Article by Wagner Hertzog 

Susan Sontag was an American essayist, playwright and political activist, who achieved notoriety in the mid-sixties, through an essay published in the now defunct Partisan Review. She consolidated her publishing career with well-acclaimed books, especially her work in the field of non-fiction. 

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Nevertheless, what can be considered marvelous and uncommon for Sontag is the fact that she, as a left-wing activist, considered the possibilities of at least some items of the left ideals and political agenda to be incorrect, mistaken, or even completely wrong. Considering how belligerent, intransigent and arrogant left-wing activists can be, this attitude of Susan Sontag can be seen as a phenomenal gesture of humility, altruism and true benevolence.

She famously said the phrase “Communism is fascism”, while in a rally in New York City in 1982, while trying to explain more profoundly the true nature of communism, and comparing to fascism, alluding to the totalitarian nature of both. At that same speech, she also suggested the possibility of anticommunist activists to be right, and that they were good-natured and well-intentioned in their efforts to prevent communism of becoming a reality, correctly implying that there is a great effort of communist sympathizers to deny and to conceal the horrendous crimes perpetrated by communist regimes all over the world. This is proven right by the fact that – to this day – although communist governments has killed far more than the Nazi regime, communism is not as hated or shunned as Nazism, with only a handful of countries in Europe – like Ukraine, Georgia, Romania and Moldova – having forbidden communist parties and activities definitely, whereas Nazism is forbidden mostly everywhere.  

Susan Sontag was widely reproved by her peers, in consequence of her criticism of communism and left-wing politics, with people criticizing her for betraying her own ideals. Which I think is a superficial overlook, and doesn’t take into an analytical specter the depth of her thoughts, political perceptions and human considerations.      

A brave person with a greatly analytic mind, predisposed to investigate profoundly the main reasons for social problems, Susan Sontag clearly had no fear of confronting what could disturb her. If by any chance she felt the need to deconstruct and analyze profoundly her own political beliefs, she would do that without any regret, knowing beforehand, of course, about the possible implications, since she knew how people on the left usually reacts, always hostile, contemptuous and aggressive towards criticism. Regardless of this, Susan Sontag had no fear of admitting to herself when something she deeply believed was wrong, and was permanently analyzing her own worldview, expanding her horizons and reevaluating her own group of beliefs, in order to evolve, and to explore different perspectives on art, literature and politics, as well as in another fields of life. 

A cohesive and sensitive thinker, without fear of exploring new possibilities, nor questioning or confronting preconceived values, Susan Sontag was a different leftist. A leftist with solidarity, perspicacity and strength to admit that she was a human, that she could be wrong at certain times, that she was constantly seeking the betterment and the improvement of her own nature and character, and that the left is not always right; she surely knew how to be and make a difference in the political scene, as a true courageous activist. There is no doubt that this was a formidable attitude of her, indicative of a benevolent personality and a profoundly humanistic character, with an heterogeneous openness that only a handful of people are able to achieve. 


Wagner

Pupil of the legendary poet Masaoka Shiki, Kyoshi Takahama, born 22 February 1874, in Matsuyama, is considered one of the most important Japanese literary figures of his generation.    

An intellectual with profoundly creative vicissitudes, the literary arts soon were established in Takahama’s heart as a deeply rooted passion. In his early adulthood, Takahama, through an acquaintance, met the Japanese literary giant Masaoka Shiki, who would become his friend and literary mentor. Seemingly heated by the ardent objective of a career in letters, in a fit of audacity and restlessness, Takahama – dutifully ignoring Shiki’s advice – quit school in 1894, to pursue his dream to study Edo period Japanese literature in Tokyo.

The following year, Takahama took a seat at Waseda University – then called Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō – but soon, as his prestige and pursuits prospered, he abandoned it to take up a position as editor and literary critic in Nihonjin magazine. In 1898, at the age of only 24, he took over the board of the literary magazine Hototogisu, previously edited by Shiki, and moved the office from Matsuyama to Tokyo, establishing a new chapter to the enterprise. 

At first, he took a modernist approach to haiku, developing a brave and fearless trend of experimentalism, whose main characteristic was the irregular number of syllables. Unexpectedly, in taking over the editorial command of the literary magazine Hototogisu, he curiously adopted a more conservative approach to haiku, rejecting the form established by a literary school known as Hekigo, which did not follow the pattern of seventeen syllables. In addition, he began to emphasize "kigo" (a word referring to some season of the year), and did his best to completely exclude the more modern tendency of non-seasonal haiku.

