Even a drone should be insulted by the use of its name by the Americans for their random-killing device. Nature's drones are not exactly workers, but they are life-givers. Drone bees don't work--except in impregnating female bees. So life depends on drones, among the bees.
We call the dull, monotonous under-sounds of bagpipes and pipe-organs "drones," too--which insults those drone bees. At least the bag-pipe's drone has a real purpose, though its noise is not necessary to its function. But there is no excuse for drone of the pipe-organ. The pipe-organ's drone pretends to be music--like all the grotesque noises sounds the pipe-organ makes.
And then there are Obama's drones, which are blind murderers. American GIs don't get killed when Obama uses drones to kill other people. And those GIs don't have to do the killing. Obama does it. And anybody he kills with his drones is--after death--automatically an enemy.
For Christmas Obama played golf in Hawaii. His drones, meanwhile, were killing "at least seven" human beings in Pakistan. Because they are dead, they can be identified as "militants"--by the Militant-in-Chief and Commander-of-Drones.
What does Obama have in common with a bee? I don't know. And bag-pipes? I don't know. But I know what he has in common with pipe-organs: drones.
The pipe organ was introduced in Europe in the seventeenth century. It was a part of the egocentric movement known in history as the Enlightenment. A pipe-organ enabled one person--one puny little man, in those days--to play all the instruments in an orchestra, and to play so loudly that the noise would fill even the largest building in the world. That was power. Never mind the quality of the sound. A pipe-organ has a number of loud noises in addition to its drones' noise that it can make: and they aren't very musical. They are loud, however.
One organist did--and does--it all. Made--and makes--all the noise. Was--and is--responsible for all of it. And when Obama sends out his drones, he is the organist.
Maybe his drones on Christmas day were playing "Joy to the World" in Pakistan. Or "O Little Town of Bethlehem." Or "Silent Night."
Of course, in wars leaders, countries, and people kill not just their enemies but anybody--and frequently everybody. Hitler's buzz-bombs besieged London. American and British bombers destroyed whole cities in Germany. America destroyed everybody in Hiroshima, and then just for fun destroyed everybody in Nagasaki. An American GI burned that little Vietnamese girl alive with his napalm--and some inhuman photographer took her picture while she burned. Richard Nixon fire-bombed all of Cambodia for a month--at Christmas. Independent terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center in New York.
So Obama's drones aren't new, either as an idea or as a weapon. It's just that nobody before has been so crass and cowardly as to call everybody he killed an "enemy."
"God rest ye, merry gentlemen! Let nothing you dismay. . . ."
vrijdag 26 december 2014
woensdag 24 december 2014
EATING GOOD GREEK IN GERMANY
If you plan to go to Nüremberg--or (to real Germans) Nürnberg--the very best thing to do is to have dinner at Restaurant Delphi, Theresien Gasse 22, a fifteen-minute walk from the Rathaus. It is a very modern-looking place, but don't let that put you off. The service is good, and the food wonderful. Close your eyes and ears, and your mouth could imagine you all the way to Taverna Bacchus in Delphi, looking down off the side of Parnassos, or a little restaurant on the edge of the Mediterranean in Pylos.
We had a gloriously good and truly Greek dinner. Fried kalamari, a wonderful taramasalada, and two lamb dishes that were better than any lamb we have ever eaten, except for platters full of olive-wood-grilled spring lamb chops at a little village in the mountains above Nikolaika in Achaia.
I have said for years that Amsterdam's De Twee Grieken is the best Greek restaurant I know anywhere. But Delphi in Nürnberg may be as good. I will go back to Nürnberg someday, just to eat there.
We had a gloriously good and truly Greek dinner. Fried kalamari, a wonderful taramasalada, and two lamb dishes that were better than any lamb we have ever eaten, except for platters full of olive-wood-grilled spring lamb chops at a little village in the mountains above Nikolaika in Achaia.
I have said for years that Amsterdam's De Twee Grieken is the best Greek restaurant I know anywhere. But Delphi in Nürnberg may be as good. I will go back to Nürnberg someday, just to eat there.
donderdag 18 december 2014
GO (TO HELL) BLUE!
And now the University of Michigan is ready to pay Jim Harbaugh $8,000,000.00 a year to coach football. Michigan taxpayers must be cheering loudly! Hoorah! Go Blue!
And in Detroit, all the poor people are cheering even more loudly. They don't have schools or hospitals or adequate police or fire protection, they have no public transport, they have inadequate housing, they have no jobs--but Jim Harbaugh is worth $8,000,000.00 a year at the state-supported university 35 miles away. You betcha!
The University of Michigan is a state-supported institution. If the State of Michigan doesn't subtract $8,000,000.00 a year from its contribution to the University of Michigan, the people of the state should be excused from paying state taxes, and students should be excused from paying tuition or fees.
And since the University obviously has an extra $8,000,000.00 a year that it doesn't need for educational purposes, it can use that sum to do away with--or at least radically reduce--student fees and tution.
By the time I left the University of Michigan in 1992--after 26 years as a professor there--the University of Michigan was already a sham. Now it is a shame.
Why don't all Michigan alumni write to the president of the university--and to the governor of the state?
donderdag 4 december 2014
HOW COULD THEY NOT?
How could they not?
Shame.
When people fail the system fails. And when the system fails, we can only fall back and rely on the people. More people. All of us, not just twelve. We must stand together, for justice and against violence.
Only in that way can we overcome. And we must overcome. Against violence, and for justice. Not for retribution, but for something larger and more inclusive, and more lasting: for justice.
Bert Hornback
Shame.
When people fail the system fails. And when the system fails, we can only fall back and rely on the people. More people. All of us, not just twelve. We must stand together, for justice and against violence.
Only in that way can we overcome. And we must overcome. Against violence, and for justice. Not for retribution, but for something larger and more inclusive, and more lasting: for justice.
Bert Hornback
woensdag 3 december 2014
McCLELLAN
McCLELLAN
His name was
McClellan. Bowling Green still only had about five police officers
then—in addition to the chief. When my uncle Bob Murphy had been
chief he had only one officer at first. And on weekends—from
Friday afternoon till Sunday night—Uncle Bob was “unavailable.”
But by 1950, when I was fifteen, there were more policemen. And
McClellan had a three-wheel motorcycle that he rode around on,
enforcing the law.
We kids used to
tease him all the time. A couple of my friends were already sixteen,
and when a white boy turned sixteen in Bowling Green he was likely to
have saved up fifty or sixty dollars to buy himself an old beat-up
car. I knew two such boys, with such cars. And if the rest of us
chipped in a dime apiece for gas, we could ride around the square
with one of them for several hours, being “seen” by girls and
other important people. And if we saw McClellan, on his
three-wheeler, we would pull up beside him and order popsicles as
loudly as we could. If we saw his bike parked somewhere, we would
let the air out a tire, or maybe tie it to a tree or a telephone
pole, or squeeze out a tube of glue on the handgrips or the seat.
Various itinerant
preachers—tent-preachers, they were called—came through Bowling
Green in those days. They would put up posters on the telephone
poles leading into and out of town, announcing a revival meeting for
a Thursday night on some good Christian's farm just outside of town.
None of us had ever been to one of those meetings, but we had heard
about them. And one night that summer—I think it was a sort of
famous preacher named Jessup who was in town—we decided to go, and
see what it was all about. I think it
was him: Walter Jessup. He was sort of famous in Southern Kentucky.
Or maybe it was his son. There were a lot of preaching Jessups, and
one of them had even been born in Bowling Green, I think.
It cost a dime, or
maybe it was a quarter, to get in to hear this Jessup preach, but we
didn't pay. We just stood around watching the country folks going
in, and then, once the meeting got started good with singing and
praying, we snuck off and crawled under the canvas around on one
side. And stood there, sort of singing or maybe saying “Amen”
with everybody else, but mostly watching.
There were three
men standing up in front, just below the little wooden stage, who
held big baskets in their arms. The baskets were for people to put
their money in. When you put your money in, you could ask Jessup to
pray for whatever it was you wanted. You didn't have to tell him
what it was; you just told god, quietly, what you wanted. And when
Jessup finished his praying he would say, in a big voice,
“Prrrrraise God,
your prayer is being answered!”
We would all sing
another hymn, then, and Jessup would go back to preaching till the
next sucker came up and put his or her money in one of the baskets.
Eventually, when
the tide of suckers with wishes had ebbed away, Jessup held up both
of his hands to hush us good. And two men carried a table out onto
that little stage, with something on it, under a sheet.
We all got quiet,
dutifully, and waited. Jessup walked over to the table, looked down,
then turned and looked at all of us.
“This girl,” he
said, “was as pretty as could be, and as happy as could be—till
yesterday afternoon. And then she took sick. The doctors was
called, but they couldn't do anything. She got sicker and sicker,
then. And this morning she was sicker still. And this afternoon,
she died. God have mercy.”
He liften up the
sheet, then, and we could see her, dressed all in white, but looking
pretty pale, and not moving.
He covered her back
up, put his ear over and listened for her heart. When he
straightened up he shook his head. We were all staring at that
sheet. And it didn't move a bit over her chest and stomach.
“She died,”
Jessup said, “But with your help and mine, God is going to raise
her up and give her back to us.”
“I will pray over
her, and in your name I will ask God to give her back to us. All you
have to do is come forward, and put your donations to this holy cause
in those baskets, and God will give her back to us!”
He stopped, and
stood there.
“God is waiting,
good people. And so is she.”
People started to
rustle about a bit in their seats. A couple of men in the back
started walking forward, one down each aisle.
And then we saw
McClellan, in his uniform, coming out through the back curtain onto
the stage. He was in uniform, of course, though he wasn't on duty.
