At 6:30 the morning of August 28, 1963 my grandfather in Pennsylvania and my parents in New York City boarded two buses both bound for Washington in the District of Columbia. All three of them were journalist; all three were Americans of African decent; all three held great expectation, pride and there was a jubilant hope in their hearts.
The summer of 1963 I was a youngster busy with summer things; wishing that summer would go on and on. I had visions of the first day of school and new school clothes dancing in my head and I had a few more trips to the beach to prepare for.
My parents sponsored the filled to capacity bus that left from the corner of 96th Street and Astoria Boulevard in Corona/East Elmhurst, Queens, New York that August morning. They didn’t take me and my sisters along; we stayed home with our grandmother. I guess they were concerned for our safety but I remember wishing that they had taken us,  and thinking that they should have taken us. When they returned home so full of hope and pride it was like they had been infused with new life and determination and it infected  us. Those same emotions were  felt by the  thousands that returned home from the District of Columbia on a bitter cold day in January of 2009.  It was just as  infectious and palpable then too.
This morning my maternal aunt sent the family a copy of the article my grandfather wrote about his reflections of August 28, 1963. I asked her if I could share it here on SWI but she answered my request via email saying “I’ve limited circulation to family because I’m giving it – and the rights to it – to the MLK Memorial in Chester. Sorry.” Suffices to say, like my parents were, my grandfather was inspired and infused by the events of that day. It is evident in what he wrote.
November 4, 2008 is another significant date in the history of these United States of America, it marks the date on which the first African American was elected to the highest office in the land. It also marks the date on which some misguided Americans felt they lost their honor (?) and their country (?). So tomorrow, August 28, 2010, they plan to attempt to erase the memory of that Great March on Washington. Glenn Beck and that woman from Alaska who sees Russia from her windows and folk like them want to erase the sanctity of that great march; they’ll tell you quite the opposite.  Once again these “teabag” hypocrites and bigots will try to sling mud on the efforts and gains of people who put their lives on the line for equality and freedom and for this great country but, something tells me they will not succeed because freedom loving Americans with hope and love and a true belief in justice can’t and won’t let them. The spirit of  our ancestors will stand on the side of justice and thwart their efforts and those of us who value freedom and cherish the the legacy of August 28, 1963 will be standing too because we have to.  We have to because we firmly believe; YES WE DO, YES WE WILL, YES WE CAN!

This  post is dedicated to the memories of  Corien Whitaker Drew, William T. Whitaker, Kenneth R. Drew and to the thousands who marched on Washington in the heat of summer in August of 1963.

Book Cover

Yesterday morning at approximately 2 a.m., I officially finished my first, full-length novel, The Gaslight Journal.

Begun back sometime in 2001, this book was originally a fluke of an idea.  Because I’ve said previously that I had no confidence in my writing, I did not work seriously at the thoughts of ever finishing this book, let alone trying to shop it around for either a publisher, or to make available as a Kindle title, which I plan to do.  I am shooting for an early to mid-November release date, hyping the publicity for Christmas.

It was around this time that I also joined an online writing group on Usenet.  That group of people that I met there, taught me a lot about life, growing up, the value of friendships of people you’ve never met, and how with just a little relentless encouragement and a whole lot of craft, I was the only one holding me back from doing this.  Some of those people–Steve W., Barry A., Joe K., Alaric M., Bob W., and Amanda T., are still close friends and confidants to this day.  To be honest, I have no idea where I would be in all this, if it hadn’t been for their kind hearts, and taskmaster discipline.

I highly encourage you to find a good, active online or face-to-face writing group.  The benefits of an online group, are that it’s easy to post excerpts or short stories for critique, and many, many people have the benefit of making comment, so you get many varying POVs.  Plus, my favourite, being able to post stories, comment and commiserate, all without leaving your chair or changing from your peejays.

The downside of a group of this nature, is that you generally have to wade through several timezones before you get an answer, sometimes waiting for days or even weeks in some cases, as people are extremely busy and the level of posting is in high volume.  The other drawback is that because each poster is in equal probability an amateur as well as a published, experienced author, you never know, without trial and error, if the advice you receive will truly work for you.

The pros of seeking out a face-to-face writing group, inherently, are the same as an online group:  you learn how to give–by mere repetition and discussion–effective constructive critiques, and you get them in return, which, since true writing is only in the RE-writing, will only make you a better writer.  You also have that immediacy of advice, because once you read your excerpt, you then have the luxury of hearing its immediate affect on those listening, and they can offer comment while the work is still fresh in their mind, and they haven’t had an ample amount of time to think about it, which often happens in online groups–people have lives to live between the time they read your story, and the time they have to comment, so opinions are sometimes in jeopardy of changing in that time, and you just don’t have the access to those visceral, gut-wrenching opinions.

The downside of this sort of group, is that you have to get dressed before you leave the house.  Oh, and you have a specified time to meet each and every week, rain or shine.  You can’t just sit back in your cozy armchair if the snow is too deep and you don’t feel like reading Shteeve’s latest tome until in the morning.

As you can see, both groups have benefits and both have their drawbacks.  As to which one will work better in your situation is entirely up to you, but the important and only thing is, that you find one and become an active part of it.  Those who offer critiques and read our stories are an integral part of the writing process.  Even if your average reader does not know how to place into words why your story sucks, if it’s not polished and snazzed up, is rife with misspellings, grammatical errors and typos, he will simply know it does, and that will be more than enough to kill your sales, because avid bibliophiles TALK.

Now that my own group disbanned about a year ago, I am also, in want of a new, constructive and active group, because I’m not nearly done writing–I’m just getting started!

My web-site: http://www.carlarene.com

My blog: http://carlarene.blogspot.com

Become a “Twit:” http://www.twitter.com/carlarenecomedy

(see Minnette Coleman  “Really”)

               The conversation had wandered to World War II.  A later arrival was of the opinion that the US had lost the war. He said that the world tricked us into rebuilding them, and protecting them, but that we had tricked them, making them our puppets.  There was much debate and spicy language.  The old goats had awakened.  The “hippie” as he was now called, was a rather young man.    He spoke in broad statements at how evil the American system has been.  But when he said that Harry Truman was a war criminal for dropping the bomb, and should have been hanged, I came unglued.  I had listened to the entire debate trading very few barbs.  I had been polite.  At this point, I no longer was.

               I spoke for five straight minutes, giving this man something to think about.  I concluded by pointing out how many American lives and Japanese women and children were actually saved by the bomb.  Before he could respond, a chorus of claps rang out.  I looked around at the faces of these old men, those who were there, those who saw it all.  They had just told me how correct my speech had been.  The “hippie Kid” decided to scoot.  As time wore on, the counter crew all talked about what their war experiences had been.  Most were vets of Vietnam and WWII.  The crowd dwindled one by one, but not without hearing some stories, learning some lessons.

               When I was almost the last one at the counter, I realized it was 2am.  On my way out, I saw a really worn old fellow in the corner eyeing me up.  I said hello, he called me “son” and said he would tell me something about the war.  My ears were tired, but I got some more coffee, and listened for two hours.  “Mickey” told me how and when he became a POW.  The Japanese had been very cruel to him and others; peeled skin, carved parts, burns, psychological terror.  Until he was finished, Mickey had tears running down his cheeks on several occasions.  There were many times, I really had to strain to hear him, over the emotion in his voice.  It was amazing to see the face of a dignified man, grimaced in emotional pain, with tears welling.  Mickey said he had told the whole story to his wife.  And until now, he had told no one else.  The story was full of horror.  Movies look tame when compared to mans’ inhumanity.  But in the end, what mattered most to Mickey?  That people remember history, so as to avoid a repeat of his pain.  He said if he could get that, he could go in peace.  He did just that at age 92.  His pain died with him, but will it be remembered?

I didn’t start out wanting to write a novel. I was living outside Washington, DC at the time and was not getting into acting as much as I wanted so I decided to write a play about what happened those many years ago. At the time I was doing a lot of reading and research on African American History and learned the many  slaves had a way of gossiping by singing about what a person had done. Instead of spreading the word through the grapevine they literally put it on the banjo. Remember David Allen Grier on ‘In Living Color” many years back? He had a character that would talk about everything and everyone with his banjo or guitar. He would start each number by saying: “Wrote a song about it. Here’s how it goes.” Kind of the same principal.

So I entitled my play “Put Her on The Banjo”. It was about a young woman who tries to convince her father to save a convicted black man from execution by forcing a rich white woman who was with him at the time getting religious counseling to testify on his behalf. The white woman, of course, cannot do this not only because of her position but because she is a little crazy and no one would believe her.

