Posted in interviews, pntv by project-noise
June 16, 2009
Today Tom Morello’s new band with Boots Riley of The Coup, Street Sweeper Social Club, releases their self-titled debut album. With a nod to Morello’s dizzying accomplishments since RATM first disbanded (though they now play live occasionally), Project Noise presents a glimpse into Morello’s background when he discusses his experiences at Harvard and his determination to be in a rock band.
Facebook Censors Anti-Hate Page Boycotting Rockstar Energy Drink
Project Noise was alerted to a disturbing case of censorship on Facebook and encourages readers to take action. It’s as easy as 1-2-3:
1.) Join the Facebook group
2.) Sign the email list in case the Facebook group gets censored again
3.) Don’t buy Rockstar Energy Drinks and spread the word by linking to this article
AlterNet Takes on Shock Jock Michael Savage and Gets Threatened With a Lawsuit
by Don Hazen and Tana Ganeva, AlterNet
When AlterNet helped publicize the link between bilious talk show host Michael Savage and Rockstar energy drink, they got a letter from their lawyers.
Michael Savage, right-wing crusader against gays, immigrants, Muslims, Barack Obama, Britain, women, (and possibly puppies), may have found a new object for his wrath: groups that have the temerity to publicize the vicious talk-show host’s connection to Rockstar energy drink — and to call for a boycott by consumers opposed to Savage’s hatemongering. Read more »
With a once in a lifetime show at the Music Box combined with a day at PATH (People Assisting the Homeless) in LA, Tom Morello continues to break ground with his 2nd annual Justice Tour, combining an incredible rock experience with real, on the ground, person to person activism.
The Justice Tour rolls from Seattle’s Crocodile show with “Tadgarden”, then on to San Francisco for an amazing show at Slim’s, but first, the artists work with Project Open Hand, making and distributing food to the homeless and hungry on the streets of San Francisco. Show features Sammy Hagar, Joe Satriani, Wayne Kramer of the MC5, Steve Earle, Corey Taylor of Slipknot, and The Freedom Fighter Orchestra help the cause: www.openhand.org
Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello’s sends his first video dispatch from Justice Tour 2009. Tom’s solo project, The Nightwatchman takes the message of Social Justice on the road for the second year in a row.
A posse of musicians travel to Seattle, get involved and learn about the plight of homeless youth at New Horizon Ministry’s Drop-In Youth Center, then play a show the next night to benefit the cause. Stay tuned for more video from the show and more Justice Tour stops in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Seattle’s show features: Tom Morello, Kim Thayil and Ben Shepherd of Soundgarden, Mark Arm from Mudhoney, Wayne Kramer of MC5, Boots Riley of The Coup, Steve Earle, and other special guests.
Please visit www.nhmin.org and join Tom in supporting a very worthy cause.
To identify Rolling Stone political correspondent Matt Taibbi as a kind of new breed Hunter S. Thompson is an unfair comparison—unfair to Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson came along in an age when journalists were still seen as innocuous enough to be granted mitochondrial level access to presidential campaigns as he was for his book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.
journalist, abu ghraib prisoner, author and mongolian basketball player Matt Taibbi dressed for St. Patrick's Day
Almost no scribe today who reported for a publication with the broad reach of Rolling Stone and with Taibbi’s history of iconoclastic irreverence (see his infamous piece “The 52 Funniest Things About The Upcoming Death of The Pope”) would be let anywhere near the day-to-day activities of a presidential candidate engaged in the PR cage match of a campaign battle.
Hunter S. Thompson back in the day
Sure Hunter S. Thompson took some drugs, went to Vegas and then didn’t report on the Mint 400, or whatever race it was that Sports Illustrated was paying him to cover. And before that, he spent a year riding around with The Hell’s Angel’s to research his first book. Both writers are known for their fearlessness in getting great stories, but Matt Taibbi’s approach is an almost reckless willingness to expose himself to great personal risk to get the whole story.
A little while ago I sat with Taibbi in his apartment along the banks of the Hudson River, while he picked through video clips of the three days and nights he voluntarily—but very covertly–spent locked in a cell at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad (a tad more gonzo than Thompson’s boastful accounts of his substance consumption).
one of the lesser cruelties of abu ghraib
“Did you feel weird at that point?” I asked Taibbi as he scrolled through clip after clip of self-shot video from his undercover mission. The footage was mostly of him whispering into the camera, or often times silent, in his elevator-sized room. In one clip he is wearing a combat helmet and flak jacket, standing in front of a intra-prison mural of Saddam Hussein. Another shows the view from the roof of the prison during a sand storm. Now on the screen, he is back in his cell for a third eerie night.
