The Guerrilla Campaign

by Leonard Cohen It's coming through a hole in the air, from those nights in Tiananmen Square. It's coming from the feel that this ain't exactly real, or it's real, but it ain't exactly there. From the wars against disorder, from the sirens night and day, from the fires of the homeless, from the ashes of the gay: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. It's coming through a crack in the wall; on a visionary flood of alcohol; from the staggering account of the Sermon on the Mount which I don't pretend to understand at all. It's coming from the silence on the dock of the bay, from the brave, the bold, the battered heart of Chevrolet: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. It's coming from the sorrow in the street, the holy places where the races meet; from the homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen to determine who will serv...

by Mary Pitt Sunday, January 18, 2009 Waddya gonna do when you've gone about as far as you can go? You want to open a window and yell, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!" But, where you live there is nobody to hear you. Go ahead, yell your fool head off but there are none to hear and, if anybody does, they don't care. The preachers will tell you, "The Lord will provide" but, in all our years, we have never heard of a Great Speckled Bird flying over and dropping money on people. And you learned long ago to pray for nothing but the strength to bear the troubles that befall us in this mortal life. You have simply lasted too long. You have lost dearly loved ones to death for first one reason or another; even nursing a dear lifemate through an illness that took years to claim them. You have worked, budgeted, and micro-managed to keep your family sustained and, due to your own age and illness, are now condemned to a life of poverty. Yo...

by Mary Pitt January 15, 2009 The greatest problem as the new President and the Congress attempt to enact remedies to the very real problems of the poor, the disabled, and the laboring class, (not the much-broader "working class"), is that they do not know or understand exactly what it is that they are trying to "fix". With the exception of the President, none of them have ever wanted for food, clothing, or medical care, (and even he, Thank God, had grandparents of substance who were able to be of assistance.) The trials with which we must deal every day are totally foreign to them. They do not know and never even visit in the homes in the tenements, the poor neighborhoods, or even the common homes in the small rural villages which dot the plains and the industrial areas of our nation. Those who knock on our doors during campaigns are college kids asking for our votes and will promise us anything in return for our pledges. Should our congresspersons come "home...

History's Clear Answer to the Torture Debate Written By Chris Floyd January 13, 2009 http://chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1680-head-cases-historys-clear-answer-to-the-torture-debate.html There has been much throwing about of brains on the subject of "what to do" about the Bush Administration's unabashed and openly confessed use of "interrogation techniques" that are, without question, classified under U.S. law as torture. There seems to be a ripening consensus among our great and good that nothing at all should be done about this perpetration of a capital crime by the top officials of the government -- although one does descry, here and there, a hint that there might be a ritual sacrifice of one or two middling-high figures if the issue gets too hot to brush aside completely. (If I were, say, John Yoo, I'd be looking at sabbaticals in Dubai or Saudi Arabia -- or Israel, maybe, where a man of his expertise in the rationalization of war cri...

by Mary Pitt Saturday, January 10, 2009 With an economy that is sadly in the tank, a stock market that cannot get its feet back under it, with record and growing unemployment, and with working class and poor people suffering with too little income and too many expenses, the economists and politicians are quarreling over what will be required to heal the ills of our nation. One "stimulus" has been tried but it was too little and too limited. Since it went only to the very poor, it immediately disappeared by being used to pay bills that were already in existence rather than on consumer spending. When the massive funds were doled out to the major banks, it did not make a ripple in the marketplace as the companies tucked the money into their reserve funds rather than releasing it into new lending. After eight years of seeing a government that was more intent on its own pet projects than on the welfare of the people; of begging a recalcitrant Congress to do something to stop the o...

Pictures of suffering Pictures of death Some say this is holy Some say this is good Women burned alive Children without heads and heaps of corpses on the ground

by susan abulhawa How can anyone watching Gaza burn escape the bitter realization that history repeats itself? Many have compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to Apartheid South Africa. But not in their cruelest hour did the Apartheid regime wreak such wanton murder and destruction. Let us stop mincing words. What is happening to Palestinians now whispers of Warsaw and Lodz. Schools, universities, mosques, police stations, homes, water treatment plants, factories, and anything that supports civil society, including the only mental health clinic in Gaza, have been blown to rubble from planes that rain death from clear skies without any resistance, because Palestinians have no opposing air force. Nor do they have an army or navy. No mechanized armor or heavy weaponry. Thanks to Israel, they haven’t even had continuous electricity or fuel for the past two years. Or food and medicine. Israel’s siege and blockade of Gaza has prevented the movement of people and goods in and o...

Jan 2, 2009 12:53 pm Thousands of shoes tie up Miami freeway traffic Thousands of shoes were dumped on the Palmetto Expressway causing significant traffic delays in Miami, Friday, Jan. 2, 2009. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz) MIAMI (AP) -- State troopers are looking for a charity to take thousands of shoes that were dumped on a Miami expressway, tying up rush hour traffic. Lt. Pat Santangelo says the Florida Highway Patrol received a call about the shoes Friday morning. Santangelo says he's not sure where the shoes came from. There were no signs of a crash and no one stopped to claim them. He says he hopes someone will take them because he doesn't want to send them to the dump. Workers using a front-end loader and a dump truck were able to quickly clear at least one lane by sweeping all the shoes to shoulder, but delays were expected until they could all be removed.