Legislative Action Message
Iraq: Call for Political Change, Not Military Solutions – FCNL
Read this alert online at: http://www.fcnl.org/action/2006/lam1130.htm
The president, Congress, and a new independent commission are all offering new prescriptions for “success” in Iraq. In press conferences, newspaper interviews, hearings, and leaks to the media, the leaders of this country acknowledge the political problems in Iraq, but they remain stubbornly focused on military solutions and military “victory.” Military force is not going to end the civil war in Iraq. Military success is a dangerous illusion. The U.S. needs to initiate a new political strategy instead of searching for new military solutions.
Next week Congress will hold hearings on Iraq policy. The policy debate is focused on an easily remembered Pentagon catch phrase, “Go Big, Go Long, or Go home.” These all add up to some combination of military tactics including rebuilding the Iraqi security forces, sending more U.S. troops into Baghdad, or a phased redeployment of troops without any matching political strategy to ease the power struggle that will follow. But the war will go on, and, early next year, Congress will vote to approve more than another $100 billion in “emergency supplemental” funding.
Congress should stop focusing on military solutions in Iraq and should start a bipartisan initiative for political processes to end the escalating crisis in the region. The U.S. has now fought in one little country longer than it fought World War II. Ample evidence stares Congress in the face to prove that war was not and is not the answer in Iraq.
Members of Congress return to Washington next Monday, December 4, for one last week of work before Christmas. The week’s congressional activity will include hearings and public briefings focused on Iraq. FCNL is joining with other national organizations in encouraging people around the country to flood Congress with phone calls on Monday, December 4 calling for a change in U.S. policy in Iraq.
Take Action: Phone Congress on Monday, December 4
Mark Monday, December 4, on your calendar today. On Monday pick up the phone and call your senators. Specifically ask them to speak out in favor of a comprehensive, bi-partisan plan to end the war in Iraq that includes a date certain for withdrawal of U.S. troops. The plan should also include:
* support for negotiations in Iraq and in the region, and
* money for stabilization and rebuilding the country
Write down this number: 202-224-3121 for the Capitol switchboard. You can also use the FCNL website to find the direct numbers for your two senators and recommended talking points. Encourage five friends to take five minutes from their day to help in this effort.
Background: A New U.S. Political Strategy in the Region
FCNL has outlined a four point plan for a new U.S. political strategy to end the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq. The plan begins with a political statement that gives the Iraqis, the people of the region, and the rest of the world a date certain for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. That statement of a date certain for withdrawal is a necessary and prior condition for all the other steps in a political solution and should be part of a package that includes:
* A date certain for U.S. withdrawal;
* U.S. initiatives for negotiations to bring Iraqi nationalists, who are fighting the government and resisting the U.S. occupation, to a cease-fire and to the negotiations table;
* U.S. participation in a regional peace process that includes talks and implementing actions with all of Iraq’s neighbors – including Syria and Iran; and
* Substantial U.S. financial support for the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq.
Read more about this plan.
Read updates on the FCNL Iraq Peace Program.
________________________________________
Contact Congress and the administration.
http://capwiz.com/fconl/dbq/officials/
Order FCNL publications and "War is Not the Answer" campaign bumper stickers and yard signs.
http://www.fcnl.org/pubs/
http://www.fcnl.org/forms/forms.php?type=bump
Subscribe to other FCNL legislative, policy, and action alert lists.
http://www.fcnl.org/forms/forms.php?type=ls
________________________________________
Friends Committee on National Legislation
245 Second St. NE, Washington, DC 20002-5795
fcnl@fcnl.org * http://www.fcnl.org
phone: (202)547-6000 * toll-free: (800)630-1330
We seek a world free of war and the threat of war
We seek a society with equity and justice for all
We seek a community where every person's potential may be fulfilled
We seek an earth restored.
Thursday
Five Years of occupation - across from Parliament
| It's been 2007 days since the start of Brian Haw's protest on 2 June 2001 -- Yes, that's over 5 years
|
Wednesday
Spying Won't Deter Us, Peace Groups Say
SAN FRANCSICO, California, Nov 29 (IPS) - A coalition of U.S. peace groups are pressing ahead with plans for what they hope will be a massive march on Washington Jan. 27, even though newly released documents show the antiwar community is under Pentagon surveillance.
"The peace and justice movement helped make ending the war in Iraq the primary issue in this last election," the umbrella group United for Peace and Justice said in a statement.
"The actions we take do make a difference, and now there is a new opportunity for us to move our work forward. On Election Day [Nov. 7] people took individual action by voting. On January 27 we will take collective action, as we march in Washington, DC, to make sure Congress understands the urgency of this moment."
Pentagon documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union last week show the Department of Defence monitoring the activities of a wide swath of peace groups including Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, Code Pink, the American Friends Service Committee, the War Resisters League, and United for Peace and Justice, the umbrella group organising January's protest.
"This might have a chilling effect on some groups," said United for Peace and Justice's Leslie Cagan, "particularly among high-risk communities like immigrants who don't have their papers yet and U.S. citizens or people with green cards who are of Muslim or South Asian or Middle Eastern descent. They've already been targeted by the government and they might feel like with this it's just too dangerous to come out and protest."
The documents come in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union earlier this year after evidence surfaced that the Pentagon was secretly conducting surveillance of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups, including Quakers and student groups.
"We are not trying to hide anything," Veterans for Peace Director Michael McPhearson told IPS. "We are not going to fear our government because it is our government and we're citizens of this nation. All of us have served this nation and we have the right to do this."
"Veterans for Peace erected an antiwar display the week of 18 April 2005 at a local university," reads a report on a New Orleans protest from the Pentagon's Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) database. "A local army recruiter mistook the event as a memorial to fallen service members and arrived to view the display."
According to the TALON report, six individuals shouted "war monger" and "baby killer" at the recruiter and a shoving match ensued.
"Veterans for Peace claim to be non-violent," the report concludes. "This incident demonstrates a propensity for violence, and the Veterans for Peace should be viewed as a possible threat to Army and DoD [Defence Department] personnel."
Another Pentagon report documents an Apr. 5, 2005 protest in New Mexico. "Veterans for Peace (veteransforpeace.org), a peaceful antiwar/anti-military organisation, held a protest east of the student union at New Mexico State University Campus in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Veterans for Peace members set up hundreds of white crosses in an open field representing soldiers killed in Iraq and were handing out anti-war, anti-military literature."
The report, which was prepared by an "active duty U.S. Army officer", goes on to mention that the group was planning similar low-key demonstrations at seven other universities in the U.S. midwest, south and northeast.
"Veterans for Peace is a peaceful organisation," it says, "but there is a potential future protests could become violent."
After the document's release, Pentagon officials told reporters the material on antiwar groups should not have been collected.
"I don't want it, we shouldn't have had it, not interested in it," Daniel Baur, the acting director of the Defence Department's counterintelligence field activity unit, told the New York Times. "I don't want to deal with it."
Bauer told the Times his agency is no longer monitoring peace groups.
"I don't think the policy was as clear as it could have been," he said. Once the problem was discovered, he said, "We fixed it." Bauer told the Times more than 180 entries in the database related to war protests were deleted from the system last year.
Experts on government spying caution not to take the Pentagon at its word, however. The American Civil Liberties Union notes the Defence Department documents reveal that other government agencies were also involved in the spying.
In one report, a Department of Homeland Security agent warned after a non-violent protest by the War Resisters League at a military recruiting station that the group may favour "civil disobedience and vandalism". The report indicates that the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Atlanta and New York were briefed on planned protests.
"In order to justify spying you have to have something called a predicate, which means there has to be some possibility of some kind of illegal activity," intelligence analyst Chip Berlet told IPS from his office at Political Research Associates in Massachusetts.
"It has to be built around the idea of violence," he said, "or the threat of violence or some kind of gun-running and bomb-making, and so what they have is a career necessity to find predicates so that there is a tendency to look at any situation and say 'this could lead to violence.' And the next step is that if you can't find the next evidence then what you do is the agent in place helps the group build a bomb or buy weapons."
