ON THE CUTTING EDGE.

You might say, “My work is on the cutting edge.” Or maybe you would boast, “I like to be on the cutting edge," or "I live on the cutting edge.”

Sorry about the first: your work’s being shredded? And the second? OUCH!
That must hurt! I hope you aren’t sitting on that cutting edge.

My point is a simple one. The people who created the idiom, “the cutting edge,” may have had something in mind, a metaphor perhaps about getting things done? It’s easier to cut the cheese with the cutting edge instead of the flat edge.” But the people who use the idiom to describe their work or thinking or research are not to be trusted: they don’t make sense. And those who “live on the cutting edge” must be (a) in great pain, and (b) utter idiots.

SOMETHING GOOD

For a change, something to be happy to report.

Four students at the Universität des Saarlandes where I teach—two undergraduates, two doctoral students—decided in early December to collect Christmas presents for poor children in Ireland.

Our English department is in the midst of an “Irish Semester,” and we have received generous support from the European Government, Irish embassy in Berlin, Volkswagen Ireland, the Irish Tourist Board, and Guinness. They decided that we should give something back.

The Saint Vincent de Paul Society in Ireland agreed to accept and distribute presents for us. DHL volunteered free shipping and delivery to Ireland for our packages. And Wordsworth Publishers in England gave them 48 free books, ranging from “Gulliver’s Travels” to “The Little Prince,” from Jane Austen to John Steinbeck, from a big book of Irish fairy tales to the collected tales of Edgar Allan Poe.

Starting the 10th of December, they asked students and staff to leave presents in our departmental library: €10 to €15 presents, of a size to fit in a shoebox, for girls or boys, age groups up to three, 4 to 8, 8 to 12, and teenagers. Five days later, DHL picked up 141 boxes. And the boxes arrived at St. Vincent De Paul in Dublin on Tuesday, 21 December, in time to be delivered for Christmas.

Michael Tighe, their contact at St. Vincent de Paul, wrote to thank them:

I think this is a great story of European brotherhood and goodwill. A lot of
people here feel quite conflicted about Ireland having to ask for support from
the IMF and the EU so something like this, in my opinion, adds a lovely sense
of European community and society instead of it all being about European
economy. Maybe I’m just a romantic, but you have really brightened my sense of
being not just Irish but a European too.

Eva Michely, Heike Missler, Klaus Schappert, and Sebastian Zimmer are already planning for next year. Maybe 141 boxes will turn into 500 then.

Bert Hornback

THE COMMUNITY OF THE DYI NG

Thinking, lately, about death. If there is no afterlife, then once I am dead that’s it. What follows is nothing. Why should I want to be remembered as a good man? I won’t be around to appreciate that. And if I have been an evil man, that won’t matter to me either. Since everything that exists in time will be, for me, non-existent, once I am dead, everything is utterly and absolutely meaningless.

I might accumulate happiness and pleasures and good memories and friends, but in the end they are like the material things—property, money, titles—that I must leave behind when I die.

The belief in death makes everything meaningless—unless I also believe in community. And community proposes, or perhaps more simply is a kind of afterlife: but an afterlife about us, not me. And if I can believe in community, then I don’t need the kind of personal afterlife that religions help us to fabricate.

To believe in community means that I have to be good enough to want to make better and happier the lives of those who follow me.

Of course, I will first have to believe in the good. Unless I believe in the good—absolutely—as the highest value—everything moral is absurd.

This is not a new thought, and it doesn’t belong to me. Our languages have been teaching this for several millennia. Community, good, and moral are all together words: words that teach togetherness. Thus my afterlife is our afterlife.

If there is what is usually called an afterlife—a continuance of personal existence beyond death—that will be a happy bonus. But more important and more urgent is the life that goes on in this world after my death and beyond my personal existence. I have to be good in this life—good enough to make better the lives of those who follow me.

If I believe in the good, I have no choice but to try to live in this way. A life dedicated to the good has no room for our usual greed.


Bert Hornback

HONOR BRADLEY MANNING

Brave people are often abused.

Honor is something that recent (and present) American governments have not been known for. Indeed, our governments since John Kennedy's "Bay of Pigs" invasion have regularly been criminal in their disregard of our Constitution and United States law. Our current and on-going violations of international law make us a rogue state.

WikiLeaks is providing a valuable service to the world--and to us, as Americans. We should be glad to have the crimes and dishonesties of our government published. Only by knowing them can we correct them.

Are there any Americans who are proud of what the WikiLeaks documents expose? Shouldn't we all thank WikiLeaks, and then demand that those responsible for illegal. immoral, and unethical policies and actions be charged and prosecuted.

If we don't do that, we are as guilty as our governmental thugs are.

If our government thinks that Private Bradley Manning is ultimately responsible for these damning documents being released, then congress should award him the Congressional Medal of Honor, and we should all celebrate his heroism. Right now, however, our government has Bradley Manning in prison, in solitary confinement, at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. He has been so held for nearly seven months.

Bradley Manning has not yet been charged with a crime. He has committed no crime. In fact, under both United States civil law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice had he not made public the evidence of the serious felony crimes which he discovered, he would be guilty of misprision of multiple felonies, of being an accessory after the fact to the commission of those felonies.

Bradley Manning has committed no crime. And our government can't charge him with having committed a crime, because his defense will be that he was doing what our law requires him to do. So, since George W. Bush suspended our Constitutional right of Habeas Corpus by executive order, and Barack Obama has not undone that illegal order, Bradley Manning might just spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement at Quantico. He is now twenty-two years old.

But maybe, someday, he will be released. Maybe someday we will have an honest, honorable, law-abiding president again. But someday is a long, long time for a young man to wait for justice. Must we make him wait? Must we cooperate in violating his rights? Must we support governmental oppression? Must we be toads and toadies? Cowards?

THOSE THINGS MONEY CAN (?) BUY

Sure, everybody knew it. Except for the owners of the Miami Hee-Heat and the three Hee-Heaters named James, Bosh, and Wade.

In Saturday night's loss to Dallas, James Bosh Wade played 115 of the team's total of 240 minutes (48 minutes x five players on the floor). Among them, the others played 115 minutes.

Here are the statistics:

Hee-Heat; Rest of the team
Shots/Shots made 56/22; 19/9
Threes/Threes Made 6/0; 8/5
Rebounds 25; 18
Assists 11; 6
Steals 3; 5
Turnovers 13; 1
Blocks 2; 3
Points scored 67; 28

For most of the game, the Hee-Heat seem to have tried to play by themselves.

Dallas, on the other hand, played as a team. They took 87 shots--and five different players took more than shots each--and made 40 of them. 6 players scored morer than 10 points each, Five players took a total of 17 threes, and made five of them.They had 46 rebounds, 25 assists, and made 8 steals. And six players committed a total of only 11 turn-overs--whereas James Bosh Wade among them gave the ball away 13 times.

This wasn't simply a bad night for the Hee-Heat. It was their usual night. Maybe if they were in a three-on-three league they would be pretty good. But maybe not. Maybe they would be better as three entries in a one-on-one league.

WAR MEMORIALS

Most countries, I suspect, have war memorials. And the majority of those memorials heroize the dead warriors. The British Cenotaph in London, a memorial to the British soldiers and sailors killed in the 1914-1918 war, is emblazoned with the words “The Glorious Dead.” The Marine Memorial in Washington, D.C. remembers those who died in World War II in the image of four Marines struggling to raise a United States flag on Iwo Jima, a small island in the Pacific Ocean.

