Sunday, May 26, 2019

"Dying for Our Freedom" and Iran


Don't insult US soldiers by saying they "die for our freedom." The Gulf War and the Iraq War were unrelated to US freedom; the policymakers don't even claim that anymore. Neither in 1990 nor in the year 2001 did the country of Iraq threaten our freedom. Those wars were strategic, related to perceived to "regional security," control of petrol resources and an urgency to get the country past "the Vietnam Syndrome." Restating a canard that is very cynically used as a Pied Piper call to send (mostly poorer) Americans into harm's way does not honor veterans. On the contrary, it disrespects them and betrays an unwillingness to look deeply into these matters of life and death. If we could see that phony line for what it is – a con used against the US public to make us accept something we would otherwise find to be an atrocity - it would go a long way toward preventing future American wars, starting with Iran.

At this point, it is worth remarking that the person (such as myself) who dares to utter the blasphemy that American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are not dying for our freedom, but for much more cynical geopolitical aims, is often greeted with vitriolic charges of being "anti-American." What these responses fail to recognize is that the individuals acting in an anti-American way are surely those Americans with political power who are orchestrating these pointless wars and sending soldiers to die, to be maimed and to suffer PTSD. There is perhaps nothing more "anti-American" than sending young men and women Into harms way for ill-conceived and shortsighted goals that are then lied about.



Friday, May 17, 2019

The Richest Man in the World Said Today


The richest man in the world said today that colonizing other planets is no longer the idea. We will instead make fake planets and cast them into orbit and this will allow us to soon have one trillion human beings. And this will be good. We could have 100 Einsteins, 100 Mozarts, he said. There is a word in Irish for the time of day when you can’t distinguish between a person and a bush.




Wednesday, May 8, 2019

a mouse in the house

there was a mouse
in the house
and he was
wearing my apron
playing my guitar
and studying spanish
he was a dreamer
and wanted to translate
neruda
and make short films
of cloud formations
with pedal steel music
he gazed into mirrors
and saw his keen
angular visage
his gleaming whiskers
his glinting eyes
he trained for a marathon
inside the walls
of the house
but he didn’t
need to run the race
because he had
nothing to prove
he was already complete
i saw him once
prancing across
the grimy kitchen floor
and knew this