I'm seventy-five. I was around during World War II--when the USA pretended that the Nazis were good guys and the Japanese were sub-human evil beings, when black people in the USA were in effect still slaves, and when the USA used its two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
My head hurts tonight in a strange way. Maybe I'm old enough to die and get out of here. Not that I don't love humanity, and life itself. But I'm worn out with the USA, and tired from having spent most of my time and energy arguing against what I see as evil.\
But if I am going to die soon, I want to get this said before I go.
For the last few years I have lived in Germany. I teach there: a civilised place, an intelligent and thoughtful and moral people. Maybe the scourge in their past helps them--us, I should like to say--to be moral.
The USA has never accepted any of its shames: its many vicious, murderous shames. Native American genocide. African and African-American slavery (both: the children of African slaves--often, like Thomas Jefferson's children--were African-American, or Afro-European slaves). Nuclear bombs in Japan. And all the USA's manufactured wars of aggression, in Korea, in the 1958 invasion of Lebanon, against Cuba, in Vietnam with lots of napalm, in Grenada, in Iraq with Colin Powell burying live Iraqi kids in the sand with bulldozer-tanks, in Iraq again, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan with murderous drones, in Syria.
And now: sometimes I am outraged by us, or disgusted; sometimes I am just angry, or embarrassed, or perversely amused. But this time I am outrageously pleased.
The good-old-broke USA has spent billions--maybe trillions--of junk dollars designing and testing a 'hypersonic' plane. Not 'supersonic'--beyond the speed of sound--but hyperbolicly 'hypersonic.'
'Superfast' means something like 'most fast,' or 'fastest.' But 'hyperfast' means ' 'over-fast,' or 'too fast.' And wow! This thing was 'hypersonic.'
It was. And on Thursday it ran away from its trackers.
The plane that could travel at 13,000 miles per hour--21,000 kilometers per hour--would have let the USA military drop bombs on its enemies, anywhere in the world, in less than an hour.
On Thursday morning the Pentagon's best team of idiots launched one of these things, testing it.
They only had two of them. The first aborted itself after nine minutes, and disappeared into the Pacific Ocean. Two hundred thousand homes for poor people sank with it.
The second launch--this Thursday's--lasted thirty-six minutes. And then the thing escaped from the tracking radar: ran away. Where to? Did it go too fast for the radar to follow it? Did it burn up--at more than 2,000 degrees centigrade--in the outer atmosphere? Did it just run off somewhere on its own, maybe to a more civilised planet? Or did it land somewhere'' in Siberia? Antarctica? In an ocean?
It could have landed, of course, in someplace like Washington. An appropriate landing place. As the little girl used to say in the "Katzenjammer Kids" comic strip, "they brought it on themselves."
So: goodnight. If I am here tomorrow, I'll look to see if the USA's 'hypersonic' extravagance cause a sunami somewhere, or just blew up, or maybe found its way home to Washington, or maybe found its way off into outer space. And if I'm not here tomorrow, maybe I'll meet it out there somewhere.
Bert Hornback
donderdag 11 augustus 2011
donderdag 4 augustus 2011
Cynthia Tucker on Obama
Three things.
First, Cynthia Tucker's recent syndicated response to disaster--to "the sky is falling"--is absurd. If the sky is falling--and it is--its doing so doesn't "depend on where you're standing." Six years ago New Orleans was flooded--and no matter where you were standing, yes, New Orleans was flooded. Even people on St. Charles Avenue knew that. Even Ray Nagin hiding in his penthouse knew that. We have lots more examples--but I read Tucker's nonsense in the New Orleans Timers Picayune.
Second, "Obama's first campaign centered around hope." That's nonsense, too. How is it possible for a campaign to "center around" hope? A center is a center, even in these impossible times in this desperately possible place. Tucker is talking nonsense.
Third, Tucker wants Obama to "reignite that spark" of what was, very briefly, hope. But Obama himself snuffed out any "spark" of hope he had given us with the first three of his broken promises: (1) he didn't end our wars of aggression, but multiplied them; (2) he failed to close the torture camp at Guantanamo Bay; and (3) he failed to restore our constitutional right of habeas corpus--and thus has been able to torture Private Bradley Manning in naked solitary confinement at Quantico for twelve months. (Manning's continuing imprisonment--without being charged with a crime, let alone brought to trial--was justified by Obama, of course, by his dictatorial proclamation, "Manning broke the law.")