Trafalgar Square in London has a column at its center, topped with a statue of Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, the victor of the battle of Trafalgar in 1813. At Hyde Park Corner the Duke of Wellington, the British general who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, has a great marble arch dedicated to his memory.

And Hyde Park Corner also has, from a century later, a white marble memorial topped with a large bronze statue of the biblical boy David. It is dedicated to the Machine Gunners Corps of the British Army: “To the Glorious Heroes . . . who fell in the Great War .” And just below that dedication, a perversely celebrative verse from the biblical Book of Samuel: “For Saul has slain his thousands, but David his tens of thousands.”

Nearby, there is an equally perverse statue, allegedly of Achilles. It is heroic in size, more than five meters tall. It represents the Duke of Wellington as Achilles. The Duke was forty-six years old at Waterloo, and lived to be eighty. Achilles, of course, was killed at Troy, at about twenty. The statue represents Wellington-Achilles as a beautiful, muscular young man, with not a blemish on his naked body. For decency’s sake, his genitals are covered by a fig leaf, but his sword is left naked.

There is a war memorial outside Spicheren, on the French-German border near Saarbrücken. In 1870 the French and Prussian armies fought there on a Saturday in early August of 1870. It was a horrible day for both sides. Late in the afternoon, the French retreated to Metz. By then 12,000 young Frenchmen had been killed, and 10,000 young Germans. Today there is a memorial to those 12,000 French soldiers atop the hill, and about twenty yards away another plinth, memoralising the 10,000 Germans who died that day. In between, there is a small circle of light blue gravel surrounding a rectangular stone, three feet high and about two feet square. A small brass plaque in the middle of the top is inscribed “NEVER AGAIN.” It is a European Union marker.

Washington, D.C. is full of monuments. The beautiful and worthy Lincoln Memorial; the monument to George Washington, a slave-owner; the Jefferson Memorial, dedicated to the author of the Declaration of Independence, who later sold his own children by a slave woman. John F. Kennedy. Franklin d. Roosevelt. Others. But not many war memorials, surprisingly. But maybe the United States has already had too many wars for them all to get memorials. The War of 1812, the Civil War, all the nineteenth century Indian Wars, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korea, the invasion of Lebanon in 1958, the invasion of Cuba in 1961, Vietnam, the proxy was against Nicaragua, Greneda, Iraq I, Iraq II, Afghanistan.

But there is a Vietnam War Memorial: a black marble wall, with the names of the thousands of American men who died in that shameful war. It isn’t a heroic monument, it doesn’t celebrate anything. It simply remembers.

I have been thinking lately that we should have, in Washington, two Iraq War Memorials, and an Afghanistan War Memorial—even before the Afghanistan War is over, and even though it may already be the Afghanistan-Pakistan War.

For the first Iraq war I would suggest several bull-dozers filling in a sandy trench, burying alive a large number of young Iraqi soldiers, with General Colin Powell supervising the operation.

For Iraq II, I would recommend a big hole in the ground, filled with oil, with the heads of Bush and Cheney sticking up out of it, and the smell of lies and death everywhere around.

And for Afghanistan? Just a very large and deep hole. Or maybe such a hole filled with worthless dollar bills.

TYPICALLY STUPID ABSURDITY--AND BEYOND

TYPICALLY STUPID ABSURDITY—AND BEYOND

With our help, the terrorists have defeated us. They helped us create the Transportation Security Administration. “Get Scared, America!” is its motto.

Every two minutes in our airports, a serious voice warns us: be above suspicion, personally--and always be suspicious of everybody else. We must keep our luggage with us—or it will be confiscated and destroyed. And if we see any unattended baggage, or suspicious-looking persons, we must report them immediately. Everybody is a potential enemy—particularly anybody who isn’t a regular northern European looking American. “Be Vigilant, America!”

First we had metal detectors. Then shoes off. Then no liquids: but that was a bit extreme, too soon, so we modified the restriction. No more than three two-ounce bottles of liquid. (Who decided that it would take more than six ounces of a liquid explosive to do something awful?) Pat-downs. Now full body radiation scans. And sexual groping by specially trained gropers. And a cancer survivor required to take off her prosthetic breast for checking. “Be Terrified, America!

Be so terrified that you will submit to anything.

It was Franklin D. Roosevelt, wasn’t it, who said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Let me suggest some ways we might really begin to protect ourselves and these United States.

1. Quit making enemies. Quit bombing Afghans and Pakistanis and then calling the people we kill “Muslim terrorists.”

2. Quit referring to Islam as “the enemy.”

3. Instead of more bombs, start rebuilding the countries that we have destroyed, house by house, village by village, city by city. And rebuild the infrastructure that our bombs have destroyed.

4. And start rebuilding the failed nation called the United States.

Build schools. Hire teachers, and more teachers, and more teachers.

Build decent housing for the poor.

Provide medical care for everybody except the rich.

Tax the rich. Tax all wealth that exceeds five million dollars at the
at the rate of 100%, and use the money to pay off the national debt.

Disband the military. Depend on moral strength instead of armed force.

Use the money we spend on the military—two billion dollars a day?—to
do good things, both at home and abroad. Teach our soldiers to build
things and help people, rather than to destroy things and murder people.

Lead the world in getting rid of nuclear weapons.

Quit honoring guns. Take them out of American life.

Quit pretending that God blesses America and nobody else. Only
a perverse God would bless us and the way we live.

Learn to honor peace.

Learn to make friends, and be friends.

A FEW SIMPLE THOUGHTS

1. Everybody knows that George W. Bush's book is plagiarism. One hundred percent plagiarism. No matter how bad and how badly written it is, we know he can't have written it. He can barely write his name.

2. Terrorists 300,000,003, US 0. That's something like the score.

What do terrorists do? They make people afraid, and thus disrupt lives. With the help of an idiotic government, today's terrorists have paralyzed the United States. Now the idiots at the Transportation Security Agent are adding more terror to our daily lives. In order to get into the "secure" area of an American airport, you have to submit a nude photo op or to being sexually molested by some goon. And once you are in the "secure" area, you get loud announcements every three minutes warning you that the scare monitor is at orange--has it ever been anything other than orange?--and if you see anybody suspicious looking you should notify the nearest law enforcement officer.

Our government has been given prize after prize by Terrorism International, for helping their cause. It is rumored that Terrorism International pays for the scanning devices, and trains the sexual molesters for free.

3. In case anybody hasn't noticed, we could use all the money spent on the anti-terrorism nonsense to feed the poor, house them, give them decent medical care, and give all American children decent schools.

4. Or we could just tax the rich, and pay off the national debt. Nobody needs more than a million dollars. Do you hear your good friends quivering? Say it again: Nobody needs more than a million dollars. And if you have two one million dollar houses, one of them should be taken away from you, and you should have to borrow money to live on in the other one.

5. This year for Christmas, let's feed the turkey, and eat the greedy.

Bert Hornback

AFTERMATH

In the aftermath of the election, and the prospect of getting nothing done in Congress, Mr. Obama has two choices: either he can accept defeat, and be a lame duck for the last two years of his one-term presidency, or he can fulfill several of the promises he made when he was campaigning and still accomplish something significant--and maybe get re-elected.

