The New
American Dream
... DREAM
1. Cut military spending, get ROTC out of high schools and colleges, killing should not be a subject of study; close the School of The Americas, investigate the School of The Americas
2. Close the U.S military bases in all other countries
3. Spend massive tax dollars on schools, housing, employment in the poor areas of the United States, cities, rural — knowing that any people that claims to be Christian or religious or even human must reverse spending on killing and put it into good things for people.
4. Abolish the CIA
5. Investigate the CIA, FBI, fully, find out what they have been up to over the years and re-evaluate any further activity
6. Release non-violent drug-offender prisoners; demolish a couple of prisons,
it's the right thing to do.
7. Open the borders, north, south, east, west
8. Raise the minimum wage
9. Stop logging on public lands
10. Allow citizens some way to opt out of paying taxes for any military activity
11. Outlaw assault weapons
12. Stop factory farming
13. Provide universal health care
14. Something-something to break up the political monopoly held by Democratic and Republican parties
15. Something-something to encourage real media diversity
16. Let the public know what the government knows or does not know about UFOs
17. Proceed confidently into the coming century, not as a bandit, criminal nation, but as a nation determined to carry out the real American Dream.
*If there were a real Democratic Party in the United States, with real people and real, hmm, courage, guts, honor, this would not seem so far-out an agenda at this point in time.
* And they would also want to repeal and repent the so-called Drug War.
*And they would want to investigate the many things that Americans doubt about their country, the conspiracies, that is.
*And they would care, really care, about the poor, and that example would spread through the country, and we would not be stupid idiots ... anymore.
This is our Dream.
Fr. Carl Kabat
Featured in New York Times
by Dan Frosch
Sept. 6, 2009
"As Battlefields Shift,
Old Warrior For Peace Pursues The Same Enemy"
Fr. Carl Kabat, now being held in
Weld County Jail in Colorado,
awating trial for damaging a nuclear missile silo.
“I thought, ‘What a beautiful place this is except for this damnable thing in the ground that could kill two or three million people,’ ” Father Kabat said later in an interview at the Weld County Jail, where he is being held on misdemeanor criminal mischief and trespassing charges. “It’s insane.”
You’ve got to learn
that when you push people around,
some people push back.
As they should.
As they must.
And as they undoubtedly will.
There is justice in such symmetry.
-Ward Churchill
Would It Be OK
To Fight Back
"For Real"?
David vs. Goliath
Mickey Z
Will work for food
Will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor get to fall through the cracks
Let 'em eat jellybeans let 'em eat cake
Let 'em eat shit, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can't make it here anymore ...
We Can't Make It
Here Anymore
James McMurtry
There Are Lives
In The Balance
Jackson Browne
If I Had
A Rocket Launcher
Bruce Cockburn
We Like War
George Carlin
"People have been bought
off with gizmos and toys,
and as a result, no one
questions things anymore,
no one questions things. "
— George Carlin
Christopher Bollyn:
The Israelis Did 9/11
"We were there to document the event."
Christopher Bollyn
What Really Happened
The
United States of America
HALL OF SHAME
Ronald Reagan
[here]
[here]
George Herbert Walker Bush
[here]
[here]
Harry Truman
[here]
Paul Tibbets
[here]
Madeleine Albright
[here]
Jeane Kirkpatrick
[here]
Paul Benson
[here]
Dan Rather
[here]
William Clinton
[here]
Janet Reno
[here]
David Atlee Phillips
[here]
Gerald Ford
[here]
Harley Lappin
[here]
The way to "the revolution"
The road to justice & peace
Food for the poor
Truth in American
high school history books
Real change
Real hope
Real government by the people
Put Dick Cheney on Trial
Thermite found in WTC dust
See story
Who is funding the Taliban?
You don't want to know.
See story
Former FBI translator says Bin Laden worked for U.S. up until 9/11
See story
Richard Dolan
on UFOs
Sheila Casey, reporter
for the Rock Creek Free Press:
"We're on
the fucking moon!"
How astronauts would have talked
if we really had made it to the moon.
But instead, they talked like this.
__________
Lizzie West:
" 19 miles to Baghdad ... what have we become?
"19 miles to Baghdad ...
....
"Tie a yellow ribbon around something ..."
__________
Food Inc., showing now
Moo ... motherfucker.
Photo by Ben Heine
http://www.flickr.com/photos/benheine/3883532523/
"There Is A God Somewhere"
“The truth is,
there is no Islamic army
or terrorist group called Al Qaida.
And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism.
The country behind this propaganda is the US . . .”
— Robin Cook
Former British Foreign Secretary
NYC Coalition
For Accountability Now
Personal Statements:
Donna Marsh O’Connor, Mother of Vanessa Lang Langer
As the world moves further and further away from the actual events of 9/11/2001 both in time and spirit, and as 9/11 effaces into yet another simple story cast in history, as the parent of Vanessa Lang Langer lost as the towers fell, I want to let it go. I want to stop talking about 9/11. I am tired of the questions unasked and unanswered. I am tired of the effort to burst yet another happiness bubble in our collective American psyche. And, too, I am tired of talking about Vanessa's death. Better for my family, in the immediacy of trying to live out our present days, to focus on Vanessa's life. To laugh at her memories and revel in pictures of her beautiful face. If it were only for the present and the joys I can still share with my children, my family and my fellow citizens, not just of this country but the world, I would let it go. I would so let it go.
But there is, after all literally, the future. And the future never relied so heavily on redress of questions unanswered in the present. To first ask and then answer what happened that day. Who committed this crime? Who should be held accountable? That is why I support the NYC CAN Ballot Initiative, and I ask for your support as well. It is beyond time for an investigation. It is beyond time.
Bob Mcilvaine, Father of Bobby Mcilvaine
Dear Citizens of New York City,
We lost our son Bobby on September 11, 2001. The death of a child is a pain like no other, compounded by the fact that this wonderful young man was murdered. When a crime as heinous as this takes place, it is assumed that justice will be served and the perpetrators will be discovered and punished. Much to our dismay, this has not taken place. We only want the truth.
Our only hope, at this juncture, is to support the NYC CAN Ballot Initiative, calling for an unbiased and non-political investigation of our son’s murder.
Jean Canavan, Sister in law of Sean Canavan:
On September 11, 2001, my brother-in-law, Sean Canavan, was taken from our family in such a tragic way that there is no “getting over it.” That day was devastating for so many people but the pain is worsened when so many questions are left unanswered and no one is held accountable. How is it acceptable that the 9/11 Commission resulted in more questions than answers? How is it acceptable that Co-chairs of the Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, are able to publish a book stating that the Commission was “Set up to fail” and that they were lied to by NORAD officials? Are we to just accept what the government has told us? The truth is that we don’t know what happened because the truth hasn’t been told. There will continue to be speculation until an impartial, independent investigation is done and the truth is told, whatever that may be. New York City CAN do it.
Reverend Edith Beaujon, First Responder:
I was a First Responder at Ground Zero with the Red Cross working for several days without a mask. I have had numerous health problems that are related to working at Ground Zero including pneumonia, and an autoimmune syndrome that has been identified as related to being at Ground Zero. Now I have excess toxins in my body including mercury, lead, tin and others that are causing health issues, for which I have had to spend thousands of dollars.
I do not believe there was a thorough investigation of the events of 9/11 and I would like to see an independent investigation conducted.
Janette MacKinlay, Survivor:
As I watched the events of 9/11 unfold before my eyes from my apartment window directly across the street from the World Trade Center towers, I never dreamed it would change my life and the lives of people around the world in such a profound and destructive way. I was covered with dust as debris poured into our burst window. Every breath brought dust into me. At that penetrating and traumatizing moment September 11th became a permanent part of me. My recovery from PTSD has been one of art to heal my soul and psyche, and activism to right the wrongs committed that day.
The well-documented omissions and distortions in the 9/11 Commission Report have left a black cloud of doubt over America. A new independent investigation is imperative to lift this cloud. The future safety and well being of our children and grandchildren depend on this, as does the future safety and well being of everyone around the world. It is for these reasons I pray we can have the unity of purpose to support NYC CAN. All of our support is critical. Every person counts. We need to seize this moment.
William Rodriguez, Survivor
The events of 9/11/01 changed the lives of everybody in the new millennium. This event also changed my life forever. I came to work that day not expecting to be a witness of the horror, despair and desolation that was 9/11. On that horrible day I went floor by floor trying to help people as I was one of the few people in the complex with a master key. I helped evacuate many lives, and yet, though they say I am a hero, they, the government officials, the 9/11 Commission and the major media, have all ignored or edited my story: many explosions occurred that morning, explosions that were not related to the impact of the planes. As I learned later, my story did not fit the story the government told. My testimony was omitted from the final report. At long last though, the New York Coalition for Accountability Now, sponsors of this ballot initiative, are aiming to bring about a real investigation of what really happened that day. That is why I wholeheartedly endorse their efforts and have agreed and am honored to join their Executive Council. We need to bring closure for the victim’s families, friends and survivors, for us all, and the only way to do that is to bring about a full and thorough investigation of 9/11. NYC CAN can do it!
Ted Walter, Executive Director:
On the morning of September 11 I was in my first ever class at NYU. I had moved to the city only two weeks before. Experiencing the horror of that day alongside thousands of other New Yorkers made me feel a connection to the city right away, and it quickly became my home. As a New Yorker of eight years, I feel as unsafe as ever because I believe we do not have the answers for why we were left unprotected that morning. I give everything I have to NYC CAN to ensure the future safety of all New Yorkers and all Americans, and for my best friend who lost his brother on September 11.
Radio Interviews
...
Protests At THE Bohemian Grove
From the Sonoma Free Press
KGB
[Killing George Bush]
I like KGB because it tells the forgotten story of prisoners and conspiracy theorists and people slaughtered by Bush Sr. in Panama and women and children in jail visiting rooms and other stuff.
I would like to say something about KGB.
I would like to ask why there is such a stink about even talking about the killing of a rich "leader" in a fictional story — and yet, the real-life slaughter of thousands, millions, of poor people goes by without a whisper, a passing breeze in the trees that is gone and forgotten by the time the hot dogs on the grill are ready.
I am not for the killing of George Bush Sr. or George Bush Jr. or George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush or George X.Y.Z. Bush.
I am not for killing. Period.
But I do think it is within the parameters of fiction and good taste and morality to allow the characters in a novel to discuss what they might do if they ever discovered how they came to such a desolate place in life.
In KGB we hear from his victims in El Salvador, Panama, prison, jail visiting rooms.
In KGB we have a pronounced preference for the poor, as it should be.
I am not for killing.
I only wish the same were true for George H.W. Bush.
From KGB, first published 2001:
The jail squatted beneath the Woodbury County courthouse, invisible as a good boy to those walking outside, known only for the white vans disappearing into the yawning jaws of the off-white overhead door to the enclosed parking lot.
Each week day morning the door would groan and open, just enough for the van to reappear to take inmates up the street to the federal courthouse.
Those prisoners needing to appear in county court would walk. They would crowd handcuffed and shackled into the elevator in the jail front lobby with two guards for the ride up two floors.
The door would open into the world of color, people in a hurry, people whose days “flew by.” People with smiles on their faces, people with faces serious about nothing.