The only hope I can see that Obama might be expected to ignite would come from his apologising for having been such a terrible, irresponsible, and untrustworthy president thus far, and resigning.
Obama has taught us how utterly hollow hope can be. As a former law professor he is intelligent enough to understand what a terrible lesson he has taught us.
"Can Obama inspire new hope in voters?" Of course he can't. Cynthia Tucker's essay is nonsense. But it does invite us to say the obvious: Obama should resign.
Bert G. Hornback
First, Cynthia Tucker's recent syndicated response to disaster--to "the sky is falling"--is absurd. If the sky is falling--and it is--its doing so doesn't "depend on where you're standing." Six years ago New Orleans was flooded--and no matter where you were standing, yes, New Orleans was flooded. Even people on St. Charles Avenue knew that. Even Ray Nagin hiding in his penthouse knew that. We have lots more examples--but I read Tucker's nonsense in the New Orleans Timers Picayune.
Second, "Obama's first campaign centered around hope." That's nonsense, too. How is it possible for a campaign to "center around" hope? A center is a center, even in these impossible times in this desperately possible place. Tucker is talking nonsense.
Third, Tucker wants Obama to "reignite that spark" of what was, very briefly, hope. But Obama himself snuffed out any "spark" of hope he had given us with the first three of his broken promises: (1) he didn't end our wars of aggression, but multiplied them; (2) he failed to close the torture camp at Guantanamo Bay; and (3) he failed to restore our constitutional right of habeas corpus--and thus has been able to torture Private Bradley Manning in naked solitary confinement at Quantico for twelve months. (Manning's continuing imprisonment--without being charged with a crime, let alone brought to trial--was justified by Obama, of course, by his dictatorial proclamation, "Manning broke the law.")
The only hope I can see that Obama might be expected to ignite would come from his apologising for having been such a terrible, irresponsible, and untrustworthy president thus far, and resigning.
Obama has taught us how utterly hollow hope can be. As a former law professor he is intelligent enough to understand what a terrible lesson he has taught us.
"Can Obama inspire new hope in voters?" Of course he can't. Cynthia Tucker's essay is nonsense. But it does invite us to say the obvious: Obama should resign.
Bert G. Hornback
vrijdag 22 juli 2011
Europe
EUROPE
Is Europe a success? Of course. Europe is not the euro, or finance. Europe is one of the great cultural experiments or adventures or undertakings in all of what we humans call time.
Americans have long—and loudly—celebrated the alleged “cultural experiment” that brought the United States into existence. But that wasn’t a cultural experiment, except that it was built on annihilating Native Americans, destroying their advanced civilisation, and importing Africans as slaves.
In 1952, the high school debate topic was the success or failure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. My debating partner was a girl named Evalyn Hosterman. Instead of defending NATO—it was, after all, nothing more than a military alliance—we argued that our human future on this planet should be a United Nations future. There is nothing in my life that I am more proud of than our seventeen year-old boldness and idealism.
The United Nations has had very little success, of course, in promoting civilisation, largely because of America’s absolute disagreement with the ideals of the United Nations. I suspect that the whole world knew, in 1947, that the United States would control, direct, and limit the United States. And by 1950, an alternative was being proposed—remarkably, from Britain—which in time would become the European Union.
The European Coal and Steel Union became the European Economic Community, which became the European Community,, and then the European Union. As late as 2005, the liberal National Public Radio in the United States still occasionally referred to the European Union as the “Common Market.” Of course: officially, the United States only understands two things: war, and what is called “economics.”
America thinks the idea of Europe is a failure. But then the United States didn’t understand what the European Economic Community was: couldn’t, because in Amereica, “economics” has to do with money, and the ideal of getting rich. The European Economic Community was two things that the United States couldn’t understand: a community, instead of what the Americans call a competition, and a real economy.
Economics is by definition social, not competitive: since the ancient Greeks created the word, it has to do with how we live together. It is a culture word. And the United States is is neither an economy or a culture. It is a me-first, screw-your-neighbor, win-win-win mock-society.
To be sure, the European Union has its faults: it is by no means perfect. But it is maybe the closest we humans have come to perfection thus far in our history.
Part of my pleasure with being a European is in collecting examples of our successes. Let me give you three small ones.
