Amidst our conspicuous consumption, let’s extend our thankfulness for the words of Jesse Hughes, co-founder of Eagles of Death Metal, the band that was playing the Bataclan theater in Paris on November 13 when radical Islamist terrorists killed dozens of concertgoers in the worst of the coordinated attacks that night in the French capital. In the band’s first interview since November 13, vocalist and guitarist Hughes, who faced one of the killers and escaped the theater, says he’s going to live with an acute awareness of how good his life is:
Maybe I went through some bad shit, but… I’m breathing. I get to talk to my son tonight. I have a house that is paid for because rock and roll’s blessed me and been very good to me. I’ve been blessed with beautiful friends. I feel like I have a life of blessings. I’m not going to walk around acting like it sucks [Jesse Hughes, interview, “Eagles of Death Metal Discuss Paris Terror Attacks,” VICE.com, 2015.11.25, timestamp 18:32].
Hughes says he and the band will not give in to fear or let terrorists (for whom he has a better name) win:
I don’t want to spend my life trying to appease assholes. I want to spend my life smiling with my friends and entertaining them.
I cannot wait to get back to Paris. I cannot wait to play. I want to come back—I want to be the first band to play in the Bataclan when it opens back up…. because I was there when it went silent for a minute.
Our friends went there to see rock and roll and died. I want to go back there and live [Hughes, 2015.11.25, timestamp 19:07].
View the full Vice interview below.
Related: An eager reader notes that the Italians vow to fight terrorism by spending a billion euros to promote culture. Among other things, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi wants to give young people passes to theaters, museums, and archaeological sites. “The Italian way, ” says Prime Minister Renzi, “is to spend a euro in culture for every euro spent on security.” If we’re going to fight, we’ve got to have something to fight for. Against the nihilist apocalyptic delusions of the Islamic State, what better to fight for than the collected wisdom, beauty, and art of a thousand generations of civilization, the cultural treasure that is both our birthright to enjoy and our obligation to preserve and expand for future generations?
Thankful creators like Jesse Hughes build the legacy of civilization. Thugs like the Islamic State never will.
Ah, but Cory, what is our (the collective West) share for the terrorism wrought on civilization by these as you call them “thugs” Are we any more civilized for attacking Iraq a second time for no more reason than someone from their country clandestinely tried to kill the President’s father? Throughout the Middle East, we have killed hundreds of thousands if not millions, and left tens if not hundreds of millions homeless and wandering the world.
It is the same lesson that Israel refuses to learn. THere will be no peace for the Israelis until the Palestinians are treated like human beings and given their equal rights. The same is true for the West. There will be no end to terror until we respect the lands and peoples of other nations and discontinue trying to make them like us with our “democracy” christendom and capitalism.
when ozzy veered right from the leftist, bluesist clapton, beck, page, and poppist beatles trail in 1969-70, rock slipped into the abyss of bats, skulls, death metal…wtf is that anyway? these guys suck, come on people. miley cyrus is doing the same thing today. marketing you motherf**kers to walmart. kick out the jams. what i say! resist
see http://www.popmatters.com/post/rockist_vs_popist_who_cares/
get educated: the commitments movie trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3paf2TLrgsg
best movie in the world-high fidelity excerpt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOwjVVSNOtY
don’t believe me?
2nd HF excerpt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ECyX8A3iP0
ok teenage boys do have a testosterone problem that perhaps explains eagle death monkeys or whatever
ok- still don’t…crappy pappy sappy music
HF third excerpt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc3TYIIpOZM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc3TYIIpOZM
so sorry…apple products are so difficult in a microsoft world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc3TYIIpOZM
good god
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc3TYIIpOZM
Lanny, you ask a great deal of me, to defend a Western civilization built on as much violence and conquest as genius and hope.
Is the United States more civilized than the Islamic State?
I was just watching some Star Trek, Next Generation. I feel like Picard facing your Q, asking what right our pathetic little “civilization” has to go on living.
I do not come to an answer quickly. One response is to note that our sins do not justify the killing of civilians in the cafés and concert halls of Paris on November 13.
