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You know... blogging is really flexible.

We don't ask many questions (unless you claim expertise or display obvious bias) and people come and go at whim.

Happy to see you whenever you show up, disappointed when you don't.

People have lives they don't have to explain.

At least to me.

Thanksgiving music

Rasputina; "Wish You Were Here" cover



Greg Brown, "Say A Little Prayer"




Furry Lewis, "John Henry"



Cathy Davey, "Cold Man's Nightmare"



Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, "I Think I Wanna Die"



Tom Rush, "Urge for Going"



Eva Cassidy, "Who Knows Where the Time Goes?"



Randy Newman; "I Think It's Going to Rain Today"



Marianne Faithful, "Sunny Goodge Street"





Men Without Hats, "Safety Hats."



Saturday Waits



Neil Young, Everybody Knows this is Nowhere. Live in Hyde Park, 2009

God we're all getting old.



Coldplay, "Green Eyes"



Richard and Mimi Farina with Pete Seeger, "Bold Marauder"

This is cool.



Mimi & Richard Farina - House Un-American Blues Activity Dream

More!!



Buffy Saint Marie, "Little Wheel Spin and Spin"



Buffy Saint Marie, Universal Soldier

with a bit of interview first.



Ian and Sylvia, "Four Strong Winds"



The Beatles, "Blackbird"

Monday Music

Cat Power, "Satisfaction"



Greg Brown, "Our Little Town"



Bob Dylan, "Positively 4th Street"



The Velvet Underground, "Pale Blue Eyes"



Dr. John, "I Know What I've Got / Blue Skies"



Son House, "Grinnin' In Your Face"



Daniel Johnston, "True Love Will Find You In The End"



Dark Tranquility, "Mine is the Grandeur"



Blues Legends born before 1924



Cathy Davey, "Sing For Your Supper"

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Accused of War Crimes by Spain

http://www.brusselstribunal.org/index.htm

MADRID: Today the Spanish Senate, acting to confirm a decision already taken under pressure from powerful governments accused of grave crimes, will limit Spain’s laws of universal jurisdiction. Yesterday, ahead of the change of law, a legal case was filed at the Audiencia Nacional against four United States presidents and four United Kingdom prime ministers for commissioning, condoning and/or perpetuating multiple war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Iraq.

This case, naming George H W Bush, William J Clinton, George W Bush, Barack H Obama, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Anthony Blair and Gordon Brown, is brought by Iraqis and others who stand in solidarity with the Iraqi people and in defence of their rights and international law.

Well, we can see a little more now why they wanted to get this done tout suite.

As usual, I'm up way too late. But I'm generally nowhere near this speechless. Even this late.

What persists in coming to mind, though, is; "How often do you get the chance to use a headline like this?"

Srsly.

Ohio Food Co-op Swat Team Raid Trial This Week

John and Jackie Stower run the Manna Storehouse in LaGrange, Ohio. Last December their organic food coop and homeschool were raided by a SWAT team, who invaded their home with guns drawn, held them and their family captive for six hours, and confiscated a large amount of food. No charges were ever filed. The Buckeye Institute is helping the Stowers sue the The Lorain County General Health District, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office and the Ohio Department of Agriculture. The trial will open October 8 and 9 at 8:30 am.

From what I can gather, all this happened because the Stowers were running a buying club, buying in bulk with a bunch of people who pre-ordered with them organically grown food, grass-fed meat, and such other healthy food that they could not afford if they did not buy it in bulk. They were raising their own meat, and had the animals slaughtered by a licensed USDA butcher.

The Stowers did not have a retail food selling license, though.

The search warrant was expired. The SWAT team took computers, personal food stocks of the Stowers, the meat had been delivered back to the Stowers by the butcher shop the day before (this was not long before Christmas, right?)


The Stowers tell their story:



The Stowers are pretty damned scary, I guess.