It was a really awful play but I entered it into a contest anyway. My rejection letter came back faster than I sent it out. Decding writing drama was not my forte, for years I left it alone.

Then while visiting my father some time later I asked about the trial and he informed me that I had been mistaken all these years. There were two trials. One when I was an infant in the early 50s when the anti-lynching laws had just come into play. Historically black men accused of even looking at a white woman were usually hauled off in the middle of the night and executed by lynching. Their bodies beaten, hung and then torched. Sometimes their families along with them. I knew this part of American History because at the age of 8, while looking for my Christmas presents, I came across a box with photos of lynchings that had been sent to my father over the years. I am surprised that I didn’t throw up on the floor of my parents bedroom. Somehow I looked at every one and the knowledge of how black people could be killed without a thought stayed with me for many years.

In the first trial my father explained that the man accused of raping the white woman got off. I don’t remember how but it was considered an embarrassment for the white community and a failure for the District Attorney. The second trial took place years later and many believe that the man who was  executed was convicted because the first one wasn’t. Things were not done completely legal of course and there was no way to save him. My father loaned me his scrapbooks of the last trial since I wanted to write about it. For months I studied them and made notes. Often I asked him questions. Then I started writing a novel called “Sweet Auburn Avenue”, the name of the street where my father worked at the Atlanta Daily World. The name of the street that has a great deal of black Atlanta history including Dr. King’s Ebeneezer Baptist Church.

It was a time of high gentrification in Atlanta and everything was Sweet Auburn. When I told my father my title he balked saying, “Use something else.” Of course I was stubborn and angry. How dare he tell me I couldn’t call my novel what I wanted? I had come up with an double-spaced 800 page novel that had a lot of history and a need of serious editing. But of course I didn’t think it needed a name change. When I went down home for a visit I saw what he was talking about and decided to take the focus of the novel off of the well known street and put it on one of the characters. I didn’t know which one, the father who was a journalist or the daughter who wanted to be like him. I put it aside for a while.

I  had decided to rework the novel and make my main character a 14 year old girl who quotes poetry. Then I read a poem in “The Book of American Negro Poetry”. The original copyright was 1922 by James Weldon Johnson who wrote The Negro National Anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” I had read some of the poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. These poems my father had committed to memory for his first love of writing was poetry. He and my mother actually met in a poetry club. The book was my resource for all my forgotten poetry.

Then one day I found the most interesting poem by a writer I had never heard of. Leslie Pinkney Hill wrote “So Quietly” based on the lynching of a Negro man in Smithville, Ga in 1919. He found the information in a news item in The New York Times. The last line was “Stern truth will never write, “By hands unknown.”

I had an idea for a title and an idea to make a point about African American history that goes untold.  In studying the anti-lynching laws and what they meant to fearful black people nation wide I realized that a trial by jury, even when not a jury of one’s peers, would mean a conviction leading to a death under the law. It would be the beginning of an era of “No Death by Unknown Hands.” Thus the story evolved.

Tim Roux is publishing it on Night Reading. It is no longer an 800 page manuscript but a well edited well cut down story that I have to say I enjoyed re-writing. I have kept several things in it that originated in the poorly written play including the journalist father coming in drunk after the execution. But this time the daughter who wants to be a journalist is 14 and on the verge of becoming a woman. She is not hiding in her bunk bed crying and wondering why daddy is acting that way. Willie Jenkins forces herself into the world of adults to see what she can do to help.

When I read it now I understand why it took so many years to get it together. A few years before my father died I asked him about the execution and he told me another thing he had never volunteered (but then again I never asked). He never saw the execution. Because of his skin color and his reputation as a writer the white cops and jailers refused to let him view the execution. It changed the ending of my novel a great deal. It also made me realize that there are many people of all ethnicities that have history to tell but are never asked about it. All my father’s articles and scrapbooks never accounted for this one human element- how he actually felt during the time and what he did to survive when the whites were closely watching him- and our family- as he tried to save a man from legal lynching.

This novel is a tribute to all those who have stories to tell but never get heard. This book is for those who prayed for “No Death by Unknown Hands.”

The British stood their ground when they were under terror siege.

New York remains on high alert. There is virtually no one here who does not understand that we and Washington are what we were on Sept. 11 almost nine years ago: the main and primary targets. Last weekend’s events in Times Square demonstrated again that our enemies are persistent and focused if not, in the case of Faisal Shahzad and, 4½ months ago, of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be underwear bomber, very good at murdering. They both appear to have been wayward sons of their nations’ establishments—Shahzad’s father was a retired vice marshal of Pakistan’s air force, Abdulmutallab’s a prominent Nigerian banker—and essentially stupid. But they will be followed by others who are not so hapless.

New Yorkers the past week have discussed all this with appropriate concern. We speak of who Shahzad is—how they found him, how they lost him, how they caught him—and of the sturdy T-shirt salesman, the mounted cop, the airport screener who spotted his name. We speculate about what happened in the moments before Shahzad, his keys still in the car, fled Times Square. But there is no air of panic; we knew we were a target, we have absorbed this information, factored it in, included it as a fact of our lives and concluded there’s little we can do about it. “If you see something, say something” as we’ve all memorized from buses and train stations.

The only time we feel a sharp edge of anxiety is when we’re between stations deep down in the subway. But even there—about five years ago, during another terror alert, anxious plainclothes policemen stormed onto our uptown subway at 42nd Street, holding the doors open with their bodies. They were breathless: Were there any unclaimed bags on this train? Look under your seats! A woman saw what looked like a full grocery bag. “Is this yours?” “No, give it to the cops.” “Is it yours?” “What’s in it?” A man’s voice rose from the middle of the jammed car, aimed at the police. “Take the blankin’ bag and close the blankin’ door, we’re goin’ home.” Pretty much everyone laughed and clapped, and the cops grabbed the bag and were gone.

Even in terror alerts, the practical trumps the abstract. We’re hungry, take your bomb, we’re going home.

But we are at this point in phase two of the long war, not the harrowing years just after 9/11 and the anthrax attacks. And here it may be instructive to look at the experience of another great nation that faced a long terror siege.

Britain faced a quarter-century of terror bombings from the Irish Republican Army, which literally called its campaign “the long war.” But the IRA found itself up against a particular spirit, a national attitude that isn’t remembered enough or lauded enough. We see some of it in these words: “There is no excuse for the IRA’s reign of terror. If their violence were, as the misleading phrase often has it, ‘mindless,’ it would be easier to grasp as the manifestation of a disordered psyche. But that is not what terrorism is, however many psychopaths may be attracted to it. Terrorism is the calculated use of violence—and the threat of it—to achieve political ends.” That is Margaret Thatcher. More on her in a moment.

In the 1970s, the IRA weapon of choice was the car bomb. They used them to hit Belfast’s main shopping center in July 1972, killing nine and leaving 130 wounded. There were many bombings and assassinations, most famously Lord Louis Mountbatten and three others in August 1979. Meanwhile the IRA broadened its campaign in England. At first they bombed pubs. In Birmingham in November 1974, they killed 21 civilians and injured 162. In the early 1990s, they bombed the City of London, Canary Wharf, Manchester; in a bombing attack in the town of Warrington they wounded 50 people and killed, among others, a 12-year-old boy and a 3-year-old shopping with his family. By the end of their terror campaign, they’d injured more than 2,000 civilians and killed more than 100.

What helped the Brits through the long haul? Their particular nature as a people. The great English journalist Harold Evans, editor of the Sunday Times at the time of the Birmingham bombings, says, “I hate to use the word stoicism, but it’s true.” There is “a dominant British characteristic” that involves “understatement and irony.” Mr. Evans adds that “history counts in people’s lives.” He, and those who were leading Britain in those days, “grew up in the war and the fantastic pride invoked by Churchill. All societies have underlying currents of feeling. With the British one is tolerance, and the other is pride in British achievements, a universal acknowledgment . . . that we were a diminished empire but a great people.”

Also unshaken, “the British pride in their tolerance, their respect for fair play,” Mr. Evans says. “When the bombs started in Britain, my recollection is that there wasn’t any huge upsurge of feeling against the Irish.” There was some fury with America, “because America was supplying the guns” to the IRA, as was Moammar Gadhafi’s Libya. In the end the English saw the Americans as “deceived by the IRA.” Those who are indifferent to the special relationship might remember what the British not long ago suffered for it.

After he left office in 1974, former British prime minister Edward Heath was the target of two assassination attempts. The IRA bombed his London home while he was away—haplessness among terrorists did not start in Times Square—and tried to blow up his car. But in October 1984 they got close to killing a sitting prime minister. In Margaret Thatcher’s memoir, “The Downing Street Years,” she recounts with understatement and precision the bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.