If we focus just on the United States of America, this strange, hypertrophied branch of Western civilization, we bear blame for many evils. We were born as a nation in bloodshed, and reborn in the greater bloodshed of our Civil War. We have developed and deployed weapons of war (the nuclear bomb) and economics (fossil-fuel-powered capitalism) that could each destroy the planet. We have oppressed and exploited all sorts of people. We have created a political system that could allow a man like Donald Trump to become President.
But I will not throw myself on the mercy of the court. I will contend that, while we have committed our share of violence, while we have done our bit to endanger civilization, our nation has principles and laws and institutions that have the greatest chance of preserving and promoting civilization. We have built a pluralistic democracy in which people of any race or creed can participate. ISIS builds an exclusionary tyranny. We provide a model for global cooperation to build a better future. ISIS offers cultural stagnation and destruction in anticipation of the apocalypse. America wants civilization and progress; ISIS wants the End Times.
If we oversimplify and say the world has two choices, then I will contend that not only that the United States of America is more civilized but furthermore that the United State of America is civilization. ISIS is death. Find me some Utopians with universal health care and good shields down the block, and I’ll throw in with them. But absent that third better way, I still throw in with America. We hold principles that, properly upheld, lead to a better world. ISIS’s principles, carried out in the streets of Paris, make the world worse.
Yes our country has laws that prohibit torture, but we do it anyway. We refuse to submit our political leaders or our military to the world court, so what difference does it make if we have laws. As I pointed out in my original post we are the big boys on the block and want to be the leader so we need to refrain from the disgusting way that we find to settle disputes.
As far as a democracy where any race or creed can participate, how does the unequal dispensing of justice to Native American in our own state and persons of color and Hispanic origins at the national level square with that assumption.
As far as ISIS being the wish for death, there are plenty of Christians who believe that we are near the rapture and wishing for the end and hoping that we continue our wars in the Middle East. As far as the phenomenon of the Donald being in the running for president, is it any more strange than two thugs like Rounds and Daugaard being elected here at home?
Breaking news-gunman opened fire near a PP clinic in Colorado Springs. Is holed up inside exchanging gunfire with police. No word of casualties or hostages. We have our own terrorists fueled by rwnj bloviating fauxknee kristian values.
Indeed, when do we start the bombing of fundamentalist’s that attack and terrorize undefended health clinics? When do we mobilize to track the terrorists down and eliminate them. ISIS is here in America and they ain’t Muslim, they are the same though as these thugs and murderers. Call Putin, Hollande and Obama with a target list, we hear them every day speak their vitriol. We shall save fuel by doing it in our own back yard. This is the new republican party of hate and death. Oh, and add corruption for the trifecta.
mfi,
Who do you think the citizens of Colorado Springs fear the most tonight, domestic terrorist or ISIS?
As of 3:45 the active shooting is still going on with four cops wounded and many more civilians and cops hospitalized.
I believe this is the same Planned Parenthood Clinic where there was an attempted bombing a few months ago.
Ms. leslie is right as right can be about this death metal music. It is a sick and demented twist on the better music of the old days. However, if this band had been armed how many fewer French people would have died?
So now I finally know who Grudznick is. Manny Steele.
How do fire a AK47 and play the guitar at the same time, grudz?
Donald Trump also said those wounded and killed in Paris should have been armed.
The terrorists only go after women, both here and in places like Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the motley crew. What on earth did women ever do to republicans that has caused them to hate so much. The terrorists deprive women of basic health needs in South Dakota along with every other state that has a republican governor and legislature. They choose to hurt women because they know they can get away with it, because men see it as a woman problem and fear these terrorists from coming after them and their families. Republicans know that fear rules, all part of fascism. In these states, the police are complicit in it as well. How many domestic violence cases are swept aside because it would put a high ranking citizen in jeopardy? No man, we have created these terrorists right here so when do we deal with them? When do we demand equal rights for women from these cowardly legislatures and the vultures who support them?
