JULIAN ASSANGE, BRADLEY MANNING, MURDER BY DRONE.


President Obama presents himself as an honorable man.

But he commits murder by drone.  Justice?  Trial?  Or just the assassinations carried out by a rogue state?

And Bradley Manning.  Without his being brought to trial, President Obama said, publicly, "He broke the law."  Justice??

Had Bradley Manning NOT "broken the law," he would have committed a felony offense--under both US Civil Law  and the Uniform Code of Military Justice--by failing to disclose his knowledge of presumed felony offenses.

Of course, NOBODY in the United States cares.  It is a ROGUE STATE, a nation without laws.  

And Americans don't care.

Every silent American is guilty of imprisoning Bradley Manning, a brave American hero.

Every silent American is guilty of keeping Julian Assange locked up safely in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.  If he goes out, he be captured by British toads, turned over to Swedish toads, and sent off to the USA to be illegally prosecuted for revealing criminal activities by the Obama  administration.

Does  anybody in the United States care?  Of course not.  

God bless America--north and south of the US border!

Never could I have imagined this as a child, as  a young man.  Not even in the  Johnson years, or the Nixon years.  Sure, Johnson and Bush I went to war based on lies, and Bush II simply because he wanted to go to war.  But since then?  

News.  It's a simple word--and not at all a new one.  The “new” has been with us for more than twelve centuries in English, and was a recognizable Sanskrit word six or seven thousand years ago.   And in its plural form, as “news,” we have     been using it in English since the fifteenth century to refer to tidings, happeningsor occurrences in time.

In our present, most of the news isn't new or news at all.  In the United States,  murder isn't news:  it's an hourly occurrence.  

And at this point in history the United States as a nation has been at war--          actively engaged in killing people--since George H. W. Bush decided to invade     Iraq for oil twenty-five years ago.  The only respite was during Jimmy Carter's
presidency--and Carter tried to start World War III with his attempt to free fifty CIA agents being held (with multiple passports each) by young Iraqis in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.  Carter's invasion would likely have caused a massive
Soviet response.  What saved the world was American technology:  all of            Carter's helicopters crashed in the desert, having sucked too much sand up 

into their engines while they were flying in below anybody's radar.

 In today's world, war isn't news.  Murder--even mass murder--isn't news.  Thirty years ago Detroit television stations quit reporting single homicides on the         nightly “news” programs because there were too many of them.  So they only     reported multiple homicides--otherwise known as mass murders:  they were still “news.”  Now American “news” programs are filled with stories of mass            murders and war-murders--which aren't “news” 

President Obama is horrified by his nation's violence.  Soon he will do somethingabout it.  He might start attacking American murderers with his drones.  Or      maybe suspected American murderers, or American murderers-to-be.  It won't  matter who his drones kill.  The President has experience saying “I'm sorry”      when he kills innocent people.  Maybe drones can be equipped somehow to         express  his apologies even as they explode.

I am not suggesting that we just ignore violence--or not report it.  But it should   be reported as BAD NEWS.  And MORE BAD NEWS.  And for good news, the    President could stop all of his wars, ground all his war-planes and murdering     drones, bring his military home from Germany, from Okinawa, and from his       torture camp at Guantanamo.  And the United States Congress could repeal the second amendment to the United States Constitution, and ban guns.                    

America should take down the Statue of Liberty--and replace it with a dedicationto Freedom and Justice.  Liberty is not a virtue:  it is not a social word.   Liberty  is a self-centered word; it is a libido word, a “what-I-want” word. Freedom and   Justice are both beautiful, good social words.  Freedom is a friendly word--free  and friend have the same Germanic root--and Justice is a word for joining           together.   

 But we have forgotten what those words mean, and what their value is.  We      chant “Kill, Bubba!  Kill!” at football games.  When we get a lot of money we       “make a killing.”  And maybe I say, “Oh, I would kill for a piece of my mother's   fried chicken!”  And athletic teams proudly call themselves “Warriors.”  Violence isn't news.

We could make news--real, good news--if we tried.  And if enough of us tried it,  we could spread our news--and broadcast it the way farmers used to broadcast  seed on their fields or corn for their chickens.

Happy New Year, everybody.  And Good News!!!

                                                                      Bert

YOU CAN'T IGNORE IGNORANCE

     Well, most people do ignore ignorance.  If they didn't--if we all paid attention and tried to make things make sense, the world would probably shut down.  At least what we call "the media" would shut down.

     I just scanned through the current Google news page.

     First, this headline:  "Nonfatal Opoid Overdose No Bar to Further Prescriptions."  This, from Medscape.  If you get a fatal overdose, your doctor won't renew your prescription.

     And this, from Huffington Post--which is usually thoughtful:  "Congress Pushes NASA to Build Deep Space Habitat for Mars Mission."  That "Habitat" in deep space is no doubt needed to house homeless Americans, but the Huffington Post failed to mention that.

