save the children. if we mean that, what should we do with the parents and teachers???

"For the Children...."
[col. writ. 9/19/09] (c) '09 Mumia Abu-Jamal

The next time I hear a politician promise to do something 'for the children', I may heave.

If one thing is clear in this nation, it is that children are hated. Oh -- we don't use that word to describe our relationships with them, but if we honestly examine those interactions we find that it would be difficult to describe in ways other than 'hate.'

For the last several months, I've been reading, studying and thinking about the nation's public school system. I've read classics in the field, like Jonathan Kozol's 1967 work, Death At An Early Age, a stunning account on his years as a permanent sub [!] in Boston's Black populated schools in Roxbury, where kids were taken down into dark, dank cellars and beaten with rattan sticks.

But what happened in the dark basements of the buildings, while certainly dramatic and deplorable, could hardly be worse than the systematic slaughter of the minds of tens of thousands of children, who were, in Kozol's words, "intellectually decapitated" daily by a racist, segregated school system.

Truth is, any major U.S. city could've been used with similar results - Harlem, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, for nationally, the drop-out rate is 50%.

Public schools are places where kids go to get their minds and souls killed.

And what is war but old men sacrificing young men in often meaningless battles? What is the so-called 'War on Terror' but a mindless slogan used to sell lies like 'Weapons of Mass Destruction?'

And what are soldiers but mostly children, molded into madmen, who fight and die, so that old rich men can get richer?

Daily, we drug millions of schoolchildren, some as young as 4 years old with Ritalin, because we describe them as hyperactive or deficient in attention --which means they don't sit still, while we bore them out of their brains, with what we laughingly call an education.

'For the children' we leave a diseased and poisoned planet, an economy on crutches, and a world boiling with hatred for their fathers.

Isn't it about time we really stopped doing more damage to the children?

(c) '09 maj

the situation in honduras is really something. i've got to give zelaya a lot of credit. here's a guy who gets overthrown, but comes back without having been reinstalled as president. essentially, he is living at the brazilian embassy, so i've also got to give the brazilian government their props. however, i will soon need my props back, as i am staging a musical version of macbeth starting in a couple of weeks. zelaya is one brave dude. when arbenz got the boot, he never returned. overthrown leaders never return, unless they have regained power, as chavez did in 02. also, zelaya's term was ending in november, so it is incredible that he is laying it on the line to stand up to the coup makers and the reactionary society they hope to recreate in honduras.

and we in the states? well, we have ignored the matter, since zelaya is not a starting quarterback and has yet to appear in a popular reality show. our change candidate has hung zelaya out to dry, and with the expensive cost of the modern dryer, who can blame him? as always, america stands on the side of reaction in latin america, and the party out of power is even worse on the issue, so there is no improvement in view.

as always, decency and fairness are words and ideas meant for school children, not for nations. and yet, there is a new breeze blowing, as my hat just flew off my head. the modern leaders of the left are not allowing themselves to be silently slaughtered. they are fighting back, as are the millions of common men and women who stand to benefit from the changes they hope to implement. let us not forgot what got zelaya in trouble...he raised the minimum wage!! he didn't confiscate land, or raise taxes on the rich, or nationalize industry (hey, what's wrong with this guy?) rather, he merely wanted to improve the lives of the most humble and poor of his nation. and that, to the corporatists and neo-fascists, is inexcusable. to even begin to redistribute wealth is to be a monster in the eyes of those who feast while the masses starve. the enemy is the rich, and the armies that fight their battles. that doesn't change. but, in latin america, the opponent is stronger. his tactics are diverse. chavez swings for the fences, while zelaya hits singles. still others boo the umpires who are doing their best to fix the game. everyone will need to do their thing, and more.

if i was honduran, i would be proud of my president. as a resident of the united states of north america, i can only envy them his decency and courage.

there is a battle to be waged. we need change we can believe in, and so does honduras.

all of us are waiting.

let's hope the larouche people don't come out on top.

the words of a man worthy of the presidency

Once we stop growing up corporate and grow up civic, we will be much more focused on nutritious food, rather than junk food; we will be much more inquiring about different kinds of products; we will look at pollution as a form of violence, not just something that is nasty and dirty; we will demand the mechanism so we can control what we own and use these great resources for an enlightened, just, prosperous, happy society where the pursuit of justice is filled with such joy it itself becomes the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of happiness becomes the pursuit of justice.

Ralph Nader

if the government gets involved in health care, some tell us, that would be fascism. it would also be socialism. i didn't realize that social security and medicare were fascist. i'm surprised that we have stood for such fascist policies for so long.

my sense of fascism is much different. since fascists are also rabid militarists that start wars to control resources and pacify populations, I tend to think of our wars as much closer to fascism than, let's say, a national health insurance plan. that just goes to show you how depraved my mental workings happen to be.

furthermore, since fascism tends to imprison and persecute large numbers of people, often racial or ethnic minorities, i ususlly think of our large prison population of over 2 million and the horrendous conditions they face as approximating fascism much more than say, public libraries.

also, since fascism usually means oppression of the "other" along nationalist, racist lines, i often see racism, sexism, homophobia, anti immigrant sentiment, and anti-arab and muslim bigotry as resembling fascism alot more than, shall we say, medicare.