I teach at the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, Germany. Last winter term we had an “Irish Semester” in the English department. In December three students in English and a doctoral student in physics decided to collect Christmas presents for poor children in Dublin. They contacted the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Dublin, who agreed to deliver the presents, and DHL, which volunteered to deliver the presents to Dublin. In six days the students collected, boxed, and wrapped 131 ten-to-twenty euro presents and sent them off. Michael Tighe, our St. Vincent de Paul contact, wrote: “You wonderful kindness made me feel like a real European. Gifts like these are the European Union.”
In June of 2011, Klaus Schappert, the physicist—who is also the founding president of the German Charles Dickens Gesellschaft—decided that this year he wanted to collect 2,000 Christmas presents for orphaned or poor children in Romania. The project is called Action Oliver, after Dickens’s novel. And the project’s chief patron is the current head of the Dickens family, Mark Charles Dickens. I mentioned his project to the Vice-President for Europe at the university, Professor Patricia Oster-Stierle; her response was that of course the whole university should be involved in Action Oliver, and she would strongly recommend it to her colleagues in other German universities. “We are all Europeans!” you know.
And then, in July, I flew back to the United States for a Dickens symposium. I looked at the dinner menu card on my Air France flight. Everyone knows how intensely proud France and the French are of their cuisine. But our menu on Air France 322 from Paris to Boston was an Italian menu. And it was accompanied by a wonderful explanatory note: our meal was “selected by Air France to celebrate its partnering with Alitalia.” (“Partnering” is a generous word: Air France saved Alitalia.)
Our menu included a salad with mozarella cheese, lasagne, a generous portion of ripe Bel Paese, two lovely amaretti biscuits, and a Sicilian lemon tart for dessert. Only the bread and the wine were French.
Europe works. It is a success: a cultural success. We Germans share borders with nine countries: Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Poland. We are very much in Europe. My university is not a German university, but—since its founding in the early 1950s—a European university: we are both the Universität des Saarlandes and the Université des Saarlandes. And given the history of the region, that duality is appropriate.
We have a French-German high school in Saarbrücken, and a popular park that is partly in Germany, and partly in France. And both Deutsch Bahn and SNCF—the German and French national railways—operate the high-speed trains that run from Frankfurt to Saarbrücken to Paris: sometimes you ride the French TGV, sometimes the German ICE.
There is a hill just outside Saarbrücken, overlooking the Saar river and the peaceful, green German and French countryside. It is a park, dedicated to the 12,000 young Frenchmen and the 10,000 young Germans who died there one Thursday afternoon in the 1880s. There is an obelisk memorialising the young Frenchmen who were killed that day, and about twenty yards away a column memorialising the your Germans who were killed. And there is a third monument: a not very large stone cube, surrounded by some light blue gravel. The brass plaque on the top is engraved, simply, “Never Again.”
This is the European Union. This is Europe. And in December, when Klaus Schappert’s Action Oliver sends 2,000 Christmas boxes to children in Romania who have never in their lives received a present, he will have made Europe again a bit larger, a bit more inclusive. And we won’t forget those Irish children, either. They aren’t only Irish; they are Europeans, as far as we are concerned. And that means something: there is an important principle involved.
Europe is not money-based, or power-based. It is based in the ideals of culture and real economics. Starting with little things like Christmas presents for poor children in Dublin and in Rumania, and an Italian dinner on Air France, maybe we will change—
Is Europe a success? Of course. Europe is not the euro, or finance. Europe is one of the great cultural experiments or adventures or undertakings in all of what we humans call time.
Americans have long—and loudly—celebrated the alleged “cultural experiment” that brought the United States into existence. But that wasn’t a cultural experiment, except that it was built on annihilating Native Americans, destroying their advanced civilisation, and importing Africans as slaves.
In 1952, the high school debate topic was the success or failure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. My debating partner was a girl named Evalyn Hosterman. Instead of defending NATO—it was, after all, nothing more than a military alliance—we argued that our human future on this planet should be a United Nations future. There is nothing in my life that I am more proud of than our seventeen year-old boldness and idealism.
The United Nations has had very little success, of course, in promoting civilisation, largely because of America’s absolute disagreement with the ideals of the United Nations. I suspect that the whole world knew, in 1947, that the United States would control, direct, and limit the United States. And by 1950, an alternative was being proposed—remarkably, from Britain—which in time would become the European Union.
