Stand-Up Robbers

by Grayson

Bullets fired by Bonnie and Clyde
in Platte City, 1933. Slugs found
in a bank in Grand Haven, sprayed
into plaster by Baby Face Nelson, 1934.

Banks in South Bend, Sioux Falls,
Bluffton, Indianapolis, East Chicago, Racine,
hit by John Dillinger and various
associates, Nelson, Makley, Pierpont,

Homer Van Meter; as well as armories
in Auburn and Greencastle, where they
helped themselves to shotguns, .45's,
and Thompson submachine guns.

John D. got away with $300,000,
a king's ransom in those days,
before he was sold out and gunned down
by the perverted Hoover's craven cowards.

Nowadays, the bankers are stealing
more than all the Dillingers, Nelsons,
and Van Meters since the invention of
money; the Wall Street boys have misplaced

more than Johnny ever dreamed of; yet,
not one cud-chewing pig-bellied sheriff
or sharp-dressed agent has been
dispatched to look for clues,

to follow leads, to track them,
to seek out snitches; no warrants issued
to search their hotel rooms or their homes,
to take fingerprints, collect evidence;

no order given to pick up
their wives, their girlfriends,
or their whores, for questioning;
no mayors or governors have offered

rewards for their capture,
dead or alive; not one G-Man has
pursued them across state lines;
no rangers nor deputies

have formed posses,
no deals have been cut with their pals
to rat them out, so as to lay for them
outside movie theaters, or hide

in leafy shrubbery at lonely roadsides
to massacre them in their cars
without warning, without so much as a
“Hands up, Johnny!”

But gee-willikers, wouldn't it be swell
to see some real stand-up robbers again,
with John D.'s crooked smile
and that spit-in-your eye wise-cracking

while he cleans out the tellers'
cages and hustles everyone
into the vault,
who aren't pretending to be anything

but what they are;
and wouldn't it be something
to see some good solid rounds
found in some banks again?

Diary Of A Rag And Bone Man

The Continuing Saga of a Homeless Man and his Dog

by Jack Rafter

"He's not right in the head," Gordon said. About Obama.

We were sitting in the library to escape the cold. I had on dark glasses, doing my blind act so I could get Vincent in. Gordon shook his head as he stared at the newspaper spread in front of him--all about the war in Afghanistan, the President sending in 30,000 troops.

Gordon lives in a boxcar. Spends most of his time in the library. Used to be a stock analyst. Now, he can't help it, his mind craves a bone to chew and wants to furnish theories on everything.

"So you're saying he's crazy," I said.

"Crazy in a special way," Gordon said, tapping his pencil on his forehead. "Very special."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he looks and sounds normal. He has this beautiful shiny wife and these darling little girls. The whole family shines, I don't know how else to put it. They sparkle. If you could make dolls out of them and mass market them, I guarantee you'd be a billionaire inside a month. It'd be the biggest thing since Ken and Barbie. Maybe bigger. It's Ken and Barbie with kids. And they have lots of nice clothes."

"What's that got to do with his being crazy?" I said.

Gordon held his pencil up and poked the air. "I said crazy in a special way. Specialized craziness. There's nothing you can do about it. You can't fix that. You can't give him anything for it. The people closest to him probably can't see it. Although I'm startin' to wonder if his wife has noticed anything unusual. Maybe she has, but, like most devoted wives, she just covers it good, maybe even hides it from herself.

"But the rest of the world, especially all the ones that voted for him, are startin' to wonder what the hell's goin' on. There's this huge gap between what he says and what he does, and there's almost no place where the two items line up, where they converge. So, everyone's goin' around lookin' dumbfounded, like a bunch of tourists left stranded by their tour guide. They're all scratchin' their heads, sayin' things like, 'What's the matter with this guy? Is he crazy? Doesn't he know he's totally wrecking his credibility?'

"And the answer is yes, he's crazy. And no, he doesn't know he's wrecking his credibility. Or if he does, he doesn't know why. And that's because there's actually two people there. There's BARACK OBAMA!! --The savior of mankind, the incarnation of Jesus Christ. That's the one who gives the speeches. And then, there's this other guy, the one we see the rest of the time, whose name might as well be Joe Blow, Rufus Smith or Dick Cheney. Say, you wouldn't have a spare dollar on you, would you?"

"Are you kidding?" I said.
"I just thought if we pooled our money we might make out better for lunch."
"Maybe so," I said.

During the lull, Vincent got up, stretched, and lay down again. I could feel him panting against my leg. Gordon tapped his pencil some more, biting his lower lip. You could hear the springs and wheels clinking in his mind. "It's the speeches, you see. That's where I first noticed it."

