Mike Palecek has a way to make serious points about the use and abuse of power by the government using ficition as his medium. He is quite a prolific writer and his website newamericandream.net, which he runs together with Chuck Gregory, and Ben Heine, contains many of them. In fact, if you visit their site, you will see that there are dozens of issues with links to videos and articles you might find nowhere else.
Mike Palecek lives in Sheldon, Iowa with his family. He works at a group home. He has been a federal prisoner for peace. Mike has also worked as a reporter, editor, publisher on small-town newspapers in Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota. The small newspaper Mike & Ruth owned and operated in southeast Minnesota won the “Minnesota Newspaper of the Year Award” from the MNA in 1994 and went out of business later that year. Mike was the Iowa Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000. He received 65,000 votes in a conservative district on an anti-military, anti-prison, pro-immigration platform, even after endorsing Ralph Nader over Al Gore.
www.newamericandream.net and more – Mike Palacek interviewed on “The Real Deal” with Jim Fetzer (31 July 2009)
Journalist, activist, and author Mike Palecek
addresses civil disobedience and how change
can be brought to this country (19 March 2008)
“Guests of the Nation”
Written by Mike Palecek
Art by Russell Brutsche
“Once again, Palecek leads us sleepwalkers through Nightmerica, the twisted beyond corruption conspiracyland of a million fears. Our tour begins in the nooks, crannies, and crawl-spaces necessarily accessed to bring a building down in its footprint.
“Before George W. Bush’s bloody rampage across the world could commence there need be a ‘catalyzing’ event. Enter the crime of the century on the eleventh day of the ninth month of the first year. Palecek goes among the real 9/11 conspirators to prove fiction is no stranger to truth.
“Palecek chronicles better than anyone America’s legion nobodies, shocked, awed, and standing appalled as their president careens around the globe, death and hellfire marking his passage.
“From headless corpses bobbing down the Tigris, to Louisiana’s unidentified ‘floaters,’ Palecek reminds, we’re all little people in this not so brave Neo World; no more citizens, but merely ‘guests’ serving at the pleasure of the president.
— Chris Cook, Gorilla Radio, Vancouver, British Columbia
Art by Michael P. Miller
“I believe one hundred percent that the U.S. orchestrated 9/11 with the help of other agencies around the world. But my blame goes to the United States because it happened in the U.S. There’s people within the U.S. that knew it happened, that planned this to happen. …”
— Bob McIlvaine, father of Robert McIlvaine, Assistant Vice President, Merrill Lynch, WTC North Tower, 106th floor. Former school teacher. Interview by Evan Solomon, CBC News 8/30/06
ONE
Art by Michael P. Miller
“It was an interesting day.”
“Looks like I hit the trifecta.”
“That’s one bad pilot.”
“Today we had our Pearl Harbor.”
— George W. Bush
Boom.
Boom-boom.
In his sleep John saw flashes and explosions, and home movies of blowing on birthday candles,
and then more rapid-fire bursts, and sitting in shop class in his underwear, and burned, stiff bodies.
All the components of an American dream.
Too many bodies.
_____________________
Each year on the first day of class Mr. Shoemaker would name the saws by firing out the fingers
of one hand, the band saw and radial arm saw being half and three-quarters length because of an
ancient band saw accident, or perhaps separate accidents.
_____________________
The bodies were stacking up in the shop area of Mr. Shoemaker’s class, next to the “croshcut shaw,” the band shaw, the radial arm shaw, and the circular shaw.
Each year on the first day of class Mr. Shoemaker would name the saws by firing out the fingers of one hand, the band saw and radial arm saw being half and three-quarters length because of an ancient band saw accident, or perhaps separate accidents.
Outside the class door John smelled the lunchroom and a whiff of Sue McCarthy’s perfume.
He heard the rumble of the changing classes.
He saw Sue sitting in the next row, and since this was a dream he smiled wide and reached over
to pull her hand to his crotch.
John’s hand hit something before reaching Sue.
He opened his eyes and saw his own fingertips touching a knee wearing dark blue pants.
Some sort of tweed?
WTF is tweed?
John uncrossed his legs and sat up in the tight little blue airport seat.
Blood rushed through his body, filling his face and ears.
He looked up and saw three people looking down on him, shoulder to shoulder, all wearing varieties of dark and white, as if three stern Catholic playground monitors had showed up to haul him to time out.
“Are you a terrorist?” said the white-haired man in the middle.
What happened to “with Folgers in your cup”?
He was tall and successful looking, the same as the younger ones, the black-haired man on the right, and the blonde babe on the left.
The young man flipped open a wallet with an FBI identification.
Probably came with the cheap billfold.
John couldn’t believe his eyes. They were really here. Like finally having an alien sighting.
All stern and serious and dark and white.
John sat next to his bag, in the waiting area to board his flight at Kennedy for home after attending the 9/11 Truth anniversary events.
He wore a red and white “Investigate 9/11” T-shirt with the letters and numbers in the shape of the smoking twin towers. He styled fairly new jeans and very new brown Skechers.
The woman agent held in her hands a green flyer that John recognized from the conference.
