“When humans created a computer with the ability to collect information and learn from it, they signed the death warrant of mankind”
Sister Becca the Finite

In 1965 Frank Herbert had a book published entitled, Dune. I came across the book at the Ft. Lewis base library in Tillacum Washington at the age of fifteen. An avid reader of science fiction I picked up the book and could not put it down. The character development was phenomenal and the story line was unbeknownst to me, prophetic. A brief synopsis follows.

Humankind has spread to the stars, but rather than relying on technology and machinery per se computers, genetically modified humans pilot and man the space vessels. Man is ruled by an Imperium, headed by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam, of House Corrino. Space travel is controlled by the Guild Navigators, genetically altered humans who plot courses through the Space continuum without computerized technology by using the cinnamon mélange spice. The Spice, a potent addictive spatial psychoactive drug is found on only one planet, Dune. This planet is a desert world populated by a native people called the Fremen. The Fremen are deep desert dwellers and wear a device called a stillsuit, the totally recycles body fluid. Water is such a precious revered substance that a dead Fremen’s water is given to the tribe. It is added to the tribal water pool at their sietch, or village. There are ongoing political military struggles over the spice. No one except the Fremen know the connection between the Spice, water and the giant desert worms. Into this maelstrom comes the Atreides family and the boy Paul. The Zensunni beliefs of the Fremen are the prophetic part of this story.

Paul Atreides flees into the desert after his father Leto is assassinated. The Fremen shelter him after he takes the spice and has prophetic visions that fit the Fremen beliefs. Here is where the language of the book takes on a scary prophetic note. Paul is renamed Mau Dib, (the Madhi) the expected one. His faithful militant warriors are called Fedaykeen, death warriors, the fedayeen mujahideen. Mau Did launches a Jihad, holy war, against the Imperium and its contracted soldiers, the Sardauker. His strategy is based around control of the Spice(Oil). He states, “He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing”

Forty years ago Frank Herbert wrote the future. We are waging war against mujahideen led by a Madhi army over oil(the spice). Water is becoming more and more valuable and scarcer. A contractor army is being used to install puppet rulers. Part of his Dune history is the revolt against the machines. The Butlerian Jihad was a reaction to AI (artificial intelligence) computers enslaving humanity. Today computers and adjunct technology, cell phones I-pods, blackberrys and I phones are taking away our livelihoods and our souls.

Attention must be paid to what we are doing to ourselves as a people. Meaningful work is being destroyed by technology. Computers take jobs away, they don’t create them. A Jihad against the machines will happen unless we can reach a balance. Books and libraries will disappear unless we say no. War will go on forever unless we say no.

Dave Ionno
Each breath carries the risk that there may not be another one
Ancient saying

Tiger, tiger burning bright in the forest of the night

Two big stories broke this week on May day. Osama bin Laden, the Frankenstein creation of the United States military and intelligence operatives, was killed and then made to disappear. DC Comics in the newest issue of Superman has the Man of Steel, the believer in Truth, Justice and the American Way going before the United Nations to renounce his US citizenship. What the anvil, what the hammer… tension, apprehension and dissension have begun.

Osama bin Laden was a weapon we developed and utilized in the first Afghan war waged by the Soviet Union from 1979-1989. We supplied AK-47’s, Stinger missiles and built the Tora Bora base for Osama and the Mujihideen rebels. Mullah Omar, Taliban leader was also armed and supported by the US intelligence community, the CIA and the Mother Company (Oil cartel and Wall Street). They turned the Soviet adventure into a version of the US debacle in Viet Nam. After the Soviets left our monster killer had no one to terrify. A reason was needed, a cause, a crusade to push the American people into another war. Thus was created the mass destruction of 9/11. The first taste of total war on American soil since the Civil War burned into the American psyche. Some Viet Nam veterans said amongst ourselves, welcome to the war America. Thus it began again.

Superman, an alien, raised as an all American boy by the Kent family was a hero to all of us as children immersed in the comic book genre. He stood for Truth, Justice and the American way and possessed of superhuman strength, due to his alien birth on Krypton, fought for America. I feel I know why Superman would renounce his US citizenship, and justly so. As myself and other Viet Nam veterans have revealed we went to war and remained at war with ourselves over what we had done, seen and let happen. Perhaps Superman went to war for America, as an American fighting man and came home one day and realized he had become something other, a human being.