The European Coal and Steel Union became the European Economic Community, which became the European Community,, and then the European Union. As late as 2005, the liberal National Public Radio in the United States still occasionally referred to the European Union as the “Common Market.” Of course: officially, the United States only understands two things: war, and what is called “economics.”
America thinks the idea of Europe is a failure. But then the United States didn’t understand what the European Economic Community was: couldn’t, because in Amereica, “economics” has to do with money, and the ideal of getting rich. The European Economic Community was two things that the United States couldn’t understand: a community, instead of what the Americans call a competition, and a real economy.
Economics is by definition social, not competitive: since the ancient Greeks created the word, it has to do with how we live together. It is a culture word. And the United States is is neither an economy or a culture. It is a me-first, screw-your-neighbor, win-win-win mock-society.
To be sure, the European Union has its faults: it is by no means perfect. But it is maybe the closest we humans have come to perfection thus far in our history.
Part of my pleasure with being a European is in collecting examples of our successes. Let me give you three small ones.
I teach at the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, Germany. Last winter term we had an “Irish Semester” in the English department. In December three students in English and a doctoral student in physics decided to collect Christmas presents for poor children in Dublin. They contacted the St. Vincent de Paul Society in Dublin, who agreed to deliver the presents, and DHL, which volunteered to deliver the presents to Dublin. In six days the students collected, boxed, and wrapped 131 ten-to-twenty euro presents and sent them off. Michael Tighe, our St. Vincent de Paul contact, wrote: “You wonderful kindness made me feel like a real European. Gifts like these are the European Union.”
In June of 2011, Klaus Schappert, the physicist—who is also the founding president of the German Charles Dickens Gesellschaft—decided that this year he wanted to collect 2,000 Christmas presents for orphaned or poor children in Romania. The project is called Action Oliver, after Dickens’s novel. And the project’s chief patron is the current head of the Dickens family, Mark Charles Dickens. I mentioned his project to the Vice-President for Europe at the university, Professor Patricia Oster-Stierle; her response was that of course the whole university should be involved in Action Oliver, and she would strongly recommend it to her colleagues in other German universities. “We are all Europeans!” you know.
And then, in July, I flew back to the United States for a Dickens symposium. I looked at the dinner menu card on my Air France flight. Everyone knows how intensely proud France and the French are of their cuisine. But our menu on Air France 322 from Paris to Boston was an Italian menu. And it was accompanied by a wonderful explanatory note: our meal was “selected by Air France to celebrate its partnering with Alitalia.” (“Partnering” is a generous word: Air France saved Alitalia.)
Our menu included a salad with mozarella cheese, lasagne, a generous portion of ripe Bel Paese, two lovely amaretti biscuits, and a Sicilian lemon tart for dessert. Only the bread and the wine were French.
Europe works. It is a success: a cultural success. We Germans share borders with nine countries: Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Poland. We are very much in Europe. My university is not a German university, but—since its founding in the early 1950s—a European university: we are both the Universität des Saarlandes and the Université des Saarlandes. And given the history of the region, that duality is appropriate.
We have a French-German high school in Saarbrücken, and a popular park that is partly in Germany, and partly in France. And both Deutsch Bahn and SNCF—the German and French national railways—operate the high-speed trains that run from Frankfurt to Saarbrücken to Paris: sometimes you ride the French TGV, sometimes the German ICE.
There is a hill just outside Saarbrücken, overlooking the Saar river and the peaceful, green German and French countryside. It is a park, dedicated to the 12,000 young Frenchmen and the 10,000 young Germans who died there one Thursday afternoon in the 1880s. There is an obelisk memorialising the young Frenchmen who were killed that day, and about twenty yards away a column memorialising the your Germans who were killed. And there is a third monument: a not very large stone cube, surrounded by some light blue gravel. The brass plaque on the top is engraved, simply, “Never Again.”
This is the European Union. This is Europe. And in December, when Klaus Schappert’s Action Oliver sends 2,000 Christmas boxes to children in Romania who have never in their lives received a present, he will have made Europe again a bit larger, a bit more inclusive. And we won’t forget those Irish children, either. They aren’t only Irish; they are Europeans, as far as we are concerned. And that means something: there is an important principle involved.
