Saturday 27 April 2013

ANOTHER GREAT NIGHT

Last night's show at Rehab with The Rebel Spell and Class Of 1984 was wonderful. Thanks go out to Heather and Cidra from Clove and Anchor Entertainment, the bands, and especially everyone who came out, and had the kindest words for us. Class Of 1984 went from being a band I thought were only okay, to being one of my favourite local bands. I will try to see them as often as I can. And The Rebel Spell can only be described as inspirational. I don't really listen to a ton of "melodic" punk/hardcore these days, but these guys compel me to listen to them. The catchy songs, the lyrics, the great personalities, they've got it all, the fuckers. Their lead singer, Todd, mentioned onstage how I have been an inspiration to him both musically and politically. Well, we've come full circle, and he's certainly that and more to me. It was a great night, we met a lot of people we hadn't talked to before, which made it totally worth it for me. Thanks again to Todd, Heather, and Cidra for putting us on the bill. See y'all on June 1st at Logan's, when we play with the Gnar Gnars, All Out Panic, and fucking Car 87! Oh yeah, and thanks to Brice for representing Car 87 at last night's show. It was great to see you. See you on the 1st.

Thursday 25 April 2013

SEE YOU ALL THERE....

Tomorrow night is the Rebel Spell Show at Rehab nightclub, on the outskirts of beautiful Victoria, B.C. Okay, the area around the club isn't the prettiest, but what can you do, uh? We haven't played with the Rebel Spell for about two years, which was the last show with our last line-up. They are a fucking phenonenal live band, and not to be missed. Fist raising anthems for the masses. Sing alongs. A handsome lead singer. They've got it all. Class Of 1984 are local skate rock veterans. I like them more and more everytime I see them. They bring it all back to street level. Buy their stuff. The Isotopes are a "baseball punk" band. I know nothing of their work, but always like seeing bands I've never heard before. Come see for yourselves. I believe we will be playing just before The Rebel Spell. Even though we have recorded, the mastering process isn't complete yet, so it'll be some time before the finished product sees the light of day. We will have some of our self-titled shark CD there, for those who don't already have it, for 5 bucks. And I will have some back issues of Revolution newspaper for free, for those who are interested. Do not be afraid to approach me. See ya there, pricks.

Sunday 21 April 2013

FUCK THE SYSTEM. FREE THE PEOPLE.

THE RAT'S NEST


The Rat's Nest is a venue I discovered in 1985 or so, located in Gary Brainless's basement. He was playing in a band called The Resistance at the time, and their brand of catchy early punk/oi inspired music kept the kids coming back. Over the years I saw some incredible shows there, from Mission Of Christ, No Means No, Shutdown, D.R.I., Problem Children, The Spores, and on and on it goes...It's also where I got my not so notable start, in a band called The Ratbags. As Rob Nesbitt said at the time (who later came to join me in Section 46 and AK-47), "They were the worst band I'd ever seen in my life". I have no doubt that was true. The Ratbags broke up during a show in The Rat's Nest, which ended up with me punching the lead singer in the head. He fell, got up and left, and I never saw him at another show after that. Soon thereafter, the first lineup of Section 46 were formed, I sobered up, Chris (on bass) left the band, Dan and Rob joined, and things got far better for us musically after that. But I digress.
   I owe Gary a huge debt of gratitude for everything he's done for the local punk scene, and I don't know if I ever would have gotten to play live if it wasn't for him and that disgusting, wonderful, basement. Bands have recorded, practiced, formed and broken up there, and it's where I learned to stay sober while hanging out with maniacal fucking wastoids. So, it's with a bit of sadness and nostalgia (even though I hate that shit), that I view the passing away of a historic venue, at least to the punk community. It was great to be at a show there on Friday night, watching  Dangler (Gary's current band), 24 hr. Standoff, Capital City Stalkers, and The Keg Killers, fronted by none other than Shwam himself. It was smoky, stinky, and gross, but that's how it always was. I think it'll be running until the end of May, and then it's goodbye forever. And thank you for everything you've done over the years, Gary.

Monday 15 April 2013

WHAT A FUCKING IDIOT

I don't normally post about stupid ego-infested hollywood popstar types, but this kid is a fucking idiot. While visiting the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam, the stupid kid wrote in the guestbook that "Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber." A "great girl"?! A fucking "belieber"?! Don't these fucking idiots have handlers and managers up the ass advising them on everything so they don't do something as ridiculous as this? He visits something as solemn as the Anne Frank House, and he turns it around so it's all about him. Moron. He should have also mentioned that he could have done a tour of all of the concentration camps in europe at the time, and been a huge hit, bridging the divide between the inmates and the guards. Such is the power of the almighty fucking beebs. Fuck him. Oh yeah, he's canadian, eh.

