Two years ago NATO launched an illegal and criminal attack upon Serbia, a small country accused of all imaginable modern wickedness. Today, Serbia is pretty much destroyed. Yet, the violence in the Balkans has not abated. In Iraq, we keep bombing very real people as though we were trapshooting. In Israel and Palestine, we leave the strangulation of Palestinian life to its own Israeli fate. And in the U.S. kids keep shooting at each other. This rendition of Swans is dedicated to these issues. Jan Baughman, Alma Hromic, Gregory Elich, Aleksandra Priestfield, and Michael Stowell share their thoughts with you.
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As usual, please read this rendition and then form your own opinion. In the poetry corner another delight from Sandy Lulay.
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Alma A. Hromic: YEAR TWO, P.K.*
Back in the mists of time when the world was only threatening to go insane, back in 1998 - on the auspicious date of June 28, national holy day for all Serbs and the date of the erstwhile Battle of Kosovo some six centuries before, I wrote this poem: More...
Alma Hromic is a novelist and a poet who was born in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia. She is the co-author with R. A. Deckert of Letters from the Fire
Gilles d'Aymery: Two Years and Counting
In May 1940, after months of the "phony war," the German military attacked both Holland and Belgium. From there, the mechanized Blitzkrieg bypassed the supposedly impregnable Maginot Line behind which the French army waited passively. Within one month, on June 13, 1940, the Germans had entered the French capital, Paris. During that short period reigned a state of chaotic confusion. The civilian population was fleeing by rail and road toward the South. Hordes of refugees. . . More...
Gilles d'Aymery is Swans' publisher and editor.
Aleksandra Priestfield: America's Agenda for a New World Order
In January 2001, Congressman Ron Paul went on record as referring to the International Criminal Court (ICC) as "the latest UN outrage". The Congressman slams former president Clinton as having signed the ICC treaty in no more than another snatch at an elusive "legacy", thus, as the Congressman puts it, taking "another step towards imposing global government on US citizens". More...
Aleksandra Priestfield, a writer and an editor, contributes her regular columns to Swans.
Gregory Elich: Personal Journey: A Flight Against The Iraqi Blockade
The boy paced rapidly back and forth, driven by desperation. His mouth, twisted in anguish, produced an expression of such intensity that I could not avert my eyes as I gazed at him through the window of our bus. Only moments before, as we approached the bus that would take us to the airport, we were surrounded, as if from nowhere, by several street peddlers. They were all pre-adolescent boys carrying trays filled with goods, their hopes soaring at the sight of more than 90 Westerners. This was Baghdad, and we were about to return home. More...
Gregory Elich is a long-time peace activist.
Michael W. Stowell: Palestine and Israel
When I contemplate the state of affairs in Palestine and Israel I am faced with the whole of human conflict at its primal level; the human family fighting over a pile of rocks. I'm also faced with a deplorable question; will we destroy our humanity in our quest for ownership of the Earth? More...
Michael W. Stowell is chairperson of the City of Arcata Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Commission, Humboldt County, CA.
Jan Baughman: Children Shooting Children
It was just another schoolyard killing - it's a rare event after all, so no need for alarm. Unless, of course, you were one of the students, the family of the shooter or of the victims, any parent, any teenager, and any caring human being. Anyway, what can we do? We had the protective measures in place, a special program implemented in the wake of Columbine to prepare us all should such tragedy happen again. (It won't happen in our town, of course, but just in case, we'll be prepared...) More...
Jan Baughman is a scientist by profession and Swans' co-editor.
Sandy Lulay: SOMEWHERE
Midnight
Somewhere
A stream flows pink with blood;
A forest screams,
A village burns,
A tear seals a coffin.
More...
An "Original Woodstock Girl," Sandy Lulay is also a "Swans kind of girl" who's been writing poetry since age 10.