Paul S. Graham

U. Utah Phillips died yesterday. As news of his passing spreads across the world, those of us who have been moved by his music and tickled by his outrageously funny story telling pause to remember a favourite song, or performance.

My all time favourite expresses Utah’s unconditional affirmation of working people and his uncompromising critique of bankers, bosses and associated social parasites.

WE HAVE FED YOU ALL A THOUSAND YEARS
(WRITTEN BY `AN UNKNOWN PROLETARIAN,’ MUSIC BY VON LIEBICH)
(FIRST LISTED PRINTING, INDUSTRIAL UNION BULLETIN, APRIL 18, 1908)

We have fed you all for a thousand years
And you hail us still unfed,
Though there’s never a dollar of all your wealth
But marks the workers’ dead.
We have yielded our best to give you rest
And you lie on crimson wool.
Then if blood be the price of all your wealth,
Good God! We have paid it in full!

There is never a mine blown skyward now
But we’re buried alive for you.
There’s never a wreck drifts shoreward now
But we are its ghastly crew.
Go reckon our dead by the forges red
And the factories where we spin.
If blood be the price of your cursed wealth,
Good God! We have paid it in!

We have fed you all a thousand years-
For that was our doom, you know,
From the days when you chained us in your fields
To the strike a week ago.
You have taken our lives, and our babies and wives,
And we’re told it’s your legal share,
But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth,
Good God! We bought it fair!

By all accounts, Utah led a good and a full life. His official obituary gives a sense of the breadth and depth of his interests and passions. Richer insights can be found in a letter he wrote to his many friends and supporters nine days before his death. But the proof of this man’s pudding is in his music. Here’s a clip from 2007. Bring it home, Utah!

Malalai Joya addressing the Afghan Parliament, April 15, 2006,
shortly before the Speaker disconnected her microphone because
she criticised the government.

On May 21, there will be an international day of action in support of suspended Afghan MP Malalai Joya. Joya was suspended from the Afghan Parliament May 21, 2007 for three years. Her crime: speaking out about the record of human rights abuses by members of the warlord dominated Afghan Parliament.

She has faced death threats, assault and attempts on her life. She needs and deserves our support.

The Canadian Peace Alliance is calling on members and supporters to organize events or to send letters demanding that Joya be re-instated to the Afghan Parliament. It is also calling on the government of Canada to immediately call for her to be re-instated to the parliament to which she was duly elected.

The case of Malalai Joya speaks volumes about the nature of the new Afghan government, currently being supported by more than 2500 Canadian soldiers. She is a tireless defender of women’s rights and has organized a grassroots movement for peace and democracy in Afghanistan. That movement which can lay the foundation for real democratic development is being silenced by the Afghan state.

Please take the time to fax or e-mail a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier, the Afghan ambassador to Canada, Omar Samad, and the Afghan President Hamid Karzai and demand that they re-instate Malalai Joya.

To learn how you can support Ms. Joya, click here.

The Net is awash in weapons of mass deception. DeSmogBlog, a web site dedicated to defusing the WMDs employed by climate change deniers, identified one yesterday that deserves your attention.

500 Scientists with Documented Doubts – about the Heartland Institute?
29 Apr 08
UPDATE: we have received notes now from 45 outraged scientists whose names appear on the list of 500. We’ve published more quotes here.

Dozens of scientists are demanding that their names be removed from a widely distributed Heartland Institute article entitled 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares.

The article, by Hudson Institute director and Heartland “Senior Fellow” Dennis T. Avery, purports to list scientists whose work contradicts the overwhelming scientific agreement that human-induced climate change is endangering the world as we know it.

DeSmogBlog manager Kevin Grandia emailed 122 of the scientists yesterday afternoon, calling their attention to the list. So far – in less than 24 hours – three dozen of those scientists had responded in outrage, denying that their research supports Avery’s conclusions and demanding that their names be removed. READ MORE.

Finding accurate news and informed commentary is a challenge, but a manageable one if we refuse to accept anything on faith and check the sources.

One of my favourite source-checking resources is PRWatch, operated by the Center for Media Democracy in the United States. They are dedicated to unmasking the hacks, flacks, spin doctors and associated bottom feeders who grind out corporate propaganda.