The door would open and reveal the load of orange men with scraggly, matted hair, men with no reason to shave, who had just walked into a department store holding the hand of a little girl and the girl asked the sleeping man what she could have and he said, nothing, and he woke up in jail with real tears coming down his cheeks.
The door split in two and revealed to the hurried people a crowded little room of orange men who were the reason for the huge building of marble and concrete and stone and hardwood.
These almost-men with their bowed heads and tangled hands propped in front of their waists like they were hiding a wet spot shuffled crossway over the lanes of traffic with difficulty, like passing through a cornfield against the rows.
Two brown men stood on the sides of the orange men, keeping them from the hurried people who carried papers concerning the lives and children of the orange men.
In three seconds, four, the orange and brown men slipped inside the lonesome door that led to the damp holding tank outside the rear courtroom door.
Above the stomach-clenching courthouse, after the orange men had been locked in yet another small room, an eagle played on the waves of heat rising from the small city. She dipped and lowered her wings and never worried about being spotted. The focus of the ground creatures was down.
The eagle admired the town square pattern around the courthouse, the row of barbershops and salons: Sam’s Shop, Wave This, the corner grocery store, bookstore, city offices, Wilbur Aalf’s Library, and five banks.
The eagle let the heat from the downtown mid-day traffic take her up another whoosh! She saw the schools, public on the east side and Catholic downtown. The eagle loved to admire her black and white feathers in the sun and her face reflecting in the wing mirror, so far above the ground.
The ground.
The eagle imagined Sioux City as a place for bovine types, carpenters, salesmen and ministers who held only shared thoughts, when they told each other what they thought, they always already knew.
These people. Such times.
Just lucky to be able to be able to soar above all that.
The smell from the wiener factory, sweet like burnt molasses over manure pancakes, kept the eagle from the south edge of town. She climbed a winding staircase.
The motion below slowed and slowed until it stopped.
From Terror Nation
Charlie Johnson is the main character in TN. Charlie is a former sports reporter for a small Iowa daily.
After he retires he begins to write anti-Bush letters to the editor.
He is taken to the local mental hospital for a "check-up."
Here is one of Charlie's letters to the Saint Smith paper.
Dear Editor:
I have a neighbor across the street.
We have watched each other out our front windows for forty years.
Their son played ball in our yard.
Last week that son's boy came home in a body bag in a box in the belly of a big Boeing, back from Baghdad.
That is nothing to "b" joking about.
I am not.
But I will not "b" quiet, either.
I have talked to my neighbors since then, on the sidewalk in front of the house, and again on the side steps of St. Mark's after Mass.
They say Timothy died because he loved freedom.
That's nonsense. He loved basketball.
They say he had his head blown off his shoulders, his legs cut off at the knees, lost his hands, to make us free.
Of course, that's not true. But what else do a heart-broken grandmother and grandfather have to hold on to?
Someone needs to speak for Timothy, perhaps speak to him, to tell him the truth, because we lied to him his whole life.
Timothy died because of us.
Me. You.
We told him it was good to go.
Fr. Cyril, either by his legendary silence, or the flag next to the altar, said it was good to go kill children and call that fighting for freedom.
She never met Timothy, but Cindy Sampson, our new editor from Iowa State, told him the same by the stories she ran, and the headlines and the photos and editorials, so patriotic, so deceptive, so self-serving.
We all told him, go, go, it's a good thing to do.
We whispered, go kill, go shoot, go murder and steal, and we'll all call it "fighting for freedom."
And when we hear in the big city newspapers and TV after thousands and thousands have died that there was no reason to die — we'll dig our heels in the front lawn grass and still call it fighting for freedom.
And when our grandchildren hit the ball into the graveyard and come back and ask us about the headstone with the flag on it and the same last name as theirs — who was that?
We'll bite our tongues and clench our fists and look anywhere but into their trusting eyes, and we'll tell them Timothy died fighting for our freedom.
Terror Nation, Mainstay Press, 2006
I wouldn't mind paying taxes, if I knew they were going to a friendly country.
— RICHARD PRYOR
We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.
— DICK GREGORY
Those images of dust rising and falling again when that astronaut steps on the planet could not be accurate because there's no gravity on the moon, and how could there be all those pictures with shadows when the moon is completely dark? — DICK GREGORY
Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to god.
— LENNY BRUCE
I hate small towns because once you've seen the cannon in the park there's nothing else to do.
— LENNY BRUCE
We are living in the future, I'll tell you how I know, I read it in a magazine fifteen years ago. We're all driving rocket ships and talking with our minds. And wearing turquoise jewelry — we're standing in soup lines. We are standing in soup lines.
— JOHN PRINE
If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.
— LENNY BRUCE
“Changing the inhumane way this world is run requires massive awareness of these horrible realities.
"All people, especially US citizens, must know what their governments have promoted and the crimes against humanity they have committed supposedly in the interests of their nation and their citizens.
"Awareness must lead us to action. It is everyone's moral obligation.”
— LORI BERENSON
Huacariz Prison
Cajamarca, Peru
"Love in action has the answer."
"The reality is that in much of industrialized societies, we are completely addicted to comfort. We are a society of addicts."
—JULIA BUTTERFLY HILL
The Truth, New Hampshire
Writer's Cooperative, 2004
From "The Truth," published by Writers Publishing Cooperative of New Hampshire.
And I Laugh
There's a photo on the Internet that makes me laugh.
A little brown boy holding a silent scream forever in four-color.
Ha.
The horrified little fellow now has no arms or legs, or brothers, sisters or parents, and I laugh out loud.
I laugh at the Marines, being all they could possibly be in God's creation, at their tough-man commercials. The Army of One. What a hoot.
The rough-guy coaches and players who let this boy die — what comedy watching them feel strong while letting the real battles be fought by little guys with sticks and bicycles.
The boy has a bandaged head.
He looks so scared his hair might turn white, as in a Hitchcock film, and it sort of makes me chuckle.
I laugh at the ministers here in town and here on this TV saying bless our troops as they defend our freedom.
I laugh at the ministers here in town and here on this TV saying bless our troops as they defend our freedom.
I laugh at the well-schooled and coifed newspaper columnists with their earnest close-cropped photos in four hundred papers read by forty million people in forty million cities.
And I laugh.
The boy is flat on his back on dirty cement, with his stubs hastily wrapped in Ace bandages, surrounded by the world trying to get a look, by photographers and people on their way to work and out to dinner.
We are nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing!
Because this boy now has no arms.
No legs.
Nothing we will do today will mean a thing because we have ripped the arms and legs from this boy as if he were a fly and we are us.
This boy who could be my boy, lying there at the feet of the world and the world looking the other way.
Goddamn us.
Please.
Give us what we deserve.
If you are a just God, rain down fire and hell upon our heads. Lightning bolts upon our backyard decks and rivers of excrement down our smooth, well-scrubbed streets.
Please, dear God we pray.
When I awoke this morning I thought it essential to the world order and being right, and a good person, that I shave, help out with the dishes, be on time, and drive on the right side of the road.
Do a good job. Be pleasant.
Smile.
But now I just can't stop laughing.
The world thinks it still matters, and that's kind of funny in a way.
There, the flag flying over the Catholic elementary school and the yellow ribbons tied to the light poles on both sides of Main Street.
Stray cats wearing yellow ribbons around their necks, roaming the night, looking both ways before crossing the street, as if it mattered.
You are never so wrong as when you damage a young boy.
We sit down here like the Who's in Whoville celebrating the coming of War Season while this boy lies on the cold floor.
Tee. Hee-hee.
My Letter
To Johnny Carson
March 2, 2001
Johnny Carson
c/o Carson Productions Group
3110 Main St.
Suite 200
Santa Monica, CA 90405
Mr. Carson:
Hello.
I am originally from Norfolk, Nebr., graduated from NHS in 1973. Recently I had a chance to listen to the tape of your interview with attorney Jim Garrison. I don't recall watching the live interview, but very well could have as watching your show before bed was our regular routine, as it was for many others.
As a fellow Norfolkan, I am curious as to why you treated Garrison as you did. I probably will not get the chance to contact you twice, so I will be frank right away. You sounded as if you were acting as a spokesman for someone else. Really. Were you protecting the real killers of Kennedy?
Of course, you were. What else can I say, but that it is obvious now with almost forty years of perspective. The Warren Commission was a joke and Garrison was on to something. Something frightening to be sure. But why did you have so much allegiance to the plotters and none to your dead president? Because he could not pay you from the grave? Is it as simple as that?
Thanks in part to you we have been forced to live in Disneyland since 1963, where everything is unreal, everything entertainment and illusion.
Please tell me, as I will never know myself: Is wealth and power worth the sublimation of the truth?
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Mike Palecek
Johnny Carson's Response:
March 9, 2001
Mike Palecek
702 6th Avenue
Sheldon, Iowa 51201
Dear Mr. Palecek,
I'm sending you a copy of a letter I recently received to make you aware that some ignorant asshole is sending out letters over your signature.
You should look into this.
Sincerely,
Johnny Carson
"And then so many people act like this was a good country at one time. America ain't never been no good. That's an illusion. It is the most filthy, ungodly, unspiritual heathen nation that's ever been put together in the history of the planet and the reason they can do what they doin' to you is you stupid enough to believe that somebody gonna cut somebody else some slack."
— DICK GREGORY
"I think it's interesting that our government would obviously lie to us so blatantly for so long and we do absolutely nothing abut it. I think that's interesting in what is ostensibly a democracy."
— BILL HICKS
Thank You!
Luke Rudkowski
& We Are Change
Karen Kwiatkowski
[more]
Where's The Outrage?
Splitting The Sky
[John Boncore]
William "Doubting" Thomas
[more]
Tom Lewis
[more]
Anna Mae Aquash
[more]
Peter Demott
[more]
Jim Garrison
On 'The Tonight Show"
Norman Mayer
Don't Forget Norman Mayer
An Edge in My Voice
Ralph Nader
Political Issues That Matter
John Ross
Author of "Zapatistas,
Another World is Possible"
and "Murdered by Capitalism,
A Memoir of 150 Years of Life & Death
on the American Left"
Subcomandante Marcos
On Neoliberalism & The Media
Sgt. Terry Yeakey
Officer involved in Murrah Bldg. bombing
rescue effort is murdered
The Randy Weaver Family
"The Secret Rulers of the World"
Charges Dropped Against FBI Sniper
Lon Horiuchi, who shot Mrs. Weaver through
the head while she was also holding a baby in her arms
Hugo Chavez
Calls Bush "The Devil" in speech at U.N.
Evo Morales
Talk to Al Jazeera
Mae Brussell
"A gutsy, no-holds-barred,
investigative radio host"
What do you
think about
the whisper
and the look?
The Whisper
The Look
The defining moment of a generation.
What does it mean?
What's happening?
Is this a great country?
Or what?
What is Andy Card saying
to George W. Bush
at Booker Elementary
the morning of Sept. 11, 2001?
Did he say, "America is under attack."
Did he say, "the second plane has hit."
What does the look say?
Is he surprised?
Is he frightened?
Is he acting?
Is he playing his role?
Is he gathering himself
for the steely resolve
needed to lead a nation at war?
A Lone Striker
by Robert Frost
The swinging mill bell changed its rate
To tolling like the count of fate,
And though at that the tardy ran,
One failed to make the closing gate.
There was a law of God or man
That on the one who came too late
The gate for half an hour be locked,
His time be lost, his pittance docked.