And anyway, Jessup was set up safely outside the city limits.
McClellan stopped a
couple of yards from Jessup, and a couple of yards from the table.
And just stood there.
And then he said,
“I'm Constable
McClellan, Mr. Jessup.”
Jessup sort of
nodded at McClellan.
“You say she's
dead, Mr. Jessup?”
Jessup nodded
again.
“Well then,”
said McClellan, folding his arms across his stomach. “You won't
mind if I just shoot her once or twice. . .”
There was a sudden
commotion of sheet, and that girl was off and running.
It took several
seconds more before Jessup turned and ran, too. And then the men
with the baskets—without the baskets, just running. And all hell
broke loose.
After that,
McClellan was our hero. We never teased him again. We went out of
our way to say hello. George Henry, bolder than the rest of us, even
asked for—and got—McClellan's autograph. We were so impressed we
probably would have called him something other than McClellan, but we
didn't know his first name. And it would have been too silly, too
embarrassingly stupid, to call him “Mr. McClellan.” So when we
saw him, mostly we just smiled respectfully, and nodded at him. I'm
sure he understood.
GENERATING LIFE
GENERATING LIFE
This planet of ours,
that we call “earth,” has what we call life. What we usually
mean by that is that this planet contains living trees and plants and
animals—like us. But the earth itself has life. We need to
realise that, before it is too late.
In the plant and
animal world, seeding provides for continuous life. Generation and
regeneration keep what we call life going. We animals are still
generating and regenerating, but the plant world with which we live
and upon which we depend isn't doing very well. It seems, in fact,
to be dying. And the earth itself?
In the last fifty
years we have been exploring what we call “space,” to discover
whether or not there is what we call “life” on those other lumps
of matter wandering around out there. We call those wanderers
“planets.”
What we are looking
for is our version of life. We are looking for what we already know.
And we are thinking of the possibilities of our colonizing
somewhere out there. That's what animal scientists call the “fouled
nest” syndrome. Humans and some other animals live that way: when
they have made a big enough mess of where they live, they move
somewhere else.
But science isn't
just a housing office, or Noah's dove looking for someplace to land.
Science should be much more than that—and smarter than that.
What we call
life—plant life and animal life--grows from seeds. Have we asked
if this earth itself has seed? This earth is dying; all things, it
seems, must die. But in our experience, generation is the companion
of dying, which lets life continue.
In exploring space,
we look for life on other planets: but we are looking for what we
call life. Ego interferes with
learning, even with understanding. Other is hard for
us to accept. Our exploration is limited by our self-centered
definition of life.
And thus we think of
colonizing other planets. “Will other planets support life?” we
ask. Of course, what we mean is will those other planets support us,
and what we call “life.”
Once we have made this
planet, earth, uninhabitable, we will need someplace to go.
With
our determined assistance, this earth may be dying. So we
want off. We
want another planet to go to. But maybe
what is needed, in the larger order of existence, is for earth itself
to “seed” another planet, not with us but
with its own seed.
Of
course, we don't know what earth's seed is. And we haven't even
tried, yet, to find out. Or imagine.
Human
ego would send us to
other planets. But maybe we aren't
earth's seed. Maybe there is something beyond what we humans call
life.
The
world is—be definition—what we know. The universe is everything,
or everything-once-around: an unmeasurable continuous ring. And
everything is bigger than what we know, bigger by far than what we
are.
dinsdag 2 december 2014
BREAKING NEWS
FROM
THE CENTER FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF PERIPHERAL THOUGHT
(Saarbrücken. 2 December 2014) A statement today from the Center for the Advancement of Peripheral Thought reports that scientists at its Contagious Disease Control Laboratories are on the verge of--or perhaps just around the corner from--creating a way to model proven medicaments, pharmacololgical remedies, and elixirs on contagious viral diseases, to make those cures themselves pandemic. "It may not be long," says Professor Bert Hornback, founding director of the Center for the Advancement of Peripheral Thought, "before our scientists can cure one case of measles and with that cure create a pandemic of cures that will wipe out measles everywhere."
Medical scientists from around the globe have been responding to the news with awe and appreciation. "This is the biggest medical breakthrough," said one, "since the discovery of health."
Atmospheric scientists are busy trying to adapt the idea to counter the spread of deadly air pollution. At the headquarters of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, teams of adaptionists were at work within hours of the announcement. And at the laboratories of the Organization of Ungodly Optimists, the changeover was quickly made from research on stopping the spread of the deadly contagious hate gene to figuring out how to make love itself contagious.
"The universe," said the Secretary-General of the Natural World, "has a new ambition."
-0-
Medical scientists from around the globe have been responding to the news with awe and appreciation. "This is the biggest medical breakthrough," said one, "since the discovery of health."
Atmospheric scientists are busy trying to adapt the idea to counter the spread of deadly air pollution. At the headquarters of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, teams of adaptionists were at work within hours of the announcement. And at the laboratories of the Organization of Ungodly Optimists, the changeover was quickly made from research on stopping the spread of the deadly contagious hate gene to figuring out how to make love itself contagious.
"The universe," said the Secretary-General of the Natural World, "has a new ambition."
-0-
zaterdag 29 november 2014
WHERE IS THE PRESIDENT?
Where is the president? He is not in Ferguson, that's where. He's hiding somewhere in Not-Ferguson, USA.
Ferguson is not on his radar. His radar is color-blind--which is to say that it's blind to color. It doesn't see color. Not that color looks white, just that color doesn't show up. Hmmmn. Maybe he isn't in the White House at all!
No statement from Washington? But aren't National Guard troops being used there? And isn't the president the commander-in-chief of the National Guard? And isn't he the president of all the people
--even of black people, even in Ferguson?
Suppose the eighteen year-old who was killed in Ferguson had been--excuse me--a Jew. And excuse me again: this isn't about race. It's only about justice. So suppose he had been white. Would he have been shot? Or--supposing, of course, that this is not about race--suppose that white eighteen year-old he had been shot by a black cop? Would white people be demonstrating? Would they need to demonstrate?
Where is the president? He is not in Ferguson, that's where. He's hiding somewhere in Not-Ferguson, USA.
Ferguson is not on his radar. His radar is color-blind--which is to say that it's blind to color. It doesn't see color. Not that color looks white, just that color doesn't show up. Hmmmn. Maybe he isn't in the White House at all!
No statement from Washington? But aren't National Guard troops being used there? And isn't the president the commander-in-chief of the National Guard? And isn't he the president of all the people
--even of black people, even in Ferguson?
Suppose the eighteen year-old who was killed in Ferguson had been--excuse me--a Jew. And excuse me again: this isn't about race. It's only about justice. So suppose he had been white. Would he have been shot? Or--supposing, of course, that this is not about race--suppose that white eighteen year-old he had been shot by a black cop? Would white people be demonstrating? Would they need to demonstrate?
vrijdag 21 november 2014
A FEW LITTLE THINKS. . .
In what language would it be least troublesome to be dyslexic?
The 1946 Studebaker. How behind the other carmakers were! But
people bought those "old" new cars anyway. And the next year the
other cars began to edge slowly toward change. And soon
Studebaker was out of business.
Robin Hood is English. American mythology doesn't have a Robin
Hood; the US has Robber Barons instead as its inspiriting social
myth.
From Escobar to Castro to Hugo Chavez to Don Quixote to Robin
Hood to Jesus to St. Martin to Francis of Assisi to the Robber Barons.
Hmmmmmmn.
Adam Haddam.
Nye Towell. Boniface Towell. Beth Towell. Hugh Towell?
Art Sifastsky.
Hy Marks. Mr. Marx. Mrs. Marx.
Sarah Mooney and Gladys Canby. And Vera Mutch.
Juanita Gopee.
Hope Leslie. Malcolm Tent.
Eddie Fine.
"It's better to win fair than not to win at all." Who said that?
HELPFUL
INFORMATION FOR TOURISTS
Ad
valorem=the price
for tourists.
A
la carte=all you
can carry.
Al
dente=with a few
dents and scratches.
Antipasta=we
don´t like pasta or
skip the pasta.
Auto
bahn=self-discipline.
Buona
notte=without
bones; filleted.
Carpe
diem= fish of the
day.
Chemin
de Fer=pajamas for
the sleeping car.
Corpus
delicti=what a
beautiful body!
Crepe
du chine=dog-shit.
De
gustibus non est disputantem: there
is no doubt that this is a windy day.
Dejeuner:
Of or about young
people.
De
rigeur=concerning
the dead man.
Dimanche=lunch
for two.
Donnerstag=gift
certificate.
Et
tu Brute=Champagne
with dinner.
Frutti
di Mare=horse shit.
Gazpacho=bloated
feeling.
Hors
d’oeuvres=horse hooves
(a delicacy in France).
Hund
in de Gut=Dutch
pickpocket.
In
hoc signo=in debt;
i.o.u.
La
Gioconda=joker (in
a deck of cards).
Laus
tibi=insect causing
tuberculosis.
Pas
de deux=two free
tickets.
Pate
de foie gras=fat-head.
Pax
tecum=May you die
of syphillis!
Place
Concorde=Paris
airport.
Plat
du jour=your
hotel.
Prei
dieu=please do.
Pour
boire=American-style
sandwich.
Quid
pro quo=how much is
this?
Sic
transit gloria mundi=I’m
sick of travelling—thank God we go home
on Monday!
Sortie
à droit=medium-dry.
Vin
du pais=the end of
the war.
Vin
du table=spill the
beans.
GENERATING LIFE
This planet of ours,
that we call “earth,” has what we call life. What we usually
mean by that is that this planet contains living trees and plants and
animals—like us. But the earth itself has life. We need to
realise that, before it is too late.