The death of his great friend and literary mentor Masaoka Shiki – whom, suffering from tuberculosis and Pott's disease, always had to deal with a tremendously precarious health –, in Tokyo in 1902, at the young age of 34, was a great blow to Takahama, who nurtured profound admiration, deep affection and great respect for this colossal champion of the Japanese literary arts. Takahama was informed of the sad news by Shiki’s mother. 

Bearing an exceedingly creative and restless mind, Takahama had a rich and eventful life, as well as an extraordinary career in letters and a lasting impact on his country’s literary scene. It is speculated that Takahama wrote between 40,000 and 50,000 haiku in the course of his long, fruitful and productive career (although some sources openly say this number is vastly underrated). He also deeply encouraged his daughter – who had inherited her father’s literary talent – to start her own poetry magazine. In 1954, Takahama received the award of the Order of Culture from the Japanese government, in recognition of his distinguished work and contribution to Japanese literature. Posthumously, Takahama was bestowed by the Japanese government with the Order of the Sacred Treasury, 1st Class.

Extremely versatile as a writer, Takahama wrote in a number of genres: a prolific writer of haiku and short stories, he also wrote novels, dramas and essays. Envisioning some sort of artistic evolution in the literary field ahead of him, Takahama ambitioned the excellence of creativity perfectly combined with a strict and disciplined adherence to form, something he masterly accomplished during the course of his literary journey. 

Takahama died 85 years old, in 8 April 1959, in Kamakura. Unfortunately, like most Japanese writers, he is little known in the western world.  



Wagner

Andy Cato is a British record producer and DJ, that serves as the half of the English electronic music duo Groove Armada. Active since 1995, Andy Cato, started his career in London Clubs, as well as arranging partnerships with another prominent producers and composers of the local musical scene. In 1994, Cato met Tom Findlay, which would be his future partner in Groove Armada. Subsequently, they would start together a bright and original revolution in the local electronica scene. 

Groove Armada started a brilliant career in the electronic music scene in 1996, and soon became ardently promising. Rapidly, they saw a huge fan base gathering, and their music conquered a large audience. Now, more than twenty years later, it has solidified in one of the most overwhelming electronic acts to emerge from Britain. With eight albums released – with an additionally high number of singles and compilations – Groove Armada from time to time enter into hiatus, as Andy Cato has always been involved with several parallel musical projects, alongside his career with Findlay on Groove Armada.  


Birth name: Andrew Derek Cocup
Date of birth: 7 June, 1971 (Age 46)
Birthplace: Yorkshire, England
Occupation: DJ
                Musician
                Songwriter
                Record producer
Instruments: Keyboards
                 Sampler
                 Bass
Genre: Electronica
Reason for fame: Groove Armada


Wagner


 

No Tears is a French new wave group formed in 2001 in Paris, by musician Paul Fiction. While they aren’t known beyond borders, they do enjoy a formidable degree of popularity in their home country, which can be seen by the considerable attention they had enjoyed over the years by media dedicated to cover topics related to the alternative music scene.  


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With a short discography, consisting of only three albums – the last of which was released in 2010 –, with a superior number of compilations, they succeed in leaving their mark on the genre, at least in a regional scale. With a somber style, characterized by a melancholic and pungent sonorous eloquence, No Tears has really ignited a virtuous level of relevance, in what concerns their ability of impressing a darker sound to the genre, that succeeded in capturing a pervasive, but exhilaratingly intense affinity that exhibits in an innocent harmonious grace each and every abyss resting below the corporeally hidden notes of the music.

Now reduced to a duo – Kristian Dernoncourt and Paul Fiction – the lack of releases in recent years does not mean that the band is inactive: they can be followed in social media, as sporadically they post press and music related material in their official FB page. 

No Tears is the legitimate case of a band that not only deserved to be better known to the general public inside their own home country, they also deserved to have launched internationally. And this was a serious possibility for No Tears, since they sing in english. With an interesting history, a decent degree of originality, and a gracious talent for composing good music, they deserved to have had more exposure. Being like a darker version of Simple Minds and Duran Duran, the elusive and pessimistic side of new wave emerged quite right with No Tears, that should have been one of the best representatives of the genre in their home country. Now, there is one question to be answered: they will fall into despondency, or there is the possibility of a new album in the future? 