but, of course, i know little. i barely make more than 20,000 a year, and that's with two jobs. therefore, what can i know? surely, i am just wasting my time complaining, when i could be out, trying to get people to join the sierra club. alas, the only sierra i ever liked was the sierra madre. what a treasure that was. well, i certainly bogarted that line.

fascism has come to america, so say the fascists. to them, fascism means the wrong guy being in power. it has nothing to do with actual policies. so, when obama does nothing to support an ousted democratically elected leader in honduras, or when he drops bombs on afghanistan, or when he advocates for the city of chicago to waste millions of dollars by hosting the olympics when the city could use that money to create jobs or build housing, none of this is fascism, though it is such facts as these that at least show a strong connection between american capitalism and militarism and fascism. but, such real connections are not helpful to the fascists that are yelling fascism at their "opponents." in fact, such facts, may help people understand how this sickening nation of ours actually operates, and that's exactly what they don't want.

so, white supremacists call obama a fascist, as they scream the n word in his direction.

welcome to the circus.

admission is free, but sadly, there is no exit.

recently saw obama on tv. he seemed loose, and was speaking the truth. i leaned closer. his voice was a little louder, it had more soul than normal. it hit me. he's talking to a black audience. indeed, he was speaking at a meeting of the black congressional caucus. i don't know what to make of this, and i do.

saw curtis fuller. he was on blue train. wrote a la mode. was on the mode for joe album. played with blakey. played on so many great records. there he was last saturday, a little hunched over, frail, wearing a patriots hat.

saw plas johnson. this man played the tenor solo on sinatra's version of that old feeling and blue moon. he is the horn on the pink panther theme. he was the session man. made some jazz classics that are almost impossible to find, including the 1959 album entitled "this must be the plas." there he was with what looked like a conked wig! white blazer, bad ass collar, smooth. he had a silver tenor. played beuatifully at 78.

the next day saw a local cat named nick goumas. wasn't expecting much. the man played his ass off. joe henderson and cedar walton tunes. the blue note sound, the 60's sound. the trane-joe thing. he had chops. he gets about a gig a month. at this gig, there was no one in attendance. i sat there, veggie burger in mouth, rum and coke in hand, stunned that i was hearing serenity played so well. i've added goumas to my list of bad local tenors (tim mayer, bill pierce, rick dimuzzio)

it's cool to hear live music. yes, the air is being poisoned, the bombs are being dropped, but, it's still cool to hear live music. especially an older dude that still has it. i love seeing the joy an older player has in making music. their instrument is usually old and has a warm sound. they know all the tunes. it's just good shit.

good shit.

now, if i could only take one.

notice how a white guy is under no pressure to refer to himself as a european american? when's the last time you even heard that expression?

you know what i'm getting at. it's black vs. african american again. it seems that a number of people, particularly in the academic community, but also wide numbers of "mor's" (middle of the road whites) think that african american is the more respectful term. somehow, this phrase pays proper homage to the roots of the person being spoken of.

well, i suppose these people are triggered by the idea that there is something negative, something disrespectful, about the phrase black. but, in fact, it is amongst these middle class, academic sectors, that a lack of historical knowledge of the civil rights and black power struggles are exhibited. do they not recall the saying "black is beautiful?" or, what of "say it loud, i'm black and i'm proud?" when a person exclaimed they were black in the 60's, it was an affirmation of self, an example of self love.

what, i ask, has happened to change this? if something has changed, isn't that the problem, and not the word black itself? and what has come along to replace it? why, of course, african american! but, who says it? have you ever heard a group of black people refer to themselves as african americans? certainly not in casual conversation. perhaps in a classroom, particularly in a room that is predominantly white.

and what of this term? is it factual? does it have any power? is it a prideful, strong term? are africans who come to america african american? what about hatians, jamaicans? what of black spanish speaking people? is david ortiz african american? well, he is from the americas, and he is clearly of african descent, so why wouldn't he be? does one have to be born in the u.s to be an african american? but, if you are born in a country, isn't that your nationality? david ortiz doesn't say he is an african dominican, he says he's dominican.

the term black does away with all this. as does the term white. these other terms are inventions of academic masterbators, who have nothing better to do than make the rest of us think that we are disrespecting ourselves, when we are in fact being truer to who we are than they will ever be.

to those who insist on the term african american, i suggest they read their malcolm, in which he says the word black with love. i suggest they revisit the struggles of the 60's. if they feel that the term black ignores their heritage, than they are the ones who know nothing about the epic racial battles of yesterday, in which the term black was claimed as a word of power, strength, joy, and beauty.

to you users of aa (yes, you need help) i suggest you meet some real black people who don't have five advanced degrees. i suggest you journey to places where black people live, work, talk, pray, eat, and shop.

leave the rarified air of the classroom, my friends, and live.

get in touch with yourself, before you claim to speak for others.

until then, my european and african american brethren, i wish you a fond farewell.

thoughts on the gig

here at bhs, the students recycle their lunch trays and plates. bhs, our leaders say, cares about the environment. they babble about global warming, doing our part, being responsible citizens. bhs, like the town that houses it, is an example of corporate liberalism, which after corporate conservatism, is about as bad as it gets. maybe worse, because of its fundamental hypocrisy. for while the students recycyle their trays, not once, in five years, have i heard anyone at bhs mention the environmental destruction and human suffering caused by the u.s. military. not one speech has been made by a liberal bureaucrat at the school imploring the students to care about our earth by doing everything in their power to halt the u.s. war machine. even writing this seems silly, as if it were possible that a fine, liberal public school could actually educate its students.

