Category Archives: Militant Pacifism

The End of Monstrous Means

Posted on by
7

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> 

justice  justice

image

                           scotconsumer

 

 

The End of Monstrous Means

   I was watching dear CSpan this morning and Ron Suskind of One Percent Doctrine spoke at also dear Politics and Prose Bookstore in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Washington DC. He spoke of the notion fiatted by Darth Dick Cheney, paraphrased, ''if there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction — and there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time — the United States must now act as if it were a certainty'' ‘making suspicion, not evidence, the new threshold for action.’

   This was a horrible but important talk which was chilling9 (cf  Vonnegut’s icenine in which a drop of the stuff turns everything to ice). However the piece that I want to remark upon is the notion Suskind brought up near the end of his talk. He mentioned that George Kennan of the Marshall Plan and of Cold War ‘containment,’ wrote that if we wanted to “preserve a moral departure point,” we could not allow the means, however noble the ends, of ‘more Dresdens.’

   I’ve been haunted not only by Dresden, a firebombing in which some 40,000 civilians were incinerated, but by the hideous firebombings and firestorms of the great wooden cities of Japan before Hiroshima (150,000 civilians dead) and Nagasaki (80,000 civilians dead).

“On March 10 1945, the US abandoned the last rules of warfare against civilians when 334 B-29's dropped close to half a million incendiary bombs on sleeping Tokyo.  
  “The aim was to cause maximum carnage in an overcrowded city of flimsy wooden buildings; an estimated 100,000 people were 'scorched, boiled and baked to death,' in the words of the attack's architect, General Curtis LeMay. It was then the single largest mass killing of World War II, dwarfing even the destruction of the German city of Dresden on Feb. 13, 1945.  . . . Even the city's rivers were no escape from the firestorm: the jellied petroleum that filled the bombs, a prototype of the napalm that laid waste to much of Vietnam two decades later, stuck to everything and turned water into fire. … ‘Canals boiled, metal melted, and buildings and human beings burst spontaneously into flames,’ wrote John Dower in War Without Mercy. People who dived into rivers and canals for relief were boiled to death in the intense heat. . . . The bombing incinerated over 15 kilometers of central Tokyo, left over a million homeless and opened the curtain on an orgy of destruction in the final months of the Pacific War that included dozens of similar raids on Japanese cities and culminated in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August. When the droning of bombers finally stopped on August 15, 1945, nearly 70 cities had been reduced to rubble and well over half a million people, mostly civilians, were dead. LeMay reportedly said: “If we had lost the war, we would have been tried as war criminals.”  [David McNeill, Japan Focus.] 66 other Japanese wooden cities the size of Houston and Baltimore and Chattanooga and Chicago were firestormed.

     Anyhow, the idea that will make us human as last is the grokking that you can not separate ends and means. Mr. Suskind mention a phrase from the Hebrew Bible: “Justice. Justice. This you must pursue.” One justice for the ends. One justice for the means. Suskind continued, “If you forget about the conflict of ends and means, you’ve missed it.”

  In their no doubt zealous desire to “protect the American people,” our leaders have spent the precious reputation of a country which tries to be better. (Now this is an illusion. I was certainly never taught in school here in USA about the M69 napalm firestorms in 67 of Japan’s wood, straw and paper cities.) How ever faux, the world saw us as somehow trying to be just. Now our Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and our general hysteria and grotesque hubris have made us distrusted and disgusting. It’s all about means and ends. Your ends can not be nobler than your means were. Amnesia and/or rationalization can blur the memory, but we must fight for means that, if not, forlornly, serene, are at least not vile.

…………<^>…………

……..……<^>………..…..

If you know or are an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of pogblogian material, please let me know at .. pogblog@yahoo.com

………….<^>……………..

It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.

…………….<^>……………..

Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.

copyright pogblog 2006 all rights reserved

Please send pogblog’s link to your friends:

http://pogblog.blogharbor.com  

7 Earth . Caban . Earthquake. Heron . East . tzolkin 135 07.03.06 mon

932 days/2y6m18d left/1364  

ffwofw728.§26d2h33m11s33.84g3.25g; 

 ..

the education-obsessed world begins today with you ..

.. let’s spend the $820,000 per minute Military Budget on education instead

………….<^>……………. 

Not One Centavo on Bullets

Posted on by
3

Not One Centavo on Bullets

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> 

    I saw a tv program on grisly diseases like river blindness and malaria. River blindness gets into your blood and causes constant horrific itching – to the point where you just peel pieces of your flesh from your body. And then when you are about thirty, you go blind and hold the end of a broomstick with a child holding the other end, leading you around for the rest of your life. Until that child goes blind and so on and on. It costs a buck a year or something to prevent this. You probably make 50 cents a month in this country so you brutally itch and go blind.

    Where does the list have to end for you, pilgrim, in order for you to throw up your guts and say FUCKING STOP spending money on weapons? I try to avoid swearing on pogblog because profanity is usually just a failure of imagination, and when you really need it like here, its impact is diluted. But the Military Budget madness is what swearing is for.

    As I said to chancelucky: Dwight Eisenhower pushing the massive interstate highway system was justified on national defense terms tho it actually benefited commerce. The idea was that troops could be shuttled around the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />US better, were there a need.

     The point about universal ultraband and cheap tough cool laptops (wolfbooks I call them 'cause it's cool) is that they'll explode cheap trivial low grade crud, yes, <b>but they'll also explode invention.</b>

    It is invention which will preserve America and a decent standard of living — not more destroyers and fighters.

    Yes, it will take us time to buy out this idiot war in Iraq and all our obligations to its mutilated and their dependents, but at $820,000 per minute for the Military Budget and $200,000 per minute more for Iraq (It's 'off the books'), we can make the transition to an education-invention economy forthwith if we just change the meme or the controlling idea.

  This invention and the savings on destructive projects could be flooded into education and health.

   What BushCo & Ilk completely miss is that we win both allies and friends with spreading what you might call ‘practical love.’ Instead of multiplying vengeance, we would multiply affection. Train paramedics instead of soldiers – the same people, folks, the very same people. Train para-engineers instead of soldiers. The same recruits. The same team work, the same camaraderie. Minus the future nightmares that we bequeath to so many of them. We should use our massive strength (tho we’re owned by the Chinese banks & it’s hard to know when that bubble bursts?) to build for the downtrodden, champion the sick. The Earth is pleading for peace in broken people — they are the runes, the hieroglyphs. You just have to have another tank — and you let another sister go river blind? These things are connected.   

    Is our legacy as America all this hell and hate? I don’t believe it. I believe that we can export engineering and education and medicine — and movies and cruddy hamburgers.

 

    Take a deep breath – we are going to have to believe in actual democracy for better or worse. The Security Council has got to go. No veto. We have to educate an international multilingual police force to do actual peace-keeping. With ceaseless citizens' oversight. Not power decreed by the Old Guard, but elected. We have to stand for our beliefs. It can’t be democracy except when that doesn’t suit us and we go all Adolf Stalin. We have to put our sword in the pit of fire and strike it ourselves into a pen and a plowshare. We cannot tyrannically declare our belief in democracy. We act it or we do not. People can see. Unilateral action can’t be countenanced because all peoples are created equal and have a right to the pursuit of happiness. We are supposed to help with that. Bombs are not help, ever. 

    How can you imagine that corporations should less than tithe? I have a real question as to why a genuine and humble leader needs to make one centavo more than the janitor – what real leader would not want to raise up the janitor and share his bread & or cake with her/him? (I just don’t recall Jesus being into aggrandizement, but maybe I missed that gospel? Maybe the Gospel of Greed was left out of all 36 tapes worth of the New Testament I listened to? Can you imagine Jesus being elected to office in USofA Inc with his platform? I think someone should comb the New Testament and update the language, chapter & verse & try to run on that.)
   Our leaders are supposed to be citizen servants – not bloated have-mores. How can we empower and include more citizens in a relative abundance of education and happiness? How can a leader call themselves prosperous if there are poor, unhoused, unhealed, unhappy? How can we trust any leader who rides in a phalanx of gas guzzlers? Is where they are getting to more important than where you are getting to on the 32 bus? If the leaders rode the bus and lived on minimum wage one week a month, I could listen to one syllable they have to piously mouth. Otherwise it’s all hot air and broken wind.
     Please, some leader, dare to try it. Try it and write a blog about it. We would rally around you like the whirlwind. One week a month. Then testify. Tell the other leaders how hard in fact it is. Put your life where your mouth is, Mr.Bush. Do democracy. Do humanhood.