She was up late working on a speech. “At 2:50 a.m. Robin Butler asked me to look at one last official paper—it was about the Liverpool Garden festival.” Four minutes later “a loud thud shook the room. . . . I knew immediately that it was a bomb.” It had been placed above her suite, which was now strewn with glass. She made her way, covered in plaster dust, out of the hotel, met with aides, slept in her clothes for an hour at a police facility, woke to the news reports—five dead, including a cabinet minister’s wife—and turned to her remarks to the Tory party conference. “I was already determined that if it was physically possible to do so I would deliver my speech.” Urged to return to No. 10 Downing, she said, “No: I am staying.”

“I knew that I could not afford to let my emotions get control of me. I had to be mentally and physically fit for the day ahead. I tried not to watch the harrowing pictures. But it did not do any good. I had to know each detail of what had happened—and every detail seemed worse than the last.”

Contemporary politicians, please note: In the rewrite of her speech, Mrs. Thatcher removed “most of the partisan sections.” This “was not a time for Labour-bashing but for unity in defense of democracy.”

After she delivered it, the “ovation was colossal.” “All of us were relieved to be alive, saddened by the tragedy and determined to show the terrorists that they could not break our spirits.”

Harold Evans remembered it. “That day she was wonderful. She truly was the iron lady.”

  About Peggy Noonan
Peggy Noonan is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal whose work appears weekly in the Journal’s Weekend Edition and on OpinionJournal.com.

She is the author of eight books on American politics and culture. The most recent, “Patriotic Grace,” is to be published in October 2008. Her first book, the bestseller “What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era,” was published in 1990.

She was a special assistant to the president in the White House of Ronald Reagan. Before that she was a producer at CBS News in New York. In 1978 and 1979 she was an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University

I wonder if David Cameron will be anything like her.

John Armor, Esq.
Box 243, 421 Kettle Rock Road
Highlands, NC  28741
828.200-0320
John_Armor@aya.yale.edu
www.TheseAreTheTimes.us

When I arrived at her gate, I was delighted to see, that her front yard was filled with geese, both big and small. I loved visiting the farms that belonged to both sides of our family, being from the outer suburbs of Detroit. I proceeded into the yard and went straight to her pen to visit with the ducklings. Reaching down, I picked up the nearest one and held it to my chest. Imagine the shock I received when my aunt’s boxer “Queenie” came charging around the side of the house barking at the intruder. I squeezed the duckling a little too hard, not that she wasn’t already traumatized, and she proceeded to excrete her dinner all over my pink frilly front all the way down into my shoes! The hens and ganders were squawking, the baby bit my thumb hard, the dog was digging dirt and barking, and here I was balling my eyes out, when the strangest woman I ever laid eyes on came around the corner.

Ruth was wearing a long brown dress and a dingy white apron with a bib. She had on a brown bonnet tied under her chin and was carrying a basket full of eggs. In her other hand she had a thick walking stick and used it quite effectively to come to my rescue. Taking me by the hand she escorted me into her home through the back door. At the big kitchen sink she pumped water from a hand pump and filled the sink with water and soap. I removed my soiled dress and she gave me a shirt to wear. She used an old wooden washboard to clean my dress and socks then took those out back to dry on the long rope line secured between two trees. When she came back in, she made us some tea and we sat at her kitchen table to complete our introduction. Everywhere I looked there were things I had never seen before. She had homemade bread cooling on the counter, onions and potato’s hanging in baskets beside wire baskets filled with all kinds of eggs. There were brown ones and white ones, speckled ones, big and small ones. There was a big wooden churn, which I soon learned was for making butter and cream. There were dollies and trivets and hand made fly swatters. She had an overhead wooden blade fan rotating slowly, churning smells that my young nose couldn’t begin to identify. She had jars of pickles and a variety of jellies. Her linoleum was in a checkerboard pattern and she had the prettiest lace curtains over her sink. We sat and talked for awhile and then she went to call my aunt and uncle to let them know where I was. That was the beginning of a most memorable friendship that over years never wavered.

Ruth had worked in the post office until she retired. She raised her own chickens and guineas and made her own breads. She traded these with other ladies for jellies and fruits and it gave her a chance to visit when the mood stuck her. She had a large barn and a corn silo in the back. She stuffed pillows and quilts with goose down and she crocheted the dollies that adorned her tables. The only modern contraptions she finally allowed in her house were an indoor privy and the telephone, both non-negotiable items that my uncle had installed.

Over the years I would sit in her kitchen and tell her stories about the city. I would talk to her about boy problems, drugs in the schools, deaths of friends, and she would just sit and listen to me. She would ask me how those things made me feel and she would hold my hand if I cried. During the summer visit’s she taught me how to gather eggs without the hems leaving peck marks in my hands, how to skin and peel the hair off the corn, to churn the butter and how to have a good time without the aid of a television. Most of all she taught me how to find peace in a very hectic world. She knew when I needed to talk and when I needed time up at the top of the silo looking out on miles of corn.

When I grew up and had my own farm and children I would send her pictures and letters. She was such an inspiration in my life. One day my Aunt Gladys called to tell me that Aunt Ruth had passed. She told me that when she was cleaning out Aunt Ruth’s house, she found all of my letters and pictures I had sent her tied up in a ribbon in an old shoe box.

I will miss her always but she is still my rock in a crazy world. When it becomes too rough, I close my eyes and picture the woman in the brown dress and bonnet who was my mentor, my analyst and my best friend.

© 2008 Lena M. P.

Doctor Watson narrates, and acts, as he helps the famous sleuth to track down clues in this complex crime mystery. Avril Field-Taylor has done her research and takes the reader on a journey which is so well constructed that it is like watching a film of events play out. Set in Devon, Hull and London, with Buckingham Palace playing a role, the story moves rapidly with the trains and Handsome cabs that propel the protagonists through the convoluted plot. The railway stations, backstreets, country houses and, of course, Baker Street, are all described so well that the reader feels at home with them.

The action brings in Mycroft, Sherlock’s brilliant but mysterious brother, the professionally jealous Lestrade from Scotland Yard, the Hellfire Club and Sherlock’s arch-enemy, Moriarty, in a plot which twists and turns without ever losing credibility. The damsel in distress is beautifully drawn and turns out to have more courage and good sense than initially expected, so that the reader really cares about her fate. Watson’s love and concern for Mary, his wife, is very well depicted. And Mrs Hudson gets an unexpected shock when Baker Street is attacked.

I won’t spoil your enjoyment by detailing the plot. This story moves apace and all the characters live so there are no stereotypes here. This will be enjoyed by all who love a good crime novel, a mystery, a problem-solver and an authentic historical setting. Sherlock Holmes fans will particularly enjoy this new adventure for their classic hero, in which the author has the voice of Watson as narrator exactly right. I picked this up, expecting to read it off and on over a few days but did not put it down again until I’d finished it. An exciting and absorbing tale, which I thoroughly recommend.

You can find her books at http://www.avrilfieldtaylor.co.uk/

In 1918 in the 11^th hour of November 11^th  World War I ended. The Allies and the Germans signed an armistice to end all fighting on the Western Front. President Wilson proclaimed November 11 Armistice Day, thereby beginning the annual commemoration of the end of the Great War. Over the years it became Veterans Day to honor veterans returning from all wars. In 1938 Congress made it a legal holiday and 11/11 has always the date.

There is one more bit of information about Veterans Day that we should remember. Unknown soldiers were laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery, Westminster Abbey in London and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in 1921. The United States still carries on this tradition of honoring our unidentified military dead on November 11 at 11a.m. at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

Unfortunately this holiday has fallen into the same trappings as all others. Some get a day off and the only significance of the day to the majority of the nation is the number of sales advertised at least a week in advance. I know too many Veterans to leave what they did on the sidelines and go shopping for what is assumed to be a bargain. Life should be looked at so cheaply.

I don’t like or believe in war. Wars have ruined far too many lives. But I understand that each country needs to have a military presence for protection. More than ever I respect the men and women who risk their lives to go out and fight for what they believe in. Some of them have not faired well lately. I want to thank all the Veterans who write for SWI for their efforts to protect this country of ours and to thank those veterans who have gone before them. We need to do more to honor those brave enough to watch our shores.

