Over the next two weeks, liveDaily will look back at 2001 by revisiting several notable artist interviews that we've published throughout the year. The following interview first ran on April 13, five months before System of a Down's sophomore album, "Toxicity," entered the charts at No. 1.

System of a Down vocalist Serj Tankian recently launched the website Serjical Strike "to introduce words and music that have been otherwise unavailable in stores."

More specifically, the site offers Tankian's 96-page poetry book "Cool Gardens," as well as music from the new label Serjical Strike Records, with bands including Bad Acid Trip, Kittens for Christian and Bad Elf.

Besides their writing and musical exploits, Serj and his System of a Down bandmates--all of Armenian decent--have worked diligently to bring more attention to the Armenian genocide of World War I, which has yet to be officially recognized by Congress. (Click here for some background.) These efforts included a benefit concert in Los Angeles last fall that raised $20,000 in funds for the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).

Social/political activist Tankian spoke with liveDaily while in the studio with Rick Rubin recording the next System of a Down album.

LiveDaily: How long have you been working to get the Serjical Strike website up and running?

It was really a very simple idea. I've always wanted to write a book and release some words, so I decided to do that. And then I thought the best way to put it out would be on a website, so that people can actually look it up, sample it and get directly involved. And then I thought, "Well, if I'm going to set up a web page, I've got friends' bands that I really want people to hear." It just started that way, on a very simple note: if I'm going to have a web page, I might as well put the bands up as well.

And that led to the establishment of the little label. And it's really great. The bands are excited. I just finished producing Kittens for Christian's next full-length LP, which I think is going to be a really exciting record.

Tell me about "Cool Gardens," the poetry book. How long have you been writing poetry?

I've been writing for a good seven, eight, maybe ten years. I'd always liked writing when I was younger, but I never sat down and wrote poetry until probably my late teens, early 20s.

Were there any poets or writers in particular that inspired you?

There's a bunch of poetry and prose writers. As far as poets, T.S. Eliot I really like. Shakespeare, obviously, and the classics.

The political messages are often talked about with System of a Down. Was a political platform a big impetus for forming the band?

You know, the political side is more ... me. My influences are political. I used to listen to revolutionary music before any other type of music. It's not something that we intended to do. In fact, I don't think we ever intended to do anything with our music, we just do what comes out naturally. And the politics play a part of it--it's not everything, but it is a part of it.

You've made immense efforts to increase awareness of the Armenian genocide of WWI. When did you start getting active with this? Seems like you were doing it before the band was successful.

I was active in it before the band. It's been part of my upbringing, to learn about my culture, as well as other cultures. Learning about the injustice that has happened to the Armenian people has opened the doors for me, seeing the injustices for other cultures, as well as all of the lies that administrations play upon their people to guarantee the blind consent that they need to run the state of affairs as they are.

Tell me the story of House Resolution 596, the Coalition for the Armenian Genocide Education and Commemoration Act. This was a bill that was actually on the floor last year, to be voted on, and at the 11th hour, President Clinton got in there ...

... and it had majority. It would have passed. The speaker had introduced it, it had majority, and there was all this pressure exerted by the Turkish government upon the Clinton administration. And the administration--instead of making moral-ground judgments based on a genocide that's occurred and making sure history doesn't repeat itself--they took the other avenue and bowed down to that pressure. And in turn, they exerted pressure upon the Speaker of the House [Dennis Hastert] to not pass the bill.

You've got to realize that, whether it's Turkey or Armenia or whatever nation that the U.S. is dealing with, as far as foreign policy, the United States' first and foremost interests are the profits of our multinational corporations. And our military, our defense money. The defense itself is a huge corporation that profits the elite of this nation. With Turkey, we have a military-financial type of thing happening. We sell them helicopters, bombs, planes and what-not, and at the same time we do other types of business with them. It's very sad that the President of the superpower of the world ... loses his composure to that type of pressure, from one of our allies.

Shifting the subject to the new System of a Down album now, how is the recording going?

We've been tracking for about four or five weeks now. We have 32 songs. We're planning to finish tracking in detail all of those 32 songs, mix them, and have one record and probably a whole lot of material for other releases, maybe a second one, as well. The record should be out in the summer.

You've got Rick Rubin in the booth--what's he bringing to the table?

He brings a lot to the table. He's got an amazing ear for music, in harmony, in what works or what doesn't work. He's got great taste, which is why I think he can produce different genres of music so successfully. He's not a genre producer--he's not known for just producing heavy bands or any certain type of band. He's done Johnny Cash, Chili Peppers, Tom Petty, so many different artists, let alone the hip-hop stuff he did earlier in his career.

There's a lot of humor in some of the song titles, like "KITT" and "Psycho." But what about "Prison Song"?

It's about mandatory minimum sentences and the drug policy that this country harbors, utilizing it for its own globalist purposes. The drug war shouldn't be waged in Columbia or anywhere else in the world, it should be waged on our borders. We are the biggest drug-using nation, and if we can't stop it from coming into our borders, we have no right to go and mess with other people's countries and crops and what-not. And set up puppet regimes to give us what we want.

The true matter-of-fact reason for the drug war is to fund things that Congress will not fund in foreign policy, that the administration wants to achieve. We all know that. We've seen the [San Jose] Mercury [News] reports--I think it was they who first released the CIA's importing cocaine from Argentina and some other nations. [Ed. note: That controversial 1996 story did not report a concrete link between the CIA and the cocaine trade, but strongly implied a connection. Click here for some background.] We've all seen this many times. Our security forces, if you want to call them that, have been caught with white powder in their hands, importing it themselves, and that's very sad.

But you've got to think of when the drug problem started in the first place. It started in the '60s, not because of the freedom movement or the rights movements. It started in the '60s in the ghettos as a form of oppression, when the police were going and shooting around the Black Panthers offices, when they needed something like drugs to make people ... numb. So I think the administration has been very complicit in the drug problem. In my opinion, they partially created it.