Europe is not money-based, or power-based. It is based in the ideals of culture and real economics. Starting with little things like Christmas presents for poor children in Dublin and in Rumania, and an Italian dinner on Air France, maybe we will change—
zondag 17 juli 2011
THESE PIPES AREN'T CALLING ME
Of course the pipes that were calling in "Danny Boy" were uilleann pipes, not the pipe organs most of us know. And those uilleann pipes--elbow-powered relatives of the Scottish bag-pipes--were melodic, and they didn't pretend to be orchestras.
The pipe-organ is a completely different thing. Its ambition in modern times--since the late seventeenth century--is a curiously un-musical one. The "Age of Enlightenment" celebrated its white male self as enlightened by reason--though we might say, today, that its founders were but reasonably enlightened.
Among other things, they thought that only European males were enlightened or susceptible to enlightenment. Women had no rights; the African slave trade was in its heyday; Native Americans--despite their marvellous civilisation--were slaughtered as "savages." I'm not sure that Spinoza, Locke, Diderot, and Jefferson considered the Chinese as enlightened or enlightenible. And they seem to have excluded their unbleached brothers in India, with whom they shared both genes and language, from the white male state of, if not yet perfection, at least perfectibility.
The pipe organ rose to prominence in the Age of Enlightenment. It was the most complete "thing" man had ever made. One enlightened white male, with ten fingers and two feet--and a slave to pump the bellows--could replace a whole orchestra.
The ancient Greek word "orchestra" signified the place in the theatre where the chorus danced. In modern use, it is the place where musicians and singers perform in a theatre, or a collective term for the musicians themselves. The London Symphony Orchestra, for example, is made up of a large group of musicians, playing together.
But one glorious organist could play a symphony all by himself. Of course his violins didn't sound like violins, nor did his various horns sound like real horns. His flutes and woodwinds squeaked and squawked. But it made a lot of noise--and one man (with the help of his bellows-slave) could do it all. And when he really wanted to make noise he could unleash an outrageous throbbing and window-rattling bass rat-tat-tat that didn't even pretend to be musical.
What an achievement! It symbolised perfectly the idea of the Age of Enlightenment. It was a celebration of self, of ego, of power, of independence. Or almost so; there was still that bellows-slave who made the great teetotum work.
People flocked to the great cathedrals to hear the organ. Ten fingers, two feet, and one machine. Never mind that the man's "instruments" didn't sound as much like real musical instruments as those of the later one-man-band on the street-corner would sound, but they made more noise. They filled great cathedrals with noise.
The relation of the Age of Enlightenment to the pipe organ is one of arrogance and power. Jonathan Swift's satirical representation of the "enlightened" musicians of Laputa ("whore's land) in book three of Gulliver's Travels was an early (1735) mockery of "enlightenment" in England; he could have had much more fun with competing universal pipe organs for the fabulous Laputans to play.
So. No arrogant mock-musical honkings for me, thank you, neither live nor recorded. No arrogant organists drowning out beautiful children's voices singing Christmas carols. No organists playing Bach. No whipped-cream Wurlitzers. I would rather hear farts, screams, automobile engines, and jack-hammers than pipe organs.
And as for the Age of Enlightenment. . .
The pipe-organ is a completely different thing. Its ambition in modern times--since the late seventeenth century--is a curiously un-musical one. The "Age of Enlightenment" celebrated its white male self as enlightened by reason--though we might say, today, that its founders were but reasonably enlightened.
Among other things, they thought that only European males were enlightened or susceptible to enlightenment. Women had no rights; the African slave trade was in its heyday; Native Americans--despite their marvellous civilisation--were slaughtered as "savages." I'm not sure that Spinoza, Locke, Diderot, and Jefferson considered the Chinese as enlightened or enlightenible. And they seem to have excluded their unbleached brothers in India, with whom they shared both genes and language, from the white male state of, if not yet perfection, at least perfectibility.
The pipe organ rose to prominence in the Age of Enlightenment. It was the most complete "thing" man had ever made. One enlightened white male, with ten fingers and two feet--and a slave to pump the bellows--could replace a whole orchestra.
The ancient Greek word "orchestra" signified the place in the theatre where the chorus danced. In modern use, it is the place where musicians and singers perform in a theatre, or a collective term for the musicians themselves. The London Symphony Orchestra, for example, is made up of a large group of musicians, playing together.