I didn’t notice it at first because he looked like so many other men is black jackets and black hats on the streets of New York. It wasn’t a fashion statement but the trim and the writing on the hat were gold, green and red. Big letters proclaimed “Viet Nam Veteran” and he looked the part, looked the age. That slight bit of machismo in his ever so slow but precise step was a reminder of the brothers who came back from that conflict with a different mindset all together. He sat in the very front, behind the driver and once he got settled he pulled out a copy of Jet Magazine. I grew up reading a copy of that publication every week. My mother decided that would be the only publication she continued to subscribe to after my father’s death.

“Hum, well,” the Veteran said aloud and leaned over to read the magazine. The price tag was still on his hat. “$19.95. Is he a vet I wondered or a pretender to the times?

“Nice, good body.” I was sure he was referring to the picture of the week that was something of a Jet centerfold. When black women were not considered beautiful a lovely woman of African American descent graced the center of the magazine. I don’t remember when they started dressing in what passed for bikinis but it this beauty made him smile. It was then I decided to give him his due and consider him a vet even though the price tag on the hat was throwing me.

“I like that.” His voice was loud but not brash yet when he spokes everyone looked up. Afraid. He didn’t look like the crazies that roamed the streets and gathered enough change to ride a bus or sleep on the train. He was clean shaven and freshly showered. Despite my sinus headache after shave floated my way each time the front doors opened. I looked at his hands and saw manicured nails that were in better shape than mine.

Crazy, clean and groomed. But what was with the hat? I wanted to tell him about the tag but then I didn’t want to embarrass him. If I approached him on the bus, especially with his Tourettes like outburst, everyone would look his way. And mine. They would think I knew him, or was trying to get to know him. They might even think I was trying to get him to shut up because every time he spoke the baby in the back cried and the woman knitting dropped a stitch.

“That’s right.” He said it to no one and I wanted to know how he got that way. How he got to wear that hat and talk out of tune. Was this a product of the war or the environment that surrounded him afterwards? Why he was in all black?

It didn’t hit me until I got off the bus and he exited slowly after me. The next day was Veterans Day but there were events all week long to honor those who went to war. He was probably on his way to one of those events and got the new hat to replace something lost or worn. As a writer I conjured up a lot of stories about this veteran in my imagination. But there was none better than the one that said he had a home and was able to keep some benefits. He had enough money to buy a hat for his day for $19.95. Or he had someone who loved him enough to give it to him.

He strolled down the street towards Columbia University. I thought about the many veterans this nation has forgotten who have no homes, no benefits and no care for their injuries that have continued long after their service to this nation. I thought about those who died in that same service.

I saluted them all as I wished him safe passage. Some brother in arms would make a joke about the hat and the price tag and that would allow him to create a story about how and why he had it. I wished I could hear it but it was not my place to intrude. I am not a veteran just a grateful citizen. It’s time to show him honor and respect.

Tommie Agee, centerfielder and leadoff hitter for the 1969 world champion New York Mets, died of a heart attack Monday at age 58, too young. I last saw Agee about 15 years ago, in the offices of New York’s Queens Borough President, where he was trying to find funding for a program for the underprivileged. A native of Mobile, Alabama, Agee embraced the city that embraced him, and as an alumnus of baseball before free agency, he needed to earn a living after his playing days and opted for a town where he remained a famous name.

Agee was the offensive leader on a team that won an unlikely championship with pitching and defense. After Agee sparked a victory over the Chicago Cubs, the team that looked to be running away with the National League’s Eastern Division in the summer of 1969, Chicago’s pitcher threw at Agee’s head in his first at bat the next day. Agee dove headlong into the dirt to avoid the bean ball, dusted himself off, and tripled, a symbolic moment that showed the Mets would not go away.

In Game Three of the 1969 World Series, Agee had what might have been the greatest day in Series history. (And as a 13 year old cutting school for a seat in the upper deck at the first fall classic game ever at Shea Stadium, it was certainly my greatest day in World Series history.) Agee homered leading off against the Baltimore Orioles’ Hall of Fame pitcher and underwear model Jim Palmer, then singlehandedly made that run stand up. In the fourth inning, Agee sprinted, back to home plate, to catch a slicing drive high above his head, backhanded, that saved two runs. In the seventh inning, his diving catch on the warning track with the bases loaded saved at least three runs. The Mets won 5-0, for a 2-1 Series lead, and put the Orioles away within 48 hours to win a most improbable championship.

But this Commentary is not about Tommie Agee or the indomitability of the human spirit that made the 1969 Mets the flesh and blood version of the little engine that could. Agee’s grabs drew immediately comparisons with the greatest in World Series history: Sandy Amoros’ mad dash in 1955 through a vacant leftfield in Yankee Stadium to pull in Yogi Berra’s bid for an opposite field home run; Brooklyn’s Al “Gionfrioddo goes back, back, back and makes a one-handed catch against the bullpen; oooh, doctor,” as Red Barber called it, to pluck Joe DiMaggio’s drive in 1947 (in a rare display of emotion on the field, DiMaggio kicked the dirt as he rounded second base, his sure home run transformed into out number three); and what is generally regarded as the greatest robbery ever, Willie Mays—whose 1972 acquisition by the Mets ran Agee out of town temporarily—on Vic Wertz in the 1954 classic.

Tie game, eighth inning, two men on. Indians slugger Wertz already has three hits off Giants’ starter Sal Maglie, so New York manager Leo Durocher calls for a relief pitcher, lefthander Don Liddle. Wertz says he never hit a ball harder, into the vast expanse of the Polo Grounds’ centerfield, where the fence was nearly 500 feet from home plate and the steps up to the clubhouse were in play. Mays chased down the drive like a wide receiver, made the catch with his back to the infield about 460 feet from the launch point, then threw a strike that kept the runner on second from scoring. Many witnesses (including Mickey Mantle worshipper Bob Costas) place Mays’ play in the realm of the impossible; there is no way a ball hit that hard and far could be caught.

The lesson for investors doesn’t come from Mays or Wertz, but from the pitcher, Liddle. After the catch, the Giants manager Leo Durocher went to the mound to remove Liddle, since he’d given up a blast that would have been a home run in any other park, including Yellowstone. As was the custom in those days, Liddle waited until his replacement arrived from the bullpen. When the new pitcher reached the mound, Liddle offered these words of encouragement: “I got my guy.”

Sometimes the bottom line doesn’t quite get to the bottom of things.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.

When I first moved to the city I used to think New York was jazz, a lot of confusing notes that somehow rolled together to find their way to a song. It changed daily and sometimes it was actually more than an off beat tune. It was smooth and mellow and there were people who wore it like a leather glove. But when I left the market my shopping bag filled with fresh peppers, onions, pears and bananas, the music stopped. I longed for it, prayed for it, then waited for it trying to determine if it was bouncing off of buildings or lost in my imagination. When I shopped for food I had a tendency to sing in my head or hum out loud. I hadn’t thought of this song in ages so I was hoping I wasn’t imagining the rhapsodic playing of this tender melody.

It started again then stopped, too loud and too real to be a recording. Keep playing I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. Get past “the very thought of you makes my heart sing”. Play the rest of it. As if by magic the music went on.

But the trumpet stopped again and so did I. Determined to find the bastard screwing with my head I looked up and down the avenue and found the old couple strolling in my direction, heads lifted to the air in search of the same song. They were walking close together but not hand in hand as one might expect lovers to do. Those who have lived with love for a long time do not always display the same affections towards one another as those who have just discovered that their breath can be taken away by a single being. The air was cool and they were dressed for the day and their age. They were older than the song and I wondered was their romance. His leather bomber jacket was open at the neck, his scarf hanging loosely over his shirt while her green knee length coat covered her entirely. You could tell she had long ago stopped telling him to wrap up against the cold and he had stopped listening. He lifted his cap, something jaunty and young, to wipe the sweat from his brow. I imagined the chapeau a gift from an admiring grandson who loved hearing stories about his grandfather’s days after the war.

I had seen this couple before but never in this neighborhood. Sometimes I saw them on the bus, smiling as if nothing in the world could ever or had ever gone wrong. They were at least forty blocks from home and in no hurry to get there. It may not have been their goal when they left their apartment but now they were looking for the music and the musician.

It started again and suddenly, as if prompted by the tune, he took her arm. I expected him to twirl her at least once on the sidewalk but they moved simply closer together. The song played on without interruption as I got nearer to them. They did not notice me for they lingered in the notes. Halfway through the second verse I found the trumpeter across four lanes of traffic and a middle-of-the-street mall garden on the other side of the avenue. The couple stopped to listen as I stopped to watch them. He squeezed her hand and she leaned into his shoulder. For a second I saw them on a date more than fifty years ago when Ella Fitzgerald sang this song considered one of the greatest post war (that’s WWII) ballads of the time. The couple had cocktails before them in crystal glasses. She wore satin elbow length gloves and a tight dress illuminating all her assets; his jacket and tie made him as dapper as any man about town in the 40’s. They were in one of those swanky jazz clubs you see in black and white movies. Tiny spaces with a dress code, a lot of class and the band so near they are almost on your table. The couple was sitting so close no air would risk coming between them and she rested her head on his shoulder careful not to crush her hair or to stain his jacket. It was a vivid picture for me, like watching a classic movie. Perhaps it was a vivid memory for them.

