Visions of Peace: A Combat Vet's Dream

You Get Over It!

2012-02-06T14:42:00.000-07:00

You know every time I watch a sporting event I resent the obligatory color guard or field size flag trotted out so everybody can pay reverence to the flag of imperialism. Sorry, but that's just the way I feel. And every damn sporting event becomes a recruiting opportunity for the military. The closest thing to a rebuttal I've seen was the end of Madonna's stage show at half yesterday. The words "WORLD PEACE" were projected onto the playing field. But I'm guessing most of the crowd felt world peace came by occupation and imperialistic aggression by the force of the American military.

Last year I was at a Nuggets game and the halftime event was a Marine Corps drill team with twirling rifles and lock step precision marching. The crowd seemed to love the action. I had a sinking feeling in my gut as I looked out on the young faces of the Marines and wondered how many would die in the next year, how many had already been through the rages and self medication, how many were estranged from family. It sickened me as the crowd cheered and clapped without any regard to the kids who watched possibly being influenced to join the Marines so they can wear the dress blues and do drills. And how many would only wear the dress blues in a casket returning from yet another senseless war?

Sure, we love our military and our troops but is militarism, wars and violence what we aspire to be as a nation? Are our heroes always going to be warriors? I know plenty of veterans who hate this shit. Shouldn't we become mentors to our young brothers and sisters to rebut the myth of war being gallant and heroic? Shouldn't we advise those old bastards who have never had a shot fired at them with deadly intention they are masters of deceit and pimps for death?

Shouldn't we tell the real truth about wars? The long boring, miserable times in jungles and deserts interrupted by the deadly cacophony of rifles, rpgs, rockets and thunderous blasts coming from hidden landscapes. The horrible screams of wounded and dying bleeding out from the traumatic amputation of arms, legs and entire trunks of young bodies. The terror of the dying right before the light in their eyes go out. The attempts of the living to stay alive long enough to find the body parts of friends to send home to family. The soiling of ourselves when all bladder and bowel control disappears in the panic of dark ambushes. Join in. Warriors all have similar horror stories never told to the naive and foolish thinking it's all glory and parades when you join up.

Dalton Trumbo had it right in JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN. His character, a destroyed body with only upper trunk and brain intact, finally manages to communicate his desire for his remaining body to be put on display. The brass immediately stops any further communication between the "body" and a nurse who discovers the ability of the body to communicate. Make no mistake, embedded reporters were the deliberate calculation of the military never wanting the "body" in Iraq or Afghanistan to be put on display as it had been during Vietnam.

Bradley Manning understands the need for the display to happen. A public that has to face what it has done to the young they sent to war may wake up and object. It seems the babies and innocent women and children in our wars never cause an uprising or objection from the general public. Collateral damage. Unintended consequences. No, fucker! Humans!! People! Babies! Don't use your fucking parsing of words to soften the horror you are responsible for. Take responsibility.

Mark Twain knew the body had to be displayed in THE WAR PRAYER. He took it to the great religious leaders who rallied the young to war. Have the religous leaders of today changed all that much from Twain's time? Hardly.

Yeah, we need to display the bodies. Like the ones that run around in my head all the time. The ones that run around in the dreams and thoughts of so many warriors for the the masters of war. They need to see their death and destruction every single day like so many warriors do. They need to tear down their heroic statutes and display the body all over the beltway of DC to demonstrate what is perpetrated inside the lush government offices of the masters of war. Too drastic, too ghoulish you say? Think about how the occupied of our wars must feel when they see the result of our cluster bombs, our tanks with DU rounds or our white phosphorous. You want reality t.v.? Take a steady dose of death created by your government issued war machine.

Get over it, you say. No, I say you like it so damn much get off your asses and away from your CALL OF DUTY joysticks and PARTICIPATE!!! Try the real thing and then you get over it.

Anyway, I'll be damned if I'm standing for that stupid anthem or putting my hand over my heart or taking my cap off. I don't need to ask permission.

Revisiting The Rabbit Hole

2012-02-05T11:40:00.000-07:00

Once again we find ourselves observing the illogical thinking of a government fighting to protect the rights of the violent more than the rights of the peaceful. Bradley Manning, a small fish in a pool of sharks, is forced to stand trial for revealing the ugly truths of war crimes and lies perpetrated against the Iraqi and Afghan people and the world.

And logically, if we fall prey to the illogical reasoning of so many, the rapes and murders in Haditha and throughout Iraq and Afghanistan by American troops and the mercenaries labeled "contractors" go without punishment. In most cases they even go without trial. A recent buzz phrase by a military court was "in the best interest of justice" they were dropping charges against an accused killer of civilians.

The reality is a troop has to be totally stupid to ever face trial for a purposeful act of murder or rape. Assaults aren't even considered since it's all in the course of the duty of a soldier to "rough up" the hajis of military age being rounded up. Interrogation includes assault, water boarding and torture not considered torture unless it happens to an American. Then, by God, it's an atrocity!

I constantly shake my head in amazement and disbelief when I see who is considered the villain and who is the hero. It's like falling down the rabbit hole of Alice's journey into "Wonderland" on LSD.

For a President who promises transparency in government, Obama has done just the opposite. He has continued the policies of Bush and doubled down on secrecy and violations of human rights and the bill of rights under the guise of the Patriot Act and the terror of terrorism.

I heard a newscaster recently question how much freedom should Americans give up to protect American freedom. And she said it with all seriousness. I also recently saw an African American "activist" claim the Occupy Oakland group has been taken over by an unsavory group of people bent on violence. I wondered if he was talking about the Oakland police who have done such a great job in keeping the peace. But, no, he meant those criminals who refused to leave the park and streets. Those who broke the city laws of peaceful assembly in public areas such as parks.

America, this beacon of freedom to the world, has become the spotlight of hypocrisy. We proclaim justice but never avail justice to the innocent victims of war crimes. We proclaim freedom but violently beat and brutalize our own people who seek redress of the government that has gone rogue. We give person-hood to the Goldman-Sachs and Wal-Mart corporations that have gutted the financial well being of this nation but deny it to individual citizens who object to injustices.

We allow one fanatical religious group more power over the personal lives of all Americans than the rule of true law and freedom. The same group that clamors to get government out of their personal lives. They cherry pick their biblical verses to suit themselves and deny their evil hypocrisy every step of the way. They beat their chests in phony and pious rants to protect the sanctity of the unborn but after the child is born don't give a damn if it starves, lives in poverty, is killed in war or becomes addicted. This is the same group that demands the gutting of the social programs helping feed, house and clothe the impoverished. They live in country club estates, retire in comfort and eat enough each day to feed four or five humans. And blame the hungry for "milking the system" and taking food from their mouths.

Another religious group that has more followers world wide has become the satanic symbol of evil. Most of their followers are chaste and devout but like Christians have fanatics that sully the name of the religion. It is no mistake most of this religion that has been demonized have brown and black pigmentation. It is the American way. How many American wars have been against the "other" races? Other than white, that is. This nation began by killing the savage red man and altering history to reflect the heroic Columbus and pilgrims that followed.

Maybe I've always lived in an illogical world of lies, hypocrisy and evil ruling those who want peace and justice. Looking at history, even the revised history of the Europeans, seems to indicate this unquestionable truth. So, why go on? Why not become as narcissistic as those in power? I mean we are all self-centered and self serving to some extent, why not all the time?

I just can't stand myself living that way all the time!!!

Resisting Defeat

2012-01-21T11:34:00.001-07:00

Six more dead Marines. Six more dead from accidental drone attacks. A few here. A few there. Kids dying of starvation in Somalia. Distended stomachs in Haiti across from NGO compounds serving steak. Racist hate spews from the hypocrital mouths of those that would be President. Oblivious masses frozen in front of wide screens watching the "big game". Lavish spending on ads for the Super Bowl. Obscene spending by obscurely named Super-PACs funded by the bastards causing the dead Marines and the families killed "accidently" by unmanned weapons. If they're unmanned, who pulled the trigger?

Who is going to remember the Marines from Hawaii? Who will remember the dead families in Pakistan or Afghanistan? How many care about the sunken eyes of the dying children? How can we walk by the filth and despair of the refugee camps in Haiti.

Just trying to keep up with all the despair makes me weary and think it would be easier to not know. But if I didn't know, would I be human? If I stopped caring would it really make a difference? Too late. I do know. As one individual, the whirlwinds of despair, hatred, volence and bad news intimidates and frustrates me. My mind is always in turmoil. Should I go to the job or make my job one of attempting to change things?

The cold reality is trying to change things isn't primary despite my best intentions. I still need to work in order to eat and have shelter. I want to simplify in my mind but the will to do so is often too weak. And so, I fret and curse and worry. What will become of us?

I look at my granddaughter and wonder if she will still face a world or sexism, misogyny and hate for women. She's seven. Already the brainwashing of institutionalized education has started. Who will look after her that she might be free to be herself?

My oldest grandson faces an unsure future. In two years he will leave high school. What choices will he have. Will recruiters come for him? Will he fall prey to the seduction of war. The narcosis of war. Or will he become indebted to be able to get a college degree worthless in a job market seeking only to pay less than living wages?

My youngest grandson starts first grade. Will there be any freedom left for him when he reaches adulthood? Will his parents see the need to enter the struggle against the hatred and oppression to ensure there are still freedom and rights? Or be too worn out, too exhausted to care?

And, still, my mind returns to the continued wars ripping apart families. Breaking the hearts of parents. Scarring children. Making wives or husbands cry in despair. The images of mothers holding obtunded babies in the hellish camps of the impoverished are hard to forget. The memories of the 9th Ward of New Orleans or the relocation camps of Vietnam aren't going to go away.

It would be easy right here to say it's hopeless. It may be in the long run. I have environmentalist friends who tell me it's too late. We've passed the tipping point. But I notice they keep fighting for their cause. They don't give up in depressive despair.

Helplessness and hopelessness are a deadly duo that leads to suicide. It can be a physical suicide or an emotional one. One where all we do is exist until we die. But in the face of all the reasons not to care or resist, can we quit? Can I ? There are certainly days when it seems like I could. But those days pass. I can't quit because I don't want to just exist.

I like to be around the energy of the young and old who have passion. I like watching my grandkids smile and enjoy life. I want that for all children. I enjoy hearing the idealism of young students and rebellious anarchists. I respect the elders of my generation who continue to battle against the tidal wave of evil that seems overwhelming.

The empathy toward those who face only poverty and hopelessness is a hard thing to maintain. But, if not us, who will it be? Do we alllow the racists, the imperialist without regard for other humans, the narcissistic politicians who sell out to be elected or the masters of war to succeed in their destructive ways?

I can't stomach the idea of allowing the rapists of women, the polluters of Earth or the bigots of this world to think they've won. That they can go unchallenged. Maybe it's rage and hatred that fuels me to stupidly think we can really "overcome". I hope there's also love in my heart. I think there is but the outrage can obscure things. The past has numbed my emotional thought processes. Many of my veteran friends can understand what I mean. But I like to think that same past has made us care.

So, despite the doubts, the outrage and despair I still feel compelled to continue the sometimes hazardous course of resistance. I don't want to be a cog in the destructive machine producing the hatefulness that kills babies, slaughters the innocent and creates the hatred of divisiveness among humans. Rather than just exist I want the adventure of living to fight for peace and justice. How totally naive and unrealistic. I can't seem to grow up!

.

Insidious Play For Lives

2012-01-21T10:15:00.000-07:00

As you watch the NFL playoffs this weekend, notice how many military recruitment ads there will be. As you watch the NBA on any weekend notice how many ads for the military. The military and their bosses pulling the puppet strings like to equate the military and professional sports. They like to use team work as being something you can find in the military. And of course, there are troops being in...ducted during half times, troops holding those field sized flags, color guards in dress uniforms. "God bless America" during the games. Yep, if you can't grow up to be Dirk or Lebron, you can grow up to be Pat Tillman.

What does it say about organizations dominated by people of color on the playing fields allowing recruitment to be done throughout the games? What target audience is there watching these ads? Does Steve Nash and Champ Bailey plan on letting their kids join the Marines real soon? But even more egregious are the Donald Sterns and Mark Cubans of the management and ownership groups. They know the effect of the ads on young people. But somebody has to fight the wars on the cheap while boys and girls playing kid's games make millions each year, right?

We shouldn't put a damper on sports, though. The insidious ads of recruitment are everywhere. They want you to "be all you can be", "Army tough" and "Semper Fi" but unlike those ads selling you all the wonder drugs that list all the side effects in small print and fast talk overs, the recruitment ads don't tell you, "WARNING: enlistment in the military can cause death, dismemberment, traumatic amputation, PTSD, TBI, MST and other serious side effects. Talk to a veteran before you enlist"

Jim Crow 2.0

2012-01-21T10:09:00.001-07:00

I hate hearing or seeing anything about the Republican primaries, "debates" or candidates for presidency. Impossible if I turn any radio or tv on or read a paper. So, the little attention I have paid tells me the GOP is in SC speaking the code of the racist white man as usual. Newt talks about "food stamp President", Romney sucks up to the ultra right and Santorum has made it clear how he feels about people of color. And all think a big old fence should surround American borders to the south....didn't hear anything about the north where rogue Canadians could be crossing over right now to steal citizenship and jobs from Americans. It's like the old blues song...."if you're black, get back, if you're brown stick around, if you're white, it's alright. Get back, get back get back".

Old Jim Crow is supposedly dead but old racist bigots are still around and running for office. From voter suppression laws requiring "just the right ID" to all that code speaking we might as well have the candidates at the debates wearing the hooded garb of the Klan while they stand on stage. And camera scans of the audience show deliriously happy good ole boys and girls whenever the next candidate drops some line about those welfare queens or food stamp mamas. Or illegals taking over the jobs. Seems the only way America can survive is if we keep it tidy white and moral. Well except for "open marriages" advocated by a former congressperson who went on a witch hunt when a certain President had an oral thing with an intern.

My skin crawls watching this crap. Please.....are people this stupid really running for the Presidency? But, I realize it isn't stupidity that creates this slimey circus. Not stupidity of the candidates. It's cynicism and the basic hate for true ideals of morality, justice and equality. The candidates are only giving the likely voters what they want. All you had to do is listen to the cheering when the code words are used. Or the cheering when it was suggested a while back anybody without insurance should be left to die if they get a serious illness they can't pay to have treated.

Is it any wonder we drop bombs on innocent people. We pander to hate and racisim toward our own people. Why would we act more appropriately toward foreign nations and people.

And the worst is yet to come. Wait until the super PACs and all the corporate "persons" start their attacks on Obama. Wait until the big money starts the hate campaign in earnest. There will be little truth spoken by either side and the clowns will be in charge. The circus has only begun.

This year the media will fill our minds with the great importance of the 2012 election. But what we really have is a con game. We'll be asked to keep our eyes on the circus while the masters of war and plunder are planning their next assault on the rights of men and women around the world. They'll be planning on how to further enslave the working class and steal the rest of their savings while we'll be watching the clowns prancing and preening from town to town acting like they're relevant to our lives.

Love America, Hate the Politicians

2012-01-21T10:05:00.001-07:00

People say, "Why do you hate America?"

I say I don't hate America. I love America. I hate the actions of the government bought by the rich corporate PACs and the wealthy who don't give a damn about Americans or the rest of the world. They only care about themselves. Their motto is "I've got mine and screw the rest of you."

There is still this mindset of "America, love it or leave it." Yeah, well my mindset is this nation is better than that. This nation is part of the rest of the world and is obligated to make the world better for all people. Rather than bombs and troops we could drill wells and reduce the number of children dying by millions. And it would be billions and billions cheaper. So why not? Stupid question. There's no profit to be made in improving the lives of the impoverished and most miserable peoples of the world.

Look at Haiti, if you can without crying or puking. Where did all those billions of dollars go to help the people? NGOs claim they've improved things but the people say things have gotten worse. If you only have 6-10 toilets per 8-10,000 people and the toilets aren't cleaned out daily is that considered an improvement over no toilets?

There are a few thousand different NGOs taking the money to bring relief. In their free time many of the staff have nice beds in luxury hotels. They eat steak and shrimp across the street from a refugee camp so crowded cholrea will kill thousands before it is controlled.

The USAID, a US governmental agency gives relief but there are certain conditions. If they buy grain it has to be American grain. If they send equipment it has to be equipment from American corporations. 93% of the billion or so dollars sent for relief is recyclyed to America corporations, many of them within the beltway of DC. Even when the food or equipment is cheaper or closer for immediate needs from non-American sources. Is this how the US wins hearts and minds?

Americans are so ethnocentric and Eurocentric they either can't conceive of the squallor of Haiti or other nations ravaged by wars and famine or they don't want to know. They don't think there are consequences for American foreign policy over the years and when there are attacks on Americans become the whining, bitching, never forgetting victims. What the hell do they think when they allow our government to impose corrupt leaders on nations, bomb, strafe and destroy civilian population centers and rape the land for natural resources? Do they really think because we're America everybody should love us.

Americans are better than they've allowed the government to be. But their voices of reason are being sold out. And too many think they deserve freedom but anybody different doesn't. Tim Tebow is the darling of the American public. How would he fare were he Muslim? How would he fare if he were gay? Intolerance has not diminished because we have laws against hate crimes. It just manifests itself in different and more sinsister ways. If we say our hate and racism is part of our religous beliefs should we get an exemption from the laws?

Or how about the Catholic Church and others who have openly bashed gays for hundreds of years? Or women who choose to have an abortion are murderers but a President sanctioning torture and indiscriminate bombing isn't a war criminal?

I don't like this America! I don't like an America where hate and violence prevail. I don't like the America where greed prevails. I don't like an America where corporations are considered people and allowed to buy my government. You can tell me to love it or leave it but I'll tell you I'm not leaving and neither are some of my best friends.

Milestones

2012-01-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

Milestones are funny. Some like birthdays are celebratory. Weddings. Births. Graduations. And then there are those we dread each year. Dates loved ones died. Dates of illnesses or accidents. For many combat veterans there are dates they never forget for the remaining years of their lives. Dates they surrendered their morality and faced the darkness of true war. Not those imaginary wars of the X-Box or the phony politicians talking about fighting for peace. Not those television wars where the battle gets wrapped up neatly in an hour. Movies like PRIVATE RYAN or PLATOON are mentioned as "good war movies". Why? Because they come close to capturing the sounds and sights of war as perceived by even guys like Oliver Stone, a veteran. But they don't capture the sounds or sights. They don't capture the smells of burnt flesh. Or the thick petroleum smell of napalm. Or the feel of the dead right at the moment of the last breath. The coldness of skin when the blood stops circulating. The tears of friends in the battle or parents, wives and husbands, children back home. The real wars are never captured except in the minds of those caught in the trap of blood and broken dreams. Even the worst expectations of a new grunt can't prepare them for the horrible reality of the movie captured by their brains to be played over again and again on sleepless nights. Until I became a parent, I never realized the nightmares of parents and loved ones waiting at home to hear word but not wanting to answer doors or phones. I still can't imagine the feelings a woman in the combat area has with the tiring and intense pressure of harassment or the memories of war and sexual trauma. And how could we who were the occupiers and aggressors ever know how the innocent victims of our actions feel? On Jan 30-31 I'll mark 44 years since the true beginning of my war, the beginning of the '68 Tet Offensive. I still have the old reel of the same sad movie running around in my mind and it never ends differently. Some years I remember more intensely. Those are the ones I try not to self medicate. My memories are always about young eighteen, nineteen or twenty something guys brought together for insane reasons, not patriotism or some noble cause. Those who died are truly "forever young" in my mind. But I'm always old in the memory even if I look young. I forget what it felt to be twenty. I'm not sure I ever was. Next thing I know, I'm 62. Don't get me wrong, I was one of the fortunate ones. I survived and found some happiness. Learned important lessons. Try to communicate them on occasion. But every year as the end of January comes around there has always been a part of me that didn't want to survive another milestone. Not to worry, though. I plan on surviving another one. I only wish so many of my young brothers and sisters didn't have to go through milestones such as these. I'm so damned tired of the realization so many humans around the globe have to have such memories because we never seem to learn. I remember looking into the faces of young troops at a local military base right before the Iraq war started. They stood across the wire of the gate apparently prepared to shoot me if I entered their base as an act of protest. That didn't phase me as much as the youthful faces I saw. My God, I thought....we are sending kids to fight our wars! It was a stupid thought because that dynamic never stops. We send kids to fight wars. And then their childhood is gone.

Breaking the Betrayal of Silence

2012-01-14T11:53:00.001-07:00

Denver will hold its annual "Marade" to commemorate MLK day. It's one of the largest gatherings in the nation. It starts at East High and goes down Colfax, one of the busiest avenues in the city. Eventually the parade/march will end up at Civic Center Park, the park where Occupy Denver was evicted by riot squads with pepper spray and tear gas. Ironic. The parade is run by self important politicians and their minions along with a good number of the religious community. No Occupy speaker will speak. No feminist will speak. No revolutionary will speak. No young anarchist will speak. No Black Panther will speak.

When the parade came to an end the last time I marched a few years back there were tables set up by "sponsors". Two in particular caught my eye: the Denver Public Safety Department and an insurance company notorious in New Orleans for unethical practices of not paying claims of the Katrina survivors. The Denver Public Safety Department is the DPD and DFD. The same Denver police responsible for pepper spraying and assaulting the peaceful Occupy Denver group. The same police notorious for brutality throughout the black and brown communities of Denver. Irony, once again.

I also came to realize the religious community of Denver fails in their understanding of Dr. King's message. Time and again the majority of the interfaith council here in Denver has had opportunity to speak out against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To object to the loss of life. To voice outrage against the billions spent on death and violence at the expense of programs for the poor. Time and again they've failed to make a stand against the greed and fraud by the masters of war making billions off the blood of millions. And, yet, the same religious community takes advantage of Dr. King's day to make themselves important as speakers praising his life.

Christians around the nation are praying for a miracle today. They pray for a football player's victory because he professes his faith every day in every way. I don't hate this player. I actually enjoy his play. But for all his profession of faith, I've yet to hear him object to the wars. The same can be said for the greatest majority of NFL, NBA, MLB players. A large number of the players are black. They give praise to the life of Dr. King but don't mention some of the core values he challenged us all to have. They don't mention the wars.

The charade on Monday will be attended by Occupy members and others who are part of a local resistance against the madness of our times. They won't have much support. I question if the religious will ever find the courage to speak out publicly against the spiritual death Dr. King mentioned in his Riverside Church address in April 1967. I question if those who declare themselves followers of Christ so publicly so frequently will have the courage to speak out as Dr. King spoke out. To break the betrayal of silence Dr. King was compelled to break.

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence - speech by MLK (April '67)

2012-01-14T11:01:00.002-07:00

Very few posts on this blog aren't my own words but at this time, the Saturday before the MLK commemoration, there are no better words relevant to the world we live in. We should revisit what Dr. King had to say often.

Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
April 1967
At Manhattan's Riverside Church

OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorage, leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.

Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor - both black and white - through the Poverty Program. Then came the build-up in Vietnam, and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political play thing of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the young black men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years - especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. But, they asked, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a Civil Rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed from the shackles they still wear.

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read "Vietnam." It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the "brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant or all men, for communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that He died for hem? What then can I say to the Viet Cong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with hem my life?

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its re-conquest of her former colony.

Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision, we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants, this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to re-colonize Vietnam.

Before the end of the war we were meeting 80 per cent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will to do so.

After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while, the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy, and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go.

They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers destroy their precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least 20 casualties from American firepower for each Viet Cong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building?

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts'? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.

Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the NLF, that strangely anonymous group we call VC or communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem, and charge them with violence while we pour new weapons of death into their land?

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than 25 per cent communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant.

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-violence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know of his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded at Geneva to give up, as a temporary measure, the land they controlled between the 13th and 17th parallels. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.

When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the President claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. Perhaps only his sense of humor and irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8000 miles from its shores.

At this point, I should make it clear that while I have tried here to give a voice to the voiceless of Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for our troops must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam and the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently, one of them wrote these words: "Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It' will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony, and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of her people.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing the war to a halt. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmare:

1. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

2. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

3. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military build-up in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

4. Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.

5. Set a date on which we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.

Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the NLF. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, in this country if necessary.

Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.

As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than 70 students at my own Alma Mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy, and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. We will be marching and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. The need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. With such activity in mind, the words of John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: " This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are the days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take: offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.

We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

We Were Trained This Way

2012-01-13T18:23:00.001-07:00

The viral video of Marine snipers urinating on dead Taliban combatants, if they are in fact combatants, is yet another example of the way the Corps and the military demonize and dehumanize the enemy. During the Vietnam insanity the DIs constantly referred to the enemy as "gooks" or other such disparaging slurs. They took away our personal identity as best they could. They created a mind set of the... only good enemy is a dead enemy. They used operant behavioral conditioning tactics that were very effective for duping and training young people. It would be easy to condemn just the Marine individuals in the video, but America, you need to understand this is an example of what you get when you send young and often immature men and women into your immoral wars. While the majority of you were at the mall or never gave a damn about the poverty draft or the all volunteer military about 1-3 percent of the population was involved in killing and being killed for no good reason. Yes, each individual is responsible for their actions. These Marines are responsible for the obscenity of this action. But the people of this nation are responsible for sending their sons and daughters to the obscenity of these continual wars. So, get over your moral outrage, America. Do something like have national debate about violence, excessive spending on weapons of mass destruction and the continued use of war to solve problems.

Pissing on The Truth

2012-01-13T18:21:00.001-07:00

Watching Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta express their outrage toward four young Marines stupidly urinating on the bodies of the killed enemies is like pissing on the truth. All the progressives and liberals talk about the Geneva Convention but where the hell were they in Vietnam with Agent Orange and napalm and white phosphorus? Where have they been with DU, napalm (repackaged and renamed) and w...hite phosphorus in Iraq and Afghanistan? And with the bombing and shelling of civilian neighborhoods in Fallujah and other centers of population during both wars? Maybe they should actually read the articles of the Geneva Convention. I offer no excuses for stupid acts of grunts called upon by the rich masters of war to fight their insane wars. I saw stupid acts of extracting gold teeth from dead bodies, pushing hog-tied prisoners from the top of tanks and AmTracs, in the field water boarding and the hitting of a prisoner hog-tied with an E-Tool flush in the face during my 13 months in Vietnam. As an 18 year old I knew it was fucking wrong but I also knew survival dictated I shut my mouth. Or, in other words, I didn't have the courage of those who exposed My Lai. Few do. The military culture want us to believe in country, honor and duty but I'll be doing a presentation with the discussion of a young woman raped by a fellow soldier. She reported to her company's top NCO. He had her give him twenty pushups because she didn't properly use the chain of command to report the rape. Where were Hillary and Leon for her??? And at the anniversary of Gitmo's illegal and immoral prison talking about the rules of war, the dignity of war is the ultimate pissing on the bodies of the dead.

Doublespeak Redux

2012-01-13T18:17:00.001-07:00

So, in our Orwellian world of doublespeak a young private can expose war crimes, immoral actions of a government and other illegal actions and he is to be tried as a criminal with the risk of a lengthy prison stay. But the perpetrators of two illegal wars such as Bush and Cheney go on their merry way smirking and laughing at the way they were able to play war with the lives of real men and women ...soldiers and innocent civilians and those dastardly "terrorists". And also able to restrict the rights of the people, many of whom cheered for the wars for 15 minutes and then went back to their reality of idiotic Fox programming claiming to be "real". And, still I hear people capitulate to this by saying they have nothing to hide and are ok with having their rights stolen from them. Still they allow the rich to con them and persuade them capitalism has worked even as they look at their 401k or 403b and notice they lost one-half to three fourths of their pension since 2008. Still they think it ok for the military to spend billions with a B every damn week for the purpose of violence and death in wars. As long as it isn't them or their kids, who cares? Still they only get outraged when they're told to by the corporate media. Such as when someone disses an evangelical quarterback who should really read the Bible concerning his prayer habits. Or if someone suggests a woman has the right to marry another woman or a man another man. Or a woman has the right to control her own body. Still the billionaires buy the elections of public officials and the people shrug their shoulders and say, "well it's been like that forever" And they ask what those damn "hippies" at all these Occupy Wallstreet sites are doing. Shouldn't they get jobs??? Still the ugly head of racism, ageism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia and hate rages as strong as ever. Lip service is paid to the issues but then it's back to the same behaviors. Anybody that thinks the struggle was won hasn't been paying attention. The struggle is a perpetual one that always needs courageous people to step up. And still I love this nation and the many people who carry on the struggle.

Unheard Stories

2012-01-13T18:13:00.001-07:00

So many stories keep slipping by our national consciousness. Haiti still remains in desperate straits two years after the earthquake. Where did all those billions go? Or did they ever arrive? Some people see these human tragedies and grieve for the humans and wonder what they might do. Others try not to see it at all...compassion fatigue. The world is too sad, too many horrible things happening. Make it go away! Denial. That's why they have television. And yet others see the horrors of a poor people and think about the profit to be made in the "relief" effort.
And then there's a local story of a young black woman with a lower rank stationed at Ft. Carson found dead in her barracks from knife wound. A male Sgt. is the suspect. How many times have we heard about a murder at Ft. Carson? One national magazine labeled it the murder base. The full story has yet to come out and when it finally does the military will have done a neat and tidy cover story about the circumstances. It usually goes like this......"this is a tragic but completely isolated incident that happened to occur on the base". The family will be left out of the loop as much as the military can keep them out. The truth of rape, which has some other euphemistic title such as military sexual trauma, will be obscured if that's what has happened. Her name was Brandy Fonteneaux. She was 28. Her family talked about her being a bright light in their lives.
But the military won't talk about the bigger problem. They forget the wives killed at Fort Campbell at the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. Soldiers were killing their wives on their return at alarming rates. They won't talk about the young female Marine raped by one of her co-workers on base, then made to work with him as the investigation took place. Eventually she was found buried in his back yard. But these were "isolated" events that took place. Strange when I began looking a number of years ago I found repeated isolated events of rape, violence, murder, suicide in the mainstream news that occurred on base or perpetrated by military personnel. And the military kept saying they didn't have a problem. The military won't talk about all the daughters in the military who were raped, harassed and traumatized by "friendly fire". They renamed rape. Called it MST.
I went to a meeting IVAW held recently to discuss Operation Recovery. One of the things I vividly remember was the disproportionate number of troops sexually assaulted compared to the number of therapists available to them. I remember that number being one at Ft. Hood. And how enthusiastic are survivors supposed to be using military therapists to treat sexual assault by a member of the military?
And then there's Palestine. Oh, my bad....am I supposed to talk about that?? Apparently not without some trepidation. There goes my quick walk through TSA for the next flight I take. How long are Americans going to cower in the face of AIPAC and the Israeli Zionists who have gone about creating the very type of situation the Jews faced in the Warsaw ghettos during the time of Hitler? What American politician will ever have the courage to highlight the atrocities of the Israeli Army against the Palestinian people? We are not talking about the halocaust when we talk about Zionism and the free Palestinian state. Granted there have been atrocities done to both sides and hatred has often been the motivating factor but do we really think kids throwing rocks at armored vehicles are terrorists? Or are they being trained to become terrorists by an occupying army brutally oppressing a people?
American guilt for turning away Jews at our shores during the halocaust led to an overcompensation by the people of this nation. But then politics took over. The politics of money. The presence of a Zionist nation in the middle of the largest oil resources in the world was in the best interests of the masters of war, greed and gluttony. And they could also create a nice arms business on the side, wherein they supplied both sides with the latest and greatest methods of death dealing weapons.
Make no mistake we're not talking about Americans doing this. We're talking about multinational corporations and the government they bought doing this. The American people have just been too lazy to educate themselves about the Middle East. They've bought into the lies and the fear deliberately spread by one government after another. They hear Palestinian and their minds have been programmed to think, terrorist.
And New Orleans and the Gulf. Did the 9th ever get rebuilt or did the land developers take it over and gentrify it? Did all those black folks ever get to go back to their homes? Where in the world is Anderson? And did BP quit drilling out in the gulf? Was the grasslands and bird refuges restored? Will it happen again. I had someone who works in the area with BP contractors tell me BP got a bad "rap". Really? The same BP that has raped the enviroment so often elsewhere? And why don't we ever hear about the oil spills in Africa that make the Gulf look like a drop of oil in a swimming pool?
I don't know. I must have good friends helping me hear about what happens in our world. I know I don't find it in the mainstream media. Facebook is good now but what happens when Goldman-Sachs starts to stamp its greedy mark on the social network? Or the internet is tiered and routed so only the rich get the fast lanes? Will we have to actually create our own media or actually meet in person? What an uncomfortable thought that could be. Using interpersonal skills while standing in front of our friends and neighbors. Damn, hope I've passed before that happens. I'm just getting used to texting. I forget how I used to do that in person thing. See how easy it is to pass on by those nasty things I started out talking about. Most folks don't want to hear it anyway. My kids' eyes start to glaze over. My work friends start to get nervous because they're working with a "socialist". Too bad I lack the social skills to avoid talking about such stuff.

Will We All Die Alone?

2012-01-07T12:33:00.001-07:00

Just finished Hans Falllada's EVERY MAN DIES ALONE. It's a book about resistance against the facist government of Hitler by a non-Jewish German couple whose son was killed in the war. The descriptions of fear and intimidation, the bullying and spying by police and other agencies of government seemed very familiar. Neighbors were afraid to trust neighbors. While the hierarchy all took the stance of uber-patriotism, the general public detested the government and but said nothing to keep themselves from becoming a target of investigation. Though written in the 40s, the book has great relevancy yet today.

I see co-workers afraid for their jobs unwilling to stand up for themselves. I see union workers targeted by management should they become too public with their unionism. And weak unions unable to do much more than collect dues and occasionally challenge management.

And of course, there are the police who neither "protect" or "serve" when it comes to dissent against government. The individual cops become a gang of blue going about their brutality toward peaceful people. Individual thought is not endorsed. Like the military. Sociopaths somehow get into the ranks and manage to get power. Like the military.

I vividly recall Marines so institutionalized by the Corps they chose to remain on base during times we were given liberty. They had money but didn't like to enter the civilian world. I remember a Staff Sgt. leading a platoon who had an IQ barely above a person with developmental disability. A concerned company clerk told some of us grunts about him. Of course, it didn't take a genius to figure that one out given his propensity to think he was John Wayne.

Is this the world we want? Automatons enforcing oppressive laws, fearful workers willing to accept abuse simply to remain working for unfair wages, government of the rich only?

Do we want a culture so vapid "reality television" is thought to be real? One where personal interactions are replaced by text messages and social media only? Where players earning millions with sports teams owned by billionaires are the "heroes"? A society so hypnotized by mass media and fluff entertainment it fails to see the true reality?

