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In a tough economy, with music lovers thinking twice before going to see their favorite acts, the 34-date BonTaj Roulet Tour by Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal is blazing new green ground in raising money for charities. So far it's collected over $100,000 for environmental and other causes. It could add that much again before the final show on September 25 at Rancho Mirage, California.

The tour features a unique pairing that cuts across rock and blues barriers...and a whole lot more. With strong reviews and healthy ticket sales on an otherwise rough summer for the music business, the tour is also laying the groundwork for a new mix in the magic art of using commercial concerts to raise funds for green and other causes.

According to Kathy Kane, Bonnie Raitt's manager, "the artists are giving, the concert goers are giving AND the ticketing agencies are giving, along with some key venues and promoters." Among the collaborators are Ticketmaster, Live Nation Ticketing, and Musictoday. "Not every venue and promoter is contributing," says Kane, "but many are trying, and every venue and promoter has worked with us to make this happen."

Many of your elected employees (e.g., Pres. Obama, U.S. Senators, and U.S. Representatives) are conducting so-called alleged “town hall” style meetings with their employers (otherwise known as voters) during the fully paid vacations you have provided for them in August and September.

Given that more members of the U.S. Armed Forces died in Afghanistan in July and August 2009 than in any other two month period since the U.S. successfully removed the then current government from power in Afghanistan in late 2001 almost eight years ago, you may wish to ask these questions in person or send them to each of your elected employees and ask for answers.


What military threat does Afghanistan currently pose to the United States?

Given that the purpose for the invasion of Afghanistan was fully accomplished in 2001, why are U.S. troops in Afghanistan today?

Given that the purpose for the invasion of Afghanistan was fully accomplished in 2001, how long do you intend to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan?

How many of your children are old enough to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces now?
SPECIAL EVENT: David Swanson will be in Columbus at 7pm on Sept. 9 for a book signing and meet-and-greet at Areopagitica, a bookstore at 3510 N. High St. near Oakland Park in Clintonville. For more information, contact Connie Hammond at chammon@columbus.rr.com

F.P.: Tell us about the book.

David Swanson: The book is called Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and forming a more perfect union, and as that title might suggest, it’s somewhat divided into a couple of parts. One part – what’s wrong, and one part, what do we do about it.

The part about what’s wrong deals largely with the real acceleration during the past eight years of the transfer of power -- from the Congress, and the courts and the people to the White House, and the crimes and abuses but also the systemic changes that need to be undone and reversed

A night full of history, knowledge and a whole lot of fun. That is how you can describe the August Second Saturday Salon organized by Free Press Managing Editor Suzanne Patzer and her husband Bob Fitrakis, who is Executive Director. The guests in attendance were from all walks of life leading to many interesting conversations. Stories of exciting and political past, struggles of today’s world, and promises of the future took over the night. One guest I had the pleasure of speaking to is brilliant artist Malcolm J. Mr. J. has a past full of loneliness and depression which he turned into something beautiful. He admitted himself into a treatment to help with his drug and alcohol addictions. Mr. J has been drawing since his younger years, motivated by his 4th grade teacher Mr. Valentino. Since his recovery he has taken it to new levels with help from organizations such as the Fresh Air Gallery, the Cultural Art Center and the VSA arts of Ohio.

The Columbus Free Press sponsored an August 25, screening of the documentary “A Powerful Noise” at the Drexel Theater in Bexley. The movie focused on three women who aided the people of their countries, especially assisting women who are discriminated against after tragic experiences. The three women’s names are Jacqueline (a woman from Bamako, Mali), Hahn (a Vietnamese woman) and Nada (a mother from Bosnia).

Jacqueline (better known as “Madame Urbain” to the people she helps) runs an organization called APAF which helps the women of Bamako get regulated pay and just treatment from their employers, but it does not stop there. Additionally, the organization helps women who were not able to get an education that enables them to sustain a normal life. Madame Urbain also knows that it is important to not only assist the women of Bamako, so she is a motivational speaker who talks to children currently enrolled in school, and villages where she has helped build schools.

Thinking about the death of Senator Edward Kennedy causes me to reflect on my own life and political activism. First, I was struck by the fact that “Teddy” was only one year younger than my father. The Senator always seemed eternally youthful, optimistic, and idealistic. I harbored in the back of my mind, up until the time his brain cancer was announced, that somehow – someway – he would still end up as President someday.

But, I was there for his last battle in 1980, supporting him and his United Automobile union allies in Detroit. In many ways, it was the last shoot-out in the Democratic Party between the liberal/progressive forces longing for a return of the New Deal/Great Society and the emerging new pro-corporate Democrats.

Not that the corporatism of Carter and his economic moderation was not offset by his championing of human rights and a rational energy policy, rather those of us who pushed Kennedy in 1980 realized that the “stagflation” – simultaneously high unemployment and high inflation – associated with Carter and the Democrats would likely pave the way for the rise of Ronald Reagan and his politics of deregulation and casino capitalism.
CICERO AND THE GREAT LAW -
MNN. Aug. 24, 2009. History repeats itself. As Cicero said [106-43 BC], “A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less dangerous, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the people. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor doesn’t appear like a traitor. They speak in the accents familiar to their victims. They wear their face and their clothes and appeal to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of their people. They rot the soul of a nation. They work secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a community. They infect the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague."

I don’t begrudge William Calley his remorse about My Lai, but I’m hesitant to acknowledge his apology for it.

If you steal $10 from your mother, you need to apologize. If, as you carry out orders, you lead a raid on a village that slaughters 500 or more defenseless people, something of a higher magnitude is required before you can have your life back.

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley told members of the Kiwanis Club of Columbus, Ga., last week. “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

It’s not that I don’t believe him . . . or that I hold him unforgivable. As a matter of principle, I refuse to waste time heaping my allotted teaspoonful of disapprobation on a scapegoat. Calley’s “responsibility” for My Lai, though personally enormous, is a minute fraction of the symbolic role — the Bad Apple in an American Uniform — he was forced to fill. He was, indeed, just following orders. And the first order of war is to suspend your humanity.

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