africa BEFORE the Arabs... before the Muslims. We're the Indians of Morocco.”

Okay, Chief,” I say. “Let's you and me drink the peace pipe and eat some pork belly. And what happened to the word Berbers?

We don't really like it,” says El Habib. “It comes from Latin. From the Romans... You know Barbarians. Anyone not Roman was a Barbarian.”

I see,” I tell him. “It's like Goyim.”

He doesn't get it.

One of the guys... the guitar player... speaks up.

I donno, Mykel,” he says. “I am a Berber, but my name is Mohammed. Don't you think I should change it? How far will I get in America with a name like Mohammed?”

“You should call yourself Osama,” I tell him.

He elbows me in the chest.

He gets it.

We have plans to meet later that night at Bar 13 where El Habib will read poems of The Beats that he's translated into Arabic. He'll also read some poems he's written directly in English.

FLASH TO THE CLUB: We're at the door. Ready to go in and Rock the Casbah to Allen Ginsberg with guitar and drum backing.

The doorman, a huge black doorman-looking guy, sits on a stool outside the bar. We approach... Me in arm boots and black jeans. The Berbers in shorts, with Moroccan equivalents of yarmulkes.

Ok, fellas,” says the doorman. “I need to see your IDs.”

They stop... freeze. The color drains from their faces. They look at each other... then at me.

Habib whispers to me, “Is he speaking Amazigh?”

Somehow I doubt it,” I tell him. “Most doormen come from the Bronx, not the Sahara. Just show him your ID.”

I reach for my wallet. The three of them are somewhat panicked, conversing in Berber.

Is this the American way?” asks the guitar player.

This is America,” I tell him. “Everything is ID, ID, ID.”

It must have a different meaning in English,” he says, shaking his head. “Aidee in Berber... er... Amazigh... means penis.

I share this information with the doorman. He laughs.

He's right,” he tells the guitar player. “Everything in America is Aidee, Aidee, Aidee.”

Inside the bar, Habib greets the hostess.. a short Semitic-looking woman who hugs him on arrival.

This is Sarah, I met her at the Kerouac school,” Habib tells me. “We've stayed in touch ever since. She runs these poetry things here.”

Sarah turns to me, gives me a big hug... like I'm a family member.

I'm guessing you're a poet too,” she says to me.

I'm not exactly a poet,” I say, “but a lot of people consider me some kind of artist.”

Poet. Artist. It doesn't matter,” she says... exuding such a love of life... of enjoying every second... I nearly cum. “Any friend of Habib's is a friend of mine.”

Then she hugs me again. I cum.

FLASH TO TIMES SQUARE: There is a big black guy... Not very black... more bank clerk black than club bouncer black. He wears khaki pants, a gray t-shirt, black moccasins with no socks. In his left hand is a piece of thick white paper... oaktag. He holds it high. On it... written in thick marker... is:

JEWS FINANCED BLACK SLAVERY... GOOGLE IT!

At first I'm pissed off... then confused... wondering if FINANCED means something different in Negro than it means in English.

I know the history. Some Portuguese and a lot of Dutch-- through the Dutch East India Company-- funded most of the slave trade in the West. Some major backers of the D.E.I.C. were Jewish. That's who lent money to the corporation at the time.

BUT, the D.E.I.C. controlled the tea trade, the salt trade, the furniture trade. They were a TRADING company, for G-d's sake! Why not say THE DUTCH funded the slave trade? Or The Dutch East India Company funded the slave trade? My ancestors in Kiev had nothing to do with it.

FLASH TO AUSTIN TEXAS: I gotta take a piss. BEERLAND is living up to its name. Shiner Bock... almost makes up for G.W.B. Shiner's a great beer, but it does what beer does and I need to get rid of mine before the next round.

I stagger over to this very Texas-looking (blond, large and jiggly on top) girl. Brushing against her prominent-though-covered nipples I slur, “Air da mess oom?”

Excuse me?” she says, stepping back a bit.

Men's room?” I say forcing my mouth into proper linguistic position. “This is an emergency.”

She laughs. “This is Austin,” she says. “We don't do men's rooms.”

A trickle begins its decent down my leg.