here at bhs, while trays are recycled, i and my peers purchase sodas from the plethora of coke machines that line the hallways and lounges. the corporate liberals and arm chair radicals at bhs ignore what coke has done to the environment in india and elsewhere, all the while imploring the student body to care. speaking of the student body, how good can it be with soda and candy on the premises?

and the hypocrisy goes on. today, there was a moment of silence for the victims of 9/11. well, there has been nearly 8 years of silence at bhs for the victims of our bombing of afghanistan. no one acknowledges the carnage. likewise with iraq. no one gets on the intercom and humanizes their suffering. no one speaks of war crimes, depleted uranium, cluster bombs, burned babies, orphans, refugees. the moments of silence go on and on and on.

we here at bhs claim to value life and the planet. but it seems that only some life is valued, and it appears fine to kill the earth, as long as we get a good deal on the vending machines. we teach our children to recycle, as we drive in to school in our suv's. here at good old liberal bhs, i have heard teachers speak of "red china" and "the great jefferson davis." they too, surely have recycling bins in their classes.

so, we here at bhs recycle.

as the bombs fall. as the cars fill the streets. as the pesticides are sprayed.

we here at bhs recycle, as marines roam the hallways. in the new rome, they roam, looking for virgin bodies to drop their bombs. liberal bhs allows them entry, lets them table during lunch. they strike up conversations with working class and black kids. their accents shift, as they go street and slang to impress the students. once i yelled "don't listen to a word these fascists tell you!"

but, the rent was due in two weeks, so i didn't push it any further.

rather, i kept moving.

but, not before recycling my tray.

as i finished my orange soda, and prepared myself to withstand another day at the slaughter house.

this is fielding mellish, reporting live from the belly of corporate liberalism.

che vive

watched part one on monday. haven't had the strength to watch part 2, yet.

what a man he was. dedicated, moral, brave, charismatic. the words themselves fail from over use. one needs to see him, to think about him, to get it. the risks he took. man. like few before him or since, he combined ideas and action. many of us think good thoughts. few of us act out the best within us. we are not brave enough. we stop, rationalize, remember that saving one's skin has its merits. but che, he was a different beast. he risked it all. by example, he attempted to raise others who would become like him. and yet, he was always different. while others congregated and socialized, che studied and observed, a man alone. it was as if he was a million years ahead of the mortals. and yet, he was of his time too. he was macho, manly, much too much, and jut too very very, to ever wind up in the dictionary.

it is rare that a man gives everything so that others may live a better life. che was such a man. he was not perfect, but he could not have been better if he were so.


che vive!

the gloom of blum

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Boys of Capital have been chortling in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century — without exception — was either overthrown, invaded, corrupted, perverted, subverted, destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States and its allies. Not one socialist government or movement — from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in El Salvador — not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home.

It's as if the Wright brothers' first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon these catastrophes, nodded their heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Humankind shall never fly.

william blum, right on, as always.

h@#$% a@#%^&$*()&

September 11, 2008

September 11, 2008 By Mickey Z.


Mickey Z.'s ZSpace Page

Join ZSpace

Edited version of a talk I gave in NYC on September 11, 2008, with preface, prologue, preamble, and postscript:



Preface: In 1853, several pairs of the previously unknown European house sparrow were set free inside Brooklyn's Green-wood Cemetery. By picking the hayseeds out of horse droppings from the carts used for funerals, these tiny birds flourished and are today one of the continent's most ubiquitous creatures. In other words: When all they feed you is horseshit, it's up to you to pick out the hayseeds that enable you to not only survive, but to thrive.



Prologue: In the 1999 film Run, Lola, Run, the female protagonist is magically given three chances to cope with a tricky situation. Like having a reset button on a video game or computer, if Lola screws up, she gets to go back and start from the beginning.



Many people imply that unless a critic expounds a specific strategy for change, his/her assessment is worthless or, at the very least, too negative. This somewhat understandable reaction misses the essential role critical analysis plays in a society where problems—and their causes—are so cleverly disguised. When discussing the future, the first step is often an identification and demystification of the past and present.



In order for us to hit the reset button, we must collectively agree that we got it wrong the first time.



Preamble: "How many other countries give you the right to write what you just wrote?" This was one of the many responses I got to a recent article of mine. Let's put aside the unintentional tongue twister and the question's obvious answer: plenty of other countries would give me the right to write what I just wrote.



The larger issue, as I see it, is how we each choose to evaluate our freedom. Is freedom just a matter of bigger cages and longer chains? Is it merely a commodity sold to the highest bidder? Must the majority of us sit by and drool while freedom fries on the grill of capitalist greed?



Freedom, according to Rosa Luxemburg, is "always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently." To merely have more freedom than, say, a woman living under Taliban repression is not the same as being free. But it is the same as settling for less subjugation instead of demanding more liberty. The "it could always be worse" excuse is no way to judge the quality or quantity of anything.



Begin: It was September 14, 2001. The F-16s were no longer circling overhead. But there were people on my block holding candles, waving flags, and singing the National Anthem as an SUV cruised by with the words "Nuke 'em" soaped onto its rear window. These people were all craving normalcy. Even with the severity of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the ultimate goal at the end of the day was always normalcy.