Independent Tribunal Established to Investigate Mass Grave Sites

For a century, the Canadian Government with the assistance of major Canadian churches kidnapped thousands of aboriginal kids and locked them up in residential schools where they could be “civilized.” Far from their families and communities, young and defenseless, they were beaten for speaking their languages. Many were sexually abused.

Fast forward to the 21 century. After much foot dragging, hand-wringing and stonewalling, some of the perpetrators have said they are sorry (still awaiting an apology from the Feds). Financial compensation has been paid. End of story, right?

Wrong. On April 10, in Vancouver, an organization called the Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared (FRD) released a list of twenty eight mass graves across Canada that they believe contain the remains of hundreds and perhaps thousands of aboriginal children who died in these schools.

According to the FRD:

The list was distributed today to the world media and to United Nations agencies, as the first act of the newly-formed International Human Rights Tribunal into Genocide in Canada (IHRTGC), a non-governmental body established by indigenous elders.

In a statement read by FRD spokesperson Eagle Strong Voice, it was declared that the IHRTGC would commence its investigations on April 15, 2008, the fourth Annual Aboriginal Holocaust Memorial Day. This inquiry will involve international human rights observers from Guatemala and Cyprus, and will convene aboriginal courts of justice where those persons and institutions responsible for the death and suffering of residential school children will be tried and sentenced. . . .

Eagle Strong Voice and IHRTGC elders will present the Mass Graves List at the United Nations on April 19, and will ask United Nations agencies to protect and monitor the mass graves as part of a genuine inquiry and judicial prosecution of those responsible for this Canadian Genocide.

Read more.

Indian Residential School, Camperville – constructed 1894-1897. Destroyed by man, February-March 1972. Local residents in foreground. Source: Manitoba Historical Society.

Where is the media?

I heard about this only today when a friend sent me a copy of the FRD news release. Wanting more information, I consulted Google News. I got two hits, neither of them widely distributed. I tried the CBC web site. Nada. Same story at CTV and Canada.com.

The story is getting wide distribution among bloggers. Maybe the mainstream media will wake up when Eagle Strong Voice presents the list to the United Nations. Maybe.

In the same way that the parties to the Indian Residential School system buried the hopes and the bodies of aboriginal kids, it seems that Canada’s mass media plans to bury their story.

Winnipeggers demonstrate against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
March 15, 2008. Photo: Paul Graham

I heard this poem at a peace rally in Winnipeg on March 15, 2008. It’s powerful. Though it’s been knocking around the Net for years, it was new to me. Perhaps it is to you, too.

A Moment of Silence

by Emmanuel Ortiz

Before I begin this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001.

I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of silence for all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in Afghanistan, Iraq, in the U.S., and throughout the world.

And if I could just add one more thing…

A full day of silence… for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation.

Six months of silence… for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 12-year U.S. embargo against the country.
…And now, the drums of war beat again.

Before I begin this poem, two months of silence… for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, where “homeland security” made them aliens in their own country

Nine months of silence… for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin and the survivors went on as if alive.

A year of silence… for the millions of dead in Viet Nam – a people, not a war – for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives bones buried in it, their babies born of it.

Two months of silence… for the decades of dead in Colombia, whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.

Before I begin this poem,
Seven days of silence… for El Salvador
A day of silence… for Nicaragua
Five days of silence… for the Guatemaltecos
None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years.
45 seconds of silence… for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas…
1,933 miles of silence… for every desperate body
That burns in the desert sun
Drowned in swollen rivers at the pearly gates to the Empire’s underbelly,
A gaping wound sutured shut by razor wire and corrugated steel.

25 years of silence… for the millions of Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky.
For those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees
In the south… the north… the east… the west…
There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains.

100 years of silence… for the hundreds of millions of indigenous people
From this half of right here,
Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears
Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness…

From somewhere within the pillars of power
You open your mouths to invoke a moment of our silence
And we are all left speechless,
Our tongues snatched from our mouths,
Our eyes stapled shut.

A moment of silence,
And the poets are laid to rest,
The drums disintegrate into dust.

Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence…
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be.
Not like it always has been.

…Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem…
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written.