So far, there's no evidence the Pentagon or federal law enforcement are involved instigating violence among opponents of the Iraq war, but during the Vietnam War era, FBI counterintelligence programmes often attempted to provoke peaceful activists.
According to a U.S. Senate Committee chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church, this included "sending an anonymous letter to the leader of a Chicago street gang (described as 'violence-prone') stating that the Black Panthers were supposed to have 'a hit out for you.' The letter was suggested because it "may intensify... animosity" and cause the street gang leader to 'take retaliatory action'."
The Church committee also reported in that in 1968, "Bureau headquarters explained to the field that Dr. [Martin Luther] King must be destroyed because he was seen as a potential 'messiah' who could 'unify and electrify' the 'black nationalist movement'. Indeed, to the FBI he was a potential threat because he might 'abandon his supposed 'obedience' to white liberal doctrines (non-violence) .' In short, a non-violent man was to be secretly attacked and destroyed as insurance against his abandoning non-violence."
"This is not new in the history of this country, but it is outrageous," United for Peace and Justice's Leslie Cagan said of the Bush administration's spying on antiwar activists.
"If we just look at this issue in isolation then we're missing the heart of the matter," she added. "One of the main things we have to be concerned about is how this whole war on terror plays out here at home and how they use it to justify absolutely everything they do no matter how outrageous." (END/2006)
Aaron Glantz writer
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35645
"The peace and justice movement helped make ending the war in Iraq the primary issue in this last election," the umbrella group United for Peace and Justice said in a statement.
"The actions we take do make a difference, and now there is a new opportunity for us to move our work forward. On Election Day [Nov. 7] people took individual action by voting. On January 27 we will take collective action, as we march in Washington, DC, to make sure Congress understands the urgency of this moment."
Pentagon documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union last week show the Department of Defence monitoring the activities of a wide swath of peace groups including Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, Code Pink, the American Friends Service Committee, the War Resisters League, and United for Peace and Justice, the umbrella group organising January's protest.
"This might have a chilling effect on some groups," said United for Peace and Justice's Leslie Cagan, "particularly among high-risk communities like immigrants who don't have their papers yet and U.S. citizens or people with green cards who are of Muslim or South Asian or Middle Eastern descent. They've already been targeted by the government and they might feel like with this it's just too dangerous to come out and protest."
The documents come in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union earlier this year after evidence surfaced that the Pentagon was secretly conducting surveillance of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups, including Quakers and student groups.
"We are not trying to hide anything," Veterans for Peace Director Michael McPhearson told IPS. "We are not going to fear our government because it is our government and we're citizens of this nation. All of us have served this nation and we have the right to do this."
"Veterans for Peace erected an antiwar display the week of 18 April 2005 at a local university," reads a report on a New Orleans protest from the Pentagon's Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) database. "A local army recruiter mistook the event as a memorial to fallen service members and arrived to view the display."
According to the TALON report, six individuals shouted "war monger" and "baby killer" at the recruiter and a shoving match ensued.
"Veterans for Peace claim to be non-violent," the report concludes. "This incident demonstrates a propensity for violence, and the Veterans for Peace should be viewed as a possible threat to Army and DoD [Defence Department] personnel."
Another Pentagon report documents an Apr. 5, 2005 protest in New Mexico. "Veterans for Peace (veteransforpeace.org), a peaceful antiwar/anti-military organisation, held a protest east of the student union at New Mexico State University Campus in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Veterans for Peace members set up hundreds of white crosses in an open field representing soldiers killed in Iraq and were handing out anti-war, anti-military literature."
The report, which was prepared by an "active duty U.S. Army officer", goes on to mention that the group was planning similar low-key demonstrations at seven other universities in the U.S. midwest, south and northeast.
"Veterans for Peace is a peaceful organisation," it says, "but there is a potential future protests could become violent."
After the document's release, Pentagon officials told reporters the material on antiwar groups should not have been collected.
"I don't want it, we shouldn't have had it, not interested in it," Daniel Baur, the acting director of the Defence Department's counterintelligence field activity unit, told the New York Times. "I don't want to deal with it."
Bauer told the Times his agency is no longer monitoring peace groups.
"I don't think the policy was as clear as it could have been," he said. Once the problem was discovered, he said, "We fixed it." Bauer told the Times more than 180 entries in the database related to war protests were deleted from the system last year.
Experts on government spying caution not to take the Pentagon at its word, however. The American Civil Liberties Union notes the Defence Department documents reveal that other government agencies were also involved in the spying.
In one report, a Department of Homeland Security agent warned after a non-violent protest by the War Resisters League at a military recruiting station that the group may favour "civil disobedience and vandalism". The report indicates that the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces in Atlanta and New York were briefed on planned protests.
"In order to justify spying you have to have something called a predicate, which means there has to be some possibility of some kind of illegal activity," intelligence analyst Chip Berlet told IPS from his office at Political Research Associates in Massachusetts.
"It has to be built around the idea of violence," he said, "or the threat of violence or some kind of gun-running and bomb-making, and so what they have is a career necessity to find predicates so that there is a tendency to look at any situation and say 'this could lead to violence.' And the next step is that if you can't find the next evidence then what you do is the agent in place helps the group build a bomb or buy weapons."
So far, there's no evidence the Pentagon or federal law enforcement are involved instigating violence among opponents of the Iraq war, but during the Vietnam War era, FBI counterintelligence programmes often attempted to provoke peaceful activists.
According to a U.S. Senate Committee chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church, this included "sending an anonymous letter to the leader of a Chicago street gang (described as 'violence-prone') stating that the Black Panthers were supposed to have 'a hit out for you.' The letter was suggested because it "may intensify... animosity" and cause the street gang leader to 'take retaliatory action'."
The Church committee also reported in that in 1968, "Bureau headquarters explained to the field that Dr. [Martin Luther] King must be destroyed because he was seen as a potential 'messiah' who could 'unify and electrify' the 'black nationalist movement'. Indeed, to the FBI he was a potential threat because he might 'abandon his supposed 'obedience' to white liberal doctrines (non-violence) .' In short, a non-violent man was to be secretly attacked and destroyed as insurance against his abandoning non-violence."
"This is not new in the history of this country, but it is outrageous," United for Peace and Justice's Leslie Cagan said of the Bush administration's spying on antiwar activists.
"If we just look at this issue in isolation then we're missing the heart of the matter," she added. "One of the main things we have to be concerned about is how this whole war on terror plays out here at home and how they use it to justify absolutely everything they do no matter how outrageous." (END/2006)
Aaron Glantz writer
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35645
one example of "takin' it to the streets"
how does your life help to remove the causes of war?
By ADAM MILASINCIC
http://www.thederrick.com/stories/11292006-3004.shtml
The best way to end the war is to support war resisters.
"War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector
enjoys the same reputation and prestige as the warrior does today."
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
In e-mail era, Shippenville man makes liberal use of post office
By ADAM MILASINCIC
Seated at his dining room table behind the keys of an old typewriter, Kenneth Emerick of Shippenville puts his thoughts on paper.
SHIPPENVILLE - Kenneth Emerick has the mailbox of a very rich man.
Each day, the postman deposits 15 to 20 fund-raising solicitations at the curb of Emerick's modest Shippenville ranch. Add to that the frequent flood of outgoing letters-to-the-editor, and Emerick easily ranks among the post office's most loyal customers in this e-mail era.
Like the tide, Emerick's back-and-forth flow of mail is always assured.
Every animal rights group and anti-war organization under the liberal sun wants its humble slice of support from the 81-year-old retiree. Most of the time, he's happy to consent.
"I think we get more mail than anyone in the neighborhood," Emerick says. "It takes a long time to open and go through all of it."
The more he gives, the more he's asked for. But he does it anyway.
Each charity receives its check precisely once per year. Emerick logs the donations by hand in a small notebook to make sure that no one double-dips.
The painstaking daily ritual detracts time and attention from the other mail that pours into Emerick's home: Periodicals by the rubber-banded bundle.
