Welcome to the latest “zine.”

by Mark M

I call the piece above “Almost Together.” Usually, I can’t think of a title for these.

This post is Number IX, Number 9, Number nine…

THE BEATLES

Being a Short History of the Celebrated Group

(And not “The White Album”)

by Mark M

Copyright © 1995 by Mark M

To June without whom…

Preface

Everyone should write a book on The Beatles because, indeed, almost everyone has.

Before

Stu Sutcliffe died because The Beatles really had no use for a painter.

Ringo replaced Pete Best because he was thought to be better than Best.

During

The Beatles were hot in England but were unknown in America. EMI’s American counterpart, Capitol Records, thinking Nat King Cole to be vastly superior, couldn’t be bothered with The Beatles, and so their initial releases went out in America on small labels.

A little later, once The Beatles had successfully “invaded” America, Capitol not only deigned to release their records, they stole songs off albums in order to compile an extra album (with a shitty final cover). [$$$$$$$]

Another example of American stupidity manifested amongst Christians outraged by Lennon’s relatively accurate remark: “We’re more popular than Jesus now….” For, after all, how many records was Jesus selling? (Or, counting Bibles, how many were actually being read?)

However, that Lennon later dismissed “And Your Bird Can Sing” as a “horror” shows that he didn’t always know what he was talking about.

Another example of Lennonfolly was his attempted Siamese twinning with Yoko Ono. That he loved her is not in question, but what disrespect to the others his insistence that she accompany him even in Beatles recording sessions was!

The discovery that she was not a welcome presence there only enraged him. And what of her, hanging out where she was not wanted. Not exactly a fine diplomacy.

“Sgt. Pepper” is often cited as the greatest rock album, but this cannot be true, not with songs like “She’s Leaving Home,” “When I’m Sixty-Four,” and “Within You Without You” on it.

On the other hand, critics have often been dismissive of the Let It Be album. But this’s a fine album with no more bummers on it than the lauded “Pepper.”

McCartney knows what he’s talking about concerning “Here, There and Everywhere.”

Perhaps The Beatles’ best and worst song was “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)” with the vastly better part being its first 45 seconds.

OK, so they weren’t getting along (McCartney, for instance, wanted them to do it on the road) and they broke up.

After

(Let M.B.E.)

The public, however, just wouldn’t let ’em be. They were constantly peppered with “Whenya gettin’ back (together)?” questions. Like, as if everyone continues to hang out well into adulthood with people they knew since they were fifteen.

Fans in denial (Beatlians?) seemed to act like a Beatles reunion would bring heaven to earth, not unlike the still-awaited “Second Coming.”

(Joseph Smith, you know it ain’t easy!)

That Lennon’s killer, a deranged Christian, broke millions of hearts as well as, for instance, deprived Lennon’s young sons of their dad, and Yoko her husband, is not in question.

However, any Beatles reunion, judging by many of the ex-Beatle releases (in fairness, it should be noted that releases of their peers – e.g., Dylan – also suffered a general decline; plus, how many reunions of other bands have yielded truly satisfactory results?), would likely have disappointed, let alone brought heaven to earth.

But fear not, public; there is other worthy talent out there.

And besides,

All Things…

Must

Pass…

NOTES

Some (generally not very musical) reflections on those blokes:

After putting out the chapbook above, I contemplated another music-group chapbook, but what band? The Beatles’ story has been told so often, it’s almost like a fairy tale: Ed Sullivan appearance/seeming overnight sensation, massive record sales, “advancing” rock music from its simpler forms, etc. and finally concluding with a bitter break-up. In comparison, the Stones’ story, for instance, is simply more obscure. (I guess Mick and Keith first met around age 5, separated at some point, and then reacquainted about 10 or so years later. And then insert one Brian Jones, and Bill Wyman, and they were exultant to get Charlie Watts to play drums for them, his reputation having preceded him. Their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, made them demote pianist Ian Stewart to road manager for not looking the part, though he still played on their albums.)

