pt1 - Lumpen

The Apocalypse Issue

TitleContents volume 11 issue 30 0LUMPEN MINISTRIES HIGH COUNCIL of ELDERSEdmar & Dakota the Father and SonMichael Di Gioia Historian and Records DirectorCowboy Joe Editorial ManagerJames John Bell Contributing EditorLogan Bay, Matt Mercer, Rotten Milk Music and MediaCONTRIBUTORSSchNEWS // Agent Marty // Al Burian // Paul ChanD.Grant // Tracie McMillan // Chicago Freenetthe NLG // Multinational Monitor // Donald P. GradyLumpen Ministries is funded in part by a generous grant from theOFD Faith-Based Initiative. The mission of the new initiative willbe to develop and coordinate the implementation of a comprehensivenational strategy to secure the United States from threatsto it’s soul. The Office will coordinate the executive branch’s effortsto detect, prepare for, prevent, protect against, respond to, andrecover from Spiritual Terrorism within the United Sta t e s .Lumpen Magazine#773.251.2234 // 960 W. 31st Street Chill, U$A 60608www.lumpen.com // hosted by beannet.neted@lumpen.comMessage from the Director 6Ryan Giese 7Hello 8Street Rec Report 11Tactical Media 12Chomsky Interview 16Ten Worst Corporations 20Iraq Peace Diary 21body copyBush War Diary 24Poster 32Revolution of the Everyday 36Wireless Freenet 41On Our Way 42Twelve Over-Hyped Albums 46Fun Page 50“Political Art” 53Media Reviews 54Top 13 Cholos 56Music 60

0 0Message from the Director6“...the battle of Good against Evil is in its end game and we arehere to make sure you choose the winning side and makeyourself ready for the coming Choice.”Dearest Lumpens, body copybody copyThe Lumpen Ministries have been awakened by the revelations delivered to usfrom the Televisual pulpits and media prophets. The current Armageddon thatthey report is a torrent of lies and they mislead the Flock into inaction, betrayal,and worse, destruction.Lo and behold, the battle of Good against Evil is in its end game and we are hereto make sure you choose the winning side and make yourself ready for the comingChoice. As reports of stars falling from the sky, beasts arising from the seaand blood of dead men flo o ding the earth proliferate, we feel unease at the interpr e tations of the false prophets. As nation rises up against nation, as plagues,supernatural terrors, and great battles in the skies are unleashed, we want to helpthe flock understand the Possibilities of absolute total devastation. We don’t trustthe Evil Doers or their false MSNBCIAFOXCBS religions proselytizing on behalfof the Dark lords. Neither should you.The Plague of To ta l i ta r i a nism has risen across the globe. Forces of Sata ni cintent are bent on devouring the peoples of Earth through never-ending Wa r,Pestilence, Famine and Death. Unholy forces using the rhetoric of Faith andtechnology of Science to obtain total power are waging their Crusade. Theysay the antichrist is here.They say the Antichrist could be a human being, but even so he is the Deceiver.And he will deceive the world. He has come to us as being very good, and heclaims to have established a reign, which seems to be just and prosperous to usall. But it is not. It is a reign that benefits the