Sometimes people commit suicide.  Sometimes they do it passively.   Sometimes they do it deliberately.   Sometimes it is over in an instant.   Sometimes it takes years.  Sometimes it is done out of anger, or desperation, or madness, or ignorance.   Sometimes it is a final defiant act in the face of untenable choices.   But one thing never changes.   It always hurts the people left behind.

When I think about the Hezbollah rockets and the Israel's recent decision to expand the fighting, they both strike me as suicidal, but in very different ways.  This brings to mind a third example very different from both of those two. 

What does real leadership look like? It certainly isn't donning a flight suit and choppering into the Green Zone. Folks like Father Louis Vitale and Medea Benjamin are about to show the world what real leadership is all about.

First - Father Vitale worked with a group of people who really want to bring an end to the violence in Iraq, putting together a "Declaration of Peace," a comprehensive plan for withdrawing our troops from Iraq and building a real, working government in Iraq, and providing for the safety of the average Iraqi people.

Second - Father Vitale, Medea Benjamin, Cindy Sheehan, and Tom Hayden are traveling to Jordan to meet with members of the Iraqi Parliament, to work with them on further solidifying the peace plan.

AFP/File/Nicholas Asfouri

A crime of immense proportions that will now see more blowback. That is, unless people of conscience stand up to this terrorism on all sides, and soon.

Doctors Without Borders In Southern Lebanon

July 25, 2006

Christopher Stokes, MSF Director of Operations:

Relief materials needed in south Lebanon, but supplying is almost impossible

Listen to full report [mp3 - Running time 3:06]

Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Director of Operations, Christopher Stokes, describes over the phone from Beirut what he has seen traveling to the south of Lebanon and back.

When an unplanned event happens once, it can rightly be considered an accident.

56 Die in "Mistake" at Qana.

Mistake kills Four UN Observers.

Fleeing Civilians Hit by Mistake.

US Bomb Hits Wrong House by Mistake.

US Bombs Wedding Party by Mistake.

Bombing Mistake takes 14 lives.

US Bomb Kills Adghan Civilians by Mistake.

US Bombs Journalists by Mistake.

Canadian Soldiers Bombed by Mistake.

US Bombing Mistake Kills Afghan Civilians.

To paraphrase Ian Fleming, once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, but when you kill the wrong people over, and over, and over, that's depraved indifference.  And it's time for it to end.

The Presidency or Regency of George Bush the Lesser is nothing more or less than a vast carefully crafted criminal enterprise.

The Bush Administration and it's extended crime family has taken organized crime from the mean streets and ethnic social clubs of urban America and transferred it high above those meager environs into the steel and glass, leather and mahogany world of the American Corporate boardroom.

The scale of the criminality of the members of this nefarious organization would make the most experienced and successful Mafiosi or Asian or Russian gangster weep with wildly envious frustration.

Yesterday, while I was standing in line in the post office, people who had never previously met were arguing passionately about the slaughter in Lebanon. It reminded me of 9/11, except the conversation had flipped over somehow. On 9/11, the Muslim family that owns the corner grocery was practicing community diplomacy, handing out free sodas and assuring nervous neighbors that terrorism wasn't part of their culture. Yesterday, non-Muslims were promising their Muslim neighbors that the U.S. doesn't support the murder of civilians.    

If you could gather one hundred or so of the best minds on the planet and serve them a list of questions compiled from "ordinary people" all over the world what might you expect from such a gathering?

We may find out soon because according to the emails I've been receiving from a group called "dropping knowledge" just such a meeting is in the works:

On September 9, 2006, 112 scientists, social entrepreneurs, philosophers, writers, artists and activists from around the world will come together in Berlin, Germany, as guests of dropping knowledge. Seated around a vast round-table in the heart of the city, these remarkable individuals, renowned for the creative, social and humanistic impact of their work, will engage with 100 questions from the global public. These questions, selected by dropping knowledge's founders and ambassadors from the many thousands generated by our "What's Your Question?" campaign, will reflect the topics of greatest concern to the global public, emphasize under-reported issues and engage key themes endorsed by dropping knowledge in 2006.

