More on Ginsberg.  I remember during the book signing  a couple of men walking around the Village Green Book store who appeared very out of place and had that faint aroma of police of some sort. At the time I wondered why anyone would be remotely interested in a dying old poet.  Of course  they also could have been employed for security by the store or Ginsberg.

Every modern lyricist from Dylan to  50 Cent  to the Stooges     should understand the influence that Ginsberg has had on their words.

Links for info on Allen Ginsberg,

Wiki
The Allen Ginsberg Project
List of published work
Howl

I have been scanning old negatives and found some negatives of Allen Ginsberg. I took these photos at a book signing at the Village Green bookstore in Rochester NY in the fall of 1996.  Ginsberg  died April 5,  1997

Great video of Matt dancing all over the world 

Bob Dylan- It's Alright Ma ( I'm Only Bleeding)

Anti-Semitism is so rife  at the BBC it is not longer a legitimate  news organization. The  BBC has demonstrated that when it comes to Israel distortion and lies substitute facts. The BBC can not acknowledge that Brown met Peres in the capital of Israel, Jerusalem, because it can not acknowledge Jerusalem is the capital so it makes something up. In Britain anti-Semitism creates a fantasy world where Tel  Aviv is the capital and Abbas and Hamas  did not celebrate and honor the child killer Kuntar.

From the BBC
Brown in £30m Palestinian pledge

Gordon Brown has announced £30m (38m euros; $60m) of additional financial support for the Palestinian Authority (PA), on a visit to the West bank.

The prime minister also promised further support in training the Palestinian police, after talks with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

Mr Brown met Mr Abbas in Bethlehem after talks in Tel Aviv with Israeli President Shimon Peres.

The trip follows an earlier visit by Mr Brown to Iraq.

The money pledged by the prime minister is part of ongoing financial backing for economic and social development in the territories.

Mr Brown said the assistance would help the "great entrepreneurial flair" of the Palestinian people come alive.

There is an email campaign to the  UN to bring attention to Bob Levinson who disappeared in Iran in March 2007

This is the link   Bob Levinsons' email Campaign 

More in info

Press Statement
Sean McCormack, Spokesman
Washington, DC
July 14, 2008

American Citizen Robert Levinson Still Missing in Iran

Christine Levinson, wife of American citizen Robert Levinson, who disappeared while visiting Iran’s Kish Island in March 2007, met today with Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns to discuss her husband’s case.

Mr. Levinson, a father of seven with a second grandchild on the way, has now been missing for sixteen months. We still do not have definitive information about his welfare or whereabouts. Mr. Levinson’s wife and son visited Iran in December 2007 in an effort to gather information about his disappearance and to press the Iranian government on his case. While the Iranian authorities guaranteed the security of the family during their journey, they provided few details from their investigation.

We once again urge Tehran to share any and all information the Iranian authorities have uncovered about the Levinson case, and we ask anyone else who may have information about the case to contact us or the Levinson family.

2008/576

Released on July 14, 2008

 

I just read an article on Slate by Ron Rosenbaum titled " The Israel Lobby and the Second Holocast Debate"  from Sept. 19, 2007 which discusses the book by Mearsheimer and Walt and the psychologically  impact of the continued call for the destruction of Israel by its neighbors. An concept which Rosenbaum argues that in the book they fail to  acknowledge the historical memory of another time and place where others were calling for the destruction of Jews.

 

an excerpt  from from this article  

And—here's the crux—it does not seem to occur to Mearsheimer and Walt that American Jews might be fearful not for themselves, but for their imperiled brethren in Israel. It apparently requires too much of a leap for them to make that connection. And that is what the moral imagination is about: the ability to make connections to the souls of other people, to imagine what it might be like for a people who had lost 6 million to be faced with daily threats to their existence—the threat of a second Holocaust—in the place where they sought refuge. Otherwise, without a moral imagination, one construes the Israel lobby as merely about power and self-aggrandizement.

It seems to me there are many Jews and Israelis who have the moral imagination to be distressed by the plight of the Palestinians. However, Mearsheimer and Walt neglect the fact that Israeli Jews and American supporters of Israel might be motivated by historical memory. By the way the world stood by and allowed the slaughter of 6 million Jews by Hitler. And by the way the current climate of demonizing Israel, and delegitimizing it by means of a double standard, sets the stage for the world to stand by once again, with a "well they sort of deserved it" shrug, when a second Holocaust looms 

Lebanon which at one time had the reputation of being civilized, Beirut was once called the the Paris of the MidEast,  has become degraded  by an ideology so vile that it gave a state welcome to a man who bashed in a child head with a rifle butt. Can you but wonder that to many it feels like 1936, when people make excuses and explanation for acts of brutality... 

We even have an Olympics  this year. 

Different people, different places, different rhetoric, but same motivation and once against the question is will Jews be caught in the crossfire? 

Heroes

Einat, Danny and Yael Haran

Today Israel is releasing Samir Kunter to Lebanon where he will be hailed a hero, given parades and receive an official state welcome by Prime Minister Faud Saniora and President Gen. Michel Suleiman of Lebanon. And what heroic act did Kunter do to deserve the adoration of his country?

Kuntar along with four other 'militants' (the word the Guardian used) sailed from Lebanon to the coast at Nahariya on a rubber dinghy and then attacked an apartment block.

They broke into a flat and dragged out a man, Danny Haran, and his four-year-old daughter Einat.  Kuntar shot Danny Haran in the back and then bludgeoned four old Einat to death with the butt of his rifle. Haran's wife, Smadar, hid in their bedroom with their second daughter, Yael, who was two, but as she tried to silence the child's cries, she accidentally smothered Yael.

 This is Lebanon's idea of a hero, a man who beats a four year old girl to death with the butt of his rifle. For anybody with any confusion about right and wrong and good and evil in the mideast  you should consider this story.

It is Smadar Haran who is the true hero, who rose above her own personal pain of having lost her family to not oppose this release.  I am unsure if I could have done this 'thing' and I am unsure if it was right but I am proud of having a relationship to a people who value each other so much that they would take this action on the slim chance that young men who were stolen just might be returned alive. 

The Lebanese government has declared Wednesday, July,16, 2008, a national holiday to celebrate the liberation of Sami Kuntar from the jails of the Israelis. 

From an article by Rabbi Shraga Simmons,  Heroes on the Borders

Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam, the revered Klausenberger Rebbe, was savagely beaten by a Nazi with crushing, deadly blows. As the rabbi was sprawled on the ground, bleeding from his head, the Nazi thrust his jackboot into the rabbi's chest and mockingly sneered: "So tell me, how does it now feel to be a Jew?"

Rabbi Halberstam looked up calmly and said, "I'd much rather be a Jew on the receiving end of this torture, than to be a German administering it."

The Mighty Quinn

Tom Waits The House Where Nobody Lives