"The speeches?"

"Yeah. There's this drama, this explosion that happens. He's a Shakespearean actor. He goes from being Rufus Smith to BARACK OBAMA!! In his speech, he becomes Captain Ahab. Says he's gonna hunt down the great white whale. No, I don't mean something racist. I just mean he's Ahab! He's goin' after this great shiny thing, maybe the greatest thing you ever heard of. Willing to go to the ends of the earth to get it. And we're right with him, boy. We're the crew of the Pequod, and we want him to succeed, we want him to get this thing, too, whatever it is. Why? Because of his speech--his words are so lofty, they soar, they fly clear up to the mastheads, there's religious fervor in his voice, his eyes shine and gleam--they roll back when he cuts loose. He says great things and he believes them. And that's how he gets you and me to believe them. See what I mean? He lifts us up with his words. He charms us, makes us fall in love with him. It's the same thing actors do--exactly the same damn thing. Laurence Olivier wouldn't let people watch him rehearse. You know why?"

I shook my head.

"'Cause he didn't want anyone to see him fumble. Because then all they'd see was this little guy, this mere mortal named Larry. No, first, he had to get it right, you see, had to get to where he believed it himself. Then, when the curtain went up and the lights hit him in the face, he could take off. He could fly in the air. And he became. . .Laurence Olivier. Sir Laurence! And it's the same thing with Obama."

"So you're saying he's like Olivier. . .or Ahab?"

"I'm saying he's whatever in the hell he wants to be when he's makin' a damn speech, 'cause he actually believes it. He says he's goin' after that elusive whale, then that's what he's gonna do. Shoot, in that moment, he probably thinks he can steer the bloody boat all by himself. And throw the harpoon right into the whale's gizzard. Problem is, once the speech is over, once the applause dies down, the lights fade out, and the cheering hysterical mob goes home, he just becomes plain old Rufus again. This little guy in a suit. And you can bet there ain't gonna be no whale huntin' goin' on after that. Man, I'm thirsty. You thirsty? Wish I had a little somethin' to drink."

At that moment, Oscar, another refugee from the trainyard, passed our table clutching a National Geographic. He leaned close on the pass and mumbled, "Better look like you're readin' Braille, Jack. Yonder comes the librarian."

* * *

Well, we went out and scrounged something to eat. When we got back, Gordon was still going on about Obama's alleged craziness. He shoved a book over to me: The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst. That's Gordon, for you, always reading weird things.

I glanced at the book. It seems that back in 1968, the Sunday Times of London sponsored a single-handed round-the-world yacht race. First prize--L5,000. Naturally, the best sailors in the world entered it. And then there was this unknown, this outsider, a failed businessman from Bridgwater, Somerset, named Donald Crowhurst.

"He was heavily in debt," said Gordon, "and he was after the prize money. Somehow, he thought he could win this thing."

"So what happened?" I said, "And what's this got to do with your theory about Obama?"

"All right," said Gordon, "Just bear with me. Okay, here's this guy, Crowhurst--well, first off, he's married, got a pretty wife, nice children, guy's a real charmer. He's smart, been to school, he reads, he knows all the sailor's jargon. He doesn't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out, but he manages to get a financial backer to pay for the boat. Everybody takes him for a pro, but he's not really much more than a weekend sailor. What he is--he's delusional. He's acting out the part of an adventurer. He probably pictures himself sailing home to cheering crowds, knighted by the Queen, like Chichester. He's charmed everybody, including himself. But the story mushrooms. Even before he sets sail, it's a big story. People all over England are rooting for him. He's the underdog and they all want him to succeed."

"Then, he takes off. And right away, he runs into problems. His boat's not as good as he thought it was. He's not making good time. He knows if he drops out of the race he'll have to pay off his backer--the full price of the boat. That would mean selling his house, everything he owns. He'll be ruined. So he makes one of those fateful decisions. He decides to abandon the race. But he doesn't tell anyone. Instead, he more or less stays in one place, sailing around in circles off the coast of Brazil. At the same time, he begins altering his logs, reporting false positions to make it look like he's still in the running. In fact, he makes his reports sound so good that, for awhile, toward the end, he's being cheered worldwide as the likely winner of the race."

And that causes a whole new set of problems. Now Crowhurst realizes that if he actually comes in first, his logbooks are sure to be scrutinized by experienced sailors. And he'll be exposed to the world as a fraud. . . .

