Friday, January 22, 2010

Lenny Bruce and The Meaning of Obscenity



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 4 -- January 23, 2010


This Week in New World Notes, radio program #99, Jan. 26:

Lenny Bruce and
The Meaning of Obscenity

Pink-collar summary

"I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce,"
-- Paul Simon, "A Simple, Desultory Philippic"

"This show is all about Lenny Bruce. Well, not just about Lenny. It's also about obscenity, American-style. Dirty words, oral sex, and the fatal stabbing of two women--one in Brentwood, one in the Bates Motel. All of the above, and Lenny Bruce too, are intricately connected."

Featuring a handful of Lenny's greatest routines, recorded 1963-64. (Sorry: no room this week for "Christ and Moses." Soon, though!)

OOPS!

Owing to technical difficulties--that's bureaucracy-speak for "I screwed up"--station WWUH in West Hartford, CT, was unable to air NWN #98 ("Cheap Junk and the Deindustrialization of America") last week. They did have #100, "Merchants of Fear," on hand and so played that. Next week, when the rest of the world is enjoying "Merchants of Fear," people in central Connecticut can settle for "Cheap Junk." Sorry 'bout that!

This week's songs

  • Incidental music: The Trashmen, Surfin' Bird
  • Outro: Supertramp, Goodbye, Stranger

Coming Soon

  • February 2 on WWUH -- Cheap Junk and The Deindustrialization of America -- Welcome to the Third World! (Hope you had your shots!)
  • February 2 elsewhere -- Merchants of Fear

Nicole Brown Simpson, June 12, 1994. Click to enlarge.

What makes the photo especially sad, to me, is the riot of
green plants, blooming away in mindless vitality, quite unaware
of the dead woman at the bottom of the stairs. "Where the dogs
go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse / Scratches
its innocent behind on a tree" (Auden, Musee des Beaux Arts).
I hope somebody is watering them.

Notes & Credits

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "long-suffering sighs") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

Free subscription to weekly New World Notes email newsletter upon request.

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Friday, January 15, 2010

Cheap Junk & The Deindustrialization of America



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 3 -- January 16, 2010

Annie Leonard (from NWN #48, "The Story of STUFF")

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #98, Jan. 19:

Cheap Junk and
The Deindustrialization of America

Workers' summary

We explore the connections among ubiquitous cheap junk merchandise, domestic unemployment and poverty, starvation wages abroad, pollution everywhere, the destruction of the environment, the deindustrialization and Third-World-ization of America, and the ever-increasing wealth of the already-rich. Was there a vote on all this that somehow I missed? Includes unflattering words on G.E. by labor leader Marie Lausch and an equally unflatttering discussion of IKEA from Ellen Ruppel Shell's book, Cheap: The High Price of Discount Culture.

Marie Lausch at UCONN, November 14, 2009

This week's song

  • Anne Feeney, Brave New Christmas

Coming Soon -- Tuesday debut dates on WWUH shown:

  • January 26 -- Lenny Bruce and the Meaning of Obscenity
  • February 2 -- Merchants of Fear (Installment #100!)

Ellen Ruppel Shell

Credits

  • Connecticut United Electrical Workers Union president Marie Lausch recorded by me at a symposium on converting Connecticut to a peacetime economy held at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, November 14, 2009.
  • Shell passage as reprited by the Toronto Globe & Mail, July 19, 2009, condensed for radio by me.
  • New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "radar") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com

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Friday, January 8, 2010

The Kids Are All Right


New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 2 -- January 9, 2010

This week's photos from the Copenhagen climate summit,
December 2009.

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #97, Jan. 12:

The Kids Are All Right

Workers' summary

To my surprise, young people today seem sharper, saner, more politically active, and more inspiring than several preceding "generations" of young'uns. Could there be hope for the future? We hear from George Carlin, trying & failing to sound like a pedophobe ... from Mari Oye and Leah Anthony Libresco, two young women in high school who challenged Bush on torture ... and from journalist Johann Hari, reporting from the COP-15 climate conference, on the wisdom & courage of the young protesters.

This week's music (from the musical, Bye Bye Birdie, 1960):

  • The Telephone Hour
  • from Kids!
  • from Fine, Upstanding, ...

