State of the Union

2012-02-02T23:37:00.001-05:00

2012-02-02T18:59:00.003-05:00

Mark G travels from city to city to sell these. After Philly, he'll hit New Orleans, Las Vegas and Oakland. Yesterday, he sold six of the cutouts at $20 per. He told me Philly cops don't bother street vendors, unlike those in NYC and other places. Mark actually does have Philly business and vending licenses, which cost him $500 altogether [!], but he doesn't have a license for selling in Center City. Mark used to work as a teacher and a graphic designer, but he prefers being his own boss. Plus, he gets to travel.

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2012-02-01T20:15:00.000-05:00

2012-02-01T19:53:00.001-05:00

Cheering On Dumb, Stupid Animals

2012-02-01T14:44:00.004-05:00

As published at OpEd News and Dissident Voice, 2/1/12:

Outrageously yet routinely, America is preparing for yet another war. Though warned by Iran not to bring an aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf, the US now has an unprecedented three. (Gee, I wonder why they call it the Persian Gulf, but don’t be surprised if, say, 200% of our high school seniors don’t even realize that Persia is Iran.) Forget the nuclear weapon babble, America is harassing Iran because it ranks in the top five in both oil and natural gas preserves. Further, it has the chutzpah to wrest itself away from the dollar hegemony by selling oil to Russia and China for rubles and yuans. For five years, Iran also tried to operate an oil bourse where customers were asked to pay in currencies other than the greenback. This, America clearly saw as a grave threat and provocation, for if the petro dollar expires, this empire will sink with it. For showing similar insolence, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were barbarically and publically killed, with their final moments broadcast to the world as a warning. See, when there’s a body to be shown, America does not hesitate to display her trophy.

On land, America has surrounded Iran by having troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. At sea, she has dozens of ships, with a permanent naval base in Bahrain. Assassinations linked to Israel and America have happened inside Iran, and American drones have flown over the country, with one shot down. On the economic front, America is leading an oil sanction. So with all this intimidation and threat of violence, this is what our Peace Laureate President has to say, in his recent State of the Union, “We will stand against violence and intimidation.” Here, Obama was referring to Syria, who is yet another victim of our intimidation if not, soon enough, violence.

Without a doubt, America is the world leader in violence and intimidation, and the US, UK and Israel alliance is the true axis of evil, for these countries have been behind so much violence and turmoil for several decades now. They instigate, spearhead, package and sell violence as a normal, day to day business. First in war and looting, they are a much graver threat to world peace than Iran, Syria and North Korea ever were, or could be. Most lives worldwide are untouched and cannot be molested by what’s decided in Tehran, Damascus and Pyongyang, but a mere sneeze in DC, London or Tel Aviv can send scores to the emergency room.

When this empire is over, and it cannot end soon enough, I doubt that it will be remembered for its artistic achievements, for Americans themselves are completely indifferent to all of their artists. Even the highly educated among us would have a very hard time naming a single living American painter, sculptor, composer or poet. Practitioners of meditative forms, they cannot compete with the hyper kinetic seduction of pop music, pop dancing and sports. Americans cannot think about the arts because their minds are crammed with hundreds of athletes.

In his State of the Union, Obama started out by thanking the troops. He praised their teamwork and urged us all to emulate them. This teamwork ethos is inculcated most effectively in sports, for both participants and spectators, but also at the workplace. Now, unity and sacrifice are certainly laudable, but only when they serve honorable goals, which are clearly absent if you happen to be in the US military, occupying a Goldman Sachs cubicle or drawing a paycheck from the Carlyle Group, etc. Soldiers speak often of fighting primarily for each other, and this makes perfect sense once you’re already on the battlefield, but if they would only step back and reflect, a near impossibility in the herd culture of the military, where the highest virtue is abject obedience, they might discover that they are just dumb, stupid animals being used, to paraphrase Henry Kissinger. Hell, they might realize that they are even less than dumb, stupid animals, for an animal’s strongest instinct is safety. Beside a contemporary American GI, I can’t imagine any primate that would volunteer to be shot at just so another SUV could be sold, not even a mouse lemur with a brain weighting just two grams.