  
Wagner

Hồ Chí Minh was a communist political leader, and president of Vietnam, from 1945 to 1969. Under the political label of communism, he founded the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, when he declared his country’s independence from France. During this time, Vietnam was a divided country, split into North and South, before unification under the communist regime in 1975.

Like all communist states, totalitarianism was a common feature in the country’s political system, and a cult of personality developed around Hồ Chí Minh, aimed to maintain the population under mind control, and to create an almost sacramental image of the supreme political leader to the general public. 

The current Vietnamese political agenda is very diligent in suppressing everything concerning Hồ Chí Minh’s romantic affairs with women. Exactly like the Nazi Party regarding Adolf Hitler, the Vietnamese communist party portrays Hồ Chí Minh as a chaste celibate, who had no time for personal matters, being inherently and completely committed to the nation, to the revolution, to the development of the country and the well-being of its people, unconditionally. He was portrayed as the ideal leader, a glorious and altruistic savior, destined to free his country from evil and misery. Unavoidably, a thoroughly mandatory adoration cult developed towards Hồ Chí Minh – a common feature in communist states –, and even his father is venerated throughout the country, having temples in his homage. 

Although the West tended to see and to portray Hồ Chí Minh as a “moderate” communist, who was unlike his more “radical” political counterparts, like Mao or Stalin, this was merely a sordid fabrication from ingenious sympathizers.  Hồ Chí Minh, like all communist leaders, saw no problem at all in murdering political opponents, to capture and kill their relatives, wage conflagrations for power purposes or to engage in belligerent conflicts to assure his control. Nonetheless, a myth was created, with the purpose to portray Hồ Chí Minh in a positive light. But there isn’t a single spark of truth in these affirmations whatsoever. Hồ Chí Minh was no different from all other communist leaders. His endless, ambitious and voracious thirst for power was unprecedented in his country’s history. And all the bloodshed generated by it was typical of communist regimes.  

Unfortunately, his legacy was perpetrated in the Communist Party of Vietnam, that rules the country with a terrible and excruciating inflexibility, inherent to this political form of government. Forced to revere a mere human being, people living in communist countries are terribly dilacerated by their own government, that enslaves their people for the purpose of absolute control. And if we can attribute a legacy to Hồ Chí Minh, this is the only he truly deserves: his contribution for the enslavement of his own people, under his image. This is everything he has done for his people. An enforcement of a totalitarian governmental behavior, that has forbidden all legitimate forms of free expression, in favor of a dreadful slave mentality, where people live in constant fear, for the sake of maintaining their own lives.     


Wagner

David Parland, better known as Blackmoon, was a celebrated Swedish musician, notorious in the black metal community for being the co-founder of Dark Funeral. He also co-founded black metal groups Necrophobic, War and Infernal. A talented guitarist and an amazing songwriter, David Parland was a predominant and exponentially creative force in all bands in which he became involved, something easy to conclude by virtue of his role as a founding member and a leading figure in all these black metal acts. He was a proverbial influence in shaping the sonorous style, the dynamic visuals and the ideological direction of those musical groups, although more commonly in conjunction with other members, despite the fact that, in some of his projects, David Parland did most of the work all by himself.

Born in Sweden in 1970, David Parland first became involved in music in 1989, when he was eighteen years old, and founded Necrophobic with another musician. In 1993, he founded Dark Funeral with guitarist and songwriter Mikael Svanberg – better known as Lord Ahriman –, which would be his best known and most notorious creation in the genre. In a few years, Dark Funeral would rise to become one of the most infamous black metal bands in the world, and a reference in the history of the genre. Initially reconciling his two bands perfectly, David Parland eventually departed from Necrophobic to fully concentrate on Dark Funeral. Despite the fact that his partnership with Svanberg – and the additional cast of musicians that joined them – would marvelously succeed, David Parland remained in Dark Funeral only for three years, leaving the band in 1996, after the release of their debut album, the iconic The Secrets of the Black Arts. The recording process for this album occurred in difficult and troublesome circumstances, being a landmark in the history of the band. Completely dissatisfied with the original product, David Parland insisted with his band mates that the album should be recorded again. Although the other band members were not as disappointed as David, he won the argument, and the album was recorded again, in a different studio, with a different producer. Nonetheless, several facts in David’s life – mainly, the solitary path he underwent musically, sometime after the album was released – suggest that he became profoundly unsatisfied with the sonorous style shaped by Dark Funeral, and that was the most probable reason for him to quit the band. With another two prominent musicians of the black metal scene, David Parland founded another band, simply called War. Short-lived, whilst it was active, the band had delivered three releases: an EP, a full-length and a compilation album, but repercussion of the work was unsatisfying. Sometime before they disbanded, the band had to change their name to Total War, since an American band already had the rights to the War name. 