Despite the lingering fear, sorrow, doubt, and anger, we waited breathlessly for the authorities to pronounce: "Don't worry. Things were bad but now, we've gotten everything back to normal."



What is normal in our country and on our planet? What type of society have we humans cultivated as we sit arrogantly atop the intellectual food chain?



The New York Stock Exchange was shut down by the attacks, but once things returned to normal, Wall Street went back to making decisions that impacted horrendously upon the large majority of the globe while the top one percent of Americans carried on owning wealth equal to the bottom 95 percent. That's normal.



The SUV owner I just mentioned might have wiped the soap off his window and driven onto the island of Manhattan where, once again, cars had free reign. The toxic haze caused by the two towers collapsing was now replaced by the normal toxic haze induced by America's automobile culture.



Those I heard singing songs of patriotism could return to stepping over homeless people to go buy products made in sweatshops. That's normal.



Contemplating normal reminds me of something Charles Bukowski wrote: "As we go on with our lives, we tend to forget that the jails and the hospitals and the madhouses and the graveyards are packed."



Normal means each month, 100,000 Americans lose their health insurance...while, each minute, one million of our tax dollars is spent on war.



Normal means 15 million animals are slaughtered each day although up to 14 times as many people could be fed by using the same land currently reserved for livestock grazing.



Normal means one billion earthlings live on the equivalent of one US dollar a day while my neighborhood is teeming with 99 cents stores. But these establishments aren't offering Third Worlders subsistence for 24 hours. No, they're where folks like me can purchase cheap goods—probably assembled in China by pre-teen girls. If you need an earpiece for your coltan-containing cell phone, it's all yours for one dollar and eight cents...after tax.



Normal means taking off your shoes at the airport, being shot at by overzealous cops, and getting priced out of the neighborhoods you grew up in...but never having to walk more than two blocks to find your nearest Starbuck's. Wait, did I say "walk"? I meant "drive," of course. Walking: how Third World of me.



Whether we realize it or not, thanks to corporate scientists, normal also means that when a human gene is introduced to a sheep's mammary glands to produce a protein called alpha-1-antitrypsin, that sheep is no longer a mere sheep...but rather, it's a legally patented commodity known as a "mammalian cell bioreactor." Not a sheep, not a lamb, but a mammalian cell bioreactor. Try it out: Mary had a little mammalian cell bioreactor. Sound normal to you?



Normal means two indistinguishable political parties, corporations that never pay taxes, and yellow ribbons as far as the eye can see.



On a normal day, more than 100 plant or animal species go extinct. On a normal day, 45,000 human beings die of starvation.



Normal means slavery—on so many levels—like this:



In the most remote regions of Brazil, slave labor is employed to cut down grand swaths of the precious rain forest to make room to grow eucalyptus which is then burned by male slaves (who exploit the body, mind, and spirit of female slaves forced into prostitution) to make charcoal for the steel mills of Brazil where the poorest of the poor toil for wages that do not sustain them so that steel can be shipped to a General Motors plant in Mexico (GM is the second largest employer south of the border) where the poorest of the poor suffer maquiladora conditions so these automobile parts can then be shipped to a GM plant in the U.S. (roughly 50 percent of what we call "trade" consists of business transactions between branches of the same transnational corporation) where even the poorest of the poor proudly take on imposing debt to possess a car "made in the U.S.A." so they can clog the highways that were paved over countless eco-systems, filling the air with noxious pollution as they make their way to the drive-through window of an anti-union fast food restaurant that purchased the beef of slaughtered cattle that once grazed on land cleared by male slaves who exploited the body, mind, and spirit of female slaves in the most remote regions of Brazil. That is some of what we accept as normal...



Normal means land mines, factory farming, and the death penalty

It means racial profiling and the shooting of abortion doctors

Normal means gay bashing and it means "illegal" is a noun

It means pesticide, homicide, suicide, genocide

Normal means the WTO, the FBI, CIA, NSA, and KKK

GMO, HMO, Guantanamo.

It means banned books, the war on drugs, and the PATRIOT Act

Normal means: "have it your way" and "just do it"

Global warming, water boarding, People magazine

It means no cod in Cape Cod and soon: no ice at the North Pole

Normal means strip malls; normal means strip mining

It means pre-emptive strikes and humanitarian bombing

It means shock and awe

Normal means if you kill someone while wearing a uniform, you get a parade. Do it in gang colors and you get the electric chair.

Normal means we live in a society programmed and conditioned to lust for revenge instead of unite for peace and justice



After 9/11, normal also came to mean a perpetual war on terror. You know what? Maybe a war on terror is precisely what we need.



No, I'm not declaring public allegiance to the current jihad against a tactic (which is in actuality a war against terrorist attacks not perpetrated by the US or its allies). Instead, I'm thinking of another meaning entirely for our new favorite, post-9/11 word: "terror."



Author Don Lutz has written that terror is "what one feels when being kidnapped or raped."



He goes on to list other terrifying examples:



"Terror is what poor people worldwide feel when approached by uniformed, armed men; what animals feel in research laboratories; what people feel when their families are faced with starvation; what a child feels when an adult starts to hit; what millions of families feel when they hear planes overhead; what fish feel when hooked in the mouth; what people feel under threat of having loved ones tortured or killed; what forest dwellers feel when the loggers come in to clear-cut; what people feel when they are threatened with invasion; and what animals feel at slaughterhouses."



