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THE INVASION OF GAZA
by Buff Whitman-Bradley
Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.
--Hosea 13:16
The strong always crush the weak and call upon The court poets and priests to invent fairy tales that justify the carnage And to hire some two-bit god with bad breath poor impulse control And serious personality disorders to consecrate the slaughter
Once upon a time God chose us because we are the righteous ones He tells us we can have whatever we want Even if we have to take it from the Others because The Others are wicked and deserve none of God’s treasures
The powerful blame their victims while claiming to be victims themselves At night they grow transparent and cannot see themselves in mirrors But they hear their own heavily armed shadows everywhere in the streets Whispering secrets and sneaking up on them in the dark
The Others are not beloved of God and wish to annihilate us To drive us into the sea to wipe us off the face of the earth Merely because we protect ourselves against their irrational violence For we are just and merciful and massacre only in self-defense
The imperious always steal from the downtrodden and explain That they are simply claiming what is rightfully theirs That only they are capable of using God’s gifts wisely That only they know how to make the deserts bloom
In our sacred bargain with God we have promised to flatter only Him And He has promised us that the land of the unbelievers is ours And has instructed us to kick their asses to decapitate their children To turn them to dust and live happily ever after
As the corpses pile up the people dance in the streets celebrating A great victory praising their bleary-eyed accommodating god while he sits in a Downtown gin joint with the court priests and poets tossing back shots Trying to get drunk enough to keep the nightmares away
Buff Whitman-Bradley is a peace and social justice activist in Northern California. In addition to writing, he produces documentary videos and audios. With his wife Cynthia, he is co-producer/director of the award winning video Outside In, about people who visit prisoners on San Quentin's death row. __________________________________________________
Wednesday Stuff
And by the way, I'll just bet those crazy kids in Mississippi (here) got their sex ed from this video (and to think, I once wore wide lapels and cotton/poly blend print shirts like this doofus)...
...The Editors ("Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors" on BBC2's "Later...With Jools Holland").
Vonnegut and Fellow Authors on Life
In their latter years, Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), and some of his fellow famous authors, each showed, I think, something of his outlook on life with a little story or a quip. For instance, Vonnegut told about an uncle who often asked a certain rhetorical question:
One thing which Uncle Alex found objectionable about human beings was that they seldom took time out to notice when they were happy. He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and he would interrupt the conversation to say, “If this isn't nice, what is?”
Several years ago, an interviewer asked Vonnegut to recount the story where he told his wife he was going out to buy an envelope:
[S]he says … why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around.
We were at a party thrown by a multi-billionaire out on Long Island, and I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to realize that only yesterday our host probably made more money than Catch-22, one of the most popular books of all time, has grossed world-wide over the past forty years?”
Joe said to me, “I have something he can never have.”
I said, “What's that, Joe?”
And he said, “The knowledge that I've got enough.”
Southwest Airlines Magazine: I understand that at one time you said that you would let your work serve as your biography, and yet In Memory, Yet Green, your autobiography, has just come out. Why did you change your mind?
Asimov: Well, my 200th book was coming up and Doubleday wanted something they could plug, so they said they wanted an autobiography. I tried to resist, but they overcame me.
SWA: How long did it take to complete?
Asimov: Ten months. I started on March 9, 1977, and I finished on December 31, 1977 because I promised I would have it finished by the end of the year. It was rough going, too. The book is over 640,000 words long, which is more than three times as long as The Foundation Trilogy.
SWA: Have you really done that much?
Asimov: In my life? I've done nothing in my life. You would be surprised how shrewdly I had to write it to obscure that fact.
Vonnegut and a fellow famous author, Studs Terkel (1912-2008), each supported the scrappy, pro-democracy newsmagazine, In These Times. Terkel wrote books, such as Working and Hard Times, consisting of his interviews with common Americans, and constantly fought for them, and against ignorance of their history. He told a little story that occurred one day in his Chicago neighborhood:
You know I walk to the bus. Bus number 146. They know me in the neighborhood. They know I’m a writer. They know me as the old guy who’s garrulous. I talk to myself. [Laughs.]
So one day there’s this one couple, they ignore me completely. So my ego is hurt. And I say, “The bus is late.” And I say, to make conversation, “Labor Day’s coming up.” And the man just turns and looks at me—Brooks Brothers, under his arm, the latest Wall Street Journal. And she’s a beauty. Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale’s. She’s got Vanity Fair in her hand. And he turns, looks at me, and says, “We despise unions.” And then he turns away.
And I said, “You what?” And the bus hasn’t come yet. “Do you know that in 1886, ‘87, four guys got hanged? How many hours a day do you work?”
He says, “Eight,” reflexively. I said, “How come you don’t work 18 hours a day? Four guys got hanged for you. Did you know that?”
They think I’m crazy. They’re scared. [Laughs.]
Now I’ve got him pinned against the mailbox. He can’t get away. “So how many weeks do you work?” No bus yet.
So finally they get onto the bus, and she looks out the window, and he says, “Is that guy nuts?” And that was the last I saw of them. This is Uptown—the haves and have-nots. I’ll bet they live in a condominium. Maybe the 15th floor.
In These Times: What do you want your tombstone to say Studs?
Terkel: On my tombstone? Because of my curiosity, my tombstone is very simple: “Curiosity could not kill this cat.” That’s it. And I think we’ve come to the end of the course. For me, I think so.
ITT: No more books?
Terkel: No. You sound like my publisher. That’s it!
On May 1, 1886, Chicago unionists, reformers, socialists, anarchists, and ordinary workers combined to make the city the center of the national movement for an eight-hour day. ...
