I've read worse

LET’S DO MORE FOR OUR VETERANS THAN RISE FOR THE NATIONAL ANTHEM

2010-05-17T02:08:00.000-07:00

I never served in the military. I do not like things militarily jingoistic, for I think they lead to unthinking and dangerous patriotism. I also think our country far too readily worships things military and violent, in spite of the fact that something on the order of 95% of us have never had anything to do with the military.

I’ve never understood how people take pride in “us,” when speaking of things military, never having served in combat. I have never been comfortable attaching myself to things I deserve no credit for, which stems not from virtue, but decent embarrassment over being associated with accomplishments for which I deserve no credit. Recently, for example, in my new hometown of Nashville, people have sprouted all kinds of “We Are Nashville” banners, buttons and t-shirts to show esprit de corps and pride in our working together to help this city recover after the terrible damage it suffered in the recent deluge. I won’t display such items because I’ve done nothing to help the city recover and shan’t pretend that I have done so.

Defense contractors use military patriotism to maximize profits, the Pentagon uses it to procure cannon fodder and politicians use it to advance their careers. I will never like things military, because of the terrible ends for which it has been used, but I do believe, although some friends even more cynical than I say it is untrue, that the vast majority of soldiers, marines, airmen (and women) and sailors serve honorably with a level of courage and sense of duty that I not only fall short of, but am genuinely incapable of fathoming.

My respect for them is ineffably immense, but I have yet to find any reason to waver in my belief that they are in most - if not all - instances, serving, in Bob Dylan’s words, as “only a pawn in their game.” (I am acutely cognizant of the unique nature of World War II and the incomprehensibly altruistic sacrifice so many thousands in the military made to protect our country in that terrible time, but even that war was fraught with moral ambiguities and none of our military actions since have approached the level of threat America faced in 1941.)

It is not my intention to debate the worthiness of our current engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, for if you still believe that we are fighting those wars to keep America safe or preserve and/or spread democracy, nothing I can say will divest you of that gullible notion. I can, however, as someone not infected with the germ of patriotism, suggest that the current abuse of servicepersons is a terrible shame, for which the Pentagon, the government at large and President Obama should be ashamed.

The Pentagon has kept combat personnel on active duty long past their periods of enlistment through its stop-loss policy or “back door draft,” the equipment with which they fought most of the Iraqi war was wanting (bad helmets, inferior protective vests, far from state of the art vehicles, resulting in thousands of deaths from IEDs, and many more inexcusable failures to protect our servicepersons as best we could ), the pay stinks, the assignments are often unwinnable and untenable, and the medical care, counseling and vocational assistance for returning veterans is unconscionably lacking. In short, our government’s treatment of the people we ask to fight these nasty little wars for us (“us” usually being corporations making obscene profits from conflict) is morally criminal and one of the worst disgraces in this country’s long history of disgraceful conduct.

Given the realities surrounding our current foreign policies, it is eminently reasonable to venerate the soldiers who fight our wars and despise the government that sends them to do so. I watch with amazement the free ride our President, the neo-liberal, gets from the media and the Democrats for his “truth-challenged” record on ending the war in Iraq. Obama never said he would end the Afghan war, but he certainly let his cleverly nuanced campaign speeches lead many to believe he would do so, as he waged his “peace” campaign for the presidency. All of us now know that Obama has escalated the Afghan war several times, and as for his stated “goal of starting to withdraw forces from (that) country in July 2011," how can people be expected to believe that, given the President’s track record on ending the Iraqi conflict?

While campaigning for the presidency, Obama promised to end the war in Iraq within sixteen months of taking office. That morphed into a more specific promise to remove all combat troops sixteen months after taking office (which would be May 20, 2010), which has further morphed into a promise to remove combat troops by the end of August, 2010, but a few days ago, on May 13, the Pentagon announced that circumstances on the ground have created a “national emergency” in Iraq which will require a further delay in beginning to remove U.S. combat troops (which could prove complicating, since Obama and Malaki long ago drew up an unconstitutional status of forces agreement that requires all U.S. troops to leave Iraq by the end of 2011).

We will not leave either Iraq or Afghanistan in the foreseeable future and the president will not quit issuing veracity-challenged statements to the contrary, but if we are going to continue Obama’s dirty little wars well into the future (and they are now, especially Afghanistan, “his” dirty little wars), instead of getting teary-eyed each time fast-moving military jets fly over star-spangled bannered football games, perhaps we might write our president strongly worded suggestions that he quit making our remarkable combat servicepersons do two, three and even four tours of duty, and that he provide them adequate medical treatment and insurance, along with psychological and vocational counseling when they return home from fighting these disgraceful wars our corporate state insists upon waging ad infinitum. It’s the least we can do for these people who valorously serve our country in the belief they are protecting our freedoms, even if they are, in fact, serving the profit margins of corporate America.

P.S. OBAMA SEEKS ANOTHER $33 BILLION SUPPLEMENTAL FUNDING FOR HIS WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

The following was brought to my attention after I posted the above essay this morning:

In the next few days, Congress will consider a $33 billion supplemental request for funding Obama’s war in Afghanistan. A supplemental bill, or “emergency appropriation” is not considered part of the pentagon budget for the fiscal year in question, but is rather gravy on top of the roughly seven hundred billion dollar defense budget for this year.

Further, of this $33 billion supplemental request, that is expected to pass in both houses of Congress easily, approximately $1.2 billion of the money will actually be used to directly make our troops safer. More Dylan: “How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see? The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind, the answer is blowin’ in the wind.”

Our public schools are physically crumbling, bridges are falling down, highways are terribly rutted, 48 million Americans have no health insurance, millions of American families can’t pay the bills, billion gallon lagoons of chemical toxins, coal sludge and livestock manure lie festering and spreading disease with no plans to clean them up, unemployment rates are astronomical, and our elected representatives (the whores pimped out to us by the corporations that own them) are going to promptly approve another $33 billion expenditure of your and my money to fund a war intended to eradicate Al Quieta, which no longer has any meaningful presence in Afghanistan and the Taliban, whom we helped empower and aren’t all that much worse than the war lord cronies of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan prime minister we put in power, who – in spite of his visit to Obama last week – is still asking us to leave his country.

Is there something wrong with this picture? So long as we do not organize meaningful protest and opposition to these obscene insanities, they will continue unabated and one can’t help but wonder if this is the government three hundred plus thousand of our relatives died to protect in European forests and on Pacific beaches some sixty-five years ago.

The moral of this story is: If these realities disturb you … DO SOMETHING!!!!!!!

THE OBSCENITY OF MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL MINING AND POLITICS IN TENNESSEE

2010-04-11T06:19:00.000-07:00

Reading editorials in support of the coal industry, almost always written by its own representatives, one would think that mountaintop removal mining (MRM) is an environmentally sound, even beneficial way to get at coal seams, one that improves public health. The aesthetic harm, ecosystemic devastation, extreme public health hazards of heavy metal displacement, and havoc wreaked upon wildlife are either down-played, overlooked, or disingenuously denied. Their editorials neglect to mention things like the twenty times higher than recognized as safe level of selenium around Zeb Mountain, in Campbell County, Zeb having been subjected to MRM, although coal spokespersons claim MRM does not occur in Tennessee, and those mining Zeb have been cited for many violations of environmental regulations, but go on with their legally dubious extraction with – to date –virtual impunity.

The state legislature, for the third straight year, procedurally quashed the Tennessee Scenic Vistas Protection Act (TSVPA), without letting it get out of committee for a vote. But then, Big Coal and its financial beneficiaries in government (at both state and federal levels) haven’t evidenced any zealous desire to subject environmental policy to democratic votes.

Some state legislators, however, bravely sponsored and/or advocated passage of TSVPA, and deserve public acknowledgement. The bill’s main Senate advocates this session were prime sponsor, Doug Jackson, co-sponsors, Tim Barnes and Eric Stewart, and supporter Charlotte Banks. In the House, advocates included prime sponsor, Michael McDonald, co-sponsors Willie “Butch” Borchert and Brenda Gilmore, and supporter George Fraley. Senator Bill Ketron and Rep. Bill Dunn also played key roles in promoting the bill.

One would be remiss to not also express gratitude to the Lindquist Environmental Appalachian Fellowship (LEAF), under the leadership of Dawn Coppock, Pat Hudson and Pat Chastain, for the remarkable work it has done in bringing this issue into public consciousness and, equally importantly, to the attention of the politicians at Legislative Plaza. This organization, a self-described Christian fellowship whose faith leads them to take action for Tennessee’s environment, has shown that religious activism can be politically progressive and efficacious.

Opponents of mountaintop removal mining are confident that a modicum of investigative due diligence will lead interested parties to the conclusion that this process is an environmental catastrophe, a public health disaster, a socio-economic boon to Big Coal and an egregious quality of life detriment to Appalachian citizens living near mine sites, as well as a moral obscenity to everyone called to exercise benign and protective stewardship over creation.

Why is it that a monolithic front to defeat TSVPA was employed with political ferocity by those arguing that the Responsible Mining Act of 2009 is more than sufficient to protect Tennessee from the ravages of mountaintop removal mining? As to the veracity of their claim, ask the citizens of the heavily mined regions in East Tennessee how that’s working out, rather than trusting the words of Big Coal spokespersons.

On April 1st, the EPA passed the most stringent curbs on MRM activities to date, but EPA’s enforcement record on regulations promulgated pursuant to the Clean Water Act (and other environmental laws) has been spotty at best when it comes to MRM activities. Beyond that, the new regulations have some loopholes and all administrative regulations are subject to change or reversal by subsequent administrations. For these reasons, those who oppose MRM should work for passage of two bills currently in Congress, the Clean Water Protection Act and the Appalachian Restoration Act (sponsored by our own Senator Lamar Alexander and Ben Cardin of Maryland), each of which would dramatically curb, if not eliminate MRM.

Neither the Tennessee legislature nor the U.S. Congress will act decisively to end MRM unless public opposition to this ecological obscenity reaches critical mass. Until it does, we are failing to fulfill our obligations to the land, our children and future generations. There is no such thing as restoration of a mountain, for one can only be preserved, not restored. How prophetic were the words of Isaiah, who said, “The earth is utterly broken, the earth is torn asunder, the earth is violently shaken.” It is time for more environmental justice and less corporate avarice.

MOVEMENT DOESN'T LIE, MR. PRESIDENT

2009-07-19T07:57:00.000-07:00

I am in a bit of a quandary. In my last blog, I acceded to the fair but firm suggestion of trusted friends that perhaps – however accurate my critical substantive assessments of the Obama Administration may be – the style of my reportage is too strident, thus turning off people before they can hear the (what I believe to be) validity of my critiques, and posted a “kinder and gentler” blog, conceding my overly strident past, but asking that the President’s defenders be open to a reality that flies in the face of their unconditional approval of Mr. Obama.

Now I am faced with the difficulty of trying to emphatically condemn yet another recent anti-environmental decision by Mr. Obama’s Agriculture Department, without sounding harsh and strident, but succeeding in bringing it to the attention of remarkably uncritical supporters of almost all the President says and does.

A dear friend once told me that “movement doesn’t lie.” I didn’t understand, so he explained that when confronted with a contradiction between what one says and what one does, go with what s/he does, because a person’s truth is shown in his or her behavior, not pronouncements. From the moment I heard that line, I have taken it to heart and I feel very strongly that in the case of President Obama, it is imperative to remember “movement doesn’t lie.”

This week, Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, under which department resides the U.S. Forest Service, and an employee of Mr. Obama, who makes decisions at the behest and under the “veto” power of the President, approved commercial logging and the necessary road-building that attends such activity within Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. This forest is a seventeen million acre pristine temperate rainforest that is the habitat of several endangered species, home to members of native Alaskan indian tribes, and an ecological treasure we are blessed to have in the United States. During his campaign for the White House, Mr. Obama promised that he would preserve the “roadless rule,” that essentially says pristine National Forests, meaning those that have not been previously developed, logged, or had roads built in them, will not be subject to logging and road-building.

(In pursuit of intellectual honesty, I hasten to add that Salazar, in an environmentally sound move, also repealed Bush Administration approval of logging in certain national forests in Oregon that are home to the endangered and once notorious spotted owl, but admitted to doing so because he was sure the permits would not withstand legal challenges under the Endangered Species Act.)

Once again, however, Mr. Obama has gone back on a campaign promise. (The previously strident journalist in me would have said he lied.) Once more, Mr. Obama has allowed his Interior Department to act in a strongly anti-environmental way, for the benefit of corporate giants, a practice that no longer surprises anyone who follows the President’s “movement” in regard to ecological matters.

What then, is one to do? Not mention this? Act as if it’s an aberrant incident? Or worst of all, go along with what passes for conventional wisdom among the vast majority of Obama supporters who will claim that it’s a small negative blip on the screen of vast good he is doing? Precisely where is this vast good the President is doing? It escapes me. Relatively few will ever know of this latest betrayal of the environment, let alone what a “roadless rule” is, but they will have seen the President’s superb speech to the NAACP this week, solidifying his reputation among liberals as what I used to admittedly bitterly call The Savior. Talk is cheap, movement doesn't lie.

Barack Obama is not the great progressive leader people apparently need him to be. We are suffering a dangerous case of politico-cultural dissonance, the minimum price of which is yet another unaffordable delay in placing this country on the truly progressive path it must steer in order to survive, if not flourish, in this century.

I close by repeating the good faith modest proposal I made in my last blog: I shall keep my critiques of Mr. Obama substantive, rather than ad hominem, if you, dear friends, will please, please judge this president on the basis of what he is and does, not what you want him to be.

UNDER ADVICE OF FRIENDS...

2009-07-04T17:35:00.000-07:00

In both Matthew and Luke, we find well know variations on the following theme: Ask and Ye Shall Receive. It should not have surprised me then, that in asking liberal Democrats to “let me have it” in response to my last blog, which was highly critical of Obama, I was soundly hammered. The criticisms were of two basic types: Notably feeble attempts to defend those actions of Obama that I had criticized, which I ignored, and serious suggestions that perhaps anger and/or frustration were clouding both my perspective and efficacy. Some of my closest and most trusted friends were among the latter genre of critics, forcing me to seriously reconsider both my writing style and the accuracy of my perceptions.

As for the accuracy of my perceptions, after lengthy deliberation, I have concluded that while I am angry when it comes to my disappointment with Obama, my criticisms of his actions thus far in office, are indeed legitimate and accurate, however much said criticisms may offend liberal Democrats. Regarding my vitriolic style, however, perhaps I am losing “street cred” with the liberals, “turning them off” as it were, to the point where, so I am told, some old friends have suggested I’m no longer the liberal I used to be. If they mean that I’ve become conservative, it’s a silly notion, but if they mean that I’ve moved unrealistically far to the left, I can only respond that one ought, in my meager opinion, speak with an idealistic fervor, while being willing to compromise in action, when it comes to politics, except when supposedly necessary compromises in turn compromise one’s moral decency.

I confess to wondering how much friends and liberals are turned off by the admittedly sometimes bitter manner of my criticism and how much they are turned off because I’ve, over the course of several blogs, presented some essentially irrefutable evidence of dramatically non-progressive things that Obama has done in office. Calling him The Savior is admittedly not constructive, and I plead guilty to having succumbed to political anger in response to far too many Democrats blindly supporting the current president, no matter how non-progressive, and in many instances (particularly civil liberties, secrecy in government, and boondoggles to large corporations), downright conservative his actions have been.

Nonetheless, believing Einstein was correct when he said that “one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true,” I agree that I have been gratuitously and self-defeatingly harsh in the tone (but not the substance) of what I have written about President Obama. (One friend claimed that I had written “fuck you” to critics of my criticism of him, to which I replied that I would never write such a thing in a blog. It turns out that I did not write it in that context, but two years ago, in a withering condemnation of right wing lunacy, I closed the column by saying “fuck you” to right-wing crazies. There is no place for such nastiness in political discourse, and I both apologize for posting that remark and promise to henceforth leave such tactics to the likes of Dick Cheney.)

I am also frequently told that I turn people off by never mentioning anything good that Obama has done. Let me do so now. I just learned from a friend that, thanks to this president, if one is laid off, she or he only has to pay 35% of Cobra costs for the first nine months. In his first two days in office, President Obama issued two executive orders regarding Bush’s secret maintenance of information. The first reversed Bush restrictions of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) access, thereby giving citizens greater access once more, to government and presidential information, and the second reversed Bush’s notorious executive order that allowed a president to keep information secret after his or her term, thus requiring former presidents to sue for the right to do so, under a strong burden of proof. Also in his first week in office, to me, by far his best (meaning most progressive) week, he reversed Bush’s denial (through the EPA) to states, especially California – which is not only the most populous state, but also an important transportation trend-setter – the right to set their own auto emissions and fuel efficiency standards beyond those required by federal rules.

He also ordered Gitmo closed by late January, 2010, although critics from both sides question the wisdom of what he plans to do with the prisoners now residing there. In his initially proposed stimulus package, Obama called for $150 billion in new federal spending for school districts, child care centers and universities. Without question, the man has done good things. My question, however, is if I am so readily willing to admit he’s done good things in office, why are most liberal Democrats so loathe to, or even incapable of admitting that he has also done bad things in office (and that it is intellectually permissible to argue that the severity of the bad things outweigh the benefits of the good ones)?

Naomi Klein says it is because we are in love with him, and love is stupid. To which I add that we needed a Savior, so we invented one. We are not only entitled, but obliged as vigilant and progressive citizens, to watch what he does as closely as what he says, and hold his feet to the fire when he is wanting. As Howard Zinn wrote in the May, 2009 issue of The Progressive, “Our job is not to give him a blank check or simply be cheerleaders. It was good that we were cheerleaders while he was running for office, but it’s not good to be cheerleaders now.” We must see what is before us, not what we want to see. If the guy or woman shows no signs of liking you, he or she probably doesn’t like you. If you’re not playing piano reasonably well after a few years of lessons, you probably won’t make it to Carnegie Hall, no matter how much you practice. If the President of the United States continues to act in importantly non-progressive ways, for say a couple more years, he’s probably not a progressive President.

It doesn’t matter how much my critique of Obama bothers people. What matters is what he does. Before his election, Obama said, “It’s not enough to get out of Iraq; we have to get out of the mindset that led us into Iraq.” Do you, his loyal liberal supporters, truly believe that the President is getting us out of the mindset that led us into Iraq? This column is not to argue substantive specifics, but here I ask you, rather than replying with platitudes about how much better than the alternative he is, if you really think he is acting with a mindset other than the one that led us into Iraq. From where I sit, Mr. Obama is exacting the quintessence of the Iraq mindset with his policies in Afghanistan.

To my twelve or thirteen readers, I offer the following proposition: I will do my level best to set aside my prejudices against the man and write of Mr. Obama without anger, hostility or bitterness, if you in turn, will set aside your unquestioning approval of him and rationalizations in defense of his policies, taking a long hard look to see if he is really doing the things you wanted when you voted for him last November 4th. Then perhaps we can have a constructive conversation about Barack Obama and in the areas where we agree he is wanting, work together to fulfill our civic duty to make him become a better President.

July 4, 2009

MR. PRESIDENT, WHERE ARE YOUR CLOTHES, OOPS, I MEAN PROGRESSIVE POLICIES?

2009-06-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

I am acutely cognizant of the fact that politics is the art of compromise and that no president, however well-intended, can accomplish all he sets out to do. I also believe, however, from the luxury of not bearing the weight of his office, that there are minimal moral decencies that must be respected and observed by a President, in spite of the direct political consequences (meaning in terms of electoral status).

The gravamen of my complaints against Obama’s Presidency lie in his continuation and expansion of what are now his three wars, his – in my meager opinion – alarmingly non-resistant giving in to corporate power, his unwillingness to stand up for true equality for gays, despite alluding to intentions to do so during his campaign (although in fairness, he always said he opposed same-sex marriage), his unconstitutional remission in failing to go after members of the Bush Administration, including Bush himself, for crimes committed in office, including war crimes that merit life imprisonment, his remarkably disappointing allowance of terrible environmental policies to be set by his cabinet members, Salazar at Interior and Jackson at EPA, his less than bold choice of Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, his almost scandalous willingness to allow “intelligence” secrecy to continue, in clear violation of fourth amendment dictates to the contrary, his refusal to even place single payer nationalized health care coverage of all citizens on the table (although here again, I admit he has been forced by health care advocates to bring the possibility of some form of governmental insurance into play), a conspicuous lack of commitment to helping the homeless and destitute of this country, or rebuilding our dangerously sagging infrastructure (schools, highways, etc.), and – in short – what I, admittedly harshly, perceive to be a substantial lack of moral courage that runs through and not only informs his presidency, but leads to the above-stated consequences. He does the easy stuff, but he’s not willing to take Rooseveltian leaps of boldness onto the visionary paths we now desperately need government to travel.

I shall add brief particulars here to some of the above remarks. Regarding the wars, his policy is not only a continuation of the neo-con Bush era, but a deepening and therefore, to me, worsening of it. He hasn’t withdrawn any mentionable number of troops from Iraq in five months. He has openly and almost braggingly expanded the war in Afghanistan (for which he shall, I strongly believe, rue the day he did so), which I believe will result in tragic consequences to America (not to mention the Afghan people), and he is now pretty much neck-deep in Pakistan. I am not oblivious to the fact that there are nasty people out there who wish us harm, but his continuation and expansion of Bush’s dream of American empire is a dangerous loaded gun coming back to haunt us.

Let us not go into MSM (mainstream media) coverage of the wars (or anything else, for that matter, other than the death of Michael Jackson which they were all about, since it in no way threatened corporate control of American government), given that the MSM is simply the propaganda arm of the corporate state (and I haven’t got time or space here to make the case for that, or the fact that Beltway pundits serve one interest only, their own preservation and expansion of power and influence, because of which they now sicken me far too much to any longer watch their shows), but instead let us look at the reality.

The Afghan civilians we are continuously mistakenly slaughtering hate us passionately. In Pakistan, our errant drones kill increasingly large numbers of civilians, but then it’s only collateral damage to us. Unfortunately, to the innocent victims of these errant attacks, it’s a tragedy and a life-long commitment to hating the United States. For example, in our recent efforts to drive the Taliban out of the Swat valley, we have terrified at least two million citizens of that region into fleeing their homes and becoming desperate refugees. Now, there’s a way to win hearts and minds, isn’t it?

We have killed well over a million people in Iraq, probably closer to 1.5 million, at least ninety percent of whom were civilians. The war there costs four billion dollars a month. The war in Afghanistan costs well over three billion dollars a month now and the price is rising. We can’t get a handle on the cost of war in Pakistan, but let’s say an even billion a month. None of this counts the secret “black” intelligence budgeting that adds up to who can even say how much more, but it is a very reasonable and modestly conservative estimate to say that our three wars now cost us ten billion dollars a month. That is insane. Let me put that in more modest terms: That is insane.

We cannot afford it. And have remarkably little benefit to show for it after seven plus years of this lunacy, a lunacy that includes countless war crimes committed by the American military and high command, from the last President of the United States, down the line to some of the troops in the field. Support our troops doesn’t mean even when they commit war crimes. There is an old saying we often hear the first half of: “My country right or wrong.” The second half of the quote we aren’t often told is, “if it’s right, keep it right, if it’s wrong, make it right.” In today’s climate, even so-called liberal Democrats, which they are not, take vitriolic umbrage when one suggests our country, or far worse, President Obama, T.S. (The Savior), might be wrong.

As for corporate America, which succeeded – amidst all the hoopla of a black man being elected Savior – in “winning over” Obama before he even took office, the billions, which may well now be trillions of dollars that has been given the big hitters, with Obama’s blessing and insistence, has been accompanied by no concomitant insistence upon transparency or accountability, whatsoever, and the dearth of efforts by the Administration, and I do indeed mean the Obama Administration, to re-regulate the financial banking and investment industries, a failure that is, to my admittedly harshly judgmental way of thinking, scandalous in its remission and failure on the part of the President to do his duty.

Sotomayor will be a moderately liberal justice, unless she votes to repeal Roe v. Wade, but I doubt she’ll do that. It is worth noting, however, that Obama never seriously considered a bold progressive and highly talented and qualified choice for the bench, two names readily coming to mind being Larry Tribe and Elizabeth Holtzman. No, choosing a genuine progressive was also “off the table” before the selection process began, for to fight the right-wing lunacy in the Senate would have required moral courage, something I’ve seen precious little of in Mr. Obama’s conduct to date.

Gays are the one progressive interest group standing up and screaming that the emperor has no clothes, as Obama continues his brilliantly eloquent obfuscation of the issues, in his efforts to do notably little in bringing constitutionally mandated equality, true equality, to the GLBTQ community. Obama’s handling of gay issues is quintessential “worship what I say, but don’t watch what I do” Obamese, cake for the masses: He made a big ceremony over extending federal benefits to partners of gays, without happening to mention, of course, that those benefits wouldn’t extend to health care for partners because that is prohibited by the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Meanwhile, Obama’s Justice Department filed a brief in federal court last month defending DOMA, but The Savior explained it away as a “speed bump” on the way to legislative repeal of the law. The logic gets a bit convoluted, so let’s get this straight: Obama had his Justice Department file a brief, supporting the legality of DOMA so that it can be repealed. That’s our Savior. When he entertains gay leaders at a White House commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots next week, I trust a few of those highly intelligent “leaders” will point out their dissatisfaction with his logic.

Would that other betrayed progressives would stand up to his waffling, obfuscation, clever triangulation and downright selling out of progressive principles, but alas, the Democrats continue to worship at the shrine of The Savior. Heaven forbid we should truly cast racism aside and call a moderately conservative president a moderately conservative president, regardless of what his color happens to be.

As for the poor, we can dispense with that silly notion quickly: What poor? I’ve never heard the President mention them. By the way, what has he done to stop developers from quasi-legally stealing the conveniently condemned homes of abandoned blacks in the ninth ward of New Orleans, so that they can eventually drive the rightful tenants out and sell the land for a large killing, bringing white gentrification to New Orleans? Haven’t heard that mentioned by the Black Savior. Comprehensive policies to house, feed and medicate the homeless? Narry a word. After all, The Savior wouldn’t want to offend the right wing lunatics, who clearly need psychiatric care more than legislative appeasement, even though they have proven that they will never vote for his bills, nor quit skewering him in the press (albeit, for all the wrong reasons).

Obama had Eric Holder, the Attorney General claim, after the NSA was let completely off the hook for criminal and unconstitutional violations of our civil rights, by conducting unimaginably extensive illegal wiretapping of American citizens, announce that the problem had been resolved, or reconciled, I can’t remember the exact word, but it added up to we’re letting it go. As for Bush Administration crimes, well, we’re looking forward, not backward. The next time you’re stopped going ninety in a school zone, explain smilingly to the officer that you were indeed doing ninety, but that was then, and we’re looking forward, not backward.

To those who claim prosecution of the Bushies would interfere with our “moving forward” with important progressive legislation (again, what progressive legislation?), I suggest they ask themselves if proving we are a nation of laws, rather than one of powerful dynastic individuals might not be a matter of some consequence.

Where is the legislative proposal to rebuild our infrastructure? Or the presidential advocacy for single-payer health-care in America, the only western democratic country on the planet without such coverage for its citizens, and here’s a bulletin for the insurance industry, not one of those other nations has yet crumbled. Where is the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the shamefully prejudicial military policy which 75% of Americans now oppose?

Mr. Obama claimed a new ruling by his Administration would protect streams beneath mountaintop removal sites, even though the new policy is guaranteed to allow this heinous and ecologically, not to mention humanly catastrophic abomination to continue, but did so in such a clever way that he succeeded in claiming he opposed it. The wolves and the polar bears took a serious hit under Obama’s Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, when Obama allowed him to maintain Bush Administration policies not to protect either of these species. The Savior wouldn’t want to offend the Palin crowd. (Does he expect their votes in his re-election bid of 2012?)

The list goes on and on and on. I cannot commit all of my grievances against The Savior to paper. I consider him the worst disappointment in the history of the Presidency. Be clear, I do not say or mean the worst president, as GWB clearly secured that honor for decades, if not centuries, to come, but for someone so brilliant, so talented, so fully aware of the plight of the needy, the destitute, the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, racial minorities, practitioners of alternative lifestyles, and the desperate longing of the people of other lands to be free of the ceaseless reign of terror visited upon them by American bombs, Obama gets my vote for the most disappointing president in my lifetime. And I’ve been around a while.

To those who say, give him time, I reply, I shall indeed, for I suspect my now almost universally-condemned take on the Obama Presidency will soon seem slightly less unsupportable. I fervently hope that I am proven wrong, but when I am not, I shall neither gloat with I told you so-ness, nor rejoice in the accuracy I now fear lies in my Cassandra-like prognostications. Rather, shall I weep over the further decline of our once-great nation, as it slides deeper into corporate fascism, supported by consumer avarice that has replaced citizen vigilance, and I shall ask my friends to bear with me, for my heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause ‘til it come back to me.

THE SELLING OUT OF NANCY PELOSI AND BLIND WORSHIP OF THE SAVIOR

2009-05-12T05:40:00.000-07:00

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, most powerful member of the U.S. House of Representatives, grew up in a politically active, militantly pro-union family in Baltimore and moved to San Francisco, where she rose through Democratic Party ranks and got herself elected to the U.S. House, regularly winning overwhelming majority re-election votes by THE most liberal constituency in the United States, the voters of San Francisco, California, and always pushed for liberal/left causes, until ascending, in a feminist coup de grace, to the Speakership, just over two years ago.

What, pray tell, has this dangerously leftist liberal done since rising to that position? She immediately and single-handedly blocked House Judiciary Committee hearings on articles of impeachment against Bush, emphatically declaring that "impeachment is off the table," continually claims to favor, yet obstructs any investigation into or prosecution of the top-ranking members of the Bush Administration, regularly speaks in unconditional defense of Israel, without recognizing rights in the Palestinians, let alone mentioning war crimes committed against them almost daily by Israeli troops, and knew all about (we just learned) but in no way opposed our torturing of suspects in Iraq, apparently being the second member of Congress to learn of such tactics, back in 2002.

In spite of claiming to "personally" support a single payer health insurance program, which most experts agree would give the greatest coverage to workers and administratively save the most money, has labeled this program dead in the water because it is “impractical,” meaning the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies who adamantly oppose it, give Nancy and her friends a LOT of money in the form of campaign contributions. Dickens fans can't help but assume that, were Oliver Twist's Mister Bumble to learn that such bribery was long ago legalized by Congress itself, he would, with withering incredulity, reiterate his legendary utterance: “Does the law say that? Then, the law is a ass, a idiot.”

Continuing the pattern of flagrant disconnect (can you say hypocrisy?) between her “personal” views and the “practical and necessary” agenda she pursues as OUR representative on Capitol Hill, Pelosi also claims to support the Employee Free Choice Act, which would facilitate workers’ ability to unionize in the face of illegal managerial tactics frequently employed to quash union organizing under the current rules, but - déjà vu all over again - can’t bring this to a vote now because we have bigger priorities, thereby neatly protecting Brobama The Savior (who hasn’t yet shown any morally courageous inclination to push for hot button items that would require a knock down, drag out with the corporate fascists masquerading as the Republican Party) from having to actually sponsor a genuinely progressive issue.

More important to Obama, and rounding out this all too brief summary of Pelosi’s impeachable dereliction of duty, she unconditionally supports every Executive measure to expand our involvement in ALL THREE mideast wars (Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan), no questions asked.

This is our "most liberal member" of the U.S. House of Representatives. Nancy Pelosi’s record as Speaker of the House is living proof of Lord Acton's famous observation, written over a hundred years ago, that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Her lightning quick sell-out to corporate power constitutes an abominable abdication of moral and constitutional duty. In THIS world and THIS country, however, she is loved by the Democratic Party, hailed as a champion of liberal "values" and staunchly supported by AIPAC, the immensely powerful lobby whose raison d’etre is to assure that billions of U.S. tax-dollars continue to flow to a never has been and never will be wrong Israeli government and military, so that Pentagon East (the IDF) can continue to keep the Mideast safe for democracy.

How often does one hear such things discussed by the propaganda arm of the corporate state (aka The Mainstream Media)? Never. Imagine what efficacious pedagogical miracles could be wrought if the true progressives in this country owned or controlled just one major network or cable television station. Of course, it would be shut down post haste by the FCC, or if more drastic measures were required, bombing.

Finally, just a quick shout out to the President and the Pentagon, for how well Obama’s war in the Mideast is going. In yesterday’s change of command in Afghanistan, General McKiernan was replaced by Lt. General McChrystal, so we now have the Afghan theatre being overseen by a man who was neck-deep in the Pat Tillman coverup and we can reasonably expect chapter and verse repetition of the pattern of our catastrophic military tactics of the past fifty years: Increasingly massive bombing of civilians, blaming the deaths and casualties that inevitably result from these operations (human bodies tend to disintegrate when hit by exploding bombs) – euphemistically known as “collateral damage" - on the Taliban, puppet Afghan President Karzai’s pleading with Obama to stop the bombing falling on increasingly deaf presidential ears, more and more troops being introduced, more and more hatred against the U.S. by the people of Afghanistan, and deeper and deeper we shall wade into what (just turned ninety years old) Pete Seeger called our Vietnam debacle, “the Big Muddy." Pete also asked in his legendary anti-war folksong, written almost fifty years ago, “When will they ever learn?” Answer: NEVER.

But let’s keep rockin' in the free world, giving trillions of dollars to the corporate power brokers who criminally and with wanton disregard destroyed the American economy for the next generation or two, and ask for no accountability or transparency in return, or re-regulation of the banking and investment industries, who’ve proven so impressively what an unfettered “free market” can do. What does the almost psychotically uncritical national approval of Obama and shamefully widespread citizen disregard for Pelosi's egregious betrayal of the public trust and the actual state of affairs in this country, the reality of which is taboo in the corporate media, tell us? We get the government we deserve.

Letter to Brobama on Supreme Court Vacancy

2009-05-01T18:41:00.000-07:00

Dear President Brobama,

Appreciating that you are rather busy, I shall cut to the proverbial chase and strongly recommend that you appoint Elizabeth Holtzman to the Supreme Court seat vacated by Justice Souter’s retirement. She, being brilliant, ethically unimpeachable, tirelessly diligent, and deeply experienced as a prosecutor, a Congressperson, and an attorney and constitutional scholar, would make an ideal replacement for Mr. Souter.

In terms of political capital, she’s a wonderful twofer: A Jewish woman! The only problem I envision is that she takes the rule of law over individuals, however powerful those individuals may be, very seriously. She wouldn’t be the least happy with your refusing to enforce the law against the knaves, thugs and thieves affectionately known as the Bush Dynasty, but that is all the more reason to appoint her to The Bench.

As a sitting justice, her governmental role would be completely passive, waiting for cases to arrive at her door, safely removed from the possibility of serving in some prosecutorial capacity wherefrom she might go after the perfidious and nefarious bastards, incarcerating them as the law demands. Don't want loose cannons who take justice seriously out and about, never knowing when they might cause trouble. Inconvenient thing, moral courage. Ah, but you, Mr. President, needn't be bothered by such matters.

Ms. Holtzman, however, is righteousness waiting to happen. Best put her on the Court. It would be, among a litany of impressive ones, your greatest triangulation yet. I offer this suggestion as bona fide food for thought, Mr. President.

A Clearly Loyal and Unquestioning Supporter

VEGANISM AND ANIMAL RIGHTS

2009-01-24T08:27:00.000-08:00

I recently delivered a short speech on veganism and animal rights at Vanderbilt University and because a few friends asked about it, I am posting the original text here, to which I have added additional facts and statistics relating to the eco-horrors of factory farming and meat-eating. If this sort of thing offends you, don't read it, but butchering twelve billion animals a year for food in this country, after rearing them in unimaginably brutal ways on factory farms offends me.

With no further ado then, here is the gist of what I said (plus the supplemental data):

There are two reasons to become a vegan: Moral obligation to animals and to protect the environment, as well as one’s own health.

I am here to tell you that the emperor has no clothes: Animals are rational, do feel pain like us, do fear imminent death like us, and do have and employ language, like us. Kant, in formulating his deontological theory of moral duty and categorical imperatives, said that we are not morally obliged toward non-human animals because they are not rational beings. He did not have the advantage of three hundred years of ethological studies (animal behavior) with which to know that animals are highly intelligent, speak and communicate. Some also make tools and some have a sense of moral obligation.

Studies in signing with chimps and gorillas have astonished us. Irene Pepperberg’s work for thirty plus years with her African Gray Parrot, Alex, who recently died, has proven that the consciousness and rational capacities of some animals are beyond our wildest previous notions of what animals are mentally capable of.

But that doesn’t even matter to me. Jeremy Bentham, the great British utilitarian philosopher, said hundreds of years ago that “the question is not can they reason or can they talk, but can they suffer?” That is the crux of the moral case. Others would dismiss moral considerateness toward non-human animals because they are, allegedly, not capable of reciprocating, therefore they are not moral agents, beings capable of extending moral entitlement, therefore not ethically entitled to receive it. Of course, this theory runs into some serious problems when one considers that infants, brain-injured adults, senile seniors, and people in coma are not capable of extending moral considerateness to others. Shall we then experiment upon or eat them, as we do nonhuman animals? And if not, should we insist animals are not due moral consideration, I ask why not?

The answer, when all the bullshit is said and done, is that we unspokenly agree that there is some a priori cultural assumption that humans are superior to nonhuman animals. This is a logically and morally indefensible position. First it was because they weren’t rational. Now, we have counting parrots. Oops, there goes that one. Then it was because they have no language, but now chimps and gorillas have been signing with remarkable language skills for many years. Koko the gorilla told -through sign language - her protector, Penny Patterson, that she was sad her pet kitten was run over, and when Penny asked why, she said, "She's dead, gone, hole in the ground." When Irene Pepperberg's parrot, Alex, died, his last words to her were, "Be good, I love you."

There was, of course, Descartes, the brilliant moron, who suggested that animals are like clockwork mechanisms with no feeling, so we needn’t anesthesize or worry about them when they scream as we dissect them alive and awake, because their screams are merely broken springs in that clockwork mechanism.

Without an airtight reason to show humans are superior to other mammals, we are not morally excused from extending certain entitlements to them, and if we are honest about it, those would include the moral rights not to be eaten, incarcerated or experimented upon. But, people don’t want to hear this.

Telling someone that God ordained that the animals are lower than humans or that Aristotle said there is a “great chain of being” with humans at the top and animals near the bottom, only above plants, is not a morally legitimate reason for using animals for our needs.

Kierkegaard said there are three levels of motivation for doing the right thing: The lowest is the law, to “do the right thing” for fear of sanction, should one fail to do so. The intermediate one is morality: Out of a sense of ethical obligation to do or not do so-and-so, serving the ends of decency and justice. But the highest motivation, said Kierkegaard, for doing the right thing is love. He was right. Love will always trump the other reasons. I attempt to obey laws except when I find them politically and/or morally reprehensible and I attempt to do the generally agreed upon morally right thing, because people of good intention do that, but when one person’s right is another’s wrong, even this becomes sticky. Love, however, with compassion and sympathy and empathy and respect all subsumed under its penumbra or umbrella, is the unfailing protector. One will always walk a further step out of love than out of obligation.

To me, animals are just God’s little children in another uniform. People often say to me that I’m just appreciative of what sociologists call “charismatic mega-fauna,” the warm and fuzzies: chimps, pandas, whales, you get the idea. Ah, but how would I feel about a rat, they challenge? I would feel exactly the same. It is not a creature’s looks or eco-systemic fate that entitles it to decent treatment. It is its inherent or intrinsic value, its miraculousness as a living sentient being, its right to share this earth with us.

Educated and clever humans go to extraordinary lengths to exculpate themselves from moral obligations toward others, but under all our sophisticated rationalizing, the pathetic truth is that almost all people draw their line in the moral sand at the precise point where they are no longer willing to inconvenience themselves.

Time precludes my belaboring the point of our moral and I believe spiritual obligations toward animals, as I’d like to say a few brief words about the environmental aspects of veganism, but I shall conclude this part of my remarks with a profound quote from the late naturalist, Henry Beston, who wrote about seventy-five years ago, in his book The Outermost House, the following:

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals...We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far beneath ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animals shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

Regarding the environmental dimension of veganism, people – par usual – go to great lengths to avoid hearing about how eating meat taxes the globe’s natural resources beyond its carrying capacity – a term we never even hear anymore, because we’ve pretty much given up living in a sustainable way on Spaceship Earth, and with global capitalism and its Gods, the multi-national corporations needing more and more resources to make the mostly worthless products they are required to convince global consumers to buy so that they can make ever more profits for their insatiably avaricious management and stockholders, one oughtn’t hold her or his breath awaiting a return to ecological sanity in this world.

Yet, the excessive amounts of water, electricity, forest, topsoil, and grain used to raise livestock for consumption is unconscionably consumptive from an eco-systemic perspective. U.S. livestock consume more than six and a half times as much grain as the entire U.S. human population consumes directly. A vegan diet requires 300 gallons of water a day, while a typical meat-eating diet requires more than 4,200 gallons of water per day. Livestock manure is one of the leading sources of water pollution in the United States. Approximately 1.5 billion tons of manure comes from North American food animals each year. Animal agriculture accounts for more than 80% of annual world deforestation. The U.S. is the world's largest consumer of Central American beef and cattle ranching has destroyed more rainforest and caused more loss of biodiversity than any other activity in that part of the world.

Let me tell you a brief anecdote about the young man who goes to meditate at a Buddhist monastery. Things go along fairly well for a few weeks, but he’s growing tired of tofu, rice and veggies, so he asks the head monk when they’re going to have meat with a meal. The monk says "we don’t eat meat here," and the young man asks why. The monk says "because we don’t want to contribute to the suffering of animals," and the young man says, "but don’t the broccolis and beans suffer when we cook and eat them?" The monk smiles and replies, "yes, but they don’t scream as loud."

People hearing this tale usually laugh and I would, for years, thereby sidestep the issue of why one ought not eat meat, but it didn’t really face the question. The real answer is twofold: First, all rational scientific evidence, from hundreds of years of study, show that there is an extraordinarily high likelihood that vegetables and grains, while they may indeed have some conscious awareness and a negative experience we can’t comprehend in being picked, cooked and eaten, are not physiologically capable of suffering on anything resembling the scale that animals do when we raise them in the nightmarish conditions of factory farming, and then slaughter them brutally, many times with livestock still alive and conscious when they are skinned on the cutting floor.

But, for conversation’s sake, let us adopt the argument of the absurd and agree that a broccoli, a grain of wheat or oats and a cow suffer equivalently when killed. The argument is utterly ludicrous, but to please the self-deceiving people who suggest there is no moral issue involved in choosing to eat animals, let us say that animals and broccolis suffer equally.

Depending on the crop, it takes between ten and fifteen times the amount of grain and vegetables to put a pound of meat on the grocery store shelf, without going into the matter of the outrageous energy-consumption and pollution involved in doing so, as it does to simply eat the grain and/or vegetables directly, rather than feeding it to livestock. Therefore, even if broccolis suffer like cows, a meat-eater is contributing between ten to fifteen times as much quantitative suffering to the world as someone who opts to eat a vegan diet, on this one basis alone.

In 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations released a report entitled Livestock's Long Shadow. The report stated that meat production is responsible for land degradation, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, species extinction, loss of biodiversity and climate change. The FAO reports that livestock production generates 65% of the nitrous oxide produced by human activities, and that nitrous oxide has 296 times the Global Warming Potential of carbon dioxide. The FAO concluded that livestock production is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, which means that meat production contributes more to global warming than all the trucks, cars and planes in the world combined.

By the way, a vegetarian diet is also vastly ecologically superior to eating meat, but with factory farming, dairy livestock are treated horrendously and then ultimately slaughtered, so the only real way, should one sincerely desire to do so, to dramatically reduce his or her contribution to the suffering of animals and overburdening of our natural resources, is to eat a vegan diet. No animal products, no dairy products, no honey, no wearing of animal products.

We all must choose our own way to go through this life. Few things make sense in this brutal world, but after careful examination, and sixty-three years of experience on the orb, I believe that attempting to mitigate one’s contribution to suffering in the world makes more sense than anything else, from an existential viewpoint: I am here, who the hell knows why, life is thus, what do I do about it? In my opinion, the answer is to mitigate one’s contribution to suffering, and that means ALL suffering, both that of humans and nonhuman animals, because pain is pain.

People always try to find ways in which I’m still contributing to animal suffering. For example, I’m told that certain car tires have cat gut in them, or that asphalt sometimes has ground chicken bones in its composition. And on they go. So, I tell them, very well, you’ve got me. I’ve only eliminated, in all my years of trying, something on the order of 98% of my contribution to animal suffering in this world. Now you can feel better. Clearly, you are suggesting this either makes me an egregious hypocrite or even if I’m sincere, one can’t ever eliminate her or his entire contribution to animal suffering, so why bother trying?

What the person is really saying is that, you can’t fully eliminate your contribution to suffering, so you’re just like me, and I needn’t then have any qualms about eating burgers, hunting, wearing fur and buying stock in a factory farming company. The argument is, of course, specious and preposterous, but people do not want to be inconvenienced. People do not want to know that to give up the taste preference of pepperoni on one’s pizza would eliminate extraordinary suffering in this world. That pepperoni is not a pepperoni, it is a pig. A highly intelligent, feeling, family-rearing gentle and innocent creature that was painfully reared and slaughtered so that the repast consumed while watching the Super Bowl might be slightly tastier.

As the late Nobel Laureate, Isaac Bashevis Singer, once wrote in a short story, for the animals, every day is a holocaust. I have done very few things I am proud of and comfortable with in this life, but becoming a vegan 25 years ago was, without question, the noblest.

THOUGHTS ON THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY

2009-01-10T08:50:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted a blog in well over a year, so perhaps it's time to put my keyboard back into the game. I offer here a note I wrote to myself on the morning after Thanksgiving in a friend's house in Atlanta. I'm posting this note because I sincerely think it is a fair assessment of where things stand with Obama, or did six weeks ago, and his statements and actions since then have only served to confirm my impression of how he will conduct the presidency.

Although I enthusiastically supported Obama's candidacy after Edwards dropped out, given that Nader and Kucinich had no chance of winning, and indeed rejoiced in his victory, I have since learned that criticizing Obama, post-election, among my fellow liberal and lefty friends brings a response similar to my criticizing Israeli action in Gaza among my Jewish friends, namely swift and vociferous condemnation. Nonetheless, here are my thoughts on Obama from Thanksgiving, which I stand by today.

POLITICAL NOTE TO MYSELF THE DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING REGARDING THE SOON-TO-BE OBAMA PRESIDENCY

This note constitutes an observation, not a lamentation. I write to make a personal record of where I stand 53 days before Barack Obama's inauguration. I have always considered myself a stranger in a familiar land, but never moreso than now, when I am somewhat critical of Mr. Obama's seeming transitional direction. Friends on the “lunatic” left, where I comfortably reside, think me a fool to have ever expected any good to come from an Obama Administration, which I have and do expect, while friends – most of mine, indeed – in the so-called liberal Democratic camp (which I do not believe any longer exists) range from frustrated to excoriating in their condemnation of my “unconscionably premature”criticism of the incoming president's seeming direction.

A few brief points to explain my percpetual context, for I believe America has lost its grip on humane sanity, and so I point out that I remain committed to the belief that it is not only reasonable, but morally incumbent to, in this increasingly insane country, oppose the following: murderous wars of aggression, whatever packaging they are sold in; abandonment of the destitute and disenfranchised of this country (and the world); near total indifference to irreversible destruction of the environment and concomitant extirpation of its nonhuman animal inhabitants; destruction of the middle class; an ever-expanding military budget and national willingness to undertake military ventures guised under the rubric of national security, but almost exclusively conducted for the financial gain of multi-national corporations, and a seemingly endless list of like-spirited enterprises, however popular they are.

Given that, I expect no president on a white horse, whatever the hue of his skin (although I am thrilled that we have taken the significant step against racism that electing a black president entails), nor a utopian democratic socialist parliamentary system of governance to be implemented here in the Corporate States of America. I do, however, expect reasonably critical analysis of the policies projected by an incoming president, the personnel he is gathering to implement said policies, and the overal tenor of a soon-to-be Administration, rather than blind honeymoon-eyed numbness and support for a dream that is clearly not, in my meager opinion, taking shape under the banner of Obamania.

Perhaps my brief following remarks will be proven wholly ill-founded, in which case I will beat my friends to the draw in calling myself wrong and Cassandra-like in my inexcusable pessimism and delighted for things to be better than I expected. However, while neither my energy level nor inclination allow for a lengthy discourse explaining my concerns about Mr. Obama, I would like to place “on the record” my basic take on the promise of his presidency.

To begin with, I am confident Obama will place decent people on the Supreme Court, which is crucial, given that Stevens, Ginsburg and Souter will all likely resign within the next year. I do not think he will apppoint a Larry Tribe or any other brilliant and genuinely leftist constitutional scholar, but he will likely appoint decent people of moderately liberal persuasion and moderately skilled abilities. This is a sine qua non of continuing an American enterprise with any semblance of democracy, for the right wing bloc on the Court, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts and for all practical purposes, Kennedy now as well, shall certainly continue to move us in an ever-increasingly reactionarily fundamentalist direction in every facet of societal life.

I am also convinced Mr. Obama will halt the catastrophic anti-environmentalism of the Bush Administration, an endeavor of such moral obscenity and practical stupidity that it defies words. However, I do not believe Obama will invest his “capital” in aggressively reversing most of the Bush wrongdoing. He will move in an improved direction, but I see no signs that he plans to undertake the necessary slogging that reversing the Bush eco-horror and setting us on a sane course will require.

Since they say God is in the details, however much it irks my friends who choose not to be burdened with the particulars of governance, I shall suggest a few things we might watch to gain a barometric reading on Obama's understanding of and commitment to improving the environment. Will he take any serious steps to create a political climate conducive to tackling the monumental and long-term task of slowing or halting global warming? I am skeptical, but this is a problem of such magnitude that we can't realistically expect tangible results in the short-term, although we can look to see if non-carbon energy alternatives are being pushed, today's equivalent of Kyoto is rejoined and tax-incentives for research, development and implementation of non-warming technology and processes are called for, legislatively promoted and implemented.

In the shorter term, sparing readers the legal minutia, we can look to see if Obama presses for reversal of egregious administrative modifications of the Clean Water Act and other laws and regulations that have facilitated the acceleration of mountain top removal mining, one of the worst eco-horrors of our time. Further, will he halt anti-environmental efforts of a broad coalition of fools, whose banner is now championed by Sarah Palin, to weaken or eliminate the Endangered Species Act, the first consequence of which would be the slaughter of wolf populations in the Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain areas, now thriving, all things considered, since reintroduction of the grey wolf to that region almost fifteen years ago (and not to be confused with Alaska's promotion and allowance of shooting wolves from airplanes)?

Further, will Obama reinforce the New Source Review on mercury, sulfur and carbon-emitting factories that the Bush Administration is desperately trying to weaken in its final days rush to commit ever more ecological obscenities? In short the rule requires greater pollution controls on substantially upgraded and enlarged utility plants and the Bush Administtration is trying to terminate such requirements. Quick action, or lack thereof will give us strong indications of how seriously Mr. Obama will take environmental issues and how high they will be on his list of pressing priorities.

Finally, Obama's picks for heads of EPA and Interior will be very telling. Will we have more industry executives or altruistic individuals inclined to represent and protect the public trust? If he picks Bobby Kennedy, Jr. at EPA, that will be a hugely good sign, not only because Kennedy is superbly suited for the job, but also because it will show Obama's willingness to enter a difficult confirmation battle in trying to do the right thing.

I also think Mr. Obama will improve the civil rights situation in this country. However, what will that improvement look like? Will he take proactive steps to restore those portions of the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth and fourteenth amendments that have been eviscerated by the fascists running the Bush Administration (I do not use that word for inflammatory and hyperbolic effect, but because I find it the only accurately description to apply to this administration), or will he engage in window-dressing? Detailed consideration of this topic would require a book-length tome, but it will be interesting to see how aggressively Obama pursues resuscitation of civil liberties in America, including a re-institution of the barrier between church and state, protection of open dissent (e.g., not putting political protesters in cages, far-removed from the venue being protested), pursuit of rights for gays, and on and on.

I confess to not expecting Mr. Obama to wage aggressive campaigns for the restoration and expansion of civil liberties, given his vote in support of maintaining warrantless wiretaps and granting prosecutorial immunity to telecoms, as well as his seeming but admittedly not yet ascertainable distaste for seeking just prosecutions of Bush Administration personnel. Could I be wrong? Of course, and let us hope I am. But I doubt it.

What are my biggest concerns about an Obama Presidency, matters not exactly popular in current public and media discourse? I shall limit my list to two things.

First, Mr. Obama has given every possible indication that he plans to expand the military and spending for said expansion and that he intends to substantially increase our involvement in Afghanistan. One would think the supposedly most brilliant president we've ever had might take an hour or so to read what former Soviet generals had to say about a large military enterprise in Afghanistan, but in matters such as this, to the surprise and scathing condemnation of friends (so be it, no complaints), I consider Mr. Obama's attitude on foreign policy and the military to be potentially neo-con in nature (based on both his own remarks and the personnel choices he has made thus far), but he may prove to be far more judicious and diplomatic than signs indicate, possibly now “laying low until the time counts.”

He has talked a good negotiating game, but I see no inclination on his part to negotiate in Afghanistan, leave Iraq in the near or forseeable future, or curb the defense industry's immoral and psychotic longing for ever more wars from whence to obtain ever more billions of taxpayer dollars, removing such funds from revenues to help the needy, homeless and all other unfortunates voguely now frowned upon in an almost Calvinistically predestinationist manner, thereby dismissively and efficaciously condemning the economically disenfranchised to a status of unworthiness beneath the merit of government assistance. Again, perhaps I am wrong, but I expect a more sophisticatedly propagandized continuation of the American Empire, repleat with its hegemonistic domination of the globe, focused upon the developing world and its vast natural resources, necessary components in continuing America's terribly disproportionate consumption of the world's treasures, so far beyond ecological carrying capacity that the phrase hasn't been publicly uttered in the past eight years.

Secondly, especially in light of his not yet having in any serious way called for accountability or transparency in the 1.2 trillion dollar corporate socialist giveway euphemistically labeled the “bailout for the benefit of all (read: All the wealthy people),” I am incapable of fathoming Mr. Obama's taking on the corporate stranglehold over the American government. I see him as a well-intended fellow who has brilliantly earned his way into the hallowed halls of power, maintaining such positions in this country demanding inseparability from at least passive complicity in the perpetuation of the Corporate State, with understandably little proclivity to challenge the power base that in almost indecipherably complicated ways provides him with the power to “govern.”

As for helping the needy, perhaps Jesus best understood the hopelessness of alleviating that situation when he said two thousand years ago that the poor will always be among you. I haven't seen the American government make any concerted efforts to prove him wrong and I'm not expecting to under the Obama Administration.

We've reached the point where my friends become apoplectic and begin throwing stones so I shall cease and desist. They may be right, I may be insane and terribly wrong in my assessment of Obama and all things political. I sincerely hope that is the case, but I see no profound insight or grasp of reality in the conventional wisdom being disseminated to convince me that the pundits have a more accurate read on what is to come than my pessimistic reservations and expectations.

As that great philosopher Doris Day sang long ago, que sera sera, what will be, will be, but I cannot yet find the disingenuous humility with which to agree with the many who insist in harmonious concert, that I don't know what I'm talking about. Meanwhile, I must simply, as Adam Clayton Powell counseled so long ago, keep the faith.

Peace.

David Hoch
Atlanta, Georgia
November 28, 2008

A SHORT BLOG FOR VETERANS' DAY

2007-11-11T08:06:00.000-08:00

This will be the shortest blog I've yet posted. As we today observe Veterans Day, ostensibly commemorating the armistice that ended World War I on November 11, 1918 and veterans that have died in battle, but actually celebrates the glories of war, as prescribed by the government which could never, under either Party, pass up the opportunity to propagandize and proselytize for the notion of war as a sanctified necessity, I wonder each year if many others see the occasion for the obscenity it has become.

Today, I found a short poem written long ago by Rudyard Kipling, whose son died in that first great war to end all wars, which assured me he knew the true meaning and cause of war.

Wrote Kipling:

"If any question why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied."

May Peace prevail on earth.

GENUG IZ GENUG

2007-09-23T18:00:00.000-07:00

One remarkable day at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach in the summer of 1972, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Alan Ginsberg, my dear friend Bruce Fried and I were driving around in a jeep, speaking with old Jewish women on the beach. (Don’t ask, with that crowd, one simply went along for the ride – and I didn’t know Ginsberg well, he just conjured himself up that day.)

Ginsberg decided we should go to the beach (the one with sand and water), and tell the old Jewish women it was time to end the (Vietnam, not Iraq) war (as if any of them would have voted for Nixon, it being a sin for a Jew to vote Republican until the Reagan era). We saw a group of elderly women leaving the beach and Ginsberg demanded we stop. We accosted the women in a friendly but loud manner, with Alan explaining that enough was enough, genug iz genug, and that it was more than time to end the war (our active and murderous involvement having reached its seventh year the month before).

Being into chanting, Ginsberg started jumping up and down in the sand, taking the ladies' hands and shouting over and over again, genug, genug, genug iz genug. Then Abbie started jumping up and down screaming maspeak, maspeak. I asked him what the hell that meant and he said it means the same thing as genug in Hebrew. (Not much help since I didn’t yet know what genug meant.) The scene got wild, but that’s another story, and I only mention it to say, Goddamnit, genug iz genug! Enough is enough.

So, the Times gave MoveOn a discount on an ad entitled “General Petraeus or General Betray Us.” Not surprisingly, the ad was critical of the general, calling him a shill for the Administration. He may be a brave soldier and loyal American, but he has also become a political tool of our cowardly president.

For conversation’s sake, I shall concede that the ad was tasteless. Actually, I found it inconsequential and innocuous, but let us say it was tasteless. At worst then, MoveOn placed a tasteless and offensive advertisement in the New York Times at a discount rate (although today MoveOn paid the balance on the full price of the ad.)

Will the universe survive this wicked and perfidious act? Not according to the corporate fascists who run this country and their nauseatingly sycophantic stooges. The right wing propaganda machine has swung into full gear, an all-out assault to save the nation and keep the world safe for democracy. This transgression cannot stand.

The mainstream media, propaganda arm of the corporate state, which even Dan Rather figured out last week after fifty years of being party to it, has convinced main street America in just two weeks that the responsible authorities at MoveOn should be tried, no doubt by some secret tribunal accountable to no one, without benefit of counsel (in W’s America), and then summarily executed, preferably on live national television, with millions of stars and stripes waving, jet fighter planes overhead, the Star Spangled Banner piped into every home, and a tearing asunder of the corpses by dogs trained by Michael Vick.

Furthermore, the thugs of the right so thoroughly intimidated the Times, not a daunting task these days, that its public editor issued an apology of sorts to readers for offering the discount, violating editorial policy by publishing an offensive ad, or both, one can’t be sure, given the obfuscatory cowardice the Times hides behind these days.

Let’s review: MoveOn placed a constitutionally protected advertisement in a newspaper that offended some people. Can one do worse in this world? Apparently not. The jingoistic anti-MoveOn campaign created an opportunity to further divert attention from the war and emboldened Mr. Bush to seek an extra fifty billion dollars, meaning he will ask Congress next week for two hundred billion more dollars to wage the war through 2008.

That atrocity met with barely a whimper. Has the entire country gone insane? Let me see if I have this straight. American sheepdom is apoplectic with umbrage (pursuant to Pravda’s direction) over MoveOn’s ad, which General Petraeus (as far as I know) never complained about. Fair enough, but let’s briefly consider the other side of the ledger.

Mr. Bush, our estimable ruler, lied us into a criminal and immoral war with his WMD nonsense, kept us there for four and a half disastrous years, oversaw the death of nearly four thousand Americans (and the injury of approximately 30,000 more), killed, according to a very recent survey by Opinion Research Business, an extremely reputable and mainstream British polling organization, over 1.2 million Iraqi non-combatants (through "collateral damage"), spied on countless American citizens without warrants, arrested others without benefit of counsel, bail, knowledge of the charges brought against them (if any), and did away with habeas corpus.

He also excised and “disappeared” large parts of the first amendment, most of the fourth, and reduced the sixth to its death prattle. As commander in chief (the buck stops there), Mr. Bush has overseen the torture and murder of more people than we care to think about, kidnapped and removed others to secret prisons overseas – the euphemism being “extraordinary rendition” – when it wasn’t prudent to torture them on our soil, spent over a trillion dollars on what John Prine would have called “your dirty little war,” many billions of which corruptly disappeared into the coffers of contractors whose executives contributed more than chump change to Bush campaigns, with no oversight whatsoever when these contractors failed to either do the work or did it so poorly that the facilities proved useless.

Mr. Bush has, in short, reduced the Mideast to a dangerously unstable and chaotic powderkeg, and I shall eschew the temptation to proffer a litany of his other disasters, not the least of those being Katrina and the economy.

We’ve had no impeachment proceedings, no timetable for withdrawal, ever-increasing war funding, more bullshit, more war crimes, more fascist propaganda, and more German-style acquiescence by the general public, a “good-hearted” but unconscionably uninformed little group of three hundred million members.

Shame on MoveOn! Support the President and “support the troops!” Don’t cut and run! Spread democracy! Stop the heathens, because if we don’t fight them there, they’ll follow us home.

I learned a little ditty at age three or four that went like this: Sticks and stones and the full might of the U.S. military can break my bones but words will never hurt me. In the spirit of that sage counsel, I close with two other words for all those offended by “betray us, ” but not the war or ruin of America.

Fuck you.

BIKO, LIBERATION, AND DEATH BY APATHY

2007-09-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

Steve Biko, legendary South African anti-apartheid activist died thirty years ago today at the ripe old age of 30. Biko, who founded the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa, an organization that was not originally looked fondly upon by the African National Congress (ANC), the major anti-apartheid party in South Africa, whose military wing was for some time led by Nelson Mandela until his imprisonment in 1962 (but shortly after his release in 1990, Mandela’s ANC won 62% of the vote in the nation’s first racially open election and he became the first black president of South Africa), but today Biko is hailed by the ANC as one of the great leaders of the liberation movement in South Africa.

Biko was one of the key organizers of the protests that led to the Soweto uprising in June of 1976. On that day, police opened fire on unarmed student protesters, injuring over a thousand and killing between five and seven hundred school children. After that, the South African authorities were committed to ending Biko’s influence and arrested him on August 18, 1977, under Terrorism Act # 83. Isn’t it convenient how repressive governments rid themselves of dissent by merely employing the word terrorism?

On September 12, Biko died in Pretoria prison, from what guards claimed to be a hunger strike, although he was found to have massive head wounds. Biko’s death aroused international anger and anti-apartheid sentiments, creating greater scrutiny of the South African regime. In February of the following year, at a hearing into his death, the police argued that Biko’s head wounds were a result of a suicide attempt and no murder charges were brought.

In 1997 five former members of the South African Security Forces confessed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that they had murdered Biko, but in 2003 the South African Justice Ministry announced that the assailants could not be prosecuted due to insufficient evidence and because the time period in which to try them had elapsed.

How many thousands of Bikos, famous and anonymous, have died in the quest for political freedom in this world, and how many more have been shot, beaten, injured, tortured, imprisoned, fired from jobs, and suffered innumerable, untold, and immeasurable other hardships in the pursuit of justice?

But in America, we are a spoiled, contented, and cowardly bunch. Just beneath the surface, almost everyone in this country, save the die-hard looney tunes who haven’t a clue what patriotism and freedom are really about, are now – in varying degrees of intensity – opposed to the horror we have created in Iraq. I have written a good deal – some would say far too much and far too often – about the cowardice and moral bankruptcy of the U.S. Congress, but be assured that our Congresspersons’ ability to do nothing to stop this war is predicated on our unwillingness to even inform them of our wishes.

One can only wonder what it will take. The war has now cost us approximately the following: One trillion dollars, 3,700 dead Americans, 27,000 wounded Americans, the blood of perhaps a million Iraqis on our hands and consciences, large chunks of the first amendment, the entirety of the fourth amendment, and substantial portions of the fifth, sixth, eighth, and fourteenth amendments (look them up, it’s a good exercise in civics).

I am as guilty as anyone of (accurately) accusing this government of being on the brink of fascism and repressing dissent, but we still have wide latitude (for how much longer, we don’t know) to speak up with relatively minor negative consequences, and yet we do and say nothing. We don’t vote, we don’t write, e-mail or call our Congresspersons, we don’t let discussion of the war intrude on our arguably insane obsession with sports, we wouldn’t begin to know how to make a public comment to an administrative agency on issues of import to this country, we essentially ignored the death of New Orleans and we turned uncomfortably in our chairs but never really complained when the rogue and outlaw Bush/Cheney government implemented a criminal foreign policy that includes pre-emptive strikes, torture (in violation of the Geneva accords), and the kidnapping of innocent people in our own country and around the world.

Sure, we wondered about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and aren’t quite sure why we’re probably going to bomb Iran, but that’s above our pay grade. The experts will handle the big stuff. More precisely, the President will handle them. George W. Bush, the most dangerous American who ever lived, will handle our life-, nation-, and world-threatening problems because we can’t be bothered with participatory democracy.

We’ve got American Idol, we’ve got Brittany and Paris and Lindsay, ad nauseam, ad infinitum. We care more about utterly meaningless gossip and scandal than we do about war, pestilence, disease, starvation, totalitarianism, real terrorism, and the threats of ecological and nuclear annihilation. We simply can’t be bothered.

Congress is an abomination, college students are obscenely apathetic, and the average Janes and Joes have long since ceased believing they had any say in the policies of their government, because they don’t. They would, of course, if they spoke up often enough and in large enough numbers, but there isn’t much danger of that happening. Propaganda and poverty work wonders in keeping down the masses.

I wonder why Chuck Hegel, my personal favorite current Republican packed it in this week. I can’t help but think he surveyed the ruins of American democracy, gave his wife a big hug, and said fuck it.

Listen guys, I hate to truncate these upbeat remarks, but Oprah is coming on, so I’ve got to split. Besides, my heart is in the coffin there with America, and I must pause ‘til it come back to me, so I’ll leave you with my favorite lines from Albert Camus. “I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.”

A FEMINIST TUDOR OR WHY THE DEMOCRATS MAKE ME PUKE

2007-09-07T16:11:00.000-07:00

On a procedural note, I am cyber-challenged and do not know how to reply to anonymous blog comments. I appreciate the remarks and would be happy to respond to anyone who leaves an e-mail address. Thank you, and now on with the show.

There is an embarrassment of riches in September 7th birthdays and events, so I shall merely list or briefly comment upon several and conclude with more extensive remarks about the biggy of the day, Lizzy I, daughter of Anne Boleyn by Hank the eighth.

Today is the eightieth anniversary of the day Philo T. Farnsworth broadcast the first electronically televised picture. Who could have known back then what a culture-changing instrument television would become and what a powerful role it would play in propagandizing the masses.

Today is also the 99th birthday of artificial heart pioneer, Michael DeBakey, who is still alive, reasonably well, and living by his motto, “strive for nothing less than excellence.”

Elia Kazan, famous author and Hollywood director, was born 98 years ago today (and died in 2003). He won three Academy Awards including Best Director for On the Waterfront in 1955, and an Honorary Lifetime Achievement Oscar in 1999, the awarding of which was surrounded by controversy because Kazan “named names” before the House Un-American Activites Committee in 1952, during the McCarthy era, for which many people never forgave him. Kazan followed up Waterfront with East of Eden, another Hollywood classic, starring James Dean, so politics notwithstanding (if such can ever be the case), the man was indeed a great director.

Other people born on September 7th include Peter Lawford (1923 -1984), Hollywood actor and brother-in-law to the Kennedy clan, by marriage to their sister Patricia, current Hawaii Democratic Senator, Daniel Inouye (born 1924), legendary jazz saxophonist, Sonny Rollins (born 1930), Al McGuire, perhaps the first superstar basketball coach (Marquette) and later TV commentator (1931 – 2001).

Charles Hardin “Buddy” Holly, one of the greatest rock and rollers, was born on this day in 1936 and died at the age of 22 in a plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa, that also took the lives of Richie Valens (age 17, Donna, La Bomba) and The Big Bopper, Jiles Perry (J.P.) Richardson (Chantilly Lace) after leaving a rock and roll concert on their “Winter Dance Party” tour. Holly wrote and sang many hits in his short life, among them, Peggy Sue, Everyday, Rave On, and True Love Ways, and was immortalized in the 1971 Don McLean hit, American Pie, in which he referred to the crash as “the day the music died.” I can testify firsthand, however, to the fact that Holly’s music never died.

Today was also the birthdate of Garrison Keillor (1942), Peggy Noonan (1950) – journalistic integrity (something she’s not always been particularly observant of) requires that I include her name, the marvelous Chrissie Hynde (1951), of Pretenders fame, and for my Gator homies, today is the 53rd birthday of Benchmont Tench, Gainesville native and keyboardist extraordinaire with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

As mentioned above, however, the biggy of the day is Elizabeth I, who celebrates her 474th birthday today. She lived to a spry 70, which was impressive in those dangerous times. Elizabeth was, of course, the daughter of Henry VIII, whose two main penchants were marrying in pursuit of a male heir, and chopping the heads of off people who irked him. When all was said and done, Daddy Hank had married six times and seen to the removal of a considerable number of heads, most notable among them being Anne Boleyn herself and Sir Thomas More, whom I admired much before learning that prior to his own demise, Thomas saw fit to order and oversee the burning at the stake of Lutheran heretics on six separate occasions, a nasty little proclivity.

Henry’s third most famous chop would likely have been his own Cardinal Wolsey, but for the fact that Wolsey had the bad form to die en route to London, where a more abrupt fate likely awaited him. Henry never forgave Wolsey for failing to gain him divorce from his loyal and quite remarkable first wife, Katherine of Aragon, but the Pope had a silly hangup about divorce and wasn’t terribly fond of Henry either. Wolsey begged to differ with Henry’s assessment of his loyalty, by uttering in his last hours (according to British historian, Sean Lang, whose scholarship provided me with many of the facts cited here), “Had I but served God as diligently as I have served the King, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs.”

Elizabeth was quite bright (as was her mother before her), cantankerous, tempestuous, and strong-willed, as well she must have been to reign for 44 years (she succeed to the throne in November, 1558 and was crowned in January, 1559, serving until her death in 1603). Elizabeth once said of herself, “I may not be a lion, but I am a lion’s cub, and I have a lion’s heart.” She was immensely popular and died in her bed.

One of Elizabeth’s biggest problems was that her cousin (after a fashion), Mary, Queen of Scots, kept approving plots to have Elizabeth killed. Mary challenged the legitimacy of Liz’s queenship, because she challenged the legitimacy of Hank’s divorce from Katherine, and thereby the legitimacy of his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth showed remarkable patience in bearing these plots, but at the insistent urging of her closest advisor, Sir William Cecil, she finally faced the truth of Mary’s threat to her crown and life, and had Mary executed in 1586.

In spite of her father’s greater fame, or should I say notoriety, or even infamy, Elizabeth’s reign was known as the Golden Age of English history. Partly because the Catholic Mary kept threatening her life, Liz established a moderate Church of England she thought both Catholics and Protestants might attend together, but we all know how well that worked out. Still, Elizabeth showed fortitude and decisiveness in doing so. She also oversaw her country’s defeat of the feared Spanish Armada, in 1588, and chartered the East India Company, which expanded the realm of the British Empire.

Another less than sterling plan was to send the Earl of Essex to put down a Catholic rebellion in Ulster, Ireland in 1594. The Earl was a bit confused, blew the gambit, and returned with plans to marry Elizabeth, who saw a different future and had his head cut off. (She apparently inherited a fondness for the block from dear old dad.)

Worsening matters, Elizabeth went along with a plan to place British Protestant settlers in Ulster, so there would be no more trouble from the Irish Catholics. That brainstorm began around 1600 and it only took four hundred and six more years for the Irish Catholics and the British Protestants to sign a peace treaty.

Still, Elizabeth was a woman of action. She gave it her best shot, and on her deathbed, at least through passive acquiescence, chose James VI of Scotland (who then became James I of England), son of Mary, Queen of Scots and a Presbyterian who did not revert to his mother’s Catholicism, to succeed her to the throne, thus ending the Tudor rule of England, as James was a Stewart. James’ two main claims to fame were probably his belief in and devotion to the divine right of kings, and his overseeing of the original issuance of the King James Bible in 1611.

Elizabeth occasionally exercised bad judgment, but she was courageous, brave, and decisive. Would that today’s Democratic Congress took a cue from Lizzy, because we are cursed with the most motley crew of spineless cowards I have ever seen in my fifty years of observing American politics.

In fairness, there are some actual Democrats in Congress and a handful with a fighting spirit, most notably Barbara Boxer, Ted Kennedy, Russ Feingold, and Bernie Sanders in the Senate, and Dennis Kucinich in the House.

On the whole, however, most Democrats have ideologically become what we used to call moderate Republicans. Their lack of moral and intellectual compass is shameful. Even John Conyers, whom I venerated for years, had Cindy Sheehan arrested when she went to discuss impeachment with him, and told her that he didn’t have the votes and that Fox News would essentially crucify him if he proceeded. This is the guy who screamed for impeachment until he had the chance to move the motion for articles as the head of the House Judiciary Committee. Patrick Leahy’s bark in the Senate is equally biteless.

Nancy Pelosi’s first major act after her platitudinous remarks about all the Dems would achieve in their first hundred days (after taking control of the House in the ’06 elections) was to declare that “impeachment is off the table.” This is not a primer on impeachment, but more than sufficient grounds exist to impeach and convict Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales, although Gonzo took a powder while the Democowards napped. Aside from committing flagrant war crimes, the President violated his Constitutional duty with illegal wiretaps, fraudulent statements about the intelligence concerning WsMD, and hundreds of signing statements that usurped Congress’s authority.

But impeachment is off the table. If it weren’t for the fact that our last chance to halt the rapid move toward fascism resides in a Democratic presidency, it would be sweet justice to see the Demolemmings blown away in the next election. They are so far behind the public curve, it is ineffably astonishing to observe their stupidity and moral cowardice. One thinks he or she is either trapped in a surrealistic painting by Dali or has fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole.

But let us set impeachment aside and discuss three quite recent examples of why the Democrats make me heave. Am I being crude? Please note that the Democrat’s abdication of constitutional duty and respect for democracy is irritatingly unfashionable and as Barry Goldwater’s speechwriter, Karl Hess, once said, “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

After going along with the megalomaniacal sociopath George W. Bush’s mass murderous war in Iraq (cutting the bullshit, we’ve now killed a million Iraqis) too many times to count, the Democrats had yet another chance to stop the madness in May after Bush, on May 1st, vetoed a bill that actually called for a beginning of troop withdrawals in October. John Edwards and other prominent Democrats (granted, Edwards is no longer in Congress) called on the Democrats to continue sending funding bills to Bush with troop withdrawal dates attached, forcing him to veto bill after bill. The Dems did no such thing, of course.

On Thursday, May 24th, Congress sent Bush a bill calling for $120 billion dollars to last until September ($20 billion more than Bush asked for), with no troop withdrawal requirement whatsoever. Keep in mind that the Democrats now hold a majority in both houses when I tell you that the vote in the Senate was 80 – 14 in favor of the bill and the vote in the House was 280 – 142 in favor of the bill. In fairness, let it be known that Nancy Pelosi, along with Clinton and Obama in the Senate, voted against the bill.

Next week, General David Petraeus will come before Congress and tell its members under oath that the war is going fairly well and how we need to continue funding and waging it, which suggestion the Democrats will statutorily support unconditionally. I love the smell of patriotism, that last refuge of a scoundrel.

Just before the summer recess, Congress voted to extend Bush’s unconstitutional powers to eavesdrop on the American people. Why did they do that? Because he asked them to. On August 5th, Bush signed the Protect America Act of 2007, which further diminishes the already anemic FISA Court powers and allows the government to wiretap phone calls and e-mails on American soil without court oversight, along with other substantial encroachments into citizen rights to privacy.

The bill does call for oversight by requiring that the Attorney General (at the time, Gonzales) and the head of national intelligence (Mike McConnell) draw up an operational procedure that a secret national security court must approve, although the court will not be privy under this law to information pertaining to the actual wiretaps themselves. Sound a wee bit Orwellian?

The bill passed 60 to 28 in the Senate with 16 Democrats in favor, and 227 to 183 in the House, with 41 Democrats in favor. It should not only have been defeated in both houses, it should never have come to a vote. The party in power controls the calendar and the Democrats could have kept the bill from ever being voted on, or at least until after the summer recess, although arguably indefinitely. But instead, the Democrats went along with yet another immoral, unconscionable, and unfathomable abuse of their constituents’ democratic and constitutional rights.

Words cannot describe the cowardice of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid. They are truly remarkable. Pelosi and Reid, in devising their Machiavellian calculus and Mephistophelian machinations aimed at regaining the White House in ’08, have triangulated themselves and their party off the moral matrix.

May Cindy Sheehan inspire Pelosi to serious ethical reflection in her bid to unseat the Speaker from Congress. No wonder Sheehans arise, along with Medea Benjamins, Naomi Kleins, and countless other articulate, knowledgeable, brave and highly intelligent challengers of the status quo, as legitimate questioners of Democratic sins of omission.

Which brings us to yesterday, when the unfailingly spineless Democrats announced that they will take “a more nuanced approach,” “manage expectations,” and work toward a “bipartisan compromise” on war funding, which in short means that, on the eve of Petraeus’s Shakespearean (or is it Warholian?) moment before Congress, the Demowimps have decided not to insist that a firm withdrawal date be attached to future funding. As Arianna Huffington suggested, perhaps they caved in when Katie Couric declared that “real progress has been made” in Iraq. After all, how could the Democrats stand up to Katie Couric?

Here’s a last example of the Democrats strangulating triangulating: Dick Durbin bravely announced today that he will not vote for any further war funding unless it is attached to a withdrawal strategy, but then went on to say, according to Mike Dorning, writer for The Swamp, a D.C. political website, that “he would continue to consider voting for annual defense appropriation bills, which include substantial funding for the war in Iraq...” This is from Senator Durbin, who in the same speech said that “I used to think this war was our worst foreign policy mistake in a generation. Now I think it is our worst foreign policy mistake ever.” Yet he can’t bring himself to unconditionally oppose any and all funding for the war.

The Democrats ought heed the words of Goethe who said that “in boldness there is genius and magic…we need only to begin.” It would better serve them to read Dante who wrote, “the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” More simply put, the Democrats make me puke.

Drink Pepto-Bismol and keep the faith.

BEATS AND TERRORISTS

2007-09-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

Fifty years ago today, Jack Kerouac’s On the Road was published, his legendary book about crossing the country with the frenetic and peripatetic Neal Cassady, who (Cassady) was later re-popularized as the crazed speedfreak driver of Ken Kesey’s bus in Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Kerouac’s book supposedly being written in one twenty-day booze infused binge on a single roll of paper.

We are told by the literati that Kerouac’s Road, along with Alan Ginsberg’s epic poem, HOWL!, published a year earlier (1956), and beginning with the poignant lament, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,” as well as William S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch (originally banned in America by the U.S. Postmaster General, for being obscene - which was somewhat ironic given that the book was a non-linear or mosaic-prosed entreaty to avoid the horrors of heroine - but finally approved for publication in America by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in 1966), were the founding publications of “The Beat Generation” of authors, a group that included such luminaries as the pre-environmental environmentalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Gary Snyder (Turtle Island, 1974), who also studied Buddhism with Alan Watts and was made famous in my favorite Kerouac novel (The Dharma Bums, 1958), the Beats having a profound influence on American letters, and in their spirit of quasi-Joyceian stream of consciousness, I believe I have just written one of the longest run-on sentences in history.

In On the Road, Kerouac said that “nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen,” and a great deal has happened in the fifty years since he penned that tome, but let us look at something that happened just last week, Friday, August 31st, to be exact. For some time, the U.S. Navy has been conducting sonar experiments, known technically as SURTASS LFA, for the ostensible purpose of improving ways to detect hostile submarines in American and other waters.

Unfortunately, the experiments, according to many environmentalists, are the direct and proximate cause of whale strandings. In short, the blasts from the Navy’s sonar experiments, it is argued, directly cause the death of many whales. As the Natural Resources Defense Council recently pointed out, according to a report by the scientific committee of the International Whaling Commission, one of the world's leading bodies of whale biologists, the evidence linking sonar to a series of whale strandings in recent years is "very convincing and appears overwhelming." Despite the broad scientific consensus that military sonar kills whales, our use of this deadly practice in the world's oceans is spreading.

Sparing you the judicial particulars, especially with law no longer counting as much more than a quaint notion in America (to borrow a word from Alberto Gonzales, our august and recently-resigned chief law enforcement officer), suffice it to say that injunctions had been granted in federal district courts, proscribing future sonar tests until the Navy provided more detailed environmental analyses of the consequences of the sonar blasts, as well as more effective ways to mitigate the potential damage to whales.

Last Friday, in a 2-1 vote by judges of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the injunction was lifted and the Court ruled that national security trumps the welfare of whales. The decision isn’t surprising, given that national security now trumps everything in America, including, law, justice, the Constitution, and personal rights to privacy, but the judge’s rationale in reaching his conclusion is quite interesting. Speaking for the two-judge majority, Judge Andrew Kleinfeld (appointed to the Court by Daddy Bush), wrote that “we are currently engaged in war in two countries.” These two countries with whom we are at war, if you happened to miss the news for the past six years, are Afghanistan and Iraq.

For the record, Afghanistan is completely land-locked, and Iraq has one small point on its southeast border with access to the Persian Gulf. Nevertheless, I have it on the highest authority from several top-ranking intelligence officers, and please recall that our intelligence has proven unfailingly accurate in recent times, that unbeknownst to most Americans, the gravest military threat from both Iraq and Afghanistan, is the strength, speed, and technologically advanced stealth of their submarine forces, especially the submarine fleet of Afghanistan, so in fairness to the judge, one can understand his deciding that our fear of submarine attack outweighs any environmental concern for the well-being of whales, or need of the Navy to comply with the Environmental Impact Statement requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969.

Judge Kleinfeld went on to say that “The safety of the whales must be weighed, and so must the safety of our warriors. And of our country." Choosing to describe the Navy as “our warriors,” one gets a feel for how fairly balanced the judge’s perception was in weighing the safety of our whales and warriors.How much havoc can these innocuous sounding “sonar tests” cause to whales? In the Navy’s own environmental assessment, it was concluded that the “exercises may result in approximately 170,000 ‘takes’ of marine mammals.” (That means the marine mammals die, but the military is very fond of euphemisms, my personal favorite being “collateral damage.”)

On another pleasant note, today is the 35th anniversary of the kidnapping of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games, by the terrorist group, Black September. The outcome of the abduction, ending in a controversial shootout and explosion at the airport a few minutes after midnight, was that the terrorists killed eleven Israeli athletes and one German policeman, the German’s killed five of the eight terrorists involved and imprisoned the other three, only to release them on October 29th when a Lufthansa passenger plane was taken hostage. Israeli intelligence operations sought those released and every surviving person involved with the Munich massacre, and mystery and dispute still surround the question of how many of them were eventually killed by the Israelis in a twenty-year pursuit of the perpetrators of Munich.

What is known, however, is that the Israelis and various Arab factions are still at each other’s throats, no workable solution has yet been implemented, horrible suffering and death continue in the Mideast, and in my meager and vastly oversimplified opinion (as a discussion of the mideast crisis would require not only a lengthy blog, but many books – thousands obviously already having been written on the subject), for which, I am ceaselessly criticized, the leaders of almost all the Arab countries have thus far refused to match Israel’s genuine commitment to a lasting peace pact and the Israeli treatment of the Palestinian population (especially in Gaza) has been morally unconscionable and inhumane, and provided the Arabs with a convenient excuse for not making the peace, with the wretched and mostly innocent Palestinians remaining, as Dylan once wrote in another context, “only a pawn in their game.”

These two items remind me of passages in Job. Regarding the Navy’s need to kill whales, it is said (5:23) that “the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.” How sad that we can bring ourselves to be at peace with neither the beasts of the field nor those of the sea. As for the unending insanity in “the holy land,” it is asked (28:12), “but where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding.”

Keep the Faith

Trains to Destiny

2007-09-03T09:03:00.000-07:00

On this day, September 3, in 1189, Richard I (the Lion-Hearted) ascended to the throne of England, after many years of trying to have his father Henry II deposed. Richard promptly showed his just and compassionate ways by banning Jews from the coronation. When several showed up anyway, he had them beaten and removed from the celebration. Oh, you know how Jews are, always complaining, the next thing you know they’re going to write some revisionist history claiming that Hitler was an anti-Semite.

On this date in 1634, Sir Edward Coke, the brilliant British jurist, most responsible for the adoption of Common Law, died.

On this date in 1658, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Realm of England, died. Cromwell, in a lengthy civil war, drove Charles I, who was ultimately to be imprisoned and then executed, from the throne. Cromwell then ruled what in essence became a military dictatorship as Lord Protector, until his death of natural causes.

On this date in 1783, the American Revolution was concluded when the victorious colonies signed the Treaty of Paris with the British.

On this date in 1995, E-BAY “opened shop,” accelerating America’s journey into consumer insanity.

On this date in 1939, England and France declared war on Germany, two days after the German invasion of Poland, generally considered the beginning of World War II.

Today is also the 100th (posthumous) birthday of Loren Eisely, the anthropologist whose marvelous writings about the mysteries of nature taught hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people that to truly observe the beauty of nature closely is to enter the realm of the mystical, the numinous, the transcendent.

On this day in 2005, former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, William Rehnquist died, and only after his passing did we learn that he had served his later days on the bench while suffering hallucinations from cancer medicine. Of course, that mental state may have been an improvement over his early days in politics, when he rose to prominence in the Arizona Republican party by illegally disqualifying and intimidating blacks from voting, a practice the Bush Administration, in its gallant quest for global justice, has honed to an art form.

Let us speak of trains carrying people to dramatically juxtaposed destinies. On this day in 1838, Frederick Douglass, disguised as a freed black sailor, boarded a train headed to freedom in Baltimore, with at least indirect assistance from Harriet Tubman’s underground railroad, and went on to become one of the most profoundly influential writers and spokesmen for the abolition of slavery in particular, and the recognition of all liberties in general.

One hundred and six years later, on September 3, 1944, Anne Frank and her family were among the 549 Dutch Jews loaded onto the last cattle car transporting Jews to Auschwitz, where they arrived on September 6th. Anne died at the age of 15, in April, 1945, just a few weeks before the camp was liberated by British troups. Her diary, however, was found, eventually published, and has since sold millions of copies and been published in many different languages. Although her personal destiny was darker than that of Frederick Douglass, she too shone the light of freedom around the world. Her most famous quote is that, “despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.”

This year, we celebrate Labor Day on September 3rd (today). As the Writer’s Almanac stated in today’s online edition, “Many of the labor laws those early activists wanted were passed in the 1930s, including the eight-hour workday and the 40-hour workweek. Most sociologists predicted that in the coming decades Americans would work steadily fewer and fewer hours. But in fact, the opposite has happened. Today, more than 25 million Americans work more than 49 hours each week. And 11 million spend 60 hours or more at work each week. Americans also take fewer vacation days than employees in any other industrialized nation, making Americans the hardest-working (or most overworked) industrialized nation on the planet.”

Furthermore, a recent study shows that the average American corporate CEO makes more money per day than the average corporate worker earns in a year. And yet, we are inundated with corporate media propaganda which tells us of the inefficiency of labor unions and how they are hampering the American economy and impeding economic growth, hindering the proverbial rising tide from floating all boats. While we move inexorably, albeit insidiously, closer to the demise of America’s middle class, we must remember: MBA uber alles!

To close today’s remarks, let us briefly consider homophobia in America. Amidst all the hoopla about Larry Craig’s gay proposition of an undercover cop in a St. Paul airport bathroom (I don’t know if he did this, I wasn’t there at the time), I have some thoughts. I am not a fan of Senator Craig, a right-winger who has done everything he possibly can to facilitate the destruction of America’s environment in his years in the Senate, yet I can’t help but wonder why his alleged sexual solicitation led to instant abandonment by his fellow Republicans, the party of principle, integrity, and compassion, while David Vitter is defended by the Party as a righteous man being persecuted by the dastardly Democrats, for all he did was engage in illegal sex with prostitutes. Could it possibly have anything to do with Craig's supposed indiscretion having connotations of…shudder the thought!...homosexual acivity?!

I find it despicable to “out” anyone who practices an alternative lifestyle and chooses not to be public about it, with one crucial exception. When people in power are gay but publicly speak out against gays, vote against gay rights, marriage, etc., and build a career by appealing to the homophobic fears of the populus, I, along with many other straight and gay followers of politics, believe that this is the one circumstance in which it is morally acceptable (if not obligatory) to out someone against her or his will.

Having said that, how remarkable that it is a crime in America to solicit homosexual companionship in a bathroom. What if all the men who inappropriately hit on women were busted for it? Hell, we’d double our already globally highest per capita prison population in the world overnight.

America’s Neanderthal attitude toward homosexuality is not merely despicable, but terribly costly as it facilitates the election of horrible people to high and powerful office in this country time and again. Many who think themselves enlightened haven’t a clue about their prejudice. The other night, on an MSNBC interview with Keith Abrams and Joe Scarborough, while discussing the topic de jour, Craig-bashing, Tucker Carlson bragged about the time he was accosted by a gay man in a public restroom, went back with reinforcements, banged the guy's head against the bathroom stall, and held him until the police came to make the arrest, fortunately saving both the safety and moral fiber of America.

While listening to Carlson’s story and watching him proudly smile (or was it gloat?), one can clearly hear both Abrams and Scarborough openly and gleefully laughing on live national television.

Day by day, it becomes increasingly embarrassing to be an American, but if you can (don’t ask me how), keep the faith.

Facebook Posts Transformed

2007-09-02T14:00:00.000-07:00

Hello Sportsfans,

It's been over seven months since I posted a blog, so my "process" isn't working all that well. Recently, a few former students (I somewhat retired in May, another time for that story) convinced me to activate my Facebook account, photo and all, and I quickly learned one can "post" there, and so I placed four posts, or short blogs, on my Facebook site in the past week. It slowly dawned on me that short and unimpressive blogs may be better than none at all (no unanimity on that view, of course), so I've decided to transfer my Facebook posts to this sight as short blogs. One will notice they are already getting progressively longer, but each one is still relatively short, and so I offer them here for the few people who might wish to peruse my recent written thinking as a cure for insomnia.

I hope to keep posting to Facebook frequently and transferring said posts to Blogspot, especially if anyone expresses an interest in reading them. That said, here are the first posts I placed on Facebook.

August 28th.

BIG DAY IN HISTORY

This is a big day in history (August 28th).It is the 258th birthday of Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (he drinks a lot of carrot juice); it is the 44th anniversary of Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream Speech, it is the day after Alberto GonFascist's resignation (although the Constitution - in spite of the Democratic Congress's flagrant obliviousness to this fact - remains in tattered ruins), and it is the start of a three game Red Sox - Yankee series at Yankee Stadium that should end with the Bosox secure in their soon-to-be AL East Championship.And that's the way it is... as Walter Cronkite (who shares my birthday but is even older than me) used to say.

August 29th

LOCKE ROLLS OVER IN HIS GRAVE

Today is the 375th birthday of British philosopher, John Locke, champion of natural rights and individual liberties, whose work inspired one Thomas Jefferson in his contributions to the Declaration of Independence, and to some extent, U.S. Constitution, those - to Alberto GonFascist - pesky little documents of little meaning. After all, President Bush himself once angrily said of the Constitution, "It's just a piece of paper!" What a guy!!

Do people really think Gonzales leaving means the crisis is over in the Justice Department, the problem of the Republican party's illegally disenfranchising millions of eligible minority voters has gone away, and that all is well? Except, of course, for the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, eight, and fourteenth amendments, each of which is hemorrhaging badly, but let's not bother ourselves with trivialities like Constitutional rights.Do people really think Karl Rove has gone away? You're kidding yourselves, folks. He's just gone underground (possibly in a bunker with Dick Cheney), preparing himself to do democracy serious harm in the upcoming elections.

Over forty years ago, William J. Lederer wrote a proufoundly insightful book about what the American government gets away with in the name of liberty and justice because the people continue to act like the title of his book: A Nation of Sheep.

By the way, Michael Vick, even though he found Jesus this week (about an hour, I believe, before his guilty plea in federal court), is a sadistic bastard without regard to his skin color. People who torture and slaughter innocent dogs are moral flotsam, be they white, black, purple, maroon, or polka dot.

Keep the faith.

August 30th

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

Today is the 89th birthday of the great Ted Williams, who all honest and knowledgeable sports fans agree, had the most beautiful swing in baseball. Williams was the last man to bat over .400, hitting .406 in 1941. He was a few thousandths of a point below .400 going into the last day of the season's doubleheader when his manager informed him that it would round up to .400 if he didn't play. Sparing you Ted's colorful response, he played both games, got six singles and wound up batting .406. No one else has done it in 66 years. And this was pre-steroids. Williams was so skinny, his lasting nickname is The Splendid Splinter. When he was 38 years old and fighting a neck injury, he batted .388.He flew military jets for six years during WWII and Korea and still ended up with 521 home runs. It seems reasonable to suggest that he would have hit more than Babe Ruth, had he played those six seasons during his prime years.

Today is also the 210th birthday of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wife of the great British poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. What, one might reasonably ask, could Mary Shelley possibly have in common with Ted Williams? Consider this: Mrs. Shelley wrote Frankenstein, and you know what that story was about. When Ted Williams died a few years ago, one of his sons had his head cut off and frozen, cryo-preservation, or something like that. What a macabre finish to such a remarkable life. Why, the full story of Ted's demise, deheading, and the legal battle over his remains is so strange, it seems a bit like the tale of...Frankenstein.

And that's the way the world turns, this August 30th, 2007, two days before the Gator season begins and 1,552 days since George W. Bush declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq, from the deck of the aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln, a ship he "flew" to through the dangerous airspace and waters of San Diego harbor in his padded codpiece and flight outfit to deliver yet another stirring speech about freedom marching forward. Listeners were jubilant as our inspiring leader reduced them to tears with his eloquent honesty.

But when I think of the war in Iraq, the latest war to end all wars (and terrorism to boot), I recall e.e. cumming's poem, Buffalo Bill's Defunct, which ended by asking, "How do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mr. Death?"

Keep the faith

September 1st

ODDS AND ENDS

August is now history and September is here. Today will be the first game of the season for the National Champion Gator football team (or, to be candid, the first full scrimmage, given that the Gators are playing Western Kentucky).

On a slightly heavier note, today is the 68th anniversary of the day Germany invaded Poland, beginning World War II. (England and France declared war against Germany two days later.) One would think that the German people were filled with bluster and pride over the invasion, but that wasn’t the case. The Germans were still exhausted from the horrors of WWI, which legally ended with the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, but didn’t come to full closure until 1920, meaning Germany began WWII a mere 19 years after the crushing nightmare of WWI was terminated.

Nineteen years ago, George Bush, The Father, was President of the United States. It is not a long span, as history goes. When the invasion of Poland began, renowned historian William Shirer, who was working for CBS radio in Berlin (and later wrote one of the finest books on the war, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich), diaried that he “walked the streets. On the faces of the people astonishment, depression. Stunned.”

Contrast that with America’s jingoistic joy at our bombing of Baghdad in March, 2003. How could that be? Perhaps it is in part attributable to the American people’s good-hearted naivete. In further part, however, it has something to do with the fact that America’s propaganda machine has a scope and sophistication that would turn Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, green with envy.

When the mainstream media becomes the propaganda arm of the corporate state (as it has in America, whether or not that notion offends one’s sensibilities), it serves as an impressively efficacious tool for manipulating and controlling the populus.If you doubt that, consider what an alarming number of Americans have already been convinced that it would be a good idea to invade Iran. It doesn’t hurt that the American economy has come to rely on the military industrial complex as the economic engine that sustains our “standard of living.” As they say in law: Res Ipsa Loquitur. The thing speaks for itself. But then I’m a “burnt out sixties hippie, so what do I know?”

Turning the page, today is also the 132nd birthday of Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of the Tarzan books. It is little known that Mr. Burroughs was well-read in Darwin and developed the “liberated” chimpanzee Cheetah as Tarzan’s sidekick because he (Burroughs) was fascinated with the relationship between humans and apes. One might suggest that Burrough’s presentation of Cheetah the Chimp in the Tarzan books was one of the earliest literary portraits sympathetic to the notion of animal rights.

By the way, Labor Day was created as a celebration of American Labor, but today we celebrate while the government takes ceaseless measures to crush the labor movement. I doubt that 5% of the public or 10% of college students could identify Eugene V. Debs (who, by the way, will turn 152 years old on November 5th, a true scorpio).

Keep those cards and letters coming, but more importantly, keep the faith.

September 2nd

WAR, LIBERATION, AND DECEIT

Today would have been the 59th birthday of Christa McAuliffe, the teacher-astronaut from Maine who was killed in the Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986, when she was 37 years old. Talk about a waste, every legitimate inquiry conducted subsequent to the Challenger debacle revealed that both the government and Morton Thiokol, manufacturer of the Solid Booster Rocket intended to carry the astronauts into space, knew that there were serious flaws in the O-Ring design (the seals holding the various stages of the rocket together) that were likely to result in an explosion in cool weather, and when temperatures plummeted freakishly low on the pre-flight eve, the MT engineers who designed and built the booster voted unanimously not to launch.

In the independent Presidential investigation headed by the late, brilliant, and esteemed physicist, Richard Feynman, who worked on the Manhattan Project as a young man, commission member Major General Donald Kutyna, Director of Space Systems and Command Control, USAF, said the O-Ring evidence was analogous to evidence that an airliner wing was about to fall off.

However, scientific engineering data ran into the brick wall of politics, money and power, this time in the form of NASA and Morton Thiokol and one rarely wins a battle against such forces, so the seven Challenger crew members are now dead and compromised shuttle flights are again being flown by NASA. As Cookie Oberg, science writer for USA today reported after the Columbia disaster, “a culture of NASA arrogance” was responsible for the Columbia tragedy, and she doesn’t hold out much hope for change in the near future.

Just what is it about American institutions that cultivates such unconscionable hubris? It was 106 years ago today, at the Minnesota State Fair, when Teddy Roosevelt counseled us to “speak softly and carry a big stick.” GWB doesn’t show any proclivity for heeding that advice, as he has clearly become the most boisterous and arrogant President in history, essentially threatening to bomb and/or destroy anyone who disagrees with him.

Sixty two years ago today, the Japanese signed the papers of unconditional surrender to formally bring a close to WWII. From Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941, until Japan’s surrender, sixty two years ago today, America was involved in WWII for precisely three years, eight months, and 26 days. To date, we have been in Iraq since our Shock and Awe campaign began on March 20, 2003, or a period of four years, five months, and 13 days - seven months and 17 days longer than it took us to defeat Hitler and Japan (with no end of the current war in sight, given Bush’s sociopathological mindset, borderline sadistic obstinacy, and John Wayne complex, synergistically combined with a spineless Democratic Congress that has managed to achieve lower poll approval ratings than Bush in the eight short months since the Dems took office).

Whatever criticism one may fairly levy against Douglas MacArthur, his post-war occupational administration of Japan was a model of sheer genius in its functional realism and efficiency, compared to the “post-war” administering of Iraq by young and inexperienced idiologues, who were brought in to take charge, based on qualifications such as their opposition to abortion and having voted for Bush, while the seasoned career professionals were removed from their posts, thereby assuring the debacle that now exists in Iraq.

Today is also the 62nd anniversary of the day Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam's independence
from France, it’s long-time pre-war colonial oppressor. Shortly after that, he wrote to President Truman, asking that in the spirit of Jefferson, Washington, and the American Revolution, the United States might assist Vietnam in securing its freedom from the French. Of course, Truman ignored Ho Chi Minh, supported the French, largely funded France’s disastrous military defeat at Dien Bien Phu on May 7, 1954, which led to the Geneva Accords temporarily partitioning Viet Nam into a north and south, Accords which the U.S. refused to honor, resulting in Ho’s guerilla war against the south, America’s massive entry under Johnson, and the only major military defeat for American troops, until now in Iraq.

Let the mainstream media say what it will, however rhetorical and platitudinous it is made to sound, the fact is that American military involvement in wars since WWII has been to promote multi-national corporate imperialism, economic hegemony, and the placement of strategic American military installations around the globe, not to mention stoking the fires of the military economy at home, a matrix that neatly takes billions upon billions of dollars from the public treasury and places them directly into corporate coffers.

Let me guess: You don’t believe me because the President and Fox News Channel tell you that "they hate us for our freedom." In response, I refer you to something Thoreau wrote in his essay on Civil Disobedience in 1849, which observation seems all too presciently relevant these 158 years later. “How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”

Seek the truth and keep the faith.

Thoughts On the Arrogance of Our Species

2006-12-23T12:59:00.000-08:00

A friend once suggested that I would find success by getting rid of my "unconventional edges -the vegetarian, animal loving, tree-hugging hippie politics.” I thanked him for the advice, but explained that those "edges" are me. This essay, to the reader's possible chagrin, resides in the domain of those edges. Yesterday, I read an AP article that saddened and enraged me. Granted, that happens each time I read or watch the news, but this particular story really “chapped my ass.”

It seems a Japanese research team filmed and then captured a giant squid, but alas, according to team leader Tsunemi Kubodera, the squid “died while it was being caught.” The article was on CNN’s website, accompanied by video footage of the mysterious creature with its beautiful orange coloring, being caught and dragged from the sea. Kubodera went on to say that the squid was pulled into a research vessel “after putting up quite a fight,” and that “they lost it once, which might have caused the injuries that killed it.” The article also contained glowing quotes from Kubodera about the successful mission and how he now knows better where to find and study other giant squid.

What arrogant, “speciesist” bastards we are. When I read that a giant squid had actually been filmed for possibly the first time, I was excited and anxious to see the footage, until I learned that merely filming the legendary leviathan would simply not suffice. This is not surprising behavior for scientists from a country that annually massacres hundreds of whales, and sells their butchered corpses as expensive delicacies to status-conscious diners, who paradoxically dote on their own cats and dogs. (The Japanese spent a reported 8.6 billion dollars on "pet care" in 2005, sharing the global practice of considering some animals companions and others food.) Do I sound racist? Not at all, Americans are every bit as brutal, only less blatant, about our slaughter of other species.

God forbid the researchers would have created an ethological video record of this splendid creature cavorting in its habitat and then left well enough alone. No, we’re humans and, with the exception of a few especially charismatic mega-fauna, we kill every beast that catches our fancy. Even those few we intend to spare are inadvertently imperiled by our rapacious consumption of their habitat.

Unlike the Japanese, Americans are - excepting those we incarcerate in "aquatic theme parks" -relatively respectful of marine mammals. We’re more inclined to wreak havoc on landlocked animals, especially barnyard creatures, approximately ten billion of whom we annually raise and slaughter in grotesquely inhumane and torturous ways, and then eat with nary a pang of conscience.

When the morality of our gastronomical treatment of other species is discomfortingly questioned by the nay-saying hoi polloi with “unconventional (vegan and vegetarian) edges,” or more perspicaciously challenged by eloquent, accomplished and estimable philosophers, such as the notorious Peter Singer, or Tom Regan and James Rachels, we deride the former and either ignore or make ad hominem attacks upon the latter, avoiding, by all means, having to face the serious question of what obligations we do and do not have toward other species.

Had I a dollar for every dear and virtuous person who has championed peace and justice for the downtrodden, the destitute, and the disenfranchised, and then celebrated a job well done by dining on the bodies of dead animals, I would be a rich man today.

Most progressives are more comfortable defending human, rather than non-human victims, apparently believing, even if unconsciously, that the suffering of non-human creatures doesn’t count, or doesn’t count enough. All too often this value judgment is defended by attacking animal rights supporters and environmentalists as being unconcerned with human misery, even though the overwhelming majority of animal protectionists are also dedicated advocates of civil and human rights.

Suffering is suffering (and violence is violence), or as Singer profoundly wrote, "All the arguments to prove man's superiority can not shatter this hard fact: In suffering, the animals are our equals." One can argue (perhaps convincingly so) from a utilitarian perspective, that the joy derived from a tasty morsel of meat is far outweighed by the nightmarish life and death of the animal that provided the meal, or from a deontological perspective, that we have a moral duty to at least grant unquestionably feeling nonhuman creatures the right to exist, but such discussions bog us down in the dry weight of intellect, which however valid, holds persuasive efficacy for few people.

It is the heart’s cold fear that must be warmed by a resolute application of compassion and decency, until our species’ arrogance toward the millions upon millions of other life-forms with whom we share this planet is leavened with widespread humility; until the blind hubris with which we cruelly and murderously wrench magnificent beasts from the sea, or annually slaughter billions of blameless farm animals, will no longer be unthinkingly taken for granted. As Thomas Edison said, “Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”

A SHORT BLOG ABOUT W'S LATEST MILITARY BUDGET PROPOSAL

2006-12-21T03:29:00.000-08:00

It is five a.m. and I am once more pacing the floor, thinking of W. His proposed budget to fight yet another year in Iraq and Afghanistan is 170 billion dollars. That's on the table, and we'll never know how much black budget money, and funds siphoned from other appropriations will be added to that figure.

Granted, there is valid concern about just walking out on those who've supported us, leaving them vulnerable and endangered, not that we can necessarily do all that much to help them, or that it would be a slaughter of the proportions some suspect. Still, it is a serious and genuine concern, given the seemingly intractable and irresolvable mess Bush has lied us into, with the able assistance of a sycophantic Congress (on both sides of the aisle), and the docile compliance of two hundred million sheep posing as an American public.

It wouldn't take all that many billions, however, to leave a residual force to protect those who've aided us and would (and will) be endangered by our departure. I lay no claim to military logistical or budgetary know-how, but offering merely speculative numbers, it seems reasonable to assume that a skeletal force of ten to twenty thousand troops (at the most) remaining for a while, could well protect those Iraqis who fear for their safety, by locating them (and our troops) in cordoned "safe" zones of some sort, at a cost of no more than a few billion dollars.

I'm loathe to wonder how long such a residual force might be asked to remain, but even if it took a couple of years (shudder the thought), the cost and necessary troop numbers (maintained on a rotating basis of something like six-month tours - one soldier, one tour) would be a mere fraction of what Bush is requesting.

Should our permanent presence be allegedly required and called for, I suggest any reasonable utilitarian calculus would conclude that the danger to American security world-wide, and, even moreso, the danger of anti-American hatred, fomented by our continued presence in the region, igniting the Mideast powder keg Bush’s little war has inflammably destabilized, would far outweigh the "worthwhileness" of our staying in Iraq, even for the most noble of reasons.

Frankly, our exit from Iraq is no easy matter to negotiate, given that W & Co. have placed us between a brutal rock and nightmarish hard place, but my remarks here pose possibly sounder reasoning on the subject than Mr. Bush is now exhibiting, for his probable plan to send in another thirty thousand troops and spend yet 170 billion more dollars is arguably insane.

Should the Democrats, who will in twelve days control the purse strings, go along with anything resembling the expenditure Bush is proposing, my disgust and contempt for the "new" Congress will be ineffably bitter, and my fount of optimistic good will toward that body will turn darkly sour. The astonishingly quisling-like words issuing from Harry Reid's mouth these days lead me to fear that just such acquiescence may occur, in which case fools such as I will be left with only a mouth full of ashes and the sentiment of Mercutio, who bitterly wished "a plague o' both your houses." To quote the trouble-making Thomas Paine, alas, "these are the times that try men's souls.”

Thoughts Upon A Mideast Ceasefire

2006-08-16T11:05:00.000-07:00

In discussing the current crisis in Lebanon, one could go all the way back to Old Testament days in making the case for both sides’ legitimate claims to the land of Palestine (and Israel). It wouldn’t do much good. Furthermore, one could engage in serious and worthy debate regarding the wisdom of having created the Israeli state, and whether or not its existence has been an overall benefit to Jews, Arabs, and the world community. That discussion, too, however, would bear little fruit.

Let us, for conversation’s sake accept the reality that Israel exists, that it has existed for 58 years, and that Israel’s Jews are understandably not going to pack up and move to some desert community in America, Europe, or Africa. More than enough problems exist in trying to bring about a lasting peace in the Mideast as we now find it. The scenario generally has the Israelis arguing that their Arab neighbors want to drive them into the sea (as some surely do), and the Arabs claiming that they are the underdogs being oppressed and militarily subordinated by American-enabled Israeli imperialism. (The question of supposed Israeli “imperialism” is debatable, but without question, some Arab communities have been oppressed by the Israeli government, most notably the Palestinian community in Gaza.)

We can also find general agreement that Hezbollah has taken hold of southern Lebanon, due to weaknesses of both strength and will in the Lebanese government and military, that Hezbollah is armed chiefly through weaponry supplied by Iran that passes through Syria, and that Hezbollah unquestionably has continuously (but sporadically), and without provocation (since the Israeli withdrawal in May, 2000) launched Katyusha rockets into Israeli territory, with little harm (until the current conflict) suffered by Israelis.

It is equally true that Israel, because of terrorist raids across the border, entered Lebanon in 1978 in pursuit of Palestinian militants, returned in 1982, with a massive display of military force, and remained there for almost twenty years. There is plenty of blame to be found on both sides for the state of affairs the Middle East found itself in this June, and each side will assure you that all fault lies with the other.

We cannot erase history, and insofar as the current crisis is concerned, no resolution can be found by attempting to ascertain who is most responsible for the state of tension that existed between the Israelis, the Palestinians, Hezbollah, and the government of Lebanon when this crisis began in Gaza several weeks ago.

We can, however, examine recent events and ask ourselves what good has come of the Israeli incursion into Lebanon, and whether or not Israel now finds itself in a more secure position, both militarily and diplomatically than it did before undertaking a major military effort in June that continued until the UN cease-fire resolution went into effect on August 14, 2006, and may or may not last.

Conventional wisdom has it that Hezbollah killed several Israeli soldiers and kidnapped others without provocation on July 12th, and in return Israel began air attacks on south Lebanon and eventually entered Lebanese territory, for the sole purpose of trying to pressure Hezbollah into returning the kidnapped Israeli soldiers.

The Hezbollah attack and shelling was not the beginning of hostilities, however. Let us go back slightly further, in nearby Gaza, a territory whose inhabitants have been treated notoriously poorly by the Israelis, in part, to be sure, in response to years and years of terrorist attacks upon Israeli land and citizens originating from Gaza.

On June 9th, an Israeli warship allegedly fired a shell onto the beach at Gaza, killing seven Palestinians, many from one family, and wounding 31 others. (Defence for Children International, August 14, 2006.) Israel immediately denied having fired the shell, claiming that a member of the family had stepped on an undetected land mine. Shortly thereafter, Israeli Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, announced that an Israeli inquiry had concluded that Israel was not responsible for the explosion that killed the Palestinians on the beach in Gaza. (Jerusalem Post, June 14th.) However, Human Rights Watch military expert, Marc Garlasco inspected the scene and concluded that the blast was caused by an Israeli shell. Said Galasco, “…I believe, an Israeli shell did come in and kill these people,” ruling out the possibility of a land mine being involved. (Jerusalem Post, June 14th, with assistance from Associated Press.)

Shortly after that, on June 24th, as reported the following day in Britain’s quite reputable newspaper, The Observer (June 25, 2006), Israeli troops entered Gaza to “detain” two Palestinians that Israel claimed were members of Hamas. One person’s detainment is another’s kidnapping, and so, not surprisingly, the next day, armed Palestinian’s attacked an Israeli military post near Gaza, killing two soldiers in a tank, and “kidnapped” another wounded Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, taking him back to Gaza with them.

The Palestinians justified their raid as a response to the Israeli “detainment” of Palestinian citizens and the many rockets being fired from Israel into Gaza from the outpost they attacked, and the Israelis justified firing their missiles as a fair response to rockets being fired from Gaza into Israel, all of which claims were essentially true. In this truth, however, it is worth noting that the first incursion into territory of the other, and seizing of citizens, was done by Israel, not the Palestinians, a factor neglected by the flagrantly pro-Israeli Western media. (A lengthy discussion of these events can be found in an online article written by Jonathan Cook on June 30th, for MediaLens, http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060630_kidnapped_by_israel.php)

As has been reported in virtually every newspaper in the world, on June 28, Israeli troops and artillery rolled into Gaza, intending to effectuate the return of the “kidnapped” Israeli soldier, Corporal Galit. Almost immediately, the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) knocked out two bridges and a power station, thus depriving almost all of Gaza and its Palestinian residents of electricity, a situation that remains today. (CNN.Com, June 29th.)

For some reason, no one will ever know why for sure, on July 12th, Hezbollah, which has been sporadically firing rockets into Northern Israel for some time now, perhaps in “solidarity” with the Palestinians in Gaza, perhaps thinking Israel would not respond, given its problems in Gaza, or perhaps with the intention of obtaining bargaining chips (Israeli soldiers) with which to negotiate the release of Hezbollah members imprisoned by the Israelis (as, contrary to further conventional wisdom, several prisoner exchanges have been negotiated with Israel in the past), attacked Israeli armored Humvees near Shelomi (northern Israel), killed three Israeli soldiers, wounded two others, and abducted two more. (New York Times Timeline, found online at: http://www.nytimes.com/packages/khtml/2006/07/19/world/middleeast/20060719_MIDEAST_GRAPHIC.html)

The Financial Times suggested that, “The timing and scale of its (Hezbollah’s) attack suggest it was partly intended to reduce the pressure on Palestinians by forcing Israel to fight on two fronts simultaneously.” Even Noam Chomsky, distinguished scholar and severe critic of Israeli foreign policy, called Hezbollah’s action a “very irresponsible act. It subjects Lebanese to …plenty of terror and possible extreme disaster.” (Democracy Now, July 14th, 2006. Democracynow.org)

Not surprisingly then, Israel responded almost immediately with artillery fire, airstrikes, and a naval bombardment of southern Lebanon. The next day, Israel bombed the runways at Beirut Airport, as well as many other sites in southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah fired over 100 Katyusha rockets into northern Israel. The rest, as they say, is (recent) history.

Before the dust cleared, however temporarily, with the ceasefire that went into effect on August 14, Israel had destroyed a great deal of Lebanon’s infrastructure, mostly, but not entirely in the south, knocked out many bridges, killed nearly 1,150 Lebanese – and according to UN calculations, one third of those killed were children under 12 (Time, August 14, 2006), “most of them civilians (New York Times, August 14, 2006),” leveled entire neighborhoods, attacked over 350 Lebanese towns and villages (New York Times, August 13, 2006), invaded Lebanon with an artillery and ground force of thousands that marched approximately fifteen miles into Lebanon, bombed two clearly marked ambulances, killing several people (The Guardian, July 25, 2006), shelled a UN lookout post in southern Lebanon and killed four UN observers, after receiving repeated calls pleading with the IDF to stop shelling and assuring the UN it would do so (Associated Press, July 25, 2006), drove over 900,000 Lebanese civilians out of their homes (UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) and into refugee status, several hundred thousand of them fleeing to Syria, on August 11, fired into a refugee convoy, killing six people and wounding thirty others (New York Times, August 14, 2006), intentionally destroyed bridges to prevent international humanitarian aid groups such as Oxfam and the International Red Cross from reaching Lebanese civilians, and as a consequence of which, grave shortages of water, food, and medicine now exist in southern Lebanon and Beirut, prompting the UN’s World Food Program’s emergency coordinator in Lebanon, Zlatan Milisic, to say “our aid operation is like a patient starved of oxygen (Environmental News Service, August 11, 2006).”

Israel also destroyed a power station containing thousands of tons of oil that leaked into the Meditteranean sea and contaminated one hundred kilometers of beachfront, extending all the way to Syria, killing immeasurable sea life and ruining Lebanon’s fishing and tourist industries, the loss of the latter threatening possible bankruptcy (as damage estimates to property and infrastructure run between five and ten billion dollars) and the survival of Lebanon’s new democracy. The Israeli naval blockade of Lebanon prevented the taking of any remedial steps prior to the ceasefire, as Israel turned down humanitarian aid requests to mitigate this ecological disaster, and continues now. (Bloomberg, August 8, 2006.)

A report released on August 3, by Human Rights Watch, possibly the world’s most respected international human rights organization, stated that “Israeli forces have systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians in their military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon,” and that “In some cases, these attacks constitute war crimes.” (Fatal Strikes, Human Rights Watch, August 3, 2006.)

The report claimed that Hezbollah had also committed numerous war crimes, and Amnesty International has strongly criticized the UN’s Human Rights Council for not emphatically condemning Hezbollah’s shelling of Israeli civilian centers as war crimes. (Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, LINK TV, August 14, 2006.)

Human Rights Watch also criticized Israel for its use of cluster bombs, which spray small explosive grenades in all directions upon detonation, and account for a higher rate of civilian casualties. Israel did not deny the use of these bombs, but claimed “their use is legal under international law.” (BBC News, July 25, 2006.) Israel also said the cluster bombs were being used to more effectively knock out Hezbollah missile sites in Lebanon, and requested an emergency shipment of more cluster bombs from the U.S. (International Herald Tribune, August 11, 2006.) Congress was debating approval of the shipment when the ceasefire went into effect.

Israel was also accused, by doctors in Lebanon who treated burned civilians, of using white phosphorus incendiary devices, which are banned by the Geneva Conventions. (Kathy Gannon, Associated Press, July 25, 2006.) That charge is still under investigation, but has been denied by Israel.

During the war, Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets into civilian population centers, including over fifty towns and villages in Israel, killed over a hundred soldiers and approximately forty civilians, caused property damages that will probably run to a billion dollars or more, and ignited many fires in Israel’s northern terrain. This discussion of the damage sustained by both sides has been summarized because the facts are essentially irrefutable and have been reported in hundreds of media outlets.

On August 14, a ceasefire went into effect, but its de facto implementation does not require that Israel leave Lebanon or that Hezbollah put down its arms, making it a tenuous cessation in the conflict, at best. In fact, “Hezbollah refused to disarm and withdraw its fighters from the battle-scarred hills along the border with Israel on Tuesday (August 15th, one day after the truce began), threatening to delay deployment of the Lebanese army and endangering a fragile cease-fire.” (Edward Cody and Doug Struck, Washington Post, August 16, 2006.)

On the almost forgotten Gaza front, which was not included in the ceasefire resolution, Israel’s offensive continues, justified as a response to the kidnapping of the Israeli soldier, Mr. Shalit, and Hamas’s firing of rockets into Israel, in spite of the fact that in the ten month period preceding the renewal of hostilities in Gaza, Israeli forces killed 144 Palestinians, 29 of them children, while no Israelis were killed by violence originating from the Strip, according to the Israeli human rights group, B’tselem. (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, July 28, 2006.)

Since “hostilities” broke out on June 28th, over 200 Palestinians have been killed and another 800 wounded (Bloomberg.com, August 16, 2006), and according to Gaza Mayor Sheikh Mansour Braika, 320 homes and 520 greenhouses have been destroyed. Israel has also arrested more than thirty Hamas officials, including Abdel Aziz Duaik, speaker of the Palestinian Parliament. (Voice of America News, August 6, 2006.)

Israel’s land, sea, and air blockade has created water, food, and medical supply shortages, and left most residents of the Gaza Strip without electricity. Seventy percent of Gaza’s 1.4 million residents now rely on humanitarian aid for food and supplies. (Bloomberg.com, August 16, 2006.)

In response, UN Spokesperson (for Kofi Annan) Stephane Dujarric recently said that “The continued killing and injuring of hundreds of civilians, including children, in Gaza, by Israeli forces is utterly unjustifiable,” and on August 9th, Mr. Annan himself spoke out against the killing of civilians on both sides, noting that Israeli attacks have caused hundreds of deaths, and called for a cessation of the rocket attacks from Gaza, which he noted have indiscriminately targeted Israeli civilians. (UN News Centre, August 16, 2006.)

Hamas, in turn, has fired many rockets from Gaza into Israeli territory, but a thorough search for Israeli casualties revealed that only three Israelis have been killed in the Gaza conflict, all of them in direct combat with militant Hamas forces. Rightfully or wrongfully, Palestinians in Gaza see Israel as the aggressor, and dramatic increases in Gaza Palestinian support for Hezbollah have recently been reported by many major news outlets.

So, where are we? The American neo-cons are delighted, once again having fomented chaos and unrest in the Mideast, ostensibly pushing Israel – the United States’ apparent military proxy in the region - closer to attacking (and by Bush’s preference, nuking) Iran, as the neo-cons still blindly think, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, most pointedly the disastrous consequences of our war in Iraq, that they can, with Israel’s assistance, force democracy down the throats of a Moslem population that has, to date, shown no variation in its response of hating America passionately.

That is why the Bush administration gave its stamp of approval to the war in Lebanon long before the fact. This June, militant hawk and former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, now head of the right-wing Likud party, met with Vice-President Cheney at the American Enterprise Institute conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado, where he received Mr. Cheney’s approval for Israel to go forward with this war, and then returned to Israel to brief Olmert and other former Israeli Prime Ministers, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak. (Dean Andromidas, Executive Intelligence Review, July 21, 2006.)

In the newest issue of the New Yorker, veteran investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh confirmed, through a high-ranking U.S. government consultant, that “several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, to get a green light for the bombing operation.” (Seymour Hersh, New Yorker, August 21, 2006.) Former intelligence and diplomatic officials told Hersh that the Bush Administration “was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks (on Hezbollah),” believing that a successful Israeli bombing attack on Hezbollah could “serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations.”

It has long been no secret that the U.S. and Israel work together on many military matters. Shabtai Shavit, a national-security adviser to the Knesset who headed the Mossad, Israel’s foreign-intelligence service, from 1989 to 1996, told Hersh, “We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America’s requirements, that’s just part of a relationship between two friends.” He then went on to say, “Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.”

As did the Americans in Iraq, Israel has now sewn the seeds from which thousands of new young Arab terrorists may spring, and aligned itself more closely than ever before with the United States, thus assuring increased Arab and Moslem hatred of both Israel and America.

Have the Israelis dissipated the threat posed by Hezbollah? Hardly. The Israelis thought destroying Lebanon’s infrastructure would turn the people against Hezbollah (Seymour Hersh, New Yorker, August 21, 2006), but it had the opposite effect. Hezbollah is now vastly more popular than it was before the war, and there isn’t much realistic chance its members will lay down their arms, given that with the ceasefire, Hezbollah has proclaimed a “divine victory,” (Sydney Morning Herald, August 14, 2006) and now poses a more serious threat to both Israel and the recognized government of Lebanon than it did before the war. Many of the Lebanese troops that will take up posts in south Lebanon under terms of the ceasefire, are Shiites and members of or sympathizers with Hezbollah.

Immediately after the cessation of hostilities in Lebanon, media pundits began opining that Hezbollah is now substantially weakened, and how the Lebanese people will blame Nasrallah for the destruction of their country. This neo-con fantasy is consistent with the perception preceding the Iraqi war that America’s “liberators” would be greeted with sweets and flowers.

Reality, however, has a way of tempering ideological dreams, and according to John Kifner of the New York Times, “it increasingly seemed that the beneficiary of the destruction (in Lebanon) was most likely to be Hezbollah…which is already dominating the efforts to rebuild with a torrent of money from oil-rich Iran.” The Washington post reported that Hezbollah’s publicly proclaimed refusal to leave southern Lebanon “demonstrated the militant Shiite Muslim movement's increased assertiveness here.” (Edward Cody and Doug Struck, Washington Post, August 16, 2006.)

Professor Amal Saad-Ghorayeb of the American University in Beirut suggested that “Support for Hezbollah was likely to become stronger,” and Rami G. Khouri, columnist for The Daily Star in Beirut said Sheik Hassan Nasrallah “seemed to take on the veneer of a national leader…His prominence is one of the important political repercussions of this war.” (Both quoted in John Kifner, New York Times, August 16, 2006.)

In light of such realpolitik, it was not surprising when Nasrallah stated on August 14th that Hezbollah “will always be ready for dialogue…We are part of the government and a basic part of it.” (Edward Cody and Doug Struck, Washington Post, August 16, 2006.) If civil war breaks out in Lebanon in the near future, there isn’t much doubt which faction will emerge the victor.

In Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is under intense pressure for not having gone more forcefully into Lebanon and winning a decisive victory over Hezbollah, and he may soon be replaced by a right-wing Prime Minister, possibly a return to power of Netanyahu. Will Israel get its soldiers back? Probably. But they could have been gotten back without this war. Israel has negotiated with “terrorists” in several previous prisoner exchanges, and the entire process could have been facilitated with no war at all, had the U.S. acceded to Israel’s request to negotiate directly with Syria for a prisoner exchange, before the heavy fighting began.

Not only did the U.S. refuse to do that, but Condaleessa Rice non-categorically dismissed any suggestions that the U.S. speak to Syria at all. (Washington Post, July 24, 2006.) This prompted Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter administration, to suggest that Secretary Rice’s recent trip to the Mideast would consist of her “sitting in front of a mirror, talking to herself.” (Washington Post, July 24, 2006.)

A strange “sidebar” to the Bush Administration’s absolute unwillingness to talk with “the evil-doers” is that, upon seeing the extent of the damage to the infrastructure and number of civilians killed by the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, Rice then “ began privately ‘agitating’ inside the Administration for permission to begin direct diplomatic talks with Syria—so far, without much success." (Seymour Hersh, New Yorker, August 21, 2006.)

The Bush Administration, never strong on diplomacy when blind and destructive military might can be used, rejected the Israeli request to speak with Syria, but was more than willing to push an emergency measure to supply more bombs to Israel through Congress, as soon as the shooting war began. Unrest in the Mideast brings more happiness to this White House, long hostage to the neo-cons.

Can the war in Lebanon realistically be argued to have either weakened Iran’s political influence, or promoted the democracy movement within Iran? Not according to Ibrahim Yazdi, secretary general of Freedom Movement, an opposition Iranian political group, who told The New York Times that “…no one can deny the large-scale invasion of Lebanon by Israel and the destruction of its infrastructure and the crimes it is committing against civilians, women and children. Such acts strengthen (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad’s position.”

Yet, William Kristol, the quintessential neo-con with no personal military experience whatsoever, continuously counsels that we attack Iran. He recently wrote in the Weekly Standard, his own magazine, that “We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression (Hezbollah’s current conflict with Israel) with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.” Perhaps Mr. Kristol should chat with Shirin Ibadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize-winning Iranian democratic reformer, who told the New York Times in January that Ahmadinejad “will use any threat of military attack as an excuse to crush the democratic movement (in Iran)… in fact, a military attack would only inflame nationalist sentiments.” She went on to explain that Bush’s entire policy threatens the nascent democratic reform movement in Iran.

An article in today’s Reuters echoes the notion that this war did not deter Iranian objectives, by suggesting that “The Bush administration's influence in the Middle East is in danger of becoming another casualty of the war in Lebanon, giving Iran a chance to build up its clout in the region…The Arab world is seething at how President George W. Bush, after promoting free elections in Lebanon, made no effort to stop Israel from weakening the new government by destroying much of the country's infrastructure in a bid to cripple Hizbollah.” (Reuters, August 14, 2006.)

The undeterred Bush would like nothing more than to have Olmert, who seems as willing as Tony Blair to do Bush’s bidding, wage a proxy war against Iran. The Lebanese incursion, however, has probably weakened Olmert too much for him to undertake such an exercise. Given the results in Iraq and now Lebanon, perhaps it’s time both America and Israel look for some alternative to the catastrophically failed neo-con formula for peace in the Mideast. As Jimmy Carter once wisely observed, “We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.” (Time, August 14, 2006.)

We might begin by employing the novel idea of actually speaking with the leaders of Iran and Syria, and possibly even Hezbollah and Hamas. We lobbied for free elections in Palestine and as soon as Hamas won those elections, Bush refused to recognize the new government. No one suggests Hamas, or Hezbollah for that matter, are boy scouts who interned under Mother Teresa. They are, however, entrenched players in the increasingly lethal Mideast chess game, and it might just be time we had a chat with them. Branding Iraq and Iran charter members of an axis of evil hasn’t served us well so far.

Seeking new direction, why don’t we and our Israeli friends negotiate prisoner exchanges with Hamas and Hezbollah, work toward a functioning Lebanese army south of Beirut that may eventually convince Hezbollah to exchange its arms for power at the ballot box, take the lead in providing a serious international force on the Israeli/Lebanese border until Lebanon can curb Hezbollah militarism, shift the billions of dollars America has been pouring down the Israeli military sewer to a reparations project to rebuild both Lebanon (and clean up the oil spill) and Palestine, and promote both bilateral and multilateral negotiations between Israel, the Palestinians, and Hamas in serious pursuit of the creation of a Palestinian state with free access between Gaza and the West Bank and a capitol in East Jerusalem, and perhaps even negotiate some workable compromise between Syria and the Israelis over the Golan Heights so that those two countries can agree to terms for a lasting peace?

We might even send someone (other than Condaleessa Rice) – why not George Mitchell, Gary Hart, or Jimmy Carter, or if you need a Republican, Howard (not James) Baker, to speak with Mr. Ahmadinejad and suggest to him that trade pacts, oil sales, and Mideast peace might serve his people better than the building of a nuclear bomb or two or three, given that we unfortunately happen to have thousands of them, with global delivery capabilities.

These aren’t novel ideas and, as the Hollies warned, “the road is long, with many a winding turn,” but what is the alternative? A prompt resumption of the conflicts in Gaza (which, excluded from the ceasefire, is ongoing) and Lebanon (Hezbollah fired ten rockets into Israel the night the ceasefire went into effect), a further stroll down the inexorable path to war between Israel (and possibly the United States) and Iran, a Syrian and Iranian supported and more adventurous Hezbollah, more wars at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, and an exponential leap in the recruitment of American and Israeli-hating terrorists, with more converts to militant Islamic fundamentalism around the globe - and if you doubt that, note the increasing frequency of attacks on Jews by Moslems in France (New York Times, March 7, 2006).

Such scenarios necessitate more expenditures at home on weaponry - lobbied for with scary efficacy by the defense contractors Eisenhower warned us to be wary of - while our own infrastructure and social programs atrophy, increasing homeland insecurity and weakening our domestic safety (because the Administration can’t be bothered to protect trains, planes, ports, and subways, when money is needed for tax relief for the rich), so we get fear-mongering by our President and the concomitant shrinking of our civil liberties, all unopposed by an electorate that has lost faith in America.

How long are America and the Mideast going to be held hostage to George Bush’s theo-political fundamentalism? Isn’t “they hate our freedom” growing both old and expensive? It might be time to try plan B. The Mideast conflict has burned bloody and hot for over fifty years. Cooler non-military solutions are now in order and long past due.

K Street Has Nothing On AIPAC

2006-08-10T09:19:00.000-07:00

PROCEDURAL NOTE:

Several people send me truly excellent e-mail responses to some of my blogs, but alas, I am cyber-challenged and cannot figure out how to respond, because all of the replies I receive simply say “from anonymous,” and contain no e-mail address to which I might respond. If you do write, and you would like a response, please include an e-mail address in the text of your note and I will reply to your much appreciated correspondence, whether your notes be favorable or unfavorable.

INTRODUCTION TO THIS POSTING:

I have been receiving a remarkable number of e-mails, now that word has gotten out amongst my Jewish friends that, for shame and for sooth, I oppose Israel’s war in Lebanon. Tellingly, not one person has sent me a personal and direct refutation of my public opinions, but rather have I received an endless stream of pro-Israeli propaganda from AIPAC (through the many Jewish organizations it funds), each and every item adamant in its insistence that Israel is pure and holy, an undeserving and unwitting victim of virulent anti-Semitism visited upon it in the Mideast and by the world.

Without question, Israel is indeed, to some extent, a victim of that vicious sentiment, but to blindly ignore its complicity in bringing the current hostility upon itself is to unwisely and dangerously court disaster. Why, as a Jew, have I become so persistently vocal in criticizing Israel’s incursion into (and destruction of) Lebanon? In part, because I continue to believe that Israel will come to see the error of its current policy, the peril of its increasingly close alignment with America, and its all-too-willing tendency to seek military resolution to complicated geo-political problems. But I also continue to so publicly oppose this war because it is wrong, and because David Crosby was profoundly correct when he sang that, “you’ve got to speak out against the madness.”

Last night, I received yet another pro-Israeli e-mail, this one containing the stirring text of a July 31st speech by Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, which – because I believe a fair and open discussion of all political perspectives to be a sine qua non for solving political problems, and an incumbency of journalistic integrity – is reproduced for you here, verbatim, above the letter I wrote last night, in response to this latest e-mail. My message may be growing cumulative, but perhaps through repetition, some people will hear and think about it.

Here then are first Prime Minister Olmert’s moving speech to the world, and then my letter. You'll draw your own conclusions.

BULLETIN!!!

It has just come to my attention, several hours AFTER posting this blog and the following “speech,” supposedly delivered by Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, that in fact the “speech” was a newspaper column written by an Israeli journalist named Ben Caspit, in the Israeli newspaper, Ma’Ariv.

Mr Caspit called the column a “suggested speech for Prime Minister Olmert.” Whether by inadvertence or design, attribution to the “speech’s” actual author, Mr. Caspit, apparently became another casualty of this war, and the column posing as speech has been traveling like wildfire across the internet, particularly (and understandably) amongst Jews in America.

While I am tempted to wonder if this important inaccuracy is indicative of the quality reportage we are receiving from the Jewish community in regard to the war, fairness insists that I also blame myself for not having inquired thoroughly into the origins of the speech, and whether or not it was actually delivered by Olmert. All of us who passed on this material with erroneous attribution are at fault, and for my involvement in the “hoax,” I sincerely apologize to my few readers.

As for my fellow Jewish passers-on of the “speech,” I await with great curiosity their response to finding out that we have all been duped. As for the speech itself, although actually written as a column by Mr. Caspit, it still raises interesting issues in regard to the war in Lebanon and the Israeli Street’s attitude toward it, and it did prompt the writing of my letter in this blog, so I shall leave the “speech” and my letter intact, but now you know going in, the actual derivation of this material.

BEN CASPIT'S COLUMN IN THE ISRAELI NEWSPAPER, Ma'Ariv, ERRONEOUSLY PASSED ON AS PRIME MINISTER OLMERT'S "SPEECH TO THE WORLD."

Ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world. I, the Prime Minister of Israel, am speaking to you from Jerusalem in the face of the terrible pictures from Kfar Kana. Any human heart, wherever it is, must sicken and recoil at the sight of such pictures. There are no words of comfort that can mitigate the enormity of this tragedy. Still, I am looking you straight in the eye and telling you that the State of Israel will continue its military campaign in Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces will continue to attack targets from which missiles and Katyusha rockets are fired at hospitals, old age homes and kindergartens in Israel. I have instructed the security forces and the IDF to continue to hunt for the Katyusha stockpiles and launch sites from which these savages are bombarding the State of Israel.

We will not hesitate, we will not apologize and we will not back off. If they continue to launch missiles into Israel from Kfar Kana, we will continue to bomb Kfar Kana. Today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Here, there and everywhere. The children of Kfar Kana could now be sleeping peacefully in their homes, unmolested, had the agents of the devil not taken over their land and turned the lives of our children into hell.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time you understood: the Jewish state will no longer be trampled upon. We will no longer allow anyone to exploit population centers in order to bomb our citizens. No one will be able to hide anymore behind women and children in order to kill our women and children. This anarchy is over. You can condemn us, you can boycott us, you can stop visiting us and, if necessary, we will stop visiting you.

A voice for six million citizens Today I am serving as the voice of six million bombarded Israeli citizens who serve as the voice of six million murdered Jews who were melted down to dust and ashes by savages in Europe. In both cases, those responsible for these evil acts were, and are, barbarians devoid of all humanity, who set themselves one simple goal: to wipe the Jewish race off the face of the earth, as Adolph Hitler said, or to wipe the State of Israel off the map, as Mahmoud Ahmedinjad proclaims.

And you - just as you did not take those words seriously then, you are ignoring them again now. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaders of the world, will not happen again. Never again will we wait for bombs that never came to hit the gas chambers. Never again will we wait for salvation that never arrives. Now we have our own air force. The Jewish people are now capable of standing up to those who seek their destruction - those people will no longer be able to hide behind women and children. They will no longer be able to evade their responsibility.

Every place from which a Katyusha is fired into the State of Israel will be a legitimate target for us to attack. This must be stated clearly and publicly, once and for all. You are welcome to judge us, to ostracize us, to boycott us and to vilify us. But to kill us? Absolutely not.

Four months ago I was elected by hundreds of thousands of citizens to the office of Prime Minister of the government of Israel, on the basis of my plan for unilaterally withdrawing from 90 percent of the areas of Judea and Samaria, the birth place and cradle of the Jewish people; to end most of the occupation and to enable the Palestinian people to turn over a new leaf and to calm things down until conditions are ripe for attaining a permanent settlement between us.

The Prime Minister who preceded me, Ariel Sharon, made a full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip back to the international border, and gave the Palestinians there a chance to build a new reality for themselves. The Prime Minister who preceded him, Ehud Barak, ended the lengthy Israeli presence in Lebanon and pulled the IDF back to the international border, leaving the land of the cedars to flourish, develop and establish its democracy and its economy.

What did the State of Israel get in exchange for all of this? Did we win even one minute of quiet? Was our hand, outstretched in peace, met with a handshake of encouragement? Ehud Barak's peace initiative at Camp David let loose on us a wave of suicide bombers who smashed and blew to pieces over 1,000 citizens, men, women and children. I don't remember you being so enraged then. Maybe that happened because we did not allow TV close-ups of the dismembered body parts of the Israeli youngsters at the Dolphinarium? Or of the shattered lives of the people butchered while celebrating the Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya?

What can you do - that's the way we are. We don't wave body parts at the camera. We grieve quietly. We do not dance on the roofs at the sight of the bodies of our enemy's children - we express genuine sorrow and regret. That is the monstrous behavior of our enemies. Now they have risen up against us. Tomorrow they will rise up against you. You are already familiar with the murderous taste of this terror. And you will taste more.

In a loud and clear voice And Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza. What did it get us? A barrage of Kassem missiles fired at peaceful settlements and the kidnapping of soldiers. Then too, I don't recall you reacting with such alarm. And for six years, the withdrawal from Lebanon has drawn the vituperation and crimes of a dangerous, extremist Iranian agent, who took over an entire country in the name of religious fanaticism and is trying to take Israel hostage on his way to Jerusalem - and from there to Paris and London.

An enormous terrorist infrastructure has been established by Iran on our border, threatening our citizens, growing stronger before our very eyes, awaiting the moment when the land of the Ayatollahs becomes a nuclear power in order to bring us to our knees. And make no mistake - we won't go down alone. You, the leaders of the free and enlightened world, will go down along with us.

So today, here and now, I am putting an end to this parade of hypocrisy. I don't recall such a wave of reaction in the face of the 100 citizens killed every single day in Iraq. Sunnis kill Shiites who kill Sunnis, and all of them kill Americans - and the world remains silent. And I am hard pressed to recall a similar reaction when the Russians destroyed entire villages and burned down large cities in order to repress the revolt in Chechnya. And when NATO bombed Kosovo for almost three months and crushed the civilian population - then you also kept silent.

What is it about us, the Jews, the minority, the persecuted, that arouses this cosmic sense of justice in you? What do we have that all the others don't? In a loud clear voice, looking you straight in the eye, I stand before you openly and I will not apologize. I will not capitulate. I will not whine.

This is a battle for our freedom. For our humanity. For the right to lead normal lives within our recognized, legitimate borders. It is also your battle. I pray and I believe that now you will understand that. Because if you don't, you may regret it later, when it's too late.

MY LETTER IN REPLY TO THE E-MAIL:

Dear ______,

I understand that my name inadvertently happens to be on a mass e-mail list you have, and that you wouldn't stop to wonder what I would personally think of Olmert’s speech that you forwarded to me. I understand this, truly. Yet, the speech did come to me from you, and I simply must respond. It is my nature.

Fortunately for you, the delete button is readily available, and while I doubt you will read more than two or three lines of my letter, I will write it anyway. Olmert's speech is very impressive, it really is. But, most of the havoc being wreaked upon Israel is by Hezbollah, and how, one might stop reading all the tear-jerking pro-Israeli propaganda long enough to ask oneself, did it come to pass that Hezbollah rose to power in southern Lebanon?

It came to pass from Israel's brutal incursion and many year occupation of the sovereign territory of another nation's land. As for the Prime Minister's remarks about relative degrees of sincerity and the responses Israel's various "peace proposals" have wrought, that is the subject for another blog (and the countless books that have already been written about both sides' good faith gestures and failings in the quest for peace), so let us not go back to the time before Christ and argue who had what claim to whose supposed land. Let's simply go back about two months. Let's start with the Israeli warship shelling the beach at Gaza and slaughtering members of a Palestinian family, guilty, I grant you, of sunbathing. Let's remember that Israel denied having done this, even though several independent ordinance experts identified the very type of shell fired from the Israeli ship. How, I beg you to tell me, do you think the Palestinians felt about the safety of THEIR people when that happened?

In response, Hamas, shortly thereafter, and remarkably STUPIDLY, kidnapped ONE Jewish soldier (who is, we can reasonably assume, alive and well, for they were hoping to use him as a vehicle to negotiate a prisoner exchange). I shan't here go into the long history of Israeli oppression, torture, and murder of Palestinians, especially in Gaza, but unlike most of my completely subjectively one-sided Jewish friends, I READILY admit the occurrence of and condemn the many acts of terror and violence that Palestinians have perpetrated against the Israelis as well.

And what was Israel's response in the ensuing two months? SO FAR, they have killed (as of yesterday morning) two hundred and thirty nine Palestinians, destroyed many houses and entire neighborhoods, imprisoned these people once more in Gaza, and are, par usual, occupying Palestinian land. And what, I beg you to tell me, do you think the Palestinian people in Gaza feel about the well-being of their women and children in the face of this Israeli aggression, aggression far more extreme than could possibly be justified?

The Mideast being the Mideast, in supposed solidarity with their Palestinian brothers in Gaza, whom they care NOTHING about, members of Hezbollah launched a few Katyushas, killed three Israeli soldiers, and "kidnapped" two more, hoping both to further consolidate their takeover of the Lebanese government and to effectuate a prisoner exchange with Israel, MANY OF WHICH HAVE TAKEN PLACE BEFORE.