When she lifted her head I passed them and nodded a hello although they didn’t see me. I walked to the corner without looking back as the song played on. It was not my business to invade their moment. For the next two blocks I could hear the song clearly as if it were playing my exit from the scene. It faded behind me and I wondered where the old couple was headed. To shop or maybe to lunch? Or maybe just to be together because they knew that life is short and precious.

I though about the last few lines of lyrics as the music faded out and I wanted to hum but I got lost in thought. “You fill my eager heart with such desire, every kiss you give sets my soul on fire. I give myself in sweet surrender, My one and only love.”

I imagine her touching his hand again. I imagine him pressing his cheek to hers. There are so many things to remember and this couple smiles all the time. How lucky they are to find yesterday and today in a song. If it made their day to hear it, it certainly made my day to find them.

You would never know she was her mother’s child until you get close to her and see the same eyes and facial features. I hadn’t been physically close to her in at least ten years. She spoke to me on the street in passing but she always seemed preoccupied. And she was. After a short stint in the juvenile system something changed her. She didn’t want to be like her eldest brother, the one I have never met because he has been in jail since I have lived in Manhattan. She told me she has lists of goals she wants to achieve in the next 8 years. This girl’s lists do not include fast men or fast cars. It does not include a life on welfare or a life without working. Her lists are about a better life.

She went to college for four years straight and graduated this past June. Not with honors but with great pride and dignity. The first person in her family to do so but her mother never mentioned it to those in the neighborhood. Her mother does not really brag about this daughter. While in college she worked at a hair salon to make ends meet and took various courses to train for jobs that most college graduates might turn down. Though she finds no shame in being an administrative assistant, her face brightened as she told me she liked working with people, her goals are towards management. She sees her future as something bright. After an hour with her I do too.

I was asked to help her prepare for a job interviews. Over the years I have done workshops with young people as well as women going back into the work force to help them build confidence as they apply for jobs and set up interviews. This young woman did not really need my help, she just needed to be reminded of the things she had learned in previous training. People in our neighborhood who know and loathe her mother would not think this child could do anything but talk loud, fight and maybe steal. When I asked her why she had majored in psychology she explained with great candor that she had been a troubled youth and that one of her many goals was to start a foundation to help kids like herself. “When somebody is trying to tell you something they learned from a book you don’t want to listen. But if its someone like me, someone who has been where you have been, you are gonna listen. Somebody did that for me.”

I longed to tell her that she was not as troubled as others in her family. She found a way out and I was glad. As we watched her grow up we noticed that she was the nice kid in the family, the one that didn’t snap back when an adult spoke or cursed you out when you asked them to keep the noise down. I remember she was arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. Trying as most kids do to be accepted, to be popular. When she got out of jail she was a lot tougher, but not meaner. She decided she didn’t like the other side of the bars and made a life for herself. The first thing she did when she turned 18 was move out of her mother’s house.

Her resume is a strong one, she has worked a great deal. It is not impressive unless you know where she comes from. She is still connected to her mother, still fairly close. But still her own woman. When people talk about kids raised in by welfare moms who would rather cheat than work I don’t think about the ones who hang on the street and amount to nothing, I think about the ones like her who take all the advantages they can and move up and out. Surely her siblings will say she is stuck up and trying to be white because she has succeeded but I don’t think she will care or revert back to the ways of her youth. That’s not on her list of things to achieve. She is one of the few who saw beyond the glamour of the moment. There is something for her to look forward and it is not seeing how long she can stay on the take. It’s seeing who she can help down the road.

And whether this impresses her family or not I am proud to know her and I say good for her. It will be interesting to see who she can reach.

As the Elders of the media die, who’ll replace them?

When William Safire died the other day, we lost one of the Elders of journalism and the argumentative arts. We’ve been losing a lot of them lately: Walter Cronkite, Bob Novak, Don Hewitt, Irving Kristol. “The stars seem to be going out one by one,” said Howard Stringer at Cronkite’s memorial.

At a gathering of Safire’s friends and family this week, Bill stories were told with affection, humor, and a bit of awe. He made his way in a profession that was, early on, hostile to the former Nixon speechwriter and PR man. He barreled through with well-marshalled gifts and a heroic work effort. He was a famous lover of words and language whose deepest loyalty was reserved, kept apart, for his wife, children and friends. He took care of those in his ken. And there was the professionalism: He loved journalism, respected what he did, loved helping young ones on the way up, and was so proud of his work that he was only half kidding when he said, “It’s not a column, it’s a pillar.”

Anyway, everyone there knew we’d suddenly lost one of the great ones, the Elders, and there is lately a sense of a changing of the guard.

***

Who are The Elders? They set the standards. They hand down the lore. They’re the oldest and wisest. By proceeding through the world each day with dignity and humanity, they show the young what it is that should be emulated. They’re the tribal chieftains. This role has probably existed since caveman days, because people need guidance and encouragement, they need to be heartened by examples of endurance. They need to be inspired.

We are in a generational shift in the media, and new Elders are rising. They’re running the networks and newspapers, they own the Web sites, they anchor the shows. What is their job?

It’s to do what the Elders have always done, but now more than ever.

You know the current media environment. You think I’m about to say, “Boy, what’s said on cable, radio and the Internet now is really harmful and dangerous.” And you’re right, and it is. Some of the ranters don’t have the faintest idea where the line is. “They keep moving the little sucker,” said the William Hurt character, the clueless and unstoppable anchorman, in “Broadcast News.” They’ve been moving the little sucker for 20 years. But it’s getting worse, and those who warn of danger are right.

Two examples from just the past week. A few days ago, I was sent a link to a screed by MSNBC’s left-wing anchorman Ed Schultz, in which he explained opposition to the president’s health-care reform. “The Republicans lie. They want to see you dead. They’d rather make money off your dead corpse. They kind of like it when that woman has cancer and they don’t have anything for us.” Next, a link to the syndicated show of right-wing radio talker Alex Jones, on the subject of the U.S. military, whose security efforts at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh show them to be agents and lackeys of the New World Order. “They are complete enemies of America. . . . Our military’s been taken over. . . . This is the end of our country.” Later, “They’d love to kill 10,000 Americans,” and, “The republic is falling right now.”

This, increasingly, is the sound of our political conversation.

It is not new to call this kind of thing destructive, though it is. It is a daily agitating barrage that coarsens and inflames. It tears the national fabric. But it could wind up doing worse than that.

I see it this way. There are roughly 300 million people in America. Let’s say 1% of them, only 1 in 100, are composed of those who might fairly be called emotionally unstable—the mentally ill, those who have limited or no ability to govern their actions, those who act out, as they say, physically or violently. That’s three million people.

Let’s say a third of them are regularly exposed to political media rants from right or left. That’s a million people.

What effect might “they want to see you dead” and “the Republic is falling right now” have on their minds?

I was once in a small joust with Roger Ailes about violence on television. I was worried about it. He responded, I paraphrase: But there’s comedy all over TV, and I don’t see people breaking out in jokes and laughter on the streets. True, I said, but depictions of violence are different. Violent images excite the unstable. Violent words do, too.

This is why, I think, so many people—I include, literally, every person I know, from all walks of life, and all ages—are worried that our elected leaders are not safe, that this overheated era will end in some violent act or acts.

Stop reading this and ask whoever’s nearby, “Do you find yourself worrying about President Obama’s safety?” I do not think you are going to get, “No.”

***

Some conservatives feel umbrage when this is said. “The left equates criticism with violence in order to squelch dissent.” In some cases that of course will be true. But this isn’t debate, it’s more like incitement. And it comes from both right and left.

Democracy cannot healthily endure without free and unfettered debate. It’s our job to watch, critique and question, and, being us, to do it in colorful terms.

But knowing where the line is, matters. Seeing clearly the lay of the land, knowing the facts of the country and your countrymen, matters.

Which gets us back to Safire and Cronkite and Novak and the rest. They knew where the line was. They were tough guys who got in big fights, but they had a sense of responsibility towards the country, and towards its culture. They, actually, were protective toward it. They made mistakes, but they were solid.