In the plant and
animal world, seeding provides for continuous life. Generation and
regeneration keep what we call life going. We animals are still
generating and regenerating, but the plant world with which we live
and upon which we depend isn't doing very well. It seems, in fact,
to be dying. And the earth itself?
In the last fifty
years we have been exploring what we call “space,” to discover
whether or not there is what we call “life” on those other lumps
of matter wandering around out there. We call those wanderers
“planets.”
What we are looking
for is our version of life. We are looking for what we already know.
And we are thinking of the possibilities of our colonizing
somewhere out there. That's what animal scientists call the “fouled
nest” syndrome. Humans and some other animals live that way: when
they have made a big enough mess of where they live, they move
somewhere else.
But science isn't
just a housing office, or Noah's dove looking for someplace to land.
Science should be much more than that—and smarter than that.
What we call
life—plant life and animal life--grows from seeds. Have we asked
if this earth itself has seed? This earth is dying; all things, it
seems, must die. But in our experience, generation is the companion
of dying, which lets life continue.
In exploring space,
we look for life on other planets: but we are looking for what we
call life. Ego interferes with
learning, even with understanding. Other is hard for
us to accept. Our exploration is limited by our self-centered
definition of life.
And thus we think of
colonizing other planets. “Will other planets support life?” we
ask. Of course, what we mean is will those other planets support us,
and what we call “life.”
Once we have made this
planet, earth, uninhabitable, we will need someplace to go.
With
our determined assistance, this earth may be dying. So we
want off. We
want another planet to go to. But maybe
what is needed, in the larger order of existence, is for earth itself
to “seed” another planet, not with us but
with its own seed.
Of
course, we don't know what earth's seed is. And we haven't even
tried, yet, to find out. Or imagine.
Human
ego would send us to
other planets. But maybe we aren't
earth's seed. Maybe there is something beyond what we humans call
life.
What
Writing Is About
My
writing career began when I learned my name. That's not to say that
I could actually write,
then. It
took a while to get to that point. I
was already five when I wrote my first story.
But
when I learned my name I had something specific I could identify as
me: something which was not my experience in this new world. Until
I had a “handle,” as we say slangily, on the idea of a self, I
had no sure way of differentiating between self and other-than-self.
It was all just existence, or existence as experience.
Identity
creates, for each of us, the first conscious separation of self from
everything else. And once that separation happens, we can begin to
discover, learn, and make connections: to make a world—and a
society. Until I
exist, us is
impossible.
Chaos
isn't chaos, looked at from the
outside. Chaos is
something that is experienced, from the inside: where one exists, not
as one, but as and in the chaos.
The
discovery of self—given to each of us, formally, as a name—is
what opens the way to society. And society—as it puts things
together (socius is
the Latin word for friend)--comes about as the newly discovered self
begins to create relationships with what is not self.
The
earliest relationships are probably just identifications:
I see that. But then we come to
associations: I see that this is like that, or unlike
that. And then the young self
makes a huge leap: a leap that
will eventually lead to
choice, or preference. It creates, for itself, the idea of relation.
I start to see that toe
which I have been playing with as a part of me.
When
I learned my name, I stepped
out of the chaos of experience which had included me, a chaos which
by definition had no center, no axis, no focus. As I stepped out of
that chaos I could for the first time identify a me, which was not my
experience in that world.
And
at that moment, though I couldn't write yet, I knew the first
principle of writing: the engagement of the self with the other
which is not self: with the world. Working out that engagement,
thst relationship, is a life's work for a writer. A life's work: as
it should be , for everybody, writer or not.
(When
I was a new young professor of English at the University of Michigan,
one of the poets in the English Department was a very dry, unengaging
and unengaged man who existed under one first name and wrote under
another, explained that he wrote poetry “to honor the Muse.”
When I heard him read his poems I felt sorry for the Muse, until I
remembered that she is deaf.)
For each of us—each self among
us—engagement must be with life itself, in this world.
The
assertion of self is justifiable because the self has work to do. It
must engage, relate. That's what writing is all about. To be
alone is to be dead, to cease to exist. Individual is
meaningless on its own: that is, as simply individual.
When
I master the first-person pronoun—or my own name—I am at step
one. Next, I or me
or whatever my name is must encounter the world, engage with it,
establish a relationship with it which will let me understand it.
Understand
is such a big word! It's as big a word as love—and
more demanding, because it says what it means so explicitly. To
understand means to
“stand under.” Newton,
again, standing under that apple tree and understanding gravity.
It isn't just weight, or heaviness. If that's all it is, the earth
would fall everything else. Gravity is the attractive force that
makes things come together. And that coming together
is what's important.
Metaphor
is a word for coming together, for putting things together.
Sometimes in Greece you see big trucks with “Metaphoros” printed
on their sides. They aren't trucks carrying loads of metaphors,
however; they are what we would call “moving vans.” They are
carrying somebody's belongings—furniture, clothing,
books—somewhere. The Greek word metaphoros says to “carry
across.”
But
across what, or to where? When the “Metaphoros” truck arrives at
its destination, we will know: and we will call it “home.”
Somebody's new home: if not ours, somebody else's.
What
a metaphor does is put together things or ideas or whatever than
haven't been put together before—and in putting them together, it
makes something new.
When
Newton put together—in his mind—the apple falling from the tree
and its hitting his head, he got something more than a bump on his
head or a bruised apple. He got an idea, a new understanding. From
standing there under that tree.
When,
as a child, I discover me—when I isolate me, see myself as
an entity, I will immediately start making metaphors. Relationships.
Maybe at first I will think “mother” is a breast, or a nipple.
But soon I will discover that she is more than that. I may think a
brick and a ball are the same thing—until I try to kick the brick.
A cat isn't a pillow—but at first, when she was asleep in front of
the fireplace, I thought she was a pillow.
I am the center of my little but ever expanding universe. But soon I
discover that there are other centers in addition to me, and each of
them has its universe.
And
instead of trying to lie down on the cat, I will pet her. And my
mother and I will start to talk. And one day I will start to learn
my letters. And then I will spell words. I will be able to put
those magical things my mother and I say—words--on a piece of quiet
paper. They won't make any noise, but they will be in their own way
real. I will have made them. And they won't go away.
My
career as a writer will be launched.
Writing,
as we know it, began a long time ago. Early cave men cut marks into
stone. The famous cave paintings at Altimira, in Spain—those
beautiful polychrome bulls—are from some 20,000 years ago.
Writings were later inscribed in stone. And on baked clay tablets.
Then written on the dried bark of trees. Then on papyrus. On paper
made from linen, or cotton. Then on paper that has a shelf-life of
maybe several years. Then electronically “saved.”
Will
we have access to what we have “saved,” electronically, fifty
years from now? Or does that matter? Will our society save anything
by then? Will we have—or be—a society by then?
I don't know. But I know the value of writing, and what writing
represents. Writing represents the social ambition to
understand this world, and us who inhabit it.
Seamus
Heaney, the great Irish poet, ended his first book with a poem about
being fascinsated by wells when he was a child. And he confesses
that the fascinastion remains, though to explore them now the way he
once did is “beneath all adult dignity.” Now he writes, he says,
instead:
I
rhyme
To see myself, to set
the darkness echoing.
For Heaney, rhyming is--was--the very social and socially necessary
act of understanding. He practised it brilliantly.
History
says, Don't hope
On this side of the
grave.
But
then, once in a lifetime
The
longed-for tidal wave
Of
justice can rise up,
And hope
and history rhyme.
When
I was very small I loved rhyme. If someone told me to put on my hat,
I would run through the alphabet quickly, saying “bat cat dat fat
gat hat jat kat kat mat nat pat rat sat tat vat wat yat zat.” And
then I would put on my hat. The multiplication tables were fun—but
not as wonderful as rhyming. Once you knew the multiplication
tables, they were always just the same. No changes, no surprises, no
interesting juxtapositions. But rhymes were wide open—and they
opened up the world to the rhymester's understanding.
13
April 2014
In Memoriam Seamus Heaney
That first cry. You don't even know that it's yours yet, don't know the idea
of you yet, or what a cry is.
But you make it. The noise. An assertion of self, perhaps, just as self starts.
Self starts before consciousness--and consciousness, when it comes, quickly
becomes self-conscious.
That first noise is not conscious. And it recurs, not as a willed noise, not yet
identifiable as noise by you, and still inseparable from you.
When self becomes conscious, it starts the collecting and accumulating that
become life. When self-consciousness happens, the collecting and accumulation
will start to have a form, and begin to be what grown-ups call knowledge.
Understanding. Wisdom.
And then it's gone. Where? Where to?
And the last thing we know before knowing itself stops is the silence.
"Don't be afraid."
That first cry. You don't even know that it's yours yet, don't know the idea
of you yet, or what a cry is.
But you make it. The noise. An assertion of self, perhaps, just as self starts.
Self starts before consciousness--and consciousness, when it comes, quickly
becomes self-conscious.
That first noise is not conscious. And it recurs, not as a willed noise, not yet
identifiable as noise by you, and still inseparable from you.
When self becomes conscious, it starts the collecting and accumulating that
become life. When self-consciousness happens, the collecting and accumulation
will start to have a form, and begin to be what grown-ups call knowledge.
Understanding. Wisdom.
And then it's gone. Where? Where to?
And the last thing we know before knowing itself stops is the silence.