In June, '69, Crowhurst's boat was found adrift and abandoned in the Sargasso Sea.

Found in the boat were two sets of logs. One contained the poetic ravings of someone who had become completely unhinged.

Gordon picked up the book, opened it to the first page and handed it back. At the top of the page was this inscription:

PARANOID GRANDIOSITY

"Paranoid grandiosity tends to be well organized, relatively stable and persistent. The complexity of delusional conviction varies from rather simple beliefs in one's alleged talent, attractiveness or inspiration to highly complex, systematized beliefs that one is a great prophet, author, poet, inventor or scientist. The latter extreme belongs to classical paranoia."
Prof. Norman Cameron, Yale
(Ency. Brit.)

copeland morris A DREAM

Wrap-around sunglasses
Ear to ear you wore
In mourning after
The sermon.
The strangeness of a willow
Embraced me once more.

You worried about my dreams;
Addressed me as "sir"
As curtly as you could
In the sedan where I seemed to live.

A man who rolled down the windows,
What must you do for him? Not even God
Can change the past.

Paul Valéry wrote his poems
When he was pulling on socks and shoes:

"God made everything out of nothing,
But the nothingness shows through."

Diary Of A Rag And Bone Man

The Continuing Saga of a Homeless Man and his Dog

by Jack Rafter

Woke up to snow this morning. Damn near froze my ass off last night in my little tent by the train yard. Nights like that make you feel grateful for a dog. Good ol Vincent snuggled up close, kept at least part of me from freezing to death. Problem is the sleeping bag. She's all gone to rot and the feathers are falling out. Gonna have to scrounge another somewhere. We boiled some water over the cookstove, had some oats and coffee. Then broke camp and hightailed it downtown. Straight for the library.

I carry a blind man's fold-up stick in my shoulder bag--got it for a dollar at the Mexican flea-market. So if we go in somewhere, I just get out the stick and put on a pair of dark glasses. Vincent always pulls a little ahead of me on the leash, so with the sunglasses and the stick in play, people think he's a guide dog. That's how I smuggle him in on cold mornings. Some may wonder why he doesn't have the leather harness gizmo with the handle on it, or how come a guide dog looks like it hangs out in junkyards, but they never say anything. Nobody messes with blind people nowadays. They're all scared of lawsuits, and they don't want to look like assholes.

I thought about using the blind act as a panhandling gimmick, but you want to be careful with a thing like that. I figure if it gets you and your dog in out of the rain or cold, that's one thing. But if you use it to enrich yourself, it could turn on you. You don't want to mess with your Kharma. So we walked in.

Well, everybody was there. All the folks from the train yard--there was Billy and Frank and Lena, Oskar and Clarice. All sitting at different tables or hunkered down in comfy chairs. Trying to appear nonchalant in their filthy clothes with unkempt hair and scruffy beards. They all had books in their hands or a magazine, and looked almost studious, like the bedraggled pupils of a hobo cooking class. I nodded to them, subtly, as I walked by. Had to keep looking straight ahead, of course, like I couldn't see them. They knew who I was, so they nodded or winked on the sly. There were others besides them I didn't recognize. I tell you, cold days like this, the library starts looking more and more like a day-shelter for the homeless. The librarians spend half their time being a cop, making sure nobody's asleep. If they are, then out they go. You have to sit there with a book and try to look like you're reading or studying, when all you're really there for is to get warm and think about how you'll score your next meal.

Maybe that's why the city keeps cutting the library hours. God forbid the place should become a haven for outcasts trying to get out of the cold. I read somewhere that Mayor LaGuardia kept the libraries of New York City open clear through the Depression era. The last one, I mean. He knew the homeless were bunching up in those places, but he wasn't gonna shut em out because he had a heart. He also knew it was the one thing people could still do for free--read books. Well, there you go--one more example of the demon socialism.

I spied a friend seated at a table in the history section, so I took a seat across from him. Vincent plopped down on my foot and leaned against my leg. Big smile on his face. I knew he was happy to be out of the cold. So was I.

My friend Gordon was sitting there bent over a newspaper, looking at it real close. Squinting his eyes. That's how you know it's Gordon. You can spot him a mile away. He spends a lot of time in the library even on warm days cause he actually likes to read. He'll spend upwards of eight hours at a stretch reading. Today it was the newspaper. But it could be anything. Novels, poetry, plays, history, music, art, travel journals, you name it. Definitely a sick man. He needs glasses, but he won't buy them cause he doesn't have the money.