FLASH TO THE NEWS: Austin has become the first city in America to legislate gender-free bathrooms. When you gotta go... you find a stall and go. That's it. No penis-bound division. Just go... just restrooms... just toilet... stand... sit... or hover... no one checks the danglies.

FLASH TO THE THEORETICAL: You probably get it by now. I'm writing about the way we divide up the world: us and them... Jews and goyim... Romans and Barbarians... gays and straights... men and women... trannies and cis-men. This division does not only come from our view of the world... it CREATES our view of the world.

Some Saudis and a couple of their buddies fly 747s into the World Trade Center. KAPLOW! Suddenly, they become ISLAMIC attackers. Not Saudis. How come?

Israel with several American Jewish volunteers kill thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. The attack was an ISRAELI attack, not a JEWISH attack. How come?

Homosexuals try to show scientific evidence they “are born that way.” What way? Every time a new sex or gender group defines itself, another letter gets added to the LBGTQ alphabet soup, expanding US, but not changing the whole view of US vs THEM.

I'm a Jew, a writer, a punk-rocker, a social libertarian, a contrarian, a pansexual, a short old bald guy with a bad hair transplant. No, that's wrong. I'm NOT a (fill in the blank). I DO (fill in the blank). I write. I shit. I fuck when I can, jerk off otherwise. I fast on Yom Kippur and don't eat bread on Passover.

I want to suggest a wee change to the paradigm... I mean a WE change. It's about how WE divide the world. It's about how WE see US and THEM. It's about how there is only US. THEM is a myth... an artificial arbitrary result of picking a few characteristics and using those to draw a line between US and THEM. It's about identity politics... where the politics should be about erasing identity.

Humanity is a hodgepodge of individual characteristics, tastes, genders, religions, skin colors. There is only US.

White Pride, Black Pride, Islamism, Jewish Nationhood... they're all dangerous divisions that come from dividing up the world in into US and THEM. Take down those MEN and WOMEN signs from the toilet world. Learn that THE JEWS (White People, Africans, Germans, The Arabs) didn't do anything-- good or bad. PEOPLE did things. And that's all the dividing we need.


ENDNOTES: [You can contact me by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available by subscribing to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]


-->Free means you don't pay dept: 11-year old Margaleet Katzenblickstein in Weston MA applied for a permit to hold a rally against the police murders of unarmed colored people. The police of that town said she needed to pay a hundred dollars (a couple hundred according to other reports) for the police presence at the demonstration.
Amazingly enough, the town declined the police request for cash and allowed her to hold the demonstration without charge... though I wouldn't want to be little Margaleet walking through the city on her own on a dark night. Look at what happened (6th arrest!) to the NY good citizen who filmed the police murder of Eric Garner.

-->Compassion trumps religion dept: This is the way it should be! Harman Singh, a Sikh student in Auckland New Zealand took off his turban (something forbidden by Sikh law) to aid a 5-year old who had been hit by a car. He tucked the turban under the child's head to help him ease the pain. That's the kind of US I've been talking about in this column.

-->Productive dept: Representative Steve La Tourette announced his retirement from congress by saying, “I'll go back and find something productive to do with my life... as opposed to the last eighteen years.”
Three days after that announcement, he joined a lobbying firm based in Washington DC.

-->It was on Fox News so it must be true dept: Thanks to D Keith Dobson Jr. for this Fox News Denver report: A Chinese man successfully sued his wife over “an extremely ugly baby girl.”
Jian Feng filed the lawsuit after his wife gave birth to the girl. Why did he win? Apparently Feng’s wife underwent more than $100,000 in cosmetic surgery before they met and never told him. He said she tricked him into thinking she was beautiful.
Feng sued on the grounds of false pretenses and a judge agreed with him. The judge also ordered Feng’s wife to pay him $120,000.
Since Fox News reported this, Snopes has investigated and found it to be complete fiction.
Fox, reporting fictional News? Who wudda thunk it?
My question: When will the viewers of FOX NEWS sue for being made stupid-- on the grounds of false pretenses?

-->Keeping the Pressure on Dept: I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a continuing Bring Back Mykel effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll for their firing me as their contribution to the world of censorship. Send your comments to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com (or post on their facebook page) with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL! Let me know how they answer.