slothful, the greedy and his beasts.They say he is born in a church, but his religion is Oil. The shadowy and deadlyfirmament..The three signs of Revelation are clear as Holocaust closes in. He is building athird Temple of Nuclear Armageddon in Jerusalem, he fancies himself as a greatmilitary ruler and he comes to invade the Middle East. The last sign is the mosta l a r ming as he seeks to enforce a worldwide system of religion on the world. Thereligion of Hypocrisy and Stupidity.Lo and behold, the End Times are near as the Lawless Ones, this Antichrist andhis minions, are bidding us to follow them to our deaths by deceitful methods.By declaring America as “God’s Gift to humanity” the Antichrist is trying to bringus to his fold of Evil deeds. He promises peace to those who follow him, and hehas risen to a position of great power. But the Righteous must be wary. He persecutes all as being evil and unworthy when it is in fact his army of beasts thatare leading us over the brink of the Apocalypse. He says the dominance of HisEmpire is imminent and inevitable, and that it will be a glorious age of peaceand harmony. But as we all know it is only an age of peace and harmony for somepeople, his Chosen Demons... The fate of humankind hangs in the decisions ofdangerous men.With the help of his false prophets and media warriors, the Antichrist will gaincontrol of the world economy, by forcing each person “to be marked on the righthand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark,that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name . . . six hundred andsixty-six.”He persecutes all other believers and religions outside his Religion of Hypocrisyand Stupidity. He tortures those he claims to be his enemy. He watches us withhis Total Information Awareness System with its all seeing technologic eyes. Helies with his Global Commu nications demons. With his soci e tal control shamanshe tries to keep us from doing even the most simple of tasks, like addressinghuman rights or environmental dangers, whether it is the ozone layer, globalw a r ming, pollution of the air or water, or bio devastation. He pits humans againsthumans in his Inquisition of false Suspicion as brother turns in brother and sistercasts out sister. He teaches us to evade these questions to “protect” us fromhis false Gods of Evil, Terror, and Weapons of Mass Destruction. He says wehave great battles to win and he presents these battles as the Last Cosmic War toend all. But these wars may be his downfall and our opportunity. This is wherethe Righteous can stop his Plan and Final Solution.First let us end the Inquisition, and let the Righteous unveil the unholy plans asthey are read in between the lines of the televisual Armageddon unfolding beforeour eyes. It is possible that before the Very End, the Good forces of Planet Earthcan intervene and triumph over the Destroyers. Believers and radical evangelicals,we know you have the faith to stand up and defend humanity! Rise upand speak, bring on the reformation, go out in the streets and Preach thegospel of Truth! The Righteous will prevail!Remember—It is Our Word against theirs!-Reverend EdMar

