When I was 15 years old and a member of the Irgun underground (by today’s criteria, an honest-to-goodness terrorist organization), we sang “(In the past) we had the heroes / Bar Kochba and the Maccabees / Now we have the new ones / The national youth…” The melody was a German military marching song.
Why did we look for heroes in the remote past?
Image: CIA torture details are appalling. Rectal rehydration and broken limbs: the grisliest findings in the CIA torture report
On December 10, International Human Rights Day, federal Magistrate Matt Whitworth sentenced me to three months in prison for having crossed the line at a military base that wages drone warfare. The punishment for our attempt to speak on behalf of trapped and desperate people, abroad, will be an opportunity to speak with people trapped by prisons and impoverishment here in the U.S.
Outside of Israel and its organized supporters in the major Zionist organizations, world public opinion and most experts in international law see the Jewish State’s invasion of Gaza and its systematic attack on civilians and basic infrastructure as a crime against humanity.
Sunday, June 29th was a warm sunny day which is never to be taken for granted in San Francisco, a perfect day for the annual Pride Parade. I got there at about 11 a.m. and made my way up Spear Street to the staging area of our unit, there to march in honor of our heroic WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
There were about 200 of us assembled for the Chelsea Manning contingent, including people from Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans, and other groups and individuals. Daniel Ellsberg was also there.
Edward Snowden
Is Edward Snowden a radical? The dictionary defines a radical as “an advocate of political and social revolution”, the adjective form being “favoring or resulting in extreme or revolutionary changes”. That doesn’t sound like Snowden as far as what has been publicly revealed. In common usage, the term “radical” usually connotes someone or something that goes beyond the generally accepted boundaries of socio-political thought and policies; often used by the Left simply to denote more extreme than, or to the left of, a “liberal”.
Well, this will be quick and, of course not, painless. I’ve been contending with this sort of deluded idea about America, or the States United, or whatever the hell you want to call this country of collective mass amnesia and mollification of facts, history.
I’m not trying to be snarky here, as the mainstream press seems to call anyone and his brother who might be questioning the values (sic) of our foreign and domestic policies. Snarky as in Glenn Greenwald, James Howard Kunstler, Rachel Carson, what have you.
Oregon voters in two counties voted against GMOs, against Monsanto. That’s 2 to 1 in favor of protecting organic farmers, communities, farmers and our health from pollan and seeds of the Frankenstein variety.
Vermont has signed the nation’s first GMO-labeling law, effective July 2016 (again, incremental, slide-side change — labels — but it’s something, nonetheless).
Here’s today’s essay topic: The Paper of Record Does In-depth Profile of White Guy Environmentalist
Subtopic: Where’s the story?
Key discussion questions: 1) Is despair just a “White Male Thing?” 2) What is the role of art in times of ecocide?
First of all, it should be a subject of some bemusement that our contemporary media culture is so Talmudic that an entire essay can be a commentary on a single brief passage in our infinitely scrolling Torah of news; i.e., an interview in the New York Times – but so it is.
a whole lot of writing going on, but no more shaking . . . rattling the cages
I’ll get to the school and the yard and the fights in a minute. But . . . .
Okay, a guest on the “alternative radio show” in Portland, KBOO-FM.