And if this is a 9/11 poem, then
This is a September 11th 1973 poem for Chile.
This is a September 12th 1977 poem for Steven Biko in South Africa.
This is a September 13th 1971 poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York.
This is a September 14th 1992 poem for the people of Somalia.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground amidst the ashes of amnesia.

This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told,
The 110 stories that history uprooted from its textbooks
The 110 stories that that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored.
This is a poem for interrupting this program.

This is not a peace poem,
Not a poem for forgiveness.
This is a justice poem,
A poem for never forgetting.
This is a poem to remind us
That all that glitters
Might just be broken glass.

And still you want a moment of silence for the dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
The unmarked graves,
The lost languages,
The uprooted trees and histories,
The dead stares on the faces of nameless children…

Before I start this poem we could be silent forever
Or just long enough to hunger,
For the dust to bury us
And you would still ask us
For more of our silence.

So if you want a moment of silence
Then stop the oil pumps
Turn off the engines and the televisions
Sink the cruise ships
Crash the stock markets
Unplug the marquee lights
Delete the e-mails and instant messages
Derail the trains, ground the planes
If you want a moment of silence, put a brick through the window of Taco Bell
And pay the workers for wages lost
Tear down the liquor stores,
The townhouses, the White Houses, the jailhouses, the Penthouses and the Playboys.

If you want a moment of silence,
Then take it
On Super Bowl Sunday,
The Fourth of July,
During Dayton’s 13 hour sale,
The next time your white guilt fills the room where my beautiful brown people have gathered.

You want a moment of silence
Then take it
Now,
Before this poem begins.
Here, in the echo of my voice,
In the pause between goosesteps of the second hand,
In the space between bodies in embrace,
Here is your silence.
Take it.
Take it all.
But don’t cut in line.
Let your silence begin at the beginning of crime.

And we,
Tonight,
We will keep right on singing
For our dead.

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.
– Introduction to the BBC Series “The Power of Nightmares,” a three part series that explores the myths surrounding “international terrorism,” broadcast in January 2005.

The threat of terrorism, we are told repeatedly, is omnipresent. It has been used to justify the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is used to excuse the ongoing erosion of our civil rights. Our democracy is suffering the death of a thousand cuts. Incrementally our freedoms are being taken from us.

Whether it is “no-fly lists,” the decision to remain in Afghanistan against the will of most Canadians, or the secret negotiation of a “Security and Prosperity Partnership” with the U.S. and Mexico, our freedom as individuals and our sovereignty as a nation are in question.

When the history of this period is written, it may begin with the words “First they came for the immigrants . . .”

Until a year ago, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service could initiate a process which led to the arrest of permanent residents or refugees who had committed no crime, throw them in jail, and detain them indefinitely with the aim of deporting them, even in the face of potential torture and death. Neither they nor their lawyers were allowed to see the “information” used by CSIS to back their allegations.

This draconian law was used to imprison five Muslim men living in Canada on allegations that they were connected to Islamic terrorist groups. They were not permitted to answer to these allegations in a fair trial because, unlike a criminal trial, the evidence in a security certificate case remains secret for reasons of national security. Their names are Mohammad Mahjoub, Mahmoud Jaballah, Hassan Almrei, Mohamed Harkat and Adil Charkaoui. While only Mr. Almrei remains in jail at present, all are facing the threat of deportation to countries where they could be imprisoned, tortured and killed. Read more.

Last February, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the security certificate system was unconstitutional and gave the government a year to come up with something better. The Tories came back with Bill C-3, which maintained most of the features deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The only significant change was the provision for a “special advocate” who would have access to the government’s secret evidence but who would still not be allowed to share it with the suspect. Read more.

To save us from terrorism, our government insists on resorting to kangaroo courts and secret evidence. Don’t believe for a moment that they will stop there.