He receives at least five per month, and the former Clarion University librarian is precise in calling them "periodicals" - not magazines.
The Progressive lies open atop Emerick's green wool sofa. In previous years, his name has graced the letters pages of that venerable Robert LaFollette venture (once as an early Iraq War critic and once to decry President Bush as "a self-promoted Christian in words, not deeds; an arrogant fake.")
Around the living room perimeter, 21 other books are stacked upon end tables and plant stands. Gore Vidal's stern visage peers up from a perch just inside the front door.
Less austere is the cardboard-framed picture of Bridgette, a white Welsh Corgi who is one of Emerick's many beloved late pets.
Across the room, Emerick stores an in-house multimedia collection of well-labeled VHS cassettes; many contain television tennis matches. It's everywhere apparent that he has not forgotten the cataloging techniques that were the mainstay of his 50-year career.
If Emerick had his way, he would be little known outside this cloistered home reference section. But that wish was not to be.
Emerick's passion for clarity, for fine details and for what he sees as setting the record straight have made him into a political celebrity of sorts.
"I don't think I'm being immodest when I say that in Clarion County, I was easily the most active opponent of the Vietnam War," he says.
His profile has escalated since then with pointed critiques of every subsequent U.S. military action. He opposed the first Gulf War, and he opposes the current one - a fact that is well-known to readers of this newspaper's opinion page..
To some, Emerick is a left-wing crank whose frequent letters to the newspaper are an unwelcome contrast to the region's conservative consensus. To others, he's a progressive hero willing to take punches for a host of locally unpopular positions.
"Saying no to entrenched power and conventional wisdom through scholarship, analysis and persistence requires fortitude - a quality Ken has demonstrated over the years," said Frank Jeffers, Emerick's long-time friend from suburban Philadelphia. "His numerous letters to the editors of area newspapers are beacons of good scholarship, good common sense and a high level of morality."
Emerick joins a long-line of chronic letter writers reaching back to the earliest years of American democracy. The likes of Samuel Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton were relentless pamphleteers who inserted their viewpoints into any backwater newsletter with sufficient stocks of ink and paper.
For decades, small-town voices of all ideological stripes routinely clamored for editorial space in the rural dailies. Letters to the editor were the blogs of a pre-computer era.
Emerick has carried on this tradition to achieve a lightning-rod local status that he says he'd rather forfeit. During his brief stint as a Clarion News columnist in the 1960s, Emerick wrote under the pseudonym "Ross Emerson" to avoid constant questioning about his unorthodoxy.
For him, a writer's notoriety is a necessary nuisance. He wields his pen as a restless anti-warrior; the lion in winter is ready to cede his scepter.
"The last thing I need is personal attention," he says. "In fact, I wish some other people would do some of the writing."
In spite of his protestations, however, Emerick shows no signs of scaling back the commentary. His recent writings have focused almost exclusively on the Iraq war - a topic he said he feels duty-bound to cover - but he hopes to eventually tackle less weighty subjects like retirement and travel.
("So many people think going to Orlando is traveling," he chuckles. "I don't consider that traveling at all.")
Emerick regards his mission as one of relentless fact checking, of shedding light on viewpoints seldom held in Clarion County. He remains in every way the librarian - classifying the facts as he sees them and packaging them for mass distribution.
His speech, like his letters, is precise and methodical. When veering even slightly from his core points, Emerick quickly returns to course with a "well, anyway," or "but that's probably not interesting."
For a man whose political rhetoric is so animated and unsparing, Emerick is surprisingly reserved and self-effacing about almost every other topic. In a three-hour conversation, he raises his voice only twice: once to lambaste retirees who waste their golden years on household busywork and once to recall the contrast of rich and poor in the Great Depression.
"Those many years of extreme economic hardship formed and color so much of my views, attitudes and the person I am," Emerick said. "Although as a child I accepted my and our circumstances as they were, now I can reflect on what was little short of being inhumane conditions."
As the son of a Brookville railroad mechanic, Emerick says he grew up quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks. Class status in childhood wasn't obvious for what was said, but for what wasn't.
"Everybody knew everybody," he says. "Their parents were businesspeople. They knew our names and they didn't mistreat us, but the kids from our side of town, we were just in the room. They didn't have anything to do with us. We were just there."
As Emerick's father struggled to provide food for his eight children during months-long layoffs, prosperity was evident in some corners of Brookville. While Emerick's friends played with baseballs they fashioned from burlap sacks, other children partook in the movie matinees. It's here that Emerick becomes riled:
"They went to the movies every damn Saturday!" he says. "I must have been 13 years old before I saw a movie."
As Emerick began his ideological journey, he was Mr. Republican. Mimicking his father's dinner table chitchat, Emerick could be counted on as a faithful apostle of Wendell Willkie and Robert Taft. In history class debates, he blasted FDR and towed the GOP line.
Eventually, Emerick says, he "wised up." His father - a U.S. soldier in World War I - often offered praises for the Germans he fought against.
"I thought it was odd that he had so much affection for the people who were trying to kill him," Emerick says. "I guess that's when I began to question things."
The questions soon amounted to a full-scale ideological break. By the time of his first political foray in 1956, Emerick was an Adlai Stevenson enthusiast. Four years later, he circulated a petition encouraging the two-time loser to challenge Jack Kennedy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Emerick's affection for the aloof intellectual is telling. Stevenson's Republican detractors helped bring the word "egghead" into the popular lexicon by applying it to the one-time Illinois governor. Then as now, Emerick held that men of letters shouldn't be dismissed with a disdainful sniff.
He says he feels bad for the uneducated, and he's adamant in his assessment of the culture they produce.
"Some of these little towns are so backward in terms of exposure to the rest of the world," he says. "That's why they're so conservative. The best thing I ever did was get out of town."
Emerick worked briefly in the office of a Brookville glove factory before punching what he thought was a permanent ticket out of the hinterlands.
After a string of Ohio library jobs, however, Emerick returned to northwest Pennsylvania.
He's stayed here since 1961. The allure was Clarion University, where he could work in cataloging and research rather than trifling with the library boards and municipal bond issues that consumed his time in Ohio.
Soon after his arrival in Clarion, Emerick's political activism would reach a new peak. The spark was the Vietnam War.
"The war was not wrong because we lost," Emerick said in a 1978 interview with The Derrick. "It was wrong because we had no business being there."
During that tumultuous time, he picketed military recruiters, attended big-city protests and - of course - wrote letters to the editor.
"He endured numerous indignities at the hands of professional patriots in their frenzied defense of the slaughter there," said Emerick's friend Jeffers.
Emerick selected as his special cause one of the war's most widely denounced groups: U.S. draft resisters who fled to Canada.
"They couldn't bring themselves to mow down, or attempt to mow down, people they couldn't consider an enemy," he said.
Emerick was so put off by society's universal reproof of draft-dodgers that he reasoned the full story hadn't been told. The groups most widely demonized are often the most misunderstood, he says.
Thus, Emerick set off on a personal three-month journey to Canada, where he interviewed, lodged with and befriended some 200 U.S. expatriates.
The results of that journey were printed in a 1972 book that Emerick self-published. That tome - which sold 2,500 copies and remains on the bibliography of standard texts regarding draft resisters - contained all the flare of Emerick's recent letters to The Derrick.
"Is this a free country?" the book's cover asks. "Federal gumshoes have withheld and tampered with my mail from Canada from the beginning. It's been a Hooveresque nightmare."
Emerick is an unreconstructed 1950s liberal, and he's unashamed of what that implies.
"I think Ted Kennedy is one of the best senators in the country, despite the way he's always being knocked," Emerick says.
He was a co-founder of a now-defunct Unitarian fellowship in Oil City, and he drives a Volkswagen Fox with "Out of Iraq" bumper stickers.
Recently, though, Emerick's political ventures have become largely muted. He lives with his second wife, Mary, and their dog, Duffy - a Scottish herding collie whose long gray locks flail about the living room as he leaps up, down and under tables.
