The Cepia Club Blog

The Cepia Club Blog: The Cepia Club believes individual awareness and activism can lead to a peaceful and prosperous world. This blog contains the pertinent literature, both creative and non-fiction, produced by the Cepiaclub Director and its associates.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Culture: Two Notes from The Underground

Notes from the Underground
October 28, 2008
By Pi Kielty

[The next concert at Planet Supply is Sunday, November 2, 2008. The pot luck dinner for friends, supporters and the public wishing to see it, who want to bring some yummies to pass or grill, starts at 6 PM. Sabyre Rae Daniels & Friends, others to be announced, possibly, and the house band The Juggernauts, will all play after the community feast. So stop by Planet Supply, beneath the US Post Office in St. Croix Falls, WI, for food, fun, and good hearty music].

At Planet Supply on Monday, October 27th, the fare was a fair look at music as statement. The first performer, a solo keyboard show by the “traveler” Bass-Turd, was without error a witting, fair-well done, play on red, white, blue(RWB) extravaganza–audibly and visibly. B.T, who is running for President of the United States in 2012, although admitting a comedian schticker-angle, surrounded himself in some Old Glory lights, and a string of RWB Christmas lights. The words played on a powerful message of lost America and lost American souls in an age of ignorant and apathetic “material diabolical dialectical consumptionism” (take that Mao Zhe-Dung). B.T.’s resounding keyboard tuned to a fluttering programmed cacophony of whizzies and whirls, but it blended into a sound meld of perhaps how the great Brian Eno experimented before Eno went “Shutov” in the “Assembly,” and puked marvelous synthesized symphonies with Harold Budd. B.T. took that “One World” sound of Eno’s, reduced it to an Underground start, and launched on an under-represented audience a: “what the hell was that? I don’t know, but it was pretty cool and unexpected”-feel.
Joining the Bass-Turd on the tour is Samuel LockeWard and the Boo Hoos. The two groups are traveling on a “Ravaged Heartland Tour,” a show of support for communities in the Midwest who got hammered by disaster and devastation in The Summer of Big Rain.” It is a noble effort, the “least” they could do, or in B.T.’s phrase, one step above doing nothing, which was the least. Touring to lift the spirits of the Ravaged Heartland, and as how St. Croix Falls did not get damage from the Big Rain, the loose-fit Underground in Polk County, WI, helped set B.T. and Sam’s group off with our positive “be good to one another”-purpose. It is all about holding together and helping one another. For no matter how weird, crazy or otherwise “special” or just hip-funky we all are in the Underground, we stand together, or we sit around in big lazy couches in the Planet Supply and just listen to poets, bards, scops and troubadours who do the right thing in a different, and still hopeful, manner. The Underground did that on Monday night.
I could not stay for Samuel LockeWard and the Boo Hoos, but I listened to Sam’s solo stuff on his rather simple, hand crafted cd. Sam himself has a great grass roots song writing knack, and the cd called “Sacrilege, Treason, Treason, Treachery & Thyme,” is an adaptation of famous gospel notes put to the anti-fascists disestablishmentariamism lyrics that the Boo Hoos, “Rachel on bass, Gracie on drums,” play live. The music has a tinge of jug band staccato, but it definitely challenges the “No class” lie of Orwellian Big Brother Nomenklatucrap-deceptionism (in your face for axiomatic idiomisms, Mousey Dung).
Yes, it was a politically-incorrect Truist show at the Planet Supply–unusual for the fair normal fare of the active community, not well enough attended, but on a Monday, nonethelessism. As it is said, it is all good, when done originally and well–in the Underground.

Notes From The Underground
October 25, 2008
By Pi Kielty

[Next shows at the Planet Supply Arts & Music Venue: Monday, October 27th, 2008. The “Bass-T—s” from Las Vegas. Come and meet their band member running for US President in 2012!! Also playing, Samuel Lockeward and the Boo Hoos. Planet Supply is “underground” of the US Post Office in St. Croix Falls, WI. Doors open at 6:00 PM. Then, on Sunday, November 2nd, at 6 PM, join all for a pot luck dinner and show, featuring house band The Juggernauts, with special performers Sabyre Rae Daniels & Friends, and a lot more . . . . Bring food to share for the dinner!! All shows at the Planet Supply have a $5 suggested donation to support original and creative music!!]

