labi siffre - into the light

An American talking truth & making sense for 25 minutes

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No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.

The problem with hyperbole

is that it leaves you with nowhere to go. There is a serious point to be made in the question, "If a burger or a football game is awesome, how the hell do you describe the universe?"

If Obama is to be labeled a Nazi or fascist, how are we to label Stalin or Hitler or Mengele?

If Obama's healthcare plans are categorized as Nazism, in what category do we place the holocaust?

If Obama's administration is to be described in terms of Hitler's administration, what terms can we use to describe the administrations of Pol Pot or present day Myanmar or North Korea?

If I designate kid's household chores (tidying their rooms & taking the trash out) as Slavery (without it being a joke) I certainly downgrade the importance of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" and should perhaps designate the KKK and Aryan Nation as healthy just-for-fun boys social clubs; and clearly I was over reacting in my opposition to Apartheid.

Are these Americans really suggesting that Obama is equivalent to Hitler? If they are, then Education in America, particularly the teaching of history, is in a parlous state.

No, these people are, at best, hysterics; and perhaps, as in the best B movies, someone should  give them a (not physical, but vocal) slap on one cheek to bring them to their senses. It would be more dignified for the USA if that slap came from the Republicans.
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Barney Frank restores a little of the USA's dignity

A new dawn

Yes we can
we always could
but will we?

You see,
when you have abused, brutalized, beaten, scarred
your children and the mother of your children
you cannot make things right by saying from today
everything will be different
will change
all will be new

First you must staunch the blood
there
and there
and in here; repair
the fractured rib
the cracked socket of the girl's, by chance,
undamaged eye; the leg will mend
though the boy will always falter with fear

And the broken spirits, though soothed, untangled
woven again, will lifelong be fragile
never quite right

Remember the past, undaunted, is ever present
at your shoulder, at my shoulder;
no matter our declarations endless of "moving on",
"lessons learned", "moving forward", no matter
the countless new dawns
the new days we keep announcing are here.
It is time to grow up
to admit, at the least to ourselves,
that we were wrong

This is not a movie, this is not a video game, this is not
a song
This must not be us, juvenile, patting ourselves on the back
cravenly believing we are right because we are sincere,
because we are strong

A new dawn in hell is a new dawn
in hell
and only the future
nano-second by nano-second becoming the past
will tell whether the present tense
for the trampled ones
will be the present made well
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the difference is

their war criminals end up in hiding, or
in the dock at the international war crimes tribunal

our war criminals rise to talk radio
to the best seller lists
to the lecture circuit
to the board

clearly
our war criminals are better than theirs

praise the lord

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John McCain - "palling around with terrorists"

^{from the blog "Daily Kos"}

Let's review: Barack Obama served on a school reform board funded by an ally of Ronald Reagan, along with a number of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.  John McCain accepts money and enjoys sitting down for interviews with a man who is a convicted felon, who plotted murders and bombings, who advocated killing federal agents, who named his shooting targets after a President and First Lady/Senator, and who tingled when he listened to Adolph Hitler speak. And John McCain praises his:

"...adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great".

Exactly which candidate "is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America"?
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The Martial Plan

We need stability in the middle east. That’s what we’re killing, sorry, fighting for __ peace. Without stability in the middle east our right to their oil is at risk; so it’s vital we have a strong fiscal policy, to ensure stability in a global economy: banking, mortgages, building, agronomy.

Furthermore, in extremis (and it looks like we’re there) we may have to invade the US of A and fight for stability the American way, to halt the rise of the world on welfare.
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with respect

midst your loud and constant
self-congratulatory fest

being the most
powerful country

in the world
is not the same

as being
the greatest

(nor even
the best)
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no matter what

April 14th 2008
on this day
in america it’s a sin to be angry
in america it’s a sin to be bitter
in america it’s a sin to be skeptical
in america it’s a sin to be poor
in america it’s a sin not to respect everyone
in america it’s a sin not to respect every belief
(except atheism) in america it’s a sin to be a loner
in britain it’s the same
i wonder how it is in the rest of the world. i wonder
are they as in denial, out of touch and
get out as little as we do?

having read today's news about china, bangladesh, italy
zimbabwe and the middle east
apparently the answer is yes
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The USA today – I pray not

Justice is the perfect meal
In an honorable
Land

But the condemnation of those
Who confess under the duress
Of torture

Is a mouth full of ashes
Washed down
With sand
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For an honorable fan of a dishonored man

^{(an open letter to President George Walker Bush)}

Get on the bus George and tell me you'll save
me a seat for Rapture and a job for life, paid
in the wages of victory in the battle of Babylon
like in your re-write of the screenplay
in which we win the battle for Vietnam

Meanwhile, in these mean times, a sports-
utility-vehicular-penthouse-address will do
(if I want one enough) to go with the pool and
the house in the hills (if i want one enough)
and most important of all respect
as just one of the guys
and the title "The Best" and a seat on the right
hand of God and gas cheap as snowflakes in
Reykjavik (before global warming)

Stand with the flag George and tell me you're
just like me: not clever but savvy, a family
man who believes in God - not some liberal,
intellectual, atheist faggot, 'cause that's what they
must be to be different from me; and that's fair
and balanced as any red blooded American can be