He's a strange dude. Used to be a stock-broker. Had him a wife and kids, cell phone, SUV, the whole nine yards. Then the crash came. He lost a lot of money--his own, and other peoples' too. He almost jumped out the window of his twenty-second floor office, but something changed his mind.

He went through his savings. Lost his home. His wife divorced him. He was a little crazy for awhile. Maybe still is. Hard to tell. He's on some meds, I believe, but he forgets to take them. He moves around a lot. He started out staying in a friend's garage. After the friend kicked him out, he showed up with a tent and lived in the freight train camp. That's where I met him. From there, he went to a salvage yard where he took up residence in the back of a wrecked Volvo station wagon. He was there almost a month. Then it was a condemned house for two months, a dilapidated barn for a week, followed by a tool shed behind a machine shop.

The tool shed was interesting. He figured out how to pick the lock. He only stayed there at night after the machinists went home, and he was always careful to put the lock back on the door in the morning. He said he really liked the tool shed cause it had a portable electric heater nobody was using and a grimy old radio that still worked. Also, the machinists kept regular hours and they were predictable. So he stayed there six months and nobody had a clue someone was living there.

Then one night a workman showed up needing some tool or other from the shed. He heard music playing softly--Gordon had the radio tuned to a classical station to lull him to sleep--Debussy's Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Fawn. The machinist turned him over to the cops. He spent three months in jail for breaking and entering, trespass, and vagrancy.

He now lives in a boxcar at the freight yards.

When I sat down, he said, "Hi, Jack," without looking up from his paper. I said hello, Gordon. Then, he held up a hand and said, "I'll be with you in a minute." I looked at the paper. He appeared to be reading about the president's latest machinations--sending more troops to Afghanistan. Added to the ones already there it would make a total of a hundred-thousand troops. Gordon made little groaning sounds and shook his head. He squinted his eyes.

"You oughta get yourself some glasses," I said after awhile.
"I know," he muttered. Then held up his hand again, so I shut up. He kept reading, squinting, groaning. Finally, he shook his head and mumbled something.
"What's that?" I said.
"I said there's something wrong with him."
"Wrong with who?"
"With the O-man. Obama."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean there's something not right about him."
"You mean he's crazy?"
"No, not crazy. Not exactly."
"Well, what do you mean, then?" I said.

Gordon picked up a pencil and stared at it for a moment, his eyes almost crossed. "I mean he's not right in the head."

EMPIRE IN TWILIGHT

Arthur Silber writes of Obama's recent extensive deliberation over what to do in Afghanistan, and the protracted appearance of seriousness over the decision, and the writer believes that "The mountains have appeared to labour mightily--with strong emphasis on "appear," for image and PR is not the main thing at this stage of the disintegration of the American Empire, it's the only thing..."

Obama wants to appear careful, prudent; and in a couple of days he will enlighten the public about "the job" that he will be careful to get done there. There will be an increase in US combat troops of something like 35,000. On a recent Bill Moyer's Journal, the actual recorded conversations between President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary McNamara and conversation between House Speaker Mansfield and the President shows beneath LBJ's surface the age old fear of being out-hawked by the right-wing. The President understood, or seemed to understand, that it was a mistake to give in to military escalation; but he did so anyway, knowing on some level the wrongness of it.

Obama is a smart man and is always projecting some kind of cool rationality; but he would seem to be doing the same thing LBJ did. Our new president however doesn't reveal that much in the way of the agony of such a decision.

It is a bloody absurdity for Obama to speak so eloquently and proclaim political principles so lucidly, only to backtrack on those principles and then proceed in the opposite direction. Weakness or dancing to the strings of puppet masters? We don't know. Today's President Karzai, while perhaps not as murderous as President Diem once was, is saturated in the same kind of corruption. Obama falls, as Lyndon Johnson did, into the same kind of political snare; and it seems perhaps reasonable to question his powers of reason.

Every remaining illusion will be stripped away and deconstructed; and after Obama comes a kind of deluge; but meanwhile during his tenure of office is this eerie twilight when things seem very surreal here in the belly of the beast.

I like the way Arthur Silber opens his essay, with the words of Horace:

The mountains will be in labour; an absurd mouse will be born.

This article is cross-posted at le speakeasy

Why Americans Don't Have Decent Health Care And Probably Never Will

by Grayson

After the movie one night,
I went into one of those
big chain ice cream parlors,
the kind of place where they mix your
cool fluff on a marble slab,
carefully weigh it,
top it off if necessary
(or take some away)
then hand it to you
and
take your money.

So when the girl handed me my
chocolate amaretto with sprinkles on top
I noticed at least half a dip left on the slab.
“What are you gonna do with that?” I said.

