freakpowertix

yep. that's right. today is "national pancake day."

yummm...

www.dailynexus.com

Burning Down the Isla Vista Bank of America
by Daniel Haier - Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 23, 2005




El Gaucho Photo Archive

Editor's Note: February 2005 marks the 35th anniversary of student protests that rocked the UCSB campus in 1970. In reaction to the firing of professor Bill Allen and the expanding war in Vietnam, rioting students burned down the Isla Vista Bank of America on Feb. 25, 1970. The second of four parts, this series looks back on the'69-70 year in UCSB history.

Swinging a bottle of wine, Rich Underwood strolled from Harder Stadium into Isla Vista with several hundred other students who had just attended a speech delivered by defense attorney William Kunstler. The date was Feb. 25, 1970.

During that month, Kunstler represented the famed "Chicago Seven," a group of prominent counter-culture figures who were accused of conspiracy with intent to incite riots after violent street protests marred the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

In his lecture to the stadium audience, Kunstler referenced the controversy at UCSB over fired anthropology professor Bill Allen and some scattered violence in Isla Vista - which included the attempted burning of a police car - that preceded his arrival.

"I have never thought that breaking of windows and sporadic, picayune violence is a good tactic," Kunstler told the crowd, which applauded the statement. "But, on the other hand," Kunstler continued, "I cannot bring myself to become bitter and condemn young people who engage in it."

The crowd, as heard on archived audio from KCSB 91.9 FM, whistled and applauded again.

Police officers in a patrol car pulled alongside Underwood. Mistaking his bottle of wine for a Molotov cocktail, the officers ordered him under arrest, in plain sight of the sizable crowd that was moving toward a planned rally in Isla Vista's Perfect Park. Underwood, described by El Gaucho reports documenting the incident as a former UCSB student, had already been placed under arrest less than a month earlier - following the police charge in front of the administration building during the first major pro-Allen rally on campus.

Underwood resisted the officers trying to arrest him again, drawing more police - clad in riot gear - to the scene to help subdue him. As police beat Underwood, onlookers flung rocks at the patrol cars.

Energized by Kunstler's speech and a fresh example of perceived police brutality, the stone throwing expanded. Vandals shattered windows at realtor companies throughout Isla Vista and then aimed their rocks at the windows of the Bank of America.

Before sunrise on Feb 26, a night of street rioting would leave the Bank of America - present-day Embarcadero Hall - in a pile of ashes. The downtown area of Isla Vista would slouch in a cloud of tear gas.

No Longer a Joke


After attending Kunstler's speech, Doug Hewitt returned to his fraternity house. Hewitt, now 53, was a freshman at UCSB during the 1969-70 academic year. His 20-year-old son currently attends Santa Barbara City College and lives on Del Playa Drive in Isla Vista.

Later that night, Hewitt said he heard rioters were trying to burn down the bank. Around 10 p.m., he went outside to see what was happening. Across the street from the bank, on the sidewalk that now fronts Woodstock's Pizza and Javan's Sandwiches, Hewitt said he watched as fire engulfed the structure.

"The flames were just shooting up the arch of the two-story brick building, three-story, whatever it was," Hewitt said. "It was like your worst nightmare. This is really happening. People would talk about it before. You heard about 'oh, let's go burn a bank,' but it actually happened. I don't remember if people were happy about it. There were some students who got really wrapped-up in the whole thing - it became their reason for being here."

Hewitt said he and his friends who were watching looked at each other in disbelief, realizing the situation in Isla Vista was "no longer a joke."

"For the most part, we were rowdy, innocent, young, or concerned about Vietnam and concerned about being drafted," Hewitt said. "I remember sitting across from the bank on the curb and just watched it. I don't know what exactly happened, but you know, you turn to the person next to you and say 'can you believe this is happening?' My direct feeling was like most of the people that were students who were not necessarily happy about it because it got bigger than anybody wanted it to get, or thought it would get."