…………….<^>……………..

………….<^>……………..

If you know an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of pogblogian material, please let me know at .. pogblog@yahoo.com

………….<^>……………..

It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.

…………….<^>……………..

Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.

copyright pogblog 2005 all rights reserved

Please send pogblog’s link to your friends:

http://pogblog.myblogsite.com

3 Rainstorm . Cauac . Redbird. West . tzol 159  11.07.05 mon

ffwofw 873§8941/24d17h28m25s31.98g5.1g/1125

..

the education-obsessed world begins today with you

………….<^>……………   
                

  

 

Rove, Cheney, and their Slithery Ilk

Posted on by
5

Karl, Dick, & their Slithery Ilk

 

mon cahbahj,

 

    I hate it when you’re out of the country in particularly trying times. It's about <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />2:29 pst & I'm on tenter hooks. Do I dare to go to sleep after eating a peach? Suppose I don't check CNN every hour & Karlsputin gets indicted & I didn't hear it live? I saw Jack Ruby shoot Oswald live after Jack Kennedy was shot down on my 19th birthday.

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> 

   Flayed as I was then, nothing between then and now prepared me for the brilliant seething cobra-venom menace of the malevolent guy who looks like Santa’s middle-aged nephew. The damage to our sweet future is concussive, crippling.

 

   Every centavo we spend on a weapon’s system is cheating some bright-eyed kid of a gallivanting future of invention and intense intention. There happens just now to be a helicopter flying over our town in the night for who knows what reason. It makes me think that if I were an Iraq or wherever war-torn, I would be hearing it with such breath-holding dread. Is it coming closer? Is it leaving? Will it fire on our village because Ahmed lied about our neighbor Hareth saying he was a terrorist when he’s just a barber. Ahmed hates Hareth because Zahraa married Hareth instead of him. So he lied to the police. Who needed to tell the Americans something. That wasn’t the helicopter of my death. I hear its rotors clearly further away now.  It will come again in an hour or a day even though Hareth and Zahraa have left for the South.

    I reckon there is some solace in the fact that once you see that military spending is not only abzurd, but obscenely counterproductive, you can’t unsee it. So when Karl, Dick the Dick, & their slithery ilk get it, they’ll get it. Grokwise.

   I remember standing in a hemisphere of light when I grokked it the first time. It was in the Nixon era well before Watergate. I was musing about ye owls know what. All of the rest of the landscape disappeared except the ground – so from horizon to horizon I was immersed in an opalescent white shimmer of air. I just remember how alone I was on the vast stretch of earth in every direction. I realized that war wasn’t just bad and too bad, that it was insane. This was an very rare view in those times – and frankly even today even my friends, except you, thank owls, say, ‘Oh oh, how terrible is war, except sometimes you have to . . .’. Pffft, pifflay. People don’t say, ‘Oh oh, psychosis is terrible terrible, except sometimes . . .’. Psychosis sucks period.

      In that moment, Riffie, I imagined Mr. Nixon who was the slitheriest to date — Little did we know what would come – I imagined Mr. Nixon on a couch in a shrink’s office. The shrink sat out of sight behind him. Mr. Nixon was describing designing huge weapons to fracture and mangle; and all the money poured into death and jellied gasoline to pour on little children to burn them to the bone; and bombs which shot out thousand of nails like bullets; and teaching young men to butcher shouting Kill Kill and to veneeredly feel noble about it. I saw the psychiatrist blanch and his knuckles grow white as he clutched the arm of his chair. He was sweating then, hot and cold and shuddering. Mr. Nixon was so matter-of-fact. Millions upon millions of dollars stolen from the schools and the comfort of the grandmothers and the wellbeing of the psyche of the nation. Businessmen drank blood and stored blood in the wineries of their bank blood accounts. The psychiatrist hugged himself to try to calm his convulsive shuddering as he listened to the grandiose malignant psychotic tale. He thought 'How in the world will I get this man safely to a rubber room?'

    Then the man sat abruptly up and turned and introduced him self to Dr. Flagwaver. “I’m Richard Nixon, Commander in Chief, President of the United States of America.”

    The psychiatrist felt limp with relief. The president! “Oh Sir, for just one minute there I thought you were a raving lunatic. But now that I know you really are president, it’s all OK.”

   Nixon smiled cryptically. “Well, son, he said in barely above a whisper, “if you want to get away with murder, you just need to do it on a big enough scale. It takes balls to dare it, but slaughter enough people, son, and you win, get statues, parades, and pages upon pages in the history books with your picture in front of adoring and cheering crowds. Only kill a few and you get your picture on the post office wall.”

      I remember my shock when I had that indelible vision of the psychosis of war. If it weren’t the president, it would be undeniably clinical.

    Anyhow, honeylamb, I wonder what will become of Karl, Dick the Dick, and their slithery ilk who indenture our countrymen to poverty and sign the order for weapons as if their pen didn’t write blood. How do they not hear the screams of the mutilated collateral damage at night?

…………….<^>……………..

………….<^>……………..

If you know an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of pogblogian material, please let me know at .. pogblog@yahoo.com

………….<^>……………..

It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.

…………….<^>……………..

Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.

copyright pogblog 2005 all rights reserved

Please send pogblog’s link to your friends:

http://pogblog.myblogsite.com 

11 Alligator . Imix . Turtle . East . tzol 141  10.20.05 thur

ffwofw 855§8941/24d17h28m25s31.98g5.1g/1107

..

the pro-peace world begins today with you

………….<^>…………….

Karl Rove .. serial Smearer.. thug psychology ..

Posted on by
2

In this week of October 17 2005, it's time to re-view this mid-summer article and refresh our memories on the real essential rottenness of Mr. Rove & how many people he has hurt — with premeditated malice.   

 

Karl Rove .. serial Smearer ..

.. thug psychology ..

 

This gets us up-to-date and gives you something to copy to friends who may not be hip to these sad and dreadful underpinings to the Present Scrupleless Folk who sadly have our sweet future under their heels. 

 

The hydra-headed info about Mr. Rove's unfettered willingness to smear people is remarkably chilling and under-reported. There are people twisted by power throughout history who we remember for centuries. I think when the full story is known of Mr. Rove's deep willingness to go after people's actual strengths with outright lies and ruin their reputations and lives and say as Mr. Bush did to Mr. McCain with a shrug, “It's politics, John,” Rove will be remembered with the Torquemadas and Machiavellis. Even if you don't know exactly what they did, your skin involuntarily crawls. They were willing to be inhuman or anti-human in a way the rest of us cannot fathom.

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> 

Please remember that this outing the identity of Joe Wilson's wife is just one big spoke in the wheel the hub of which is FixedIntelGate. We sent people to war on fixed intel  which <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Wilson revealed and they wanted his reputation emasculated — 'his wifie sent him.'

 

Mr. Rove is a serial Smearer. He gets worse and more bold as he keeps getting away with it. And it often has a peculiar sexual innuendo — his male political consultant rival who supposedly made a pass at a young man at a Republican bbq; Ann Richards as lesbian and lesbian sympathizer; the judge with children's charities as pedophile. Accusations where the poor deny-er gets in a “Have you stopped beating your wife' circular hell.

 

I am sick of someone who acts, in  Josh Green's phrase in the Nov 2004 Atlantic, “where conscience forbids most others” getting cut such slack in the media. At the very least this person should be shunned, not lionized. (He certainly should also be on administrative leave with no security clearance.)