By executive order, Mr. Obama can

(1)Restore our constitutional right of habeas corpus;

(2)Close the illegal concentration camp in Guantanamo;

(3)Stop CIA kidnappings--"renditions"--all over the world;

(4)Close all the the illegal CIA prisons and torture camps;

(5)End the US invasion of Pakistan, and US attacks inside Pakistan;

(6)Quit blocking court decisions overturning the unconstitutional
"Don't Ask-Don't Tell" law.

He can do all of that in one busy day. And he can maybe save our country and his presidency.

Bert Hornback

NO PERETZ HALL AFTER ALL

Concerning Martin Peretz: I have received a letter from the office of the president of Harvard University, assuring me that "the University is not naming a building after him." In a statement issued by the University, the president says that the university is "dedicated to the proposition that all people, regardless to color or creed, deserve equal opportunities, equal respect, and equal protection under the law." He continues, "The recent assertions by Dr. Peretz are therefore distressing to many members of our cummunity, and understandably so."

So no Martin Peretz Hall of Anti-Social Studies after all.

Bert Hornback

GOD BLESS AMERICA--SOMEDAY

The President of the United States says that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law is discriminatory, and unconstitutional. So he pressures the judiciary to keep that discriminatory and unconstitutional law in force.

He says that the district court judge who ruled that the law is discriminatory and unconstitutional was "moving too fast." Does the President not know that "moving too fast" is what racist America said to people like him for more than a century?

But the President doesn't move fast. He has had nearly two years now to say "Close the Concentration Camp at Guantanamo," but he hasn't said it. He has had nearly two years to restore the consitutionally guaranteed right of "Habeas Corpus"--but he hasn't done that, either.

And thanks to the President's disregard for law or justice, he now has Bradley Manning beginning his seventh month in solitary confinement at the Quantico Marine Corps base. Manning hasn't been charged with a crime--and he hasn't committed one. In fact, he is in prison--in solitary confinement--because he obeyed the law.

A person who knowingly conceals information about a felony is by definition an "accessory after the fact" of the offense. "Misprision of a felony" is the other legal name for this crime. It is both a federal offense and an offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Had Manning kept secret the criminal activity which he uncovered about our military, he would have become himself guilty. He did the right thing, and released the information.

Another young man in the U. S. military risked his life trying to expose the murderers in his unit in Afghanistan. When his father told military authorities about it, they told him to get lost. Now that the murders are public knowledge, the military has charged the whistle-blower with murder. And the men who murdered innocent civilians at random, for sport, and saved their victims' fingers--and one skull--as souvenirs of their crimes: they are "under investigation."

What has happened to us--to the United States? Mr. Obama was supposed to be a good man, and an intelligent man: that's why I voted for him. I can't find either the goodness or the intelligence. And I can't find any leadership or courage or honor.

My friends tell me, "Give him time, give him time." They tell me we can't go too fast in trying to undo wrongs. If the house is on fire, I shouldn't hurry to put it out. If I see a drowning man, I shouldn't rescue him too fast. If. . . .

JUSTICE FOR ALL

One young man about to start his seventh month in solitary confinement for obeying the law. . . .

Another charged with murder for blowing the whistle on U.S. Army murderous "game hunters" in Afghanistan, while the "game hunters" remain unindited. . . .

Bradley Manning is suspected of having leaked classified information about
U.S. war crimes. Had Manning--a twenty-one year old soldier--NOT leaked those documents he would have been committing a crime. He would have been an accessory after the fact, guilty of misprision of a felony: very serious crimes under American civil and military law.

So he is in jail: in solitary confinement at the Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia. Starting his seventh month in solitary.

Manning hasn't been charged with any crime. Why not? Because if the military or Mr. Obama's government charges him with a crime, his defense will be that he was obeying the law by doing so, and that all those who have tried to keep what he uncovered secret are the guilty parties.

(Of course Manning has only been held in solitary confinement, not charged with any crime, for six months, going on seven. Mr. Obama's prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camp have been held--some of them--for nine years now, not charged with any crime. That's justice, American style.)

And the young man who told his father about the kill-for-sport Army "game hunters" in Afghanistan: that young man is charged with murdering an Afghan civilian. But the Sergeant and the others who organised the murder games have not been charged with anything. Only the heroic young man who "ratted" on them. And when that young man's father tried to tell the U.S. Army what was going on, he was told to get lost.

The U.S. has given more than 200,000 young men an opportunity to become murderers. Six month tours, then more six month tours. Learn to kill. Murder is your job, boys. And now go home and be civilised. That's the American way.

In World War II, the men who fought had at least a sense--a legitimate sense--that they were fighting aggression and--in the Nazis' case--evil. When the war was over, they came home to something that could be called civilisation, having served in what could be seen as a good cause.

Since then--Korea, Vietnam, our proxy wars in Nicaragua, Angola, Bush the first's oil war, Bush the second's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now Obama's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan--our cause has been greed, our principle arrogance, our creed simple murder.

In 1945 American troops came home to a mostly civilised country. Our government created the Marshall Plan, to rebuild Europe: and the Marshall plan may well be the greatest, most wonderful social undertaking in human history.

Troops who come home now from our wars have learned to be racist bigots, or to enjoy killing, or both. And they come home to a selfish country, dedicated to greed and hatred and violence. There are many more guns in the United States than in the middle east. Our returning warriors, used to killing, will really be coming "home."

It's frightening. And what is more frightening is that so many people who should care about all this--good, decent people--have stuck their heads in the sand. They don't want to hear the bad news. They think they can hide. Maybe they think things won't explode in the United States before they have a chance to die.

But what about their children?

Bradley Manning is a hero. So is the young man who was frightened by the crazy murderers he lived with.

I'm not sure that, come election day this year, we have a chance to vote for a change in America, for a change to a better, more civilised way of life. But maybe if we vote down the extremists on the right this year, we can at least keep things from getting worse. And maybe someday we will re-learn honor and decency, and will find candidates for high office worthy of our support.

I had thought that Mr. Obama was a bright and good man. He isn't. Next round, I will vote for Bradley Manning for president. And for that other young man for vice-president. Even if they aren't on the ballot.

THUG AMERICA

YASIR AFIFI is a twenty year old student, and an citizen of the United States. His father happens to be Egyptian. He found a tracking device on his car. The FBI admitted that it "belonged" to them. They wanted it back. And the FBI thug who was speaking to him allegedly said, "We're going to make this much more difficult for you if you don't cooperate."

A perverse United States judge says secret electronic surveillance of United States citizens is legal. But no judge can make what the FBI thug said other than criminal.

"We're going to make this much more difficult for you IF you don't cooperate": that statement is an overt threat of violence. It is attempted extortion.

An FBI thug ought to go to jail. His superiors who ordered the spying should be charged too, but the perverse judge has at least temporarily made that impossible.
Spying on citizens is legal, he says. But he hasn't made extortion or attempted extortion legal.

Is the United States a "police state"? Have we taken over from the old Soviet Union?

Since when is it a crime in the United States for a citizen to be an Arab, or a Muslim? Racial discrimination has been illegal since 1964: which means that cops can't harass or arrest black people because they are black or white people because they are white, or Jews because they are Jews, or Muslims because they are Muslims. Or Arabs or Arab-Americans because they are Arabs or Arab-Americans.

The United States has become a Discrimi-Nation again. It is sad, shameful, oppressive, threatening, frightening. And we are all scared to say anything. It seems that even our president is afraid to say anything: even though all United States citizens are his people: black people (African, African-American, etc.), white people (Indo-Europeans--both Caucasian and those from northern India--, Arabs, Berbers), yellow people(Chinese, Japanese, South-East Asian, Mongol, Eskimo), red people (native North and South Americans), Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindua, atheists of any color or race or tribe or origin.