After Underwood's arrest, mobs of students roamed the streets, pelting police patrols with rocks and bottles. While police reinforcements eventually retaliated with tear gas, the hail of stones and bottles completely drove the first contingents of law enforcement officials from Isla Vista. Many police were injured. At the bank, a group of rioters lit a dumpster on fire and rolled it next to the building's entrance. According to accounts by KCSB reporters broadcasting live, unknown individuals overturned the flaming dumpster. Burning trash ignited plywood shielding used to protect the bank's windows from rocks, and the structure burned through the night it collapsed.

Property of Bank of America


Shortly after learning of his 1960 appointment to a tenured teaching position at UCSB, sociology professor Richard Flacks made front-page news nationwide. An attacker, posing as a reporter, met him at his Chicago office for an interview and savagely beat him. The unidentified assailant left Flacks, a well-known founding member of Students for a Democratic Society, with a hole in his skull.

Flacks, who would recover at a hospital and arrive at UCSB in July that year, said he has always assumed the attack was political. Students for a Democratic Society was a new-leftist student movement that primarily protested the war in Vietnam.

"When my appointment [at UCSB] was announced, which was like June of '69 - that became a controversial issue," Flacks said. "Governor Regan attacked the appointment. He said a wonderful statement of his. He said it's like 'hiring a pyromaniac to be a fuse-maker in a firecracker factory.'"

Prior to the controversy over his hiring, which eventually subsided, and the student unrest that brought chaos to the UCSB campus, Flacks said he had expected Santa Barbara to be more relaxing than the politically tumultuous Windy City.

"So the irony was that with starting in January of 1970, there comes this tremendous explosion of campus protest here, which had been preceded by a year or two of prior actions by black students, and by the student anti-war people, and so forth," Flacks said. "But first the demonstrations in support of Bill Allen were dramatic, and then came this scene in Isla Vista, which led to the burning of the bank."

Flacks, who teaches classes in political sociology, has also devoted significant time to researching social movements, political consciousness and student culture. His book, "Beyond the Barricades: the 60's Generation Grows Up," tracks the evolution of political attitudes among several Isla Vista riot participants in the 20 years since the bank burned down.

"There was a mood among the wider student body by 1970, and not only here, but around the country, that was really kind of a neat reaction to authority - both national and police authority, parental authority [and] university authority," Flacks said. "All of these seemed ... to a lot of young people at that point in time as backward, repressive, uncaring, unfeeling, sending us off to war, not understanding our values as young people."

Flacks said there were collective values that young people shared during the late 1960s and early '70s.

"There was no 18-year-old vote, there was a draft," Flacks said. "These are very strong realities that I think people of [the current] generation don't acknowledge ... you have to really work at feeling what that might mean. That, on the one hand, you might be forced to go die for your country, but have no voice in foreign policy at all. Not even a voting voice."

Doug Hewitt said those realities were always in the back of his mind, especially when he stepped out of line. He said he and his roommate tried to take a piece of the bank back to the dorms while protestors were looting the building.

"There were a bunch of things around," Hewitt said. "One of them was a chair. My roommate and I took this chair. It said 'Property of Bank of America' on it. We get this announcement saying 'Anyone discovered with Bank of America property will be arrested on the spot.' So we took the chair and put it in the lounge. Somebody [today] probably has it in their corporate board room."

All content, photographs, graphics and design Copyright © 2000-2006 Daily Nexus. All rights reserved.

i didn’t want this week’s 3rd anniversary of the largest day of coordinated mass demonstrations in world history, february 15th, to go by unmentioned.  millions across the globe took to the streets that day to protest bush & blair’s evil invasion plans & (eventual) occupation of the country of iraq.



certainly, while the decision to proceed had already been made long before that date, the pressure caused by this outpouring of dissent not only slowed down the march towards war, it helped prevent the usual “rubber-stamp” authorization of the u.n. security council (for u.s. hegemony) from ever happening. also, i think this global peace movement set into motion the forces that made possible the subsequent exposure of the massive & conspiratorial global political deceptions around the invasion (+ the corporate media’s complicity in this most awful of war crimes).