The Dave Clark Five? That would certainly have lent itself to brevity: Early on, they rivaled the Beatles in sales, and then they comparatively all but disappeared. (The other Beatles would chide Ringo when they felt his drumming could have been better: “Sounds like Dave Clark!”)

(Speaking of the Stones, concerning the never-ending Beatles vs. Stones debate, since, as much as I like the Beatles, I never found their music particularly danceable, I would say, if danceability is the standard, the Stones win hands down. It’s the syncopation, man.

(I recall Mick aptly saying in a mid-1970s radio interview that the groups were complementary.

(A touching Charlie and Ringo pic.)

I remember seeing on the new books shelf at the Kenosha Northside Public Library yet another Beatles biography, and, having by then read any number of books about them, thinking, “Oh, no, not another Beatles book to read!”

So I think I passed that one up. But I don’t recall for sure.

It was this then-new Beatles book library encounter that led to the chapbook above with its wisecrack preface.

And in the many years since then, I resumed reading about them as I discovered the countless more new ones.

Recently, I read pretty much just the John parts to Yoko Ono: An Artful Life.

I rarely put on music nowadays, and, if I did, I would not likely play the Beatles. Not out of a dislike — though I by now can do without hearing “Something” — but out of having heard their songs so many times — these were the first records I bought starting about age 13 — that I know most all of them intimately. Incidentally, the first album I bought when I was about thirteen years old was Magical Mystery Tour. A friend had it closer to when it was new, and we played it a lot. (The first single I bought, by the way, also when it was about three years old, was the Doors’ “Light My Fire.”)

Recently, reading the Beatles parts to Beatles the Bible & Bodega Bay, written by a fellow with a connection to the Beatles, but generally pretty much only strictly business (he worked for Capitol Records, the Beatles’ U.S. label before their own later Apple label), the author wrote that Ringo asked him, “So when are you gonna write a book about us?” and he replied that he didn’t know enough juicy stories, and that’s what the publishers want, and Ringo replied, with resignation, “Just make up stuff. That’s what all the others do.”

Incidentally, my chapbook mentioned Capitol Records would shave off songs from their albums to release on “extra” albums.

Wikipedia says this about it:

“In the United States, Capitol Records modified the Beatles’ albums from their original configurations, altering track listings and artwork. This was done because albums released in the US contained fewer tracks, typically no more than 11 or 12, due to differences in how publishing royalties were calculated in the two countries.”

Nonetheless, the Beatles weren’t pleased at these reconfigurings nor pleased that Capitol “added reverb to several tracks” on their early U.S. releases.

The power of schoolteacherings over young children: There is a brief snippet on YouTube where Paul relates being recognized on a beach by a grade schooler, perhaps about age 9, who relates to him what she learned in school, a Beatles anecdote that Paul characterized as “vaguely conspiratorial.”

He tried to set the record straight with her, saying he was there and it really wasn’t that way, but she wasn’t having it. “That’s not what we learned in school!” she insisted, not believing him.

Concerning a very well-regarded book called Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties:

By 2007, Paul McCartney had read the book and disputed the accuracy of author MacDonald’s readings. In a 2014 interview, he called it “a good book to just dip into,” but felt irritated when inaccurate assertions from such “a very highly respected tome” are propagated as facts.

So I was age 8, second grade, when I saw the big splash on the Ed Sullivan show. It was kind of like this:

Michael Nesmith, then 22, Paul’s age, wrote about seeing them that evening. His wife learned of the upcoming appearance and was urging that they somehow see it, but they didn’t own a TV. They were allowed to watch it on a blind fellow’s TV with the understanding that Mike would describe what he’s seeing on the screen. In reaction to what Mike is seeing, he keeps saying, “This is fantastic!” The blind fellow gets annoyed, what is going on? He probably, for instance, is hearing lots of screaming. Now, if one watches the footage, it probably seems somewhat quaint, almost like, what was the big deal? But by now we know their career arc and break-up and so forth, not to mention that long hair on men gradually came to cease being a scandal beginning with them. That evening was a moment in time, a “you hadda be there” kind of thing.