Even women, left-handed people, albinos, the physically handicapped, old people, young people, mentally handicapped people, homosexuals, long-haired people, and people who don't belong to the NRA: all of us citizens are fully-entitled and should be fully-protected under law and by our president. By our congress, too, and by our courts. Even by law enforcement agencies, and rogue organisations like the FBI, CIA, and NSA.

What went wrong? How did we become a police state without a dictator? How did the rule of law disappear? George I. Q. 0. Bush suspended (illegally) the constitutionally guaranteed right of habeas corpus, and president Obama has not undone that arrogance of power. And it has long been true that, at lower levels, the United States is a police state.

Are you afraid of policemen and sheriffs? Yes: because SOME of them are bad, evil. Do you contribute to your local law enforcement officers' "benevolent fund"? The officer who calls says that if you donate money, you will get a decal for your car that will identify you as a "friend"--and you know what that means. Do you report that criminally extortionist call to your local district attorney? Of course not.

We have known for years that the CIA and NSA commit murder all around the world--"to preserve American liberty." And none of us ever object. None of us ever say that the United States should not murder.

Right now we have a twenty-one year soldier in solitary confinement for exposing military crimes. He has been in solitary confinement for nearly five months, while our corrupt system of justice tries to find out what crime they can charge him with. Awkwardly, both United States civil law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice make concealing knowledge of felony offenses itself a felony. Thus Bradley Manning is not a criminal; he exposed criminal acts.

We run a concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. We have been holding men prisoner there, some of them for nine years, but none of them have been charged with a crime. Guantanamo is the crime. We are the criminals. But none of us says anything.

And most likely we will say nothing about what happened to twenty year old United States citizen Yasir Afifi. We will just hope that it doesn't happen to us: which means that we--all of us, me included--are moral cowards.

Morality has nothing to do with sin, or sex. "Moral" is a word for how we live together. And when we don't live together, when each of us hides and avoids social responsibility--our responsibility to each other--then we are immoral.

Unless we defend Yasir Afifi--and Bradley Manning, and the people in our illegal camp at Guantanamo Bay, and the people somewhere in this world that the CIA or the NSA will murder tonight or tomorrow--: unless we defend them, we are immoral.

Bert Hornback

HYPOCRITUS

The U.S. government didn't manage to stop its hideous, perverse, illegal, and unethical syphilis experiments on black prisoners at Tuskegee until 1972: thirty years on--and well-hidden. Now we have news of further U.S. government sponsored syphilis "research"--again hideous, perverse, illegal and unethical--involving intentionally infecting otherwise uninfected Guatamalan men with syphilis. Why Guatamalan? Not just because they were poor? Not just because they were not "white"? (Well, we might say, at least they weren't U.S. citizens this time.)

Of, course, since the beginning of the Tuskegee experiments, the U.S. government had been spewing propaganda about medical experiments the Japanese were supposedly carrying out on prisoners. According to U.S. propaganda, this proved that the Japanese were "evil," even "sub-human," and deserved to be "exterminated." U.S. propaganda wasn't so hard on the Nazis: after all, they were only doing bad things to Jews.

Now? Well, the U.S. has its government kidnappers and murder squads all over the world, its secret "rendition" prisons and torture camps, and its illegal concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. And the U.S. president won't do anything to stop them. U.S. military courts absolved almost everybody in the torture crimes scandal in Iraq. The U.S. Army almost managed to keep anyone from knowing about the "kill-for-sport" soldiers in the Army's Stryker unit--but one brave young man and his father finally made these continuing war crimes public knowledge. And the U.S. government has had Bradley Manning in solitary confinement for more than four months now, at Quantico; he is the young U.S. Army soldier who heroically and honorably leaked videos of U.S. military's murders of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, published as "Wikilinks."

Is there anything that connects all these things? Of course there is. And there are surely more links in this chain of violence, war crimes, and constant dishonor.

The Nuremburg War Crimes trials which the U.S. ran did not punish individual Nazi soldiers. It punished leaders. Of course: and in those days U.S. President Harry Truman had a sign on his desk, "The Buck Stops Here." It's time to conduct similar trials for the U.S. leaders responsible for these recent and continuing crimes. And if the U.S. court system is compromised--contaminated--and we don't have a working democracy any more, then the World Court should do it.

Or do 10,000 nuclear weapons and a lack of any sense of honor put us above anything like law or justice?

KIDNAP, KIDNAP

I don't like revenge. But sometimes, when bullies won't listen, won't learn, "turn about is fair play" seems almost morally legitimate.

The US has just convicted a Palestinian citizen, Aafia Siddiqui, of "trying to murder US military personnel." She was sentenced to 86 years in prison.

Dr. Siddiqui's husband and uncle have been held, illegally, in the US concentration camp at Guantanamo since 1991. Dr. Saddiqui had been captured by US soldiers, in 2006, in Afghanistan, and was being "interrogated." She escaped. Two years later she was kidnapped, brought to the US, and left to rot in prison for two years. Now she has been tried, and convicted.

Now an American citizen has been kidnapped, and the kidnappers are demanding an exchange. They will free this unnamed hostage in exchange for the freedom of Dr. Siddiqui.

A hostage exchange. Kidnap for kidnap.

Or is it against some higher special privilege for power law that says only the US can kidnap people?

Not to mention run a concentration camp in Cuba, and hold kidnapees in secret prisons all over the world.

I don't know about you, but I assume that, like me, you prefer the rule of law to our government's arrogant lawlessness.

Bert Hornback

HYPOCRISY????

Oh, come now! The good ole liberty-loving USA couldn't possibly be hypocritical. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson the slave-owning, daughter-selling "all men are created equal" founding father, the Christian hate-mongers and warriors, the democracy-loving congressmen who love lobbyists, the champions of college and professional athletics, the rich liberals, the millions and millions of income tax cheats and liars: they can't be hypocrites!

I would defend every last soul--if there is such--among them. Just because we execute a woman in Virginia is no reason we can't cry "shame!" at Iran for planning to execute a woman. Is a "lethal injection" any less humane than stoning? Does a human cringe more, cry more, curse more, hurt more being injected with a deadly poison or potion than by being hit with stones? Isn't death death? Isn't murder murder? Those Iranians! Who do they think they are, criticising us? Everything we do is right, and just, and proper. (Excuse me: can I add, just for my liberal heart's sake, "Screw the poor!")

How about the Pakistani woman sentenced to 86 years in prison--for allegedly shooting at US soldiers in Pakistan. Wait. We don't have soldiers in Pakistan, legally. Wait twice. Let's remember that the US has had her uncle and husband in its illegal concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cubs for nine years--on "suspicion" of crimes that the US obviously can't prove or they would have brought them to trial. Wait a third time. This woman was kidnapped in Pakistan by the US.
And now she has been tried in a US kangaroo court, and convicted--of shooting at US soldiers operating illegally in Pakistan, which happens to be her country. Good for us! We are always right, no matter what we do. (We have nuclear bombs: and everybody had better remember that!)

We USers are a moral people. We believe strongly that we are right. We hate everybody who doesn't agree with us. We are confident that Jesus Christ approves of greed, and actually wrote in his famous gospels that greed and other kinds of violence are Christian virtues. We know that God blesses our abuse of other peoples.