Stand tall at the podium George, smile and say
you love this country and Jesus does too
that this is the greatest nation any year, any
hour, any day, any where. tell us we're good,
tell us we're really good, tell us our hearts
are pure and we'd never do anything false, unjust,
dishonest or cruel because that's not how we
in the USA live, endure and play

Tell it like it is George
and I'll give my child's life
so you can have your way
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Odd, perhaps tragic

Now that America considers
The world to be
Its back yard
Tis a pity
Beyond compare
They have forgotten the wise
Advice not to shit there
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Compassion

^{(for Virginia Tech - April 16, 2007)}

Will the concept of a loving God comfort you or will a loving God comfort you? Will the president comfort you? Will his “concern and condolences”, his confessed inability to express “how much sorrow” he feels “for the families” comfort you? Will his prayers “lift you up”?

Will our “disbelief and horror” comfort you? Will our “shock and sorrow” comfort you? Will our “loss for words to explain” comfort you? Will you be comforted to know I felt neither horror nor shock nor disbelief, merely resignation (perhaps irri-tation) in the face of absurdity. I leave you room to believe me heartless.

Will anger comfort you – ours, yours? Will the fact that the gunman took his own life comfort you? Will it comfort you to know he was “a troubled loner”? (there are so many trouble loners).

Will it comfort you to know that others cannot be comforted in that place where only they can go? Now, in that place where only you can go, there is another empty space never to be filled. Will it comfort you to know that I can never know how you feel? And vice versa.

So, there you have it: our sorrow for your loss. Fetch a measure. How deep are, “our deepest condolences”?
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"guns don't kill people"

says the NRA
"People kill people"

trouble is
there are soooooooooooo
many
People
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if this is pro gress we need less

A lie about sex between adults consenting bred baying accusations from adulterers at prayer. Then came lies-upon-lies-upon-lies killing thousands of innocent civilians in a far desert land; plus thousands of our own personnel militaire, their blood fertilizing the sand.

So, which of these lies in the land of the brave deserved the decision to impeach el presidente; and what does that say about adulterers at prayer, with their fingers pointing. And what does that say about our righteous USA.
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Mocking Dubya (with small cojones)

Many who mock Dubya the American president, George Bush, mean well, but I wait (probably in vain) for political pundits, commentators, intellectuals, showbiz personalities and the media (especially in the USA) to have balls enough to ask: “If Bush is so dumb, what does that say about the intelligence of the population of the country that made and kept him the most powerful man on the planet?”

NB. The rules of collective responsibility and culpability state that: in a democracy, if you are eligible to vote, you are responsible for your government and its actions - even if you didn’t vote for it.
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an alternative theory

when the majority
individually
agree

that short term
personal gain be
the prime dire

ective there be
no need of con
spiracy

Wake the fuck up!

pussy footy wussy wimps our media is so
toenail in the water “you first, then we’ll go”

so in case you ain’t noticed
(and i can’t wait no mo)

the US Supreme Court circus farce
is simply about killing
Wade v Roe

_source

9 / 11

^{4 of 14 short pieces written within twelve days of the 2001 attacks (all 14 are HERE)}

i was watching it on big
screen TV in an almost
empty pub and a guy came
in from a back room muttering
"they've turned the fucking
rugby off for this!"

Llanelli was playing
Swansea i think

*
voice and hair like shredded
pewter plates his face
a quarry of rage
the old New Yorker
quivering with the strain
of forbidding an ocean
of tears to fall spits
THIS  will NOT   HAPPEN
aGAIN !!!

oh yes it will
my mind replies

*

funky music
^{(sing to the tune of "Shortnin' Bread")}

Flags 'n God
Flags 'n God
everybody talkin' 'bout
Flags 'n God

(repeat - endlessly)

*

"I didn't kiss him goodbye
because I had my lipstick on

This was my fiance
It has taken me my whole life
to find him and I don't know
what I am going to do
without him"

^{Rachel about James
who worked on the 104th floor
South Tower}

only then - tears

*

where the dream and reality collide

Katrina queen of the hurricanes is gone
re his Teflon indifference to the suffering
and deaths in New Orleans and the wide
er Gulf what need has Bush to worry

the photos were great PR; hugging refugees
too weak with shock to push him away
their brains flooded with “overwhelmed by
celebrity” mush their hungering stomachs
empty of anything to throw up

(get away from me man! don’t hug us ‘less
you brought food ‘n water!  ‘n get away
from my daughter!)

in that movie land of impotent media collusion
all he has to do is praise God some more
and Americans will soon forget that the greatest
sin in the USA (the sin America’s God
so righteously abhors) is to be poor

4 cast

America is afraid

given an inch the shrub

takes a thousand miles

expect no change

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Multi-faith initiative

In Britain and in the USA
Introspection is viewed as self-indulgence

Though no nation except perhaps North
Korea is more intro

Spective than the USA; a country whose people are
Unaware of the existence of other nations
Allowing there is terra incognita but bel

Ieving it to be populated by simulacra, computer
Generated avatars at worst and at best by
Golems half formed who do not realise yet

That they too are Americans (4th class) as Islam
Believes everyone is Muslim though
Some don’t know it

Which cannot excuse their apostasy nor
Save them from the fire of God’s wrath

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