By this time, David Parland also founded Infernal, which started as a band, but eventually, over the years, became more of a personal project, since Parland alone wrote all the songs, and performed and recorded everything mostly by himself. Sometimes he was assisted by occasional session musicians, that usually were friends or acquaintances from his musical circle. Mainly a drummer, or a bassist.  

In 2003, after years of a marginal degree of productivity, having released only two EP’s and a split, it became clear that Infernal was going nowhere. As a result, David Parland took a hiatus of almost six years. During this period, although haven’t becoming necessarily inactive, Parland maintained his involvement in music restricted to a minimum. 

For little more than a decade, from the mid-nineties to the beginning of the 2000’s, David Parland managed his own record label, called Hellspawn Records. Within his tenure as a small label manager, David Parland printed by Hellspawn ten releases, ranging from his musical projects and bands, as well as other prominent acts within the underground metal community.   

After several years of invisibility in the musical scene, David Parland returned in 2009, to fully concentrate on his project, Infernal. Resurfacing with surprising vigor, lucidity and energy, Parland released an EP titled The Infernal Return, under the Infernal moniker. Although Parland was doing mostly everything by himself – like vocals, guitar, lyrics, songwriting and occasional bass playing –, he was being assisted by a revolving cast of musicians – mainly bass and drum players –, and was apparently seriously trying to transform Infernal in a live band, but to hold on a permanent basis by his side the right musicians, with the level of commitment that he wanted, and also on the same musical alignment, proved to be a goal almost impossible to achieve. He also announced the full length debut of Infernal, an album tentatively titled The Infernal Retribution, which was never recorded. Unfortunately, when everything seemed to be fine and going well with David, he mysteriously disappeared again from the musical scene. After some years, he resurfaced, and revealed what was going on in his life. He explained everything in a very long, honest and detailed October 2012 interview, that he gave for Rites of the Black Moon, a webzine that already had interviewed him three years earlier.    

In this interview, David Parland revealed quite frankly that he was dealing with the consequences of a series of major problems in his personal life. Some years ago, he was involved in a serious car accident, that he suffered when he ran over an elk, returning from a studio in the Swedish countryside. The car was extensively damaged, beyond repair, but he survived without major distress. Nonetheless, he sustained terrible injuries caused by the car crash, and had to deal, from then on, with chronic pain. To alleviate his suffering, he started to use medications, and eventually became addicted. Inevitably, he had to be isolated in a psychiatric facility for an undisclosed period of time for treatment. 

Parland also revealed that this problem had brought him bad financial circumstances, since he wasn’t able to work in a regular job by virtue of his pain. Nonetheless, he maintained some positivity, affirming that he was planning to return to music full time. He also disclosed the problem of getting in Sweden the medications that he needed to properly treat his condition, revealing how terrible and restrictive the healthcare system was in his country. Even prescriptions for soft medications could be hard to get, because, in his own words “nearly everything is considered a narcotic here”. Describing how difficult it was for him to properly function without medication, David Parland also addressed his indignation and resentment towards the policy that makes pharmacological substances hard to obtain, and how much suffering these flawed laws brings to people who really needs the medicine to counterattack the aggressive symptoms of their precarious health. David Parland also debated about another points of concern in his life, and meticulously discussed his ambitions towards his work and his music. He was also working on another project, simply titled Blackmoon – that was also called Darkwinds, and Blackmoon’s Darkwinds for a while –,  and under this alias, a demo, an unreleased demo and an untitled album was produced.  

Unfortunately, things did not go well from then on. In March 19, 2013, David Parland committed suicide. He was forty two years old. Nobody knows precisely what was going on in his life for a fact, or what circumstances specifically drove him to execute such a desperate act. When hearing the news of his death, former band mate, Mikael Svanberg, from Dark Funeral, expressed in a formal statement his grief and sadness. He declared that, although he and David had their differences, they were friends, and David occasionally visited him in his residence, especially when he was dealing with severe difficulties. He also declared that, four days before he took his own life, David Parland called him, and the two spoke to each other naturally. Svanberg told the media that Parland seemed normal and okay, and by what he understood from their conversation, things were going fine. He also pointed out the fact that David knew he could always count on him, and didn’t know why, before considering an extreme act like suicide, Parland didn’t called him again, asking for help. 