But one glorious organist could play a symphony all by himself. Of course his violins didn't sound like violins, nor did his various horns sound like real horns. His flutes and woodwinds squeaked and squawked. But it made a lot of noise--and one man (with the help of his bellows-slave) could do it all. And when he really wanted to make noise he could unleash an outrageous throbbing and window-rattling bass rat-tat-tat that didn't even pretend to be musical.
What an achievement! It symbolised perfectly the idea of the Age of Enlightenment. It was a celebration of self, of ego, of power, of independence. Or almost so; there was still that bellows-slave who made the great teetotum work.
People flocked to the great cathedrals to hear the organ. Ten fingers, two feet, and one machine. Never mind that the man's "instruments" didn't sound as much like real musical instruments as those of the later one-man-band on the street-corner would sound, but they made more noise. They filled great cathedrals with noise.
The relation of the Age of Enlightenment to the pipe organ is one of arrogance and power. Jonathan Swift's satirical representation of the "enlightened" musicians of Laputa ("whore's land) in book three of Gulliver's Travels was an early (1735) mockery of "enlightenment" in England; he could have had much more fun with competing universal pipe organs for the fabulous Laputans to play.
So. No arrogant mock-musical honkings for me, thank you, neither live nor recorded. No arrogant organists drowning out beautiful children's voices singing Christmas carols. No organists playing Bach. No whipped-cream Wurlitzers. I would rather hear farts, screams, automobile engines, and jack-hammers than pipe organs.
And as for the Age of Enlightenment. . .
vrijdag 15 juli 2011
The United States has raised its debt ceiling to $13,000,000,000,000. That's 13 TRILLION dollars.
The US spends a modest $1,000,000,000--one billion dollars--a day on its current wars. So every three years its war expenses are $1,800,000,000,000--1.8 trillion. How much is the total military budget a year?
And what does the US spend, annually, on health care, education, housing for the poor, environmental repair, foreign aid?
To put it another way? How much money does the US spend on destruction, and how much does it spend on construction?
And how much does the US spend on a worse-than useless counterproductive government? Is there anybody--ANYBODY--in Washington who earns his pay? And of course, they don't need pay at all: they are generously reimbursed by the rich obscenities who own them.
Let's do away with government. Pay off our debt with what we save. Squeeze the "defense industry" out of existence. Individually remove all our money from banks and other financial institutions.
And then, when everything has come to a standstill something like what happened to passenger railroad service in America: then lets abolish the dollar, and start over.
No more rich people. No more hoarders and grossers and grabbers and greeders.
We can declare ourselves a Free Nation: a nation dedicated to Commonwealth, to the "common good." We can declare for the idea of Society, instead of the stupidity of Capitalism.
We can set as our ideal that strongest and safest of virtues, Peace, and refuse the destructive vice called War--or, in the official US euphemism since 1945, Defense. (That's when Roosevelt's "War Department" was re-named the "Defense Deparment." It is the US "Defense Department" that is currently engaged in four, maybe five Offensive Wars, called on the one hand "necessary" and on the other "Wars of Choice." It is warrior Obama's departing Secretary of Defense who called Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and maybe Syria "Wars of Choice.")
The prison that provided the court for the World War II War Crimes trials has been restored. The US put Nazi Germany on trial there. It is now time for the world to put the US on trial there: it is ready for us.
If we don't halt the way we live now, in the United States--if we don't change our whole way of life--we may have to submit to such judgement.
Ah, but no. The United States has 10,000 nuclear weapons with which it daily threatens the whole world. We have used them in the past. We have threatened to use them again, for 66 years now.
But there might be a window of hope yet. Maybe the United States could be persuaded to save itself from bankruptcy by selling all its nuclear weapons to a responsible nation like Germany--for lots of money. Or maybe the Americans could sell them to those utterly trustworthy Penguins on the South Pole.
Penguins are smart: they don't have nuclear weapons, wars. capitalism, or any of those other bad things. The sane world would help them buy America's weapons of destruction--on condition that in the future Americans only destroy each other.
Remember: The family that prays together stays together. Jesus loved sinners--and hated war. God is on America's side--or at least the American God($$$$)is: that's what American coins and dollar bills all say: "In God We Trust."
Is God a nuclear weapon?
Enough. Or too much.
The US spends a modest $1,000,000,000--one billion dollars--a day on its current wars. So every three years its war expenses are $1,800,000,000,000--1.8 trillion. How much is the total military budget a year?