"Don't be afraid."
zaterdag 2 augustus 2014
ENLARGING THE EUROPEAN UNION
Since 1959, the United States of
North America has extended from the western shores of the Atlantic Ocean
halfway across the Pacific Ocean. When
Russia joins the European Union, that Union will extend from Ireland,
traditionally a part of Europe, just off the eastern coast of the Atlantic
ocean, to the northwestern shores of the Pacific Ocean And across the Bering Straits, the European
Union and the United States of North America will be only 82 kilometers—51
mies—apart.
Since 1959, when Alaska and Hawaii
became members of the United States, the distance between the eastern
(Atlantic) coast of the United States of North America and its western-most
states is roughly 6,000 miles. The
distance from the western-most (Atlantic coast) parts of Europe
to the eastern (Pacific) coast of Siberia is roughly the same.
The land mass of the USNA, including
Alaska and Hawaii, is 3.8 million square
miles. The total land mass of the
current EU is 1.7 million square miles—but add Siberia, and the enlarged EU has
a land mass of 8.3 million square miles.
And Siberia is a lot closer to European Europe than Hawaii is to North America.
Most of the 6.6 million square miles Russia would bring into the EU, is—like much of Alaska--frozen Siberian
tundra, though a lot of that tundra is
rich in minerals, oil, and natural gas.
The total population of the USNA is
313 million. The total population of the
EU is 507 million; with Russia (and
Siberia) the population of the EU will be 640 million.
And what—beyond numbers—will this
mean? For Russia, it will mean that it
and its citizens will have better access to European technology. For the EU, it will mean that the current EU
countries will have better access to Russian oil, natural gas, and other
natural resources. And it will mean
enlarging significantly the greatest experiment in human political history, a
voluntary union of peoples.
The USA was cobbled together out of
revolution, purchase, war and conquest.
And it was built on the backs of black slavery and violent subjugatioin
of the Native American population. The
European Union has been and continues to be built on application and
invitation. There is a huge
difference—and it shows every day. And
what it shows—on the USA’s side—is the greatest obstacle, not just to world
peace but to world-wide human justice.
If Russia joins the European Union,
mankind will take a real (and un-hyped) “giant step” forward—and that step will
be taken on this planet.
THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN’S PLAYERS
I created the Lord Chamberlain’s Players at the University of Michigan from 1966. It was active there until 1992, and then at Bellarmine College in Louisville, Kentucky from 1992 to 1999, when the organization changed its name to Abbey West Players. In 2009 it was again reconstituted, this time in Saarbrücken, Germany, as Abbey East Players at the Universität des Saarlandes.
I began my theatre career just before my sixth birthday, in 1941. I was the Prologue for the Christmas program at St. Joseph’s School in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Little folks, you will say, Should be seen and not heard: ^ But you woin't mind if I Say just one word?
That one word is Welcome! Welcome everyone! And now that I have said it, Our program has begun!
I also played a young waif—a silent part—in the Nativity pageant, which closed our program. I wore a nice white shirt and new knickerbockers as Prologue. But as a young waif I was supposed to look waifish. I knew I couldn't dirty my white shirt or my new knickers, so I just rubbed some playground mud on my face and my arms and my legs. I did my waif's make-up, alas, before the program started, so I could do it well—and Sister Mary Annine—she was only eighteen, and this was her first year as a nun—didn't notice until I was on stage to say my little speech.
In the early 1950s, while I was in high school, I wrote and directed two plays. One was a very successful half-hour live radio opera called “Hansel and Fritzel,” the other a sort of absurdist play (I had never heard of such, of course) that I staged at College High School when I was a senior. Then I retired from the theatre until 1965.
I was a newly minted Doctor of Philosophy in 1965, in the second term of my first year as a member of the English faculty at Michigan. That spring, Donald Hall volunteered me to play opposite him in the John Barton Wolgamot Society's production of Ubu Roi, by Alfred Jarré. It was wonderful fun. Don Hall—in his bearish phase—played Papa Ubu, and I was his conscience.
In the autumn of 1966 I walked into the ornate rococo foyer of the university's Angell Hall, I stopped dead still. This was the perfect set Oscar Wilde's “Salomé”—and I wanted to use it, and would ask Don Hall to play Herod. I did, and he said yes. I recruited students, and created The Lord Chamberlain's Players. I chose the name because in 1896 the Lord Chamberlain, in London, refused to grant a license for the production of Wilde's play on the grounds that it was obscene.
Our production was a spectacular success. I persuaded—pleaded, with and finally persuaded—Josef Blatt, professor of opera at the Music School, to attend. He came—and declared it as moving a production as he had ever seen or heard: “Better than Strauss,” he said.
After that, the Lord Chamberlain's Players presented Byron's “Manfred” in Angell Hall, and Henry Fielding's “Tom Thumb,” and the American premier of Charles Marowicz' “Macbeth Collage.” We also did several short medieval English plays, and several short plays of mine. And—not in Angell Hall—P. T. Barnum's melodrama, “The Drunkard.” And we made a road trip to the University of Notre Dame to perform in a theatre festival called “Expose Yourself!”
In the midst of all of this, Don Hall used a lot of the Lord Chamberlain's Players in a 1967 production of “MacBird!”--Barbara Garson's anti-war play—that ran through several weeks in three different locations. I got to play MacBird—dressed in a red kilt, superman-blue tights and shirt with a big “McB” symbol on the chest, a red cape, a gold crown, jester-type shoes with long turned-up toes, and a long red rubber glove on my left hand to signify that I was a murderer.
When the lights were out and the house black after the intermission, I would sneak out in the darkness to the apron of the stage, just inches from the people on thr front row. The rest of the cast would be at the back of the theatre, and would start to chant, “Hey! Hey! LBJ! How Mny kids did you kill today?” The audience would pick it up, quickly, and after a minute or so their angry shouts would be frightening. If the people on the front row—university students, mostly—had known I was standing just six inches in front of them, they would have bitten my legs off. But when the lights came up, I was MacBird, a ludicrous satiric idiot, and they would laugh.
The Lord Chamberlain's Players also did two productions of a play about Einstein and James Joyce's Ulysses, which I called “Yes to the Universe.” And twice we did productions of my stage version of Plato's “Apology,” with Charles Stallman as Socrates—talking, as Socrates did, forever.
In 1992 I left Michigan. For the next ten years I taught at a small college in Louisville, Kentucky. The first spring I was there a new version of The Lord Chamberlain's Players staged “Oedipus the King” in a natural ampitheatre on campus. Except for Oedipus, it was pretty awful. But my students were quick learners, and the next year we did a fine production—with mostly the same cast--of the Irish dramatist John Synge's “The Playboy of the Western World.” It was good enough that we changed our name to Abbey West Players, and dedicated ourselves to doing Irish theatre.
Over the next six years my Bellarmine College students performed beautifully, wonderfully, in four Brian Friel plays--”Philadelphia, Here I Come!” first, then “Translations,” “Aristocrats,” and “Dancing at Lughnasa.” I had seen the original Abbey theatre production of “Dancing at Lughnasa,” in Dublin and in London, and three American productions. Our production wasn't in the same league with the Abbey productions, but it was much better than any of the American ones, including a (very bad) one at Actors Theatre in Louisville.
As Abbey West Players we also did two short Lady Augusta Gregory plays and Synge's “Shadow of the Glen,” three one-act plays by William Butler Yeats, and two of my plays. Then we staged the American premier (unwittingly) of Thomas McDonagh's “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” and finally Samuel Beckett's “Waiting for Godot.”
We played “Godot” in the college's chapel, the stage in the theatre being much too big. The local Catholic archbishop objected to our using the chapel, but I told him than many people thought that “Godot” was to be taken as “God,” and that the play was a highly moral work of art. “Of course,” he said. (Beckett might have enjoyed that. When asked, once, if “Waiting for Godot” were about God, he answered, “I know how to spell God.” It is, of course, a very moral play.) After we finished with “Godot” on campus at Bellarmine, we took it to a theater-bar in downtown Louisville for another week's run.
Abbey West Players became Abbey East Players in 2008, when I started teaching at the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, Germany.
There was a student theatre group in the English department, with a faculty moderator. I went to see a production of Wilde's "The Importance of Being Ernest" with two of my colleagues. After a ninety-minute first act, we all three produced excuses requiring our immediate departure. I tried again the next term, but had to escape during a scene change. So I recruited five students, none of whom had ever acted before, and we put on “Waiting for Godot.” It was hard work, but didn't really take much time. And the five of us designed and built our set, and created the lighting. After the first night, the cast knew what they had done—and were amazed at themselves. The audience was amazed, too. And I was so very, very happy with what my students had created that I immediately started thinking of what Abbey East Players could do next.
But there was no next. I couldn't get any students interested. Not even one.
So that's it. My career in drama has also included, since 1974, a total of 434 performances as Charles Dickens, doing dramatic readings from A Christmas Carol and other of his novels. I have played Dickens all over the United States, and in Canada, Ireland, England, the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany, and on both radio and television.
And once, for an Ars Musica concert, I got to play Giuseppi Borroni, an 18th century Italian composer about whom history knows almost nothing. None of his music survives. As a young man he heard the music of Pergolesi, and as an older man he heard Mozart. In recreating Giuseppi Borroni, I got to let him talk about Pergolesi and Mozart, and I made him the great-great grandfather of my own great-grandfather, Giuseppi Borroni., who in the 1870s, in America, changed the spelling of his name to Borrone.
Now, except for my Dickens readings, my drama career is over. Except for those annual readings, I will just play me, and direct me. But that should keep me busy. But I'm sorry that the Lord Chamberlain's Players are no more, and that the Abbey West Players and Abbey East Players are gone.
I created the Lord Chamberlain’s Players at the University of Michigan from 1966. It was active there until 1992, and then at Bellarmine College in Louisville, Kentucky from 1992 to 1999, when the organization changed its name to Abbey West Players. In 2009 it was again reconstituted, this time in Saarbrücken, Germany, as Abbey East Players at the Universität des Saarlandes.
