@duckpin Thanks for info on Buffy Sainte-Marie and the Cramps, duckpin. Don't know enough about either, though of course know a little.

The sooner the broader public begins to understand the vile nature of the FBI maybe we'll finally begin to get somewhere positive. They have been, quite explicitly, employed to crush LW dissent since their inception under the insane self-hating, cross-dressing, conservative bigot Hoover. Employed isn't even the right word; they're an autonomous branch of the Deep State as far as I'm concerned.

They are the antithesis of the Bill of Rights. Instead of dedicating resources and manpower to investigating the economic terrorists of Wall St who took the economy down in 2008, they've spend decade after decade surveilling, harassing, intimidating and threatening anti-war pacifists, peaceful non-violent civil rights protesters and social movements from Occupy to #BLM to #NoDAPL. They also started the racist War on Drugs, targeting a black woman singer, Billie Holiday, as its first kill.

Excellent discussion between British journalist Johann Hari and Naomi Klein about his book, "Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs."

In 1939, Billie Holiday stood on stage in New York, and she sang the song "Strange Fruit," which, as you know, is a song against lynching. Her goddaughter, Lorraine Feather, said to me, "You’ve got to understand how shocking it was to have an African-American woman singing a song against"—she wasn’t allowed to walk through the front door of that hotel. She had to go through the service elevator. So to stand up in front of a white audience and do that was pretty—a time when almost all popular songs were like "P.S. I Love You," right? And that night she was told, according to her biographer, Julia Blackburn, by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, "Stop singing this song." Right? The Federal Bureau of Narcotics was run by a crazy racist called Harry Anslinger, a man who was regarded as a crazy racist by the crazy racists at the time....

And that’s when Anslinger resolved to destroy. [She] was like a symbol of everything [he] hated—you know, African-American woman standing up and—yeah. So he sends this agent to stalk her. The first guy he sends to stalk her fell in love with her, because she was so amazing. But she’s sent to prison, and when she gets out, she can’t perform, because you needed a license to perform. She couldn’t perform in most places....

And Billie Holiday sinks back into addiction. She collapses when she’s in her early forties. She’s taken to hospital in New York, and she says to one of her friends that the agents aren’t—Anslinger’s men aren’t finished with her. She says, "They’re going to kill me in there. Don’t let them. They’re going to kill me." They handcuff her to the bed. I interviewed—she was diagnosed with liver cancer. They knew that. I interviewed the last surviving guy who was in that room. They handcuffed her to the bed. They didn’t let any of her friends in to see her. They took away her record player and her candies. One of her friends manages—she went into withdrawal. One of her friends managed to get her prescribed methadone, and she started to recover. And 10 days later, they cut off the methadone, and she died.

Riveting conversation around the question, "Does Capitalism Drive Drug Addiction?"

Thanks for the cool thread, EL. I've got lots of memories watching the rise of Nirvana while being fresh at my job in the music industry, including as an already big fan of their Sub Pop releases being passed to by a record co. promotion person while on an airplane to San Fransisco, a demo tape of a few of the songs on Nevermind, months before the album came out and which would then etch that moment in time, and being floored.

Buffy had her career partly ruined by a concerted FBI harassment of her record company(s) distribution of her albums and a campaign against promoters who would have hired her for concerts. It's all in her FBI file which she obtained years after the fact.

Universal Soldier carries the radical notion that to have a peaceful world don't join the military. It's worth reading and heeding the words today.

Buffy also was active supporting the American Indian Movement and this was the second strike against her in the eyes of those who control the political economy and the repressive forces they command.

Her suppressed recordings of the 1970's and 1980's are very good and worth seeking out. In my opinion, her last great album was Coincidences and Likely Stories although the ones that followed contain some good songs.

Worldwide, she packed concert Halls but in the USA, the FBI was largely successful