("I never wanted to get a dog that big," Emerick mutters.)
He said most of his like-minded friends have either passed away or opted for warmer venues. A son, Schuyler, lives in Florida and has no interest in politics.
Since retiring from Clarion University in 1989, Emerick has spent much of his own time crisscrossing Europe. Still, he always returns to Ridgewood Road.
One senses that Emerick intends to carry on the battle despite how long and lonely it may become.
Perhaps his letters aggravate more readers than they enlighten. Perhaps northwest Pennsylvania will always maintain its unswerving conservatism. That seems to matter little to Emerick.
Whatever one thinks of his outspoken liberalism, he shines bright as a templar of old-school civic activism.
He shares an age and brusque demeanor with Giles Corry, the 80-year-old man tried as a warlock during the Salem witch hunts. Upon his refusal to confess, Corry was pressed to death by stones. Bystanders urged him to give in, and folklore has preserved Corry's reply:
"More weight."
Emerick is a like-minded spirit.
He pounds out another letter on his prehistoric typewriter.
Emerick chooses a black heritage postage stamp.
As a final touch, he scrawls across the envelope - with no particular audience in mind beyond the mailman - "Lies and deceit took us to a needless, immoral Bush war."
"Bush" is underlined 18 times.
With his white hair, thin beard and frail gait, Emerick walks slowly to his mailbox.
http://www.thederrick.com/stories/11292006-3004.shtml
The best way to end the war is to support war resisters.
"War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector
enjoys the same reputation and prestige as the warrior does today."
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
one example of "takin' it to the streets"
how does your life help to remove the causes of war?
By ADAM MILASINCIC
http://www.thederrick.com/stories/11292006-3004.shtml
The best way to end the war is to support war resisters.
"War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector
enjoys the same reputation and prestige as the warrior does today."
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
In e-mail era, Shippenville man makes liberal use of post office
By ADAM MILASINCIC
Seated at his dining room table behind the keys of an old typewriter, Kenneth Emerick of Shippenville puts his thoughts on paper.
SHIPPENVILLE - Kenneth Emerick has the mailbox of a very rich man.
Each day, the postman deposits 15 to 20 fund-raising solicitations at the curb of Emerick's modest Shippenville ranch. Add to that the frequent flood of outgoing letters-to-the-editor, and Emerick easily ranks among the post office's most loyal customers in this e-mail era.
Like the tide, Emerick's back-and-forth flow of mail is always assured.
Every animal rights group and anti-war organization under the liberal sun wants its humble slice of support from the 81-year-old retiree. Most of the time, he's happy to consent.
"I think we get more mail than anyone in the neighborhood," Emerick says. "It takes a long time to open and go through all of it."
The more he gives, the more he's asked for. But he does it anyway.
Each charity receives its check precisely once per year. Emerick logs the donations by hand in a small notebook to make sure that no one double-dips.
The painstaking daily ritual detracts time and attention from the other mail that pours into Emerick's home: Periodicals by the rubber-banded bundle.
He receives at least five per month, and the former Clarion University librarian is precise in calling them "periodicals" - not magazines.
The Progressive lies open atop Emerick's green wool sofa. In previous years, his name has graced the letters pages of that venerable Robert LaFollette venture (once as an early Iraq War critic and once to decry President Bush as "a self-promoted Christian in words, not deeds; an arrogant fake.")
Around the living room perimeter, 21 other books are stacked upon end tables and plant stands. Gore Vidal's stern visage peers up from a perch just inside the front door.
Less austere is the cardboard-framed picture of Bridgette, a white Welsh Corgi who is one of Emerick's many beloved late pets.
Across the room, Emerick stores an in-house multimedia collection of well-labeled VHS cassettes; many contain television tennis matches. It's everywhere apparent that he has not forgotten the cataloging techniques that were the mainstay of his 50-year career.
If Emerick had his way, he would be little known outside this cloistered home reference section. But that wish was not to be.
Emerick's passion for clarity, for fine details and for what he sees as setting the record straight have made him into a political celebrity of sorts.
"I don't think I'm being immodest when I say that in Clarion County, I was easily the most active opponent of the Vietnam War," he says.
His profile has escalated since then with pointed critiques of every subsequent U.S. military action. He opposed the first Gulf War, and he opposes the current one - a fact that is well-known to readers of this newspaper's opinion page..
To some, Emerick is a left-wing crank whose frequent letters to the newspaper are an unwelcome contrast to the region's conservative consensus. To others, he's a progressive hero willing to take punches for a host of locally unpopular positions.
"Saying no to entrenched power and conventional wisdom through scholarship, analysis and persistence requires fortitude - a quality Ken has demonstrated over the years," said Frank Jeffers, Emerick's long-time friend from suburban Philadelphia. "His numerous letters to the editors of area newspapers are beacons of good scholarship, good common sense and a high level of morality."
Emerick joins a long-line of chronic letter writers reaching back to the earliest years of American democracy. The likes of Samuel Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton were relentless pamphleteers who inserted their viewpoints into any backwater newsletter with sufficient stocks of ink and paper.
For decades, small-town voices of all ideological stripes routinely clamored for editorial space in the rural dailies. Letters to the editor were the blogs of a pre-computer era.
Emerick has carried on this tradition to achieve a lightning-rod local status that he says he'd rather forfeit. During his brief stint as a Clarion News columnist in the 1960s, Emerick wrote under the pseudonym "Ross Emerson" to avoid constant questioning about his unorthodoxy.
For him, a writer's notoriety is a necessary nuisance. He wields his pen as a restless anti-warrior; the lion in winter is ready to cede his scepter.
"The last thing I need is personal attention," he says. "In fact, I wish some other people would do some of the writing."
In spite of his protestations, however, Emerick shows no signs of scaling back the commentary. His recent writings have focused almost exclusively on the Iraq war - a topic he said he feels duty-bound to cover - but he hopes to eventually tackle less weighty subjects like retirement and travel.
("So many people think going to Orlando is traveling," he chuckles. "I don't consider that traveling at all.")
Emerick regards his mission as one of relentless fact checking, of shedding light on viewpoints seldom held in Clarion County. He remains in every way the librarian - classifying the facts as he sees them and packaging them for mass distribution.
His speech, like his letters, is precise and methodical. When veering even slightly from his core points, Emerick quickly returns to course with a "well, anyway," or "but that's probably not interesting."
For a man whose political rhetoric is so animated and unsparing, Emerick is surprisingly reserved and self-effacing about almost every other topic. In a three-hour conversation, he raises his voice only twice: once to lambaste retirees who waste their golden years on household busywork and once to recall the contrast of rich and poor in the Great Depression.
"Those many years of extreme economic hardship formed and color so much of my views, attitudes and the person I am," Emerick said. "Although as a child I accepted my and our circumstances as they were, now I can reflect on what was little short of being inhumane conditions."
As the son of a Brookville railroad mechanic, Emerick says he grew up quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks. Class status in childhood wasn't obvious for what was said, but for what wasn't.
"Everybody knew everybody," he says. "Their parents were businesspeople. They knew our names and they didn't mistreat us, but the kids from our side of town, we were just in the room. They didn't have anything to do with us. We were just there."
As Emerick's father struggled to provide food for his eight children during months-long layoffs, prosperity was evident in some corners of Brookville. While Emerick's friends played with baseballs they fashioned from burlap sacks, other children partook in the movie matinees. It's here that Emerick becomes riled:
"They went to the movies every damn Saturday!" he says. "I must have been 13 years old before I saw a movie."
As Emerick began his ideological journey, he was Mr. Republican. Mimicking his father's dinner table chitchat, Emerick could be counted on as a faithful apostle of Wendell Willkie and Robert Taft. In history class debates, he blasted FDR and towed the GOP line.
Eventually, Emerick says, he "wised up." His father - a U.S. soldier in World War I - often offered praises for the Germans he fought against.
"I thought it was odd that he had so much affection for the people who were trying to kill him," Emerick says. "I guess that's when I began to question things."
