Dissident Veteran For Peace: American Jackass

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Saturday, August 03, 2013

American Jackass

This post is dedicated to Gloria.

Take a close look at "Big Bertha"—the world's largest tunnel boring machine—in the photo below. At the top you'll see that some American jackass has hung an American flag. This flag-waving expression of nationalism is ridiculous and out of place. You see, Big Bertha is being used to dig a tunnel in Seattle but the machine was built in Japan by Hitachi Zosen and the main contractor for the project is Seattle Tunnel Partners, whose majority stakeholder is Dragados USA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Spanish conglomerate Actividades de Construcción y Servicios, S.A. The tunnel project is also a not-fully-funded $4.25 billion (if, miraculously, there are no costs overruns) publicly financed, pro-car Big Labor/Big Construction boondoggle. On second thought, maybe Old Glory does belong up there.