This news made me so happy today!

These protesters are going after Bank of America!  I unfortunately had a mortgage with Bank of America - they never sold it to anyone else, because they knew I was an excellent credit risk.... and when I went to pay down the mortgage early, they seriously messed up my account, did not deduct what they were supposed to deduct, and then they started applying my payments to someone else's mortgage.

IT TOOK FIVE MONTHS OF REPEATED PHONE CALLS TO STRAIGHTEN IT OUT.  IT WAS EXHAUSTING.

But, thanks to my tenacity, I did straighten it out.  A year after I paid off my mortgage, they sent me a card saying that I would be welcome to get another mortgage.  I wrote back that I would rather die than have another mortgage with Bank of America.  Nobody makes that many mistakes, and takes so damn long to fix them, without having a criminal agenda.

I feel a lot of sympathy for the people who have a mortgage with Bank of America and actually hit hard times and fall behind on their payments.  They are forced to deal with an evil system run by evil people.  God help them.

THE FUTURE by Leonard Cohen

Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it's lonely here,
there's no one left to torture

Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that's an order!

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture

Give me back the Berlin Wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I've seen the future, brother:
it is murder.

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul

When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
[When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant]

You don't know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I'm the little Jew
who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
but love's the only engine of survival

[Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It's over, it ain't going
any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder]

Things are going to slide ...

There'll be the breaking of the ancient
western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
and the white man dancing

You'll see your woman
hanging upside down
her features covered by her fallen gown
and all the lousy little poets
coming round
tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson
and the white man dancin'

[Give me back the Berlin Wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby:
it is murder]

Things are going to slide ...

When they said REPENT REPENT

War and Peace here in the old USA

Photo:  File photo shows a US Predator unmanned drone armed with a missile stands on the tarmac of Kandahar military airport. The new Pentagon budget includes $113 billion for a range of drone aircraft, a new long-range bomber, helicopters, warships, submarines, anti-missile weaponry and other arms, while boosting pay and benefits for a force stretched by years of combat. (AFP/File/Massoud Hossaini)

•       In March 2010 Secretary of "Defense" Robert Gates complained that "the general [European] public and the political class" are so opposed to war they are an "impediment" to peace.


•       "Since both the US and France lost in Vietnam, then the 'fight for our freedom' must have been unsuccessful, and we must be under the occupation of the North Vietnamese Army. Next time you're out on the street and you see a passing NVA patrol, please wave and tell them Tim says hello." – Tim Moriarty


•       The American Museum of History, on the Mall in Washington, DC: One of the popular exhibitions in recent years was "The Price of Freedom:  Americans at War". This included a tribute to the "exceptional Americans [who] saved a million lives" in Vietnam, where they were "determined to stop communist expansion". In Iraq, other true hearts "employed air strikes of unprecedented precision".


The tyranny empire imposes on others it finally imposes on itself. The predatory forces unleashed by empire consume the host. – Chris Hedges

********************

How long before we have drones flying over our country shooting at people?

Truth

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it...always. "

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"

"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained."

"Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. I must continue to bear testimony to truth even if I am forsaken by all. Mine may today be a voice in the wilderness, but it will be heard when all other voices are silenced, if it is the voice of Truth."
~Mohandas Gandhi

"All great truths begin as blasphemies."
~George Bernard Shaw

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
~George Orwell

Got knocked off line - by lightening

I have not posted this week due to a lightening strike directly behind my home. It fried the modem and my mouse - but the computer works just fine! My neighbors had a couple of windows damaged by the wood from the pine tree that was struck.

I am sure glad that my home did not see any damage.

Chimes of Freedom - Bruce Springsteen

Chimes of freedom from Copenhagen 1988

Well far between sundown's finish and midnight's broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway thunder crashin'
As majestic bells of boats struck shadows in the sun
Sayin' it may be the chimes of freedom flashin'

Flashin' for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashin' for the refugees on their unarmed road of flight
And for each and every underdog soldier in the night
We gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashin'

Well in the city's melted furnace unexpectedly we watched
With faces hidden here while the walls were tightenin'
As the echo of the wedding bells before the blowing rain
Dissolved into the wild bales of lightnin'

Yeah tollin' for the rebel yeah tollin' for the raked
Tollin' for the luckless the abandoned and forsaked
Yeah tollin' for the outcasts burnin' constantly at stakes
And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashin'

And then through a cloud-like curtain in a far off corner flashed
There's a hypnotic splattered mist was slowly liftin'
Well electric light still struck like arrows
Fired but for the ones condemned to drift or else be kept from driftin'

Well tollin' for the searching ones on this speechless secret trail
For the lonesome haunted lovers with too personal a tale
And for each young heart for each channeled soul misplaced inside a jail
Yeah we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashin'

Well starry eyed and laughin' I recall when we were caught
Trapped by an old track of vows for the hands suspended
As we listened one last time and we watched with one last look
Spellbound and swallowed "Has the tollin' ended?"