Allow yourself to consider, for a moment, that the danger posed by terrorists is greatly exaggerated. Fear of terrorism is a weapon wielded by those who want to control us, who want us to accept “security and prosperity” within a North American union, who want to control, through war, the energy resources of the planet.

http://www.archive.org/flow/FlowPlayerLight.swf?config=%7Bembedded%3Atrue%2CshowFullScreenButton%3Atrue%2CshowMuteVolumeButton%3Atrue%2CshowMenu%3Atrue%2CautoBuffering%3Atrue%2CautoPlay%3Afalse%2CinitialScale%3A%27fit%27%2CmenuItems%3A%5Bfalse%2Cfalse%2Cfalse%2Cfalse%2Ctrue%2Ctrue%2Cfalse%5D%2CusePlayOverlay%3Afalse%2CshowPlayListButtons%3Atrue%2CplayList%3A%5B%7Burl%3A%27ThePowerOfNightmares%2Fchapter1%5F512kb%2Emp4%27%7D%2C%7Burl%3A%27ThePowerOfNightmares%2Fchapter2%5F512kb%2Emp4%27%7D%2C%7Burl%3A%27ThePowerOfNightmares%2Fchapter3%5F512kb%2Emp4%27%7D%5D%2CcontrolBarGloss%3A%27high%27%2CshowVolumeSlider%3Atrue%2CbaseURL%3A%27http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Earchive%2Eorg%2Fdownload%2F%27%2Cloop%3Afalse%2CcontrolBarBackgroundColor%3A%270×000000%27%7D

Set aside some time and view The Power of Nightmares. The series is available, free of charge, at the Internet Archive. It places our “post 9-11 world” in an historical context and effectively challenges the lies of Bush, Blair and Co.

Then ask yourself, who are the real terrorists?

http://video.google.ca/googleplayer.swf?docid=8350185661070256841&hl=en&fs=true

War has always been a battle for minds as well land, resources, and political power. The rules — portray our warriors as noble innocents, bravely sacrificing themselves for a higher cause; demonize the other side — call them fanatics, terrorists, murderers.

It helps if you don’t speak the enemy’s language, don’t know their history and culture and can hardly locate them on a map. Add a natural sympathy for our soldiers and a compliant news media and it is no wonder that we get such a one-sided view of things.

The truth is, war is murder, no matter who is pulling the trigger. In the case of Afghanistan, we (the “Western We”– the Americans, the Canadians, the Brits, etc.) bear most of the responsibility because we invaded Afghanistan, a land already destroyed by decades of war and civil wars that arose out of the Cold War.

Under the pretext of fighting a post 9-11 “war on terror” and rooting out Osama bin Laden, we joined in an unholy alliance with corrupt, autocratic, woman-hating, drug-running Afghan warlords to rout the Taliban “evil-doers” who, in reality, were no less anti-woman or autocratic, but who, at least, took a dim view of the opium trade.

In joining forces with the so-called Northern Alliance we became partners in their atrocities as did they in ours.

“Afghan Massacre: the Convoy of Death” tells the story of a Northern Alliance war crime perpetrated early in the war. Produced and directed by Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran, the film documents the cold-blooded murder of thousands of prisoners who surrendered to the US military’s Afghan allies after the siege of Kunduz in November 2001.

The film describes how some three thousand of the prisoners were forced into sealed containers and loaded onto trucks for transport. When the prisoners began shouting for air, Northern Alliance soldiers fired into the trucks, killing many of them. The rest suffered through an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, so thirsty they clawed at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds.

Witnesses say that when the trucks arrived and soldiers opened the containers, most of the people inside were dead. They also say US Special Forces re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried. Now, up to three thousand bodies lie buried in a mass grave.

The only antidote to propaganda is the truth. While this film has had wide distribution in Europe, Canadians and Americans have had to rely on the Internet to see it.

Pass it on.

Holy Shit, Batman! Canada might run out of combat troops before we run out of war!!

According to the Vancouver Sun, “The Canadian Armed Forces continue to face difficulties in securing the resources to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. Recruitment drives have been under way to boost both the regular Forces and reserve numbers, but many soldiers are returning to Afghanistan for a second and third rotation.”

This is a serious problem, folks, but a remedy is at hand: send the people with the biggest stake in the outcome. That’s right, send bankers, senior bureaucrats, arms manufacturers (and their leading shareholders), and of course, the entire Liberal and Tory caucuses.

And while we’re at it, send the editorial board of the Winnipeg Free Press. Anyone who could write “Five years on, however, the world is a better, safer place because of the Iraq war.” needs a sabbatical, and fast. Where better than in the front line of Canada’s own little war?