currently, while the anti-war movement is somewhat floundering, trying to re-find its bearings again here in the states (with the exclusion of the energy put back into it by the bravery of its domestic victims’ family members, like cindy sheehan, or members of iraq veterans against the war), i think we should take energy from this recent history, & remind ourselves that it is possible to build something that is sustainable, smart, creative, humorous, life-affirming, &, yes, i’m going to use a leftist “buzzword” here (that pun being very secondary, & initially unconscious, i guess): revolutionary.

i mean, i want us to get back to the worldwide energy & militancy of 1968, but i’ll readily admit that we’re not there yet... far from it...

as much as i hate santa barbara, @ times, there are some good things about it.  it’s a progressive city in many ways... & not always just "liberal." back in 2003, we put together antiwar marches that grew to 5000 strong on @ least two occasions (which is massive, given the population of our town).  we also convinced our congresswoman to come out fairly strongly against the war, & to vote against its authorization.  of a more militant nature, santa barbarans blocked the 101 highway a couple of times around the opening days of the actual invasion, held a number of unpermitted marches, & performed other acts of civil disobedience in our area, such as the march 2003 "die-in" that took place in the middle of our main drag here, on state street (see below).



i truly wish now that i had taken pictures during those events. there were a number of things that i thought were so powerful, invigorating, inspiriting about them... (two of the photos posted here in this journal entry, i should note, are by local santa barbara photographer & activist robert bernstein.)

with all of this, i want to put out a challenge to y’all: how about we start opening up some dialogue now, throughout the buzz, about some rather serious matters?  i mean, it's not like we haven't been (thank you again, paxgitmo, & so many of y'all!)... i just want to encourage us to continue our work to grow that dialogue in here... i'm just seconding that position (3rding it, 4thing it, what have you)...

i do not want to see all of this madness continue, like it’s some sort of pandora’s box, & i do not think it has to!!!  clearly, the u.s. & israel have designs on some really scary actions against another extremist state, in iran (& i say “another” here because, lest you forget, just like in iran, we have religious fundamentalists running our country as well -- to quote jello biafra’s recent album: "sieg howdy" y’all!).

of a more personal nature, a number of us in the “buzz” have amazing friends like mohammad, over in iran.  i certainly don’t want to see our leaders unleash such awful violence upon such a beautiful land that he & other friends of his, & ours, are documenting there for us online (btw: the diplomacy that buzznet makes possible is one of its most marvelous traits, i think)...

i also want to say that i’m not bringing all of this up to be extremist or alarmist. i just want y’all to realize how much is @ stake &, like i say above, i want us to starting communicating with each other about what we need to do in order to fix things, to set them right, ... to transform the world.

i do think it’s possible, & i want to hear from y’all about this... here. in your blogs & photos. with your other friends. & families. & out in the streets too, ya know?

speaking of the “stakes”: i do love the picture below from feb. 15, 2003, in santa barbara (again courtesy of robert bernstein)... on top of the main part of the image (cheney's head on a stick), as much as i hate lame “dick jokes,” this woman's sign also sorta works for me, especially given recent developments with mr. sure-shot this past week... (teehee)




and, finally, re: the sight of cheney's head, up there on a stick... it brings out some vlad the impaler streak in me, i guess... what a glorious image, no? (my romanian friend, doina, certainly would get a kick out of that! ;)

o.k. now talk to me, people!

peace out,
freakpower.

"the origin of love"

When the earth was still flat,
And the clouds made of fire,
And mountains stretched up to the sky,
Sometimes higher,
Folks roamed the earth
Like big rolling kegs.
They had two sets of arms.
They had two sets of legs.
They had two faces peering
Out of one giant head
So they could watch all around them
As they talked; while they read.
And they never knew nothing of love.
It was before the origin of love.

The origin of love

And there were three sexes then,
One that looked like two men
Glued up back to back,
Called the children of the sun.
And similar in shape and girth
Were the children of the earth.
They looked like two girls
Rolled up in one.



And the children of the moon
Were like a fork shoved on a spoon.
They were part sun, part earth
Part daughter, part son.