Supongamos, mi hijos, suppose this my children, Superman renounces his US citizenship becomes a world citizen and seizes Osama bin Laden to bring him to trial before the World Court at the Hague for crimes against humanity. The United States should have brought Osama to trial at the World Court just like the Nazi war lords and Milosevich. This would have been the right and just thing to do. But we could not risk that Osama would tell all that he knew about what we did in Afghanistan during and after the Soviet adventure. Osama knew too much about CIA involvement in the heroin trade. He knew too much about illegal assassinations and renditons. He knew and would reveal the dark shadow of United States policies. In the end Superman might have to bring our own elected leaders before the World Court in the name of Truth, Justice and the Human way.

Dave Ionno
Viet Nam veteran Against All Wars

Among combat veterans acronyms possess an almost prophetic identity. The very spare lettering conceals the pain and spiritual agony once the meaning is clear. BNR(body not recovered), KIA (killed in action, MIA (missing in action), WIA (wounded in action) and SIW (self inflicted wound) are all standard military connotations dealing with casualties of war. As a combat medic in Viet Nam I had total responsibility for the lives under my hands and none of the power to save them. The current wars are invisible to the American public, just as we the warriors are. This detachment from the killing ground, this abandonment of us is the root cause of the suicide epidemic among returning Iraq and Afghan veterans. It has also re-invoked the ghosts of Viet Nam and as a national remembrance fired the discussion of the Civil War.

The American Civil War (1861-1865) happened as a result of the self inflicted wound crippling the nation at birth. The US Constitution enshrined chattel human slavery in its document and thus knowingly and consciously prepped us for bloody conflict. James Madison, a founding father and President remarked that slavery was a time bomb waiting to explode. The explosion when it came was almost apocalyptic for the nation. The highest loss of life in any American war, 625,000 dead and the first total war waged not only on the battlefield but in the towns and cities. Washington DC, Richmond, Atlanta, Vicksburg and Fredericksburg all were besieged and shelled. On a single day in September of 1862 at Antietam (Sharpsburg) Md. 23,000 Americans killed each other. It is still the greatest loss of life in battle for Americans of any war. Like many Americans raised in the crucible of war time I visited Civil war national battle fields as a child with my family. Gettysburg was one. As an adult and father I took my children to Manassas (Bull Run) and Antietam. These visits were after my own participation in war. It was Bloody Lane at Antietam that conjured the ghosts of Viet Nam. I could hear the cries of the dying and see the faces of the dead I knew. It is these wounds that never heal.

In my unit during my tour in Viet Nam we had several suicides and self inflicted wounds. The SIW’s were done in the attempt to get home, alive. One of my comrades pointed the muzzle of an M-16 at his foot thinking to blow off just the little toe. He failed to remember that the rifle barrel is beveled to cause the round to tumble and inflict maximum damage. It took his foot off. I am confounded by the psychology of maiming oneself to escape untenable conditions, but I have seen it over and over. Pain, physical or spiritual, can cripple our thinking, and thus magnify injury. In order for us to heal there has to be an admission of wrongdoing. We have to look in the mirror of our history and accept that the Constitution was warped and that we need to set it right.

Dave Ionno
Veteran for peace and against all wars

There is an ancient saying, “My son and I against my brother, I, my son and brother against my cousins, my family against my clan, my family and clan against my tribe and my tribe against the world.” DNA loyalty is inherent and feeds the territorial imperative – the Italian in me says it is all about “mi carnal’, my flesh, my blood.

In the US today there are tribal loyalties based on blood and on organizational environment. American families have been separated by distance and by career decisions. The automobile and the interstate system have spread us all over the lower 48 and the world. Hence our tribal loyalties are dispersed.

I belong to a nomadic tribe of camp followers known as “military brats.” We are the sons and daughters of career military lifers. We have lived all over the US and the World on military bases that are the first target of any hostile force. Many of us, like myself, followed our fathers into the service, our tribal culture. It is often easy for us to recognize one another. We have our own patois, a mix of military acronyms and foreign words. We often have a neutral English dialect that defies identification, and use words that are more common in other parts of the country.

I lived 16 years in this tribal culture. I moved every three years when my father received orders. I lived five years in Asia on military reservations in Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan and then Viet Nam as a US Army soldier of the tribe. It was my exposure to Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese culture that altered my tribal beliefs. The war I fought in Viet Nam and the wars we are currently waging in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused me to quit my American self.

I don’t know that I ever accepted the theory of Manifest Destiny in American history, but I absolutely do not believe in American Exceptionalism. These ideologies are arrogant and narcissistic. My country is like unto a man, disfigured by some horrible disease, who regarding his reflection in the mirror, states, “But on me it looks good.”

