Hot Topics
>
[an error occurred while processing this directive] > > >
The Pulse of the Community
by Brad Dickson
With the unofficial start of summer only a week away. I decided to test the pulse of the community by going for a run through the streets of the city. What better way to gauge the atmosphere of L.A.. I figured.
Beginning at Whitsett and Burbank Boulevard in the Valley I began running south, getting a good four feet before stepping into a hole in the sidewalk. This was a small hole, only half the size of the Grand Canyon. I wouldn’t say it’s been a while since the sidewalks were repaired but it was caused by the big earthquake – of 1907.
Continuing south, through this, one of the least scenic parts of North Hollywood, past the outlet malls, the weed-infested used car lots, the boarded-up abandoned homes, the halfway houses and the Vietnamese restaurant that always has their Grade of B proudly displayed in the front window, apparently mistaking it for something positive. I pass a group of day laborers on the corner waiting to be picked up for work. One of them wears a necktie over his t-shirt, a sure sign the recession is over. I believe the first sign a city has gone completely nuts is when the studio executives wear jeans and the day laborers have neckties. One of the day laborers looks vaguely familiar – I believe he was the former vice president of the Enron Corporation.
Continuing on Whitsett while crossing a side street, I’m nearly run over by a “kamikaze suicide driver,” also known as a taxi driver taking a fare from the Burbank Airport. He flips me off and I respond in kind. Last time this happened while running. the same dude picked me up the next morning to take me TO the airport, knowing A. where I lived, and B. that I was leaving town. I called home several times that weekend, half expecting a guy with a Colombian accent to answer.
I pass a city work crew doing some pre-summer repair work on our sewer. If you’ve ever driven through this part of town during a heavy rain you know there is only one sewer for the entire Valley, so it’s imperative to keep it in good working condition.
Looking up, I see a family out for an early summer walk. It’s a typical Los Angeles family – Mom, step-dad, three kids and a pit bull. The smallest child of about 2 is attached to her mother by some kind of leash while the pit bull roams free, which strikes me as just about the most screwed-up sense of priority I’ve ever seen. Suddenly the pit bull snarls and lunges at me, and I quickly step into the street. “Untie that baby and get that damn dog on a leash!” I shout at the family, who respond with the vacant stares of those who don’t understand English.
I’m now heading down Tujunga, past the notorious Vitello’s restaurant where Robert Blake’s wife was killed. Business has reportedly shot way up since the crime, no pun intended, indicating just how disturbed some Angelenos are. It’s gone from relative obscurity to one of the more popular restaurants in the East Valley. It’s something like the eighth most popular restaurant. Number 8 with a bullet, I believe. The same thing happened at the Mezzaluna restaurant in Brentwood a few years ago. However, L.A. people are fickle. Someday another celebrity’s wife will be killed outside another restaurant and everyone will forget Vitello’s and flock there.
I’m now heading back north on Coldwater, toward home. As it’s 8:30 in a city where morning rush hour lasts from 4 a.m. to 1 pm, I’m smack dab in the middle of it.
Forced to run in the street, I’m passed by speeding cars, secure in the knowledge they’ll try to avoid hitting me only because it would make them late for work. Traffic in this town has two speeds –100 miles per hour or 2 miles per hour, with no middle ground. This morning it’s the former.
The worst are the SUVs, which to a runner stands for Scary Urban Vehicle, or as I sometimes call them “gas-guzzling agents of death.” Judging by how people are driving today it’s going to be a bad summer for those who enjoy peace and tranquility on our roads.
A guy in a Jeep Cherokee veers toward me in a dangerous game of “chicken” and I scream that he’s crazy. The driver has three flags on his Cherokee – a U.S. flag, and two Lakers flags. L.A is the only city I know of where nobody bothers with auto insurance but we wouldn’t think of going out with less than two flags on our vehicle. This is also that rarest of places where I can be involved in two morning road rage incidents before I even get in my car.
I pass the house on Coldwater where I suspect the owner of hosting summer cockfights. All I know is on Saturday nights from June through August a ton of pickup trucks are parked out front and there’s loud cheering coming from the house. Either that or he’s got the best porn movies in town.