He stood rebuked and unemployed.
The straining mill began to shake.
The mill, though many-many-eyed,
Had eyes inscrutably opaque;
So that he couldn’t look inside
To see if some forlorn machine
Was standing idle for his sake.
(He couldn’t hope its heart would break.)
And yet he thought he saw the scene:
The air was full of dust of wool.
A thousand yarns were under pull,
But pull so slow, with such a twist,
All day from spool to lesser spool,
It seldom overtaxed their strength;
They safely grew in slender length.
And if one broke by any chance,
The spinner saw it at a glance.
The spinner still was there to spin.
That’s where the human still came in.
Her deft hand showed with finger rings
Among the harplike spread of strings.
She caught the pieces end to end
And, with a touch that never missed,
Not so much tied as made them blend.
Man’s ingenuity was good.
He saw it plainly where he stood,
Yet found it easy to resist.
He knew another place, a wood,
And in it, tall as trees, were cliffs;
And if he stood on one of these,
‘Twould be among the tops of trees,
Their upper branches round him wreathing,
Their breathing mingled with his breathing.
If — if he stood! Enough of ifs!
He knew a path that wanted walking;
He knew a spring that wanted drinking;
A thought that wanted further thinking;
A love that wanted re-renewing.
Nor was this just a way of talking
To save him the expense of doing.
With him it boded action, deed.
The factory was very fine;
He wished it all the modern speed.
Yet, after all, ‘twas not divine,
That is to say, ‘twas not a church.
He never would assume that he’d
Be any institution’s need.
But he said then and still would say,
If there should ever come a day
When industry seemed like to die
Because he left it in the lurch,
Or even merely seemed to pine
For want of his approval, why,
Come get him — they knew where to search.
Let's Build The U.S. Peace Memorial
by Del "Abe" Jones
We have memorials for heroes
Who have fought in wars and died
For great generals and others
To express our nations pride.
From the American Revolution
Until the wars we fight today
Where we honor those people
For, the ultimate price, they pay.
We have statues of politicians
And the leaders of our land
Monuments for almost everything
Some small, some huge and grand.
They are made of stone — cast in bronze
Carved in mountainsides and wood
Some are fanciful, some somber
As we celebrate all those, we should.
But, if you just think about it
And if you search, everywhere
You will see that one is missing
And sadly, so many don’t seem to care.
Where do we credit all those folks
Who stand for peace and good will
Who speak out against those wars
That maim, destroy and kill?
Where do we credit all those folks
Who stand for peace and good will
Who speak out against those wars
That maim, destroy and kill?
Some will say, “It’s unpatriotic!”
To try to find a different course
To resolve the worlds conflict
With sane and rational discourse.
“They don’t support the troops!”
“They want to give up and surrender!”
“They don’t want to fight for freedom!”
“It’s just passive words, they tender!?
That could not be further from the truth
It’s because, they, honestly do care
What’s wrong with peaceful resolution
Especially, when it is just and fair?
Let us all honor those peacekeepers
Who would strive to find a better way
To resolve the worlds differences
And end, the terrible price we all pay.
They deserve their own monument
For their valiant fight against all war
Striving for world peace and freedom
Isn’t that, what America stands for?
So, let's build the US Peace Memorial
For people of the world to come and see
The people of our nation, long for peace
Across every land, where all live free.
Del “Abe” Jones
05.30.2008
To support the Memorial please go to
http://www.uspeacememorial.org/
©Copyright 1988 by Del “Abe” Jones
"Guests of the Nation"
by Mike Palecek
From "Guests of the Nation"
In the weeks leading up to 911 Bush and Cheney were at Bush’s ranch.
They were doing the final stages of planning.
Bush is not a genius, but if he has lines to rehearse, the dumb fuck can act.
He knew what was going on.
He was performing in a play produced by his father and his father’s friends,
also his friends, by now.
Plausible deniability, don’t they call it?
Cheney is in the bunker talking to him and her, directing this and that.
If he gets caught there, they don’t all get caught.
George Senior spent the night before in the White House, talking about fishing and golf.
He then had a meeting the next day with Bin Laden’s brother.
Warren Buffet has a meeting that morning at Offutt AFB with a bunch of executives from the World Trade Center who would have died that morning otherwise,
and then George Junior ends up there later in the day, obviously by random choice.
This day was in the works for years, while Clinton was in office.
They worked and planned every day for years.
Nothing about it was random.
You believe that?
“Why didn’t anyone talk?”
Bill sat up in his chair, uncrossed his legs, now laced his big, basketball-palming hands behind his ol’ nappy white head.
How do you explain it?
You know that I can only guess, don’t you, I said.
You understand we’re just talking here, before all this ends unfortunately.
Some know, some don’t, some are following orders, duty, honor, all that crap.
The big boys.
Well, they are focused, on the target, like a laser, have been their whole lives.
What would you do if you had the actual chance to rule the world?
What if that apple was right before your eyes and all you had to do was pick it?
Would you?
How do you understand it?
If honesty and righteousness and piety had not ruined these guys’ career by now,
it was not going to at this point.
They made their peace with whomever long ago.
Just like every body.
What keeps you from walking down to the bank and taking out all the money in savings and give it to the guy begging on the corner that you see every morning?
Try to grasp it.
You can’t.
Just like trying to understand heaven and forever and ever and ever.
I don’t know.
But you don’t do it. You didn’t do it yesterday morning, or this morning, and you won’t do it tomorrow morning.
You won’t ever.
Understand.
Now Ron crossed his arms across his chest.
I could feel his thoughts pressing on my chest like my grandpa’s heart attack.
I pointed a finger at him, put the thumb up, cocked and fired, twice.
The killing.
Iraq Prison Diary
Hussam Amin
Alas, you don’t see that one day you destroyed your
Life in this place
You destroyed the value of your life no matter where
You end up on this planet…
Today, I am a prisoner inside my homeland
A stranger, who came from very far
To steal my freedom, leads this prison
Yet he failed, for Baghdad, Tikrit and any other city
Live in my veins. Never leave me. And will never leave them,
Poor those who imprisoned me; they don’t know any of this.
Winter Soldier Hearings
http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier/testimony
Lebowski Fest
THE SPEED OF SOUND TOUR
2009
|
|
It's been
a long road.
From a stolen election, to a government-planned attack on Sept. 11, 2001, to two invasions based on lies, based on power, on money.
What else?
To a murdered Senator, the one standing in their way, who would not be moved.
We didn't want it to come. We marched. We e-mailed, we sang, we wrote, we got arrested.
But it came anyway.
And it is still here.
...
The New American Dream is a "Yellow Ribbon Free Zone."
We do not support the troops.
We do not support fighter planes flying over the Super Bowl.
Why?
And why "The Star Spangled Banner?"
Steve Earle's "F The FBI" is actually a song more in line with a free nation, a nation that at least wants to be free.
Let the children sing that to start each school day and we've at least got a start.
The troops are not defending our freedom. They are thugs for the empire.
Ooo-rah.
We heard all about "putting a boot up their ass" from Toby Keith.
He's a brave man, to encourage other men to kill men, women and children — for no reason.
The real patriots were the Dixie Chicks. We all know that now.
Why didn't we know it then?
Are we idiots?
Cowards?
Are we evil? Are we a virus with shoes, as Bill Hicks suggested?
Just asking.
Protesters protect our freedom.
That's the truth.
Think Medea Benjamin not John McCain.
A hero does not drop bombs on people who are trying to live their lives.
"My dad died for that flag."
"Really? I got mine at K-Mart."
— Bill Hicks
...
What is needed ...
is a New American Dream
Something we can finally be proud of.
Not based on greed, killing, torture, prisons — keeping others poor so that we may be rich.
That is not who we are.
Is that who you feel you are?
No!
It's not.
We are much, much better than this.
Much better than the rich people we have chosen, for some reason, to lead us.
We need to be open to a new way of seeing things.
Let us wipe the sleep from our eyes — the be-all-you-can-be military advertising lies, the lies of politicians, the fantasy found in our high school history books.
Oswald did it? Sirhan did it?
What?
Oklahoma City was done by McVeigh alone?
The fire, coming out of the tanks at Waco?
See that?
And you still believe our President and Attorney General and FBI did NOT burn children alive — on purpose?
The World Trade Center Towers collapsed from the fire? And one of them was not even hit by a plane?
Sadaam had weapons of mass destruction?
We believe it because Colin Powell told us so?
What?
C'mon ... Teachers, priests, ministers, coaches, parents, please start telling the truth.
We can handle the truth. In fact, without the truth, we cannot live.
We will die.
Slowly, and then all at once.
We will collapse and that will be that.
It will be over.
A dusty pile of rubble and Ho Ho's and lies.
We need inspiration, something to foster a desire to drive way across the country just to soak it all in — rather than just a desire to leave the country and escape the tired predictability and hordes of American idiots.
We need a new dream, something real, solid to believe in.
Truth in our history books.
Bread on the table of the poor.
There really, honestly, are truths and riches out there we have not yet imagined, growing this moment in the fertile minds of those who will lead us.
[Green Day]
The New Underground Railroad
Judy Plank, letting her little light shine, being not afraid, fighting for what her heart knows is right — resisting the border patrol, the Minutemen, the fences, the prevailing wind — in favor of those who seek a better life, who just want a chance at the American Dream — perhaps like the fathers, mothers, grandparents, great-grandparents of every one now living in the United States.
The murder of Robert F. Kennedy by agents
within the United States government
James Douglass is at work on a series of books, which when completed will finally give us firm footing as we seek to move into the next century. One of those will be about the murder of Robert F. Kennedy as he sought the presidency in 1968.
In this top button issue piece we take a look at an article Douglass published in 1999, an interview with a witness to history.
The murder of John F. Kennedy by agents
within the United States government
For those of us who sat in the classroom, breathless, shortly after lunch recess on Nov. 22, 1963, only to hear our teachers tell us the president had been killed — well, we have waited our whole lifetimes for someone to tell us the truth about what happened that day.
We waited and waited and waited — for James Douglass' "JFK & The Unspeakable — Why He Died and Why It Matters."
Leonard Peltier & me
Remember Leonard Peltier when you wake up from a long, cozy night's sleep in America.
Recall what it is like to really fight, to really care, to really suffer — for truth and for people — and for America.
Art, Truth & Politics
by Harold Pinter
War & Social Justice
by Howard Zinn
Being Poor
... an essay
People are poor for a reason.
Because other people have too much.
We have prisons because we refuse to share our stuff.
Wars are fought over stuff.
People die every day over stuff.
Our first thought every morning is about whether we have enough stuff and what we will have to do today to secure our stuff...
— and whether we can do it again, or not.
"The battle ... has to begin here. In America. The only institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society ... You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests are being carried out in your name."
— Arundhati Roy
We are Americans
It's an amazing time to be alive.
We survived Kate Smith on the radio.
We survived Bush, though not all of us.
It's morning, time to wake up.
There are no longer any questions we cannot ask.
Nothing about our country we are not allowed to know.
We are Americans.
This is our country.
This morning we take it back — from the CIA, the military, the bosses, the Warren Commission, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, the 9/11 Commission.
Our children will study lies no more.
Did George W. Bush, his father, his father's friends, actually steal the elections of 2000 and 2004?
And, if they did that ... why would they ever stop ... at anything?