And what does the US spend, annually, on health care, education, housing for the poor, environmental repair, foreign aid?
To put it another way? How much money does the US spend on destruction, and how much does it spend on construction?
And how much does the US spend on a worse-than useless counterproductive government? Is there anybody--ANYBODY--in Washington who earns his pay? And of course, they don't need pay at all: they are generously reimbursed by the rich obscenities who own them.
Let's do away with government. Pay off our debt with what we save. Squeeze the "defense industry" out of existence. Individually remove all our money from banks and other financial institutions.
And then, when everything has come to a standstill something like what happened to passenger railroad service in America: then lets abolish the dollar, and start over.
No more rich people. No more hoarders and grossers and grabbers and greeders.
We can declare ourselves a Free Nation: a nation dedicated to Commonwealth, to the "common good." We can declare for the idea of Society, instead of the stupidity of Capitalism.
We can set as our ideal that strongest and safest of virtues, Peace, and refuse the destructive vice called War--or, in the official US euphemism since 1945, Defense. (That's when Roosevelt's "War Department" was re-named the "Defense Deparment." It is the US "Defense Department" that is currently engaged in four, maybe five Offensive Wars, called on the one hand "necessary" and on the other "Wars of Choice." It is warrior Obama's departing Secretary of Defense who called Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and maybe Syria "Wars of Choice.")
The prison that provided the court for the World War II War Crimes trials has been restored. The US put Nazi Germany on trial there. It is now time for the world to put the US on trial there: it is ready for us.
If we don't halt the way we live now, in the United States--if we don't change our whole way of life--we may have to submit to such judgement.
Ah, but no. The United States has 10,000 nuclear weapons with which it daily threatens the whole world. We have used them in the past. We have threatened to use them again, for 66 years now.
But there might be a window of hope yet. Maybe the United States could be persuaded to save itself from bankruptcy by selling all its nuclear weapons to a responsible nation like Germany--for lots of money. Or maybe the Americans could sell them to those utterly trustworthy Penguins on the South Pole.
Penguins are smart: they don't have nuclear weapons, wars. capitalism, or any of those other bad things. The sane world would help them buy America's weapons of destruction--on condition that in the future Americans only destroy each other.
Remember: The family that prays together stays together. Jesus loved sinners--and hated war. God is on America's side--or at least the American God($$$$)is: that's what American coins and dollar bills all say: "In God We Trust."
Is God a nuclear weapon?
Enough. Or too much.
dinsdag 12 juli 2011
FOR ALL MY OLD FRIENDS
Dear old friends,
We have fallen out, because I am critical of the United States. I'm sorry: but we can't be friends if I have to lie, or keep my mouth shut when my country--it is still my country as much as it is yours--is acting like Nazi Germany.
That's not an exaggeration. And you know it isn't. This country has been fighting wars of aggression--or as the outgoing Secretary of Defense and Obama Toady Medal winner calls them, "wars of choice"--since 1949. Constantly.
We bomb civilians. Remember when Reagan bombed Tripoli because some US soldiers had been murdered in a bar in Germany? But the perpetrators weren't Libyans. Remember Reagan's stupid, lying invasion of Greneda? And when the truth came out, remember how the US press forgot to mention it?
Remember the train full of Bosnian civilians that Clinton bombed--because it happened to be crossing a bridge the we wanted to destroy?
Remember Vietnam--and Johnson's lies about the Gulf of Tonkin? Remember Bush I's lies about the first War Against Iraq? Remember Bush II and his war against Iraq?
And Afghanistan?
Remember Bush's torture camp at Guantanamo Bay? Remember Obama's torture camp at Guantanamo Bay?
You don't have to remember the torture of Bradley manning, or his illegal imprisonment. It's still happening.
And you want me to be quiet? To keep still? To shut up?
I live in Germany now, among honorable people who are ashamed of their ancestors who kept quiet during the Nazi years. I also know many honorable people whose ancestors did not keep quiet during the Nazi years.
Why are so many of you keeping quiet? Why do you acquiesce in the face of the outrages our government commits? What is wrong with you? And it is a wrong, and you know it.
Bert
We have fallen out, because I am critical of the United States. I'm sorry: but we can't be friends if I have to lie, or keep my mouth shut when my country--it is still my country as much as it is yours--is acting like Nazi Germany.
