the oswald interview

the retired assassin grimaced

as he tried to explain how he became

a spirit spent on a soul-less paradigm

he wore expensive glasses with both lens cracked

there were bird feathers

a string of baby saliva

and lord knows what else

that stood out on his junk-wire beard.

he had the face of a world

that gave birth to a still-born Africa

he spat that the only way to kill Ecclesiastes

was to write poetry from right to left on

parchment without lines

to change the flow of red rivers, he said.

with a mischievous grin and snicker he quickly added

that he stole the idea from one of his victims and

that he probably got the details mixed up, or left some out.

besides, he mumbled, the sun really doesn’t make a distinction

between whats old and whats new…

loop dance

they walk to and from their escapes

oblivious to all other escapes

until they are apprehended by the

screech and smoke.

they contemplate the rush

then snap back into their deity

their lesser heavens at each end

of an assembly line of plaster molds

that bob up and down

rock back and forth

wobble side to side

some are empty except for

the hollow

(ants carry their crumbs with more dignity as the ecology embraces them).

all ceilings are gray now

some praise their Michelangelo

many have no time for art

their flesh hanging on the thorns

for the butcherbirds

though out of sight, still circling overhead.

black clouds

are at waist level and rising

becoming wisps of another world

as escapees chase the color of summer leaves.

Darrell Issa, meet Ronald Reagan

“I’d rather see Jackson in the Cabinet than any of the more than 100 characters in the Reagan-Bush administration who variously have been accused or convicted of wrongdoing, making it, in my view, the most corrupt administration in my [life].”

The quote is from a column that appeared in the October 17, 1996 Chicago Sun-Times. The columnist was Dennis Byrne, who at the time was a member of the Sun-Times editorial board. The quote was actually taken from a column that he had written a few years earlier that was in response to how upset Republicans were by the fact that then-presidential-candidate Michael Dukakis was considering naming Jesse Jackson Jr. to his Cabinet.

It’s no surprise that the GOP engages in the same type of high-minded hypocrisy today and that it’s magnified by sadistic amnesia, or at the very least an insidious form of ignorance. I was reminded of the quote when I heard that Republican Congressman Darrell Issa proclaimed that President Obama was “one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times.” Of course in the interest of self-serving civility he amended his original comment and said that he was actually referring to the Obama administration and not the President himself.

Mr. Issa’s remarks would be laughable if they were not so disgraceful and shameful in their disregard of history and truth. As Mr. Byrne mentioned in his column there were more than 100 members of the Reagan administration who had been either accused or convicted of wrongdoing.  According to Wikipedia, “The presidency of Ronald Reagan in the United States was marked by multiple scandals, resulting in the investigation, indictment, or conviction of over 138 administration officials, the largest number for any US president at the time.” That bears repeating: Over 138 officials that served in the Reagan administration were either investigated, indicted, or convicted of wrongdoing.

But of course you wouldn’t know that from all of the worship and praise that Reagan received during the recent celebration and commemoration of his 100th birthday that took place across the nation. The media’s hyperbolic hugging of the man was so omnipresent that you could be forgiven for thinking that he had died, been buried, and was resurrected on the third day.  

How can this be? How is it that a man who was at the helm of what has to be considered the most corrupt presidency in U.S. history be worshipped like a god in this country? I believe that the late Walter Karp- who was a journalist, historian, and contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine– can provide some perspective on how such a pervasive scope of malignant amnesty can be granted to the likes of a Ronald Reagan.

