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The current lineup of 'Rheostatics'
While working on some blog posts recently there has been a sort of personal sadness about an upcoming event that has been niggling in the back of my skull.
As I type or link about the various forms of psychopathic degeneration and tremendous beauty happening now on this Earth, I will take a moment to mention the end of one of my favourite treasured distractions over these past few decades.
There are few bands whose careers I have followed from their beginnings to their possible ends.
The Rheostatics are one of those few and I could say, without reservation, they are my favourite Canadian band, (with a few close seconds).
I received word in a newsletter mailing from their Indy label “Six Shooter Records” last month and somehow hoped it was some sort of ill conceived publicity stunt to sell more tickets for what it turns out will be their final show at Toronto’s Massey Hall.
From the Six Shooter Newsletter:
"For the last 21 years, Rheostatics' songwriting frontline of Dave Bidini, Martin Tielli, Tim Vesely and, more currently, drummer/producer Michael Phillip Wojewoda, have helped spark and shepherd contemporary CanRock from a self-conscious sound-alike scene into a spirited universal force, leaving classic albums like Melville, Whale Music, Music Inspired by the Group of Seven, Story of Harmelodia and 2067 in their sonic wake.
"After much consternation, it has been resolved that the group's March 30th, 2007 date at Massey Hall will be the last live performance for the group as they have existed for the last two-plus decades.
"The Rheostatics may continue to persevere in one form or another in the future, but not with their current lineup intact. For fans of the group, it will be the last chance to see this band as they've appeared heretofore; one final evening with Canada's most beloved, long-standing rock band."
When the announcement was posted on their official website I realized that my futile hope of an unlikely, (and wholly uncharacteristic) promotional stunt was wishful thinking and this band that has been tweaking my Canuck beak since 1987 was calling it quits, (at least with their current lineup, one can still grasp to the faint hope of some sort of “Rheostatics 2.0“).
The video for the haunting 'Stolen Car', one of my favourite Rheostatics tunes.
I suppose that it is probably a logical progression for this quartet of legendary, eternally- indy Canadian prog-rockers considering that Dave Bidini has long since embarked on a career as an author and documentary filmmaker, Martin Tielli has gone on to release a staggeringly diverse collection of solo albums, Tim Vesely has recently embarked on a different path with his promising new band, The Violet Archers and current drummer/producer Michael Phillip Wojewoda has always been resplendent with multiple projects including his experimental electronica undertaking, “Faceless Forces of Bigness”.
Although I have seen these fellows in countless smoky bar gigs, (back when freedom of choice reigned in this formerly free country), sat and chatted with some of them and like a true geek fan got albums signed and made devotional offerings of stanky doobs, I still hoped for yet more musical delights from them.
The beautifully strange video for “The Tarleks” from what will end up being their final album “2067”.
Frank Bonner of “WKRP in Cincinnati” fame revises his role as “Herb Tarlek” or more literally an army of “Tarleks” alighting from invading UFOs.
More Rheostatics videos on "You Tube"
There are few things in this era of grand deception and true horror that can make my jaded soul feel less able to stand the waves of senseless death and declining virtue caused by the bigoted and regressive neo-conservatism currently gripping this once hopeful nation.
I am afraid that the end of the “Rheostatics era” really has taken some wind out of my already tattered sails.
I realize that might sound pathetic but few musical acts have been so ever-present for each stage of the soundtrack to my pitiful existence.
I’ve got my tickets for their final gig at Massey Hall next March 30, 2007 and I look forward to one final aural assault of good natured, surrealistic mayhem regrettably tinged with a bittersweet touch of reflective melancholy.
Now the five month wait for that show creeps onward.
Imagining the day after that show and the end of this excellent band causes me to recall the lyrics of the first song I ever heard by Rheostatics setting me off on a lifetime of weird Can-Rock love.
Ditch Pigs
by Martin Tielli/Rheostatics
Called you, you were not at home, no.
And I know that it's nothing but...
You've been gone for so long
And I know that it's nothing but...
I try to stay together, but I...
Try to figure whether, but I...
You were on the telephone
When they were pulling me out of the ditch.
You were gone.
Knocked your door, there was no answer,
So I left; I went away.
You were gone, you weren't home now,
So I left your bell alone.
You were so gone.
You were gone.
Ditch pigs.
Called you for naked answers,
Bus stops and useless transfers.
You live far, so far demand.
I put the ticket in the garbage can.
I don't know nothing, I guess I'm broke.
You were on the telephone
When they were pulling me out of the ditch.
You were gone.
You were so gone.
You are so gone.
