"There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world," Mr. Obama said. "Part of the rationale for establishing Guantanamo in the first place was the misplaced notion that a prison there would be beyond the law -- a proposition that the Supreme Court soundly rejected." __President Barack Obama (May 21, 2009)

Fahad Hashmi, an American citizen imprisoned under Guantanamo-like conditions 6 blocks from New York's City Hall, needs your help! Can you come to a Monday night vigil to help raise awareness that Bush's Patriot Act is alive and well and torturing people in downtown Manhattan? Join Wallace Shawn, Kathleen Chalfant, Bill Irwin, David Strathairn, Vanessa Redgrave, and others who are raising their voices for justice at the Manhattan Correctional Center, 150 Park Row, at Pearl St. behind the NYC Municipal Building. (There is a map at the end of the video below).

Fahad has been convicted of absolutely nothing, yet he has been held in sadistic conditions for over two and a half years. Let's send a message to the media to stop ignoring this abuse, and let Attorney General Eric Holder know he must stop backing Bush's illegal policies and restore the rule of law.

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The imagery’s grown so stark
the tempo its fury,
violence, its stroke,
all quickened, loud.
We’ve left the injured bound
and buried, where screams
pierce like whispers.
Gone is our awareness,
emptied like God in our prayers.
Our courage to defeat it
hangs in the air like a paper kite
set aloft as if to stay;
sandcastles and daydreams have more
sky than our spirit.
We’ve built worlds in our thoughts
only to destroy forests and oceans
filled with our uncertain faces.
All the while our fists have been busy
finding flesh to unwrap.

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(Ben Heine)
Thinking of my own responsibility as an artist in a time of war, I began to consider the obligations of artists, and was struck with the sense that many artists do not feel compelled or obligated to craft something that attempts to shed light upon the often shady reasons for warfare or upon the propaganda that may foment it.

Why would an artist not try to weave immediate dissent into his or her art, be it painting, music, film, plays, etc? For me the need for art in the world is great, and during times of strife, upheaval or war, it is, in my opinion, most important, appropriate and even obligatory.

With the premise of responsibility one might explore the following questions:

1. Are artists obligated to create, pro or con, art that touches upon aspects of current wars?

2. If artists do not are they basically forgoing some unwritten rule of their particular craft?

To explore these questions one must, I suppose, first consider the definition of war and the feelings it may illicit.

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After it all falls
Falls away
After it all falls
Falls away
I will greet you.
The green ground is wet again in the St. Francis Forest,
It is weeping for what’s taken place,
And the deer look sad, like old bullfrogs
Sunk in the swamps puffing their throats.
I will meet you by the cabin,
By the moss-green cellar door with the rusty handle
And we will hold one another and the bullfrogs
Will bellow their melancholy.

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Glenn Beck had Rush Limbaugh on his show to help him obscure his blatantly asinine remark that Barack Obama is a racist and to, I suppose, deflect from the fact that after he uttered this idiocy advertisers fled from his show like intelligent moths from a flame.

Here's what the two clowns actually said (transcript via Crooks and Liars)...

BECK: Oh sure, they're tearing me apart (liberals) but none of the facts! Write what you learn on this show down. Write these questions down and demand answers. Because it's not my America we're talking about here. It's all of ours -- left, right, Democrat, Republican -- all of our freedom of speech is on the ropes. And questioning your government is not only important, it is -- in a democratic republic, which I think we still have, it is required of you. Freedom of speech is under attack.

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-Pastor Steve's Sermon followed by my letter in protest-

The same God who instituted the death penalty for murders is the same god who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals, sodomites and queers!