Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Happy Birthday, Antiwar.Com



According to Ann Charters, Kenneth Rexroth’s reading of his 1953 poem “Thou Shalt Not Kill: A Memorial for Dylan Thomas” influenced Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, published in 1956. Rexroth says in his preface that “The poem is directed against the twentieth, the Century of Horror” :
  
             They are murdering all the young men.
             For half a century now, every day,
             They have hunted them down and killed them.
             They are killing them now.
             At this minute, all over the world,
             They are killing the young men.
             They know ten thousand ways to kill them.
             Every year they invent new ones.


From -
Alexia Gilmore
Executive Director
Antiwar.com


      On December 2 , 2010, Antiwar.com quietly celebrated 12 years of existence. 12 years of questioning the powers that be, shedding light on the truth and analyzing the events that shape our world. As an independent, reader-funded web and radio presence, Antiwar.com continues to bring higher quality news to more people (around 80,000 unique visitors on one recent day!) faster than any mainstream print or television media source, and at a fraction of their operating costs. We like to think no one shares more information with more people for a less money—we’re proud of that, and we hope you are proud to invest in what we do.


   Despite some positive signs of improvement in some sectors, the economy is still down. In fact, it’s just been during the latter half of this year that we, as a non-profit entity, have really started to feel the burn. As we lose donors who’ve had to tighten their belts, we’re in danger of losing our shirt. Our recent decision to boycott Amazon.com for kicking WikiLeaks off their servers will cost us much of the little ad revenue we get as well—but as always, Antiwar.com chooses principles over profit, because we know our readers demand nothing less. Just as you can trust us to bring you the truth, Antiwar.com trusts you to keep us alive, and you always come through.


[That's how it is in the boring, stupid 21st century. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when long-haired humanoids roamed the earth... and the high-point of my spiritual journey. Also from http://rossbender.org/exorcism.html] -

The mimeographed text circulating at the Pentagon march is reproduced in Norman Mailer’s account in The Armies of the Night

           
OCTOBER 21, 1967
WASHINGTON DCA
USA
PLANET EARTH

We Freemen, of all colors of the spectrum, in the name of God, Ra, Jehovah, Anubis, Osiris, Tialoc, Quetzalcoatl, Thoth, Ptah, Allah, Krishna, Chango, Chimeke, Chukwu, Olisa-Bulu-Uwa, Imales, Orisasu, Odudua, Kali, Shiva-Shakra, Great Spirit, Dionysus, Yahweh, Thor, Bacchus, Isis, Jesus Christ, Maitreya, Buddha, Rama

Do exorcise and cast out the EVIL which has walled and captured the pentacle of power and perverted its use to the need of the total machine and its child the hydrogen bomb and has suffered the people of the planet earth, the American people and creatures of the mountains, wood, streams, and oceans grievous mental and physical torture and the constant torment of the imminent threat of UTTER DESTRUCTION

We are demanding that the pentacle of power once again be used to serve the interests of GOD manifest in the world as man. We are embarking on a motion which is millennial in scope. Let this day, October 21, 1967, mark the beginning of suprapolitics

By act of reading this paper you are engaged in the Holy Ritual of Exorcism. To further participate focus your thought on the casting out of evil through the grace of GOD which is all (ours). A billion stars in a billion galaxies of space and time is the form of your power, and limitless is your name

Norman Mailer devotes several pages to his observation and analysis of this historic rite of exorcism:

            Now while the Indian triangle and the cymbal sounded, while a trumpet offered a mournful subterranean wail, full of sobs, and mahogany shadows of sorrow, and all sour groans from hell’s dungeon, while finger bells tinkled and drums beat, so did a solemn voice speak something approximate to this:

            In the name of the amulets of touching, seeing, groping, hearing and loving, we call upon the powers of the cosmos to protect our ceremonies in the name of Zeus, in the name of Anubis, god of the dead, in the name of all those killed because they do not comprehend, in the name of the lives of the soldiers in Vietnam who were killed because of a bad karma, in the name of sea-born Aphrodite, in the name of Magna Mater, in the name of Dionysus, Zagreus, Jesus, Yahweh, the unnamable, the quintessent finality of the Zoroastrian fire, in the name of Hermes, in the name of the Beak of Sok, in the name of scarab, in the name, in the name, in the name of the Tyrone Power Pound Cake Society in the Sky, in the name of Rah, Osiris, Horus, Nepta, Isis, in the name of the flowing living universe, in the name of the mouth of the river, we call upon the spirit to raise the Pentagon from its destiny and preserve it.

….

Then all the musicians suddenly cried out: “Out, demons, out,  -- back to darkness ye sevants of Satan – out, demons out! Out, demons, out!” …..

Ed Sanders spoke: “For the first time in the history of the Pentagon there will be a grope-in within a hundred feet of this place, within two hundred feet. Seminal culmination in the spirit of peace and brotherhood, a real grope for peace. All of you who want to protect this rite of love may form a circle of protection among the lovers.” …
“These are the magic eyes of victory,” Sanders went on. “Victory, victory, victory for peace. Money made the Pentagon – melt it. Money made the Pentagon, melt it for love.”
     Now came other voices, “Burn the money, burn the money, burn it, burn it.”
     Sanders: “In the name of the generative power of Priapus, in the name of the totality, we call upon the demons of the Pentagon to rid themselves of the cancerous tumors of the war generals, all the secretaries and soldiers who don’t know what they’re doing, all the intrigue bureaucracy and hatred, all the spewing, coupled with prostate cancer in the deathbed. Every Pentagon general lying alone at night with a tortured psyche and an image of death in his brain, every general, every general lying alone, every general lying alone.”
     Wild cries followed, chants: “Out demons, out! Out demons out! Out! Out! Out! Out demons out!”
     Sanders: In the name of the most sacred of sacred names Xabrax Phresxner.”
     He was accompanied now by chants of “hari, hari, hari, hari, rama, rama, rama, ram, Krishna, hari Krishna, hari, hari, rama, Krishna.”
     “Out demons out!”
     They all chanted: “End the fire and war, and war, end the plague of death. End the fire and war, and war, end the plague of death.” In the background was the sound of a long sustained Ommmmm.”

So, politicians and generals, do you want to knock off the bullshit? Or do you want to risk the wrath of of Tuli; more powerful in death, like Gandolph and Obi-Wan? Just walk away from the refinery...




2 comments:

Angela Keaton said...

Very cool that someone remembered



Pissst...Antiwar.com celebrates it's birthday on around the 25th dated back to the purchase of the url in 1995. At least, I'm sticking to that since we had the 15th anniversary stickers printed up already.

Can you use some?

racketmensch said...

Thanks Angela, you guys are my heros. I don't need any stickers, though, because I rarely even go out any more, living in the shadow of mordor-on-the-potomac. I'm boycotting almost everything. Until I get a pair of those sunglasses that reveal the robots, I'm assuming they're everywhere. (Just kidding; I'm not really nuts [I hope], just disgusted.