Trained and conditioned by tribal/nationalistic propaganda I enlisted in the US Army, my tribal band of brothers and I went to Viet Nam as an American fighting man, but had the ill considered grace to come home alive as a human being. That’s why I feel as if I am a stranger in a strange land.

I am currently attending a reaction PTSD veterans group at the Hartford Veteran Center in Rocky Hill. I find much support and understanding by my tribal brothers in arms. It is one place where my rage and pain is shared and understood. I am back there because the new wars have called up the old wars in my soul. And this is what America fails to recognize, that Viet Nam (and all wars) are over, and over and over… forever.

Dave Ionno
Veteran for Peace and Against the Wars

Much has been said about a documentary entitled Waiting for Superman. In this film two economic hit-men, Geoffrey Canada and Michelle Rhee, assault public education and teachers’ unions as the enemy of the children and parents. The producer of the movie describes how he drives by decaying public schools in LA as he ferries his own children to private school, wondering how any one can send their kids into this maelstrom of second class education. I am one of those parents who did not drive by safely ensconced in my bubble of upper class virtue. I sent all four of my daughters to neighborhood schools in Hartford because that is what I believe in and what I could afford as a struggling working class union member. I am a combat veteran of Viet Nam and the reason I enlisted and volunteered for Viet Nam is a direct result of attending public schools and learning and living the democratic virtues of this country with the people I live with.

Ever since the Reagan years there has been a rising drum beat against unions in general and teachers in particular. I have spent years coming before the Hartford Board of Education to support comprehensive public education that includes Art, Music, Sports and the total curriculum of Liberal Arts and Sciences. I have watched as successive Superintendants and Boards have ripped the curriculum to shreds and with the assistance of misguided and selfish parent advocates blamed the teachers and school staff for the failures of their children. This poisonous and assaultive atmosphere is like Kryptonite placed as an IED or booby trap for your Superman. I have never been waiting for a superman to save me or my children. I am responsible for their earliest education and they are responsible for learning and behaving in school.

The true indictment of this movie is of the lottery system. Your charter magnet theme based schools are a charade. A Wizard of Oz contraption that is deceptive. You are now busing kids all over the city and the buses are less than half full. Children and parents wait years for a lottery pick. These schools are still public schools paid for by homeowners and taxpayers. Why haven’t you told parents that they can demand attendance for their child in the local district school they live near? Why are you having separate graduations at Hartford Public High School instead of a class graduation? It is because you have laid Kryptonite in ambush. I hope Superman doesn’t come, because you will kill him if he does as you have destroyed and poisoned public education.

Dave Ionno
Parent and proud union member

“Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.”
- Saying attributed to the Old Man of the Mountain, leader of the assassins, the Hashishin

The events in Manchester Ct. at Hartford Distributors on August 3rd and what happened on September 11th in New York are bound together by a history of violence. The history in question is the past history of this nation, my nation, America. Born out of Revolutionary War and having waged the longest guerrilla war against the native indigenous people, 300+ years, we were born out of violence. As a young male during the 50’s and 60’s, Viet Nam was where I was going. I was raised inside the war machine as a military dependent (Army brat) for 14 years and on my 18th birthday in 1969 enlisted and volunteered for Viet Nam. I was born and bred for war, fed a daily diet of war programs disguised as high school sports. Filled with pride in our always victorious results we were suckled at the teats of wolves on the milk of violence.

This early psychological conditioning has been augmented by the use of even more intrusive and ubiquitous technology, the Internet, cell phones, i-pods and Black Berry’s. War games and interactive video have taught the bravery of being out of range and fed the vicarious hunger of voyeur killers. Americans have been conditioned to respond to any threat, real or perceived with violence.

There is a correlation between the rise in violent actions within society and the return to society of millions of veterans bringing their wars home with them. Civil society is pressured when our leaders respond with military actions by stoking fear and paranoia. Fear and suspicion is visible in every workplace, security officers are now the fastest growing career and the Office of Homeland Security by its very title reflects that paranoia. Do not think that our children do not see how we respond. They watch us and emulate us.

The Teeth of the Dragon is a reference to mythology. The Greek Jason of Argonaut and Golden Fleece fame, was tested by the King of Colchis. He was given the ensorcelled teeth of a dragon to plant on a field of battle. From the bloody soil sprang full grown warriors that he must then destroy. The test required violent response to violence conceived. This is the never-ending forever war that leaders of our nation nurture. It is replicated in society at large. One of my brothers-in –arms from Viet Nam says it succinctly, “What you do, you become.”

Dave Ionno
Veteran for Peace and Against the Wars