titleblurb.Sub-body copybody copyEVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OK *G E E Z

hello.

Since #87...Goodbye Weasel / BrunerandBayears’Eve / TABD Protest / Repeat OffenderFashion Bender / PR02 En Rutaand always Rocking Bridgeport.photos by Ed, Dakota, Elisa, Douggpound

Horsemen courtesy of StreetRec Collective,available at www.appliedsemiotics.com1 0

1 1 ReportWashington, DC Anti-War RallyJan 18, 2003filed by D. Grant, StreetRec CollectiveIt was the most people I’d ever seen anywhere for anything. The reports have saideverything from 30,000 to 500,000; I would believe almost any big number anyonetold me, because in the entire 6 hours we spent in the march proper, I neversaw the beginning or the end. It packed the DC mall shoulder to shoulder withevery stripe of human being you can imagine, all out there in the cold, all outthere opening a huge fracture in the latest right-wing lie: that the an uncheckedmajority of people living in this country want this war.Myself and three other StreetRec folks had driven to DC the day before, stayingwith a sibling in the ci t y. We came with a set of four signs depicting four US leadersas the horsemen of the apocalypse: President Bush as War, Vice-PresidentCheney as Pestilence, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld as Death, Asst. Secretary ofDefense Wo l f owitz as Fa mine. Most of the images for these four ghouls camefrom a photo shoot they did for Vanity Fair which featured huge full page highcontrast images of their faces; these photos screamed out “deface me!”. Somes c a n ning and photoshop later, we had our specters ready to rally their opposition.An emergency stop in a Cleveland costume shop got us four horse masks,which would both further the metaphor and keep our faces out of too many photos.[These photos can be seen throughout the issue—ed.]On Jan 18, we started with a feeder march that centered around solidarity withi m migrants, which was organized by Positive Force DC and the Progressive MuslimNetwork. Lots of percussion, lots of black bloc youth, and a lot of anarchice n e r g y. We assembled at Union Station, and started marching with the horsemensigns four abreast. I felt the kind of mixed glee endemic to these rallies:there’s so many of us, this is thrilling, the reason we’re here is horrible, will thisprotest do anything, etc; I worked to put aside doubts and concentrate on hope.The feeder march was already thousands big, so we were just starting to graspthe scale of what we were involved in. As we made our way to the mall fromU nion Station, there was a police presence, but it was thin compared to the usualarmy of Darth Vaders that surround anti-globalist/anti-capitalist actions. Apparently,the A.N.S.W.E.R. march organizers had a trust relationship with the capitolpolice. Regardless, we had few doubts the goon squad was polishing thei rshinguards in a nearby basement, champing at the bit to come bust heads. Oneof the punk percussioneers crossed the police line, or said something about theFraternal Order of the Police’s shitty fundraising: suddenly the march was runningen masse over to where the cops were arresting a black-clad kid. A big shovingmatch followed the rush; we’d been marching for less than an hour, andalready there was some ruckus. We were looking behind us to see if the policeline was flanking us, fearing pre-emptive arrest. Once the arrestee was taken aw a yand the combat cooled down, the feeder march progressed to the mall.When we arrived, the full-scale march was already beginning: there was a trickleof people heading onto the march route. We were unsure whether there weremore speakers, and even if there were, whether we could manage to get in frontof the huge stage set up at the north(?) end of the mall. We were unsure if Chumbawumba had already played, and unsure if we cared. We were already surroundedby a dense crowd, and began marching. It was immediately apparentfrom the noise, variety, and turbulent flow of the crowd that this thing was huge,completely and irrevocably huge.Our group stopped several times during the march route to try and collect friends,to watch the march, to hand out our literature, to find the black bloc, and to getnear the drums. All told, we stopped for at least an hour if not more, while thishuge processional just flowed by: ceaseless, noi s y, and by turns joyous, crass,solemn, and angry. The marchers really responded to the horsemen, and at onepoint we had a photo-op where we all stood around a guy with a seven foot dayglogreen sign that simply read “Fuck You Bush”—it was a complex tableau, tosay the least.In the course of our stopping, I never saw the end of the march. I never saw theline of slow moving blue and whites that tend to signal the tail end of a massaction; all I saw was a river of people and signs, stretching back for blocks andblocks until the source was obscured from view. I felt totally overwhelmed andthrilled: certainly this many human beings can’t be ignored. This was as manypeople as there were soldiers being staged in the Middle East for this very conflict.Surely a display of this scale could pull the atrophied heartstrings in themistrusting, arrogant anti-populists of the White House.We marched stop and go for hours through streets thick and thin, passing a marinebarracks where they lined up trucks and soldiers to guard against any attemptsto enter, with the march finally ending in a sea of parked busses: the ANSWERfolks had lost their permit to have a sound truck at a second location the daybefore, and without a rallying point, this huge mass of folks was dispersing withdisheartening quickness. Loading onto busses, piling into public transportationor cabs, this temporary autonomous zone was dissolving in moments. 100,000people can do anything, including walk directly into the White House; but youdon’t get 100,000 people without having lots of moms, dads, and folks from allover who need to get back. Our counter-army was huge but fleeting, and I hopewe can be back even larger when the time comes

Tactical Media1 2Stencil BrigadeLumpen mi nistries believes in the Gospel of Stenciling for putting the Word onthe street. Agents A and M started stenciling a few years ago. Influenced by thei rown printing and tagging interests as kids, they found religion after Bush startedhis reign of terror.Within the last year and a half, they have seen the possible political and socialramifications of a well-placed piece, and the stencils have taken a more serioustone a la Banksy and Logan Hicks. Once they started doing stencils and learninghow to manipulate them preci s e l y, they found it to be quite a versatile medium—itcan be very complex, with layered colors and shades, or simple, withonly one color covering accents of the image.