An article by Mr. Karp titled “All The Congressmen’s Men: How Capitol Hill Controls The Press” appeared in the July 1989 issue of Harper’s Magazine. Here’s an excerpt from that article:

On February 26, 1987, Reagan’s “special review board,” known as the Tower Commission, issued its long-awaited report on the Iran-Contra scandal. An hour’s reading revealed a President obsessively concerned with, and intensely curious about, Iran-Contra matters, and determined to keep those matters in the hands of close personal advisers. To the press, however, the three members of the commission said exactly the opposite. In public statements, interviews, television appearances, and private meetings with leading editors, they insisted that Reagan was victimized by a “management style” that kept him in complete ignorance of everything blameworthy. That disgraceful lie, which in effect accused the President of his own defense, was endorsed at once by Democratic leaders and duly became the day’s news, as if the report had never been written. When the Iran-Contra committees of Congress issued their report on the scandal, congressional leaders told the press at once that the whole sordid chapter was closed. The press did as instructed and closed the books at once on the most extraordinary abuse of power in presidential history. The report itself was ignored; a wealth of newsworthy information, impeccably “sourced,” sank into journalistic limbo. The report termed Reagan’s private war against Nicaragua “a flagrant violation of the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution,” but that grave charge, worthy of blazing headlines, was scarcely noticed in the press and ignored entirely by the Times. What rule of journalism dictates such base servility to the powerful? No rule save the rule of the whip, which political power cracks over the press’s head.

Again: The press did as instructed and closed the books at once on the most extraordinary abuse of power in presidential history.

Again: The report termed Reagan’s private war against Nicaragua “a flagrant violation of the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution,” but that grave charge, worthy of blazing headlines, was scarcely noticed in the press and ignored entirely by the Times. Mr. Karp is referring to the New York Times, the same paper with the motto “All The News That’s Fit to Print.”

I guess the fact that the president of the United States violated the very Constitution that he swore to uphold was not newsworthy or “Fit to Print”. It appears that the press (i.e. corporate media) has determined that it’s in their best interest to promote the worship of false gods rather than to expose the dangers of such worship. How does that saying about the blind leading the blind go again?

When The People Have Had Enough

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everyone knows that Dr. King not only talked the talk, but he also walked the walk. His dedication to championing the concepts of justice and equality was surpassed only by his courage, which he punctuated profoundly when he stated that “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.” Dr. King was clearly a man who was willing to die for what he believed in because he could not live with the way things were.

It appears that the wave of protest and revolt that is currently surging across the Middle East was triggered by the supremely sacrificial act of a man who was willing to die because he could not live with the way things are in his beloved country Tunisia. I don’t know exactly what 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi believed in, but I believe that it’s safe to say that he had had enough.

Mohamed Bouazizi had a university degree but was unemployed. To make a living he sold fruit and vegetables, basically trying to survive as an unlicensed street vendor. One day the authorities in the small city of Sidi Bouzid where Mohamed lived seized his produce cart, essentially taking away his livelihood, his means of survival. It’s been reported that Mohamed became so angry that he set himself on fire. He died a couple of weeks later.

But the impact of his act was instantaneous. The incident enraged witnesses and rioting quickly spread throughout the town. Reuters reported that “Riots are extremely rare for Tunisia, a north African country of about 10 million people which is one of the most prosperous and stable in the region.” I guess the obvious question would be “prosperous and stable” for whom? A relative of Mohamed was quoted as saying, “People are angry at the case of Mohamed and the deterioration of unemployment in the region.”

The majority of Americans have absolutely no knowledge of the social, economic and political dynamics at the root of what is currently taking place in the Middle East, but there are millions of Americans who do know a little something about unemployment in a country that is “prosperous and stable” for a select few.

As a recent commentary in The Nation pointed out, “While 22 million were searching for jobs in the US this week, Goldman Sachs tripled Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein’s base salary and awarded him $12.6 million of stock, a 42 percent increase from ’09.”

Laura Flanders, who wrote the commentary, takes the position that it is the income inequality that exists in Egypt that has compelled people to take to the streets, pointing out that, “As in Tunisia, the protesters are driven by fury at poverty, lack of options and the looting of their state by the super-powerful.”