“Throw it away,” she said
and started to scrape it off the counter.
“Wait a minute, why don't you
give it to me, I'll eat it.”

“If I do that I'll have to charge you for it.”

“But you're throwing it out, so it's
lost anyway.”
“Either I have to charge for it
or I have to throw it away.”

“Who says?”
“My boss says.”
“What'll he do if you give it to me?”
“He'll fire me.”
“But he's not here.”

“They watch us through a camera.”

“You're kidding. Who watches you?”
“Somebody. I don't know who.”
“Where's the camera?”
“Up there behind me.”

“So they watch you through a camera?”
“Yeah.”

“How much do they pay the person
to watch you throw ice cream away?”
“I don't know.” She looked at me.
“Do you want this?”

“I guess not.”

And she scraped it in the trash.

OBAMA IS HANDED THE MALTESE FALCON IN A CONTINUING SERIES OF AWARDS

The coveted Maltese Falcon has been awarded to President Obama, in anticipation of some unfortunate policies he inherited from either Bush or Cheney; whose dirty business he plans to continue. Such would be Our Falcon of Perpetual War and Secrecy: the surveillance state, indefinite detention, unnatural rendition, banker's ejaculations, and the cover-up of the CIA/Pentagon torture affairs, to name but a few.

In order therefore to balance the positive encouragement which Norway has lately invested in him, with the Nobel Peace Prize; he has been awarded The Bird, as a countermeasure that signifies the public's unrealized hopes out of his own grandiose inertia. If Obama can accept the Nobel for the better choices he could make in the future, as president; then he is equally obliged to graciously accept a dousing with cold water.

He must clutch the Maltese Falcon; for what other choice has he allowed himself?

The president encourages the same activists who helped elect him, to make him do real things (as opposed to simply humping the bully pulpit). I say that before the President is swayed by advisers who tell him that the lefty folks and assorted progressive bloggers are "unreliable", that we should prove those sourpusses wrong, by jumping on the President's Awards Train. Like good sports, we should get up a Lifetime Achievement award for him, and sign endorsements in the spirit that moved the good people of Norway, for the day when the US Air Force will quit rubbing out Afghan kids. Perhaps the Academy of Arts and Sciences can present Obama a preemptive Oscar, trusting that his lifetime of achievement is inevitable, in the category of "Best Performance by a Leading Man".

And from the graveyard of empires comes a new trophy for the president's desk: the Gilded Poppy, soon to be announced by the Karzai Brothers of Afghanistan.

The rhetoric of hope, and revival of inspiration that Obama has perfected, with its resonance in the future, must require a real proliferation of awards. The President will have to give himself the Medal of Freedom to top it all off.

The journalist, Naomi Klein, has said this about the Peace Prize, "I think the moment of just rewarding Obama for awakening hope and optimism has clearly passed."

Klein goes into the depressing developments following the UN-sponsored investigation of Israel's recent military crackdown in Gaza. The overwhelming force that invaded the ghetto included bombardment with white phosphorous and the casual shooting of civilians, a few of whom were held at gunpoint before being shot. The South African jurist, Richard Goldstone, completed an exhaustive investigation which was widely acknowledged as fair, as being unbiased.

But what we see, as in the context of the climate negotiations, is the US is reengaging, but in an extremely destructive way, using their status, their seat at the table, to undermine international law. That’s happening in the context of the climate negotiations, and now it’s happened in the context of the Goldstone report, where, rather than strengthening international law, the US pressure on Abbas and also their own words and actions undermine a crucial report, which should have been a breakthrough.

And the Obama administration wasted absolutely no time in selling out Judge Richard Goldstone with no basis of fact whatsoever. The report was extremely balanced. The Obama administration could have stepped back and allowed it to work its way through the UN system, really kind of hid behind the UN on this one. Here you have a judge with an extraordinary international reputation for his belief in international law and his commitment to the reality of the—of “never again,” whether in the context of Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia. And this is somebody who’s really, really been committed to that idea. And the US has allowed his reputation to be destroyed, and contributed to it in many ways. So this is a moment where Palestinians more and more are saying, “OK, you raised our hopes, and now you’re dashing them.”

Obama disappoints some in the gay community because of his delay in repealing the "Don' Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which has allowed gays to serve in the military, but still holds them behind a wall of silence, confined by stigma and ostracism.

And NOW's Illinois Chapter can recall that Barack Obama used his strong oratory to condemn George W. Bush for leaving the 4th Amendment in tatters, with a call to restore Americans' rights of privacy and freedom from being spied on.

