I approached him at the party
Because I didn’t know anyone,
Because he looked harmless,
Because he stood alone,
And I introduced myself.
I said,
You must know a lot of these people,
And he looked straight ahead and said,
All my friends live underground.
And then I realized that he was almost dead,
And I had the idiotic notion that I could help him.
But then he looked right at me
And it hit me that I too was almost dead,
That nobody knew anybody here,
And that he was the only one who could stand the truth.
So I left,
Passing through rooms full of people,
Through the mudroom,
The ice-room,
The wind-room,
Out onto the sidewalk.
And I just started walking,
Following the angling streets
Breathing in the sour breath
Of an exhausted planet,
Trying to remember how to live.

Dear friend, timing is everything these days.
But if we wait for the "right moment" we might lose the day.
I have been wondering, of late, what the 60s have in store for me,

as I am done re-inventing myself.

But there is an essence, a honeyed core

that I have always been able to track through all my permutations, without which all is lost.
The night-sea-journey no longer works for me. I am a white beard now. The time for shadow-work is past.
Dumpster diving is for younger folk.

There is nothing in the dumpster for me
but self-acceptance.
And I will be disappointed.
And I will lose much that I love and am attached to.
Pieces of this thousand piece puzzle are missing.

They are just gone!
And people around me will turn to others in conversation,

and I must not wonder why.
The conversation is the bees in the barley.
It is the rain making inaudible circles on the pond.
It is about the future.
The conversation is sub- and super-sonic.
Sometimes I feel I am holding a door open in the middle of a field.
Sometimes I feel I am living in a great steaming dump

that stretches for miles in all directions,

so why bother cleaning my house!
Sometimes I wish I was Saint Francis.
Sometimes I am Saint Francis.
I care so much about this little pocket world, called Earth.
How small it is! How much smaller I!
Maybe time will be good to me.
Maybe I have a friend in time.
Who are my friends?
Are they the ones who leave me alone?
Or are they the ones who hold my finger to the flame?
I care so much about this little pocket Earth.
Just teach me what that looks like.
Now, ring the singing bowl.

Predator Odrona is about to sign a military authorization bill [Carl Levin's S-1867] that puts every one of us at risk of being detained by our own military. If the government decides that you are a terrorist threat, the military will be able to kidnap you and deny you the right to a trial or even the right to know why you're being held.

The arrogant and short-sighted leaders who “govern” us have granted the government the right to detain you anywhere in the world, including inside the U.S., and there is no limit to the amount of time that they can hold you once they've got you.

We shouldn't worry though, they claim, because this new law is only meant for the terrorists among us.

So just who represents a terrorist threat? Well, protesters for starts, according to a Pentagon training test, which defines protests as acts of low-level terrorism. Quaker peace meetings in Vermont and across the country have been registered as “suspicious incidents” by the Defense Department's secretive TALON snooping system. Once your name has been entered into one of these lovely surveillance systems, you can rest assured that it will never disappear.

The muslims in America certainly know that they are perceived as potential or likely terrorists by an alarming number of law enforcement agencies across the land. Reports have documented blatant anti-muslim profiling by “experts” presenting at law enforcement terrorism training events.

And let's not forget the right side of the spectrum. Radical back-to-the-landers who wave guns and evade taxes have long been a government favorite for keeping their kill squads sharp. Just ask Randy Weaver. Washington state recently requested an was granted the use of a military surveillance drone to lead SWAT teams, a bomb squad, the highway patrol and four counties’ worth deputy sheriffs to arrest three unarmed brothers over a six-cow dispute.

The new military authorization bill makes the US a "war zone" in the "war" on terror, and makes us all potential terrorists with no constitutional rights, while further blurring any distinction between cops and soldiers

Islamabad -- This past June I posted an article by Anatol Lieven on Facebook. For those who are not familiar with his name, Anatol is from the UK and numbers among the few journalists whom I always enjoy reading. I have met Anatol a few times and he is the kind of person who likes to get acquainted with the psycho-social environment of the people he writes about. Written in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s execution, Anatol’s article was critical of the US approach to the region, particularly Pakistan.

Among those responding to this post was an American whom I would rather not embarrass by naming; so let’s just call him X. Admitting that he hadn’t read through Anatol’s article and was judging its contents by earlier articles of the author, he went on to add, “let me put this as simply as possible, for you to understand. The US has concluded that the Pakistan army is part of the problem, not the solution; and that the interests of the Pakistan army are not identical with those of Pakistan. Consequently, the US has decided that the Pakistan army has to be cut to size and, if in the process of doing so, the Pakistan army is destroyed, so be it. And, I agree”.