You wanna wage war against terror, why not find a worthy adversary? No shady FBI stings, unconstitutional wire tapping, or panic-inducing color-coded warnings that conveniently pop up at the most politically expedient intervals. The variety of terror I just described is genuine and endemic and it is the real problem.



Many Americans automatically defend their country's rampant illegalities because they perceive these actions as falling under the seductive justification of "defending our way of life."



The U.S. constitutes roughly 5% of the earth's population but consumes more than 25% of the earth's resources. Maybe "our way of life" makes us the real terrorists.



Besides, if our way of life is so sacred, so ideal, so worthy of being defended by any means necessary, why do we need so many homeless shelters, alcohol and drug rehab centers, rape crisis hotlines, battered women's shelters, and suicide hotlines?



Why does a sexual assault occur every 2 1/2 minutes?



If America is the world's shining light, why are its citizens left with no choice but to organize in a desperate attempt to protect human, environmental, civil, and animal rights?



Why can't we drink the water or breathe the air without the risk of becoming ill from corporate-produced toxins?



If America is the zenith of human social order, why does our vaunted way of life provoke terror as a tactic and an emotion?



I know what some of you are thinking: Surely, Mickey Z., humans aren't as bad as you make them sound. They can't possibly be the most dangerous species of all time. Humans aren't more dangerous than a T. Rex, right? To you, I ask: In all the millions of years dinosaurs roamed this planet, did a single stegosaurus ever feel the need to invent nuclear weapons?



Even today's "monsters" are far less harmful than we "intelligent" humans. No great white shark created DDT, napalm, or the internal combustion engine; you can't blame cigarettes, greenhouse gases, hydroelectric dams, or mercury-laced vaccinations on a pit bull; and rest assured no non-human conjured up zoos, animal experimentation, or the circus.



With the point of no return fading in the rearview mirror (or at least obscured by a Hummer), the time is long overdue for all of us to recognize the real enemy is that which inspires terror. The real enemy just might be what we see as normal.



And what can be more normal than the American Dream? You all know the American Dream myth, the fable of individualized success. If we're tough enough and willing to fight our way past the competition, this is the land of opportunity: anything is possible. If you succeed, it's because you worked harder and better and deserved it more. If you fail, the blame is all on you.



William Burroughs sez: "Thanks for the American Dream, to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through."



Vulgarization. Falsification. Compromise. Conformity. Assimilation. Submission. Ignorance. Hypocrisy. Brutality. The elite. All of which, as Rage Against the Machine reminds us, are American dreams.



All of which are American dreams...



So, how about cultivating some new American Dreams?

Dreams not for sale

Dreams not based on celebrity

Dreams not based on material consumption
Dreams not based on physical beauty

Dreams not based on military conquest

Dreams that promote unity and collective action while maintaining individuality and independence

Dreams that challenge us to think for ourselves and about others

Dreams that help us pick out the hayseeds amidst the horseshit



Postscript: In his 1941 classic, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Henry Miller contemplated what it might be like to bring an American Indian back to life and show him the steel mills of Pennsylvania. Miller imagined the Indian thinking: "So it was for this that you deprived us of our birthright?"



Miller pondered, "Do you think it would be easy to get him to change places with one of our steady workers? What sort of persuasion would you use? What now could you promise him that would be truly seductive?"



I think I know what might win over that resurrected soul. A reset button, just like the one Lola had. For if this is the best humanity could produce with the gifts we've been given; if this is what is accepted as normal by the majority of Homo sapiens on the planet, what we really need is to hit the reset button...before it's too late.



But then again, what do I know? I've always been the black mammalian cell bioreactor in my family.



Mickey Z. is the author of CPR for Dummies (http://www.rawdogscreaming.com/cpr.html) and can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.

van rode out of town

obama had a guy named van jones working for him. by all accounts, he sounded like a cool dude. his thing was trying to create green gigs. in short, a progressive. so, the dirt was dug. once, he referred to republicans as assholes. once, he stated that black students wouldn't have created the carnage at columbine. once, he signed a statement requesting a look into governmental collusion in the crime of 9/11
the right wing hacks started blogging. these supposed lovers of freedom never seem to love freedom of speech, when that speech runs counter to their regressive ideology. what is to keep obama from pointing this out? if these protestors can draw hitler mustaches on obama's face, call his health care plan socialist, and refer to him with the n word, why can't van jones speak controversial thoughts out loud? what would the reactionaries do if obama gave a press conference and said "if my opponents value freedom so much, why are they condemning others for practicing the very same freedom they claim to love so much?" what would their response be?

well, i suppose you know how this went down. van was shown the highway. yep, a one way ticket to ride far, far out of town. obama didn't speak up for him. not one word. and the thing is, he's in power now. remember when the big o hung his pastor out to dry? there were those who said he needed to win the presidency. well, he's got the gig now! what's his excuse? why can't obama stand up to power when he is in power?

my hunch is, if obama went on tv and made the kind of challenge to his crtics that i propose, a lot of people would like it. but, the game is not played that way. in the u.s., right wingers can say the most bizarre things, and no one forces them to resign. in fact, they get tv shows! but if you make radical statements from the left, your job will run away faster than a criminal from a cop.

and the cat who represents change won't do a damn thing to stop it.

so, here we stand, with two right wing parties, one more reactionary than the other. of course, the dead pile up under both of them. those afghanis killed as they tried to gather fuel likely felt no better that they died from bombs dropped with the okay of democrats. as this is the case, one could argue with good cause that van jones had no business doing business with criminals of this caliber.

but, just this once, now that the dude is in charge, wouldn't it have been nice if he told his fascist critics to fuck off?

that ain't gonna happen.

not with an election in 2012, and even a few fascist votes helpful to the cause.

and, let's remember that obama is not a fighter. he can't fight fascism, for one needs to recognize a problem before one can fight it.

and if you are too busy creating problems, you will never be able to solve them.