Coming Soon

  • January 19 -- Cheap Junk and The Deindustrialization of America -- Welcome to the Third World! (Hope you had your shots!)
  • January 26 -- Lenny Bruce and the Meaning of Obscenity

Notes and credits

Johann Hari's article from Common Dreams online, December 16, 2009: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/16-5.

Amy Goodman's interview with Mari Oye and Leah Anthony Libresco (July 3, 2007) courtesy of democracynow.org: http://www.democracynow.org/2007/7/3/we_do_not_want_america_to .

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "inflexible deadlines") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail dot com.


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Friday, January 1, 2010

Varieties of Sexual Experience


New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 1 -- January 1, 2010

Screen capture from Perversion for Profit (1964). Links in text, below.

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #96, Jan. 5:

Varieties of Sexual Experience,
OR:
Goldberg's Other Variations

Workers' summary

This year's Annual Sex Show--okay, we skipped 2009--takes a lighthearted look at variations from the tried and true. Comedian Jimmy Tingle explains gays & homophobia. A 1964 documentary from the Citizens for Decent Literature--Perversion for Profit--exposes (so to speak) the Communist-inspired flood of filth peddled to our precious children from every newsstand in America. Speaking of children, social satirist Paul Krassner discusses how to respond when your 16-year-old daughter tells you that she's bid adieu to virginity. And Leonard Cohen again confuses an unfaithful girlfriend with the Collapse of Western Civilization.

Top: Charles Keating, anti-smut crusader and convicted swindler
(source: Thomas Ives/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images).
Bottom: Boston landmark Jimmy Tingle

This week's songs

  • Leonard Cohen, Everybody Knows
  • Robert Preston & chorus, from Ya Got Trouble

On Charles Keating and his Citizens for Decent Literature:

From Danny Gallagher, The Top 10 People Who Almost Destroyed Fun

  • The former face of the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal didn't spend his entire life trying to take the life savings of every man who walked into the scope of his view. He also spent part of it trying to take their pornography from them. The Cincinnati attorney formed the Citizens for Decent Literature in the late 1950s, an organization that used any legal recourse necessary to outlaw pornography in all of its forms. He even produced his own film, Perversion for Profit, that became a huge bestseller among disappointed men in trench coats.
    He not only failed to outlaw porno, but ended up in jail on charges of wire and bankruptcy fraud, where the term "Perversion for Profit" has more to do with earning cigarettes.

Notes & Credits

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "very noses") of WWUH-FM, a community service of the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

http://www.jimmytingle.com/

Paul Krassner commissioned celebrated Mad Magazine cartoonist Wallace Wood to draw the most famous naughty cartoon of the 1960s, Disneyland Memorial Orgy. Krassner published the black-and-white drawing as the centerfold in his magazine, The Realist, in 1967. Portions of the drawing, which was subsequently colored, appear on the book cover shown, below. You'll find the complete colored version at the top of Krassner's Web page: http://www.paulkrassner.com/.

Download or listen online to NWN's previous Annual Sex Show (April 2008).

The show's words by Krassner are read from an interview published in CounterPunch, "Sex and Violins": http://www.counterpunch.org/krassner04092008.html

Free subscription to weekly New World Notes email newsletter upon request. Subscribers list is totally confidential.

Krassner's latest book (2009).

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Friday, December 25, 2009

Potpourri


New World Notes News
Vol. 2 No. 51 -- December 26, 2009

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #95, Dec. 29:

Potpourri


In a nutshell

I tried to make a hodgepodge of interesting unrelated items, but everything came out interconnected anyway! Features Brit journalist Johann Hari's expose' of Israel's secret weapon against Palestine--tons of untreated Settler sewage. The US's bloody foreign policy since--I dunno--1898? 1756? Glen Ford on Obama, "The Banksters," & dancin' to "The Monster Crash." As Zola wrote, I accuse! Happy New Year!

Discharge of sewage from Israeli settlement of Beitar
Illit pours down onto Palestinian fields, destroying
crops and poisoning drinking water.

This week's music

Notes & Credits

Correction: Last week I mistakenly said that the music in our Christmas show (#94) was performed by 3 Jews and a gay Gentile. In fact, the music was performed by 2 Jews, a gay Gentile, and a Swedish Baptist (Stan Freberg). Could I make this stuff up?

