Kent State 1970

Forty-three years ago John Filo snapped an iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio, a fourteen-year-old runaway, kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller after he was shot dead by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970.

I was 17.

Richard Nixon had been elected President in 1968, promising to end the Vietnam War.

"The war showed no signs of going away as the Pentagon instituted a draft lottery and American troops massacred My Lai. In Late-April of 1970 President Nixon gave to go-ahead to an invasion of Cambodia after staging a coup in that neutral country with the blessing of Henry Kissinger.

Thousands of protesters hit the streets across America and then it was hundreds of thousands.

My all-boys Catholic high school shut down, so that its students could demonstrate in Boston Commons.

Washington was under siege.

College campuses across the nation were closed by the protests.

At Kent State hundreds of students gathered to witness one student burn his draft card.

That evening after the closing of a bar bikers, students, and transient people broke the glass windows of a bank. Police confronted the mob and the town mayor ordered the closure of all the bars leading to an escalation of violence, but tear gas persuaded the mob to retreat into the campus.

The next day Governor Jim Rhodes ordered in the National Guard after hearing of threats to destroy the college and town. The protesters responded to the escalation by burning down the ROTC office and preventing firemen from saving the building.

Governor Rhodes was furious.

""We've seen here at the city of Kent especially, probably the most vicious form of campus oriented violence yet perpetrated by dissident groups. They make definite plans of burning, destroying, and throwing rocks at police, and at the National Guard and the Highway Patrol. This is when we're going to use every part of the law enforcement agency of Ohio to drive them out of Kent. We are going to eradicate the problem. We're not going to treat the symptoms. And these people just move from one campus to the other and terrorize the community. They're worse than the brown shirts and the communist element and also the night riders and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America. Now I want to say this. They are not going to take over the campus. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America."

On May 4 the bloodshed of Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos came home to America.

Companies A and C, 1/145th Infantry and Troop G of the 2/107th Armored Cavalry, Ohio National Guard lowered their M-1 rifles and shot into the rock-throwing crowd. Only 29 of the 79 discharged their weapons, but four students lay dead and nine were wounded.

The war continued another five years.

Even with four dead in Ohio.

Fuck Henry Kissinger.

Bring the war criminal to justice.

"To hear FOUR DEAD IN OHIO, please go to the following URL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnOoNM0U6oc

Rob The Rich

I know rich people.

They live mostly in Palm Beach, Millbrook, or the Upper Easts Side of Manhattan, because they feel safe in those wealthy enclaves, however armed gunman invaded a Tribeca condo a little after dark. One of the pair put a 9mm to the head of the young owner.

"Where's the safe?"

The young man told them without hesitation. He was worth multi-millions.

"What's the combination?"

Herman gave it up without a struggle.

They got $90,000 and left Herman tied to the chair. His wife found him an hour later. He got up and opened a bottle of wine.

"Aren't you calling the police?"

"What for?"

He didn't need the NYPD asking any questions and Herman phoned me later to ask, "Did I do the right thing?"

"Someone knew you had the money in the safe. Someone knew why." I wasn't asking any questions. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, but my wife is freaked."

"Are you going to tell her the truth?"

"No." And he wasn't telling me it either.

We are entering a time that I never thought I would see again.

1975 with all of America broke and people willing to take chances. but this time is will be worst, so you rich people, when Obama requests more taxes, don't say nothing or else you could end up like the Russian aristocrats in 1919 and that was a tough year for the rich..

Give and give often or else who'll meet Herman's friends. They number in the millions and there is no where safe in a revolution, unless it's in Cindy Crawford's arms.

The Dearth of Wealth

No one in the USA will rebel until they surrender their dream of instant wealth.

There are only three ways of becoming rich.

1.) birth
2.) marriage
3.) theft

And theft is only acceptable amongst the rich

For a poor man to steal a loaf of bread is a felony.

To launder millions for a corporation was a movie fantasy for the middle class aspiring to be a Palm Beach heir or heiress.

It is time for people everywhere to reject the illusion of wealth.

Fast cars, beautiful women, and big houses are a hoax.

The car needs a mechanic.

For every beautiful woman there is a man down the street who is tired of fucking her and vice versa even more so.

Big houses are too much work without help and who can get good help in the days of no slavery.

Time to think of a more simple existence.

A loaf of bread and a bottle of wine beneath the bough of a tree. Paradise anow - Omar Khayyam

That works for me.

I have an illustrated copy of Khayyam's Rubaiyat.

Jannah is the Sufi assassin hashish paradise.

"One day in paradise is considered equal to a thousand days on earth. Palaces are made from bricks of gold, silver, pearls, among other things. Traditions also note the presence of horses and camels of "dazzling whiteness", along with other creatures. Large trees are described, mountains made of musk, between which rivers flow in valleys of pearl and ruby."

According to the Koran and there will be wine served by immortal youth.

The quaffs will not grant drunkenness or incited fighting.

Obviously we Irish will not be going to Jannah.

Our home for eternity is Avalon.

Beer and whiskey forever.

Born To Be A Billionaire

Summer was the low season on Palm Beach. The seaside mansions were battened down for the hurricanes of August and September. The palm-lined avenues were devoid of Bentleys. The tables of the chic restaurants were wide open from Bice to Amici and the Leopard Bar was empty at 5pm. There was no happy hour at the Colony Hotel.

In June of 2008 I was writing ALMOST WICKED in the spacious dining room of a Spanish mansion. The three glass doors opened onto a courtyard, once filled with the carriages serving the Woolworth estate. That family had moved into humbler surroundings.