Now the new Elders must do the job they once did. Some of them will think they can’t, that the old ones were too big. But it always looks that way. Who thought Walter Cronkite of United Press would become Ed Murrow, only maybe more influential? Who would have thought Bill Safire, refugee from the Nixon White House, could fill the shoes of Scotty Reston? But he did, and more.

Everything has changed since the old ones came up—new platforms, new ways of communicating. Everyone has a mic now, from the guy making YouTubes to the anonymous drunk on the comment thread.

But it’s still possible to set an example, encourage the helpful, stand for the good, pass on the lore, take responsibility.

The new Elders will have to rescue America from the precipice. They’ll have to be mature, think of the collective, of the country as a whole.

If they don’t do it, who will? If they don’t lead through this polarized time, who can? People who are 25 and 30 can’t. They haven’t been around long enough and don’t have the sway. They’re the guests on the broadcasts, not the executive producers. The new Elders are.

And they’ll have obits someday too. Their careers will be captured in eulogies, leaving their children proud, or not. In a way you’re writing your own obit every day. You’re making the lead paragraph positive and constructive, or not.

Someone’s going to sum you up one day. You want to live your professional life in a way that they can write good things.

·         About Peggy Noonan
Peggy Noonan is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal whose work appears weekly in the Journal’s Weekend Edition and on OpinionJournal.com.

She is the author of eight books on American politics and culture. The most recent, “Patriotic Grace,” is to be published in October 2008. Her first book, the bestseller “What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era,” was published in 1990.

She was a special assistant to the president in the White House of Ronald Reagan. Before that she was a producer at CBS News in New York. In 1978 and 1979 she was an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University.

from ConspiraZine Magazine–posted below:

911 and Avian Flu Legislation Were For the Sake of Martial Law: Just Say No to Mandatory Vaccines

In America, we may be on the verge of martial law, the current excuse being the threat of Avian Flu. While remaining calm, we do need to address this potential while we still have the freedom to do so. Perhaps we can stave it off if we look squarely at what is happening, and why. We have to look more deeply into the reality of vaccines, and why they are really being imposed upon us. We can look at 911 to realize that the government will use any deception to control us more. 911 didn’t work to bring total martial law, which is what it was intended to do, so bird flu is now being used to accomplish that state. Martial law is not being used as a last resort because of disaster out of our control. Martial law is the goal, and the disasters are hoisted on the public for the express purpose of making them give up their freedoms. Let’s not.

While Bush’s publicly proposed martial law in response to Avian Flu may seem like an answer to a problem, the “problem” is martial law. Republican Congressman Ron Paul represents the 14th Congressional district of Texas. He also serves on the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, and the International Relations committee. On the Alex Jones show, he said this about Avian Flu: “I believe it is the President hyping this and Rumsfield, but it has to be in combination with the people being fearful enough that they will accept the man on the white horse. My first reaction going from my political and medical background is that it’s way overly hyped and to think that they have gone this far with it, without a single case in the whole country and they’re willing to change the law and turn it into a military state? That is unbelievable! They’re determined to have martial law. ….”They don’t want any resistance to their authoritarian rule.” (www.prisonplanet.com)

Obviously, it is not only conspiracy buffs and militia spouting off about martial law abuse. On Ted Koppel’s Nightline, former Bush official, Richard Clarke, told us we should get used to the idea the Bush Regime will sponsor a cataclysmic event for the purpose of martial law.

Stanley Hilton was a senior adviser and chief of staff for Senator Bob Dole and has personally known Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for decades. On the Alex Jones show, he said: “This (9/11) was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder.”

How can we turn our backs when all around us people are exposing the government’s plan to take us over? Reporter Steve Watson at www.infowars.com shows how the federal government, under the Bush administration is using any excuse to usher in Martial Law. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a terrorist attack, a threat, a fake threat, or a natural disaster. Bush wants the ability to declare Martial Law. He wants the power to declare war IN the United States.”

http://www.firedupmissouri.com/node/335 After 9/11, plans for martial law plans became obvious. The Pentagon proposed deploying troops on American streets. In April 2002, Defense Dept. officials created a new U.S. Northern Command (CINC-NORTHCOM) for the continental United States. The Command will respond to attacks and natural disasters. Bush also created the National Security Service (NSS); a branch of the FBI that answers completely to his authority.

Political scientist and lawyer Stanley Hilton, Bob Dole’s chief of staff, interviewed people working for NORAD and the Air Force, who said there were five drills that simulated the events of 911, or dress rehearsals, on Sept. 11^th, and at least 35 drills over at least two months before. (The Alex Jones Show.)

Dr. Paul Rea, who wrote the book Still Seeking the Truth About 911, tells us that, with no evidence to support it, the 911 Commission Report altered the timeline for many significant events of the day. For example, government agencies had established that the Air Force was alerted about a plane at 9:16 a.m.. But the report changed it to 10:07. 51 minutes later than it happened.

Former MI5 counter subversion agent David Shayler points out that the Twin Towers and the never- shown- on- TV sudden collapse 8 hours later of WTC Building 7 were the first buildings ever to fall from fire damage. No other buildings have ever gone down exactly like a controlled demolition unless they were controlled demolitions. In which case, they’d need a good deal of preparation and access to the buildings. Who would have had access to the buildings? Well, hmm, Marvin, the President’s brother, was in charge of the security for the WTC.

Shayler has gone on the record concluding 9/11 was an inside job as a pretext for the already planned invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and ultimately Iran and Syria. Shayler says the evidence suggests the attack was supposed to create enough damage to allow martial law.

Bush signed orders giving him sole authority to impose martial law, suspend habeas corpus and ignore the Posse Comitatus Act, which disallows deployment of U.S. troops in our country. This allows the Constitution to be suspended, martial law to be declared, people to be imprisoned in internment camps, and the President to seize control of the entire government.

KATRINA

White House senior adviser Karl Rove ordered the governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, to find a way to impose martial law, in September 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, we were told by the Washington Post. The White House tried unsuccessfully to force Gov. Blanco to yield control of the state National Guard. Preceding Katrina, Donald Rumsfeld had repeatedly said that he wanted to use the military domestically. The administration was put the Pentagon in charge. This caused a 3 day holdup in the federal response to the tragedy. The choice was made to withhold aid until the governor capitulated.

In Washington,as William Arkin reported in the Washington Post, NORTHCOM conducted Granite Shadow exercises. “Granite Shadow is yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control.”

“Visible Intermodal Protection and Response” teams, or VIPER teams, patrol various mass transit systems such as Amtrak, ferries, and bus stations. This began one week after the incident in Miami where Rigoberto Alpizar was gunned down on board American Airlines Flight 924 for supposedly saying he had a bomb. According to witnesses, Alpizar never screamed that he had a bomb. Passengers said they were more frightened of Air Marshals putting guns to their head and threatening them not to look at what was taking place. The incident was an excuse for more Federal militarized police in the public.

VACCINES

911 and Katrina have set the stage for the quarantine imposing mandatory vaccines, requiring martial law. 911 shows that the government is capable of putting one over on the public in order to control us. Now, we see one way they are attempting to do this right now, and I would ask all reading this to contact authorities, and write letters, and pass along this article, in order to stop their current ploy, which is the Pandemic Preparedness bill called BioShield Two. If it is not allowed now, martial law may be postponed long enough for the population to wake up to the deceptions, and may be avoided forever. In the meantime, just say no to vaccines. My article will explain the reasons this is important to do.

Bush’s announced on on major TV stations that he would impose martial law to enforce mandatory vaccines if one case is found to jump from person to person. Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate Dean of Columbia University’s School of Public Health for Disaster Preparedness, told the Associated Press that giving the military a law enforcement role would be an “extraordinarily Draconian measure” that would be unnecessary for the distribution of vaccines.

“The translation of this is martial law in the United States,” said Redlener.

We’re exposed to harmful chemicals every day, but some of the most damaging are delivered in supposedly benign vaccines. Vaccines are implicated in causing cancer, autism, Alzheimers, Guilliane-Barre, heart trouble, developmental diseases, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, lupus, MS, ALS, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, and many more pandemics. Some people have been able to avoid vaccinations to some degree, but now the government, sponsored by the pharmaceutical companies are using the fear of an avian flu pandemic to coerce people to accept a mass vaccination by companies who have contaminated the public in the past. The pharmaceutical companies are now being told, through the bill called Bioshield Two, that they should make vaccines even more quickly, surmising what mutation may possibly develop. The bill gives them the message it doesn’t matter if the vaccines are contaminated. Stopping this bill from passing could be the most important thing we can do to avoid martial law, which will be imposed in order to force the American people into having vaccines. S 1873 was considered in committee in October, and was recommended to be considered by the Senate as a whole.