The concert was avant modern, radical and experimental at the Planet Supply on Friday., October 24th. People showing up to support counter-revolution in the modern musical canons enjoyed the all-original, fascinating tunes and fuguey tones in the new “old’ school of Geek Power Age of Punk (which is quite a good thing). With a wide variation of the styles, this was a total new throw-back monk punk for the classical rebel against convention.
The fist band, Minneapolis’ the SoftRocks, played a grand acid grunge. Mike S. on lead guitar and vocals, Elliot H., the drummer with vocabulaire effects, and Matt L., who played a strangish percussion circuit along with his ‘tronic bass, performed songs from their latest album “Summer Apocalypse.” Having gone to Ohio to record this, their second album, and back from an East Coast tour, the repertoire sounds of the SoftRocks was a melodious psychedelia; warm to the ear of how the stranger afflicted the laid back, soothed yet energetic.
The second band, a reprise to the Planet Supply, PeopleAreMagnets, took their many influences of earlier eras, from Led Zeppelin to Radiohead, into a progressive-style Post Rock. Masters of ceremonies would have a hard time controlling this troupe’s musical hearing-vision. PeopleAreMagnets play mind-boggling dream moods that sounds the way clowns on zoomers would look to the keepers of deeper doors of perspective, and amused in the same way tripped clowns feel puzzled apart yet all together “complete’ on a totally different plane of consciousness. Spectrum stuff, in the spirit of old Tangerine Dream, but on an orangish-blue-purple Tang Dream of musical colors mixing smoothly in the diluted reality. People should look forward to the new cd, as yet unnamed, that Todd, Chris, Dave and Jeff will have soon. Playing out of the Minneapolis area, they add a bright bending light around Planet Supply’s alternative gravity every time they come.
The last band of the evening, the two man Young Quitters of Joe and Croix, played on the floor of the concert room, bringing their show banter into the audience, permitting participants in their own self-deprecating jokes. Complete without vocals, a guitar with two pedals and a drum set, the hard edged punk arrivistes popped off less than a dozen songs of wondrous split personae dualist rifts. It was all made an instrumental rebel bellow with rhythms as though these surgeons of punk psychology split the scalpel with ee cummings’ level of sonic meter.
Not quite the usual show at the Planet Supply, the evening performance on the Friday in question is not questionable about the new forms of music recycled in the old attitude: Anything goes for something interesting, as long as it is well-done and original, in the underground.

Friday, October 17, 2008

A Song and Sight for Optimism

We live some hard times in this thing called “living.”  I have found in family, friends, my work, and in my own “America” things for which to be grateful to the first cause in which I believe.  I half-jest that I possess in the best and worst occasions a “Candide”-like frequent naive optimism. Nature deprives us.  We know it hurts to be human. Does humanity need to hurt each other so much?
    We do have choices to make things better, if not for ourselves, then for those around us. Together, in darker times (personal or otherwise), can we not believe in us at this moment and forget the irrelevant crap that divides too many people from one another?  As a favor, please watch the music video at the link below. Let’s find the optimism where we can.

High Resolution (DSL/Cable):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gT1DNZx0Dk&fmt=6 

Normal Resolution (dial up or slow computer) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gT1DNZx0Dk 
   
From the words of the Song writer, an indirect friend of mine.

    “. . .I've always found lots of things in America I would like to change.  People I'd like t see advocated for more strongly.  Ideals I wanted voters to think on, instead of being swayed by rhetoric and sound bites.  How we treat people everyday makes a difference.  How can we create or re-create a country we've loved our whole lives into something we are proud of.  A country that we can, with pride state we are part of when we travel the world and receives smiles instead of jeers. . . .
    “ . . . I was shocked by how many people were so passionate about being part of the video.  Well over 2/3rds of the people I asked, immediately grabbed the pen and paper, furrowed their brows, thought about it (most very briefly) and than began furiously scribbling down their feelings.  Some people were so excited to write down their ideas, I had to make them write it twice, because the first was illegible.
    “This was a very profoundly inspiring process for me to go through.  Feeling the sense of community and love for a country we are all part of.  We may not all have much in common, but a love of country (a perfect country or busted one) was something we could indentify with.  Our common-denominator.”

