The world adores matt hayward

If you’ve seen the book ‘Crossing the Rubicon’ by Micheal C. Ruppert, or perhaps his video ‘The Truth and Lies of 911′, then Mick Ruppert will be no stranger. He has an uncanny way of stating politicians’ modus operandis in a bleak yet compelling, judical-like tone.

Unlike most journos or political commentators, he runs his own subscriber based site www.copvcia.com. So what’s the truth without spin Mick? Well as of September 2, Ruppert had this to say.

“The United States, with 5% of the world’s people, consumes (wastes) 25% of the world’s energy. How do you destroy demand? You collapse the economy. Homeless, unemployed “refugees” (what a cold, depersonalizing term) don’t buy gas, take trips, fly on airplanes or buy consumer goods (made with energy and requiring energy to operate). They don’t use air conditioning because they can’t afford it. They are the embodiment of Henry Kissinger’s infamous term “useless eaters,” a phrase from the Nazi vocabulary.”

It starts even more tragically:

“What is not being discussed rationally by the mainstream media is Katrina’s impact on energy production. They don’t dare. By my calculations and those of oil energy expert Jan Lundberg, the United States has just lost between 20% and 25% of its energy supply. My projection is that it’s not coming back — at least not most of it.”

“As many as twenty offshore rigs have now been confirmed as adrift, capsized, listing or sunk. Each rig may have as many as eight wells. Where’s the money coming from to replace them? How long will that take?”

Suffice it to say, America is completely buggered oil-wise. Even if they can get oil from Venezuala, Colombia, or god forbid the Persian Gulf, a lot of it was processed in New Orleans anyway. It doesn’t just magically turn from ‘bumblin’ crude into precision oil, or electricity.

There’s also the indeliable aspertions on George W. Bush

Since taking office, President Bush “has appointed, in succession, his 2000 campaign manager and an Oklahoma lawyer whose only emergency management experience prior to joining FEMA was as an assistant city manager.”

Beyond any natural, freak occurence, it’s highly apparent that this is not so much a racial descrimination as a class issue. Because as our old mate Mick puts it, in a neo-conservative, corporate run world, the less poor consumers, the more to go around with fewer overheads. Socialism for the uber rich. Get used to it or do something about it. The Republicans and their allies only care for themselves.

Here’s the original article if you want to judge for yourself.

Timbo was in pretty good form today. Not fantastic, but not bad. He seems to be at the tail end of a rather harrowing experience and might just pull through. In hindsight, he’s become like a negro, Delta blues star: idolised by everyone for years to come but no one would want to be in his shoes.

I’ve spent most of today in a melancholy mood listening to ‘Ghost Songs’ on repeat. On first impressions, ‘Dirty Ron’ has lost the cool, rocking country twang of Spit Polish and is trying to pull off some Rockabilly shit thing. It’s just not working for me yet. But ‘Ghost Songs’ is uniquely poignant and almost voyeuristic and compelling, like what ‘Big Brother’ is meant to be. There is a tragedy in the boy that’s for sure!

So what better way to finish a day listening to dulcet, yet depressing duos on Ghost Songs, than to see Timbo play? There were about 200 or so people there. You have to give it to Timmy, even though he couldn’t remember half of his own tunes (hey man, he’s written HUNDREDS and blatantly hadn’t rehearsed), he’d play ‘em in a heartbeat if asked. Two people came up and sang.

He was in good humour, although he seemed to have an epiphany when he read the liner notes of his own CD. Poor bastard wen’t silent. Now Timmy’s stopped playing his Guild acoustics, his guitar sound is a little more shallow. I have to admit i’m not completely taken with it.

Anyway it was good to see Timmy soldiering on. He reckons You Am I have recorded 7 tracks for their new album. And they only pan out to about 17 minutes. So there’s a bit of animosity comin’ our way, that’s for sure. After Dirty Ron, I can’t wait! It will be a welcome change.

After moving house recently, it’s become patently obvious how useless CDs really are. Why can’t most bands get off of their high horse and realise how much their major labels are screwing them and realise how much MP3 is doing for them.

Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the first exhibit is goth metal band Cradle of Filth. Now albeit this is a very niche market for goth metal, they were for a very short tenure signed to Sony. On a recent JJJ Radio interview, the guitarist from the ‘Filth whined how fans were putting up music pre-released for music journos to review onto the internet.

Well Mr Filth boy, if it wasn’t for MP3 and file sharing, I wouldn’t have even heard of your stinking band! Do you really think that we all have $30 burning a hole in our pocket, to risk on your album because some emo prettyboy walks past with a Cradle of Filth T-Shirt on? You know the truth. Not everyone is going to buy your music, and I don’t think it’s theft or fraud if they don’t. Because unfortunately popular music is a very stilted platform. On one end you’ve got shelf life pop stars that get where they are from pre-pubescent teenagers with their digits on their parents’ mobile phones. In the other corner you’ve got you guys trying to earn an honest quid in a crowded, stagnant metal market.

