About
This website is the Internet home of respected private citizen and professional bad egg Leonard Pierce. It features his writing on subjects abstruse and arcane; hosts his podcast, the PetardCast; contains links to his work...
HOT CONTENT
The latest from the intellectual property mines.
All Around You, All the Time
"A lot of it was just sheer grinding shitwork. You think making a revolution is all agony and ecstasy? It's not, it's mostly drudgery. Hard, disciplined, repetitive work that's boring and necessary. But...
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What You’re Supposed to Do
When you read, as you often do, of an extremely wealthy person doing something of questionable legality -- an Elon Musk, perhaps, appearing to bribe voters on a wide scale, or a Harlan...
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Shot By Both Sides
The die, for me at least, has been cast. After months of argument - with friends, with family, with my own comrades, with countless people online and in person - I have cast...
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Truth Replaced By Silence
It is becoming harder and harder to pretend what kind of country we live in anymore. The irony of it is that we do pretend, harder and harder, every day. As the distance...
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They Do Not Feel as We Would
There is no value that we might possess that is worth the cost of another person's suffering. This is one of the fundamental lessons of anti-capitalism, of anti-imperialism, of any conception of humanity...
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Thirteen Thoughts as Darkness Falls
I. What Is and What Never Should Be It can be very easy, living where and how we live, to lose sight of what we refer to, and even then in quotes ironic...
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The Easiest of All Hunting Expeditions
There is, we are told, no ethical consumption under capitalism, and so it is. Any participation in a system of exploitation is exploitative, and one cannot engage in even the simplest acts of...
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The Mother of All Crimes
When one mask comes off, others start to follow, and in quick order. America's rightward turn, its fascist lean, is finding allies everywhere; if they are not necessarily ideological allies, they are at...
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The Hottest Places in Hell
Our wars are never just; our heroes are never pure. Paul Fussell, whose service in the American infantry during the Second World War defined his entire life and work, understood this. He wrote...
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Possibilities Decreasing, Regrets Mounting
This time, we are told, is not like the other times. This time -- this this time, not all the other this times -- it is nothing more than the future of democracy...
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Rock On, Ancient Queen
Gosh, do I love the '70s! America's Weirdest Decade is always a source of entertainment, whether it's actual culture produced by the most drugged-up people in history at the time, or the tribute-culture...
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Asabiyyah
If you are an organizer or an activist, think about the time you felt most effective, most powerful, most joyful in struggle. Was it alone? Was it in solitude, your face bathed in...
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To Speak for the Skin and the Bone
One of the primary contradictions of the present moment is that unionism in the United States is enjoying its biggest surge in decades, while union membership is at one of its lowest points...
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Can You Find the Wolves in This Picture?
This weekend, in a squall of rain and a first breath of the cold months to come, we went to the Galewood Crossings AMC to see a movie. It was movie weather; the...
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How Much Was Ended
What is there to say, at a time like this? What is the point of speaking, of writing, of talking amongst ourselves, when a people who have been oppressed and harried unto death...
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FILM WRITING
The most beautiful fraud in the world.
Can You Find the Wolves in This Picture?
This weekend, in a squall of rain and a first breath of the cold months to come, we went to...
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A Pawn and a King
We live in an age when the Culture War, the most avoidable conflict in human history, continues to drag on....
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Ma Petite Ruine
The dominant mode of the crime novel in pre-war European fiction was much as it had been since the birth...
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It Will Always Matter
As monotonous and familiar as the movie scene has gotten of late, films can still surprise you. There are films...
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Man of Steel
Armando Iannucci makes deeply political comedies that are not actually at politics at all. This is not the only good...
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The Strength of Street Knowledge
Let's preface this review by discussing something that made me feel older than anything else has in my entire life: ...
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Pay Back Africa
Tonight's blog entry, which ought to be a relatively simple movie review, is one of the most difficult things I've...
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The Floating World
Stephen King adaptations, as my friend Scott Von Doviak can tell you, are a real mixed bag. When you're the...
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On Thin Ice
There have been a number of films lately -- and are likely to be more, as I continue to get...
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Go See a Star War
As I have to tell everyone around this time every year, I'm not really a big fan of the Star Wars...
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Prince of Dorkness
The older I get, the less patience I have for so-bad-it's-good culture. I get why it's so appealing to the...
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As Above, So Below
Okay, let's first get the obligatory Twitter joke out of the way: The Shape of Water is the best movie you'll see...
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