​Apparently, David Parland’s artistic endeavors, goals and aspirations never took the path that he wanted, although he fought hard to be in control of the circumstances, and to react against the terrible situations that constantly affected his life. Struggling endlessly with the difficulties inherent to a musical career – specially in a subgenre of the underground scene, like black metal – he always had to be pleased with little, being forced to deal with an insurmountable succession of adversities, which tormented him with an afflictive chain of frustrations, brought by a spiral of problems that always put obstacles and barriers on his way and compromised his objectives. One way or another, David Parland always had to deal with circumstances whose control was always beyond his possibilities.     

An underground icon that achieved cult status in the nineties, and a legendary figure of the Swedish underground scene, David Parland still can be considered an elemental shadow of nature, and a vigorous force of black metal. He will be remembered for the great musician he was. A pioneer of black metal, he always will have a special place within our hearts, our minds and our thoughts! Although we miss him, now that he has been absent for four years, we have a little comfort in the fact that, at least, David Parland finally is having the rest that was constantly denied to him in life. 



Wagner

John Duffy and David Mulcahy were two british serial killers, responsible for the rape, sexual assault and deaths of several women in Camden, England. Duffy and Mulcahy were childhood acquaintances and school friends, that solidified their mutual friendship while they were growing up. When the two individuals reached adulthood, their friendship developed into something dark, inconspicuous and sinister. For an insanely mysterious reason, the two best friends started to attack young women in the area of Hampstead Station, beginning a sordid chapter of brutal and violent murders in the history of crime in the United Kingdom. 

The vicious attacks started in the early eighties. Initially acting as serial rapists, John Duffy and David Mulcahy had brutally assaulted and raped  dozens of young woman, before making their first fatal victim. Alison Day was followed by the pair of assailants in December 29, 1985, and eventually killed after being raped several times. Nonetheless, Duffy and Mulcahy began to act more sporadically, and this fact caused some difficulties to the police, that was having a hard time to connect all the crimes to a single suspect. 

As the rape and murders had continued, though, the police set up several different investigative task forces, to align everything correctly into a diagram of cohesive patterns. When different cases were conclusively linked to a single perpetrator, they were classified together. Since John Duffy already had a criminal record, registered when he was accused of raping his own wife, he was enlisted as a main suspect, among thousands of others.

As the investigation  advanced, it became increasingly clearer that John Duffy was, beyond any question, the real offender. When the police collected enough evidence to prove that he was, indeed, the offender beyond any reasonable doubt, he was imprisoned and sent to justice. Nonetheless, by virtue of several clues left at the crime scenes, as well the nature and the circumstances surrounding the rapes and the murders, it became clear that Duffy hadn’t committed all those crimes alone. Probably he had an accomplice, something the police investigators had already suspected. Despite his reluctance – Duffy and Mulcahy had some sort of a mutual agreement, like a “code of honor” that inherently left implicit the fact that if one of them was caught by the police, there would be a refusal to reveal who was the accomplice – Duffy eventually agreed to name his partner in crime, probably bittered by the fact that, while he was in prison, his former murderous associate was free to live his life exactly as he wanted. Nonetheless, it took a long time, before Duffy decided to reveal to the police who his accomplice really was. Imprisoned in 1986, it would take more than a decade for Duffy to speak to the officers that his partner in crime was his childhood school friend, David Mulcahy, who was finally arrested in 1997. After a lot of evidence was gathered, the case was closed, as it was finally proved that John Duffy and David Mulcahy were the Railway Killers. To this day, David Mulcahy still affirms he is innocent, and runs a website that contests the investigations. 