I began my theatre career just before my sixth birthday, in 1941. I was the Prologue for the Christmas program at St. Joseph’s School in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Little folks, you will say, Should be seen and not heard: ^ But you woin't mind if I Say just one word?
That one word is Welcome! Welcome everyone! And now that I have said it, Our program has begun!
I also played a young waif—a silent part—in the Nativity pageant, which closed our program. I wore a nice white shirt and new knickerbockers as Prologue. But as a young waif I was supposed to look waifish. I knew I couldn't dirty my white shirt or my new knickers, so I just rubbed some playground mud on my face and my arms and my legs. I did my waif's make-up, alas, before the program started, so I could do it well—and Sister Mary Annine—she was only eighteen, and this was her first year as a nun—didn't notice until I was on stage to say my little speech.
In the early 1950s, while I was in high school, I wrote and directed two plays. One was a very successful half-hour live radio opera called “Hansel and Fritzel,” the other a sort of absurdist play (I had never heard of such, of course) that I staged at College High School when I was a senior. Then I retired from the theatre until 1965.
I was a newly minted Doctor of Philosophy in 1965, in the second term of my first year as a member of the English faculty at Michigan. That spring, Donald Hall volunteered me to play opposite him in the John Barton Wolgamot Society's production of Ubu Roi, by Alfred Jarré. It was wonderful fun. Don Hall—in his bearish phase—played Papa Ubu, and I was his conscience.
In the autumn of 1966 I walked into the ornate rococo foyer of the university's Angell Hall, I stopped dead still. This was the perfect set Oscar Wilde's “Salomé”—and I wanted to use it, and would ask Don Hall to play Herod. I did, and he said yes. I recruited students, and created The Lord Chamberlain's Players. I chose the name because in 1896 the Lord Chamberlain, in London, refused to grant a license for the production of Wilde's play on the grounds that it was obscene.
Our production was a spectacular success. I persuaded—pleaded, with and finally persuaded—Josef Blatt, professor of opera at the Music School, to attend. He came—and declared it as moving a production as he had ever seen or heard: “Better than Strauss,” he said.
After that, the Lord Chamberlain's Players presented Byron's “Manfred” in Angell Hall, and Henry Fielding's “Tom Thumb,” and the American premier of Charles Marowicz' “Macbeth Collage.” We also did several short medieval English plays, and several short plays of mine. And—not in Angell Hall—P. T. Barnum's melodrama, “The Drunkard.” And we made a road trip to the University of Notre Dame to perform in a theatre festival called “Expose Yourself!”
In the midst of all of this, Don Hall used a lot of the Lord Chamberlain's Players in a 1967 production of “MacBird!”--Barbara Garson's anti-war play—that ran through several weeks in three different locations. I got to play MacBird—dressed in a red kilt, superman-blue tights and shirt with a big “McB” symbol on the chest, a red cape, a gold crown, jester-type shoes with long turned-up toes, and a long red rubber glove on my left hand to signify that I was a murderer.
When the lights were out and the house black after the intermission, I would sneak out in the darkness to the apron of the stage, just inches from the people on thr front row. The rest of the cast would be at the back of the theatre, and would start to chant, “Hey! Hey! LBJ! How Mny kids did you kill today?” The audience would pick it up, quickly, and after a minute or so their angry shouts would be frightening. If the people on the front row—university students, mostly—had known I was standing just six inches in front of them, they would have bitten my legs off. But when the lights came up, I was MacBird, a ludicrous satiric idiot, and they would laugh.
The Lord Chamberlain's Players also did two productions of a play about Einstein and James Joyce's Ulysses, which I called “Yes to the Universe.” And twice we did productions of my stage version of Plato's “Apology,” with Charles Stallman as Socrates—talking, as Socrates did, forever.
In 1992 I left Michigan. For the next ten years I taught at a small college in Louisville, Kentucky. The first spring I was there a new version of The Lord Chamberlain's Players staged “Oedipus the King” in a natural ampitheatre on campus. Except for Oedipus, it was pretty awful. But my students were quick learners, and the next year we did a fine production—with mostly the same cast--of the Irish dramatist John Synge's “The Playboy of the Western World.” It was good enough that we changed our name to Abbey West Players, and dedicated ourselves to doing Irish theatre.
Over the next six years my Bellarmine College students performed beautifully, wonderfully, in four Brian Friel plays--”Philadelphia, Here I Come!” first, then “Translations,” “Aristocrats,” and “Dancing at Lughnasa.” I had seen the original Abbey theatre production of “Dancing at Lughnasa,” in Dublin and in London, and three American productions. Our production wasn't in the same league with the Abbey productions, but it was much better than any of the American ones, including a (very bad) one at Actors Theatre in Louisville.
As Abbey West Players we also did two short Lady Augusta Gregory plays and Synge's “Shadow of the Glen,” three one-act plays by William Butler Yeats, and two of my plays. Then we staged the American premier (unwittingly) of Thomas McDonagh's “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” and finally Samuel Beckett's “Waiting for Godot.”
We played “Godot” in the college's chapel, the stage in the theatre being much too big. The local Catholic archbishop objected to our using the chapel, but I told him than many people thought that “Godot” was to be taken as “God,” and that the play was a highly moral work of art. “Of course,” he said. (Beckett might have enjoyed that. When asked, once, if “Waiting for Godot” were about God, he answered, “I know how to spell God.” It is, of course, a very moral play.) After we finished with “Godot” on campus at Bellarmine, we took it to a theater-bar in downtown Louisville for another week's run.
Abbey West Players became Abbey East Players in 2008, when I started teaching at the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, Germany.
There was a student theatre group in the English department, with a faculty moderator. I went to see a production of Wilde's "The Importance of Being Ernest" with two of my colleagues. After a ninety-minute first act, we all three produced excuses requiring our immediate departure. I tried again the next term, but had to escape during a scene change. So I recruited five students, none of whom had ever acted before, and we put on “Waiting for Godot.” It was hard work, but didn't really take much time. And the five of us designed and built our set, and created the lighting. After the first night, the cast knew what they had done—and were amazed at themselves. The audience was amazed, too. And I was so very, very happy with what my students had created that I immediately started thinking of what Abbey East Players could do next.
But there was no next. I couldn't get any students interested. Not even one.
So that's it. My career in drama has also included, since 1974, a total of 434 performances as Charles Dickens, doing dramatic readings from A Christmas Carol and other of his novels. I have played Dickens all over the United States, and in Canada, Ireland, England, the Netherlands, Italy, and Germany, and on both radio and television.
And once, for an Ars Musica concert, I got to play Giuseppi Borroni, an 18th century Italian composer about whom history knows almost nothing. None of his music survives. As a young man he heard the music of Pergolesi, and as an older man he heard Mozart. In recreating Giuseppi Borroni, I got to let him talk about Pergolesi and Mozart, and I made him the great-great grandfather of my own great-grandfather, Giuseppi Borroni., who in the 1870s, in America, changed the spelling of his name to Borrone.
Now, except for my Dickens readings, my drama career is over. Except for those annual readings, I will just play me, and direct me. But that should keep me busy. But I'm sorry that the Lord Chamberlain's Players are no more, and that the Abbey West Players and Abbey East Players are gone.
vrijdag 25 juli 2014
maandag 21 juli 2014
EGOS, ONE THROUGH THREE
I have made a sort of list--of contemporary egoists. My three I's would be shocked to find themselves lumped together. But they seem to me to be the three worst, biggest, and most obvious egoists in the world. Not just in the United States, though all three belong there, live there. The three biggest egoists in the world.
Let me start with the easiest one, Donald Trump, a.k.a. "The Donald," "Trump," and "Ass." He calls himself "The Donald." He parades the name "Trump" in gold letters everywhere he can. And he is the world's most absolute ass. If there were a Trump logo, it would show Trump kissing his own ass.
Poor Donald. Self-named "The Donald," a parody of the idea of ego (if there can be such). A man with (as he sees it) awsome power--and his own television program (which he bought) to demonstrate (with personality and dramatic grandeur) that power. (If it weren't unnecessary, he could be called No-Trump.)
The second is almost as easy. LeBron James is a great basketball player. The media crowned him "King James" when he was just a boy, and he wore his crown with embarrassing arrogance. He once volunteered to play--one game--for any European basketball team that wanted to pay him a million dollars for his brief appearance. Soon his reign will be over--is already over, in fact.
There have been other super-star athletes who had titles. Sportswriters called Babe Ruth "The Sultan of Swat"--and he was. But he wasn't an egoist. Muhammid Ali was "The Greatest"--and he gave himself that title. He paraded it, and in the way he paraded it made it a mocking, challenging joke--until he actually became "The Greatest" in his fight with the U. S. Government over the Vietnam War. And Ali remains a great and important world citizen. But he was never just an egoist--even when he called himself "The Greatest."
Paul Hornung was maybe once a candidate for the egoism title, but his stage was smaller, and over time got smaller still. When he was a senior in college he was the Notre Dame team. He kicked off, passed, ran, and punted--and did all four stupendously. The only thing he couldn't do was catch his own passes, or--despite his greatness--make Notre Dame win games.
When the Notre Dame team came onto the field in South Bend, Indiana, they all came rushing out of the tunnel and 50,000 people roared like they were roaring for champions. And then Golden Paul strolled out, all by himself, helmet tucked under his arm, golden curls blowing in the wind, waving to the adoring crowd. Rome was never more thrilling.