This may simply sound like a rant but it seems the more people are polarized and distanced from reality and each other the more likely the government and the puppeteers of wealth are to carry out their oppression. The more wedge issues created by bastards like Rove and the Koch brothers the less likely people are to rise up in angry resistance. John Paine and others were the pamphleteers of revolution in the late 1700s. Today there is a great variety of ways to do what they did. But for how long? Will Goldman-Sachs and friends soon be the owners of all the media?

A Few Radical Random Thoughts

2011-12-31T13:14:00.001-07:00

Over the past month or so, these are some of the random thoughts posted on that iconic social media, facebook. They're perseverative, redundant and rebellious. It's just the way a warped mind works after this nation sent me to a war even an 18 year old like me at that time could determine immoral. Some will interpret my rants as "un-American" but I have no idea what America stands for as a nation. I do feel it my duty as a citizen of the world as well as the United States to object to immoral and illegal acts and conditions our government allows. Citizenship comes with some responsibilty. Dissent is one when a government fails to do its duty to uphold the Constitution. The Bill of Rights has been shredded by years of oligarchic rule and Americans have passively accepted it. We come up with many reasons to look the other way from jobs to material possessions. But can we look at the younger generations and say we did our best???

1.) If American workers cared enough about restoring their country to what it should be, they'd shut down the t.v., put down the damn phones and shut down the workplace. How much more shit do we need to have our noses rubbed in to come to realize the banks, the government and the big corporate bosses don't give a damn about our welfare? They only care about the welfare of the tax dollars bailing them out and funding their theft from the working class. Hundreds of thousands can watch a football game played for billionaires by millionaires but can't get their assses out in the streets to demand an end to the tyranny of the rich????? Working in healthcare, I can honestly say the bosses of the health industry, including "non-profits", don't care about their patients nearly as much as they care about their bottom line. And they expect healthcare workers to feel noble enough not to object. Time to get over that nobility when there is no reciprocating respect from the management. Maintaining the status quo isn't good patient care, it only prolongs the misery of patients not getting necessary services. They'll try to lay a guilt trip on anybody daring to suggest a work stoppage or collective bargaining but where is their guilt in expecting unsafe patient to caregiver ratios in clinics and hospitals???? Where is the guilt when turning away the indigent by putting their ER on diverts and triaging the poor out of care?

2.) The rich and powerful aren't content to "just" be rich. They want their serfs, the American workers, so tired, so in debt and so discouraged they won't object, won't protest against the insidious and overt oppression money can buy for them. Seeing Scott Olsen this morning on Dem. Now reminded me why we can't allow the oppression to beat us down. We can resist in whatever way is possible for us. But, as 2012 nears, for our own personal integrity we need to resist, object, protest and continue the struggle. This is our country!

3.) A recent post indicates 3 times as many returning veterans (from Iraq/Afghanistan) have died as a result of suicide as have been killed in action. Sadly that ratio is the same as the suicide rate of Vietnam vets. The real crime is the military and the mental health community had ample knowledge about the emotional toll of combat and sexual assault in the military but failed to prepare for it. How many lives were needlessly lost because of this failure? And the bigger question would be why were we ever at war and why did millions of innocents die because of our reckless imperialism??

4.) What kind of mind feels it acceptable to kill a woman in front of her kids because he can't possess her? Or spit on an eight year old girl because she dresses "immodestly"? It can only be the hate for women that consumes so many of us males that leads to such acts. Or is it religious fanaticism? But then again misogyny rears its ugly head in so many of the so called pious religions. These things don't surprise me.....just depresses me.

5.) Here's to pissing off the mindless mobs who never give a thought to the wars we inflict on others nor the victims we dehumanize as collateral damage. If I'm pissing you off by reminding you of the uncomfortable things you don't like to hear, I'm elated!

6.)Think about this.....around 400 families have more combined wealth than the poorest 150 million Americans combined. One hour of a wealthy CEO or corporate owner's salary could equal the entire 430, 000 dollars of donations for the poor in a recent Denver food and clothing drive. The pigs of the Congressional and Presidential trough bicker over a measly hundred dollars per week for the middle class and poor in payroll tax deductions and extending unemployment. They attempt to allow big corporations to be exempt from provisions against preexisting condition disqualification in the Affordable Healthcare Act. They attempt to portray the building of a pipeline carrying the dirtiest form of oil in the world crossing the largest fresh water aquifer in this nation as a jobs program and damn our children and grandchildren with the burden of the environmental disaster the is inevitable. Unions, workers, parents and grandparents need to wake up!!! The national debt isn't the problem. The national welfare state for the rich and entitled is what is destroying us. Profits from wars and profits from the sick and dying are where our nation's moral compass clearly points. We are sacrificing our morality to become economic serfs. When do we become outraged enough to stop the insanity???

7.) I watched a short video of a sheriff's department evicting a family from their home. The obviously traumatized family saw their personal items being put out on the street while the sheriffs kept saying they were only doing their jobs. Seems that mantra is always being used to justify carrying out the acts of the immoral. As cops sprayed demonstrators with pepper spray they later commented they were only doing their job. The demonstrators, many homeless, dared to pitch tents on public property. The mayor claimed health department regulations made him just do his job of clearing them out. The governor, with the most hilarious excuse, claimed he just did his job to prevent a flash fire amongst the tents. Just doing my job. The lame excuse whenever we humans decide to carry out immoral acts.

8.)Is the world better off because of globalization of labor? Look at China where it seems most everything consumed by Americans is produced. There is the wealthy few and then the rest of the Chinese people living in near poverty or poverty. So has Wal-Mart improved the lives of the Chinese in the country they have their biggest distribution center? Has Nike kept children from making their exorbitantly priced shoes? The economic boom of China and other nations we exploit for their cheap labor has come at the cost of workers being abused and treated as serfs much like in the middle ages. And the same companies who advertise themselves as true-blue Americans and exploit the troops by including them in their advertising schemes don't pay taxes to help grow this nation, they've effectively decreased the wages of every working American by undercutting and undermining collective bargaining and they continue to strip jobs from the American economy. How patriotic can they get? The Waltons, Koch brothers and all the oligarchy have only one flag they swear an allegiance to and it isn't the red, white and blue. They will have you believe they have been great philanthropists with their charitable deeds but their business practices erase whatever good deeds they perform. And like the "good" Christian who lets everybody know how righteous he is by blatant demonstration of faithful prayer and charity so too do these rich racketeers make sure their deeds are part of the advertising of their goods.
If true globalization of labor is to happen, all workers will make a living wage and be able to prosper for their endeavors. And the rich will still be rich. History shows when labor has been at the highest levels of unionization this nation was at its most prosperous.

9.) The question could be posed to a man with a conscience if he could take the job of building nuclear weapons knowing they would be used or refuse to take part in the nihilist practice of life. Or if a man or woman knowing a war was immoral could continue fighting that war simply because they were ordered. Our lives are confronted with such choices everyday. Will we choose to be a positive force or go along knowing we're contributing to the negative forces that are destroying life. Our morality is based on these things. Do we criminalize the homeless or recognize they exist? Do we drive past a person in danger or take a chance? Do we sacrifice our values day in and day out thinking someday we'll reclaim them? I'm sick of observing those who care only how they're doing and look away at the suffering of others.

10.) I visited Senators and representatives before the wars began and after they began. They patted me on the head as if I had no idea of the corruption. They turned red in the face when I confronted their lies and blustered noncommittal answers. They may pepper spray me, beat me and jail me but I will no longer meekly sit by and politely ask for my rights. I plan on demanding my rights. They may imprison me but they can never imprison the idea there can be no peace without justice!! A cell is not a thing that can contain the idea of freedom and basic rights for all people. 2012 presents us with the opportunity to gather twice as the rich and elite of both parties divvie up their prizes in their conventions. Americans need to show up.

11.) I was tear gassed in a Marine brig, beaten and gassed at a convention, jailed for non violent civil disobedience, shackled and cuffed as I walked across the tarmac of National Airport in DC as a GI resister. Go ahead Mr. President, sign a bill that tries to take away my rights. I no longer fear the fascist pigs of police brutality or the attempts to revoke basic rights. I remember during the days of the freedom riders when Mississippi decided they'd imprison all the riders. It only created greater solidarity and a greater sense of dedication. They were beaten, water hosed and had dogs set loose on them but they kept returning And so must we!!!

The Violence of the Hick and the Dick

2011-12-31T00:52:00.000-07:00

Hick & Cock seem bound on provoking violence in the city of Denver. Their answer of homeless shelters is like asking cattle to enter the feed yards. Like the old song of "signs, signs everywhere signs....do this, do that" describes what they offer. Most single men without proof of recent TB testing and ID won't be admitted to one of these fine shelters they so often tout. As many mental health professionals know, psychotic, delusional and veterans with PTSD and substance abuse issues aren't going to enter the shelters. What? You say put them in a psych unit. In the past five years over 2/3 of the inpatient psych beds in the region have been closed. The most galling is the unit at the state funded University Hospital. Psych units aren't the answer to the homeless problem. Jails aren't the answer even if the legal system now houses and treats the most mental health patients in the state. Veterans with hypervigilance and self medicating problems aren't viable candidates for the cattle call admittance to the overnight shelters. There are no wet shelters for the functional or peaceful addict or alcoholic. Denver Cares or Arapahoe Detox are nightmares and not meant as shelters. In the past many veterans created encampments along the S. Platte called names like Clintonville, Bushville and the sort. At least they had some shelter and had each other's backs. But gentrification by the returning yuppies from suburbia meant the blight of encampments had to go. LoDo's million dollar condos couldn't look out over shanty town encampments of the homeless unwilling to enter the lottery of the overnight bedding shelters. So the encampments moved south and north but cops and authorities harassed the bridge people, the encampments and the park dwellers with fines, arrests for public intoxication, public urination and other legal issues. They knew these homeless people could never pay the fines and would end up with failure to appears or serving time in city or county jails. Out of sight out of mind. The criminalization of being homeless and not wanting to jump all the hoops demanded in the city, state and federal supported shelters grows every day. Every year the snow comes and the weather gets deadly and still there are homeless people who refuse to enter the shelters. That alone is an indictment of these shelters meeting the needs of the wide range of homeless. And less we forget, there is a triage system in which families, battered women and single women take precedence over single men. Homeless shelters for veterans only don't exist even though a good 40% of all men over the age of 30 that are homeless are veterans. Veterans in a crowded shelter of homeless people can be a time bomb. One intrusion into a personal space can create a trigger leading to flashbacks and violence. But most veterans are weeded out anyway because so many are self medicating and homeless people don't get admitted to shelters if they're thought to be intoxicated or under the influence.

Hick and Cock would have you believe there's a room or place for all and there's no need for shanties, burn barrels or sleeping on steam grates downtown. And homeless people are so damned dirty and such a turnoff for the rich hotel dwellers from out of town or visiting the sites around Civic Center. What's laughable is Civic Center Park has long been known as a haven to make a drug score while cops looked on in boredom and disinterest. CCH has become tied up in all the politics as well as many of the shelters "approved" by the authorites. Too often these folks berate groups like Food Not Bombs for feeding the homeless with the premise it only encourages the homeless population to shun the "real shelters" and leaves too many on the streets.

A few years back I was developing a small federally granted house for the homeless and decided to do site visits of all the different shelters in the area. It soon became clear there was backbiting and infighting in spades between the different shelters. Directors would bad mouth each others' programs and tout their own. It didn't take long to figure out the chase for government and charity dollars was leading to this uncoordinated effort.

While Hick would like you all to know how he pushed for more housing for the homeless during his mayoral tenure, he fails to mention all the subsidized housing lost to gentrification. Housing formerly used by mental health centers for their clients. All the touted new housing wasn't even keeping up with the housing lost to gentrification. And then Hick decided a state of the art jail spending around a half billion dollars was necessary. A jail increasing bed capacity by 200 some beds.

Hick had a study done to see about jail diversion of populations with addiction and mental health problems done prior to the push for the new jail. The experts found for every one dollar spent in treatment 5-10 dollars of incarceration dollars could be saved. He ignored the study because the new jail made for some lucrative land deals and some political capital put out to the contractors bidding on the construction of the new jail.

Well, along came the Bush depression causing cuts in state and city budgets. And staffing a new jail with 200 more beds has become a problem. But keep in mind more and more homeless people are sent to jail following multiple arrests for petty misdemeanors they can't pay fines for and failure to appear charges because they either know they can't pay or they don't have an address to get their summons.

The new jail and all the jails in the metro area have become default homeless shelters. "It's a crime to be broke in America" was a rap done by Michael Franti and Spearhead a while back. And he wasn't wrong at all.

So, where does the provocation of violence come into play by Hick and Cock? They are in a full fledged battle against the occupy movement gaining traction in their city, their state. They see tents and burn barrels to warm people as crimes requiring full riot police participation. They see food served to the hungry as a threat to the state and city. They follow their corporate masters who want their corporate streets sanitized of the homeless and those willing to miss showers and comforts of home to make a huge political stand for economic equity, social justice and systemic change.

Every since the battle for Seattle at the WTO gathering every major police agency has trained for the confrontations of the poor and middle class seeking redress of their government. The feds have used terrorism as sledge hammer to dismantle the civil rights of all Americans. And a great majority of Americans have agreed to give up freedom for a false sense of security. They say they have nothing to hide and think those who object to the violations of the constitution must surely be hiding sedition and terrorism.

Hick and Cock and all their parallel flunkies around the nation see the Egyptian summer and the willingness of the oppressed to go toe to toe against overwhleming force and fear the rocks and bottles may be coming their way. And in a self fulfilling way that's what they seem to be provoking in their willingness to fight the homeless and their supporters from Occupy Denver.

Cock got roundly booed and called a fascist at a vigil for the homeless who died this past year. Some think it was disrespectful to those being mourned but maybe we should think about how many lives could have been saved had Hick and Cock done the right thing instead of continuing the battle against the homeless by criminalizing it as quickly as they can. Maybe it's time to let this city know the poor and homeless are humans deserving the same respect as the oil executive or campaign contributor.

A message to Hick and Cock. If you act like fascists expect a blowback of violence and civil disobedience to occur. And all your riot police can't put the fires of rage out like they did a few warming barrels last night. I don't say this to encourage violence but history demonstrates oppression leads to an eventual revolutionary change.

.

The Hypocrite Hancock Doesn't Honor Homeless

2011-12-31T00:46:00.000-07:00

I can understand the problem some had with protesters aligning themselves with Occupy Denver interrupting and cat-calling Mayor Hancock at the vigil for the homeless who died the last year. But, were I homeless and this clown of a mayor stepped on a stage to "honor" the homeless I'd be pretty damn angry. Keep in mind while Hancock and Gov. Hick like to do the photo-op things at shelters and vigils they are working to further criminalize homelessness. Hancock, along with ex-cop and now councilman, Charlie Brown, are plotting to make sleeping in LoDo, downtown area illegal. How can Hancock have the audacity to call himself an advocate of the homeless? Were I one of the homeless that has repeatedly been harassed and brutalized by DPD at several sites on several occasions I would be angry about an appearance of such a damn hypocrite as Hancock.

The reality is homeless folks are on the frontlines of the disparity of wealth in this nation. The rich and powerful either want to herd them into their version of shelters or in cheap motels unfit for children to thrive. They want to sanitize the tourist areas and the financial sectors of the city. Homeless not welcome.

I was once homeless for six months in this city immediately after my return from Vietnam. There was no way I would have gone to the miserable excuses they had for shelters back then. And I totally understand those who don't want to go to what they offer today.

I also respectfully disagree shouting down the mayor at the vigil is an act of a provocateur or shouldn't be done simply because it offends some and the mainstream press will jump on the negative remarks. I have been part of many groups who constantly worried about the mainstream press coverage. They planned rallies and marches for times congruent with the evening news or newspaper deadlines. And, what have they gotten the great majority of the time? Ten right wingers show up to counter protest the 500-1000 or even 100,000 protesters of the left and they get as much coverage as the larger group trying to get their message out to the mainstream public. One idiot of a large group of people can act out and the mainstream press will use that as their lead in the story about a rally or march.

I'm very much of the opinion the mainstream press can go fuck themselves. They are simply the media cheerleaders of the establisment of the rich....or as the Occupy movement says, the 1%. When Martin Luther King or the freedom riders carried out their acts of civil disobedience did the mainstream media agree with them or report objectively about their actions? When Malcolm X went to the streets with his message did the mainstream media give white Americans some understanding about the message Malcolm was giving?

And yet we continue to suck up to the bought and paid for media in anything we attempt to do in the resistance against the oligarchs? I am more an advocate of Malcolm's message of "by any means necessary" than Dr. King's message. I came to this conclusion with regret. But when a large group of people congregate to seek redress and to exercise their right to free speech, and do so peacefully, and riot police with lethal weapons appear I find it outrageous.

I don't agree with remaining passive if I'm peacefully standing in a public park expressing my protest against a system of government and corporate oppression. I'm not going to sit down to be brutalized. I'm not holding hands and not defending my skull against a robotic cop who is wired with the thrill of finally getting to use the riot training in real time. I won't try to quiet another person voicing anger at provocative riot team with the only weapons on site.

I won't talk to the mainstream press. Too many times the editing of the press creates a totally errant context of a person's thoughts. Their agenda is to create fear and negative impressions when they report on those who dissent against the oppressors in government and the corporate world.

I refuse solidarity with groups such as the Tea Party. A group funded primarily by Karl Rove and the Koch brothers is by definition a polar opposite of the type of world I struggle for. For me groups such as this are a huge part of the problem. So, seeing a member of OD call for solidarity with them is startling and I will not accept it.

For some of us older activists the outspoken and in your face reactions of the young is disturbing. We can't remember our own time of outrage as young people in the streets during the 60s and 70s or some never took part. I admit the style of some anarchists and young radicals isn't the style I'm used to at my age.

But I also remember being the rageful Vietnam combat vet organizing VVAW here in Denver. I remember a friend who was a member of VVAW and the Black Panthers. He was constantly harassed by DPD to the point they would raid his home and tear apart it apart based on a false report he was holding guns. He was running the Panther breakfast program. He refused to stop his personal resistance.

So, I don't object when an oppressed group confronts a mayor so disingenuous as Hancock. And I'd ask those who were offended at the events to try to understand the reasons the confrontation occurred. Hancock had been dodging members of the Occupy movement for weeks. His appearance at a rally for the homeless was offensive.

And I'd ask those who throw out the charge of infiltrator and provocateur against those who don't match your idea of political action to be aware how offensive these words are to activists who simply do things differently than you. The current rift of Occupy Denver and groups such as the Street Medics and Cop Watch is based on slander such as this directed toward those who didn't "stay on message" the hierarchy of OD had in mind.

Solidarity is an ideal but isn't necessarily a reality. I respect those who desire things to always be peaceful and want to cooperate with the authorities. I disagree with coordinating things with the police or the authorities, however. I respect those who want to include cops in the 99%. Hell, my wife comes from a family of cops but they wouldn't be in riot gear quite willing to bash your head or pepper spray you. I can't include the police in the 99% group when they are the hammer of the oppressors.

So, I've taken a long route to simply say it's easy to dismiss or denigrate the actions or ideals of other activists but I believe we have to keep in mind there are diverse circumstances that have brought people to the path they are on. I'm not willing to exclude those who may want to try something different than what I'm comfortable with.

The Great American Electoral Diversion

2011-12-31T00:31:00.000-07:00

As we enter 2012 the world's attention will be diverted from the real problems and issues of the human race to the stooges of the two parties that continue to hold power with oppressive tactics and indifference to the poor or troubled. The great American election season will descend upon us like a dark cloud of death and destruction and liars and their lies will take center stage. Don't be deceived! There isn't a "good" choice. There is no choice if we're seeking true revolutionary change.

Don't be deceived! Don't allow your energy to be sapped and stolen by the thieves who tell you what you want to hear but never intend to put their words into action. They are the bought off tools of those really in power. They are the puppets of the masters of war. If you really want change spending countless hours trying to win over the electorate for a lying political puppet will only waste your time.

Oh, yeah, I've heard and been part of the electoral myth of representative government. I fought in the war of my generation and came back with tortured soul and disturbed mind. I was a sucker for all rhetoric and patriotism spewing out of their mouths in speeches they allowed others to write for them.

The great American election is a fictional endeavor to keep us distracted from the rapes and murders done in "our name". It is the con game to keep our eyes on the circus while the earth is plundered and destroyed and we are made serfs at the bidding of rich lords who are not benovolent. They are toxic, violent and destructive to life. 2012 will be the year of just one more vaudeville stage act to distract us. But this time the money to do so is unlimited thanks to the justices of a court that has no idea what justice is.

The puppets will spend more than most nations' have to spend in twenty years and the media will become their willing partner in spreading putrid lies. If the American people are willing to allow their choices to be determined by 30 second sound bites of lies and half-truths they are destined to be subjugated to third world status. There will be television in the media circus of the mythical democratic election of 2012 but the true revolution will not be televised! The puppet masters will not allow it. The masters of war will send their storm troopers in cars marked "To Protect and Serve" to attempt silencing all of us who dare speak out.

The controlled media of the oligarchy will distort and misconstrue any attempt of truth escaping the nightmare of the great American dream. It will tell you what a wonderful life you have. It will tell you workers are revered by the oppressive multinationals as they offshore and globalize your jobs to slave labor camps. They will tout your freedom and talk about the heroes who went to illegal wars to protect it but secretively build detention centers for you if you challenge their rule.

And the saddest thing is not what they do but what they fail to do. They will allow children to go hungry and starve, to die from starvation and poor water while they spend billions to deluge the airways with their phony lies and promises in order to get elected. They'll turn their backs on the heroes they so glowingly hailed when they started their wars as they live in luxurious estates and high end suites traveling around the nation to lie. They'll claim to care about the young man or woman scarred for life from the horrors of war but fail to have the moral courage to stand up for them in budget debates. They'll even use them in their campaign ads.

The great American election will be like all the others but your eyes will be glued to the tube while the corruption and evil carry on unabated. They'll talk about fetuses, homosexual marriages destroying the traditional marriage, socialism threatening the pathetic system of medical care, environmental regulations causing jobs to be lost while we breath the fumes of their toxic wastes and see the waters of our world become a huge oil slick. They'll talk about pipelines saving us from dependency on foreign oil when in fact the oil in the pipes will go to foreign markets. It will be wedge issues not real issues that will dominate the media we get via cable, net and phones.

Think about the cost of the upcoming election and then think of the child who dies ever 15-30 seconds caused by the effects of poverty. Think about the suicides of the men and women sent to wars only to increase the wealth of a few. Think about the homeless man and woman in sub-freezing temperatures being rousted during the day by storm troopers making sure the dirty and disheveled don't upset the clean and neat. And rich.

The election of 2012 will get all the headlines but the reality of human issues will be hidden from the debate. If we spend our time involved in this lie they would call democracy or freedom we delude ourselves we can make a difference.

Goodbye, Old Friend

2011-12-20T12:29:00.000-07:00

Sylvester took his last breath around 430pm yesterday. I was holding him in my arms as Pam stroked his head between his ears...his favorite spot. He barely struggled. Just a moment of crying out in fear before he relaxed and then died peacefully as I held him and sobbed. Pam was crying too. Her baby who truly adored her had left us both. Strange how I thought of a couple of Marines who took their last breath with me at their side. I wished I could have been as gentle with them as I was with Silly. But I can cry and grieve a beloved pet. Just not a human life. Instead I get stoic and dissociate.
Now the routines we had interacting with Sylvester begin to hit us. I started to go get his food dish to wash it out as I have for years now. The reality suddenly hit me. The grief is physical as well as emotional. My body aches and I'm so very tired. I woke at 3am thinking of death. Not unusual since I often have combat nightmares. But this was grief waking me.
How in the world did I allow this cat to capture me like he did? He was frequently in competition for Pam's affection during our time together. And yet, yesterday before she came home, I reluctantly kept going down to pet and soothe him. I cried as I told him the plan. He purred loudly as I petted his head and down his now bony spine. His eyes were tired eyes of an old timer who had had enough. I understood exactly how he felt. I feel like an old blues song I often listen to that has the lyric, "I'm tired....so very, very tired".
On my facebook I commented that it seems sort of irrelevant a cat died in the face of all the problems we have in our stuggle for peace and justice. But personal heartache doesn't care about politics or the stupidity of humans. It just happens and at that moment of heartache nothing else matters. The most important thing I did yesterday was hold my old friend as he took his last breath. With my loving wife sitting right beside me and him. The most important thing I could do yesterday was tell him how much his life meant to me, that we loved him and to tell him goodbye.
After I carried his body out to the vet's pickup, I thought how appropriate it was to be snowing and so cold. It captured the pain of the loss. I returned to the house and Pam and I embraced each other and cried. It was probably the most tender embrace we've had for many years. Our lives go by and we take each other for granted until the time of heartache comes to make us remember one another.
Today I called Isaac to let him know. I thanked him for bringing Sylvester into our lives He was the one who brought the cat to our home. He was going to take care of him. That didn't last long. Isaac has his own troubles which aren't conducive to caring for a cat.
I couldn't keep from crying when I talked to Isaac. I'm sure he was upset. And, of course, my fear was he would use the death as a trigger to use cocaine. Another heartache waiting to happen. And I can't say with any certainty I will cry as I did yesterday. With Isaac it has been a long drawn out process of dying where neither Pam or I can intervene to stop it. I only hope this death of our old friend won't be the final straw for Isaac.
I miss seeing Silly in the sun room basking in the sun. Sitting with his feet tucked under his body. I miss his nagging me to remind Pam it's time for her to brush him. I'll miss him going out in our yard and turning it into his own personal jungle. How did I allow this cat to get this close to my heart?

My Wife's Cat

2011-12-02T10:25:00.001-07:00

My wife's cat is dying. He's close to 20 years old and has been part of our lives for a third of our lives. Amazing to think as I look back. It was the year my youngest son graduated that Sylvester first came into our home. He was one of those pets that starts out being the kid's but ends up with the parents taking care of him.
He was a wild child at first. He literally tore down a ficus tree over a period of weeks. Shredded it with his claws. I became the enforcer with the spray bottle of water trying to use aversive therapy to tame him down. I got a lot of exercise chasing him as he darted here and there and finally ended up under a bed or some dark hideaway I couldn't get him out of.
Then when the youngest abandoned him, Sylvester became Pam's cat. She was the one person he truly attached himself to. They fell in love with one another and that love has persisted to this day.
There's been many moments when Sylvester and I seemed to be at odds because we both wanted Pam's love and attention. And he made it clear he wanted to be first in line.
He has always loved the summer. Although he's been primarily an indoor cat, he loved going out in the yard we have and strolling through the shaded tree areas, lying low in the grasses and going around the perimeter to make sure his kingdom was safe.
He loved when I started growing tall fountain grasses in the yard. It gave him more cover to be the stalker of wild bugs like moths and flies. He became a practiced expert in capturing these insects. He was a blast to watch as he lowered himself in a crouch ready to pounce. His rear end would wiggle right before he uncoiled to grab a moth out of the summer air.
We thought we were going to lose Sylvester when he was younger. He developed a urinary tract infection that resulted in an expensive operation. He ended up castrated and we changed his diet. That didn't seem to keep him from getting a little chubby.
When he first came into our home we had an old English Cocker, Daisy. She was my love. I had many dogs but Daisy was the greatest and most loving dog I ever had. Her death created a great void in my life. Sylvester loved to cuddle up against Daisy's soft coat while she lay in her favorite living room chair. She tolerated it. In some way I think she felt like the mother she hadn't been allowed to be and he saw her as the replacement for his mother he'd been taken away from when he came into our home.
When Daisy died Sylvester seemed lost and looked for her. He lay in her bed one time and never did it again. Soon he realized she was gone. And he became king of our home. We didn't mind. Well I had no choice and Pam definitely didn't mind.
Up until the time Pam left for a time to be with her niece in China while the niece adopted a child, Sylvester and I had only a live and let live relationship. When Pam was gone it was clear I had to find a way to interact with him to offset the depression he felt with his lover, Pam, gone. So, I decided brushing him might work. Did it ever.
Sylvester is one of those creatures that decides if you do something for him one time that he likes you have to do it the rest of his life. And we have. And he knows exactly what time he's to be brushed. 630 p.m. is his time. He gets feed at 5p, 9pm and 5 a.m.. If we miss those times he lets us know. But we tolerated his nagging and have come to be ruled by his schedule.
Sylvester used to fly up on the window sills or our bed. He loved looking out the windows at all the traffic and other things happening out in the front of our home. He loved sitting on Pam's lap in the evening if she was on the bed reading. He would sit in a Buddha style as she rubbed his head between his ears and talked lovingly to him. Only recently has he been unable to get up on the bed. And jump up on the window sill. He still goes out to his backyard jungle but doesn't stay as long.
This summer I started leaving the front door open so Sylvester can look out like he used to from the window. There's been a few times a neighbor cat showed up and Sylvester would hiss and growl at the intruder. He's also had a few visitors out back he's tolerated only to sit a few feet away and have a stare down.
Since I began brushing him he and I had a more cordial relationship. And he certainly didn't mind me feeding him. But only in the last few years has he used me as the intermediary to get Pam to do what was on his schedule. If I was lying on the couch and Pam was across the room in her chair, Sylvester would come up to me and meow, stare at me in a questioning way until I would remind Pam what time it was.
Yeah I know all this pet shit is hardly world shattering. Except for us. I look at the tumor on Sylvester's side and know his time is short. But he carries on. He doesn't whine or act angry. He still wants to be brushed even as he has infrequent times his balance is off.
He still eats well but he is losing weight. He's now a bony black cat with some white markings on his paws and chest. But he still purrs lovingly when we brush him. He looks at Pam in adoration and love whenever she gives him attention. I'm jealous that I can't give her as loving looks as he does. But I'm happy to see that bond of love the two have.
I'm not a cat person. I always had dogs growing up. My mom introduced cats into our home when I was a teen but they kept their distance and I kept mine. I've always gave dogs credit for their unconditional love. Never felt cats could duplicate it. But I see Sylvester with Pam and I've changed my mind.
As he has gone down hill, he now lets me rub his head and massage his neck. He purrs and lets me know it's alright. But it isn't alright. I'm already feeling the loss. I hate that I've allowed myself to get this close to this damn cat. But I see him steadfast every day and I realize he has become a role model for me. Yeah, a cat becoming a role model. He is like the "panther kitty" Pam calls him. A black panther. He's had a mindset of being tough minded and demanding his freedom.
But Sylvester is his own lesson in grace. He's a tough guy who still demands we stay on schedule, carry out the important things in life. Like loving an old black cat that somehow managed to grab my heart when so many people could never do so. He's taught me to never give up on a relationship. There may be a time when things change.
I don't cry very often. I'm an old man who's pretty much a crank. I like my privacy. I don't like groups of people too often. Hate all the holiday parties. I have to force myself to even be social. I'm sort of close to my kids and sort of not. I'm not overly affectionate. I blame it on the war and PTSD. Probably is. I got numbed to death and loss in Vietnam. It came home with me.
I'm going to cry when Sylvester passes. I'm almost crying as I write this. He's been part of my life so long I took him for granted until suddenly he pushed himself into my heart. My wife's "panther kitty" has left a large impression on my life. I'm going to miss him something awful. Thanks Silly...thank you so very much.
Addendum:
December 19, 2011
We're going to call the vet today and have him come out to euthanize Silly. Slyvester had a good week of eating wet food for the first time since he was a kitten. But now he's not eating and can barely walk. He hangs his head in his water bowl and uses all the energy he can seem to muster just to drink. Last night I put my face down on the floor next to him to look him in the eye so I could thank him and tell him I loved him. He calmly looked at me with his tiring eyes as if he understood exactly what I said. Pam is terribly upset. Her baby will be gone. I doubt I can ever fill that void. Strange how relationships evolve. I've come to distance myself from everybody. And I understand that exhausted feeling I see in that old black cat's eyes. I'm tired, also.

Veterans Day 11-11-11 (Rembembrance Day)

2011-11-11T09:41:00.001-07:00

I saw this thing on the History Channel yesterday about the Vietnam War. It said in WWII the combat veteran was in actual combat an average of 10 days a year. The combat veteran in Vietnam was in actual combat an average of 240 days a year.

During "my war" over 58,000 Americans were killed. It's estimated nearly 3 million Vietnamese were killed. In Cambodia millions more were killed during the genocide brought on by the Nixon/Kissinger cabal involving Cambodia in our nasty and immoral occupation in SE Asia. Kissinger still has credibility in our national political arena. He was very much involved with the Bush/Cheney cabal that is responsible for millions dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's fascinating to sit down forty three years later and watch the footage of the war in Vietnam in HD. Especially after experiencing it in real time....would that be 3D, 4D...not sure. Somehow I couldn't keep from watching as footage of the Tet Offensive of 1968 came on the screen. The battle for Hue especially since that was one of my stopping points during my 13 month Marine Corps "tour". I could never understand how they could describe participation in war as a tour. I think I got the wrong travel agent.

I hate the holiday of Veterans Day. I hate the opportunity so many take to celebrate and glorify American militarism. Even the local Occupy Denver group made some statement about honoring the "fallen heroes" and all of us who "sacrificed" for our nation. I hate people thanking me for being a veteran of my immoral war. I hate other veterans saying "welcome home" forty two years after I came home.....the person I was and could have been never came home.

I don't need the History Channel to show me HD footage of the war. I have that on a regular basis running around in my head. It's the movie clip that never ends. And, for some reason..insane as it sounds.....I don't want it to end. I don't want to forget the waste of lives I witnessed and took part in. I don't want to forget the many names I found on the Vietnam Memorial...."The Wall", on a cold January day.

In 1970 after a two year battle with the USMC to get discharged and after I flipped off the MPs at the Camp Pendleton gate as I left for the last time, I made a promise I would never forget or forgive what this nation did in Vietnam. I promised my brothers of India Company, 3rd Batallion, Fith Marines who died during the entire year of 1968 I was in Vietnam I wouldn't forget them.

In 1971, I met Brian Adams and Steve Norris at an anti-war conference here in Denver. Brian was a national organizer for Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Steve was a veteran who joined us to organize VVAW in Denver. I've been told there was another version of VVAW before or after the time I organized. But at the time it was just us three. VVAW was the answer to the rage I felt about the war. It allowed me an opportunity to do "something". And 40 years later I'm still trying to do "something".

I don't buy into the fallen hero concept of combat veterans. Just yesterday a combat veteran was sentenced to life in a military prison for his involvement in the murders of Afghan civilians just for the sport of it. It would be easy to say the all voluntary military has brought about the decline of the military and led to such atrocity. But, I saw antisocial Marines in 1968 trying to be the first one to hit an elderly rice farmer working a 100 yards away from where we had stopped for a break.