Barack Obama in 2003:

Yes, I would vote to repeal the U.S. Patriot Act, although I would consider replacing that shoddy and dangerous law with a new, carefully crafted proposal that addressed in a much more limited fashion the legitimate needs of law enforcement in combating terrorism (for example, permitting a warrant for the interception of cell phone calls, and not just land-based phones to accommodate changes in technology).

Fast-forward through the 2008 election campaign, when Obama shocked progressives and liberals by letting the telecoms off the hook, for aiding and abetting the Bush surveillance crimes. Let's see what happened earlier this month, when the Senate dealt with the odious provisions of the Patriot Act. No, they could have let the "sunset provisions" take effect in December, as scheduled. But they didn't.

Instead, the [Senate Judiciary] Committee just passed a bill to renew all of the PATRIOT powers that were set to expire at the end of the year, with only a handful of the original reforms that were first proposed by Senators Feingold and Durbin's JUSTICE Act and Committee Chairman Leahy's original PATRIOT renewal bill.

Instead of adding more protections to the bill, as EFF and the Times have been urging (along with many other Americans who have been organizing Facebook and Twitter activism around PATRIOT reform), the Committee this morning voted to accept seven Republican amendments to the USA PATRIOT Act Sunset Extension Act to remove the few civil liberties protections left in the bill after it was already watered down at last Thursday's Committee meeting. Surprisingly and disappointingly, most of those amendments were recommended to their Republican sponsors by the Obama Administration.
(EFF)

What kind of FBI do we have? What kind of country is this, where librarians can still be gagged, after receiving a National Security Letter, that compels them to remain silent, after turning over the reading lists of people who use the library? Perhaps The Sir Talks-A-Lot Prize will be awarded to our new president for repeatedly reminding us that there need not be a conflict between liberty and security.

Barack Obama was elected because he inspired trust and talked about justice; and he seemed organized for diplomacy rather than force when he was running for president. His manner was disarming; he had principles that were well received. And people were insisting on change and were anxious to oust the republicans.

But lately, folks who support Obama want his leadership to improve; they want him to do better at moving and articulating his policies. Where, for example, is his political argument being used to influence his own party? Obama's standoffish style of leadership and his courtesy to republicans who are obstructing everything just looks like weakness, and it hasn't resembled a cool strategy, or a strategy of any kind.

It's the stuff that dreams are made of.

LET'S MAKE HAPPY (& HAVE HEALTH CARE, TOO!)

Okay, I'm going out on a limb, here. My good liberal friends tell me you can't reason with people who treat facts like the plague, who rank our President alongside the anti-Christ. But. . .gosh darn it, somehow, I just feel a grudging respect for those brave souls who have planted their sabers for a principle: to stand as one against government-funded health care.

Yes, you heard me correctly. I believe the raging minions have a right to be heard. They're Americans, too, God bless 'em. Including the ones with guns strapped to their legs. Why, they don't mean any harm. They're just marching to a different drummer, that's all.

So, this goes out to you, all you townhall protesters—you ”teabaggers,” “Birthers,” and “Glenn Beckers,” whoever you are. Wherever you came from. Listen, I'm not half the man you are. If I were lying in bed in pain and somebody offered me free cancer treatments or an open-heart surgery, why I'd chuck my pride and take the charity so fast it'd make your head fly. That's how lily-livered I am!

But not you, not the Birthers and Beckers. You've taken a stand, by golly, even if it's to your own detriment. Don't we usually equate that with heroism? Most of you are just an illness away from utter ruin. Half the foreclosures are the result of sky-rocketing medical bills. Yet, you Patriots (even some who are on Medicare!) are willing to stand up and say, “No! I will not take one thin dime of your filthy government money! Not even to save my own children if they should fall ill!” Now, that, my friends, is bravery!

Show me one banker, one measly CEO, who would have done that during the bailout!

So, in the interest of fair play, in the spirit of Obama, who seems to want nothing more than for everyone to just make nice and try to get along (he did win the Nobel Prize, after all), I offer this modest compromise. Please, hear me out:

First. I agree with my friends on the right: no one should be forced to carry health insurance. I call this the “Survival of the Fittest” Option. If you get sick and die, well, that's the breaks. Like Grampa used to say: “Some days it's chicken, and some days it's feathers.”

Second. The Public Option should be available. After all, a clear majority supports it, don't they? Around 72%. Assuming we're still a democracy, assuming Congress and the President haven't been bought off by the insurance corporations, the majority should win, right? At least that's what I was taught in fifth grade Civics class. Well, we'll see.

