This is intended as an Open Thread.  Please weigh in with your own observations and speculations at will.  First, listen to Assata Shakur in her own words on Democracy Now, reading part of her open letter to Pope John Paul II during his visit to Cuba in 1998; you will learn some of the history that put in her in prison initially, and some of the further horrors that came to her down the road.  She speaks so eloquently and passionately.  I believe the recording must have been back in Democracy Now’s Pacifica Radio Days.  May I take this time to remind us all what a seriously Inconvenient Wren Amy Goodman has been for so long?  Thank you Amy, and all the Wrens who are in your bevy of Wrens….

 (for mafr, who brought us the gift of this glorious song recently, and told us that Karine had dedicated it as a hymn to the Occupy movement; thank you.)

 The lyrics, while speaking to the great fires horrors in London resulting from the Blitz,  it so aptly reflects the dark and wretched times so many humans are experiencing all over the world in the present.  Sometimes when we’re silent, we can fairly hear the infrasound echoes created by so many of the earth’s inhabitants cry out in pain and fear; the planet, so grievously wounded by human abuse, answers with her own sorrow and portentous signals in floods, droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes…and more.

And yet: behold the Wee Wren; allow Karine’s music to wrap your heart in…the possibilities of singing light into the darkness…

(This live version is far better, but the embedding has been denied; it will open in a new window.)

At Ludgate Hill
on the cracked and blackened cobbles of the town
the ashes fall to rest
As the tiny King of Birds he flutters down
to build a citadel
to light glory in the dark
and from hell
to breathe hope in every heart

Who can not tear up at the abundant fullness of the song, and want to pay homage to the Wee Wrrens among us?  There are so many more than we ever will realize, at least metaphorically staking themselves out in defense of the planet, each other, our civil and human rights…working to create a better world, selflessly giving of themselves in order that we, and our big blue-green ball of a planet…might live more harmoniously and consciously.  Please add your own Tiny Wrens who are bringing The Light. 

‘At Ludgate Hill
where the towers of smoke and mirrors bruise the sky
the pilgrims huddle in
as the tiny King of Birds begins to cry
the people start to sing
to light glory in the dark
to ring the bell
and to breathe hope in every heart…’

The tipping point for defeating the Dark will come when enough light-bearers arise to even heal the King of Birds when he wearily falters, and wails his lamentations…  Wren Power; People Power.

Bless you, 79-year-old grandmothers Spotted Wren Nancy Zorn,  for chaining yourself to a bulldozer working the XL pipeline in Allen, Oklahoma, and disrupting its ‘work’ for a few hours; may your dedication permeate the collective consciousness aloft. (You can see Mutual Aid’s brand new Keystone XL 10-minute video here.)

Mafr also brought us this incredible story.  House WrensMichael R. Walli (63), Nun Megan Rice (82),and Greg Boertje-Obed, (57), succeeded in a disarmament action at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Nuclear facility in July, 2012:

(by Anthony Freda via wendydavis @flickr.com)

By now you’ve heard that the rules say that once a year the DOJ discloses to Congress the number of FISA eavesdropping applications it files and the numbers both approved and rejected by the Court, and that Senator Harry Reid was given the report for 2012 last week. 

Glenn Greenwald explained the history of the original 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act recently, and said it was purported to have been the ‘remedy’ to past rampant federal government abuses of its eavesdropping powers that were discovered by the Church Committee Senate hearings.  He called the law’s provisions ‘a radical perversion of the judicial process’, in that the FISA court convened in secret, its rulings were classified, the standards of ‘probable cause’ were seriously diluted, and grotesquely, no adversaries to the government ‘evidence’ against a target were permitted in the room.  Adding to the irony, the Court itself was housed in the Justice building. 

When the New York Times broke the story in 2005 about Bush’s minions breaking the law and listening to phone calls, reading emails, etc. of Americans without obtaining warrants (just too much of a burden, you see), Congress, rather than punishing said officials, passed a new law to legalize it all.  We can’t be too secure, you know; nor can Congress-critters asses ever be too secure.

Thus was the FISA Amendments Act of 2008’ created.  Ars Technica’s opinion of it can be read here; it’s subtitled ‘Telco immunity is the icing, not the cake’ (that’s a hint).