 

Of course, I would be completely happy to have the wonderful Ann Richards be a lesbian or whatever the heck she wants. But in Texas at the time, this untruth was spread as a 'dirty secret.' Some parts of Texas are lagging in their ability to encompass variety.

 

It is impossible to get the Smearodent Toothpaste back in the tube. What is John McCain to say? “No, I didn't father a black baby with a prostitute.” Then just even more people hear about it and wonder. Or John Kerry and the Swift Boat ads. “No, it was dangerous as hell and I could have died and I was really brave, unlike you, you chicken hawk.”

 

You can't rebut this garbage without sounding defensive or vain. The victim of these tactics is in a serious trap.

 

yours in distress, pogblog

 

These details of thug psychology come from years of studying this, beginning with the ruthless mentor Lee Atwater, way surpassed by his disciple Karl. A very good recent look is Josh Green's Nov 2004 Atlantic article. (Mr. Green has zero association with the opinions in this post, of course.)


…………….<^>……………..
………….<^>……………..
If you know an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of rage for justice, rage for peace material, please let me know at .. pogblog@yahoo.com
………….<^>……………..
It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.
………….….<^>……………..
Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.
copyright pogblog 2005 all rights reserved
Please send pogblog’s link to your friends:
http://pogblog.myblogsite.com
ffwofw
..
the pro-peace world begins today with you
………….<^>……………..

The theo-Military Budget & Militant Ridicule

Posted on by
3

The theo-Military Budget & Militant Ridicule

the Marshmallowists ..

the intergration of lucid waking with lucid dreaming  

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> 

    Purrs Nicety addressed a seminar of clowns about to be deployed into the Dream Scheme to terrorize the Insane Leadership of the USofA Inc with sneak barrages of marshmallows.

     Purrs was a master strategist of guerilla Ridicule. “The RovBuCondRumsChenian Ilk can be howitzerily guarded in the K1, the full kinesthetic, solid-density, daylight plane,” said Purrs with a sly, if not snide, chuckle. Purrs sported the Puss in Boots look, complete with large blue hat with swashbuckling pink feather. Feline-pirate chic. She was, however, a Ridicule Assassin who fought fang and fought claw to embarrass the Putative Mighty.

    “Do you realize,” growled Purrs, “that they steal the happiness of their kittens to build weapons systems?” Her hackles bristled with furry fury. “No one – and I mean no one – dares speak out against the bloated, obscene, insane military budget. Not a chirp, not a squeak, not a bark, nor a howl. Either the hypnotism or the intimidation is complete.

    “Last class I told you all to memorize the Far Looney Bleeding Heart Extremist Agenda. Lobosuave, can you recite it for us?” Lobocake was something of a teacher’s pet, it must be said. Purrs clearly preferred him to any other comrade-in-marshmallows.

    Lobocake gave her his taunting wolfish grin, “That pesky Far Looney Left Extremist Agenda is universal healthcare; a superb, public K-College education for every child; a treasured and revered environment; a robust living wage; and nationwide free wireless internet ultra-broadband. We’re asking those who generally agree to memorize these and blurt them out to friend and foe at every opportunity. Healthcare, Education, Environment, Wages, Ultraband.”

   “Thanks, Lobo,” preened Purrs who was clearly smitten. “Now, these jerkbeciles are talking cutting Medicaid and the prescription drug benefit, closing schools, and gutting American civil rights, and we may not talk about – even mention – the next-generation DDX destroyers or more Trident submarines or more D-5 missiles or F/A22 fighters or V-22 Osprey aircraft or the strangelovian Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators or any of that fantasy Missile Nonsense aka Star Wars program? Their present destroyers, submarines, aircraft, bombs are going to be challenged by whom?

    “We could put a non-maintenance moratorium on all Weapons of Mass Mutilation development for 5 years. Simply buy out all the workers and companies affected and re-deploy them to build super schools and the infrastructure of the WiFi Nation. We’re spending $820,000 per minute on theoMilitarism, not counting the extra $200,000 per minute on rubbling the rubble in the quagsands of <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Iraq.

     “Fundamentalist Christianity is an anti-jesusian, virulent sidebar. The real 8000 lb gorilla in America is the Church of Militarism. To speak out against it is a burn-at-the-stake heresy-equivalent. They do you with the gatling gun and finish you off with a flamethrower.

    “Dare to suggest that 99% of military spending is a colossal waste of money and in come the bunker-busting bombs, soon to be nuclear for cruds sake.” Purrs derisively settled her bright silver fur with a quick shake.

    “Sir Nickety,” said Lobo with that insolent droll drawl, “Before you outline the Dream Scheme marshmallow raid, Operation Pelt, can you elaborate on the stealth psychology of theoMilitarism in 21st century USofA Inc?”

    Purrs cheshired. The clowns at Clown School InterD were a droll rowdy and raunchy lot. The nice thing about traveling in OtherLand was that you could change your body style as handily as the earthbound could change from a denim workshirt to an Hawaiian shirt. Last night she and Lobo had shapeshifted into human guise for some claw hammer and tongs recreation. Because their passions were medieval, he called her Sir Nickety as a kind of petitchouism.¹ Last night between bouts of smackdown, they’d discussed the sickening dangers of theoMilitarism.

    “ It’s probably easier to use the magic glasses of the view back from Y3000,” said Purrs. “In the Year 3000, we do not mutilate the children of strangers to solve adult disputes. We do not allow overwrought young men to drive suicide cars, the cheaper death, nor suicide tanks, the expensive death. The accumulation of stockpiles of WMM, Weapons of Mass Mutilation is seen as obscene and stupid.

    “The cult of Militarism is a very very virulent disease, and sadly its extirpation takes all of human and cosmic ingenuity to accomplish. It takes a drug cocktail of 3 parts Ridicule, 1 part Kindness, and, for the caretakers, huge doses of Vitamins OH and DD. Vitamins Obsidian Humor and Vitamin Damned Doggèdness.

    “All addicts’ hallucinations hijack the basic bio-survival circuits. Similarly the paranoid is unshakably convinced of the perils because the seamless internally-generated evidence is so intimate. External evidence does not access the theo-romanti-spiritual-sublime circuits where the self-generated molecularly-intimate tinctures are enzymily oozed, igniting a conviction for which people will actually end their existence. When these constellations of hallucination are lemming-amplified by fellow cultists, koolaid will be swilled.

   “Even most of the white-hats in 21st century America are either semi-infested themselves with milder forms of the theoMilitarism disease which are still potent enough to distort vision — or are clear-eyed and justly damned afraid.

    “Luckily, in OtherLand, Marshmallowists can be deployed with Weapons of Mass Ridicule and begin the psychic rehabilitation these hijacked entities, the Ilk, need to begin recovery. Their oneiro-security is negligible. We invade their sleep with our improvised marshmallow devices, our IMDs. Into each doppelsleeper’s gaping and snoring mouth, the Ridicule Counter-Militarism squad leader drops a marshmallow. The rest of the clown troops glide by, and marshmallow by marshmallow bury an Ilk’s dreambody in derisive marshmallows. The caboose or last clown out leaves a small keyring-sized plastic pineapple as a sign that it could have been grenades instead of marshmallows, but the uninfected soul goes for k-suave.

.

to be continued .. ..

….

quik Glossary .. petitchouism = petit chou is little cabbage in French, an endearment; extirpate = uproot; k-suave (k = K1 or solid earth day-density/suave – soo-ah-vay  = sweet, mild, smooth, gentle, harmless, uninjuring);

…………….<^>……………..

………….<^>……………..

If you know an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of pogblogian material, please let me know at .. pogblog@yahoo.com

………….<^>……………..

It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.

…………….<^>……………..

Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.

copyright pogblog 2005 all rights reserved

Please send pogblog’s link to your friends:

http://pogblog.myblogsite.com

6 Vulture . Cib . Owl . South . tzolkin 136  10.15.05  sat

ffwofw 1000§8941/24d17h28m25s31.98g5.1g/1102

..

the pro-peace world begins today with you

………….<^>…………….