That's not an exaggeration. And you know it isn't. This country has been fighting wars of aggression--or as the outgoing Secretary of Defense and Obama Toady Medal winner calls them, "wars of choice"--since 1949. Constantly.
We bomb civilians. Remember when Reagan bombed Tripoli because some US soldiers had been murdered in a bar in Germany? But the perpetrators weren't Libyans. Remember Reagan's stupid, lying invasion of Greneda? And when the truth came out, remember how the US press forgot to mention it?
Remember the train full of Bosnian civilians that Clinton bombed--because it happened to be crossing a bridge the we wanted to destroy?
Remember Vietnam--and Johnson's lies about the Gulf of Tonkin? Remember Bush I's lies about the first War Against Iraq? Remember Bush II and his war against Iraq?
And Afghanistan?
Remember Bush's torture camp at Guantanamo Bay? Remember Obama's torture camp at Guantanamo Bay?
You don't have to remember the torture of Bradley manning, or his illegal imprisonment. It's still happening.
And you want me to be quiet? To keep still? To shut up?
I live in Germany now, among honorable people who are ashamed of their ancestors who kept quiet during the Nazi years. I also know many honorable people whose ancestors did not keep quiet during the Nazi years.
Why are so many of you keeping quiet? Why do you acquiesce in the face of the outrages our government commits? What is wrong with you? And it is a wrong, and you know it.
Bert
maandag 11 juli 2011
LOYAL OPPOSITION
I oppose Barack Obama. My list of reasons is short, and specific: he governs in defiance of the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights, as well as international law.
He continues to run an illegal concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay.
He has not erased George W. Bush's suspension of the right of habeas corpus.
And because we have no right of habeas corpus, he can continue to hold Private Bradley Manning in high security custody. He held Manning in solitary confinement and tortured him for a year; it will soon be two years since Manning's arrest. Obama has already declared that Manning is guilty--"He broke the law," Obama said--though he has not been charged with a crime.
Manning can't be charged with a crime, because had he not done what he allegedly did, he would have committed a very serious crime. Knowing what he knew, to keep that knowledge secret--to continue to cover up deeply criminal acts--would have made him an accessory to those capital crimes.
The one person whose order could stop the violence against Bradley Manning is Obama: he could do that with two words, "Release him." He could also close the illegal torture camp at Guantanamo with two words: "Close it." He could restore the right of habeas corpus--so that what he has done to Manning cannot be done again. He could stop his wars, too--in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Sudan. And he could stop Israel's imprisonment of what should be Palestine.
But no. Obama has signed himself onto a list of history's ruthless tyrants. To be sure, George Bush was mean, and a liar. Bill Clinton was bright, but venal. And George W. Bush was stupid. But Barack Obama is worse than any of them. Obama is mentally agile, and he knows a lot; but he is cowardly, dishonest, and vicious, and his actions as president are--according to our Constitution--criminal.
He should be impeached, and brought to trial for his crimes.
He continues to run an illegal concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay.
He has not erased George W. Bush's suspension of the right of habeas corpus.
And because we have no right of habeas corpus, he can continue to hold Private Bradley Manning in high security custody. He held Manning in solitary confinement and tortured him for a year; it will soon be two years since Manning's arrest. Obama has already declared that Manning is guilty--"He broke the law," Obama said--though he has not been charged with a crime.
Manning can't be charged with a crime, because had he not done what he allegedly did, he would have committed a very serious crime. Knowing what he knew, to keep that knowledge secret--to continue to cover up deeply criminal acts--would have made him an accessory to those capital crimes.
The one person whose order could stop the violence against Bradley Manning is Obama: he could do that with two words, "Release him." He could also close the illegal torture camp at Guantanamo with two words: "Close it." He could restore the right of habeas corpus--so that what he has done to Manning cannot be done again. He could stop his wars, too--in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Sudan. And he could stop Israel's imprisonment of what should be Palestine.
But no. Obama has signed himself onto a list of history's ruthless tyrants. To be sure, George Bush was mean, and a liar. Bill Clinton was bright, but venal. And George W. Bush was stupid. But Barack Obama is worse than any of them. Obama is mentally agile, and he knows a lot; but he is cowardly, dishonest, and vicious, and his actions as president are--according to our Constitution--criminal.
He should be impeached, and brought to trial for his crimes.
Abonneren op:
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