Third. Now, get this: Those fine Americans who still believe in free and unfettered private enterprise will be allowed to sign a waiver, stating their intention to refuse all government assistance. That's right—with a stroke of the pen, you can kick those stinking government boys out of your lives forever!

And it will be business as usual for the health insurance companies! Their doors will remain open! You teabaggers, Beckers, and others, will be allowed to purchase all the insurance you can afford.

Now, let's be clear on this. Let's be fair. Signing this waiver would be a one-time option. You can't come back later and change your mind. Make no mistake—the Devil will tempt you. When you see all those crazed liberals getting free checkups and free colonoscopies, you may be tempted to back-slide on some of your hard-won principles. Don't succumb! Think how unfair that would be to the insurance companies for whom you fought the good fight—not just the CEO's struggling to maintain a minimum level of prosperity in these hard times, but--dear God!--think of your hard-working agent, the one who looked out for you through thick and thin, through all the price increases and rising deductibles; the times you may have been justly denied coverage; the good—dare I say it?--family friend, who sent you all those birthday and Christmas cards through the years. You owe him something.

(And, of course, by signing the waiver, you also agree that you will no longer require the services of public schools or libraries, you'll haul your own trash to the dump, and should any emergency calls issue from your home, they will not be answered by police or fire departments.)

There, you see? Everyone wins! I believe this plan is workable and fair to all parties concerned. A few may sicken and die, but at least, it will be their choice!

POLICE HIT STUDENTS WITH BATONS AND TEAR GAS ON PITTSBURGH CAMPUS

Yesterday numerous cops in heavy riot gear entered the University of Pittsburgh campus, after dark. RAW STORY, among others, has offered early reports on the heavy-handed dispersal of a peaceful protest at the university. What is clear from a host of video coverage is that the five-hundred students who were voicing their opposition, as well as passers-by and spectators, were dispersed by police in riot gear. Some were arrested, some tear gassed; and a few policemen pursued students into the foyers of their dorms.

The outdoor assembly was called to express solidarity with G-20 protesters in the city who were suffering rough treatment at the hands of police. Students reacted with disbelief to the police invasion, but did not panic, even while in a state of shock and dismay.

Accusations of anarchism were sometimes sent flying here and yonder, through the city of Pittsburgh and in mainstream media; but it is a stretch to call the G-20 protests themselves an example of anarchy. The massive looting of the US Treasury by engineered chaos of credit default swaps, overseen by the Federal Reserve, facilitated by lawmakers who abolished financial regulations, is most like anarchy; and the demonstrators who have had to wear protective clothing and helmets to lessen their chance of being seriously hurt by police, are not so much the anarchists. Besides, it is an ugly example of American journalism when pundits take the low road and describe these demonstrations in Pittsburgh as riots.

The police did proceed methodically on campus. Officers weren't out of control, for the most part; but to the astonishment of the students, the rough treatment, which resulted in bloodied heads and arrests, was completely uncalled for. The Pittsburgh Chief of Police issued a declaration that called the gathering an "unlawful assembly". Since when are peaceful demonstrations monitored by campus security overruled by city authorities?

But the atmosphere has changed during the past few years, over the rules regarding citizen rights to have peaceful demonstrations. So-called non-lethal riot projectiles, beanbags and rubber bullets are being used by cops; and hits to soft tissue, or the neck and head, sometimes result in death. It was recently revealed that the FBI wants to quadruple its electronic surveillance capacities; moreover, federalized police and a multitude of new police entities are infiltrating the most innocuous peace groups and fielding provocateurs to incite or even commit violent acts at demonstrations.

A fundamental danger to our liberties is growing in the enhanced police powers we are seeing; and these are especially visible in the increasingly harsh policing which arises more frequently, at a lower threshold of provocation. A more brutal array of crowd control weapons is also being readied to deal with unrest. The ear-splitting sonic weapon is already in use against crowds at the G-20 protests in Pittsburgh; meanwhile, some version of this device is being used by the Micheletti Junta in the Honduran capitol, targeting the Brazilian Embassy, where the ousted President Zelaya is staying under diplomatic protection, as the Golpistas with their armed goons are savaging the president's supporters on the other side of the gates.

It should be noted that right-wing "teabaggers" and the nitwits who travel (some with sidearms) to US Town Hall meetings on the insurance companies' dime--and others among them, who muscle their way into overcrowded venues and beat on the windows--miraculously don't get tear gassed or have police batons batter their skulls. You'll never see one of those ultra-conservatives taking a rubber bullet in the neck for the cause.