     Or this bit of unqualified news, from USA Today:  "US says Iran tested rockets 1,500 yards from American Warships in the Strait of Hormuz."  Shouldn't USA Today have noted--just to keep us properly informed--that the very narrow Strait of Hormuz is the southern border of Iran, and that those American Warships were more than 12,000,000 yards from the nearest US border.  What are US warships doing 7,000 miles from the US?   

     What would happen to the USA if  people in  "the media" were thoughtful?  And at least tried to make sense of things?

                                                              Bert Hornback

SOME ISSUES AND SOME PROBLEMS WITH THEM


     I just read about a professional athlete in America who has an "issue" with his shoulder.  I have a problem with that.
     I realise that most Americans are afraid of problems.  They can't face the fact--not just an idea, but a fact--that gun violence in America is a terrible epidemic, much worse than AIDS or any other disease ever was.  Americans can't face the fact that the first Bush's greedy, arrogant oil-war against Iraq has been going on now since 1992.  They can't have bad news:  they are too insecure for such.  The closest Americans ever get to a problem is McDonalds--which isn't a problem at all.  It's not even an issue. Americans want McDonalds, all day every day.

       The U. S. Constitution guarantees that Americans can't have problems.  They can all have guns, and they can print as much paper money as they want to.  And God blesses America--and nobody else:  the U. S. Constitution guarantees that, too.

       Everything is all right in America.   Problems are forbidden.  The word has been removed from American dictionaries.  (That was needless; Americans don't read--they only watch commercials.)

      America is a land of issues.  There is nothing seriously wrong with anything in America.  Just a few minor issues:  national bankruptcy, guns, forever wars, guns, poverty, guns, murder, guns, pollution, guns.  No problems, just a few issues.

ON OPEN LETTER TO MR. OBAMA 

WRITTEN IN RESPONSE TO HIS BOMBING A HOSPITAL

 Mr. Obama:

STOP KILLING PEOPLE.  Don't go to church this morning; instead, STOP KILLING PEOPLE.

Stop your wars.  Ground all your war-planes--and your new favorite murder-weapon, the drone.

And if you don't have the moral courage to do that, then resign--and let a moral man take your place and call the halt to military murder.  (We can trust Mr. Biden.)

You are the person in charge.  You can stop it all, today.

Your "I'm sorry" is about as cheap and stupid as saying "stuff happens."

All your weapons were designed and built to KILL HUMAN BEINGS.  And they all belong to YOU.

STOP KILLING PEOPLE.  

YOU are the president.  YOU are responsible.

STOP KILLING PEOPLE.  

MURDER is not made legitimate by high office--or by U.S. citizenship.

STOP KILLING PEOPLE.  STOP MURDERING PEOPLE.

Should I be polite and say "please"?  Of course not.  This is not a matter of your royal pleasure.
This is a moral, civilised command:  a human demand.

                                                                    Bert G. Hornback 

"OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM

     "The Star-Spangled Banner" is not really a very good anthem.  Not only is is too hard for
most people to sing--the range is to great--but it's a war song.  And we have had more than
enough wars. And more than enough boasting, too:  "the land of the free, and the home of
the brave."  Don't forget slavery, and what we did--and are still doing--to Native American's.
We have not only slavery in our past; we have genocide.

     "God Bless America" is not much better, though it is shorter.  We sure don't want "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," or "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" (borrowed from the unmusical English).

     How about "America the Beautiful"?  The first verse will remind us of how beautiful this
continent we occupy once was.  And what it asks--of God--is that he "crown our good / with brotherhood."  In such a murderous country as ours is, we could use more "brotherhood"--and "sisterhood."

     The second verse is even better--if you forget the racism of "pilgrims' feet"  which marked a "thoroughfare for freedom" across what our white ancestors saw as "wilderness" but the Native Americans knew as "home."  Of course "freedom"---the same word as "friendship," historically
--would not have let us massacre Native Americans along that thoroughfare.  But the last lines
of the second stanza of "America the Beautiful" are very, very good--and we need them:

                                America! America!
                                Amend thine every flaw!
                                     Confirm thy soul
                                     In self-control,
                                Thy liberty in law!

       That would be a wonderful anthem.  Even a prayer--a prayer I would be very happy to pray, fervently.
                               


                 

New Books!

Dear friends,

I do have lots of things to say--and a bunch of new essays that I need to post.  But I have been busy
with two new books, just out.

           ANEMONES MY FOOTSTOOL:  ESSAYS LITERARY,
               SOCIAL, CULTURAL, AND POLEMICAL

                                               and 

                              OH, TO BE A 'CELLO!

The first book contains ten essays, mostly literary--but then literature is usually social, and both concerned with and a part of culture, and it is sometimes--maybe often--polemical.

The second book contains thirteen essays, variously "about" music, and thirteen poems--by
Yeats, Masefield, Lewis Carroll, Donne, Tennyson, Hardy, Wordsworth, and Mrs. Leo Hunter.

They should be available through bookstores and internet bookstores like Amazon.

And beware:  there is another book of Dickens essays in the offing, to be called  In the World to be of It.

                                                                       Yours,

                                                                       Bert Hornback