War Letters
In the winter of 2003, it was obvious that America was going to war. Congress had voted approval, the modern version of a declaration of war. The troops. and supplies, were on the borders of Iraq, waiting for the order to go in.
PG felt the need to make a statement. There was no illusion that it would affect the overall decision to invade Iraq. However, PG wanted to go on record as being opposed to the folly to come.
It was a low risk act. In America, we have freedom of expression. This does not mean that the powers that be listen to the people. The only expression that matters is by people who pay the authorities. The people can say anything, but nobody in charge listens.
There were three representatives in Congress to contact. The two Senators were Saxby Chambliss and Zell Miller. The 4th district was represented in the House of Representatives by Denise Majette. She was new to Congress, having defeated Cynthia McKinney in the 2002 election.
The area that PG lives in is gerrymandered into different districts every ten years by the Georgia legislature. This is partly the legacy of the Voting Rights Act, which requires the voting districts in Georgia to be approved by Federal authorities. Today, PG is in the 6th district, represented by Republican Tom Price.
The letters are lost in hard drive crash fog. It started out with the phrase “you were elected to represent me.” Apparently, this left Zell Miller out. He has been appointed to finish the term of Paul Coverdell. Democrat Zell Miller was appointed by Democrat Governor Roy Barnes to complete the term of Republican Paul Coverdell. After this, Zell Miller gave the keynote address at the 2004 Republican Convention. This is what Georgia has come to expect from Zig Zag Zell.
The anti war letter was not great writing. It basically said that the invasion of Iraq was not a good idea. The letter did not address the tax cut. In a bizarre move, Congress approved a tax cut, with an economically ruinous war on the horizon.
The responses to the letter are attached here. Denise Majette gave a thoughtful reply. She did not say “I agree with you” in so many words, but it is clear she is not gung ho about killing Iraqis. Miss Majette said, and PG agrees, that once the war begins, the debate should cease.
Saxby Chambliss sent two replies. Both talked about how well the war was going, and how wonderful it was to be killing people in Iraq. It is a good question whether his staff read the original letter from PG, which opposed the war.
In the 2004 election, Denise Majette ran for the Senate. Zell Miller chose to retire, and his seat was up for grabs. Republican Johnny Isakson won the Senate seat. Cynthia McKinney made a comeback, and won the fourth district House seat.
Saxby Chambliss was re-elected in 2008, and retired in 2014. The conflict in Iraq continues to this day. It is a disaster. The withdrawal of American combat troops did not end the civil war. Currently, Iraq is the scene for combat operations from the Islamic State military force.
The financial burden of the war has been immense. The military depends on contractors for many basic services, at increased cost to the Asian war financiers. The National debt has been increasing by a trillion dollars a year. Revenge for nine eleven, directed at a marginally responsible country, has been horribly expensive. Pictures for today’s entertainment message are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Thanksgiving Story
Thanksgiving was a time our family cherished. It was the only time all of us got together under one roof and mingled. Except for me. ~ I was the the family embarrassment. They were Catholic, and disliked my way of life. I played guitar, loved Heavy Metal, and worshiped Satan. ~ All this explains why my family shunned me. In their eyes, I was the flaw of a nearly perfect gem, but in mine, I was the cream of the crop.
I should’ve known they had something awful in mind when they asked me to join them somewhere. They drove me to the very corner of the ranch. ~ “What the fuck are we doing back here,” I asked. My only reply was, “Shut up you blaspheming fool.”
At last we got to the destination. My father, mother, and sister were standing around, wearing funeral clothes. ~ In the middle was a shallow grave. “What’s that hole for?” I asked dumbly. “Take a guess you satanic fucker!” Was the reply from my father.
I felt a thud on my head. I hit the ground with a loud thlap. I turned in spite of excruciating pain to see my uncle wielding a shovel. ~ I touched the back of my head to find my fingers coated in blood. I suddenly grew light headed and passed out. When I woke up I inhaled dirt. ~ Luckily, my family didn’t know how to properly bury someone so I was able to dig myself out. I sat there and puked for about fifteen minutes.