US Hypocrisy Astonishes the World
Indefensible Nation
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Americans have lost their ability for introspection, thereby revealing their astounding hypocrisy to the world.

US War Secretary Robert Gates has condemned the Associated Press and a reporter, Julie Jacobson, embedded with US troops in Afghanistan, for taking and releasing a photo of a US Marine who was wounded in action and died from his injury.

The photographer was on patrol with the Marines when they came under fire. She found the courage and presence of mind to do her job. Her reward is to be condemned by the warmonger Gates as “insensitive.” Gates says her employer, the Associated Press, lacks “judgment and common decency.”

The American Legion jumped in and denounced the Associated Press for a “stunning lack of compassion and common decency.”

To stem opposition to its wars, the War Department hides signs of American casualties from the public. Angry that evidence escaped the censor, the War Secretary and the American Legion attacked with politically correct jargon: “insensitive,” “offended,” and the “anguish,” “pain and suffering” inflicted upon the Marine’s family. The War Department sounds like it is preparing a harassment tort.

Isn’t this passing the buck? The Marine lost his life not because of the Associated Press and a photographer, but because of the war criminals--Gates, Bush, Cheney, Obama, and the US Congress that supports wars of naked aggression that serve no American purpose, but which keeps campaign coffers filled with contributions from the armaments companies.

Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard is dead because the US government and a significant percentage of the US population believe that the US has the right to invade, bomb, and occupy other peoples who have raised no hand against us but are demonized with lies and propaganda.

For the American War Secretary it is a photo that is insensitive, not America’s assertion of the right to determine the fate of Afghanistan with bombs and soldiers.

The exceptional “virtuous nation” does not think it is insensitive for America’s bombs to blow innocent villagers to pieces. On September 4, the day before Gates’ outburst over the “insensitive” photo, Agence France Presse reported from Afghanistan that a US/Nato air strike had killed large numbers of villagers who had come to get fuel from two tankers that had been hijacked from negligent and inattentive occupation forces:

“‘Nobody was in one piece. Hands, legs and body parts were scattered everywhere. Those who were away from the fuel tanker were badly burnt,’ said 32-year-old Mohammad Daud, depicting a scene from hell. The burned-out shells of the tankers, still smoking in marooned wrecks on the riverbank, were surrounded by the charred-meat remains of villagers from Chahar Dara district in Kunduz province, near the Tajik border. Dr. Farid Rahid, a spokesperson in Kabul for the ministry of health, said up to 250 villagers had been near the tankers when the air strike was called in.”

What does the world think of the United States? The American War Secretary and a US military veterans association think a photo of an injured and dying American soldier is insensitive, but not the wipeout of an Afghan village that came to get needed fuel.

The US government is like a criminal who accuses the police of his crime when he is arrested or a sociopathic abuser who blames the victim. It is a known fact that the CIA has violated US law and international law with its assassinations, kidnappings and torture. But it is not this criminal agency that will be held accountable. Instead, those who will be punished will be those moral beings who, appalled at the illegality and inhumanity of the CIA, leaked the evidence of the agency’s crimes. The CIA has asked the US Justice (sic) Department to investigate what the CIA alleges is the “criminal disclosure” of its secret program to murder suspected foreign terrorist leaders abroad. As we learned from Gitmo, those suspected by America are overwhelmingly innocent.

The CIA program is so indefensible that when CIA director Leon Panetta found out about it six months after being in office, he cancelled the program (assuming those running the program obeyed) and informed Congress.

Yet, the CIA wants the person who revealed its crime to be punished for revealing secret information. A secret agency this unmoored from moral and legal standards is a greater threat to our country than are terrorists. Who knows what false flag operation it will pull off in order to provide justification and support for its agenda. An agency that is more liability than benefit should be abolished.

The agency’s program of assassinating terrorist leaders is itself fraught with contradictions and dangers. The hatred created by the US and Israel is independent of any leader. If one is killed, others take his place. The most likely outcome of the CIA assassination program is that the agency will be manipulated by rivals, just as the FBI was used by one mafia family to eliminate another. In order to establish credibility with groups that they are attempting to penetrate, CIA agents will be drawn into participating in violent acts against the US and its allies.

Accusing the truth-teller instead of the evil-doer is the position that the neoconservatives took against the New York Times when after one year’s delay, which gave George W. Bush time to get reelected, the Times published the NSA leak that revealed that the Bush administration was committing felonies by violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The neocons, especially those associated with Commentary magazine, wanted the New York Times indicted for treason. To the evil neocon mind, anything that interferes with their diabolical agenda is treason.