The questions soon amounted to a full-scale ideological break. By the time of his first political foray in 1956, Emerick was an Adlai Stevenson enthusiast. Four years later, he circulated a petition encouraging the two-time loser to challenge Jack Kennedy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Emerick's affection for the aloof intellectual is telling. Stevenson's Republican detractors helped bring the word "egghead" into the popular lexicon by applying it to the one-time Illinois governor. Then as now, Emerick held that men of letters shouldn't be dismissed with a disdainful sniff.
He says he feels bad for the uneducated, and he's adamant in his assessment of the culture they produce.
"Some of these little towns are so backward in terms of exposure to the rest of the world," he says. "That's why they're so conservative. The best thing I ever did was get out of town."
Emerick worked briefly in the office of a Brookville glove factory before punching what he thought was a permanent ticket out of the hinterlands.
After a string of Ohio library jobs, however, Emerick returned to northwest Pennsylvania.
He's stayed here since 1961. The allure was Clarion University, where he could work in cataloging and research rather than trifling with the library boards and municipal bond issues that consumed his time in Ohio.
Soon after his arrival in Clarion, Emerick's political activism would reach a new peak. The spark was the Vietnam War.
"The war was not wrong because we lost," Emerick said in a 1978 interview with The Derrick. "It was wrong because we had no business being there."
During that tumultuous time, he picketed military recruiters, attended big-city protests and - of course - wrote letters to the editor.
"He endured numerous indignities at the hands of professional patriots in their frenzied defense of the slaughter there," said Emerick's friend Jeffers.
Emerick selected as his special cause one of the war's most widely denounced groups: U.S. draft resisters who fled to Canada.
"They couldn't bring themselves to mow down, or attempt to mow down, people they couldn't consider an enemy," he said.
Emerick was so put off by society's universal reproof of draft-dodgers that he reasoned the full story hadn't been told. The groups most widely demonized are often the most misunderstood, he says.
Thus, Emerick set off on a personal three-month journey to Canada, where he interviewed, lodged with and befriended some 200 U.S. expatriates.
The results of that journey were printed in a 1972 book that Emerick self-published. That tome - which sold 2,500 copies and remains on the bibliography of standard texts regarding draft resisters - contained all the flare of Emerick's recent letters to The Derrick.
"Is this a free country?" the book's cover asks. "Federal gumshoes have withheld and tampered with my mail from Canada from the beginning. It's been a Hooveresque nightmare."
Emerick is an unreconstructed 1950s liberal, and he's unashamed of what that implies.
"I think Ted Kennedy is one of the best senators in the country, despite the way he's always being knocked," Emerick says.
He was a co-founder of a now-defunct Unitarian fellowship in Oil City, and he drives a Volkswagen Fox with "Out of Iraq" bumper stickers.
Recently, though, Emerick's political ventures have become largely muted. He lives with his second wife, Mary, and their dog, Duffy - a Scottish herding collie whose long gray locks flail about the living room as he leaps up, down and under tables.
("I never wanted to get a dog that big," Emerick mutters.)
He said most of his like-minded friends have either passed away or opted for warmer venues. A son, Schuyler, lives in Florida and has no interest in politics.
Since retiring from Clarion University in 1989, Emerick has spent much of his own time crisscrossing Europe. Still, he always returns to Ridgewood Road.
One senses that Emerick intends to carry on the battle despite how long and lonely it may become.
Perhaps his letters aggravate more readers than they enlighten. Perhaps northwest Pennsylvania will always maintain its unswerving conservatism. That seems to matter little to Emerick.
Whatever one thinks of his outspoken liberalism, he shines bright as a templar of old-school civic activism.
He shares an age and brusque demeanor with Giles Corry, the 80-year-old man tried as a warlock during the Salem witch hunts. Upon his refusal to confess, Corry was pressed to death by stones. Bystanders urged him to give in, and folklore has preserved Corry's reply:
"More weight."
Emerick is a like-minded spirit.
He pounds out another letter on his prehistoric typewriter.
Emerick chooses a black heritage postage stamp.
As a final touch, he scrawls across the envelope - with no particular audience in mind beyond the mailman - "Lies and deceit took us to a needless, immoral Bush war."
"Bush" is underlined 18 times.
With his white hair, thin beard and frail gait, Emerick walks slowly to his mailbox.
http://www.thederrick.com/stories/11292006-3004.shtml
The best way to end the war is to support war resisters.
"War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector
enjoys the same reputation and prestige as the warrior does today."
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
1984 all over again
Big Brother: Watching, Listening And Shouting
Behavioural control agenda continues as cameras
will now record our conversations in the street
and determine whether we are aggressive
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
In an amazing story, that was passed over as if completely by-the-by, it was revealed over the weekend that London police and councils are considering monitoring our conversations in the street using high-powered microphones attached to CCTV cameras.
The microphones, which are already in use in the Netherlands, can pick up "aggressive tones" on the basis of 12 factors, including decibel level, pitch and the speed at which words are spoken. They are so advanced that background noise is filtered out, enabling the camera to focus on specific conversations in public places.
The excuse being touted is that in 2012 London will host the Olympics. So what?
These devices may be successful in recording the murmurs leading up to a scuffle between a couple of hobos but they're certainly not going to prevent any major security threats. What are they going to do, monitor conversations and despatch emergency squads of argument police if it looks like it might turn nasty?
Step by step our free and open society is being transformed into one of hi-tech authoritarian panopticon state control.
This latest suggestion even has the former Home Secretary David Blunkett, (an MP who for so many years pushed the ID card database in the UK) up in arms. Blunkett yesterday remarked that the listening cameras "smacked of the "surveillance state".
Once again this about having total information awareness, the ability to monitor everyone, anywhere, all the time. It's about getting used to being controlled and eliminating any backlash towards living under total surveillance. Note how the primary function of the cameras is to detect aggression or dissent.
In addition to simply watching and scanning us 24/7 with the ability to positively identify who we are, which many now consider perfectly normal, the latest technology is being used to monitor and manipulate our behaviour.
Face scanning cameras are another example of such technology. Some of these devices are programmed to sound an alarm when they spot suspicious behaviour, such as waiting somewhere for a prolonged period of time or just walking in a suspicious way.
Don't think that these are just proto-type tools either, we have seen how their use in airports and train stations has been hyped over the past year.
Those who are lucky enough to work out of the big cities or those who drive to work have their movements and personal behaviour monitored by traffic cameras all over the UK.
In an even more shocking move we reported last month that the cameras may even start shouting at you in order to publicly humiliate you and let everyone else around know if you are doing something they deem to be wrong. "UNMUTUAL, UNMUTUAL". This way you might be shamed into never stepping out of line in that way again.
Such forms of eavesdropping and monitoring conversations are not new, they are now simply less covert and more out in the open because there is an excuse to justify their use.
In the US you can call your cell phone company, ask them where you are and they will tell you down to a few feet. That is a federal operation that's hooked into the NSA right at this moment and about to be hooked into every major police department and squad car.
Your name, everything about you, what you're doing, where you're going and the cop can punch in a few keys and use your phone as an audio sensor.
Major cities such as Austin, Texas have already installed gunshot detection microphones. The government assured us that they respect our privacy but the very companies installing them bragged about how they can listen to a kid on the street talking to his friend two hundred yards away.
And now, from Rochester New York to Austin Texas to Chicago, the government has announced that they are being used as microphones and they will be used to listen to us.
And it's not just in the street that you can be listened to.
Private industry and eventually government is planning to use microphones in the computers of an estimated 150 million-plus Internet active Americans to spy on their lifestyle choices and build psychological profiles which will be used for surveillance, invasive advertising and data mining.
Check your computer now, if it is a fairly new model it more than likely has a built in microphone that really serves no obvious purpose at this time. Cable and satellite boxes also have the microphones. Why does your TV need to listen to you?
Even if you believe the agenda is purely a consumerist drive to aggressively advertise (why should you when the government wants warrantless wiretapping and the power to detain without trial) this is still a flagrant invasion of our privacy and an attempt to manipulate our behaviour.