When I got back, it was Thanksgiving night. through the window I could see my family, sitting there, saying grace like the sheeple they were. ~ Seeing them praying made my hate for them and all Catholics grow. It went from a smouldering, muddled anger, to a flaming, outrageous hatred
I ran into the garage and found my uncle’s shotgun, sitting there, waiting for me, beckoning, saying, “Go ahead, make these fuckers pay.” ~ “Hi Mom!” I shouted as I pulled the trigger, I started laughing uncontrollably as I continued firing at my family until I was empty.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!” My father asked, wounded, shot in the gut. “Wrong with me?” I asked calmly. “What’s wrong with you?” ~ With that I threw the gun away and dined. Not on Turkey, but on raw human flesh. It was the best Thanksgiving ever. ~ Text presented in twitter serialization by @creepypasta_txt. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
The Silly Remarks Of The President
Wednesday, November 19, was the 151st anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. This is seven score, and eleven years, ago. This is not as poetic as four score and seven. The famous speech was written on White House stationary, not the back of an envelope. The train ride to the battlefield was too bumpy to write on, so it was written elsewhere. No one is sure what happened to the original.
The text was published in newspapers, and became famous. Relatively few people heard the actual speech. Not everyone was impressed. The Harrisburg Patriot & Union said “We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall be no more repeated or thought of.” The descendent of this paper, The Patriot-News, printed a retraction in 2013. Better late than never.
Other contemporaries were critical. Presidents are politicians, with allies and enemies, and are not often beloved in their own time. The New York World accused Lincoln of “gross ignorance or willful misstatement” with his declaration of “four score and seven years ago.” The Democratic Chicago Times called the address “a perversion of history so flagrant that the extended charity cannot regard it as otherwise than willful.”
H.L. Mencken had a few unkind things to say about the affair. “But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination—”that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. “
As the rest of the linked essay points out, one motivation for the Confederates desire for self determination is to maintain the ability to own other human beings. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. These are Union Soldiers from the War Between the States. UPDATE There is a Fibonuccian synchronicity to Wednesday’s anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. The original is famous for the phrase four score and seven. If you add four and seven, you get eleven. Wednesday was 151 years after the original address, or seven score and eleven.
Who Does The Killing?
PG used to work with someone, who we will call Fred. This person contracted some sort of cancer, and died nine days after nine eleven. Fred, the son of Holocaust Survivors, was probably the most Jewish person that PG has known. Fred was generous with his opinions. While no claim is made to having access to secret information, these opinions gave an insight into a certain pattern of thought. Some of these attitudes continue to this day, with other situations.
The employment related association took place between 1985 and 1989. This was during the Iran Iraq war. It was felt by many that those were two evil countries, that should be allowed to fight each other as long as possible. When they were fighting each other, they were not a threat to Israel. Fred enthusiastically endorsed this idea. “Yes they should. It is for your benefit. It will prevent terrorism”.
Hundreds of thousands of young men died in that war. Iraq got worn out by the fighting, and resorted to the use of chemical weapons. Iraq also ran up a large debt to Kuwait. In an effort to cancel that debt, Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. That set in motion a cycle of violence and revenge that still plagues the United States.
Today, there is much fighting in Syria. There are some who say that with Hezbollah fighting Al Queda, they are both bad actors. Let them kill each other as much as they want. Again, when they fight each other, they will leave Israel alone.
The carnage in Syria, with the government killing thousands of it’s citizens, brings to mind another Fred story. In 1989, China brutally repressed demonstrators asking for more rights. On the monday after the massacre, Fred commented that the Soviet Union was sorry. They wanted to do this killing themselves. Could this be how Israel feels about the killing in Syria? This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner is alive at eighty two. He survives Lenny Bruce, Abbie Hoffman, Groucho Marx, and Lyndon Johnson. His magazine, The The Realist, is now available as an online archive.
PG was recently looking for background noise to compliment his photomongering. Somewhere along the way, he found episodes of WTF podcast to be available on Youtube. He made a list of shows he wanted to see, including Paul Krassner. When Mr. Google was recruited to find the show, other things floated to the surface. This is how Mr. Google operates.
An onion is more than an internet namesake. It lends a lively flavor, both cooked and raw. The onion consists of many layers of thin skin. These can be peeled off, as you get deeper and deeper into the root. A thin skinned root that gives you bad breath…. an aromatic symbol for the sixties.