Justin Bieber hopes Anne Frank 'would have been a belieber'

Pop star's comments after a visit to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam is not his first controversy on this European tour
bieber anne frank
Photograph: http://www.facebook.com/annefrankhouse
Teenage heartthrob and recent controversy magnet Justin Bieber has again left the internet slack-jawed, this time over comments left at theAnne Frank House.
The Canadian pop star used part of his downtime from touring the cities of Europe to visit the Amsterdam hiding place of the young Holocaust victim, which has since been turned into a museum.
Alas, in comments left in the Anne Frank House guest book, he opened himself up to ridicule and online anger.
"Truly inspiring to be able to come here," he offered. So far, so acceptable. Then came the hand-slap-forehead moment: "Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber."
Referring to the young diarist, whose documenting of life under the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands made her a poignant symbol of the suffering of Jews during the second world war, as a "great girl" was in many minds glib to say the least. Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945 at 15 after her family's hiding place was uncovered by the SS.
But it is the suggestion that had she been alive at the same time as the Canadian singer, she would have devoted herself to his music – fans of the pop star are commonly referred to as Beliebers – that had most online commentators venting their anger.
"She would've been a WHAT? That little idiot is way to [sic] full of himself. She's an important historical figure so show some respect," read a typical post left on the Anne Frank House's Facebook page, which first reported the guest book comments.
It isn't the first bit of negative publicity that the 19-year-old has attracted during his stint in Europe. To date, the tour has been hit by incidents ofBieber angrily confronting photographers in London, having his monkeyseized by officials in Germany, concerts cancelled in Portugal and school officials in Norway rescheduling exams to avoid clashes with his shows.

Saturday 13 April 2013

FAILURE

The recent suicide by Rehtaeh Parsons has many people asking questions. Why didn't the loser fucking pigs do anything? Why didn't the blind and stupid schoolboard do anything? What about the parents of the fucking animals who raped her and posted the photos on the internet? How the fuck do those little death deserving shitheads come to think this is okay? And are they now going to crawl out of their ratholes with false tears and apologies? Fuck them. The bigger question is, why do young men being raised in this society think this is acceptable behaviour? Whose standards are they living up to? How many more rapes and suicides will it take before we throw this society and it's values into the trash where it belongs? We need Revolution, Nothing Less...

Rehtaeh Parsons: Halifax community mourns bullied teen

While more than 100 mourners recall the life of 17-year-old Parsons, who hanged herself after months of depression over alleged rape and cyberbullying.
Text size:IncreaseDecreaseReset
Report an Error
Save to Mystar
A young woman holds onto a funeral program leaflet for 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons as she embraces a fellow mourner outside St. Mark's Anglican church in Halifax Saturday. Parsons, a local high school student, was taken off life support on April 7, three days after she tried to hang herself. The teen was bullied after an alleged sexual assault, her family said.
PAUL DARROW / REUTERS
A young woman holds onto a funeral program leaflet for 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons as she embraces a fellow mourner outside St. Mark's Anglican church in Halifax Saturday. Parsons, a local high school student, was taken off life support on April 7, three days after she tried to hang herself. The teen was bullied after an alleged sexual assault, her family said.

EXPLORE THIS STORY

6PHOTOS
Save to Mystar
HALIFAX, N.S.—Amid the young and old grieving over the shattering loss of Rehtaeh Parsons, the dead teen’s youngest sister Teaghan was getting fidgety, as 3-year-olds do in church.
Remembering that Parsons’ grandfather, a former minister at the very Anglican church where the funeral for Rehtaeh was held Saturday, had a philosophy that “children should move freely,” cousin Angella Parsons got up and roamed about with the young child.
While more than 100 mourners recalled the life of 17-year-old Parsons, Angella and Teaghan came across a collection of cards and gifts that well-wishers had left for the family. Teaghan was drawn to a small stuffed dog, its pink collar embroidered with the name of her big sister.