A government engaging in escalating criminal actions and becoming more and more secretive should not be watching and tracking us as if we're all criminals. The same goes for all forms of watching, listening, shouting, singing, dancing, flying CCTV surveillance. That's not freedom.
The very matter of fact announcing and the creep of this surveillance nightmare works on two levels. On the one hand the placement of the technology allows a literal big brother monitoring system to function. Secondly the fallout is shaping individual behavior, which means it doesn't much matter what slips past the surveillance grid, because people are cowering in fear of speaking out or being active in any way.
Big brother may not need to watch all the time and that is ultimately more successful, because control by fiat rather than force is something that’s far easier to accomplish and far harder to resist.
Do not cower. If you see any of these devices in your area, demand their removal. Or if your local government plans to implement listening and shouting cameras, resist them.
http://www.infowars.net/articles/november2006/281106BB.htm
Tuesday
Tao: colorless
| Ruling a great state is like cooking a small fish when you govern the world with the Tao spirits display no powers their powers do people no harm not that their powers do people no harm the sage does people no harm and neither harms the other for both rely on Virtue daodejing #60 translated by Red Pine |
 |
What is the difference between erotic and spiritual?
Temples and lovers are equally gaudy.
Temples and lovers are equally gaudy.
What's the difference between eroticism and spirituality? Both refer to ecstasy. Both lead to transcendence of the self. Both lead to unification with a larger order. Both are vulnerable to the excesses of perversion, lust, sadism, obsession, and madness. Eroticism and spirituality--the two deepest endeavors of humanity are twins.
Both eroticism and spirituality mean intense involvement in the diversity and color of the world. But there is a higher order, a state where one is holiness itself. Then nothing of the world of color matters to you anymore. The pleasures of the couch will mean nothing. Neither will the glories of the ascetic's efforts mean anything. Only by entering the colorless state of pure, blinding light can there be freedom from the twins.
Meditation changes your consciousness. The type of consciousness that emerges depends on the meditation. You consciousness in turn colors your perceptions of the world around you. There is no such thing as objective reality. You color everything. If you want the highest state of being, aim for consciousness without color.
colorless
Deng Ming-Dao
365 Tao Daily Meditations
isbn 0-06-250223-9
Both eroticism and spirituality mean intense involvement in the diversity and color of the world. But there is a higher order, a state where one is holiness itself. Then nothing of the world of color matters to you anymore. The pleasures of the couch will mean nothing. Neither will the glories of the ascetic's efforts mean anything. Only by entering the colorless state of pure, blinding light can there be freedom from the twins.
Meditation changes your consciousness. The type of consciousness that emerges depends on the meditation. You consciousness in turn colors your perceptions of the world around you. There is no such thing as objective reality. You color everything. If you want the highest state of being, aim for consciousness without color.
colorless
Deng Ming-Dao
365 Tao Daily Meditations
isbn 0-06-250223-9
Snail, Whale, Riverspine Tails
© 2006 lisbethwest
© 2006 lisbethwest
for a short reading list of Taoist and Zen material,
please go to http://www.duckdaotsu.org/dao-books.html
(duckdaotsu receives a small monetary contribution
when books are purchased from that location)
to subscribe to daily Taoist meditations
send an email to duckdaotsu
write SUBSCRIBE TAO in the subject line
visit my online shop! at http://www.cafepress.com/duckdaotsu
request any graphic you see here to be used on any item in the online store
or as a photographic print for framing
archived at http://www.duckdaotsu.org/nov06/colorless.html
please help support the daily Taoist thought
(thank you to all who have contributed!)
quick email address at http://preview.tinyurl.com/yxv6xa
donations are not required to receive the daily Taoist meditations
but they do support the work and upkeep of the web and mailing list!
please go to http://www.duckdaotsu.org/dao-books.html
(duckdaotsu receives a small monetary contribution
when books are purchased from that location)
to subscribe to daily Taoist meditations
send an email to duckdaotsu
write SUBSCRIBE TAO in the subject line
visit my online shop! at http://www.cafepress.com/duckdaotsu
request any graphic you see here to be used on any item in the online store
or as a photographic print for framing
archived at http://www.duckdaotsu.org/nov06/colorless.html
please help support the daily Taoist thought
(thank you to all who have contributed!)
quick email address at http://preview.tinyurl.com/yxv6xa
donations are not required to receive the daily Taoist meditations
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Tao: colorless
| Ruling a great state is like cooking a small fish when you govern the world with the Tao spirits display no powers their powers do people no harm not that their powers do people no harm the sage does people no harm and neither harms the other for both rely on Virtue daodejing #60 translated by Red Pine |
|
What is the difference between erotic and spiritual?
Temples and lovers are equally gaudy.
Temples and lovers are equally gaudy.
What's the difference between eroticism and spirituality? Both refer to ecstasy. Both lead to transcendence of the self. Both lead to unification with a larger order. Both are vulnerable to the excesses of perversion, lust, sadism, obsession, and madness. Eroticism and spirituality--the two deepest endeavors of humanity are twins.
Both eroticism and spirituality mean intense involvement in the diversity and color of the world. But there is a higher order, a state where one is holiness itself. Then nothing of the world of color matters to you anymore. The pleasures of the couch will mean nothing. Neither will the glories of the ascetic's efforts mean anything. Only by entering the colorless state of pure, blinding light can there be freedom from the twins.
Meditation changes your consciousness. The type of consciousness that emerges depends on the meditation. You consciousness in turn colors your perceptions of the world around you. There is no such thing as objective reality. You color everything. If you want the highest state of being, aim for consciousness without color.
colorless
Deng Ming-Dao
365 Tao Daily Meditations
isbn 0-06-250223-9
Both eroticism and spirituality mean intense involvement in the diversity and color of the world. But there is a higher order, a state where one is holiness itself. Then nothing of the world of color matters to you anymore. The pleasures of the couch will mean nothing. Neither will the glories of the ascetic's efforts mean anything. Only by entering the colorless state of pure, blinding light can there be freedom from the twins.
Meditation changes your consciousness. The type of consciousness that emerges depends on the meditation. You consciousness in turn colors your perceptions of the world around you. There is no such thing as objective reality. You color everything. If you want the highest state of being, aim for consciousness without color.
colorless
Deng Ming-Dao
365 Tao Daily Meditations
isbn 0-06-250223-9
Snail, Whale, Riverspine Tails
© 2006 lisbethwest
© 2006 lisbethwest
for a short reading list of Taoist and Zen material,
please go to http://www.duckdaotsu.org/dao-books.html
(duckdaotsu receives a small monetary contribution
when books are purchased from that location)
to subscribe to daily Taoist meditations
send an email to duckdaotsu
write SUBSCRIBE TAO in the subject line
visit my online shop! at http://www.cafepress.com/duckdaotsu
request any graphic you see here to be used on any item in the online store
or as a photographic print for framing
archived at http://www.duckdaotsu.org/nov06/colorless.html
please help support the daily Taoist thought
(thank you to all who have contributed!)
quick email address at http://preview.tinyurl.com/yxv6xa
donations are not required to receive the daily Taoist meditations
but they do support the work and upkeep of the web and mailing list!
please go to http://www.duckdaotsu.org/dao-books.html
(duckdaotsu receives a small monetary contribution
when books are purchased from that location)
to subscribe to daily Taoist meditations
send an email to duckdaotsu
write SUBSCRIBE TAO in the subject line
visit my online shop! at http://www.cafepress.com/duckdaotsu
request any graphic you see here to be used on any item in the online store
or as a photographic print for framing
archived at http://www.duckdaotsu.org/nov06/colorless.html
please help support the daily Taoist thought
(thank you to all who have contributed!)
quick email address at http://preview.tinyurl.com/yxv6xa
donations are not required to receive the daily Taoist meditations
but they do support the work and upkeep of the web and mailing list!
