Two More Nuclear Cowboys

June 5, 1998
· Martin Kelley

For the last fifty years, Amer­i­ca has swag­gered around the globe like a par­o­dy of one of it’s Hol­ly­wood West­erns. Like John Wayne car­ry­ing his six-shooter down the Main Street of Dodge City, Amer­i­ca has strut­ted around the world, tak­ing nuclear weapons wher­ev­er it want­ed it’s way, from the Gulf of Tonkin to the Gulf of Pana­ma to the Gulf of Persia.

Well, the oth­er cow­boys in town have got­ten the mes­sage. To be some­one in the nuclear age means you need to car­ry your own six-shooter. In the last few weeks, India and Pak­istan have offi­cial­ly joined the nuclear cow­boys by set­ting off nuclear weapons. Dodge City’s just become a lit­tle tougher.

Inter­na­tion­al out­rage against India and Pak­istan is a lit­tle strange. No one’s real­ly doubt­ed they had nuclear capac­i­ty. Like Israel, it’s long been known they have nuclear weapons. The dif­fer­ence between them and the more estab­lished nuclear pow­ers is sim­ply the log­ic that says it’s okay for some coun­tries to have nuclear weapons but not oth­ers. Like all double-standards, it was just a mat­ter of time till the this one fell to its own hypocrisy.

The debut of two new nuclear cow­boys has brought into sharp relief the real work of our age: full nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment. The real Dodge City, Kansas long ago out­grew it’s gun­slingers. The only John Wayne’s who stomp down its Main Street these days do so for the tourist cam­eras. It’s a qui­et Mid­west­ern town full of shop­ping malls, drug stores, and fast food restau­rants. There’s no need for tough sher­iffs, show­downs, or six-shooters.

The Wild West is long gone, rel­e­gat­ed to the movie screens and cut­sey gift shops. It’s time to close the door on the nuclear age too. Time to pack in the six-shooters and learn to live togeth­er under inter­na­tion­al law. Lets leave nuclear brinks­man­ship to Hol­ly­wood screen­writ­ers and let the real world live in peace.

John Sayles Looks at “Men with Guns”

May 1, 1998
· Martin Kelley

John Sayles is one of the most tal­ent­ed inde­pen­dent direc­tors film­ing today. In movies such as “Broth­er from Anoth­er Plan­et,” “Mate­wan” and “Lone Star,” he’s told sto­ries about every­day peo­ple as they live their lives, try to build bet­ter worlds and find them­selves caught in their human frailty. His lat­est movie, “Men with Guns,” fol­lows a wealthy but dying city doc­tor as he search­es the inte­ri­or of his coun­try for the stu­dents he had trained to treat the indige­nous poor. Like Dorothy fol­low­ing the yel­low brick road, he col­lects a car­a­van of lost souls along the way and learns what his igno­rance has wrought, both per­son­al­ly and for the life of his country.

The tale is set in an anony­mous Latin Amer­i­can coun­try and the ambi­gu­i­ty serves its pur­pose well. This is not the sto­ry of a par­tic­u­lar set of abus­es or a spe­cif­ic gov­ern­ment or army. It is a tale of what hap­pens when cap­i­tal­ism, mil­i­tary rule, rhetoric and human fal­li­bil­i­ty come togeth­er. It is a sto­ry of what hap­pens when good peo­ple refuse to con­front atroc­i­ties being com­mit­ted in their name and instead opt for a will­ing naiveté.

In inter­views, Sayles said he got the image of “men with guns” when he imag­ined the lot of Viet­nam’s “rice peo­ple”, politically-simple peas­ants who went on har­vest­ing rice for hun­dreds of years as a suc­ces­sion of “men with guns” came through in waves of ter­ror. It did­n’t so much mat­ter if the armies were Chi­nese, French, Amer­i­can or from North Viet­nam: all men with guns rule with what seems an arbi­trary bru­tal­i­ty. The most that the locals can do is stay out of the way.

At it’s heart, “Men with Guns” is a paci­fist and anar­chist movie, though assign­ing such labels dimin­ish­es the work and threat­ens to turn Sayles into anoth­er man­i­festo writer. He’s too inter­est­ing for that and uses story-telling to show us the world and how it works. Ulti­mate­ly, the movie blames every­one for their role in the ter­ror – the sol­diers, the rebels, the priests and our good-hearted but naive doc­tor. But Sayles also absolves them and pulls them from their car­i­ca­tures as he shows us the larg­er forces that drove them to their roles.