(Re their haircuts, about six months before the Ed Sullivan performance, George visited his sister who lived in southern Illinois with her husband. George was famous in England, but a complete unknown here. Some of the people in that town, where the men went to the barber about every two weeks, wondered if he was poor and couldn’t afford a haircut!)

And then a few months later, I went to see A Hard Day’s Night with my sister, age 6, and a buddy and his sister, a matinee, and telling my sister beforehand, “Now don’t scream!” — to no avail, as it turned out to my annoyance.

Young me, not realizing they were from England, and hearing their accents remarked, “They sound like they’re from a different country!”

I remember seeing Help! on TV, so maybe it was a year or so old, and, because the Beatles are playing themselves, and, because I’m not much more than age 9, thinking it was tantamount to a documentary.

For instance, early in the film, in a visual gag, the Beatles arrive at their apartment building each in front of a separate door, and getting out a key to enter their presumed separate, immediately-neighboring apartments, only for the viewer to see, by the now interior film shot, them all enter from the separate doors into the same large living room-type room. “Ah, that’s how they live! How cool!” I thought. The power of such films over young children.

From very early on, I gravitated to Lennon as my favorite which seems interesting because as a youngster, I read no interviews, so how would I know to favor him?

(Jane Roberts‘ Seth would perhaps say it was via telepathy:

(“A man’s intent is subconsciously sensed by everyone with whom he comes in contact. Telepathy accounts for the usefulness of spoken language. Without telepathy no language would be intelligible.”

(—Seth/Jane Roberts, The Early Sessions, Vol. 2, Session 57, May 27, 1964)

But that Lennon favoritism with me stuck all through the years even though recently having read, after passing it up when it was new in 2008, the 800-page biography, John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman. By the end of that book, I was quite sick of the guy. Pre-fame, Lennon was practically amoral.

(Several years later, Norman wrote an 800-pager on McCartney. Actually, that book “should” have been twice as long since Paul had by then lived close to twice the years of Lennon’s 40-year life. I suppose few publishers wanted to issue a 2-volume bio. I started that one, but never finished it. McCartney might possibly have been an all-around greater musical talent than Lennon, but his story just seems more boring to me.

(Author Mark Lewisohn, has written volume one of a planned three-volume series on the Beatles which, in U.S.-abridged form, runs about 900 pages and only takes you to about 1962, on the verge of their U.K. breakthrough. I spent some time leafing through it, but I just don’t have the appetite for that one, and, imagine, the unabridged version runs about 1600 pages!)

I remember in the famous, long, Rolling Stone interview in 1970, Lennon bitterly griping (bitterness was perhaps a main feature of that interview, the nasty break-up still being quite fresh) that “The critics tried to beat me into being Paul McCartney.” But while that might have happened to an extent, because Lennon tended to have more respect from the critics than sweet-pop Paul, it was probably more frequently the other way around.

I think it was in this interview that Lennon volunteered something like “The Beatles were the biggest bastards.”

Here are some examples that come to my mind:

Wikipedia tells us when George recorded his little-known album Electronic Sound (1969):

‘According to the album’s liner notes, “No Time or Space” was recorded “in California in November 1968 with the assistance of Bernie Krause”.^[28] The title was a phrase Harrison had adopted when discussing the aim of Transcendental Meditation in a September 1967 interview for the BBC Radio 1 show Scene and Heard.^[29] Krause later said that “No Time or Space” was a recording of him demonstrating the Moog III to Harrison in Los Angeles, following a session for Jackie Lomax‘s album Is This What You Want?, which Harrison was producing at the time.^[30][31] Krause claimed that the demonstration was recorded without his knowledge and nor would he have given his consent, since his playing included ideas he intended to develop on the next Beaver & Krause album. Krause’s name was originally included on the front cover of Electronic Sound, under Harrison’s, but it was painted over at Krause’s insistence.^[14] The words “Bernie Krause” were nevertheless visible under the silver ink on original LP pressings.’

