John Balaban comes to mind. In 1967 he began a two year service as a conscientious objector. He studied linguistics at the University of Can Tho. Then he became the became field representative for : The Committee of Responsibility to Save War Children. He's done documentary, translations, articles and given testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Refuges, Escapees, and Civilian Casualties. Etc.,...

He's written his personal poetry, entitled 'After The War' and returns to Vietnam to collect folk poems.

I choose this one : * Sad, idle, I think of my dear mother : her mouth chewing rice ; her tongue removing fishbones : Men of one nation must love one another.*

*

Each evening, I watch the clouds flying and curling about. My heart is melancholy.

Each evening, the loon calls to the evening. Someone in white, red, and a blue scarf.

Sad about a friend, I hurt inside.... Thinking.... this morning.

apologies to J.B. for redacting the second poem titled, Evening.

paved the way for the establishment of the gangster state known as Kosovo.

Surely Mr. Raimondo realizes that any state is a gangster state, except for the pure state of anarchy!!

At least give us a "Various Items" or something.

2 5:01, Ron Pauliac, in the same-same tune as 'Happy Birthday Suit To You ' is sung to those darn long-haired wooly alpacas.

Sing. okay. Close you eyes. okay.

Happy Memorial Day to the sheared Alpacas. Happy Memorial Dat to dear Alpacas. Happy Memorial Day to dear Ron Pauliac. Happy Memorial Day to the living. Happy Birthday Suit.

Ron Pauliac. You sitting there naked?

O Happy Memorial Day to the naked.

If Joan had a name : Joan Coke Head?

Readers could say : 'Joan is jonesing for a coke can to crumple up to take to a can-can parade.

coke cans recycle @ 80-cents a ton.

My respect. Thanks.

Last comment today.

it will not take place.

The horrendous invasion and occupation of resistant foreign peoples continues unabated after six years and counting of domestic protests and criticism, international condemnation or acquiescence. Failed states proliferate on the world stage and more are in the pipeline as natural disasters and manipulated shortages of basic commodities push more and more people to the brink of extinction.

Inflation ramps up at home, while evictions become a new spectator sport in neighborhood after neighborhood, in suburbs so far from employment that Mom or Dad can't afford to fill up the diesel F-350 at well over $5.00 a gallon and climbing, and second-car is a Hummer, so that's no good, either. Just try to find functioning public transportation. Good luck!

Go to the supermarket and grumble with the rest of the customers who are hit with ever rising prices for milk and eggs and rice and cheese. Cooking oil, breakfast cereals, and bread, all of it skyrocketing in price. On top of the transportation price rise, your average American is left stunned and bewildered.

What happened? Seems everyone forgot about the Enron-ization of the economy.

Meanwhile, a high school popularity contest is run as a substitute for a presidential campaign, with all the gravity that entails, and the media remains locked into its narratives for reporting and commenting, narratives which have less and less to do with reality every day, and people turn it off. They have other things to worry about, none of which manage to garner the attention of the chattering classes.

But despite their worries, the People are pacified, almost supine, in the face of increasing authoritarianism and autocracy. Raids are conducted in the Heartland to round up and haul off brown foreign worker types to the camps, by the hundreds, together with their children, there to be held, eventually to be processed for "removal." The Honorable Chertoff crows yet another Victory in the ongoing struggle against the Brown Menace, the Worst of All Possible Menaces in the History of the World. Round 'em up, haul 'em off, Rawhide! And though the People "tsk" and "harrumph" at the goings on, they do nothing. Other matters are of more immediate concern and interest, like deciding whether to pay the light bill or buy gas for the Guzzler in the driveway with five more years of payments to make on it.

On this Memorial Day, some veterans are heard speaking out about the horrors they have unleashed and witnessed in the course of their duties on behalf of the Empire, the crimes they've committed, the suicides they've comntemplated. Cheney expostulates on their plight, "So? They volunteered. Suck it up."

And the horrified and pacified public turns away in fear and loathing of their rulers and what has been done in their names.

Fear of that midnight knock. If they speak out or do anything to raise suspicion, if they take any political risk at all, if they express any unauthorized outrage, the Honorable Chertoff's Stasi will be banging down the door and it's off to the camps for them, right along with the Brown Menace already rounded up. Nope, best to keep ones head down, nose clean and mouth shut. Just get through it. One day, lord, one day this too shall pass.

Shh. Just shhh.

It'll all be over some day.

Surely it will.

Shhhh....

The Honorable Chertoff crows yet another Victory in the ongoing struggle against the Brown Menace, the Worst of All Possible Menaces in the History of the World. Round 'em up, haul 'em off, Rawhide! And though the People "tsk" and "harrumph" at the goings on, they do nothing. loathing of their rulers and what has been done in their names.--Che Pasa

My daughter is a supervisor of a non-prophet organization that works to expose the realities of immigration and labor laws, and the treatment of abused and exploited laborers, and improve upon the lives of the people effected by the issue everyday. Not everyone is, as you claim, just 'tsking harrumphing and doing nothing'.

Your other options are adnoto, who has no plan other than to keep shooting people who aren't pure enough until no one is left or the anarchomystic who has it all figured out in his head. Chaos. -- L.W.M.

You know you really should check yourself. You are way out of line. One day I am an authoritarian. the next I am an anarchist and now I am an authoritarian again. Make up your mind you senile old bastard.

I realize that you hope your fantasies about me will make you look "reasonable" by comparison but people are smart enough to see through your establishment enabling, status quo bullshit. It is you and your kind that will have us living with pseudo fascism for the foreseeable future. People will remember that.