Just asking.
Did George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Condoleeza Rice, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz, Colin Powell, et al. conspire to commit murder and treason in the 9/11 attacks, in order to again be able to lie about anthrax, uranium and WMD, and torture — in order to attack Iraq, and make millions, billions of dollars?
We want to know,
we need to know,
we deserve to know ...
We want to know, we need to know, we deserve to know who killed Bobby, Martin, JFK, Wellstone.
Did we land on the moon? Is Bigfoot real? How about UFOs?
C'mon, there are no wrong questions, remember? No secrets in anyone's land of the free.
How do we explain to our children how the war on drugs goes with "this Bud's for you?"
Prisons, poverty, trees, wind power — we can talk about all of it — because we are Americans again.
We are not the subjects of the FBI or CIA or the U.S. Army or Wall Street.
We do not torture, kill children, bomb, rape, mutilate. We are Americans.
We are Americans.
Why is Leonard Peltier in prison?
Why did we fund death squads in El Salvador? We overthrew elected governments in Chile, Iran, Guatamala? Really? Why?
We deserve to know. We need to know. We have to know.
So that we may tell the world.
We are Americans.
"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good."
— Thomas Paine
NYC Coalition
For Accountability Now
Personal Statements:
Donna Marsh O’Connor, Mother of Vanessa Lang Langer
As the world moves further and further away from the actual events of 9/11/2001 both in time and spirit, and as 9/11 effaces into yet another simple story cast in history, as the parent of Vanessa Lang Langer lost as the towers fell, I want to let it go. I want to stop talking about 9/11. I am tired of the questions unasked and unanswered. I am tired of the effort to burst yet another happiness bubble in our collective American psyche. And, too, I am tired of talking about Vanessa's death. Better for my family, in the immediacy of trying to live out our present days, to focus on Vanessa's life. To laugh at her memories and revel in pictures of her beautiful face. If it were only for the present and the joys I can still share with my children, my family and my fellow citizens, not just of this country but the world, I would let it go. I would so let it go.
But there is, after all literally, the future. And the future never relied so heavily on redress of questions unanswered in the present. To first ask and then answer what happened that day. Who committed this crime? Who should be held accountable? That is why I support the NYC CAN Ballot Initiative, and I ask for your support as well. It is beyond time for an investigation. It is beyond time.
Bob Mcilvaine, Father of Bobby Mcilvaine
Dear Citizens of New York City,
We lost our son Bobby on September 11, 2001. The death of a child is a pain like no other, compounded by the fact that this wonderful young man was murdered. When a crime as heinous as this takes place, it is assumed that justice will be served and the perpetrators will be discovered and punished. Much to our dismay, this has not taken place. We only want the truth.
Our only hope, at this juncture, is to support the NYC CAN Ballot Initiative, calling for an unbiased and non-political investigation of our son’s murder.
Jean Canavan, Sister in law of Sean Canavan:
On September 11, 2001, my brother-in-law, Sean Canavan, was taken from our family in such a tragic way that there is no “getting over it.” That day was devastating for so many people but the pain is worsened when so many questions are left unanswered and no one is held accountable. How is it acceptable that the 9/11 Commission resulted in more questions than answers? How is it acceptable that Co-chairs of the Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, are able to publish a book stating that the Commission was “Set up to fail” and that they were lied to by NORAD officials? Are we to just accept what the government has told us? The truth is that we don’t know what happened because the truth hasn’t been told. There will continue to be speculation until an impartial, independent investigation is done and the truth is told, whatever that may be. New York City CAN do it.
Reverend Edith Beaujon, First Responder:
I was a First Responder at Ground Zero with the Red Cross working for several days without a mask. I have had numerous health problems that are related to working at Ground Zero including pneumonia, and an autoimmune syndrome that has been identified as related to being at Ground Zero. Now I have excess toxins in my body including mercury, lead, tin and others that are causing health issues, for which I have had to spend thousands of dollars.
I do not believe there was a thorough investigation of the events of 9/11 and I would like to see an independent investigation conducted.
Janette MacKinlay, Survivor:
As I watched the events of 9/11 unfold before my eyes from my apartment window directly across the street from the World Trade Center towers, I never dreamed it would change my life and the lives of people around the world in such a profound and destructive way. I was covered with dust as debris poured into our burst window. Every breath brought dust into me. At that penetrating and traumatizing moment September 11th became a permanent part of me. My recovery from PTSD has been one of art to heal my soul and psyche, and activism to right the wrongs committed that day.
The well-documented omissions and distortions in the 9/11 Commission Report have left a black cloud of doubt over America. A new independent investigation is imperative to lift this cloud. The future safety and well being of our children and grandchildren depend on this, as does the future safety and well being of everyone around the world. It is for these reasons I pray we can have the unity of purpose to support NYC CAN. All of our support is critical. Every person counts. We need to seize this moment.
William Rodriguez, Survivor
The events of 9/11/01 changed the lives of everybody in the new millennium. This event also changed my life forever. I came to work that day not expecting to be a witness of the horror, despair and desolation that was 9/11. On that horrible day I went floor by floor trying to help people as I was one of the few people in the complex with a master key. I helped evacuate many lives, and yet, though they say I am a hero, they, the government officials, the 9/11 Commission and the major media, have all ignored or edited my story: many explosions occurred that morning, explosions that were not related to the impact of the planes. As I learned later, my story did not fit the story the government told. My testimony was omitted from the final report. At long last though, the New York Coalition for Accountability Now, sponsors of this ballot initiative, are aiming to bring about a real investigation of what really happened that day. That is why I wholeheartedly endorse their efforts and have agreed and am honored to join their Executive Council. We need to bring closure for the victim’s families, friends and survivors, for us all, and the only way to do that is to bring about a full and thorough investigation of 9/11. NYC CAN can do it!
Ted Walter, Executive Director:
On the morning of September 11 I was in my first ever class at NYU. I had moved to the city only two weeks before. Experiencing the horror of that day alongside thousands of other New Yorkers made me feel a connection to the city right away, and it quickly became my home. As a New Yorker of eight years, I feel as unsafe as ever because I believe we do not have the answers for why we were left unprotected that morning. I give everything I have to NYC CAN to ensure the future safety of all New Yorkers and all Americans, and for my best friend who lost his brother on September 11.
“I want to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” — John F. Kennedy
The following excerpts are from an interview with comedian Mort Sahl in the April 1-15, 1968 issue of The Argo.
Argo: What’s the extent of the conspiracy and why is the government so desperate to keep the truth from the American public?
Mort Sahl: We have determined that elements of the Central Intelligence Agency planned the execution and killed the president. Lee Oswald attended those meetings planning it. He was the only non-CIA man at the meeting.
And he worked for the FBI … we still later find Oswald saying, “I was a patsy,” in the Dallas Police Station. The “elements” are in the Central Intelligence Agency.
They don’t want to lose their power. And they don’t want to fall.
It has become government by hoodlum.
And I don’t blame them. If I were them, I wouldn’t want to fall, either. I would pull out all the stops, as they have.
Argo: Why is the truth about the assassination of President Kennedy the last chance of America for its survival?
Sahl: Because the evidence developed by District Attorney Garrison indicates that certain people had to take President Kennedy’s life in order to control ours. In other words, as Richard Starnes of the New York World-Telegram said, the shots in Dallas were the opening shots of World War III.
There’s been a great change in this country since Kennedy. I’m afraid a great deal of hope was interred with his remains.
She has to hang on through a period of the military and the CIA with a blank check trying to sell fascism.
Argo: What is the long hard night that America must go through you’ve spoken of?
Sahl: She has to hang on through a period of the military and the CIA with a blank check trying to sell fascism.
If she can hang on long enough, Americans may yet live in the country in which they were born. And that is the country structured by Tom Paine and Tom Jefferson.
Argo: What is the renaissance following this long, hard night that you also spoke about?
Sahl: We’ll start pursuing the American dream again. I don’t know if we’ll ever realize it, but we’re supposed to have the right to pursue it. And that’s what this country is. It’s an active exercise in man reaching his upper limit, as they used to say in the math department.
And the renaissance will be that a groundswell of public opinion will flush out the rascals because the CIA has infiltrated every area of our national life.
I’m afraid the country they subverted best was the United States … be they in the various right-wing churches or the Dallas Police Department.
— Perry Adams of The Argo interviews Mort Sahl at “The Hungry i” in San Francisco, Monday, March 18, 1968
From Jim Douglass, author of "JFK & The Unspeakable"
"Unless we have an awareness of Kennedy's story, this story will be repeated, and I mean repeated in the worst consequences of Obama being assassinated, or being pushed very, very hard by advisors for war into decisions that he either has to resist at the risk of his life or has to carry out at the risk of everybody else's life. ...
"If we walk around with some kind of idea that Barack Obama is going to save the world,
that's a bunch of nonsense."
— Jim Douglass
"If we walk around with some kind of idea that Barack Obama is going to save the world, that's a bunch of nonsense. That cannot happen except through an understanding ... a redemption of us as a world from the powers of violence, and of war, and of oppression, and of manipulation, and of lying, as the CIA, and our propaganda forces, has been doing for decades.
"If we're going to be liberated from those forces, that's up to us. Obama can't do it as the President of the United States. It has to be a movement, an international movement.
"And especially a movement of consciousness of the past, and education, on what really happened to John F. Kennedy, so that it is not repeated. I believe it will be repeated, unless we understand and educate ourselves about the past, and we are way, way short of that right now."
You Gotta See This
Black Op Radio
North Tower Collapsing [psst ... exploding ... don't tell any body]
Bart Sibrel Moon Hoax Interview
THE Worst Press Conference E-e-eeever
The Apollo 11 Post-flight interview
Why aren't these guys happy? If they are not happy about being the first men on the moon, just what would make these guys happy? If only kiwi-strawberry had been invented back then.
Did the moon suck?
Maybe, just maybe — maybe they didn't actually land on the moon?
Maybe they are ashamed? Afraid?
Just asking.
MUFON News
Bigfoot Research Organization
The American Dream & War
by Shane LaChance
Jack Ruby I
Jack Ruby II
"There are things we don't or can't understand. A reasonable man, a healthy man ... a sane man ... when he encounters the inexplicable ... forgets about it."
— Maurice Minnifield, Northern Exposure
"Be open to your dreams, people. Embrace that distant shore. Because our mortal journey is over all too soon."
"They say dreams are the windows of the soul — take a peek and you can see the inner workings, the nuts and bolts."
"Today, a belated apology to the much maligned Chicken Little. It turns out you were right — the sky is falling. The National Space Administration informs us that Uncle Sam's Com-Sat 4 satellite is in a rapidly decaying orbit. That's their way of saying a ton of angry space trash is heading back home at fifteen thousand miles an hour.
"To that unsung triceratops and all its kin,
here's a song for you ..."
"What does that make me think of?
"Makes me think of a triceratops, innocently munching a palm frond when out of the sky, whammo, a meteor sucker punches old mother Earth. Next thing you know, that triceratops, along with a hundred and seventy-five million years of dinosaur evolution, is nothing but history.
"To that unsung triceratops and all its kin, here's a song for you ..."
— Chris In The Morning
Northern Exposure
"But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
We're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more."
— John Prine
"It's a happy enchilada, and you think you're gonna drown."
This is not 'Nam. This is bowling, there are rules.