“word
“Mischa”

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Rebuilding Civilization Requires YOU

Without considering the eventual impact of the global “war we cannot name or define,” the financial coup d’etat underway against the middle and working classes is the beginning of a great re-ordering in this country. Let all America’s “average” citizens be so informed: We the People, collectively–all of us without exception–hold responsibility for the international political and financial upheaval taking place since 9/11/2001. This age will damage and endanger our core national interests and security, and in the end that of American families.
We the People as a whole thought better to stay un-informed about the reality that a few manipulated; We the People chose to fall for the destructive partisan political process. We indulged our greed to get what we could, to grab outside of our reach for more because of the fear of not getting as much as someone else. We choose our leaders poorly.
The phony choices we accept in all the false prophets and lunatics in BOTH the Republican and Democratic parties only served to divide us in our communities. Divid et imperia. We became divided over utterly irrelevant matters, and lost the simple understanding of individual liberty, family economic freedom, justice IN the law, and the truth that we all need each other’s help. These are Natural Laws & Rights. America’s independence was built around them. We forgot where we lost them! Hence shall those smarter and wealthier in this country and elsewhere conquer and rule in THEIR minority interests instead of the general good for all.
We fell victims to our own delusions: WE FIND NOW that there are limits in politics, economics, governing and morals. We broke the “silvery rule,” that is we as individuals, families, factions, and communities did not protect our very own self-interests first and foremost by protecting the common interest of all for the better good.
People can vote their own poisons for president and Congress in the same delusion as before. Wake up!! Republicans and Democrats at all levels, even unwittingly, work for the same people, and those people are not us. Examine the history and the records, and then follow the money. Remove passion, ideologies, and open the objective mind–if you dare to reason.
Multi-trillion-dollar bandages won’t help. America’s independence, our own liberties, material well-being, and our hope for an improved way of life requires a complete re-building of our civilization. We need a cultural rebellion in American thought and action, against the ignorance and apathy.
Re-building begins at the level of main street and neighborhood. Build from the bottom up. Government is better, more responsive, and a greater impact when you can walk or drive in a matter of minutes to the city, village or town hall or county seat. Autumn is the time to run for local offices in Wisconsin’s spring elections. It only requires a little paper work. Find out more and pursue it. Be the change. If not running, attend the local government meetings. Speak up. Volunteer to help improve your community–meals on wheels, neighborhood watch, the library, etc.. Do it because it helps everyone and is the right thing to do. Follow up with action. These measures, building anew in the communities and counties where the land and people meet, produce greater results than ever casting one ballot for a president. No more lesser of two evils. Choosing to help community and local government is a choice for the better, greater good.
Signed [Tim Krenz]

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Into the Post-History

After the fall of the Soviet Union, writer Francis Fukuyama declared "the End of History." In his view, the collapse of the Bolshevik/ Communist rule in Russia meant it was now possible to create a new order of international relations composed increasingly of nations governed by liberal democratic and capitalist institutions. Fukuyama's thesis traveled a long line of politicians and philosophers who believed that peace in the world depended on "enlightened" rather libertarian values of rule by consent of the masses, elections, trade, international law.

The world having seemed to achieve such an irreversible trend toward such institutions world-wide following Desert Storm and the fall of the Soviet empire as its indirect result, Fukuyama may have been a little too optimistic, but his core principles were nonetheless libertarian in tradition going back to Locke, Jefferson, Kant, and Mill. Yes, indeed, democratic and market processes, rules, mores, and exchanges are a path to perpetual stability in the world. The Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant derived the formula in the late 18th Century. President Woodrow Wilson attempted to incorporate the principles into the "new order" following the First World War. His formula–democracy, free trade, international law, and world disarmament–as pillars of peace were the principles of both the League of Nations following that war and also the basis of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's creation of the United Nations in the last year of World War II.

To compliment his political mentor's intellectual construction of peace, Roosevelt added his "Four Freedoms" to Wilson's formula. The Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want. These Four Freedoms cemented the Alliance of the Western Democracies Great Britain and the United States in the global struggle against an unholy alliance of the ideas and practice of Nazism, Fascism, Racism and Militarism, the ideological enemies of all human history, if in different names. World War I and World War II cannot really be seen as two separate incidents due to the common enemy in the perceptions. Instead, the period from 1914 to 1945 needs to be considered in one giant whole, a thirty-one year conflict of struggle between the same forces: enlightened "classical" liberal/contemporary libertarian conceptions of human government pitted against liberties ageless enemy: Elite groups or rulers imposing a brutal, slavish, genocidal, tyranny over the minds and bodies of women and men in the service of that ruler or group. The enemy of enlightened liberty and freedom in World War I–German militarism used in the name of nationalism and autocracy–was the same enemy in World War II, but now with global partners (i.e. Nazi sympathizers and allies in South America and Asia).

