Marine says he killed civilians

Jimmy Massey, a 12-year veteran of the Marines, told Amy Goodman that he and his fellow soldiers regularly slaughtered civilians in Iraq for little or no good reason. When he went public, the military sent him home for treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, a move he thinks was intended to discredit him by making him out to be a headcase.

“He was tired of watching his boys “light up” cars full of innocent civilians with their 50 cal’s and M-16’s. He couldn’t forget how his paranoid, sleep-deprived soldiers opened fire on a group of unarmed protestors while he walked the lines making sure they had enough food and water. More than enough Iraqi babies had died in his arms after suffering wounds from American machine gun fire.”

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How the Greens choose Kerry over Nader

Walt Sheasby, long time Green, details precisely what happened, and who did it.

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America, A History in Verse. Vol 3. 1962-1970

Ed Sanders, shaper of the exploding hippie culture of the 60’s, co-founder of the legendary Fugs and the Peace Eye Bookstore on the Lower East Side in the early 60’s, author of The Family (one of the best books about the Manson Family), has released another book of poetry, America, A History in Verse. Vol 3. 1962-1970, which just got a quite favorable two-page review in the LA Times (subscriber only) Sunday Book Review.

The Fugs had a huge impact on me. They were outrageous, profane, funny, spiritual, horny, and completely broke the mold as to what music groups could do. They influenced a lot of people.

From the review, this particularly grabbed me:

Yet he <Sanders> is not afraid to examine his own errors. In an entry on the 1967 Summer of Love, and the counterculture he helped spawn, he writes

It made great copy for mass culture sources such as
The 6 o’clock news or Life magazine

but nothing is easy
& the long-time all-level fierceness
required to forge such social change
was not quite there in the Zone of Fun.

That could be said other social and political movements too. Effecting real and lasting change requires white hot commitment lasting years, if not decades. Still, Hippie spawned huge changes in the culture like the environmental movement, feminism, mistrust of the government (yes kids, in the 60’s if you said the government was lying to us, people thought you must be a drug-addled commie prevert, now everyone assumes the government is lying.) And the culture war that began then is still raging. Rightwing zealots reside in the White  House while a subversive movie about their corruption and deceit gets international attention - sounds like a culture war to me.

Sanders is right though, for real, serious change, we need that "fire in the belly".

PS In 2003, the Fugs released The Fugs Final CD, Vol. 1, which was maybe their best yet; howlingly funny, dead-on political barbs, mixed with mystic yearnings and William Blake poetry. Not to mention the participation of 80 year old co-founder Tuli Kupferberg, who is just as horny, political, and funny as ever. God bless ‘em all!

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Rumsfeld gave go-ahead for Abu Ghraib tactics, says general in charge

The former head of the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad has for the first time accused the American Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, of directly authorising Guantanamo Bay-style interrogation tactics.

Brig-Gen Janis Karpinski, who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade, which is at the centre of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal, said that documents yet to be released by the Pentagon would show that Mr Rumsfeld personally approved the introduction of harsher conditions of detention in Iraq.

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Now for something completely different!

Baptists angry at Bush campaign tactics

The Southern Baptist Convention, a conservative denomination closely aligned with President Bush, said it was offended by the Bush-Cheney campaign’s effort to use church rosters for campaign purposes

“I’m appalled that the Bush-Cheney campaign would intrude on a local congregation in this way,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

Evangelical environmentalists

Declaring that caring for the environment is part of following Jesus, a group of 30 evangelical leaders has agreed to work for faith-based environmental activism among the nation’s most conservative Christians.

The decision to move ahead, made at the end of a two-day conference in Maryland, could begin to reshape environmental politics in the years ahead, those present said.

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