Wagner
 

Charles Bukowski was one of the great literary icons of American literature in the 20th century. Born Heinrich Karl Bukowski in Andernach, Germany, he moved with his parents to the United States when he was only a child. The young Bukowski very soon had to learn from the painful hardships and depressive ordeals of life. A severe case of acne in his teens turned him unattractive to girls, and the shy and introverted Bukowski, as a result, became even more closed to himself. Already in his youth, he relied on alcohol, in order to anesthetize chronic social rejection, and the general pains of existence. Having very early manifested his literary tendencies, Bukowski’s father was an abusive, aggressive and authoritarian figure, that would tear up his manuscripts, and do everything possible to keep his son away from writing. This terrible treatment in the part of his father would leave deep scars and lasting marks on the young Bukowski, and would play a vital role in the formation of his cynic, sarcastic, pessimistic and disillusioned view towards life.
Bukowski was able to sell relatively early his first short story to a magazine – he was only twenty four years old –, and managed to sell a few more in the following years, but the difficulties in the literary business soon exasperated the young Bukowski, that grew severely disillusioned on his dream to become a writer, and for almost a decade, he ceased to write. In order to maintain himself, he worked in all kinds of odd jobs, and this period of his life is well described – although in fictionalized versions – in autobiographical novels, such as Factotum (which is a Latin word that literally means “Do Everything”, in reference to a worker that literally do all kinds of jobs) and Ham on Rye, which covers a long period of his life, from infancy to adulthood.

Although he continued writing, and publishing in independent newspapers and magazines, Bukowski’s achievements through this point were mediocre ones, and his literary endeavors seemed to go nowhere, to his constant and ongoing frustration. Although it took some time, in 1969, when he was forty nine years old, all was about to change, when a small publisher offered him the possibility to quit his job – which was in a Post Office agency – and become a full time writer. Already exasperated with his work, he accepted the offer, resigned his job, and very soon, published his first novel, titled Post Office, which, like many of his works, was extremely autobiographical. And you could certainly say that a literary legend was born.  

Barfly, a 1987 movie starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway, was written by Bukowski, as a work commissioned by renowned film director Barbet Schroeder. Though they had minor disagreements – Bukowski wanted his friend Sean Penn to star in the main role, and Sean Penn by his turn wanted the film to be directed by Dennis Hopper, although Bukowski wouldn’t deliver to Hopper a script that was solicited by another director – the movie came along well. Semi-autobiographical in tone, Barfly shows the ups and downs of Henry Chinaski – the alter ego of Bukowski in his fiction works – in an almost permanent alcoholic stupor, wandering endlessly through the underground decadent bars of L.A, not knowing precisely what directions to follow in life. Bukowski made a cameo appearance in the film. Sean Penn and Bukowski remained very close friends, until Bukowski’s death in 1994.  

From the early seventies, until his death, in March 9, 1994, aged seventy three, Bukowski was a full time writer, that has written hundreds of poems and short stories, as well as dozens of articles, columns and non-fiction pieces for underground newspapers and magazines. Most of his work published in periodicals was eventually collected, and printed in book form. Nevertheless, today he is best remembered for his six novels, that went to be his most successful literary achievements: Post Office, Factotum, Women, Ham on Rye, Hollywood and Pulp. He also worked occasionally as a film scriptwriter.

His main literary themes were mundane ones: alcohol, sex, his complicate relationships with women, the ups and downs of life in L.A, the act of writing, trying to break into the literary business and, in later life, dealing with fame and notoriety. He is frequently cited as the poet and philosopher of the marginalized, poor, neglected and forgotten ones, probably because he was all those things, before the world was able to acknowledge him as a talented, proficient and versatile writer.      


Wagner

There are a lot of reasons for us to think that Bono is an abject and despicable individual. If you are fooled by what the television, the internet and the fake news network present to you, the facts and the events surrounding the terribly ordinary, but notorious U2 frontman are never what appearances may suggest. The reasons behind the man that seems to love African children, fight poverty and proclaim a battle for equality and justice are not exactly advocated by the motives you think they are. In fact, Bono has always been a master of well played theatrics and deceitful treachery, doing a real awesome work, as a mindful and unlawful trickster. But think just for a second. Do you know what Bono really loves? Let me follow with three simple words here: fame, notoriety and money. Behind the man that sometimes act as an ambassador of all the good fortunes, posing as the savior for the poor and the destitute, kissing popes, wandering by the White House with American presidents and meeting statesman from several countries, while he receives medals for acting as the paladin of humanitarian causes, you have in fact an egomaniac individual desperate for attention, that seeks with an absurd obsession his desire for global recognition. Bono is in fact a sordid opportunist of the worst kind, that never loses the chance to be exactly where he wants to be: at the center of the spotlight, receiving exclusive attention.  