As America moves its war pieces into place, the folks back home can watch helmeted pseudo-warriors crash into each other with each play. In our culture, repeated collisions are a primary excitement. The players’ immediate aim is to gain yards, which are carefully tabulated, with the climax happening in an end zone, a goal which, unlike other sports, cannot be crossed by the ball alone, but must be accompanied by one’s own body. This hard fought, much resisted entry is called a touchdown, as if one has been airborne and homeless all this time. In the end time, the blessed among us will be allowed into that final, celestial end zone, where we can whoop it up with a real Touchdown Jesus, Vince Lombardi and Joe Pa. The Cowgirls will shake their pompoms and more, and Billy White Shoes Johnson will do his funky chicken dance.

Meanwhile, on this depleted uranium, corexit, cesium, agent orange and corn syrup mess of an earth, we can look forward to this game on Sunday, where military jets will roar overhead and there will be a huge flag the size of the field itself, with soldiers standing at attention. During the broadcast, troops stationed overseas will be shown so we can all thank them in our hearts for allowing us to watch these simulated wars at home, and when an actual war starts, we can watch that too. Between real and fake wars, car commercials. It’s so exciting, all these wars all the time.

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2012-02-01T00:40:00.000-05:00

2012-01-31T14:01:00.010-05:00

After the screwy session with Press TV, I felt rather like crap yesterday, so I stopped into McGlinchey's for a couple of pints. Next thing I knew, I was at Frank's, where I saw my old friend, Lowry. I have written about Lowry in the New York Times. I also saw Ken, whom I had seen maybe once in 15 years. Ken's father had just died, he said. Ken is one of the sweetest, most mellow and dignified people I've ever met.

A guy to my right was eating some general tso's chicken, while a man to my left asked, "Why do women take longer to do everything?" Later he introduced me to his wife, whom he called a genius.

Sheila was behind bar. I've written about Sheila in a poem, published in American Tatts. Sheila is the one-woman force behind a great charity, Sunshine Arts. It's simply amazing, what she's doing.

A middle-aged guy said to the general tso's chicken dude, "It's never one sided. Both sides must take the blame in any divorce." About fifteen minutes later, I overheard him say to a younger woman, "So when are we going to have sex?" Laughing, I turned to General Tso, "Did you hear that? He's going to blame whatever happens next on his wife too."

By this time, I was feeling pretty good, hence the photos above. I had just met them, and they had just met each other, but alcohol is such a lubricant, all was goofily fine.

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'US uses arms for genocide in its wars'

2012-01-31T10:34:00.006-05:00

There was a technical problem at Press TV yesterday. Sitting in a Philadelphia studio, I couldn't hear the audio from Tehran for 2/3 of the show. I couldn't follow the discussion and wasn't sure I was going to be on at all. When suddenly, we were connected, I had to jump in and said something, though I had prepared to say much more:

The use of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition in US-led wars across the globe is 'genocidal' and a 'tremendous crime against humanity,' an analyst tells Press TV.

A new report shows US forces have used massive amounts of DU in Afghanistan -- causing a huge number of congenital deformities and cancers.

Several UN human rights commissions have prohibited the use of depleted uranium on humans, including during military conflicts.

However, the US government has used weaponized depleted uranium on humans, including: 340 tons during the first [Persian] Gulf war in 1991; every missile used during the 1998 Yugoslavian invasion; at least 1,000 tons in Afghanistan in 2001; and 2,400 tons in Iraq in 2003.

Depleted uranium is radioactive and extremely destructive to humans - with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. In other words, it takes 4.5 billion years for one kilogram of depleted uranium to reduce to a half a kilogram- - meaning that the US has contaminated certain countries almost forever.

Press TV has interviewed journalist and writer Linh Dinh from Philadelphia to get his opinion on the issue. What follows is the transcript of the interview.

Press TV: Linh, we know that the US government- if you were following the discussions we were making here- the US government has been saying, of course, that it has been using these kinds of weapons, it's been acknowledging it.

At the same time the question arises why would the United States want to use these kinds of weapons which are not just deadly as I said but as our guest in Chicago is also telling us not even recognizing borders, causing a lot of illnesses, cancers in various and in vast, large areas of land and not just depleted uranium but also phosphorous bombs and agent orange was used. Why would the United States resort to these kinds of weapons?