-->And: I'm still on a massive clean-up/divest kick. I'm giving away DVDs, cassettes, VHS videos, CDs, posters, and a few 7-inch singles. Just pay separate shipping and handling. Details at: MykelsGiveaway

-end




Wednesday, September 03, 2014

TO BE or NOT TO BE or MAYBE TO BE Mykel Board's Post-MRR Column 13



TO BE or NOT TO BE or MAYBE TO BE


YOU'RE STILL WRONG
POST MRR COLUMNS
by Mykel Board

We will peer at wiggling things that look like rattlesnakes from one side and look much more like the middle of next week from a different but equally plausible angle of view. Those with tired or rigidly dogmatic minds will find these perceptual relativities distressing... You have had warning. Don't complain later if this seems like a bloody abattoir for you own favorite Sacred Cows and you get a bit uneasy about things that formerly looked simple and honest. --Robert Anton Wilson


Fuck, I'm late. They're gonna be pissed off at work. The Japanese are such sticklers that on-time is late. I'm hung over... I need to pour myself into my clothes and POW! out the door. Elevator downstairs... out the front door. My foot hits something slimy... gooey... slippery.... SSSSSSS.. TAKOOO! It slides from under me. For a second, I'm in the air... Peter Pan over Bleecker Street. TWATOOOM! I'm on the sidewalk... my ass a mass of coffee-colored pain... my hands aching and slimy. I look at them. They too are brown... palms covered in shit. Splashed onto my wrists, the sides of my pants. I slipped on dog ooze and landed in it palms first. The smell makes me gag.

FLASHBACK TO 1997: I don't have a cellphone. I won't be bullied into getting one for a couple years. But I need to make a call. In the 90s, there were things called COIN PHONES. The body of the phone was attached to a little stand. You picked up the receiver (a black piece of plastic with a speaker for your ear and one to catch your voice) and listened for something called a DIAL TONE. Once you heard the tone, you put some money-- usually a quarter-- into a slot at the top of the fixed part of the phone. Then you dialed the person you wanted to speak to. There must be an instructional video on YouTube someplace.

This time, though, the act of picking up the receiver, putting it next to my head... against my ear... and speaking into it is … well... there's something slimy on my ear, something squishy on my hand, something foul-tasting in front of my lips. You guessed it! It's covered in shit! This time I vomit... right into the receiver.

FLASH TO LAST WEEK: First class over, now! An intestine full of last night's Red Horse beer … Red, now brown... waiting to burst out... I can just about make it to the men's. Rip open my belt... unzip... now... now... NOW! BLLLAAAUUUUPPPP! A blast... a joyful noise... a liquid soup... a number three.... exploding from my rectum with such force it splashes the bowlful of water back up... mix of shit and bogwater coat my ass... drips from my balls... FFFFFRRRRT.. an aftershock... another ecstatic explosion. My God... the best feeling of the day... the week... the month... I'm pregnant... giving birth... releasing the universe inside. The best shit... uhhhh... wait.

Shit! Shit? Good or bad. Most evil of face filthers or most delicious of joys? Maybe it's neither... or both... or... And of this shit begins this column.

SHIFT TO A BOOK: Recommended to me by my jailbird friend Kyle, it's written by Robert Anton Wilson. He's best known for his conspiracy trilogy THE ILLUMINATUS... and his participation in lots of Libertarian events. It's the third part in another trilogy: the Trigger Books. The quote at the start of this column is from that book.

Wilson writes the entire book without using the verb TO BE (am, is, are, were, was etc) except when quoting someone else. The reason? He believes that TO BE stops thought. If I say, “It IS cold outside.” there is no room for discussion... only right or wrong. Disagreement becomes personal attack. A position is hard... fixed. Whereas if I say, “From my life experience, and in comparison to other temperatures I've observed, the weather seems colder than at other times.” I open the door to intelligent discussion and a world of possibility closed to the IS COLD absolutism.

If we only have IS, we can only counter with IS NOT. We're trained to make binary decisions. A or B. Hot or cold. Right or wrong. Good or bad. Mother Theresa or Adolf Hitler. The world isn't like that. There's a complicated range of possibilities... and they can be different depending on what side of the sphincter you're on.

Intellectually, that appeals to me. Stylistically, it sucks. I like the idea though, and will take a lesson... or two..., from it. Lesson one:

Take Israel... please.