I thank you for letting me say this. I know what I've said is true. All my rich and war-loving friends have been telling me so for years. And they aren't hypocrites.

With liberty and justice for all,

Bert Hornback

Harvard Bigotry

I have just sent the following letter to the president of Harvard University, regarding the university's plans to name a building after an ignorantly offensive professor who says that "Muslim life is cheap."

May I urge you to send similar letters.


Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, President
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Dear President Faust,

I am disgusted by Martin Peretz’ ignorant and obscene remark, and both shocked and ashamed that Harvard University will still name a building after him.

Does Harvard think it is above criticism? My colleagues and students here certainly don’t think so.

I taught for twenty-eight years at the University of Michigan. Public bigotry was not honored there. And here, where people are sensitive to bigotry and prejudice, the remark is seen as utterly offensive.

Surely Harvard’s honor is not so cheap as honoring Martin Peretz will make it.
Sincerely yours,

Bert G. Hornback
Professor of English, Universitaet des Saarlandes
Emeritus Professor of English, University of Michigan

I don't quite know where to start. I don't like to use--let alone depend on--statistics. I would prefer to argue principle. But nobody seems to pay any attention to principle.

If Christians were attentive to principle, they would have to quit hating Muslims, call off all their wars--and give up all their wealth to follow Jesus. If Christians were attentive to principle, they would despise--as Jesus did--all hypocrisy. (Sorry, Benedict: you are the number one hypocrite.)

But Christianity is a minority religion, and the United States is largely a godless place unless you let the hypocrites count as godly.

Even as a secular nation, the United States pretends to principle. We talk about democracy even as we subvert it. We talk about equal opportunity but do nothing to establish it. Our president talks about our consitiution while he violates it. We talk of justice and honor while we kidnap and torture and run a World War II style concentration camp.

So let's not try to talk principle. Let me cite a few statistics, and invite you to focus your attention on them.

You and I own slightly more than 61% of General Motors. For some alleged reason it was "saved" by our generous government, and still exists. It has a new CEO, Daniel Akerson. And somehow, President Obama's overseer has agreed that Daniel Akerson deserved a $9,000,000 pay package for this year!

How does Daniel Akerson deserve such? Deserve? There are hungry Americans, homeless Americans, jobless Americans who can't get work because Daniel Akerson needs $9,000,000.

We approved that? Are we crazy? Or is our greed so blind and stupid that we will protect Daniel Akerson's greed because someday we might get a chance at a similar-sized theft?

TIAA-CREF is a retirement fund organisation created for teachers. For some years Clifton Wharton. Jr., was its president. Dr. Wharton came from the academic world. Dr. Wharton was and is a great man, and not a greedy man; he didn't need a huge salary in 1987 when he accepted the presidency of the organisation founded to help university teachers prepare for retirement. But in 2009, when Roger Ferguson took over that job, he "needed"--and was given--$11,000,000 a year, plus benefits and expenses.

Should TIAA-CREF be spending teachers' money so extravagantly? If university professors are now making enough to afford people like Roger Ferguson, then university professors are paid too much, too.

But $9,000,000 a year isn't much in the United States, nor is $11,000,000 plus benefits and expenses. Daniel Akerson's annual $9,000,000 is four and a half minutes--minutes--worth of the United States military budget.

The United States spent $1,039,531,000,000 on what was euphemistically called "defense" this past year. That's $2,000,000 a minute.

And what is our defense? War in Iraq, war in Afghanistan, bombings in Palistan, kidnappings and assassination attempts everywhere, United States troops occupying parts of Cuba, Japan, Germany, Britain, Italy, Greece. Dangerous, murderous, and not very bright CIA operatives--I have known five of them--all over the world. (I wonder if the assistant economics attaché at the United States Embassy in London is still the cover for the chief CIA man in Europe?)

The best defense the United States could mount would be decency in the world at large, and a decent society at home.

Since the days of the Marshall Plan--which was one of the greatest undertakings of any government in the history of this world--the United States has gone from failure to failure, disaster to disaster, lie to lie, greed to more greed.

Can we still save us? Yes: but we need to get busy now, before there's nothing left to save, nothing left worth saving.

GO TO JAIL FOR TELLING THE TRUTH

Go to jail for telling the truth.

The Bush government violated everything this country supposedly stood for. We all knew much of what they were doing, but we didn't have hard evidence. Like most criminals, the Bush government tried to keep their worst criminal acts secret. And they tried to keep the criminal acts of others secret. But the truth kept leaking out. Their crimes were so gross that they couldn't stay secret. Some of them--like attacking Iraq and the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay--weren't secret at all; they were arrogant acts of illegal, unconstitutional, immoral violence. They tried to keep their world-wide kidnapping and torture program secret, but we found out. about it.

Now, thanks to a young man named Bradley Manning, we know a lot more. Thanks to Bradley Manning's patriotism and his heroism, we have a great deal of evidence. It is in the public domain.

Knowing what he knew--having the evidence that he possed--Private First Class Bradley Manning had two choices. He could keep his mouth shut, and join all the others involved in the cover-up. Had he done so, he would have committed a crime underArticke 78 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In both civilian and military jurisdictions, this crime is called "accessory after the fact." His other choice was to make known what he had discovered.

Remarkably, Bradley Manning is now being held in prison, in solitary confinement, for obeying the law. By whom? Not by the Bush administration, but by the Obama administration.

Why is President Obama holding Bradley Manning? Because he told the truth? Because he made public the evidence for some of our crimes of violence? Of murder, of torture?

Now you and I have two choices. We can demand Bradley Manning's release from prison. Or we can keep quiet, and ourselves become guilty of being accessories after the fact. We can join the conspirators, and by our cowardice become criminals.

At present you and I can't be charged with crimes for supporting Bradley Manning and demanding his release. But if we keep quiet we might as well be living under such a threat--and maybe soon we will be. "Keep quiet," the tyrant says.

Unless President Obama wants to be the same kind of criminal join George Bush and his cronies were and are, he must release Bradley Manning immediately. The rule of law demands it. And without the rule of law, we are indeed what many in the world accuse us of being: a rogue state.

Bert Hornback

Logic, Law, Justice, and Freedom

It's tiresome, dealing with ignorance. George W. Bush, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Phylis Schlafly's absurdly stupid husband. The California woman protesting against gay marriage, and except on a few miraculous good days Thomas L. Freidman of the New York Times. They all have right to be heard. But the rest of us have a responsibility to respond.

We have had good presidents. FDR. Harry Truman--despite the gravest error of modern times, the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki. I would not agree that the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima was justified; I would argue forever that the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki was criminal. So was the fire-bombing of Dresden, carried out by the United States and Britain.

Since World War II, we have had Truman's war in Korea, stupid in hindsight. And ten other wars, stupid and immoral and criminal in foresight. Johnson's lies to get us into Vietnam: the admitted fabrication of that attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. (The CIA was operating in Vietnam as early as 1962, according to CIA operative Paul Corscadden.) President Kissinger and his stooge Richard Nixon, bombing Cambodia.)

Stupid Gerald Ford, and poor Jimmy Carter: both feebly tried to have war; Ford with Nortnh Korea and Carter with Iran. Carter's attempt was much more perverse: a bunch of young Iranis had captured 50 CIA agents in the U.S. Embassy in Terehan; we couldn't release their names--or confirm their number--because they all had multiple identities and passports. The world was lucky: Carter's attempt to start WW III failed when his attack forces' helicopters went down in the desert. At time, our European friends were trying to reach a diplomatic solution to the situation in Teheran; but Carter was running for reelection, and needed to prove that he was macho. To hell with diplomacy.