With only a couple blocks til home, I evaluate my run – I stepped in a giant hole, got into an altercation with a cab driver, was attacked by a pit bull, and nearly run over. Looks like it’s going to be quite a summer.
Taking the E out of RAVE
Assemblywoman Sally Havice (D-Cerritos) has introduced a new bill that would regulate the abuse of Ecstasy at raves. (That means we can still take Special K, woo-hoo!) A recent case where a father took his son to a RAVE and introduced him to E led Havice to comment: “This father’s behavior, and I use the term lightly, is a sin.” At any rate, whether or not this bill is passed, a few precautions should be applied when using E:
1. Make sure your dates are really hot because you will be having sex with them later
2. Don’t drop more than two tabs every hour
3. Mixing with alcohol can yield very pleasant results, but use in moderation
4. Arrange for someone to drive/carry you home
And finally the bill will require the promoter of a RAVE to present evidence showing that he or she is sufficiently knowledgeable about illegal drugs and paraphernalia. This means better and stronger drugs for all! Thanks Assemblywoman Havice! Contact 916-319-2056 (or your local dealer). – VR
Patriotism Rakes in the Bucks
On Seventh Street near Alvarado, in downtown Los Angeles, down where the drug missionaries offer sweet salvation in the loving arms of black tar, a helicopter seems to be following me. It hovers a hundred feet overhead, then turns to track me as I take a lap around Mac Arthur Park to kill some time. The drug boys whistle at me and they mutter, "What do you need, my friend?" as I stride past. I'm at the ass end of American hegemony here, the bottom of the pyramid that supports us all. I'm here because I love conspiracy theories. But I love money more, and I want to collect $1000 for proving Mike Ruppert wrong.
Mike Ruppert claims to be an ex-cop driven from the LAPD 18 years ago for his repeated public claims that the CIA was involved in the drug trade in America. Since that time, he has been, among other things, an admitted drunk and a homeless person. When he was scheduled to appear on “Nightline” some time ago, fact-checkers dismissed him after the LAPD claimed he'd never been a cop. (Later, my call to the Personnel Department at LAPD confirms that there was a Robert Michael Ruppert on the payroll from 1969-1978, but I have no way of confirming if this is the man I will see tonight.) Tonight's Mike Ruppert once prepared a 32-page written statement for the Senate Select Intelligence Committee investigation into the CIA's involvement in the drug trade, but was never called to testify. He claims that he has been shot at and defamed by the authorities. He claims to have cost former Director Duetch of the CIA his appointment as Secretary of Defense under the Clinton Administration. Above all, he claims, the CIA is an organization that keeps the American economy afloat with drug money, and that they had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks but let them happen because Unocal wanted to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan. He should be pretty easy to dispute, or so I think.
Mike has a “documentary” which is actually a video of him giving a talk at Portland State University. I am attending a showing of the video at the 4th floor headquarters of “Arts in Action,” a nonprofit organization that was involved in coordinating the street protests at the DNC in 2000. The humble offices are above a mini-mall that sells bootleg DVD's, tejano tapes, and the votive candles that end up decorating sidewalks after drive-by shootings. Windows look out to the skyscrapers of downtown. From where I stand, they look like fortresses – or prizes just out of reach. Posters abound: anti-war, pro Zapista, anti-capitalist, multi-culturalist. Anything goes, as long as it's not racist, sexist, or ageist. A room with couches for reading, a lecture hall with fifty folding chairs, and a workstation or two are the extent of this nodule of dissent.
The crowd is eclectic; a Vietnam vet, some senior citizens, some guys with Lenin beards, a couple of Mother-Earth types with multiple piercings and dreads. Some guys that you might see at a tree planting or a Phish concert, a sprinkling of curious Westsiders, and a few genuine nutters, guys that might start up a conversation with you on a Greyhound Bus and admit to you, much later, that they killed a man in Reno once. The start time comes and goes and there's no video, so I strike up a conversation with the most interesting-looking person there: a white man in his late 30s with an East Coast accent and wearing the traditional Arab headdress known as a kaffiyeh. His name turns out to be Joey. He's not Muslim, he's Maoist, and the checkered kaffiyeh is “for solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine.” Joey thinks we are at a momentous point in human history.