The original idea of Israel was to make a socialist paradise-- a safe haven for any Jew under attack. It was supposed to be an example. A utopia... a lesson for the world on how to live... a place to go when the going gets rough (as it often does for Jews). That's a worthy cause.... a good cause. But there's been a lot of lead over the desert since then.

In the current war, thousands of Palestinians have been killed... fewer than a dozen Israelis-- all soldiers. A U.S. funded Iron Dome system protects Israel. It destroys in-coming rockets before they reach their target. Gaza has no such system... so they die from Israeli rockets. How can Israel excuse such a one-sided massacre? What's left to say... they WANT to die?

Yep, that's what they say. According to the Israelis, Palestinians hide the rockets in schools, hospitals, and apartment complexes. The Israelis warn them of coming attacks and the locals climb to the building tops to wave on the attackers. The fact that there are tens of thousands of refugees running from the war doesn't change this opinion. Running away or not-- they still WANT to be killed. How can people believe that? It's easy, because the opinion doesn't come from facts... it comes from viewpoint, from BEING.

I AM a Jew. Jews support Israel. First support Israel, then bend the facts to fit that support.

And what of those lefty Jews? Those who say I AM a liberal. The ones outraged by environmental degradation... refusing to shop at Walmart because the company pays slave wages... marching against climate change... what are their feelings on Israel? Support a massacre, an ethnic cleansing. They find their views are exactly the same as FOX NEWS... How do THEY feel when their liberal perspective suddenly turns conservative? When Glenn Beck visits Israel and wears a yarmulke? How do they choose between I AM a Jew and I AM a liberal?

Why support Israel just because you ARE a Jew? Jewdom has a myriad ways of expressing itself. It's a religion, a nationality, a culture. You don't have to believe in Israel any more than you have to believe God turned Sodomites into salt. You can start with some version of reality and THEN see if that leads to supporting or opposing the Jewish state. You can start with the moral action, rather than the rules you have to follow by BEING Jewish. Same, of course, with BEING a liberal.

Lesson two:

Or take feminism... double please.

The idea went through a myriad of changing. Starting (in the US) with an angry Carrie Nation's saloon smashing, morphing into a voting rights movement, now finding itself at war with transexuals. Calling the trannies bed wetters in bad wigs.

Like being pro-Israel, if you start out being feminist (in the 2014 sense), you see things in a completely different way from someone who is not feminist. Feminist Susan McClary, for example, writes that Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is about rape:

The point of recapitulation of the first movement of the Ninth is one of the most horrifying moments in music... which finally explodes in the throttling murderous rage of a rapist.”

Oh please! I hate Beethoven as much as the next guy. The music may be boring, but it ain't rape. From her feminist-first point of view, however, that's the reality.

Now we see lefty wars between feminists and trannies... and you can't even say “tranny” anymore. (NOTE: I AM Mykel Board. I can... and do... say what I want.) Fox News' Gavin McInnes was fired both from his Fox TV job and the ad agency he helped start. This for writing on the internet:

(Transsexuals)
are mentally ill gays who need help, and that help doesn’t include being maimed by physicians. These aren’t women trapped in a man’s body. They are nuts trapped in a crazy person’s body. I see them on the streets of New York. They are guys with tits and a sweatshirt. They wear jeans and New Balance. “What’s the matter with simply being a fag who wears makeup?” I think when I see them. You’re not a woman. You’re a tomboy at best. Get fucked in the ass. And ladies, if you’re a butch lesbian, you’re a lady with a lot of testosterone. Put a dick on a belt and fuck your girlfriend. You don’t need to turn your vagina inside out. You’re not a man.

Here we see rightist FOX-NEWS Gavin taking the same side as the radical feminists. But maybe he knows this and has decided not to BE a right-winger, but to SAY what he thinks is right. Fuck the requirements of TO BE ideology.

Of course I disagree with him... but NOT completely. I want to fight the binary.

Gavin says, “You ARE NOT a man?” Does that mean you ARE a woman? We're caught in the binary again, instead of the realm of infinite possibilities. Why are there only two choices? There aren't!