Last Fri­day, Bish­op Juan Ger­ar­di Coned­era, a lead­ing human rights activist in Guatemala, pub­lished a scathing report doc­u­ment­ing abus­es from Guatemala’s 36-year civ­il war; two days lat­er he was mur­dered in his own home by unknown assas­sins. The real-world mod­el for Sayles’ doc­tor was Guatemalan and it’s hard not to see Con­der­a’s mur­der as anoth­er inci­dent of bru­tal­i­ty by men with guns, fig­u­ra­tive­ly if not lit­er­al­ly (his mur­der­er report­ed­ly used a cin­der block). See­ing John Sayles’ lat­est movie would be a fit­ting trib­ute to Con­der­a’s work and that of oth­ers strug­gling for jus­tice in the world.

Ohio Protests Open National Debate on War

February 19, 1998
· Martin Kelley

Pro­test­ers in Colum­bus, Ohio upset a pro-war pro­gram with top Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials Wednes­day after­noon, ask­ing them tough ques­tions at a live CNN “Town Hall” meet­ing and giv­ing the anti­war move­ment its first seri­ous nation­al publicity.

Sec­re­tary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Defense Sec­re­tary William S. Cohen were in Colum­bus to gain pop­u­lar sup­port for the war and to build the myth of a nation­al con­sen­sus for a U.S. attack on Iraq. They were both sur­prised and embar­rassed by the jeers and tough ques­tions they received from audi­ence mem­bers. Some audi­ence mem­bers held up signs and chant­ed “We Don’t Want Your Racist War” while one ques­tion­er asked why the U.S. was­n’t con­sid­er­ing force against oth­er coun­tries vio­lat­ing human rights such as Indone­sia in it’s slaugh­ter of East Tim­o­rese (when Albright start­ed hem­ming and haw­ing, her accuser shot back “You’re not answer­ing my ques­tion, Madame Albright.”)

The Colum­bus dis­senters are the top sto­ry in the major news­pa­pers and media pun­dits are start­ing to pub­licly doubt polls show­ing over­whelm­ing sup­port for mil­i­tary action.

Sam­ple Let­ter to Media

To the Editors,

With today’s sto­ry about an Ohio audi­ence jeer­ing Sec­re­tary of State Madeleine Albright, it’s time for MS-NBC to give some cov­er­age to the groundswell of grass­roots oppo­si­tion to anoth­er Gulf War. If you had been mon­i­tor­ing the “Iraq Cri­sis Anti­war Home­page,” the events in Colum­bus would not have been a sur­prise. In fact, 82 oth­er demon­stra­tions are cur­rent­ly list­ed here.

In addi­tion to events list­ings, the Anti­war Home­page has analy­sis, action alerts, ideas for orga­niz­ing and links to major non­vi­o­lence groups. A project of the Non­vi­o­lence Web, home to dozens of U.S.-based peace groups, it is a cen­tral source for anti­war organizing.

Please con­sid­er pro­fil­ing all the great work being done around the coun­try to stop anoth­er sense­less war.

In peace,
Mar­tin Kelley
Non­vi­o­lence Web

Reporters vis­it­ing the “Iraq Cri­sis Anti­war Home­page” would not have been sur­prised by the turnout in Colum­bus. A huge grass­roots anti­war move­ment has grown in the past month. The Non­vi­o­lence Web’s email box is being flood­ed with great state­ments, let­ters to Clin­ton, action ideas and just plain wor­ry about anoth­er war. The Anti­war Home­page’s list of upcom­ing protests spans the world, list­ing the Colum­bus event along with over sev­en­ty others.

But lit­tle of this orga­niz­ing has got­ten the nation­al media. Most of the online media have put togeth­er sec­tions promis­ing “com­plete cov­er­age,” and sport­ing bravu­ra titles like “Show­down with Sad­dam.” But look at the cov­er­age and you’ll see only fluff pieces about the brave boys on the air­craft car­ri­ers or furrow-browed analy­sis of U.N. Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Kofi Annan’s doomed search for a diplo­mat­ic settlement.

fter Ohio, the nation­al media will have to start rec­og­niz­ing the wide­spread dis­sent among Amer­i­cans. Some progress is being made. YAHOO, the most pop­u­lar site on the net, has list­ed the Anti­war Home­page in its list of Iraq Cri­sis resources. And a top news orga­ni­za­tion is work­ing on a pro­file of the Non­vi­o­lence Web to appear with­in a few days (keep­ing look­ing for an announcement).

