"Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom"

Pour a little out for the Homies

Iceberg Slim; Born Robert Beck, August 4, 1918, in Chicago, IL; died April 28, 1992, in Los Angeles, CA
At one point in his life he was on of the most successful black author in America, second only to Alex Haley. (If you’re able to leave your judgments and morality at the door you might learn something here)

“I don't want to be remembered as a beaten champion.”

On this day Rocky (The Brockton Blockbuster) Marciano announced his retirement from boxing at the age of 31 he had a professional record of 49 wins, no losses and 43 knockouts. He was the world champion for four years and is the only boxer to ever retire undefeated. After his retirement he invested in failed businesses and nightclubs, he tried standup comedy and public appearances but worked primarily as a referee for boxing and wrestling matches, until his death in a plane crash in 1969.

Marciano is the inspiration for movie Raging Bull this movie was Amazing, I think it was an excellent synopsis for the times when we are our own worst enemy, if we are lucky we can see it, however in the case of the Marciano’s character in the movie, his violence and hostility made him famous and provided for his family, and in the end they are the seeds of his misfortune and lead to his eventual downfall. In Rocky V there is a flashback of Mickey giving Rocky a necklace with a gold cufflink shaped like a boxing glove that he said was given to him by Rocky Marciano. I am often haunted by the same dream.

"We must be cruel to be kind, thus lets begin the bad and leave the worse behind"

There are records that confirm that Shakespeare was baptized on the 26 of April. However it was common practice of the time to wait three days to baptize a newborn, therefore it is commonly held that he was born and died on the same day. April the 23rd.

William Shakespeare was born to Mary Arden (Daughter of a wealthy land owner, Robert Arden). And John Shakespeare (the son of Richard a man who had worked on the Land of Robert Arden) despite their social division a year after the death of Robert Arden in 1557 John and Mary were Married (marriage for love was not very common at the time). Seven years after the marriage William was born. Williams Father rose the rank of Alderman in the community which allowed William a good education (John and Mary were both illiterate), however at the age of 14 he had to be withdrawn from school to work, as his father began to have financial trouble (its believed it was due to religious persecution, the Shakespeare’s were Catholic).

William Married Ann Hathaway at 18 and they had three children. At the age of 21 he moved to London to pursue an acting career and received some notoriety for his skill. However at the age of 28 he quit acting to devote all his time to becoming a playwright, it’s commonly understood that from the years of 1592 to 1608 William wrote the most brilliant plays in the English language “The Tragedies”

Upon his death in 1616 William had only published a few of his plays after his death in 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, fellow actors. published most of his works in the “First Folio” as the typesetting for this work took several years the original price was about three hundred dollars (comparatively), only about a thousand were printed, 228 are known to currently exist, The Folger Library in Washington DC has 79 copies, and in 2001 a copy was sold by the Christies auction house in New York for 6.16 Million.

It is commonly understood that Shakespeare invented over 1700 commonly used words. And his phrases are accepted as the fabric of our Language to this day; someone who is “green” as being young. Or struck by the “green eyed monster of jealousy”, or killing someone in “cold blood”, or not understanding some one as “speaking Greek”, or vanishing into “thin air” or being “tongue tied”, having to go to a “shylock”, being “caught in a pickle”, if you’re ever a “laughing stock”, refer to family as “flesh and blood”, if you’ve been “hoodwinked”, or “deader than a door nail”. This is all Shakespeare and more.
There are critics who doubt the authorship of his plays due to the fact that he had a limited education and came from illiterate parents however his childhood education would have far exceeded our modern standards, it would have included Latin ancient Philosophy mythology and history.

When I was a child one of the few books in the house was a complete works of Shakespeare I first began to pick apart and define the language, then reread the plays to understand the imagery. I loved the characters and the timeless concepts; the frustration of Mercutio, the Cowardice of Macbeth, the Nobility of Henry the 5th, the demons of Richard the 3rd, and the Madness of Hamlet.

There is no evidence that Shakespeare ever traveled further then London from his home in Stratford, but his characters conveyed a richness of the time an emersion of the surrounding. For example, the in the Two Gentlemen of Verona the servant Panthino speaks in a cumbersome provincial accent and of his knowledge of traveling and the sea, Shakespeare did this constantly whether he was speaking in the "proper kings English" or the gravediggers drunken drawl in Hamlet, the details are a seamless reflection of the emotional conflict and eternal struggles.