Cable TV to cover Manna Co-op Trial
by Brad Dicken
October 5, 2009

ELYRIA - A county judge has granted permission to the cable television network formerly known as Court TV to cover a civil trial next week in which the owners of a LaGrange food cooperative have sued several government agencies over a raid on their property last year.

The Dec. 1, 2008, raid on Manna Storehouse on state Route 303 has already garnered quite a bit of attention and complaints that local authorities overstepped their bounds.

Assistant Lorain County Prosecutor Scott Serazin said complaints about how deputies handled the raid - law enforcement disputes claims that officers stormed the home of John and Jacqueline Stowers with guns drawn - are obscuring the real issues in the case.

April Update: SWAT Team Raid on Homeschool and Food/Health Ministry for Hungry Families
Journal of Whole Food and Nutritional Health
April 21, 2009

It happened before Christmas 2008 at a food and health ministry for hungry families in Ohio. It was as if the family were bio-terrorists or something.

Three snipers with high-powered rifles were aimed at the home with ten children being homeschooled. Babies and toddlers were inside also. About twelve armed sheriff deputies along with agents from the Lorain County (Ohio) Health Department and the Ohio Department of Agriculture raided and ransacked the inside and held the family for six hours inside a room in their home outside Lagange, Ohio.

Food, computers and phones were seized from their private home along with 61 boxes of grass-fed beef and lamb were taken that was butchered, wrapped and labeled by a licensed and USDA inspected butcher shop and delivered the day before. According to the expired search warrant, deputies were to seize money and bank accounts. The storehouse of organic foods from a variety of suppliers as well as the personal food stock were taken as the terrified family watched.

Whatever complaint the State of Ohio had, it is hard to imagine why the officials couldn't just ask politely, or at worst show up with a search warrant and insist. But the idea that they needed to scare everyone with weaponry and arrest them is far beyond the pale. I think once we buy them a SWAT team, they will inevitably find excuses to use it.

And once they start invading people's lives and taking them prisoner like that - people with kids - and get away with it, what's to stop them from taking the kids?

It happens. "You are criminal parents, and now we're absconding with your children and foisting the child protection agencies upon them."

Oh, happy days. Not.

If you want to read more about this, here's the wordpress blog link.

zappa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq-HWKhnI-s&feature=player_embedded

Remember the Bloggers of Yesteryear

Remember back when,
we let them work us?

Because we didn't know better
weren't practiced enough
too easily led.

Remember when we used to fight each other
over stupid stuff
not realizing we were like rodents at each other's throats
while meanwhile, the hawk swooped menacingly
laughing
well, that is if hawks could laugh.

And I like hawks
I just don't like the people in that hawk metaphor.

Remember back when
we thought we needed them?
The heavies, the big guys.

It was all so attractive, all that action.
And we thought we could really change each other
instead of changing into each other.

Now, sometimes
changing into each other
ain't all that bad.

In fact, it's kinda underrated
when it happens as a free-form process.

it's the controlled version that wasn't quite so good
not quite so happy
and the built in fighting
and the built in judging
and the built in publicity
that was too often about the fighting and the judging
that wasn't so good.

Remember when we realized that
we didn't have to do that
because we really didn't need that
because what we really needed
was each other?
Pure, unadulterated, each other.
Warts and all.

So here's to blogging the future
since it got us here
because somebody cared
and then some more people cared
and then a whole hell of a lot of more people cared

and then, one astonishing, amazing, frightening day
We were there.
We'd blogged the future, and it was us.
And none of us were the enemy anymore,
because we'd learned
that there doesn't have to be an enemy
because life itself is enough of a hassle.

now that we spend our time
with each other
instead of alone
enemies are relegated to fairy tales
They are things to warn children about
lest they become their own enemies
that would be bad
and we understand that now.
We understand the importance of
children, and their strangeness
and how wonderful that is
instead of something to be hit.

So thanks to those people
so long ago
too long ago
who blogged the future and saw these things
and how they must be
because it had to be
because there wasn't any other
way to do it
that worked.