Dark Side of the 60's Moon by Mike Marino (beginner reading books for adults txt) 📕

sandle wood incense.

In 1971...ka-boom, they bombed the Capital….1972 pop goes the Pentagon….by 1975 the State Department felt the shatter of explosives. The Weathermen were determined revolutionaries, not kids joyriding drunk  in  a stolen car.  They were the bastard child spawned as a splinter group of the SDS, which also began life in the People’s Republic of Ann Arbor, Michigan.  They had one agenda and that was  to destroy the American system. Conversely,  the FBI was out to destroy them. I blame all the violence erupting in the Seventies on Disco and K.C. and the Sunshine Band. You don’t need a weatherman or a sunshine band to know which way the wind blows.

The times were ripe for gays and lesbians and those ever popular switch hitting bi-sexuals to come out of the closet, bathhouses, public restrooms and piano bars  in an attempt to gain their civil rights faster than Liberace could tickle the ivories. In June of 1969, the Stonewall Riots officially began as cops raided the Stonewall Inn in New York’s  Greenwich Village. The riots were a series of violent demonstrations between  police and members of the Gay Community leading to the Gay Liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States.. (I remember watching Johnny Carson whose guest was noted gay singer, Monte Rock the III. Dressed resplendently in feather boa he was asked straight out, no pun intended, “Monte are you gay?” His response, priceless…”John,” he said, “I’m hilarious!”)

Ban the Bomb and Burn the Bra! The Women’s Liberation movement was also getting fuel injected especially by former cottontail Playboy Bunny, Gloria Steinem who brought sex appeal (OK, I’m a chauvinist pig..so sue me!) to the movement.

Rosie the Riveter would have been proud.  New York women organized a demonstration at the 1968 Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City. The feminists objected to the commercialization and racism of the pageant, in addition to the way it judged women on "ludicrous standards of beauty."  Today every August around the world women celebrate Go Topless Day and march and parade around topless displaying  nuclear nipples atop magnificent weapons of mass erection. It beats the hell out of Moscow’s May Day Military parade!

By 1969, the more radical feminist group, Redstockings, organized an abortion speakout in New York City where women could talk about their experiences with what was then  illegal abortions. The feminists wanted to respond to government hearings where previously only manly men had spoken about abortion deciding for women on the issue.  After this event, speak-outs spread across the nation; Roe v. Wade struck down many restrictions on abortion four years later in 1973.

Canada was not immune to the new violent turn in politics. Remember the line from the Doors, “We Want the World, and We Want it NOW!!” Even Canada, the French Canadians anyway were locking and loading.  The Front de libération du Québec (Put that all on one business card)  was a separatist and Marxist-Leninist (reminder, we aren’t talking Groucho and John here) paramilitary group in Quebec, a militant part of the Quebec sovereignty movement.

It conducted a number of bloody attacks for years which totalled over 10o plus violent incidents which killed eight people and injured mucho more. These attacks culminated with the bombing of the Montreal Stock Exchange in 1969, and with the October Crisis in 1970, which began with the kidnapping of the British Trade Commissioner. Ironically, during the  negotiations for his release, Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte was kidnapped and murdered by a cell of the FLQ.

Even Canada, yes, Om Mantra Canada had had enough. A federal crackdown ended the crisis and resulted  with a small number of FLQ members being granted refuge in Cuba. They had traded pastries for tacos, and snowshoes for cigars.


Darby O’Gill and his little people locked themselves behind closed doors in the Emerald Isle in 1969, the year  the Provisional Irish Republican Army or the IRA, not to be confused with a retirement program or a Gershwin,  began an armed paramilitary campaign of bombings and sniper attacks in Northern Ireland and terrorism in England, aimed at ending British rule in Northern Ireland in order to create a united Ireland. As Paul McCartney sang….Give Ireland Back to the Irish.





Then of course, our dear friend, sexy slinky Vietnam... The U.S. Army finally brings murder charges in 1969 against Lt. William Calley concerning the massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai Village in March of 1968. (You’ve seen “Platoon?”) You get the idea except there was no Willem Defoe/Sgt. Elias around to punch Sgt. Barnes)

October ‘69 brought full tilt boogie  the 'Moratorium' peace demonstrations held in Washington and several U.S. cities which infuriated the  American conservatives including then VP Spiro Agnew  who called the protesters engaged in their Constitutional right to protest as Communist comprised of  (I remember this phrase well) "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals." This from a moron under investigation for tax fraud and other dark secrets...as a lawyer, he was eventually disbarred!) Talk about impudent...


In November, Tricky Dicky Nixon took to the vast wasteland TV tube asking for support from the silent (shhhh) majority  for his Vietnam strategy. He stated “the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris. North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that." Speaking of which he was correct...Nixon did indeed humiliate America and the office of the President all by himself. His ship of state had sprung a Watergate leak...perhaps he should have called a “plumber”.