But in the NFL, though Hornung was a star, and even a superstar, he had lots of company. And though he was a great running back, that's all he was. Years later, his professional career long behind him, Paul became again a sort of legendary hero in his hometown in Louisville, Kentucky. And there is a huge and wonderful picture of him, at his best, painted on the side of a tall building. And Paul had for years a sports talk show on television, which he hosted from a local bar. The golden curls were gone, his head as shiny as his supersized helmet had been in the glory days. And then one night the golden curls came back. . . .
The third of my three super-egoists is somewhat different from the others. He reached the status that let him be a major egoist by election. Not that he was elected as an egoist, or to be egoist-in-chief. But once Barack Obama was elected President of the United States he became an amazing egoist. He was young, handsome, bright, articulate, personable, and though many Americans hated him for being black, they couldn't do so publicly.
Obama got himself caught in the mire of America almost immediately. Campaigning, he had promised to close the U.S. Concentration Camp and Torture Facility at Guantanamo in Occupied Cuba. He didn't do it. He escalated the U.S. military offensive in the Middle East, despite his campaign promises. And then he introduced drones, and used them to kill people without having to risk American lives. Anybody killed in the American offense in the Middle East had always been identified as a terrorist after his or her death, and Obama continued that policy. Anybody a drone killed was automatically an enemy combatant.
When Bradley Manning exposed U.S. war crimes, Obama declared him "guilty" of a major crime. In saying that--before Manning had even been charged with specific offenses, the commander-in-chief become a dictator. And now he calls Edward Snowden a "traitor" for exposing American war crimes. Mr. Obama was a lawyer. And he must know that to conceal a felony offense is a felony. The legal terms are "misprision of a felony," and "accessory after the fact."
America has, in its recent history, one warrior president after another--and more than its share of criminal presidents. Since 1958--when American troops (me included) invaded Lebanon in hopes of having a war there--the United States has been at war. Even Gerald Ford sent gun-boats into North Korea. And Jimmy Carter attempted to start a war by trying to invade Iran. Luckily, the North Koreans didn't resist Ford's invasion, and American technology failed Carter, causing all the helicopters carrying troops to crash in the desert, their engines clogged with sand blown up into them by their rotor-blades. And Bill Clinton, too: but only with bombs, so no Americans would get killed. And when the U.S. bombed a bridge in Bosnia that just happened to have a civilian train loaded with Bosnian civilians crossing it when the bomb hit, that was not anybody's fault, because the bridge had been "assigned" as a target by the U.S.command. And the Bushes. The Oil Bushes, murdering for oil.
Becoming the U. S. president, Mr. Obama inherited a murdering job. And though he promised to end the murdering, he continues it--and has made it even more "sophisticated." And as a college freshman taught me in 1960, in my first year as a university teacher, "sophistication" is not a good thing.
But Mr. Obama is sophisticated, and is obviously proud of what he is doing. And he is raising two little girls who will grow up to know what their father has done. His ego is more important to him than anything else. If Mr. Obama were killing "white" people, he would have a problem. But he is killing Arabic people, and they don't count. They are America's new "niggers," these last twenty-five years. And for Mr. Obama, killing them is more important than justice or honor or decency or right. More important, too, than his daughters.
Ego blinds. And it has blinded Mr. Obama.
I have made a sort of list--of contemporary egoists. My three I's would be shocked to find themselves lumped together. But they seem to me to be the three worst, biggest, and most obvious egoists in the world. Not just in the United States, though all three belong there, live there. The three biggest egoists in the world.
Let me start with the easiest one, Donald Trump, a.k.a. "The Donald," "Trump," and "Ass." He calls himself "The Donald." He parades the name "Trump" in gold letters everywhere he can. And he is the world's most absolute ass. If there were a Trump logo, it would show Trump kissing his own ass.
Poor Donald. Self-named "The Donald," a parody of the idea of ego (if there can be such). A man with (as he sees it) awsome power--and his own television program (which he bought) to demonstrate (with personality and dramatic grandeur) that power. (If it weren't unnecessary, he could be called No-Trump.)
The second is almost as easy. LeBron James is a great basketball player. The media crowned him "King James" when he was just a boy, and he wore his crown with embarrassing arrogance. He once volunteered to play--one game--for any European basketball team that wanted to pay him a million dollars for his brief appearance. Soon his reign will be over--is already over, in fact.
There have been other super-star athletes who had titles. Sportswriters called Babe Ruth "The Sultan of Swat"--and he was. But he wasn't an egoist. Muhammid Ali was "The Greatest"--and he gave himself that title. He paraded it, and in the way he paraded it made it a mocking, challenging joke--until he actually became "The Greatest" in his fight with the U. S. Government over the Vietnam War. And Ali remains a great and important world citizen. But he was never just an egoist--even when he called himself "The Greatest."
Paul Hornung was maybe once a candidate for the egoism title, but his stage was smaller, and over time got smaller still. When he was a senior in college he was the Notre Dame team. He kicked off, passed, ran, and punted--and did all four stupendously. The only thing he couldn't do was catch his own passes, or--despite his greatness--make Notre Dame win games.
When the Notre Dame team came onto the field in South Bend, Indiana, they all came rushing out of the tunnel and 50,000 people roared like they were roaring for champions. And then Golden Paul strolled out, all by himself, helmet tucked under his arm, golden curls blowing in the wind, waving to the adoring crowd. Rome was never more thrilling.
But in the NFL, though Hornung was a star, and even a superstar, he had lots of company. And though he was a great running back, that's all he was. Years later, his professional career long behind him, Paul became again a sort of legendary hero in his hometown in Louisville, Kentucky. And there is a huge and wonderful picture of him, at his best, painted on the side of a tall building. And Paul had for years a sports talk show on television, which he hosted from a local bar. The golden curls were gone, his head as shiny as his supersized helmet had been in the glory days. And then one night the golden curls came back. . . .
The third of my three super-egoists is somewhat different from the others. He reached the status that let him be a major egoist by election. Not that he was elected as an egoist, or to be egoist-in-chief. But once Barack Obama was elected President of the United States he became an amazing egoist. He was young, handsome, bright, articulate, personable, and though many Americans hated him for being black, they couldn't do so publicly.
Obama got himself caught in the mire of America almost immediately. Campaigning, he had promised to close the U.S. Concentration Camp and Torture Facility at Guantanamo in Occupied Cuba. He didn't do it. He escalated the U.S. military offensive in the Middle East, despite his campaign promises. And then he introduced drones, and used them to kill people without having to risk American lives. Anybody killed in the American offense in the Middle East had always been identified as a terrorist after his or her death, and Obama continued that policy. Anybody a drone killed was automatically an enemy combatant.
When Bradley Manning exposed U.S. war crimes, Obama declared him "guilty" of a major crime. In saying that--before Manning had even been charged with specific offenses, the commander-in-chief become a dictator. And now he calls Edward Snowden a "traitor" for exposing American war crimes. Mr. Obama was a lawyer. And he must know that to conceal a felony offense is a felony. The legal terms are "misprision of a felony," and "accessory after the fact."
America has, in its recent history, one warrior president after another--and more than its share of criminal presidents. Since 1958--when American troops (me included) invaded Lebanon in hopes of having a war there--the United States has been at war. Even Gerald Ford sent gun-boats into North Korea. And Jimmy Carter attempted to start a war by trying to invade Iran. Luckily, the North Koreans didn't resist Ford's invasion, and American technology failed Carter, causing all the helicopters carrying troops to crash in the desert, their engines clogged with sand blown up into them by their rotor-blades. And Bill Clinton, too: but only with bombs, so no Americans would get killed. And when the U.S. bombed a bridge in Bosnia that just happened to have a civilian train loaded with Bosnian civilians crossing it when the bomb hit, that was not anybody's fault, because the bridge had been "assigned" as a target by the U.S.command. And the Bushes. The Oil Bushes, murdering for oil.
Becoming the U. S. president, Mr. Obama inherited a murdering job. And though he promised to end the murdering, he continues it--and has made it even more "sophisticated." And as a college freshman taught me in 1960, in my first year as a university teacher, "sophistication" is not a good thing.
But Mr. Obama is sophisticated, and is obviously proud of what he is doing. And he is raising two little girls who will grow up to know what their father has done. His ego is more important to him than anything else. If Mr. Obama were killing "white" people, he would have a problem. But he is killing Arabic people, and they don't count. They are America's new "niggers," these last twenty-five years. And for Mr. Obama, killing them is more important than justice or honor or decency or right. More important, too, than his daughters.
Ego blinds. And it has blinded Mr. Obama.
CAPTIVITY
I wonder what its like to live for sixty-six years in captivity. That's how long Snoopy the Manitee has been held captive in a marine park somewhere in the United States.
We noble savages speak quite freely of animals "held in captivity" and don't think about it at all.
And in the United States, nobody thinks about the human beings held in captivity at the illegal Guantanamo Bay Torture Facility--for fourteen years now? So that twelve-year old boy who was sent there is twenty-six now? Or is he still alive?
Do we even know how many of them might have been tortured to death? Do we care?
Do we ever even think about them? It was seven log years ago that Mr. Obama promised that he would close down Guantanamo: because it was illegal, unconstitutional. He hasn't closed it--and it is still illegal and unconstitutional.
None of those prisoners has been tried in a court of law. None of them has been charged with a criminal offence. The Lawless Nation we used to know as the United States, champion of democracy, freedom, and the rule of law, simply holds and tortures them--in Cuba.
Why in Cuba? Because it is not the United States, and in the United States what is being done to them would be a crime. Mr. Obama and all his torture thugs would be in jail.
But it seems that Americans are comfortable with such criminal acts. We don't mind treason against our constitution.