The Human Race is Deformed by Militarism

Posted on by
2

The Human Race is Deformed by Militarism

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> 

   Please note that all over the USofA Inc, there will be vigils on the day following the Death of Soldier #2000. We are at Soldier #1951 tonight.

    I wrote Grave of the Known Soldier .. Save Juan Smith #1999 when there were 146 kids left before #1999 for us to wake up, for us to stand up. Stand up. Now we’re down to 48. We still could save Juan Smith #1999.

   Every time I read this #1999 piece, it seems distilledly stupider for grown-up conscious beings with consciences to be pretending to solve problems by mutilating other people’s children at the cost of $200,000 per minute in Iraq, $820,000 more dollars per minute for militarism in general. (The idea that we need more next-generation destroyers or more trident submarines or more D-5 missiles or any Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators or any of that fantasy Missile Nonsense aka Star Wars program while we in our small city and you in your town are increasing class size or closing schools entirely is pornographic past any bared bosoms or rumps. This pork & paranoia of bloated papally infallible military grand theft must be arrested if we are ever to thrive in the next age.)

     I have Grave of the Known Soldier .. Save Juan Smith #1999 for you below, but if your heart can stand it, also please read Hector & the Abolition of War which is as compelling a pro-peace piece as I ever get to write. If you have any wavering doubts about whether it is ever ok to deliberately kill anyone, those doubts end with this story.

    The anniversary of my beginning to go out alone with my  teach peace sign just around and about downtown is 10.09.2005. It will be three years exactly. Today is 1095 days in a row with my now beat-up sign. I went out this Friday evening to stand on a main corner at commute time, waving at the cars streaming by. People wave back or ignore me or honk or flash the peace sign. Only one ‘F**k Peace,’ whatever that could mean?

   Anniversaries make us gather and condense our considerations around some hub. A birthday. A marriage. How many years we worked some place. How many days in a row you've carried a peace sign. 2000 kids killed in Iraq. (Who counts the Iraqi dead? About 30 World Trade Centers worth. They aren't American, so so what?) William Blake of ‘Tyger Tyger burning bright in the forest of the night’ and of ‘the Universe in a Grain of Sand’ flays us to the anniversary attention in every hour. It is so solemn and splendid and giddy to be alive as long as we can stay awake and not sleep walk through our days – or nights, sooth be said.

    Blake exhorts us to know that ‘A skylark wounded in the wing, A Cherubim does cease to sing.’ And we hurl shock and awe by the explosive tons at the collateral children of <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Iraq? In Auguries of Innocence, Blake also says ‘Nought can deform the human race Like to the armor's iron brace. When gold and gems adorn the plow To peaceful arts shall Envy bow.’

    We are deformed by this war. It is too late in history to be mutilating children to haruumph that we are strong. If it weren’t so dangerous and stupid, we could howl derisively at the absurdity. No, George, no, we are making more terrorists and proving to them how very effective their suicide cheap-car driver is compared to our suicide expensive-tank driver. Ours noble, theirs craven? No, both insane. But conned and brainwashed by adults who never send their own children or, gods forfend, find the cause noble enough to go themselves.

    We got past one kind of human sacrifice in history. However, we still sing a war anthem and drink the putative blood of our deity. But we did get past separate water fountains for Colored and White (in my benighted town when I was a child). My mother was born in the year when women were considered human enough to vote. Big changes do happen. War is a dinosaur. We do dump militarism on the slag heap of history – how soon depends on you. When do you stand up? Kick Inertia in the shin. Apathy is only amusing and then vaguely in petulant 13 year-olds.

    ‘What difference can *I* make’ you waveringly wonder? Well, if the sonsa bitches woke up one morning and every single one of us who is adamantly pro-peace was standing out in front of her or his house or apartment house or trailer with a peace sign, do you doubt their gonads would jellify? There is a tipping point. The sooner you add to the body count for the helicopter photo, the sooner it ends. It is up to you.  

 …………<^>…………..

 ……………<^>…………..             

  

The Grave of the Known Soldier .. Save Juan Smith #1999

 

What do we know about Sgt. Juan Smith who is doomed to die on Tuesday November 22, 2005? 

 

Why does it bother me particularly that he is a huge fan of the fey  movie Spinal Tap, a celebration if there ever was one of harmlessness? Perhaps because it is unexpected that a 26 year-old has such quirky taste. I like that in him.

 

Well, he'll be 26 when he is shot in the head. The left side of his head. His brains will splatter onto soldier Raymond Callahan, his second best friend, a 22-year-old from Alabama whose mother, Joyce Callahan, voted for George Bush in 2000, but will never vote Republican again. Mrs. Smith, Juan's mother, dwells in a twilight of sadness.

 

Juan Smith's birthday is on November 8, so he is 25 now as we watch in August, waiting for him to die. Just turned 26 when he dies. He is a Scorpio with Pisces rising. Brave, dreamy, very very smart about the conscious world of day and of tanks, RPGs and rubble, and of the unconscious world, which runs the whole shebang in Iraqi, but which is never spoken of. 

 

Juan Smith does not have to die. He does not have to be #1999. We could stop it at once. Someone will be the last man's name on a stark white cross. The last man on The List. Maybe it could stop at # 1888? Mr. Bush could see that piling up more dead in flag-draped coffins we are not allowed to view will not make the war end better. It is going to end badly. We know that. Nothing will keep the insurgents from blowing up American soldiers for the next 300 years. Cheap explosives. Countless idealistic young men, sold, like ours, a bill of goods.

 

There will be some morning when The Lizard Leaders lie no more. Because nobody's buying their snake oil — well, lizard oil, I guess.

 

Damnit, Juan, I don't know what to do to save you. I do not know what to do. We talk now a little. I'm psychic. I've seen his death. He's seen me seeing it. He's imploring me to turn back time before it is reached so he can go home, marry the very pretty — not beautiful, but very pretty, Felicia, buy the blue pick-up truck his cousin could sell him in the first week of December if he could only live that long. Their first child would be named Joseph.

 

Is it Baquba? Taji? Al Asad? Abd Allah? I cannot read the address of the bullet yet. He has written the name of Felicia inside his helmet with a Sharpie. Felicia es mi ángel. He drew a heart above and one below.

 

Felicia keeps his tooled cowboy boots by her bed, waiting for his return. Which does not happen because we did not pour into the streets soon enough. We lamented, but did not act. As if our being embarrassed or discomfited was more unbearable than the death of #1999.

08.16.05/ 98 days/ 141,120 minutes until the Death of Juan Smith #1999

09.18.05/ 64 days/ 92,160 minutes until the Death of Juan Smith #1999

09.24.05/59 days/84,960 minutes until the Death of Juan Smith #1999

10.08.05/45 days/64,800 minutes until the Death of juan Smith #1999

 ∞∙∞∙∙∞∙∞∙∞∙∙∞∙∞∙∞∙∙∞∙∞∙∞∙∙∞∙

Today, 08.15.05,  we're at 1852 American soldiers dead. To me this isn't only about Ken or Casey or Roberto or Rachel  — it's about Juan Smith #1999 — is there ANY way we can save that kid?¹ Today September 18, we’re at 1900 American soldiers dead. Today October 08, we’re at 1951 dead.  

 

Is there ANY way we can save Juan Smith #1999 using the energy and the smarts of people like you and Cindy and me and any darnbody at all?

 

“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Iraq for a mistake?”²

 

I actually asked myself when I woke up this very morning, “Would I sleep with Karl Rove if it would stop the war today?” I have to tell you it was a sobering question which I could not answer at once. You cannot possibly imagine how much I despise slitherer Karl Rove and how much stealthy evil he has done malice aforethought. But now after a few hours of thought, clearly yes, to stop the senseless death of another kid, I'd even do that.)

 

As I write this mid-August, 1852 American soldiers (sons daughters fathers mothers individual unrepeatable lives) have died in the quagQuicksands of Iraq. [Now on September 18, we have 1900 dead. Only 99 dead to wake up. Now on October 08, we have 1951 dead. Only 48 dead to wake up.]

