Direct Action: An Historical Novel
changing the world – one arrest at a time!
Rumor: Halliburton equipment worth $7 million was found in the nefarious hands of our mortal enemy, Russia!!
Truth: The cache was two old Navy toilet seats and a used Bible missing all the best parts. The $7 million was the amount Halliburton had charged the US Govt for said equipment.
UK Guardian Story – click here
Image courtesy Home Depot – the nation’s #1 news source!
Russia’s Roscosmos space agency reported this week that its Luna 25 lunar mission had “ceased its existence as a result of a collision with the lunar surface.”
Phew! For a moment there I thought it had crash landed.
The whole thing reminded me of the Monty Python Parrot Sketch.
Mr. Praline: ‘Ello, I wish to register a complaint.
Roscosmos Owner: We’re closin’ for lunch.
Mr. Praline: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this Luna 25 rocket I purchased not half an hour ago from Roscosmos.
Owner: Oh yes, the, uh, the Luna 25… What’s, uh… What’s wrong with it?
Mr. Praline: I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, my lad. It’s dead, that’s what’s wrong with it!
Owner: No, no, it’s uh,…it’s resting.
Mr. Praline: Look, matey, I know a dead rocket when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.
Owner: No no it’s not dead, it’s restin’! Remarkable rocket, the Luna 25, isn’t it? Beautiful landing gear!
Mr. Praline: The landing gear don’t enter into it. It’s stone dead.
Owner: Nononono, no, no! There, it moved!
Mr. Praline: No, it didn’t, that was you hitting the launching pad!
Owner: I never!!
Mr. Praline: Yes, you did!
Owner: I never, never did anything…
Mr. Praline: (yelling and hitting the launching pad repeatedly) ‘ELLO LUNA!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o’clock blast off call!
(Takes rocket and thumps it on the launching pad. Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.)
Mr. Praline: Now that’s what I call a dead rocket.
Owner: No, no….. No, it’s stunned!
Mr. Praline: STUNNED?!?
Owner: Yeah! You stunned it, just as it was starting up! Luna 25 stuns easily, sir.
Mr. Praline: Um…now look…now look, mate, I’ve definitely ‘ad enough of this. That rocket is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not ‘alf an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it bein’ tired and shagged out from all its testing!
Owner: Well, it’s…it’s, ah…probably pining for the Kremlin!
Mr. Praline: PININ’ for the KREMLIN?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that? Look, why did it fall flat on its nose the moment I got it home?
Owner: The Luna 25 rests on its nose! Remarkable rocket, isn’t it, squire? Lovely nosecone!
Mr. Praline: Look, I took the liberty of examining that rocket when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been standing on the launch pad in the first place was that it had been NAILED there.
(pause)
Owner: Well, o’course it was nailed there! If I hadn’t nailed that rocket down, it would have instantly blasted off! VOOM! Feeweeweewee!
Mr. Praline: VOOM?!? Mate, this rocket wouldn’t “voom” if you put four million volts through it! It’s bleedin’ demised!
Owner: No no! It’s pining for the Kremlin!
Mr. Praline: It’s not pinin’! It’s passed on! This rocket is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet its maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch it’d be pushing up daisies! Its metabolic processes are now ‘istory! It’s off the twig! It’s kicked the bucket, it’s shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-ROCKET!!
Monty Python Parrot Sketch – click here
Image courtesy SpaceFlightNow.com
My long-labored Tarot novel – A Fool Such As I – is complete at last!
A Fool Such As I is a loving deconstruction of all things magical. Imagine a world where everything from the police to the amusement park is pagan!
Click here for links to print and kindle versions – or get a free PDF of the book!
Signed/inscribed copies ($25 US, $50 outside the US) benefit Reclaiming Quarterly and support copy-editing and chants production.
Here’s the back-cover blurb of A Fool Such As I
The owner of Arcane Wisdom Magicke Shoppe is dead. His revolutionary new deck, the Trismegistus Meister Tarot, is missing.