An old military friend of mine sent me an email that basically said, We would have won every fight we lost in Vietnam if we would have just had Trump, Bush and Cheney along with the rest of bullshitters. Where the hell was he? He could have picked up an AK 47 or any other kind of weapon and showed us how to do it. Some just talk a good fight. Life is funny like that.
Mr. Strickerz, in my younger days I was a fit individual, strong as an ox and brown as a nut, but probably not a Man of Steel.
I think Cory wins the argument, even if terrorism is as American as apple pie.
The USA is not perfect, but we have as our mission “to form a more perfect union,” and most people at most times are focused on that goal. We will always fail in our goal because what we mean by “a more perfect union” is constantly being negotiated, defined and refined. It has always been subject to the cries and demands of a continuing wider circle of people wanting to partake in the freedom that America offers. That is why it is hard for me to understand how Americans can torture anyone, how Americans can support measures that prevent people from voting by using ID cards, that restrict immigration or refugees. A more perfect union is not the goal of those people, and they, in my mind, are not American.
At the outset of this nation forming that union did not include women, Native Americans or blacks. We still haven’t figured out race and gender and a lot of other things, but in my own lifetime, there has been a long road traveled on that long arc of history that bends toward justice. Sometimes we do take steps backward due to people’s fears or a lack of imagination in our leaders. That is when it is important to remember that it every citizen’s duty to stand up against policies when they are wrong.
I remain optimistic, but if Trump or almost any other Republican takes the Presidency, I think we are in danger of taking giant steps backward.
Grudz, I am sure you didn’t catch my metaphor. Manny Steele was formerly my State Senator. He along with a bunch of others walked Minnesota Ave here in SF carrying their guns in the open to show that they had the right to do so. But like you, Manny Steele was not a man of steel; as he dropped out before they got to their destination, Starbucks. Shortly after, Starbucks banned weapons in their stores nationwide.
Mr Pay, I don’t care who wins the argument. As a citizen of the planet before I am an American, A Christian before I am a Catholic, an American before I am a Democrat or a Republican, I have to call foul when I see it. As I am sure many of you know we have trained some of the folks that we now call terrorists and have armed most of them.
And as I pointed out on another blog, at SOA, the School of the Americas, which changed its name to WHINSEC Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, we have been training the terrorists who have wracked Central and South America for nearly 70 years. This is to stop the spread of socialism in these countries and to uphold capitalism. The following quote can be found at this site:
http://www.soaw.org/about-the-soawhinsec/what-is-the-soawhinsec
Since 1946, the SOA has trained over 64,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared,” massacred, and forced into refugee by those trained at the School of Assassins.
At a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, CO a gunman shot nine people taken to hospital, also four officers shot.cnn.com
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/27/us/colorado-shooting-probe/
Suspect captured. PP spokesperson blamed poisoned environment of wingnut domestic terrorists.
James Dobson has his fingerprints all over this with his wretched ways. His Sharia Christianity must be stopped root and branch for what it is, terrorism.
More American terrorism sanctioned by the NRA and those that support their craziness. http://www.sunherald.com/news/local/crime/article46710235.html
Mr. Stricherz, I am sorry I did not understand and I am sorry your elected representative turned out to be a whack job or one of those who are insaner than most. That blame would seem to fall on your and your brothers and sisters there in your town. I can’t help your district 9 in that regard other than to offer them my wisdom and if they listen, do not vote for fellows like this Mr. Steele.
See this, Mr. Deutsch. The unstable people you incite don’t always have the will power to control their violent tendencies.
When are we going to frog-march these amerkin kristian anti-abortion, anti-constitution, gun nut zealot, whiteguys to gitmo, waterboard them, and those whom incite them, as the domestic terrorists they are? This is the 4th attack in 4 months. The US makes Paris look prepared. These domestic attackers have no constitutional rights to behave this way or to subject the rest of us to their zealotry. Put a suicide vest on him, those who incite him, and march them to the Fort Carson impact area. Give them their personal second coming. Hopefully guys like this preying on women will receive the prison-treatment like child abusers and rapists – few survive.