PhotosView gallery

  • Glen Canning, father of 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons, is comforted outside St. Mark's Anglican church.zoom
  • Leah Parsons, mother of late 17-year-old Rehtaeh Parsons, leaves St. Mark's Anglican church with boyfriend Jason Barnes following her daughter's funeral.zoom
  • Rehtaeh Parsons, 17, killed herself 18 months after she was allegedly raped by four boys in her small town of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.zoom
“The little one took this for comfort, so thank-you to whoever brought this little dog,” Angella said later.
Those who loved Parsons, who was taken off life-support last Sunday after hanging herself three days earlier, spoke of their despair, anger, indescribable grief. But others talked of the good, too, that has come in the days since her suicide, which followed months of depression over an alleged rape and subsequent social shunning.
Rev. John Morrell, in a eulogy that urged mourners to use this death to prevent others, acknowledged the positive accompanying the terrible loss.
“Social media contributed to Rehtaeh’s depression and death. Social media have shared her story around the world,” Morrell said. “Given the worldwide attention to the events leading up to this tragedy, it is appropriate to focus on what happens tomorrow, and the day after, and the weeks and years to come.”
After the funeral, at which Parsons’ aunt gave a eulogy and two friends shared memories, a glass-encased box containing Parsons’ ashes was loaded into a hearse as rain pelted down.
Watching in silence were Parson’s mother Leah and her younger sisters, Teaghan and Temyson, 9, both wearing pink outfits bought for the occasion. Parsons’ father, Glen Canning, sobbed and clutched his partner.
Mike Wells, Parsons’ boyfriend since last fall, arrived at the funeral with the family. In an interview Thursday with the Star the 20-year-old pipefitting student had said Parsons “was just way different than any other girl.”
“I still can’t believe it,” Wells said, as he quietly sobbed.
He was thankful that the tragedy has aroused widespread public outrage and calls for justice but felt “it shouldn’t have taken this.”
On Friday, police announced they were reopening their investigation into allegations that Parsons had been raped by a four boys at a house party in November, 2011.
The Parsons family says the teens took turns assaulting Rehtaeh and snapped a cellphone photo that was widely circulated among high school students in nearby Cole Harbour, where they live.
The humiliation and bullying that followed led to an 18-month battle with depression for Parsons. Her family says she turned to drugs and had suicidal thoughts.
RCMP and Halifax police investigated the family’s allegations but did not lay charges, saying there was not sufficient evidence to prosecute anyone. This prompted calls for justice from online “hacktivists.”
Several students at Cole Harbour District High School, which Parsons’ attended, told the Star that her alleged attackers — said to be in Grades 10 through 12 — still walk the halls freely.
Police now say all this may change with the reopening of the investigation: someone with credible new information has come forward. They stressed the information did not come from online sources.
Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter, who attended the funeral, called the family’s loss “unfathomable.” Afterwards he thanked those upset and angered by the tragedy for not taking action into their hands.
The Anonymous group of hacktivists has claimed it knows the names of the four alleged attackers but has not made them public out of respect for the family’s wish to avoid violence and further bullying.
Last week Dexter appointed a minister to oversee a review of the case. On Friday, his government launched an online and TV ad campaign to raise awareness about the resources available to those needing help.
Parsons’ death has also prompted other Nova Scotia high schoolers to take action. Shannon Barry, 16, a student at Dartmouth High, where it is suspected that students also saw the photo, is one of a group that started a campaign to promote positive use of social media and cellphones.
Their philosophy is that students literally have the power in their hands — via their cellphones — to positively or negatively affect another person’s life. Students are encouraged to sign pledges to use that power for good.
They will then tweet, text or post to Facebook their personal pledges en masse.
“It’s to encourage us not call a girl slut on Twitter, not retext a nasty picture,” she said.
Rev. Morrell called for efforts to battle sexual abuse and cyberbullying.
“How can our society create a safe haven for young girls? Why do young men feel that young girls are but objects for their sexual fantasies and pleasure? Why do teenagers avoid seeking help when they are depressed and suicidal? How can our schools deal with physical and now cyber bullying?” he asked.

Monday 8 April 2013

ANOTHER DEAD ASSHOLE

Another right wing conservative war mongering baby killing asshole has fucking died, and no doubt that idiots will be crawling out of their dark corners to heap praise on the carcass. Fuck 'em. Margaret thatcher was a union busting, people hating imperialist war lover. Basically, she was the female version of ronald dead asshole reagan. It would have been better that she never lived. Read this...