Dinh: It's interesting that you brought up agent orange because during the Vietnam war a vast amount of agent orange was used and the US also denied it was toxic, the same way it is denying that uranium- depleted uranium is harmful.

So it took until 1984 for American soldiers to finally win a partial lawsuit, a settlement with the Pentagon [actually, the settlement was with he chemical companies, primarily Monsanto and DOW] to get compensation and the amount that was given to them was ridiculously small.

For a Vietnam veteran who was completely disabled, he only received 12,000 dollars over 10 years which is absurd. And a widow of a soldier who already died received only 3,700 dollars.

So we are seeing the same pattern again that is using something which is frankly genocidal, denying that it is harmful and once depleted uranium gets into the environment, into the water, into the soil, into the air it remains there for billions of years and it doesn't just stay in these countries although these populations are the ones who are most affected immediately it would spread all over because once airborne it will spread all over across the globe.

So this is a tremendous crime against humanity for generations to come, for billions of years to come literally. US is doing it. Who knows why? The first reason one can speculate is because of money.

Press TV: If I could just jump in here. Yes, that is the question when we are looking at the consequences of these weapons, when we obviously know that these are against international laws, you say crime against humanity, genocide Mr. Miraki [another speaker on the show] has referred to it or the slow genocide of generations of people.

What has stopped the international organizations, international bodies from stopping the United States?

Dinh: Well, the United Nations is under influence of the United States so it's not really raising a voice and most of the European countries are allies of the United States so it's not raising a voice.

So basically the media is not giving this any kind of coverage at all. It is a crime in itself- the lack of coverage of this issue, the neglect of this issue, which is a critical issue.

VG/GHN

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2012-01-28T20:14:00.001-05:00

2012-01-28T19:51:00.004-05:00

[1/19/12 outside the Capitol Hilton, where there was a conference of American mayors.]

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2012-01-28T18:19:00.000-05:00

2012-01-28T12:56:00.002-05:00

[Across the street from the Martin Luther King Library]

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2012-01-28T10:26:00.000-05:00

2012-01-28T10:07:00.000-05:00

2012-01-28T09:47:00.000-05:00

2012-01-28T01:24:00.000-05:00

2012-01-28T01:03:00.001-05:00

2012-01-28T00:47:00.000-05:00

2012-01-27T20:14:00.000-05:00

[Freedom Plaza on 1/22/12]

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2012-01-27T20:03:00.000-05:00

[McPherson Square]

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2012-01-27T19:38:00.003-05:00

McPherson Square on 1/22/12. Starting at noon on 1/31/12, the National Park Service will ban camping at both Occupy DC sites.

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2012-01-27T19:17:00.002-05:00

9:33AM on 1/22/12 at DuPont Circle. Person with can of soda and two bags of whole wheat rotini.

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2012-01-27T16:44:00.003-05:00

4:53PM on 1/19/12, at 17th and L, four blocks from the White House. 29°F. He was walking back and forth and raving in Spanish.

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2012-01-27T12:35:00.000-05:00

2012-01-27T12:10:00.001-05:00

2012-01-27T12:00:00.002-05:00

2012-01-27T10:53:00.002-05:00

[McPherson Square]

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2012-01-27T10:34:00.000-05:00

2012-01-27T10:19:00.000-05:00

2012-01-27T10:05:00.001-05:00

2012-01-27T09:23:00.002-05:00

2012-01-27T08:41:00.001-05:00

2012-01-27T00:17:00.004-05:00

1/19/12. Occupiers outside the Capitol Hilton Hotel, where there was a conference of American mayors. Later, there would be an incident between protesters and Oakland mayor, Jean Quan.

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2012-01-26T23:55:00.000-05:00

2012-01-26T23:04:00.001-05:00

[Donald Arthur Kronos]

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2012-01-26T22:25:00.001-05:00

2012-01-26T22:03:00.000-05:00

2012-01-26T20:40:00.000-05:00

2012-01-26T15:39:00.000-05:00

2012-01-26T15:19:00.000-05:00

2012-01-26T14:40:00.003-05:00

[1/19/12 on K Street, right outside the Catholic Information Center, 3 1/2 blocks from the White House and half a block from McPherson Square, a site of Occupy DC.]