This is the way many Americans think. America uber alles! No one counts but us (and Israel). The deaths we inflict and the pain and suffering we bring to others are merely collateral damage on the bloody path to American hegemony.

The attitude of the “freedom and democracy” US government is that anyone who complains of illegality or immorality or inhumanity is a traitor. The Republican Senator Christopher S. Bond is a recent example. Bond got on his high horse about “irreparable damage” to the CIA from the disclosures of its criminal activities. Bond wants those “back stabbers” who revealed the CIA’s wrongdoings to be held accountable. Bond is unable to grasp that it is the criminal activities, not their disclosure, that is the source of the problem. Obviously, the whistleblower protection act has no support from Senator Bond, who sees it as just another law to plough under.

This is where the US government stands today: Ignoring and covering up government crimes is the patriotic thing to do. To reveal the government’s crimes is an act of treason. Many Americans on both sides of the aisle agree.

Yet, they still think that they are The Virtuous Nation, the exceptional nation, the salt of the earth.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

a dude who runs a school, i guess they call these cats headmasters or principals or deans. i tend to call them assholes or fuckheads. in any case, one of these intellectual midgets was just featured in the local paper. it seems he doesn't feel that the library at his school should contain books. 20,000 of them being donated, disregarded. he said that the computer is to the book as the book was to the scroll. someone should tell this nimrod that analogies are no longer used on sat's.

wow. a library without books. books, they want us to believe, are a thing of the past. even the term library, they intone, is obsolete. speaking of obsolete, remember meredith on the zone? he was a librarian, a lover of books, and, so said his society, obsolete. but yes, library ain't the word anymore. learning center is in. computers. computers. and more computers.

but, can you get a high from touching a computer screen? can you lie down, book beside you, as you bundle yourself under the covers on a cold night? can you take a computer with you to the toilet, as you order up a number 2? (supersize those fries for me please!) the book is your one friend as you sit on the bus. you can walk down the street with it, sit in a cafe with it, read it while you are doing the laundry, as you wait for your pizza.

a book has a smell, a soul, a charm, that a screen will never have. yes, you can put the words of a book on a screen, but the experience of the book itself can not be duplicated. yes, we should get what we can out of computers, but not at the expense of the book, a wonderful creation, perhaps the greatest creation of modern man.

to anyone who has ever touched a book and felt its warmth, this man's plan is a fucking crime.

but, i'll say this. when this shithead is dead and gone, some kid will pick up a book and discover neruda or trumbo or heller or zinn or hughes or emma goldman for the first time. they will sit and lie and cry and laugh and smile as they discover their words.

and they will not have heard of this man.

come to think of it, i've forgotten his name already.

in fact, i never even knew it.

we continue to kill in afghanistan. and now, they are starting to kill us too. 44 american soldiers in july, 47 in august. almost eight years now since the insane carnage began. and for what? they tell us that more troops need to be sent. for, you see, the situation ain't fucked up enough. if we just fuck it up a little bit more, victory will be ours. but victory for whom, and what kind of victory? a country that was all ready ruined is being more ruined. we did it to get osama, al qaeda, the taliban, and we did it for democracy, women's rights, the free market, fair elections. or so we said. at different times, different stories were told. now, nothing is being told. now, it's just being done. the big o has it under control, while others are under the bombs. democracy in afghanistan is a cruel joke. they had it better under the soviets, but no one will ever tell you that, not anyone with an audience anyway. but, in truth, none of these european or north american countries have any business in afghanistan. haven't we murdered enough of their multitudes?

no u.s. president wants to lose a war. no u.s. president wants to admit to being a criminal. no u.s. president wants to stand up to the u.s. military, and the corporations that sustain it. of course, any person who wanted to do these things would not be president. there's the old catch 22 again.

so, afghanis must die. and u.s. troops. crimes must be undertaken. for to stop would be to admit our criminality, or at least, our defeat. so, we must freeze spending on social security and give the military more money. the army will not need to conduct bake sales this year, or the next. there will be no war crimes trials, but there are plenty of war criminals to try. many of them claim to be liberals, and are derided as socialists by their opponents. they insist on playing along with the bipartisan game of war, and are equally embedded in the militaristic structure as the crazed contrarians who attack them.

but, it seems the courts are only for the small time crooks. the big criminals need to run the world.

and you can't run the world from behind prison walls. the game wasn't set up to be played that way. so, we continue with our destruction of afghanistan. should we send more troops, or are there enough there now? do we need to switch to more of a counter insurgency model? perhaps if we only show the troops "battle of algiers" again, all we be well.

but, don't forget how that played out.

the french had to leave. the french lost. and so did a ravaged algeria. left behind were thousands of tortured and dead.

we too will one day have to leave. we will surely leave behind a ravaged nation with no winners. much bravery and courage will be displayed, but for what? it was brave to invade the soviet union in the dead of winter, but no one recalls the nazi invasion of russia warmly. so it is with us.

as petty crooks and pot smokers are criminalized, we condemn countries to a condition of utter carnage.

all the while, getting ready for the next rocky movie.

fuck you freedom!

Gross Violations of Human Rights
Why Not Sanctions for Israel?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

In Israel, a country stolen from the Palestinians, fanatics control the government. One of the fanatics is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Last week Netanyahu called for “crippling sanctions” against Iran.