(by Anthony Freda via wendydavis @flickr.com)

Each of us will inevitably be left with certain lessons learned or some fully formed memory engrams  from the bombings in Boston, be they the photos, the early media reportage, the conflicting stories, agency ass-covering, the failure of the massive snooping security state infrastructure ‘failure to investigate or predict’…and in the future: the trial of the live suspect may be what some remember most vividly.

One of my favorite literary characters, John Irving’s Owen Meany, once said (his utterances were always in upper case: ‘TELEVISION GIVES GOOD DISASTER’. )  At the time, he and his best friend were watching the endless coverage of JFK’s assassination and the aftermath…that really hasn’t ever ended.  And that fact causes my mind to ping on some other favorite fictional characters: The X-Files’ ‘the Lone Gunmen’, parodies of conspiracy theorists who got a lot of it…right, in the ‘just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you’ sort of way.

Given that by now, it’s ALL media (including the blogosphere) that ‘gives good disaster’ is the main reason that I don’t really ‘do’ disaster; not Oklahoma City, Waco, the razing of the Twin Towers, or Boston.  Among those reasons is that governments lie, ours lies with even more frequency in the handily constructed ‘War on Terror’, war is profit for Empire and multinationals, and…the media love to play on our fears, and spike them higher to…sell ads, as well as serve their corporate masters.

It wasn’t possible to avoid seeing photos, headlines, and I even read a thread or two at FDL, so a few impressions and bits of coverage stuck with me, but one stuck out mightily from all the others:

‘Boston is under lockdown!’

(by Anthony Freda via wendydavis @flickr.com)

One of my early hopes was that this President had meant what he’d said in 2009 about the US leading the way towards a nuclear-free world.

As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act,” he said. We cannot succeed in this endeavour alone, but we can lead it.

So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment and desire to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.

He’d added several caveats during the speech, appaarently, to show the world how tough he’d be on Iran, North Korea, surrounding enemy nations with missile ’defense’ systems, etc.  But even at the time, lest we’d get too misty-eyed over the possibility, we should have been advised of more than the feel-good sound bites (my bolds throughout):

Gary Samore, the White House’s Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism, indicated that Mr. Obama’s call for ridding the world of nuclear weapons need not be taken too literally.

“In terms of a nuclear-free world, I think we all recognize this is not a near-term possibility.” Rather, the call was an attempt to “seize the moral high ground” in order to increase pressure on countries like North Korea and Iran.

Yes We Can!  (Make Sure That Only the Good** Our Guys Have Nukes!)

 This is Navajo Mythological Cosmology: Chanting the landscape:

Third-worlders see it first:
The dynamite, the dozers, the cancer and the acid rain
The corporate caterpillars come into our backyards
And turn the world to pocket change
Reservations are the nuclear frontline;
Uranium poisoning kills
We’re starving in a handful of gluttons
We’re drowning in their gravy spills…

~ Buffy Sainte-Marie

From the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, April 4, 2013:

For Immediate Release: New Annual Report reveals that 313 Black People were killed in 2012, averaging one every 28 hours. 

 Every 28 hours in 2012 someone employed or protected by the US government killed a Black man, woman, or child! This startling fact is revealed in Operation Ghetto Storm: 2012 Annual Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 313 Black People by Police, Security Guards, and Vigilantes.

 “When we started this investigation in early 2012, we knew a serious human rights crisis was confronting the Black community”, says Kali Akuno, an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM). “However, we did not have a clear sense of its true depth until we compiled and examined the annual figures. We have uncovered outrageous rates of extrajudicial killings–rates, that when they are found in countries like Mexico or Brazil, are universally condemned.  The same outrage inside the U.S. also demands immediate action.”

If those statements sound inflammatory, well…they’re intended to be.  If they sound hyperbolic on the surface, the (pdf) report adds caveats and exceptions in some of the cases, and when there was evidence of implied or outright violence committed by the person killed ‘extra-judiciously’, the researchers called it: arguably justifiable.  The report, authored by Arlene Eisen of the Malcolm X Solidarity Committee, is 130 pages long; 29 are text, photos, and graphics, Memorial pages.  The remaining pages are charts identifying the dead with photos, locations, armed or not, mental health issues, self-medicating issues or not, police report claims and alleged circumstances, then additional comments pertaining to dissenting eye-witness claims, investigations yielding X effects or ongoing ones, etc.  The author/s had a separate column for ‘Was excessive force used’; for each person there was either a Yes or a No given.  This chart shows that by their reckoning, in 12% of the incidents, the answer was NO.