Tense rally in Caledonia ends peacefully
CTV
See this CTV report for an image of “Gary” who put on his best t-shirt, (apparently from the “Baby Gap”) to show up and greets his hundreds of followers only to skitter away when it was apparent his march was a rousing failure.
(click pictures to enlarge)
Upon arriving at the reclamation site we were pleased to find larger numbers had come out to support the Six Nations than had come to support the Tourist Bigot Parade.
While the different media outlets had reported different numbers for
“Goofy McHale’s March of the Racists”, from our side of the “fence” it appeared that only several hundred (out of G.H.’s announced “20,000”) had bothered to come out in a display of personal misery.
The media , of course, had included those good non-native citizens and residents of Caledonia who attended outside of the reclamation site to mock and deride the McHale March as numbers among “Gary’s kids”.
Some young men and elders set up a large drum at the mouth of the reclamation site and pounded ancient beats while doing some mighty fine native singing. I turned my back to the drum, held up my Six Nations flag and closed my eyes to listen to the sound that was, no doubt, heard long ago through the thick forests and over silent plains of the Turtle Island.
Such music gives me shivers and echoes deep inside.
The raised voices and pounding beats were indeed good medicine.
After a few raised false alarms of people attempting to approach the site the only glimpse of “Gary’s love bunch” I caught there was as they pressed up against the fence of an adjacent Canadian Tire parking lot and shouted racist epithets, mock “Indian calls”, and flashed the middle finger through the chain link portions of the fence, (below).
The greatest accomplishment of “Gary’s March” was to unite Natives from all over North America along with many outside supporters of many ethic backgrounds and dispositions to come to the defence of the righteous land reclamation.
The only arrests that day were among the outsiders, with a few of them attacking the police or being drunk and disorderly.
Gary scrambled back under his rock long before his abortive “protest” had ended and hopefully, having received more attention than he has ever deserved, will remain there to stew in his own rancid man juices forever.
"Something stupid this way comes...."
The view from the highway at the Reclamation site of Gary's gang stopping up traffic. That would be as close as the angry freaks would come to the site on the main road.
RESPECT
A portion of "Peace Pipe Ceremony" original painting by Cecil Youngfox
Outsiders risk upsetting hard-won calm at Caledonia"Community united against rally" CBC
The Six Nation’s rightful reclamation of treaty land sold off by disingenuous Canadian governments is holding fast in Caledonia.
Tired of being ignored, marginalized and robbed blind of their rightful historical claims, the Clan Mothers, Warriors, and Citizens have made a stand against the encroachment of generic urban sprawl on their tribal land, and are hunkered down for a cold winter of negotiations with the foot dragging Ontario government.
The lack of Ipperwash style jackboot head cracking and murder on the part of the O.P.P has apparently upset some couch moisteners from the G.T.A. who, aside from an unhealthy hatred of Canada’s original occupants have nothing to do with the situation.
Gary McHale a self styled champion of the oh so brutally oppressed Canadian Caucasian is organizing a march on the site by his fellow out of town rubberneck police state cheerleaders for purposes unknown to any rational students of history or human decency.
This blob of human lamp oil has a beef with the McGuinty government and the O.P.P. for not crushing the Six Nations rightful reclamation protest with the racist abandon so liberally employed by Mike Harris’s Conservatives, and feels that wedging himself and his fellow out of town couch spuds between the police and the Six Nations Clans will somehow change things.
Of course, his “protest” over the lack of police violence belongs at Queen’s Park or the constituency office of one of the local Federal Neocons whom Canadians were stupid enough to elect.
Despite calls from McGuinty and non-native residents of Caledonia (including the Mayor), to take his unwanted “protest” elsewhere due to the possibility of escalating tension and/or violence, this pious crusader for the oppressed weight-bearing Caucasian simpleton constituency plans to go ahead with his own version of redneck tourist rabble rousing.
Perhaps he was inspired by the violent yokels who assaulted the claim site earlier this year and hopes that these upstanding examples of humanity will return to throw more punches and racist epithets.
If you live in the area, I invite you to head down to the site with NOTHING but signs, banners, a healthy respect for the surrounding community and peaceful intentions, to show your support for the Six Nations and their RIGHTEOUS undertaking there.
The march of the couch monsters will take place
"from 1:00 to 4:00 pm on Sunday Oct. 15th".
If you are a violent bigot with nothing better to do, stay home and write loving emails to your hero Steve Harper, demanding he work even harder in his tireless Neoconservative endeavours to bring an end to all brown people's claims to their lands the world over.
see also:
March Against Caledonia Reclamation Site goes over like a Pregnant Pole Vaulter
Does a Companion Star to Sun Cause Earth's Periodic Mass Extinctions?