For more by Glen Ford & other good commentary, see http://www.blackagendareport.com/

Johann Hari, "Israel is Suppressing a Secret It Must Face," originally in The Independent (London), April 28, 2008. I condensed & edited the U.S. version, from Common Dreams. Full text here: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/28/8582

Johann Hari

Free subscription to weekly New World Notes email newsletter upon request. (Subscribers list is totally confidential.)

Thanks to David Schonfeld for rounding up this week's 2nd song & permission to broadcast it.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "spreading chestnut tree") of WWUH-FM, a community service of the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

Coming soon -- Tuesday debut dates on WWUH shown:

  • January 5 -- Varieties of Sexual Experience, OR: Goldberg's Other Variations
  • January 12 -- The Kids Are All Right -- Including teenaged Presidential Scholars who stood up to Bush on torture . . . and young protestors in Copenhagen who combined sanity & street theatre. Gen-X slackers are dead. Long live the kids!

No comment.

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Saturday, December 19, 2009

Christmas Special 2009


New World Notes News
Vol. 2 No. 50 -- December 19, 2009

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #94, Dec. 22:

Stan Freberg

Christmas Special 2009


Brevity is The Soul of Wit Department:

Somebody famous was born on Christmas--I forget who. John Lennon? In celebration thereof, we present 3 seasonal songs, performed by 3 Jews (Simon, Garfunkel, & Stan Freberg) and 1 "out" homosexual Gentile (Elton John). Less humorously, we also commemorate 2 unhappy anniversaries: the sack of Fallujah (2004) and the sack of Gaza (begun Dec. 27, 2008). "War is over, if you want it." Happy Christmas!

Credits

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "unisex bathroom") of WWUH-FM, a community service of the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

Notes

This week's holiday music (all Oldies):

  • Simon & Garfunkel, Silent Night / 6 o'Clock News
  • Stan Freberg, Green Chri$tma$
  • Elton John, Where To Now, Saint Peter?

http://www.annefeeney.com/

Coming soon -- Tuesday debut dates on WWUH shown:

  • December 29 -- Potpourri . . . including Israel's secret weapon in Palestine . . . U.S.'s bloody foreign policy since 1898 (if not 1756) . . . and Obama, "the Banksters," & dancin' to The Monster Crash. Happy New Year!
  • January 5 -- Varieties of Sexual Experience, OR: Goldberg's Other Variations

Broadcast schedule: Scroll down to previous entry.

Sir Elton John

A Christmas Carol

Where to now, Saint Peter,
If it's true I'm in your hand?
I may not be a Christian,
But I've done all one man can.
I understand I'm on the road
Where all that was is gone.
So where to now, Saint Peter?
Show me which road I'm on . . . .


.

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Saturday, December 12, 2009

Afghanistan: Won't Get Fooled Again!


New World Notes News
Vol. 2 No. 49 -- December 13, 2009

Note: Entries in this blog are not transcripts of the radio
program. Rather, they are informal essays concerning the
program installment and its subject.

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #93, December 15:

Afghanistan:
Won't Get Fooled Again!

Executive summary

Three fine minds (& my own) cut through the BS about why "we" are rampaging across Afghanistan. Hartford activist Steve Fournier questions why Hillary Clinton calls Afghan suicide bombers "cowards" while the U.S. is bombarding wedding parties with aerial drones controlled from Nevada. Political scientist David Model (read aloud by me) lucidly explains the real reason for this war. Last, in a rousing speech, Afghan activist and ousted MP Malalai Joya--a young woman--brilliantly denounces the cruelty and hypocrisy of Bush, Obama, Karzai, the warlords, NATO, and the Taliban.

What is past is prologue

In 1964, when President L.B. Johnson ordered a large increase in U.S. military personnel in Vietnam, few Americans alive knew anything about the war's most obvious ancestor: the U.S.'s Philippine War of (circa) 1898-1905. The "large increase" in troops was called an "escalation" back in the 1960s, not a "surge." Political/military "Newspeak" was in full flower back then . . . but still less resplendent than it is today!

After the Philippines adventure, the powers-that-be waited 60 years (overlooking Korea) before serving up more of the same in Vietnam.

In 2003, so eager were the P-T-B to control the oil of the Middle East, that they launched the Iraq bloodbath/quagmire only 30 years--just one generation--after the end of its Vietnam predecessor.

(I recognize that "end" is a debatable term, as Vietnamese people are still being born deformed and dying young from the gazillion gallons of toxic defoliants the Americans sprayed on their country. To say nothing of the descendents of the GIs who did the spraying.)

