A Cape Cod Thanksgiving…
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the cold, cloudy island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this Thanksgiving morning, very early, 4:59 a.m., EDT, this twenty-fourth day of November, 2011, coming to you from the wood and ocean of Cotuit, the tiny old Cape town on a peninsula touching Nantucket Sound. Many moons ago, before there even was a “United States of America”, there were a group of settlers, mostly from England, who lived on these shores with the original stewards of this land, the American Indian, whose spirit is still available for anyone with a heart open enough to receive ‘it’, ’so come on down, and give us visit, and, as always, we will leave the LIGHT on for ya!’ There are so many reasons for this reporter to be thankful today it is hard to count them all, however, I would like to thank all of the wonderful people who have sent me comments over the year, you inspire me, thanks. I also wish to express my gratitude for all of the great journalists out there who have made my job that much easier, you are all a pleasure to watch on the ‘tv’, and your work has helped keep this country from slipping into an even scarier place than it is right now. Men and women, of which I am sure I will leave a few out, but, rest assured, you know who you are, and thus, so do I, reporters like Chris Mathews, who I just saw jumping a plane to Nantucket!, I’m only 30 miles nautically north/northwest of your local, Ed Shultz, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Alex Wagner, Chris Hayes, and of course, the dean of journalism himself, Mr. Keith Olbermann, of Current TV, who had, as his guest last night, with David Shuster doing a fine job as the regular guest host filling in for Keith, none other than Daniel Ellsberg, a former rifle commander with the Marines in the 1950’s, but perhaps more remembered for his whistle blowing when he worked in the Defense department, in the year 1971, wherein he released 7000 pages of top secret, at the time, papers from the Pentagon, hence coming to be known as ‘The Pentagon Papers’, contributing greatly to bringing an end to the Vietnam war. Releasing those documents to the New York Times, along with 18 other publications, created a firestorm of controversy with then President Nixon being overheard on a telephone call saying, ‘we gotta get this son of a bitch…’. Here is the entire interview via, “Countdown, with Keith Olbermann”, from Tuesday night’s show, airing every week night at 8 p.m., EDT, re-airing at 11 p.m., 2 a.m., 7 a.m., noon, and three the next day, only, again, on Current TV, an interview that brings this all transcendental, for if a well spoken, articulate eighty year old man, who has been arrested 83 times for ‘civil disobedience’, a non-violent form of protest that gets the job done, can bring his energy to this “hippy, tree huggin’, filthy scum bag” movement, then so can you my brothers and sisters, and watch (as Reverend Al Sharpton said on his new promo for his great new show, “Politics Nation”, only on MSNBC, airing at 6 p.m., week nights, EDT), and see who has blue berry pie all over their face, right AFTER they told you they had not eaten any, nor had they even seen a blueberry pie…” Happy Thanksgiving Reverend! So, without further adieu, here is the interview, with David Shuster asking the first question of Daniel, “…how does this “Occupy” movement compare with the anti-war movement of the 1960’s?” Ellsberg: “In some ways, it’s a throw back for me, what I was seeing at Sprowl Plaza, or now what is called ‘the Mario Savio steps’… as a reborn youth movement. The movement against the war then, and even before the draft, a major issue, was the youth movement. The Civil Rights movement was largely a youth movement, the free speech movement at Berkeley was as well. We haven’t seen that much of it for a long time, and nobody is quite clear on why that is. I was just very euphoric to see this happening now. We don’t have the draft, but of course the students are facing not only crushing student debt, and ever rising tuition, but they’re being drafted into the army of the unemployed, that’s the future that they have looking at them. And I think this particular movement took off from a college graduate in Tunis, who could only get work as an unlicensed vegetable seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, who actually burned himself to death in protest against the corruption, of the police brutality and the corrupt blight of fees they were getting on him. And then one other thing happened, Wiki leaks published one of many cables that were put out by one individual, an American patriot, we don’t know who, but the man accused is Bradley Manning, who is sitting in a prison right now, in Leavenworth, and those cables showed that the American government was well aware of the corruption of the Ben Eli regime in Tunis, which we’ve been backing for years and supporting in various ways, which led to the occupation of Tunis square, and that, in turn, led to the occupation of Liberty square, or Tahrir square in Egypt, both of which actually toppled those corrupt and dictatorial regimes. Now my understanding is that this “Occupy movement” here took heart and inspiration from that very invention, non-violent protests, the idea of persistent occupation, not just a demonstration that lasts for only one day, and I hope it will change the corruption in this country. Shuster: “It also appears to be fueled by these police tactics we are seeing over and over again. We keep seeing images of students being pepper sprayed at the U.C. Davis campus, what was going through your mind when you saw that and how do you think that particular incident will impact the movement?” Ellsberg: “I’ll tell you exactly, when I was sitting on the steps, I was invited into a tent, by some young people there, and in the course of it, they were still feeling the effects of being ‘nudged’ (as the A.P. put it) by police batons, and you’ve probably seen the You Tube pictures of those people being rammed by large batons, batons are better called bats, well, in the course of that night, they were expecting police assaults, on this very peaceful gathering of people sitting and lying, people peaceably assembled, and they offered me a gas mask, a gas mask, in America? Peaceable assemblies don’t have to worry about gas masks! I’ve been arrested a few times, but never tear gassed, or gassed…to me, if there were pictures of Abu Ghrab, they would be right at home. This is torture, police torture, the idea they were spraying these students at U.C. Davis, as though they were spraying bugs amongst weeds…people should be held accountable. One of the things that is coming out of these occupations, I think, is 4000 people, peaceably submitting to arrest, non-violently, in ‘civil disobedience’, in very dramatic contrast to the 0 prosecutions of the people who fraudulently brought this country to it’s knees, in the sub-prime mortgage scandal. Not one person to my knowledge has been prosecuted for that at this point. The contrast is very startling. Corruption in Tunisia? I hadn’t heard corruption here, although I heard it earlier in your show, I was very struck by that. The FACT is that one hundredth of the one percent, not the sports stars or the movie stars making millions, but the people who lobby congress, and write our laws, have corrupted congress, and the Executive branch. They buy campaigns, they buy elections, and the WRITE THE LAWS. Nick Johnson, an FCC commissioner from forty years ago, said that the problem is not that businessmen break the laws, GOD KNOWS they do, the problem is that they WRITE THE LAWS and they BUY legislators. The concentrated wealth that this movement is focusing attention on for the first time, has corrupted our democracy, and these young people want to get OUR democracy back…” Thank you Mr. Ellsberg and Happy Thanksgiving to you sir, and a Happy Thanksgiving to everyone I know, here in the United States as well as in Europe, may you have a wonderful day and week end, keeping clear, God willing, of any of those FOX NEWS wooden nickles, but, I wish them a Happy Thanksgiving anyhow, for they too have a right to say whatever they are going to say, but we, by the same token, reserve the right to question and reject you when you are purposely lying to our face! PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