Something tells me that Mr Sony Spin Doctor man is going to spend money on disposable pop star that will piss right off as soon as the ratings season ends. And hey guess what? Not every shopkeeper wants to put your lurid posters up and have a bunch of Emo cunts hanging around, crowding up the place with doom and gloom.

That leaves you with very few avenues to promote yourself. So a few kids ‘rip’ your CD into MP3 format and load it, and share it with their friends online. Before you realise it, Filth boy, at least one of those kids isn’t just going to download all your music, he might actually (god forbid!) BUY your next album. But if it wasn’t for the file sharing, they never would’ve!

Suffice it to say, stop whining. Because these so called fans weren’t going to buy your album in the first place. If they’re anything like I was in my teens, buying a $30 CD meant no social life for a week. So it still to this day is a pretty big thing for me to buy ANY CD.

Dave Mustaine, in another JJJ radio interview, he had the right attitude. He sees the connect between tape trading in the 80s and file sharing in the noughties. And ultimately, it’s the best way to get turned onto a band is by referral and trade. Also a good point he made was that “in business, you have to prepare for losses”. And well, let’s face it, file sharing is in part a loss. But from a publicity perspective, a bit of a gain.

Now, rock stars aside, CDs are just fucking stupid. Their ‘tangible benefits’ these days are next to none. They have none of the nostalgia of vynil. They get scratched to buggery. They take up heaps of space in your car and shelf space at home. Once you put them on MP3, you never even look at the stupid arsed covers again, unless it’s some fancypants Digi-pack or some shit - which let’s face it aren’t that collectable and loose their charm real quick.

And the distribution sucks. I have never bought a CD from eBay that actually arrived. I really can’t be arsed ordering something from some shitty record store that will take weeks to arrive that I can download anyway. Besides, just like in Tim Roger’s song, ‘Letter to Gene’, [Gene Simmons of Kiss] some fat dude is smoking in a cigar at his desk, while the band freezes outside in the cold on a tour bus.

Your rock band might get a nice fat advance to record their rekurds from the label, but they sure as hell don’t get that much out of CD sales - if infact they sell any. Therefore, i’ve got no beef buying a CD at a gig or from the artist himself. Let the fat man in his office starve.

I now have boxes of CDs at my parents place in musical pergatory. They do absolutely nothing. But one sweet day, I really hope my kids find an old hard drive, dust it off and plug it in, and start rockin’ out to my MP3 collection.

Ages ago, I wrote an open letter to Kim Beasley. It was in order to keep a law going to allow the open slather importing of vehicles, mostly from Japan, aged 15 years old or more.

This law was setup because they, the Liberal government, thought it would put an end to the slew of Silvias and Skylines on the roads. Well it didnt. In their finite wisdom, they forgot to check that most of the cool cars of the moment (Nissans: 300zxs, Silvias, Skylines, GTRs; Mazda MX5s and the first of the VTEC Hondas) all came out in 1989-1990, you guessed fifteen years ago.

Well my letter was in vain. The law was abolished and now they’ve decided only cars made up to and before 1988 can be imported open slather. Bugger.

There are two poignant facts we have to live with now this rule is over. First, there was a bit of insanity in the 15yo rule. It was making fast and unreliable, twin turbo cars affordable to dramatically more people. Some nutter chick a while back bought a twin turbo Nissan 300zx coupe on her 18th birthday. She pretty much got straight on the Western Ring Road in Melbourne and put the right clog to the floor and was doing 240kph by the time the cameras caught her. Now in anyone’s language, that’s just insane.

In a strange way, i’m kinda glad it’s over. There are far better ways for societies fuckknuckles to kill themselves. No need to waste a perfectly good car over them.

Secondly, when you look at the import sites now, there really aren’t that many cars to crow about. J-Spec are trying to push the V35 Skyline and more kosher, SEVs compliable motors. These cars are kinda cute, but not worth getting wet over. You can tell that most of them are just trade-ins from Nissan dealers. There not exactly straight out of a tuning shop or some hot rodder’s garage. You’d be better off now buying a locally delivered and manufacterd Ford Falcon XR6 Turbo.

High Performance Imports magazine are of the opinion that since the late 90s, Japan have given up on the turbo performance market, and it’s becoming more and more self evident in the import yards. What’s left of the import motors will be run into the ground by anyone that can get their hands on them though, that’s for sure.

Then there’s the final nail in the coffin. www.yahoomotorsport.com, seem to have gone on a huge arsed binge and bought every last 15yo import they can get their hands on. His holding yard in suburban Adelaide, must look like a refugee detention centre for unloved Japanese cars. In their current stock, rust is rife and high kilometres a-plenty. I’m not dissing Yahoo motorsport though, they seem to be very much ‘what you see is what you get’, but is it worth the getting any more? Sadly no.