I know many transfolks are not gay. Half the guys who become women become lesbians. Is that gay? I don't know. But Gavin asks questions that go beyond the gonzo writing. Some transactivists want children “born in the wrong body” to be given hormones... starting as young as 8 years old. That way, they say, the kids can have a smoother transition.

WTF? eight-year olds cannot legally decide who to fuck. They're not allowed to fuck anyone, actually. Yet they can decide to take hormones leading to major surgery? Huh? When I was eight years old I wanted to be a cop... or maybe an astronaut. Kids-- all people-- change their minds. One false move as a kid and POW! you're on hormones! This thinking disappears when you get rid of the verb TO BE, at least when it comes to gender. Not I AM a girl or I want TO BE a boy... but

Johnny, you may be right and don't feel like you're a boy. That doesn't mean you're a girl. You don't have to be one or the other. You're JOHNNY! Different from everyone else. Okay?”

Of course I support the freedom to choose your gender... and the freedom to unchoose it. But if we stop looking at gender as something you ARE... instead just doing what feels good, we can kiss the hormones and the scalpels goodbye.

Here's where that copula-cutting works. If I say (and I used to) I AM a leftist does that mean I support Fox's censorship of Gavin McInnes? That's what leftists do. I don't. If I say I AM a Jew, do I have to support the Israeli genocide? That's what Jews do. I don't.

I've written before about homosexuality and how people DO homosexual... not ARE homosexual. Maybe it's time to rein in the BE... er... in my opinion, the time has arrived to rein in the BE... not to eliminate it, but to think a bit before using it.

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available by subscribing to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-->Full-disclosure dept: The coin phone episode is true... but it didn't happen to me. It happened to my friend Bianca... and was the reason she got a cell phone.

-->Had to happen department: An ALS fatality... some idiot decided to do the ice bucket one better. Jump in to a pool at the bottom of a cliff... a 100+ foot drop... plow... didn't make it. I guess he won't have a chance to challenge someone else.
Me? I was challenged and rejected the challenge... or tried to. At the bar we ordered 3 bucketfuls of Red Horse beer. I explained how I'd decided to refuse to be intimidated into supporting a rich charity where most of the money goes to the board of directors. My friends answered by holding me down, pouring the water and ice from all the buckets... over my head. Fortunately, they forgot to video the farce.

-->Just because it's in the Post doesn't mean it's wrong dept: The NY Post reports that private eyes have started using drones to spy both on cheating spouses, and people filing false disability claims. “The drones are a game changer,” says one of NY's private dicks.

-->Censorship is censorship dept: I'm not sure of the best way to support Gavin McInnes in his ouster from Fox and his ad company, Rooster. Try send emails of support to Fox and to the Rooster Ad Company complaining about the censorship.

-->Quote of the Month dept: President Obama is a member of a minority and as such I'm sure during his lifetime he has been prejudiced against... Now he's doing the exact same thing, talking about the top 1 percent as if there's something wrong with us. --Cypress Semiconductor CEO TJ Rodgers

-->Compassion, Swine and the 1%-- South Africa style dept: Thandi Modise, chairwoman of the S.A. National Council of Provinces, was paying workers on her pig farm sub-McDonalds wages. They walked off the job. Without attendants, the animals starved, became cannibals and drank their own piss. When the woman was confronted with the facts, she said, “The suffering the animals endured does not compare to the financial loss I suffered.”

-->More on the 1%-ers dept: 1%-er Michael Bloomberg's website Bloomberg.com reports that economists at the European Central Bank said that a new study shows the percent of earnings of the 1% is not 30% as usually stated, but 36%... and may be higher. Study author Philip Vermeulen said, “The results clearly indicate that surveys are very likely to underestimate wealth at the top.”

-->Keeping the Pressure on Dept: I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a Bring Back Mykel effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll. Send your comments-- to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL. Let me know how they answer.

-->And: I'm on a massive clean-up/divest kick. I'm giving away DVDs, cassettes, VHS videos, and a few CDs. Just pay separate shipping and handling. Details at: MykelsGiveaway


-end-










Saturday, September 28, 2013

Between Columns Mykel Solves the Syrian Crisis

Spending my free time:

An Inter-Column Post

by Mykel Board



I've got a weekend free before my journey to South America. Since I have some free time, and not much else to do, I figure I might as well use that time to solve the Syrian crisis. After hours of thinking, I present my solution:

Step 1: The U.N. Security Council gives New Jersey to the Syrian rebels. There are at least a hundred people of Syrian decent already living in the state, so it's a natural. The state is to be renamed NEW PHOENICIA.