The income inequality that exists in America has been receiving major attention lately, especially during the recent tax cut spectacle. But what’s incredibly shocking and perverse in the comparison between the US and Egypt is that, as Ms. Flanders writes, “…the US actually has much greater inequality than Egypt—or Tunisia, or Yemen.”

That’s right, the income inequality in the most powerful nation in the world is worse than that of Egypt, Tunisia, or Yemen– countries located in a region of the world that at this very moment is being transformed by an unrelenting demand for the end of tyranny and the establishment of governments that are dedicated to the well-being of all citizens.

After hammering home the facts that the income disparity between the rich and the poor in this country is “anti-democratic” and that American democracy is “suffering,” Ms. Flanders concludes with the question, “What are we going to do about it?” For me the most significant question is: When will the people decide that they have had enough?

sermons

maybe the

inflections

are not

infinite/

the rising and falling of dubbed

messiah songs.

canals that open and close

like the gates to mythical domains/

rapture’s root stretched to the limit

laid out on nightclub floors

in spilled beer and blunt ashes.

the fire now. right now.

hymn-books made of sheets of

asbestos/

no binding hallelujahs.

just amen.

again and again…

corporate america

it’s during the post-mortem days

of january that it is really felt

when winter becomes the trifling sister

with her razored, cold stares

then there’s the white tongue of frost

stuck out in mockery, just after derision,

licking away the distinguishable features-

we become frozen in the unity of nothingness

we rise beneath tears heavy with ice

but we become no wiser during

this unseasoned storm

the weight of what we absorb

is all that identifies us

as we melt into the numbing mire…

There’s a True Sheriff in Town

 

A couple of days after the assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson AZ I was walking through the supermarket where I normally shop, observing the other shoppers going through the mundane motions of daily living and I wondered just how many of them really cared that Gabby, as she is affectionately called, was laying in a hospital bed fighting for her life. I wondered if they had an iota of an inkling of just how volatile the situation is in this country.

An article recently written about a cognitive study done by researchers at The University of Michigan- as reported in the Boston Globe newspaper- highlighted some of the findings of that study. The major point was that:

Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

The article goes on to say:

In light of these findings, researchers concluded that  a defense mechanism, which they labeled “backfire”, was preventing individuals from producing pure rational thought. The result is a self-delusion that appears so regularly in normal thinking that we fail to detect it in ourselves, and often in others: When faced with facts that do not fit seamlessly into our individual belief systems, our minds automatically reject (or backfire) the presented facts. The result of backfire is that we become even more entrenched in our beliefs, even if those beliefs are totally or partially false.

And here’s the cherry-on-top to sum it all up:

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” said Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher of the Michigan study. 

During the news conference following the shooting Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik was stating facts when he said:

“I think it’s time as a country that we need to do a little soul-searching, because I think it’s the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business…that may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences.” 

What Sheriff Dupnik was basically saying is that the confrontational, inflammatory, and hateful language present in the political discourse in this country these days has created the type of climate that can produce murderous acts such as the one that occurred in Tucson.

I am one of the many people who agree with him totally and see his candid and heartfelt remarks as heroic, especially in light of the pervasive cowardice and complicity that is being shrouded as objective commentary. Watching pundits and politicians tip-toe around the issue has been a deeply sickening experience. And watching individuals from the right engage in pathological partisanship is both infuriating and terrifying.

Anyone that even suggests that liberals or the left have engaged in the same level of divisiveness as the right is either irreparably ignorant or consciously wicked. The evidence to the contrary is so absolutely overwhelming that the contrast wouldn’t be worthy of discussion if the national psyche wasn’t so grotesquely fractured.

One question that I haven’t heard either asked or answered in the aftermath of the shooting is this: Can anyone truly say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Jared Loughner was not influenced in any way by the vitriolic rhetoric that Sheriff Dupnik was referring to? The answer is no, and that should be enough to trigger at least a modicum of human remorse or compassion. But human remorse or compassion is not the reaction coming from the right.