Yeah tollin' for the achin' ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused accused misused strung out ones at worst
And for every hung out person in the whole wide universe
We gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashin'

Letter to Representative Shuler's office on budget

When I look at the bill passed late last year that extended the Bush tax cuts, and then I look at the bill passed recently to spend more money on unnecessary and counter-productive wars and to continue the bloated military budget.... well, all this talk about a BUDGET CRISIS strikes me as a sick and silly joke.

If you were serious about the deficit, you would not cut the US Government's income by reducing taxes.

You would further get real about cutting the budget by cutting the PENTAGON budget.

Until you do those things, you are not serious at all about the doing something about the deficit.

You are like a silly women who is worried about the child who steals a quarter from her purse to by candy and claiming that will make her go broke, while her husband writes out $1000 checks every day to cover his gambling debts.

Palestine - The Sound of Reason

Bruce Springsteen & Tom Morello - The ghost of Tom Joad

Man walks along the railroad track
He's goin' some place, there's no turnin' back
The Highway Patrol chopper comin' up over the ridge
Man sleeps by a campfire under the bridge
The shelter line stretchin' around the corner
Welcome to the New World Order
Families sleepin' in their cars out in the Southwest
No job, no home, no peace, no rest, no rest

And the highway is alive tonight
Nobody's foolin' nobody is to where it goes
I'm sitting down here in the campfire light
Searchin' for the ghost of Tom Joad

He pulls his prayer book out of a sleepin' bag
The preacher lights up a butt and takes a drag
He's waitin' for the time when the last shall be first and the first shall be last
In a cardboard box 'neath the underpass
With a one way ticket to the promised land
With a hole in your belly and a gun in your hand
Lookin' for a pillow of solid rock
Bathin' in the cities' aqueducts

And the highway is alive tonight
Nobody's foolin' nobody is to where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
With the ghost of old Tom Joad

Solo

Now Tom Said; "Ma, whenever ya see a cop beatin' a guy
Wherever a hungry new born baby cries
Wherever there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me ma
I'll be there
Wherever somebody's srtugglin' for a place to stand
For a decent job or a helpin' hand
Wherever somebody is strugglin' to be free
Look in their eyes ma,
You'll see me

And the highway is alive tonight
Nobody's foolin' nobody is to where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
With the ghost of Tom Joad

Talk in Madison, WI

WASHINGTON RULES by Andrew J. Bacevich

This book is an overview of America’s national security policies, why they are so bad, and why they must change.  No matter who gets elected to office in the US Congress or the White House, things stay the same.  In spite of consistent failures, things stay the same.  This author argues that this must change – we need to stop our militaristic approach to the world, and fix what is wrong here at home.  The book starts with this quote:

“Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood.” – T. S. Eliot (1930)

This problem has been with us a LONG time.  A critic of foreign policy from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Roger Morris, had this to say:

“The lethal fault of American foreign policy is a matter of neither left nor right, neither liberal cowardice nor conservative conspiracy, but rather a relatively banal bipartisan mediocrity…… A loss of competence more than a loss of nerve, it is not different from nepotism and misrule in one’s country commission or school board, a decrepit commuter railroad or an expiring automobile manufacturer like Chrysler.”

And, from the viewpoint of the US Congress and the military-industrial complex, the aim was to make America “safe” by technological fundamentalism.  In past years, the powers that be did not see the US implementing a policy of preventative war, so they saw their pursuit of nuclear dominance as a source of stability, along with military bases around the world.  That the world might look on all this differently did not cross their minds.  And so this monster grew and grew… and sucked up more and more money and effort.  And any serious consideration of a different path was never considered.

Of course, the Iraq war was a “war of prevention” per Bush administration comments.  In reality, it was a war of aggression. 

One US Senator did speak out against the abuse of power.  Senator Fulbright wrote a book called THE ARROGANCE OF POWER, which received little attention.  He proposed that while America had good intentions, but problems developed when these good intentions were married to seemingly bottomless reserves of power.  The result, he proposed, was self-delusion combined with a tendency to lose touch with reality.  Since the time the country was founded, Americans have believed that we were God’s chosen ones to lead the world, and our immense power is a testimony to God’s favor on our country.   Senator Fulbright asked:

“Who are the self-appointed emissaries of God who have wrought so much violence in the world?  They are men with doctrines…. Who believe in some cause without doubt and practice their beliefs without scruple, men who cease to be human beings… and become instead living, breathing, embodiments of some faith or ideology.”