The origin of love

Now the gods grew quite scared
Of our strength and defiance
And Thor said,
"I'm gonna kill them all
With my hammer,
Like I killed the giants."
And Zeus said, "No,
You better let me
Use my lightening, like scissors,
Like I cut the legs off the whales
And dinosaurs into lizards."



Then he grabbed up some bolts
And he let out a laugh,
Said, "I'll split them right down the middle.
Gonna cut them right up in half."
And then storm clouds gathered above
Into great balls of fire

And then fire shot down
From the sky in bolts
Like shining blades
Of a knife.
And it ripped
Right through the flesh
Of the children of the sun
And the moon
And the earth.
And some Indian god
Sewed the wound up into a hole,
Pulled it round to our belly
To remind us of the price we pay.
And Osiris and the gods of the Nile
Gathered up a big storm
To blow a hurricane,
To scatter us away,
In a flood of wind and rain,
And a sea of tidal waves,
To wash us all away,
And if we don't behave
They'll cut us down again
And we'll be hopping round on one foot
And looking through one eye.

Last time I saw you
We had just split in two.
You were looking at me.
I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar,
But I could not recognize,
Cause you had blood on your face;
I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain,
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart;
We called it love.
So we wrapped our arms around each other,
Trying to shove ourselves back together.
We were making love,
Making love.
It was a cold dark evening,
Such a long time ago,
When by the mighty hand of Jove,
It was the sad story
How we became
Lonely two-legged creatures,
It's the story of
The origin of love.
That's the origin of love.



art by emily hubley
composer/lyricist stephen trask
from "hedwig & the angry inch"



besides the amazing artwork of animator emily hubley (in the film adaptation of the stage musical), perhaps the best thing to spring from that version is the benefit album, "wig in a box: songs from and inspired by hedwig and the angry inch" (pictured above), featuring such artists as frank black, sleater-kinney & fred schneider, the breeders, robyn hitchcock, they might be giants, bob mould, polyphonic spree, stephen colbert, spoon, yoko ono & yo la tengo, ben kweller with ben bolds & ben lee, cyndi lauper & the minus 5, & both rufus wainwright & jonathan richman each doing "the origin of love."

i sorta "discovered" jonathan richman's back-catalogue a couple years ago. i knew who he was, of course, but it really helped that i work @ a radio station, so i could sample his music beyond what's in "there's something about mary" or knowing "pablo picasso" (made famous for many of us by its inclusion as a cover by burning sensations in the "repo man" soundtrack).

his personality & performance skills really helped win me over, too. my introduction to him live was @ a fantastic show @ the ventura theater in early 2004. that night, richman displayed not only his famously boyish charm & cleverly poetic lyricism, but he also launched into an unexpected political segment during the concert: turning "pablo picasso" into an attack on gov. arnold schwarzenegger (he kept singing "asshole" with a particularly austrian inflection--"oss-hoale"); appealing for the audience to help seek a death penalty commutation for california inmate kevin cooper; & singing a touching song about another death-row inmate, mumia abu-jamal (with accordian accompaniment in its recorded version). i was really won over with all of that, & returned to kcsb to explore the wonderful music of his that we have available to us @ the station.

i sporadically, continually, reflect, though, on the title track to his 2004 release, "not so much to be loved as to love." it's, like, there's just something so profound about that deceptively simple tune's lyrics... the dude's such a philosopher! =)

(again, that title track [+ two excellent music videos] can be found @ vapor records' official website.)

LoveLoveLoveLoveLoveLove

Me and my friend were walking
In the cold light of mourning
Tears may blind the eyes
But the soul is not deceived
In this world even winter
Ain't what it seems

Here come the blue skies
Here comes springtime
When the rivers run high
And the tears run dry
When everything that dies
Shall rise

LoveLoveLove is stronger than death
LoveLoveLove is stronger than death

In our lives we hunger
For those we cannot touch
All the thoughts unuttered
And all the feelings unexpressed
Play upon our hearts
Like the mist upon our breath

But awoken by grief our spirits speak
"How could you believe
That the life within the seed
That grew arms that reached
And a heart that beat
And lips that smiled
And eyes that cried
Could ever die?"