I seem to recall in another account of this George even says, “Trust me, I’m a Beatle.”

McCartney went “behind [Lennon’s] back” to buy extra Northern Songs shares enraging him.

More McCartney greed was when someone asked him why he was mixing the stereo and mono versions of the White Album somewhat differently in spots, and he replied that Beatles fans who sought to have all releases would then buy both.

Frank Zappa vs. John Lennon, from Wikipedia:

‘Lennon and Ono’s album Some Time in New York City also featured a recording of Lennon and Ono performing with Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention at the Fillmore East on 6 June 1971, a collaboration instigated by Andy Warhol.

‘Zappa criticised the presentation of the Mothers’ performance on Some Time in New York City, as the vocals of Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan had been removed, and Zappa did not receive writing credit for “King Kong“, which was wrongly identified on this release as “Jamrag”.^[23][24] He and Lennon had also agreed that each would release their own version of the performance, but Zappa was legally prevented from issuing his version, which did not appear until the release of Playground Psychotics in 1992.’

As an apparent dig, in Zappa’s release, he renamed “Aü” as “A Small Eternity with Yoko Ono.”

I already wrote of Lennon’s lack-of-integrity method of “apologizing,” citing the instances of George Martin and Carole King.

When John and Yoko lived under threat of deportation from the U.S. (this effort was started under Nixon) until he finally got his green card, ca. 1976, a number of celebrities signed letters urging the U.S. government to allow them to remain in the U.S. In 1972, Bob Dylan wrote a letter to the U.S. Immigration Service on John’s behalf as did others.

During Lennon’s retirement from the music business from 1975 to 1980, Lennon recorded onto cassette song ideas, one of which was him singing the news from a cable TV news station’s chyron (the TV’s sound was off) but in a Dylan style of singing. It was quite mocking of a person who had made an effort on his behalf.

In the aftermath of Lennon’s murder, when Lennon was getting “hagiograph-isized,” “sainted,” an upset Paul privately complained to official Beatles’ biographer Hunter Davies who he remained in contact with (that bio came out in 1968) that they’re making John into “Martin Luther Lennon” and that he actually could be “a maneuvering swine.”

When that long Rolling Stone 1970 interview (Lennon Remembers) was re-released in 2000, there was a passage deleted from the original where John says he manipulated or maneuvered to get what he wanted and Yoko directs Jann Wenner to delete that, and Lennon says something like, “But it’s true!”

So there we have it!

Incidentally, John wanted that interview released only in the pages of Rolling Stone, which it initially was. But Wenner subsequently released it as a book which infuriated John who then held a grudge against Wenner for the rest of his life for breaking the agreement.

But, as far as I’m concerned, one must take some time off for John in purgatory for his efforts on behalf of peace. If Left is right, John was Left. In February 1972, he and Yoko guest-hosted a week of the Mike Douglas Show. Among their guests were Ralph Nader and Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale.

He even phoned up Michael Moore when Michael was just a guy in Michigan producing an alternative weekly magazine based on a story Michael ran and Michael hung up on him thinking he was being hoaxed. John called back.

I read that Brian Wilson, when he heard “Strawberry Fields Forever,” thought, “Damn, the Beatles got there first.” But I consider his “Good Vibrations” a comparable achievement (though I’ve heard both songs too much by now to really groove to them any more) and it precedes SFF by about 4 months.

Until the bitter break-up, it seemed like they were pretty tight-knit (Roger McGuinn of the Byrds thought so, this being ca. 1965, when he asked George if they believed in God and George replied something like they hadn’t come to a conclusion on that yet), but reading all these books, one finds out the intra-group rivalries.