Could the culprit be one of the locals on Oracle Street? Perhaps gnostic sage Madame Bluebloodsky? Self-promoting raconteur Alabaster Crockley? Or maybe feminist maven Wendy Womansdaughter, owner of the Wiccan Wonderland?
Did the shifty mountebank from the esoteric street faire have a hand? And what about millionaire Cornelius De Roquefort, founder of the Headstone Eclectic Metaphysical Outlet chain?
Will the Universal Pan-Pagan Interfaith Council – UPPIC, the highest authority in the brave new Pagan world of the Great Return – succeed in hushing up the affair?
Worse yet, is UPPIC looking for a convenient scapegoat?
Join detective and resident custodian Jeff Harrison as he immerses himself in the minutiae of Tarot, taxing all of his intuitive and janitorial skills in a desperate attempt to clean up the messy affair – before he faces trial by ordeal!
Click here for links to print and kindle versions – or get a free PDF of the book!
Over 1000 people were arrested on the day Putin announced widespread conscription and a broadening of the war against Ukraine.
Photo Getty News Service – September 2022
Bush Jr “mis-speaks” and decries his own brutal invasion of Iraq. Truth does tend to come out…
Photo NPR.
In case you missed the thrilling news, a group – or more likely a single, friendless man calling themselves “Jane” – fire-bombed an anti-abortion office in Wisconsin.
Is this our plan for changing the world? Not mass action. Not electoral organizing. No – we need lone heroes to save us.
Nothing says “I have no faith in my fellow citizens” like running off by yourself and setting off a bomb. Or a fire. Or a rock through a window.
This isn’t about ethics. It’s about strategy. You know, like having a plan and finding other people to work with. Damn hard, isn’t it?
You might actually have to talk to other people who don’t entirely agree with you. You might actually have to reach consensus.
And guess what? You don’t get to be the hero. Sorry, “Jane” – I’m outing you as a white male techie who hates your life, has no friends, and dreams of being a hero.
Looks like you failed.
In a widely anticipated new opinion poll, Americans of most races and ages are whinier than they were in 2022.
The Whine Index now sits just below its all-time high during the Trump Administration, and is expected to be broken during the coming election cycle.
Our old activist comrade and my close friend Steve Nadel passed away in early December 2021. Steve was 68, and had been in good health until a stroke in October.
Here’s a tribute from the Bay Area Sunflower Alliance
In my circles, Steve marched with Teen Earth Magic in the 2011 Solstice in the Streets event. We traveled together to Nevada Test Site several times for actions in the 1980s. He helped defend Peoples Park in the 1990s, and organized around Richmond Oil Refinery in recent years. He was also the Funky Nixons’ number one roadie!
Some folks from the old days knew Steve from Livermore Action Group, a 1980s Bay Area anti-nuke and anti-intervention coalition. The character Mort in my book Direct Action is based on Steve – http://DirectAction.org/book
Those who worked with him regarded Steve as one of the sharpest and clearest thinkers we ever met. I wish we’d pressed him to write more. He co-edited Direct Action newspaper in the 1980s and GroundWork magazine in the 1990s – click for back issues.
He consistently called old friends together for holiday BBQs, and hosted a Monty Python-infused party each year at Thanksgiving.
He’ll be missed by friends and by many on the activist front.
What is remembered lives – Steve Nadel, presenté!
– by George Franklin/Luke Hauser
Starhawk’s classic eco-fable for all ages – read by Georgie Craig. With surrealistic illustrations by Lindy Kehoe.
Youtube – with all of the pictures!
In the heart of the last magic forest lives the last wild witch…
Will the children of the perfect town find their inner power and let a little magic into everyone’s lives?
History of Nonviolent Direct Action in the US: https://youtu.be/s6XTNv2Caus
A brief excursion through 200 years of US activism, with a focus on post-1980 nonviolent activism.
I originally made this video in connection with my book “Direct Action,” and updated it following the Fall 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
It offers one version of the nonviolent activist lineage that helped shape today’s protest movements.
– George Franklin aka Luke Hauser aka…