As most people known – although this doesn’t make a difference in anybody’s life – Bono is the singer of U2, an Irish band that has had worldwide fame, for more than three decades now. And let me be true and honest here: U2 is one of the most tedious and mediocre bands that the world has ever seen. But, despite the fact that this conclusion seems to be a contradiction, the mediocrity of U2 is one of the reasons for them to be so famous. U2 does rude, unsophisticated, boring, average, ordinary and superficial pop music, that literally serves for the masses, people who are exactly like U2: rude, unsophisticated, boring, average, ordinary and superficial. But going straight to the point, why a mediocre singer from a mediocre pop band, for quite a while now, has been hanging around the world so much, with so many politicians, especially American presidents? 

Well, you know, like I wrote some lines above, this happens exactly because Bono loves the spotlight. He doesn’t know how to live without being the center of all attentions. And he will do everything in his power to achieve the level of recognition that he desperately wants. Whatever and whenever there is a camera on, Bono will run away very fast to appear right before ahead of it. If he can hug an African child before the photographer shoots a picture, he will do that. To hug a lot of politicians, and to proclaim words of hope, wisdom and faith seems to be his real expertise, way more than singing, if you ask me. But of course, he will always proclaim empty words of hope, wisdom and faith, that conveniently never translate into action. A tour at the White House was always at his disposition from the Bill Clinton administration onwards. He became very friendly with George Bush and Barack Obama as well (I don’t know if Trump will allow his privileges to continue, though). Now, ask yourself – or anyone who is fooled enough for being tricked by Bono’s humanitarian and political superficial theatre – how this have benefited the world exactly?

Well… the world hasn’t seen a milligram of benefits whatsoever, in any moment of Bono’s career as an attendant of fancy presidential dinners and extravagant political events. The only one who has advantages with all of these insanely comic acts is Bono himself. Why? Because he gets famous, and famous and famous, and photographers follow him wherever and whenever he goes, and he can deceive everybody by pretending to be an angelic emissary sent from heaven to save the world. This is exactly what he wants. 

But the truth speaks for itself. There is a great gap between what Bono proclaims to defend, and how he really lives his life. For the ones who haven’t been informed, U2 relocated to The Netherlands some years ago to avoid taxes. Bono and his gang are multimillionaire bullshit rock stars, but they changed their country of affairs to avoid paying higher taxes. While Bono pretends to care and to protect and to defend the world, the poor, the homeless and the defenseless, shouting to everybody the importance to fight the systematic problem of poverty in Africa, his only real preoccupation is to get richer, and richer and richer. And the most unbelievable thing is that his attitudes really deceive naïve people, who really believe that he is some masculine version of Angelina Jolie (who, unlike Bono, is a true humanitarian activist). U2 has high financial risks and investments operations, but they have arranged everything for their costs to be the lowest possible, and the profits to be the highest. U2 is not a band, but a multimillion business enterprise – a category upon which the most famous bands in the world, like the Rolling Stones, Metallica and Aerosmith, to name just a few, could be included – and the priority on Bono’s agenda, as well as his band mates, is to keep the money flourishing, without a truce. Money is the only thing that really matters. Oh, and keeping up with the appearances too.   

So, a man that really has enough money, the means, the influence and the power to make the difference choses only to speak, to meet politicians and to appear in front of the cameras, instead of giving up a generous amount of his abundant financial resources and taking action? If you don’t see a lot of things clearly wrong in this story, you should really open up your eyes. Bono only cares about money, medals, notoriety, distinctions, fame, money, more money, and of course, deceiving everybody to think that he is the savior of the world.         


Wagner

Ray Liotta has always been one of my favorite actors, and his presence in a movie is enough for me to watch it. Having entered the show business in the late seventies, Liotta rose to prominence as Henry Hill in the 1990 biographical crime-drama film Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese, where Liotta divided the screen with highly acclaimed legendary actors, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. As Liotta wasn’t a very well-known actor at the time, he auditioned for the role, and persistently persuaded Scorsese and the producers of the film for the part of Henry Hill, who is the main character and narrator of the movie. Eventually, Liotta himself had met the real Henry Hill, who was an associate of the Lucchese crime family of New York, from the mid-fifties until his downfall and subsequent imprisonment in the eighties, whose incarceration had finished the criminal careers of several of his mafia partners as well. The movie covers extensively all these decades’ long periods in Henry Hill’s life, beginning when he joins the mob, until his eventual arrest.  

Despite being best known for his part on the Scorsese biopic, Liotta is a very prolific actor of movies and television, working occasionally as a narrator of documentaries, and appearing in commercial advertisements as well. Usually playing very tough guys, mainly corrupt cops or very dubious and immoral law officers, he can be seen regularly playing both decent and evil characters. 