Step 2: Anyone of Syrian descent will become an automatic citizen of New Phoenicia. I expect the population to initially increase from refugees avoiding the government gassings in Syria. But the state will act as a homeland for dissident Syrians everywhere.
 
Step 3: Because the surrounding 49 states have so much room. The American population of New Jersey will be encouraged to emigrate. We expect the other states to take them in quickly, though there is a possibility that there will be refugee camps on the borders. Those Americans who wish to stay in New Phonecia can do so, but they will not be allowed to serve in the NP army. Also, if they move out of NP, they will not be allowed to return. Only those of Syrian blood will be allowed to be new citizens of New Phonecia.

Step 4: There will be some time where Kuwait will have control over New Phoenicia. During this time, Syrian terrorists will blow up a few hotels and murder all residents of Secaucus. But this period will be short, and the Syrians soon will be allowed to rule themselves.

Step 5: After independence, Russia will donate billions in money and arms to keep New Phoenicia alive. It will be the largest receiver of Russian foreign aid. Syrians in Russia will keep putting pressure on the government to increase aid. They will point out that New Phoenicia is “the only democracy in North America.”

Step 6: We expect there might be some dissatisfaction with the new country by both the surrounding states, and residents of the former New Jersey. The latter will now be in other states, mostly in refugee camps. They may even attack the new country. Fear not: supplied with arms and money from outside, New Phoenicia will beat back the attackers, and expand it's territory, taking what is now Rockland County (called THE NORTH BANK) and Brooklyn (called the EAST BANK). They will settle those areas, forcing local people to become refugees or captives in their own counties, subject to starvation by the New Phoenicians. If humanitarian boats try to bring in food, they will be mounted by the New Phoenician army, and the food-deliverers shot.

Step 7: Residents of Rockland and Brooklyn, may attack the citizens of New Phoenicia, but, because of overwhelming technology, and a policy of YOU FIRE ONE ROCKET WE KILL A THOUSAND PEOPLE, the New Phoenician army will maintain control.

Step 8: The U.N. may decide to reconsider it's original plan for New Phoenicia. If they do, the New Phoenicians will accuse them of anti-Syrianism. This will justify the New Phoenician actions and insure the continued existence of that country.

SO, that's my plan. What do you think?

--Mykel




Monday, June 03, 2013

MRR Column for #361 (Lots of Lincolns)







 
 
 
You're Wrong

An Irregular Column

by Mykel Board
 
Originally from MRR #361, as it turns out, this will be my last column printed in MRR

"What we are facing is a conspiracy of sedition, division and destruction of our homeland." --Abraham Lincoln


It's brother against brother... looking at each other through gunsights. Terrible... just a dividing line in the dirt... puts... FIZZ! BING! A bullet enters his face, right at the right cheekbone. It tears a small hole as it enters-- like a large wart-- then it tears through the inside of the skull, coming out through the back of the head... a baseball-sized hole, brain spraying gray matter before the expression of surprise can leave the now-dead face.

“It's terrible. Terrible,” says the president. “The nation is torn apart, but we have no choice, if we're to preserve the union.”

Flash to Riverdale in the Bronx. I'm at dinner with friends-- at a friend's house: shrimp, macaroni with tuna, little pieces of herring with toothpicks stuck through them, flatbread with all kinds of toppings. There is a TV... bigger than my apartment... somehow fastened to the wall. On the TV smiles some dork in a Tuxedo.

Goddamn! It's the fuckin' Oscars. I was looking forward to missing the Oscars, like I miss the Superbowl, and Obama's inauguration. Like I've never seen ET or The Titanic. Like I can't tell Rihanna from Guyana. I live to be as divorced from popular culture as that soldier's brain is divorced from his head.

But here I am. Stuck like herring on a toothpick in front of Hollywood Hell in all it's stinking glitter. The guys on TV talk about some movies. Nothing I've seen, of course. I don't like movies with white people in them.

