American Porn by Heathcote Williams
Page 8
While the President makes a show of weeping
For Sandy Hook Elementary School,
Links between this and the arms trade are clear
To anyone save an all-American fool.
The President is the high priest of a gun cult
Which spawns thousands of devotees
Who shoot thirty thousand a year stone dead
And bring his own country to its knees.
The US arms trade exposes the hypocrisy
Of the President’s crocodile tears
For body counts are trumped by share prices
And fear-mongering profiteers –
Profiteers who hire powerful lobbyists
To visit the White House in droves
And ensure that half the world’s arms sales
Are of the weapons the US so loves.
The US War Machine’s annual budget could buy
Each homeless American a million dollar home –
If the imperial government were ruled by compassion
Instead of a murderous suicide syndrome.
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The Dalai Lama, ISIS and America
The Dalai Lama has said that America created ISIS
Through its use of drones and its waterboard torture,
For the US has exempted itself from the rule of law
And become no more than an international butcher.
Tibetan Buddhism’s spiritual leader urged the Administration
‘To alter America’s catastrophic foreign policies.’
He was in Moscow at the Bolshoi Theatre, where he was inaugurating
A festival: ‘Tibet: Traditions, Art, Philosophy and Peace’.
He chided the President for supporting fallacious Saudi clerics
Who claim to represent Islam by siding with cut-throats:
‘Thus they give the radical groups an excuse for their crimes’,
Those who heinously murder the innocent, and then gloat.
‘Several times I importuned President Obama,’
He said, as he outlined his geopolitical fears,
‘To end his catastrophic support for Saudis and their terrorist proxies
‘In the Middle East, but my appeals fell on deaf ears.’
Presidents have been happily photographed bowing to the Saudi King,
For their economy depends on Saudi oil’s poisonous spouting.
Like every prostitute politician each President claims to have vision
As they cravenly capitulate to Wall Street’s touting.
In ISIS’s latest propaganda video — as Saudi oil spurts
Into the gas tanks of American automobiles —
A Yemeni is escorted into the desert by chanting captors.
His eyes and his mouth show the terror he feels.
In Arabic, the lead captor explains to the camera
That ‘the enemy must be crushed’,
Then he bends down to pick up a boulder
And the Yemeni man’s head is smashed.
His eyes are closed in agony as the boulder’s removed.
Gouts of blood jet from his distorted mouth.
The ISIS participants film their victim’s last seconds
As his bloodstained eyes open in terrified disbelief.
The boulder’s picked up, then it’s dropped.
The event is chronicled by ISIS’s Cyber Army.
A remorseless, triumphal chant is added as soundtrack:
‘The soldiers of Allah are ready’.
In the White House’s Oval Office the President of Barbarica
Signs his Wednesday ‘kill list’ with a golden pen
And the enemies of the Imperium are duly dispatched
Through State assassination or a robot drone.
The flow of the President’s pen leads directly
To crimson stains in Yemen’s distant dunes,
But Imperial power is impervious to reason
And the White House can’t read the runes.
In political science as well as in physics
Every action that anybody takes
Has an equal and opposite reaction, like karma:
A drop of blood shed can grow into lakes.
NOTES
i American writer, William S Burroughs once worked as a pest controller, an experience he recounted in his novel Exterminator.
ii Property magnate Fred Trump was once arrested at a Klu Klux Klan (KKK) rally and was sued, in 1973, by the Justice Department for refusing to rent his flats to black people. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/all-the-evidence-we-could-find-about-fred-trumps-alleged-involvement-with-the-kkk
iii Nick Penzenstadler, and Susan Page, ‘Trump’s 3,500 lawsuits unprecedented for a presidential nominee’, USA TODAY, 2 June, 2016
iv Trump accused of ‘savage sexual attack’ on a 13-year-old girl, http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/donald-trump-accused-of-savage-sexual-attack-on-a-13yearold-girl/news-story/6585a49357159ff2fdc3ff3933370500 July 5, 2016. Lisa Bloom, Attorney and legal analyst for NBC News and Avvo, ‘Why The New Child Rape Case Filed Against Donald Trump Should Not Be Ignored’ Huffington Post, 29th June, 2016; updated, July 1st, 2016
v Brad Hoff, ‘Hillary Emails Reveal True Motive for Libya Intervention: Newly disclosed emails show that Libya’s plan to create a gold-backed currency to compete with the euro and dollar was a motive for NATO’s intervention.’ Foreign Policy Journal, January 6, 2016
vi The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (also referred to as ISIL and Daesh) an Islamist entity directly descended from al-Qaeda — itself, arguably, the result of the West’s interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
vii http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/16/just-5-7-percent-of-clinton-foundation-budget-actually-went-to-charity/
viii CNBC, 26 Sep 2016
ix John R. O’Donnell, James Rutherford, Trumped! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump--His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall, Simon & Schuster, 1991
x Nick Paumgarten, The Death and Life of Atlantic City, The New Yorker, September 7, 2015
xi Tom McCarthy, ‘Donald Trump reverses position on torture’, The Guardian, 4 March 2016
xii In June 2017 Trump took the US out of the Paris Accord on climate Change.
xiii To Trump: "the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."
xiv CNBC is an American cable television broadcaster, part of NBC Universal news group
xv http://www.salon.com/2017/03/11/how-the-us-military-is-using-violent-chaotic-beautiful-video-games-to-train-soldier/
xvi Author of You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again.
xvii Born Bradley Edward Manning, Chelsea is a trans woman who was sentenced in 2013 to 35 years in prison for providing Wikileaks with three-quarters of a million military and diplomatic documents in 2010. The leaked material, particularly the diplomatic cables, was seen by some commentators as a catalyst for the Arab Spring. Manning also exposed a video which showed two American helicopters firing on a group of ten men in Baghdad, two of whom were Reuters employees. The US Pilots mistook their cameras for weapons, and expressed notable glee at their shooting. This leaked footage caused a sea-change in public opinion about the war.
xviii Steven Evans
xix http://www.povertyusa.org/
xx ‘US begins $1 trillion upgrade of Nuclear Weapons Arsenal.’ International Business Times, November, 15, 2014
xxi All quotes are from actual tweets.
ms, American Porn by Heathcote Williams