Reagan didn't get to have war. But he reminisced about his combat flights in World War II--though of course those took place only in movies. He did manage to bomb Lybia, and to invade Grenada.

George I wanted a war, and he got one. He was quite a guy: remember when he said that the reason he had been so outrageously vulgar in the vice-presidential debate with Geraldine Ferraro was that he "just wanted to kick a little ass"? In August of 1990 George I decidedto go to war, though he insisted that was looking for peace. In January of 1991 he went to war, as planned.

Bill Clinton began his presidency beybombing Basra, in Iraq. Why? To prove that he was as ruthless a murderer as any other American. An Iraqi had been accused of plotting to murder George I. According to American law, an accusation is the same thing as a conviction, so Clinton prempted any court, and trial, and bombed Basra. Oddly, the man was never brought to trial. Count a few deaths for murderer Bill.

And then we got George II. And now we have Barak Obama.

Is Mr. Obama a good president? Well, he told us that he would restore "habeas corpus," but he hasn't. He promised to close the U. S. concentration camp at Guantanamo, but he hasn't. He promised an end to U.S. torture, but he hasn't ended it. And he told us he would end our illegal war in--our invasion of--Iraq, and our illegal war in Afghanistan.

He is a very bright man, but he has failed at everything. And in addition to no "habeas corous," the continued operation of the concentration camp in Cuba, torture, and our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we are now invading and attacking Pakistan.

So . . . what about all those good things? I had intended to talk about them. But--sorry--I am too depressed to talk about justice and law and society and community and goodness and freedom and all those other un-American ideas: ideas that have been a part of human history for at least the past 8,000 years.

Maybe I will try again. Right now I am too depreseed--as I always am, when I think about our country. Funny: the only times I can feel good about us are when I read about Sarah Palin or Mitch McConnell.

LIES THAT LEAD TO WAR

When I was a schoolboy, the argument was over whether Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance that Pearl Harbor was to be attacked, but let that attack happen so that he could get the United States into World War II. Then--as quick as quick--we were at war in Korea, over aggression from the North. To make this war legal Harry Truman called it a "Police Action."

We invaded Lebanon in 1958, without invitation, because Admiral Holloway wanted a "show of force" in the Mediterranean, and Dwight Eisenhower let him have his way. After three months we came home. Our accomplishments: ruining Beirut's streets, almost burning down the port (my fault), killing one of our own soldiers, and getting in the way of a democratic election.

Then Lyndon Johnson lied his way into the Vietnam War--undeclared by Congress, but allowed thanks to the fabricated story about attacks on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Lies. A war justified by deliberate lies. A hideous ten-year war followed. But it was actually longer, because the CIA started it in 1962--not in 1964.

Gerald Ford sent U.S. Navy gunboats into North Korea, but failed to start a war. Jimmy Carter asked our European allies to try to resolve our problem at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and while they were doing so he tried to invade Tehran. Thanks
to U.S. technology, his invasion failed in the desert, and Carter didn't start a war.

Ronald Reagan had a hard time finding a war to fight, and finally settled on invading Grenada. The pretext? Cuban soldiers. But the Cuban "soldiers" had been invited there by the Grenedan government, to build new runways for the airport--so it could land 747's loaded with U.S. tourists! On the second day after the U.S. invasion, the Grenedan president was produced aboard a U.S. Navy ship, holding a typewritten letter (unsigned) requesting (after the fact) U.S. intervention. We admitted this. Awkwardly, we had invaded a member-state of the Commonwealth of Nations, whose head was and is the Queen of England--and she had not been consulted about this invasion of her territory.

George Bush invaded Iraq for oil. Pure, simple, overt aggression. Like Hitler taking Poland. For several months after his decision to invade was made, Bush pretended not to have decided to to go to war. Lies. Documented lies. Several thousand Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by Colin Powell in this exercise in American freedom and justice.

Then Bill Clinton. First thing, in February of 1963, he ordered a bombing raid on the Iraqi city of Basra. Why? Because an Iraqi civilian in puppet Kuwait had been accused of plotting to assassinate George Bush. The Iraqi was never tried, let alone convicted. But that didn't bother Clinton: he was proving that he was an American president, by going to war and killing people.

And then George Bush II. All the stupid lies to get us into war. Nine years' worth now.

And after having said that this war was wrong, and that he would end it; after saying that he would close the U.S. concentration camps around the world, and stop the U.S. torture of abductees--after a year and a half, Obama has done nothing except expand the Bush wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan.

Now, it seems we are lying our way toward a war with North Korea. The evidence of a North Korean attack on a South Korean ship is very, very suspicious. It seems to have been manufactured by the South Korean government, perhaps in collusion with the U.S. government.

Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies.

What is this country? Criminal is not a big enough word for us. But it's maybe the biggest we have available. And since the U.S. claims to be a democracy, we are all--every last one of us--criminals. We know full well that we are being told lies. But we don't care. We are a dying society--a non-society, dying of our own stupid greed and arrogance. But we are still trying to rule the world.

REFUDIATION

REFUDIATION is a perfectly good word. Sarah Palin has no need to indulge in palinody for having used it.

To REFUDIATE is to be asinine, or act like an ass, again.

Sarah Palin’s whole career is REFUDIATION. FUD (or FUDD) is an old Northern word for “ass,” or “backside.” Funny: PALIN is itself an old Greek word for “back,” or “backward.”

And Sarah Palin—going back, perhaps, to her roots, being both a Palin and an ignorant, loud, hee-hawing ass, has been REFUDIATING throughout her public career.

Everybody who laughed at poor, ignorant Sarah should be ASSHAMED for mocking her REFUDIATION.

America needs more ignorance.

It also needs more stupidity and dumbness. Both those words have to do with not saying anything, with keeping your mouth shut.

Bert

DEALING WITH LIARS

Given that, in the case of Shahram Amiri, we are dealing with the world's premier liars and the world's dumbest bunch of thugs since comic books were born, shouldn't news agencies like the New York Times be a little bit more circumspect?

The world's premier liars and the world's dumbest bunch of thugs are one and the same, of course: the CIA. If I were in charge of guessing through this fiasco, I would have no problem choosing my route.

The first premise is that the CIA made a mess. The second is that they are lying, trying to get out of it. Shahram Amiri either wasn't a nuclear scientist, or he was a plant posted by the Iranian government. He was either kidnapped, or bribed to defect. He was allowed to return to Iran either because he had already set up the disclosure of his "exploitation," should he disappear, or because the CIA was hoping to hide its stupidity, or because they were even stupider than they usually are and just let him go home since he wasn't a nuclear scientist anyway.

The CIA has housed incompetent people since I first met them in 1957. They are Keystone Cops with huge budgets, huge egos, and the intelligence of earthworms.

Earthworms take things in: blind observation. It runs through them, and comes out the other end as intelligence. Ask Philip Agee if I'm right. Or Mark Sullivan. Or the widow--or the children--of Paul Corscadden.

Bert Hornback

PAYING FOR CLEAN ENERGY--AND NEW ORLEANS

It used to be that rich people gave fat sums of money to presidents and politicians to buy the kind of government they wanted. Barack Obama has changed all that. Now he asks little, otherwise insignificant people like me to give him money to buy the kind of government we want. And he obviously has a whole staff of people hired to do this.