And the politicians set out on their self-appointed missions to police the world, and defeat all tyrannies, are less likely to advance the cause of peace then to wreck havoc, and bring misery and death to the intended beneficiaries.  And, as a side note, though they would claim that “all options are on the table” the fact is that many options are not on the table at all – such as the option to not use violence or falsehoods to promote their cause.  The USA is very much a militaristic and aggressive nation.

And the Presidents that we elect are charged with continuing this policy, while they had us a bunch of slop to make us accept this violence and aggression.   Bush gave us 27 different reasons for invading Iraq and for continuing to occupy Iraq.  Obama has surged three times in Afghanistan, while claiming that this war and occupation is necessary to defeat the “terrorists” even while they acknowledge that the terrorists who organized the attacks on the US on 9-11-01 are long gone from Afghanistan.  And yet Obama still calls it a “war of necessity”. 

Later in the book, this author points out that there is NO evidence that what the US has done in the world with our military has advanced the cause of global peace (he is referring to post WW2).  Here are some steps that the author feels the US should take to correct our way of being in the world:

1)      Recognize that the point of the US military is not to combat evil or remake the world, but to defend the United States.

2)      The primary duty station of the American soldier is in America.

3)      Force should be employed only as a last resort and only in self-defense.

Near the end of the book, the author points out that if the politicians in DC continue to follow these military and fiscal policies, then that is the fault of the American people.  There is much, much more in the book and I do recommend it.

Mississippi 1955 - the story of Emmett Till

This came to me via email from Asheville PARC:


Mississippi 1955 from Bruce Kennedy on Vimeo.

Recent pictures from Afghanistan

Which I will be sending to my elected officials........

A boy, injured during a NATO air strike, lies on a hospital bed in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province February 20, 2011.  REUTERS/Stringer

 

A relative mourns near the damage, caused during a NATO's forces raid in Khogyani district of Nangarhar province, east of Kabul, Afghanistan on Monday, Feb. 21, 2011. The NATO coalition says it is investigating the accidental death of Afghan civilians in Nangarhar province along the Pakistan border.

(AP Photo)

An Afghan youth looks at the damage caused during a NATO's forces raid in Khogyani district of Nangarhar province, east of Kabul, Afghanistan on Monday, Feb. 21, 2011. The NATO coalition says it is investigating the accidental death of Afghan civilians in Nangarhar province along the Pakistan border.

(AP Photo)

Relatives transport the body of a man killed after an air strike in the back of a vehicle in Nangarhar province February 21, 2011. The NATO-led force in Afghanistan said on Monday it was investigating another case where its troops may have accidentally killed Afghan civilians, a day after local officials claimed 64 had been killed in raids in the east.

REUTERS/Parwiz (AFGHANISTAN - Tags: CIVIL UNREST CONFLICT)

*******************

And the idiot Petraus has this to say:

Gen. Petraeus Suggests Afghan Parents Intentionally Burned Children

Tension is rising between U.S. and Afghan officials after reports that 64 Afghan civilians may have been killed in NATO attacks last week. The Washington Post reports that U.S. Army General David H. Petraeus suggested Sunday in a closed meeting that pro-Taliban Afghans might have burned their own children or invented stories to exaggerate claims of civilian casualties. Afghan officials present at the meeting were said to have been shocked by Petraeus’s comment. One Afghan official said, "Killing 60 people, and then blaming the killing on those same people, rather than apologizing for any deaths? This is inhuman."

From Democracy Now on 2-24-11

On those torture tapes that were destroyed

What the torture tapes would have shown:

So here's what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking, (b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical "confessions" under duress. This was all prompted by the president of the United States, implemented by the director of the CIA, and the end result was thousands of wasted man hours by intelligence and and law enforcement personnel.

Attorney General Holder did not and will not let the US Congress question people about what was on the tapes.  Holder did not prosecute anyone for destruction of evidence. 

(However, the real reason the tapes were destroyed may be none of the above reasons – it may be that the tapes caught someone confessing to where the financial backing for the 9/11 attacks actually came from – our supposed allies.  That is just a speculation on my part, and possibly not true at all.)

The America I knew and loved DID NOT TORTURE.  The America I knew and loved DID NOT OBSTRUCT JUSTICE.  The America I knew and loved FOLLOWED THE LAW.  The America I knew and loved RESPECTED CIVIL RIGHTS AND HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ALL PEOPLE, EVERYWHERE, ALWAYS. 

And today, we have a former US president bragging about torture on national TV.  Sickening

The America I knew and loved is dead and gone.  I miss America.  I miss this country badly.  I don’t think it is ever coming back.

A look back at US torture

In this undated file photo obtained by ABC news and allegedly taken by Sgt. Charles Frederick, Army Spc. Sabrina Harman, of the 372nd Military Police Company, poses with the body of Iraqi detainee Manadel al-Jamadi who is packed in ice at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq. In the years since the Sept. 11 attacks, CIA officers who committed serious mistakes that left people wrongly imprisoned or even dead have received only minor admonishments or no punishment at all, according to an Associated Press investigation.