The Best Way To Deal With Margaret Thatcher's Legacy Is To Kill It

by Harry Paterson
8 April 2013175 Comments
Margaret Thatcher is dead. No doubt now we'll have to deal with people claiming she made Britain. She didn't, and we should all turn our backs on her funeral cortege in silence as it drives by...
Among the many valuable lessons that history has bequeathed is the undeniable truth that it is written by the victors. Or perhaps rewritten would be nearer the mark. It’s well worth you bearing this in mind because very soon Margaret Hilda Thatcher will die. Possibly, some would say hopefully, maybe even as soon as next year. At that moment we’ll need to brace ourselves against a veritable tidal wave of mawkish revisionism and rewritten history.
With at least the possibility of a state funeral for the soon-to-be-deceased former Prime Minister, opinions, as one might expect, have polarised sharply. They shouldn’t have, though, because one’s political affiliations aside, it’s simply not on. Despite the rank, power, influence and wealth that comes with the office of PM, in the final analysis, the role is simply that of a public sector worker. If we think giving state-funded funerals for prime ministers is acceptable, why not for doctors? Firemen? Nurses? Teachers? Cleaners? Or indeed all public sector workers? Besides which, giving Thatcher such a send-off, paid for by tax-payers, raises the entirely reasonable question of why her but not, say, Tony Blair? Gordon Brown or any other politico?
The fact is, though, that Thatcher is a powerful symbolic totem for the champions of capital and her unassailable credentials as the consummate class warrior of the late 20th century provide invaluable propaganda for her epigones at a time when all she constructed is rapidly going down the toilet.
Her demise will allow the reconstruction of the myth that she saved Britain, that she was a great and fearless warrior, a visionary and a giant among world leaders. The inevitable link between her economic philosophy and the austerity measures currently being foisted onto the heads of the poorest and most defenceless will be made. The message will be clear: this is what she would have done. This is what she would have wanted and as she was so omniscient and all-powerful, a kind of credibility by association will be invoked to provide yet further justification for the coalition’s reverse Robin Hoodery.
Turn your back and think of ‘care in the community’; the elderly, the sick, the mentally ill and the infirm treated with all the compassion shown by a fox in a henhouse
Against the oncoming flood of propaganda, lies, distortions and Orwellian changing of the past, the space for the truth will be remarkably small. But there will still be a space. So let’s start filling it now and remind ourselves of the true legacy of the most pitiless, inhumane, greedy, venal and megalomaniacal creature ever to cross the threshold of 10 Downing Street:
The institutionalised corruption of privatising the nation’s utilities so her mates in the City could get ever richer.
The complete dismantling of entire industries and the communities that relied on them.
Engineering the biggest transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest ever seen in the UK up to that point.
The cynical and immoral war-mongering in the Falklands for the sole purpose of conning a politically backward electorate in securing for her a further term in office.
The Poll Tax, riots, poverty, record unemployment, the most draconian and repressive employment legislation anywhere in the developed world, more small businesses going to the wall than at any period prior to her rule, her defence of and friendship with Chilean mass-murdering dictator General Pinochet and the ruination of the NHS to name but a few of her achievements.
You can, I’m sure, add many more to this partial and by no means exhaustive list. We are, today, as she made us. A paranoid, divided, mean-spirited nation, full of resentment, envy, greed and distrust. Racist, selfish, inhumane and tragically too stupid to see we are now nothing but turkeys lining up to continually vote for Christmas.
Were there a shred of doubt about any of this, just step back a few weeks to the 30th of November and recall the petty, resentful and envious bitching of private sector workers without the balls to defend their pensions, whinging and whining about how good the undeserving public sector workers have it.
Take a look at the lying, racist, foaming bigotry and xenophobia dripping from our two biggest-selling daily newspapers and then listen to the idiots in your workplace unthinkingly lapping it up as gospel and then regurgitating it for the benefit of the next clueless and brainwashed fuckwit.
Listen to the vitriol and condemnation heaped upon the head of some track-suited sink-estate youth for cleaning a few windows on the side while claiming benefit and then contrast that with the deafening silence as the banks and the City continue to loot and pillage their way through the nation’s economy.
This is her legacy.
In conclusion, then, the best way I think we can mark her passing with dignity and without conceding the moral high ground to the enemy by gloating and cheering, comes from a friend of mine; we should line the streets along which her funeral cortege passes and simply turn our backs in silence as it trundles by.
One by one, each of us, in silence, as she passes turn our backs and say that on this, the hour of her death, now is the time to start living again. To rebuild the shattered, violent land she has left by placing people before profit. By tossing into the dustbin of history all her hate-filled bile. The best way to deal with Thatcher’s legacy is to destroy it.
The lady might not have been for turning but when that solemn procession passes you by, turn your back. Turn your back and, instead, remember the countless millions she gloatingly destroyed in pursuit of yet more wealth for her pals. Turn your back and think of ‘care in the community’; the elderly, the sick, the mentally ill and the infirm treated with all the compassion shown by a fox in a henhouse. Turn your back and remember her victims.
Turn your back…