For example: This morning I received an e-mail from Mitch Stewart, seemingly the chief confidence man. Today’s subject is “Getting to a Clean Energy Future.” I opened it because of the topic. As a New Orleanian, I am very seriously concerned about our energy future; but more of that later.

Mr. Stewart’s plan this morning was that I add my name to a letter asking the U. S. Senate to vote for Clean Energy legislation. So I did, electronically. But in order to complete this transaction, I was required to choose an amount—between $5.00 and $34,495.00—and submit my credit card information.

I had no intention of paying even $5.00 to try to influence a vote in the Senate. My taxes already pay Senators outrageously and give them health care nobody else in America has and a pension that pays their salaries for life.

But I couldn’t vote unless I paid. I tried giving them a wrong credit card number—but somehow they already had my credit card information, and rejected my wrong number! Hmmmn. What is the president’s chief con man doing with my credit card information?

The Obama “open government” wheeze is just that: another con game. Through Mitch Stewart and others on his team, Mr. Obama gets to talk to me by e-mail any time he wants to. But there is never—never—an opportunity for me to reply.

He tells me he wants me to support his health care plan. I want to say, yes, I will—but first I want him to agree to a much bigger health care plan, by closing his concentration camp at Guantanamo and ending his two brutal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I am not allowed to say that.

He asks me regularly to support something or another, but he never mentions Guantanamo or his wars. And I am supposed to support him? Nonsense.

Mr. Obama is full of words about the BP oil spill catastrophe. Words. George Bush only flew over New Orleans once after Katrina; Obama has flown over four times, and twice he has landed. Of course, those four fly-overs cost us a total of nearly $20,000,000.00 –which could much more usefully been spent on relief for the shrimp fishermen and their families whose livelihood has been wiped out by this disaster. Obama’s fly-overs are a very expensive, insensitive, useless publicity stunt.

Mr. Obama is intelligent. Why didn’t he start building a barricade in front of wetlands and wildlife refuges—and even beaches—on the first day? The country is full of big earth-moving rigs, used by construction companies to build highways, used by Colin Powell’s army to bury thousands of Iraqi soldiers—to bury them alive in the sand. And why haven’t we been siphoning spilled oil out of the Gulf for six weeks now? He should have ordered that on the second day after the disaster struck.

Since Mr. Obama assumed office, he has mocked himself, his promises, and his promise. We expected a great deal of him, because he promised a great deal. All the world saw a promising future in him. And he has betrayed us.

The constant solicitation scheme is offensive. So are the chatty one-way communications he sends out as electronic versions of the infamous “rallies” of earlier times. We can’t talk back. We can’t ask him about the promises he has broken, about his new war hatching in Pakistan.

We can sign our names to letters of support for him. And we can pay him to let us do this. That’s all.

And that’s democracy.

Bert Hornback

MALIGNING THE KANGAROO

There is no reason for us to insult the kangaroo by talking about the way justice is administered in the United States. It was in the United States some one hundred and fifty or sixty years ago that the "kangaroo court" came into the English language, and it referred to sham legal proceedings. Such travesties of justice were also called "mustang courts." There's no reason to insult horses, either. Let's just call them American courts.
The United States has a rather full history of sham legal proceedings--as do many other countries. But that doesn't make ours the less shameful or despicable. Indeed: since vanity (or is it insecurity?) makes Americans boast constantly about the glories of our form of government, our sham justice is all the more hideous and disgusting. American injustice has become a model of perversion.
The CIA has for many years now operated outside the law, murdering and kidnapping and torturing. Presidents since Eisenhower have all condoned such: have known what the CIA was doing, and have sanctioned it.
Our government acknowledges that since 2001 the CIA has run secret torture camps all over the world. Men are kidnapped and taken to these illegal torture camps. Many of them die there: are murdered there.
In 2004 Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was captured, and held for two years in one of these secret torture camps. Then he was transferred to the US-run concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. He has been in the Guantanamo torture facility for six years.
Now the US government has decided to bring Mr. Ghailani to trial. It would be worse than naive to expect that his trial will be anything but a sham.
Lewis A. Kaplan, judge of a Federal District Court in Manhattan, was asked by Mr. Ghailani's lawyers to dismiss the charges against him because of his illegal torture--and because he has been held captive for eight years in concentration camps, not charged with any crime.
Judge Kaplan ruled that the US government's illegal treatment of Mr. Ghailani has no relation to the charges brought against him.
I know I shouldn't complain. I should accept this the same way I should accept everything else that's wrong with the United States, from our wars to our racism and our violence and our poverty and our ignorance--and our hypocrisy.
I should be ashamed of myself for complaining, not ashamed of my country.

US INTERVENES TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING

A hundred million Americans have pledged to use the automatic ice-makers on their refrigerators to make a billion ice cubes to send to the North Pole to restore the ice cap.

For summer vacations, Americans are being urged to drive their cars downhill only, to save gasoline and reduce emissions.

The Surgeon General has urged flatulent Americans to reduce their emissions to once a day.

Republicans have agreed to filibuster only in sign language, and if the Hot Air bill passes, politicians will be silenced indefinitely.

The Office of Air Pollution Control has banned all radio talk shows, and both CNN and Fox News.

Smokers will be forbidden to exhale.

The American Medical Association has recommended that human body temperatures be reduced to 90.0 F. by 2012.

Happy Days are Here Again!

"Happy Days are Here Again!" That used to be the U.S. Democratic Party's song. The last time I remember hearing it was in 1968, when at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, a brass band tried to drown out boos from delegates as the Party machinery forced the presidential nomination of Lyndon Johnson's pathetic, spineless tool Hubert Humphrey. That summer an assassin's bullet and the leaders of the Democratic Party gave the world Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and six more years of the vicious, deadly U.S. war against Vietnam.

These days things are at least as bad as they were in 1968, in the U.S. Two illegal and immoral wars going, and a third now underway (by drone) in Pakistan. A concentration camp at Guantanamo, still, and everybody trying to forget about U.S. war crimes and torture. No right of Habeas Corpus, still--suspended by George Bush's presidental proclamation, and still suspended by Barack Obama. Will it ever be restored? Or does the U.S. find it more convenient to be able to "disappear" people?

But I am told I should be happy, even if my country is a rogue state.

I should be happy, even though New Orleans is still--five years after Katrina--trying to house its homeless. Even though poverty in the United States is unrelieved. Even though our schools are for the most part a disaster. Even though our expensive new health care bill will leave millions of Americans without access to medical care. And the rich are still rich, and getting richer. And the rich are still rich, and getting richer. And the rich are still rich, and getting richer.

Should I say that again? And the rich are still rich, and getting richer.

But never mind them. If the rest of us were decent, we could give the rich away--to Antarctica--and take care of our problems without them. We could, if we had proper, decent leadership. But without having taken care of our poor, our homeless, our ill-educated, our uninsured, even without quitting the wars that bankrupt us both economically and morally, even without closing our concentration camp at Guantanamo, President Obama is talking about wanting to send men to Mars! For that, he should win the Marie Antoinette Prize--or be sent to mad King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein to live out his idiocy.

That's a joke, of course. Not a very good one, not enough of one to get me a place in the chorus of Americans singing "Happy Days are Here Again." But even if I sang "Happy Days are Here Again," I couldn't make myself deaf to the chorus of our wrongs and the sad, shameful state we are in.