@leslie: “death metal…wtf is that anyway”
It isn’t Eagles of Death Metal’s music that’s for sure. Their name is an inside joke trying to describe their sound. Just another so-so Southern California band playing garage rock at a blistering tempo with a drum kit that sounds like it has only a snare, a bass and a cracked cymbal. Kind of reminds me of the Kinks with only a 1/10th of the talent. Nothing special about this band but I’m sure they have sold some records/CDs because of this.
However I do understand some of what Jesse Hughes feels and is going through. Having had to personally look down a barrel of a gun during a holdup a number of years ago, I have felt and smelt some of the fear he felt during the Paris attack and to this day I fight not to let it overwhelm me when someone, somewhere triggers that sense that reminds me of that day.
Way to go leslie!!!! Fighting back that terror and anger is called building spiritual and emotional muscle. I need work in that area.
Don Coyote, what you have is a flavor of PTSD. That is how it works. Easy to see why folks that faced that death each time they woke up, know the taste as well as sight and smell. There are 3 dead now including a policeman in Colorado Springs. There lives taken by a terrorist with an assault rifle. The wounded will know that of which you speak for the rest of their lives right along with those that witnessed the terror. America needs to understand that Muslims are not our problem here, white men with guns are. Gun laws must be put into place so that those that are hunters and those that are sane can still have a place in which to enjoy what they love. There is no need for assault rifles, none. If you fear your government to enslave you, you are a paranoid and should not be allowed near any kind of weapon. My long gun is 5 rounds, if I cannot take my deer in that then the deer should not have been fired at in the first place. 15 or 30 rounds in a clip to go hunting is bullshit. Assault style shotguns have to be considered for coyote calling. I am sure that those that scream 2nd Amendment will say I am wrong, but the dead and wounded along with the traumatized, say I am correct.
Coyotes should get the same consideration as deer. If you cant call a ‘yote close enough to pop it with your small caliber center fire then don’t be out there, folks. The rest of this nonsense is just libbies attacking guns in general. I, for one, say the zombie preppers tend to vote with the whack jobs. What does that tell you, Mr. Dakotan?
sorry to hear don. life can be crude, but the beauty of it when its not is sublime
Our President is often criticized for not calling out Daesh as “Fundamentalist Muslim Extremists”. The TeaParty and Ted Cruz point to this as him being pro-terrorist and pro-Muslim.
Will President Obama call down the CO Springs shooter for what he and his ilk really are? Fundamentalist Christian Extremists aka Crazy Cristers. Probably not, so have some restraint, right wing. Your terrorists are in every state and your BORN AGAIN radical hate group has killed enough. Make them stop, Deutsch and Schoenbeck. Call them out, label them publicly and make them stop.
>You’re not a life until you’re born and you’re not a corpse until you die!
Don Coyote, a band doesn’t have to rise to your refined standards of musical excellence to make the point they make. Hughes has obviously played well enough to make a living at his music, which I suspect places him in the 1% or better of all artists. He recognizes his good fortune and sees his music as a chance to affirm life.
I side with Lanny on tackling every one of the atrocities he identifies that have blood on our hands. We can defeat the tyrants at home and the Islamic State abroad in part by adhering to our principles of pluralistic democracy. We can educate people, elect leaders, and create laws and institutions that make life better for everyone and check those who would abuse power to do harm to others.
But, at peril of indicting my democratic, humanist credentials (and at peril of responding to terrorism with less life-affirming courage than Jesse Hughes), I will suggest that we have more tools available to respond to our own atrocities than we do to the Caliphate. Simply reporting our government’s training of terrorists can be enough to shame the government into stopping such activities. Barring that, such reporting can be used by candidates to win elections and swing votes in Congress to stop such activities. We can convict or impeach our own officials who commit such crimes.
Law and conscience aren’t quite as effective against the Caliphate’s peddlers of End-Time death. We cannot negotiate with these suicidal (and, given the tools, genocidal) maniacs. We may have only two options: first, kill them; second, continue to create our more perfect Union which will invite all people of all faiths and races to share in our liberty and prosperity so there is less despair for the next ISIS leaders to manipulate for recruits.