"they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right

On this day in 1975 after several years of terrorizing the Pine ridge Indian Reservation by members of the BIA, two FBI agents attempt to enter, and initiate a shootout at, an AIM (American Indian Movement) camp at Jumping Bull Ranch within the Reservation

The two FBI agents are killed along with Lakota tribe member Joe Stuntz.

Three American Indian Movement (AIM) Leaders; Bob Robideau, Dino Butler and Leonard Peltier were charged with the murder (on later admitted coerced testimony) Robideau, and Butler were tried and acquitted of the crime on the grounds of “self defense”. However Leonard Peltier who had been fighting extradition in Canada, Once returned to the United States was convicted of the crime in a separate trial.

Despite the self defense verdict no one was ever charged for the murder of Joe Stuntz

Any of the shortcomings of the initial prosecutions of Robideau, Butler were “miraculously” found or testimony fabricated for the trial of Leonard Peltier. And all of the motions that were allowed for the initial defense of Robideau, Butler were not allowed by the judge for the Peltier defense (the judge was changed after the initial not guilty verdict).

The FBI still holds over 6,000 pages on the Leonard Peltier case which they refuse to release for "National Security reasons."

Leonard Peltier has been declared to be a “political prisoner” by Amnesty International, and the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights.

"The people, who are trying to make us over into their image, they want us to be what they call "assimilated," bringing the Indians into the mainstream and destroying our own way of life and our own cultural patterns. They believe we should be contented like those whose concept of happiness is materialistic and greedy, which is very different from our way.

We want freedom, rather than to be intergrated. We don't want any part of the establishment, we want to be free to raise our children in our religion, in our ways, to be able to hunt and fish and live in peace. We don't want power, we don't want to be congressmen, or bankers....

we want to be ourselves. We want to have our heritage, because we are the owners of this land and because we belong here.

They say, there is freedom and justice for all. We have had "freedom and justice," and that is why we have been almost exterminated. We shall not forget this."
-Grand Council 1927

"if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. "

I am sorry that I haven’t written in a few days but I have been feeling a little down (that should be a warning this may take awhile), there was the acquittal of those police officers shooting that unarmed man in New York (he was on his bachelor party), they didn’t identify themselves, and when they began to shoot into the car he attempted to drive off, the officers defense was that they felt they were in ‘immanent danger’, they shot reloaded and shot numerous times. And there were a few other things, but I try not to write about these things for the sake of not sounding negative.

Today is the Birthday of George Orwell he was a great writer and his books were intricate his language concise but what I have found to be truly amazing, was that his vision was mythic.

I was in a conversation with a friend the other day describing an incident where the Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was being grilled on some social service mechanism in a ‘Town Hall’ style meeting, and some poor soul stood up and began to describe his situation; he had lost his job and his home, his family was struggling, and he was being denied social services, and he could not get an answer as to why. The Governor looked him in the eye, introduced himself, and then asked for the mans contact information, and said that he would look into the matter ‘personally’ and find out exactly what the situation was, and why the services were not being provided. Now maybe he didn’t do anything, maybe he forgot… or just maybe, for one moment, this horrible bureaucracy was given a face and showed an air of humanity.

When I look at the two potential Democratic National Candidates, (DNC) I see very little difference in their policies, and I see very little difference in their campaigns, however in one case I see someone that has the potential to give the unaccountable horde of bureaucratic sheep a face, and in the other I see a cold idol, manufactured for popular consumption and presented by the machine. When I hear about things like those police getting off, or about Wesley Snipes being sent to prison for tax evasion, I am reminded how far we have too go, or how much further away we are getting. Let me make it clear, I don’t condone breaking the law and I don’t condone not paying your taxes however, I dictate my ideals they don’t dictate to me. The Nation that you and I live in is no longer the same Nation that your Grandparents or Parents once voted in, paid taxes to, fought and died for.

I no longer believe in revolution and I may not even believe in “change” but I have seen the incompetency of the multitude hidden behind the acronyms of the bureaucracy, the IRS, the DMV, the CPS, the GOP… etc. etc. I have seen how the inverted ideals of the machines weeds out the compassionate and the strong, and I have seen how it rewards the weak and gutless. I have seen the qualities that it takes to rise in the bureaucratic corporations are the same qualities that would deny the humanity and accountability necessary for change. And I have seen how they mask their immorality and deny their complicity with these corporate mechanisms.