1954-2006
| Malachi Ritscher 1954 - 2006 by Peter Margasak November 7th - 4:06 p.m. On Saturday the Sun-Times ran a small item about a man who had set himself on fire during rush hour Friday morning near the Ohio Street exit on the Kennedy. His identity has still not been officially determined, but members of the local jazz and improvised music community say they are certain it was Malachi Ritscher, a longtime supporter of the scene. Bruno Johnson, who owns the free-jazz label Okka Disk, received a package yesterday from Ritscher that included a will, keys to his home, and instructions about what should be done with his belongings. Johnson, a former Chicagoan who now lives in Milwaukee, began making calls. Police are still awaiting the results of dental tests, but Johnson says an officer told one of Ritscher's sisters that all evidence pointed to the body being his; his car was found nearby and he hadn't shown up for work since Thursday.
Buried on Ritscher's web site Chicago Rash Audio Potential, a compendium of invaluable show postings, artwork, and photography, are a suicide note and an obituary. Both indicate that he was deeply troubled by the war in Iraq and pinpoint it as a motive for suicide (no method is specified), though there are indications that he may have had other issues as well. "He had a son, from whom he was estranged (at the son's request), and two grandchildren," reads the obit. "He had many acquaintances, but few friends; and wrote his own obituary, because no one else really knew him." Ritscher was a familiar face at antiwar protests, and he was arrested more than once for his involvement, including this time this past May. A note found at the scene of the immolation reportedly read "Thou Shalt Not Kill." Although Ritscher, who was in his early 50s, had played music off and on over the years, he was best known for his devotion to documenting other people's shows. Several nights a week for at least the last decade he could be found at places like the Empty Bottle, the Velvet Lounge, and the Hungry Brain; by his own count he recorded more than 2,000 concerts. Over the years he invested more money in equipment and as his skills improved, many of his recordings went to be used on commerical releases--by Paul Rutherford, Gold Sparkle Band, Isotope 217, Irene Schweizer, and Ken Vandermark among others. Ritscher was fiercely modest about these pursuits--I once tried to do a piece on him for the Reader but he declined, saying he didn’t want publicity. Photos courtesy of Joeff Davis | |||
Malachi Ritscher was a martyr for peace.Here is his testament: (this letter was left for the world to understand the reasons behind this act of war resistance) http://www.savagesound.com/gallery100.htm "My actions should be self-explanatory, and since in our self-obsessed culture words seldom match the deed, writing a mission statement would seem questionable. So judge me by my actions. Maybe some will be scared enough to wake from their walking dream state - am I therefore a martyr or terrorist? I would prefer to be thought of as a 'spiritual warrior'. Our so-called leaders are the real terrorists in the world today, responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden. I have had a wonderful life, both full and full of wonder. I have experienced love and the joy and heartache of raising a child. I have jumped out of an airplane, and escaped a burning building. I have spent the night in jail, and dropped acid during the sixties. I have been privileged to have met many supremely talented musicians and writers, most of whom were extremely generous and gracious. Even during the hard times, I felt charmed. Even the difficult lessons have been like blessed gifts. When I hear about our young men and women who are sent off to war in the name of God and Country, and who give up their lives for no rational cause at all, my heart is crushed. What has happened to my country? we have become worse than the imagined enemy - killing civilians and calling it 'collateral damage', torturing and trampling human rights inside and outside our own borders, violating our own Constitution whenever it seems convenient, lying and stealing right and left, more concerned with sports on television and ring-tones on cell-phones than the future of the world.... half the population is taking medication because they cannot face the daily stress of living in the richest nation in the world. I too love God and Country, and feel called upon to serve. I can only hope my sacrifice is worth more than those brave lives thrown away when we attacked an Arab nation under the deception of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'. Our interference completely destroyed that country, and destabilized the entire region. Everyone who pays taxes has blood on their hands. I have had one previous opportunity to serve my country in a meaningful way - at 8:05 one morning in 2002 I passed Donald Rumsfeld on Delaware Avenue and I was acutely aware that slashing his throat would spare the lives of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people. I had a knife clenched in my hand, and there were no bodyguards visible; to my deep shame I hesitated, and the moment was past. The violent turmoil initiated by the United States military invasion of Iraq will beget future centuries of slaughter, if the human race lasts that long. First we spit on the United Nations, then we expect them to clean up our mess. Our elected representatives are supposed to find diplomatic and benevolent solutions to these situations. Anyone can lash out and retaliate, that is not leadership or vision. Where is the wisdom and honor of the people we delegate our trust to? To the rest of the world we are cowards - demanding Iraq to disarm, and after they comply, we attack with remote-control high-tech video-game weapons. And then lie about our reasons for invading. We the people bear complete responsibility for all that will follow, and it won't be pretty. It is strange that most if not all of this destruction is instigated by people who claim to believe in God, or Allah. Many sane people turn away from religion, faced with the insanity of the 'true believers'. There is a lot of confusion: many people think that God is like Santa Claus, rewarding good little girls with presents and punishing bad little boys with lumps of coal; actually God functions more like the Easter Bunny, hiding surprises in plain sight. God does not choose the Lottery numbers, God does not make the weather, God does not endorse military actions by the self-righteous, God does not sit on a cloud listening to your prayers for prosperity. God does not smite anybody. If God watches the sparrow fall, you notice that it continues to drop, even to its death. Face the truth folks, God doesn't care, that's not what God is or does. If the human race drives itself to extinction, God will be there for another couple million years, 'watching' as a new species rises and falls to replace us. It is time to let go of primitive and magical beliefs, and enter the age of personal responsibility. Not telling others what is right for them, but making our own choices, and accepting consequences. "Who would Jesus bomb?" This question is primarily addressing a Christian audience, but the same issues face the Muslims and the Jews: God's message is tolerance and love, not self-righteousness and hatred. Please consider "Thou shalt not kill" and "As ye sow, so shall ye reap". Not a lot of ambiguity there. What is God? God is the force of life - the spark of creation. We each carry it within us, we share it with each other. Whether we are conscious of the life-force is a choice we make, every minute of every day. If you choose to ignore it, nothing will happen - you are just 'less conscious'. Maybe you are less happy (maybe not). Maybe you grow able to tap into the universal force, and increase the creativity in the universe. Love is anti-entropy. Please notice that 'conscious' and 'conscience' are related concepts. Why God - what is the value? Whether committee consensus of a benevolent power that works through humans, or giant fungus under Oregon, the value of opening up to the concept of God is in coming to the realization that we are not alone, establishing a connection to the universe, the experience of finding completion. As individuals we may exist alone, but we are all alone together as a people. Faith is the answer to fear. Fear opposes love. To manipulate through fear is a betrayal of trust. What does God want? No big mystery - simply that we try to help each other. We decide to make God-like decisions, rescuing falling sparrows, or putting the poor things out of their misery. Tolerance, giving, acceptance, forgiveness. If this sounds a lot like pop psychology, that is my exact goal. Never underestimate the value of a pep-talk and a pat on the ass. That is basically all we give to our brave soldiers heading over to Iraq, and more than they receive when they return. I want to state these ideas in their simplest form, reducing all complexity, because each of us has to find our own answers anyway. Start from here... I am amazed how many people think they know me, even people who I have never talked with. Many people will think that I should not be able to choose the time and manner of my own death. My position is that I only get one death, I want it to be a good one. Wouldn't it be better to stand for something or make a statement, rather than a fiery collision with some drunk driver? Are not smokers choosing death by lung cancer? Where is the dignity there? Are not the people the people who disregard the environment killing themselves and future generations? Here is the statement I want to make: if I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country. I will not participate in your charade - my conscience will not allow me to be a part of your crusade. There might be some who say "it's a coward's way out" - that opinion is so idiotic that it requires no response. From my point of view, I am opening a new door. What is one more life thrown away in this sad and useless national tragedy? If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country. I was alive when John F. Kennedy instilled hope into a generation, and I was a sorry witness to the final crushing of hope by Dick Cheney's puppet, himself a pawn of the real rulers, the financial