There's one about killing Osamu Bin Ladin, another about escaping from Iraq, one about a colored guy and slavery and one about Lincoln. War movies all... in their own way. I hate war movies.

I love gore movies. Severed heads and still-beating hearts. I love to watch guys screaming as their balls are ripped off. Gangster movies too: the Chinese mafia taking out a rival gang... fists and bullets. Pow! Pow! Achah! Achah!

But I hate war movies. They're too close to the real world. I don't need movies for what I get in the NY Times. Besides, they remind me of football.

And Lincoln wasn't only in movies about the world of 1860. He's in the real world of now. That soldier in the first paragraph wasn't from the Confederate Army. He was from Syria.

That quote at the beginning of this column? I lied.

It wasn't from Abraham Lincoln. It was from President Bashar al-Assad, of Syria. The two, however, are not much different.

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.” That is a REAL quote from Abe Lincoln.

I bet Assad would agree.

FLASH TO THE 1970s: Marshall Tito is my favorite Communist. He's the president of Yugoslavia and will be until 1980. He keeps the various ethnic and religious factions together... without war. Today you have Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Kosovco, and who-knows-what-the-fuckistan. Under Tito, there was only YUGOSLAVIA. He organized the fight against the Nazis. Everybody loves him. He keeps the new country together without war... only with charisma and statesmanship.

Tito is the guy who gives both Russia and the U.S. a big middle finger. Then goes off to make friends with Egypt and India. After he dies, there is chaos and half a dozen tiny fighting countries.

Are there other Lincolns? You bet! A dime a dozen. Saddam Hussein in Iraq, who kept the Shiites and Sunnis in check and created a unified whole from a melting pot of fractious groups. Also without war... until the Bushes invaded and there was chaos.

More? Mao Tse Tung was the Lincoln of China. The Tibetans, The Uigars. The Inner Mongols. They want to secede. Make their own countries. Seek their own destinies... the blue and the gray... It's a war that the current Chinese Lincolns continue to fight.

Vladimir Putin, the Lincoln of Russia, has been fighting the Chechnyan separatists since he took office. And there are more.

You get the idea. But what I want to focus on, with all this Lincoln hullabaloo, is why I wish the Confederacy had won the U.S. Civil War. Fuck Lincoln and his gold-plated Hollywood statues.

Imagine we have the USA and the CSA, a ragged border between the two... following the Mason-Dixon line... leaping upwards over Texas, and Oklahoma. Newer regions join the USA or CSA. California and Nevada stay independent.

The relatively small United States needs the relatively small Confederate States for its cotton, bourbon, tobacco and oil. The Confederate States needs the U.S. for manufactured goods and a few resources like salmon and lumber.

Occasionally, there are trade disputes. The South puts a tariff on paper from the North. The North has a quota... or high taxes... on tobacco and booze.

Slavery disappears in the Confederate States, like it did in the Caribbean, South Africa, and Brazil. The government will try to keep voting WHITES ONLY, and to maintain segregation. Like they did in the U.S. until the 1964 or South Africa until 1990.

World pressure will end all that, like it ended apartheid. By 1990, the world will celebrate the first Negro president of the Confederate States of America... probably before the first one up north in the U.S.A.

More importantly, because what is now the US is in (at least) two independent pieces, neither side develops the power the U.S. now has. The sides join forces for WWII because of Pearl Harbor. The rest of North America (Canada and Mexico) are anti-Axis as well.

Young Strom Thurmond, the 40-year president of C.S.A, threatens to withdrawal Confederate troops from the Pacific front if Truman goes ahead with his plan to drop a new fangled ATOMIC BOMB.

“I didn't want us to get into this war in the first place,” he says.

The bomb is never dropped. Japan surrenders anyway.

There is no Vietnam war. Although the U.S. wants to invade, the C.S.A wants no part in the invasion.

“We suffered our own invasion,” says C.S.A. president Strom Thurmond in 1966. “We don't want to be part of another one.”

After WWII, the CSA follows a policy of isolationism that would make Ron (or Rand) Paul proud.

Over time, the cultures develop along lines similar to the present. The CSA adopts Evangelical Christianity as the official state religion. The USA, following its constitution, maintains separation of church and state.