I feel sorry for Snoopy the manitee, held captive for sixty-six years. But I feel even more sorry for the human beings who have been locked up and tortured for fourteen years at the Guantanamo Torture Facility.
If enough of us protested, maybe we could make him free them. But I guess we don't care. We don't believe in or follow our own laws.
I shouldn't say this, of course. We all know it--though we pretend not to. We don't wake up every morning thinking about those men in the Guantanamo Torture Facility waking up.
I wonder what its like to live for sixty-six years in captivity. That's how long Snoopy the Manitee has been held captive in a marine park somewhere in the United States.
We noble savages speak quite freely of animals "held in captivity" and don't think about it at all.
And in the United States, nobody thinks about the human beings held in captivity at the illegal Guantanamo Bay Torture Facility--for fourteen years now? So that twelve-year old boy who was sent there is twenty-six now? Or is he still alive?
Do we even know how many of them might have been tortured to death? Do we care?
Do we ever even think about them? It was seven log years ago that Mr. Obama promised that he would close down Guantanamo: because it was illegal, unconstitutional. He hasn't closed it--and it is still illegal and unconstitutional.
None of those prisoners has been tried in a court of law. None of them has been charged with a criminal offence. The Lawless Nation we used to know as the United States, champion of democracy, freedom, and the rule of law, simply holds and tortures them--in Cuba.
Why in Cuba? Because it is not the United States, and in the United States what is being done to them would be a crime. Mr. Obama and all his torture thugs would be in jail.
But it seems that Americans are comfortable with such criminal acts. We don't mind treason against our constitution.
I feel sorry for Snoopy the manitee, held captive for sixty-six years. But I feel even more sorry for the human beings who have been locked up and tortured for fourteen years at the Guantanamo Torture Facility.
If enough of us protested, maybe we could make him free them. But I guess we don't care. We don't believe in or follow our own laws.
I shouldn't say this, of course. We all know it--though we pretend not to. We don't wake up every morning thinking about those men in the Guantanamo Torture Facility waking up.
vrijdag 11 juli 2014
RECTAL EXAMS
All the stupid spying that the United States does--on ordinary U.S. citizens and on its closest and most important allies--must be caused by something serious, something seriously out of place. The American "spy culture" is not just stupid; it is asinine.
Dr. Hornback agrees, and recommends rectal exams. American leaders, it seems, must all must have their heads up their asses. The Surgeon General should order his troops to conduct rectal exams on everybody from Obama down to the lowest intelligence officer. The Surgeon General's troops will find their rectums all stuffed with heads: their own heads..
Then the Surgeon General can send out all his Colonels with their Colonoscopes, to perform Colonoscopies. And then? As Thomas Aquinas might have put it, rectum ratio factibilium.
Need I go further? Our language has a long list of coprological idioms that one might quite properly use for Mr. Obama and his government, having to do with fecal eating, fecal-facedness, fecal causes of blindness,etc.
All the stupid spying that the United States does--on ordinary U.S. citizens and on its closest and most important allies--must be caused by something serious, something seriously out of place. The American "spy culture" is not just stupid; it is asinine.
Dr. Hornback agrees, and recommends rectal exams. American leaders, it seems, must all must have their heads up their asses. The Surgeon General should order his troops to conduct rectal exams on everybody from Obama down to the lowest intelligence officer. The Surgeon General's troops will find their rectums all stuffed with heads: their own heads..
Then the Surgeon General can send out all his Colonels with their Colonoscopes, to perform Colonoscopies. And then? As Thomas Aquinas might have put it, rectum ratio factibilium.
Need I go further? Our language has a long list of coprological idioms that one might quite properly use for Mr. Obama and his government, having to do with fecal eating, fecal-facedness, fecal causes of blindness,etc.
dinsdag 17 juni 2014
The Birthday Party School of Literary Criticism
The Birthday Party School of Literary Appreciation
Have you heard enough of
deconstruction, narratology, semiotics, transgresssive transgendering,
flatulitics? It’s much worse than the
older labelling terms and rules—comparatively simple nonsense like iambs and
trochees, sonnet forms, heroic couplet
—which were used as a substitute for
engaging with literature. But both the
new “theoretical” nonsense and the older formalist labels are worthless, and
worse: they distract us. We should forget all the old literary
arithmetic stuff, and we must refuse, abjure, denounce, and in the future
simply ignore all literary “theory” and the literary criticism that uses such. Literature has value—and neither it nor its
readers need literary theory or literary criticism—or rules.
The world was much better—and we were
much better and more useful—when the study of literature meant reading for understanding
and appreciation. Our aim was modest and
respectable then: we served art, rather
than shit on it, and we read literature in order to learn more about life.
Literature has value, and there are
good reasons why we should study it.
Criticism has its place, of course:
we should all read critically, thoughtfully, analytically. But what most literary critics do is—at best—an
irrelevant elaboration of the footnote, a sort of self-important
distractionism
.
.
There was once an important
footnote—and it is a most important bit of Keats criticism. Douglas Bush wrote—in a footnote to the old
Riverside edition of John Keats—“When Keats writes about ‘thinking,’ he means a
sympathetic understanding of the human condition.”
The Birthday Party School of Literary
Appreciation is dedicated to reading poems, novels, stories, and plays. And essays, biographies, and autobiographies. You can attend—or start your own branch. Why not begin with Keats? Friday, 31 October 2014 will be the 219th
birthday of John Keats. Call a meeting—or just invite
your friends. Read and talk about some
of Keats’s poems. You might even refer
to his letters. And celebrate—with
perhaps “a draught of vintage”—those poems, and their author.
Bert
Hornback
vrijdag 6 juni 2014
VIOLENCE
Another murder. Another young man with a gun, killing somebody. And Americans are sad, horrified, etc. For sixty years America has been killing people--innocent people, like the tens of thousands of people it murdered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, like that little girl covered with napalm, burning alive in Vietnam--and some damnable American journalist took her picture instead of trying to help her. If there is a hell, he should have a very special place!
Americans bomb the world. Their shameless hypocritical leader uses drones to kill anybody anywhere--and after they are dead, the USA declares them "enemies."
All the young Americans who kill their classmates are doing is following the leader. Killing is the American thing to do: and this president has taken such to a higher leve than we have ever known. Harry Truman had the excuse of ignorsnce. The wonderfully named "Obamba" knows exactly what he is doung.. And to cluck and sigh at this latest act of violence is gross hypocrisy.
Stop the president's murders! Stop the Sixty Years War.
Open your eyes, Americans. You TEACH violence and murder. It's the American Way. And until YOU quit supporting such you will cause more and more murders like the ones in Seattle.
Don't cringe, and sigh. STAND UP AGAINST YOUR COUNTRY'S MURDEROUS VIOLENCE. And then you can start to deal with the horrific violence among your fellow-citizens, in your country.
Bert Hornback
Another murder. Another young man with a gun, killing somebody. And Americans are sad, horrified, etc. For sixty years America has been killing people--innocent people, like the tens of thousands of people it murdered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, like that little girl covered with napalm, burning alive in Vietnam--and some damnable American journalist took her picture instead of trying to help her. If there is a hell, he should have a very special place!
Americans bomb the world. Their shameless hypocritical leader uses drones to kill anybody anywhere--and after they are dead, the USA declares them "enemies."
All the young Americans who kill their classmates are doing is following the leader. Killing is the American thing to do: and this president has taken such to a higher leve than we have ever known. Harry Truman had the excuse of ignorsnce. The wonderfully named "Obamba" knows exactly what he is doung.. And to cluck and sigh at this latest act of violence is gross hypocrisy.
Stop the president's murders! Stop the Sixty Years War.
Open your eyes, Americans. You TEACH violence and murder. It's the American Way. And until YOU quit supporting such you will cause more and more murders like the ones in Seattle.
Don't cringe, and sigh. STAND UP AGAINST YOUR COUNTRY'S MURDEROUS VIOLENCE. And then you can start to deal with the horrific violence among your fellow-citizens, in your country.
Bert Hornback
donderdag 29 mei 2014
JOHN KERRY: ON BEING A MAN
Mr. Kerry wants Edward Snowden to "man -up," and go back to the United States to face what Mr. Kerry calls "justice."
Mr. Obama has already said that if Edward Snowden comes home, he--Mr. Obama--will not seek the death penalty for him.
What the United States calls justice --as Mr. Kerry should know--includes the illegal torture facility at Guantanamo Bay in illegally Cuba. It includes using unmanned drones to kill people who--after they have been killed--are determined always to have been "enemies" of the United States.
The prisoners at Guantanamo--some of them there, now, for fourteen years--have never been tried in a court of law, not even a United States court of law! They have been declared--without trial--to be "enemies" of the United States.
And now Mr. Kerry thinks Edward Snowden should "man-up" and go back to the United States. He would quickly get sent off to Guantanamo, where he could safely be tortured for the rest of his life.
If Mr. Snowden were not in Russia, Mr. Obama would by now have used one of his American drones to murder Mr. Snowden. He has already killed one United States citizen with a drone. (Never mind "trial by jury"--that doesn't mean anything is a rogue state.)
We might remember that when Bradley Manning was first apprehended, and put in solitary confinement, and tortured--in his native country, as a United States citizen: even before anybody started talking about the perhaps necessity of bringing him to trial, Mr. Obama announced that Manning was in prison "because he broke the law."
When the president of a country declares someone guilty before he is even charged with specific offenses, before he is tried in court for any offenses, that country is a lawless rogue state. Mr. Obama might as well declare himself for what he is: a dictator, a lawless head of what has become a lawless state.
When will the United States recover itself? It can still reform. Its people aren't evil people. Americans protested against Lyndon Johnson and his war in Vietnam, and brought him down. When Richard Nixon's National Guard opened fire on antiwar demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio and killed four young people, the whole nation was horrified.