When I was with the USMC less than one month in Vietnam I witnessed my squad leader tossing a fragmentation grenade into the air vent of an underground shelter occupied by fearful Vietnamese civilians. They wouldn't exit when he attempted to communicate he wanted them out of the shelter. He had ordered me to toss the grenade. I refused. I kept hearing the cries of a baby coming from that shelter. I wouldn't kill a baby.

Less than two weeks later the squad leader was killed by a sniper during an ambush. It was January 30, 1968. The beginning of Tet. I wasn't sad to see the sonofabitch die. I just felt guilty that I had wished him dead. I've never considered him a fallen hero. Never will.

The turning point of my 18 year old life came on January 30-31, 1968. My squad was overrun by a large North Vietnamese Army force trying to escape the trap my Marine company had them in. They were encircled within a village inside a grove of trees. It was during the dark of night. Earlier that day I had been close to a tree line burned down by the tumbling napalm bombs dropped by USMC jets supporting us.

Napalm burns at around 3000 degrees F when it ignites. It takes away the oxygen of the area of detonation. We called the charred bodies of the victims of napalm, "crispy critters". On January 31, 1968, following a night of combat in which I was knocked unconcious by the blast of a Vietnamese concussion grenade, I saw my first "crispy critter".

It was around noon when we entered the village in the grove of trees. The napalm had been dropped on the village. Earlier in the day the surviving members of my squad had the task of collecting bodies of the enemy strewn around a large rice paddy and tall grassy area surrounding it. One Marine decided he would use his survival knife to extract gold fillings and teeth from the dead bodies. We found over 30 bodies. We lined them in a row for the Batallion Commander. He posed with the bodies in the forefront for cameras of Marine combat photographers.

I first smelled the village. It smelled like ham. The napalm had incinerated the pot belly pigs of the villagers. The first thing I saw other than badly burned trees was charred forms of human bodies scattered on the ground of what used to be a village. Most of the village structures were burned to the ground. Nothing had escaped the heat of the napalm.

The first human form I came upon was the size of an infant. It was on the ground next to a form of an adult human. I guessed it was the mother of the infant. Besides the smell it was a grusome and horrific sight. But I couldn't take my eyes off the scene. Every where I looked I saw more forms. More "crispy critters". Some of the Marines laughed and joked about the crispy critters. Some talked about how the napalm had "got some". I wanted to puke but had nothing in my stomach to throw up.

Crispy critters, traumatic amputations, strewn body parts, evaporation of bodies from huge booby traps, short rounds killing us instead of them, water boarding and assassination of prisoners, torture, body mutilation,free fire zones, revenge .....this became my life at age 18 and 19. I didn't stop it. I didn't object. I could do neither and survive Vietnam. I just did my job. I became the squad leader I had hated and wished dead.

I've written this narrative several times, Each time I seem to remember one more detail. I've spoke with high school and college students about the experience of combat. I've given my oral history of war countless times. Each time is an emotional revisiting of those days of combat. I consciously decided to let emotion become part of any presentation I gave about my time in war.

The Marines gave me medals. I was given one for being wounded. I returned to the "world" with high performance and proficiency scores. I had been meritoriously promoted two times. I was a poster boy Marine when I came back. Squared away. Until I started refusing. And saying, "no". They tried retraining me, punishing me, jailing me.

Sargeants, Lieutentants, Captains, Colonels all yelled at me. Chaplains told me I was forgiven for what I had done because it was for my country. Military psychiatrists said I had some readjustment problems but wasn't sick enough for their hospitals. In the end they threatened me with prison at a Naval brig in New Hampshire. My military lawyer sold me out. My ACLU lawyer pressured the USMC and Naval legal service to offer a discharge.

So, there was a happy ending. Not if you ask my grown sons or my wife. Not so happy living with me on many occasions. Bouts of rage, self medicating, depression and suicidal thinking and attempts followed my happy ending. If only they had a diagnosis for whatever it was causing me to behave in such a way. About 12 years after my discharge PTSD was included in the psychiatric community's diagnostic bible, the DSM.

Since 1975 three times as many Vietnam veterans have killed themselves as were killed in action. 58,000 plus KIA. Over 150,000 committed suicide. I wonder how many during the 12 years I mentioned. The divorce rate for Vietnam veterans is 90%. 500,000 Vietnam veterans have been arrested or incarcerated. 100,000 are currently incarcerated and another 200,000 are on parole. 40% of Vietnam veterans are unemployed. 25% earn less than $7,000 a year. Drug and alcohol abuse ranges from 50-75%.

I'm going to a presentation by IVAW tonight. Operation Recovery is a project intended to get the needed help for active duty men and women. Such as stopping commanders from sending troops back to a war zone when the mental health professionals have declared them unfit for duty in a war zone. One of the statistics given me was one active duty troop commits suicide every 36 hours. Nearly 1/3 of the female troops report sexual assault or harassment. Clearly that number is greater because of the military attitude toward women making such a charge.

Don't tell me thank you for your service. I did no service to this nation. I had good intentions but failed to inform and educate myself. Don't welcome me home. Despite my body and much of my mind being back from Vietnam, a large part of me never came home. My mother lost the son she saw go to war despite her warnings. My sister could never be close to me again. If you want to thank veterans on this day set aside to remember....the day used to be called Rembembrance Day......work to end the wars. Work for peace and justice. That's what I thought I went to war for but instead became a tool and thug for the racketeers Smedley Butler talked about.

.

Zinn-Like Anarchy

2011-11-07T11:58:00.002-07:00

For the last month I've been going to the Occupy Denver site to support a cause I think has the potential to change this nation. Unless the thugs and alleged "anarchists" promoting violence and property destruction destroy the movement. There's nothing wrong with anarchists in my opinion. Howard Zinn was an unabashed anarchist. Gandhi was an anarchist. Emma Goldman was an anarchist. At one time she promoted the use of violence but came to discover it diluted the movement and the cause of dismantling oppressive governments.

For the past month I've seen folks running around with handkerchiefs covering their faces apparently to identify themselves as anarchists. It is the dress code as much as we veterans wear our old fatigues or dress uniforms, campaign ribbons, boonie hats or some identifying thing.

It's obvious the anarchists don't like the tactics and much of the philosophy of the main Occupy Denver group. They make it clear by talking over the main group's megaphone and "people's mike" with their own megaphones. It has become a inane battle of megaphones at every gathering of more than a few dozen people.

Now I am as radical as they come in my thinking about tactics. At heart I'm an anarchist. I don't believe in national borders, don't think there's such a concept as an "illegal" person. I know the government isn't one for me or most of the people I am acquainted with. It has always been a government to protect the oligarchs in possession of the greatest wealth.

I came to realize I was duped as an enlisted Marine in 1967. And, unlike Smedley Butler, it didn't take me 30 plus years to come to the conclusion the military was nothing but a group of thugs trained to become sociopathic tools to destroy anybody or anything blocking the will of the racketeers in government and their rich masters. It took me the first month (January) I was in Vietnam in 1968 as an 18 year old combat infantryman.

I may have been stupid enough to enlist but I wasn't so stupid I couldn't see we were nothing but bullies with lethal force against the Vietnamese people. But rather than go to prison, I went along and did my job. My job was to seek out any and all individuals considered the enemy of the US or my platoon. And I became proficient in carrying out my job when it became necessary to protect myself or the men in my platoon.
On return to the US my emotional health and the shock of my 13 month experience in Vietnam led me to start my own personal resistance against the USMC. I walked away time and again despite all the medals, commendations and rank I had "earned" while in Vietnam. Eventually I was imprisoned in a Marine brig, a city jail and in a Marine correctional platoon. On one occasion the brig pod I was incarcerated in was gassed because of an uprising by some of us combat veterans. None of the punishments or threats had an impact on my resistance. I came to realize I was acting out my conscience.

Finally the Corps got tired of my shit and offered me a less than honorable discharge. Their threatened court martial wouldn't have looked too good once my ACLU attorney let some of his newspaper friends know the Corps intended on jailing one of their heroes with meritorious promotions and medals only heroes earned. One that had been wounded in action. I accepted the undesirable discharge with pleasure and actually felt it an honor to be considered undesirable to the USMC.

Once discharged I happened upon a national organizer of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He and I, joined by one other veteran, organized the Denver chapter. We sent a contingent to Operation Dewey Canyon III in DC. We threw our ill gotten medals over the fence at the Capitol. Later we had our own Winter Soldier's Investigation in Denver that followed the format of the national investigation in Detroit. We testified about war crimes and corrupt practices of the military we had witnessed.

A few of our local members were also members of the Black Panthers. We were constantly on J. Edgar Hoover's radar as being anti-American "communists". Local police and FBI constantly tried to infiltrate us and provoke us to act out violently. The problem with this tactic was the true veterans of combat were tired of violence. Our organization existed to stop violence, end the war and bring our brothers home. At one point the DPD intimidated a WSI witness by threatening to revoke his probation. He had been self medicating with drugs and ended up being arrested and tried for a felony.

Even in therapy groups infiltrators appeared. It sounds crazy but that was the case in my first Vet Center group. It took us a few weeks before we realized one of the group was an impostor. It destroyed the group.

I'm presenting this history as a way of giving myself some credibility to speak out about what I've observed at Occupy Denver. In today's social media, haters and flamers will usually come out of the woodworks if someone provides criticism about a movement or progressive organization. I don't really care if anybody chooses to hate me and attempts to discredit me. I do care about changing this world so my grandsons and granddaughter have a better life than is now projected for them.

Occupy Denver has good intentions from all sides but the rudeness and infighting that seems to be worse everytime I come to support the movement is palpable. And disturbing. And I'm not the only one feeling this. This past Saturday at the Fed the megaphone duel sent many mainstream supporters on their way.

The constant tactic of march and rally has diminishing returns. Most people have heard enough, read enough and experienced enough to know the issues. Teach-in time is over. It is now time to act on what is said to be common goals and beliefs. A next step is necessary.

Many of us veterans have experience in guerilla or insurgency warfare. There is a good deal to be learned from the tactics used against us. But non-violence has to be maintained. Centralized grouping may be good show but mobility has some advantages. Weekends are convenient but inconvenience can be inflicted on weekdays as well. Cooperation with cops and authorities about tactics and planning is poor strategy and lets the oppressive force of the government and their corporate masters dictate what will be done.

We are in a class warfare! The 99% needs to discover its power and exert it wisely and with tactics that are different than what was done in the past. Every revolutionary movement for change has to live in the present. The tactics of the past are well known to the guardians of the corporate and governmental castles.

We are in a class war and we had better be prepared for pushback. The opponents we face are well financed, influential and control much of our lives. They aren't stupid. We can rail against the rich and powerful and fail to give them credit or try to understand them and work to weaken their strength. There's plenty of opportunity to point out what the big "they" do, but isn't it time to uncover who they are and expose each individual?

As an individual I've had a history of being part of an illegal and immoral occupation. This is the time for a moral occupation by the 99% who don't have the security of that 1%. The moral occupation can't allow itself to regress to the violence the masters of war and greed want from us. We can strike fear in the hearts and minds of the 1% by growing the movement and keeping violence out of the equation. Anarchy can be useful and necessary but those who propose violence of actions or words will weaken the movement. It's that simple. You want to be isolated again, keep up the violence.

Solidarity or Failure

2011-11-01T23:30:00.003-06:00

So now the Occupy Denver movement is for real. The sniping, infighting and division about tactics are reaching the mainstream press and like vultures they swoop down to show all the dysfunctional parts of the movement. Some say we should "fight back" with self defense classes and aggressive actions towards the police. Heard a mention of a gun being needed.

Thing about the movements that have succeeded is there wasn't instant gratification even as much as it was needed and desired. Believe me, as a former grunt, it takes all the self restraint I can muster not to go violent. But the question is....how would that help the big picture of the movement? What perception will a full scale riot create in bringing more everyday people or people from communities of color into the movement? Don't we have enough of our brothers and sisters serving time in prisons as it is?

As much as I hate the slow pace of things in bringing about revolutionary changes, an assualt or aggressive action toward police will end up with activists dead. We know the propensity of DPD for violence. We know they don't care if they kill someone they consider a "scumbag". And we know they seldom, if ever, face legal prosecution for their brutality. Is this what we want to go toe to toe with by demonstrating our self defense tactics?

I have differences of opinion toward the tactics being used. I'd prefer more proactive and creative tactics as opposed to the constant march and rally cycle. And maybe there can be both? Discussing tactics on social media isn't something I'd do but questioning whether there are some alternative methods seems appropriate.

It is discouraging to read and hear individuals deciding they think the Occupy Denver movement is bullshit simply because there's not a consensus to carry out a tactic preferred by one group or another. Solidarity dissipates quickly when the conflict becomes internally focused instead of focused on the true oppressors.

I'm 62 and been in many different actions and movements. Inevitably differences boil over and factions from one extreme to the other start appearing. I've marched with combat veterans and been gassed. Been arrested for opposing the war while active duty. Been arrested as a civilian. I've been proud to hook up with peace activists who have dedicated themselves to the grueling work of trying to create change. I love the energy and passion of young people from colleges to anarchists to hip-hop nation. And us old geezers need to start listening more to your concerns. It's your future at stake.

I have history of being in a diverse movement that included Catholic nuns and priests and members of the Black Panthers and Brown Berets of the LaRaza movement. It was a coalition that somehow gelled for a while. Then infiltrators and internal disputes disrupted the solidarity.

As dedicated activists we have to get used to the reality of police infiltrators and agitators. In today's world we will have to beware of agitators from the right wing such as the Tea Party and even more radical fanatics. We have to beware of drunks and felons who are not willing or able to control their propensity for violence. And there will be felons and homeless who will be indispensable in the knowledge they can bring to the movement.

The movement is reaching the point where it can either move forward with a more inclusive culture or it will fall apart from the irreconciable differences. That will be a shame but it is a real possibility. I've deliberately refrained from being part of any leadership group or spokesperson. My time has passed. Now I just want to be with the movement in solidarity and support. I don't mind facing off the police if that's a logical and needed thing to do. But if the movement is full of individuals unable to resolve differences without splinter groups working against each other, it will be difficult to support.

I am one of many veterans and older Americans fed up with what's gone down in our nation. We want change. We seek a movement that can have differences but keep the goals as the priority. Some of us will walk away if violence is a routine occurrence. And all the hotheads can say good riddance if they choose. But believe me when I say this movement will not succeed if families, older Americans, middle class Americans, people of color and a wide range of diverse beliefs aren't included.

Believe me, I have great anger toward this system that has destroyed so very much. I have moments of rage beyond anything most people can have. But in the final analysis, I realize I'm nothing without a large group of dedicated people to work with. I hope that's what happens with Occupy Denver

What's The Point? Are You Kidding Me!?

2011-10-31T11:33:00.008-06:00

Several people have asked my wife and me, "what's the point?" concerning the Occupy Denver movement. One of them a woman whose husband had to declare bancruptcy for his construction business. He hasn't been able to find a job for over a year since that time. He's in his fifties.

Another is in debt to credit card companies for over twenty thousand dollars. He has a mortgage that's "under water". He fails to understand what the point of getting arrested in non-violent civil disobedience accomplishes. He thinks our main problem is government is too big. He buys into all the rhetoric of the Tea Party and dear ol' Rush.

Others look at the mainstream press reports and think Occupy Denver is groups of anarchists, trouble-makers or dope smokers. How many of the middle aged or older folks holding jobs and struggling in this economy are we seeing on the 5pm or 10pm newscasts? How many older veterans like myself are reported to be in the movement? How many moms and dads with their kids are we seeing in the mainstream press reports? I've seen plenty in the past month. I've also seen elderly folks well past their 60s walking in the marches.

No, what the mainstream press wants is blood, gas,pepper spray and arrests. They want to ignore the peaceful activists of the movement as irrelevant despite the peaceful being the great majority. They prefer to show cops "protecting" themselves against unarmed young people acting out enough to get arrested. They prefer to show cops in mass formations dressed in their Ninja Turtle riot gear. And the average person who hasn't gotten up off the couch to speak out but is quite willing to go to a Halloween gig downtown or to a football game at the stadium thinks the Occupy movement is just another bunch of those freaking liberals who support big government.

What's the point? The point is the Occupy movement around the world is putting a spotlight on things that will affect future generations. They are demanding accountability for the mass fraud of the biggest banks in the world.They are demanding accountability for the unethical and destructive practices of the Wall Street brokers who all hide behind the lies they are the job makers. They've been outed by the Occupy movement as destroying the economies of this nation and several other nations.

What's the point? The point is the Occupy movement has connected the dots of the 3 billion dollars spent each week just to support the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They've shown how big corporations have profited off the blood of the poor in war zones, whether they be Americans or innocent civilians. They've shown the betrayal of the returning veterans in getting timely medical or mental health care.

The movement has demonstrated to spotlight the injustices of wealth distribution throughout the world. They've shown the myth of the richest 1% paying 35 % taxes. The recent CBO clearly shows this to be a lie when it reports the largest corporations in the world based in the U.S. not only don't pay taxes, they manage to get huge rebates through tax loopholes.

The movement has brought attention to the sieve know as the Federal Reserve. The Fed has secretively distributed taxpayer dollars in the trillions to the wealthiest corporations and individuals without oversight. Not only did the American government bail out the banks through the Congress, they've been continuously bailing them and other fat cats out without any accountability. More money has gone to them via the backdoor than through the Congress.

What's the point?The Occupy movement has brought attention to the environmental destruction posed by a pipeline from Canada to the Gulf that runs through some of the largest aquifers of drinking water in the middle part of this nation. They've shown there is no such thing as "clean coal" or safe nuclear power. They'e shown fracking is yet another danger to clean potable water and pristine forests and grasslands.

What's the point? The occupy movement has shown education and all social programs in this nation are under attack by the greedy 1%. They've shown the attack on collective bargaining by the 1%. It may seem to many this is good but they fail to understand the places where collective bargaining and unionization are free from attack are the places where workers historically have higher wages and better benefits. All workers. Not just union workers.

What's the point? The occupy movement has shown the fear of the oligarchy that the truth get out. They have ordered their police forces to squash the movement. The longer it stays around, the more the truth will be revealed. The police have obliged all across the U.S.. In Oakland Scott Olsen's skull was fractured by an "errant" projectile fired into the crowd by the riot squad. When others in the Occupy movement attempted to come to Olsen's aid a concussive cannister was thrown near Olsen's prone body as his rescuers came to his side. Olsen remains hospitalized and unable to speak. Scott Olsen is a Marine combat veteran with a job and a place to live. He was deployed twice to Iraq.

Really?? A combat veteran or any other activist violating an order that at best would bring misdemeanor charges deserves violent assault by police? Why is it the public cries out in anger when groups of activists simply try to put up food tents and sleeping tents in public parks but still think nothing of two wars killing Americans and innocent ciivilians? Why do the governors and mayors throughout the nation send out riot squads to gas, pepper spray and beat Occupy movement participants trying to camp out in the parks near the center of the local governments? And yet, these are the only Americans willing to demonstrate and speak out in the streets against the theft of millions of American pensions by the fraud of banks and Wall Street.

It is clear authorities don't want to be embarassed for their complicity in a bought and paid for government for the rich and by the rich. It has become overtly clear our own governor, John Hickenlooper, and the mayor of Denver, Michael Hancock, are colluding with the business world that funded their elections. The 1% control the wealth which means they control the media, they control the lobbyists and they control the governments all the way down to city governments. This is the point of the Occupy movement - to expose the fraud and demand regulations on campaign spending. To demand regulation on banking practices. To demand regulation on practices of stock brokerage firms. To demand the government get out of the corporate bed and govern the way it is intended.

What's the point? The claim the Occupy movement really doesn't have a focused message is absurd. The message is clear if people think about all the problems they have in living their lives free of worrying about food, shelter and healthcare. The message is clear if people think about being able to have a living wage, being able to pay their debts and being able to help their children go to college. The message is clear if students think about the debt they've incurred going to a university for their degree. The message is clear to the 47 million Americans who are without healthcare benefits. They don't think they should have to die because they are uninsured. The message is clear to parents who have buried sons or daughters who died in combat for the oil fields in Iraq. The message is clear to the mother who can't afford to get prenatal care and has a premature baby. The message is clear to the incarcerated young black or brown man who sit in prisons for crimes of possessing small amounts of street drugs. And yet, the greatest source of substance abuse is legal in forms of alcohol and tobacco.

What's the point? The point is the Occupy Denver, Occupy Oakland, Occupy Wall Street and all the other occupation sites are struggling for justice and equality. They struggle for cops who are short staffed and facing more and more budget cuts. They struggle for teachers to keep the right for collective bargaining and to be able to actually teach instead of administer inane achievement tests that fail to measure the true knowledge of each child. They struggle for all of us whether we ask them or not. And they pay the price with constant police harassment. They pay the price with the determination to stay despite weather, fatigue, adequate shelter or facilities. They pay the price with fractured skulls and welts from rubber bullets and pepper spray pellets fired into their bodies at close range.

Attempts to discredit them are intense. Infiltrators who scream and shout to incite violence are constantly appearing. Provocateurs who try to incite property damage or engage in profanity and inciteful dialogue with cops and others have come and gone. The mainstream press feed on the failures of the immature to remain calm and peaceful. They don't give a damn if you're peaceful. Their jobs are to find something "juicy" about the movement so they can claim they've done investigative reporting. Even the true journalists will find their words and visuals distorted by the editors.

What's the point? The point is this movement may be the last chance to overcome the oppressive control of the richest 1% of the world. It may be the last chance for our children and grandchildren. If you don't get that .....then wake up!!

Embrace the Revolution

2011-10-28T13:51:00.000-06:00

As Occupy Wall Street and the many solidarity occupations continue through this fall the rich fat cats smile and tell each other winter will put an end to this temporary nuisance. They don't believe there will be "winter soldiers" in the movement. They think the brutal assault on a combat veteran in a police sweep in Oakland will discourage the families and elderly. They think the mainstream media will grow tired of the story and move on to more important matters like interviews of the Madoff family. They think the police provocateurs will get the hot heads in the occupation sites to act out violently and discredit the movement.

The Tea Party is now whining they didn't get to camp out in city parks and public places like the occupation movement has. Of course, if the group that inhabited Crawford, Texas to protest the presence of Cindy Sheehan and Camp Casey is any measure, it is highly unlikely the Tea Party members would have lasted more than a day without the comfort of their RV's with t.v.s and air-conditioning or heat. They would have missed setting up a grill and gorging themselves with good ole American beef and as many carbs as they could get. And never give a thought to the black brothers and sisters dying of hunger in Africa.

The question for the Occupy Wall Street movement is whether they will sustain the movement during the hard times ahead. The assault on Scott Olsen, who went to war in Iraq two times, is the rebuttal of Wall Street and their indentured slaves in government and the police department. If they are willing to bash the skulls of the troops they so willingly sent to die for their oil and empire, they won't hesitate to bash the heads of those peaceful men and women who have struggled many years to prevent wars and violence.

American exceptionalism tells us we don't brutalize our own but the ugly truth is we do. We, the 99% are disposable to the 1%. They will create the fervor for war and occupation of nations with natural resources they covet. They will promote yellow ribbons and faux parades of appreciation for "the troops" but don't give a damn about the loss of life, limbs and peaceful minds of those troops and their families.

The 1% doesn't care if the VA or any other social program suffers budget cuts as long as their bottom line continues at the 275% increase it has over the past thirty years. The 1% long ago hijacked the America we were falsely told about in school and in the press. That America, that United States, has never existed. It has never existed except for the 1%. Peace and justice for all is a myth. The words look good on a new public building but the truth is what's happening on the streets below the words. On the streets the 99% either toes the line and follows like sheep or is slaughtered like sheep and cattle.

The 99% are cannon fodder. They are indentured serfs to the system and the corporations that really control this nation. After WWII the 1% allowed unions and some Americans to prosper. It took blood and death but they grudgingly gave the serfs some of their scraps. And managed to turn all of us into foolish consumers buying in to a dream that is, in truth, a nightmare.

The 99% allowed ourselves to think we are free, that buying with credit and money we didn't have was good and that we were given all this because God loved us more. We thought we were exceptional. Turns out, we are only exceptional in our excesses much like the Roman empires and the other failed empires of history. Our foolish beliefs have only lined the pockets of the 1%. They now have most of us by the balls and throats in their trap of debt.

Before we begin the revolution, most of us need to acknowledge we were our own worst enemies for believing the lies of the 1%. Too many times we of the 99% still claim we like our lifestyles even as our neighbors dwindle in the destruction of foreclosures and lost jobs. We hated the unions but wished someone represented us when jobs were taken out of country or given to cheaper labor forces in other parts of the country. We demand better education but have vilified the teachers and failed to see the suits in administration hoarding budget monies to maintain their six figure jobs.

We bundle our kids up against the cold, make them wear helmets, elbow pads and knee pads but think nothing of sending them off to wars that are immoral and illegal. No one forced us to do any of this. We allowed ourselves to be conned. We knew our homes weren't worth the amounts the banks told us but went ahead and borrowed money to the max in the foolish belief our homes would always maintain their values. The 1% told us so.

Like all us combat veterans who survived our wars and came to realize we made a mistake in our narrow thinking, so too must all of us 99% realize we aren't going to be able to sustain the way things were before the bubble burst on the foolisn American dream. We need to endorse changing our lifestyles rather than thinking we can go back to being the excessive and destructive consumer driven people. We need to endorse changing our lifestyle to embrace the environment that sustains us. We need to change our interactions with the people of the world and accept we are first citizens of the world and owe our allegiance to no flag or anthem but to one another as humans.

Most of all we of the 99% must throw off the dependency we have on the 1%. The most logical way of getting the 1% to equal and just sharing of wealth and resources is to quit supporting them. Doesn't it seem the 99% has the power to create new ways of assuring hunger and hate don't dominate? Doesn't it seem the 99% can refuse to sacrifice our children to wars and violence? Isn't it time we repudiate a multi-national corporation is human? If they are human, where is the heart? Where is the soul? Where is the compassion and caring?

Over the past few days I have had great hate in my heart seeing the videos and hearing the sounds of Scott Olsen being assaulted. As an ex-combat Marine I realize I am "always faithful" to other Marines. I like to think I feel the same toward others in my world who want to be non-violent and work for change. I could let my anger build up to violence but then I'm no different than the cops who don't care if they kill us or ruin our lives. It's clear, the cops are the storm troopers of the 1%. They forfeit the compassion of the 99% with actions like occurred in Oakland the other night or here in Denver a few weeks ago.

How dangerous is standing in a street with others or sleeping in a park? It inconveniences others? Like the 1% doesn't only inconvenience the rest of us; they brutalize and intimidate us. They steal the legacy of our children. They commit crimes that destroy millions of lives and they continue to smirk in their castles and country clubs. Who is more dangerous; a combat vet seeking a peaceful way to express his constitutional right to free speech or the 1% who have created so much destruction, death, hate and environmental disaster? What magic hold do the 1% have on us that we continue to do only what benefits them?

The hate I've been feeling needs to be expressed in the peaceful but assertive pursuit of justice and change. Revolution is not dangerous to anybody but the 1% unwilling to change. Occupy Wall Street is only the beginning of a revolutionary change in our thinking. And we will succeed only if we remain unlike the 1%. Only if we remain peaceful and thoughtful toward our world.

Preaching To The Choir ...Again

2011-10-23T08:45:00.000-06:00

Spent another day at OD....unlike the week before this one fit the description of MOS. Preaching to the choir makes all go home feeling warm and fuzzy but I'm left with the feeling momentum was lost. I know it's not what folks will want to hear but the changes that have occurred in American history came when men and women were willing to face down the oppressor time and again regardless of the consequences. That doesn't mean violence by those protesters but it does possibly mean breaking oppressive laws that take away freedom and are immoral. Imagine if the freedom riders had decided after the first violence threatened them and inflicted upon them had said, "enough" and just talked about rights. Imagine if Gandhi had decided after massacres by the British it was too high a price to pay. In both cases what the protesters were doing was against the laws of that time and place.

I spent most of the early parts of the 2000's trying to get along with the PD to avoid violence from the PD in most cases. There was never a viable threat of violence on the part of the protesters in any rally or march. There was always a threat of violence on the part of the police. In the 70s the police were never part of the right side of history. They took on roles of private guards to the richest and against the men, women and families most in need in this nation. We may have sympathy toward the cops who are in line to have funding cut on such issues as pay and benefits but we cannot condone their actions as thugs for the rich

We had rally after rally and march after march. We sit in at offices and businesses. And here we are ten years later with two wars, an economy that is in reality a depression, a wealth gap 300 times greater than ten or fifteen years ago, more Americans without health insurance, more homeless, more poor and fewer jobs paying a living wage.

Like the chants have been saying....."the banks got bailed out, we got sold out". But there wasn't that type of anger or outrage today as there had been last week at Occupy Denver. The leadership apparently stated they wanted to avoid last week's type of event. They didn't want to risk arrests. Didn't want to face off against the protectors of the realm, the police. Instead, they decided a concert and a rail-athon following one more parade ushered by the police would be best.

The crowd chanted, "Who's streets, our streets!" but in reality the streets belong to the rich oligarchs and their protectors in blue as long as we're led the way the police dictate. This movement will fall back like all the others into the failed tactics of the past movements. Rallies and marches will not win the day as long as more Halloween costumed people show up downtown than people who want critical change in the way government and economic policy is being carried out in this nation.

Tactics must change. Cooperation with the oppressor or his representatives rather than confrontation is an appeasing approach to revolutionary change needed. Some yogini at the rally suggested we let go of our anger. I say we utilize our anger! We utilize our outrage! We must direct our anger in non-violent ways against the privileged few who have been the primary causes of oppression. I heard angry speeches today, but words not followed up with actions are still just words.

I'm too old and too impatient to take the short time I have left and the dwindling energy I have left to continue the path of appeasement. I'm not going to participate in a rally a week and letters to congress people who are merely the puppets of the masters of wealth and war. There are plenty of ideas floating out there that can create new and more viable tactics.

My suggestions stem from taking part in a guerrilla war. Without using violence there are still many ways to jam the machine and bring fear to the powerful. We know what their weaknesses are....consumption and collection of wealth. Some are saying we take our cash out of the banks and put them into credit unions. This may be a credible tactic for a small number of people but many couldn't currently make it doing such a thing.

I have resigned myself to the failure of the American people to once again rebel against the oppressors. Like the unhealthy lifestyles of being overweight and obese so rampant in this nation, so too is the lifestyle of the consumer society that places more value on selfish motivation and more attention to the celebrity than the most in need. We place more importance on who the starting QB will be next Sunday than we do the failure of Congress to work together and the daily selling out of elected officials to lobbyists and special interests.

Selling out isn't confined to the national level. Mayor Hancock and Governor Hickenlooper are both testament to the persona of the sell out. They both sold out the poor, homeless, desperate and disaffected to uphold business as usual. When a dedicated group of activists are evicted from public spaces for their message rather than any real reason of importance, it's clear the people have been sold out.

I wish I could be enthusiastic about Occupy Denver but seeing all those costumed zombies infiltrating the ranks of the activists all day long in their flight to the inane celebration of a "holiday" personifying greed and over-eating causes enthusiasm to fall short of bringing hope. It was said there were possible 20 thousand zombies compared to less than a thousand protesters. The irony of more zombies than activists is apropos as an analogy of this nation's zombie like compliance with oppression both inflicted on other nations and our own people.

I am resigned to return to my smaller community in SW Denver and avoid the alleged movements. I'm not going to campaign once again in a way that has little voice or future. Let the liberals and progressives continue to deceive themselves about how their rallies and marches will effect change but they won't deceive the rich and powerful. I will be content to do urban gardening and attempt to organize a neighborhood rather than hit my head against a wall repeatedly in vain attempts to make rallies and marches relevant.

Today Is the Day for Resistance

2011-10-06T11:12:00.000-06:00

So, I'm going to come across negative on this piece but I just have to say it. I reluctantly went back on facebook after the Eygptian rebellion that caused the downfall of Mubarak. Thinking maybe the rebellious sorts here in the U.S. might use the "social media" the same way the Eygptians had done to rally people to the square in protest. But, of course that didn't really happen. Perhaps we need more repression before we can turn out millions or a complete and total collapse of the economy instead of the partial collapse which has swept away the middle class.

Now months after the "Arab spring" a brave group of protestors took to the streets around Wall Street in NYC in an action named "Occupy Wall Street". The group has been harassed, beaten, pepper sprayed and arrested but stayed their ground. Now there are local actions in solidarity with them in a few other cities across the U.S., including Denver.

I just saw the call to action for this weekend at the state capitol for a rally to support "Occupy Wallstreet". At first I was enthusiastic about it but then someone made an excellent comment. "Why not on Monday?" "Why not in the financial district of Denver?" And I agree.

I think back to the early days of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (and the days before) and recall how every weekend there was some action planned and every weekend it was the same people showing up to hear speakers and musicians speak and sing. There were rallies and marches and everybody went home with a renewed sense of purpose. Some of us even got arrested in acts of planned civil disobedience. Planned, as in letting Denver PD know where, when and what was going to happen.

And every weekend activists would look for press coverage. It barely came or never came. When the press did cover the story of the rallies, marches and arrests it was always a slanted view of things. If any negative thing happened it led the story. And, almost always, the opposing view of hawks and the right wing pimps for war had more space than those of the activists opposing the Bush/Cheney illlegal wars.

To say it became a redundant exercise in futility was to be kind. It became the same people preaching to the same choir with the same result. Very few people of color, very few students and young people, very few veterans and very few activists not part of the "mainstream" groups of acvtivists ever attended or were ever much consulted. Meeting to organize always brought up the question why this was and often there were responses that these groups had been invited and if they didn't show up it wasn't our fault. But, of course, our tactics and our agenda seldom changed or incorporated the needs of the poor communities, the communities of color or the views of the young, including anarchists who were willing to avoid violence.

I see how futile this became and realize when I helped organize VVAW here in Denver it was a daily effort, even after working all day. I took time off to go to D.C. to join a coalition of groups from Black Panthers to Gray Panthers to Catholic clergy to demonstrate our dissent. We occupied the steps of the Supreme Court. We went to the Capitol and "returned" the medals of fake valor given for an immoral and illegal war. We managed to get a consumate politician inside Senator Fullbright's committee to challenge the war. It was John Kerry's greatest speech.

When Cindy Sheehan came into the fray against the wars, there was a new energy that galvanized many of us. I joined hundreds of other activists to camp out in the sweltering heat of Crawford to demonstrate to the vacationing George W. Bush his wars weren't wanted by a growing number of people including veterans, families of veterans and the families of men and women killed in those wars. Cindy's grief struck a nerve with all of us and with mothers and fathers across the nation. She revived a sagging movement.

After Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf area, veterans joined survivors to march from Mobile to New Orleans in solidarity against the failure of the American government to assist the survivors and the wasteful spending on the wars that impacted the funding of assistance. Immediately following Katrina, a group of veterans, clergy and students combined in efforts to assist the hardest hit citizens of the 9th Ward and outlying regions devastated by the hurricane.

All along groups of activists have taken direct action to build grass roots organizations to struggle against the mulitnational interests that eventually led this nation to near financial ruin. Veterans worked to help other veterans get necessary mental health treatment along with family members of the returning men and women from the two deadly wars. Immigrant rights organizations worked to ensure immigrants without documents weren't abused by a racist system led by ICE. Police Watch organizations came out to observe police in the area to try to stem the number of brutality cases that were far too often attacks on our brothers and sisters of color. Multiple others have resisted and taken part in the struggle.

The thing most of the better actions to fight against the insanity of wars, racism and injustice had in common was they didn't only occur on a weekend or as a result of a march or rally. They occurred because of dedication to continue the struggle and resistance against hate, war, and social injustice. They occurred because activists were willing to give up their evenings, take off days and sacrifice time they could be doing things far less difficult and more self centered.

What I'm getting at is our resistance against the oligarchy, that promises to oppress the poor and middle class until we demonstrate we've had enough, will take more than the weekend rallies and marches. If we truly care enough to make the change we either dedicate ourselves to more time in the trenches of activism or we use our time with local organizing and local efforts in hopes sometime soon a network will be built in which there will be a strong coalition angry enough and dedicated enough to demand the change such as seen in Eygpt and other oppressed nations.

I can't go back to rallies and marches without hope of them being different. I look at the rallies in Wisconsin this past spring and find hope. Those rallies were day after day. Not just weekends. I need that hope here in Denver before I return to the same old tactics.

Now, a day after I wrote all of the above, I know it is time to bring new energy to support our brothers and sisters in New York occupying Wall Street. It may well be the autumn of the American uprising against the oppression of the masters of war and peddlars of greed. As an individual I am obligated to help it be. As a father and grandfather I am obligated to resist against the evil that attempts to crush the spirit of people seeking peace and justice.

My dear friend Dahlia Wasfi left me a gift when she went back east. It's a mouse pad with the image of Malcolm X, forefinger pointing above his head with the quote, "We declare our right on this earth to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth by any means necessary"

I see this every day. I remember when Malcolm said it in 1965. I failed to completely understand it at that time. By the end of 1968 and my time in Vietnam, I had a great sense of what Malcolm's words meant. And today.....today, those words are as powerful as they were in 1965.

Today is the day to change the course of our nation. Today is the day to renew our struggle and resistance against the brutality, injustice and violence. Today is the day for us to choose which side we want to be on; the side of greed and militarism or the side of peace and justice. We can't just do this on the weekends. The weekend should evolve into the beginning of a better time, a better week, a better month, a better year. And today is the day to start.

Class Warfare and Other Ramblings

2011-10-01T10:20:00.000-06:00

The Republican leadership is crying because our current President dared to suggest the rich and super-rich pick up a bigger share of financing the government of this nation. Class warfare, they cried. Yes, they are right there is class warfare and it has been going on since this nation's first days.
In recent times the rich have become richer at a faster rate than any other time in history. The poor and middle class have lost more wealth than any other time in history. That is class warfare.
Yesterday, new data revealed the health insurance rates for employer supported health insurance took a dramatic jump in prices even though claims for services have decreased substantially. The high cost of medical care is the excuse insurance companies give. More likely, they are setting their rates high ahead of the upcoming healthcare legislation's implementation. The news agencies and all Republicans have given the piece of legislation the moniker of "Obamacare".
Obamacare is actually a racist nickname for a weak legislative (Affordable Healthcare Act) attempt to provide healthcare to all Americans. It was suggested by a black President but watered down by the obstructionist Republicans who have gone all out from the first day President Obama took office to keep anything he suggested from passing. The first words out of their Republican mouths were "we will do all that is necessary to defeat this President". The missing piece to this manifesto was the thought of "regardless of the harm or the needs of the American people. We don't care about this nation's poor and middle class. We only care about keeping our power and keeping our rich masters satisfied".
And the Republicans have carried out their class warfare masterfully. They've managed to enlist the upper middle class whites to their cause by creating a well funded group called the Tea Party. For any who have some curiosity about how this party evolved, just follow the money. It came from special interests such as Karl Rove and his friends in politics and the corporate world. The Koch brothers, those right wing icons of class warfare, are just an example of some of those who have created this alleged "grass roots" movement called the Tea Party. More like synthetic turf movement.
The upper middle class and marginally rich white population of this nation have been stirred into a fear frenzy that the "mud people" are taking over. Blacks are becoming President and illegal aliens are taking away jobs and putting a drain on the costs of government to the point profits are not what they used to be.
If you talk to the ground troops of the Tea Party you hear the words of the Rupert Mudoch Fox News stooges and the hate mongering talk show hosts of right wing radio stations that dominate much of the farm belt and plains of this country.
The reality of the Tea Party supporters is they seldom if ever hear an opposing viewpoint. They are constantly assualted with the hate and misinformation of the only radio they have available in many cases and they refuse to listen to independent sources of information. They claim to mistrust the government but never get information outside of the controlled press of the right wing movement intent on taking over the government.
Marshall McLuhan once speculated about media becoming extremely powerful and influential. His prophetic opinions have come true more than even he anticipated. George Orwell worried about Big Brother controlling the lives of common people. His thoughts became even more draconian than "1984" described.
Chris Hedges describes the cloistered and insulated lives of evangelical Christians which keeps them from ever hearing any other opinion or argument in his book, AMERICAN FASCISTS: The Christian Right and the War On America.
The sad truth seems to be Americans have chosen up sides and only listen and watch news they perceive meets their view of the world. And journalism has abandoned objectivity and checking facts when headlines and ratings are all important. Newpapers have folded all across then country for lack of readership. Some have modernized to online versions but most have become ghosts of times past. Even in those past times objectivity was hard to find but with groups like Clear Channel and Murdoch controlling vast segments of the information the world receives labelled as "news" the message has become obviously slanted to the right.
The myth of the liberal press has never been substantiated since the great majority of the mainstream press is controlled by corporate interests with little regard for liberal or progressive views. But then, myths are the currency of the misinformation masters such as Rove and the Koch brothers.
There is the myth about welfare "queens" taking in huge amounts of tax payer dollars while they sit home collecting welfare and having babies to stay on welfare. Ronald Reagan's campaign created the myth of the Cadillac driving welfare queen. Searches for that Cadillac driving woman failed. But the idea of slackers getting tax dollars to live the good life while the rest of us had to work for our money became a favorite topic of the mostly white conservative movement. And, it goes without saying most thought the welfare queens to be black women having multiple babies by different fathers.
A study just published this week talks about the nursing home industry hospitalizing Alzheimer patients who really didn't require hospitalization for such things as urinary tract infections. The study speculated the reason for the 2-3 day inpatient stays was quite likely motivated by money. Once these patients became inpatients their benefits switched over to the better paying Medicare from Medicaid. And, of course, their is the whole "end of life" industry where extraordinary medical procedures are used to extend the lives of frail and dying elderly patients. One of the more notorious examples of this was an Alzheimer victim in her late 80's being diagnosed with breast cancer. She was exposed to chemotherapy and a bilateral mastectomy in an attempt to combat the cancer.
The stories of the elderly in nursing homes being exposed to medical procedure after medical procedure with little or no hope of some curative effect are rampant. The costs of this practice by unethical medical professionals is in the billions of dollars. No one points fingers at these welfare kings making millions of dollars through unethical practice.
I've observed psychiatrists visiting inpatient clients for less than five minutes and found out later they were charging Medicaid or Medicare for a full hour of services. I've seen prescribers who consistently prescribe more expensive medications that have no proven efficacy better than less expensive medications for the same disorder. Some of these prescribers make six figures each year giving "educational" talks about the very same new medication they've been prescribing with great frequency.
The practice of poly-pharmacy goes relatively unchecked in the field of psychiatry. Most patients I encounter anymore are prescribed multiple medications from the category of antidepressant, antianxiety, antipsychotic and mood stabilizer. In addition they're prescribed medications for the side effects of these medications or drugs know as adjunctive medications said to enhance the effects of one or more of the other drugs. When the medications prescribed by a patient's PCP are added to the psychiatric drugs often times a patient is taking ten or more medications each day. I once had a patient prescribed over 20 medications each day.
And the PCP is another culprit in the current trend of American medicine to give a patient a pill for everything. For them, many working for coporate practices, the rule seems to be the path of least resistance. If a patient comes to their office and complains of pain the prescription pad comes out and often times a narcotic analagesic is prescribed without exploring possible etiology of the pain other than the patient's vague complaint. Seldom do PCP and other specialitys confer about the whole picture of the patient medical profile. Such as what other medications does a patient take that might interact with the medication being prescribed. Some are beginning to question whether PCPs have become legal venues for patients with addiction problems. Prescription abuse of such medicines as oxycontin, percocet, xanax, valium and a good many others has risen dramatically. We have become a "pop a pill culture".
So, the question is who pays for this practice of poly-pharmacy besides the toll on the bodies of the patients? In many cases the patient is on tax paid benefits. I've had other professionals complain about these patients strapping the system with their costly care. Seldom do I hear complaints about medical professionals practicing on the boundary of unethical care. And, that is the problem. Too often it becomes easier to blame and denigrate the weakest member of our society for all the problems while ignoring the bigger systemic problems of greed and ethical behaviors whether it be in the financial realm or the medical industry or in our daily living.
The greatest example of class warfare is war itself. There is no longer any pretense about the equity of those who sacrifice their lives for American wars. The predominate majority of the "voluntary" military don't come from rich families except those in the officer ranks. There is no draft but there is the "poverty draft". Failure of politicians and the American corporate interests to create well paying jobs in this country has pushed young men and women toward enlistment. Promises of bonuses to enlist and the benefits of education and continuing healthcare on discharge appeal to a kid living in urban or rural areas of poverty.
Of course, Americans fail to educate themselves about the wars our politicians involve us in. We become sheep following the wolf to our own destruction. I just saw a figure today that we spend 3 billion dollars a day in the current wars involving American troops. So why do American parents insist their children wear all the protective gear to ride a bike, play sports and numerous other activities but seldom question their child's decision to enlist and face multiple deployments to combat zones? Why do parents rush to schools in terror if there is any possible scare of another Columbine type incident but fail to understand the terror of combat?
Back during the Vietnam war a song called THE UNIVERSAL SOLDIER became a wide-spread anthem of the peace movement. The song speaks to the history of young men (and now women) always heeding the call to go kill other humans no matter what size, what religion, what nation or philosophy. The relavence of that song remains as strong today as ever. As does Mark Twain's THE WAR PRAYER. As does Smedley Butler's WAR IS A RACKET declaration.
I often speak with young people and question why they would make the decision to take up arms to hunt other humans intending to kill them without knowing the reason. I ask why would we make a decision sometimes in less time than it takes to buy a new car or a new television but fail to educate ourselves about the culture of our alleged "enemy" and reasons we are supposed to hate them. We claim to hate big government and the politicians in D.C. yet we continue to allow ourselves to be seduced into wars without meaning or moral cause. I know because I was 17 when I decided to enlist into the Marines. I was 18 the day I entered Vietnam as a combat infantryman. I was 19 the day I left the combat zone to return to America. I have regretted my involvement every day since I realized early in my "tour" in Vietnam that I had been duped.
The rich and powerful want us to believe taxing them or asking them to pay a "fair share" to fund this nation's government which has allowed them to amass huge profit is "class warfare". They claim it will result in those who create jobs slowing the creation of jobs or failing to create jobs. Their arguments ring hollow since these are the people who "outsourced" American jobs at a record pace once the globalization gates were opened wide during the Clinton administraton. These are the people who have made a concerted effort to crush collective bargaining and diminish the wages of the American workers. They would prefer we return to the time when workers had no rights and the "bosses" ruled with an iron fist. These are the perpetrators of class warfare.
If the middle class and poor continue to passively follow these robber barons and their stooges in government, the class war will be lost and they (we) will become enslaved and indebted. Without resistance and an uprising of the type that took place in Egypt, the middle class will become poor and the poor will become even poorer.

It's Howdy Doody Time, It's Howdy Doody Time

2011-09-27T11:54:00.000-06:00

Last evening I watched Brian Williams on NBC News interviewing teachers about the difficulties of their jobs in the public school sector. He polled an audience of teachers to see how many spent money out of their own pockets to do their jobs. A group of approximately 50 shown on camera all raised their hands. He asked how many spent more than 60 hours a week working on their jobs. Again all raised their hands. He asked how many had to take other jobs or more than one other job to make ends meet. Again all raised their hands.

The next segment showed Williams interviewing the Secretary of Education who emphatically stated educators should be more highly respected for their work and salaries should be doubled to recruit better and brighter candidates into the teaching profession. He said the key to a better future was better education.

In the final segment of the report, Williams commented state governors seemed to have different ideas when it came to education in public schools. Then he showed Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper making the comment, "It's not about money. It's about looking at things in a different way".

That's right, Governor Howdy Doody made that inane statement about the plight of public schools.

This is the same governor that as Mayor of Denver pushed heavily to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new city jail near Civic Center Park. Instead of spending money to improve neighborhood schools to prevent drop outs and future incarceration, Hickenlooper chose building a new jail to increase the capacity of the number of inmates that could be incarcerated.

Instead of increasing the amount of funding for mental health and substance abuse treatment programs to divert groups of people who frequently end up in the city jail, Hickenlooper ignored a study he commissioned that found more than five dollars in the jailing of the mentally ill and addicts could be saved in one dollar's worth of treatment programs. He ignored the huge cost of warehousing an individual in jail versus the small cost of early intervention to prevent incarceration.

When I asked the Denver Mayor about the study, Hickenlooper hemmed and hawed before saying the study was only true up to a point. The study was never brought up in debates leading up to the election to fund the jail.

Instead of increased funding to keep recreation centers open longer and building new rec centers in poorer parts of Denver, Hickenlooper lobbied feverishly to get the vote out for building the new multi-million dollar jail.

What wasn't mentioned was a trust fund of Hickenlooper's indicated he had some rights to land where the jail was going to be built. There was never a mention certain real estate interests were lobbying for the new jail to improve land values around the Golden Triangle near Civic Center and the area the new jail would be built.

Instead of attempts to keep schools open in the neighborhoods populated predominately by people of color using some of the millions intended for the new jail, Hickenlooper allowed schools to close on his watch despite promises not to close schools.

The opponents to building a new jail pointed out the huge disparity in the numbers of minority and ethnic inmates in the city and county jails of Denver to Hickenlooper. They pointed out new beds meant more people of color were going to be locked up for lack of bail on minor charges such as traffic offenses and possession of small amounts of street drugs as opposed to those with money who would be able to make bail.

Opponents pointed out the old jail already had problems with staffing to run the day to day operation and questioned how a larger capacity jail could be staffed appropriately. Hickenlooper never wavered in pushing for a new tax on Denver citizens to fund the new jail. When the big economic crash came, Denver budget cuts included sheriffs who staff Denver jails. The new jail is now built but lacks the funds to appropriately staff it.

But now, Governor Hickenlooper tells us we don't need to invest in the education of Colorado children and children across the U.S., we just need to look at things in a different way. When we asked him to look at the issue of preventing incarceration instead of building a new jail he refused to look at things in a different way. He chose to invest in imprisoning humans instead of improving the lives of humans.

He could have pushed for better funding for to hire more teachers to improve the environment to learn but chose instead to invest in locking up people who failed in an educational system that pushed away students having problems in learning.

By his comments to Williams on NBC News Hickenlooper shows his unwillingness to invest in education even though teachers are telling us they spend their own money to facilitate learning in their classes, they spend 60 hours a week to make things better for students but get paid only for forty hours and they have to take second and third jobs to make ends meet for themselves. A beginning teacher barely earns a living wage.

Hickenlooper joins the ranks of governors like Scott Walker and Chris Christie in allowing teachers to be blamed for a failing educational system. He prefers to ignore the truth that teachers are being over-extended and disrespected. He ignores class sizes too large for a good learning environment.

But it isn't that Hickenlooper is stupid. No, Hickenlooper is one more corporate worshipping stooge who would prefer teacher's wages be decreased, their unions be busted and schools be privatized through the bogus charter school concept and other "innovative" ways to move toward corporate interests having control over public schools.

John Hickenlooper tries to pass himself off as a Democrat and people have fallen for his "oh shucks, I'm just a regular guy" PR but the truth is he's a ruthless shill for big business. He fits far better in the category of a Wall Street Democrat or even to some extent just a plain conservative Republican.

The people of Colorado who care about a public school system that competes with the rest of the world in the sciences and arts need to understand politicians whose loyalty is primarily with big business don't want the American child to be educated, questioning and able to think abstractly.

They want children who know how to follow authority, rules and fall for the bogus idea the company has the worker's best interest at heart .....so why should the worker possibly need a union.

John Hickenlooper is part of the corporate hierarchy that wants Americans dumbed down to prevent them from rising up from the enslavement of a debtor class of worker who survives pay check to pay check, dependent on staying in the good graces of the "Boss".

These are people who want the middle class to fail in order to have American workers so worried about keeping their low paying jobs they don't have the energy to object and resist. They prefer American workers anethetized by inane television programs pushing militarism, consumerism and passive acceptance of the status quo.

They prefer we have more passion for our sports teams than our real lives of slavery to debt, poor education, poor government services and little hope for a better future for our children and grandchildren. Ignoring and failing to invest in the public education system is a major symptom of the oligarchy John Hickenlooper and those like him want to fully achieve.

John Hickenlooper is a snake in the grass who comes across like Howdy Doody but is really more like the CEOs of the banksters and Wall Street speculators that caused the crash of the American economy and the demise of the American middle class. His venom comes whenever you turn your back on him.

Welcome to My Hood, Mr. President

2011-09-24T09:48:00.001-06:00

Just found out President Obama will be visiting the high school seven blocks from my home. My two sons went to the school. Back in the 90's when they went to Abraham Lincoln High School, stepping into the school was like stepping into chaos. Students were running up and down the halls, graffiti was on the outside walls and the whole vibe was chaos and loss of control. During that time one of my sons was threatened in one of the smoking areas by a gang member wielding a switchblade. Apparently the gangster didn't like the way my son looked at him. A faculty member happened by and the gang member walked away. The smoking areas no longer exist.

So, this Tuesday Obama is coming to Lincoln. The school is cleaned up now. Too late for my kids and all the kids they went to school with. Still, the graduation rate for Hispanic and Latino males is barely above 50% when the drop out rates are figured from middle school on. Lincoln will tout a higher graduation rate and more college bound students but statistics by Denver Public Schools are skewed like most statistics when it comes to "new and better" schools.

The discouraged students, the behavioral problem and suspended students and the pregnant/married students amongst others are taken off the books. Leaving only the student that would likely succeed anyway.

I'm glad Lincoln has made strides to meet the challenge of educating students from a neighborhood with over half of the population living in poverty. A neighborhood where over half the kids need a breakfast program and a lunch program to stave off hunger. A neighborhood where a majority of the families speak English as a second language. A neighborhood that has families without documentation of citizenship in the US. The vile term "illegal" takes the place of "wetback" and other disparaging slurs.

Paul Lopez is our city councilman. Good man. He and I worked together with a group to keep huge amounts of money from being used to build a new jail instead of using it to prevent incarceration. We lost. Real estate and the prison industry won over the people of Denver. Now the city can't hire new staff for the new jail and has laid off staff in budget cuts. Paul was a union organizer before he was elected. He knows about the poverty here in the neighborhood. Hopefully Obama will talk with him.

Hopefully the man at Jewell and Sheridan, which is a block away from Lincoln, will be there with his young daughter of about six years old. He's been at that corner just recently with a sign begging for help to feed and house his family. Hopefully the disabled guy with his dog will be at the corner of Evans and Sheridan, the corner where the Lincoln athletic fields end. The guy is always there in evening rush begging with a sign asking for help. Often there are homeless people across Federal on the corners with signs asking for help also. The intersection of Federal and Evans is one of the busiest in Denver. A good place to ask for help from the commuters stopped at the traffic lights. And people in this neighborhood are generous. I see people giving money to the people on the corners or at the stores all the time. We're not a rich neighborhood but despite the dangers of gangs and poverty my neighbors understand the need of those brothers and sisters on the corners.

I doubt Obama will see the people I see almost every day on those corners. No doubt police and Secret Service will clear them out like they did the homeless when the DNC was here in 2008. I'm sure the feeling of a police state will return in the neighborhood on Tuesday. Helicopters over head and Denver Police SWAT teams huddled near the school. They'll have all that "neat" stuff bought for them when the DNC came.

Too bad Obama can't go down the street to Newbarry's to have a cup of coffee. He'd hear from the wait staff how tough things have gotten for them. The coffee shop used to be packed with a wide variety of customers. On Sundays we used to wait to get in for breakfast after church. Now, because of demographic changes and the increased poverty in my neighborhood, Newbarry's is seldom crowded. There are fewer wait staff working there.

I wish the President could do a tour of the neighborhood to count the "For Sale" signs. Every block seems to have at least two or three. Most are foreclosures. It would be good if he could go over to the projects at Westwood or down to Sun Valley to listen to the people hurt most by the bipartisan bickering and hatefulness. And the 'banksters" and Wall Street speculators.

Of course the President won't do any of this. He's coming to my "hood" to court the Hispanic and Latino voters. He's losing them in the polls. He's demonstrated he's all show without game. He'll give a fiery speech about putting Americans back to work.

He's done a good job at keeping a lot of our neighbors here employed by extending the wars. It's kids from neighborhoods like mine and my old neighborhood on the Northside of Denver that end up fighting these wars, Mr. President. It's the kids who dropped out and ended up with GEDs who can't afford college without veteran benefits. The average student who can't get a scholarship and doesn't want to go in debt to the rip off merchants shilling education end up enlisting instead.

Nah, President Obama coming to my neighborhood is all about show. I heard Tavis Smiley say his momma always told him words are just words without deeds.Wish his momma had talked to the President.

I'm not hopeful about this President or any other President helping me or my neighbors. We're on our own when it comes to the American government. Like the street people, the homeless and the beggars on the corners we will be forgotten as soon as the last words are spoken and the applause is finished.

Some fell for the eloquence of Obama's words back in '08. I really didn't because he surrounded himself with too many K Street types without a clue of how folks live outside the D.C. beltway. Unfortunately my feeling about him proved to true.

But welcome, President Obama. Wish you could really see my neighborhood. Despite all the poverty and struggles going on here, I like it here. The Lincoln High neighborhood is America. Too bad your entourage will keep you from seeing it.

American Barbarism - Continued

2011-09-22T13:58:00.001-06:00

I'm old enough to remember the same debate about the death penalty going on in the early 60's that's going on today. We never learn! I was in the 6th grade and knew in my heart killing another human in the name of justice was not justice; it was revenge. I knew at age 12 killing another human "officially" was still murder.

I remember when the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was unconstitutional. I was overjoyed that finally our government got something right. How naive and stupid I was about the concept of justice. I was taught the rulings of the Supreme Court were the final word in law. The things they teach in public schools!

Now it's clear. The Supreme Court is a tool like all the rest of the tools of our government. Thank you Howard Zinn for truly teaching me American history.

I am old enough to remember in those same early 60's the "negroes" in the South were rebelling against Jim Crow. I wondered who the hell Jim Crow was. Then I watched Bull Connor and his goon squad unleash the dogs and fire hoses and I knew. I saw George Wallace block the doors of the University of Alabama. I saw the Freedom Riders getting beaten and bashed in the press. I saw MLK leading marches and boycotts. I saw the bombing of a "negro" church killing children. I saw Medgar Evans being assassinated. And I knew who Jim Crow was.

I've lived long enough to know that the old blues song BLACK, BROWN & WHITE Big Bill Broonzy sang rings as true today as it did back in the days of American apartheid. "If you're black, brother, get back, get back, get back". Or do we fool ourselves into believing the hatred directed toward Obama is simply about his "socialist" agenda? That's why they've had to double or even triple his Secret Service protection. That's why old white rednecks think it's perfectly acceptable to carry around stuffed monkeys with a name placard of Obama on them while waiting to get in to a campaign rally. That's why the good old boy club in Congress has successfully obstructed anything and everything Obama attempted to achieve.

And the thing is, I am not a fan of Obama. I can't understand why the right wing would be upset with him. He's done everything possible to appease the right wing agenda at the expense of the liberal and progressive agenda. He's sold us out....all of us.

Last night at 11:08 p.m. EST in Georgia proved conclusively Obama, Congress and the Supreme Court don't give a damn about justice or ending violence. They all put their own personal stamps of approval on American barbarism by sitting on their hands as Troy Davis was executed by the government of the state of Georgia. They allowed Snookie Williams to die.They will allow Mumia Abu Jamal to eventually die.

In the case of Troy Davis it became clear for all to see the police, prosecutor and judicial system conspired to exact quick revenge for the death of a white cop by a black man. They cooerced, lied and ignored. They had already decided who they wanted to charge, convict and execute. Even when witnesses began to recant their testimony and it was seen the witnesses were biased by the procedures of the police and prosecutor, Georgia refused to admit they might have made a mistake. They refused to admit they should at least have another trial that was fair and impartial...and based on fact.

The American people are Troy Davis. What happened last night in Georgia personifies the American people. We are a people polarized by race, morality and a sense of justice. The same people who often rant about unborn fetuses are the biggest supporters of exacting revenge through the death penalty. Some Americans clearly see the injustice and racist implementation of justice in this nation whether it be the sentencing practices of judges for drug offenses or murder cases. Others feel "those" people are the trouble-makers, the illegals, the offenders.

The case of Troy Davis is further evidence of our failing humanity. From the hunger we allow in impoverished neighborhoods to the wars we allow the sons and daughters of the poor and middle class to die in, Americans have demonstrated time and again we are a culture of violence. We can label ourselves Christian or Judeo-Christian but we are neither. Nor are we true followers of Buddhism, Islam, Mormonism or any other religious cult extolling true justice, true love for one another and true brotherhood. We continue to fall prey to our barbarism. We have crowds calling for the death of a man without insurance in a debate of Presidential candidates one week. And the following week we execute Troy Davis and a white supremacist on the same day. How ironic. Almost like the macabre scenario of both executions on the same day was intended.

The racists will have the perfect answer to those complaining about the death of Davis. Well they also executed the white guy, Lawrence Russell Brewer. White supremacist, Russell Brewer, killed a black man by chaining him to the back of a pickup and dragging him along a backwoods asphalt road in Texas. If we are against the death penalty then we must also say the state sanctioned death of Brewer was also an act of barbaric terrorism. But, there was little doubt in the case of Brewer's guilt while there was great doubt in the Troy Davis case.

When I was young, those opposed to the death penalty used to say all executions should be televised to show Americans the barbarism. Today, I don't think most Americans would give a damn. That's how far down the well of violence and barbarism we've fallen.

Damn Right There's Class Warfare!!

2011-09-19T13:04:00.000-06:00

Class warfare? Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell would have us believe there's not class warfare in this nation? Are you f'ing kidding me?
These are people we allow to be in Congress. People who think we are so stupid that we don't realize there's been class warfare going on from the first day this country became one nation, under God, indivisible.....blah, blah, blah.
And today there is so much blatant class warfare we've come to accept it, allow it and ignore it. But let's look at the ledger for just a few examples of the class warfare that's happening.
First, the average worker makes 300 plus times less than the average CEO of a multinational corporation based in the U.S.
The gap between the richest 1% who hold over 50% of the wealth has continued to grow even wider with record profits for their corporations while the average worker hasn't had enough in raises to even keep up with the yearly cost of living increases. Wealth gap has blatantly widened in the last 20 years.
If there is no class warfare, why is it the middle class, lower middle class and poor who predominately fight the blood for oil wars of the rich bastards making all the profits from the wars? Why has that been the case in every war this nation has ever been involved in? Why has war been so very profitable to the rich and so disastrous for all other classes of humans? That is class warfare at its very penultimate.
Then let us look at the communities of color in our nation to determine how they're doing. Why are a greater percentage of blacks, Latinos and ethnic groups of color imprisoned than the communities of European descent? Why do people of color have a jobless rate two to three times higher than any other group?
Why have American corporations been allowed to pay little or no taxes consistently while more and more good paying jobs are allowed to be shipped overseas to nations free of collective bargaining and under control of slave masters posing as businessmen. Why does Wal-Mart, the great "American" company, have its biggest distribution center in China, a nation run by a communist dictatorship? Why has the American garment industry died because China's government (and other off-shore nations) allows its industry to pay far less than any other competitor? The corporations utilizing the slave labor camps aren't Chinese or some other nation's. They're American corporations getting tax breaks while they destroy the American workforce.
Why do women in the American workforce still make less than 80 cents on the dollar compared to men when they are capable of doing and doing the same work as men?
Why does the typical American town or city have to fire teachers, firemen and cops when the wealthy are able to send their children to private schools, hire private cops and have priority on fire-fighting for their properties?
Why are parks closing? Why are bridges crumbling? Why are streets in disrepair?
Why do rich Americans get the finest medical care in the world with special suites in hospitals while 45 million or more Americans have no medical care or benefits? Why does the American Congress, President and Judicial branch of government all have great health benefits but all American do not have the same? Why does the family farm get squeezed out while the corporate farm takes over the food supply?
The disparities of the haves and have-nots are so obvious they've been taken for granted but, please, don't take us for stupid that we don't intuitively and objectively know there are not only gaps but huge chasms of disparities in this nation based on class. Don't take us for stupid that we don't know the rich are paying less and less of their fair share to keep this nation's basic services going while they reap bigger and bigger benefits of wealth from this nation. Don't think we're stupid that we don't know the banks and Wall Street have come out of the financial crisis even stronger and wealthier while working people keep falling further behind, keep losing jobs and keep losing health benefits.
Class warfare isn't about the rich finally having to pay a greater share to maintain this nation's daily functioning and support the future, Mr. Ryan and McConnell. Class warfare is letting lobbyists from the nation's biggest corporations determine the governance of the country instead of the people. Class warfare isn't about the poor on welfare draining the wealth from this nation in so-called entitlements. Class warfare is about the entitled rich draining the wealth of this nation through "corporate welfare" which allows the rich to pay little or nothing in taxes. And don't try the lame excuse that taxing the corporations and the rich will be harmful to those who provide jobs. If that were the case, where are the jobs in this nation when corporations and the rich have had the highest growth of income in history?
Class warfare? You're damn right there's class warfare. Class warfare is the attack on the postal carriers union and all other unions that might elevate the wages of all workers. Class warfare is attacks by right wing governors on teachers unions and unions for police and fire-fighters. Class warfare is sabotage and threats from companies like Wal-Mart and others against any employees attempting to bring collective bargaining to the workplace. Class warfare is lowering safety standards on oil derricks near New Orleans resulting in the desecration of the wetlands and wildlife of the area and the destruction of the fishing and shrimping industries. Class warfare is weakening safety standards for coal miners in West Virginia and having miners die underground and above ground from the toxic fumes and substances they must endure.
We are not stupid, Mr.Ryan and Mr. McConnell. At least not all of us. Not all of us will do your bidding like those who are stuck on the talking points created by the Karl Roves of the world. Not all of us are sheep like the members of a group claiming to be about the constitution but failing to include ALL the constitution in their thinking. Yes, we are in class warfare. One which was started by the ideologues of the most rich and powerful to destroy the middle class and make all Americans subservient to the company logo.
How dare you try to come across as the victims of class warfare!

The Ashes of Hiroshima Cloud the Skies of 9-11

2011-09-07T23:32:00.002-06:00

Howard Zinn wrote about the willingness of Americans and the American media to time and again fall prey to the lies of the government when it came to accepting the call to war. He attributed it to two things. Time and place. The dimension of time, Zinn said, was the inability of Americans to have a historical perspective. We fail to remember the lessons of history and continue to repeat the same insane mistakes. The dimension of place Zinn described as the inability of Americans to think outside of nationalistic boundaries. We Americans think everything outside the borders of the US is inferior to our nation. We still hold on to the concept of a "manifest destiny" despite all evidence that demonstrates this type of thinking is toxic.
This is the week leading up to the tenth anniversary of the 9-11 terrorism attack on the World Trade Center's twin towers in 2001. All week we are bombarded by the media hyperbole of that day when over 3,000 Americans died in the worst case of terrorism on American soil. Unless we count the hundred plus years of slavery from the time of the original Constitution until the Civil War's end. And the Jim Crow laws following that until the 1970s.
There is no doubt we should stop and remember that awful day in 2001. No doubt we should reflect on the meaning of such an attack and where it has led us since that day. We should ask the questions if two wars have made us safer or more hated? We should ask the question if giving up basic freedoms for a sense of security that is very transient in nature is the path we should continue. Would the victims and survivors of the attacks have wanted Americans to live in constant fear and forfeit basic freedoms as a result of their sacrifice?
All across the land there will be tributes and commemorations. The Nationalistic Football League will wave large flags and sing the anthem and God Bless America and mention the sacrifices made to honor America by our military heroes.
Like Dave Zirin said in his blog today, there'll be no mention of Pat Tillman. Nor Camilio Mejia, Pablo Paredes, Kelly Dougherty, Garret Reppenhagen, Cindy Sheehan or all the other heroes who have spoke out against the immorality of the wars. All except Cindy served. Cindy lost her son, Casey.
Noam Chomsky wrote an article today that questioned the way we look at 9-11. I haven't read it yet because I want to put my own thoughts down first.
By chance or some karmic force, I picked up John Hershey's book, HIROSHIMA yesterday. It was written days after the nuclear bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima in 1945. It's a hidden masterpiece of the true cost of nationalism and terrorism. American terrorism. Howard Zinn wrote about Hiroshima and the sacrosanct history most Americans choose to hold onto. Again, we have to keep in mind the perspective of time and place. In the first blast of the bomb over 100,000 people were killed in minutes. Tens of thousands more died hours and days after the bomb being dropped. The huge majority of the dead were non-combatants. Hiroshima was far from a military target. It was a psychological target. Days later, another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki with the same type of casualties.
The mushroom clouds of Hiroshima and Nagasaki obscure the cloud of the Twin Towers falling on September 11, 2001. But the dead Japanese weren't Americans, they were non-whites and their government was at war with our government. The dead children and families weren't Americans. The bombed Red Cross Hospital John Hershey writes about didn't have American patients. And besides the American government would tell us all the bombs incinerating Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved upwards of a half million American lives. A fallacy but something they'd like us to believe.
The 6000 plus dead American troops and at least one million dead Iraqis obscure the number of dead at "ground zero" of the 9-11 attacks. And there are still no weapons of mass destruction nor any connection to Iraq and the attack on the World Trade Center. The shock and awe of the first wave of attacks on Iraq killed mostly innocent civilians. Thousands of them children. Our democratic reform has been a sham and what has happened is an American occupation leading to sectarian hatred and violence. And increased hatred for Americans in the Muslim world and around the world. What victory have we gained in our vengeance? The same scenario has taken place in Afghanistan. A corrupt regime like the regimes put in power by the American government in Vietnam and Central America has brought only shame to the thought of bringing democracy to that nation.
Of course, the end game was always dictated by big businesses like Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater and the multinational oil companies.
What we have done in the wake of the attack of 9-11 brings only shame to the memory of those who died. From the immoral and illegal wars to the fear mongering, renditions, water boarding torture, profiteering of huge coporations to the waste of American youth and innocent civilians, we have failed to bring honor to the victims of 9-11. We have not protected freedom in their names. We have stripped freedoms promised to all Americans out of fear that is fanned by the rhetoric and hatred of our government and the media acting as the megaphone for our government.
And we speak of terrorism like we are the greatest victims of it. And we fail to acknowledge our terroristic acts in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Baghdad, Fallujah and Afghanistan.
This Sunday I won't watch the hypocrisy of the NFL waving the flags of militarism in phony honor of those who have served and paid the ultimate sacrifice. Not when their jingoism blinds them to all the victims of terror by all the masters of war.