I had a colleague at the University of Michigan who telephoned me one evening after the executive committee of the English Department had determined salary raises for the next year for the faculty. Though I was the most published member of my department, taught four classes instead of two, was the only member of the department to have received two university teaching awards, had also received two awards for outstanding service to students as an academic adviser, etc., as usual I was to receive the minimum salary raise. My friend told me, "Bert, if you would just learn to keep your mouth shut about things, we could pay you more." Thanks, E.J.

Now I am told I should quit complaining about things going wrong, not at the University, but in the United States and in the world. I'm not going to do it. To accept this world as it is is immoral. To accept President Obama's governance of the United States would be, to my mind, to join in the perpetration of war crimes. And I won't keep quiet--even if many of my American friends object to what I say.

The United States is running a concentration camp in Cuba. If we didn't have so many nuclear weapons and a nasty record of having used them, the rest of the world would object. The United States has suspended the constitutional guarantee of Habeas Corpus--which is of course unconstitutional. We are currently engaged in two illegal and immoral wars, and are regularly now bombing people in yet another country.

Why should I shut up about this? Why should I not complain? Why should I not be angry--at what my country is doing?

Those who say I should shut up want to pretend that everything is rosy: and they want to pretend such because everything is indeed rosy for them. They are wealthy, they live in safe communities, their kids are either finished school or in good schools, they don't even know anybody who is in the military, and they never even think about Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Pakistanis, poor Americans, people without health insurance, kids in bad schools, street crime, poverty.

I don't do all I should to try to stop our national crimes. I don't do all I should
to try to remedy the evils that infest our society, or to relieve the poor. But I do more than those who tell me to shut up--and I challenge them to show me otherwise.

News from the Academics

An exciting new "critical" approach to literature has been announced. Well, not an approach to literature, really. It's part of the game of tag that the academic folks play with books. This one is called "Do you know that I know what you know."

Do you know that I know what you know?
I know that you know what I know is useless.
Do I know that you know what I know is useless?
You know that I know that you know what I know is useless.
But I am the professor, and I am writing a book about what I know.

It needs a better name than "Do you know that I know what you know," of course. How about Semiarsics? Typslomusics? Opisthics?

The Catholic Church . . .

Authortity always asks for acceptance of its errors. The Catholic Church never, ever, invokes "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." But caught--quite literally--with its all-male pants down--it suddenly remembers.

The woman caught in adultery is no great sinner. Consenting adults? There is nothing abusive about that, though there is perhaps a breach of trust, of faith.

But the clerical sex crimes are another matter. These are rapes: statutory rapes for the most part, the victims under the age of consent. For the victims beyond that age, it's a matter of "moral" authority used to commit crimes. And the Catholic Church lives on the "moral" authority of its clergy.

To look more largely at what the Catholic clergy's sex sacandal means is to ask, why does the Catholic Church exist? What does it have to do with Jesus of Nazareth? Anything?

He taught against greed, against the rich. What is the richest--and the greediest--organisation on the face of the earth? The Catholic Church. It not only has the biggest bank accounts, the greatest stock holdings, the most real estate; it glories in its wealth. Its churches proclaim wealth. Its Pope wears a triple gold crown, and parades around dressed in gold-embroidered vestments. Everything about it mocks Jesus of Nazareth.

So why does it exist?

The historical Jesus was a very good and noble man. He taught the same simple but profound goodness that Socrates taught. Because many people listened to him, and accepted with enthusiasm what he taught, he was deemed dangerous by the powerful people of his time, and brutally murdered.

Since then, the powerful people have been more shrewd. They have taken him over, pretended to admire and love him, have made a god of him--and have ignored everything that he said.

If the people who call themselves "Christians" thought--for one short moment--of what their Christianity amounts to, they would rise up and with one great decent voice begin to change the world. The wealth of the Catholic Church would be used to feed millions and millions of people, gaudy churches and cathedrals would house millions of homeless people, and freed from the Church's hypocrisy we might even begin to take care of each other.

Christians could indeed change the world. The first step toward than end would be the abolition of the Catholic Church. It has a long, long history of abuse: and the thousands of cases of sexual abuse of boys that have been exposed in recent years are just the perverse tip of nearly two thousand years of moral perversity--and the perversion of the teachings of one of the truly great men in human history.

The Catholic Church has responded to the crimes of sexual abuse by condemning the sin, but not the sinner. How clever! The pope apologises for the sins, but doesn't mention the sinners. One might think, from what the pope has said, that what has been exposed is a massive, world-wide ring of young masturbators, not a world-wide ring of vicious hypocritical child-molesters disguised as Catholic priests.

WIN-WIN SITUATIONS

The United States has found another another win-win situation. We will sell more arms to India and also more arms to Pakistan. The more arms they have, the bigger war they can have some day--without having to use their nuclear weapons. And the more money U.S. arms manufacturers will make.

A few years ago the good people who make their money selling weapons all over the world happily sold arms to Ronald Reagan so he could give them to the Taliban--so they could fight the U.S.S.R. Did the arms manufacturers already know that the Taliban would use them to fight the U.S.--and that George Bush and Barack Obama would then buy more arms from the weapons manufacturers so the U.S. could fight the Taliban?

The coffin manufacturers must be next in line for getting really rich. The way things are going, it will soon be time to bury the whole of the U.S.

MONEY TALKS

This year, in the United States, the football bowl games all had new names. The AT&T Cotton Bowl, the FedEx Orange Bowl, the Allstate Sugar Bowl, the CitiBank Rose Bowl.

Now that Congress is part of the economy, and senators and representatives can be purchased legally, their owners will start identifying themselves. We will have the MetLife Senator from Massachusetts, the Exxon Senator from Illinois, the DuPont Senator from Delaware, the Pfizer Senator from Florida. Or maybe we will just do away with the state designations, and identify Senators by their corporate owners.

I wonder who will own--or already owns--the Supreme Court Justices? They will no doubt have the biggest price tags.

What a wonderful thing democracy is! The best thing about it, as the United States demonstrates with such remarkable regularity, is that democracy is so easily corrupted.

Bert Hornback

TEACHING OBSCENITY

American universities teach lots of different things: math, medicine, law, the humanities, the natural sciences, the social sciences. But they teach most effectively the anti-social science that their recent presidents practice, which is GREED.

American university presidents teach by example. They are paid hugely obscene salaries, and in demanding and accepting such teach their students GREED. No matter what students are taught in their other classes, they are all taught GREED by their presidents.

Michigan is a state in desperate economic trouble. Unemployment, poverty, homelessness are everywhere, not just in Detroit. There are even unemployed, poor, and homeless people in Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is situated. The president of the University of Michigan has an annual salary of $600,000, plus a $100,000 a year bonus, plus an expense account, plus a huge mansion and servants to take care of her and her husband. In addition to being the university president, of course, she is the university´s senior professor of GREED, and one of the nation´s best.

(If Michigan´s president is not such an effective professor of GREED, then why is she being paid so extravagantly?)

HAITI

Of course we need to help the people of Haiti. But we don´t need three presidents urging us to donate a few dollars each to the cause.

Mr. Obama can suspend his wars for a week, and send $7,000,000,000 to Haiti. That´s $20 for every American. And then he can suspend his wars for another week, and send $7,000,000,000 more.

By then maybe we will have realised that we do much more good by helping others than we do by bombing them.

I would rather be afraid of possible terrorists than guilty of mass murder. And I think there is much better likelihood that the United States can be safe from attack if it helps others--the poor, the needy--than if it murders them.

America´s wars kill other people, and they endanger Americans.