In Memory: Victims of the "Tulsa Race Riot"

Today is Thursday, 31 May 2007.

On this date in 1921, elements of the white community of Tulsa, Oklahoma began a pogrom against the African-American community in North Tulsa, during which the whites destroyed 35 square blocks of the Black ghetto, forced many thousands to flee from their homes, and murdered more than 300 African-Americans in cold blood.

The Wikipedia entry on “Tulsa Race Riot” is good.

Today, the ghetto is still largely neglected, with poverty and murders endemic. The white power establishment is wasting millions on a Downtown entertainment arena, already predictably over budget, and some rich scam artists want to use public money to build pleasure islands in the middle of the Arkansas River.

In Memory: Pasternak

Today is Wednesday, 30 May 2007.

On this day in 1960, died the greatest of Russian poets and novelists, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, author of many poems and Dr. Zhivago, aged 70.

Winter Night

by Boris Pasternak

It snowed and snowed ,the whole world over,
Snow swept the world from end to end.

A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.

As during summer midges swarm
To beat their wings against a flame
Out in the yard the snowflakes swarmed
To beat against the window pane

The blizzard sculptured on the glass
Designs of arrows and of whorls.

A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.

Distorted shadows fell
Upon the lighted ceiling:
Shadows of crossed arms,of crossed legs-
Of crossed destiny.

Two tiny shoes fell to the floor
And thudded.
A candle on a nightstand shed wax tears
Upon a dress.

All things vanished within
The snowy murk-white,hoary.

A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.

A corner draft fluttered the flame
And the white fever of temptation
Upswept its angel wings that cast
A cruciform shadow

It snowed hard throughout the month
Of February, and almost constantly

A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.
___________________

Here is rare video of Pasternak:

As an American dissident since the 1960s, I cannot begin to express how much the solidarity I felt with the Soviet dissidents, such as Pasternak, Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky (d. 1997), etc. meant to me.

Nixon at Paar

Today is Tuesday, 29 May 2007.

Jack Kennedy born on this day in 1917.

And I just ran across this: Nixon playing the piano on The Jack Paar Show in 1961:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCsGSMze_6Q.

I invite your comments.

Decoration Day

Today is Monday, 28 May 2007.

Today is Decoration Day, and I shall speak only of one aspect of the present.

In memory of 500,000+ Iraqi and Afghan civilians assassinated by the Bush-Cheney regime in their attempt to conquer Iraq and Afghanistan and render same American colonies.

In memory of 3,400+ American military members forced into complicity in criminal wars of aggression by the Bush-Cheney regime, and assassinated by same.

With condolences to the loved ones of all the murdered dead.

The "Mere Presence" of Dick Cheney

Today is Sunday, 27 May 2007.

Now comes, as the legal language would have it, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

The case concerns as many as 1,000 citizens of the said United States, wishing yesterday to apply their Bill of Rights rights to assemble upon the grounds of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, owned, by the by, by the American taxpayer, and to provide an alternative view to the militaristic hate speech at the graduation ceremonies by an employee of the American taxpayer, one Richard “Dick” Cheney.

In a ruling as inane, asinine, and vicious as it is patently unconstitutional, the three judges held: “Although the vice president is a political figure, he is also an incumbent official in the United States government. As such, his mere presence on campus to address members of the United States military on their graduation does not convert the West Point campus into a public forum …”

DECISION:

One cannot be “an incumbent official in the United States government” without one’s public acts being inherently political, and also, in any case, subject to the First Amendment: the prohibition against “abridging the freedom of speech”, and “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

This entire nation is a “public forum”.

But their disHonors of the Second Circuit would have us surrender deferment to King “Dick” Cheney: how his tender ears might be wounded by cries of dissent.

Their disHonors should rather heed the cries of the 500,000+ Iraqis, and 3,000+ Americans, assassinated by the Bush-Cheney/Cheney-Bush regime in the criminal war of aggression against Iraq.

The decision of the Second Circuit is therefore reversed, and the relief sought is hereby granted.