She pulled it to her waist, gripped it by the edges with her fingertips and held the front toward John.
He nodded.
He knew his name was there as a speaker. One of the first things you learn is you keep track most efficiently from the front of the crowd.
The younger man bent down and squinted to read the button on John’s shirt.
The older man put his hand on his waist, pulling back his coat to reveal a black pistol.
Smooth move.
John still had not spoken.
He consciously noted.
He had heard their voices.
They had not heard mine.
Not that I knew of.
And so I thought that gave me a semblance of control.
“Sir,” said the woman in a deep, beautiful, tough woman voice that was not unnatural.
Her hair was coarse from too much swimming.
Well, too much, that’s not my judgment to make, maybe it was just right, for her.
Nice tits.
Very, very nice.
She stepped in and took me by my underarm in a grip that with just a small change in pressure points could have brought me to my knees.
So would the tits.
Black Haired Boy shook his mane back the way cool kids do and leaned to pick up my bag.
“What have I done?” I said as I rose to stand, trying to sound uninhibited, not perturbed, non-indignant, unafraid, truthful, trustworthy, brave.
Chief White Haired Guy stepped right in. I smelled the cherry Lifesaver in his cheek.
His eyebrows were white and bushy and his face worn.
In his killer cool brown eyes I saw all the way to Quantico and Fred Hampton and Wounded Knee and Dillinger and too many whiskies after golf, four successful kids, a retirement lake home.
“John,” he said. The voice underlined all my assumptions.
You cannot make this stuff up. These guys, when you actually meet them, they walk fully dressed
right out of your midnight imagination.
“John.”
The four of us formed a huddle, surrounded by the eyes and ears now beginning to find us.
Again he showed me the gun, the persuader, a subtle aside.
“We need to visit with you,” said the voice of Marshal Dillon.
He took me by the other arm.
We fell in behind Blacky carrying my grayish bluish bag, uniquely designed for two purposes in life,
same as ol’ Blonde’s ass, to look good and fit into a tight space.
Whitey and Blonde had me securely by the arms.
Blacky never got too far ahead.
We attracted plenty of stares, gawks, leers.
Scenarios developed instantly by those passing, milling, waiting: drugs being smuggled, terror
being averted, security being maintained, threats being assuaged.
Assuaged?
Did I say that?
Secret Service. FBI. CIA. NSA. PTA. XYZ. ATT. NFL. ABC.
Saudi. Argentine. Italian. Israeli.
Wary eyes, cross looks, whispers.
Taps on shoulders.
Look at that.
I tried to match their pace, did match it, no choice. Keep my eyes ahead, not be embarrassed, afraid, angry, must not get angry.
Terrorists are angry people. I am American, happy, jovial, love to chat, eat burgers.
The ambient sound included a mix of pop music and announcements from omnipresent speakers.
We arrived at a grey door, not unlike a hundred other unmarked grey doors leading to supplies of Pine Sol and Windex.
We entered, now in single file, Blacky, Blonde, me, Whitey, down a white-tiled hall with grey block walls. Nothing on the walls.
To another grey metal door with silver knob.
We entered and stood in our group for a moment.
Maybe they had not worked together much, or had not used this room before, or they didn’t really want to be here.
There was a long grey metal table and behind that a grey metal folding chair.
On this side of the small grey painted concrete block room with grey painted concrete floor were two grey metal folding chairs, and maybe that’s what the deal was, they didn’t know where to find another grey chair.
A silver metal ashtray, clean, sat on the table. A smell of 1970s cigarettes hung in the air like moldy, mildewed laundry, bell-bottoms.
We all walked around a bit, shuffled sideways and back, checked out the pattern of the blocks, head joints, bed joints, the dearth of dirt in the corners, until Whitey spoke.
“Ron. Have John sit over there,” nodding toward the chair on the other side of the grey metal table.
So I walked around to sit over there as Ron tried to catch me to direct me and ended up coming around the other side and beating me to the chair.
I sat.
It was cold and not close at all to the table or to the wall, this particular chair.
The speakers hacked into the high corners came from the sound system of a ’66 Mustang owned by a seventeen-year-old gearhead from Sandusky.
Not feeling I possessed sufficient cachet to move the chair, I sat where it was, out in the open, no-man’s land, no-person’s land, my hands on my knees, feeling my billfold, wondering if I turned off the stove, and whether it made any difference.
Perhaps sensing a possible security breach, Ron sidled around the table and hustled to the door.
He fiddled with the big silver knob, trying to see if it would lock.
“Just leave it,” said Whitey. “If you fuck it up, how we gonna get out?”
Ron put his back to the door, his hands behind his back.
Whitey scraped up one of the chairs on their side and sat right up close, laying his elbows on the table like a full house.
He pushed the ashtray toward me.
“John,” he said.
“My name is Bill.”
“Cosby?” I said.
He did not smile.
“This is Ron, Laura.” He fired thumbs over each shoulder.
Ron and Laura were not smiling.
I put both hands up to say I didn’t smoke.
“What do you have against the United States of America?” Laura asked.
Because she just had to.
Art by Allison Healy