At the McCormick reaper plant, a long-simmering strike erupted in violence on May 3, and police fired at strikers, killing at least two. Anarchists called a protest meeting at the West Randolph Street Haymarket, advertising it in inflammatory leaflets, one of which called for “Revenge!”
The crowd gathered on the evening of May 4 on Des Plaines Street, just north of Randolph, was peaceful, and Mayor Carter H. Harrison, who attended, instructed police not to disturb the meeting. But when one speaker urged the dwindling crowd to “throttle” the law, 176 officers under Inspector John Bonfield marched to the meeting and ordered it to disperse.
Then someone hurled a bomb at the police, killing one officer instantly. Police drew guns, firing wildly. Sixty officers were injured, and eight died; an undetermined number of the crowd were killed or wounded.
...
Police arrested hundreds of people, but never determined the identity of the bomb thrower. Amidst public clamor for revenge, however, eight anarchists, including prominent speakers and writers, were tried for murder. The partisan Judge Joseph E. Gary conducted the trial, and all 12 jurors acknowledged prejudice against the defendants. Lacking credible evidence that the defendants threw the bomb or organized the bomb throwing, prosecutors focused on their writings and speeches. The jury, instructed to adopt a conspiracy theory without legal precedent, convicted all eight. Seven were sentenced to death. The trial is now considered one of the worst miscarriages of justice in American history.
Many Americans were outraged at the verdicts, but legal appeals failed. Two death sentences were commuted, but on November 11, 1887, four defendants were hanged in the Cook County jail; one committed suicide. Hundreds of thousands turned out for the funeral procession of the five dead men. In 1893, Governor John Peter Altgeld granted the three imprisoned defendants absolute pardon, citing the lack of evidence against them and the unfairness of the trial.
Amid a cacophony of car horns honking and chants of “Yes We Can” and “O-ba-ma,” there were taunts directed at the current occupant of the White House, chants of “No More Bush” and “Nah-nah, Good-bye.”
...
George W. Bush will not get the impeachment that he has so thoroughly earned, but at least there will be the scene of ecstatic young Americans wishing him to be gone from the White House that he illegitimately claimed in the stolen election of 2000.
As I walked among the young crowd that packed into Pennsylvania Avenue and reveled in the area around Lafayette Park, I was reminded of a very different moment nearly eight years earlier when I went with two of my sons, Sam and Nat, to a spot a few blocks away.
We stood in the chilly rain on Jan. 20, 2001, as protesters chanted angrily against Bush’s ascension to the presidency, a position he claimed with the unprecedented help of five Republican allies on the U.S. Supreme Court.
That day was a dark and ominous beginning to what has proven to be a catastrophic eight years.
But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.
I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.
It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.
It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.
This is your victory.
And I know you didn't do this just to win an election. And I know you didn't do it for me.
You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime—two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.
... then we were off, in the rain, me wrapped in my friend's coat, giving hugs and high fives to strangers, all the cars stopping to let us pass through, to the White House where there were drums and cheering and singing and a giant cardboard Obama cutout being passed from hand to hand as if he were there crowdsurfing with us (‘cause you know he would)—and then we saw, unbelievably, in the crowd of 4,000, more people we knew, and we all hugged and took photos and jumped up and down and cried and then the lights in the White House went out and we said that the next day for sure Jon Stewart would talk about how President Bush tried to get all those damn kids off his lawn.
The most amazing thing was how peaceful it was. No one got hurt. No one got in any fights. (I checked the crime reports the next day.) We were all excited and many of us were drunk, but it was so joyous. Even when the crowd started singing together that “na na na na, hey hey, goodbye” song, even that was good-spirited. It was the very definition of peaceable assembly.
The president who has been MIA for all these last weeks, lest he be blamed for John McCain's fortunes, did what only he would do in this instance. He turned out the lights at the White House.
Shortly after midnight, the celebration that had been taking place in the ambient light of the White House faded to dark, while figures continued dancing in the shadows.
In Cleveland yesterday, 80,000 persons packed in and around Mall C for a rally for Barack Obama where Bruce Springsteen played and sang some songs. After the sing-along “This Land is Your Land”, Springsteen did a monologue, which led into “The Rising”, after which he welcomed Obama and his family to the stage. In the monologue, Springsteen strummed some chords, and gave his pitch for voting Obama, and for working to take America back from those who sold it down the river:
Now in my job I travel around the world and I occasionally play to big stadiums or crowds like this, just like Senator Obama does. And I continue to find out that wherever I go, America remains a repository for people's hopes, their desires. It remains a house of dreams. And a thousand George Bush's and a thousand Dick Cheney's will never be able to tear that house down. That's something that only we can do, and we're not going to let that happen.
...
[O]ur house of dreams has been abused, it's been looted, and it's been left in a terrible state of disrepair. It needs defending against those who would sell it down the river for power, and for influence, for a quick buck. It needs strong arms, strong hearts, strong minds. We need someone with Senator Obama's understanding, his temperateness, his deliberativeness, his maturity, his pragmatism, his toughness, and his faith. But most of all it needs us—it needs you and it needs me. And he's gonna need us. Cause all that a nation has that keeps it from coming apart is the social contract between us, between its citizens. And whatever grace God has decided to impart to us, it resides in our connection with one another, and in our life and the hopes and the dreams of the man or the woman up the street or across town—that's where we make our small claim upon heaven.
Now in recent years that social contract has been shredded. We look around today and we can see it shredding before our eyes. But tonight and today we are at the crossroads. We are at the crossroads, and it's been a long, long, long time coming.
...
So I don't know about you, but I know I want my country back, I want my dream back, I want my America back! Now is the time to stand with Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, roll up our sleeves, and come on up for the rising.