But that’s no surprise. As Mr. Nyhan pointed out, it’s absolutely threatening to admit that you’re wrong, especially when you’re engaged in a titanic struggle for control of the government of the most powerful country in the world. The question is: How can a society realistically hope to survive if facts and truth cease to have value to its citizens, especially those that have power or influence?

Again, thank you Sheriff Dupnik for telling it like it is.

My thoughts and prayers are with the victims of this horrible tragedy, their families, and everyone affected. May God have mercy on this nation.

room service

staring into the hell-house mirror

219 suddenly becomes a 187

another death by distortion

he can’t help but wonder

who allowed her eyes to enter

into the room

he dialed lust for murder

but the line went dead

as cold as the snow that speckled

the windshield like drops of love

frozen and fractured

during the long journey back

to the beginning…

he stared at it

wondering if it was as long as

the ones her friend whispered about…

back to the beginning-

blood trickles

down the side of his face

though he is surprised

that he has any left

the tears have sapped his veins

been on the rack for a long time

down deep where no one can see

brought up every now and then

and put on display-

today’s mannequin for madness

that reigns throughout the lonely castle

made from the plastic of

childhood toys molded and mangled

like memories that mold and mangle…

a staff made from cuervo gold

is the only thing that he can hold on to

his soul oozing through his fingers

like wax from a candle that can’t be

blown out

he stares at the gimmick in the mirror

and starts to cry…

back to the beginning-

issues of manhood and money

his face (from an old photo)

taped onto a counterfeit bill

small denomination

he knows that he’s worth more

but the bill-of-sale has faded

since 1619…

denomination

the caste of brethren

that he shares the room with

damned by paper-thin divinity

and devotees they pay love to…

A tale of two economies

“I’m sick and tired of people going to congress in Washington D.C. and making a living out of it while we starve to death.”

Those words were spoken by a resident of Newton Iowa during a segment of CBS’s 60 Minutes titled “Anger in the Land,” which aired on October 31, just days before the 2010 mid-term elections. The words were simple yet as savage as a sledgehammer striking at the foundation of the frustration shared by citizens across the land.

Newton is one of the small towns in America that has been decimated during the Great Recession. The 60 Minutes segment was devoted to capturing the mood in the country just before the elections that would be taking place in the midst of unrelenting economic hardship. A CBS/New York Times poll was cited that revealed that 80 percent of the people polled said they want most incumbents out of Congress regardless of whether that incumbent is a Democrat or Republican.

Though understandable, much can be said about the unsophisticated and suicidal aspects of this sentiment, which speaks to just how deep in the dark the majority of Americans are as it regards the jigsaw puzzle that is governance in this country. But in fairness to those of us who are languishing in the darkness, it’s extremely difficult to connect the pieces when we’re disconnected from the process. Note this exchange that took place during the 60 Minutes segment:

“What’s surprised you the most about this recession?” correspondent Scott Pelley asked business owner David McNeer.

“I think the depth of it, and the length of it. I think what surprised me the most about this one is it doesn’t wanna end,” he replied.

“You know, the economists say that the recession’s over,” Pelley pointed out.

“Really? They should come to Newton, Iowa,” McNeer replied.

But of course they won’t be coming to Newton because the people in Newton really don’t matter. They are no more a part of the economic recovery process that truly matters than they are a part of the political empowerment process that truly matters. And that goes for the majority of us living in America.

Robert Reich, former secretary of Labor under President Clinton, put it this way in a recent article:

There are two American economies. One is on the mend. The other is still coming apart.

The one that’s mending is America’s Big Money economy. It’s composed of Wall Street traders, big investors, and top professionals and corporate executives.

But there’s another American economy, and it’s not on the mend. Call it the Average Worker economy.