The names of twenty five hundred young men and women have been erased from the chalkboard of life by the merchants of pain and death in our government.

They were erased from the list of the living by the hands of arrogant men wielding erasers soaked in the blood of tens of thousands of others who were maimed and wounded and tens of thousands of Iraqis whose deaths they will not dignify by counting or even mentioning.

It's a number, another irritating milestone that they hope falls on Friday so that the press flap will dissipate over the weekend.

I realize that I do not comprehend how our federal government works, it appears to be a good old boy network that rewards longevity and loyalty.

In the early 70's there use to be an Office of Economic Opportunity, it was a Cabinet Level Position it was occupied by Donald Rumsfeld, he had a bright young man working for him, Dick Cheney.

In August 1974, President Nixon abdicated his Presidency to a Congressman from Michigan, Gerald Ford on August 9th 1974. Donald Rumsfeld was named as Chief Of Staff for President Ford, of course he brought to the West Wing his protege, Dick Cheney.

A number of weeks back, I was contacted by Penny Coleman. She's the author of the thoroughly provocative and deeply researched work, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide, and the Lessons of War. (Read her Memorial Day thoughts here.)

I'd personally like to dedicate this Memorial Day to those who've worn the uniform, served in combat, yet go unrecognized on our KIA lists or memorial walls at their death. Penny Coleman's late husband, Daniel O'Donnell, became one such casualty of the Vietnam War when he took his life after battling something later referred to as posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD].

As she says in her book, "The overwhelming evidence proves beyond a doubt that war is a disease that kills and maims, not just by tearing apart soldiers' bodies, but also by ravaging their minds. In every war American soldiers have fought in the past century, the chances of becoming a psychiatric casualty were greater than the chances of being killed by enemy fire." (emphasis mine)

Today, I remember these fallen casualties of war...

One of the words used to describe the September 11th hijackers in the hours and days after those horrific acts of terror was the word coward. U.S. leaders and news channel pundits called the hijackers cowards. TV talk show host Bill Maher, quipped that guys flying planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon were anything but cowards. Going a bit too far, perhaps, he said "We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly."

Since Maher was soon fired from that job, I think people have been a bit more cautious throwing the coward word around. I think the time for such caution has come to an end. It is time speak out against the real cowards.

My Golly, where to begin?

Let's start with a Secretary of Defense who uses the expression "my golly," or "gee willikers." I did a Yahoo search for this term and Donald Rumsfeld's name was in the first ten results. Jumpin' Jehosephat who is writing this script, Lewis Carroll?

What rabbit hole have we entered, what twisted hall of mirrors are we trapped in and how do we come down from this psychedelic trip that we seem to be on.

My golly, the buzz I'm hearing and reading is that we're going to war. Yes, I know, we already have two wars going, but they are so unfulfilling aren't they, bogged down as we are, three years after we accomplished our mission in Afghanistan and made Kabul nearly safe for the foreign press and killed or captured most of a deck of cards in Iraq and hired Halliburton to build us a house of cards which is falling down around us.

Don't you draw the queen of diamonds, boy
She'll beat you if she's able
The queen of hearts is always your best bet.

Sixty one years ago today Germany announced the death of Adolf Hitler.
Hamburg radio announced to the German people that their Fuhrer had "fallen at his command post, fighting to his last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany."

The announcement was to be one of the last big lies told by the most accomplished band of liars of the first half of the twentieth century. Hitler had taken the exit reserved for cowards. The chickens were coming home to roost in Berlin and they were wearing Russian uniforms.

Today or yesterday is an anniversary of sorts, a day of commemoration, a day to reflect on what it is in man that dooms him to endless repetition of his mistakes.

Maybe it's just a day to spit on the sidewalk, hitch up your pants and say, "same shit, different day" and let man worry about himself.

Sixty nine years ago Hitler and Mussolini decided that propping up their soul mate Francisco Franco would offer them a great opportunity to test out all the new high tech military hardware they had amassed.