There was once a time when I would not vote, I believe if you voted you were a party to the whole criminal conspiracy and in turn you had no right to complain, but me, I did not participate, and I did not ask for any part of it, therefore I alone had the right to complain. But here it is another election season and I am primed to be duped by anyone who promises “change”, Hoping that the qualities that it takes to rise to the part of the machine that is actually capable of making any valid decision, are not corrupted by the fear and incompetence of those that would continue to perpetuate the lies.

By the way, George Orwell’s Birthday was today he was Brilliant

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… Has it ever occurred to your, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?…The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

-George Orwell 1984

"Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it… All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children."

-George Orwell 1984

As wrecked men deem they sight the land When far at sea they stay.

The first time I saw MadameX I was sixteen, I had no money, and I had spent the day wandering up from Bleeker along 6th and through the Park. I had woke early but I didn’t know how far it was. Then I had to spend hours talking to the security guard at the front of the Met, due to my smooth talking, his desire to be left alone, or the fact that the Museum was going to close in an hour, he finally let me in (I was not very smooth). I tried to shuffle through as much of the museum as I could, then it seemed I could not go any further. I walked into a large dark room lined with several canvasses. She is Immense, she must be about eight feet tall, and commands the room. Nearly twenty years later, I may have seen some of the great works of modern painting that day, and I am sure there were others in the room, but I could not tell you what they were. I have pondered this attraction for years I believe it to be contrast. MadameX typifies contrast, she is daring and graceful she is bold and sublime. I believe as men are single minded it is inherent and distinctive to her that she should effortlessly manipulate the contrast that men find so captivating yet so elusive, she is strong and beautiful.

"Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me."

Today is the Birthday of Immanuel Kant, I know its earth day as well but they actually kind of tie in together. Immanuel Kant was born on this day in 1724 in Königsberg Russia. His philosophy started as a scientific analysis of the works of Galileo and Newton (Okay, here is my weak attempt at his life’s work of complex theory) In his defining works he attempted to quantify the nature of our existence to its most common factors e.g. our lives need this much Carbon, that much water, this much air, this much heat, and this much gravity. He took into account all the factors that make our life on earth possible and worked out a theoretical equation to define the odds that make all life plausible. Then he had to define the possibility of this unique chain of events taking place anywhere else in the Universe. Therein lies his most telling arguments of the existence of some divine intellect. What are the odds that we are an accident or a product of mere chance? And as a product of this wisdom do we bear the responsibility of this gift? Using his scientific theory as a springboard he then began to develop the; syllogistic argument model, metaphysics, aesthetics, and my fave the Categorical Imperative! (You really need to look this up on your own) basically the language of philosophy that we all use to this day.

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; -Kant

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end. -Kant

Religion is the recognition of all our duties as divine commands. -Kant

And that has made all the difference

Today is the Birthday of James Newell Osterberg, Jr b-1947. I think that we should all observe a moment here because there have been many who could trace punk rock back from So-Cal Thrash, to English Oi, to New York Power Pop, to Detroit Garage, and further back to elements of the 60`s and 50`s Rock, Metal, Jazz, and R&B. However, I am not alone in saying that he is not only the “Godfather of Punk” but a man that can lay legitimate claim to being the founding Father of a genre of music that has altered society forever.

I am a zen master of Fantasy Baseball!!

"Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.

I just wanted to mention last week Hazel Court passed, she was notable for her roles in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) with Peter Cushing, The Mask of the Red Death (1964) with Vincent Price, and The Raven (1963) with Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff. She has become most well known for her role in The Devil Girl from Mars (1954). In that Movie the leather wearing, Amazon devil, Mars girl, comes to earth to turn all earth men into sex slaves because (for some reason?) they had run out on Mars. But don’t worry, the main character slays the laser gun tote`en Devil girl and saves all masculine humanity from an everlasting fate worse than death. Hazel plays the selfish bastards love interest (like she so often did), her flawless beauty was perfectly suited for being rescued, Her Daughter said, she had a bright red head of hair and deep green eyes her whole life. If I had to choose between Hazel Court or taking one for the whole team … it would have been tough.