One of the Pittsburgh students is overheard asking a policeman about the rough stuff and the cop invasion of campus. Amid other public objections to the G-20's economic cabal, the bankers' bonanza, and the globalization agenda with its worst foot forward in Pittsburgh, students wanted to voice their objections, on their own campus, and let it be known that they didn't like the way police have been abusing demonstrators in the city. Well, on Friday night they had one hell of an object lesson, to the effect that if you protest against some things (and not others) the police in their heavy riot uniforms will give naysayers something to think about. A student is heard to ask why. He asks why and why again. But no answer was offered Friday night.

Οι Δικοι Μου Χενοι

The beautiful Haris Alexiou

WILDFIRES BURN THEIR WAY TOWARD THE CITY

Photograph: Milos Bicanski/Getty Images

The scene is of wildfires burning at night, of smoke and flames on the outskirts of Athens, making a ring in the distance around the Acropolis. In an account by Guardian reporter, Helena Smith, there's a sense of the scale of destruction:

Environmentalists said that the blazes had caused "biblical damage" to an estimated 120,000 hectares of virgin fir and prime forest.

This is enough to awaken prophetic vision, or at least it should call to mind something of the Ancient Greeks' interpretation of "the cycle of history", at the very least. Climate change is making this part of the Mediterranean world drier; and there are periodical reports and suspicions that developers set some fires during this dry season, in the countryside and along the coasts, to make tracts of land available for more hotels and resorts.

The piecemeal burning of civilization is what we notice more and more on this side of the ocean: the undermining of civilized conduct, the ubiquitous propaganda that spreads paranoia and delusion, and the busy corporate takeover of government, and the normalizing of endless war. And each of these is like a shower of sparks and embers, its own hand of arson, of social damage and upheaval, which has set wildfires that spread across the land. We are engulfed gradually as the smaller and larger fires converge.

The fires are at the gates of the city. Governments that do the bidding of corporations have the arsonist's hand, helping along the inferno. Like those who sold junk mortgages on Wall Street, they are piling wealth into the hands of the few; and if disaster capitalism is not separated from the organs of government, and cannot be closely regulated, it will surely push this world backwards into slavery, where children are once more in the workhouse, forced to stand on treadles all day.

Bush and Cheney's torture chamber is finally being opened for public inspection. They took the United States to the late stage of empire, represented by sadism and circumvention of law, and corruption of office holders. The mistreatment of people held in custody is one measure by which a country is condemned as uncivilized.

CIA and military interrogators threatened prisoners with imminent death, and made horrors of drowning on waterboards; stripping men and boys and leaving them in freezing cold, beating them and threatening their mothers and children with harm. However, the new president is not sure we should dwell on the past.

There must be a line between advertising and indoctrination that has blurred. Corporations are now backing charter schools in the US, where they can control the curriculum. The civic institution of public school will be all that the poor have left; and rundown schools and rundown neighborhoods will go together. The corporate charter school idea uses gentrification by real estate development to push out the unsightly poor.

And it will be an uncivilized state of affairs; if fires such as these make their way to the city. It is also sad to say; but the very last thing this government will give up is its expeditionary army, and its fortified bases overseas, and its military adventures. And these things are unsustainable. They cannot or will not see that the tether will break; for those who rule us cannot imagine what peace is. Their civilization might outlast them; but they insist on their delusion of power, and govern according to that.

Members of the US Congress who have sold out to insurance companies have flung the most incredible fantasies into the public debate over health care. A bland paragraph in the bill that concerns having a doctor reimbursed for an elective discussion with families, about living wills and end-of-life decisions, is distorted into some template for euthanasia. It's hard to relate to this level of dishonesty.

In Canada, people cannot be denied medical help because they have "pre-existing conditions" and they use their health card in any part of the country without worrying about paying out of their own pocket. In Canada, the government can cover every individual, without exception, on 7 percent of GNP. In the USA, the HMO system eats up 9 percent GNP; and fifty million people are still uninsured. The delusion is rampant that the status quo system is not in the business of rationing care and denying certain medical procedures to those who have the insurance.

There is a difference between living in error and living in delusion. A person living in error can get new information, grab an olive branch if one is handy, and beat out a fire before it spreads; but a person in delusion is putting a match to a wildfire.

Homer is clear about the delicacy of Ate, goddess of delusion, when he says,

"her feet are delicate; for she steps not

on the ground, but walks upon the heads of men."

--The Symposium, Dialogues of Plato, (trans., R.E. Allen)