>>PREVIEW
JELLO BIAFRA
Monday, April 10
MacEwan Hall
It’s one of the most dazzling drive-by answering machine messages of the year.
Right after spineless Democrats can’t even come up with a filibuster to keep a Neo-Nazi off the Supreme Court, comes the lovely news that Halliburton subsidiary KBR just got a $385 million dollar contract on January 24 from the Department of Homeland Security for the construction of temporary detention facilities inside the United States in case of "an emergency influx of immigrants" or to support the rapid development of new programs or natural disasters. What new programs? Speaking of Nazis, check out the new environmental protection agency rule on testing pesticides on children without them or their parents’ permission. Neglected or abused infants can be subjected to pesticide tests, or mentally handicapped or orphaned infants can also be used, as can children outside the US in countries that have even less laws protecting human beings than this one now does. Seig heil baby! The Corporate Riech is in!
As I’m leaving a message thanking him for the education, Jello Biafra, former front man of American punk icons The Dead Kennedys, grabs the other end of the line and spurts, "OK, we can do this quickly – I am here for a little while. It’s now or never, we’re gonna do it fast."
Who can blame the man – who urged citizens to Become the Media in 2001 as an antidote to the dangerous, biased corporate monopoly – for not wanting to spare too many moments talking to the press?
But I get his full attention when I share the news that the Canadian branch of his beloved Green Party nabbed a 4.5 per cent share of the popular vote in the January 2006 federal election, and that Alberta, otherwise known as the Texas of Canada, actually ponied up the highest Green voter turnout with 6.6 per cent of the voters choosing the no-longer-so-fringe party.
"What did the Liberals and the NDP do to open up such a huge void?" he asks moments after another equally important question. "Are you recording by the way?" If he’s going to soil himself by talking to the media, he may as well make it count.
"Well, I think in this case, it just goes to show that voting for the party of your conscience rather than the evil of two lessers is not wasting your vote. The Greens need to get active instead of resting on their laurels and see if they can double that total next election. Which, of course, would ideally grow the party enough to be essential to any coalition, to head off the right, and as Germany shows, once the Greens are in the coalition you can start getting some of your policies enacted. Not all of them, unfortunately – that’s the way democracy works."
He adds that the Green presence in the coalition forced Germany to stay out of the Iraq War, and will result in nuclear reactors being mothballed within the next 20 years in that country. He also adds that in America, inter-party bickering between a bunch of old lefties proves that "fundamentalism is poison – you’ve got to keep your eye on the prize."
Biafra’s still minding the store, folks, and urges Canadians to pressure the government to rescind the 2001 anti-asylum law for draft dodgers, a law of which he says most Canadians are unaware.
"Bush and the Pentagon are denying that they want another draft, while at the same time they are talking very openly of attacking Iran, and if they can’t do that, well, how about North Korea or Syria or, hell, let’s go with Venezuela?
"I think Canada needs to fix the laws immediately if nothing else than as a strong statement against continuing the war in Iraq for the rest of our natural lives."
With his Robert Munsch voice, it is a very scary children’s story the man is telling and, almost before a question can be shoehorned in, the activist launches into an auto-pilot tirade against the U.S.’s "colonization" of Iraq. I derail him with a query that has intrigued me since I first heard him speak about all the background grit on Tipper Gore and her music-censoring Parents’ Advisory Council. What was the turning point at which he became politicized, and then acted on it, as opposed to most of us good little obedient sheep who just go to work, sit down, shut up, pay our taxes, don’t ask questions and consume, consume, consume?
"I don’t think there was ever a turning point. I’ve always been a news junkie. I saw Oswald get shot dead while I was lying in my parents’ living room when I was five years old. Years after that, I was watching the 6 o’clock news, which came on right after the cartoon show. I didn’t see much difference between the two.
"My parents chose not to hide reality from their kids. If there was a race riot on TV, they would tell me that’s what it was. I knew early on what racism was, what war really was, what corruption and pollution and later police brutality were. Officer Friendly in the schoolbook had no basis in reality.
"In America it’s the society of thought control through celebrity culture and consumer culture. We won’t deprive you of information the way the Soviets did under Communism – we’ll just bombard you with mountains of useless information. We have Britney Spears pregnant a second time – oh, the baby has two heads. How important? Will the baby be born with a boob job?"
He also rallies against the blurring of journalism and product, saying news programs in the States are accepting money to broadcast commercials in the guise of news.
We touch on the lawsuit in which Biafra was ordered to pay $200,000 in damages to the Dead Kennedys’ label over income lost by breaking up the band.
"It’s like a mortgage I’ll carry until I’m 70 that I would never have chosen to sign. I mean, some of the damages were for things like not promoting the band in Spin, Rolling Stone or even VH1!"
So, having rallied against censorship, the erosion of rights and the new corporate feudalism for over a decade, only to see corruption thrive, how is Biafra’s soul through all this crap?
"My soul? It could be better," he sighs. "But it’s not as bad as the people in New Orleans – and that’s a picnic compared to Iraq, which is a picnic compared to Afghanistan." |
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