Spencer Ackerman's 'Reign of Terror HOW THE 9/11 ERA DESTABILIZED AMERICA AND PRODUCED TRUMP'

McChrystal: ‘Impossible to Argue’ War on Terror Was Worth It

'The Scariest Thing I've Ever Seen In My Life': How The 'Ground Zero Mosque' Meltdown Set The Table For Trump

The White Christian Nationalism Behind the Worst Terrorist Attack in American History

What a stolen motorcycle reveals about America’s failed strategy in Afghanistan

I've been reading The Attackerman  at least since the days of Danger Room at Wired as that is where his byline was a go to for me to read. I'm sure I had read his work before as he was covering beats that I had an interest in but slowly (actually it wasn't THAT slow) and surely I came to regard him as one of the most authoritive journalists writing about American Foreign Policy post 9/11. 

Hardcore? Yes! Spin? No! (Check his Rumsfield Obit)

I followed him over to The Daily Beast after his stint at The Guardian. Now Spencer has a substack and tho at the moment I am on the free list I think it may be time to end my Beast subscription and move it over to Forever Wars.  

Anyway I hope at this very moment my copy of his book is winging its way across the world to me here in Melbourne. I may just be an old disability pensioner with all the poverty that that entails but I tell you my mind is far the richer for reading Spencer over the years.

Oh and did I mention he is drumming on a forthcoming punk album (a 23 minute punk rock opera album actually) about The French Revolution?

Reign of Terror

Five Decades After Evacuating The Embassy In Saigon The CH-46 Phrog Did It Again In Kabul

Be like Nick Cave

Via

Bec Taylor & the Lyrebirds - 'Adrift' (Album Lockdown Launch 21/8/21 UTC + 10)

Facebook Events Page 

Zoom link

Bec is my daughter-in-law (well with the COVID lockdowns the actual wedding still hasn't taken place but...) and is going to make me a very proud Grandad in November and oh yeah is a really good musician too. The first time that we met was in Melbourne when Bec was drumming with Glitoris and  Grandma-to-be and myself popped along to the Bendigo and had a great night...but now it's time for her debut album release with The Lyrebirds  

All I will say is that my son is a lucky man tho despite repeated attempts by his (very talented) multi instrumentalist partner to teach him even rudimentary uke stuff...just, just nah! 

Seems he has found his calling making guitar racks etc. tho

I hope their child has her mothers' genetics when it comes to playing music

Poster 2

Posters 1

I hadn’t done any scribbling for a couple of weeks. So last night I made these. 

One poster is from the This Is Your Brain On Eggs/Nancy Reagan school of drug education and the other is from the Just Say Know side. 

I still think a lot of the drug education whatevers would go with the first idea. That one came about when I started noticing these two designs (not any others) dumped here and there over the last few months. 

The second design is actually what I came up with when I did my Cert IV in Alcohol & Other Drugs oh at least fifteen years ago in the day when HepC treatment was NO fun. Trust me I remember and I was lucky to only have to do the Interferon course for six months. 

I had to get my first computer for going to TAFE which was a gawdsend in the end. However there was quite a few steep learning curves and frantic phone calls to my eldest kids back then I'm sure. Anyway there was not a hope in hell of me turning in a poster using photoshop I can assure you. (I still can't use it) So I handed in a sketch of that second design. Lettering would have been done using a lightbox and probably an old Letraset catalogue. I knew the copy was good and I was quite pleased with my HEPCats thang. 

Funnily enough tho I knew that I would lose marks for the amateur hour work handed in I didn't expect the lecturer to fawn over the winning work. 

That was a film (a very well made film) of shots of trains coming into Frankston Stn and trains leaving Frankston Stn...nice blending of scenes, a bit of slo-mo whatever and then the message (as this was a drug course) KEEP ON THE RIGHT TRACKS! 

I mean seriously WTF? 

He was marked on how well the film was made but this wasn't a fugn film course and that message? 

Strangely enough at the completion of that wee qualification I was actually offered a job at Frankston TAFE lecturing in the AOD Dept. 

Sadly my inability to speak in public put paid to that...

Well see my design #1 above

‘Rawness, freedom, experimentation’: the Brit jazz boom of the 60s and 70s

So sad...and that opening C U T joke is one of my all time faves

Strewth...

The original inspiration for these stories was an anecdote told to me by my flatmate at the time, the lovely Grant McLennan of the Go Betweens. Hence the Australian accent in the 1st story (the one he told me) about the Ozzie and the beer can... https://t.co/08jFdk5Zl3

— charlie higson (@monstroso) August 18, 2021

Scribbles from last night

John Birmingham: Is SloMo a liar or a bullshitter?

Minimata (Trailer)

MORE IMAGES 

W. Eugene Smith's Warning To The World

I'd call them the 'cunts without compounds'

George Harrison - All Things Must Pass (2020 Mix)

 

Thanks to My Friend Stan for posting this review of the ATMP box set and finding out that this mix isn't on the release!

Allan Jones to release a follow up book to 'I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down'

As the blurb for 'I Can't Stand...' said: 

'Allan Jones launched Uncut magazine in 1997 and for 15 years wrote a popular monthly column called Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before, based on his experiences as a music journalist in the 70s and 80s, a gilded time for the music press. By turns hilarious, cautionary, poignant and powerful, the Stop Me...stories collected here include encounters with some of rock's most iconic stars, including David Bowie, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Elvis Costello, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Smiths, R.E.M. and Pearl Jam. From backstage brawls and drug blow-outs, to riots, superstar punch-ups, hotel room confessionals and tour bus lunacy, these are stories from the madness of a music scene now long gone'

Allan is/was one of the funniest journalists around taking the piss when the piss had to be taken 

Jones the Journalist and I go way back

Socially_Distant

Numeric Pictures