When you go looking for WTF/Krassner, you are directed to issue 74 of The Realist. The feature story is the missing segments of a John Kennedy biography. On page 18, Jackie Kennedy saw more of Lyndon Johnson than she needed to see.
“That man was crouching over the corpse, no longer chuckling but breathing hard and moving his body rhythmically. … And then I realized – there is only one way to say this – he was literally fucking my husband in the throat. In the bullet wound in front of the throat. He reached a climax, and dismounted. I froze. The next thing I remember, he was being sworn in as the new President.”
Page two of issue 74 is the letters to the editor. The featured scribe is John L. Timmons, Secretary, Mattachine Society of N.Y. He wrote “Letter From A Homosexual,” in response to a cartoon page in issue 69, fag battalion. Using KY to lubricate a rifle is not a good idea.
At the time, America was fighting a war in Vietnam. Young men were given the choice of go in the army, or go to prison. It was ugly. There was a group, “The committee to fight the exclusion of homosexuals from the armed forces.”
The Mattachine Society was neutral. Some members supported the war, and some were opposed. It distracted from the overall agenda to take sides in other disputes. The editors at The Realist agreed. “… homosexuals who don’t want to be drafted will no longer be able to exploit their deviation rather than face the consequences of conscientious objection.”
When issue 74 was published, Walt Disney was still alive. This may account for the action on page 12. Maybe Uncle Walt did not want his animated actors to be drafted for active duty. The activities on page 12 might not be sufficient to have the players excused from active duty, however. By this stage of the war, the local draft boards were not accepting excuses.
Getting back to Paul Krassner… he founded the YIPPIES with Abbie Hoffman, took LSD with Groucho Marx, and published a satiric magazine without advertising. Only the last part can be confirmed. After the description of Lyndon Johnson’s post mortem dentistry, who knows what is real, and what is fake. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Mow The Lawn
Israel is mowing the lawn in Gaza, again. One of the weapons used is Hasbara. “In Hebrew it literally translates to “an explanation” but 972 Mag gives us the modern definition: “A form of propaganda aimed at an international audience, primarily, but not exclusively, in western countries. It is meant to influence the conversation in a way that positively portrays Israeli political moves and policies, including actions undertaken by Israel in the past. Often Hasbara efforts includes a negative portrayal of the Arabs and especially of Palestinians.”
One claim made is human shields. The story has Hamas storing weapons in residences. This claim was made in many recent wars, including Vietnam. If the enemy bombs an area, and civilians are killed, then the enemy looks bad. Mr. Netanyahu recently increased the semantic firepower. He claimed Hamas was using human shields to gather “telegenically dead Palestinians for their cause.”
Not everyone believes the human shields claim. Here is another report. “Some Gazans have admitted that they were afraid of criticizing Hamas, but none have said they had been forced by the organisation to stay in places of danger and become unwilling human-shields. The Bani Sobeila area, near Khan Younis, where the Abu Jamaa deaths took place received leaflets dropped from the air last week warning them to leave.
But almost all stayed. One reason for that was many of the houses belonged to the Abu Jamaa clan who felt there was safety in staying together. Another reason was given by a neighbour, Abdullah al-Daweish: “Where do we go to? Some people moved from the outer edge of Khan Younis to Khan Younis centre after Israelis told them to, then the centre got bombed. People have moved from this area to Gaza City, and Gaza City has been bombed.”
Amnesty International has a report on the conflict. “The Israeli authorities claim that Hamas and Palestinian armed groups use Palestinian civilians in Gaza as “human shields”. Does Amnesty International have any evidence that this has occurred during the current hostilities, and what obligations of Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups are relevant?
Amnesty International is aware of these claims, and continues to monitor and investigate reports, but does not have evidence at this point that Palestinian civilians have been intentionally used by Hamas or Palestinian armed groups during the current hostilities to “shield” specific locations or military personnel or equipment from Israeli attacks. As explained above, in previous conflicts Amnesty International has documented that Palestinian armed groups have stored munitions in and fired indiscriminate rockets from residential areas in the Gaza Strip, and available evidence indicates that they continue to do both during the current hostilities, in violation of international humanitarian law. During the current hostilities, Hamas spokespeople have reportedly urged residents in some areas of the Gaza Strip not to leave their homes after the Israeli military dropped leaflets and made phone calls warning people in the area to evacuate. However, in light of the lack of clarity in many of the Israeli warnings on safe routes for civilians to evacuate, the lack of shelters or other safe places in the Gaza Strip for them to go to, and numerous reports of civilians who did heed the warnings and flee doing so under Israeli fire, such statements by Hamas officials could have been motivated by a desire to avoid further panic. In any case, public statements referring to entire areas are not the same as directing specific civilians to remain in their homes as “human shields” for fighters, munitions, or military equipment. Furthermore, international humanitarian law is clear that even if officials or fighters from Hamas or Palestinian armed groups associated with other factions did in fact direct civilians to remain in a specific location in order to shield military objectives from attacks, all of Israel’s obligations to protect these civilians would still apply.”