The New American Dream
"Big Lebowski"
Trivia Challenge
something-something
Be the first to answer correctly and win a used T-shirt from a recent Palecek book tour:
To open the movie, The Dude is in Ralph's, purchasing an item to make White Russians. He writes a check for sixty-nine cents.
What is the date on that check? ...
....
This act of aggression will not stand, man.
It can be a natural, zesty enterprise.
New shit has come to light.
You guys are not privy to all this new shit, but that's what you pay me for.
Careful man, there's a beverage here.
Yeah, well, that's just like, your opinion, man.
"Now Showing In The Basement Bunker"
by Konspiracy Knute
New American Dream
arts & entertainment editor
V for Vendetta
TV Speech
The Edukators
Texas Love Song
The Logical Song, by Supertramp
Dreamer, by Supertramp
Lives in the Balance, by Jackson Browne
The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., with Dick Gregory & Mark Lane
The view from Iowa
by Mike Palecek
I'M READING and re-reading and underlining and bending corners in RUSS BAKER'S " Family of Secrets."
It's about our two George Bush's, our two "son of a bitches," to paraphrase William Rivers Pitts' recent Ode to W.
To read this book is an epiphany, like James Douglass' " JFK & The Unspeakable."
It places George Bush Sr. in the CIA, within the plot to kill Kennedy, within the machinations of big oil, and the CIA to run the world.
It places George Bush Sr. in the CIA,
within the plot to kill Kennedy, within the machinations of big oil, and the CIA to run the world.
These people.
These people ... "public service" is the furthest thing from their minds.
From the front book jacket:
With George W. Bush's departure from Washington, a dark chapter in American politics comes to an end?
Or does it?
Family of Secrets reveals that what most of us believe about the Bush dynasty is only a fragment of a larger reality.
Indeed, the same forces that put Bush-Cheney into power are still very much at work, exerting a stealthy dominance over he mechanisms of democracy, regardless of who occupies the White House.
From the conclusion:
Time and again, there has been a rush to bury inquiries into the most perplexing events of our time, along with a determination to subject dissenting views to ridicule.
And the media weren't just enabling these efforts; they were complicit in them — not least by labeling anyone who dared to subject conventional views to a fresh and quizzical eye as a conspiracy theorist.
I'll admit it. Fear of being so labeled has haunted me throughout this work. It's been an internal censor that I've had to resist again and again.
And also an external one, as friends within the journalistic establishment reviewed my findings, found them both credible and highly disturbing, and yet urged me to stay away from them for my own good.
"... as friends within the
journalistic establishment
reviewed my findings, found them
both credible and highly disturbing,
and yet urged me to stay
away from them
for my own good."
... the boundaries of permissable
thought are staked out and enforced.
I began to realize that I was experiencing the very thing the process is designed to induce.
The boundaries of permissable thought are staked out and enforced.
We accept the conventional narratives because they are repeated and approved, while conflicting ones are scorned.
Isn't this how authoritarian regimes work?
They get inside your mind so that overt repression becomes less necessary.
The defense industry and the aligned growth business of "intelligence." provide muscle.
On a lower level is an arm of enablers — the campaign functionaries, the PR people, lawyers.
This was the Bush enterprise. The Bushes embodied it as a dynasty, but it is larger than them, and will prove more enduring.
Deception resides at the very center of our national psyche. It affects us in incalculable ways, from decisions in the voting booth to our own life choices.
The solution, clearly, is to pull away the veil.
The David Ray Griffin FBI File
October 2008 Speech in Olympia, Washington
The New Pearl Harbor
Grand Lake Theater, Oakland, California
The Myth & The Reality
The Jean-Marie Bigard FBI FILE
A New 9/11 investigation needed
Those Magical Terrorist Passports
The Bruce Cockburn
FBI File
If I Had A Rocket Launcher
Catholic Worker Demonstration
at Offutt Air Force Base
Dec. 28, 2008
Part I, Catholic Worker Demo
Part II, Catholic Worker Demo
Something to see:
Len Osanic of Black Op Radio
interviewing attorney William Pepper:
The Bill Hicks FBI File
It's Just A Ride
 
The Philip Berrigan/Frida Berrigan FBI File
Final Warning
My Father The Activist
Cost of Freedom
Enjoying Your Freedom?
Thank a protester.
“There is good reason to have at your disposal things that remind you of things as they are. Cost of Freedom is a perfect candidate; it does more than remind: it also informs.”
— Harry Belafonte
Available on Amazon.
And here.
"A writer cannot put himself today in the service of those who make history; he is at the service of those who suffer it."
— Albert Camus
"The war on terror is a fraud, and until we realize that, the empire is going to continue."
— David Ray Griffin
"I don't get all choked up about yellow ribbons. To me they are symbols and I leave symbols to the symbol-minded."
— George Carlin
Former Spy Annie Machon
giving her insights into 9/11 and other issues
Joe Coffee's Revolution
I like Joe Coffee because it tells the truth about the Democratic Party and about farmer revolutionaries and farm kitchen tables.
Still available from Amazon.
Twins
I like Twins because it talks about a prison burning and about the Twin Cities, which I love, and about robbing Twin Cities banks to give the money to the poor on Hennepin Ave.
Two twin brothers, one a revolutionary priest, the other the warden of the local federal penitentiary, battle in the streets and from the rooftops. It's a sibling rivalry, rich vs. poor, yuppies against the gangs of the ghetto, the Kiwanis Club meets the prison yard weightlifters. It's walleye sizzling in the crisp north woods air and dirty diapers in the gutter. It's food on a stick, a seat on the third-baseline, and halftime mud wrestling between Dorothy Day and Mary Tyler Moore, in this one-of-a-kind American metropolis.
A Portion of "Twins"
“I bring it up because it is what is on my mind.
Many of you do not remember John Kennedy, many of us remember nothing but.
“Where do these thoughts of John Kennedy, his brother Robert and Martin Luther King Jr. come from? All mortal men, surely sinners. But in my mind heroes, just as Jesus is a hero of mine. And to be a hero of mine you have to do one thing.”
“Don’t seek to live so damned long that you finally have to be unplugged.
"Make the bastards come get you — make their terrible plans, hunt you down and fill you full of holes, just as they did our Lord Jesus Christ.
Mars put up his crooked right pointer finger, the finger that had been stomped on. He held it over his head and out toward the congregation.
“You have to go and get yourself killed.”
He held the finger in the air until it became the focus of the room. Couples with their arms inter-locked on the pew behind the heads of their children stared at the finger. Mars meant to be pointing straight up, toward the ceiling in exclamation,
when actually his finger was more of a comma.
“You can’t score six touchdowns on one night and be my hero.”
Mars spoke loudly, pausing, turning this way and that, using all of his homiletics textbook skills.
“You cannot have twenty-inch biceps and thirty-inch waist and be my hero.”
He stopped and estimated three seconds, impatient to keep going.
“You cannot go to work each day and pay your bills and keep your kids in college and your wife happy and play errorless third base for the church softball team and be my hero.”
He put his hand down as parenthesis.
“I see these guys who drive their little cars into the lot at the elevator every morning and leave every night. They do this without fail for ten years, twenty years, thirty years. Maybe forty years! They drive in each morning at the same time, they leave at the same time. Same route, look the same way before turning, park the car in the same spot at work, same place at home.
“Now, to some people that image is one of supreme heroism, the loyalty, the work ethic, the steady nature of the man going to work each day, earning his daily bread for his family, that they may prosper and live and grow and also maintain their routine.
“I am weird. I see it as cowardice. I really do, and I know some of you are going to have trouble with that. That’s okay. I see it as immoral, boorish, dull behavior.
Because you see during those years that man is going to work, maintaining a certain lifestyle, people around the world are dying, from poverty, from war, what have you. And on some of those days that man is going to work and coming home
while his country is at war, outright bombing people in other countries and they are dying. And yet.
And yet he parks in the same spot, goes home at the same time.
“That is nothing unusual. His parents, wife, children and friends expect nothing less. But is it the Christian response? Hardly.”
“Make ... the ... sons of bitches kill you.”
He leaned forward and whispered like the Godfather.
Now Mars did not care if they liked him.
The bones of his jaws showed like ripples in the water portending a shark below.
He made direct eye contact with three people, as he had been taught, not long enough to confront, but enough to show he was not afraid.
“Don’t seek to live so damned long that you finally have to be unplugged. Make the bastards come get you — make their terrible plans, hunt you down and fill you full of holes, just as they did our Lord Jesus Christ.
“And take that chance. The chance taken by Jesus the skinny guy with no money, no family, no friends, no career — no papers or books published — with only this one desperation shot at redemption, with one card to play that might mean he
would ever amount to something.
Take the chance that God is God.”
He pushed his papers together, looked up like Walter Cronkite at the end of the newscast, and smiled.
“Now, let us pray.”
If America Is
THE Dark Side
... who was Charles Bukowski?
"I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me . . . To do things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day . . . was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep."
— Charles Bukowski,
Ham on Rye, 1982
"This is a world where everybody’s gotta do something. Ya know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that . . . Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don’t wanna do. All the things that I don’t wanna be. Places I don’t wanna go, like India, like getting my teeth cleaned. Save the whale, all that, I don’t understand that . . ."
— Charles Bukowski,
Barfly, 1987
"It was true that I didn't have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?"
— Charles Bukowski,
Factotum, 1975
"... the average American citizen male bread-winner is a horror to behold. He is a sight to make one vomit blood and gut and hope all out, for even when he smiles, even when he is kind, even when he is a winner, a lover, a father, a playboy, a champ, he stinks. He is rot, he is a flower without a head, a plant without a root, a slab of meat butchered and dressed in clothing."
— Charles Bukowski
April 6, 1966
Screams From The Balcony
"The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life away to a function that doesn't interest you. This situation so repelled me that I was driven to drink, starvation, and mad females, simply as an alternative."
— Charles Bukowski,
Sunlight Here I Am:
Interviews & Encounters
1963-1993, 2003
"There's nothing to mourn about death any more than there is to mourn about the growing of a flower. What is terrible is not death but the lives people live or don't live up until their death. They don't honor their own lives, they piss on their lives. They shit them away. Dumb fuckers. They concentrate too much on fucking, movies, money, family, fucking. Their minds are full of cotton. They swallow God without thinking, they swallow country without thinking. Soon they forget how to think, they let others think for them. Their brains are stuffed with cotton. They look ugly, they talk ugly, they walk ugly. Play them the great music of the centuries and they can't hear it. Most people's deaths are a sham. There's nothing left to die."
— Charles Bukowski,
The Captain Is Out to Lunch
and the Sailors Have
Taken Over the Ship, 1998
— Hunter S. Thompson
"There was one exact moment, in fact, when I knew for sure that Al Gore would Never be President of the United States, no matter what the experts were saying — and that was when the whole Bush family suddenly appeared on TV and openly scoffed at the idea of Gore winning Florida. It was Nonsense, said the Candidate, Utter nonsense ... Anybody who believed Bush had lost Florida was a Fool.
"The Media, all of them, were Liars & Dunces or treacherous whores trying to sabotage his victory ... Here was the whole bloody Family laughing & hooting & sneering at the dumbness of the whole world on National TV.
"The old man was the real tip-off.