Hear It's Your Birthday...

2011-08-30T16:21:00.000-06:00

My youngest son is missing. Not that he isn't in town or lost in some wilderness, run away or some other catastrophic event.

He is lost in the wilderness of addiction and he's chosen crack cocaine as his fallback. When given an ultimatum to choose either family or crack, he chose crack.

Some would say we must be terrible parents to give up on our son. Those who have endured the terror and horror of a child's addiction know what the feelings are. My son has tried treatment, been educated about addiction, recovery and all aspects, believe me. He has the knowledge. We're now going on over 20 years of my son being involved in street drugs. Sunday was his birthday. We had a party for him and my daughter-in-law for their birthdays.

He never returned a call and didn't show up despite messages being left by my wife....his mother. We last saw him on Father's Day. I could tell he was jonse-ing about midway through the dinner get together. Then he inexplicably decided he had to go over to his friend's house. His friend has been caught up in the steam-roller of his addiction almost as long as my wife and me. He's my son's boss. He came back later but soon left telling me he loved me. I told him I loved him. I haven't seen him since.

Somehow the friend thought by "controlling" my son's money, he could control his addiction. Thing is, an addict will look you in the face and lie his ass off to manipulate getting his drug. He's controlled by the rush and the lifestyle. He'll deny it. He'll tell you he hates what he's doing. But when push comes to shove, an addict will brush off groups or treatment to go back to the pipe. He'll lie to his parents and other family members. He'll lie to what few friends he still has left.

I tried the money control thing. He lied time and again about why he needed money for things like groceries, gas, work items and on and on and on. I loved him but I didn't much like my son as he was. As he is. What parent could like a child who is smart enough to know he's slowly killing himself but like some fucking moth attracted to a flame continues on his fatal way?

I once wrote an article about parents lying awake at night in dread and worry because their child was in combat in one of this nation's insane wars. I had some insight about how they must feel since I was a combat vet but more importantly.....every time the phone rings, night or day. there is a part of me that dreads answering for fear it will be the bad news that I've come to expect for my son. Between memories of insane events of war and wondering about the whereabouts of my son, I lie awake during the night quite often.

Some theorize an addict or alcoholic benefits from always having a support system that will unconditionally accept where their life is at the moment. Done that. It made us angry and feeling like we were being used. We were being used. You see, an addict is a narcisscist. Everything is about them....and their drug. They think they know the pain they put others through but ultimately they only think of their own pain and rather than endure go get high. Addiction is an illness. So is diabetes. Addicts and diabetics have to treat their illness or die. Treatment is hard work and painful. It's easier to go get high.

Yeah, I am angry. I'm angry that my son can't get the treatment he needs unless he can put up over ten grand to enter a residential treatment program. I'm angry my son has reached the point where he has chosen his drug over family and friends. But ultimately ......in all things, individuals must make choices. Parents can't make choices for adult children. And parents have to move on to not go down the addiction rabbit hole that never has an answer.

For all those sanctimonious folks who say "that will never happen to my kid", beware. Addiction hits all socio-economic groups. Or haven't you been reading the gossip rags like NATIONAL ENQUIRER?

If I could, I'd guide my son to a path he can find true happiness, peace and a feeling of some security. I have always had that wish in my heart and mind for him. I've prayed until I've come to realize my prayers will not be answered. My faith in God has been tested. My son's addiction and the insane wars have caused me to lose my faith. Waiting for God's intervention is a big fantasy for me. One day I suddenly realized I was believing in a fairytale.

And so it goes. Happy Birthday, son. We love you.

.

This Is My America, Mr. President and Mr. Speaker

2011-08-14T20:37:00.000-06:00

I want you both to see the America I see in my lower middle class neighborhood here in Denver. This morning I drove down the block and saw three homes in foreclosure. I drove by the local park and saw a handsome young hispanic man carrying a backpack with bedroll on top. He had those Mayan features of many of our local Hispanic men and women. His hair was long and his skin has turned much darker over this summer because he lacks a place to live. I've never seen him beg but I see the sadness in his eyes every time I pass him. Being a combat vet myself I'm sure I see a thousand yard stare of another combat vet. Only he would be a vet of your making Mr. President and Mr. Speaker.

After the park I went to one of our busy intersections at Evans and Sheridan. While waiting for a light to change I look across the intersection and see a tall black man probably in his fifties. He's wearing a green tee shirt like the Marines wore in Vietnam. Like I wore back in 1968. There's holes in the shirt on the back. His jeans have holes in the knees. He's wearing a tattered pair of sneakers held together by duct tape. He carries a bedroll. His back is bent and he's limping down Sheridan. His face is unshaven and he looks weary and sad. His face has a stare of someone trying to ignore the pain, trying to dissociate himself from his reality of poverty and hopeless dreams of the future.

I stop by a local 7-11 to get a cup of coffee to wake myself up. I am already saddened by what I've seen in my "hood" today. When I come out of the 7-11, I see the black man limping across the driveway. I think about approaching him to ask if I could give him some money but I don't because I'm living pay check to pay check myself.

I drive down Sheridan to the local King Soopers grocer a mile away. After finishing up my shopping and returning to my car, I see this black American again walking through the parking lot. I've not once seen him beg. What I see up close is despair. I feel like sobbing, Mr. Speaker, Mr. President.

As I drive around the Harvey Park neighborhood I see panhandlers on every busy corner with signs asking for money. Some say, "help, I lost my job", some "Veteran needs help". Each sign has an individual story. Sure some are phony and the men and women on those corners are struggling with addictions but do you really think this is how these Americans want their lives to be, Mr. President and Mr. Speaker? Any one who thinks these are lazy people should stand on a corner and beg for help all day. I suggest you both try it sometime.

Yesterday I got an email from a friend who happens to be a professor at University of Colorado. She had asked me to help her help a friend who had been diagnosed with cancer. The friend was an attorney who had lost her home in a wildfire in one of the canyon areas near Boulder, Co. In addtion to losing her home, she had been back east to find a long term care facility for her elderly mother struggling with dementia. She also had a son who had been autistic all his life and required special care. Despite all the troubles of Stephanie's life she was able to go to school when she was in her thirties and passed the bar exam to become an attorney. She specialized in rights for the disabled. Not exactly an area for big money like you both gained from your degrees. But her son gave her a passion to help those who are disabled in this state because too often they are slipping through bureaucratic cracks caused by budget cuts in the state. The cuts came as a result of reduced federal help.

Besides having cancer, Stephanie was without healthcare benefits. The fire and her struggle with placing her mom had caused her to let expensive individual insurance lapse. My friend asked me if I had any thoughts of where Stepanie could go for her care.

I had tried talking with many of my associates and friends at the local mental health center I work at. They all gave me the same basic information that I had already given my friend. The Colorado Indigent Care Program was where they all said to start. The problem with CICP is they are overrun with Americans without insurance and needing care. Their budget has been cut due to the fiscal problems created by you two, Congress and the bankers and brokers you are so protective of in all that you do.

I had emailed my professor friend the information from my associates yesterday. The email I got back....the one I first mentioned....informed me Stephanie had died the day before, August 12th. So, there is where your great ideas for health care reform has gone to help people like Stephanie Mr. President and Mr. Speaker. We see a 46 year old American die before her autistic son and her mother with dementia because she waited too long to get the care she needed. Waited because she couldn't afford the bills she knew would come if she sought care. First she lost her son, then her home, then her mom and finally her life. Is this the America you two are telling us you want?

At my work recently I had a patient admitted to the crisis facility I am the RN for. The patient was suicidal in large part because of her medical problems. She had recently had a kidney transplant at the University of Colorado med school. She was indigent but the med school had gone ahead and done the transplant. Unfortunately they hadn't made sure my patient could secure the medication needed to prevent rejection of her new kidney. Even though she had been able to secure Medicaid/Medicare the copay for the medication was in the hundreds of dollars. My client was impoverished after she paid for a place to live and food.

I called, emailed and faxed information all around the Denver metropolitan area attempting to find a way to get the medication for my patient. All the efforts failed and I do know how to work the bureucratic mazes for my patients. My patient was discharged without ever securing the funds to pay her copay for her medication to protect her new kidney.

Given the time I could easily tell you both hundreds of stories like these. This is my America, Mr. President and Mr. Speaker. You both haven't a clue what the majority of Americans are going through. You both fail to serve as you claim you want to do because you are far too busy ensuring the rich contributors to your reelections are happy. You both have been complicit in widening the wealth gap between the poor and the advantaged rich. You claim reform is necessary but all you seek to do is further enrich the wealthy.

There are two Americas Mr. President and Mr. Speaker. Howard Zinn eloquently spelled it out in his writing. The two Americas are the haves and the have-nots and you both are guilty of betraying the have-nots. I truly wonder how you both live with the betrayals you and your colleagues in D.C. have inflicted upon the America I see every day.

.

The bin Laden Shell Game

2011-05-04T10:48:00.002-06:00

So, bin Laden is dead and our mission is completed in Afghanistan and Iraq, right? Yeah, right!!
Americans have been fed the story of the boogie-man bin Laden while American imperialists and the same rich bastards responsible for the collapse of the economy will continue to cash in on oil rich Iraq and the land of a strategic pipeline, Afghanistan. And, lest we forget, wars create opportunity for the military industrial complex to profit greatly. Or, as Smedley Butler so aptly stated, "war is a racket!".
The ghoulish gathering of loud and proud Americans chanting "USA, USA" as if attending an Olympic hockey match at the gates of the White House and at "ground zero" in New York City sends a chill down my spine. I'm glad the threat of bin Laden has been eliminated from the many fears constantly provided us by our governmental "protectors". It seems preferable bin Laden would have been captured and put on trial but we all knew that was never in the cards. But, cheering the death of an individual in the manner the end of WWII was cheered is indicative of a nation that has lost its moral center.
I was touched at one report of a 9-11 survivor saying he was happy if it meant just on less violent death but he couldn't cheer for another violent death even if it was bin Laden. His was the voice of reason and reflection but his sentiment was far from the prevailing attitude in the US.
And, of course, the mainstream media has set up the circus tents of over exposure and sent the usual talking head clowns to bleed the story in celebratory glee. Mothers and fathers of troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq have been sought out to comment on the death of the terrorist "monster". But only mothers and fathers who choose to hold on to the notion both wars were "good" wars and their children didn't die being duped by the masters of war who lack conscience and morality. Cindy Sheehan wasn't interviewed by the alphabet networks.
The sad truth is ignored about the military invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Ground wars with large troop deployments are antiquated and insane in attempts to uncover terrorist cells intent on attacking this nation. It takes good investigation, good planning and elite troops trained in counter-insurgency to be successful. 24 Navy Seals were responsible for the mission of entering bin Laden's compound and basically assassinating him. Not 50,000 or 100,000 troops only barely trained to fight a ground war in nations they knew far too little about. It didn't take cruise missiles or 1,000 pound bombs, It didn't take indiscriminate attacks by mercenary troops trained by American tax dollars and then hired by private security companies contracted to "guard" high profile figures in the war zone to bring down bin Laden.
The question has to be asked why there will be over one million troops who have been exposed to combat in two wars having nothing to do with protecting the security of the American people. Why have thousands of American sons and daughters died or been maimed physically or emotionally for these meaningless wars? Why have up to a million or more civilians been killed purposefully or accidentally by this nation's careless wars?
Americans do not want to hear the truth. They don't want to hear the wars had nothing to do with national security. They don't want to hear over a trillion dollars of tax dollars has been for no other reason than padding the profits of a small group of powerful merchants of death. Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater and others earned huge profits in the most privatized national war in US history. The common thread of all these contractors was their ties with the Bush/Cheney/Rove cabal. And the bought off politicians of Congress. The winners of these wars and most wars are the masters of war who sacrifice nothing and profit obscenely in the blood of poor and middle class troops and helpless civilians.
Americans don't want to hear their alleged "voluntary military" is predominately staffed because of the "poverty draft". Mediocre and average students were met with a crashing economy and little or no employment or educational opportunities. The military offered them a "way out" by luring them with job security (unless they were killed), health benefits, tuition and housing. It is no accident recruiters focused their efforts in decaying urban centers and dying small towns. The poor and middle class have bore the brunt of American wars since this nation was born. And, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the sacrifice is once again unequally endured by the poor and middle class.
I have a vivid memory of attending the second inauguration of George W. Bush. I went with a petite young medical doctor who is an American citizen but has family in the southern part of Iraq. We went to voice our protest against the policies of Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan. For some bizarre reason the authorities directed Bush supporters decked out in fur coats and designer clothing down Pennsylvania Avenue right into the teeth of the members of the peace movement. My friend, all 95 pounds of her, confronted these rich supporters of Bush as they passed with the question, " are you sending your sons and daughters to Iraq and Afghanistan?". Most of the Bush elites said nothing but one did speak up. He told her his children were going to college because of our actions to protect our nation in these nations. Astounding! At that point I had to grab my friend to keep her from attacking the man.
This memory speaks volumes about the polarization of the nation we live in. There are the "haves" and there are the "have nots". And we all know who pays the price and fails to ever profit from the eternal flames of American wars.
Obama and the elite of the government and their puppet masters of industry would have us believe the economy's crash isn't tied to the wars and the profiteers. Amazingly, Americans continue to ignore the elephant in the room when it comes to reasons the economy is in a "depression"....not a recession, a depression. That elephant continues to be the willingness to sacrifice our children and the resources of our nation to violence in form of war or constant violent interference. Teachers, unions, state workers, even firefighters and cops are made the scape goats for the decline in the economy. These are all ploys to evade the truth. War is the great undertow dragging Americans down the economic drain. Except for those who are the profiteers, racketeers or gangster bankers and brokerage firms who finance the death and violence of war.
It all makes me want to holler!
And sing the old ballad about where have all the flowers gone.......when will we ever learn?

Jesus Christ, Inc.

2011-04-25T07:00:00.003-06:00

Jesus Christ, Inc.

Easter and Christmas are the most obvious days of observing the life and legacy of Jesus Christ by Christians around the world. Obvious, because both days are basatardized into consumer holidays for multinational corporations. Most telling is the fact the American economy’s health is in large part based on Christmas spending. Retailers’ profits and financial well-being are made or lost by this holiday spending.

Easter, though less commercialized, is also an important consumer holiday. Easter bunnies, candy and large amounts of food are necessary to properly celebrate the season in most Christian homes here in the United States. And all those Hallmark moments need Hallmark cards to tell loved ones what could easily be said around the table or in the privacy of the home. But, somehow, there seems to be a great need to have a token of love. Cards and presents are the American way.

All this begs the question where Jesus Christ fits into the picture. Christ has become the golden calf of the retailers and merchants of the Christian world. Jesus is the late night pitchman that seems to compel Christians to consume, spend, consume. And Christmas and Easter are only the two most obvious examples of how Pharisees have marketed the name of Jesus Christ.

In the city I live there are hundreds of large and small stores profiting from the sale of Christian products. Bibles, prayer books, statues, cards, rosaries, jewelry, shirts and on and on are all part of the marketing of Christ. Each sect of Christianity has their own items for sale. Each one has their own biblical interpretation requiring separate bibles for their faithful. Some families insist on having an expensive family bible. It’s not clear if having the expensive bible makes one a better Christian or paves the way to heaven but Christians are influenced to buy bibles for Christ.

Since I’m a former Catholic, and also Baptist, I can witness to the wealth of the churches from buildings to organizations to overt commercialization of the image and philosophy of Christ. At the Vatican there are countless pieces of art that are priceless. But were they for sale they would garner huge amounts on the open market. Any other organization would call this bounty what it really is – assets.

The evangelical movement of Christianity has become not only a faith community with huge following but it is a multi-billion dollar business operation. Focus On the Family and multiple mega-churches don’t just preach the word of God and Jesus, they preach the Word of capitalism and consumerism.

As a child growing up in a Baptist family from the South, I always wondered why there was always a collection for building a new church. It seemed the “not quite full” church building in real time wasn’t ever large enough. As I grew older and looked around the towns and cities I grew up in, I kept seeing larger and larger church buildings that seemed to be architectural masterpieces. I couldn’t help wondering how much it cost congregations to build these structures. I kept thinking about the Tower of Babel as I saw more and more of the elaborate church buildings.

I began to question why Christians thought expensive buildings and settings honored Jesus Christ’s life. How did the humble carpenter who sacrificed himself for his disciples become associated with wealth and materialism? How did days intended to honor the most holy of days become the Holy Grail for retailers and multi-national corporations?

It seems ironic in Christian America; Muslims are portrayed as godless and fanatical while Christianity is portrayed as the “true religion”. Why, then, is it Muslims who demonstrate respectful humility and reverence in honoring their most holy days while most Christians have “incorporated” materialism and profit into their most holy days?

I’ve still not shaken my uneasy feelings about Christian churches cajoling and begging for more, more, more from their parishioners through tithing or appeals. Since these churches have taken the financial route in the practice of faith, I have to ask what parishioners are getting for their money. NGOs around the world are sponsored by various religious groups and bring relief to those most in need around the world. Some, however, have imposed conditions on receiving the “charity” of the church. Struggling communities of different religions are often proselytized by NGO members prior to receiving needed supplies in the control of the NGO. This practice dates back to the settlers of the American West that opened Indian schools on reservations and demanded indigenous people accept the European way of life and religion. In some Christian homeless shelters the homeless must listen to the “word” before being served their meals.

And despite the good deeds sponsored by the money of the churches, there still seem to be more and more leaders of the churches living in the splendor of wealth and avarice. From the Pope living in the Vatican’s lavish settings to Joel Osteen and Pat Roberson living in mansions and having the ear of Presidents and the powerful it seems too much of the money collected on Sundays and through contributions of the lay people is being spent on things other than what Jesus may have intended to be spent in his name.

I know such heresy is challenged by faithful followers of Christ with arguments that are simply illogical. They’ll tell me “the church” isn’t a building or a man at the pulpit; it’s what’s in the “heart”. I know spiritual belief is an essential part of most human’s lives. I just question why the beauty of that spiritual belief is allowed to be soiled and tarnished by the cynical modern day Pharisees of Wal-Mart, Target, Macy’s and the others who take the love and joy of Christ and pervert it. I keep wondering why the faithful allow the most holy days honoring the birth, death and resurrection of Christ to be used to reap profits for corporations without souls and certainly not individuals as the U.S. Supreme Court would have us believe.

I also wonder who would remain faithful if their churches gave away the wealth accumulated and met in humble surroundings. Would the spiritual belief remain as strong? Christ was challenged in the desert and his faith in his father endured. How many alleged Christians could withstand a personal challenge in the desert?

Just saying.

Wm. Terry

Taxes are An Investment in Jobs

2011-04-20T10:31:00.000-06:00

As the world turns back into the neo-con era of Bush and Cheney on steroids, the question must be asked; where are the so-called liberals, progressives and radicals to counter this obscene ruse of the plutocracy?

Where is the rage that ten years has passed and we’re still at war? Where is the outrage about the biggest rip off in American history when Wall Street and the banksters ruined our economy and then reaped huge rewards in taxpayer bailouts? And why don’t the American people know about the back door handouts given the rich and the same corrupt thieves from Wall Street and the giant banks by the Federal Reserve?

I still read about the elderly opposing healthcare reform and siding with the very corrupt politicians that plan on taking away vast amounts of care they will need in the very near future. What kind of toxic Kool-aid is being given these people that they fail to understand their collusion in the destruction of their own healthcare assurances in Medicare and Medicaid?

It simply boggles my mind when I hear teachers, cops, firemen and unions are responsible for the current economic disaster this nation finds itself. How stupid have we become!!

If we look back in history to see the most prosperous time in American history, we will find it was during the post-World War II period when unions had the highest membership. It occurred when we were building our infrastructure such as Eisenhower’s interstate highway dream. It occurred when Americans built things rather than flipped burgers or worked in the local 7-Eleven to supplement their incomes at Wal-Mart or other poor paying jobs.

Once the people in this nation took risks to accomplish things thought impossible. Once people in this nation understood social change had to occur and eventually it did occur. But in the world we have today we are like the kids riding bikes or being driven back and forth to school and back. We’re so afraid of a bump or bruise of some unnamed boogey-man we’ve become a nation of inertia. We’re frozen in indecision and fear promulgated by the lords of industry who seek to destroy all labor rights and lower the wages of the workers to a rate comparative to third world countries.

It’s already happening as companies like IKEA from Sweden are flocking to the shores of America for cheaper labor and freedom of union interference. Already the main American production site of IKEA has been accused of unfair labor practices and racism. IKEA deliberately chose sites in cities and states with the right to work laws crippling rights for collective bargaining.

In Sweden IKEA is a model of a company that has union workers paid at a reasonable wage (19.00 per hour) with benefits of “socialized medicine”. Unions respect the company for fair bargaining and allowing worker substantial leave time and a wage that is a living wage, meaning their workers can save.

But IKEA saw the right to work for less law in the US and realized they could pay workers 8-9 dollar per hour without benefits and without the right for collective bargaining. They saw the opportunity to enter a third world nation without worker protection that would lead to higher profits. They were also provided tax incentives from local governments allowing them to pay little or no American taxes.

Welcome to the third world, America!

We can only expect more of the same as Republicans elected to governorships and local offices have colluded to destroy labor rights and insure lower wages. This is the new jobs program they really had in mind. An example of the new America was the 50,000 jobs being offered by McDonalds across the nation. Thousands more than could be hired showed up desperate to get one of the jobs. The jobs once held by high school students and young people looking for their first job have now become premium jobs paying 8-9 dollars an hour.

Sensible people might think if Americans are to return to prosperous days it might take some investment in jobs building infrastructure and paying the workers enough to live on. In order to build and repair all the necessary things cities and states need to repair and build taxes must be raised to pay for the projects. Bond issues must be passed.

As strange as it seems to mention increasing taxes, common sense shows it is a perfect way to stimulate the economy. Put people to work earning enough to have some disposable income and they spend to drive an economy. Revenue increases for local and state governments allowing them to provide better schools, better roads, and better services governments should provide.

An example has taken place here in my hometown of Denver. The citizens of Denver passed several bond issues to improve the infrastructure of the city. Building cranes and workers are obviously evident all around downtown and all along light rail routes. Denver citizens were able to understand they had to tax themselves to “build” their city.

The Worst of Times

2011-04-19T09:27:00.001-06:00

It has been the worst of times as my life dwindles down to precious few years left. The once proud American has become disillusioned, greedy and lacks compassion. The corporations have won not only personhood via a Supreme Court decision but they’ve won the battle of labor by pitting workers against each other. Meanwhile banks and Wall Street investors continue their toxic policies of ripping apart the American economy.

The crash of ’08 has done little to end the fraudulent practices of the robber barons. America’s most wealthy are on their way to making record profits while they dupe the public into believing a tax cut for the wealthiest ten percent will lead to jobs.

This fallacy of job creation by cutting taxes of the richest is accepted by Americans because they only listen and read the information from the media outlets owned by the very same rich.

Meanwhile a new movement of Tea Party Americans foolishly thinks they are a grassroots organization expressing the will of the American people. They refuse to understand or accept their roots stem from the dollars of Karl Rove and his cronies intent on carrying on the PNAC….plan for the new American century.

What’s even more astounding is the call for the end of Medicare and Medicaid, which are actually the most efficient healthcare systems in the nation. Not to mention they are the safety net for the poorest and the elderly. Amazingly the very elderly who will be most affected by such a bogus plan are falling all over themselves to support the actions that will gut these programs.

What the Tea Party really seems to be is a group of predominately white people who come across as people saying "I've got mine and I intend on keeping all of it without sacrificing anything". The TP's seem to be a mixture of racists, libertarians and survivalists who cannot accept a black man was elected President. They speak code that clearly demonstrates their racist ideology and their hatefulness toward the poor and the weakest living in this nation.
I see the same people in the Catholic church I attended. They are affluent and hold the parish hostage with their tithes in exchange for control of the parish dogma. The soothe their consciences by giving money to Catholic charities but look dimly on including the disenfranchised into the parish community. They look dimly on any priest suggesting the long wars in the Middle East are immoral and troops should be withdrawn.
In the rituals of the mass there are prayers for the "peace keepers" protecting American values meaning the troops. Whenever the deacons or priests are reminded there should be a petition for the innocent humans killed by our wars their response is akin to patting a schoolchild on the head and saying they understand. But they seldom petition their God for these innocents or for the end of war.
I've suggested the Church is implicitly supporting the wars because of the insurgents' faith being Muslim. What we are seeing is one more crusade of Christians against what they feel are godless Islamic fanatics. They fail to differientate or suggest the fanatics are a small minority of Muslims just as there is a small minority of fanatical Christians perpetuating the hate.
The hate is pervasive and palpable in this nation. And hate-mongers like Sara Palin, Rush Limbaugh and the Fox network make sure the hate keeps on coming. This hate and divisiveness keeps Americans distracted from the real issues of two wars costing billions upon billions, an unchecked and unregulated banking and investment system which diverts the wealth of Americans to the top ten percent and a government in city, state and federal realms intent on destroying all pretenses of a safety net for the weakest citizens of our nation.
The middle class is cannibalizing itself at the urging of the rich masters of industry and commerce. I can never remember a time of less hope for my country. Obama ran on a platform of hope but instead has led us to despair.

A Parent Sitting Up Late at Night (Aug 05)

2010-04-05T00:59:00.000-06:00

I wrote this one during one of my frequent nights of being unable to sleep. Cindy Sheehan had just gone to Crawford, Texas to confront George W. Bush about the death of her son, Casey. Two days after I wrote this piece, I was in Camp Casey I.

Her story made me think, first as a parent of two sons, how it would be if they were in Iraq or Afghanistan in harm's way. It also made me think of how my parents looked when I returned from Vietnam.

I realized immediately upon seeing my parents for the first time in over thirteen months they'd been as much at war as I had been.

Only later in talking with my mom did I truly understand the inner turmoil that having a child go to war causes a parent. When I became a parent I had an even better understanding of what it means to have a child in harm's way.

Last evening I met a mother who had a son killed in Iraq. I listened to her compelling story near tears, with great sadness and with an overwhelming sense of rage.

As she talked, I saw in her the compassion and love I remember from my own mother. My mother was never the same after my tour of Vietnam and she was able to have me return alive if not entirely healthy.

Since I heard from many mothers about this article after I posted it, I felt it was something that does touch a parent in some way. I've decided maybe I should put it on top of my blog every so often as a remembrance of moms and dads who still grieve or still wait in horrible limbo.

With great love in my heart for all parents who face the grief or the constant unknown.
An now here it is in the year 2010. What's changed? Another quagmire in Afghansistan? This is why we voted for the young President who promised us dreams but has only kept the nightmares coming???
Terry Leichner, RN

Vietnam combat vet - USMC

Parent of two grown sons

Grandfather of three

Imagine (Written August 22 05)

Can you imagine what it would be like to see them come up to your door?

In uniforms and grim looks on their faces, and your child in the war.

Can you imagine how it must feel when they say those five words?

We regret to inform you…do you hear anything but those five words?

Can you imagine telling your husband or wife your child is gone?

Your child whose birth gave your greatest joy is gone.

I’m sitting here in the middle of the night wondering how someone could question a mother or father who lost a child to this war. How could someone in good conscience accuse a mother of politicizing the death of their child? Have we grown so disconnected with our humanity we can’t imagine the day a parent sees the dark colored car drive up to their street, up to their house and uniformed men emerge?

If you’re a parent, maybe you can imagine hearing those five words. It’s your greatest nightmare. You lie awake at night wondering where your child is at tonight.

You hate hearing the phone late at night. You hate seeing strange dark cars in your neighborhood. You can’t stand the newspaper or television news.

Then imagine the five words. Will you hear beyond them? Will you know before they say them?

Then there will be telling the rest of the family. You tell it over and over again…you child is gone. You want to scream out insanely. How can they be gone!!!!!?

Imagine the memories of your child first walking. The first words from their lips. The first worrisome cold. How can they be gone?

Imagine when you watched them swim, or skate or play baseball or football. Imagine playing basketball with them in the driveway in the fall as the leaves turned gold. Imagine the graduation and the joy in their face.

Imagine the day they leave your house to enter boot camp. The next time you see them their hair is short and they seem different and changed.

Imagine the last flight you see them off at the airport. The last phone call from the place of the war. The last letter.

Imagine the day when, with a broken heart and empty soul, you follow the dark hearse with your beloved child inside a casket. Imagine the numb feeling as you get out and see the burial plot where your child will be lowered into the earth. There will be words from the Bible, the Torah or Koran. They don’t bring your child alive.

There will be family all around you but you’ll be as lonely as you’ll ever be. They’ll hand you a triangle in red, white and blue like it will replace your child or there is something there to comfort you.

Imagine the final moments as the casket is lowered into the ground. The thought of your child leaving this earth before you rips at your heart. You hear over and over the words of sympathy and comfort and they are arrows that smash into your spirit in reminder of your child.

Then everybody leaves, you’re alone with only the terrible thoughts of the death of your child. You wonder how it really happened. You wonder if your child suffered. You wonder if they died alone. Death for you would be a welcome thing instead of these thoughts you have.

Imagine after the first month or so, everybody seems to think you’re able to be yourself again. They’ll never understand you’ll never be yourself again; you’ll never be whole again. Your child is gone and each day is a struggle to get up and each day the sorrow begins again.

Imagine returning to work and seeing the looks and the avoidance of some and the overbearing presence of others. They don’t know.

Imagine going to the grocery store and seeing a child with a smile like the smile of your child. You want to scream out your child is gone!! They’ll look the other way to avoid the sadness you hold in your heart.

Imagine the silence between you and other family members. You’re left to think of the moments of each day when your child would get up, go to school, return from school, go to a friends, eat dinner, go to practice, get ready for bed. Each moment so damn precious and you failed to recognize it at the time.

Imagine hearing a song and becoming tearful because it was your child’s favorite. Seeing a book and the memory of discussing the plot and characters with such joy.

That’s all I can do. Imagine it. My mom and dad feared it each day of 1968. They imagined it but they never heard those five words.

I imagined my sons being that dead child as I sat here this late, late night. My heart ached from just the thought of it. I had memories of them swimming and running. I remembered the day of each birth. I remembered reading Mark Twain or Watership Down to them.

All those memories of my children came flooding back to me and I couldn’t really imagine how gut wrenching awful it would be to hear those five fucking words!!!

“We regret to inform you….”