Further deponent saith not.

"History is more or less bunk." Henry Ford, this day, 1916

Today is Friday, 25 May 2007.

In 1803, Ralph Waldo Emerson, American philosopher and friend of Thoreau, was born.

In 1878, Bill "Bojangles", the quintessential American tap dancer, was born.

In 1926, hottest jazzist Miles Davis was born.

In 1934, Gustav Holst, composer of The Planets, died.

In 1935, to the discomfort of A. Hitler, African American Jesse Owens set five world records in athletic events, in a single hour. He'd make even more of a monkey of the Fuehrer the following year, at the Olympics.

More Music of Sorrow, and Hope

Today remains Thursday, 24 May 2007.

On Woody Guthrie's guitar, was written, "This machine kills fascists."

On Pete Seeger's guitar, is written, "This machine surrounds hate with love, and forces it to surrender."

Herewith, Jim Croce:

Yes, We're All Going to Die, But It Need Not Be for Wickedness

Today is Thursday, 24 May 2007.

The Connecticut Yankee in the Court of Crawford predicted today in a press conference that there will be heavy fighting and heavy casualties in Iraq this summer, as his 1 year, ten year, Thousand Year Reich plan for conquering Iraq continues to roll, like Behemoth, over the people of Iraq.

[“Heh heh” and a smirk.]

To make the math simple. At least 500,000 Iraqi civilians have been murdered as a result of the Bush regime’s conquest attempt. At least 5,000 Americans have died or will soon die in same.

For every American murdered, 100 Iraqis are murdered.

A fine gloss on the Bush Regime wickedness, a gem from 1970, Pete Seeger singing Country Joe McDonald:

http://www.countryjoe.com/seeger.htm

Once again, I am ashamed to be part of this country.

Remembering Harry Chapin

Today is Wednesday, 23 May 2007.

An error in the The New York Times of this date gives me impetus to mention another great musical artist, Harry Chapin.

In July, on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor, a folk music festival “featuring Odetta, Harry Chapin, Richie Havens and a tribute to the spirit of Woody Guthrie”.

Alas: Harry Chapin died when his car was rear-ended by a tractor-trailer on the Long Island Expressway on 16 July 1981. Siblings and friends, collaborators with him back in the day, present the concert as a remembrance of him.

I heard the news about Chapin’s death on the radio, driving to my girlfriend’s apartment, where I arrived in tears. Little did I know that, moving to New York City in 1984, I would end up producing folk music concerts, including Odetta and Richie Havens (both of whom are great human beings as well as artists). Given Harry’s politics and mine, I’m sure I would have produced him, had he lived. My life is poorer for having known him only through his music.

Herewith, one of his finest:

In Memory: Denese

Today is Tuesday, 22 May 2007.

High school friend and comrade Denese died, tragically young, on 10 May, aged 54, after an heroic struggle with cancer, word has just reached MoB.

HH hadn't seen her since high school, but he always expected she'd turn out good.

An activist for human rights and animals: HH was right, and right on Denese.

The Museum of the Bourgeois extends most profound sympathy to the husband, family, friends, and comrades of Denese.

We continue the struggle.

God Bless Malcolm, Ho, and Ives

Today is Saturday, 19 May 2007.

Pity Paul Wolfowitz, forced to resign the presidency of the World Bank.

“Wait one”, and, as they say on the Teletype: BREAK BREAK BREAK.

On this day in 1890, Ho Chi Minh was born.

On this day in 1926, Malcolm X was born..

On this day in 1954, composer Charles Ives died.

As Deputy Secretary of “Defense”, Wolfowitz was such a major player in the Bush-Cheney war of Conquest against Iraq, that he made himself liable, along with the rest of the High Command, to the international and American law against conducting Wars of Aggression, the penalty for which is hanging.

I oppose the death penalty. The whole gang should be in prison for life, no parole.

But Wolfowitz was rewarded with the presidency of the World Bank.

In for a penny, in for a pound, as it were.

