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ZINE REVIEWS by Thom White --- Communiqué
#2 I gaze at the cover art and see a message to the world. It is a fine and thought-provoking image in black and white: gas-masked bats drop bombs over minarets and a joyous proclamation accompanies the mirthful destruction: "Let the Globalization Begin." Inside Communiqué brings together original fiction, poetry, and reviews, along with reprints of important news that may have fallen through the cracks. This is an independent zine in its formative stage: typed on a typewriter, pasted together, photocopied, and stapled by hand. Read the variety: there's a reprint from City Beat about a brilliant physics student convicted of vandalizing an SUV dealership, a comic in which Jesus and George Bush meet to discuss job opportunities (Jesus is not qualified), a true romance by Erick Lopez, then reviews of DVDs, zines, and candy (including a very positive review of The Locust record), and even an ad for the fine folks at Pizza USA (562-866-1666, se habla español). Page one has the most important bit of info in the zine with reprinted aerial photos (seen widely on informationclearinghouse.info) that expose one of the grand coups of U.S. war propaganda in 2003, "Operation Staged Statue Toppling." A day after rolling into Baghdad in April 2003, U.S. military herded international T.V. crews into the city's central Fardus Square to film a few dozen hired hands (some of them members of the "Chalabi militia" imported by U.S forces into Iraq just a few days earlier) as they pulled down a Saddam Hussein statue (with the aid of an off-camera U.S. Humvee). The scene of this U.S. sponsored spontaneous media circus was shown repeatedly on T.V. beginning on the morning of April 9, to convince the world that the war to topple Saddam was "won," and so the war in Iraq was "over." From the aerial photos, one sees clearly that most of the Fardus Square is devoid of people, and a small crowd gathers by the statue. This entire public space is cordoned off by U.S. military vehicles and American soldiers comprise many (if not most) of the 150-200 people who surrounded the statue. But well-placed cameras prevented T.V. viewers from seeing the emptiness around the U.S.'s Iraqi "rent-a-crowd," and thus no one could deny the "new reality" in Iraq beamed in on their T.V. sets. Look for this zine in any area that is Norwalk adjacent. They say this issue's better than #1, so #3 stands to be better than #2, so seek out the message of Communiqué if you can.
This black-and-white newsprint zine has defined purpose and is not a bunch of random shit. It is split: news, current events, culture go first; musicmakers later, and a perfect division between the two. The news section offers facts with analysis and invites the reader to read and think about a war close to home in Sudan, or a high school newspaper controversy in far-flung Fullerton. Then there are the full feature spreads on the pressures of high-priced fashion on today's youth, and the plight of U.S. network news honchos facing decreased mind control power with the rise of internet news and 24-hour blabbathon stations like CNN and MSNBC. Then come the bands. I've never heard of any of them, but that doesn't mean it's because I live in a cave; it just proves this is the underground scene you're going to learn about in Paradigm. Using original photography and artwork, zinemeister Kari Hamanaka has put together some creative layouts to frame each band interview, without getting too "loud" and distracting from the text (or making it hard to read). There's even a calendar section to boot. But why not add a glossy sheet to gift wrap the solid, original content? This might even draw some of those superficial prisoners trapped behind the Orange Curtain into the world of Paradigm, and then no doubting Thomas could continue to deny that this is art.
"Keeping Up With the Boneheads" -- Straight outta Orange, this is the best #1 ever. "Sound Advice" offers Q & A for aspiring rockers and new arrivals trying to fit in in blinding California. For all us brainiacs, there is a coool crossword puzzle that got me hooked (I'll fill in all the coolness later), and a maze where Bob & Neil need to get to the emo show at Chain Reaction. The editor paints a dark picture of the present O.C. music scene, and has a special disdain here for everything emo. Youth creativity is quashed in a Ritalin-induced stupor while stages at rock clubs fill with flaming flocks of teacher-obeying emocore boys sporting small shirts, girl pants, and moppy hair. Fashion flair and a flashy web site are the new keys to success, replacing original, soulful, powerful music as the main mark of greatness in rock. In "Where Pieces Fall? Or Pieces Placed?," the editor turns his gaze abroad, listing a timeline of important events in the Middle East (The unresolved deaths of PLO leader Yasser Arafat [November 2004] and Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri [February 2005], and recent flights over Iran by U.S. military aircraft) that point to a wider U.S.-Israeli war against Iran and Syria. The silence in U.S. mass media about this disturbing trend of events helps silence debate in the homeland over our government's war against uncooperative countries, but that is the point, is it not?
This is a full-fledged independent weekly newspaper with a strong emphasis on international news, and it refreshingly lacks the jingoism and terrorist attack scaremongering of most U.S. mainstream news. The Epoch Times is based in New York, but is distributed widely in the L.A. area and elsewhere. The paper has a professional layout with opinion pieces, sports, and movie reviews. In the hard news section, there is a theme of growing troubles threatening the U.S. There is the civil strife abroad in countries like Argentina which are resisting U.S. bank pressures to pay off debt for loans to previous corrupt regimes. And then there are the economic dangers within the U.S. with General Motors' impending bankruptcy (also a top story in The New Federalist) and the potential disaster to American agriculture with the proposed "free trade" accord with the states of Central America (the so-called CAFTA pact, being pushed aggressively by the Bush Administration, but yet to be ratified by Congress). The Epoch Times seems to have origins in some Chinese dissident group, because there are a number of commentaries criticizing the failures and corruption of the Chinese Communists. Perhaps this publication is funded by Taiwanese interests who were stripped of their possessions in China when the Maoists took over in the 1950s. That's just an uneducated guess.