"Heavy snows are driven and fall from the world’s four corners; the murder frost prevails.
The Sun is darkened at noon; it sheds no gladness; devouring tempests bellow and never end.
In vain do men await the coming of summer.
Thrice winter follows winter over a world which is snow-smitten, frost-fettered, and chained in ice."—"Fimbul Winter" from Norse saga, Twilight of the Gods
The last time around
Sun has binary partner, may affect the Earth
Physorg.com
"The phenomenon known as the precession of the equinox, fabled as a marker of time by ancient peoples, is not due to a local wobbling of the Earth as modern theory portends, but to the solar system's gentle curve through space.
This movement of the solar system occurs because the Sun has a companion star; both stars orbit a common center of gravity, as is typical of most double star systems.
The grand cycle–the time it takes to complete one orbit––is called a "Great Year," a term coined by Plato."
image and articles found on the homepage of J. Orlin Grabbe
Evidence mounts for Sun's companion stareurekalert.org
"Outside of a few popular articles, and Cruttenden's book "Lost Star of Myth and Time", which outlines historical references and the modern search for the elusive companion, the possibility of a binary partner star to our sun has been left to the halls of academia.
But with Dr. Brown's recent discoveries of Sedna and Xena,
(now confirmed to be larger than Pluto), and timing observations like Cruttenden's, the search for a companion star may be gaining momentum."
Theory and evidence for the Sun's binary companionbinaryresearchinstitute.org
"While there is no obvious visible companion star to our Sun, there could be a dark binary, such as a brown dwarf or possibly a relatively small black hole, either of which might be very difficult to detect, without accurate and lengthy analysis.
Beyond direct detection – one way to determine if we are in a binary system is to see if the Sun is curving through space.
To us on Earth that means we should experience a gradual
“changing orientation to inertial space.”
Such a phenomenon is observed as the precession of the equinox."
Lost Star of Myth and Time
by Walter Cruttendun
Star Systems Hint at Possibility of Sun's Nemesis
As you watch the world, keep your eye on the sky...
* New Articles added, 10/10/06
My stat-counter informs me that many Canadians are searching for articles detailing the “whats” and “whys” of the growing Canadian war and occupation in a nation many Canadians could not find on a map.
The following articles could be helpful in determining the facts running counter to our Neoconservative government’s increasingly convoluted fictions presented as the reasons for Canada entering a multi-billion dollar, multi-generational lost cause in Afghanistan.
More articles and opinion will be added to this list in the coming days.
Canada/NATO Invasion of Afghanistan Sows Destruction and Misery*
Global Research
"Deepening resistance U.S./NATO officials say they are surprised by the scope and success of the resistance to their latest offensives. "The fighting is extraordinarily intense," said the commander of British forces in Afghanistan. "The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq."
But the reasons for deepening resistance are not difficult to understand.
The Senlis report states:
"During the past five years, there have been some limited achievements in Afghanistan.... Yet these visible achievements, frequently lauded in the West, mask the [Afghan government's] lack of independence and the growing irrelevance of the Afghan government to the Afghan people."
The Afghan puppet government and its police and army forces are deeply resented by much of the population for their corruption and abuse. Looting and wanton destruction by foreign and puppet forces routinely follow in the wake of their military operations.
On May 29, a popular uprising occurred in the streets of Kabul following yet another in a long line of civilian deaths caused by reckless driving of a U.S. military convoy. Protesters marched on the presidential palace chanting "Death to America." The protest was brutally suppressed, with Agence France-Presse reporting at least 14 protesters killed.
Canadian soldiers have killed civilians, including children, during patrols in Kandahar. Scores of civilians were killed during the recent "Operation Medusa" bloodletting."
Afghanistan: Wrong Mission for Canada
M. Byers
"The coolly reasoned case made by a leading expert in international law."
How the West Destroyed Afghanistan
Murray Dobbin - The Tyee
"In order to sell Canadians on our war-fighting mission in Afghanistan, the Harper government resorts to using language that reduces the debate to an adolescent level.
By constantly repeating phrases like "we can't cut and run" and we won't leave "until the job is done," or "we have to support our troops" or we "can't let the terrorists win" Harper hopes to frame the debate so that nothing substantive ever gets discussed.
These are the kind of arguments you find amongst adolescent boys fighting in schoolyards: too immature and too driven by their testosterone to actually think straight about the consequences of their actions.
It might be productive if every conversation about Afghanistan had to begin with a quotation from Benjamin Franklin: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." At least it might lead those discussing the war to delve a little deeper, to examine Afghanistan's social and political structures, its history and, most importantly, the record of the West in creating the current horrors.
