Author Archives: Phil Rockstroh

For days surrounding Veterans Day, we have endured demonstrably false propaganda that the fallen soldiers of U.S. wars sacrificed their lives for “our freedoms.” Continue reading →

With a major portion of public space utilized for commercial exploitation, and, as a consequence, the concept of the public commons ignored into psychic oblivion, the surface of the corporate state may appear to be too diffuse, too devoid of a center to pose a threat of totalitarian excess. Although, as of late, by the violent response to Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters by local police departments in Oakland, Atlanta, Chicago, and in other U.S. cities, the true nature of our faux republic is beginning to be revealed. Continue reading →

Why is it that self-termed progressives are in full retreat (and have been for decades) from the witless army of angry clowns and hack illusionists of the U.S. right wing? Continue reading →

As Hurricane Irene made her way up the Eastern Seaboard, my wife and I packed a few changes of clothes and trundled westward out of her path to spend the storm’s duration in Pittsburgh, PA. Continue reading →

Unpopular wars drag on, gas prices erratically rise and inexplicably fall, as clouds of cynicism, dark as Richard Nixon’s perpetual five o’clock shadow, brood over the length of the U.S. At times, it seems as though Nixon’s 1970s never ended: Only Ronald Reagan’s/Bill Clinton’s/Barack Obama’s Quaalude-laced, faux populist snake oil caused the nation collectively to slip into a soporific sleep—and now, with the effects of the drug wearing off, we begin to awaken . . . hung over, groggy, queasy . . . still in the midst of that ugly and odious era. Continue reading →

As the poor of Britain rise in a fury of inchoate rage and stock exchanges worldwide experience manic upswings and panicked swoons, the financial elite (and their political operatives) are arrayed in a defensive posture, even as they continue their global-wide, full-spectrum offensive vis-à-vis The Shock Doctrine. Continue reading →

At present, most of us negotiate our days so distracted, disillusioned, dazed, buffeted, bought or marginalized by the corporate state/mass media hologram—the multi-headed, awareness-addling Hydra that guards contemporary precincts of perception (apropos, the “debate” involving the so-called debt ceiling “crisis”)—it is difficult to apprehend what we are up against i.e., the forces of consolidated and calcified power that degrade almost every aspect of life in the nation. Continue reading →

As of late, Pat Robertson has been waxing apocalyptic regarding mankind’s imminent reckoning with wrathful divinity, while liberals have been sharing scary bedtime stories by the ghostly light of computer screens . . . telling sleep-banishing tales of Michele (“Crazy Eyes”) Bachmann, now stalking primary states, assailing common sense and chewing the scenery of sanity during appearances on the 24/7 Creature Feature Theatre, otherwise known as, cable news programming. Continue reading →

Late last month, poet, musician, and self-termed “bluesologist,” Gil Scott-Heron exited the hologram and returned to the source . . . to begin chanting, eternity will not be televised. Continue reading →

Osama bin Laden is dead. And so is the U.S. republic. We had to destroy our freedoms in order to save them. What is left to save from the next rampaging dragon when the knights, sworn to kill the monster, destroy everything in their path in the pursuit of him? One killer is dead. Now what are we going to do with all the killers in our midst who killed him. Continue reading →

The technologies that inflicted upon the world the ongoing tragedies in both the Gulf of Mexico and Japan serve a dangerous addiction, an addiction to blind optimism, a habituation of mind that allows us to dwell within provisional comfort zones but renders vast spaces of the world into death realms. Continue reading →

In Berlin, Germany, in early 1939, at Friedrichstrasse railway station, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, my grandmother placed my mother and her older sister, with a few family valuables sown into their clothing, on a Kindertransport bound for Great Britain. Soon thereafter, she went about the business of bribing my grandfather’s way out of a concentration camp. And then, by means of more bribes, charm, cunning, and sheer force of character, she and my grandfather secured exile from Hitler’s Germany. Continue reading →

Even before the floodwaters of the tsunami that inundated eastern Japan receded (and a threat of a global-wide disaster, engendered by the core breach of multiple nuclear reactors, loomed) in the US, Godzilla jokes began trending on Twitter. Continue reading →