When I first got the grand idea of making my own printed paper to give away to people for nothing, I only saw a few such publications that appeared regularly: Skratch, Destroy All, San Diego's Reviewer Magazine, and this bi-monthly newssheet and community calendar, Change-Links. These free rags were doing whatever it took to get their message out, and I wanted to join in. As the slogan for the long-running independent paper Change-Links goes: "Don't Wait Till the Spirit Moves You -- Move in the Spirit." Change-Links always offers an extensive calendar of events for progressively-minded people in L.A., along with commentaries from famous thinkers. This issue (February 2005) features articles by Norman Mailer, Howard Zinn, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, who writes about political activist James Forman who recently passed away. In this issue, the editor reflects on chaos in the world with natural disasters like the Indian Ocean Tsunami and mudslides in L.A., and man-made disasters created by the American government, "flooding an entire area of the world with bombs." He relates all this to his own personal situation of helping his aging mother through her declining health. The Change-Links enterprise is a burdensome one to maintain, but in these troubled times, let's hope the independent voices in this zine do not soon fall silent.
Many people would expect a magazine with a name like The American Conservative to be filled with nothing but lavish praise and excuses for our commander-in-chief President Bush, and to use any additional space to chill readers' critical reasoning faculties with the latest and greatest government-manufactured information on the Islamo-fascist bogeyman that confronts us. TAC, however, has set out on a much different path, going to great lengths to note the Bush Administration's lies, errors, and denials, especially regarding the attempted conquest of Iraq in 2003, and the bloody, demoralizing efforts by the U.S. military since then to subjugate the nations of Iraq. This newborn was not formed from the union of a man and a woman, but from the alliance of a republican and an aristocrat. Speechwriter Patrick Buchanan and Greek-American boat industrialist Taki Theodoracopolous started The American Conservative as a publishing platform to promote "traditional conservatism" and to oppose the heartless, mindless, money-driven Bush revolution. The editors oppose key Bush administration policies, such as plans to give illegal immigrants official status as second-class citizens (temporary work visas), and free trade agreements with Central and South America (FTAA and CAFTA) that threaten the economic feasability of agriculture within the U.S., and set the stage for our country to be dependent on imported food (along with imported technology) to survive. Formerly, the 'letters to the editor' section brimmed with compliments from liberals and unorthodox Jews on how much they dug this breath of fresh air (who knew there was an "antiwar right"?). Warmongers and Bush Republicans, however, are starting to hate The American Conservative, and have responded with a storm of negative feedback. This issue features an example, a letter from solid Bush backer Dean Stephens of Colerain, NC. Mr. Stephens is incensed by a commentary by Gregory Cochran called "Bush's Napoleon Complex." The article compares Napoleon's 1808 coup d'etat in Spain (which turned into an ugly five-year guerrilla war under French occupation) with Bush's Iraq coup d'etat in 2003 (another interminable battle for liberation between natives and invaders). Stephens insists, "Someone from the Middle East was going to start nuking our cities" and that's why Bush invaded Iraq. Bush is a good leader, and does what's right, and so deal with it. He then accuses the magazine of joining the Democrats' "socialist alliance" by publishing the article. With such a fierce response from this strong Bush partisan, maybe The American Conservative is doing something right after all.
This newspaper is run by former union activist, economist, New Democrat, and everready candidate for the U.S. Presidency, Lyndon LaRouche, Jr., and gives special attention to LaRouche's "FDR-style" solutions to macroeconomic woes of today. However, this propaganda is much more. It is laid out like a standard paper, with an Op-Ed page towards the back, some human interest stories on the legacy of Friedrich Schiller in the middle, and international and regional news from the "LaRouche Movement" perspective. Lyndon LaRouche (who in early days organized workers under the pseudonym Lyn Marcus) has made manifold political enemies during his career, especially since the 1970s and 1980s when he began to expose the underhanded financial dealings and orchestrated CIA hits by Henry Kissinger, George P. Schulz, and George H.W. Bush, among the most prominent evildoers in his sights. With apparent behind-the-scenes motivation from Kissinger, in the late 1980s, LaRouche was investigated, prosecuted, and convicted of "mail fraud conspiracy" and of paying insufficient tribute to the U.S. imperial state (income tax evasion) . LaRouche repeatedly cites the Nixon/Kissinger administration's woeful decisions in 1970-71 to take the U.S dollar off of the gold standard (the hallmark of Roosevelt's 1944 Bretton Woods currency policy which tied the dollar's circulation to actual gold reserves) with the introduction of a "floating exchange rate" to value the currency. LaRouche calls for a "New Bretton Woods" program that would return redeemable value to the dollar, rather than relying solely on public confidence that this green folding stuff is worth something. His plans would also bring an end to the present madness of crushing debt for nations like Brazil and Argentina, whose U.S.-friendly dictatorships were lent huge sums of money by international bankers during the 1970s and 1980s, at time when dollars could be manufactured cheaply in New York and D.C. --- Reader Comments No Comments. |
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