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2012-01-26T14:11:00.001-05:00

2012-01-26T13:24:00.001-05:00

[11:21PM on 1/22/12 at Union Station]

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2012-01-26T12:31:00.004-05:00

Propaganda from Monsanto, the company that have brought you Agent Orange, PCBs, Dioxin, cancer-inducing BST milk and genetically modified seeds.

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2012-01-26T12:06:00.001-05:00

2012-01-26T10:30:00.001-05:00

2012-01-26T10:13:00.000-05:00

2012-01-26T09:46:00.002-05:00

[ad inside Metro station]

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2012-01-26T09:25:00.003-05:00

6:08PM on 1/19/12, 28°F, 1 1/2 block from the Martin Luther King Library and two from the basketball arena. Under the blue tarp, an old black man.

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2012-01-26T09:04:00.001-05:00

[8:57PM, 1/19/12, Pennsylvania Avenue across from West Wing of National Gallery and within sight of the US Capitol. 28°F.]

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2012-01-25T15:28:00.003-05:00

[9:19PM, 1/19/12, Pennsylvania Avenue across from East Wing of National Gallery and within sight of the US Capitol. 28°F.]

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2012-01-25T14:55:00.004-05:00

[9:03PM, 1/19/12, Pennsylvania Avenue outside the Newseum and within sight of the US Capitol. 28°F.]

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2012-01-25T14:37:00.002-05:00

[Constitution Avenue, across the street from the National Museum of American History.]

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2012-01-25T14:10:00.001-05:00

2012-01-25T12:24:00.000-05:00

2012-01-25T10:55:00.005-05:00

Conception Picciotto inside her small tent at 5:50PM on 1/22/12. 30°F. Also, Conception from 2011, 2010 and 2009.

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2012-01-24T22:52:00.001-05:00

2012-01-24T17:49:00.000-05:00

2012-01-24T17:39:00.001-05:00

2012-01-24T16:48:00.001-05:00

2012-01-24T16:33:00.001-05:00

2012-01-24T16:18:00.000-05:00

2012-01-24T16:01:00.000-05:00

2012-01-24T13:55:00.005-05:00

Shaun had these cards out, but without prices, so I suggested that he put out a price card, "Otherwise, people will think you're hustling them!" I also reminded him to state that they were handmade. I disappeared for a couple hours and when I came back to Market Square, he seemed all happy. "Did you sell anything?" I asked.

"Yeah, brother, and I have to thank you for helping me out!"

"What? I didn't do anything."

"Yes, you did," and he shook my hand and took off.

The next day, I found out that a bar waitress had bought a card from him, and instead of giving him $6, as requested, she gave him a twenty.

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2012-01-24T13:29:00.001-05:00

[Obituary]

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2012-01-24T13:17:00.001-05:00

2012-01-24T13:01:00.000-05:00

2012-01-24T11:25:00.001-05:00

2012-01-24T11:10:00.000-05:00

2012-01-24T10:51:00.004-05:00

The Carpenters Union is protesting against Jim McIntyre, Superintendent of the Knox County Schools, but the man in photo is not a carpenter. He's hired by the union to man this protest, and it's a job he's glad to have, he said. Until March of last year, he worked as a plant manager. Such a position pays over $90,000 a year, on average.

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2012-01-24T10:30:00.000-05:00

2012-01-24T10:01:00.000-05:00

2012-01-24T09:46:00.000-05:00

2012-01-23T23:00:00.001-05:00

2012-01-23T22:23:00.000-05:00

2012-01-23T22:04:00.000-05:00

2012-01-23T21:50:00.002-05:00

[Preservation Pub]

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2012-01-23T21:30:00.001-05:00

2012-01-23T20:59:00.001-05:00

2012-01-23T14:54:00.005-05:00

Waitress at Preservation Pub. A native of New Orleans, she's in Knoxville to go to school. The night before, she got so trashed she bought everyone drinks, then a handmade Valentine's card from a homeless man, sitting at a table just outside this bar. He asked for $6, she gave him 20.

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2012-01-23T14:43:00.000-05:00

[David and Charlie]

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2012-01-23T14:25:00.001-05:00

David was all blustery and acting tough but I could tell that he was really mellow at heart, a big pussy, really, and I mean that in the best way.