But we must all do more. Write and email the nation­al media to include cov­er­age of anti­war actions. Demand that a link to the Iraq Cri­sis Anti­war Home­page be includ­ed in their “Com­plete Cov­er­age” of the cri­sis. A sam­ple let­ter to MS-NBC is includ­ed here, but please write your own and show them that dis­sent has spread past the Colum­bus audi­to­ri­um and is fol­low­ing them across the internet!

Stop the Zipper War Before It Starts

January 30, 1998
· Martin Kelley

Why is Pres­i­dent Clin­ton talk­ing about a reprise of the 1991 Per­sian Gulf War?

We’re told it’s because U.N. inspec­tors believe that Iraq has hid­den “weapons of mass destruc­tion.” But of course so does the Unit­ed States. And Britain, France, Rus­sia, the Ukraine, Chi­na, India and Pak­istan. Iraq does­n’t even hold a region­al monop­oly, as Israel cer­tain­ly has atom­ic weapons atop U.S.-designed rock­ets aimed this very moment at Hus­sein’s Bagh­dad palaces.

Insanely-destructive weapons are a fact of life in the fin-de-Millennium. There’s already plen­ty of coun­tries with atom­ic weapons and the mis­sile sys­tems to lob them into neigh­bor­ing coun­tries. Hus­sein prob­a­bly does­n’t have them, and the weapons U.N. inspec­tors are wor­ried about are chem­i­cal. This is the “poor man’s atom­ic bomb,” a way to play at the lev­el of nuclear diplo­ma­cy with­out the expens­es of a nuclear program.

Clin­ton seems obliv­i­ous to the irony of oppos­ing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruc­tion with our own. The air­craft car­ri­ers and bat­tle fleets that have been sent into the Gulf in recent weeks are loaded with tac­ti­cal nuclear missiles.

If the pos­ses­sion of weapons of mass destruc­tion is wrong for Iraq, then it is wrong for every­one. It is time to abol­ish all weapons pro­grams and to build real world peace along lines of cooperation.

He’s our Bully

Most Amer­i­cans, on hear­ing a call to let Hus­sein be, will react with dis­be­lief. Con­di­tioned to think of him as our mod­ern Hitler, any­one oppos­ing a new Gulf War must be crazy, some­one unfa­mil­iar with the his­to­ry of the appease­ment of Hitler pri­or to World War II that allowed him to build his mil­i­tary to the fright­en­ing lev­els of 1939.

But Amer­i­cans have alas not been told too much of more recent his­to­ry. Sad­dam Hus­sein is our cre­ation, he’s our bul­ly. It start­ed with Iran. Obsessed with glob­al mil­i­tary con­trol, the U.S. gov­ern­ment start­ed arm­ing region­al super­pow­ers. We gave our cho­sen coun­tries weapons and mon­ey to bul­ly around their neigh­bors and we looked the oth­er way at human rights abus­es. We cre­at­ed and strength­ened dic­ta­tors around the world, includ­ing the Shah of Iran. A rev­o­lu­tion final­ly threw him out of pow­er and ush­ered in a gov­ern­ment under­stand­able hos­tile to the Unit­ed States.

Rather than take this devel­op­ment to mean that the region­al super­pow­er con­cept was a bad idea, the U.S. just chose anoth­er region­al super­pow­er: Iraq. We looked the oth­er way when the two got into a war, and start­ed build­ing up Iraq’s mil­i­tary arse­nal, giv­ing him the planes and mil­i­tary equip­ment we had giv­en Iran. This was a bloody, crazy war, where huge casu­al­ties would be racked up only to move the front a few miles, an advance that would be nul­li­fied when the oth­er army attacked with the same lev­el of casu­al­ties. The Unit­ed States sup­port­ed that war. Inter­na­tion­al human rights activists kept pub­li­ciz­ing the abus­es with­in Iraq, and denounc­ing him for use of chem­i­cal weapons. They got lit­tle media atten­tion because it was not in U.S. polit­i­cal inter­ests to fight Hussein.

