March 17, 2013

Back to Blasting

For years I have not been writing on this site. I started it right after the Supreme Court stopped the voting in Florida and selected George W. Bush to be president. I was so infuriated by that, and by the media's response, or lack of response, that I decided to have my own media through which I could speak out, even if I only had a few listening.

I wanted it to be blunt and irreverent as the underground papers I had seen in the late '60s. As the attack on Iraq approached in 2003, the site got up to almost 30,000 hits a day. The Guardian listed it as one of four "anti-war weblogs" in its special report on the anti-war movement. It was among the sites blocked in China. The Memory Hole had this to say about Headblast: "Host David Cogswell provides head-jarring anti-media media coverage and commentary on passing events in the temporal world. It's like a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which 'is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.'"

The Sideshow said, "There's a maddening lack of permalinks on Headblast's broadsheet-style front page, but it's fun to read and a bit too quotable. Wow, I can remember when I had that kind of energy - and coffee can compensate for only so much. Much is quotable, so here's just one:

Nixon Rises From Hell

Democratic Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, speaking out against Bush administration attempts to seize autocratic power and conduct a war with no consent, said, "For all of their blustering about how al-Qaida is determined to strike at our freedoms, this administration shows little appreciation for the constitutional doctrines and processes that have preserved those freedoms for more than two centuries ... I have not seen such executive arrogance and secrecy since the Nixon administration, and we all know what happened to that group." Interesting choice of words. What indeed did happen to that group? Some of them -- Cheney and Rumsfeld for example -- have resurfaced and are in control of the government right now. "

Around the time Obama was elected I changed my ways and stopped posting every day. For one thing, I had said pretty much everything I had to say about politics. Obama was still doing most of the most despicable things Bush did, extending the Bush overreaches as if the power had not changed at all and the overriding agenda just kept rolling. I got tired of repeating the same warnings when everything I feared most came to pass anyway and there seemed to be little anyone could do to affect it. I used the time instead to publish a few books, Existentialism For Beginners, Zinn For Beginners and Unions For Beginners.

Now it is a whole new period and I'm going to start posting blogs again on this page, but in a different way than before, with a slightly altered set of concerns and focus. So here we go.

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