In 2003, millions of American citizens retained vivid memories of the horrors of Vietnam. So launching the equally-unnecessary Iraq bloodbath/quagmire was a gamble. Which, however, has succeeded to the satisfaction of the powers-that-be.

Hartford activist/lawyer/Green politician Steve Fournier

I have certain doubts about the Nobel Peace Prize, but President Obama certainly deserves this decade's Chutzpah Up the Wazoo Award for starting yet another Philippines/Vietnam/Iraq combination bloodbath/debacle only six years after the launch of the last one--and before that one has come close to ending!

If you liked our little Iraq adventure, you're gonna really like the Great Afghanistan Escalation. And you'll simply love the Af-Pak Donnybrook! Coming soon to a theater-of-war near you!

Department of Adolescent Humor:

I said that David Model reveals the main reason that "we" are bombarding babies in Afghanistan. I don't want to tease the reader, but I don't want to spoil the suspense, either. So I'll just give a hint about the actual main reason: Afghanistan is Trouble with a capital T, which rhymes with P, which stands for . . . . No, not Pool, you knucklehead!

I'll give you another hint.

Three teenaged guys (circa 1965) were chatting about who was the sexiest woman in the world. One (let's call him Tinker) opines, "Marilyn Monroe, without a doubt!" Evans rebuts, "Nah, don't be a jerk: it's Brigitte Bardot!" Chance pipes up, "You guys are both full of [solid waste]. It's a well-known fact that the sexiest woman in the world is Marilyn Pippilini!"

Tinker and Evans are nonplussed. They exclaim in unison, "What?! Who the [heck] is Marilyn Pippilini?! "

Chance pulls out his wallet. Next to the rolled condom is a clipped newspaper headine. He shows it to Tinker and Evans. It reads,

Three Hunded Men Lay
Maryland Pipeline

This is one of two jokes from my adolescent years (circa 1965) that I still remember. The other doesn't bear repeating. All those dozens of Elephant Jokes . . . gone!

Recent offering by David Model

Notes and links

Steve Fournier's jeremiad recorded exclusively for New World Notes. See Steve's "Curent Invective" at http://www.currentinvective.com/ .

David Model's essay, "NATO's Chimerical Enemy in Afghanistan," from CounterPunch, condensed & edited for radio by K.D. Here's the original: http://www.counterpunch.org/model11132009.html.

Malalai Joya's speech in Vancouver on November 14, 2009, was recorded for CFRO by Alex Smith--http://www.ecoshock.org/. See also http://www.stopwar.ca/. About half of Joya's speech is reproduced in this installment of NWN. For the whole shebang and/or Q&A, see here: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/37338.

Malalai Joya's recent book is Raising My Voice. Jonathan Steele's interesting review of it in The Guardian is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/15/afghan-activist-malalai-joya

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "oppressive yoke") of WWUH-FM, a community service of the that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford.

Malalai Joya


Coming soon -- Tuesday debut dates on WWUH shown:

  • December 22 -- Christmas Special ... including reflections on the sack of Fallujah (5th anniversary) and the sack of Gaza (1st anniversary)
  • December 29 -- Potpourri . . . including Israel's secret weapon in Palestine . . . the U.S.'s bloody foreign policy since 1898 (if not 1756) . . . and Obama, "the Banksters," & dancin' to The Monster Crash. Happy New Year!

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Saturday, December 5, 2009

Michael Parenti on "Political Liberties and Economic Democracy"


Bread line, Louisville, Kentucky, 1937. Photo by Margaret
Bourke-White. All Graphics: click to enlarge.


New World Notes News
Vol. 2 No. 48 -- December 8, 2009

This week in New World Notes, radio program #92, Tuesday, December 8:

Michael Parenti on
"Political Liberties and
Economic Democracy"

Workers' Summary

The best parts of Parenti's lecture and Q&A at the University of Hartford on November 4 are here. Parenti argues that improvements in public policy--and in living conditions for the non-rich--resulted from struggle from "below," not from the goodness of the governing elites' hearts. Average citizens fought for greater political liberties as tools to compel concrete improvements in their lives.

This program includes fine parts on airport security, Saddam Hussein, the Maine anti-gay-marriage referendum, and Parenti's forthcoming book on organized religion, God and His Demons.