With more than eighty movies to his name, despite the fact that he is sixty two years old, the veteran actor born in 1954 in Newark, New Jersey, apparently is eager to work more frequently than ever. Like Christopher Walken, he hardly refuses to participate in a project, and can be seen regularly in movie festivals and events worldwide. Frequently seen in movies where he is the lead, he also heavily participates in secondary and minor roles. The genres upon which he is mostly seen are crime, drama and cop thrillers. Personally, if you ask me, I remember him mostly for his parts as extremely corrupt police officers, and I can describe a lot of examples. In the 1997 movie Cop Land, upon which he worked again with De Niro, Liotta shared the screen with Sylvester Stallone, Robert Patrick and Harvey Keitel. In this movie, Stallone plays the sheriff of a fictitious small town, who has to deal with extremely corrupt and abusive NYPD police officers. As the authority figure of what is usually called a “dormitory city”, Stallone’s character has to deal with cops who work in New York City, but live in the neighboring small town. They frequently engage in abuse of authority and blackmail, amongst many other illicit activities. Determined to break this chain of corruption, although he is frequently ridiculed by his role of sheriff of a little community, the character of Stallone decides to stand against the criminal cops, and Ray Liotta’s character is one of them. In the more recent Blackway, a movie on which Liotta shared the screen with Anthony Hopkins, he plays the title character, a brutal, perfidious and very insidious local crime lord, who was a former police officer. In Street Kings 2: Motor City, he played a very pervasive and furtive cop, thoroughly involved in serious crimes. In The Place Beyond the Pines, Ray Liotta had played a very malevolent and corrupt cop as well. In the classic 1992 movie, Unlawful Entry, on which Ray Liotta co-starred with Kurt Russell and Madeleine Stowe, he played a very ambiguous, immoral and delusional cop, who develops an extremely sick obsession by Karen, Madeleine Stowe’s character. In The Son of No One, co-starred by Channing Tatum and Al Pacino, Liotta one more time played a very dark and malevolent law officer. Although evidently there was a lot more movies than this one, I only remember Ray Liotta playing a very good, honest and decent cop in the movie Suddenly, on which he co-starred with famous actor Dominic Purcell, whose character is the antagonist of the story, that revolves around a very deadly premise. Purcell plays a double agent, whose mission is to kill the US President, expected to attend a public commitment in the small city upon which Liotta’s character is the sheriff. Purcell and Liotta had previously worked together in the movie Bad Karma. 

In the 2002 movie Narc, co-starred by Jason Patric, and in the 2011 movie The River Murders, co-starred by Christian Slater, Liotta played more down to the ground law officers, that try hard to be good coops, but eventually fall under the pressure of their own moral flaws, as well as the evil that surrounds the profession. 

Another of his memorable roles was the one Liotta took on the movie Identity, co-starred by John Cusack, Amanda Peet and Pruitt Taylor Vince. A more sinister and ambivalent thriller, Identity tells the story of prospective victims of a very shadowy and mysterious serial murderer, that gather together to eventually discover that they have far more things in common, than what they could possibly have imagined.  Amongst his recent major movies, 2011 The Entitled also deserves mention. In this movie, Canadian actor Kevin Zegers plays an individual who kidnaps three young adults from rich parents. Ray Liotta plays the father of one of the individuals kidnapped. The other two are the son and daughter, respectively, of his two wealthier friends, who are also successful businessmen. Nonetheless, the son of one of them is fatally killed, and Ray Liotta’s character, who has been in fact financially broken, elude his friend that his son is still alive, just to deceive him to loan him money, for having the chance to pay the ransom for his own son. A very amazing and exceptional movie, The Entitled is a major and compelling thriller, that deserves to be seen very attentively, from the beginning until the end.  

Having started his career in a soap opera, in the early eighties Liotta moved to Los Angeles, in the hopes of getting roles in the movie industry. This proved to be beneficial for his career, as in a matter of time movie roles were being offered to him. From then on, his hardworking ethics would compensate. Now, regarded as a formidable Hollywood actor, he always has a lot of roles in movies and television at his disposition, waiting to be played by him. With an extensive and very respectable filmography, Ray Liotta has really conquered his well-deserved space in the movie industry, and has proved the extensive range and amazingly realistic skills of his acting abilities.  


​Wagner