"I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure"

Yesterday Pope Benedict XVI met privately with victims of clergy sexual abuse. On the first day of his visit to the US he actually addressed the issue directly and seemed genuinely sadden by it. He has fielded several questions on the issue and although his itinerary was made public it seemed to be a surprise that he met with victims of the scandal. The Pope met with victims while in the presence of Bishop O’Malley of the Boston Archdiocese, this Bishop along with several others, was named by an advocate watch group as some of the worst offenders in helping to cover the issue up. Some may trivialize this gesture however had the Pope chosen to ignore the issue, like many of the Archbishops and Cardinals have in the past, it would have not raised any concern. I am going to play the devils advocate here and say that I only hope that this may be the beginning of witch-hunt within the clergy, to finally free themselves of this awful stigma (let me qualify I am not a bible thumper however I am forced to go with the odds on this topic, religion has helped more people then I have so I really must deign to its validity, although it has been a slow week for me) http://www.bishopaccountability.org/

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Today is the Birthday of Kathy Acker one of the famed black mountain beat punk poets. I always thought her poetry a little to “avant garde” for me, but it seemed to develop that 'cool' underground ‘blind’ following, that only real ‘individuals’ like the independent art crowd are capable of devoting. I really did love some of her books; they were the funniest modern commentary based on this kind of stranger removed ‘point of view’ wandering through a modern landscape. The feminist portrayed her as a victim, and I am sure more then a few people thought she was a ‘tart’ (I am being kind), but I always thought she was a cross between Mister Magoo and Elvira. She was criticized for plagiarizing writing styles and classic author’s premises; however it always seemed to lend her writing style a sort of point of reference. I never took her books that seriously anyway.

Today was the start of the West Virginia Mine War of 1912-1913. I think it’s important that we remember this period in our history because you really have to research your history books to find out about this period, {or be a dork like me and spend a summer in grade school reading everything you can find on Clarence Darrow}. We often hear about the Rockafellers, Vanderbilts, and the Gettys of this era forging the foundation of our modern industrialization, however we so rarely hear of the civil unrest of this era and immoral treatment of the poor and working class by the wealthy tycoons that our society has come to idealize.

"There's not an American thats free, until every one of us is free."

Yesterday was Jackie Robinson Day; it was in commemoration of the day that he first took the field as a Dodger. I love this day, I am so proud every time I am at a ballpark and I see that 42 hanging on the wall (since 1997 #42 has been retired by all major league teams) Jackie Robinson was born in Georgia and moved to Los Angeles as a child. He was an outstanding student-athlete and lettered in four sports at UCLA and got medals in two others. He did not finish at UCLA due to financial hardship, and like many of the poor, Jackie enlisted in the Army and served as a second lieutenant, he was granted an honorable discharge after being arrested by the Military Police for refusing to sit in the back of a segregated bus in Texas.

Jackie then signed with the legendary Kansas City Monarchs before being scouted by the Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey, I think a special thanks is due to him, he carefully sought a candidate to help him break the color barrier, the candidate had to be from a background that was open to scrutiny, he needed to be skillful enough not to just compete but excel, he needed to be old enough to have a strong mental attitude, but young enough to be open to suggestion, Branch Rickey found all these qualities in 28 year old Jackie. He called Jackie to his office and explained his plans and he laid out a stipulation as part of the contract, it was, for two years after Jackie signed he was not allowed to retaliate to any verbal or physical abuse he was given by anyone on or off the field, to test him out Branch Rickey spent an hour in his office calling Jackie every name in the book, to see how he would react. It was this agreement that I believe shaped the public perception of Jackie that endures to this day. However it was this same agreement that many attribute Jackie’s later physical problems and early demise, it was widely agreed that the stress of these early years changed him. In his first year Jackie received the newly created “rookie of the year” award and the dodgers lost the series in seven games to the Yankees, the Dodgers won the pennant again in 1949, a year in which Jackie won the National league MVP, the Dodgers won the pennant again in 1952 and 53, and finally won the series in 1955, a series in which Jackie stole Home in game one at Yankee stadium. He would steal home a total of 19 times. Jackie was an all star six years in a row and had a lifetime batting average of .311 toward the end of the 1956 season there was talk of trading Jackie to the Giants however he chose to retire rather then to consent to such an indignity.