But I digress.

Back to our politicians. It just isn’t fair that our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and Stephane Dion, Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, just get short, teensie-weensie, little visits when they are such eager warriors. (Is it a coincidence that they have the same first name? I think not!) They royally deserve the opportunity to experience the thrill of combat, first hand, for an extended period — say to the end of December, 2011. And so they won’t be lonely, they should take their fellow members with them.

They would be a formidable force. Judging from their antics in Question Period, the Taliban wouldn’t stand a chance.

And in that time honoured tradition, I’ve even found a song to speed them on their way. (What would a war be without a song, I always say!)

You can sing along.

We Hate To See Them Go
by Malvina Reynolds

Last night I had a lovely dream.
I saw a big parade with ticker tape galore,
And men were marching there
The like I’d never seen before.

Oh the bankers and the diplomats are going in the army.
Oh happy day! I’d give my pay to see them on parade,
Their paunches at attention and their striped pants at ease.
They’ve gotten patriotic and they’re going overseas.
We’ll have to do the best we can and bravely carry on,
So we’ll just keep the laddies here to manage while they’re gone.

Chorus:
Oh, oh, we hate to see them go,
The gentlemen of distinction in the army.

The bankers and the diplomats are going in the army,
It seemed too bad to keep them from the wars they love to plan.
We’re all of us contented that they’ll fight a dandy war,
They don’t need propaganda, they know what they’re fighting for.
They’ll march away with dignity and in the best of form,
And we’ll just keep the laddies here to keep the lassies warm.

(Chorus)

The bankers and the diplomats are going in the army,
We’re going to make things easy cause it’s all so new and strange;
We’ll give them silver shovels when they have to dig a hole,
And they can sing in harmony when answering the roll,
They’ll eat their old K-rations from a hand-embroidered box,
And when they die, we’ll bring them home, and bury them in Fort Knox.

(Chorus)

White House photo by Eric Draper

“The men and women who crossed into Iraq five years ago removed a tyrant, liberated a country, and rescued millions from unspeakable horrors.”

— George W. Bush, March 19, 2008

A young Iraqi near Basra being “rescued from unspeakable horrors” in the early days of the invasion. Photo: Associated Press/BBC

How do you account for George Bush’s speech earlier today at the Pentagon? Is it possible that he is completely unaware of the crimes he has committed? Was he blinded and deafened by the “shock and awe” he unleashed on the Iraqi people five years ago today? Have his handlers neglected to tell him about the civil war, the ethnic cleansing, the two million refugees, the annihilation of a culture and a people, the uncountable deaths?

Are his assertions that America rescued Iraqis from “unspeakable horrors” the ravings of a madman? Or the lies of a monster?

Not surprisingly, the Americans have gone to great lengths to minimize the Iraqi death toll. Back in 2006, Bush put the figure at 30,000. I guess that figure falls within his idea of speakable horrors.

But the question remains, how many people have died as a result of this war?

Counting corpses in a war zone is difficult, dangerous work because, after all, the action is taking place in a war zone. People are getting slaughtered in great numbers all over the place and it is pretty much impossible (and risky) to count them individually.

Published estimates are based on compiling statistics from media sources, such as those published by Iraq Body Count. Their research puts the death toll at just under 90,000.

Or, they are based on random sample surveys of the population, such as those conducted by Johns Hopkins (published in The Lancet) and Opinion Business Research. The Johns Hopkins study, conducted in 2006, put the carnage at 655,000. The ORB survey, published in 2008, concludes that between 946,000 and 1,120,000 Iraquis have been killed since the 2003 invasion.

The latter two studies form the basis for the “Iraqi Death Estimator” published below by Just Foreign Policy.

Today’s Guardian describes the various attempts that have been made to calculate the carnage. It’s worth reading.

Whether it is 90,000 or 900,000, Bush is guilty of crimes against humanity.

On March 4, 2008, voters in two Vermont towns approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for “crimes against our Constitution.” The measure, which is described as symbolic and non-binding, instructs town police to “extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them.” Read more.

One can easily imagine there would be no shortage of “authorities” eager to prosecute them.