Simply put: There’s the American economy that matters to the folks that matter in Washington D.C. That’s the economy that’s composed of those that have the wealth and power to shape policy to their advantage. They are the ones that, for example, rule Wall Street and were able to contribute 15 million dollars to presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign and have the monetary muscle to lobby against any meaningful legislation to regulate the Wall Street investment banks “whose missteps caused a global financial crisis and economic slowdown two years ago,” as pointed out in an article that appeared in Bloomberg.com the other day. These are the people responsible for the economic catastrophe that has produced the suffering that is taking place in Newton IA and throughout the country and the world. 

Then there’s the Average Worker economy. The majority of us are plugged into the one that doesn’t really matter. Well, at least at the moment that’s the case. I’ll simply close with the ominous warning that Mr. Reich issued at the end of his article:

“…if nothing changes in the Average Worker economy, there will be hell to pay.”

last night in the vestibule

i was hoping that it was the wind again

pretending to be an old senile actor trying to

carry a message

a warning

between forgotten lines

wanting to be born again

but giving up and dying

in the form of this man

whose features i had often given

to the night

whose voice i had often given

to the darkness

who was at my door…at my door.

he rang the bell as if all of his blood

had surged into the one hand, the one finger

like the one that pokes our chests or our foreheads

after each utterance of why

after each scream of why

like the one that belongs to grandmama, to granddaddy

or their grandchildren who don’t know any better

the finger that seems to always separate the blood

into explanation

blood that was about to be set free

flowing like declared independence

after alley-crack dialogue

filling lies where rock and sand have failed

no, the wind’s freedom is not the same.

maybe his blood was Ashanti…as mine became Dogon…

there were shadows standing along the drawn-up boundary

hearts beating like hands against a hollow log

he was a wanderer seeking refuge from the shadows

like an unplanted seed needing one last embrace from the sun

not caring to take root beneath infertile rhetoric.

he was a stranger

seeking refuge in a vestibule…in a village

Senufo…Bateke…no…yes…no…we were both african

but he could be conquered

his hand fumbling through the boot-legged images

that could bring death from the shadows

that could conceal death

but he could be conquered.

hearts beating like hands against a hollow log

a shared dialect heard above the babble

of fading shadows

…Ibibio…Yoruba…no…we were both african

i could feel it in the wind.

Make It Plain

 Note: This interview of Malcolm X took place in 1965 on CBC-TV’s (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) “Front Page Challenge” just a few weeks before his assassination.

he

who was

red

really ain’t dead

because his tone colors

what flows through

many veins

and arteries

sometimes clotting

because slogans

are slurred

during drunkenness

from dreams

or when

arteriosclerosis

becomes a

code name

for

agents

that infiltrate

the purification plants

and poison

the life-giving

sustenance

that is injected into

streams that are

red.

The world brought to us by WikiLeaks

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”  Thomas Jefferson 1787

This is quite an illuminating quote from one of the founding fathers of this country who, interestingly enough, was often personally and viciously attacked by the press during his time. But apparently he understood something about the nature of man and government that compelled him to maintain the position he held regarding the relationship between the press and government until the day he died.

Another quote that I believe is relevant to any conversation regarding the recent WikiLeaks revelations and the rightness or wrongness of those leaks is attributed to the journalist I.F. Stone. He is quoted as saying that “All governments lie.” I don’t believe that any reasonable person will try to argue with that truth, especially since it’s amply supported by history.

I.F. Stone is cited as the only American journalist that challenged the Johnson Administration’s account of the Gulf of Tonkin incident that took place in 1964. The incident turned out to be a fabrication of an attack on two U.S. warships by the North Vietnamese, but was used as justification for the escalation of U.S. military engagement in the Vietnam War, which claimed the lives of 58,159 U.S. soldiers, an estimated 1 – 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians, an estimated 200 – 300,000 Cambodians, and an estimated 20 – 200,000 Laotians. All of this has a tragically familiar ring to it, doesn’t it?   