Jackie spent his retirement as a director for the NAACP, wrote a syndicated column often addressing racial issues, and help found and direct several philanthropic endeavors, including a scholarship fund and a construction company dedicated to low cost housing for the poor. Jackie Robinson died on October 15, 1972, nine days after attending a world a series game in which he expressed that "I'd like to live to see a black manager, I'd like to live to see the day when there's a black man coaching at third base" Jackie Robinson had hoped to be that person however it didn’t happen for another three years. In 1997 the number 42 was retired by all Major League teams, the rule was grandfathered in and the last player to wear the 42 is Yankee Mariano Rivera.

In 2007 Ken Griffey Jr. asked Miss Robinson if he could wear number 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson he wore the number along with several other players including the complete rosters of several teams the most notable being the Dodgers. I was there it was beautiful, there were a lot of famous people in attendance including the widow Rachel Robinson, Hammerin Hank Aaron. Ernie Banks, Dave Winfield, Don Newcombe, Tommy Lasorda, and Major league Baseballs first black manager Frank Robinson (no relation)

"Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts"

On this day in 1945 a staff member at an Oak Ridge, Tennessee hospital injects plutonium into the survivor of a car accident. Thus begins an enormous top secret study that lasts almost 50 years by US government to investigate the effects of radioactive materials on humans.

The study involved several aspects over the years, some well known, and some less widely publicized and documented.

• Early on scientist working on the Manhattan project routinely injected human subjects (without their knowledge) with radioactive plutonium to study the negative effects of radiation, this program did not end until the mid 70`s
• At the Fernal Institute in Massachusetts, 73 mentally disabled children were fed oatmeal containing radioactive Isotopes.
• over a period of decades 829 pregnant mothers in the Oak Ridge Tennessee hospital received what they were told were "vitamin drinks" that would improve the health of their babies, but were, in fact, mixtures containing radioactive iron, to determine how fast the radioisotope crossed into the placenta.
• in 1947 at the Bikini Atoll some 40,000 military personnel in over 150 decommissioned and captured naval vessels were without their knowledge intentionally exposed to nuclear tests
• In 1954, American scientists knowingly conducted fallout exposure research on the citizens of the Marshall Islands a nuclear device was detonated upwind, and the residents were exposed to serious radiation levels, some developed severe radiation sickness and long term affects included birth defects, and thyroid problems.
• In 1950, The U.S. Government in northern New Mexico exploded in the atmosphere a conventional (non-nuclear) bomb containing metal that had been charged with high levels of radioactivity. The scientists then went to Watrous, a town seventy miles east of the laboratory, to make a count of radiation levels.
• Due to the stratospheric nuclear testing that was taking place shortly after World War II “Operation Sunshine" began. this was the theft of cadavers throughout the world by the US government to cremate and examine the amount of radiation absorbed by individuals, of special interest was infants due to their ability to absorb contaminants
• From 1963 to the early 1970s, more than 130 inmates of the Oregon and Washington state penitentiaries participated in an experiment that subjected their testicles to high levels of radiation to determine what it would take to render them temporarily sterile. Available records indicate that the prisoners signed consent forms but were not advised that there was a high risk of contracting testicular cancer

All of this information is true varifiable through a Department of Energy report issued by the Government in the Mid 90`s http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/

Les Fleurs du mal

Be Drunken!!
One should always be drunken.
That's all there is, that’s all that matters;
that's our one imperative need.
Lest you feel the horrible burden of time break you down and bend you to the earth,
you must continually be drunken.
With what? With wine, with poetry, or virtue, as you please.
But be drunken.
And if, at some time, on steps of a golden palace,
or in the cool green grass of a ditch,
or in the bleak solitude of your room,
you should wake and find that the drunkenness has begun to half fade,
ask the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and the clock,
all that which flies,
all that which cries,
all that which crawls,
all that which sings,
all that which speaks, ask them, what time it is;
and the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and the clock, they will all reply:
It is time to be drunken!
So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time,
be drunken, be drunken, relentlessly without ease!
With wine, poetry, or virtue,
as you please!"
-Charles Baudelaire

Today is the Birthday of one of my greatest childhood influences (I think that says a lot). Charles Baudelaire was born in 1821, his Father died early in his childhood. His stepfather was an ambassador that afforded him a good education. He pursued a literary career early and achieved success after the publishing of his first book of poetry, Les Fleurs du mal ("The Flowers of Evil"), The book addressed themes of death, sex, a life of excess, and a search for profound meaning. He was a catalyst of the most precious and imperative literary times, the golden age of existentialism the 1860`s. However as result of his search and individual excess he was an alcoholic, addict, he went bankrupt, suffered a massive stroke, and eventually succumbed to the symptoms of encephalitis at the age of 46

'The King of poets, a true God'. -Arthur Rimbaud
'the greatest poet of the nineteenth century'. -Arthur Vigny
'technical mastery which can hardly be over praised ... has made his verse an inexhaustible study for later poets’ -TS Eliot

"From my cold dead hands"

Charlton Heston?! What?! not Charlton Heston say it aint so! Everyone is going to say that he was an actor of considerable talent, and that he was a person whose character preceded him. But he was truly an icon, a part of Americana that we all can lay claim to whether is attracts or repels us.