Paul, in the Get Back/Let it Be sessions, finding out Lennon’s not bringing many songs to the table says, “We’re gonna have a crisis” if John doesn’t come up with more songs. But George had a bunch which is why there were so many songs on his first post-Beatles solo album, some dating from 1966! (People, in awed mode, point out that that album, All Things Must Pass, was a triple album, overlooking that the third LP was just fucking jamming. Any band or artist could pad out a release with a jamming disc like that. But, still, a double album right out of the gate, post-Beatles, is impressive.)

Paul stood to make less money on a George tune (the “crisis”!), but his and Lennon’s early, pre-fame, handshake deal that the song of either partner would get a Lennon-McCartney credit even if a song actually had little if any input from the other meant that he was going to make more money off a John tune than a George tune. (Lennon and McCartney, early on, hoped to become well-known songwriters in the style of Rogers and Hammerstein or Goffin and King.)

Also, there was certainly a Lennon-McCartney rivalry with Lennon feeling there were more Paul A-sides on their singles at least in the latter days where he felt his B-side song was the more deserving tune.

Everyone thinks when they recorded what was their last album, Abbey Road, that they all knew it was to be their last. Nonsense. There was a post-Abbey Road meeting, recorded for Ringo who was absent, where Lennon was proposing to cease with the Lennon-McCartney song credit and that on future albums, he, Paul, and George would get four songs each and Ringo can have two, if he wants them.

Paul actually responds that the idea sounds “too democratic for its own good” and that until Abbey Road, his and John’s songs had been simply better than George’s. (I really like “Here Comes the Sun,” but I like other George tunes much better than the highly-regarded “Something.” George lifted the expression “Something in the Way She Moves” from a James Taylor song with that as the song title. JT was flattered, actually.)

Producer George Martin, in those years, felt the same way about George’s songs which assuredly made George a junior member along with Ringo. It also didn’t help that George was the youngest of the four.

It seems nearly to his dying day, George resented Paul over such superior attitudes as that.

But about 2 weeks after that post-Abbey Road meeting, having played a gig in Toronto with Clapton and others backing him, Lennon told the others we was quitting; it was over.

Paul has admitted he wished they had never broken up.

When the three surviving Beatles regrouped, ca. 1995, to polish up two primitively-recorded Lennon songs as a reunion, there was a fair amount of critical derision over the effort. But I thought these two songs were fine. I was happy to hear them, happy they made the effort.

Oops. It looks like I’ve just written another “book” on the Beatles.

P.S. Jane Roberts’ “Seth” asserted as follows (I include this because I think the Beatles fit the bill):

“Thus you deal often with events in which men are touched by great illumination, isolated from the masses of humanity, and endowed with great powers — periods of history that appear almost unnaturally brilliant in contrast with others; prophets, geniuses, and kings shown in greater-than-human proportion….

“They will be formed to impress world conditions at any given time, and therefore couched in symbols and events that will most impress the populace. This is craftily done, for the inner self knows exactly what will impress the ego, and what kinds of personalities will be best able to personify the message at any given time. When such a personality appears in history then, he is intuitively recognized [the screaming girls, for instance –Mark], for the way has long been laid…”

From Seth Speaks, Chapter 21, Session 585, May 12, 1971

P.P.S. A note on Yoko (net worth $700 million): John had nothing to do with the writing of “Yesterday,” so Paul asked her if the song credit could be solely him. No. He then asked if it could have a McCartney-Lennon credit. No. Such was the thanks he got for playing messenger at her request to John when she wanted to get John back into her life in 1974 when they separated for about a year and a half. Wikipedia: ‘Lennon would lament this period publicly but not in private. Journalist Larry Kane, who befriended Lennon in 1964, wrote a comprehensive biography of Lennon which detailed the “Lost Weekend” period. In the interview with Kane, Lennon explained his feelings about his time with Pang; “You know Larry, I may have been the happiest I’ve ever been… I loved this woman (Pang), I made some beautiful music and I got so fucked up with booze and shit and whatever.”‘ And Lennon and McCartney were actually then considering working together, but that all went by the wayside when he went back to Yoko.