Sticking with the Vietnam relevance to all of this, the video features commentary and historical perspective from Professor Noam Chomsky who, along with Howard Zinn, helped government whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg edit and release the Pentagon Papers, described as the top-secret internal U.S. history of the Vietnam War. In a 1996 New York Times article commemorating the 25th anniversary of the release of the Pentagon Papers it was noted that the papers “…demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance.”

Regarding the Pentagon Papers Professor Chomsky said that they revealed things that “…the American people should have known that the government didn’t want them to know…” and he states that pretty much the same thing is true as it regards the diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks recently released. What is probably the most profound point that Professor Chomsky made during the interview is that “One of the major reasons for government secrecy is to protect the government from its own population.” I take that to mean that if the people find out what dirt the government is really up to they will take it upon themselves to get rid of that government.

The point of debate central to all of the discussion about the leaks is the people’s right to know. What are the consequences of the American people knowing or not knowing about what their government is up to? Take for example what Robert Scheer, editor of Truthdig.com, recently wrote regarding Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. Scheer points out that Senator Feinstein has called for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, “to be vigorously prosecuted for espionage.”

Scheer notes that Feinstein strongly supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and now she “has the audacity to call for the imprisonment of the man who, more than any other individual, has allowed the public to learn the truth about those disastrous imperial adventures—facts long known to Feinstein as head of the Intelligence Committee but never shared with the public she claims to represent.” But later in the article he offers an even greater indictment of Senator Feinstein, stating that “the inconvenient truths she has concealed in her Senate role would have indeed shocked many of those who voted for her. She knew in real-time that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack, yet she voted to send young Americans to kill and be killed based on what she knew to be lies. It is her duplicity, along with the leaders of both political parties, that now stands exposed by the WikiLeaks documents.” 

There you have the consequences of the American people not knowing the truth about what it’s government is up to: Dead American soldiers. Dead Iraqi soldiers and civilians. Dead Afghan soldiers and civilians. Add to this those who have been physically, psychologically and emotionally maimed by these wars and only then can one begin to comprehend the level of human devastation that has been wrought by those who have taken it upon themselves to be lords over the people they are supposed to serve.

Today is the 30th anniversary of the death of the music legend John Lennon. One of his most popular songs was Give Peace A Chance, released in 1969 and considered an anthem of the anti-war movement in the 1960s. I’m sitting here thinking that the only way peace can have a chance is to give truth a chance and the only way that will happen is to recognize truth when it is revealed within today’s wilderness of facts. With a nod toward’s Mr. Scheer’s site name, it’s something worth digging for.

rosa verses/outkast

 

For Rosa Parks, who sued the rap group OutKast for defaming her name. Today is the 55th anniversary of her historic act of protest.

they should have

been able to sit themselves

in her space

they should have

been able to see the look

on her face

as she sat at the

threshold of birth

as she reversed the

spinning of the earth

but…no connection/no direction

trivializing

the struggle to fit

the rhyme

careless chants

do not echo from her time

she felt

the wetness on her face again

the spit and the spew and the

frost hurled from frozen lakes of blue

the complexities of their profane homage

deriving analogy from a historical stoppage

when a nation began to see itself through

the windows of mass transit…

something large, often empty and hungry for profit.

funeral for a doll

so fragile it was

so fragile it is

a porcelain offering from

a man without false shine

alabama hardness that often hid wealth mined

from beneath the carnage he often

reached the bottom of, acting as if he had

discovered some new form of extinction

in a land he defended as if it was his alone…

but her smile always lit the exit tunnel

when he choose to suffer the surface of things:

he would rise from the bottom slowly

as if lifted on a scaffold of crud and circumstance.

she smiles and giggles, as she did back then

remembering the way he handled her firstborn

pulling it out of a greasy bag that was

as rippled as the wine it once held gently

the same way he would hold her

from time to time, his breath smelling like that church

on the corner- he said it was his church- where the

men and women preached funny when they came out…

he would preach funny sometimes too

but he didn’t preach at the funeral for her little baby

that broke after it fell off the kitchen table when

he slapped her sister, sending her flying underneath it

into one of the already rickety legs.

he said that he was sorry about what happened to her baby

he grinned and said he would try to buy her another one

she really didn’t believe that he bought that one

but his teeth shined just like her little baby did

so she just smiled back and giggled…

Assassination in the real world



There is a scene from the movie Collateral, starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx, that I believe beautifully sets the tone for this post. Cruise plays an assassin named Vincent and he’s just carried out a hit on someone and has hijacked the cab of Foxx’s character, Max, and has thrown the victim’s body into the trunk of Max’s cab.