Noth­ing’s real­ly changed now except U.S. polit­i­cal inter­ests. Hus­sein is still a tyrant. He’s still stock­pil­ing chem­i­cal weapons. Why are U.S. polit­i­cal inter­ests dif­fer­ent now? Why does Bill Clin­ton want U.S. media atten­tion focused on Iraq? Look no fur­ther than Big Bil­l’s zip­per. Stop the next war before it starts. Abol­ish every­one’s weapons of mass destruc­tion and let’s get a Pres­i­dent who does­n’t need a war to clear his name.

Countdown to Millennium-ism

December 25, 1997
· Martin Kelley

n the next week, mil­lions will cel­e­brate the turn­ing of the new year, the begin­ning of 1998, and the inevitable start of count­downs to the Mil­len­ni­um. At times like these, all sorts of calls go out and self-proclaimed prophets fore­tell bat­tles of good and evil. There are already many calls to peace going out in the name of the upcom­ing Mil­len­ni­um and this being the era it is, these cel­e­bra­tions are being planned and adver­tised right here on the Inter­net. But what’s the fuss about?

Since you’re read­ing this on a com­put­er, let’s start with num­bers. Com­put­ers don’t rec­og­nize the mil­len­ni­um, since they don’t count in tens. The whole exis­tence of the mil­len­ni­um is a trick of our base-ten dig­i­tal num­ber­ing sys­tem Our com­put­ers more nat­u­ral­ly think in bina­ry code-base two rather than ten-or in hexa­dec­i­mal base six­teen. In hexa­dec­i­mal, two years from now will be the year “7d0.” In bina­ry, or base two, it’s a hideous mix of ones and zeros that don’t look at al spe­cial. But humans have ten fin­gers and ten toes, so we count in tens, and when you count that way two years from now has a lot of zeros in it’s name.

Well, it does if you’re a Chris­t­ian. A sec­ond assump­tion is that the lat­est epoch of human his­to­ry start­ed with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth in the manger. Most of the world’s peo­ple don’t agree with that, using oth­er dates to begin their cal­en­dars (for exam­ple the Mus­lim cal­en­dar starts with Mohammed’s flight from Mec­ca). Mak­ing mat­ters even more con­fus­ing is that ear­ly cal­en­dar mak­ers mis-counted: Jesus was born a cou­ple of years ear­li­er than they thought which means we’ve already past the mil­len­ni­um mark.

Still, it’s not enough to mere­ly point out the incon­sis­ten­cies of the millennium-minded peace-makers. What is the draw of this sort of mark­er? Is it the chance to live in some spe­cial age? War often pro­vides this sort of marker-our con­cep­tions of his­to­ry often use wars as ref­er­ence points, bring­ing “ante­bel­lum” and “post-war” to our descrip­tions. Wars re-orient soci­ety and it’s basic struc­tures, cre­at­ing changes in every­one’s lives and giv­ing soci­eties a shared sense of liv­ing in history.

Could the mil­len­ni­um mean some­thing if we all just agree that it means some­thing? It’s hokey to think peace could come because the cal­en­dar flips, but if enough peo­ple believe it, things real­ly could change. The non­vi­o­lence move­ment has been quite frac­tured in recent years, to the point where one has to real­ly argue whether there is a “move­ment.” What kind of event could we coa­lesce around to cre­ate fun­da­men­tal social change? What are we wait­ing for? What kind of soci­ety do we envi­sion and when are we going to come togeth­er to work on it?

Big ques­tions, I know. The mil­len­ni­um won’t answer them, I also know. And I don’t think the mil­len­ni­um is real­ly the event I want. But the urge to com­mem­o­rate a non-war event and use it to bring world peace is a strong one. If we could under­stand why so many want peace and change to come in 2000, then we could per­haps fig­ure out how to work across our easy answers and bring about a real and last­ing peace.

A Look Back at the Peace Movement’s Response to the Gulf War

November 20, 1997
· Martin Kelley

It is safe to say that the peace move­men­t’s largest cam­paign in the past decade took place around oppo­si­tion to the mil­i­tary build-up and con­flict in the Per­sian Gulf in 1990 – 1. New peo­ple became involved, old peaceniks became reac­ti­vat­ed and every peace group in the coun­try went into over­drive to orga­nize and edu­cate about the issues.