———=———

Frank Zeidler (1912–2006) was the third of Milwaukee’s three socialist mayors. His term was 1948–1960. Also, he was the Socialist Party USA’s presidential nominee in 1976, getting on ten state ballots. He is the last Socialist Party candidate to be elected mayor of a large American city.

I got to meet him and speak with him on a few occasions, usually at the annual Socialist Party picnic in Milwaukee.

When I learned that Racine once had a socialist mayor, he told me that that guy was something of a crook, alas.

One thing to keep in mind, Frank couldn’t just freely “socialisticize” Milwaukee during his term. He had to work with the city council with its non-socialist members.

I wrote him a letter asking, in essence, how he “got away” with being Milwaukee’s socialist mayor during the time of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

He typed out this reply for me on Socialist Party of Wisconsin letterhead on June 3, 1996:

Dear Mark:

Concerning your letter of May 31 last inquiring about how I was able to serve as Milwaukee’s Socialist Mayor during some of the years the Senator was in office, let me say that my elections were based on a written platform of the then Municipal Enterprise Committee. The Municipal Enterprise Committee (now the Public Enterprise Committee), was an organization composed bf Socialists, liberal Democrats and Progressive Republicans with a strong element of organized labor people. This group and its platform were suffi­ciently acceptable to the voters of Milwaukee that people of reactionary views and under corporate influence could not prevail in three different elections. These elections were in 1948, 1952, and 1956.

In his early years, Sen. McCarthy had some elements of liberalism in him. He was, for example, interested in supporting veterans public housing, It was only after 1952 that he became interested in using the Communist movement of the United States as a target. Unfortunately, he did not know much about this movement and broadened it into a general attack even on his own friends in the U.S. Army. The Senator also did not generally attack people in Wisconsin, but there were many people in Wisconsin who opposed him, and several of us, knowing him personally, were mystified how any one nationally or internationally could take him seriously.

The program of the Municipal Enterprise Committee promoted public initiative in houslng, transportation, civil rights, cultural development, efficient municipal operations, better conditions for workers and so on. All of these were challenged both in the 1948 and 1956 municipal elections, but the program of the MEC prevailed.

Cooperatively,
/s/ Frank Zeidler

———=———

I think the idea of the United Nations is a most worthy one, but its effectiveness has long been hamstrung by it having a Security Council, making some nations are more equal than others.

The five permanent members hold veto power over UN resolutions, allowing a permanent member to block adoption of a resolution.

In the early years, the Soviet Union was the record holder for vetoes.

However, since the early 1970s, the United States has been the most frequent user of the veto power.

It was little known that the late Rep. Henry Gonzalez of Texas sought to impeach President George H. W. Bush for his taking the U.S. into war with Iraq in 1991.

I wrote him seeking information on his sadly failed effort.

This was from his reply in his letter of April 25, 1991 to me:

“…The second basis for my Resolution is that the President violated the United Nations Charter and other laws in bribing and threatening U.N. Security Council members into voting for the use of force in the Middle East. This is clear: Egypt’s $7 billion debt to us was “forgiven”; China was promised $140 million; over $7 billion was promised to the Soviet Union; Zaire was promised military assistance and partial forgiveness of its debt; Saudi Arabia was promised at least $12 billion in arms; Yemen was threatened with the termination of support; and the United States finally paid off $187 million of its debt to the United Nations….”

So this is how G.H.W. Bush “engineered” United Nations backing for his war.

I found it rather eye-opening, and, in terms of the U.N., pretty damn disappointing.

Seems the U.N. “makes sausage” too.

And not only that, this article says:

“The United Nations, like many labyrinthine orders, has proven to be impenetrable , bureaucratic and dispiriting.  For years, it has been dealing with a range of conduct issues regarding UN personnel and, for want of a better term, the workplace.  Over that time, it has also sought to keep such misbehaviour, and in some cases blatant criminality, concealed, preferring to focus the ire upon those who spill the beans [i.e., whistleblowers].”

———=———

Opinions that follow are not necessarily at all the views of ArtRoot, the Racine Literacy Council, nor the generous grant funders, the Osborne & Scekic Family Foundation, but are instead entirely my own.

