EXCLUSIVE: John Walker Lindh's Parents Discuss Their Son's Story, from Joining the US-Backed Taliban Army to Surviving a Northern Alliance Massacre, to His Abuse at the Hands of US Forces

EXCLUSIVE: John Walker Lindh's Parents Discuss Their Son's Story, from Joining the US-Backed Taliban Army to Surviving a Northern Alliance Massacre, to His Abuse at the Hands of US Forces

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In the immortal words of Bob Dylan: "Don't it make you feel ashamed/To live in a land/Where justice is a game?"

Newspeak Dictionary: Definition of a Terrorist

A civilian who fights back.

Synonym: extremist.

Unless and Until...

Unless and until we, as a people, decide that the maintenance of our health and the treatment of disease are too important to be left to the mercy of market forces, to decisions made with an eye to the for-profit bottom-line; unless and until we are able to muster the self-respect necessary to demand the complete reorganization (and/or dismantling) of for-profit insurance corporations, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, elder care facilities, and medical practices, we will never witness the revolution in health care that we want and, frankly, that we deserve.

The Obama Administration is presently colluding with the for-profit status quo to arrange our evacuation from one sinking ship into another--because that's the American Way. You don't want Coke? No worries. Here, have a Pepsi instead. Frying pan too hot for you? Not a problem. Just jump over here--into the fire.

We, the people, subscribe to the fiction that we have delegated the responsibility for our lives and welfare to democratically elected officials but, in fact, we have delegated that responsibility to the unelected individuals and organizations those elected officials depend upon and answer to: lobbyists for special interests, career bureaucrats, the Pentagon and its corporate welfare allies in the so-called defense industry.

We like sheep have gone astray and there is no help for us--unless and until we wake up and gain insight into the true nature of our predicament. The health care debacle is merely symptomatic of a far more pernicious affliction: a disease of the will. The will of the people that makes for a functioning democracy.

The American experiment in freedom has always been an under-realized ideal; under-realized because we sold our birthright as free women and men for a mess of commodification. Though our national mythology continues to look to the pilgrimage to Plymouth Rock as the commencement of our spiritual journey as a people, it is in fact the Jamestown settlement that was and remains the authentic emblem of the state of our national soul. We live and die by mercantilism.

Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains. One believes himself the others' master, and yet is more a slave than they... J. J. Rousseau.

What Is To Be Done?

Leo Tolstoy, the last Christian.



Read Tolstoy's still timely Letter to Russian Liberals at the wonderful Anarchy Archives.

News Item

The White House has recently disclosed that double digit unemployment will soon be upon us (if it is not upon us already).

What an unexpected boon for military recruiters at a time when the project of U.S.-based Capitalist imperialism is struggling to enter a new phase.

This recession really is the answer to militarist prayers. How fortuitous! Who could have foreseen it?

The pressing need to find an exit strategy for Iraq has suddenly eased. The Obama Administration's commitment to increase U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan is no longer regarded as untenable.

Suicide bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan continue apace, but no one is minding the body count.

Yes we can! Yes we can!