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Help Al Qaeda Succeed
There is some talk in the media about what are tastefully called drone strikes. Unmanned airplanes are piloted by remote control. The focus on a target, and fire a AGM-114 Hellfire II Missile. Often, a second strike is made, after rescuers come to the scene. When the dead are buried, there is sometimes a strike on the funeral.
This kind of warfare costs money. The Hellfire II Missile costs $40,000. The drones use lots of fuel, and require maintenance. For a broke government, this adds up.
The moving lips in Washington say that no civilians are killed by these attacks. The dead are labelled militants. Anyone speaking out against this can expect to be denounced by the government.
“More recently, on February 8, the Times reported the BIJ’s findings that the CIA’s drone attacks in Pakistan “have repeatedly targeted rescuers who responded to the scene of a strike, as well as mourners at subsequent funerals.” But after highlighting BIJ’s report, the article then allowed a “senior American counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity” to not just question the report’s findings, but to state: “One must wonder why an effort that has so carefully gone after terrorists who plot to kill civilians has been subjected to so much misinformation. Let’s be under no illusions — there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help al Qaeda succeed.”
The use of drone warfare has increased dramatically under BHO. This tactic is employed against populations in countries like Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. America is technically not at war with these countries. Since the program is secret, there may be other countries.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. They are Union Soldiers, from the War Between the States. Drones were not used in this conflict. This is a repost.
Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present, spent an hour talking on Booknotes. This is a C-SPAN show, with author interviews. The show aired March 12, 2000. Later that night was a show about the 2000 election, featuring Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. The role Mr. Nader would play in the November election was unimaginable in March. Life is bad fiction.
The first serious job Mr. Zinn had was World War II. He served in the Air Force. Towards the end of the war, “we bombed a little French town on the Atlantic coast called Royon… `We’re not going to use regular demolition bombs. We have something new. We w–you’re going–instead of dropping our usual 12 500-pound demolition bombs, you’re going to drop 30 100-pound canisters of jel—jellied gasoline.’ It was napalm–the first use of napalm in the European theater.”
Later, Mr. Zinn thought about it all. “And it didn’t s–the–the thing is you’d bomb from 30,000 feet. You don’t see what’s happening down there. You don’t see people suffering. You don’t see people burning. You don’t see limbs falling. You–you just see little flashes in the–in the d–in the dark, you know. And—and you go back, and you’re debriefed and you don’t think about it. And it’s horrifying.
Later–only later did I begin to think about it, and I was horrified by what I had done, and I’m still horrified by what I did. But I think that had an effect on my thinking about war, because here I was in the best of wars. And I believed it was the best of wars because I volunteered for it. A war against fascism? I mean, how could you find a more bestial enemy? And yet it’s a–it complicated the war for me. It complicated the morality of the war, and it made me begin to think that war itself is evil. Even when it starts with good cause, even when the enemy is horrible, that there’s something about war, especially in our time when war inevitably involves indiscriminate killing–and I came to the conclusion that war simply cannot be accepted morally as a solution for whatever problems are in the world.
Whatever tyranny, whatever borders are crossed, whatever problems there are, somehow human ingenuity has to find a way to deal with that without the indiscriminate killing that war involves.”
Brian Lamb is the host of Booknotes. He speaks non theatrically, often with questions that are very different from the narrative presented by the author. After this talk about war, the question was “LAMB: What would you have done had you been president and those bombs were dropped on Pearl Harbor? Mr. ZINN: That’s the toughest question I’ve ever faced. I … And–and I confess, I–I–I haven’t worked out an alternative scenario.