The Unimaginable Reality

2010-03-15T13:13:00.002-06:00

They still hold their breath every time a door bell buzzes or a phone rings. Their nights are still sleepless with worry and thinking the worst. They hate seeing government looking cars going down their street. It's seven long years since shock and awe started. Nine since the Taliban were first defeated.
Young men and women still go time after time to the senseless wars our nation's leaders can't seem to avoid or don't want to avoid. The ultra rich and fat cats seldom think of them. The average American hardly remembers them. The mainstream media seldom mentions them. What are they doing there, again?
A few years back I wrote a piece about parents waiting for them. I asked the readers to imagine staying up late at night wondering where your child is at that very moment in Afghanistan or Iraq. Are they one of those Marines going through the hell of a Fallujah or a Marjah? Are they pinned down at some remote outpost near the mountains of Afghanistan?
Imagine a parent wondering why their child has been asked to go three, four, five times to the two wars no one at home seems to remember. Imagine a son or daughter who has seen their parent only 24 months of the last 60 months. The parent missed all their recitals, school plays, basketball games, first proms, field days and birthdays while they were gone to a war.
Imagine a young wife left behind by her husband 3 months after their marriage. Living on base is impossible to think about. A constant reminder of where he is. Going back to mom and dad's place seems like one step back. Living with his parents is out of the question. So a dingy studio apartment in a rough part of town seems the alternative. Skyping and emails hardly makes up for the lost intimacy. Minimum wage jobs hardly helps pay the bills even with his private's pay.
Imagine a reservist who has already lost his heating company because he could no longer be in the country to run the jobs. He could no longer bid jobs and expect to get them because his contractors knew he was likely to leave again for one of the wars. They support the war and all but they have to make money. Too bad the reservist got the wrong end of the stick. Who knew he'd end up going back three more times. Too bad his wife faces foreclosure with him out of country at war. Someone should do something.
Imagine the poor lost kid who barely made it through high school because of his ADD. His mom insists he stay on medications but the recruiter says he can enlist if he stops them and signs a waiver. The military doesn't care about the ADD as long as the kid can learn to be a grunt infantryman. Imagine the kid off meds in the middle of a firefight. He gets shot but it hits him in his Kevlar. The guy who befriended him isn't so lucky. He takes a round in the head and bleeds out in front of the kid. The kid makes it through the firefight but the images haunt him. His ADD kicks in big time with impulsive behaviors and disorganized thoughts being in the forefront. He tells his 1st Sgt. to "f' off. He drinks excessively. Misses formations. Fights with his squad leader. They put him on report. He's restricted and spends his time obsessing about the firefight. He sinks into depression and thinks about "offing" himself. He thinks about killing that "top". They put him on suicide watch and place him in a closet with a fire hose and fire axe next to the quarters of the First Sgt.. Smart.
Imagine the parents of the young Marine who came back and fell into the abyss of alcoholism. They keep taking him to the VA but the VA keeps kicking him back out on the streets to return to his torment and his booze. They say he has to be sober before they can provide services. The stupid cycle repeats itself over and over as the frantic family sees their son spiral toward the drain. On one evening the young Marine wants to sit on his father's lap and be held as he was held as a child. A young combat Marine wanted this. The next day the family finds their son hanging in their basement. He will always be known as a suicide but his parents know he was a casualty of the war. He died of the neglect we have allowed ourselves to have toward the returning troops.
Imagine a parent sitting up late at night going through family photos to take to the memorial service of their dead son or daughter. Imagine the young wife devastated by the suddenly abusive husband returning from the war. Imagine the young woman returning home after doing her tour of duty in Iraq surviving the IEDs and firefights but not the rapist who was a member of her combat unit.
Imagine seeing the blood of an infant drained from the body at the site of the exploding cluster bomb. Imagine seeing the sniper round hit your best friend in your combat unit. Imagine his brain matter splashed across your face. Imagine coming to the aid of one of your men whose leg is lying in a horrifying pool of blood across the road. Imagine the arterial blood pumping from the stump of the quickly dying man who screams from the fear and excruciating pain.
Parents sit up late at night wondering if they will see their chld again. Wives get up each morning fearing their husbands next rage attack. Children go to school unable to talk about their mom who has been gone for a year in a place they know nothing about.
Parents and wives, husbands and daughters, sons and brothers, sisters and friends all wonder about their loved ones but feel angry no one else seems to remember them. Imagine that their loved one survives the combat but ends up addicted, incarcerated or dead at the hands of a cop after waiting six months without an appointment with a VA psychiatrist. Imagine a mom being told her son died from " friendly fire" but later is told her son committed suicide. When she questions how he could have shot himself in the temple with a rifle the story changes to "unknown" cause of death. Imagine being awarded a bronze star and purple heart and finding yourself lined up at a local homeless shelter only six months after discharge.
We no longer need to imagine these things. They've all happened along with countless other tragic and detestable stories Defenders of the "holy wars" of Christianity against the "godless" Muslims will likely say "things happen" but most of the troops are treated well. For the families and friends of the victims of these wars, all they know is the hellish truth of what happened to their loved ones. Only thing is.....no one wants to hear them.
Wm Terry Leichner, RN
USMC combat vet - RVN '67-'69

The Rotten Core of The Catholic Church

2010-03-06T12:36:00.001-07:00

Once again Archbishop Charles Chaput of the Denver Roman Catholic Archdiocese has demonstrated his pettiness and lack of true Christian faith. In the latest of many hateful acts by this archbishop, a young preschooler at Boulder's Sacred Heart of Jesus will not be allowed to return to the center because their parents are gay women.
Yep, kids with gay parents aren't allowed in Catholic day care because their parents are living a lifestyle contrary to the dogma of the Church. This is the same Church that concealed predatory, child molesting priests for decades rather than dismiss them and comfort the child and the family of the child. This is the same Church that cries out against the intrinisic evil of abortion but still fails to object to the intrinisic evil of the wars George W. Bush started for the evil reason of American empire and greed.
Chaput should particularly be singled out as he has consistently gone along with the hateful anti-gay and pro-war crowd of politicians. I've previously mentioned his participation in Presidential prayer breakfasts with Dubya. There's a telling photo of Bush and Chaput together smiling and laughing with Chaput touching the leg of Bush. There's the attempts by Chaput to influence Catholic voters against candidates opposing Bush because of their political stand concerning abortion and gay marriages. Chaput joined the growing number of evangelical right wing Catholic leaders in suggesting communion should be denied any politician or follower who didn't agree with the Church dogma concerning gays and abortion. These leaders had much in common with the war mongering evangelical Protestants such as the Focus On The Family group in Colorado Springs led by James Dobson. Chaput seemed to always overlook the mean spirited policies of the Bush-Cheney administration that gutted social programs and programs meant to help the weakest and most at risk, however.
Chaput wrote he opposed war but sometimes there were "justifiable wars". Apparently his failure to lash out against the wars as strongly as he has against gays and abortion suggests he considers wars for oil and empire fall into the justifiable column.
What's incongruent with Chaput and the Roman Catholic Church being so loudly vocal about abortion and the intrinsic evil of abortion is they fail to recognize the number of innocent children from age one day to adolescence killed by American bombs, rifles, rockets and mortars. They fail to recognize the number of children living well below the poverty level in starvation throughout the world, including here in America. They fail to recognize children dying in gang wars, children dying from addiction and abuse.
The answer for the Catholic Church is not allowing a woman any form of birth control and then calling her a killer should she decide an abortion is necessary to prevent her other children from starving. The woman is a killer if she doesn't want to carry the child of her rapist. She's a killer if she has an abusive husband who has raped her other children. She's a killer if giving birth will cause her family to fall further into poverty.
The Church talks a great story about how they will provide for unwanted children but the astronomical number of orphans and unwanted children throughout the world are testimony to the abject failure of promises by the church.
I've sat through many a homily directed by Chaput and the Church's leadership in Denver bashing gays and women who have had abortions. The original Church of Jesus Christ has forgotten the very tenets of their Savior. They have failed in Christian charity and understanding. They have failed to live up to the beatitudes of Christ.
What purpose does barring a young child from being with other children they have come to know accomplish for the Church? What message does the hateful ban against gay parents give to us? One message is the Church doesn't want gay parents adopting children. This flies in the face of the Church telling women they should preserve life by carrying their child throughout the pregnancy and if need be, put the child up for adoption. Another message to the child barred from a Catholic day care is somehow the child is "bad" and the child's parents are bad. How Christian is that?
But what do we expect from this Church so full of misogyny and hatefulness led by men only? What can we expect from a Church that has such a bloody and evil history toward women? What should we expect from a Church more worried about image problems than children molested by priests? What should we expect from a Church that had priests encouraging young men enlist to fight the Godless communists in Vietnam as they did with my friends back in the 60's and 70's?
What should we expect of Charles Chaput who told a woman heading a priest abuse panel of victims to shut up and allow the Catholic Bishops Conference to decide the course of victim reparations? The same Charles Chaput who aligns himself with fanatics and intolerance of the right wing evangelical movement that has led this nation to illegal wars and the financial ruin we now face.
This latest action by Chaput and the Denver Archdiocese is symptomatic of the disease of hate that has rotted the core of the Catholic religion. Chaput and the Church may defend themselves by citing Christ as an opponent of gay marriage and abortion but there is no such evidence Christ believed any of this hateful dogma. The Church may rail against gay marriage being a threat to the traditional marriage but their logic is failed logic that assumes men and women can be "converted" to being gay rather than accepting there are men and women born with a genetic code causing them to love persons of the same sex. And let us keep in mind the Church objects to loving couples because they happen to be same sex but fails to take a moral stance against the illegal wars our sons, daughters, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters are sent to die in. What moral sense does it make that a relgion hates a couple in love but endorses a war?
The Church is really big on talking about the culture of death when it comes to abortion but what about the culture of violence and hate that is so historically associated with the Catholic and Christian religions? Did Christ really want what has occurred to be done in His name?
I have long believed in Jesus Christ but I just don't know the Christ of the Catholic Church. I converted to Catholicism many years ago but came to realize the Church leadership has infected the Catholic religion with hate. This latest action by the Church only confirms what I've sadly come to realize, the Church has a rotten core.

Wm. T. Leichner, RN
Denver VVAW

Connected Through Violence

2010-02-27T11:38:00.001-07:00

So there it was again. Television cameras showing students running from a local suburban school because someone with a rifle had shot two students. The middle school was only 3 miles from Columbine High School here in the Denver metropolitan area.
The local media hopped right on the story and has continued to highlight it for the last four days. Two students were shot. One was injured with a wound to her arm. Another was shot in the chest but the wound wasn't lethal. He will recover.
Now the school is shown with aggreived parents and school staff hugging and sobbing as the school comes back together. And everywhere there's a personal story of trauma or shock. And everywhere a camera is present there seems to be a crowd of people willing to play the role of victim and hero for surviving the shooting of a madman.
Turns out the shooter really is an insane young man who fell through the cracks of the pathetically underfunded mental health system. His father talks about his son's daily conversations with his hallucinatory "friends" that only he heard or saw. The father talks about his son trying to get help but being unable to afford the costs. The police record of the young man is lengthy and full of violence and yet he only spent time in jail but was never hospitalized for his psychotic thinking.
Maybe I've reached the end of my compassion for the almost weekly shootings that go on in this nation by people who should never have had access to weapons. Maybe I've become desensitized to the violence of our culture. But you know the first thing I begin to think when the shootings are at a school and I see the mad rush of parents to the scene to make sure their children are safe? I wonder why they are so panicked about the safety of their children when they're in school but think it's normal and quite ok when their children are sent off to one of our incessant wars of aggression. I wonder why they aren't as protective when at age 18 or 19 their children are sent into combat with a much more likely chance of death and irreparable harm?
Call me cruel and heartless if you want but this has become my thinking because I believe we live in a time where the nations of the world are interconnected so closely that the violence of a culture in North America can result in the violence against a culture in Iraq or Afghanistan.
I can't help but wonder why parents are shocked when violence comes to their local schools when their kids are frequently mesmerized by games of war such as Call of Duty I and II. War games are prevalent in the market of games our children play on X-Box and other gaming systems. I even had my younger son, who very well knows my hatred for war, tell me he knows it's not cool but the graphics of the latest war game are so realistic he feels he's right there in the middle of the war.
I tell my son there will never be a game that can simulate the true feeling of combat. But, I sadly realize all across this nation there are young men who are obsessed by the games of violence. They will argue they're only games and they would never lead them to real violence. Some argue the games actually help relieve their aggression.
I won't argue the vague psychology of violent video games being causative factors of real life violence. What I will argue is the acceptance of violence in our daily lives has reached the level we should not be shocked when our children become targets in real life. The violence of our words and interactions with one another have a ripple effect. All across the blogoshere it's become totally acceptable to belittle one another with racist, misogynistic and threatening responses that are so easy when they remain anonymous.
Almost weekly the media of television and movies seems to find newer and more violently graphic forms of human carnage. NCIS, CSI, Criminal Minds, etc. are favorite forms of entertainment. Hollywood continues to churn out the bloodletting of horror movies so graphic that the idea of a "snuff" film seem tame. We don't need snuff films when we can watch real life events of violence on programs documenting car wrecks, near death and death experiences and attacks by animals.
And yet the Pentagon and Presidency worries about showing dead American soldiers, the return of their caskets and the graphic nature of the wars we're involved in out of "respect". Mainstream media outlets continue to censor film or photos of the aftermath of drone attacks on innocent civilians in remote Afghan villages or the aftermath of 500 pound bombs on neighborhoods in Baghdad during the start of the war in Iraq. Are they seriously worried about the American people being unable to stomach what they might see if they showed the true nature of the wars they send their sons and daughters to fight?
It's more likely the censorship of the true reality of war has more to do with the fall out of media showing such scenes during the Vietnam war. If the true nature of war is allowed to be seen it might cause some Americans to start thinking about the reasons we're in these wars.
I believe there are connections between the costs of war and the spiritual health of a nation. I believe there's a connection between the costs of war and the collapse of the economy, the failure of government to maintain a safety net for Americans most in need, adequate housing and schooling, healthcare for all and the way the people of this nation are perceived around the world. I beleive there is a connection between the accidental killings of innocents and the continued number of insurgents and groups of people who hate America.
I believe there's a connection between the shooting of two students at a middle school here in the Denver area to the culture of violence we've allowed to fester and infect so many of our people. There is a connection of an American to a Palestinian to an Israeli to an African to a Chinese to all other people of all other nations. Our reliance on violence affects all humans. It diminishes us all.

The Sad Failure to Seize the Moment

2010-01-30T12:24:00.000-07:00

I try to like Barack Obama but every time I give in to that particular feeling he reminds me he is first of all part of the cabal of the rich and elite ripping this nation apart.
In his recent State of the Union message Obama once again displayed his great oratory skills. A few times he actually challenged the system he is so much a part of. He commented on the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision to grant "personhood" to giant corporations, effectively opening the door for even more money of special interests being able to buy the American elections. Justice Scalia was seen vigorously shaking his head "no" and mouthing the words, "you're wrong". Of course Scalia is one of the intellectual giants in his own mind.
Then Obama noted it was George W. Bush's presidency that brought the disaster of the financial collapse to the people of the nation and that he, Obama, was left the task of cleaning up the mess. There's a certain cruel irony that the first black President would have to clean up the huge mess of a white man whose policies were among the most damaging to blacks in America since the 60's and 70's.
Obama even made note of the lock step obstruction of the Republicans in the Senate making 60 votes necessary to pass any bill. He scolded them for their obvious attempt to destroy his presidency without giving a damn about the American people. And, he put the burden of governing back on their shoulders if obstruction of his policies was to continue.
Obama didn't let the Democrats off easy either when he reminded them they had the biggest majority in Congress in some time and now was not the time to "head for the hills". Of course, it's obviously clear, both parties are pretty much the same in their lack of courage. All elected officials play to the polls and the big money financing their campaigns. The people can clearly be inundated with talking points and sloganeering that will make them accept anything the rich bastards decide they should accept.
So, Obama did make me like him for some of the things he said but his actions and the rest of his speech just fortified my outrage for his failure to seize the moment in history to make changes that will actually push the agenda of those most in need. His continued failure to look at the excessive spending on the military industrial complex continues my lack of respect for this man who has so much potential that's been wasted.
Obama talks about a freeze on spending to bring down the national debt but excludes the spending on the military and all the ancillary funding that's involved in keeping the military going. The exclusions from spending freezes amount to 70% of all spending by the government with tax payer dollars! All that's left to freeze are programs that could actually bring positive changes to the lives of everyday people.
All around this nation schools are facing huge budget problems that will result in closing schools and laying off teachers. Higher education budgets are being cut so drastically the tuition for a state university is prohibitive for most citizens' children. Community colleges are being touted as the "new" way to get a college education. Of course after getting an associate degree most students won't be able to go any further in pursuing higher education.
Homelessness, mental health and substance abuse treatment, treatment for the disabled young and old, child care, early education, hunger and all the many problems faced by more and more Americans will be more and more ignored in state and local budgets. Already cities and states are telling the poor, the newly foreclosed and unemployed they can't help. Already schools and programs meant to help the at-risk students are being chopped from budgets.
But, never fear, Obama is here. We can still send our children and grandchildren to war! The wars will continue on and more and more young people will be needed to do the bidding of the masters of war. As Smedley Butler so correctly stated, "war is a racket". We manufacture little in this nation except the tools of war and the equipment needed to keep wars going. In Slidell, LA there's a company making Bradley armored vehicles. That's the major industry of the town. All over America there are these types of companies dependent on the wars continuing. Just today there was a story that the US sold 7 billion dollars of arms to Taipei. Imagine how much we are selling Israel!
Obama can make nice speeches and tell us he's for the common citizen but his actions refute his words. And, watching the mostly white contingent of Republicans in Congress, I can't help but think many of their leaders would be wearing white sheets and robes and burning crosses just a few decades ago.
The hatefulness and obvious distaste shown by their faces and body language are telling. These are the looks of the racist whites who beat down and hosed civil rights workers in the 60's. These white elected officials of the Republican Party are the descendants of the KKK and those who lynched blacks. They'd deny they're racists and accuse anybody who called them racists as being anti-white and using the race card. They will rail against the burden placed on white men with the use of equal opportunity laws and affirmative action. And they will never get it. These are the representatives of the deluded who can't accept the US will become a nation in which the majority will not be white.
It's been clear Obama would encounter the racists as the first black President. But, the extent of the Republican obstruction in Congress is unparalleled. And, the coporate media refuses to comment on it. In America, we don't talk about racism, sexism, homophobia and anything diferent from the Euro-centric "norm".
I live in a neighborhood where the residents were almost completely Anglo. Over the 26 years I've been here I've seen the neighborhood change to one that is at least 50% Spanish speaking. A large influx of immigrants has come to this lower middle class neighborhood. No doubt many lack proprer "papers". Many live with more than one family in a single family dwelling. Many park their cars on their lawns and don't necessarily believe growing and watering grass is absolutely needed.
I like my neighborhood except for some of the old-timers who have talked with me in the local stores griping about how the neighborhood has "changed". They ask me how I like living next door to "them". They talk about the number of cars or people that live in some of the homes. What's really clear to me is the innuendo of these neighbors. They're talking code. Racist code. They don't talk with "them". They only assume about "them".
This is America today and try as I might to like Obama I can't. I can't like him because he has sold us out to the very people who would have gladly lynched him 30 years ago. He has sold us out to the robber barons and gangsters who have oppressed the poor, the people of color and the worker for a century or more. And they will not change simply because we now have a black President. They'll eventually make Obama the scape goat for all that has happened since Ronald Reagan's disastrous reign. They'll point to the first black American President as proof the black man can't govern. Nor play quarterback.
In my sixty years on this planet I have seen much. But the one unshakeable truth has always been the racism that prevails in far too many minds of Americans.

The Sorry State of Obama

2010-01-27T10:01:00.001-07:00

Obama will give the "state of the union" address tonight, hoping to pacify and appease all sides of the political spectrum but will likely please none. He'll mouth platitudes toward the "middle class" and "mainstreet" but not once offer a realistic plan to help the families facing foreclosure on homes or joblessness. Does he seriously feel the general public living in the US gives a damn about his meager proposals in the face of the massive bailouts and handouts to banks and Wall Street racketeers?

Here's the state of the union Mr. President. The banksters, gangsters and racketeers have your testes squeezed tight and you'll do whatever they say if you want to stay in office another term. You and your cronies, along with George W. Bush and his cronies, perpetrated the biggest theft from the American tax payers in history when you gave away money to the failures of the banking and investment systems without conditions or regulations.

Mr. President, the state of the union is you plan on pumping billions of dollars into the military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon budget and fighting terrorism but are allowing schools, social safety nets such as Medicare, mental health, addiction treatment, healthcare for all and housing for the poor to go to hell in a hand basket.

The question is how in the hell do you expect to put Americans back to work this way? Are we all supposed to join the military to get a job? Don't tell us you're giving a few hundred million to some job programs or educational initiatives while you continue to pour billions after billions into wars unwarranted and unwinnable.

The state of the union is Americans are sick and tired of a Congress that obstructs any attempt to change things despite a majority number in both houses of Congress held by the alleged party of change, the Democratic Party. Why aren't 51 votes enough to pass a bill in the Senate? It's enough to elect a Senator but not enough to pass a simple bill giving Americans needed health care.

Why isn't the Republican Party called out by you, President Obama, for the un-American tactic of opposing any and all legislation proposed by a Democrat? Why did the Republicans, when they controlled Congress, jam bill after bill down the throats of Americans taking away basic rights, undoing years of social programs to protect the poor and needy and providing massive handouts to the already rich?

The destructive policies of greed continue and will only worsen once the Neocons retake the Congress in the near future. They will bring fear to the idiots willing to listen to their lies in the next elections and only the rich will benefit.

The state of the union is my son will lose his home soon, my wife and I will never be able to pay off our debts in our lifetime and we will join the millions of other families destitute and angry. We will be like the scenes we see in Haiti following the deadly earthquake. People will be in the streets hungry and angry. More so than the thousands upon thousands already at that point.

The truth is, Mr. Obama, there isn't a middle class left in this nation. Your bankster and racketeer friends speculating the wealth of this nation have made sure of the destruction of the middle class. Families can't send sons and daughters to college. They can't get needed health care that will prevent illness. They can't afford their homes.

Get out of the DC Beltway and really look at this nation, Mr. President. If you aren't outraged by what you find, then you have sold us all out.

And So it Goes

2010-01-26T13:21:00.003-07:00

I've been gone from blogging since June of 09. Not much has changed personally since the blog of June about myself. Depression and all it entails remains pretty much the same. Or worse.
Much has changed since the election of Obama. Or has it really just stayed the same? There's an argument to be made for both thoughts.
Obama the new fresh face of democracy has turned out pretty much as I expected. He's really like Abu Jamal Mumia suggested; just a black face doing the bidding of the masters at the plantation. He'll be tagged with all the political and economic disasters of the Neo-Cons and then they'll return espousing a "new" direction for America. It's already happening as shown by the election of a neocon in Massachusetts to replace the Senate seat of the late Ted Kennedy.
Obama came into the Presidency with the hopes of the world that thngs would change but quickly showed it would be the same old thing of the banksters and corporate icons running the show. He continued and expanded the war in Afghanistan while making believe we have reduced our presence in Iraq. Whenever someone asks why we are in either place the terrifying reply starts out with terrorism.
But does terrorism really justify us bombing and strafing villages thought to have the Taliban or the ever elusive Al Queida roaming around in them? How does the drone rocket attack on a wedding party or the home full of children endear the American people to the people of these nations we occupy?
Just as Dubya continually raised the level of risk everytime his ratings seemed to fall, Obama has continued to use terrorism like we used to use the term communism during the war in Vietnam. And just like that war turned out, so too will these wars turn out. We might as well start the memorial wall for the dead Americans duped into thinking they were protecting democracy when in fact the mission they were given has had the opposite effect.
I know a little about being duped by my government. I am coming up on the 42nd anniversary of the 1968 Tet Offensive this weekend on January 30-31. I learned one month after my arrival in Vietnam as a combat infantryman in the Marines what insanity I had volunteered to be part of. JFK and his charismatic oratory along with his martyrdom at the hands of an assassin made it seem I must give up my life to "protect" our country from the scourge of communism.
Instead, what we did in Vietnam was occupy a nation that really didn't want us there except for the Westernized dictators who ruled the South. We terrorized by day and night with the mightiest display of weaponry the world had ever seen. We kicked in hootch doors and insulted and bullied villagers from Saigon to the DMZ. We did all this in the name of democracy. We insisted the Vietnamese wanted our democracy. Like Iraq and Afghanistan, what the Vietnamese people wanted was security from the insanity of war so they could live in peace, work in peace, take care of their kids in peace and live free of violence. We provided none of this for them. Nor did the armies of the other side. What we did was put the general population of Vietnam in the middle of a violent game of power. They couldn't win if they supported the Americans or the North Vietnamese and NVA.
Sure this is a simplification of Vietnam and the current wars but we still must ask ourselves why we were ever there and why we are still there (in Iraq and Afghanistan)? What have we accomplished by importing violence to nations already overwhelmed with violence? C'mon, the truth is we went to these nations to demonstrate our power and to have strategic control of areas in the world we could exploit for natural resources and the fear we could bring to our perceived enemies such as China, Russia and Iran.
Our presence on their doorsteps and the control of oil fields, deep water ports and other vital resources was meant to intimidate. We have become the class bully and in classic Orwellian terms classified our actions as fighting for freedom and democracy.
Why is it we Americans trail all the other industrialized nations in literacy and the knowledge of languages other than our own? Why is it the rest of the industrialized nations have better infant mortality rates and can manage to give all their citizens decent health care? We have slowly descended into the depths of stupidity and ignorance while all around us see our emperor has no clothes while he marches in his pompous parade of oligarchic power.
Just this past week another Orwellian twist has occurred. The justices of the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to designate corporations as being individual people, having the same rights as an individual. This concept has been fought against for over a hundred years to prevent coporations from further buying off our elected officals. Now that the justices appointed by Reagan and the Bushes have opened the door to this personhood of big businesses we are offically without true democracy. Money talks, poverty walks. If we close our eyes and imagine Wal-Mart is a person do we see a predominately American or Chinese person? Where will the campaign funding come from, American tycoons or the centralized government of China, a nation once called our greatest enemy?
If we have become sickened by the lies, the innuendoes and distortions of campaign ads in past years, wait until this election season. Big money willl flood the airways with attack and counter-attack ads. And ignorant Americans will buy into the lies and distortions without finding the truth for themselves. Any attempt to hold a conversation of original thought will be difficult to find. Buzz words and talking points will be used to counter any rational argument against the lies of America, Incorporated.
So, yes, the more things change the more they stay the same. Who will break the cycle? Certainly not the "greatest generation" of my father who have gotten theirs but don't want anybody else to have the same. Certainly not my generation who claimed they would change the world but instead copped out and cut their hair and became "the man". My progressive friends like to believe the coalitions of the Vietnam moratorium movement changed the course of the war but conveniently forget after 1968, the bombing and deaths increased rather than decreased. Nixon used the war for four years to ensure his reelection. The genocide in Cambodia occurred because Americans refused to stop the war.
Who will break the cycle? I don't think my sons' generation will do it because they are the result of my generation's pampering and infantilzing. They became self absorbed and so materialistic they couldn't escape the debt trap of the corporations. They failed to understand the death trap of the military.
And so it goes. Welcome back to my cynical and disparging blog about the country I try dearly to love but become repulsed by every day. Like the old folk song asks, "when will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?". I ask myself that almost every day and can't come up with a hopeful answer.

That's Me

2009-06-06T11:10:00.004-06:00

The past months have been hard. Life doesn't always go on as always. Sometimes it goes on in spite of us. Sometimes despite our wishes. But life does go on. Having reached 60 for the first time in my life, I've suddenly wondered where my life went. I look back and find all the wasted time and wish I had it back. I look back and say, "if only". If only I had made a better decision when I was 17 enlisting in the Marines. If only I had refused to fight in a war I found intolerable and wrong but was trapped in. If only I had not been the bastard toward wife and kids as I fought the demons trapped in my mind. If only I had bought into the materialistic, self-centered life of Americans maybe I could feel better about my life.
Did I ever think I'd spend more than 40 years ruminating and obsessing on what I did when I was 18 and 19? I doubt I did. Decisions in life at an early age can haunt us for the rest of our lives. I never expected to be 60. Hell, I never expected to be 30. I can't say whether it is a sense of survival or just a cowardly fear of death that has kept me alive. Maybe both. There certainly have been times I wished I could off myself and leave this world a better place. And there have been times when I felt I had to do something to make this place a better world.
Since January of this year depression has been the most descriptive part of my life. Sometimes immobilizing, sometimes suicidal and sometimes just enough to make it hard to do anything of importance or with meaning. Anhedonia is a word used by us in the "psych" world to describe an inability to experience pleasure. Do I experience pleasure? Yes. But I find myself always the person looking through a window at life inside apart from the warmth of family and friends. I see life but I'm never quite completely part of it. I'm the little kid with their nose pressed up against the store window wanting the candy inside but unable to get it.
I don't know if things will get better. I look back at all the sabotaged relationships I've had. I can't stand getting close to anybody. I don't want them to know my darkest secrets. I don't want them to expect too much of me. I don't want to be responsible for their feelings.
I've talked about war, violence, peace and justice ad nauseam to an empty room. I've wanted to make a difference through my words but found I'm just one of millions wanting the same thing. Blogs are a dime a dozen full of inane thoughts of the writer. Why should someone care what I think? Why should I care what someone else thinks?
I used to think I should care what someone else thinks but found it caused me too much discomfort. If I cared what they felt I took on some of their burden as well as the good things they brought with them. If I cared about the thoughts of others I might become human. I don't want to feel the pain of a child soldier in some third world country like Sudan. I don't want to take on the depression of a Palestinian family oppressed by Zionists. I don't want to hear about the families in Basrah or Baghdad living in fear of bombs, bullets and destruction.
I'm American. I have enough angst wondering if they'll foreclose on my home which is too large for just me and the wife. I worry too much about the debt I incurred buying into the American nightmare of instant gratification and consumption to give a damn about a starving child two oceans away.
We here in this country wonder how anybody could dislike us. We are the greatest nation in the world we tell ourselves and to question that is to become a pariah, a communist, a terrorist and an enemy of all that is American. I go to functions my wife wants me to go to with her and find myself so completely alienated by all the excess I find around me I can hardly keep from erupting in a profanity laced rage. I wonder if she wants all that her friends seem to have. The big pictures, the lofts, the urban lifestyle with good furniture and all the latest trendy items to only look at and never touch. I've certainly failed her if that's what she wanted.
I look at my kids as the hardest part of my life. How did I fail them so badly? Crack cocaine became their refuge from me. One still fights the addiction and the other is so closed off I never know what he thinks. My grandkids are beautiful but I am aloof and detached with them just like I am with everybody in my life. The kid with his nose pressed against the store window of life never able to enter and take part in the sweetness of life. That's me.

Tool of The Rich

2009-06-06T10:46:00.002-06:00

What part of Obama's speech in Cairo should give us hope for a new relationship with the Islamic world? Rhetoric is just rhetoric when actions contradict. Obama has become the new salesman for the American royalty of rich power brokers and entitled elitists.

The significance of Obama's journey to the Middle East to give a polished speech he began writing before his election is window dressing and disingenuous. His destinations of Saudi Arabia and Egypt are the cues to his lack of sincerity toward the Muslim world. He chose the two most repressive regimes of the region to curry favor with the long misunderstood and vilified people of Islamic faith. He spoke eloquently about peace in Palestine and even dared to challenge Israel but his failure to speak of the repression of Egypt's Mubarak and the Saudi royal family makes his words hollow and hypocritical.

Progressives and liberals may want us to give Obama time but families sending their sons and daughters off to the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan war wonder when enough is enough after multiple deployments of their loved ones. Yes, there is still two wars being waged in the name of this nation and billions each month is being spent to fund them. Billions that could be spent to "bail-out" the millions who have lost jobs due to the handling of the phony economic crisis.

What goodwill is being gained by this nation when we continue to wage illegal and immoral wars in nations of large Islamic populations? And how do we stem the hatred toward Americans when we send drones into Pakistan and make multiple mistakes in bombing the homes of innocent civilians instead of the alleged enemy?

As expected the new deal of Obama has turned out to be the same old deal of oligarchy, imperialism and nationalistic insanity. As expected Obama has sold out to the self appointed "royalty" of America. The richest families and multi-national corporations continue to wield the greatest influence and power in this alleged democracy. Locally and nationally special interests buy the elected political prostitutes while the poor and diminishing middle class go begging for table scraps of the great American dream.

While Obama speaks with a charisma not heard since JFK, like JFK he is merely a tool of a corrupted system never meant to be about "we, the people".

Wm. Terry Leichner, RN

Denver VVAW member

After The Pomp What Will Be the Circumstances?

2009-01-20T22:11:00.006-07:00

On election night there were tears in my eyes when it was announced Barack Obama had been elected as the first black President of the United States. I’m 60 and the memories of Jim Crow, dogs and water hoses are still there for me, even though I’m a white male.

Today I watch as Obama is about to be sworn in on the grounds of the Capitol which was built by slaves considered non-human and not worthy of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I look at the podium and still see the predominance of white faces, hear the jets of militarism fly overhead and see former Presidents who have led this nation on the path of imperialism over the past three decades.

I’d like to say I finally have great hopes of the “change” promised us by Obama and all the others during an excruciating campaign for the Presidency. I don’t. I look at the announced cabinet members of the “new” President and see the "same old" faces of our past three or four decades responsible for a culture of death Americans have endorsed for too long. The friends of Zionism have prevailed in these choices. The friends of aggression and imperialism have prevailed. The friends of injustice have prevailed. There are few friends of the impoverished, the downtrodden and all those mentioned on the Statute of Liberty.

The speech is about to be given and it will no doubt be stirring and inspirational. There is no doubt Obama is the most gifted orator since John Kennedy. His deliverance of words is compared to Martin Luther King. These are fair comparisons but words spoken aren’t necessarily actions taken.

John Kennedy was the President that inspired me to join the Marine Corps, asking not what my country could do for me but asking what I could do for my country. The truth is Kennedy was an imperialistic leader that took a militaristic path rather than a one of justice and fairness. I was a young fool when I joined the Marine Corps to fight an imperialistic war in Southeast Asia. The inspiration I took from Kennedy was based on deceit and aggression. I failed to seek the truth. Instead I accepted the propaganda of a government intent on world dominance.

Yesterday I marched with thousands from the City Park of Denver to the Civic Center in honor of Martin Luther King. The 3.1 mile march was one with hopeful and proud faces. Young and old seemed to have even greater enthusiasm than the previous marches I’ve taken part in. The election and inauguration of Barack Obama was clearly on their minds and expressed in shirts bearing Obama’s likeness, buttons with his name and chants of, "Obama".

"Black Pride" is rightfully and finally acknowledged by a nation with a long and inglorious history of racism. As Obama is about to be sworn in as the next President at this very moment, our hopes for him are overwhelmingly high and unrealistic. No one man can possibly live up to such expectations of hope.

Even sadder, now that his speech is completed, I heard the same saber rattling of previous Presidents. I heard the intention to continue the same path of materialism and militarism. I heard more attention paid the economy of the country than the moral soul of the nation. Have we become such a shallow nation we fail to recognize the humanity that suffers throughout the world is our primary problem? Sadly, the answer remains the same as it has always been. We’ve always been a nation that only reacts when poverty is facing us not when it remains the permanent condition of far too many humans on this planet.

I don’t deny the symbolism of the first non-white President in the American republic’s history. It is, indeed, a step forward in the history of a nation that has pretended to cherish equality and justice. Anyone my age knows it is just a pretense. Any who listened and observed carefully during the campaign know the seeds of hatred are still very much alive in this nation toward any candidate who is non-white or female with the ambition to lead our country.

I don’t hate my country but I’ve come to understand there’s a difference between the government of this nation and the people. Most Americans are like most people in the world. They want peace, security and to provide for their families. They want justice. They want the equality stated in the Bill of Rights and throughout the Constitution. This is a generous nation of people but a people that has failed to understand the misery of those outside the American lifestyle, however.

Recently Abu Jamal Mumia made a statement about the possible election of a black man to the American Presidency. He reminded us that the masters of the plantation are still in control despite the pigmentation of the man elected. He reminded us the state of our nation remains in crisis caused by the leaders of the government and one man in the figure head role of President will not be able to do the necessary work to bring the needed changes.

We’ve seen in the recent assault of Gaza by Zionist forces of the Israeli government a reminder to the world that the government of the US remains firmly entrenched in supporting the oppression of the Palestinian people. Our government continues to endorse concentration camps full of Palestinians because we continue to be cowed by AIPAC and other Zionist groups.

We will soon see the build up of forces in Afghanistan that will drain even more blood and vast potential of our young from our nation. Afghanistan will be the quagmire for Obama that Iraq was for George W. Bush. The continued military occupation of nations in the Middle East will continue to be the greatest recruitment tool for those fanatical groups bent on continued terrorism toward the American people. The failure of the American people to understand “why they hate us”, keeps the hatred fueled without any possible end in our future.

We continue to allow a child to die every 15-30 seconds as a result of poverty while we consume more than any nation on the planet. We continue to spend vast amounts of money for destruction instead of construction. We continue to ignore our complicity in allowing tyrants to oppress by our financial and military support. We allow a school at Ft. Benning, GA to train the forces of tyrants in the Americas and many other oppressed nations of our world. We continue to ignore the threat of nuclear destruction despite the ever growing risk of it happening. We fail to acknowledge the physically and mentally challenged here in our nation. We fail to acknowledge the impoverished, the hungry and homeless here in our own country. Ten billion dollars a month has gone to a war every month since 2003 while the programs for the weakest and most at risk citizens have been cut to the bare bone and face even greater cuts.