An AIA spokesman named Ian Johnson takes the microphone and begins talking about the campaign of misinformation that tonight’s guest has suffered under, claiming those responsible were part of the counter-insurgence propaganda department in Vietnam. We are underway.
The video opens with a history lesson; Mike describing the CIA’s involvement in cocaine trafficking in the 1970s. This is necessary, he says, to establish a background for explaining their activities regarding 9/11. He asks his Portland University audience how many of them believe that Oswald acted alone in the JFK assassination. There are chuckles from the Portland audience, but few raised hands. He shows a clip of Zapruder’s famous “back and to the left move” on a loop, and says, “for years, America has known that there was a conspiracy about JFK – but what has that knowledge changed? Tonight, I’m not going to talk about speculation. I’m not going to discuss whether or not there were explosives in the building or if the planes were guided to their targets by remote control. I don’t want you to go home and have armchair discussions about this. What’s at stake is our freedom. Mike is a good speaker, if a little corny. He is graying and balding, and looks less like an ex-cop and more like a high-school principal.
The video is a 2 1&Mac218;2 hour taped lecture on the ties of the CIA to drug-running, the ties of Bush to Bin Laden, and the government’s knowledge of the 9/11 attacks months before they occurred. I'm scribbling notes as fast as I can, looking for that false statement that will mean payday. Mike quotes from public documents that seem to show that:
• The CIA was created to sell drugs to help the U.S. economy.
• American banks launder $500 billion a year in drug money.
• Israeli agents and German and Russian newspapers warned the U.S. about 9/11 ahead of time and were ignored.
• Put-option stock trading of United and American Airlines went to unprecedented levels before 9/11. (A put-option is the speculation that a stock will suddenly drop),
And
• A military officer named Vreeland wrote down a list of the 9/11 targets days before the attacks, sealed it, and gave it to authorities in Canada where he was being “falsely detained.” Canadian officials supposedly opened it after 9/11 and saw the list of targets that said, “let the first one happen, stop the rest.” Vreeland has sought political asylum…in Canada.
Intercut with Mike's testimony are cameos by people like Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Director of HUD, who asserts that the stock market will crash if we ever stop selling drugs to our children. Through it all, Mike jokes, reads government documents in a silly German accent, and generally holds the audience in rapture. He warns the Portland audience that through the Patriot Act, the government could, “come into your home when you aren't there, seize anything, and use it against you.”
After the video, Mike himself comes to the front of the room. He talks about how his website has been hacked and he needs money to keep the truth going. “I'm not doing this to get rich,” he says. Then he opens it up for questions.
I go back over my notes. I haven't got access to the same sources Mike does. I'm just armed with common sense and an awareness of current events. And I think I have something. I raise my hand and point out that he had said that our ally Pakistan was the largest supporter of terrorism in the world. I counter that it is Iran, which has launched Hezbollah and Hamas, the two terror groups responsible for hundreds of attacks in the Middle East. Mike backpedals, saying that Pakistan is the largest supporter of terrorism in Central Asia, and that Hezbollah and Hamas haven't attacked Americans (two points that he had not brought up in the video). I feel that pursuing this line of reasoning is futile, as he will probably just argue semantics. I press him to explain why the U.S is pissing off the Colombians by destroying the cocoa plants (which are the main source of income for impoverished farmers there), if the CIA is really behind the drug trade. He responds that yes, we were destroying the drug trade in areas controlled by the Marxist guerilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, but it was only so the drug trade controlled by the CIA could flourish. I sigh. There's not going to be any claiming of the $1,000. Mike has it tied up. Besides, the audience is mumbling and beginning to hiss at me. Mike cuts me off, and goes to the rest of the audience's questions, which are, by and large, not questions at all, but gushing praise of Mike and his quest for truth.
These people want to believe in a conspiracy, I think. It gives them a reason that their lives suck and a cause to keep fighting for. I walk out, passing by a table where I can buy a copy of the video and an information pack for $75. I've seen this hustle a thousand times before, usually at church. I did want to look at that Vreeland document though.