PHOTUS is known for taking a non-heroic view of our history. Regarding the US Constitution, “When they set up the new government, when they set up the new Constitution, I mean, they set up a strong, central government which will be able to legislate on behalf of bondholders and slaveholders and manufacturers and Western land speculators.”
Mr. Zinn does not discuss The War Between The States on this show. (PG has not read PHOTUS, and does not know how WBTS is treated.) This was a case where the central government was favoring the industrial interests, at the expense of the agricultural interests. How much of that conflict was economic, with abolition serving as a moral fig leaf?
After the war, Mr. Zinn went back to school. A job appeared at Spelman College, and he worked there seven years. After that, he taught at Boston University for 24 years. His next door neighbor was five year old Matt Damon, who later read the audiobook version of PHOTUS.
There is one more bit of amusement from the transcript. Mr. ZINN:`For the United States to step forward as a defender of helpless countries matched its image in American high school history books but not its record in world affairs. It had opposed the Haitian revolution for independence from France at the start of the 19th century. It had instituted a war with Mexico and taken half the country. It had pretended to help Cuba win freedom from Spain and then planted itself in Cuba with a military base, investments and rights of intervention. It had seized Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam and fought a brutal war to subjugate the Filipinos. It had opened Japan to its trade with gunboats and threats. It had declared an open-door policy in China as a means of assuring the United States would have opportunities equal to other imperial powers in exploiting China. It had sent troops to Peking with other nations to assert Western supremacy in China and kept them from–kept them for over 30 years.’ LAMB: There’s a lot more in here about Colombia and Haiti and Nicaragua. Is this country at–this sounds like I’m–I’m arguing here, but has this country done anything right?
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress
The Ira Hayes Story
The post before this is about Arizona SB1070, a controversial measure dealing with illegal immigration. One of the men quoted is the Sheriff of Pima County, which lies on the border.
Pima County is named for the Pima Tribe, whose land was in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. Their name for the “river people” is Akimel O’odham. According to Wikipedia, “The short name, “Pima” is believed to have come from the phrase pi ‘añi mac or pi mac, meaning “I don’t know,” used repeatedly in their initial meeting with Europeans.”
Many of the Mexicans crossing the border are Native Americans. They did not agree to the Gadsden Purchase , or the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo . In other words, they were here first, and the white man (and black associates) are the uninvited guests. Maybe the natives should ask the English speakers for their papers.
The second part of this feature is a repost. One of the best known Pimas was Ira Hayes. He was one of the Marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima.
One of the enduring images of World War II was raising the flag on Iwo Jima. Three of the six men raising the flag died on the island. A fourth, Ira Hayes, became a casualty after the war.
The story of Ira Hayes is well known, but needs to be told again. A Pima Indian, his people had not been treated well by the conquerors. Nonetheless, when the War against Japan started, men were needed for the struggle, and Ira Hayes joined the Marines.
Iwo Jima was a steppingstone to the main island of Japan. After Iwo Jima and Okinawa were in Yankee hands, preparations could be made for the invasion of the main island. However, the stepping stone islands proved to be incredibly tough to secure. There were more American casualties on Iwo Jima than on D Day.
On the fourth day of the battle, a picture was made of six marines raising the flag on top of Mount Suribachi. A month of sticky, treacherous fighting was ahead for the fighting men. Of 21,000 Japanese soldiers, 20,000 died. Still, the image is inspiring. The photographer fiercely denied having staged it.
The flag was raised on February 23, 1945. Germany was all but defeated. The “explosive lens” for the atom bomb had been successfully tested. Viewed from the standpoint of 1945, it seems inevitable that the costly island hopping needed to continue, to be followed by an invasion of the Japanese mainland. From the view of 2009, one wonders if the fight for Iwo Jima, in retrospect, was really needed. War is fought in the present tense.
Two of the twelve hands holding the flagpole belonged to Ira Hayes. Ira Hayes did not adjust to peacetime well. He became a drunkard. On January 24, 1955, he passed away.
Ira Hayes was a native American. Thousands of African Americans have returned from foreign wars, to be treated poorly. Until a few months ago, if a man, or woman, is accused of being gay, the service is forgotten. On Memorial Day, we should struggle to ensure that all future veterans are treated with respect, all year long. This is a repost, with pictures from The Library of Congress.
Chamblee54 
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