I want to hope President Obama will bring the changes he promised but his decisions so far make me pessimistic there will be any substantial changes at all. I had a discussion yesterday about the need of the activist community to remain focused and assertive in demanding the needed changes. It seems ever since the election of Obama there’s been a blindness about the choices he’s made. We seem to accept the historical event of his presidency without questioning the morality of his intentions.

Obama's speech today is a dark cloud of misguided priorities aimed at our financial well being while dismissing the tough moral choices that are needed. I heard the words of a man who has brought great hope to a nation but seems intent on carrying out the same policies of the well heeled and self proclaimed aristocrats that have caused this nation great harm.

I look at the faces of hope in the huge crowds of people that came to see the history of Obama sworn into office and fear they will be terribly disappointed when their lives fail to improve. The disappointment of the idealistic young and old will further weaken a nation of people who have allowed their government to be taken from them. The American republic could well be in the final stages of existence if the people fail to recognize and reject the deception of the special interests of an oligarchic government.

Sadly, President Obama failed to inspire me and gives me little hope. With George W. Bush I had lowered expectations but should the hope Obama gives so many prove a failure it will be much crueler than Bush and Cheney being in power. I pray and hope I’m wrong.

Failure to Compromise Dooms Us

2009-01-13T09:10:00.002-07:00

Over the past fifty years I've sadly observed the continuous hate between Palestinians and the nation of Israel. Palestinians have lived in concentration camps ever since the beginning of the modern nation of Israel. Zionist politicians have maintained control of the Israeli government all this time.

The reaction and response cycle of death continues unabated. Innocent people continue to starve and die lacking the basic needs of survival while only a short distance away the oppressors live in relative luxury. Children continue to perish for lack of potable water. Teens continue to be indoctrinated in the hate of their ancestors without questioning the rationale. Adults continue acting like anything but adults.

An eye for an eye mentality makes it impossible to be neutral or objective because should one attempt to look logically at the newest holocausts being perpetrated you are judged to be against one or the other side. Zionists will condemn you as a friend of Islamic terrorists and Palestinians and supporters of a free Palestine will condemn you as a Zionist should you refuse to choose a side.

I've read and heard and watched all the arguments and rationales that could possibly be made for the continued killing and maiming but fail to agree with either side in their choice of solutions.

It is perfectly clear the Palestinian people had their ancestral land stolen from them in the rush to create the state of Israel. It is clear the planning for the "homeland" of Israel started well before the Holocaust of WWII and the intentions were clearly to rid the homeland of the indigenous peoples who might object.

It is clear the tactic of mass punishment and retaliation was used, continues to be used and has no likely future of ending if Zionists continue to rule the government of Israel. Political influence and American desire to maintain control of the Middle East has fueled the violence and hate.

Americans rubber stamps the actions of oppressors using the lame excuse Israel has the right to defend itself. Looking any further to determine Israel isn't defending itself; it is perpetrating the very conditions so many Jews fled from during the Nazi reign of terror- is beyond the cognition of most Americans.

Time after time Israeli jets, artillery and soldiers invade, destroy and kill with the endorsement of the American government that has provided the bombs, shells and weaponry for the killing to happen. The Israeli government will tell the world they are a humane and scrupulous force that drops leaflets over their intended targets that warn any innocents to flee from their homes if they want to live. Otherwise they will be considered terrorists and the enemy.

Where will the Palestinian people flee? How does a family with nothing but a hovel for a home flee to a "safe" place? Who will take them in and provide them the basic needs they're already missing? Will Israel allow them to cross into Israel? How would the people of Tel Aviv or Chicago react to such a leaflet being dropped on their cities?

How can any sane person question the reasons the Palestinian people rebel against the oppression of the Zionists? The bully would like us to believe it is they who are the victim. The rebellious oppressed people fight back with rocks, homemade rockets and weapons provided by arms dealers of other nations and the bully says if only they submit to being oppressed all this killing could stop.

The more fanatical fringes of the rebellious oppressed people have decided to play by the same rules of the oppressor. Suicide bombers are actually homicide bombers when they kill a busload of school children. The use of innocent civilians as shields in the ongoing violence is a tactic long used in guerilla warfare but it is just as evil and wrong as the use of white phosphorous and cluster bombs.

Gino Strada, a noted surgeon and founder of the NGO, EMERGENCY, tells his audiences and the readers of his book, Green Parrots, 90 percent of the casualties of war since WWII are innocent civilians. Of that group 40 percent are children not in their teens.

Dr. Strada has refused to align himself with either side of conflicts in setting up surgical units to treat casualties of war in the areas of conflict. His organizations stays constantly busy and in need of more funding as more and more wars are perpetrated.

Gino Strada hates war. He hates the senseless carnage of fools with weapons exerting their terror on the children and innocent humans his surgical units have had to treat over the years. He and his EMERGENCY team have seen the darkest side of war. The torn flesh, crushed bones and horrific bleeding no doubt haunts them and compels them to do the work they do.

I find it particularly sad more people don’t understand the thinking of Gino Strada’s refusal to choose sides. But that is the nature of the hate caused by the displacement of Palestinians from their homes to create the nation of Israel.

Surely the Zionists must be condemned for their failures to resolve harm done to the Palestinian people. Zionism, like nationalism, is a plague that discounts and vilifies groups of people in order to carry out a plan of oppression and aggression.

Murder of children and innocent people who may or may not agree with the Israeli government’s actions should be condemned as well. It’s absurd to think small children have any political agenda. The thinking that a bomb in a school bus or in an area with children is an act of a freedom fighter is insanity.

This past weekend here in Denver the supporters of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza and throughout the area occupied by Palestinians lined one side of a major street in front of the state capitol. On the other side was a crowd nearly as large supporting the Palestinian freedom movement. Police presence no doubt kept violence from occurring by the more fanatical participants.

I chose not to attend because I knew I would have found myself figuratively standing in the middle of the street. My family has a history that dates back to the Russian pogroms. My grandfather’s family was forced from their land by government forces in a purge of Jews from Russia. This history does not make my family or me Zionists. In fact my grandfather was raised as a Christian to protect him from the anti-Semitism his mother and father were exposed to throughout their lives.

I abhor the Zionist movement that’s created the occupied territories which are no different than the Warsaw ghetto or concentration camps. But I know the Zionist movement is not fully endorsed by all Israelis any more than the policies of Bush and Cheney were endorsed by the American people.

I have friends who are now only acquaintances because I refuse to choose a side. One friend lived with my wife and me over six months but has since disavowed me because I apparently didn’t agree with their avid belief all Palestinians are freedom fighters. They constantly recalled the life of Rachel Corrie as a life to be admired but took the militant stance that led one to believe all Israelis were Zionists and all Palestinians were oppressed and without any fault for the continued violence. I don’t believe Rachel Corrie died believing the violence perpetrated by either side was acceptable.

I have former friends who feel a violent response is an act of acceptable rebellion to oppression even if it means the murder of children. Of course, these people never got to see the aftermath of a war. And though some are people of color and have experienced great oppression and violence, retaliation will not bring them justice.

The friend who lived with me grew up in relative wealth, going to private schools and exclusive universities. Now they pass themselves off as one of the oppressed because they have family members living in the war torn area in the Middle East. I beg to differ. The family members are oppressed. A rich and pampered American with family in a war zone is an imposter even if they visited twice. They never saw the dead bodies of war or even a shot fired in anger.

It frustrates me that Americans have blindly supported Zionism despite the horrors that have been perpetrated in the name of the Zionist movement. For most, Israel is merely another American state. It frustrates me Americans in the liberal and progressive movement rail against Zionism but refuse to admit the actions of fanatics in the name of the Palestinian movement are immoral and wrong as well.

There seems to be no future for compromise that will end the slaughters. It seems we’re destined to witness and take part in the continued insanity of war between forces that have allowed hate to fuel their entire lives. As long as there is no chance for compromise and peaceful resolution of differences, the entire world is held captive. The future for Palestine and Israel will never be peace and with the continued hate and violence and the failure of Americans to end their government’s involvement. It’s not about choosing sides anymore. It’s about choosing life for the children of our world.

Nonviolence Is Not Passive

2008-12-31T11:36:00.001-07:00

The logical challenge to the nonviolent philosophy of activism is the one asking if we'd be nonviolent if our community or families were being attacked. My personal answer would be, of course not. My immediate reaction would be to defend my community, my family and myself. Even the beloved Gandhi speaks about this situation and says much the same.

The difference between protecting ourselves against attack and initiating violence against others is the difference between morality and immorality. Being the aggressors takes away any moral standing we may have had in a struggle. That's not to say being assertive isn't a moral path. Nonviolent resistance is probably the ultimate form of assertiveness.

Nonviolent resistance doesn't mean passivity. It is the direct opposite of passivity. Nonviolent resistance doesn't mean sitting in streets being ceremoniously arrested in a plan worked out ahead of time with the police. It means taking to the streets to resist the oppressor and the agents of oppression like the police.

For too long the activist movement has wanted to play by the rules of the oppressor in their resistance. They've bowed to getting permits to allow them the "right" to march against oppression. They've coordinated with police to ensure things are "orderly" when the resistance is meant to bring disorder to a failed system. Activists have allowed police to be part of their strategy in resistance. This leads me to the analogy of inviting the fox into the henhouse to help plan a defense against the intrusion and violence of the fox.

Nonviolent resistance can and should target the icons of oppression. Companies like Shell, Halliburton and Fox are all complicit partners in oppression. Wal-Mart and other corporate giants have oppressed workers since the founding of their companies. Political action groups like AIPAC have bastardized access to elected officials and bought public policy. Foreign policy has been dictated by companies and organizations that make huge profits from the policies of never-ending wars.

Martin Luther King and the civil rights workers targeted Woolworths' refusing to seat blacks at their lunch counters. They didn't target the federal government or local government first. They started at the local and corporate level. They started at the level that would ignite the flame of perceived injustice being carried out in the everyday lives of people oppressed.

The flame was lighted by Rosa Parks being forced to stand when empty seats were available in the "white only" part of the bus. She was tired from working hard and for wages that hardly paid the bills. She challenged an oppressive and injust law by taking a seat in the "front" of the bus. Her arrest clearly highlighted the oppression of the segregated South. Her simple, noviolent action was heard around the community and around the nation.

The differences between the civil rights movement and the current movement are dramatic. The eventual diversity of the civil rights movement compared to the current activist movement stand out. The strategies of organizing locally and building by actions that address local issues are different from the march and rally shows against national policies today.

But the issue is Iraq and Afghanistan....Israel and Palestine the movement says. Those issues are surely foremost in a global sense but they trickle down to our local communities. Young men and women are induced into the military locally because they can't find adequate jobs or education. The money for such programs go into the war machine. Crippling the war machine has to be done by preventing it from taking our young people in a back door draft. Crippling the war machine has to be done by insisting local companies take precendence over huge corporate giants that contribute heavily toward war. Crippling the war machine has to be done by demanding local officials refrain from supporting the war economy. It has to be done by fighting for those oppressed locally so they can be enlisted to move on a grander scale against the larger oppressors.

It certainly isn't hard to find local oppression. Police brutality, substandard housing, substandard wages, substandard schools and the ongoing decline of inner cities while rich oppressors flee to the suburbs are but a small example of local injustices and oppression. The most oppresed locally and nationally are people of color and those of non-European ethnicity. Supporting this diverse population only makes sense to build any activist community. It's like planting seeds in the spring to see the the harvest in the fall. If we plant the seed of community caring and support that comes from all sectors of the community we have a rich harvest of activists.

Unfortunately, professional activists from the old Vietnam era movement has taken root and failed to remember the diversity needed to get the attention on the national level. Martin Luther King rallied his followers to join against the war. The Black Panthers were included in the movement. The Brown Berets and LaRaza were part of the movement.

Today we seem to work in separate issue groups that seldom acknowledge the need to connect all the issues as part of the overall oppression going on in this nation and around the world. Gay rights are part of human rights. Immigration rights are part of human rights and the labor struggle. Police brutality is part of racism and violence toward the disenfranchised. Police brutality is part of overall fear to dissent and challenge oppression and injustice. The issues are all interconnected and the activists should be as well for a movement to actually be effective.

Nonviolent action and resistance is not passive. It is assertive and doesn't back down even when violence is directed toward it. I feel strongly about protecting myself and others against violence directed toward us. I'm not going to sit at the curb and allow myself or others to be brutalized without attempting to stop the attacker. But I won't join in the planned attack of others to effect a temporary victory for change. That mentality of retaliation and reprisal is the problem we see in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel and Gaza, among other places in the world. Violence truly does beget violence and I can't work with organizations that include violence as part of the strategy of effecting change. I did that once. It was called the Marine Corps.

I'm Not Endorsing The Path of Violence

2008-12-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

As death continues to reign in Gaza, the Israeli army prepares for invasion and the US and allies stand idly by with the same old refrain...."Israel has the right to defend itself". The new face of change, Obama, is included in this Greek chorus of the ongoing tragedy being carried out.

The rationale for killing over 300 and destroying entire communities by accounts of the mainstream media is 7 dead Israeli citizens from the rocket attacks of groups in the Gaza strip. The truth, of course, is Israel is challenging the new President's loyalty to Zionist causes before he even takes the oath of office. The invasion and bombings were every bit as planned as was the war in Iraq. It was inevitable Israel would start the violence once again and continue it until they get what they want; a government they can control rather than one "democratically" elected.

Of course, the US can't condemn Israel's actions since they are so much like the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. The military strategy is simple; pound the target area with bombs and artillery killing indiscriminately to soften things up. Once the chaos, death and destroyed infrastructure is completed, the ground troops aided by helicopter gunships and on call air support enter and occupy. It's the Falllujah strategy. It was refined in Vietnam and carried over to the Middle East.

We fool ourselves, however, if we think voicing our outrage will do much more than validate that we care about the inhumanity of our biggest ally in the world stage. I don't say we shouldn't voice outrage however futile it is. I do suggest we not forget the great urgency we have to build a stronger coalition of activist that spans all cultures and ethnic groups.We have AIPAC and the military industrial complex to overcome to have our voices heard. Only when the numbers reach the scale of the Vietnam moratorium days or the days of Dr. King will the reasonable voices of peace and justice be heard.

I've worked with many activists in my 60 years of life. The most effective have been the men and women who decried the violence of all sides of conflict. The continued killing of those people caught between the two or more political forces at war isn't true revolution or peace and justice. The eye for an eye mentality so often demontrated by the warring sides is a vile repudiation of peace and justice for anyone.

I've been a participant in this insanity of war. The code was retribution for any of our Marines killed by the other side. If a sniper in a village killed one of us, that village was likely to disappear and evacuation of the innocent wasn't part of the deal. My Lai wasn't an isolated incident of war. That fact is finally coming out forty years after the war in Vietnam.

Retribution and revenge killing is common in wars. If I am to offer my support for the insurgents of Iraq, Afghanistan or Gaza, I'm forgetting the concept of peace and justice. Killing and destruction may make us feel good if it is inflicted on the "bad guys" but we give up a large chunk of our humanity to feel satisfaction about killing other humans.

I read and hear anarchists, liberals, progressives, Marxists, socialists and others talk enthusiastically about the struggle with the thinking violence is a logical tool of the struggle. I hardly ever hear that from the combat veterans who have gone that route. Young idealists with rage and frustration in their heart are misdirected in thinking violence will get them peace and justice. They're quick to recall Malcolm X and other radical figures in the past but forget Malcolm came to the conclusion violence wasn't the path.

Rhetoric about violent revolution is one thing, carrying out violence against a stronger and larger force is another. Entering the battle with spears against tanks, artillery and air power may be brave of those who actually engage but it's pretty damn stupid and a waste of life.

I've heard young radicals talk a good story of resistance and struggle but seen them disappear when heads started getting bashed. I've seen vocal leaders encourage their followers to act in violent ways but they always seem to be missing when the violence they encouraged happens. I've listened to impassioned speakers encourage others to resist and act but the only part they take is their words. They don't face the guns or the prisons. They seldom even risk arrest.

I'm not inclined to listen to rhetoric of phonies encouraging us to act violently, to resist and risk prison or to confront the oppressors if they don't walk their talk. And there's a lot of them out there. Now, folks like Kathy Kelly, Roy Bourgeois, Ardeth Platte, Carol Gilbert and Jackie Hudson walk the talk and do it nonviolently. Their voices are strong and determined.

So, salute the leaders of violent means of change if you choose but don't expect things to change all that much. The power of the gun is a false god that leads only to more violence.

Your Friendship Is Cancelled Unless You Agree With Me

2008-12-29T10:38:00.005-07:00

Just wondering this morning about recent comments from people on "facebook" about the Israeli slaughter in Gaza. I fully agree we should all be outraged by the overt aggression against an entire group of people for the actions of fanatics claiming religious cause for their actions. The fanatics firing rockets into civilian areas of Israel are no more religous than the fanatic Zionists claiming to protect Judaism in Israel. These are not religious people! Zionism is not Judaism and the self proclaimed Islamic warriors who kill babies and innocents with bombs aren't true followers of the Muslim faith.

I recently had the temerity to give the opinion being outraged without an activist group of great diversity is like going to a wilderness and screaming our displeasure. With a Zionist Congress and Presidency, a media that is primarily slanted toward Zionism and the power given AIPAC just being outraged activists won't bring any changes. The outrage from reasonable people won't be heard or taken seriously until there is a larger and more powerful coalition of many groups of people expressing outrage.

I also refused to go along with the thinking that Hamas is without some responsibility of the violence going on in Gaza and Palestine. Thinking fanatics on one side killing children are "freedom fighters" and fanatics on the other side killing children are aggressors misses the point of why we should be outraged.

The fanatics of both sides, or all sides, that continue to perpetuate violence have trapped the majority of the people in Palestine and Israel in constant violence and fear. They hold the Palestinian and Israeli people hostage with their hatred and violence. And they hold the world hostage because the American government continues to rubber stamp and supply the Zionists in their aggression.

There is no doubt Zionism had a master plan to displace the indigenous people of Palestine to create a "Jewish homeland". That movement began at the beginning of the 20th Century. David Ben-Gurion and others continued to formulate plans to achieve the reclaiming of the "homeland" until WWII presented them the perfect opportunity. The fanatics of Zionism saw the Halocaust as an opportunity to justify stealing Palestinian land for their own.

The hatred and religious fanaticism has gone on for centuries at the expense of innocent people desiring peace and the chance to dream of the future. And the hatred is a double-edged sword where Zionism posing as Judaism and terrorists posing as Muslim freedom fighters take anybody in the way with them into the bloody abyss of violence.

Apparently some took exception to such thinking when posted on a thread decrying the current atrocities in Gaza. My friendship on "facebook" was "canceled" by the person who made the original post. Unfortunately, we've known each other for a few years and I continue to be a great supporter of the person who "cancelled" me as a friend.

It seems immature to believe we can overlook the violence of one side killing children and innocent people and condemn the other doing the same. Since the cycle of violence is centuries old and there's arguments by both sides who started things, both sides deserve our condemnation for perpetuating violence trapping a majority of people wanting peace.

I strongly believe the American people should pressure their government to end the free pass to the Zionists running the Israeli government. I'm outraged American taxpayers fund a large part of the Israeli military from jets to rifles. I'm sick of AIPAC using financial influence to further the cause of Zionist aggression.

I'm just as sick of fake religious leaders using the Muslim religion to further their part of the violence. I'm sick of the fanatics who would blow up babies and innocent school children who claim to be freedom fighters. They are no better than Zionists claiming to be fighting for Judaism. And it is naive and foolish for American liberals and activists to perceive the perpetrators of violence against Zionism by way of killing innocents as freedom fighters as much as it is foolish and racist for supporters of Israel to think mass violence against an entire people for the actions of a few fanatics is acceptable.

Cancelling my "friendship" because I happen to see the need for both groups of murderers to be held responsible for their vile deeds is childish. Closing ourselves off from honest debate about this issue when we disagree with someone doesn't help us grow as a person it makes us ideologues and apologists for one group's violence and misdeeds.

I think if we were to ask the Palestinian people, the Israeli people or the people of Iraq and Afghanistan what they want most it wouldn't be the death of one another. I think they would want lasting peace and opportunity to see their families grow and thrive. I believe that to be the common desire of most humans. I think the eye for an eye mentality of killers claiming religious or nationalistic reason is no longer accepted by most people.

Bend Over, America

2008-12-20T19:25:00.003-07:00

The American worker no longer has to wonder what will happen in these times of economic crisis. Already city and state governments are trying to balance their budgets on the back of their employees. Here in Denver, the mayor has asked the police, fire and sheriff department employees to take a 2% wage decrease or face possible layoffs. This follows rancorous wage negotiations between the city and police just last year which finally ended with a modest increase over a multi-year time.

The sheriffs just got their first significant increase in many years and a new city jail is well on the way to completion despite efforts by some to divert the money to programs that could intercede to stop incarceration, treat drug and alcohol addictions and improve schools; all proven preventative methods to avoid the ever growing imprisonment of a certain population of citizens. That would be people of color. With staff cuts, the new jail will immediately be short of qualified staff to adequately do the needed duties.

My guess is John Hickenlooper, the Opie acting mayor of Denver, has the cynical plan of going after the “heroes” who wear flag pins on the job first before the next request of city employees in other areas. If the badge guys and gals accept the decrease in wages they become role models for the rest of the work force.

There is no doubt in my mind the rest of management in all areas of the work force will be following the plan of making cuts on the backs of workers. Local government will also continue the trend to cut budgets in the safety net of Medicaid clients, the homeless, mentally ill and all other programs of human services. The weakest and poorest of this nation just don’t have advocates and political action committees like AIPAC and the defense contractors.

Over 400 billion dollars have bled from the American treasury to “bail out” Wall Street, automakers, insurance giants and other corporate giants but the American worker will have to face the foreclosure threat with less in their pay check. Health insurance will become more costly and families will have to choose between food or paying for catastrophic illness and injury. Elderly Americans will have to choose between food and life-saving medications. The mentally ill will have to choose between psychosis and relapse or paying co-pays that take away their monthly grocery money. And, we must ask where is the money for the alleged bail out going? Certainly not to the citizens most in need. Not even to the middle class families facing foreclosure and needing to go to the local food banks.

I’m sorry, why is it the American people don’t want to organize their workplaces? Is it because they can’t get enough abuse from the bosses who will continue to get bonuses from CEOs who continue to make obscene amounts in salary more than the average worker? Is it because they can no longer afford health and dental insurance? Certainly becoming homeless wasn’t what the workers felt came with their jobs.

All these dilemmas and many more continue to face the workers as they continue to be targeted as the problem in the economic meltdown. None of the greedy corporate masters are going to have to be responsible for their key roles in causing the meltdown. No politician allowing the regulation free world of Wall Street will pay for their role in the largest theft in history. The war machine continues to suck the life out of the American citizen and there appears no end is in sight. The bad economy favors reenlistments and new enlistments as jobs become impossible to find for the inadequately educated American students.

First there was the fear Wall Street was collapsing and taking a majority of American pensions with it. Then, it was either bail out or the end of the American economic system. Then, the Big Three automakers came to DC begging for financial aid. When it appeared a deal was done, anti-union Senators reneged because the UAW wouldn’t accept further concessions of pay and benefits. The finger was pointed at the workers while the malfeasance and criminal tactics of brokers, traders, politicians and the wealthy was pushed aside.

Since it worked so well against the UAW, the next step was to blame the rest of the workforce. That effort has started in earnest and soon we’ll all feel guilty about failing our country in a time of need, bend over, and take it like we always have done in the past.

Wm. Terry Leichner, RN
Denver VVAW member

A Dying Labor Movement Wounds Us All

2008-12-15T13:25:00.002-07:00

It certainly is no surprise the Congressional prostitutes of “big business” have targeted UAW as the problem in recent hearings and meetings to bail out the “Big Three” auto-makers of the US. And, of course, the non-union states catering to the Japanese auto-makers had Senators leading the charge against union members in the former "industrial states".

It has been clear for some time Republicans, and many of the so-called progressive Democrats, have done their best to bust the unions of America in an attempt to further erode the rights of workers and fatten the wallets of the multi-national corporate world.

The saddest part of the discussion about unionism in America is that the corporate world is succeeding in the dismantling of unions. Unions now make up less than 25% of the workforce in the US. But we can’t put the blame entirely on the lackeys of the rich oligarchy. For some unfathomable reason the American worker tends to put more faith in the bosses of the world than other workers who seek some equity and justice in their work for CEOs making 500-1,000 times more in salary than the average worker.

For some reason American workers are stuck on the idea of paying dues “to work” as an affront to them but meekly allow the bosses of Wal-Mart to continually abuse them and deny them a living wage. They allow foreign automakers to reduce benefit packages for healthcare and retirement plus tie the retirement into a volatile stock market. For some reason American workers think the bosses will treat them fairly while the union will cause them to get laid off.

The recent uprising by the Republic Window workers in Chicago is a classic example of the union versus the non-union workforce. Republic management gave the 250 workers less than a week’s notice the company was going out of business. To make matters worse the vacation/sick pay and promised severance pay in the union contract wouldn’t be paid by management because their financier, Bank of America, refused to put up any more credit for the company.

Unbeknownst to the union workers, at first, was the fact Republic was closing the union company at the same time they were opening a new company in another part of the country friendlier to business interests. The new code of the time for “friendlier to business interests” means, of course, unions aren’t welcome. Sure enough, the new company, Echo, was opened as a non-union shop without the “high” wages and expensive benefit package that meant all workers could afford health insurance and dental.

The 250 workers at the defunct Republic decided they weren’t going to put up with the rip off of vacation and severance pay they had legitimately earned. They were especially enraged Bank of America was withholding money to pay Republic’s workers the money due them. Bank of America had just received over 25 billion dollars in the “bailout” program to save America from economic disaster. And, like the many fat cats receiving the money intended to open up credit to businesses, Bank of America was holding on to their billions to make their own bottom line look good to investors.

The workers of Republic took over the closed company’s work place with a sit in. Word of their revolt soon reached the media and spread like a wildfire across the nation. A worker revolt in America was a surefire story because it was very unusual any worker in this nation stood up for themselves against the corporate masters. Union leaders attempted to arrange meetings with Bank of America and Republic management but Bank of America failed to meet the union leaders.

A strange thing began to happen, though. Americans identified with the injustice of the 250 workers of Republic facing unemployment without notice and without being paid for what they had rightfully earned. As usual, politicians came into things late, once they saw the public was outraged and the political fallout could be a problem. Soon President-elect Obama was calling for justice to be served for the workers. Only a few days later Bank of America changed course and negotiated with the union leaders to have the workers paid what was owed.

The uprising by the union members against Republic and Bank of America is an example of a strategy that needs to be used by all activists and the American worker. It was clear the worker was morally right in taking their stand against the company and the financier. Publicity of the injustice struck a note with most Americans facing similar situations of unemployment and loss of benefits. Bank of America had a choice of looking like the evil money grubbers they truly are or defusing the outrage by doing what was right. They paid the workers to avoid the negative image being seen by so many.

Only a few days after Bank of America paid the union workers of Republic the money they had rightfully earned, BOA announced layoffs of 35,000 workers across the nation. Happy holidays, Bank of America workers! Where’s the union to protect you from losing accumulated vacation and retirement pay? Weren’t the billions of dollars provided Bank of America intended to stimulate the economy? Apparently keeping Americans working isn’t part of such a plan.

Soon after the bailout GM, Ford and Chrysler CEOs came before Congress asking for their own bailout package. The first trip to Congress saw them arriving in three separate corporate jets. Nothing like flaunting their power and wealth to impress the public and Congress of the great need for bailout. Pressured by already angry constituents who saw the 250 billion bailout of Wall Street as a scam for the wealthy, Congress feigned outrage toward the auto-makers. The bailout was refused until the CEOs were prepared to provide a detailed plan on how the money they asked for would be spent and assurances the plans would include alternative fuel cars.

It was sickening to watch members of the prostituted Congress chastise CEOs of corporate America that often times buy favors from them. Their outrage was simply incongruent with the facts of political campaigns and political action committees. Drama Queen Pelosi and others looked like poor actors in a small town theatre production.

Now, there was certainly nothing wrong with scolding the CEOs of the “Big Three” and demanding a spending plan but we have to wonder why the same standards weren’t demanded of AIG and all the other Wall Street types when they received far more than the automakers were asking.

The 250 billion plus bailout of Wall Street firms basically came with no strings attached. There was a hopeful expectation the money would be invested in reopening lines of credit for business and helping home owners refinance from onerous loans causing record foreclosures. Of course, Wall Street failed to meet any such expectation. Instead they continued to schedule bonuses for management, prepared golden parachutes for themselves (just in case) and openly went off to luxurious retreats at warm resorts.

Rep. Barney Frank has since gone on national television programs like 60 Minutes saying “you can’t make anybody do what they don’t want to do”. Since Frank is head of a committee on banking and finance he wields great power but he’s disingenuous in his attempt to say there were conditions in the legislation for the 250 billion dollar bailout he, Paulson and Bernacke worked out. The carte blanche bailout of the rich was more a sell out than a bailout.

As we look around the landscape of the crashing American economy we can see the obvious greed factor as one of the major causes for the collapse. We can see hedge funds and selling short practices causing artificial wealth for the suckers hoping to invest in a fair marketplace. All the while, Wall Street became like a big crap game in some New York alley. Bettors put bets on the failures of certain companies in order to win huge sums of money. They used the ruse of calling such bets hedges or insurance but any gambler could tell us Las Vegas casinos run the same schemes.

So, along come the automakers asking for their payday in order to keep hundreds of thousands of union workers employed. At first the arrogant CEOs totally failed to include the UAW in the request for the bailout. Why would they want to include the workers that made their product in any plea for financial help?

On their second visit to Congress, the CEOs came by hybrid cars and had a plan. They included the UAW in negotiations with the Senate once the House passed a bill giving the automakers an original assistance package of 12 billion to tide them over until the Obama Administration took power.

Once the bill got to the Senate, Republican Senators decided they had the perfect opportunity to further weaken unionism by demanding the UAW concede lower wages and benefit packages as a good faith sign of “doing their fair share”. The UAW leadership balked at further wage and benefit concessions. Already they had offered future concessions in addition to the wages and benefits lost in the past twenty years to help keep the factories open. The CEOs had made a public spectacle of offering to accept only one dollar salary for the upcoming year to show their good faith. Of course, they had already prepared their finances for golden parachutes and offshore accounts.

Much is made of the average cost of labor being approximately seventy three dollars an hour for the Detroit automakers. The truth is the average worker’s wage at GM, Ford and Chrysler is around twenty five dollars an hour before benefits. The benefits have been consistently cut over the past two decades. The figures being spewed by anti-union politicians in bed with big business included money being paid workers already retired and the astronomical salaries of CEOs and management. In no other nation does an executive of a corporation make a salary a hundred times more than an average skilled worker.

Many say we should allow the American automakers to go bankrupt since they have mismanaged their business. Truthfully, the CEOs and management of the “Big Three” know they can’t lose either way. With bankruptcy, union contracts can be dismantled, pensions can be stolen and the smaller suppliers won’t be paid. The template has already been forged by the airline industry when they used bankruptcy as a tool to either destroy or fatally weaken their unions. Union members lost over half their accumulated pensions and they saw benefits shrink for healthcare. Wages remain stagnant and seldom match increasing costs of living.

And, of course, the union haters of the Senate blame the failure to give the automakers a financial bailout on the unions. The blue collar worker is being blamed for the problems with the economy not the greedy and cynical tycoons and brokers who have built the house of cards bound to crash on Wall Street.

I can only wonder how the brokers betting for companies to fail and then manipulating stocks to accomplish the failures sleep at night. I wonder how they can pose as patriotic while they systematically and deliberately drive companies out of business causing countless men and women to lose their jobs. And, then the same criminals have the gall to seek bailouts to rescue them from their own destructive practices and their prostitutes in Congress go along with the biggest rip off in American history. But, of course, the blame goes to the worker.

The American workers have become foolish sheep who continue to believe management is their ally despite every indication management will abuse and use them until they decide to excuse them from the workforce. Health benefits continue to decline with over 40% of Americans uninsured. Pension funds in 401K and 403K programs have lost 40-50% of their value in the crooked stock market of Wall Street. Job security is worse than any time since the Great Depression. Two wars bleed our youth and the money from our treasury while making enemies around the world. The failed economy has been a boon for enlistments and reenlistments. Treaties of globalization have devalued the wages of all workers worldwide.

The American worker wants to believe the villain is the union taking dues from their pay but fail to see the only reason their pay is where it’s at is because unions negotiate higher wages for union shops and the threat of unionism forces non-union shops to concede higher pay for their workers to stave off possible organizing. But big businesses, along with their lackeys in Congress, have created large campaigns to vilify and nullify unionism as Marxist, socialist and evil incarnate. And few Americans have any clue what the general principles of Marxism and socialism really are.

American workers need to understand the conspiracy against them is one which will indenture them to corporate power even more than it already does when the unions are destroyed. There are more than financial costs at stake for big business. They want total control of the worker. Breaking up the labor movement is the biggest step toward that goal.

Destruction of the middle class is already well under way. The oligarchy of America grows even bigger and stronger while the American worker foolishly thinks management has their best interests in mind by protecting them from the plague of unionism. Rising unemployment and covert and overt ageism, racism, misogyny and homophobia in the workplace are all signs management has no intention of allowing “undesirables” any power.

Undesirables are those who desire and seek economic justice such as a living wage with benefits to avoid total financial havoc in case of illness or damaging accident. Undesirables are those who want workers to have some security in the latter years of their lives in form of pensions that are stable and not dependent on the stock market.

I foresee a time when the workers of America will be not much better off than the Chinese or Thai slave laborer. I see workers being looked at as interchangeable parts that are thrown away when no longer able to do enough or when making too much. These things are already happening today. Only the labor movement has kept total management oppression of the workers from happening. When we kill the movement we kill ourselves as free people in the workforce.

Wm. Terry Leichner, RN

Combat veteran

Former union nurse and pipefitter

George W. Bush-Enviromental Terrorist

2008-11-21T13:01:00.009-07:00

My friend Naomi Rachel has continued to tell me the environmental destruction we humans have created will destroy our planet long before our politics accomplish it. Naomi was a leading environmental activist in Canada before she moved to Colorado and became a professor at the University of Colorado.

I grew up in a mining family which meant we lived a life of constant moves to follow the work here in the Rocky Mountains. Much of my early childhood was spent in mountain towns like Breckinridge, Dillon, Leadville and a place that no longer exists called Kokomo, Colorado. This was before ski resorts dotted the Colorado mountains every hundred miles or so.