As is stands now, we proceed as if Afghanistan was created from nothing on Sept. 11, 2001."
On Appeasement and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
James Laxer
“Two charges are regularly made against those who advocate the withdrawal of western armies from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The first, that they are craven because they would “cut and run” is nothing more than the usual excess of testosterone displayed by those who think that any brawl they get into must end with the annihilation of their opponents.
The second charge is that those who would withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan are appeasers following in the footsteps of Neville Chamberlain at Munich.
The second accusation is more serious because it raises the question of what we can
learn from history to prepare us to deal with the dilemmas of the present.”
Canadian death toll reaches 40
The image from Afghanistan seen almost daily by Canadians:
Will it harden us into accepting Harper’s fallacious and juvenile reasons for ramping up Canada’s war against a nation that did nothing to us or will it see Canadians demand an end to the continuously lethal Neoconservative experiment to reshape the Middle East in America’s now unrecognizable image by force?
Harper's Wager: Casualties for Global Influence
James Laxer
“The mounting Canadian death toll in Afghanistan is the price of leadership that comes with playing a significant role in global affairs”: Stephen Harper.
Note the statement. And think about the mind set of the Canadian leader who made it.
The statement is crass and vulgar. It is utilitarian in its willingness to trade blood for influence. It measures the worth of Canada and Canadians in quantitative terms---more casualties, more influence.
The statement sweeps to one side the moral worth of the Canada that has achieved greatness and respect throughout the world as a nation that values human life and embraces diversity.
It dismisses the Canada that has lent its energies to peacekeeping.”
Re-branding America's
“Operation Enduring Freedom”
Nato takes over Afghan security
BBC
Afghanistan: Why NATO cannot win*
Asian TImes
"We saw over a period of many years how the country was torn apart by civil war ... But in the face of outside aggressions, Afghans have always put aside their differences and united.
Evidently, the [US-led] coalition forces are also being seen as a threat to the nation."
Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence*
Democracy Now
"Now, certainly on paper, women are more equal to men than they were before, but in practical terms, very little has actually changed in Afghanistan for women. There's increased sexual and domestic violence against women. Women parliamentarians are harassed and threatened."
Real Taliban Distance Themselves from P2OG Taliban
Kurt Nimmo
"Lost in the corporate media fluff surrounding the supposed suicide attempt of Dallas Cowboys’ star receiver Terrell Owens and the sorrows of Anna Nicole Smith, we learn that the fanatical Wahhabi Taliban, wholly artificial creatures groomed in CIA-ISI sponsored madrassas in Pakistan, are “worried about their image” and are attempting to “distance themselves from the suicide bombers,” according to the Herald.
“The number of suicide bombings and roadside booby-trap blasts in Afghanistan has soared by 600% in nine months, triggering fears that the Taliban are copying Iraqi insurgent tactics.” NATO officers and UN officials “say there is no proven link to either Iraqi insurgents or Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, and that bomb-making techniques could be picked up from extremist websites.”
In other words, a black op “foreign Taliban” appears to be at work in Afghanistan, busily attempting to discredit the real Taliban, who are making gains against the occupation of their country."
CIA and the DIA Smuggle Afghanistan's Heroin to the World Left Russia
Q- How big is American drug traffic to Europe and who is behind it?
A- About 15-20 tons of heroin a year.
When Poznan become open, I think it could rise to 50, even 70 tons.
Behind this business are the CIA and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency).
Actually, this is what they did already in Indochina in the 1960s-70s and in Central America in the 1980s.
Q- What are the goals of these U.S. secret services?
A- In the first place, it's personal enrichment.
Second, special services make huge amounts of money out of drug trafficking.
They can spend this money at their own discretion, without the knowledge of the Congress and even the U.S. president.
Finally, with this money secret services can solve certain political problems.
For example, they can enter into mutually profitable agreements with Afghan warlords, who give "protection" to drug business in their fiefdoms.
This also gives secret services powerful influence on Kosovo Albanian diaspora in Europe, which is more than one million strong. It is a kind of "fifth column" of the United States in "the old Europe."