Egypt, 21st Century

Notes

www.michaelparenti.org

The first 20 or so minutes of Parenti's lecture--on the dislike of democracy by the Framers of our Constitution--with parallels drawn to the Classical world--are not included in this installment of NWN. This omitted segment is intellectually substantial and well worth hearing when you're in the mood for some serious history & political science. Some later parts are snipped as well. I've made a complete, uncut, unedited recording of the entire presentation and Q&A (1h, 12m) available for anyone who cares to hear same. The introduction is by University of Hartford President Walter Harrison.

Recorded live by moi.

Free subscription to weekly New World Notes email newsletter upon request. (Subscribers list is totally confidential.) The newsletter essentially duplicates the weekly blog entry--but some people like the weekly reminder.

Dr. Michael Parenti (plaid shirt)

Coming Soon -- Tuesday debut dates on WWUH shown:

  • December 15 -- Afghanistan: Won't Get Fooled Again!
  • December 22 -- Christmas Special ... including reflections on the sack of Fallujah (5th anniversary) and the sack of Gaza (1st anniversary)

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):

"Freedom of Speech" by Norman Rockwell. No comment.



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Sunday, November 29, 2009

Is There a Right of Self-Defense? -- The US vs UK


New World Notes News
Vol. 2, No. 47 -- December 1, 2009

This week in New World Notes, #91 (December 1, 2009):

Joyce Malcolm discusses,
Is There a Right of Self-Defense?
-- The U.S. vs. the U.K.

Noted historian and legal scholar Joyce Lee Malcolm discusses the diverging English and American views of the ancient English right on which the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is based--the right of self-defense.

This legal right has been preserved in the United States but has largely been abolished in the United Kingdom. Malcolm's stories of the practical effects in England of this change fascinated her audience. Would you believe a homeowner jailed for holding a toy gun on burglars?

This program features the first two-thirds of a public lecture Malcolm delivered at the University of Hartford on October 7, recorded & lightly edited by yours, truly. The final third was included in installment #90, broadcast last week. You can listen to or download #90 (64 kbps mp3) at any time.

Next week: selections from Michael Parenti's lecture, "Political Liberties and Economic Democracy," recorded live on November 4.

"The Little Insurgent": Monument in Warsaw
commemorating the Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Click
photo to enlarge for detail. For more on the
Warsaw Ghetto (and its similarities to Palestine
today), see our photo essay, here.

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Thursday, November 19, 2009

Joyce Malcolm on the Meaning of the 2nd Amendment


All graphics: Click to enlarge

This week in New World Notes, radio program #90 (Tuesday, November 24):

Joyce Malcolm on the Meaning
of the 2nd Amendment

In a nutshell:

An offbeat look at guns & gun-banning. I tell of my own development from a capgun-slinging 7-year-old to a liberal-academic gun-banner ... to somebody who knows a little about guns & gun laws and thinks the NRA is not totally wrong about everything.

Then historian & legal scholar Joyce Lee Malcolm discusses the meaning of the 2nd Amendment & the recent landmark Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which affirmed the right of the individual citizen to keep & bear firearms.

Heller, though, applies only to the District of Columbia! Next year, in McDonald v. Chicago, the Court will decide whether the individual right applies to the rest of the country as well.

Joyce Lee Malcolm

Thought experiment

What do you understand this sentence to mean?--

  • A well-educated workforce being necessary
    to the prosperity of a free State, the right of
    the people to buy and read books shall not
    be infringed.

Does it, say, guarantee only the right of an employer to provide printed instructional materials as part of a formal job-training seminar?

Does it empower the government to ban the possession of racy novels or other literature having no connection with earning a living?

This week's song: Fred Eaglesmith, Time to Get a Gun

Miss part or all of our last 2 programs?

Our radio adaptation of the documentary Sir! No Sir! is good for the soul and good for the blood pressure. Learn more, listen online, or download the audio for future listening by clicking on this link.


No comment.

Coming soon -- Tuesday debut date on WWUH shown:

  • December 1 -- Joyce Malcolm asks, Is There a Right of Self-Defense? -- The U.S. vs. the U.K.

  • December 8 -- Michael Parenti on Political Liberties and Economic Democracy

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):

Malcolm's latest (Yale University Press, 2009)--nominated for a
Pulitzer Prize. More information at www.joyceleemalcolm.com .