Max feebly tries to chastise Vincent for what he just did, attempting to appeal to his conscience. Here is the exchange as it took place in the movie, picking up right after Max asked Vincent what had the murder victim done to deserve his fate:

VINCENT: What do you care? Ever hear of Rwanda?

MAX: Rwanda. Yeah.

VINCENT: Tens of thousands killed before sundown. Nobody’s killed people that fast since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Did you bat an eye, Max? Did you join Amnesty International, Oxfam or something? No. I off one Angeleno, you throw a hissy fit…

MAX: I don’t know Rwandans.

VINCENT: You don’t know the guy in the trunk, either.

Until recently I didn’t know who Anwar Al-Awlaki was and I’m almost certain that I was among millions of Americans who contribute to the collective ignorance of the existence of the Muslim cleric whom President Obama has targeted to be killed because of an alleged link to terrorist activities.

The focus of this post is not Al-Awlaki’s guilt or innocence or whether President Obama’s executive order is justified or not. I want to focus on the ignorance and indifference that Tom Cruise’s character Vincent touched on in the movie.

I’m sure that a lot of people who watched Countdown with Keith Olbermann on 4/7/2010 were stunned to hear that the President of the United States had issued an executive order to have anyone killed, let alone someone who is currently a U.S. citizen.

I can imagine many asking themselves: How can a nice and timid family man like President Obama give the OK to have someone killed? Because it’s not about personality, it’s about the nature of power in this country and the necessities born out of that nature. And it’s a nature that we are not taught about in history and civics classes in this country.

What President Obama did is unprecedented in terms of authorizing the assassination of an American citizen, but as it regards a U.S. President’s authorization of assassination, this is hardly anything new.

In an Associated Press story that appeared in the 11/19/93 Daily Herald it was revealed that the administration of President John F. Kennedy (today coincidentally is the 47th anniversary of his assassination) “…asked the CIA to develop a “standby capability” for carrying out assassinations of foreign leaders, according to newly declassified documents.” The story goes on to say that “…the Kennedy administration had inherited a plan to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro…”

The Associated Press story also refers to a 1967 report by the CIA inspector general, J.S. Earman, that “…covers the various well publicized CIA efforts to assassinate Castro during the 1960’s,” and

adds that those efforts “…were reviewed in considerable detail by a Senate committee in 1975, which concluded there were eight such attempts on Castro’s life.”

At this point Max the cab driver would probably ask: “What exactly did Castro do to deserve to be killed?”

The Senate committee that the story is referring to is the Church Committee, which held Congressional hearings that took place in 1975, a portion of which is shown in the second video in this post.

The focus of the video is Congressional testimony regarding a “heart attack gun” designed for the CIA for use for assassination. It sounds like something out of a James Bond movie or one of the Mission Impossible movies that Tom Cruise starred in, but again, this was discussed during Congressional testimony. On Capitol Hill. In Washington D.C. In America.

This was not part of a movie or make-believe. Nor was Keith Olbermann’s report. It seems that the majority of Americans are blissfully ignorant of these matters, and when they hear about atrocities that take place in far away lands they barely blink. This is the state of oblivion that the assassin Vincent was referring to in the movie and it could very well become a terminal condition for America if the citizens of this country do not become more appreciative and vigilant regarding our freedoms and also the freedoms of those in other countries as well.