So, why not, Wolfowitz being, in the language of “The Greatest Generation”, a “Major War Criminal” (cf. Nuremberg Trials 1946), why not defraud taxpayers of many nations, we who pay the bills for the World Bank, to finance a generous pay package for one’s sex partner?

“Birds do it, bees do it”, executives of major USA corporations do it … so, Paul, why not?

O wait: birds and bees aren't thieves.

In Memory: Bertrand, 3rd Earl Russell

Today is Friday, 18 May 2007.

Born on this day in 1872: Bertrand, 3rd Earl Russell, philosopher, mathematician, pacifist.

“The passions of my life are: longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for humankind”.

Precisely.

Not that any of us achieve these goals, but, to strive for such, instead of for cash and power and W DUH ...

Happy 135th birthday to you, BR.

Lucky 7

Today is Thursday, 17 May 2007.

The tone at the time is: 6:07 am CDT, or 12.07 Universal Coordinated Time (formerly/concurrently Greenwich Mean Time), as your author begins this column.

Dig the “7” multiples. [And yes, there is a significance. Your author, from time to time, "embeds", to use a phrase of our times, little secret significators, a private ha-ha to only a single reader. Goin' out today to Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.]

On this day in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 9-0, that “separate [i.e., white supremacist segregated] educational facilities are inherently unequal." Brown v. Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas [where your author briefly and happily lived].

In 1510, the great Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli (check out not only his art, but also the intellectual game bearing his name, and the title of a grand play by Terence McNally (1968), concerning the Vietnam War, in which your author played in the lead in a 1988 performance Off-Off-Off Broadway, for which your author probably still owes Mr. McNally royalties --- like $45 or so, but he didn’t have the scratch at the time to both do the show and pay McNally, who latter needs the $45 like Trump) died, at the age of 65, in abject poverty, proving once again, as if were it needed, that the free market doesn’t know jack.

In 1866, Eric Satie, French composer featured in recent column, “Now Includes Ducks!”, was born.

In 1918, Birgit Nilsson, great Swedish operatic soprano, is born.

1936. Dennis Hopper born. HH, also an aging thespian, says: dude has had chops, has chops, will always have chops. Easy Rider … too easy [sic]. Apocalypse Now … Yes!. Blue Velvet … tasty. And Waterworld, famously bad-mouthed sci-fi film in which DH is The Villain, is a damn fun little movie.

1973. The [Senate] Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities opens hearings on the crimes now known collectively as “Watergate”, the first act in the long-delayed and long-deserved long fall from grace of Richard M. Nixon.

Here’s to the hope that George W. Bush suffers a similar fate.

“Here’s to the state of George W. Bush … find yourself another country to be part of.”

Blessed be Phil Ochs.

Concluded at 6.57 am CDT, also 12.57 UTC/GMT.

Foulwell Fallen

Today is Wednesday, 16 May 2007.

Jerry Falwell, who died yesterday, would have had us imagine that he bestrode this narrow world like a colossus.

No more than his “betters”, Goldwater and Reagan, was Foulwell the Author of the River of Rancid Republican Reaction [yes, I’m goin’ all Spiro Agnew alliterative on ya], but merely a speck of rubbish, a bit of undigested beef [goin’ Dickens here], a middling merchant of hate, floating along with such peers as Pat Robertson and Billy James Hargis, peddling his filth in a stagnant by-pool, preening himself that he was the “Christian” Goebbels.

A life-long segregationist white supremacist, anti-Semite, and homophobe, Foulwell long advocated a genocidal nuclear attack on the USSR by the USA, pretending that the Bible promised that, were the USA to strike first, God would insure that the USA was immune to Soviet nuclear weapons.

Foulwell called his enterprises “faith”. The fact that he installed his sons as heirs to the family business suggests that Foulwell spelled “faith” $$$.

Not only did he make a wasteland of his life, but he deceived and wasted many other lives.

Let us speak ill of the dead, who, in their lives, did ill to the living.

In Memory: Gibbs, Green, Jackson State

Today is Monday, 14 May 2007.