There are generally friendly relations between the two countries. People bunch in the North-- and in the new M.P.R.C (Mellow People's Republic of California). Texas Oil lets the CSA thrive, though the destruction left by the civil war, and the lack of advanced training of the former slaves, leaves a greater gap between rich and poor.

Something interesting also happens. Since the Civil War followed on the heals of the Mexican American War. The newly independent CSA says they had no beef with the Mexicans. The attack on Mexico was by the USA-- that country up North. California is already independent, so it's lost to Mexico. Arizona and New Mexico are just desert anyway. Who needs those places? Give 'em back to the Mexicans, the CSA urges the USA. We'll support Mexico until you do.

Thus a great new friendship is established between Mexico and the CSA. Travel between the two countries opens. No passports. No visas. As easy as crossing into Canada to see Niagra Falls used to be.

After World War II, the USA looks East, while the CSA looks South. Franklin Roosevelt, already pals with Stalin and Churchill, embraces Russia in a Grand Coalition. The USA continues to expand its welfare and social services and Russia continued to expand its personal liberties and access to pornography.

There's never a cold war. No one attacks the World Trade Center because the US does not have the power to wage the anti-Muslim wars that make Al Quaeda want to attack in the first place. The world becomes a happy and peaceful place from the end of the second world war, right until... well... right until now.

It all would have happened if it weren't were for fuckin' Lincoln. If only John Wilkes Booth were a few years earlier. The Oscars be damned.


ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or blog viewers (mykelsblog.blogspot.com/) will get live links and a chance to post comments on the column. Your zines, Cds/records, and... er... private videos... can and should be sent to me at: Mykel Board, POB 137, Prince Street Station, New York NY 10012]


-->Is it only me? dept: ABC NEWS reports that the U.S. census bureau is dropping the word NEGRO starting in 2020. Now, all that's left is me and the United Negro College Fund. Quick, I'd better send a donation!
-->Jailbird pal Kyle sent me an article about Samsung TVs. Their build-in cameras allow outsiders to gain "root access" to the TV. Remember in the book 1984, at the end, Winston Smith finds the camera behind a picture in the wall of his apartment? Now, it's not only that bedroom picture you have to worry about.


-->Oh no dept: Could it happen in Scandinavia? Home of my favorite governments? Well, according to the local paper, Iceland will "become the first Western democracy to ban online pornography." Yep, official government censorship... like in China. I fear it's the beginning of the end. Watch the Republicans change their tune about the evils of Scandinavia once those blonds ban porn.

-->My kind of city dept: On Feb 4, 2013 Charlottesville, Virginia became the first city in the US to pass a resolution against the domestic use of drones. It also calls for Congress and the state of Virginia to adopt legislation prohibiting information from domestic drone use from being introduced into a Federal or State court. Furthermore, they want to prohibit drones equipped with anti-personnel devices, so people can not be killed remotely.

Hmmm, killing people remotely, trial by missile, who'd want to do something like that? It's hard to imagine, huh?
-->Legitimate targets? Is that like legitimate rape? dept: Reason.com reports that a US Army officer said Afghan children are “legitimate targets.”

"It kind of opens our aperture," said Lieutenant Colonel Marion Carrington. "We're looking for children with potential hostile intent." he added.
-->Ah Michigan, how you've devolved dept: Progressive Magazine reports that Michigan lawmakers proposed an amendment to the state's income tax code that would allow pregnant women to claim their twelve-week or older fetuses as "dependents." These same legislators pushed to cut a tax credit that applies to actual already-born children.
-->School? Prison? What's the difference dept: Wired.com reports the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas, suspended a student for refusing to wear a tracking device. It was a leg bracelet similar to the ones used on probationed criminals. Since the school's funding is based on student attendance, they use the trackers to prove students are in class. As of this writing, a judge has temporarily reversed the suspension.
-->Students with balls dept: Censorship News (www.ncacblog.wordpress.com) reports that the school administration of La Salle University told the student newspaper that they had to run an unflattering story about the school "under the fold." (That means the part of the paper that's hidden when it's folded on a newstand or in a newsbox.)

The newspaper, the COLLEGIAN, printed the next issue with a blank top half, except for tiny print instructing readers to "SEE BELOW." Ten punk points guys!

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You can see Mykel's almost functioning website at www.mykelboard.com.



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