If we want to keep some semblance of freedom, it’s the time to stop the bird flu vaccine and anti-virals from being mandatory. Yet, while we were watching the BioShield Two, in December, Senator Frist’s Pandemic Funding, Lability Shield Cleared Congress while snuck in with the defense spending bill. We already have much to counteract.

The bill provides $3.8 billion for pandemic influenza preparedness and a liability shield for those who produce and administer drugs and vaccines used in a declared public health emergency $350 million goes into vaccine production, and stockpiling antiviral drugs.

People who are damaged by the drugs can sue only if they prove “willful misconduct” by those who made or administered it. This is our task. We must prove that this is not being done for our welfare.

But Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. Speaks for us when he says that the bill allows the HHS secretary to use a variety of common diseases as an excuse to activate the liability shield. He is backed by Senators Tom Harkin from Iowa and Chris Dodd from Connecticut.

Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, allows the HHS secretary to apply the liability protection by declaring an emergency. No criteria are given and it is not open to court review. Should we just hunker down and accept vaccines? Many people still believe the story that they are useful and safe. However, I will show that this is not the case.

In the pretense of stopping or abating one specific illness, vaccines damage the immune system, creating the possibility for future physical ailments. The U.S. National Vaccine Information Center reports more than 54,000 adverse events following vaccination, such as convulsions, encephalitis, and death were reported to the FDA between 1990 and 1993. The FDA says that only ten percent of doctors report adverse effects. Of course, only a very small number of patients would even recognize that their illness was related to a vaccination, especially as not all occur immediately. And only a small number would report reactions they identified. Connaght Laboratories, a vaccine manufacturer, believes that a fifty-fold under-reporting of adverse effects occurs, and considering their line of business, we should multiply that figure greatly.

A physician, Montague Leverson, M.D., Ph.D., M.A., said, “Now the forcing of these inoculations upon individuals by law is one of the worst tyrannies imaginable, and should be resisted, even to the death of the official who is enforcing it.” (Pearson, The Dream and Lie of Louis Pasteur.)

The Center for Disease Control, admitted that almost every case of polio in the U.S. between 1980 and 1994 was caused by the vaccine itself. You can only imagine that they, who are in the unfortunate business of promoting vaccines, would give us as little against vaccines as they could get away with. If even the have to admit the truth to come into some semblance of realism, we can see that there is some evidence t hat can�t be swept under the rug entirely, much as they would like to.

The Centers for Disease Control has been injecting children with high levels of mercury (called Thimerosal) in almost all vaccines. Although we are told not to eat fish with mercury, we are required to stand by while health professionals inject it.

Why the persistence in using mercury? The Bush family and the administration have many ties to Eli Lilly, the makers of Thimerosol used as a preservative. Bush senior sat on the company’s board in the 1970′s. Eli Lilly CEO Sidney Taurel is on the homeland security advisory council.

White House budget director Mitch Daniels was an Eli Lilly executive.

The effects of Thimersol are identifiable, including ADD, ADHD, autism, trouble focusing and coping, personality disorders, and depression, and other symptoms. Teen Screen and New Freedom Commission screens every child, every year, for mental illness, in order to find children they can administer more drugs to.

If the CDC admitted the real problem, parents would be told to check out the possible mercury cause of their children’s apparent personality and mental dysfunction.

Instead, children are often prescribed psychiatric drugs, which are degenerative, linked to suicide, violent crimes, and physical ailments. Zyprexa, for example, can cause hyperglycemia/diabetes in one week�s time. The side effects of these prescribed drugs are the focus of national lawsuits.

Vaccine safety studies are only allowed for 14 days maximum after the shot, and they compare a new vaccine to a so-called placebo. However, the placebo is not a benign, inert substance. It is another vaccine. If the new vaccine has the same side effects as the “placebo”, the new vaccine is called “safe.”

Numerous DC documents show that antibodies are not proven to protect from infection. For example: “The findings of efficacy studies have not demonstrated a direct correlation between antibody response and protection against pertussis disease.” MMWR March 28, 1997/Vol.46/No. RR-7, p.4

Globally, we are being told by our governments that we must take pandemic vaccines and that martial law may be required to handle the process, with restrictions on travel, for example, enforced at gunpoint. The bill shielding pharmaceutical companies from public scrutiny and no liability also creates the first agency to have no liability. The Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005 (S. 1873), “Bioshield Two”, sponsored by Senator Burr, would create the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency, BARDA, which would be exempt from open records.

This is the time to contact the Senators, as the bill is now on the calendar. Now is the time to make some noise. It would be impossible here to cover the whole subject of vaccine history and how they are not helpful but harmful, and all the negative effects of them on the body and society. Knowing the facts about vaccines in particular and government deception in general will help us all be better able to deal with what�s happening in this country and the world. I am proposing that you learn some facts to ready yourself for spreading the word about vaccines to your associates. Memorize a few. So here are a few �strange� numerical facts in question and answer format:

Quiz 1: HOW MANY NON- VACCINATED HAVE AUSTISM?

The mercury in vaccines is believed by many researchers to be responsible for autism. But the numbers are manipulated in the false reports paid for by the vaccine companies and put into the public as if it were true. This type of procedure is the modus operandi in the pharmaceutical field. It is difficult to find subjects who have remained unvaccinated. Can you guess how many among one set of these control subjects had autism?

In Deadly Immunity, Robert Kennedy Jr. tells us that Dan Olmsted used the Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania as control subjects in the effects of vaccines, as they refuse to immunize their babies. According to the national rate of autism, Olmsted should have found 130 Amish autistics. There were four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three autistics in the community had been vaccinated.

Quiz 2: HOW MANY TIMES MORE CHILDREN HAD AUTISM IF EXPOSED TO THE AMOUNT OF MERCURY CONTAINED IN VACCINES?

Andy Waters, with the law firm of Waters & Kraus, who is suing on behalf of the victims of autism, made public a confidential version of a report by the Centers for Disease Control about how a mercury preservative in children’s vaccines causes neurological damage. A falsified version of the report previously made public by the CDC has been used to say the results are inconclusive. The true, confidential version that Waters demonstrated that an exposure to more than 62.5 micrograms of mercury within the first three months of life greatly increased a child’s risk of developing autism.

Children with the exposure were more than twice as likely to develop autism as children not exposed.

The confidential report, states: “As for the exposure evaluated at 3 months of age, we found increasing risks of ‘neurological developmental disorders’ with increasing cumulative exposure to thimerosal … within the group of ‘developmental disorders’… for the sub-group called ‘specific delays,’ and within this sub-group for the specific disorder ‘developmental speech disorder,’ and for ‘autism,’ ‘stuttering’ and ‘attention deficit disorder.’” VaccineInfo.net describes this in more detail.

Quiz 3: HOW MANY MORE CHILDREN DIE IF THEY ARE GIVEN DPT VACCINES?

Children die at a rate of three times the normal rate within three days after receiving dpt vaccinations, such as those created by Chiron. (The American Journal of Epidemiology.) As is typically the case, diptheria had declined 90 percent before the vaccines were created, and the public is led to believe the vaccines were responsible. According to the Presidential Address of the British Association for the Advancement of Sciences, deaths of children under 15 attributed to diptheria declined by 90 percent from 1850 to 1940 due to improved sanitation. Antibiotics and widespread, compulsory vaccinations against diptheria were introduced in 1940.

Quiz 4: HOW MANY STUDENTS GIVEN THE CHICKENPOX VACCINE NOW HAVE IT, AT A KINDERGARTEN IN WISHCONSIN?

According to the La Crosse Tribune, in a current outbreak of chickenpox in the Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau School District, in Wisconsin, all but two of the 44 sick children were vaccinated against it. At the Kindernook Learning Center, 36 of 99 kindergartners developed chickenpox. No manufacturer has reported a problematic batch of vaccines.

Quiz 5: HOW MANY ANTHRAX VACCINE HOSPITALIZATIONS DID THE PENTAGON HIDE?

According to The Daily Press, the Pentagon didn�t inform Congress about over 20,000 hospitalizations involving troops who had been vaccinated against anthrax. Generals and Defense Department officials told Congress that fewer than 100 people were hospitalized or became seriously ill after vaccinations between 1998 and 2000.

Quiz 6: HOW MANY DOSES OF CONTAMINATED VACCINES DID CHIRON PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY UNDER- REPORT?