Flashback:
Canada in Afghanistan: Top Ten Under-reported Facts*
Media Alliance for New Activism
Brief Overview:
FACT #1: Jean Chretien & Canadian Corporations Involved in Trans-Afghan Pipeline
FACT #2: Gordon O'Connor, Defence Minister, Is Former Military Lobbyist
FACT #3: Current Afghan Parliament Includes Warlords and Drug Lords
FACT #4: Afghan Warlords Considered Bigger Threat Than Taliban
FACT #5: Afghan Women Face Repression Despite Removal Of Taliban
FACT #6: Elected Afghan Woman Faces Death Threats For Speaking Out
FACT #7: Since the U.S.-led War, Afghanistan Is Increasingly Hooked on Heroin
FACT #8: U.S. And Coalition Forces Using Excessive Force & Arbitrary Detention
FACT #9: Canada Complicit In Violation of Human Rights For 'War On Terror'
FACT #10: U.S. Finds More Oil and Gas Reserves After 4-Year Search
Afghanistan: The Other Lost War
Stephen Lendman
The US war on Afghanistan was also planned well in advance (at least a year or more) of the 9/11 attack that provided the claimed justification for it.
It was part of the US strategic plan to control the vast oil and gas resources of Central Asia that former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski under President Carter explained the importance of in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard. In it he referred to Eurasia as the "center of world power extending from Germany and Poland in the East through Russia and China to the Pacific and including the Middle East and Indian subcontinent."
By dominating this region including Afghanistan with its strategic location, the US would assure it had access to and controlled the vast energy resources there.
Have a safe day of protest and networking, American friends.
Canadians see Afghanistan as lost cause
ctv.ca
"A clear majority of Canadians consider the mission (WAR) in Afghanistan a lost cause, according to an extensive survey that hints at deep public skepticism about the war on terror.
Decima Research polled more than 2,000 Canadians last month just as Prime Minister Stephen Harper stepped up his efforts to promote the mission.
Fifty-nine per cent of respondents agreed
Canadian soldiers "are dying for a cause we cannot win,"
while just 34 per cent disagreed with that statement.
An even larger majority said they would never fight in Afghanistan themselves under any circumstances - not even if they were forced to in some military draft."
So, despite all of the Harper Neocon’s Cheney/Bush techniques of chiding people with “cut and run” “stay the course” taunts, their constant abusive referencing of the false flag 09/11/01 inside job as the reason for fighting in Afghanistan for generations and our mainstream media’s pro-war horn tooting, THE MAJORITY of Canadians see “Operation Enduring Freedom” in Afghanistan for what it is - another undefined American quagmire.
Despite our primewarmonger's efforts to stick a NATO or UN label on this dog of an occupation/war, anybody with a brain realizes it is and always will be an American Imperialist venture sucking in international troops to free up Americans to continue their rape of Iraq while commencing with other Neocon driven “regime changes” in the region.
Call it a UN mission all you want, the Americans know what it is.
The efforts of Harper’s Neocons to ape the Bush regime’s strategy of making the debate over the war all about “support the troops” instead of “why are we actually there?” doesn’t seem to working well.
Guilt tripping and scare mongering people into the belief that Canadians staying in Afghanistan for generations and attempting to kill every religious fundamentalist there while imposing the fake American puppet “democracy” is worth our nation’s reputation, billions of tax dollars and our very soul is not working like it did in the U.S.A. for Cheney/Bush and their "Project for the New American Century".
Canadians are not buying the patronizing bullshit story about Canada being in Afghanistan to “help women” and “rebuild the country”.
We are there to wipe out the religious fundamentalists on one side of an Afghani civil war and prop up an American puppet regime.
As the Americans continue to bomb the countryside, (and occasionally NATO troops) indiscriminately, not much is being “rebuilt”.
More and more of us are waking up to the fact that as our warships are deployed to the region directly under the “Operation Enduring Freedom” banner and more tanks and soldiers are dispatched under O.E.F. refurbished as a NATO mission we are sinking into an endless American conflict.
Canadians know a soldier eating quagmire/black hole money pit/ lost cause when they see one.
We have watched Americans dive into them for generations.
The important questions are how long will Canadians sit on their thumbs while our Neocons continue to bleed soldiers and tax dollars into the Afghanistan quagmire and what are we willing to do to end our expanding role in America’s
“War of Terror”?
"9-11, 9-11, 9-11, is it working on you yet?"
Removing Harper's Neocons from office would be a great start toward restoring Canada’s soul but replacing them with what is increasingly looking like Neocon Mike Ignatief’s fake “Liberals” would just be flipping the coin.
It is obvious that it is time for thinking Canadians to support ANY party other than the Neocon/Liberal dual sides of the Canadian Cerberus Control System.
We need REAL change.
This Neocon scam is not about "supporting the troops", it's about supporting American foreign policy.
We need to bring the troops home.
Join the Majority of Canadians in a nationwide protest against Harper's expanding War October 28, 2006
Canadian Troops Out of Afghanistan! - Vancouver Rally
For more on the Canadian ships sent to join "Operation Enduring Freedom" and what they might really be doing there see:
The March to War: Naval build-up in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean
