ELEVEN HOMICIDES, GILGO BEACH, SUFFOLK COUNTY, NY

by LindaAnn LoSchiavo

 

Author's Note: Suffolk County, New York law enforcement sabotaged and delayed investigating the deaths of eleven corpses found along Gilgo Beach for years until their corrupt Police Chief James Burker was arrested in connection with a different case and imprisoned along with Thomas Spota, District Attorney, and Christopher McPartland, Assistant District Attorney. All three were convicted of witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy charges. Only then did the Gilgo Beach murder investigation proceed. On Wednesday, June 17th, 2026 the killer was sentenced.

 

 

 

 

New Yorker and award-winner LindaAnn LoSchiavo is a member of British Fantasy Society,  HWA, SFPA, and The Dramatists Guild. Find out more about her on Substack @GreenwichVillagePoet .

DRONING ON & ON & ON

by Art Goodtimes

In 2013, Daniel Hale was at an antiwar conference in D.C. when a man recounted that two family members had been killed in a U.S. drone strike. The Yemeni man, through tears, said his relatives had been trying to encourage young men to leave al-Qaeda. Hale realized he had watched the fatal attack from a base in Afghanistan. At the time, he and his colleagues in Air Force intelligence viewed it as a success. Now he was horrified. It was such experiences, Hale told a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., on Tuesday, that led him to leak classified information about drone warfare to a reporter after leaving the military. “I believe that it is wrong to kill, but it is especially wrong to kill the defenseless,” he said in court. He said he shared what “was necessary to dispel the lie that drone warfare keeps us safe, that our lives are worth more than theirs.” U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady sentenced Hale, 33, of Nashville, to 45 months in prison for violating the Espionage Act, saying his disclosure of documents went beyond his “courageous and principled” stance on drones. —Washington Post, July 27, 2021

Ironically perverse, ’inn’it

that the whistleblower descendant

of our first patriot spy Nathan Hale

who blew up the U.S. drone program

 goes to jail for four years

 

Convicted & sentenced for exposing

to the light of citizen discernment

our American guide to extrajudicial killings

& their collateral

extinguishment of innocents

 

While, feted followed & showered

with speaker fees

Bush Obama Trump Biden

go on being hailed as leaders

given awards

 

But we the people know whatever the hui

as they’d say on Kauai

with a hang-loose flash of the fist

whatever the name of the game

they gotta keep to the Free World's

bipartisan new normal

 

Mass murders on a scale outweighing all recent

incidents of personal gun violence

in the ol’ U.S. of A

 

So, on we go, in spite of lies

insurrections deceptions liberal

cant & fundraising junk mail

 

On & on. Targeting terrorists

in ever-widening circles of definition

Editor’s Note: For more on Daniel Hale, go to: the sparrow project, the intercept, and Stand With Daniel Hale.

Art Goodtimes is a Western Slope poet, former Green elected official, and constituent of Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado's Third Congressional.