On the evening of 14-15 May 1970, the peace of Mississippi and the United States was gravely imperiled by a gathering on the campus of Jackson State University of several hundred descendants of African-American slaves, who had the audacity to presume the First Amendment (“the right of the people peaceably to assemble to petition for the redress of grievances”) included Them under “people”.

Fortunately, some 75 white Jackson police and Mississippi [Storm] Highway Patrol troopers were there to save the day, without legal reason firing at least 460 rounds into the miscreants. (Hard to say the number for certain: before the officers allowed ambulances to remove the wounded, they collected the spent shell casings.)

Mayhap this delay is why two JSU students were assassinated: Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green.

Far less media and public attention was devoted to these murders, compared to the Kent State assassinations ten days before. Go figure.
___________________________________________

Also, on this date in 1928: Ernesto “Che” Guevara, “The Great Rebel”, was born.

Up the Republic!

Today is Saturday 12 May 2007.

As an Anglo-Austrian American, and a human being, I was disgusted by the groveling reception recently given in this country to Elizabeth “2” Windsor, the “Queen” of England.

The Royal Family can be unfavourably compared to the Gambinos and the Corleones, the British Royal Family being responsible for more murder and thievery than all organized crime throughout history. Of course, “royalty” everywhere invented organized crime.

On 24 April 1916, the Irish Republican Brotherhood launched the Easter Rebellion, an attempt to free Ireland from the genocidal yoke of England. (And if one thinks the “g” word is over-kill in this context, read some history. E.g., Cromwell and his gangsters for one were the prelude to Hitler in Poland.) Though the Rebellion failed in the short term, it set the stage for the independence of Ireland, save for the Northern counties, which remain the property of E. Windsor, et al.

On this day in 1916, Brigadier General James Connolly, a socialist and commander of the Dublin Brigade of the Irish Revolutionary Army, having been wounded in the fighting, was bound to a chair and became the last of seven Rebellion leaders assassinated by British firing squads.

Depose and expropriate the Windsors!

Free Northern Ireland!

“Up the Republic!”

Now Includes Ducks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4tsbDzv3yo

Bush in Infamy

Today is Wednesday, 9 May 2007.

The Republican leadership is whining that the Democrats are offering “a prescription for failure”.

Sorry, dudes: the warlords (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Rove, et al.) wrote that Rx when they attempted the military conquest of Iraq.

The Warlord Regime complains that Congress is considering funding the Conquest piecemeal. Then, why is the Regime offering spending requirements piecemeal? Is it because the Warlords fear informing the American taxpayer of the voracious needs of the war all at once, in a normal budget request?

Of course. The Warlords wish to conceal the true costs of the War, estimated by a Nobelist economist at $1 trillion to $2 trillion, as the Warlords concealed the true motivations for the War.

Ironically, today is V-E Day, Victory in Europe Day, and the day the combat ended in the European Theatre of War, with German surrender.

Or, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt said to Congress on 8 December 1941, asking for a declaration of war against Japan: “Mission accomplished”!

Oh, wait, FDR said: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 --- a day which will live in infamy --- …”

Kennan

Today is Tuesday, 8 May 2007.

I am only 55, yet I have been waiting for 3 decades for a proper biography of George Frost Kennan (1904-2005).

This volume I today purchased, and hold in my hand, is not that proper biography, but it will do ‘til then.

George Kennan: A Study of Character, by the esteemed John Lukacs.

Kennan is the only significant person in the US Govt. in the Early Cold War Period who comes to mind who had some sense. He advocated, not war with the USSR, but “Containment”, a status quo, waiting for the USSR to fall apart.

I will have to address this subject at length in the future, because it will take too many words for this evening’s column, but, students of the subject will recall the brilliant “Long Telegram” of 1946”:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/documents/episode-1/kennan.htm

When it comes to anti-Communism, Kennan was a measured and ethical Tough Guy.

I regret I was so foolish as to not make the time to take the train from NYC to Princeton and chatting the man up. By the time I spoke with his secretary, he was in his final illness.