(AP Photo/ABC News, File)

*********

While some of the lower level people involved in torture have been punished, the people who ordered it are still running around free and bragging about the torture they ordered or approved.  Well, free inside the USA.  There are some European countries that are indicating that they might arrest them.  And the CIA officers who have messed up severely over the last nine years - generally no punishment or accountability for them either.  One exception is the CIA folks in Afghanistan who brought in a guy to report on Pakistan... he turned out to be a double agent and blew himself up and killed several CIA agents. 

Poster for a US audience

This came from an End the Occupation email.  Very well done!

We also need to end our support of the building of settlements on Palestinian lands.  With the recent US veto of a UN resolution on this issue, the US government has shown that it is on the side of the Israeli right-wings, and not on the side of peace or justice.  Seems like a stupid and dangerous position to take, in light of all the protests across the Middle East recently.  

Panorama - The Battle for Bomb Alley

This news report really shows the uselessness of our military actions in Afghanistan.

Four and a half million orphans in Iraq!

Keep in mind, a child without a father (and therefore no means of support) is called an orphan even if his mother is still alive.

Clinton shows how much she believes in freedom

While Clinton is giving a speech on internet freedom, and freedom of speech, Ray McGovern stands up and turns his back on her.  Then some security thugs pull him out of the audience and drag him off.  This has got to be the height of hypocrisy.



Veterans for Peace have this statement:

VETERANS’ GROUP DEMANDS APOLOGY FROM SECRETARY OF STATE

HILLARY CLINTON WATCHES AS POLICE MANHANDLE PEACEFUL PROTESTER

George Washington University, Washington D.C., February 15, 2011. 

Just minutes after Secretary Clinton began a speech lauding freedom of the internet, two security personnel forcefully removed an audience member wearing a Veterans For Peace t-shirt who had silently stood and turned his back to her.  Ray McGovern, a 71-year old veteran, and former CIA analyst was violently grabbed and forcibly removed from the auditorium in direct view of Mrs. Clinton.  According to Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, attorney with the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, “For this peaceful expression of dissent, he ended up bruised, bloodied, arrested, and jailed.  Secretary Clinton never paused, continuing her speech lecturing other countries about the need to allow freedom of expression and dissent, while Mr. McGovern was hauled out in front of her.” 

Mr. McGovern is covered with bruises, and the metal handcuffs were fastened so tightly that his wrists were cut and bloody.  After being held by local police, he was told that he was being charged with “disorderly conduct.”

We asked Ray for a quick statement after his release.  He wrote:

“I find myself wondering if this show of brutality may be a signpost on a path to even wider and more brutal repression. I have been comparing what happened during Clinton’s speech Tuesday with my four-minute mini-debate with Donald Rumsfeld on May 4, 2006 in Atlanta (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MInHphR4zBg). Halfway through, Rumsfeld gives the nod to a black-hatted security fellow to elbow me away from the microphone.

I shout, ‘So this is America.’  Rumsfeld takes one look at the TV cameras streaming live, makes a snap decision, and tells the security fellow to let me stay.  During that same speech in Atlanta, one fearless witness stands dead-center in the audience with his back to Rumsfeld for the entire speech and is not bothered, much less beaten and jailed.
The contrast between the experience of May 2006 and February 2011 can be viewed through the prism of the proverbial ‘boiling frog.’ There does seem to be a subtle but successful campaign to get people gradually accustomed to increasingly repressive measures; and many, perhaps most, Americans seem oblivious. 

After 9/11 Norman Mailer saw a ‘pre-fascist climate’ reigning in America.  If we don’t stand up for our rights, it may not be long before we shall have to drop the ‘pre.’”

Veterans For Peace is proud of our member Ray McGovern, whose simple, dignified action speaks volumes about the power of non-violence.  We abhor the actions of the security personnel who reacted violently and in flagrant violation of Mr. McGovern’s First Amendment rights.  We also deplore the indifference of Secretary Clinton who didn’t bat an eye and we demand that she apologize for her silence and hypocrisy.   Most importantly, we call on the American public to wake up to the dark reality of what this country has become…a place where civil liberties and freedom of expression are becoming increasingly endangered, and the government’s response to every situation is intimidation and force.

Call 202-647-4000 and write Sec. Clinton to protest.

Government turns violent in Bahrain

And meanwhile, Clinton and Obama sharply criticize Iran's actions towards the protesters there .... which is way more peaceful than either Bahrain or Egypt.

Anti-government demonstrators disperse after being attacked by Bahraini riot police officers at the Pearl roundabout in Manama.  Photograph: Hasan Jamali/AP

Women weep outside a hospital morgue in Manama.  Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images