Recent­ly I have heard sev­er­al peo­ple bemoan the fail­ure of the peace move­ment dur­ing that peri­od, a fail­ure because the war was­n’t stopped. But there were suc­cess­es beyond any­one’s wildest dreams. The week the war start­ed saw two mas­sive protests in Wash­ing­ton. It took almost a decade of involve­ment in Viet­nam before protests that large were ever seen. The peace move­ment mobi­lized incred­i­bly quick­ly and (in ret­ro­spect) effi­cient­ly, and we sure­ly defined the options avail­able to U.S. Pres­i­dent Bush.

The after­math of the war brought a cri­sis to many orga­ni­za­tions. Their fundrais­ing efforts dried up and bud­get deficits led to cut­backs in staff and pro­gram out­reach. It was as if a sort of pub­lic amne­sia set in and no one want­ed to think about peace. This is a nat­ur­al human response per­haps, but it’s rever­ber­a­tions on the infra­struc­ture of the peace move­ment con­tin­ue to this day.

Let’s start a dia­logue about the peace move­ments response to the Gulf War. What were it’s effects on your lives and the orga­ni­za­tions you were a part of? Was the peace move­ment a suc­cess, a fail­ure, or some­thing in between?

How Come the U.S. Trains All the Terrorists?

November 13, 1997
· Martin Kelley

I’ve just been read­ing today’s New York Times arti­cle about the con­vic­tion of the New York City World Trade Cen­ter bombers. With it is a com­pan­ion piece about the plot leader, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who hoped to kill 250,000 peo­ple when the tow­ers col­lapsed onto the city below. Born in Kuwait to a Pak­istani moth­er and Pales­tin­ian father, his life began as an alle­go­ry for the social dis­place­ments of the Mid­dle East, and he grew up with anger towards the Israelis-and by exten­sions the Americans-who had forced his father from his home­land. Even so, Yousef came to school in the West, to Wales, where he stud­ied engi­neer­ing. But in 1989 he left it for anoth­er edu­ca­tion, fueled by his anger and lead­ing to the death of six in the heat and smoke of the mas­sive under­ground explo­sion in down­town Manhattan.

Yousef trav­eled to Afghanistan to join the Muja­hedeen rebels in their fight against Sovi­et occu­piers, and there learned the guer­ril­la tech­niques he would lat­er employ in New York. Who sup­port­ed the Muja­hedeen and paid for Youse­f’s train­ing in ter­ror­ism? The Unit­ed States Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, who fun­neled the Afghan rebels mil­lions of U.S. tax­pay­ers dollars.

It would seem a sim­ple case of U.S. mil­i­tarism com­ing home to roost, but it is not so sim­ple and it is not uncom­mon. Fol­low most trails of ter­ror­ism and you’ll find Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment fund­ing some­where in the recent past.

Tim­o­thy McVeigh was anoth­er angry young man, one who had to drop out of col­lege, could­n’t find a steady job, and moved from trail­er park to trail­er park as an adult, won­der­ing if the Amer­i­can Dream includ­ed him. He did what a lot of economically-disadvantaged young kids do, and enlist­ed in the U.S. Army (this has been described by some as “the pover­ty draft”).

In 1988, he met Michael Forti­er and Ter­ry Nichols at the U.S. Army base at Ft. Ben­ning, Geor­gia (coin­ci­den­tal­ly home of the infa­mous School of the Amer­i­c­as). There he was taught how to turn his anger into killing and was quick­ly pro­mot­ed, get­ting good reviews and being award­ed with the Bronze Star and Com­bat Infantry Badge for his ser­vice in the Gulf War.

Lat­er he came back to the U.S. with his Ft. Ben­ning friends and turned his anger against the U.S. gov­ern­ment. He used his mil­i­tary skills to build a bomb (alleged­ly with Nichols, now at tri­al, with the knowl­edge of Forti­er, who turned state’s wit­ness). On a spring day in 1995, he drove the bomb to Okla­homa City’s fed­er­al build­ing and set it off, killing 168 peo­ple. McVeigh’s moth­er said, “It was like he trad­ed one Army for anoth­er one.” (Wash­ing­ton Post, 7/2/95)

Anoth­er ter­ror­ist trained by the Unit­ed States government.