"The leer on his face was almost frightening. It was like looking into the eyes of a tall hyena with a living sheep in its mouth. The sheep's fate was sealed, and so was Al Gore's."
by Daniel Berrigan
Dan Berrigan's Meditation
on the Action of the Catonsville 9
On May 17th, 1968, Nine people, including Father Daniel Berrigan and his brother Father Phillip Berrigan, entered a draft board and removed draft files of those who were about to be sent to Viet Nam.
They took these files outside and burned them with home-made napalm, a weapon commonly used on civilians by the U.S. forces. They then awaited their arrest by authorities. The following is the statement Dan Berrigan read in court during their trial.
Some ten or twelve of us (the number is still uncertain)
will, if all goes well (ill?) take our religious bodes
during this week
to a draft center in or near Baltimore
There we shall of purpose and forethought
remove the 1-A files sprinkle them in the public street
with home-made napalm and set them afire
For which act we shall beyond doubt
be placed behind bars for some portion of our natural lives
in consequence of our inability
to live and content in the plagued city
to say "peace peace" when there is no peace
to keep the poor poor
the thirsty and hungry thirsty and hungry
Our apologies good friends
for the fracture of good order the burning of paper
instead of children, the angering of the orderlies
in the front parlor of the charnel house
We could not so help us God do otherwise
For we are sick at heart our hearts
give us no rest for thinking of the Land of Burning Children
and for thinking of that other Child of whom
the poet Luke speaks The infant was taken up
in the arms of an old man whose tongue
grew resonant and vatic at the touch of that beauty
And the old man spoke: this child is set
for the fall and rise of many in Israel
a sign that is spoken against
Small consolation a child born to make trouble
and to die for it the First Jew (not the last)
to be subject of a "definitive solution"
And so we stretch out our hands
to our brothers throughout the world
We who are priests to our fellow priests
All of us who act against the law
turn to the poor of the world to the Vietnamese
to the victims to the soldiers who kill and die
for the wrong reasons for no reason at all
because they were so ordered by the authorities
of that public order which is in effect
a massive institutionalized disorder
We say: Killing is disorder
life and gentleness and community and unselfishness
is the only order we recognize
For the sake of that order
we risk our liberty our good name
The time is past when good men may be silent
when obedience
can segregate men from public risk
when the poor can die without defense
How many indeed must die
before our voices are heard
how many must be tortured dislocated
starved maddened?
How long must the world's resources
be raped in the service of legalized murder?
When at what point will you say no to this war?
We have chosen to say
with the gift of our liberty
if necessary our lives:
the violence stops here
the death stops here
the suppression of the truth stops here
this war stops here
Redeem the times!
The times are inexpressibly evil
Christians pay conscious indeed religious tribute
to Caesar and Mars
by the approval of overkill tactics by brinkmanship
by nuclear liturgies by racism by support of genocide
They embrace their society with all their heart
and abandon the cross
They pay lip service to Christ
and military service to the powers of death
And yet and yet the times are inexhaustibly good
solaced by the courage and hope of many
The truth rules Christ is not forsaken
In a time of death some men
the resisters those who work hardily for social change
those who preach and embrace the truth
such men overcome death
their lives are bathed in the light of the resurrection
the truth has set them free
In the jaws of death
they proclaim their love of the brethren
We think of such men
in the world in our nation in the churches
and the stone in our breast is dissolved
we take heart once more.
FAAARRR
OUT!
— Howard Zinn
Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. And our problem is that scene in All Quiet on the Western Front where the schoolboys march off dutifully in a line to war.
Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world, in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country.
That's our problem.
We recognize this for Nazi Germany. We know that the problem there was obedience, that the people obeyed Hitler. People obeyed; that was wrong. They should have challenged, and they should have resisted; and if we were only there, we would have showed them. Even in Stalin's Russia we can understand that; people are obedient, all these herdlike people.
NYC Coalition
For Accountability Now
Personal Statements:
Donna Marsh O’Connor, Mother of Vanessa Lang Langer
As the world moves further and further away from the actual events of 9/11/2001 both in time and spirit, and as 9/11 effaces into yet another simple story cast in history, as the parent of Vanessa Lang Langer lost as the towers fell, I want to let it go. I want to stop talking about 9/11. I am tired of the questions unasked and unanswered. I am tired of the effort to burst yet another happiness bubble in our collective American psyche. And, too, I am tired of talking about Vanessa's death. Better for my family, in the immediacy of trying to live out our present days, to focus on Vanessa's life. To laugh at her memories and revel in pictures of her beautiful face. If it were only for the present and the joys I can still share with my children, my family and my fellow citizens, not just of this country but the world, I would let it go. I would so let it go.
But there is, after all literally, the future. And the future never relied so heavily on redress of questions unanswered in the present. To first ask and then answer what happened that day. Who committed this crime? Who should be held accountable? That is why I support the NYC CAN Ballot Initiative, and I ask for your support as well. It is beyond time for an investigation. It is beyond time.
Bob Mcilvaine, Father of Bobby Mcilvaine
Dear Citizens of New York City,
We lost our son Bobby on September 11, 2001. The death of a child is a pain like no other, compounded by the fact that this wonderful young man was murdered. When a crime as heinous as this takes place, it is assumed that justice will be served and the perpetrators will be discovered and punished. Much to our dismay, this has not taken place. We only want the truth.
Our only hope, at this juncture, is to support the NYC CAN Ballot Initiative, calling for an unbiased and non-political investigation of our son’s murder.
__________
Bob Mcilvaine, Father of Bobby Mcilvaine
Dear Citizens of New York City,
We lost our son Bobby on September 11, 2001. The death of a child is a pain like no other, compounded by the fact that this wonderful young man was murdered. When a crime as heinous as this takes place, it is assumed that justice will be served and the perpetrators will be discovered and punished. Much to our dismay, this has not taken place. We only want the truth.
Our only hope, at this juncture, is to support the NYC CAN Ballot Initiative, calling for an unbiased and non-political investigation of our son’s murder.
Jean Canavan, Sister in law of Sean Canavan:
On September 11, 2001, my brother-in-law, Sean Canavan, was taken from our family in such a tragic way that there is no “getting over it.” That day was devastating for so many people but the pain is worsened when so many questions are left unanswered and no one is held accountable. How is it acceptable that the 9/11 Commission resulted in more questions than answers? How is it acceptable that Co-chairs of the Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, are able to publish a book stating that the Commission was “Set up to fail” and that they were lied to by NORAD officials? Are we to just accept what the government has told us? The truth is that we don’t know what happened because the truth hasn’t been told. There will continue to be speculation until an impartial, independent investigation is done and the truth is told, whatever that may be. New York City CAN do it.
|
This Is Iowa
... where mourning doves coo
and we have cocka-doodle-doo
... at A&W the police drive-through
dude, they're looking for you.
__________
The New American
Dream Editorial
American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are invaders, killers for the empire. They are not fighting for anyone's freedom, not the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, their own or their families'.
They may think they are, only because they are also products of massive American propaganda, just as we are here at home.
The truth is that the real heroes are the "insurgents" fighting against the American troops. They are really, actually fighting for freedom. They are fighting against the American corporate empire.
These wars are not about 9/11.
The Iraqi's and the Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11.
The very American government that is sending American soldiers to kill and to die, for a lie, is the one much more likely responsible.
We need a Truth Commission in the United States. We need a real investigation of 9/11.
We should be way past tired of living a lie.
We should be way past tired of sending men and women to die for lies.
IF you really want to know,
THESE people are not your enemies:
  
  
RATHER, the real enemies of the American people are the rich people in government, in media, in business, who have lied to us for so many years, have killed for so many years — not in the interests of "the American way," as they profess, but in the interests of maintaining their own riches and power:
Un-American Activities
"On television the voices of dissent can’t be counted upon to match the studio drapes or serve as tasteful lead-ins to the advertisements for Pantene Pro-V and the U.S. Marine Corps. What we now know as the “news media” serve at the pleasure of the corporate sponsor, their purpose not to tell truth to the powerful but to transmit lies to the powerless."
We must never forget the ringing words
of Robert Jackson,
chief prosecutor for the U.S.
at the Nuremberg trials.
He said:
"Law shall not stop with the punishment of
petty crimes by little people. It must also
reach men who possess themselves of great power."
John Pilger: President Barack Obama Is A Phony
— A Corporate Marketing Creation
New Political Fiction
by Mike Palecek
... this is a nation of immigrants ... umm, right?
... dude?
... we are all aliens, right?
... dude?
... dude?
... it's the requiem to "Looking For Bigfoot"
... the woods are effing dark & deep ... be careful where you step
   
  
The New American
Dream Editorial
To what rigorous study do we owe our beliefs
about these critical issues, themes, mysteries of our day?
— 9/11
— Waco
— The Oklahoma City bombing
— UFOs
— The counting of the votes in the
2000 and 2004 elections of George W. Bush
— The murders of MLK, JFK, RFK
— The alleged moon landings
— The death of Paul Wellstone
— Bigfoot
— The presence of U.S. military personnel stationed
everywhere on the planet, for seemingly no reason
Do we believe what we believe because we have studied,
held them in our hands, rolled them around, and decided.
Or, was it because we heard it on the TV from
some person being paid to deliver the message.
"... how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda ... how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for the truth, said they were."
— William Shirer, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"
The Other Holocaust
"... from 1945 to the end of the century, the United States attempted to otherthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes.
"In the process, the U.S. caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many more to a life of agony and despair."
— William Blum
[Add to that over 6,000,000 Native Americans
slaughtered in order to steal their land from them
and put up machine sheds and baseball fields.]
Something Here
Just Not Right
... ever get that feeling?
"You're here because you know something.
What you know you can't explain — but you feel it.
You've felt it your entire life;
that there's something wrong with the world;
you don't know what it is, but it's there,
like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.
It is this feeling that has brought you to me.
Do you know what I'm talking about?"
"The Matrix," Neo asks?
You can feel it when you go to work,
when you go to church,
when you pay your taxes;
it is the world that
has been pulled over your eyes
to blind you from the truth."
And Neo asks, "What truth?"
"That you are a slave Neo, like everyone else,
you were born into bondage; born into a
prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch;
a prison for your mind.
Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is.
You have to experience it for yourself."
The Matrix (1999)
John Judge
radio interview
http://www.blackopradio.com/archives2009.html
It has to do with being a responsible person, citizen,
someone who cares enough to know the true history of his or her country.
_______
"Lies & Liars"
by Ben Heine
http://www.benheine.com/
1. The troops are not heroes.
They are criminals.
Any welcome-home parade should
proceed to the county courthouse.
2. We have not yet had a real investigation into 9/11.
3. Hmm.
4. We could probably use one.
"9/11 Coincidences"
“I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11,” he said, speaking before a red curtain and six pairs of U.S. and Egyptian flags. “But let us be clear: al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day.”
— Barack Obama, June 4, 2009, Cairo
November 10, 2001
— President George W. Bush Speaks to United Nations
"We must speak the truth about terror.
Let us never tolerate outrageous
conspiracy theories concerning
the attacks of September the 11th;
malicious lies that attempt to
shift the blame away from the terrorists,
themselves, away from the guilty.
To inflame ethnic hatred is to advance
the cause of terror."
Those are the words of liars, now here is what someone looks like, when caught out in the open with the world watching, who is complicit in murder and treason.
"That's an absurd insinuation."
...
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove
— who is this guy?