 

Can we possibly pull our ingenuities and resources together and save Juan Smith destined to be #1999?

 

That would give us 146 dead to wake up, write our Congress people, write Letters to the Editors. Save Juan Smith #1999. Or does the count drone on and we sit baffled, eloquently lamenting?

 

Save Juan Smith #1999.

 

pogblog

 

ps. Please send this Save #1999 link to your friends.

http://pogblog.myblogsite.com/blog/_archives/2005/8/15/1140249.html

 

All the contact info for House & Senate is at afterdowningstreet. Get on their emailing list for Actions. It is beautifully and heartfeltedly organized. http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/

 

² adapted from John Kerry’s 1971 speech before Congress; 

 …………….<^>……………..

………….<^>……………..

If you know an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of rage for justice, rage for peace material, please let me know at .. pogblog@yahoo.com

………….<^>……………..

It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.

…………….<^>……………..

Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.

copyright pogblog 2005 all rights reserved

Please send pogblog’s link to your friends:

http://pogblog.myblogsite.com

12 Water . Muluc . The River . East  tzol 130  10.08.05 sat   

ffwofw 780§8941/24d17h28m25s31.98g5.1g/1095

..

the pro-peace world begins today with you

………….<^>……………..

 

 

pro-peace, not anti-war

 

   It's the eve of the Big September 24 Peace March in Frisco. (I know they're supposed to hate being called Frisco, but that's just obdurate — Frisco is so cool, & after  32 years of living 40 miles south of that misty and mysterious city, I'm bloody gonna call it Frisco.)

   A few days ago I thought, Well, we should dub ourselves pro-peace rather than anti-war. This better obeys the powerful but slightly tweaky notion of what in hypnosis is called an embedded command. Stick with this because it is important in all your life. Once you see through the psycho-lingual trick, you'll grok it forever.

   If I say “Don't fall off the ladder!” — it's called an embedded command TO fall off the ladder. Because in order to comprehend the words themselves, you have to (unconsciously) imagine yourself falling off the ladder. The really helpful exhortation is “Hang onto the ladder!” or some such version which requires your brain to process actually hanging onto the ladder.

     The other subtlety of this is that you cannot do a negative. You cannot stop smoking. You do something else instead. You start breathing freely. You observe the sunset after dinner instead of smoking, or whatever. 

   (Larry King always goes to a break saying, “Don't go away.” I always shout at the screen, “Embedded command!” Charlie Rose & others say, “Stay with us.”)

   IF we say 'anti-war' instead of 'pro-peace' in this micro-embedded command, we are requiring people to imagine the war. IF we say pro-peace, they have to imagine something about peace to even comprehend the words.

..

   I have put Compulsory Cannibalism here because it's such a darn good piece of cherry pie idea. And I put the Grave of Known Soldier #1999 here too because this afternoon at the weekly major intersection mini-peace demo, one of our folks had taped 1913 on the street light pole. And I had written #1999 when we still had 145 dead kids to go. Now we only have 86 kids to collateralize. 86 families to shatter. Of course who cares about the Iraqi dead and their ruined mothers — they aren't Americans.   We could still save #1999 — who should haunt us all.   

…………….<^>……………..

………….<^>……………..

 

 

Compulsory Cannibalism

 

   “Compulsory cannibalism: if you had to eat everyone you killed, war would end damn fast,” said Abbie Hoffman.

 

Another sign at the 03.15.03 SF Rally: Mirth on Earth. Power to the Peaceful is a perennial favorite of mine. This sublime guy with an huge pink wig had a beautifully lettered sign saying, If you don’t choose peace over war, aliens will land in my wig. A sign like that makes humanssooftenunkind worth saving after all. Jonathan Schell talks about the ‘unredeemably stupid fatality’ that leads to war. On 11.29.02, I was talking to a guy about how ‘Mr. Bush & Mr. Hussein won’t get any dust on their shoes.’ He said that if like George Washington they were required to be out there themselves, then he would listen to them. I said, “Why aren’t we called pro-peace?”

 

I wrote then a little piece called Dead is Dead. On 9.13.02. Before I had made my teach peace sign on 10.09.02.

    Reading in the New Yorker about the World Trade Center, our rage & disbelief: The ‘How could this act of brutal madness,’ the ‘Who could do, could conceive such a thing? seem obvious and emotionally rational. ‘The enormity of the act.’ The dazed, bereft people holding cheerful snapshots of the lost. Yes it was an irredeemably evil act. Yet we never as Americans imagine or connect that the vaporized souls in Hiroshima or Nagasaki or the dozens of wooden Japanese cities we firebombed were also someone’s sweetheart or son or sister. We have already proved ourselves terrorists, or deliberate killers of civilians, with weapons of mass destruction. Ye gods we ought to be humble. Instead we escalate in arrogance and sanctimonious patriotism.

     Dead is dead. Whatever fancy justification we prettify it up with, we vaporized over 200,000 civilians, and it doesn’t disturb our sleep. We had our reasons.

     They have their reasons.

     Until there are no reasons we can bear, we will not be actually human yet.   

 

…………….<^>……………..

………….<^>……………..

    Our local Peace Group, Mountain View Voices for Peace, is already planning a solemn March for after Death #2000. (If you haven’t had a chance to read Grave of the Known Soldier #1999, I have it here below for you. It’ll break your heart. I keep thinking we could still save this kid #1999 – he wouldn’t have to die.

     MVVP has members meet at the intersection of El Camino & Castro every Friday from 6p-7p, the height of the commute, with pro-peace signs and waving. (This is a major local intersection.) You could start such a group in your town if you haven’t yet. You can get more info and ask questions here. Or you can be an individual loon like me and go out a little every day with something like a teach peace sign as you go about your business to the post office or the library. See details on that here. (It’s only the first two excruciating forays you have to get past and then you feel foolish without your sign! I’ve been out 1076 days in a row now. It isn’t about me, or you – it’s about that one little girl or boy who sees a person willing to appear absurd to some for the sake of peace and harmlessness and that kid will grow up to be the next Martin or Mohandas. If I don’t have my sign, that kid may not see it. The butterfly’s wings will not start a storm of peace.)

…………….<^>……………..

………….<^>……………..

 

To me this isn't only about Ken or Casey or Roberto or Rachel  — it's about Juan Smith #1999 — is there ANY way we can save that kid? </strong>

 

“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Iraq for a mistake?”²

  

ps. Please send this Save #1999 link to your friends.

http://pogblog.myblogsite.com/blog/_archives/2005/8/15/1140249.html

 

All the contact info for House & Senate is at afterdowningstreet. Get on their emailing list for Actions. It is beautifully and heartfeltedly organized. http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/

 

² adapted from John Kerry’s 1971 speech before Congress; 

 

…………….<^>……………..

………….<^>……………..

 

 

An Outlaw After Midnight .. the pain of pacifism

Posted on by
2

An Outlaw After <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Midnight

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> 

    I think of the other outlaws after midnight and what we pay and what we owe and how down and dirty is it going to get. Almost all my ties are cut now. I own nothing but rage. I have you, my darling, in my mind like an ember-coal under a dove-grey silt of ash – I have but to blow on the thought of you and the lava of you in my heart is re-revealed. But the rest, like Dante’s 10th circle of Hell, is cold or colder or coldest. Hate is not hot in the end.

    They say love solves everything. I have not noticed that to be so. It is hard to know which is more gigantic in these Present Menaces, their gigantic Greed or their gigantic Stupidity? If you know, please tell me. I long for something known.

   “Why are you an outlaw, Miss,” asked a young journalist named John Plume, who wished he dared to bear that unflinching look into the darkness of their hearts, but wanted to hear the blindness secondhand. I remember the color of strawberries. I remember the celadon color of your eyes struck with a shaft of sun, the color inside the curl of a breaking wave. I see so clearly now that the sight of their other-than-human not placable, not relenting obscene bastard midas meanness drove me blind.