But it does­n’t end there either. This same dynam­ic hap­pens on the nation-state lev­el as well. Today’s head­lines also include sto­ries about the stand­off between Iraq’s Sad­dam Hus­sein and Unit­ed Nations arms inspec­tors, a sit­u­a­tion which threat­ens to renew mil­i­tary fight­ing in the region. Who fund­ed Hus­sein and gave him mil­lions of dol­lars worth of weapons to fight the Ira­ni­ans dur­ing the 80s? Why, it’s the U.S. gov­ern­ment again​.How come the Unit­ed States is direct­ly involved in train­ing some of the biggest ter­ror­ists of the decade? Haven’t we learned that mil­i­tarism only leads to more mil­i­tarism? Would Ramzi Ahmed Yousef and Tim­o­thy McVeigh just be polit­i­cal unknowns if the Unit­ed States had­n’t taught them to kill with their anger? Would Sad­dam Hus­sein be just anoth­er ex-dictator if the U.S. had­n’t fund­ed his mil­i­tary dur­ing the 1980s?

We can nev­er know these answers. But we can stop train­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of ter­ror­ists. Let’s stop fund­ing war, let’s stop solv­ing prob­lems with guns and explo­sives. Let today’s angry twen­ty year olds cut peo­ple off in traf­fic and do no more. Let’s stop these unde­clared wars.

Catch Yourself Thinking: A 1997 Tribute to Allen Ginsberg

April 6, 1997
· Martin Kelley

Allen, words go off through emails, phones, whis­pers on trol­leys, sad lost souls wan­der­ing beat neigh­bor­hoods telling the news: you’re dead.

I walk around, tears in eyes, look­ing look­ing for a changed world. See stu­dents in goa­tees, so beat, but they’re smil­ing, they don’t know, don’t care, you’ve been reduced to a fash­ion. But you’re here, in the air we breathe, that smell of lib­er­a­tion, of just stand up and laugh and prank and lis­ten to the soul sex spir­it burst­ing with­in. Smile through the soli­tary puri­tanism that keeps every­one apart.

But where are you remem­bered? Where’s the drum cir­cles? Need­ing some­thing now, I buy the lat­est Wald­man anthol­o­gy in book­store, thir­ti­eth street train sta­tion, full of time mag­a­zine, hus­tler, romance nov­els, lot­tery tick­ets. Cashier looks at book, says some­one else just bought it too. Oh joy, no drum cir­cles but at least oth­er lost souls not know­ing how to share the loss but to remem­ber the immor­tal words, the words now his­to­ry, set for­ev­er in twelve point times to be read as anoth­er Dead White Male poet.

I tell cashier, friend­ly mid­dle aged black woman that he — points to your out-of-focus head in pho­to of Cor­so, the Orlovskys, Ker­ouac — is dead. “Who is it?” “Allen Gins­burg.” “Oh, that’s him, hmm?” I say, I hope, that there’ll be a lot of peo­ple buy­ing these books now, but know yet anoth­er illus­trat­ed his­to­ry of Viet­nam will be their best seller.

Nigh­t­ime now. I can’t help it, I look to the sky to see if there’s a new star in the fir­ma­ment. But over­cast, smog­gy, orange-skied Ger­man­town does­n’t open to the cliché.

I miss you. You taught so much. How to com­bine poet­ry and lib­er­a­tion and pol­i­tics and the search for won­drous love­ly spir­it. Since I first saw you speak — 1988 Rut­gers, Rad­i­cal Stu­dent Con­fer­ence — I’ve become activist non­vi­o­lence pub­lish­er, Quak­er seek­er. You spoke to me, told me I could spin my own life of joy if only I could be open and hum­ble, ready to laugh, but also ready to take light­en­ing bolts upon my head for stand­ing up in row-after-row movie the­ater Amer­i­ca, watch us per­form, give us six bucks America.

In new book you say pre­scrip­tion for this Amer­i­ca is:

more art, med­i­ta­tion, lifestyles of rel­a­tive penury,
avoid­ance of con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion that’s
burn­ing down the planet.

To that I say mere­ly, ‘a‑okay,” let’s get back to work. I love you Allen. Peace be with you.

 

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