Here come the blue skies
Here comes springtime
When the rivers run high
And the tears run dry
When everything that dies
Shall rise

LoveLoveLove is stronger than death
LoveLoveLove is stronger than death

Shall rise
Shall rise
Shall rise
Shall rise

"love is stronger than death," the the, dusk (1993, composed by matt johnson)
to listen, select "dusk" in the the's jukebox on the band's official website, and proceed...

i haven't been reading enough (for some o' ya, that refrain is getting o-l-d, i'm sure)...

anyways, i love this routine. it's featured in it's just a ride, the excellent 1994 documentary about the late bill hicks.

the image above is pretty fucking amazing too... breathtaking, in fact, for a hicks fan like moi (it comes from the website centripedus.com, and is by jason scade).

there are some edgy things in the bit... i get a little uncomfortable with the class & gender dynamics in it, but as brett butler puts it above, hicks' vitriol somehow comes from loving that world so much, at the same time.  it's very particular to his (their) experience, i guess, as southerners...

the documentary was transcribed by elspeth fahey, fellow hickscult member, & also posted @ centripedus.com (a transcript of the entire 45 minute documementary). that's dedication!

Published on Thursday, February 2, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
A 9/11 Conspirator in King Bush's Court?
Sheehan Wasn't Welcome But a Saudi Accused of Support for al Qaeda Was
by Jeremy Scahill

While Cindy Sheehan was being dragged from the House gallery moments before President Bush delivered his State of the Union address for wearing a t-shirt honoring
her son and the other 2,244 US soldiers killed in Iraq,

Turki al-Faisal was settling into his seat inside the gallery. Faisal, a Saudi, is a man who has met Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants on at least five occasions, describing the al Qaeda leader as "quite a pleasant man." He met multiple times with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. Yet, unlike Sheehan, al-Faisal was a welcomed guest of President Bush on Tuesday night. He is also a man that the families of more than 600 victims of the 9/11 attacks believe was connected to their loved ones' deaths.

Al-Faisal is actually Prince Turki al-Faisal, a leading member of the Saudi royal family and the kingdom's current ambassador to the US. But the bulk of his career was spent at the helm of the feared Saudi intelligence services from 1977 to 2001. Last year, The New York Times pointed out that "he personally managed Riyadh's relations with Osama bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar of the Taliban. Anyone else who had dealings with even a fraction of the notorious characters the prince has worked with over the years would never make it past a U.S. immigration counter, let alone to the most exclusive offices in Washington." Al-Faisal was also named in the $1 trillion lawsuit filed by hundreds of 9/11 victims' families, who accused him of funding bin Laden's network. Curiously, his tenure as head of Saudi intelligence came to an abrupt and unexpected end 10 days before the 9/11 attacks.

"Nobody explained the circumstances under which he left," says As'ad AbuKhalil, author of The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power. "We know for sure that he was tasked by the United States government back in the late 1970s and on to assemble the kind of Arab Muslim fanatical volunteers to help the United States and the C.I.A. in the fight against the Soviet communist regime [in Afghanistan]. In the course of doing that, this man is single-handedly most responsible for the kind of menace that these fanatical groups now pose to world peace and security." Yet, there al-Faisal sat on Tuesday as President Bush spoke of his war on terror and Cindy Sheehan was being booked. At one point, the cameras even panned directly on al-Faisal listening intently to Bush.

The 9/11 families' lawsuit charged that al-Faisal secretly traveled to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar twice in 1998 where he met with bin Laden's representatives and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. Based on sworn testimony from Taliban intelligence chief, Mullah Kakshar, the lawsuit claimed that al-Faisal allegedly received assurances that al Qaeda would not use "the infrastructure in Afghanistan to subvert the royal families' control of Saudi government." In return, according to the lawsuit, the Saudis promised not to seek bin Laden's extradition or the closing of his training bases. Al-Faisal also allegedly promised Mullah Omar financial assistance. Shortly after the meetings, the Saudis reportedly shipped the Taliban 400 new pickup trucks. According to the London Observer, Kakshar also said that al-Faisal "arranged for donations to be made directly to al-Qaeda and bin Laden by a group of wealthy Saudi businessmen. 'Mullah Kakshar's sworn statement implicates Prince Turki as the facilitator of these money transfers in support of the Taliban, al-Qaeda and international terrorism,'" according to the lawsuit.