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I was interviewed by James Feltzer

2012-01-18T18:16:00.004-05:00

on December 28, 2011. The MP3 is now available. I'm not big on talking over the phone, and the interviewed was conducted via Skype, which is phone-like enough, so I drank two big cans of Forster just to loosen my tongue a bit. I hope I didn't ramble too much.

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2012-01-18T18:12:00.001-05:00

This blog will be dormant until next Monday evening, as I'll be in DC and Knoxville.

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2012-01-18T17:53:00.000-05:00

2012-01-18T17:25:00.001-05:00

2012-01-18T16:51:00.000-05:00

2012-01-18T16:34:00.000-05:00

2012-01-18T15:41:00.003-05:00

For 30 years, Jim worked as a manager at a warehouse owned by the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, the very first in the US, founded in 1790. After Nasdaq acquired it in 2008, they laid off 200 of its 400 employees, including Jim. Now he sings Creedence Clearwater and Beatles songs for tips at a commuter train station. Since he doesn't remember all the lyrics, he has to look at sheets of paper as he sings. After a song today, he announced, "This is good for pocket money, folks, but it doesn't pay the bills! If anyone has a real job to offer, please let me know!"

The man in red, John, works at a shoeshine stand. He stopped by to sing along, then dropped a buck into Jim's guitar case.

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2012-01-18T15:25:00.000-05:00

Collateral Savages

2012-01-16T17:39:00.009-05:00

As published on OpEd News, Dissident Voice, CounterPunch and Intrepid Report, 1/17/12:

It is a recurring theme: civilization committing barbaric acts to feed its refined gluttony. As we found out about American Marines urinating on dead Afghans, there was also a story about Brazilian loggers tying an eight-year-old girl to a tree and burning her to death. She belonged to the Awá, an Amazon tribe of around 300 members, with only 60 still clinging to their hunter-gatherer way of life. To maintain our so-called civilized standards of living, collateral damages are inevitable, and “savages” must be sacrificed.

If they get in the way of civilization’s quest for petroleum, lumber, tin, zinc, copper, whatever, they must be killed wholesale, or one by one, as was accomplished by Chris Kyle, currently touring bookstores to promote his American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History. Kyle killed 255 “savages,” his term, and can stand before God with a clear conscience, he told Bill O’Reily, because he was saving American lives. FOX being FOX, the question of why Kyle was in Iraq in the first place was not probed.

With his tunnel vision specialty, teamwork ethics and preoccupation with numbers, Kyle is the quintessential tool in civilization’s machinery. Tasked with long-distance, targeted killing, he performed outstandingly, and is proud of his feats, all carefully quantified. His 160 Pentagon-confirmed kills wipe out the previous American record of 109, held by Delbert F. Waldron, not to mention the relatively puny 93 of Carlos Hathcock. Kyle’s longest shot was 2,100 yards. Though impressively long, yes, very long, it’s dwarfed by the 2,700 yards recorded by one Horse Craig Harrison, a Brit.

Empire is civilization’s greatest efflorescence and final aim. With empire comes the tallest, biggest and longest of everything. Citizens of empire, down to the lowest cog, bathe themselves daily with numbers as a kind of self-congratulation. Counting themselves hoarse to prove that they are in fact content, they measure their achievement and happiness with Dow and Nasdaq indexes, inches on flat-screen TVs, cars sold, runs and touchdowns scored by sport heroes, and savages killed by even more heroes. A large number denoting anything, even debt, cheers up denizens of an empire since it is proof of their gigantism. Empires compete to see who can piss the longest and furthest, over the most continents.

What a contrast this is to a primitive nomad, who sees properties as a burden, and thus does not care to count hardly anything. The most extreme example of this is another Amazon tribe, the Pirahã, whose language includes no cardinal numbers at all. They simply can’t count, and have no interest in doing so. American scholar Daniel Everett spent an hour each night for eight months trying to teach them numbers in Portuguese, with zero success, “It was just a fun time to eat popcorn and watch me write things on the board.”