But now? Well, the United States has been at war constantly since 1991. Maybe now nobody knows how to stop being at war. Maybe that's why most American citizens ignore it. Maybe they figure they are lucky to be Americans--because so far Mr. Obama hasn't used his drones IN the United States.
Stay where you are, Edward Snowden. And when you are given the Nobel Peace Prize, accept it in absentia. Or go to Oslo with Mr. Putin walking in front of you and behind you.
Mr. Kerry wants Edward Snowden to "man -up," and go back to the United States to face what Mr. Kerry calls "justice."
Mr. Obama has already said that if Edward Snowden comes home, he--Mr. Obama--will not seek the death penalty for him.
What the United States calls justice --as Mr. Kerry should know--includes the illegal torture facility at Guantanamo Bay in illegally Cuba. It includes using unmanned drones to kill people who--after they have been killed--are determined always to have been "enemies" of the United States.
The prisoners at Guantanamo--some of them there, now, for fourteen years--have never been tried in a court of law, not even a United States court of law! They have been declared--without trial--to be "enemies" of the United States.
And now Mr. Kerry thinks Edward Snowden should "man-up" and go back to the United States. He would quickly get sent off to Guantanamo, where he could safely be tortured for the rest of his life.
If Mr. Snowden were not in Russia, Mr. Obama would by now have used one of his American drones to murder Mr. Snowden. He has already killed one United States citizen with a drone. (Never mind "trial by jury"--that doesn't mean anything is a rogue state.)
We might remember that when Bradley Manning was first apprehended, and put in solitary confinement, and tortured--in his native country, as a United States citizen: even before anybody started talking about the perhaps necessity of bringing him to trial, Mr. Obama announced that Manning was in prison "because he broke the law."
When the president of a country declares someone guilty before he is even charged with specific offenses, before he is tried in court for any offenses, that country is a lawless rogue state. Mr. Obama might as well declare himself for what he is: a dictator, a lawless head of what has become a lawless state.
When will the United States recover itself? It can still reform. Its people aren't evil people. Americans protested against Lyndon Johnson and his war in Vietnam, and brought him down. When Richard Nixon's National Guard opened fire on antiwar demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio and killed four young people, the whole nation was horrified.
But now? Well, the United States has been at war constantly since 1991. Maybe now nobody knows how to stop being at war. Maybe that's why most American citizens ignore it. Maybe they figure they are lucky to be Americans--because so far Mr. Obama hasn't used his drones IN the United States.
Stay where you are, Edward Snowden. And when you are given the Nobel Peace Prize, accept it in absentia. Or go to Oslo with Mr. Putin walking in front of you and behind you.
THE NEW SON-NET
I'm writing you a poem which has four-
Teen lines--which means, of course, that it's a son-
Net, and therefore good and worth our stu-
Dy. Older sonnets rhymed, but now the hy-
Phen's used at ends of lines. Who wants old-fash-
Ioned stuff? Who cares to listen to that child-
Ish sing-song, ring-ding, dung-tongue repeti-
Tion? We hyphenate, and sometimes use a dash--
To signify the octave's over, fin-
Ished. Now it's time to write a clever ses-
Tet. No more silly quasi-insubstan-
Tial rhyming trash. No wit or thought or mean-
Ing. All we need is form, and formula-
Tion. Sing, my muse, sing hyphenated trash--
I'm writing you a poem which has four-
Teen lines--which means, of course, that it's a son-
Net, and therefore good and worth our stu-
Dy. Older sonnets rhymed, but now the hy-
Phen's used at ends of lines. Who wants old-fash-
Ioned stuff? Who cares to listen to that child-
Ish sing-song, ring-ding, dung-tongue repeti-
Tion? We hyphenate, and sometimes use a dash--
To signify the octave's over, fin-
Ished. Now it's time to write a clever ses-
Tet. No more silly quasi-insubstan-
Tial rhyming trash. No wit or thought or mean-
Ing. All we need is form, and formula-
Tion. Sing, my muse, sing hyphenated trash--
dinsdag 27 mei 2014
POPE FRANCIS AND SEX ABUSE
POPE FRANCIS AND SEX ABUSE
A "zero tolerance" policy is nice, and almost sounds tough. But what about punishing the known offenders? Shouldn't they be turned over to the appropriate law enforcement officials. to face criminal charges?
"Zero tolerance" says simply that the Catholic Church WILL NO LONGER HIDE CRIMINAL SEX ABUSERS. That isn't enough. Pope Francis has to release the information on those whom the Catholic Church knows are sex offenders so that they can face justice.
Anything less than that is itself criminal. And hiding sex abusers and sex abuse makes the Pope guilty of such himself. It's called 'misprision of a felony," or being an "accessory after the fact."
He needs to turn over the church officials who have themselves hidden sex abuse--like Cardinal Mahoney of Boston, who was escaped from Boston authorities by Pope Benedict and hidden away in St. Mary Major basilica in Rome. Send him back to Boston for trial.
Bert Hornback
A "zero tolerance" policy is nice, and almost sounds tough. But what about punishing the known offenders? Shouldn't they be turned over to the appropriate law enforcement officials. to face criminal charges?
"Zero tolerance" says simply that the Catholic Church WILL NO LONGER HIDE CRIMINAL SEX ABUSERS. That isn't enough. Pope Francis has to release the information on those whom the Catholic Church knows are sex offenders so that they can face justice.
Anything less than that is itself criminal. And hiding sex abusers and sex abuse makes the Pope guilty of such himself. It's called 'misprision of a felony," or being an "accessory after the fact."
He needs to turn over the church officials who have themselves hidden sex abuse--like Cardinal Mahoney of Boston, who was escaped from Boston authorities by Pope Benedict and hidden away in St. Mary Major basilica in Rome. Send him back to Boston for trial.
Bert Hornback
maandag 5 mei 2014
MEDICAL CHARLATAN CHAUNCEY CRANDALL
Please join me in shaming Dr. Chauncey Crandall, a third-rate medical charlatan advertising himself for "pennies a day" as a doctor. He should be banned from the medical profession. He is a capitalist disgrace to an honorable calling. Doctors should demand his exclusion from their number.
He is a huckster. And a disgrace.
Avoid Chauncey Crandall! Despise him and his kind!
Bert Hornback
Please join me in shaming Dr. Chauncey Crandall, a third-rate medical charlatan advertising himself for "pennies a day" as a doctor. He should be banned from the medical profession. He is a capitalist disgrace to an honorable calling. Doctors should demand his exclusion from their number.
He is a huckster. And a disgrace.
Avoid Chauncey Crandall! Despise him and his kind!
Bert Hornback
dinsdag 22 april 2014
US TERRORIST ATTACK ON TERRORISTS AND OTHERS
Mr. Obama-amabo has done it again. Strike up another big mark for US Terrorism. 55 people this time. Another drone attack. US TERRORISM. US TERRORISM. The world's biggest Terrorist organization strikes again.
The US rubric is, as usual, "Anybody we kill must have been a terrorist."
Obama makes Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon look like angels.
The US thinks that because it has a million nuclear missiles it can do anything: murder anybody anywhere. Like every other corrupt, murderous regime in history, it will fall. The danger is that the US is so selfish--and so stupid--that it may destroy the whole world as it falls.
Can the US get any worse? Sure. And it will. Every day it gets worse, and worse. The world's only hope is that it will implode. Maybe US drones will get smart and start to explode in the US.
SHAME. SHAME. SHAME.
Mr. Obama-amabo has done it again. Strike up another big mark for US Terrorism. 55 people this time. Another drone attack. US TERRORISM. US TERRORISM. The world's biggest Terrorist organization strikes again.
The US rubric is, as usual, "Anybody we kill must have been a terrorist."
Obama makes Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon look like angels.
The US thinks that because it has a million nuclear missiles it can do anything: murder anybody anywhere. Like every other corrupt, murderous regime in history, it will fall. The danger is that the US is so selfish--and so stupid--that it may destroy the whole world as it falls.
Can the US get any worse? Sure. And it will. Every day it gets worse, and worse. The world's only hope is that it will implode. Maybe US drones will get smart and start to explode in the US.
SHAME. SHAME. SHAME.
maandag 21 april 2014
US MURDERS 55 IN YEMEN
Congratulations, Mr. Obama-amabo, on adding another 55 people to the long, long list of people you have murdered since you became president.
I hope you give each of your daughters a bloody kiss for every one of your murders.
Terrorism, Yankee style.
Murder.
You think that just because you are the biggest bully around you can murder anybody. You can. But that just makes you and your country the EVIL KINGS of the world--for now.
Every arrogant, corrupt, murderous power in human history has fallen, in disgrace. Yours will, too. But you and your country have so much outdistanced all the murderous regimes in history--Athenian, Roman, Chinese, Hun, British, Nazi, Soviet--that there is no comparison. The farther you have to fall; the more history can despise you.
Ever since 1944, when the USA joined the murderous Brits in firebombing Dresden's civilian population, and 1945, when the USA dropped nuclear bombs on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the USA have been anathema.
Your napalm and vicious landmines and your "saturation bombing" in Southeast Asia mark you and yours as vicious murderers.
Your twenty-odd attempts to murder Fidel Castro show both your lawlessness and your stupid incompetence.
Colin Powell's burying a thousand young Iraqis alive in the sands of their home deserts are as disgustingly murderous as anything in history.
And you and your drones! And your torture camp at Guantanamo.
What a shameful creature you are, Mr. Obama-amabo. At least George W, Bush was stupid. You don't have that excuse.
You are a criminal disgrace.
Bert G. Hornback
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