Kokomo was a company town for Climax Molybdenum. Climax mined molybdenum from a huge mountain peak at the top of Fremont Pass. Over the years that peak became a vast hollowed out mountainside and tailings from the mining stretched down a beautiful mountain valley for ten miles. The tailings eventually forced the closing of the small company town of my childhood to allow more room in the valley for the waste.

The ashes of both my parents were spread in the serene valley that was once Kokomo.The place where we spread their ashes is now covered with the waste product of the molybdenum mine. The once majestic peak on Fremont Pass has become an ugly eyesore of a mountain half collapsed in on itself.

The pristine forests my sister and I once spent entire days roaming have been taken over by ski resorts and condos. Pine beetles and various other virulent diseases of pines, Douglas fir, aspen and even ancient bristlecone occur with much more frequency and scar the beauty of a once glorious region of America.

In Rocky Mountain National Park glaciers that have been around for centuries are receding and expected to melt entirely in the near future. The clear mountain streams and remote lakes have become polluted from the nearby cities of Boulder and Denver spewing carbon wastes from automobiles and coal burning power plants. Rocky Mountain National Park is a crown jewel of mountain majesty that faces an ugly change in the eco-system. The beauty and serenity will be lost for the next generations of our families.

Colorado has over 300 days of sunshine annually. When the skies are blue and the winds lightly blow, I can think of no better place on Earth. Unfortunately, here in Denver an ugly brown cloud of pollution is about as common as the sunshine. Driving into Denver from any direction you can see the city lights from many miles away at night. And for the last thirty years you can see that ugly brown cloud of pollution during the day.

Living in Denver for people with respiratory problems used to be the ideal location. We had TB sanitariums that were known throughout the world. National Jewish Hospital is the leading research hospital for respiratory illnesses like asthma and COPD.
Today, living in Denver is a risky proposition for people with asthma and COPD. The pollution triggers the respiratory systems of the young and old struggling to breath. Ozone days have increased and lowered standards for polluting cars have caused even more “red” days of pollution.

It’s now more difficult to find the remote place to hike and be alone in Colorado. ATV trails scar the tundra and mountainsides. Four wheel drive roads are just as bad. Even we hikers have caused irreparable erosion with our lack of knowledge about the land and our ecosystems. We go off trails and create new erosion paths on tundra land, leave plastic and other trash along the way and demonstrate lack of respect for what we’ve been blessed with by carving initials and other stupid things into the trunks of trees.

I’ve been an activist in the peace and justice movement for over thirty years. I’ve gone to rallies and marches more than I care to remember. I’ve railed against the wars of our time and there are constantly injustices that need to be opposed and confronted. My friend, Naomi, has consistently pointed out the peace and justice community seldom mentions the deteriorating state of our environment. She’s right.

Part of a true peace and justice movement has to recognize the very ground we walk on is in jeopardy. If we fail to treasure our sunshine days and the places of nature to escape the madness of urban life, we fail in our quest for peace and justice. If we fail to understand we are responsible for trashing our cities, our forests and our open spaces we’ve failed as activists. Thinking “green” is the new buzz word but living in harmony with nature is a necessity.

So, as the criminal Bush regime comes to an end, there is great need to be on guard against the callous and calculated attempts to further weaken and destroy our environment. The further destruction has already started with Bush by use of “midnight regulations” which most outgoing Presidents use.

Bush’s regulations are another overt present to “Big Oil” and big business. The regulations are not at all regulations but instead deregulation of primary environmental protections. Clean water, clean air, logging, mining and drilling will all be affected for the worse while allowing corporate interests to have free rein in destroying wilderness areas, the air we breathe and the water we drink.

As we celebrate and contemplate the incoming Obama Administration most are distracted from what is happening in the Bush Administration. Much can be done in the final days of the tyranny of Bush and Cheney. The evil days of the neo-cons didn’t end on November 4, 2008 when Barack Obama was declared the winner in the Presidential election.

One of the biggest victims of the tyranny will be our environment. The giveaways to big business aren’t just happening in Wall Street or Main Street. The thefts of the corporate world are also going on in the rivers, the mountains and valleys so many of us cherish.

I’m including an article from the Guardian from recent days that reviews the Bush deregulations:

President for 60 more days, Bush tearing apart protection for America's wilderness

• Oil shale mining in Rocky Mountains gets go-ahead

• 'Midnight regulations' to dismantle safeguards

• Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday November 20 2008 00.01 GMT
• The Guardian, Thursday November 20 2008
• Article history

'They are taking down pollution controls' (link to audio)

George Bush is working at a breakneck pace to dismantle at least 10 major environmental safeguards protecting America's wildlife, national parks and rivers before he leaves office in January.

With barely 60 days to go until Bush hands over to Barack Obama, his White House is working methodically to weaken or reverse an array of regulations that protect America's wilderness from logging or mining operations, and compel factory farms to clean up dangerous waste.

In the latest such move this week, Bush opened up some 800,000 hectares (2m acres) of land in Rocky Mountain states for the development of oil shale, one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet. The law goes into effect on January 17, three days before Obama takes office.

The timing is crucial. Most regulations take effect 60 days after publication, and Bush wants the new rules in place before he leaves the White House on January 20. That will make it more difficult for Obama to undo them.

"There are probably going to be scores of rules that are issued between now and January 20," said John Walke, a senior attorney at the National Resources Defence Council. "And there are at least a dozen very controversial rules that will weaken public health and environment protection that have no business being adopted and would not be acceptable to the incoming Obama administration, based on stances he has taken as a senator and during the campaign."

The flurry of new rules - known as midnight regulations - is part of a broader campaign by the Bush administration to leave a lasting imprint on environmental policy. Some of the actions have provoked widespread protests such as the Bureau of Land Management's plans to auction off 20,000 hectares of oil and gas parcels within sight of Utah's Delicate Arch natural bridge.

The Bush administration is also accused of engaging in a parallel go-slow on court-ordered actions on the environment. "There are the midnight regulations that they are trying to force out before they leave office, and then there are the other things they are trying not to do before they go. A lot of the climate stuff falls into the category of things they would rather not do," said a career official at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Other presidents have worked up to the final moments of their presidency to impose their legacy on history. But Bush has been particularly organised in his campaign to roll back years of protections - not only on the environment, but workplace safety and employee rights.

"This is Bush trying to leave a legacy that supports his ideology," said Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, an independent Washington thinktank that monitors the White House office of management and budget. "This was very strategic and it was in line of the ideology of the Bush administration which has been to put in place a free market and conservative agenda."

The campaign got under way in May when the White House chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, wrote to government agencies asking them to forward proposals for rule changes. Bolten had initially set a November 1 deadline on rule-making. The White House denies that the flurry of rule changes is politically motivated. "What the chief of staff wanted to avoid was this very charge that we would be trying to, in the dark of night in the last days of the administration, be rushing regulations into place ahead of the incoming, next administration," Tony Fratto, the White House spokesman, told reporters.

But OMB Watch notes that the office of management and budget website shows 83 rules reviewed from September 1 to October 31 this year - about double its workload in 2007, 2006 and 2005.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration cut short the timeframe for public comment. In one instance, officials claimed to have reviewed 300,000 comments about changes to wildlife protection within the space of a week.

The new regulations include a provision that would free industrial-scale pig and cattle farms from complying with the Clean Water Act so long as they declare they are not dumping animal waste in lakes and rivers. The rule was finalised on October 31. Mountain-top mining operations will also be exempt from the Clean Water Act, allowing them to dump debris in rivers and lakes. The rule is still under review at the OMB. Coal-fired power plants will no longer be required to install pollution controls or clean up soot and smog pollution.

Yet another of the new rules, which has generated publicity, would allow the Pentagon and other government agencies to embark on new projects without first undertaking studies on the potential dangers to wildlife.

Announcements of further rule changes are expected in the next few days including one that would weaken regulation of perchlorate, a toxin in rocket fuel that can affect brain development in children, in drinking water.

The Bush strategy has prompted a fightback from environmentalists, the Democratic-controlled Congress, and members of the Obama transition team.
John Podesta, who is overseeing the transition, has said that Obama will review the last-minute actions, and will seek to repeal those that are "not in the interests of the country".

Pollute, baby, pollute

The last-minute rules passed during the "midnight hours" of the George Bush presidency differ from his predecessors because they are basically a project of deregulation - not regulation. Among the most far-reaching:

• Industrial-size pig, cow and chicken farms can disregard the Clean Water Act and air pollution controls.

• The interior department can approve development such as mining or logging without consulting wildlife managers about their impact.

• Restrictions will be eased so power plants can operate near national parks and wilderness areas.

• Pollution controls on new power plants will be downgraded.

• Mountain-top mine operators could dump waste into rivers and streams.

• 2m acres of land in Utah, Wyoming and Colorado opened to development of oil shales, the dirtiest fuel on Earth.

How We Failed The Missing Marine

2008-11-19T14:44:00.001-07:00

LCpl. Lance Hering staged an escape from the Marines 27 months ago in Boulder County, Colorado. He is an Iraq veteran who faced redeployment to the war and couldn’t stand the idea of returning. Lance was apparently so desperate he and a friend staged his “accidental” death from rock climbing in a popular area for climbing.

The friend reported Lance’s fall from the rocks and a large search for him or his body ensued. The local sheriff estimates it cost $33,000 to search for the missing Marine. Rescue teams including several veterans and former Marines came out to search. Eventually the story of the friend unraveled and the public that helped search for Lance became furious that they were duped.

This week Lance was arrested in Port Angles, WA. following an anonymous tip to the Boulder, CO. police. His father was with him attempting to fly Lance out of Washington to a psychiatrist and then to turn himself in to the USMC. The Rocky Mountain News has made this a front page story for the past two days in a world of continued war, financial crisis, the Congo killings and all the other tragic stories of humanity. There is a tone of angry retribution swirling around this 23 year old Marine who was 20 when he was in Iraq.

What most of the angry public fails to realize is Lance was indeed missing and his life was like that of a rock climber on the edge of cliff without ropes or a tightrope walker trying to maintain balance above the deepest canyon. Trying to keep balance becomes tiring and at times the exhaustion makes a person want to let go or give in to a mind and body failing them.

What I’ve really just described is the thinking of a combat veteran struggling with PTSD. The video of horrific acts doesn’t seem to have a pause button. The intrusive thoughts break up friendly family interactions or attempts of intimacy with a loved one. Noises, normal to most, take on far more intensity and create startle and fear. Anger seeps into the soul like a deadly virus and explodes into violent reactions for unknown reasons.

Suicide is a daily thought for many veterans with PTSD. For some it is an hour to hour, minute to minute option. We’re told to carry on and suck it up but the truth is we’ve become tired of living in a skeleton of the person we used to be. Our guilt of seeing the dead friends and dead kids haunt us constantly. Dying seems to be an option that will bring us peace and relief.

There could be no search party on Earth able to find Lance Hering who was so desperate he staged his death to avoid returning to the hell known of the Corps and Iraq. He was lost before he started that day with his friend to find a way out. Lance Hering didn’t fail us. We failed him.

We expected a young man with a scarred mind to forget about things he’d seen and done. And to return to do them again. We failed to look beyond the appearance of a healthy young man to see his thousand yard stare that demonstrated his despair and depression. We failed to recognize we can’t send a young man or woman to war and get the same person to return.

I’m not angry, Lance. I totally understand the despair, the hopelessness and the darkness that leads to doing something to escape. When I was twenty I returned from my war as a Marine. I didn’t face redeployment but I did face remaining 18 more months in the Corps. I faced carrying on like nothing happened to me over there. And I couldn’t stand the thought of it. I left without permission to save my sanity.

What Lance Hering faces is a normal reaction to an insane situation. His mind absorbed insanity on a daily basis and it rebelled against it. He was asked to suppress his moral core to do his duty. He became numb to the holocaust of war. Coming home didn’t turn the switch to normalcy back on for him. It more than likely made things worse because he became a stranger in his own family, regardless of their love for him.

It would be easy to condemn a young man we think betrayed us but the more humane and appropriate thing would be giving him the help he needs to restore some semblance of a normal life. Lance has become a broken soldier/Marine that is no longer of any use to the war machine. Why should we demand a pound of flesh because we broke him? He needs the support given when it was thought he had fallen down a mountain; because he has fallen into the abyss of PTSD and it is a very long climb back up from that dark, dark place.

Wm. Terry Leichner, RN

Psychiatric RN

Combat veteran with severe and chronic PTSD

USMC – Vietnam 1967-1969

The Failure of The Church

2008-11-19T10:33:00.002-07:00

In the past weeks significant events took place that confirms the Catholic Church has failed in bringing the message of Christ to me any longer. Instead the Church has become a right wing political action committee akin to the fanatical evangelicals of the Republican far right. Instead the Church has become the Pharisees like those who persecuted Christ in his final days.

Prior to the recent election there was a concerted effort by American Catholic Bishops to heavily influence the way Catholics should vote in the Presidential election. Locally here in Denver, Archbishop Charles Chaput publicly spoke out against candidates that professed a "pro-choice" viewpoint on the issue of abortion. He made sure to preface his remarks as those of a private citizen but knew without a doubt his views would have dramatic effect on Church members who strongly adhere to the direction of Church leaders.

Reports across the state and across the nation described priests cajoling their parishes to vote against Barack Obama for the singular issue of his abortion viewpoint. They described him as a "pro abortionist" despite his statements of great concern about reasons that led to abortion and his desire to reach out to both sides to prevent abortion situations from occurring.

It is not accident Chaput is also promoting a new book of his ultra conservative views that consider abortion the most "intrinsically evil" issue we face in our world today. Chaput has often consorted with the outgoing President Bush who is responsible for the egregious acts against Afghanistan and Iraq which have constantly proved to be without merit. His voice and those of most American Catholic bishops have been significantly silent about the millions affected by those wars.

At one point Archbishop Chaput argued to me some wars are morally justified with the implication Iraq was one of those wars. That was in answer to my protest when he endorsed Bush by default over a Catholic, John Kerry, for the same singular issue of abortion. A short time after the reelection of Bush there was a photo of Bush and Chaput smiling at one another during a White House breakfast for clergy. Bush was reaching out to Chaput with his hand on Chaput's thigh in a gesture of two "good ole boys" laughing it up. Photos can have lasting impressions, Archbishop.

The week after the election of Obama the American Catholic Bishops Conference declared they will strongly challenge (confront) the newly elected President over his abortion views. At the same time many of the Bishops implied and directly stated any Catholic voting for Obama should seek penance and not be given communion until that time. The mostly white male council of bishops has insinuated a vote for Obama was a mortal sin that should exclude the laity voting for him from the Eucharist.

For eight years this same body of Church leaders has given the criminal actions of Bush and Cheney a pass. They have consistently refused to speak out against the discredited wars started by Bush as long as he has consistently followed their agenda about abortion and fetal stem cell research. They have overlooked the illegal and immoral nature of the wars that have caused 1.5 million deaths according to the research of the medical journal, Lancet.

I've even heard of some of the Bishops defending their lack of action about the wars because the casualties were low in comparison with the deaths caused by abortions. Research on the numbers of abortions worldwide is highly unreliable, often over-inflated and often include spontaneous or "naturally caused" abortions such as miscarriages. The number of aborted fetuses is no doubt in the millions but the fanatical fringe groups declaring 40-50 million each year are simply doing more to harm their cause than help it. These figures are based on alleged research that lacks scientific principles. But, of course, like evangelical wings of the Christian churches other than Catholicism, science is considered witchcraft when convenient by all fanatics whether Catholic or Protestant.

It is now estimated one child five or under dies approximately every thirty seconds in the world for reasons that could have easily been avoided. Poverty, with poor water and poor nutrition is a major contributor to the approximately 9-10 million deaths of children under five each year.

If the Catholic priests were truthful, they would admit war throughout the world is the major driving force of poverty. The 1.5 million estimated killed in Iraq is the number of casualties from the military actions that took place. They don't account for the other millions of deaths caused from the poverty caused by the wars. And we need to keep in mind the number of children dying every thirty seconds from the causes of poverty and other preventable reasons is children five and under. The numbers of ages five through 18 would also have to be in the millions.

Many questions beg to be asked. Where are the Catholic bishops in the face of this genocide of the world's live birthed children? Why have they failed so often to condemn the wars of America and all other nations? Where are the fanatics of "pro-life" to be outraged about the men and women of government responsible for starting and carrying out the wars creating the deaths of so many?

Another less prominent event occurred last week that also demonstrates the misogyny and out of touch arrogance of the Church leadership. Roy Bourgeois, a Catholic priest and Vietnam veteran who was wounded in action during his time in Vietnam, was sent a letter threatening excommunication from the Church by the Vatican. His sin was sending a letter to the Church leadership demanding justice for the women of the Catholic Church by allowing women who felt a calling to become ordained as priests.

Father Bourgeois is no stranger to issues of justice. He is one of the founders of the annual School of Americas protest at Fort Benning, GA. Those protests are centered on the American military providing training to Latin American troops of dictators and tyrants to take back to their nations to use against peasants and any who object to the often American sponsored oppression. The Contras had many of their troops trained at this facility. For fifteen years the protest has grown to the many thousands. Many of the protestors are concerned individual clergy (certainly not Catholic hierarchy)and many have been arrested with severe prison sentences imposed during the eight years of Bush and Cheney. Father Bourgeois has been imprisoned for his own acts of non-violent civil disobedience against the American military exporting terrorism to nations of oppressed peoples.

There is no doubt Bourgeois will not be swayed by the Vatican's senseless mandate nor the Church by a simple priest demanding justice for women. He logically and righteously points out in a time of priest shortages all over the world the stubborn misogynists in charge of the Church continue to oppress women without reason. He points out thousands of male priests have shamed the priesthood as pedophiles or sexual abusers of Church members who see them as leaders. The opposition to the ordination of women is a shameful legacy by church leaders to subjugate women and lacks merit based on the teachings of Christ.

One other event created by religious zealots is the shameful oppression of gay members of society. The Mormon Church alone spent over 70 million dollars to prevent loving couples of the same sex from marrying and obtaining the same benefits of other couples in the area of health care and pensions in a California ballot issue. The Catholic Church also spoke out strongly against the "gay marriage" issue, as it has so often in other places.

Intolerance, hatefulness, sexism and even overt racism seems to have become the Catholic catechism. They seem to have turned their backs on the radical and rebellious nature of Jesus Christ who stormed the temple to chase the money changers and constantly stood up against the "establishment".

Christ was not a bureaucrat such as Charles Chaput or the current American Bishops Council. Or even the Pope. Christ was a rebel who chose to hang out with thieves, whores and tax collectors who most of "good" society scorned and rebuffed.

Would Christ be sitting in the streets of a Fort Benning or at a rally against illegal wars? Many of us concerned Catholics believe He would. Many of us concerned Catholics feel our Church no longer represents us, however. We don't want the leadership of our Church dictating we vote for tyrants and criminals like Bush or McCain simply because they "say" they oppose abortion.

It seems very curious the feelings these politicians express for the right to life only go so far as to curry favor with religious zealots but don't extend to the children of Iraq, Afghanistan and so many other poor nations. It seems illogical the Church wants to deny people who love one another a basic right to express that love while turning a calloused eye to the militarism that pervades this nation.

Sadly, the Catholic Church has become the modern day Pharisees caught up in rules and rituals while losing its soul and humanity. It fails to ask every day what Christ would truly want and seems more intent enforcing rules on the laity to succumb to the power and politics of the Church.

I for one reject the Church as it is today. I voted for Obama and I have no need of penance for that act, even as I wish I had a better choice than the Democrats or Republicans. And I will take communion until self-righteous priests deny it. When that happens I will not meekly stand by to accept the dictates of a Church that has become out of touch with morality and Christ.

Wm. Terry Leichner, RN

Denver VVAW member

Combat vet, disgruntled and dismayed Catholic

Veterans Day 2008

2008-11-11T12:39:00.002-07:00

Five years of the current wars and a whole new generation of veterans has been produced. They will have their own nightmares, wounds and difficulty ever being the same son, daughter, husband, wife, brother, sister, or friend. And America will “honor” them with a day that is no longer even a holiday. Just a weekend parade here and there across the nation. And really the parades are more recruitment tools than honoring the veterans for the alleged service we’ve given this nation.

As usual, I object to a day that honors war, warriors and violence perpetrated by a government of rich, fatted cows who have fed on the backs of the poor and middle class far too long.

I continue to hear the same old clichéd line whenever I meet someone new that discovers I’m a veteran of Vietnam; “thank you for your service”. It’s easier to just accept the well intentioned comment than to go “Rambo” on them and ask them what damn service they are thanking me for.

Was it taking part in killing the old papa-san who happened to get in the way of Marines one day doing a search and destroy patrol? Was it the napalmed village full of kids and mama-sans? Was it the brutal investigation of a terrified Vietnamese woman by Naval intelligence that included an in-the-field form of water-boarding, the use of a .45 cal pistol to break her cheek bone, punches to the face and body and eventual execution once the Marine patrol was told to go up the path?

I’m just not understanding why Americans think I did any service to this country by taking part in an unnecessary war responsible for killing 58,000 plus Americans and 3 million Vietnamese. I’m sick of being seen as someone who “protected” our democracy by fighting “gooks”. If it ain’t gooks then it is haji or rag-heads. There’s always some pejorative word to capture the enemy’s race and ethnicity that isn’t like “us”.

Veterans Day is like Memorial Day. Both are attempts to cast the military veterans as righteous and courageous heroes who have fought for flag and country. Both are attempts to ease our collective consciences about the atrocity of wars we have continued to allow in our names. The days are attempts to glorify and sanctify militarism and imperialism so our future generations of sons and daughters will want to emulate those of us duped into believing we were going to make a difference by killing in the name of God and country.

This nation’s people love a parade. They love to see “Johnny come marching home”. They love all those red, white and blue flags and bunting. We get our little boys to dress up in costume uniforms of Marines to hold the flag like Ira Hayes held it over Iwo Jima during WWII. We gather together high school kids dressed in uniforms of the various ROTC programs with mock rifles held “shoulder arms” marching in lock step with one another.

We love to say we are a nation of peace but anybody that visits our nation’s Capital will be overwhelmed by the number of war memorials to be found in the Washington DC area. What does that say about our peaceful nature? There is an insane dissonance that we look at these war memorials as tributes to peace making.

How does the participation in killing other humans bring us peace? I guess the thinking is kill enough to get the other side to submit and we’ve brought peace to our world. The problem with such logic is resentment and hatred bred from the use of force seldom brings peace.

Making nations or groups of people capitulate to the more powerful force merely enslaves them to the power of a stronger force. They will most likely seek their retribution whenever they find a way of inflicting pain on their perceived oppressor. Occupation and oppression doesn’t make us a peaceful nation. It makes us bullies.

Oh yeah, the words I speak are not the words of patriotism some like to hear. They want to hear about the glory of our conquests. The whole world is a game and our role is to defeat all others to “win” for America. And like adolescents and small children, our politicians think they can keep hitting the reset button until we get it “right” to win the world domination game.

Ok, I don’t love my country more than anything else. I love humanity more. I love true peace more. I love justice more. I love being a citizen of the world more. I love the children of our world more.

I am tired of waving flags and cheering soldiers to perpetuate one war after another. I’m tired of being enslaved to the concept of my country right or wrong. I am sick and tired of phony days of tribute to the culture of death and violence that has been the essence of America far too long. Veterans Day does no honor to any of us.

Wm. Terry Leichner, RN
Denver VVAW member

Dream On

2008-11-06T15:31:00.002-07:00

Well it took all of one day before newly elected President Obama made it clear that it will be politics as usual. His choice of Rahm Emanuel for his Chief of Staff is a clear message to dash any Palestinian dream of an unbiased approach to peace between Israel and Palestinian refugees currently being walled in by the Israeli military.

Emanuel is a former Clinton staffer but more interesting is his dual citizenships. He is both an American who holds office in Congress and an Israeli citizen who volunteered with the IDF during the Gulf War. That’s the war the other Bush started back in the 90’s that led to the disastrous and deadly sanctions against Iraq. It’s estimated the effects of those sanctions killed at least a million Iraqi children.

It’s strange Emanuel wouldn’t join the American military as so many in Congress have done to embellish their biography for future political ventures. Being an American citizen it seems he might enlist to protect the “homeland” that he now represents in Congress.

A brief check of Emanuel’s background answers the question. His father was one of the original Zionist terrorists that took part in bombings of British and other colonial occupiers of the “Jewish homeland”, Israel. There is some speculation Emmanuel is well connected with the Israeli secret service, Mossad.

He certainly is no stranger to AIPAC and the contributions they make to American politicians to further Zionist agenda. AIPAC constantly lobbies against a fair hearing about the plight of Palestinian people forced into refugee camps and subjected to whims of the Israeli occupation. Of course, in the US, saying the word, Zionist, or complaining about the Israeli government’s aggression is tantamount to denying the holocaust or being anti-Semitic.

Obama has clearly joined the Zionist ranks which have no intention of legitimatizing Palestinian concerns or the need for a free Palestinian nation. Like most in Congress and the White House, Obama lacks the courage to go up against the most powerful political action committee in the US. He couldn’t have won an election by making a moral stand against AIPAC. It is a sad statement both major party candidates kowtowed to AIPAC to affirm their support of the current Israeli government.

Unfortunately, most Americans lack the political intelligence to understand the issue of Zionism and Palestine. We are a nation of citizens dependent on the sound bite type of media to keep us informed. Fully investigating and formulating our own thoughts and opinions isn’t taught in most of our educational institutions or systems. Our ignorance allows the latest “apartheid” by the Israeli government against the indigenous people of the Palestinian region. It allowed the deadly sanctions against Saddam Hussein that only affected the children and the poor. Our ignorance allowed two unnecessary wars to begin and will lead Obama to expand the deadliest of all quagmires, Afghanistan.

What is the message to the Muslim world when the new Chief of Staff for the President is a former member of IDF and has close ties with AIPAC? They can only surmise as most of us should that we’re in for more of the same.

On the night of the election after Obama was announced the winner, mainstream media gushed about the diverse and “new” look administration Obama would bring to DC. They spoke about people from outside the DC beltway becoming part of the administration. Looking at the lineup Obama has right now it looks like the Clintons won this election. Besides Emanuel, there are several other Clinton hacks surrounding the newly elected President. This is not change. This is the continuation of the same old oligarchy that has ruled in DC since the birth of the US.

Some don’t want to challenge or confront Obama because of the historical symbolism of his election. I was unabashedly emotional when the word came Barack Obama was the first African-American elected President. I saw the tears of Jesse Jackson and so many young black, brown and white supporters. I listened to John Lewis talk about the “struggle” he endured with MLK and never dreaming he’d see a black elected President. It was a momentous time of history that finally validated the struggles and courage of our black brothers and sisters.

It would be a disservice to have the symbolic leader of black Americans and all Americans continue with the failed policies of our past. His first actions to surround himself with people who symbolize that failed past need to be confronted and opposed. Too many believed him when he told them “yes we can”. Too many put their hopes in him to do whatever he could to bring peace and a sense of security to this world. Too many saw the chance for justice in his candidacy’s success.

He told us he would listen especially when we disagreed. Well we’d better start trying to get his attention so he can listen to our disagreement. Too many allowed Bush and Cheney to wall the public off from the process and look where we’ve ended up. Obama needs a heads up immediately. No punches should be pulled because of his historical symbolism. As activists we understand betrayal better than most. And we know what needs to be done when we’re betrayed. The dream is over. A new nightmare is beginning. All the alarms are sounding and now is the time to wake the hell up!

Wm. Terry Leichner, RN
Denver VVAW member

I’m including the open letter to Barack Obama by Ralph Nader. Nader should be listened to and respected for his perseverance and integrity. By now he must feel he’s beating his head against a stone wall that’s immovable. And yet he continues out of love and concern for his country and the people we share the planet with.

An Open Letter to Barack Obama
Between Hope and Reality
By RALPH NADER

Dear Senator Obama:
In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of the power-entrenched status quo.
Far more than Senator McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S. Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have shown that you are their man?
To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires character, courage, integrity-- not expediency, accommodation and short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed by a majority of Jewish-Americans.
You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas-- the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored "direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."
During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45 minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference, and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your trip supported the illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side. Instead of a statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full economic and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little awe.
David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here. This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President."
Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians. ...Even the Bush administration recently criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians [see www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to defend itself.'"
In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp... with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.
Israeli writer and peace advocate-- Uri Avnery-- described Obama's appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim world and mortgaged his future-- if and when he is elected president.," he said, adding, "Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people."
A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues, you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W. Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before a frightened major religious group of innocents.
Although the New York Times published a major article on June 24, 2008 titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea Elliott), citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come from all walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to live the American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald Tribune published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque." None of these comments and reports change your political bigotry against Muslim-Americans-- even though your father was a Muslim from Kenya.
Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage or even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time to Bill Clinton this year.
Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and Egypt, but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to avoid Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it took to sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by Jimmy Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated to a stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a showing of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on you, Barack Obama!
But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas of American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate, Matt Gonzalez, on www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the 100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans, and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but you omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.
Should you be elected President, it must be more than an unprecedented upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign that spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the concentration power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting the power from the few to the many. It must be a White House presided over by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden here and abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control of labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of foreign policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of American politics-- opening it up to the public funding of elections (through voluntary approaches)-- and allowing smaller candidates to have a chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.
Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated cowardly stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality" consumes it daily.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

The Dream Is Not Complete

2008-11-05T10:26:00.001-07:00

The faces of elderly black women and men, young African-Americans, young college students and a wide diverse group of hopeful Americans made last night a special and historical one.

Being 60, I remember the days when a high school in Little Rock was blocked by the Arkansas governor in attempt to keep black students from entering the fully segregated school. I remember Bull Connors “sicking” dogs and fire hoses on young men and women attempting to sit at a Woolworths’ lunch counter. I remember 3 dead civil rights workers, a church bombed, white hoods and burning crosses. I remember returning from patrol in the northern region of Vietnam to hear Martin Luther King was assassinated. He followed in the tragic footsteps of a President elected as a transformational figure who was also assassinated.

Living in this time of history I never envisioned a black American would be elected to the office of President and live in the White House built by slaves two centuries ago. Too many times I have witnessed the cruelty of racist hate from the perspective of a white male who felt sick and ashamed when it occurred. Too many times I’ve heard the terrible words used to demean and hurt men, women and children of color.

I recall making many journeys to Erie, Pennsylvania to visit my wife’s family during the 1990’s and early part of this century that I heard these hurtful words and characterizations come from citizens of that city. I felt at times I had entered a time warp and returned to those terrible days of the 1960’s. Last night 59% of Erie voted for a black President.

So last night was indeed special. And I felt tears rolling down my cheeks despite my cynical view of our world and the politics of our nation. I remembered reading the struggles described by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and Malcolm X. I remembered the harassment of my friends Butch Mayfield and Larry Hales by racist police. Last night there was jubilation with tears in places all over this nation by even the most cynical of us.

Barack Obama is the President-elect of this nation. And the celebration of history should not be obscured by the fears of the future. Even I will stop today and savor the historical significance of November 4, 2008. It was a day of redemption and one of lifting an oppressive force just a little off the backs of those oppressed for so long. It was the beginning of the end of the nightmarish years of fanatics of Christianity wielding far too much power over the rest of us who believe Christ was not like they describe.

Still, the cynicism seeps into my mind. Why do I fear there is some assassin waiting to be sent to kill this historical figure and spark violence like that of 1968? Why does my mind drift to thinking about young men and women wearing uniforms who will still be in Afghanistan and Iraq carrying out the duties of the corporate masters’ imperialistic occupation? Why do I think about the people of those nations and all the other nations that have been burdened and bludgeoned by America’s greed and militaristic nature? Why do I think about the many children who no longer play on the playgrounds and streets of their bombed nations but instead reside in the burial grounds of their ancestors? Why do I think about the continued racism that seeps throughout this nation causing the dreams of young blacks and Hispanics to dissipate into hatred or depression?

I don’t like to think these things but history and experience has taught me to always look for the trip wires of booby-traps that can kill dreams and hopes. History and experience has taught me the Democrats and Republicans are poisonous to the true ideal of democracy and freedom.

We can fool ourselves to believe a black face in the slave built residence of the leader of the American nation will transform us into a better world and nation but the truth is overtly evident should we care to look at it. The need for activism and a unified movement toward peace and justice has not diminished. It may well have grown ever more critical and necessary.

The oppressive cadre of politicians and tycoons wielding power will expect us to be lulled into the notion the dream of Dr. King has been fulfilled. They will expect us to think we have just proven democracy is alive and well in America.

They expect this despite the incarceration of so many young black men in the prisons of this nation. They expect this despite the continued police brutality all across this land. They expect this despite the urban blight caused by years and years of neglect for the poor and disenfranchised. They expect this despite the uninsured families unable to access adequate healthcare. They expect this despite the back door draft and the perpetual wars. They expect this despite the dismal infant mortality rates in this nation. They expect this despite the disparity of educational opportunity for the rich and poor. They expect this despite the ever growing homeless and hungry men, women and children all across this land. They expect this despite the failure of treating mental illness adequately and humanely.

Obama has spoken about these issues but his record belies that he is anything but a torch-bearer for the wealthy and corporate oppressors. He speaks eloquently and gives us hope but we must continue to keep our cynical guard up to prevent further expansion of the oppressive rule of the shadow government this nation has always had; the money men behind the scenes with their own agenda of power and domination.

Let us celebrate the historical event that took place last night but let us not accept it as a bone thrown to a hungry dog to keep it from barking and howling. Let us continue to bark and howl and do whatever necessary to truly effect the changes that will transform this nation into one that is supportive of peace and justice. Let us bark and howl for this nation to remember we are a people responsible for over consumption that pollutes the air of our children and grandchildren. Let us growl about American proliferation of weapons throughout the world that could destroy us all in a moment of madness. Let us unleash the corporate stranglehold on our world and insist on becoming true citizens of the world, sharing our wealth and ideals with all our brothers and sisters.

Many will look like our new President in color and many will be diversely different but all are brothers and sisters we should embrace if we truly want peace and justice. Many will follow the religions of their ancestors and many will only accept Christ. And if we Christians truly believe in the words and deeds of Christ we will embrace the entire world as brothers and sisters.

The selection of Obama to lead the American nation is only one small step toward us joining the world in a cooperative effort to solve the over-riding issues of peace and justice for our world. The flag of nationalism must be replaced by the embrace of a new world effort to care about all people, regardless of nation or flag.

Peace be with you

Wm. Terry Leichner, RN
Denver VVAW member
Combat vet, peace activist, human