      “I went blind, Mr. Plume,” I said not unkindly because he was so earnest and not bereft of hopes, even high ones – he reminded me of myself once upon a time – “I went blind, Mr. Plume at first only on Mondays and Thursdays, because the ratbreath bastards became so brazen and so gruelingly cruel and my brothers and my sisters were still bamboozled by their skillful gigantic Deceits. One day my right eye just burst into tears of blood from watching their Lies in full color on CNN. A friend of mine said, ‘Ye gods, Belle Z. Babe, your right eye is weeping tears of blood.’ I smeared my hand across my wet cheek and saw that it was so. ‘I’m not so surprised really,’ I said to him. ‘Why is your right eye not weeping tears of blood?’

   “I cannot believe that we just go to sleep at night and let day after day pile up like corpses along side the highway of history while these bastards loot and steal right out from under our noses and we do not whimper, not even like a kicked dog. Where in the hell, Obol, amigo de mi corazón, is our dignity and our sacred honor? Such sheepery and lemminghood disgust me about ourselves. They don’t even have to bestir themselves to defeat us. They must be putting saltpeter in the junk food. Are we tamed by aspartame?”

    Mr. Plume looked at me bemused. This was an hour when my fractured vision, which was like looking through shards of broken glass, had some light not only darkness. I saw him begin to see.

    After midnight us outlaws devise and revise. How do we move the Titanic an inch away from the iceberg that is looming in our sweet comrades’ dark while they don’t or refuse to know? A militant pacifist, I only get keen words in a noisy world. If you begin to see, begin to do small disobedient acts. Stealthy subversions. Our planet should be tended not plundered. I sharpen the guillotine words on our behalves.

………….<^>……………..…

……………..<^>……………..

If you know an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of rage for justice, rage for peace material, please let me know at .. pogblog@yahoo.com

………….<^>……………..…

Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.

copyright pogblog 2005 all rights reserved

Please send pogblog’s link to your friends:

http://pogblog.myblogsite.com

Flint . Edznab . Knife . North  tzol 118  09.27.05  tues

ffwofw 576§8941/24d17h28m25s31.98gb/1081

..


the pro-peace world begins today with you
………….<^>……………..

pro-peace, not anti-war

Posted on by
2

pro-peace, not anti-war

 

   It's the eve of the Big September 24 Peace March in Frisco. (I know they're supposed to hate being called Frisco, but that's just obdurate — Frisco is so cool, & after  32 years of living 40 miles south of that misty and mysterious city, I'm bloody gonna call it Frisco.)

   A few days ago I thought, Well, we should dub ourselves pro-peace rather than anti-war. This better obeys the powerful but slightly tweaky notion of what in hypnosis is called an embedded command. Stick with this because it is important in all your life. Once you see through the psycho-lingual trick, you'll grok it forever.

   If I say “Don't fall off the ladder!” — it's called an embedded command TO fall off the ladder. Because in order to comprehend the words themselves, you have to (unconsciously) imagine yourself falling off the ladder. The really helpful exhortation is “Hang onto the ladder!” or some such version which requires your brain to process actually hanging onto the ladder.

     The other subtlety of this is that you cannot do a negative. You cannot stop smoking. You do something else instead. You start breathing freely. You observe the sunset after dinner instead of smoking, or whatever. 

   (Larry King always goes to a break saying, “Don't go away.” I always shout at the screen, “Embedded command!” Charlie Rose & others say, “Stay with us.”)

   IF we say 'anti-war' instead of 'pro-peace' in this micro-embedded command, we are requiring people to imagine the war. IF we say pro-peace, they have to imagine something about peace to even comprehend the words.

..

   I have put Compulsory Cannibalism here because it's such a darn good piece of cherry pie idea. And I put the Grave of Known Soldier #1999 here too because this afternoon at the weekly major intersection mini-peace demo, one of our folks had taped 1913 on the street light pole. And I had written #1999 when we still had 145 dead kids to go. Now we only have 86 kids to collateralize. 86 families to shatter. Of course who cares about the Iraqi dead and their ruined mothers — they aren't Americans.   We could still save #1999 — who should haunt us all.   

…………….<^>……………..

………….<^>……………..

 

 

Compulsory Cannibalism

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> 

   “Compulsory cannibalism: if you had to eat everyone you killed, war would end damn fast,” said Abbie Hoffman.

 

Another sign at the 03.15.03 SF Rally: Mirth on Earth. Power to the Peaceful is a perennial favorite of mine. This sublime guy with an huge pink wig had a beautifully lettered sign saying, If you don’t choose peace over war, aliens will land in my wig. A sign like that makes humanssooftenunkind worth saving after all. Jonathan Schell talks about the ‘unredeemably stupid fatality’ that leads to war. On 11.29.02, I was talking to a guy about how ‘Mr. Bush & Mr. Hussein won’t get any dust on their shoes.’ He said that if like George Washington they were required to be out there themselves, then he would listen to them. I said, “Why aren’t we called pro-peace?”

 

I wrote then a little piece called Dead is Dead. On 9.13.02. Before I had made my teach peace sign on 10.09.02.

    Reading in the New Yorker about the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />World Trade Center, our rage & disbelief: The ‘How could this act of brutal madness,’ the ‘Who could do, could conceive such a thing? seem obvious and emotionally rational. ‘The enormity of the act.’ The dazed, bereft people holding cheerful snapshots of the lost. Yes it was an irredeemably evil act. Yet we never as Americans imagine or connect that the vaporized souls in Hiroshima or Nagasaki or the dozens of wooden Japanese cities we firebombed were also someone’s sweetheart or son or sister. We have already proved ourselves terrorists, or deliberate killers of civilians, with weapons of mass destruction. Ye gods we ought to be humble. Instead we escalate in arrogance and sanctimonious patriotism.

     Dead is dead. Whatever fancy justification we prettify it up with, we vaporized over 200,000 civilians, and it doesn’t disturb our sleep. We had our reasons.

     They have their reasons.

     Until there are no reasons we can bear, we will not be actually human yet.    

 

…………….<^>……………..

………….<^>……………..

    Our local Peace Group, Mountain View Voices for Peace, is already planning a solemn March for after Death #2000. (If you haven’t had a chance to read Grave of the Known Soldier #1999, I have it here below for you. It’ll break your heart. I keep thinking we could still save this kid #1999 – he wouldn’t have to die.

     MVVP has members meet at the intersection of El Camino & Castro every Friday from 6p-7p, the height of the commute, with pro-peace signs and waving. (This is a major local intersection.) You could start such a group in your town if you haven’t yet. You can get more info and ask questions here. Or you can be an individual loon like me and go out a little every day with something like a teach peace sign as you go about your business to the post office or the library. See details on that here. (It’s only the first two excruciating forays you have to get past and then you feel foolish without your sign! I’ve been out 1076 days in a row now. It isn’t about me, or you – it’s about that one little girl or boy who sees a person willing to appear absurd to some for the sake of peace and harmlessness and that kid will grow up to be the next Martin or Mohandas. If I don’t have my sign, that kid may not see it. The butterfly’s wings will not start a storm of peace.)

…………….<^>……………..

………….<^>……………..

 

To me this isn't only about Ken or Casey or Roberto or Rachel  — it's about Juan Smith #1999 — is there ANY way we can save that kid? </strong>

 

“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Iraq for a mistake?”²

 

 

The Grave of the Known Soldier..Save Juan Smith #1999

 

What do we know about Sgt. Juan Smith who is doomed to die on Tuesday November 22 2005? 

 

Why does it bother me particularly that he is a huge fan of the fey  movie Spinal Tap, a celebration if there ever was one of harmlessness? Perhaps because it is unexpected that a 26 year-old has such quirky taste. I like that in him.

 

Well, he'll be 26 when he is shot in the head. The left side of his head. His brains will splatter onto soldier Raymond Callahan, his second best friend, a 22-year-old from Alabama whose mother, Joyce Callahan, voted for George Bush in  2000, but will never vote Republican again. Mrs. Smith, Juan's mother, dwells in a twilight of sadness.