Outside, the helicopter is gone, but it comes back and circles around me three times while I'm waiting for my bus. I wave at it. by Erik Johnson
by Brad Dickson
With the unofficial start of summer only a week away. I decided to test the pulse of the community by going for a run through the streets of the city. What better way to gauge the atmosphere of L.A.. I figured.
Beginning at Whitsett and Burbank Boulevard in the Valley I began running south, getting a good four feet before stepping into a hole in the sidewalk. This was a small hole, only half the size of the Grand Canyon. I wouldn’t say it’s been a while since the sidewalks were repaired but it was caused by the big earthquake – of 1907.
Continuing south, through this, one of the least scenic parts of North Hollywood, past the outlet malls, the weed-infested used car lots, the boarded-up abandoned homes, the halfway houses and the Vietnamese restaurant that always has their Grade of B proudly displayed in the front window, apparently mistaking it for something positive. I pass a group of day laborers on the corner waiting to be picked up for work. One of them wears a necktie over his t-shirt, a sure sign the recession is over. I believe the first sign a city has gone completely nuts is when the studio executives wear jeans and the day laborers have neckties. One of the day laborers looks vaguely familiar – I believe he was the former vice president of the Enron Corporation.
Continuing on Whitsett while crossing a side street, I’m nearly run over by a “kamikaze suicide driver,” also known as a taxi driver taking a fare from the Burbank Airport. He flips me off and I respond in kind. Last time this happened while running. the same dude picked me up the next morning to take me TO the airport, knowing A. where I lived, and B. that I was leaving town. I called home several times that weekend, half expecting a guy with a Colombian accent to answer.
I pass a city work crew doing some pre-summer repair work on our sewer. If you’ve ever driven through this part of town during a heavy rain you know there is only one sewer for the entire Valley, so it’s imperative to keep it in good working condition.
Looking up, I see a family out for an early summer walk. It’s a typical Los Angeles family – Mom, step-dad, three kids and a pit bull. The smallest child of about 2 is attached to her mother by some kind of leash while the pit bull roams free, which strikes me as just about the most screwed-up sense of priority I’ve ever seen. Suddenly the pit bull snarls and lunges at me, and I quickly step into the street. “Untie that baby and get that damn dog on a leash!” I shout at the family, who respond with the vacant stares of those who don’t understand English.
I’m now heading down Tujunga, past the notorious Vitello’s restaurant where Robert Blake’s wife was killed. Business has reportedly shot way up since the crime, no pun intended, indicating just how disturbed some Angelenos are. It’s gone from relative obscurity to one of the more popular restaurants in the East Valley. It’s something like the eighth most popular restaurant. Number 8 with a bullet, I believe. The same thing happened at the Mezzaluna restaurant in Brentwood a few years ago. However, L.A. people are fickle. Someday another celebrity’s wife will be killed outside another restaurant and everyone will forget Vitello’s and flock there.
I’m now heading back north on Coldwater, toward home. As it’s 8:30 in a city where morning rush hour lasts from 4 a.m. to 1 pm, I’m smack dab in the middle of it.
Forced to run in the street, I’m passed by speeding cars, secure in the knowledge they’ll try to avoid hitting me only because it would make them late for work. Traffic in this town has two speeds –100 miles per hour or 2 miles per hour, with no middle ground. This morning it’s the former.
The worst are the SUVs, which to a runner stands for Scary Urban Vehicle, or as I sometimes call them “gas-guzzling agents of death.” Judging by how people are driving today it’s going to be a bad summer for those who enjoy peace and tranquility on our roads.
A guy in a Jeep Cherokee veers toward me in a dangerous game of “chicken” and I scream that he’s crazy. The driver has three flags on his Cherokee – a U.S. flag, and two Lakers flags. L.A is the only city I know of where nobody bothers with auto insurance but we wouldn’t think of going out with less than two flags on our vehicle. This is also that rarest of places where I can be involved in two morning road rage incidents before I even get in my car.
I pass the house on Coldwater where I suspect the owner of hosting summer cockfights. All I know is on Saturday nights from June through August a ton of pickup trucks are parked out front and there’s loud cheering coming from the house. Either that or he’s got the best porn movies in town.