The first thing that hit me was the arrogance of his statement. The “US has decided (on behalf of, and for, the people of Pakistan) that its army’s interests and theirs are not identical”, and will, on behalf of, and for Pakistan, cut its army to size! Typical arrogance expected of the American establishment. The only issue was that this American had hitherto seemed pretty level-headed and very far from arrogant. Nor was he a Mansoor Ijaz or even an expatriate American. I commented on the arrogance of his words, to which he chose not to respond. However, I did not take the contents of his comment very seriously; not at that time.

The “Memo-gate” Scandal

Most readers will be familiar with this scandal, so I will cover just the bare outline of the incident from my perspective. On October 10th, Mansoor Ijaz, a multi millionaire American of Pakistani origin, wrote an op-ed for the Financial Times which, as it was expected to do, set Pakistan’s political landscape on fire.

His op-ed titled, “Time to take on Pakistan’s Jihadist spies”, as the title indicates, ostensibly seemed to target the ISI and the Pakistan military for maintaining ties with Jihadists. However, it mentioned the fact that in the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s execution, he was contacted by a “senior diplomat”, who was known to be close to Pakistani President, Zardari. Apparently, Zardari feared the possibility of a military coup. Everybody knew that the senior Pakistani diplomat referred to Hussain Haqqani, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US.

Smoldering ruin of a border outpost inside Pakistan attacked by US helicopter gunships. 24 Pakistani soldiers were slaughtered here and at a second mountaintop outpost in an unprovoked and clearly coordinated US massacre

This article originally appeared in The Pitch, a Kansas City alternative newspaper. ThisCantBeHappening! normally does not reprint other publications' material, but this story about Kristi Neuhaus, a heroic doctor who has fought for women's right to abortion in one of the most cynically benighted regions of the country for decades, together with her journalist/private investigator husband Mike Cadell, a lifelong prairie radical who puts the truth in front of Kansans in his newspaper, the Fightin' Cock Flyer, and on his radio program Radio Free Kansas, has to be told to as wide an audience as possible. We're proud to run it here:
 

There isn't an address on the paint-chipped farmhouse in Nortonville, about 30 miles north of Lawrence. Across from it on this country road, the mailbox hangs limp. A muddy driveway leads past a beat-up pickup truck to a garage. An approaching car sends cats scattering.

It's the only place that Ann Kristin Neuhaus and Mike Caddell have ever owned. She describes the place as something out of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road. Caddell calls it "a money pit."

"Do we look rich?" Neuhaus asks. "We're very broke all of the time. Our house is falling down."

She turns on the water each time she wants to flush the toilet, but this is home for Neuhaus and Caddell. They've been married 26 years, and they have a 14-year-old son, Tristan. Six chickens, five cats, four dogs, three horses, two roosters and a goat roam the family's 10 acres.

Neuhaus and Caddell bought the place 15 years ago, when she was making a little money. Now they're struggling to survive. About a year ago, the house nearly faced foreclosure. During an interview with The Pitch in September, Neuhaus was on her way to apply for a payday loan. Then in October, the utilities were almost shut off.

"It's just literally month by month that we're holding onto the place," says Caddell, host of the Radio Free Kansas online radio show. "We've been living on $30,000 a year for about two and a half years now." That money came from a research stipend that has since expired. Neuhaus is now working as a research instructor at the University of Kansas Medical Center's Department of Family Medicine.

Out here, they say, the neighbors are protective. One, fearing for Neuhaus' safety, offered to loan her an AK-47. That's life on the front line of Kansas' abortion war.

Neuhaus is one of the last links to Wichita abortion provider George Tiller, who was murdered in May 2009 while attending a Sunday church service. From 1999 to 2006, Neuhaus provided second-opinion mental-health exams to determine whether the late-term abortions that some women sought at Tiller's clinic were medically necessary. That step was required by Kansas law.

Three Kansas attorneys general tried to prosecute Tiller for his arrangement with Neuhaus. Tiller eventually was charged with having an improper financial relationship with Neuhaus. He was acquitted of the misdemeanor in March 2009. The doctor was assassinated two months later by Scott Roeder, who had attended Tiller's trial and was seen sitting next to Operation Rescue president Troy Newman.
Ann Kristin Neuhaus, under attack for years by cynical right-wing politicians, and standing her ground in Kansas (photos by Angela C. Bond)