Al-Faisal does not deny he traveled to Afghanistan in 1998 for meetings with Mullah Omar, but he insists it was to "convey an official Saudi request to extradite Osama bin Laden." al-Faisal has a long history in Afghanistan. He worked closely in the 1980s with the both the CIA and the mujahadeen that would later form both al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Ultimately, a judge dismissed the 9/11 families' lawsuit against al-Faisal and his cohorts, saying US courts lacked jurisdiction over the matter. But many of those families believe firmly that al-Faisal was connected to the attacks that killed their loved ones. The obvious question is: how does the president justify the ejection of a Gold Star Mother from the State of the Union, while openly welcoming a man believed by hundreds of victims' families to be connected to the attack Bush uses to justify every shred of his violent policies?

During his speech, Bush said, "It is said that prior to the attacks of September the 11th, our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy." Perhaps he should have just looked over his wife's shoulder up there in the gallery during the State of the Union.

Jeremy Scahill, a correspondent for the national radio/TV program Democracy Now!, is a Puffin Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. He can be reached at jeremy(at)democracynow.org.

this amazing band is playing the the knitting factory in los angeles on april 2nd, with the legendary subhumans (w/ifs' first west-coast tour in @ least four years!).

don't just take my word for it regarding world/inferno friendship society: you can check out 3 of their songs & 1 music video @ their myspace site. you can also listen to mp3s by simply clicking on any of of these 4 titles:

glamour ghouls
the models and the mannequins
our candidate
all of california and everyone who lives there stinks.


(the best of the lot, though, can be found @ that myspace page, which contains this ten-year old group's most recent material that's available for free, online.)



here's an invitation to enter their cabaret:

"NYC's disturbingly cult-like, circus-related, Halloween-tent-revival orchestra The World/Inferno Friendship Society perform red-eyed soul show tunes for the swarming punk rock masses.

The World/Inferno Friendship Society is not a rock band with a horn section; it's a fully-integrated orchestra of young men and women writing for you songs of the wine, freedoms and foibles which make life more than waking up and going to work every day. Nine pieces - 2 drummers 4 horns 2 guitars way too many teeth a piano and an accordion. Sign the fuck up!



Fate, my friends, loves the Fearless. And We, in turn, love You. Don't turn away from love, friends--don't be chicken. THE WORLD/INFERNO FRIENDSHIP SOCIETY is all the proof you need. With songs so sweet and a quicksilver beat, a lean 9-piece orchestra of girls and boys plays the cabaret-soul-punkety soundtrack to your romances and disasters. The vaudeville circus you always wished your life could be can be--just come and see!



THE WORLD/INFERNO is coming to your town! They are not fucking around! Full-time-fighting friends to the friendless, the most successful scourge to the oppressors since Willy Sutton, they're riding a wave of delicious alcohol straight into your hearts. Even if they have to buy the drinks themselves, they'll do it. Come see the circus play the dirty rock club, one night only! Come and waltz with the one you love.

It's Halloween, it's 1933, we're all in Bladerunner and the drinks are on the house. You have no excuse not to come out unless it is that you are a jerk. I don't think you're a jerk, I'll see you there."

(Jack Terricloth, front man: W/IFS)



sign up for one of their two mailing lists...  look @ their tour schedule & try to see them, wherever you may be.  however good or bad you might think w/ifs to be, based on this meager blog tribute, they are, regardless, so... great... live.  take my word for it: have i really let you down, yet?

a w/ifs show will make you very, very happy (my one experience of this band was transformative: i guess you can say it made me an infernite. ;)




they don't leave the east coast too, too much-- 'cause of the size of their collective -- so now's the time, my pretties!!!

see them.  join the society!!!!





find out more about "the world inferno's 'the true story of the bridgewater astral league.'"