With only a couple blocks til home, I evaluate my run – I stepped in a giant hole, got into an altercation with a cab driver, was attacked by a pit bull, and nearly run over. Looks like it’s going to be quite a summer.
Taking the E out of RAVEAssemblywoman Sally Havice (D-Cerritos) has introduced a new bill that would regulate the abuse of Ecstasy at raves. (That means we can still take Special K, woo-hoo!) A recent case where a father took his son to a RAVE and introduced him to E led Havice to comment: “This father’s behavior, and I use the term lightly, is a sin.” At any rate, whether or not this bill is passed, a few precautions should be applied when using E:
1. Make sure your dates are really hot because you will be having sex with them later
2. Don’t drop more than two tabs every hour
3. Mixing with alcohol can yield very pleasant results, but use in moderation
4. Arrange for someone to drive/carry you home
And finally the bill will require the promoter of a RAVE to present evidence showing that he or she is sufficiently knowledgeable about illegal drugs and paraphernalia. This means better and stronger drugs for all! Thanks Assemblywoman Havice! Contact 916-319-2056 (or your local dealer). – VR
Patriotism Rakes in the Bucks
On Seventh Street near Alvarado, in downtown Los Angeles, down where the drug missionaries offer sweet salvation in the loving arms of black tar, a helicopter seems to be following me. It hovers a hundred feet overhead, then turns to track me as I take a lap around Mac Arthur Park to kill some time. The drug boys whistle at me and they mutter, "What do you need, my friend?" as I stride past. I'm at the ass end of American hegemony here, the bottom of the pyramid that supports us all. I'm here because I love conspiracy theories. But I love money more, and I want to collect $1000 for proving Mike Ruppert wrong.
Mike Ruppert claims to be an ex-cop driven from the LAPD 18 years ago for his repeated public claims that the CIA was involved in the drug trade in America. Since that time, he has been, among other things, an admitted drunk and a homeless person. When he was scheduled to appear on “Nightline” some time ago, fact-checkers dismissed him after the LAPD claimed he'd never been a cop. (Later, my call to the Personnel Department at LAPD confirms that there was a Robert Michael Ruppert on the payroll from 1969-1978, but I have no way of confirming if this is the man I will see tonight.) Tonight's Mike Ruppert once prepared a 32-page written statement for the Senate Select Intelligence Committee investigation into the CIA's involvement in the drug trade, but was never called to testify. He claims that he has been shot at and defamed by the authorities. He claims to have cost former Director Duetch of the CIA his appointment as Secretary of Defense under the Clinton Administration. Above all, he claims, the CIA is an organization that keeps the American economy afloat with drug money, and that they had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks but let them happen because Unocal wanted to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan. He should be pretty easy to dispute, or so I think.
Mike has a “documentary” which is actually a video of him giving a talk at Portland State University. I am attending a showing of the video at the 4th floor headquarters of “Arts in Action,” a nonprofit organization that was involved in coordinating the street protests at the DNC in 2000. The humble offices are above a mini-mall that sells bootleg DVD's, tejano tapes, and the votive candles that end up decorating sidewalks after drive-by shootings. Windows look out to the skyscrapers of downtown. From where I stand, they look like fortresses – or prizes just out of reach. Posters abound: anti-war, pro Zapista, anti-capitalist, multi-culturalist. Anything goes, as long as it's not racist, sexist, or ageist. A room with couches for reading, a lecture hall with fifty folding chairs, and a workstation or two are the extent of this nodule of dissent.
The crowd is eclectic; a Vietnam vet, some senior citizens, some guys with Lenin beards, a couple of Mother-Earth types with multiple piercings and dreads. Some guys that you might see at a tree planting or a Phish concert, a sprinkling of curious Westsiders, and a few genuine nutters, guys that might start up a conversation with you on a Greyhound Bus and admit to you, much later, that they killed a man in Reno once. The start time comes and goes and there's no video, so I strike up a conversation with the most interesting-looking person there: a white man in his late 30s with an East Coast accent and wearing the traditional Arab headdress known as a kaffiyeh. His name turns out to be Joey. He's not Muslim, he's Maoist, and the checkered kaffiyeh is “for solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine.” Joey thinks we are at a momentous point in human history.