As reported by people like Kathryn Dixon, though the Brits caught Chiron with 60 million doses of contaminated vaccine, Chiron still tried to cover-up and convince the U.S. government to allow the vaccine to be used. Additionally, Chiron said they had only shipped one million already, though it was actually 6 million. Even though damages often take an extended period to show up,they moniter subjects for ONLY up to 7 days for side effects. And that�s BEFORE the bill.

Quiz 7: HOW MANY SENATORS HOLD STOCK IN VACCINE MANUFACTURING COMPANIES?

U.S. Newswire reported that, according to the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, forty-two Senators own stock in pharmaceutical companies, which is a conflict of interest, as they vote on legislation which benefits the drug industry. Drug companies give them gifts as well, so are we surprised that they are passing the bill that says drug companies making vaccines need make nothing open to the public any more?

Dr. Alan Cantwell, who wrote Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic, tells us that AIDS first appeared in the New York city gay population in 1979 a few months after a vaccine experiment began in Manhattan, with vaccines said to be purposefully contaminated with HIV virus which was created in the lab. Twenty percent of the gay men who volunteered for the experimental hepatitis-B vaccine in New York later became HIV-positive. Manhattan men had the highest rate of HIV in the world. While I don�t agree that HIV actually causes AIDS, this is still worth investigating.

Quiz 8: WHAT IS THE PROBABILITY THAT THE BIRD FLU WILL MUTATE TO BE HUMAN-TO-HUMAN CONTAGIOUS?

The Congressional Budget Office says the likelihood of a flu pandemic is less than one-third of one percent, according to Atlanta Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. Yet the whole world is being told they have to take the vaccines, and the neurotoxin Tamilflu, which supports Rumsfield. Are the labs creating yet another illness, or are they just using the potential for mutation as a scare tactic, and a money maker for Pharma and the government leaders who are tied to it?

Quiz 9: HOW MANY OF US WOULD BE QUARANTINED BY THE ARMY UNDER MARTIAL LAW?

The World Health Organization predicted authorities using the army and police to quarantine about 120,000 people to contain an initial pandemic flu outbreak of just 19 cases, reported David Pilling, Jan. 13^th, Medical Journal.

There is nothing stopping the drug companies from giving us whatever contaminated and harmful vaccines they want to. If BioShield Two passes, that would be the best time for mandatory vaccination of the population. But the bill in place since December is probably all they need, and they could move forward on this at any time, unless we raise our voices and support the Senators opposing this. If the medical authorities wanted to say the bird flu had mutated, they would. If they wanted to make it do so, they could. And if they wanted it to mutate, they could make it do so in the labs. Either way, this would give them the chance to declare martial law. The government has been looking for an excuse to declare martial law. They were close on 9-11 and they�re not giving up on the �holy grail� of martial law. We must prevent them from having any excuse to start rounding people up.

Tantra Bensko, M.A., M.F.A.

]]> http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/09/9353/feed/ 2 http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/09/thank-you-soldier/ http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/2009/09/thank-you-soldier/#comments Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:17:18 +0000 AngelaPoseyArnold http://www.speakwithoutinterruption.com/site/?p=9147 Since 2004 I have been involved with “Amazing Grace, Ministry to the Troops”. We send packages to Chaplains and soldiers, and individual letters and cards to actively deployed and wounded American troops. Our mission is to encourage and bless them, let them know we care and support them, and send them a bit of something from home. However, the blessings and encouragement has returned to us through letters, emails, pictures and correspondence from the troops who somehow stumble upon the Scripture Cards we make.

Recently, I wrote a poem, printed several off and put it into a care package. I hastily wrote the simple poem including it in with a box of homemade cookies. Two weeks later I received an email from a Sergeant whose nickname is Big Tank. In the email he said, “since I have been in Afghanistan I have gotten packages of all kinds of things from people I did not know, but never have I felt so compelled to send something back. The poem you wrote is now hanging over my bunk and I have inserted the text of the poem onto a picture I took. I hope you do not mind because I have made copies and given them out all over base here with the 82nd Airborne. Thank you so much. Your words are making a difference in a very dangerous place to be. God Bless You, Big Tank.”

The poem, simply titled, Thank You, is not Dickinson, Whitman or Frost. It is just plain and simple, written quickly from the top of my curly head and the bottom of my heart. I may never be on the famous list of poets or writers. But, today I am famous with the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan. Only God can arrange such meetings.

Poem placed on photo by soldier in Afghanistan

The poem is difficult to read on the picture. The words are below.

Thank You

To me you are a hero just because of what you do

You train, leave home and fight

Because you believe in the right.

I am not able to fight, shoulder to shoulder with you

I’m just a Southern Lady

Who thanks you and the red, white and blue.

Because of you I can watch the sunrise in a sky of purple red hue

Even though I can’t fight at your side

My heart, my prayers are with you.

I know God sends His angels to comfort, protect and guide

You may not be able to see them

But know they are there by your side.

Big warrior angels surround you on each and everyday

Assigned to you, keeping charge they do

They know your every way.

So if you feel lonely or if you feel blue

Remember your country cares

Because to us you’re a hero and always,

Always in our prayers.

©Angela Posey-Arnold 2009

These chapels are full for every service. Standing room only.

We send boxes to the Chaplins and they write back asking for more.

If you know of a currently deployed soldier or wounded soldier please email me and we will be glad to put them on our mailing list.

• The Voting Rights Act of 1965.

• The Freedom of Information Act.

• The Occupational Safety and Health Act.

• The Americans with Disabilities Act.

• The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act of 2009.

• Fought a four-decade crusade for universal health coverage.

• Helped Soviet dissidents.

• Fought apartheid.

• Was one of 23 senators to vote against the Iraq war.

• Vastly expanded the network of neighborhood clinics.

• Virtually invented the COBRA system for portable insurance.

• Helped create the law that provide Medicare prescriptions.

• Helped create the Family Leave law.

What kind of man was he? Admittedly, neither a man without faults nor a self-righteous man who called names. In the words of Vice President Joe Biden, who worked in the Senate with him for 46 years, Senator Kennedy “never was petty; never was small. It was never about him, it was always about you.” He reached out to others, had a heart for others. When Mr. Biden’s first wife was killed in a terrible auto accident that injured their two children, Senator Kennedy was on the phone with him immediately, offering support.

What did Rush Limbaugh say about him? If Kennedy was the Lion of the Senate, “We were his prey.” No surprise there. I have two questions for Mr. Limbaugh and others like him: Does this mean that you oppose all of those things that Kennedy fought for that have benefited so many of your fellow citizens? Or do you simply not care?

“Today we have lost a great spirit,” Vice President Biden said. And so we have.

In a recent post, political cartoonist and blogger David Horsey wrote the following: “Teddy Kennedy is gone and we may not see his like again. But a greater tragedy for the nation would be if the politics of mutual respect, wise compromise and willingness to find common ground died with him.” So it would, David, so it would. An even greater tragedy would be if those who despise mutual respect, compromise and a willingness to find common ground are allowed to murder it.

“If by a liberal,”, Senator Kennedy wrote, “they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind; someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions; someone who cares about the welfare of the people, their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties; someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicion that grips us; if that is what they mean by a liberal, I am proud to be a liberal.” —Edward M. Kennedy

And so am I.

All for this post,

George Polley

Anger over al-Megrahi’s release should be directed at the Scottish and British governments that freed him. Scottish so-called Justice Minister Kenny Macaskill’s pompous, self-righteous justifications for the release ought to make that that easy. Still, it’s hard to imagine why the authorities thought it was a good idea to let this guy go free. On the planet where I live, there’s no compassion due anyone who kills 270 innocent people without warning or cause other than the accident of their nationality.

Furthermore, if there was some inclination to release al-Megrahi, then Libya should have given something in return, such as turning over officials responsible for the 1988 pre-Christmas bombing that targeted Americans returning home for the holidays. It makes little sense for authorities to just let al-Megrahi go, adding credibility to the claim by Moammar Gadhafi’s son that there’s a trade deal tied to his release.

Despite the inflammatory pictures of cheering crowds greeting al-Megrahi, the reception was reportedly subdued by Libyan standards. Moreover, the issue of released prisoners is almost invariably bound to offend someone. Think of the homecoming of that certified American hero, Senator John McCain. His heroism traced to dropping bombs from the thousands of feet in the air, endangering innocent civilians even when not specifically targeting them. Imagine how North Vietnamese, particularly those who lost loved ones to American bombs, felt seeing him lauded and meeting with the president after his release. Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder.

Totally globalized native New Yorker and former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen is author of Hong Kong On Air, a novel set in his adopted hometown during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal, financial crisis, and cheap lingerie.