More fool me.

Kennan wasn’t ignorant and sociopathic, like W Bush, nor bombastic and venal, like Nixon.

Kennan wrote the following in 1982 (when Reagan, among others, slobbered at the possibility of imminent Armageddon):

“The readiness to use nuclear weapons against other human beings --- against people whom we do not know, whom we have never seen, and whose guilt or innocence is not for us to establish --- this is nothing more than a presumption, a blasphemy, an indignity --- an indignity of monstrous proportions --- offered to God!”

Amen, and amen.

Living With War

Today is Monday, 7 May 2007.

On this date in 1954, the Fall of Dien Bien Phu, the end of the French Empire in Indochina, for those keeping score.

Back in The Day, In a Time of Torment [the title of an I.F. Stone book], during the slaughter in Vietnam in the ’60s and ‘70s, there were late evenings when a friend would listen to certain songs over and over, beating theirself up over their inability to stop the slaughter, but the songs helped.

One was “River”, by Joni Mitchell. Original must be in litigation, having been scrubbed from You Tube, so here, as interpreted by Allison Crowe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aB_YFW4-fU.

And, from these days, Neil Young, “Living With War”, and I’m not sure if through the tears I’m getting this right, oh hell, just go to http://www.searchforvideo.com/music/n/neil-young/, “Living With War” is there, and then dig Real Neil performing John Lennon’s “Imagine”, in a tribute to the dead of 9-11.

Herewith, the lyrics to “Living With War”:

I'm living with war everyday
I'm living with war in my heart everyday
I'm living with war right now

And when the dawn breaks I see my fellow man
And on the flat-screen we kill and we're killed again
And when the night falls, I pray for peace
Try to remember peace (visualize)

I join the multitudes
I raise my hand in peace
I never bow to the laws of the thought police
I take a holy vow
To never kill again
To never kill again

I'm living with war in my heart
I'm living with war in my heart in my mind
I'm living with war right now

Don't take no tidal wave
Don't take no mass grave
Don't take no smokin' gun
To show how the west was won
But when the curtain falls, I pray for peace
Try to remember peace (visualize)

In the crowded streets
In the big hotels
In the mosques and the doors of the old museum
I take a holy vow
To never kill again
Try to remember peace

The rocket's red glare
Bombs bursting in air
Give proof through the night,
That our flag is still there

I'm living with war everyday
I'm living with war in my heart everyday
I'm living with war right now

Vive le France!

Today remains Sunday, 6 May 2007.

On the birthday of Robespierre, ca. 53% of French who in the presidential election voted chose N. Sarkozy, the racist arch-conservative, who would be a clone of Bush, save he has an educated mind and is therefore more dangerous.

Beaucoup merde to you, M. Sarkozy.

The Museum of the Bourgeois, home of the heart of France in exile.

[film clip of Claude Rains throwing a bottle of Vichy water in a trash basket and kicking it.]

Fittingly, it is a night of thunder and rain here in Cowtown. "Is that cannon, or is it my heart pounding?"

All rise for La Marseillase: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/marseill.html.

Vive le France!

Thoreau

Today is Sunday, 6 May 2007.

The Museum of the Bourgeois memorializes David Henry Thoreau, who died on this date in 1862.

“I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government”.

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison”.
______________________________________________________________

Triple play day: Maximillien Robespierre, French revolutionary, b. 1758, Sigmund Freud, auteur of psychiatry, b. 1856, and Orson Welles actor/director, b. 1915.

Happy Cinco de Mayo

Today remains Saturday, 5 May 2007, Cinco de Mayo.

A thought.

We all know health care is rationed, mainly by economic class.

Why should the likes of Tony Snow, W’s journalistic liar-in-chief, facilitator of W’s war crimes and crimes against humanity, receive any cancer treatment at all, while children in ghettoes, on Native American reservations, and in Papua New Guinea suffer from less-than-minimal health care?

The Museum of the Bourgeois believes all humans should receive all necessary health care; health care should not be restricted by economics.

"Lose Your Chains!"