First of all lets address the obvious, ‘Hardcore Republican Conservative’ blindly following a dogmatic agenda, but he was really much more then that. Before it was fashionable for actors to enter into the arena of politics, he marched with Martin Luther King, he marched to oppose the war in Vietnam, and after the Kennedy assassination he stood up for gun control laws. I don’t think that his political stance during and after the Reagan era fully quantified him, because his history of political activism seems to follow the notions of a man that was guided by an individual conscience rather then a predetermined ideology.

I must admit, that whole “cold dead hands” bit that is priceless!! Who could pull that off? he was the consummate dramatic professional. I remember seeing him years ago on the Bill Maher’s Politically Correct he was sitting across from Lisa Kudrow, and she was arguing some anti-gun stance, she was attacking not only his political stance but his moral agenda. Being the perfect gentleman, he let her ramble just enough not to let her embarrass herself, then he leans in and in that low baritone grumble doing his best Moses from The Ten Commandments says “Let he who is with God go with me” the room fell dead silent, and you could visibly see her swoon.

Okay he was an icon, it’s not just that, but admittedly and it goes to tell, (in a story of which we don’t have time for here), I have never had a father. So what I have learned to do was to gather elements of my surroundings; My Grandfather, Uncles, Sports icons, Movies and Literary Characters. I remember he was in The Planet of The Apes “Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!”, (sorry I needed to get that out) Soylent Green and of course The Omega Man, THIS WAS MY FAVORITE, I know it wasn’t one of his best roles, but to me it embodied that quality which I admired most about his characters, he seemed to embody that solitude that only real men can truly comprehend, burdened by our own egos, ignoring an overwhelming sense of self doubt, serving the ideals that coalesce our concealed destiny. he was Diogenes`s point of reference, and the archetype of Shakespeare’s Paragon, In Bowling for Columbine when Michael Moore baits then attacks Mr. Heston (who was admittedly suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s), it was like watching the fall of one of my heroes, and part of me, (I am not crazy I will elaborate more on this later)

And you my Father there on your sad height, curse bless me now with your fierce tears I pray
-Dylan Thomas

See, what a grace was seated on this brow;Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination and a form indeed; Where every god did seem to set his seal; To give the world assurance of a man:

-Shakespeare

"April is the cruelest month"

On this day Prisoner Of War PFC Jessica Lynch was rescued from an Iraqi Civilian Hospital in Nasiriyah southern Iraq. PFC Lynch had sustained several wounds as the result of the Humvee crash that she was in when her convoy had gotten lost and subsequently ambushed. Despite conflicting reports of a gun battle and torture, there was no evidence of such harsh treatment by her captors. By Lynchs own admission her weapon had jammed and she was unable to use it to defend herself. At the time of her rescue from the Hospital, a week after the crash, there were actually no insurgent forces stationed at the hospital. PFC Lynch later stated that, they had sung songs to make her feel more comfortable. However despite the alignment of all these fortunate circumstances the National Media, and the Military Propaganda, began to spin the event into a ‘Ramboesque’ account of a real American Hero, with the intent of popularizing the unpopular conflict. Subsequent Congressional hearings made clear the White House and Pentagon manipulation.

It is clear that despite military efforts to keep quiet peripheral reports of the event, Several of PFC Lynchs` team members sustained mortal wounds in the Ambush Including PFC Lori Ann Piestewa, The first Native American woman to die in military combat. PFC Piestewa is a member of the Hopi tribe and enlisted in the military to secure an income to provide for her two children. Lori Piestewas` Father and Grandfather were former Military and veterans of Foreign Conflicts.

“I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were, in fact, legendary ... The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes, and they don't need to be told elaborate tales”. –PFC Jessica Lynch

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks that nothing is worth war, is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself".
—John Stuart Mill