And why did you pay him to lie to the American people, for all your words, words, about loving America?
"Mostly due to structural failure because the fire was just too intense."
Ummm ....
I Guess
I'm Not
An Obama Fan
After all
by Mike Palecek
I got the idea to start this website after Barack Obama was elected.
Maybe others went through this as well, but it was kind of hard to switch from being against something, to being for something.
But I decided this would be a great opportunity to say what-if.
What if we could really do the things that would make us the America we think we are?
What if we could get some questions answered.
What if we could take some bold steps and say, so what? We don't live forever anyway, so why not go for the gusto?
But, you know all that money that was contributed to the Obama campaign?
Well, I guess when you think about it, it didn't come from the poor. It came from the rich. And that's who is still in charge.
As with the health insurance debate, Obama is going to hedge his bets and let the poor die.
He's going to kill when he thinks it's "prudent," and he is going to focus on doing what is necessary to remain in power.
Truth and justice for the poor will not be the driving forces of this administration.
I guess.
That's what it's looking like.
Barack Obama believes, or says he believes, that it was Al-Qaida who attacked American on Sept. 11, 2001, and that he needs to destroy them in Afghanistan because of that.
He will not go after the real perpetrators, or even conduct a cursory look-see under the White House beds, rather will send wave after wave of drones to kill the poor in Afghanistan to make it look as though he cares.
When you care, you don't kill — you seek truth and you seek justice for the poor.
That is what you do.
That is what we had hoped for.
[Are The Iranian Protests Another U.S. Orchestrated "Color Revolution?"]
“The Army trains you to be this way. In bayonet training, the sergeant would yell, ‘What makes the grass grow?’ and we would yell, ‘Blood! Blood! Blood!’ as we stabbed the dummy. The Army pounds it into your head until it is instinct: Kill everybody, kill everybody. And you do. Then they just think you can just come home and turn it off. ... If they don’t figure out how to take care of the soldiers they trained to kill, this is just going to keep happening.”
— Kenneth Eastridge, Iraq veteran, now serving 10 years in prison for accessory to murder
The Troops Do Not Defend Your Freedom
They Are Thugs,
Killers For The Empire
Actually, Your Freedom Is Being Defended
By Two Guys In Yorba Linda
[an Army of two]
"We can't move forward in healing or in peace
until those criminals are in prison."
Cindy Sheehan Leads Protest
at Home of George W. Bush in Dallas
June 8, 2009
[video]
Poetry
A Poem on 9/11
by An American Political Prisoner
While Still Inside
An American Prison
Marilyn Buck
Incommunicado:
Dispatches from a Political Prisoner
by Marilyn Buck
September 11, 2001
before
morning-slow
I move
Julan hollers
come come see
the world trade center's
exploding
she's not serious
no one would make that up
would they?
maybe
live on TV
video mantra
replay: plane crash
replay: collapse
slow motion, dying morning
no not a made-for-TV movie
not a disaster film
not Hollywood special effects
one tower falls
the other follows
do chickens come home to roost?
enormity crashes
dazed disbelief
(chickens won't roost here again
pigeons either)
I, a political prisoner, can
conceive why
but comprehension is not complicity
I look around me
I know nothing
I know too much
there is no answer in death
nor in dying
I know
soon others will die
dark smoke spreads
cinders of wrath rise
the eagle's talons flex
hungry for revenge
(eyes locked on the shocking scene
a Muslim sister whispers
they will blame the Muslims)
I know
many will feed the eagle
the Palestinians?
(Palestinians are always suspect)
Muslims? Arabs?
many will die red upon the land
I can't comprehend
men who commit suicide
taking civilians with them
(a u.s. postal worker
Columbine high school boys
a man at McDonalds
all-American suicide killers)
civilians
used as warheads
I shudder and walk away
from death
to my cell
Bich Kim runs in
if there's a world war three
they will shoot all the prisoners, won't they?
I shake my head
I don't think so
but you, political prisoners
like you, won't they?
I hope not
(question marks
the corners of my mouth:
what do I know
about the fine-print)
I turn to sweep the floor
find rhythms of the ordinary
The Order: 9 AM PDT
a tap
I turn
a guard
come with me
I won't return today
I stand before the captain
we must lock you up
for your own safety
(not for my safety)
you're intelligent you know why
I speculate, no
not for my safety
you must be locked up
just for your safety
I am
stripped naked
ID card confiscated
everything taken
I need my glasses!
keep the glasses
I keep a neutral face
handcuffed behind the back
clad in bile yellow for isolation
and flip-flops
I keep outrage
wrapped within my fists
I swallow anger
metal clangs swallow sound
the concrete cocoon swallows me
The "SHU": Special Housing Unit
"there was an old woman
she lived in a shoe"
what did she do?
9/11 no prisoner may speak to you
you may not speak to any prisoner
9/12 overheard voices
there are terrorists here
who are the terrorists?
silence, everyone behind her door listens
9/14 a legal call
small relief: it's political -- Washington --
not something i did
9/17 no more calls
no visits
no mail
until further notice
incommunicado
i hang from a winding string
winding in this cocoon
i breathe deep
the air isn't good here
( from outside the walls Susan yells
you are not alone)
i breathe deeper
Sunday i get a radio: KPFA lifeline
Sikhs dead, detainees disappeared
political prisoners buried deeper
incommunicado
i remember another September 11: Chile '73
more than 3,000 dead
tortured assassinated disappeared
a CIA-supported coup
(the WTC bombers not-yet-born)
many people there still mourn
let us mourn all the dead
and the soon-to-die
i worry about the prisoners
isolation sucks at the spirit
i am furious: inferred association
held hostage in place of men
with u.s. weapons and CIA training
an infernal joke
the puppet masters laugh
i laugh to stay sane
before i explode in irony's flame
we are hostages
to blood-thirsty oil men
ready to splatter deserts
with daisy-cutters
their collateral damage
dead mothers and children
dead mother earth
dead daisies
( hasn't this happened before?
u.s. cavalry and smallpox blankets
special forces and blanket bombing)
( Susan is back
she taps on the wall: you are not alone)
i walk around the edges
how many walk on edges?
what edges do the Palestinians walk?
cold radiates whitewashed
walls press against my edges
suspend animation
no butterflies to break out
no silken thread to weave sweet dreams
panic rises in my throat
thick white choking cold
so cold
i swing hope on a thread
a transparent sliver it crashes
against the cinderblocks
i drop
frozen chrysalis
cold into a coffin box
Night
i lay down on suspect blankets
a Cyclops light pins me
onto the metal cot
an altar for vengeful gods
metal restraints for hands and feet
"just in case"
the suicide cell has ghosts
desperate women
have lain here chained four-pointed
to command composure
sacrificed to voyeur visions
through the glass starkly
through a burqa window
i don't want to think of i
i meditate
i think of other politicals
behind wires and walls
i remember the assaulted
the accidental
the collaterally damaged
killed, corrected, coerced
i remember: the u.s. funds the fundamentalists
Muslims Christians Zionists
self-righteous missiles
of mayhem and retribution
i remember Afghani women held hostage
inside indigo cocoons
cells smaller than a confessional box
my veil is this cell
i will put on no other
except the veil of sleep
the light, damn the light
the Cyclops spies
i toss between the tomb-thick walls
how long will this go on?
will my bones break
into ice shards or will they desiccate
stranded in this cell
at last i doze
till dawn the Cyclops watches
clanging keys, slamming metal traps
shift change
daylight creeps inside
i rise: i must seek cycles
inside
without clocks or mirrors
without all but i
The Weekend
a glacier, daylight advances
imperceptibly
a plank of light teeters
on the edge of board-faced windows
travels obliquely across
then it's gone
warmth fades fast
the food trap opens
cold eggs the color of our clothes
plunk – weekend brunch
i swallow in silence
silence flees before sudden cacophony
two women beat plastic bowls on metal doors
we want rec we want rec
the sun is out we want out
my head is wrapped in metallic clanger
bang bang bang
i stay silent
i bite my lip
hours pass: shift change 2:00
the sun drops fast behind the wall
finally: who wants recreation?
I do
me too
let me out first
voices reach through the metal doors
food traps clank
handcuffs click
one by one women are led
to wire cages
joy rings louder than the chains
i wait
no guard comes
i break silence
you didn’t ask me
disembodied denial echoes through the walls
you can’t go with the others
wait
not my decision
i will miss the sundrops
"Perchance to Dream"
night comes
i fall exhausted into sleep
i dream of Dresden Hanoi Baghdad
whistles scream
walls fall apart
in waves
Dali deserts
watches tick
waterdrip
dream shift:
swords of steel glint against the sky
a swarm and puff
dark blood drops
bituminous birds bank
spread-eagled free fall
ashes ashes they all fall
down dark flashes
cherry splashes on concrete
Babel towers collapse in crying heaps
a curtain rises gray
covers gladiators draped across the stage
i wake cold-throated
what time is it?
my limbs locked
beneath a concrete rockslide
is this my tomb falling on me?
my chest is piled rock-heavy
bodies rise from the shallows of my breath
graze my eyes and flee
across the desert scape
shadow prints dissipate
am i awake?
the Cyclops stabs my eye
i must be awake
i wrap a scratchy towel
around my face
i escape electric night
into sightlessness
a ghost voice wails
what time is it?
A deep male boom
1:24, go to sleep
no, turn on the radio, talk to me
no! no! please no, my eyes blink
inside their blind
little Brueghel men dance
wooden-shoe notes
ruthless on my sleep
sound streams woman's babble
pools beneath the door
i hunker under the winding sheet
does she stop talking
or do i descend?
i don't remember
shift change
shift change
guards come and go
officials pass by peering
into our crypt-cages
taking notes, verifying
Monday, September 24
the captain appears
we may release you today after 2:00
2:00 comes and goes
the shift changes
i wait and wonder: will other politicals be released today
i wait
hope is the moment's thief
don't wait!
at last: Buck roll out
i leap a jack-in-the-box
ready
ready
the metal key clangs just before the 4:00 count
i gasp relief
and hurry through before the gates slam
shut and i am left below
Eurydice whom Orpheus glimpsed
a moment soon
i step out
a four o'clock unfolding, fuchsia in the shading light
back into the routine prisoner's plight
December 2001
This poem appeared in Joy James, editor, Imprisoned Intellectuals: America's Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion, March 2003
And, finally, here's something ...
I was notified recently by the Internal Revenue Service that I have been fined $5,000 for "frivolous filing" of a tax document.
The story, quickly:
In the spring of 2007 and the spring of 2008 I took a book tour around the country. In 2007 I went east and in 2008 I went west.
Each time before I left home I sent a letter and a tax form to the IRS.
The forms each had a black Magic Marker "X" through them.
The letters indicated why I did not wish to cooperate with the United States of America.
It was symbolic. They had already received my money through paycheck withholding tax.
But even though merely symbolic, it's something, some very little thing, in an effort to stand with those who have been stomped on by the government of George W. Bush, those in Iraq, and those in the United States, who have gone without health care, decent schools, roads, lived in poverty so that we might spread the American empire across the globe.
And it is now apparent that having a Democrat in the White House means only more of the same, a lesson we might have learned from living through the Clinton years, the bombing of Iraq, the sanctions on Iraq that killed millions, the increase in prison construction, the "reform" of welfare etc.