Today is Saturday, 5 May 2007.

The Museum of the Bourgeois wishes a happy birthday to proto-existentialist philosopher/theologian Soren Kierkegaard (b. 1813) and philosopher/economist/revolutionary Karl Marx (b. 1818).

In Memory: One Monday in Ohio

Today is Friday, 4 May 2007.

On this day in 1970, soldiers of the Ohio National Guard fired on unarmed students at Kent State University in Ohio, many participating in protests against the American invasion of Cambodia.

The invasion of Cambodia, an illegal war of aggression under American and international law, begun on 25 April, and announced on 30 April, had been concocted by President Richard M. Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, and followed hard on the heels of an American instigated- and backed-coup which had overthrown the neutralist Cambodian government and replaced it with a military dictatorship.

This “wider war” was supposed to be the catalyst to win the Vietnam War. Instead, it provided the conditions necessary for the Khmer Rouge (pseudo-communists) to defeat the incompetent military dictatorship and establish a sociopathic regime which exterminated more than a million Cambodians.

As of this writing, the surviving co-author of the invasion, Henry Kissinger, has still not been brought to justice, and, indeed, is esteemed by some as a distinguished elder statesman.

That the Kent State killings were pre-meditated murder, there can be no doubt, as demonstrated by an analysis of photographs by Peter Davies, in his book, The Truth About Kent State: A Challenge to the American Conscience (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1973). National Guardsmen advanced on the students, who were too far away to present any threat. The Guardsmen then began to withdraw, while a small segment of their number huddled together in conversation. As the Guardsmen reached the top of a small hill, those who had conversed suddenly turned and opened fire, perhaps on orders, triggering others to fire also.

Four students were killed.

When Nixon assumed office in 1969, he could have ended the Vietnam War on the same terms which he accepted in 1973. Instead, cowardly safe in his bunker in The White House, he chose to slaughter millions of Indochinese and tens of thousands of Americans in pursuit of a hopeless and pointless victory.

The Guardsmen may have pulled the triggers at Kent State, but Nixon and Kissinger (and those who, knowing their murderous ways, nevertheless chose to put them in power) handed them the loaded weapons and gave them the opportunity to fire.

The Museum of the Bourgeois mourns the deaths of Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder.

Ironically, Seymour Hersh won the Pulitzer on this date in 1970, for reporting on the US Army extermination of ca. 542 civilians at My Lai.

Neil Young’s great song, “Ohio”, acoustic version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV0rAwk4lFE

Electric version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6Vy4Tq-5a8

Irony for 2 May 2007

Today is Wednesday, 2 May 2007.

From an advertisement in The Tulsa World, 29 April 2007, concerning a conference:

Understanding Anxiety in Children

Conference is free and open to the public.

On-site child care will not be available.

Happy May Day!

Today is Tuesday, 1 May 2007.

Happy International Workers’ Day, comrades!

For the record: The Museum of the Bourgeois advocates anarcho-socialism. Classical anarchism politically: cooperation, not coercion. Socialism economically: from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs; none rich, none poor.

“Imagine”.

Special note to Christianist capitalist fundamentalist extremists. According to Acts 2:44-5, “And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need”.

In other words, the members of the early church at Jerusalem, those who knew Jesus best, including the Apostles, lived in what economists call “primitive communism”.

All ye who claim to take the Bible literally, and obey it in all things, kindly heed.

Following are two verses and the chorus from The Red Flag, by James Connell (the anthem of the British Labour Party; tune is O Tannenbaum).

Verse 1

The workers' flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead;
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold
Their life-blood dyed its every fold.

CHORUS:
Then raise the scarlet standard high;
Beneath its folds we'll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.

Verse 5

With heads uncovered, swear we all,
To bear it onward till we fall;
Come dungeons dark, or gallows grim,
This song shall be our parting hymn!

CHORUS:
Then raise the scarlet standard high;
Beneath its folds we'll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.

THE MUSEUM OF THE BOURGEOIS: Keeping the red flag flying since 1789.