1 3Tactical MediaFont Attack!!When you don’t have the time to scan and trace your favorite photos of theworlds greatest tyrants, dictators and presidents, Super War Dudes will come toyour rescue. Made by Asif Khan (http://www.asifkhan.co.uk) as a public serviceto graphic designers and agit-propsters, Super War Dudes makes it easy for youto eviscerate your local political leader.q e p o nz m c u id t w s 1r a y f xg h j k v;

Tactical MediaI’m Glad the Space Shuttle Blew Upby Al Burian1 4I woke up on the morning of Feb 1, 2003, around noon, to the grim news thatfor the second time this mi l l e n nium I had slept through a pivotal American di s-aster and would be condemned now to experience it as an endless, all-day rerun.It was a good re-run, though: NPR looped the sound-bite proclamations ofhuman tragedy, assurances that there was a “90% probability” that the spaceshuttle crash was unrelated to terrorism, etc. I made some coffee, positionedmyself in front of the radio, and set about my day’s routine of craft projects.Before I’d finished off the coffee I found I’d made a stencil that said: “I’m gladthe space shuttle blew up.” I pondered the implications of that slogan for a while.Good one, I thought. I got an old T-shirt out of my closet and stenciled the messageon to it. My roommate discovered the shirt, folded over a chair to dry, a fewminutes later. “That’s fucked up,” she said. “You’re fucked up.”“But I am happy it blew up,” I protested.I hadn’t even known there was a space shuttle in flight, though in Israel it hadbeen front-page news for weeks. “It was a nice distraction from the Palestiniansituation,” Israelis interviewed on the radio said, “It was nice to have some goodnews for a change.” Good news for a change! George Bush, only the day beforepromising war in Iraq in “weeks, not months,” found himself suddenly unableto openly advocate mass murder during the period of national mourning. Thewar, it seemed, would have to be pushed back a week or two. F u cked up? Ithought, looking at the shirt. I am glad the space shuttle blew up.Come on, people: the space program is a waste of time and resources at best, anevil and immoral institution at worst. It exists primarily as a research branch ofthe mi l i tary-industrial complex, who are hell-bent on deploying “strategic defense”satellites to defend us against enemy missiles which exhaustive UN inspectionshave shown don’t exist, at a cost of billions to you the ta x - p a y e r. Other than that,the space program is little more than a vanity project for mankind, who reallywant to prove that we are not primates at all, but rather some sort of galaxy-hoppingMarvel comics characters, while here on earth millions of humanoid primatesstarve to death.W h a t ’s more, last time a space shuttle blew up in 1986, it was rather harrowinglyadmitted by NASA scientists that waste plutonium had been slated to gointo orbit as part of Challenger’s cargo, a move which was fortunately rescheduled,since Challenger’s subsequent explosion would have distributed that pluto nium into the atmosphere, resulting in death by cancer for, oh, somewherebetween the victims of Chernobyl and everyone on earth. Close call! But, usingthe laws of statistical probability, these NASA scientists concluded that two in arow was really, really unlikely, and sent the plutonium up with the next shuttle.Hope there wasn’t any plutonium on Columbia- they probably wouldn’t tell usif there was, but I guess we’ll all find out over the next ten to twenty years.I’m gad the space shuttle blew up. I think a nation preparing to engage in thehigh-tech killing of thousands ought to spend a moment grieving for seven peoplewho died for essentially no reason inside the most advanced piece of machineryon the planet. Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon said that he hoped people wouldsee his space voyage as symbolic. I’m not a religious person, but if I did believein a higher power willing and able to commu nicate His will to us mortals (asGeorge Bush and his fundamentalist cronies do), the message would seem tobe loud and clear: God is not on your side, Judeo-Christians. Clearly you’veangered him and you might want to re-think your new crusades until you’veappeased him somehow.

1 5Horsemen courtesy of StreetRec Collective,available at www.appliedsemiotics.com

Posters from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea pledge to fightAmerican Imperialists. The campaign was posted along the streets ofPyongyang and other parts of the country shortly after North Korea withdrewfrom the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty on January 10th. Mostposters “call for a sacred struggle to smash the US imperialists’ moves toisolate and stifle the DPRK and defend the dignity of the DPRK and thenation’s right to existence.” (AP 01/30/03)1 6