Hiroshima and Mother's Day

Mother's Day in the USA is as good a day as any to remind people what that mother Hillary Clinton meant when she said she would "totally obliterate" Iran if in some highly speculative future scenario it nuked Israel. Barack Obama replied: "It's not the language that we need right now, and I think it's language that's reflective of George Bush. We have had a foreign policy of bluster and saber-rattling and tough talk, and, in the meantime, we make a series of strategic decisions that actually strengthen Iran." Hopefully, in his comments he's merely pandering to war mongers!

Anyway, mothers of the world, this is where we are headed if we don't stop cooperating with - and even fronting for - patriarchal and largely male miltarism and war mongering. More photos here.
In fact, it's a great day to reprint reformer Julia Ward Howe's 1879 "Mother's Day Proclamation"

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Video of Baby Boomer Turning 60

May 5th is Cinco de Mayo in Mexico, Japanese Children's Day, Europe Day and the birth day of Karl Marx and a lot of minor and not very memorable figures - including me. Now don't all you identity thieves go running out to buy cars and houses under my identity!

Anyway, I made a fun collection of video and photo clips of my life set to a bouncy version of the birthday song. Leaving out a number of significant others so I don’t get a lot of complaining emails! Ain’t modern technology wonderful?

Your Voter ID, Senator Obama? No problem, Rev. Hagee....

The Supreme Court just upheld an Indiana law requiring citizens to present a photo identification card in order to vote. That means that all the non-driving poor and/or old and/or two-jobbed and/or busy and/or clueless people who don't know or have the time to find out which government agency supplies these cards are tough out of luck on election day. And if they can't afford the $15 - 50 such a card might cost - no, that's not an unconstitutional poll tax says the Supremely Unfair Court.

If Illinois enacts such a law, Barak Obama will have to present his card. Hope his driver's license is up to date!

Of course, by election day the media should have thoroughly destroyed Obama's candidacy, if they don't just hand the nomination to Hillary first. After all, we all know that there is no more important story than the three or four silliest things your pastor said when you weren't listening. (Or is it Wright's critique of US/Israel racism that really freaks out the media?)

Meanwhile Christian Zionist John Hagee - a speaker at AIPAC's 2007 convention - can endorse McCain and nary a word is said, even though he's been quoted saying: ''It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day.'' Oh, and Katrina victims and 9/11 victims also deserved it - and don't get him started on those Catholics! The Columbia Journalism Review did a nice expose of journalistic bias in the McCain-Hagee versus Obama-Wright situations. (I've written about Hagee here a couple times previously - and include the groovy photo of Hagee as Satan to the left.)

In conclusion - if voting could change anything they'd make it illegal - like the Supreme Court just did, just in case...

15 Years Since Feds Massacred at Waco

I just watched the year 2000 Star Trek Voyager episode called "Memorial" about a beacon that sends the experience of a government massacre of 82 people to whoever passes the otherwise empty planet where it happened. Coincidentally this show aired the day before the April 19th 15th anniversay of 76 of the 82 Branch Davidians being killed at their Mount Carmel ranch near Waco, Texas. In writing my book The Davidian Massacre I relived that experience myself for two years.

Now that the Davidian property has been taken over by a competing faction, the 82 trees and stones that were the members' memorial to their familes and friends has been dismantled, though a group of supporters' stone memorial has been allowed to remain. The greater memorial is that when Texas law enforcement went into the Yearning for Zion Ranch over accusations of child abuse, they didn't go in shooting.

However, as television footage clear showed, the Texas Rangers went in with their own armored vehicle, and all the officers were armored more like soldier than peace officers. So there's no doubt that Texas is ready to get it on against any citizens who tick them off. Below is a 16 part video that I haven't watched, but it evidently includes a lot of interviews with Davidian survivors. (See update on this post below.)

Update: On April 20th Eric Dondero (see my expose here) posted an idiotic and factually inaccurate blog entry entitled "Mormon Polygamist Compound Raid in Texas: Where's Carol Moore and all those left-libertarian Anti-BATF Waco demonstrators now?" My reply to his inaccuracies is on the page, (including the comment: "(We're also against slave contracts where immigrant or poor women agree to marry men who then abuse them, stating that's part of the contract"). CNN actually linked to it at the "From the blogs" section at the bottom of this article about the section.

Censoring the Declaration of Independence (Jefferson's Birthday)

Today would be Thomas Jefferson's 265th birthday. And while the patriarchal slave holder wasn't perfect, he did give us these immortal words from the Declaration of Independence, its second and third sentences:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

This video shows a couple of examples of government and media trying to censor this message.

Should Elephants Replace Humans??

Watching this artistic elephant at work makes you wonder. Something tells me they'd never be foolish enough to invent nukes!

Carol Went to See the Beatles - and Now It's in a Book

This fun book "We're Going to See the Beatles" includes interviews with Beatles' fans who saw them in person - including me! It has several passages from my adventures seeing them twice in 1964. (Note my blog description above - "Imagine there's no countries, and no religion too.") The book is available at Amazon.Com.

As I wrote, in part, in an earlier blog entry about the Beatles and the Apocalypse of Love:

In 1964, at sixteen years, I had three experiences which helped me leave the constrictions of the Catholic faith. I read most of Ayn Rand’s novels, which raved against religion of any kind. I had my first spontaneous experience of the universe as being one connected consciousness and of my being part of that consciousness. And finally at the end of the summer of 1964 I saw the Beatles twice in person, August 30 in Atlantic City, New Jersey and September 20 in New York City. (Yes, I am one of the anointed ones!)
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Before the latter concert four of us went exploring through the upstairs halls. We separated at a staircase when a guard appeared. Our friends who went down the staircase ended up at the entrance to the Beatles' reception room! They saw two live Beatles! My sister and I ran the other way and ended up in the lobby. I've always seen that as the great symbol of the many missed opportunities in my life.

Of course I say something more positive in the book which also is true: I think about it from time to time when I'm having decisions in my life - should I take the more conservative or aggressive route - and I think of those stairs and I think, "I gotta go down those stairs!" 'Cause I don't know what I'd miss if I don't.

Well, now that my arm is out of a cast and at least two fingers on my left hand can type, I've run out of excuses for laying on my butt watching TV all day. It's back to fulfilling my New Year's Resolutions!