.......ALL ON THE COVER OF NEWSWEEK

 M. alphons was saying, a few minutes ago, that the US was full of crap and indeed it is but historically it breeds heroes and  Father Daniel Berrigan, SJ,

who died recently, was one of mine.

 I had his book for a long time, America Is Hard To Find but it went down in the Flood, like much else, and I can't even remember what it was about, except America being Hard To Find. 

There were a few bold US radicals at that time: 

before he OD'd in Phil Spector's toilet, crazy-saint Lenny Bruce, well, he perfected the art of How to talk dirty  and influence people.

 I only heard Lenny's records long after his death but he was a profound influence, his raps accenting  much of what appears here.

The late Bill Hicks, too, took up Lenny's cause

and there have been a handful of others, satirists, novelists and lawyers.

Berrrigan's sometime attorney,  William Kunstler, a fierce opponent of the death penalty,

"We have become the charnel house  of the Western world with reference to executions; the next closest to us is the Republic of South Africa." Kunstler, 1996

 defended the Chicago Seven - a bunch of harmless anti-war dopers - as well as those wrongly accused of the Attica Prison riots and Berrigan himself, with his brother and other co-accused, Phil Berrigan, second right, a WW2 vet turned priest, who campaigned into his eighties;

 Kunstler saying that he wasn't a lawyer-for-hire, he only defended those he loved. 

If only the Birmingham Six  and the Guildford Four and the Hilsbro Hundreds had secured such representation. We don't seem to produce that type of lawyer, here. 

Solicitor, 

 

Gareth Peirce of Birnberg and Co, 

was one such, a civil rights lawyer representing, notably, Judith Ward and the Guildford Four but British lawyers who care about their clients are like rocking horse shit, civil rights ones especially, look at Imelda Blair, QC, our most prominent civil rightser. 

 Civil rights lawyer, Imelda, QC.

Gimme me money, that's what I want, yes, from tyrants, yes, from despots and torturers, yes, just gimme money, that's what I want.

Berrigan was a New York Jesuit priest, poet and anti-war activist who became famous for his opposition to the Vietnam War, joining protests, burning draft cards and going to jail, as priests should.  In his later years he campaigned against torture, as priests should 

but it was his legitimising of the anti-Vietnam War protests for which he will be remembered, almost before my time, Berrigan, but for a while he and others like him, in South America,  promised a better Church and a better world. 
Berrigan here, 

 

in old age, campaigning with his niece against his country's torture policy.

 The Noncing Monsignors, though, of Popes John Paul, Benny Nazi

JohnPaul2's Man In Boston, Benny, managed to get the Boston Diocese into Voluntary Protective Bankruptcy before those pesky children could claim compensation.

and Frankie Fray Bentos, they've got things back on track, now, while here at home our insipid, Godlessheathenbastard clergy, 


 
happy to splash holy water on the Tornadoes,  claim Christianity is now antique, almost irrelevant, just one aspect of   FaithCorp, worthless fucking bastards.

It wasn't always crap, M. alphons, the States; once, there was a way to get back home. Where once, though, they had Berrigan, Bruce, the Washington Post, the Black Panthers  and the Yippies to tweak Power's nose they now have  Family Guy. 

America is hard to find