Though living on a finite planet, the subjects of empire are indoctrinated into the religion of infinite growth, with anything short of that seen as a major disaster. With their gross appetites, they cannot conceive of a no-growth existence, though that was the economy of man for thousands of years. During the age of fossil fuels, now winding down, this infinite growth formula can appear sane and sustainable, but as oil and gas go scarce, its murderous and suicidal nature will become ever starker, like an innocent girl being burnt at the stake.

Most of the planet must slave and starve, so the anointed few can consume, yet even these lucky buyers must themselves slave, commute long hours and pop uppers or downers nonstop to afford that Ipod, Ipad and Xbox. Speaking of which, here’s a still relevant insight from Ben Franklin:

“Having few artificial wants, they have abundance of leisure for improvement by conversation. Our laborious manner of life, compared with theirs, they esteem slavish and base; and the learning, on which we value ourselves, they regard as frivolous and useless.”—from his Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America

With social networking, who needs face-to-face conversations? Slaves to bogus needs and virtual thrills, we have become estranged from the real, with our savage instincts, suppressed, flaring up as conceits or pathologies. Often they explode overseas, as the T-shirt says: TRAVEL TO EXOTIC LANDS, MEET INTERESTING PEOPLE THEN KILL THEM.

In an advanced civilization, a nomadic existence, with its hunting pack, can only be approximated in a war, but instead of hunting animals for subsistence, our boys are gunning down people who are merely trying to prevent us from exploiting and humiliating them. With such a dubious reason to kill or be killed, it’s not surprising that many of these soldiers come back home only to kill themselves.

As I write this, the US is encircling, harassing and sabotaging Iran, yet few Americans seem alarmed that for the sake of oil, again, and increasingly elusive economic growth, their leaders may kill millions and wreck this earth even further, but as their empire convulses and collapses, most Americans will find themselves reduced to the level of those they’ve been annihilating. They will discover that they, too, are just collateral savages.

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2012-01-12T00:35:00.000-05:00

2012-01-12T00:00:00.006-05:00

Half an hour before this photo, I followed a black, middle-aged man into The Dollar Store because he was talking to himself, "You eat garbage, listen to garbage and read nothing, no wonder why you're garbage! Don't tell me you're loaded. I know pimps who are loaded! Prostitutes who are loaded. Loaded ain't nothing! Your mind isn't worth two cents. My dad got a PhD when he was 26, and my mom, she got a Master's. In fact, she got two! One in science, and one in philosophy. A son has got to be equal to or better than the father, that's how you move forward, but you don't even know your sons. In fact, you don't even know your father! My father, he played with Cab Calloway. He even met that, uh, that banana lady. What's her name? I can't think of her name at the moment, the banana lady. Oh, yes, Josephine Baker! My father met Josephine Baker when she was 78-years-old. He said she had a body of a 23-year-old. Imagine that! Yes, give me a good woman any day, because I know how to be a man. A real man."

Josephine Baker died at 68, by the way.

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2012-01-11T21:02:00.001-05:00

2012-01-11T20:08:00.002-05:00

[Dirty Frank's]

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2012-01-10T15:14:00.001-05:00

[2,3,4,5]

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2012-01-10T13:16:00.003-05:00

Monday, 1/9/12--"Two for a dollar, two for a dollar. Who's next? How are you today? Very good to see you. Two for a dollar, two for a dollar. Who's next? Welcome back, it's happy Monday. It's time to go to work! It's a beautiful day today, but don't get used to it. It's going to get colder tomorrow! Two for a dollar, two for a dollar. It's very nice to see you. Welcome back!"

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2012-01-10T12:47:00.000-05:00

2012-01-10T11:47:00.004-05:00

Harvey, 18, is a college freshman studying political science. When he stated he was considering law school, I warned, "Be careful. Do you know that only half of law school graduates could find jobs in their field?" Harvey is reading Naomi Klein for class, and he has discovered Chris Hedges and Common Dreams on his own. I told him about Howard Zinn. At 18-years-old, I was much more politically naive than Harvey is, for sure. Harvey is from Robbinsville, a wealthy suburb of Trenton. Many people there work in pharmaceuticals.

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2012-01-10T11:17:00.003-05:00

Lamont. In left background is Vito, a second generation Italian-American. He was unemployed for two years before he found work at Papa John's, but it is only part time. He now works 3 to 4 hours a night, 3 nights a week.

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