An AIA spokesman named Ian Johnson takes the microphone and begins talking about the campaign of misinformation that tonight’s guest has suffered under, claiming those responsible were part of the counter-insurgence propaganda department in Vietnam. We are underway.
The video opens with a history lesson; Mike describing the CIA’s involvement in cocaine trafficking in the 1970s. This is necessary, he says, to establish a background for explaining their activities regarding 9/11. He asks his Portland University audience how many of them believe that Oswald acted alone in the JFK assassination. There are chuckles from the Portland audience, but few raised hands. He shows a clip of Zapruder’s famous “back and to the left move” on a loop, and says, “for years, America has known that there was a conspiracy about JFK – but what has that knowledge changed? Tonight, I’m not going to talk about speculation. I’m not going to discuss whether or not there were explosives in the building or if the planes were guided to their targets by remote control. I don’t want you to go home and have armchair discussions about this. What’s at stake is our freedom. Mike is a good speaker, if a little corny. He is graying and balding, and looks less like an ex-cop and more like a high-school principal.
The video is a 2 1&Mac218;2 hour taped lecture on the ties of the CIA to drug-running, the ties of Bush to Bin Laden, and the government’s knowledge of the 9/11 attacks months before they occurred. I'm scribbling notes as fast as I can, looking for that false statement that will mean payday. Mike quotes from public documents that seem to show that:
• The CIA was created to sell drugs to help the U.S. economy.
• American banks launder $500 billion a year in drug money.
• Israeli agents and German and Russian newspapers warned the U.S. about 9/11 ahead of time and were ignored.
• Put-option stock trading of United and American Airlines went to unprecedented levels before 9/11. (A put-option is the speculation that a stock will suddenly drop),
And
• A military officer named Vreeland wrote down a list of the 9/11 targets days before the attacks, sealed it, and gave it to authorities in Canada where he was being “falsely detained.” Canadian officials supposedly opened it after 9/11 and saw the list of targets that said, “let the first one happen, stop the rest.” Vreeland has sought political asylum…in Canada.
Intercut with Mike's testimony are cameos by people like Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Director of HUD, who asserts that the stock market will crash if we ever stop selling drugs to our children. Through it all, Mike jokes, reads government documents in a silly German accent, and generally holds the audience in rapture. He warns the Portland audience that through the Patriot Act, the government could, “come into your home when you aren't there, seize anything, and use it against you.”
After the video, Mike himself comes to the front of the room. He talks about how his website has been hacked and he needs money to keep the truth going. “I'm not doing this to get rich,” he says. Then he opens it up for questions.
I go back over my notes. I haven't got access to the same sources Mike does. I'm just armed with common sense and an awareness of current events. And I think I have something. I raise my hand and point out that he had said that our ally Pakistan was the largest supporter of terrorism in the world. I counter that it is Iran, which has launched Hezbollah and Hamas, the two terror groups responsible for hundreds of attacks in the Middle East. Mike backpedals, saying that Pakistan is the largest supporter of terrorism in Central Asia, and that Hezbollah and Hamas haven't attacked Americans (two points that he had not brought up in the video). I feel that pursuing this line of reasoning is futile, as he will probably just argue semantics. I press him to explain why the U.S is pissing off the Colombians by destroying the cocoa plants (which are the main source of income for impoverished farmers there), if the CIA is really behind the drug trade. He responds that yes, we were destroying the drug trade in areas controlled by the Marxist guerilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, but it was only so the drug trade controlled by the CIA could flourish. I sigh. There's not going to be any claiming of the $1,000. Mike has it tied up. Besides, the audience is mumbling and beginning to hiss at me. Mike cuts me off, and goes to the rest of the audience's questions, which are, by and large, not questions at all, but gushing praise of Mike and his quest for truth.
These people want to believe in a conspiracy, I think. It gives them a reason that their lives suck and a cause to keep fighting for. I walk out, passing by a table where I can buy a copy of the video and an information pack for $75. I've seen this hustle a thousand times before, usually at church. I did want to look at that Vreeland document though.
Outside, the helicopter is gone, but it comes back and circles around me three times while I'm waiting for my bus. I wave at it. by Erik Johnson