On the subject:
Howard Zinn's recent article.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22639.htm
"House approves $96.7 billion to fund wars"
These people. These people have everything on their minds but public service.
My impression is they have power and the keeping of that power on their minds. We imagine that people who seek public office want to work for the social welfare and would naturally want to know the truth, but so often and for so many years we have been disappointed by putting our faith in our political leaders.
We have a semblance of representation, but not in reality.
Nobody asks you if you want to build more prisons. Nobody asks you if you want to bomb children in Iraq. Nobody asks you if you want your money to go to the poor, to schools, to roads.
Nobody ever asks.
So sometimes, sometimes you just have to tell them.
Every year we are asked to pay our taxes, send in our forms, pay for the bullets, the bombs that kill the children, the men and women.
We are given no choice.
Just as we were given no choice as children whether or not to rise before class and say the pledge of allegiance to America's wars.
We're not children anymore.
Our acquiesance has real consequence.
We pay to have people killed so that America and America's businesses may expand influence and market area.
I don't want to believe that.
I want to rather believe in the America I believed in when I walked alone into Mrs. Steele's kindergarten class and saw written across the giant blackboard in gigantic white chalk letters: President John F. Kennedy.
But.
They killed Kennedy and America has never been the same since.
But the ideal remains.
The dream of a good and just America remains.
We may never get there, but we must try.
We must try.
Also:
*When I was the Iowa Democratic Party candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, Fifth District, in 2000, I sent a similar letter to the IRS. That year I walked from my home to Sioux City, taking about a week, to deliver the letter.
That year I also received letters from the IRS, saying I owed them $500 for frivolous filing. I received two of those letters, followed by a final letter that said they had decided to forget about the penalty.
Here are the letters from 2007, 2008:
March 1, 2008
Internal Revenue Service
3539 Southern Hills Drive
Sioux City, Iowa 51106
Hello.
Enclosed is my tax form for this year.
It is crossed-out because I do not wish to cooperate with the government of George W. Bush.
President Bush has chosen to spend our tax dollars on war and killing while cutting spending on social programs.
As a Christian, I cannot go along with this.
I must protest.
Sincerely,
Mike Palecek
702 6th Ave.
Sheldon, Iowa 51201
March 27, 2007
Internal Revenue Service
Kansas City, MO 64999-002
Hello,
Enclosed is a crossed-out tax form.
I will not cooperate with the murderous regime of George W. Bush.
President Bush and his administration planned and carried out the attacks on the United States on 9-11-01, in order to attack Iraq and steal their oil.
In the eyes of Bush and Cheney and Rove, the war is going according to plan. They and their friends are making millions, billions, from the oil, from the defense industry, while the poor go without, while social services are cut in order to pay for more war and killing.
As a Christian, I cannot go along with this.
I must protest.
Sincerely,
Mike Palecek
"If I was president,
I'd get elected on Friday,
Assassinated on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday ..."
Wyclef Jean
"If I Was President"
JFK & The Bush Connection
by John Hankey
“I have this feeling that whoever is elected president, when you win, you go into this smokey room, and this little screen comes down … and it’s a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you’ve never seen before … and the lights go up … and they go to the new president … any questions?”
— Bill Hicks
Interview with "Family of Secrets"
author Russ Baker
Black Op Radio
May 7, 2009
"We'll know our disinformation program is
complete when everything
the American public believes is false."
— William Casey, CIA Director
(from first staff meeting, 1981)
____________________
 
“You will know the truth,
and the truth will set you free.”
— Carved into the marble entrance to CIA Headquarters
 
New American Dream
Suggestion Of The Week:
Blow Up Your TV.
Throw Away Your Paper.
And use the time you save listening to these people instead.
 
Bob Mcilvaine Donna Marsh O'Connor
at Webster Hall 9/11 Symposium, West Hartford, Conn.
 
John Judge Richard Gage / [here]
Interview
David Ray Griffin
Interview from Lucerne, Switzerland
May 7, 2009
We call for a real investigation into:
* the Bush Administration involvement
in the attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001
* The many violent deaths of witnesses
to the John F. Kennedy assassination
* the deaths of the 60-some people on the Pine Ridge reservation during the reign of terror by goon squads, death squads — like those we also sponsored in El Salvador — around the time of the Wounded Knee and Oglala events
"I will stand with my brothers and sisters. I will tell the truth about them and about why we went to Wounded Knee. I will fight for my people. I will live for them, and if it is necessary to stop the terrible things that happen to Indians on the Pine Ridge Reservation, I am ready to die for them. But the judge and his lawyers must know by now I will never lie against my people, crawl for a better deal for myself. I stand with Russell Means, Gladys Bissonette, Carter Camp, Ellen Moves Camp, Clyde Bellecourt..."
— an affidavit presented to the court on June 27, 1973 by Pedro Bissonette
[more]
* the death of journalist Gary Webb
* the death of Mike Connell
Eugene V. Debs, A.J. Muste, Lucy Parsons
“We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace.
War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life.
If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.”
— A.J. Muste
Mother Jones
more
Emma Goldman
more
Dorothy Day
more
Fred Hampton
more
 
Freedom Riders, Lunch Counter Sit-ins
Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee
more
Kent State
more
Field correspondent Tom LaPorte brings us a 23 minute interview he
held with anarchist, guerrilla clown, and stand-up revolutionary Abbie
Hoffman back in 1969 during the Chicago 7 Conspiracy Trials.
The Chicago 7
  
David Gilbert, Bernardine Dohrn, William Ayers
more
more
more
Freedom For Political Prisoners Calendar
Catonsville 9
more
The Plowshares 8
more
Carl Kabat, Elmer Maas, Philip Berrigan, Molly Rush,
Dan Berrigan, Anne Montgomery, John Schuchardt, Dean Hammer.
The Silo Pruning Hooks
more
Paul Kabat, Helen Woodson, Larry Cloud-Morgan
and Carl Kabat, Nov 11 1984,
at their Minuteman missile 'Silo Pruning Hooks' action in Missouri.
 
Carl Kabat
more
Helen Woodson
Mary Beth Schlagheck (on left) and Helen Woodson, chained to the Catholic cathedral in downtown Madison, circa 1982. They were protesting the national bishops' statement regarding the morality of nuclear weapons possession and use.
More about Helen Woodson:
http://www.jonahhouse.org/Woodson0704.htm
http://www.quatloos.com/Q-Forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=3062&start=0
http://www.serve.com/vigilforpeace/articles/mbarticle.html
Rachel Corrie
5th Grade Speech
And the Nobel Peace Prize
goes to ...
YOU!
When do they vote for that thing, anyway?
Those who stood up to the Bush administration when the going was tough, after 9/11, before the start of the war, during the war — those are the folks who should be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize.
It really should be that scared someone in Shitstorm, South Dakota, who wrote that letter to the editor against the wishes of her husband, her children and her best friend and sent it to The Shitstorm Sentinel
— and accepted the consequences.
But in lieu of her, we offer these suggestions.
There are a million others:
  Cynthia McKinney Dixie Chicks
Jim Fetzer Lori Price,
Citizens
For Legitimate Government
Cindy Sheehan David Ray Griffin
Code Pink Women in Black
William Rodriguez Alex Jones
Disturbing the peace at Ft. Benning
LInda Ventimiglia, Larry Rosebaugh, Roy Bourgeois
Excerpt:
... Fort Benning, Georgia. August 9, 1983. The summer sun was finally setting. It was time to act. Time to engage the Salvadoran troops.
... Moments later the voice of the dead Salvadoran archbishop, Oscar Romero, boomed in Spanish from the treetops, shattering the silence below:
"I would like to make a special appeal to the members of the army and specifically to the ranks of the National Guard, the police and the military. Brothers, each one of you is one of us. We are the same people. The peasants you kill are your own brothers and sisters. When you hear the voice of a man commanding you to kill, remember instead the voice of God: THOU SHALL NOT KILL!"
It was the archbishop's last Sunday homily, delivered in the San Salvador cathedral on March 23, 1980. His fateful words had stung the Salvadoran military and led to his assassination the next day.
Romero's words again triggered a violent reaction as they echoed through the barracks at Fort Benning, imploring the startled Salvadorans to disobey orders to kill. It was as if someone had poked a beehive.
The base was abuzz.
Lights beamed.
Sirens wailed.
MPs with M-16s swarmed over the grounds.
But in the darkness they had trouble locating the source of the disturbance, even with the aid of police dogs.
"It was a sacred moment," Bourgeois later recalled.
"Those soldiers coming out of the barracks,
looking into the sky, not being able to see us, hearing the words of this prophet."
"It was a sacred moment," Bourgeois later recalled. "Those soldiers coming out of the barracks, looking into the sky, not being able to see us, hearing the words of this prophet."
Finally, one of the lights fixed on the rope ladder at the base of the pine, and then illuminated the trespassers in the tree.
The MPs started cursing and threatening to shoot them down, but even with weapons trained on him Bourgeois stalled for time, hoping to play the entire homily.
He shouted down that they no longer had the rope ladder, and as the MPs scurried about trying to figure out what to do, the tape played over and over.
"No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. There is still time for you to obey your own conscience, even in the face of a sinful command to kill. The church, defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, and of the dignity of each human being, cannot remain silent in the presence of such abominations."
"In the name of God, in the name of our tormented people whose cries rise up to heaven, I beseech you, I beg you, I command you, stop the repression!"
As the chaos on the ground grew, the dogs started to fight among themselves. A couple of MPs tried to pull them apart, while another started to climb the pine, grabbing branches of nearby trees to pull himself up.
Then another went up with the rope ladder. Rosebaugh, whose perch was lowest in the tree, was taken down first, then Ventimigila. Rosebaugh was strip searched and Ventimigila was gagged.
Meanwhile, the first MP had climbed nearly sixty feet up to get Bourgeois and to shut off the cassette. After Romero's voice was silenced, Bourgeois started shouting the bishop's words in Spanish, angering the MPs on the ground.
When he finally descended the tree, a trainer was waiting for him.
"He hit me from behind," Bourgeois said later, "then threw me up against the tree and stripped me. There were five or six agitated dogs and about ten MPs with M-16s who were shining lights on us. The trainer got in this karate pose and wanted me to get up and fight, but his own men pulled him off."
As he was led away that night, Bourgeois was largely undaunted: the message had been delivered, the mission accomplished.
The three activists carried no identification. When questioned at the provost marshal's office, Bourgeois gave his name as Oscar Romero; Rosebaugh, as Rutilio Grande, a Jesuit priest slain by the Salvadoran military; and Ventimiglia, as Jean Donovan, one of four U.S. churchwomen raped and murdered by Salvadoran security forces.
by James Hodge and Linda Cooper
Published by Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY 10545-0308.
Larry Rosebaugh murdered in Guatamala
May 18, 2009
[here]
Don't You Know?
We're Talking About A Revolution?
... many people think, talk about "the revolution."
What is The Revolution?
How should it come about in the United States?
Can it?
Or, are we doomed?
Are "they" just too powerful?
Just asking.
Whatever our answers are ... music always helps.
__________________
"When you hear something on the news tonight,
substitute "CIA" or "western intelligence"
when you hear the term "al-Quaeda, "
it gives you a totally different perspective on the world."
— Paul Zarembka, author of "The Hidden History of 9/11"
____________
Tracy Chapman
|
|