The kind of blockade that Netanyahu wants qualifies as an act of war. Israel has long threatened to attack Iran on its own but prefers to draw in the US and NATO.

Why does Israel want to initiate a war between the United States and Iran?

Is Iran attacking other countries, bombing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure?

No. These are crimes committed by Israel and the US.

Is Iran evicting peoples from lands they have occupied for centuries and herding them into ghettoes?

No, that’s what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for 60 years.

What is Iran doing?

Iran is developing nuclear energy, which is its right as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran’s nuclear energy program is subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which consistently reports that its inspections find no diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons program.

The position taken by Israel, and by Israel’s puppet in Washington, is that Iran must not be allowed to have the rights as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that every other signatory has, because Iran might divert enriched uranium to a weapons program.

In other words, Israel and the US claim the right to abrogate Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy. The Israeli/US position has no basis in international law or in anything other than the arrogance of Israel and the United States.

The hypocrisy is extreme. Israel is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and developed its nuclear weapons illegally on the sly, with, as far as we know, US help.

As Israel is an illegal possessor of nuclear weapons and has a fanatical government that is capable of using them, crippling sanctions should be applied to Israel to force it to disarm.

Israel qualifies for crippling sanctions for another reason. It is an apartheid state, as former US President Jimmy Carter demonstrated in his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

The US led the imposition of sanctions against South Africa because of South Africa’s apartheid practices. The sanctions forced the white government to hand over political power to the black population. Israel practices a worse form of apartheid than did the white South African government. Yet, Israel maintains that it is “anti-semitic” to criticize Israel for a practice that the world regards as abhorrent.

What remains of the Palestinian West Bank that has not been stolen by Israel consists of isolated ghettoes. Palestinians are cut off from hospitals, schools, their farms, and from one another. They cannot travel from one ghetto to another without Israeli permission enforced at checkpoints.

The Israeli government’s explanation for its gross violation of human rights comprises one of the greatest collection of lies in world history. No one, with the exception of American “christian zionists,” believes one word of it.

The United States also qualifies for crippling sanctions. Indeed, the US is over-qualified. On the basis of lies and intentional deception of the US Congress, the US public, the UN and NATO, the US government invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and used the “war on terror” that Washington orchestrated to overturn US civil liberties enshrined in the US Constitution. One million Iraqis have paid with their lives for America’s crimes and four million are displaced. Iraq and its infrastructure are in ruins, and Iraq’s professional elites, necessary to a modern organized society, are dead or dispersed. The US government has committed a war crime on a grand scale. If Iran qualifies for sanctions, the US qualifies a thousand times over.

No one knows how many women, children, and village elders have been murdered by the US in Afghanistan. However, the American war of aggression against the Afghan people is now in its ninth year. According to the US military, an American victory is still a long ways away. Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared in August that the military situation in Afghanistan is “serious and deteriorating.”

Older Americans can look forward to the continuation of this war for the rest of their lives, while their Social Security and Medicare rights are reduced in order to free up funds for the US armaments industry. Bush/Cheney and Obama/Biden have made munitions the only safe stock investment in the United States.

What is the purpose of the war of aggression against Afghanistan? Soon after his inauguration, President Obama promised to provide an answer but did not. Instead, Obama quickly escalated the war in Afghanistan and launched a new one in Pakistan that has already displaced 2 million Pakistanis. Obama has sent 21,000 more US troops into Afghanistan and already the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, is requesting 20,000 more.

Obama is escalating America’s war of aggression against the Afghanistan people despite three high profile opinion polls that show that the American public is firmly opposed to the continuation of the war against Afghanistan.

Sadly, the ironclad agreement between Israel and Washington to war against Muslim peoples is far stronger than the connection between the American public and the American government. At a farewell dinner party last Thursday for Israel’s military attache in Washington, who is returning to Israel to become deputy chief of staff of the Israeli military, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy, and and Dan Shapiro, who is in charge of Middle East affairs on the National Security Council, were present to pay their respects. Admiral Mullen declared that the US will always stand with Israel. No matter how many war crimes Israel commits. No matter how many women and children Israel murders. No many how many Palestinians Israel drives from their homes, villages, and lands. If truth could be told, the true axis-of-evil is the United States and Israel.

Millions of Americans are now homeless because of foreclosures. Millions more have lost their jobs, and even more millions have no access to health care. Yet, the US government continues to squander hundreds of billions of dollars on wars that serve no US purpose. President Obama and General McChrystal have taken the position that they know best, the American public be damned.

It could not be made any clearer that the President of the United States and the US military have no regard whatsoever for democracy, human rights, and international law. This is yet another reason to apply crippling sanctions against Washington, a government that has emerged under Bush/Obama as a brownshirt state that deals in lies, torture, murder, war crimes, and deception.

Many governments are complicit in America’s war crimes. With Obama’s budget deep in the red, Washington’s wars of naked aggression are dependent on financing by the Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Saudis, South Koreans, Indians, Canadians and Europeans. The second this foreign financing of American war crimes stops, America’s wars of aggression against Muslims stop.

The US is not a forever “superpower” that can indefinitely ignore its own laws and international law. The US will eventually fall as a result of its hubris, arrogance, and imperial overreach. When the American Empire collapses, will its enablers also be held accountable in the war crimes court?

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com