 

Juan Smith's birthday is on November 8, so he is 25 now as we watch in August, waiting for him to die. Just turned 26 when he dies. He is a Scorpio with Pisces rising. Brave, dreamy, very very smart about the conscious world of day and of tanks, RPGs and rubble, and of the unconscious world, which runs the whole shebang in Iraqi, but which is never spoken of. 

 

Juan Smith does not have to die. He does not have to be #1999. We could stop it at once. Someone will be the last man's name on a stark white cross. The last man on The List. Maybe it could stop at # 1888? Mr. Bush could see that piling up more dead in flag-draped coffins we are not allowed to view will not make the war end better. It is going to end badly. We know that. Nothing will keep the insurgents from blowing up American soldiers for the next 300 years. Cheap explosives. Countless idealistic young men, sold, like ours, a bill of goods.

 

There will be some morning when The Lizard Leaders lie no more. Because nobody's buying their snake oil — well, lizard oil, I guess.

 

Damnit, Juan, I don't know what to do to save you. I do not know what to do. We talk now a little. I'm psychic. I've seen his death. He's seen me seeing it. He's imploring me to turn back time before it is reached so he can go home, marry the very pretty — not beautiful, but very pretty, Felicia, buy the blue pick-up truck his cousin could sell him in the first week of December if he could only live that long. Their first child would be named Joseph.

 

Is it Baquba? Taji? Al Asad? Abd Allah? I cannot read the address of the bullet yet. He has written the name of Felicia inside his helmet with a Sharpie. Felicia es mi ángel. He drew a heart above and one below.

 

Felicia keeps his tooled cowboy boots by her bed, waiting for his return. Which does not happen because we did not pour into the streets soon enough. We lamented, but did not act. As if our being embarrassed or discomfited was more unbearable than the death of #1999.

08.16.05/ 98 days/ 141,120 minutes until the Death of Juan Smith #1999

09.18.05/ 64 days/ 92,160 minutes until the Death of Juan Smith #1999

09.24.05/59 days/84,960 minutes until the Death of Juan Smith #1999

 ∞∙∞∙∙∞∙∞∙∞∙∙∞∙∞∙∞∙∙∞∙∞∙∞∙∙∞∙

Today, 08.15.05,  we're at 1852 American soldiers dead. To me this isn't only about Ken or Casey or Roberto or Rachel  — it's about Juan Smith #1999 — is there ANY way we can save that kid?¹ Today September 18, we’re at 1900 American soldiers dead.  

 

Is there ANY way we can save Juan Smith #1999 using the energy and the smarts of people like you and Cindy and me and any darnbody at all?

 

“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Iraq for a mistake?”²

 

I actually asked myself when I woke up this very morning, “Would I sleep with Karl Rove if it would stop the war today?” I have to tell you it was a sobering question which I could not answer at once. You cannot possibly imagine how much I despise slitherer Karl Rove and how much stealthy evil he has done malice aforethought. But now after a few hours of thought, clearly yes, to stop the senseless death of another kid, I'd even do that.)

 

As I write this mid-August, 1852 American soldiers (sons daughters fathers mothers individual unrepeatable lives) have died in the quagQuicksands of Iraq. [Now on September 18, we have 1900 dead. Only 99 dead to wake up.

 

Can we possibly pull our ingenuities and resources together and save Juan Smith destined to be #1999?

 

That would give us 146 dead to wake up, write our Congress people, write Letters to the Editors. Save Juan Smith #1999. Or does the count drone on and we sit baffled, lamenting?

 

Save Juan Smith #1999.

 

pogblog

 

ps. Please send this Save #1999 link to your friends.

http://pogblog.myblogsite.com/blog/_archives/2005/8/15/1140249.html

 

All the contact info for House & Senate is at afterdowningstreet. Get on their emailing list for Actions. It is beautifully and heartfeltedly organized. http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/

 

² adapted from John Kerry’s 1971 speech before Congress; 

 

…………….<^>……………..

………….<^>……………..

If you know an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of rage for justice, rage for peace material, please let me know: pogblog@yahoo.com

………….<^>……………..

Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.

copyright pogblog 2005 all rights reserved

Please send pogblog’s link to your friends:

http://pogblog.myblogsite.com

6 Dog . Oc . Wolf. North . tzol 110  09.19.05 mon

ffwofw x§8941/24d17h28m25s31.98gb/1076

..


the fiercely pro-peace world
begins today with you

………….<^>……………..

Go to Mutilation .. “War” is a Euphemism

Posted on by
2

Go to Mutilation

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />. 

    Instead of saying Go to War, if we say Go to Mutilation, we strip away the monstrous notion that War, that Mutilation is noble. We’re going to Mutilation for fight for freedom? People need to recoil if they hear a Mutilation-monger – whether it is their neighbor or their president.

     Remember, dear reader, that my premise is that in Y3000 human reject war as absolutely as we reject child abuse today. (Of course war, of course mutilation is the worst degree of  child abuse – no worse harm can be done to a child than death or mutilation.) I believe that we end Mutilation as an accepted tool of cloved-hooved statecraft much sooner that Y3000. I’d reckon we will have eradicated the mutilation virus by 2038, 33 years from now. But because I don’t find it fruitful to get hung-up on dates, I’ve picked a timeframe only the NeoNutCons can dispute. Once we refine the memes, the mind-vaccine will spread very fast. People will recoil and rebel against the obscene waste of humane resources that the Mutilation Machine sucks out of your child’s brain.

    Because we are learning to stay on message, let’s have today’s recounting of the Extreme Left Wing 5-Point Agenda: universal healthcare; superb K-College education; a treasured & revered environment; a robust living wage; and nation-wide wi-fi.

    When we spend $200,000 per minute on Iraq; $820,000 per minute on the Mutilation Machine annual budget beyond the Iraq quagsands – those sum are being subtracted from healthcare, education, environment, robust wages, and a wired nation.  

     The pro-Mutilation crowd will jump up and down and hiss ‘n holler, ‘Whoo, whoo, Remember 9/11, They’ll get us here if we don’t mutilate them there.’ Balderdash.

   3000/425,000. The plane-wielding jerks are much less destructive than the cigarettes-wielding jerks. Yes, we should be vigilant and smart. But not, I may inject mildly, hysterical. This full-bore red-line the Mutilation Machine hysteria has not served us well even in its own terms. We have proved a red-coat dinosaur among insurgent lemurs. We have already lost.

    But we will have wiser leaders and, more important, we will teach ourselves not to be bamboozled by false fervors.

…..<^>………..<^>…………

………<^>………..<^>…………

.
Notes:

(1)On 02.27.1968 Walter Cronkite said about the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Vietnam debacle, “To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic if unsatisfactory conclusion.”  It was seven more years until it was finally over on April 30,1975. I hope we can do better. Mr. Kissinger implies that it was the divisions at home that prevented us from winning. Ho Chi Minh said, “We would have fought you for 300 years. We live here.”

 

(2)Cindy Sheehan spoke of people “who don’t have skin in the game.”

 

(3) Karen Meredith, Gold Star Mom from Mountain View noted that since Mr. Bush’s vacation (‘hanging loose time’) began, 31 soldiers had been killed in Raq.

 

(4) Whole cities are getting wired by MetroFi and Aiirmesh. South Korea has 60% broadband penetration in its country. And its broadband pipe is 20 Mbps moving to 100 Mbps compared to Comcast’s broadband boast of 1Mbps. We is smokèd. Effit, we is radically charred.

…………….<^>……………..

………….<^>……………..

If you know an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of rage for justice, rage for peace material, please let me know at .. pogblog@yahoo.com

………….<^>……………..

It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.

………….….<^>……………..

Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.

copyright pogblog 2005 all rights reserved

Please send pogblog’s link to your friends:

http://pogblog.myblogsite.com

8 Death . Cimi . Twins . North . tzol 86  08.26.05 fri

ffwow 472§8769§24d7h47m33s1047


..
the pro-peace world begins today with you
………….<^>…………….