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Saturday, November 7, 2009

Sir! No Sir!

Listen to or download Part 1 now (Broadcast quality 192 kbps -- 41 MB)
Listen to or download Part 1 now (Good quality 64 kbps -- 13 MB)
Listen to or download Part 1 now (32 kbps for dialup -- 7 MB)
Listen to or download Part 2 now (Broadcast quality 192 kbps -- 41 MB)
Listen to or download Part 2 now (Good quality 64 kbps -- 13 MB)
Listen to or download Part 2 now (32 kbps for dialup -- 7 MB)
List all . . . and listen to or download any . . . installments


Donald Duncan

This week and next in in New World Notes, radio programs #88 and #89 (Tuesday, November 10 & 17):

Sir! No Sir!
(2 Parts)
adapted to radio by K.D.

In a nutshell:

David Zeiger's fine video documentary makes great radio. Rebellion by America's soldiers & sailors (God bless 'em!) ended the Vietnam War. Recent reflections by anti-Vietnam-war vets & other activists--some famous, some obscure--mix with period (~1970) newscasts & other recordings. The famous ones include Army physician Dr. Howard Levy, Army "Green Beret" Sgt. Donald Duncan, and actor & activist Jane Fonda. I've adapted the 50-minute BBC-4 version of the documentary to radio. The longer, American version is available for sale on DVD.

NB: For the complete screenplay (U.S.-version), illustrated with hundreds of screen-capture photos, click here.

Top: Jane Fonda

Quoth the raven:

GREG PAYTON, U.S. ARMY: Guys were coming from all over the country, so you getting people coming in with different information about the black power struggle at that time, and black unity, and feeling real good about yourself. You had to really question what you were doing in Vietnam.

I remember one day this first-sergeant was talking about gooks [Vietnamese people]. To show you how naive I was, I didn't know that gook was a racial slur. I didn't really understand that. And one day he was talking about gooks and I remember, a light went off in my head, and I said, "Wow! A gook is the same thing as a nigger!"


SUSAN SCHNALL, U.S. NAVY NURSE: I was a member of the Medical Committee for Human Rights. And then I remember also hearing about the B-52 bombers that were dropping leaflets on Vietnam, urging the Vietnamese to defect.

And I thought, well, if they can do it overseas, then we can hire a small private plane, load it up with leaflets, and drop the leaflets on military bases in the San Francisco Bay area. Thousands and thousands of leaflets.

At one point I know we were a little concerned about getting shot down, but nothing happened. Evidently they landed pretty accurately. That's what they testified at the court-martial.

And on my way driving in to the [anti-war] demonstration, I decided I was going to wear my naval uniform. . . .

David Cline

DAVID CLINE, U.S. ARMY: The third time I was wounded was on December 20, 1967, and we got overrun by North Vietnamese regulars. . . .

After the fighting ended, and the sun came up, they carried me over to this guy who had shot me. And he was sitting up against the tree stump, and he was dead. He had three bullet holes up his chest, and he had his AK [-47 rifle] laying across his lap. And the sergeant said, "Here's this gook you killed. You did a good job."

And I seen this guy, and he was about my age, and I started thinking, you know, "Why is he dead and I'm alive?" It was just a matter of pure luck. Then I started thinking, I wonder if he had a girlfriend, and how his mother is going to find out. And things like that.

And when you just went through an experience of that nature, and you find out that it's all lies, and that they're just lying to the American people, and your silence means that you're part of keeping that lie going, I couldn't stop. I mean, I couldn't be silent. I felt I had a responsibility to my friends, and to the country in general, and to the Vietnamese.

The last guy who I shot -- and I don't consider he was the first guy I shot, but it was the first guy I shot where I was shooting it out barrel to barrel with him, and looked him in the face afterwards -- and I felt a certain amount of responsibility to him. To make his death not be in vain meant that I had to try to advocate for the justice that he was fighting for. Because I believe he was fighting for his country. So I became involved in the [anti-war] Movement.

Top: Levy today. Bottom: Unidentified GI in Vietnam

Coming soon -- Tuesday debut date on WWUH shown:

  • November 24 -- Joyce Malcolm on the Meaning of the 2nd Amendment

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):

Unadvertised Special!

Rita Martinson sings that great song with which Part 2 ends, Soldier, We Love You. YouTube video -- complete, uncut, un-voiced-over, and in living color: (Click here).

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