At the end of World War II and the creation of the United Nations, what should have been a more manageable world had another "cold" conflict simmering from the ashes of 1914-1945: Bolshevism (or communist fascism) in Soviet Russia. The deal to dance with the devil in order to defeat Hitler's Nazis took the form of Churchill's and Roosevelt's alliance with Stalin and Stalin's one-party fascists state under Marxist-Leninism in Russia. Born of the rubble of Russia's World War I defeat to Germany, the Bolshevik/Communist Party rule ensured that the forces of democracy, markets, rule of law, and peaceful existence would not prevail until the ideological Communist brand of tyranny over the minds and bodies of women and men toppled from the crushing weight of its own lies. When Soviet rule over Greater Russia (which included the other 14 soviet socialist republics) finally ended in December 1991, the long awaited victory of libertarian values (democracy, etc.) over Nazism, Fascism, Racism and Militarism had finally been achieved after 77 years of direct and proxy hot and cold war. The hope of Fukuyama's thesis rested in the ideal that the vision of Wilson's Four Principles and Roosevelt's Four Freedoms had overcome the existential threat from the tyrants, the thieves, the immoral and the murderers. The End of History had arrived. It began in 1914 through accidental diplomacy leading immediately to tens of millions of dead and wounded. It lead further to two or three scores of millions of casualties in the next round against Hitler. Even the proxy wars like Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan caused tens of millions more in dead, wounded, and defiled. Indeed, there was hope.

A 77-year war between liberty and freedom on one side and totalitarian slavery on the other was now complete. Fukuyama indeed had reason for optimism. Never again would the mistake be repeated: From now, democracy, markets, law, and human fellowship must indeed reign over the relations of nations. If not, warmongers, thieves and slave masters in an international anarchy would be liable to destroy the world, a world with nuclear and biological weapons. If reason and "classical liberalism" did not rule from henceforth, the uncertainty of the future portended doom. Seventeen years following the lowering of the Soviet Union flag over the Kremlin, we are at the end of the End of History. What has happened? Later historians may point to the following as leading to the collapse of the enlightened, selfish age in which the world withdrew after 1991. It all ties into the very watchwords that governed U.S. policy since Wilson's intervention in the First World War in 1917. First, "democracy" was only practiced in America by the few smart enough to see that its general benefits could serve them narrowly. America's electorate became self-satisfied by the greed promised by a false dream of getting everything for free. Unfortunately, TANSTAAFL–"there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Believing they deserved things without earning them, Americans in general grew ignorant and apathetic to the costs imposed on them in creating a future debt for others to carry, in the legacies of natural rights like liberty and the natural law of vigilance to protect them. Second, the wealth exploited yesterday and today was not everlasting. Someone has to pay for the ignorance and apathy. The debt is rapidly coming due. Third, when political and economic power become concentrated, the law is also for sale. It was, and someone besides the American working-middle classes bought it. And fourth, the interaction of politics, economics, and social institutions caused the pursuit of peace through human community to surrender to the an iron law of rule by the few over the many: War is more profitable and gains more power for those few who rule than peace, peace being a general benefit spread to thinly per capita to all humanity. In short, Nazism, enslaving the masses for the narrow benefit of the ruling class, is winning again. And it is up to average people who think "liberty and freedom" to live it, to defend, and win for the future generations the right to own themselves, and to create peace and prosperity for all.

What is meant by Cepia Club's Post-History and how do people benefit? Post-History is a politics, economics, and society of people who live believing that they have natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (the pursuit, not the guarantee of it). Post-History is a time when the line must be drawn between the lovers of life, liberty and happiness and those Nazis/Fascists who seek to steal it. If we draw that line together, it can be kept. People benefit by unifying in neighborhoods, between households, in the communities where land and people meet. In order to defeat the coup d'etat against the republic, against the prosperity of average people, against the rule of law in America via the Constitution, and against the natural law and right of Creation given to all people to speech and thought without censorship and to be guaranteed the ownership of their own property (their very minds and bodies themselves most importantly), then ALL WE Americans must rebel. WE must fight with our beliefs, our hearts, our spirits, and our bodies. WE can no longer live apart if we will save ourselves. Post-History is the "New Age Now Beginning." It is the era of united rebellion, the final struggle through peaceful, positive, moral action and civil disobedience against the lies told by party politicians, false prophets, and pundits. Truth in us; Truth a weapon.