“Definitely,” he said. “I was freaking out the whole time I was in there cause I was afraid of getting…” he trailed off, preoccupied with video thumbnails.
“Found out?” I asked.
“Well, yeah.”
This particular Taibbi adventure occurred soon after news of the torture within the prison walls had dominated front pages around the world. He accessed the jail courtesy of the clandestine and completely illegal hospitality of a contract interrogator he happened to meet on his flight over for his original assignment–to cover the war for Rolling Stone as an embedded journalist with U.S. troops. Abu Ghraib was a mere detour.
Taibbi got just as involved with the subject matter for his best-selling book, The Great Derangement: A Terrifying Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire. In it, Taibbi examines the collective psyche of post-9/11 America, its culture of fear, and the impact of ineffectual and duplicitous government leadership that Taibbi posits has spurned expansion of a lunatic fringe. His research included joining the Reverend John Hagee’s mega Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, known for its rigidly right-leaning congregation. Taibbi also joined the 9/11 Truth Movement, which turned out to be a sadly indicative lab sample of the remnants of old school lefty activism. Many journalists would have stopped there, having gotten their Spy vs. Spy angle covered with plenty of colorful extremists.
For Taibbi though, his drive seems to lie in his determination to understand, on multiple levels, the entire story, doing whatever it takes to get it–and distilling it into a read that somehow manages to combine the scholarship of a textbook with the entertainment value of Mad magazine. In other words, the Rolling Stone demographic gets it–and likes it–even if they don’t always agree with it.
While describing his pre-Rolling Stone beats, Taibbi noted, “When I lived in Moscow, terrorist attacks happened pretty routinely. The Chechens were always blowing shit up. And nobody had an apoplectic fit about it or thought ‘My God, my whole life is different now that I’ve lived in a city where there was a terrorist [attack].’ They didn’t start rushing to give up every right that they have. Americans completely over-reacted to 9/11.”
signing the patriot act--that'll get 'em
If you live in some other part of the world where you regularly have contact with other cultures and realities where there is poverty or radical political movements, where people are desperate or there’s war, or any of that stuff, you realize life gets ugly sometimes and it’s not the biggest deal in the world to have something like that happen. It’s just a fact of life.”
WASHINGTON—A majority of African-Americans surveyed in a nationwide poll this week reported feeling “deeply disturbed” and “more than a little weirded out” by all the white people now smiling at them.
Black citizens have reported a disturbing 350 percent increase in interracial high-fiving since January 20.
First witnessed shortly after President Obama’s historic victory, the open and cheerful smiling has only continued in recent months, leaving members of the black community completely unnerved.
“On behalf of black people across this nation, I would like to say to our white brethren, ‘Please stop looking at us like that,’” said Brown University psychology professor Dr. Stanley Carsons. “We’re excited Barack is president, too, and we’re glad you’re happy for us. But giving us the thumbs up for no reason, or saying hello whenever we walk by, is really starting to freak us out.”
Added Carsons, “We just want to be able to stand in line at Home Depot without getting patted on the back.”
According to the poll, more than 92 percent of African-Americans have noticed a dramatic increase in the number of beaming Caucasians in their vicinity, as well as a marked rise in the instances of white people making direct eye contact with them on the bus, engaging them in pleasant conversation, and warmly gazing in their general direction with a mix of wonder, pride, and profound contentment. All respondents reported being “petrified” by the change.
“Yesterday, I’m pretty sure the cashier at the Giant Eagle winked at me,” said Eddie Wilkes, a Pittsburgh resident who described himself as “not a politics person.” “Then she said something about what a happy day it was and tried to bump fists. The whole thing gave me the willies.”
“I can’t even be at a bar anymore if they have the news on,” said Chicago native and small business consultant Jarell Brown. “Obama gives a speech on the economy and people act like my team just won the Super Bowl. I didn’t even vote for the guy. I’m a Libertarian.”
Although poll respondents said that the regularity of jovial white strangers greeting them in elevators has risen approximately 450 percent since mid-January, the incidents are reportedly nowhere near as frequent as they were on Nov. 4, 2008. On that day, the country was temporarily seized by an epidemic of unsolicited white-on-black hugging.
Posted in interviews, pntv by project-noise
January 22, 2009
Project Noise spent 12 hours at The Cubby Bear to get this–some of it outside in the snow–but it was well worth it. Clinton talks about his three Inauguration gigs, conspiracy theories, conspiracy facts, Vietnam, and what makes him a pivotal figure in music.
Taibbi got just as involved with the subject matter for his best-selling book, 