Too many kids.

Too little fortune.

Same as me.

No money, although enough to keep my families in Thailand fed, while I hide my destitution from the pitiless mercy of the rich, for nothing unsettled the wealthy more than the other classes requesting a loan no matter how small the amount.

One afternoon I was standing in front of Graf Jewelers, wondering how much they were asking for the flawless D diamond in the window. I had a client for a 3-carat stone. He was the manager of a luxury car dealership in West Palm Beach. His girlfriend had been married twice. The diamond ring in the Graf display was out of his price range even on 47th Street in Manhattan's Diamond District where I had sold jewelry for over twenty years.

Graf's front door was open and I started to enter, except a high whining voice caught my ear as did the blind man tapping of an older woman's high heels on the sidewalk.

The accent was Mainline Philadelphia and the age of the bejeweled heiress was of indecipherable decrepitude. Her friend looked ten years younger thanks to a dip in a Botox swimming pool. Neither of them noticed me. I was in the shadows, but I clearly overheard the older one remark about lending money to the non-rich, "They never pay you back, because they think you won't miss it, so why bother giving them anything other than a glass of wine and a good meal."

I stepped out of the shade and she astutely assessed my value within a blink of her rheumy eyes and her scrapping voice dropped nearly to a whisper in fear not so much of revolution or theft, but wary of an interloper hearing her inside game.

If it had been dark I would have stalked her into the Parigi Alley like a hungry dog hankering a snarl at a bag of garbage.

Within Two seconds I could have ripped the diamonds from her chicken-bone fingers. Broad daylight re-instilled my good citizenry and I entered Graf to ask, "How much is that diamond in the window?"

"$150,000." The salesman had seen my eyes on the 3-carat stone.

"Good stone." My boss Manny and I sold the same stone for about $50,000.

"The only one of its kind, but we have bigger."

"I bet you do."

"But nothing smaller."

"I like the three."

"It'll be here for a while."

"It is the season."

"It certainly is."

I bid him a good afternoon.

Both of us knew that I wasn't coming back, for the salesman like the wizened heiress assessed me for what I was, but he possessed a sympathetic graciousness, since he wasn't too far away from me either.

Neither of us were born to be a billionaire and I blinked in the bright sunlight of Worth Avenue.

Summer had a long way to go before I had to leave Palm Beach.

The Flight Of Thieves

Back in 1976 I wrote a screenplay on my Olivetti typewriter. D. Descending was a tale of a reclusive hang-glider recruited by a mysterious female to rob a Manhattan skyscraper. I can't remember what they were trying to steal, but the other day I stood on a billionaire's 5th Avenue penthouse terrace installing bronze lockers for his cashmere pillows. Each one cost $3500, which was a little less than I coined in a month. Inside the apartment several museum-class paintings hung on the living room walls. I calculated them to be worth over a $100 million and called up an art dealer to tell him where I was. Dithers was a hound for the rich and famous. "See anything interesting?" The ex-investment banker and I were trying to sell a Picasso to my clients, a gay couple in Dublin. Dithers' private owned the painting. They were having second thoughts about getting rid their Picasso. It was from 1954. "There's an amazing Rothko." "I know the painting." Its purchase had broken records at auction. "Can you get to it?" "Yes." I looked south. All of Manhattan stretched below me. Such a theft would make the headlines around the world, but I wasn't after infamy. "It's two steps from me." The glass door was open. It was a ten-story drop to 66th Street. "Are you up for this?" "What?" Dithers came from a good Washington family, but money also was tight for the rich these days. "Get a truck and I'll throw out a painting. There's no security." "But they'll catch you." "I know, but you;ll escape with the painting and I'll do the time." I was working blue-collar. There was no chance of getting rich through honesty. "Prison?" "Yes, prison, unless we return it for a ransom. We'll split it 50/50" "I don't know." "I know you don't." The year was 2013. Dithers wasn't a thief. He was a rich kid in his 40s. They had no balls. "Don't worry about it. I was just joking about it. The Rothko is too big to hang in the Fort Greene Observatory." My ceiling was very low. I hung up the phone and admired the painting, then turned around to scan the length of Central Park. The view was free of charge same as a glance at the Rothko. They were both the same to me.

TAKE ME by Peter Nolan Smith

The summer of 1972.

Seal Beach south of LA.

My college friend and I were staying at his cousin's beach house. We liked drinking in the dive bar on the PCH. Fish swan underneath a sheet of glass. We thought that was cool. Both of us were 19.

Two nights before out departure for San Francisco Nick and I approached the Fish Bar.

A Porsche convertible was parked in front with the keys in ignition.

Both of us thought the same thing.

"Take me."
We exchanged a glance and Nick said, "I drive."

"You got out. I drive in."

Someplace on I5 Nick hit 125.

I topped out at 115 on the return.

Twenty minutes later we parked the car in the same spot and walked into the bar.

"Anyone leave their keys in a Porsche?" Nick dangled the keys.

No one said yes, but everyone looked guilty.

We had a couple of beers and left the keys back in the ignition. It was someone else time to joyride that night.

Resist The Rich

Over 400 factory workers were murdered in Bangla Desh by the capitalist terrorism and millions are homeless around the world thanks to the class-cleansing policies of the banks. This country's pillars of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have been destroyed by the rabid accumulation of wealth over the last thirty years under the free market system. There is only two courses of action. International Write-Off day and Resist the Rich.