Meanwhile, in America another christianic terrorist lashes out and survives after killing at least three:
http://gazette.com/obama-hickenlooper-lamborn-others-respond-to-shootings-at-planned-parenthood-in-colorado-springs/article/1564453
The obvious and only answer is force more people to carry assault weapons and live in fear of everybody else. Closing all PPs won’t stop fauxknee kristian kop killers. Today it is abortion,tomorrow-who knows what sets these kold blooded killers off.
Colorado Springs is a bastion of White Supremacy and Evangelical Fundamentalism. Were this shooter a black man, he’d be dead. But how many black, mass murderers have there been? One thing for sure, Christian, born-again, evangelical prosthelytizers … he wasn’t a Syrian refugee. How does it feel to be treated like one?
You’d never have guessed this,yesterday while there was shooting going on in a PP clinic,a wingnut congressweasel from Illinois was on the boob tube slamming PP. He ignored actual violence to do a diatribe about severely edited videos that contain no wrong doing. What a freakin’ jerk of a human being!
What is the equivalent of Sharia Law, Fundy bullshit, they are both nuts. So how do we stay out of the crossfire? http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/sep/29/usa.danglaister I think I know, renounce all things religious as it is detrimental to the peace and security of the United States.
Two weeks ago, I probably would have agree with you, Jerry. I quit going to church when Robert Carlson was Bishop of Eastern SD. Prior to that I had never missed mass on Sunday and had attended during the week for many years. I also quit praying. But then my older brother got sick and when my nephew notified us, I emailed him back that I hadn’t prayed in years but that I would start, and I have done that. I have found a new peace come over my soul except when Alabama’s football team is playing. I do not like them and never have since they got the coach they have now. My prayers are as much for me as for my brother as we both have become pretty much agnostic. But this change in my prayer life seems to have given me some peace.
I am not talking about meditation and prayer Lanny, I speak of the evil that comes from the message of hate these people speak as if anointed by divine intervention. They clearly are aware that there are those among us who cannot think for themselves and are easily led by these charlatans into the most unnatural act of all, murder.
You are absolutely right Jerry and it was for those reasons that I quit the church and started my path of agnosticism. But I have often said the quote in the bible about it would be better that a millstone be place around his neck and be tossed in the ocean than to mislead one of my children, refers to bishops and priests and religious leaders misleading the adults in their flock not just to little kids.
This is what a domestic terrorist looks like:
http://www.keloland.com/newsdetail.cfm/police-identify-planned-parenthood-shooting-suspect/?id=187908
An American Christian terrorist to be precise.
Perhaps something like this could save us from ourselves. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/magazine/a-dream-of-utopia-in-hell.html?_r=1
Republican politicians’ shrill rhetoric on Planned Parenthood and abortion directly and indirectly implicitly contributed to killing a cop and a co-pastor, an Iraqi War veteran father of two, a mother of two, and wounding other cops. Their “pro-lfe” is hollow hypocrisy. The modern republican politicians are so far in the gutter that Eisenhower and Reagan would not recognize them. It’s long past the time to make these domestic terrorists account for their words, incitements, and actions.
John, here is what Vice President Joe Biden said the other day in response to terror. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/21/weekly-address-face-terror-we-stand-one
“Earlier this year, the top ISIL leader al-Baghdadi revealed the true goal of their attacks. Here’s what he said: “Compel the crusaders to actively destroy the gray zone themselves. Muslims in the West will quickly find themselves between one and two choices. Either apostatize or emigrate to the Islamic State and thereby escape persecution.” So it’s clear. It’s clear what ISIL wants. They want to manufacture a clash between civilizations. They want frightened people to think in terms of “us versus them.”
Change a couple of words like ISIL to the teaparty and Muslims to Americans and you see where this is going to divide and conquer. The candidates for the republican party have made no secret to their belief of founding a fascist form of government here. ISIS knows the history of the United States with the genocide it approved, the apartheid that still lingers and an extreme right wing that made even Hitler take notice. He so did love the KKK and what it stood for regarding Jews and people of color.