Militant Pacifism as Daily Bread

Posted on by
2

Militant Pacifism as Daily Bread

 

..

 Now that I’m settling into being a militant pacifist, how does it feel?

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> 

 Fierce pacifist, c’est moi! Well, I’ve burned almost all my bridges to politics as usual or life as usual. I am no longer considered part of any fold. As you can see in the Hector & the Abolition of War piece, I’ve seen too much to go back. 

 

 

 You realize you’ve gone further out on a limb to the future than any of your friends. They’ll still default to some version of the good or necessary war.

 

   I don’t see any point in arguing about any past wars. We should stand where we are in history and in human rights and see our way forward. I say without fear of contradiction that in Y3000, we do not fight wars to resolve conflicts anymore. The idea then is repugnant, is preposterous.

 

   So what I’m trying to grok¹ and funes² (big picture/drink deeply; little picture/inhale details) is how we make our way through the individual consciousness; the social consciousness; the practical restructuring – to take care of the buggywhip makers and to re-orient the grooms. And to paint the murals of how we can inhabit an energy and fierce creativity comparable to the addictive personal & collective bloodthirst?

 

    What are the new memes³ or idea genes we need to manifest as talismans for people to make it to a whole new way of thought? Of course in retrospect this process will be seen as having happened organically, but there are quantum nudges.

 

    The Military Industrial Ship has hit the Iceberg. <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Iraq has proved that War doesn’t work even if you are the only Gigantic Bully on the Whole Planet. There is still pro forma and habitual Chest Thumping, but if someone with ¼ a brain can get the word out about the Cost of this Sucker, the populace is going to take major incoming of disillusionment. It was swell – this very night I saw one of the guys who pulled Mr. Hussein out of the hole say 'No, Don’t stay in to honor the slain.'

 

      How many people like me will have to be thrown in the leaf-chopper before it becomes generally accepted that War is Toast that fell on the floor butter-side down?  I’m ready to take on the reviling and the ridicule so we can refine our language. It’s going to be a brutal time of Whak-a-Mole.

 

    Someday soonish a few more people will say, “Some of my best friends are fierce pacifists!” I long to be claimed by someone, anyone.

 

     There is a great liberation being out of the cocoon, beyond the gestation. I’m not sure how to handle all this bright light and the zephyrs and gales or to handle these glorious if ungainly wings. Quite the long while I’ve been willing to be arrested for the right to stand with my Teach Peace sign in public places where I was not so welcome. This now is a quantum leap – I have to be willing to die not to kill.    

 

¹ ² ³  See pogblog's Glossary

 

………….<^>……………..

 

part 1

 

Become a Militant Pacifist .. Charred by Nagasaki
..

I remember going to the Army Medical Museum adjunct of the Smithsonian in Washington DC as a child long long ago. Trust me, I happened upon this ghoulish place by Total Mistake. I'm sure it's most useful to the medical student, but to the 10-year-old seeing 30-gallon, two-foot-in-diameter glass test tubes with, say, an enormous elephantiasised leg from the knee down frayedly floating in formaldehyde was skincrawling. Row upon row of huge glass-tubed Everything in the place was diseased.

 

But the scorching, the charred memory was all the black & white pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims. Maybe, though I never thought about it til this exact instant — those pictures were the boschian journey through the darkside of the human blackheart for why I grew up to be a militant pacifist?

 

I have never seen anything else like those pictures since. They were probably so clinical and blunt and close-up because it was the Army Medical Museum and not thought of as for the general public. And presumably they had Army access to photos that reporters wouldn't.

 

The wreckage and the radiation effects and the so-far past Hell monstrous hurt to children and to men and to women and to old people and the visible burned burned pain. It ripped open my young soul to what violence actually is in the violently tortured poor flesh. Having seen it, you could not cause it.

 

Maybe you could bear and repress three such pictures in a magazine or some in a book, but this was walls of them in ruthless medical close-up absent any remnant of artistic composition or recoil. Just 'Let's look at the boiled eye pulped socket and the radiation boiled flesh.'

 

There is something about radiation burns entirely different from fire-burns. It is unnatural in a way I only remember from all that life ago. Fire happens from the outside in as if there were some layer, some human refuge left however tormented. But radiation burn is from the marrow out all at once a fury of the insanely enraged and offended flesh as if it were microwrithingly boiling the flesh right in front of your screaming eyes. 

 

Walls of these pictures and your pity and horror rose until the idea of causing harm or closing your eyes to harm changed your very dna — never. Never will I be party to, excuse, stop speaking, I owe it to these silent ruined people who could have been as shiny and delighted and sunstruck somersaulting as I was.

 

So here I am. Militant pacifist. Never speak to me of collateral damage. Put yourself in the dark fire first. Dare not do this harm to another whose hand you do not hold in the very incineration moment. Dare not stand apart.  

 

pogblog

 

ps. It was that day in WashingtonDC that I stepped upon another species path. I did not care if I was the only one. I claim nor exalt kin nor kindness with a species that would do that deliberately charred mutilation to its own kind whose photographs I saw upon the walls. Better alone in the universe with no friend nor God than to be one of the glorified, sung and storied DeathDealers or one of their apologists.

 

Militant pacifism. It was and is a reviled view. I cannot recommend this deep a loneliness to you, friend, but if you cannot bear the lies and the slither of rationalization, your own heart will feel light to you and you will have earned the wholehearted right to hear the dawn songs of birds without the static of the screams of the dead that the Killers hear in their own forsaken child’s heart. There was a time before they joined the Legions of DeathDealers, before they chose to walk across the line of blood and justifiy the sword; the machete; the M16UziAK47; the jellied gasoline. Before they surrendered their will to the command of a Dark Purpose which feeds on the blood of the innocent under the guise of glory.

 

There must have been a day when an X became sufficiently distinct from an Y to become a different species. Whatever is in the blood or in the minutely coiled memory of my parents, I too wave farewell across a divide over which I will never return. The death you deal is evil. There is no camouflage for that. I am not one of you.

 

I looked at eternity and I accepted that utter a loneliness rather than drink radioactive human blood again – or have my military priests share that evil sacrament on my behalf. In my chalice is water.

 

My anti-war views have evolved this far now. I would not have described myself with the phrase militant pacifist at once.

 

I remember when I stood in some shocking lightning illuminated moment in the Nixon era and saw that war wasn’t just sad and too bad –ah, the necessary evil – but was insane. That if you put a man on the couch and had him explain his actions with armies and air forces and what he was commanding to be done, you’d call for the strait jacket and ready the RubberRoom. Unless he was your President. It’s clearly clinically mad and just because  so many people believe it doesn’t make it right or so. The earth was never flat no matter through how many generations or with how much God-granted authority it was proclaimed.

 

I recommend you stay with your fellows unless you have the stomach and sinew for a deep and silent dark which none could warn you of how far from human habitation it is, without the reassuring rustle and murmurs of your own kind. A very few will still speak to you and leave a bowl of soup for you to find. But none will hold your hand.

 


…………….<^>……………..
………….<^>……………..
If you know an agent, editor, publisher person who would handle this kind of rage for justice, rage for peace material, please let me know at .. pogblog@yahoo.com
………….<^>……………..
It’s an honor to have you visit pogblog. Do comment.
………….….<^>……………..
Check pogblog’s Glossary for brave & nefarious words.
copyright pogblog 2005 all rights reserved
Please send pogblog’s link to your friends:
http://pogblog.myblogsite.com
7 Serpent . Chicchan . East . tzol 85  08.25.05 thur
ffsb 829§8769§24d7h47m33s1047ikhoudvanu
..
the pro-peace world begins today with you
………….<^>……………..part 1
copyright pogblog 2005 all rights reserved
Please send pogblog’s link to your friends:
http://pogblog.myblogsite.com
2 Deer . Manik . West . tzol 67  08.07.05 sun 
for jamie 981§8783§24d8h36m59s ikhoudvanu