Freep Hero: U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV)

While most of the Senate Democrats sit idly by looking for their spines, Sen. Robert Byrd nearly single-handedly fights to protect the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights from the smiley-faced friendly-fascist assault by the Bushmen. Byrd also revealed on September 27 that government documents establish that the Reagan-Bush administration sent numerous shipments of biochemical agents to the government of Iraq. After U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said he had no knowledge of any U.S. shipments to Iraq, Byrd revealed that between 1985-88, the nonprofit American Type Culture Collection made eleven shipments to Iraq, with the government’s approval, of biological warfare pathogens. These include anthrax, botulinum toxin and gangrene. Also, between January 1980 and October 1983 the Federal Center for Disease Control shipped a variety of toxin specimens to Iraq including West Nile virus and Dengue Fever. The Center for Disease Control was forced to deny that the current outbreak of West Nile virus in the U.S. is linked to the shipments it made to Iraq.

The Free Press Salutes

I scream FREE AMERICA, barely legible on the wall —
and I get one word, one rat, one care,
and an angry and ignorant old-world glare,
a smile here, bewilderment there —
And it seems there is nothingness everywhere.

*

What compels one to erase signs of peace everywhere?
What once blared out is no longer there.
A sigh for the next lost soul that’s to come,
and a sign that will be erased, but that might
reach some.
My voice, it will echo and the image linger on,
for this image isn’t mine, for my words will not end,
for Hell is war, and this war
can’t be won.

-- Melanie Gnosa, poetforhumanity@yahoo.com

First, the big anti-war demonstrations in Washington D.C., and San Francisco a couple of weeks ago; then, the Election Day sweep by Bush and the (prime) party of war and then, ... in my case, a concert by Merle Haggard in my local town of Eureka, Calif., Wednesday night.

When it comes to the big themes of love and war and history, nothing concentrates the mind like a few songs by Merle, whose 1969 pro-war country anthem "Okie from Muskogee" lambasted the dope-smoking hippie peaceniks and earned the former resident of San Quentin a full pardon from Governor Ronald Reagan.

Merle's political positions have evolved somewhat since the late Sixties, as we'll see, but sitting there in a mostly white working class audience even a tad older than the equally white crowd listening to Bob Dylan in Berkeley a few weeks ago, an obvious question bulked as large as the Stars and Stripes hanging above Merle: Are we seeing the birth of a new anti-war movement as potent as the one that prompted Merle to riposte with "Muskogee" and "The Fighting Side of Me"?

“The Order of Skull & Bones is the Wizard of Oz! Presidents are just assassinated! There is no conspiracy!”

“It’s just necessary for us barbarians ‘to be able to make sense of the world!’”

“Whitewash, Smokescreen, Disinformation and Modified Limited Hang-out”

Recent Yale graduate Alexandra Robbins’s new book, Secrets of the Tomb - Skull and Bones, The Ivy League, And The Hidden Paths of Power portends to be an exposé, but in reality is a response by Bones to its critics, an apologia and. more skullduggery. Ms. Robbins, who claims to be a member of one of Yale’s seven senior secret societies (she never reveals which one) writes:

“The rumors and conspiracy theories about Skull and Bones. are widespread and deep-rooted. The most fascinating thing I learned through my interviews with members of Skull and Bones is that the majority of rumors were carefully planted by the Bonesmen themselves.”

Some people are pioneers, innovators. They cannot help it and no matter how much they may try to suppress their genius, their flaming intellect, there is nothing that can be done about it. Jim Shepard was just such an entity, except he didn’t suppress anything and truly answered to no one.

On October 16, 1998 this seminal artist took his life — and yet instead of focusing on that final act, I think the focus needs to be placed on the work this man did during his thirty-nine years of extreme and bombastic living. His music — his art — the steaming body of work he left for us to listen to and dance to and grind and sink to creates a jarring impact. Like a meteor, he burned his own fiery trail; made every note he played, every fretboard he scraped his own.