plunderers and looters who profit from every calamity; following the template of Reagan's idiocracy. The upcoming elections are not a solution - our two party system is a failure of democracy. Our government has lost its way since our founders tried to build a structure which allowed people to practice their own beliefs, as far as it did not negatively affect others. In this regard, the separation of church and state needs to be reviewed. This is a large part of the way that the world has gone wrong, the endless defining and dividing of things, micro-sub-categorization, sectarianism. The direction we need is a process of unification, integrating all people into a world body, respecting each individual. Business and industry have more power than ever before, and individuals have less. Clearly, the function of government is to protect the individual, from hardship and disease, from zealots, from the exploitation, from monopoly, even from itself. Our leaders are not wise persons with integrity and vision - they are actors reading from teleprompters, whose highest goal is to stir up the mob. Our country slaughters Arabs, abandons New Orleaneans, and ignores the dieing environment. Our economy is a house of cards, as hollow and fragile as our reputation around the world. We as a nation face the abyss of our own design. A coalition system which includes a Green Party would be an obvious better approach than our winner-take-all system. Direct electronic debate and balloting would be an improvement over our non-representative congress. Consider that the French people actually have a voice, because they are willing to riot when the government doesn't listen to them. "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government... " - Abraham Lincoln With regard to those few who crossed my path carrying the extreme and unnecessary weight of animosity: they seemed by their efforts to be punishing themselves. As they acted out the misery of their lives it is now difficult to feel anything other than pity for them. Without fear I go now to God - your future is what you will choose today." www.savagesound.com/gallery99.htm His biography is here: www.savagesound.com/gallery100.htm Let's not allow this sacrifice to be written off as just another unfortunate tragedy. The tragedy is in Iraq, and Malachi Ritscher died to tell us all that. Malachi Ritscher is entitled to at least as much respect as those Buddhist monks in Viet Nam. | |||
Malachi Ritscher obituary by Malachi Ritscher - out of time - Chicago resident Malachi Ritscher passed away last (day of week), a (tragic, baffling, mundane) death at the age of (subtract 1954 from current year). He was the modern day version of a 'renaissance man', except instead of attaining success in several fields, he consistently failed, and didn't really worry too much about it. For example, his boxing record in Golden Gloves. The eldest son of Richard C. Ritscher, a music educator, he collected and played many exotic instruments, without mastering any. Most recently, he had been playing a vintage Conn C-Melody saxophone that once belonged to free-spirit Hal Russell. Malachi was best known for his live concert recordings, mostly of local jazz groups who couldn't afford expensive studios. His license plates said AKG C 414, after his favorite microphones. Upwards of fifty recordings were eventually released commercially, with some acclaim for their natural sound. His archive of live recordings he had documented exceeded 2000 shows. Mostly he was just a big fan. Also he was a film photographer, with a picture of a peregrine falcon chick published in a local Audubon magazine, and related video footage shown on local television news. He wrote poetry that was not published, painted watercolors in a quirky naive style, and participated passionately in the anti-war and free speech movement. He was arrested at a protest on March 20, 2003 and spent the night in jail, then became a member of the pending class-action suit against the City of Chicago. Arrested again two years later, he successfully sued the City of Chicago for false arrest on 1st Amendment/free speech grounds. One of his proudest achievements was an ultra-searing hot sauce recipe, which he registered under the name 'Undead Sauce - re-animate yourself!' It was a blend of tropical peppers, which he grew indoors in 5-gallon buckets, and a few secret ingredients that gave it a unique flavor (pomegranate, pistachio, and cinnamon). Born Mark David Ritscher in Dickinsen, North Dakota on January 13, 1954, he lived most of his life in the mid-west, ranging from small-town Madison, South Dakota to Chicago, where he moved in 1981, changing his first name to Malachi. As a child, he was intensely afraid of many things, especially heights; he spent the rest of his life trying to face his fears, without ever coming to terms with his fear of people. He dropped out of high school and married at the age of 17, a union that lasted almost 10 years. He became an ordained minister with the Missionaries of the New Truth in 1972, and had performed several weddings. He provided for his family with a variety of trade positions, eventually reaching Journeyman High-Voltage Technician status with the electric utility in Lincoln, Nebraska. He became a Licensed Stationary Engineer in 1987. He was a member of several unions throughout his career, including IBEW, IUOE, and SEIU. He was proud to be a dues-paying proletariat intellectual. After getting divorced, he relocated to Chicago to work with friends in an art-rock band, which inevitably led to forming a trio called 'wantnot', recording and releasing a CD in 1990, with Malachi on bass and vocals, Mike Mansfield on guitar, and Janna Brooks on drums. The cover design received an award from the American Center for Design, which didn't increase sales. He also designed skateboard decks, flyers, and t-shirts, with similar commercial results. He was a collector of several things: books, records, meteorites, butterfly knives, keris, glass eyes, fossil tully monsters, microphones, medium-base lightbulbs, and instruments, especially snare drums. He was a man of strong contrasts, and fierce loyalties. There was a joy of life, which balanced a suspicious misanthropy. Endless pondering of existential gray areas could be interrupted by a totally spontaneous act: jumping in his car to drive downtown and participate in the Sears Tower stair-climb (2003). When he read Goethe's words "Nowhere but in his own Montserrat will a man find happiness and peace", his first thought was to find out where it is, and then book a flight there. He had memorized Pi to the 1101 decimal place, and would recite it at will. He could shave with a straight razor. He loved cinnamon rolls. He loved the smell of turpentine. He also loved motorcycles, which he wisely avoided. In the words of Stephen Wright, he was a 'peripheral visionary'. His sense of humor was droll - he theorized that surprise and not tragedy was the most important element of comedy. His favorite joke was to walk into a room, sniff the air, and observe "it smells like snot in here". His favorite word was 'ominous'. His favorite two words were 'Tahitian hiatus'. He always carried his passport with him. He owned and maintained several web-sites: savagesound.com, unwinnablewar.net, killthepresident.net, warwhores.us; in addition he was preparing www.publicparkingparty.org, to promote protection of residents' rights in Chicago. A lover of literature, even more than music, he had always dreamed of being a writer. The handwritten manuscript of his 'fictional autobiography', titled "Farewell Tour", was under consideration by publishers. It had a general theme of shared universal aloneness, and was controversial for seeming to endorse suicide after the age of fifty. His favorite classic authors were Proust and Shakespeare. The metaphor for his life was winning the lottery, but losing the ticket. In the end, the loneliness was overwhelming. He was deeply appreciative for everything that had been given to him, but acutely aware that the greater the present, the higher the price. He was a member of Mensa, and Alcoholics Anonymous since 1990. For him, sobriety was virtually getting a second chance at life. He practiced a personal and private spirituality, seeking to connect across the illusion that separates us from each other. Reportedly, his last words were "rosebud... oops". Near his end, he was purchasing real estate in Vancouver with the intention of eventual emigration, unable to reconcile his conscience with his tax dollars financing an unjust war. He frequently took short trips to New York City and New Orleans, where he made more recordings of concerts. Europe seemed more civilized to him, and he experienced Paris and Amsterdam, Germany and Switzerland, as well as Madrid and Barcelona. His family was far-flung, surviving parents Richard and Betty Ann, older sisters Carol and Susan, younger siblings Paul, Jon, and Ellen; nieces Laurel, Carol, Julia, Jessica, Marissa, and nephew Aaron. He had a son, from whom he was estranged (at the son's request), and two grandchildren. He had many acquaintances, but few friends; and wrote his own obituary, because no one else really knew him. He has a plot at Calvary Cemetery in Evanston, Illinois; and the epithet he chose is "I Dreamt That I Was Dreaming". Bruno Johnson of Okkadisk will have the dubious honor of maintaining archives and dispersing collections. galleries music 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 music 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 stuff 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 stuff 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 places 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 places 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 asleep 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 future 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 future 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 future 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101... all content copyright 2006 savagesoundsyndicate | |||
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http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/74806/index.php http://blogs.chicagoreader.com/post-no-bills/2006/11/07/ malachi-ritschers-apparent-suicide/ |
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