The anti-war movement was on a roll and by November, The 'Mobilization' peace demonstration drew an estimated 250,000 in Washington for the largest anti-war protest in U.S. history.

Ah the good old days...by Autumn Myrika, Danny Two Horse, Kaylee  and I would be joining the tribes occupying  Alcatraz, but first there was a march on Washington that we would also be involved in.

Meanwhile, back In the present we had an FBI informant (Joey)  and an undercover agent (Paul) in our compost pile. We contacted our IRA friend Liam in Chicago and Mr. Levesque our contact with the Quebec Separatist Movement. They had certain expertise in matters of this nature. We had pests...it was time to call the exterminators….

Chapter 42 - Pest Control

 

Danny Two Horse offered a few suggestions on handling our Joey, the informant, and Paul, the FBI “rat” problem. After a few bowls of hashish and a couple of hits of speed...it made sense. That is, until the high wore off and reality sank in. I always hated coming down. If only someone would perfect the one way trip...other than brain damage and mental illness and a reservation in a rubber room loaded up on Thorazine...Thanks for the memories...and the tranqs!

The plan was to turn them over to anyone of our allies. I can see it now. Liam and his Irish Republican Army playmates would opt to insert a grenade in both their arses and give them a Belfast enema. Then of course, there were always the Black Panthers. I could envision a militant Huey “Kunta Kinte” Newton  roasting both Joey and Paul like Christmas chestnuts over an open fire selling tickets to a Bobby Seale Burn Baby Burn BBQ Bash.

We could have the extermination deed done in Quebec where no one would ever guess. The only problem there is they would have to be killed in French and in English. There was always the Mafia. We didn’t have any dealings with them but, being a Wop myself and growing up in an Italian neighborhood in Detroit I knew a greaseball dago made guy would whack a person for a slice of pizza and a canoli...badda bing...badda boom…

We could also turn them over to the American Neo-Nazi Party by simply telling them they are the Schwartz Brothers, a famous FBI team known as the Oy Vay Brigade and they said “Hitler was a cross-dressing Hebrew rabbi  in disguise and gave blow jobs to Jews for free!”

Of course, with the southern fried Civil Rights ya’ll movement in full toothless swing, we could always turn them over to a group of  backwoods banjo playing Ku Klux Klan lynch mobs claiming they were really Sidney Poitier educated Northern Negroes disguised as white folk here in Birmingham to ride the bus in the front seats, drink from a whites only drinking fountain, piss a whites only toilet and gang rape white women while listening to “We Shall Overcome” sung by James Brown.

Then again, we were running out of options...we were out of ideas of groups who prize secrecy and white sheets and burning crosses. We were down to seeds and stems. The Hell’s Angels, the Boy and/or Girl Scouts or a Catholic Girls Cheerleading Squad or a group of nuns with severe PMS reactions.

There’s always the Gay community...they were militant in those days. We could turn them over to them. If it were a Black Gay group,  they could play “drop the soap in the shower” followed by “pin my tail in the honkey.”

We eventually decided on a two pronged plan. Joey, the Junkie...we’d keep him hopped up and lit like Times Square on New Year’ s Eve in a cabin high up in the Yukon as close to the Arctic Circle we could find. He would be talking to polar bears about quantum physics for all we cared and mate with penguins and take one for a wife. He would be out of the way at least...and soon his supply would include a hot shot..we'd make sure of that and he would die of natural, well, natural drug related causes. No witnesses, no one would even find the body until the spring two years from his DOA date. He might leave behind a widowed penguin but, chances are she won’t spill the beans...one problem down...one to go...Mr. FBi, Paul.

We’d keep him on the island, force feed him speed balls and acid and opium for 30 day straight until he was completely paranoid. Then we’d take him to Washington, D.C. to the FBI building with an unloaded FBI weapon and plenty of methamphetamines and acid in him to power the Starship Enterprise... Then we would inform him that the building was the Communist Headquarters of America and he had orders to kill J. Edgar Hoover, who was in reality, Joe Stalin in drag guarding Lenin’s Tomb which was hidden in the executive men’s room. Either he would be arrested and a blithering idiot who would be admitted to a mental ward as delusional or...shot dead...either way worked for me..




The Alcatraz Occupation lasted for nineteen months, from November 20, 1969, to June 11, 1971, and was forcibly ended by the U.S. government. The Occupation of Alcatraz had a direct effect on federal Indian policy and, with its visible results, established a precedent for Indian activism.

The first nationwide Moratorium was followed on Saturday, November 15, 1969, by a second massive Moratorium march in Washington, D.C., which attracted over 500,000 demonstrators against the war, including many performers and activists. This massive Saturday march and rally was preceded by the March against Death, which began on Thursday evening and continued throughout that