July 2nd. Finishing 25 days into my hunger strike. Listening to Leadbelly sing about "breaking up this old 
Jim Crow" and thinking of Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie fighting oppression back then with their music. The struggle remains, only it seems more urgent now as we realize we don't have unlimited time to turn back those who are literally torturing not only individuals at Guantanamo but in a larger sense, the whole planet and it's denizens. Just watched "Chasing Ice." Incredible. See it if you can. It's all connected. Guantanamo represents and is emblematic of much more than just one prison. It's also an achilles heel of the system, representing to the whole world the cruelty, sadism and inhumanity of the sociopaths running the U.S. Empire. At the same time, many of the men at Guantanamo are victorious by maintaining their resistance and humanity in the face of all the Empire's barbarism. Even death does not dim their heroism.
Take my blood.
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.
Send them to the world,
To the judges and
To the people of conscience,
Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.
And let them bear the guilty burden before the world,
Of this innocent soul.
Let them bear the burden before their children and before history,
Of this wasted, sinless soul,
Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the "protectors of peace."
Jumah al-Dossari
In light of such profound struggle, the very small amount of suffering, doing without solid food, is maybe just still a beginning to the sacrifice needed to achieve justice in this world. Change will not come without a huge price. Not meaning to minimize the significance of those of us who are voluntarily sacrificing so as to have some solidarity and compassion for our brothers in much more dire conditions, but for my own sake I try to keep it in perspective.
Today was a bit tougher than usual. I was in Manhattan last night at a meeting with National Lawyers Guild lawyers who are defending a group of us (mostly veterans) from an arrest at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial last Oct. 7th. The lawyers expect the trial of 17 of us, including Elliott, to go for maybe a week. If the judge does not hold up our right to assemble, some of us will take jail time rather than pay a fine or do community service and in my case continue the hunger strike behind bars if necessary. For some reason, I couldn't sleep at all last night and drove home to Woodstock at 4 AM so I'm feeling it. Important to get sleep.
Some may want to know details of how each of us is faring during the fast so here goes. I've lost about 17-18 pounds so far but that seems to be leveling off. In general, excepting today, my energy and strength are holding up. I attribute that to both the nutritive quality of the 200-300 calories I've been taking in and also that I do not want to get weak and am still doing resistance exercise fairly regularly. Drinking about 16 oz. of fresh squeezed vegetable juice every day plus water with lemons. Today I added something to my liquid diet as I felt the need for something hot. I got a product at the health food store called Pacific organic free range chicken broth - 10 calories in 8 ounces. I've also found organic vegetable broth, also only 10 calories in 8 ounce, called Field Day Organic Vegetable broth. Prisoners in Guantanamo have no access to such luxuries so I consider myself lucky in the extreme.
I do miss eating but still get joy seeing others eat and I like to cook for Ellen and friends that come over. I just don't taste what I'm cooking but they seem to enjoy it and I enjoy the smells of good food. Someday . . .
Also taking a very good daily vitamin and a daily B complex. It's called MegaFood and I recommend it.
Looking forward to planning with everyone how we can continue to keep the pressure on and make this campaign grow in size and impact.
Free all prisoners. Close Guantanamo!
Tarak Kauff
Board of Directors
Veterans For Peace
845 679-3299
845 706-0187 (cell)
"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."