Ariticles by Christian Parenti in The Nation

This is the kind of journalist they call a traitor these days. His articles in The Nation are listed here.

Parenti in Bagdhad July 2004

In this article in The Nation, Christian Parenti hits the streets outside the Green Zone. He describes the Bagdhad of July 2004.

Christian Parenti interview in Mother Jones

Mother Jones interview from 01/05

Here is a journalist who does not consider himself particulary left wing ( even though he is the son of a pretty serious "marxist" scholar [hey, it's a free country, ok?]), quoting from an interview in Mother Jones:

"The military is, generally, a bunch of regular working-class Americans from all over the country. They work extremely hard and remain serious with whatever their task is: changing tires, getting computers to work, making sure communications are operational, making sure there is enough water and food, etc. You just get this serious, all-business, approach to the operations as a whole."

Right. And we need a strong military. To defend ourselves. We don't need to send 150,000 people and spend billions of dollars to invade a tinhorn Mideast dictator who's been getting bombed every time he farts since the early 90's.

This reporter Parenti happens to be the kind of guy who would have Rush Limbaugh and lots of other right wing types shitting bricks, because Parenti went over there and did his damnedest to interview the Iraqi insurgence as well spending a lot of time embedded w/ the U.S. Military.

Parenti also managed to piss of The News Hour on PBS as well by relaying facts he observed regarding how lots of people still had no power or water.

"just because you don't want to be in Iraq doesn't make you a traitor to your country"

Quoting from this 0304 interview on the radio program Democracy Now!, "Cody," from the U.S. Army, who was and still may be over there. More:

"...the thing about speaking out is a lot of questions about how you will be looked at after that. Anyone that's anti-Bush or anti-war will be looked at as a traitor and I’m just trying to put out to everybody that you can be -- you can love the Army and you can love America and just because you don't want to be in Iraq doesn't make you a traitor to your country. That doesn't make you any less patriotic. But you're being labeled that way because, you know, they're trying to suppress what the real morale is over there."

...From an interview w/ journalist and writer Christian Parenti, the soldier "Cody," and Michael Hoffman, a former Marine speaking out.

Paul "Earthquake" Pena obit

Paul Pena passes away at 55. Subject of a wonderful movie, Genghis Blues, about Tuva and the singers there, Paul Pena wrote a couple big songs Steve Miller had hits with, and was, more importantly an important bluesman and a conduit of this oddball Tuvan music, aka Tuvan Throat Singing.

Summing up our great country in a song

Oh my goodness, something about this song just sums up what our country (USA) is all about. Song is, I think, Roadside Flowers, by Winter Hours. I couldn't find a good pic of the band so I'm putting up this pic of a library in Rhode Island instead.

The lyrics go, as heard by me:

Follwing the footsteps that you gave me
I walked out alone,
highway streching out in front of me.
Then I saw the billboards
and the smoke from the refinery,
where the open sky it used to be.
Passin thru the small towns
and the clapboard houses beaten down,
I could hear a distant churchbell ring.
There beneath the maple trees
it all comes rushin back to me,
a simple thing forgotten long ago.

long ago, long ago, I heard those bells toll...
[chorus:]
I don't walk alone
I don't don't own the lonely roar
I don't walk alone,
Just see the the road side flowers
look how they have grown.

I have been in cities where
multitudes enveloped me,
the stations and depots felt so cold.
Looked up at the city spires
they couldn't build them any higher,
A giant's teeth were clenched around my soul.
I walked along the river side
to watch the changin of the tide
and the black cloud hanging over me.

over me, over me, hangin over me,

[chorus] [mandolin solo]

And thru the roar of factories
reminded me of battlefields
where our brightest promises were lost.
overcome by fire and steel
groaning for humanity,
a thousand voices drowning in that roar.
And this is
Mister Harriman
rolling in his comforts and his spoils.
With the we wind we headed west
taking little time to rest
felt the prairies burning under me.

under me, under me, burning under me,

[chorus] [pedal steel & guitar solos] [end]

More evidence of momentum!!

I'd like to keep with the theme of momentum- momentum being my feeling that soone or later, we will ALL get sick of BushCo and quit putting up with so much shit.

In Phoenix, people are sick of personal information about high school students being automatically given to military recruiters. This story from the Arizona Daily Star has details, but the point is students and parents are standing up for privacy, going, "hey wait a minute here, who the hell says that the U.S. Military should have my contact info if I didn't ok it in the first place?"