As a pacifist, I can hardly condone Putin’s attack on Ukraine (even though Noam Chomsky, others, and I think he was provoked; Massachusetts Peace Action says that former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder reported August 2 that Putin wants a negotiated settlement, whereas Biden last week announced a further $3 billion in military aid and announced no new diplomatic initiatives; the Biden administration and Congress are silent about this Ukraine death list which includes Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters).

In comparison, how much U.S. outrage did the following action on the part of China elicit? Certainly it should have, for the crimes against Tibet continue to this day. I guess Tibet is not a bread basket, has no oil, nor is strategically located such as for a pipeline, and the people don’t “look like us.”

China annexed Tibet in 1950. Although the estimates vary considerably, it is believed that up to one million Tibetan natives have been killed by the Chinese to suppress their demand for freedom. As the Tibetans are highly religious by nature, the Chinese have methodically targeted their places of worship and learning with a vengeance. Over 6,000 monasteries have been destroyed or ransacked. Damage done to Tibet’s relics, heritage and architecture has been truly horrendous; and beyond redemption.

Tibet has been amalgamated in China as Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). It is autonomous only in name; the Chinese government exercises total and unbridled control. The locals have no say. 

The following from Wikipedia is perhaps the only good thing the CIA ever did (but not for high ideals as it turns out):

At the outset of the 1959 Tibetan uprising, fearing for his life, the Dalai Lama and his retinue fled Tibet with the help of the CIA‘s Special Activities Division.

In October 1998, the Dalai Lama’s administration acknowledged that it received $1.7 million a year in the 1960s from the U.S. government through a Central Intelligence Agency program. When asked by CIA officer John Kenneth Knaus in 1995 to comment on the CIA Tibetan program, the Dalai Lama replied that though it helped the morale of those resisting the Chinese, “thousands of lives were lost in the resistance” and further, that “the U.S. Government had involved itself in his country’s affairs not to help Tibet but only as a Cold War tactic to challenge the Chinese.”

The Dalai Lama’s administration’s reception of CIA funding has become one of the grounds for some state-run Chinese newspapers to discredit him along with the Tibetan independence movement.

In his autobiography Freedom in Exile, the Dalai Lama criticized the CIA again for supporting the Tibetan independence movement “not because they (the CIA) cared about Tibetan independence, but as part of their worldwide efforts to destabilize all communist governments.”

In 1999, the Dalai Lama said that the CIA Tibetan program had been harmful for Tibet because it was primarily aimed at serving American interests, and “once the American policy toward China changed, they stopped their help.”

———=———

Both the war in Ukraine and Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen are serving as golden opportunities for U.S. arms merchants to make money.

Peace activist David Swanson points out:

“Every single Member of Congress is willing to let Yemeni children die” and concludes “There is no pro-peace Congress Member. The species is extinct.”

These 535 men and women are the representatives of the people of the United States of America? Where is the Squad?

Maybe their short work-week is the problem with no time for them to care.

Nader writes: “Even when Congress is in session [not in recess], Senators and Representatives usually work a three-day week – Tuesdays to Thursdays – with time to rush to nearby campaign offices and dial for campaign dollars.”

Back in 1969, Mr. Lennon wrote a musically-catchy song about peace.

All we keep saying is give peace a chance.

The End.

Next week (subject to change): A Story about Roodi, UFOs, The Bible

Boilerplate: As part of my community project as Racine Writer in Residence, I hereby invite Racine-area people to send me prose or poems of 250 words or less for me to consider for inclusion in my posts as a “guest appearance.” So far, there have been no responses(!). So, former Racine Writers in Residence, I want to explicitly include you in this invitation. If you want, also send a photo and a very short “bio.” You will retain the copyright for the material you submit. Send to m.mk at att.net with “Racine WiR” in the subject line. Thank you.

Don’t hide your light under a bushel-sized basket; it is recommended that you let it sheen.