It was a stupid and brutal move by Hezbollah, and anyone who says otherwise is a fool or a liar, for Hezbollah is, when it comes to dealing with Israel, essentially a ruthless terrorist organization. And what has Israel done in response to this action by Hezbollah? They have implemented a plan that lay in waiting for at least a year, to re-enter Lebanon (as Yogi Berra might say, Deja Vu all over again), but this time they have killed approximately a thousand people, FORTY PERCENT OF WHOM ARE CHILDREN, destroyed villages and whole towns, and destroyed the infrastructure of Lebanon, as well as knocking out large segments of the nation’s electric grid.

They even blew up the bridges so that no humanitarian aid could get in, and international relief organizations, terrorist groups like Oxfam, the International Red Cross, and the UN’s World Food Program and Children’s Fund would be prevented from bringing the civilians of Lebanon desperately needed water, food, AND MEDICINE. And what, I BEG you to tell me, do the civilians of Lebanon think of this? Will THIS lead to peace? Have the Israelis ended Hezbollah's control of southern Lebanon or curbed its quest to take over the government? In the past four weeks, Israel has made Hezbollah ten times stronger than they could have become in ten years.

Israel, whose very army Olmert has told you with wonderfully melodramatic effect, is humane and caring, unlike those Arab barbarians, has told people to get out of the cities, and then killed them in their cars when they attempted to leave, blown up food supply trucks, killed drivers of medical relief convoys, and slaughtered people in ambulances. IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW PROUD JEWS ARE OF ISRAEL. Israel has done these things, whether you like it or not, and denying that they happened doesn't make them less true.

Israel has destroyed Lebanon, which WAS the one other fledgling democracy in the Mideast, not that silly nonsense of a “government” in Baghdad Mr. Bush tells diabolical lies about. Israel has also ruined the environment of that country, spilling oil all over its beaches. Israel has bankrupted Lebanon, that is inarguable, and by the way, Israel has sent ONE MILLION LEBANESE refugees, SO FAR, to Syria. That will do a lot of good. Israel may have actually in four weeks equaled America's now almost four year effort to create terrorists from Arab children. Good work.

Hezbollah should have been stopped by Lebanon long ago, and the U.S. should have made it happen. But THE U.S. WANTS WAR IN THE MIDEAST. It’s good for business, the neo-cons, the fundamentalist Christian lunatics enraptured with the rapture, and the Bush dynasty. The U.S. uses Israel as its military arm in the region. The U.S. wants Syria to come in, or better yet, for that nutcase in Iran, Ahmedinjad to send military assistance to Hezbollah, so Israel will finally have an excuse to bomb the hell out of Iran, and if Bush and you are really lucky, Israel might even drop a nuclear bomb on Tehran, and wouldn't that be great.

So, with all due respect, I am over reading bullshit propaganda about how Israel was forced to attack Lebanon and Hezbollah to insure its own survival. Hezbollah, at its strongest possible point, could NEVER BE MORE THAN A TRAGIC NUISANCE AGAINST THE MILITARY MIGHT OF ISRAEL.

I am sick of receiving forwarded e-mails about the righteousness of Israel's cause, and how this is a good and just war, from unthinking and foolish American Jews who condemn me for having an opinion based in fact and for attempting to be fair, from an international perspective.

Olmert was very impressive in citing the hypocrisy of people throughout the world who condemn Israel's incursion into Lebanon but said nothing about the Russians destroying entire villages in Chechnya, or the NATO bombing of Kosovo (which was a far more complicated matter).

BUT I WASN'T ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE. I DID PROTEST. I PROTEST ALL MILITARY BUTCHERY OF INNOCENT CIVILIANS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, and as a Jew with family in Israel and a nephew who has been called up during this crisis, I am - contrary to what my ex-Jewish friends tell me, for they have excommunicated me for telling inconvenient truths they don't want to hear - aware of what is going on in the Mideast.

Hezbollah is committing war crimes, but, however uncomfortable it may be to hear, Israel is committing war crimes of a VASTLY more grave consequence, and Israel was wrong, both morally and geo-politically, to have attacked Lebanon in response to the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers (which wasn't, of course, the reason, but merely the excuse to do so).

If by some chance you've read this note, feel free to write back that I am a "self-hating" Jew and a terrorist, as other charming Jewish friends have done, but I BEG you, do NOT send me any more propaganda, I'm really tired of it, as I'm forced to watch it on every major American TV station and cable network ALL day, EVERY day.

I will lose friends, I will be called a traitor to Judaism, and I will continue to be deeply distressed over this wholly unnecessary war, over which I lose much sleep, but I will NOT lose sleep for having stayed silent when precious too few Jews were telling the truth about this war Israel chose to wage for its own ends and those of its munitions supplier, the United States.

David

I'm Glad You Didn't Take It Personally: An Open Letter to My Jewish Friends

2006-07-30T17:50:00.000-07:00

When Jim Bouton, the former Yankees pitcher, wrote a relatively innocuous and humorous “expose” of his time in baseball, replete with scandalous revelations about Mickey Mantle’s beer drinking, Whitey Ford’s cursing, and other stars’ equally grave sins, he was reviled throughout the sports world for having broken the wall of silence. Never at a loss for wit, Mr. Bouton promptly penned a less than sterling sequel, entitled I’m Glad You Didn’t Take It Personally.

The response from Jewish friends to my opining that Israel’s invasion of Lebanon was excessive and unwise has been predominantly vitriolic, most notably the harsh criticism of several people who admitted they hadn’t actually read my blog.

When I was in college, I had my eye on a lovely young woman, who – in response to my bungling but persistent pursuit - invited me to drop by one day. When I arrived, she was excitedly hanging up a poster that said something like “they’re rioting in the streets, chaos is everywhere, what we need is law and order,” with attribution to Adolph Hitler, its purpose, I presume, being to warn us against the dangers of fascism.

By coincidence, I had just seen a similar poster in the student union with a quote by Chairman Mao. I offered to bring her the other poster so she could hang them side by side, but she said that would make her politically uncomfortable, because it would cast Mao in a bad light, and her politics were quite left of center. I told her that at some point one must choose between the pursuit of ideology and the pursuit of truth. She told me to get out.

My fellow Jews, now more than ever, the time has come to choose between ideology and truth. In the inquisitive spirit of a well-known Jewish intellectual who allegedly once said, “the truth shall make you free,” I say unto you that Israel is not perfect. It will not threaten that nation’s existence for you to admit this. It is not perfidious to concede that the IDF has made some poor decisions this month. Inundating cyberspace with a ceaseless stream of supercilious (and insultingly simplistic and puerile) propaganda will not change reality.

Let us make a deal: I will readily concede that I am not a first-rate mind, if those of you who know me will concede that I am not a third-rate mind. My criticism of Israel neither dumbed me down to the level of George W. Bush, nor made me what I believe American Jewry is now calling a “self-hating” Jew. My breadth of knowledge (or lack thereof) has not changed. Does criticizing Israel make one less Jewish? (Rest assured, Hitler would still gas me if given the chance.)

Does pointing out the fallibility of an understandably frustrated Israel mean one has forgotten the Inquisition, the pogroms, the Holocaust, the post-war Polish savagery toward Jewish survivors (as discussed with timely convenience last week in David Margolick’s New York Times Book Review’s front-page review of Jan T. Gross’s book, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz), and the continuing and shameful stain of anti-Semitism throughout the world, as most recently evidenced by the murderous hand of yet another ignorant lunatic at Seattle’s Jewish Federation this week? I think not.

To unthinkingly support Israel without reservation is to eschew the potential if admittedly limited opportunities for peace that might be found in recognizing the intricate geo-political complexities of the Mideast, complexities that cannot be dealt with or taken advantage of when one is too busy spewing apologistic dribble to stop and think about what we want and how best to get it.

How long will we hear about the homogenized evil of Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al Quieta, and treat them as a monolithic devil, when in fact they are dramatically differing organizations, divided by Shiite and Sunni loyalties with substantially diverse goals, and frankly don’t get along all that well, except on those occasions when Israel inspires them to transcend their differences in opposition to their common enemy, the IDF?

Must I now go into a lengthy discourse, already alluded to in my last blog, about my awareness of the nastiness of Hezbollah, Hammas, and al Quieta? On PBS’s Bill Moyers On Faith and Reason this week, the erudite author Martin Amis called militant fundamentalist Moslems (whom he labels Islamists) “fantastically poisonous,” and labeled their conduct a “monstrous distortion of the Koran.” Insofar as their extra-Arabic activities, means, and ends are concerned, I have no quarrel with Mr. Amis’s assessment.

The clarity of that message becomes distorted, however, when the (majority of the) American Jewish community insists that Israel does all it can to protect civilian lives when it engages in military exercises that are “necessary for the state’s survival.” A modicum of detached objectivity would lead reasonable observers to doubt that the current escapades in Gaza and Lebanon were necessary, rather than elective actions, but let us focus upon Israel’s supposed concern with the well-being of innocent civilians.

As I write this on Sunday afternoon, July 30th, current conservative estimates are that at least 700 Lebanese civilians have been killed in this invasion, although many experts think the number must surely double that. This morning, Israel bombed a building in Qana, and the death count from that blast so far stands at sixty, with over half of the victims being women and children.

The United Nations’ relief coordinator, Jan Egeland condemned both sides after a tour of war-torn south Lebanon this weekend. Egeland agreed with Israel’s supporters that Hezbollah engages in a “cowardly blending” of its troops among the civilian population, and that he doesn’t think “anyone should be proud of having more children and women dead than armed men.” He also, however, described Israel’s bombing of civilian centers as “a violation of international humanitarian law,” and described the damage to Lebanese civilian communities as “horrific.”

Yet American Jews insist that Israel makes Herculean efforts to protect Lebanese civilians. Where do they get this impression, from media pundits such as Wolf Blitzer, who is now broadcasting from Jerusalem and treated us this week to dramatic aerial footage of his tour of southern Lebanon in an Israeli Blackhawk helicopter (supplied to the IDF by the United States)?

It is no longer surprising that Mr. Blitzer interviews Israeli military and diplomatic figures, one after the other, without ever interviewing anyone from Hezbollah. What is surprising, however, is that Wolf now openly presents “the news” as if Israel is a part of the United States. Astute viewers have long since given up hope that Blitzer would present news of our war in Iraq with any semblance of journalistic integrity, but we are now treated daily to his globally disseminated version of the U.S./Israeli war against the forces of darkness.

Such subjectivity does not serve Israel well. If there is anything Arabs hate more than Israel, it is the United States, and Wolf Blitzer and his ilk, along with the Bush Administration’s unconditional favoritism of Israel at every turn, have eliminated any perceived difference on the Arabic street between the United States and Israel. Thank you, Wolf, and by the way, do you really think CNN is better than Fox News?

The reality American Jewry refuses to accept is that Israel habitually drops leaflets telling civilians to leave because bombing will soon commence, but on many occasions when civilians heeded that warning and attempted to leave, they were killed in their cars by Israeli aircraft. Medical relief trucks have been destroyed and ambulances have been blown up. These facts are neither pleasant nor consistent with Jews’ mythological faith in Israel’s saintly concern for civilians, but they are nonetheless true.

Israel has now admitted that it uses cluster bombs in many of its attacks on Lebanon, thereby dramatically increasing the probability and extent of civilian casualties. It is still disputed whether or not Israeli forces have been using white phosphorous, clearly banned by international treaty, but there is a growing body of anecdotal evidence to suggest that they have. It has been well-documented that UN personnel pleaded with Israel on at least six occasions to cease and desist it’s bombing of a well-known UN observation outpost in south Lebanon, and Israel, after assuring the UN it would stop, continued the bombing until four UN observers had been killed, and would not even stop the bombing when aid workers tried to retrieve the bodies.

Let’s briefly revisit the philosophical moral legitimacy of this enterprise. As mentioned in my last blog, among the many schools of moral philosophy, most conflicts are defended from either a utilitarian (greatest good for the greatest number) or deontological (minimum moral duties are owed to every person) position. In issues such as affirmative action, for example, a strong argument can be made from either side. (Obviously, utilitarians would support affirmative action and deontologists would oppose it.) No such legitimacy of differing perspectives exists here.

Israel’s incursion into Lebanon has set back hopes for a lasting Mideast peace by decades. The hatred and number of potential suicide bombers created by incidents such as the bombing of Qana this morning is incalculable, but you may be certain that the net benefit to Israel (in terms of alleged military security) is far outweighed by the increased insecurity guaranteed by the now swelling roll of teenage boys clamoring to become Hezbollah martyrs.

It is apparently no longer politically correct to mention that Israel continues killing Palestinians in Gaza on a daily basis, ostensibly to extract one “kidnapped” Israeli soldier in return. Do the utilitarian calculus on those numbers, please. It is taboo to suggest that it’s high time the Israelis accept that they cannot eradicate Hezbollah by military force. (Think Vietnam, think Iraq.)

Israel, however difficult its dilemmas and however righteous its intentions, makes mistakes. Its decision to invade south Lebanon was a terrible mistake that has cost hundreds of innocent Lebanese lives, a substantial number of Israeli lives (both in military fighting and by Hezbollah’s continuous terrorist katusha attacks on Israeli cities), and – however successfully Hezbollah has temporarily been routed - imperiled Israel’s position in both the Mideast and the world by an immeasurable exponent.

There is no magic solution to the Mideast crisis, as evidenced by fifty-six years of ceaseless warfare. At some point in the near future, however, let us hope we see an international peace-keeping force (that will not “cut and run” at the first sign of a katusha entrail) on the border between Israel and Lebanon, simultaneous multilateral and bilateral negotiations between involved nations and parties (which would include Hezbollah and Hammas, and require George Bush to rise above his incomprehensibly arrogant ignorance so that difficult issues such as Syria’s claim to the Golan might be discussed), eventual implementation of the two-state solution we all know is required to resolve the Palestinian “problem,” and a provision of the support needed for an autonomous Lebanese government to terminate Hezbollah terrorism. Platitudinous silliness will not serve to achieve these monumentally difficult, but globally necessary goals.

I am embarrassed by and ashamed of Jewish brothers and sisters who have willingly suspended mental rigor and intolerantly vilified other Jews who, however supportive of Israel, dissent from some of its policies or voice concerns about the cost in civilian lives being exacted by the current folly in Lebanon.

To give and demand unquestioning loyalty to Israel (or any other cause) at the expense of prudent reason is to, as Bob Dylan once suggested, “become my enemy in the instant that I preach.” More pointedly, unthinking abrogation of moral discernment sacrifices Judaism’s long and noble quest for social justice and its remarkable intellectual achievements on the altar of that very religious fundamentalism we so fear and reject.

THOUGHTS ON ISRAEL'S LATEST "EXCESSES" (BROUGHT ON BY HEZBOLLAH'S LATEST STUPIDITY)

2006-07-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

I am a Jew. I have several close Israeli relatives and friends, beginning with my nephew, his wife and small baby, and I suspect, being as he's 29, a military veteran, and still in the Reserves, that he's been called up in this action.

I also know a little bit about the history of Israel, its neighbors, militant Islam's commitment to the destruction of Israel, and Israel’s need for a strong military to assure its survival, not to mention the world's long and nasty history of anti-Semitism, still more healthily extant than is mentioned in polite company.

Which is to say that, in spite of my strong criticism of Israel’s current conduct (not to mention its morally and strategically dubious conduct toward the Palestinians – who are certainly not blameless either), I am neither - as suggested by the neo-cons, the President (of the United States, remember him?), and countless Jewish compatriots inundating the internet with propagandized nonsense about the unquestioned purity of Israel and all that it does - anti-Semitic nor unsympathetic to the plight of Israel.

Having said that, I posit my thesis. There is no moral justification for the wholesale killing of civilians that Israel is undertaking in Lebanon. The Hezbollah are uncompromising and unwielding, and, however arguably righteous the cause that created them, have committed morally abhorrent acts, practices so unconscionable that a strong argument can be made (by others, not me) for militarily taking them out.

Hezbollah seized on the occasion of the incredibly stupid (or else ruthlessly calculated) Israeli incursion into Gaza, Israel’s longtime de facto topographical prison for Palestinians, as a pretense for shelling Israeli towns, an assault they've been anxious to undertake (and sporadically doing) for some time now. Likewise, the Israelis seized on the occasion of the "kidnapped" Israeli soldier as an excuse to once again ravage Gaza.

Israel, especially under its new and apparently most militant right-wing prime minister ever, Ehud Olmert, has been chomping at the bit to go back into Lebanon and take out Hezbollah (as if the action won't - as America has done in Iraq - create the impetus for ten thousand new Hezbollah “martyrs” to rise from the ashes of southern Lebanon), and the Israelis found their excuse served up on a golden platter when Hezbollah’s supposedly brilliant (but apparently quite stupid) leader, Hassan Nasrallah, started launching rockets into Haifa.

What did he think would happen when a katusha killed seven Israelis in an attack on the Haifa train station? (Granted, he may indeed have hoped for the Israeli overraction he provoked, so as to solidify his power in the Moslem world.) Yet, the Israeli response, all things considered, is morally unjustifiable from any perspective.

The usual clash of ethical schools of thought in this type of situation is to adopt a utilitarian, greater good than harm, position, or suggest deontologically (a la Immanuel Kant) that one has a baseline moral duty toward all people that precludes - even if the utilitarian calculus says otherwise - engaging in certain actions that will harm innocents, and that one must find another way. That is the traditional conflict in moral philosophy, two often conflicting views of the ethical legitimacy or illegitimacy of certain conduct (especially military). In this case, however, there is no moral argument, utilitarian or otherwise, to be made in support of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

More terrorists than the Israelis can possibly kill will arise from this incursion, and the number of innocent civilians dying, not just from the attacks proper, but the destruction of both infrastructure and access being levied by the Israeli military, precludes any realistic utilitarian argument in favor of this action.

The American media's coverage of this "war (none dare call it butchery)," is the most prejudicial and subjective coverage of news I have ever seen. Anything the Israelis do is acceptable, and - surprise of surprises – one is aiding and abetting terrorism to even question Israel's conduct. (I’ve never heard that one before!) Not to worry, no cable or network anchors would dare question the legitimacy of Israel’s conduct. They may not all share Wolfe Blitzer’s lustful enthusiasm for any and every Western military assault on Islam, but none of them will criticize Israel on camera, which would be a bad career move.

Consequently, Israel’s brutal crushing of civilians in Lebanon goes essentially unmentioned by the corporate media, and therefore, as far as the public is concerned, hasn’t occurred. Why show the people that our proxy military is butchering hundreds of small children with our tax dollars? It’s so unseemly, and we don’t wish to be bothered with messy truths. Besides, these children had the temerity to be born in Lebanon, so while it isn’t politically correct to actually say so, let’s face it, they’re on the “wrong side,” and while they may not “deserve” to die, their deaths are necessary collateral damage in freedom’s American-funded, sponsored, and incidentally wholly inefficacious march through the Mideast.

Congress’s resolutions in support of Israel are spineless shams. We give billions of dollars to Israel each year, much of which is conditioned upon the requirement that Israel must then - and the operative term here is “must” - use the money to buy weaponry from American defense contractors. That’s a built-in incentive for contractors to lobby in support of Israel's unbridled aggression in Lebanon.

Our corporate-owned government constantly violates Section 4 of the Arms Export Control Act, which requires that military items transferred to foreign governments by the United States be used solely for the internal security and legitimate self-defense of recipient governments, a joke most recently honored in the breach by Congress’s vote this week to supply Israel with an emergency cache of bombs, an even more nefarious act of villainy than those in which our military – industrial -Congressional complex habitually partakes.

Two – even if only tangentially relevant - last thoughts. First, Hillary Clinton's rhetoric throughout all of this is the single most disingenuous bullshit I have yet heard issue from her mendacious mouth. (Stay tuned, however, far more to come during the ’08 Presidential primaries.) Even for Hillary, her recent performance has been over the top. If she becomes the Democrats' nominee for President, I will know that the party has indeed lost its moral legitimacy (and hear the moldering spirits of FDR, JFK, Bobby, LBJ, and many other real Democrats rolling over in their graves).

Secondly, let us not dismiss the hand of George W. Bush, whose seemingly passive complicity plays no small role in the Mideast’s current slide into yet further hatred and conflict. Bush’s support of the defense industry's avaricious longing to endlessly supply Israel with arms conveniently dove-tails with his most loyal constituency’s need to save Israel so Christ can come back to Jerusalem and kill all the Jews personally (which, being as Jesus was a Jew, makes perfect sense to me). Combine this realpolitik with his flagrant incompetence and slothful character, and the unsurprising result is that Bush has spent the past six years doing absolutely nothing to promote a Mideast peace (founded upon the creation of a Palestinian state in return for Israel’s guaranteed security), providing yet further confirmation that George W. Bush is the most dangerous person on this planet, bar none.

In closing, I repeat: I am a pro-Israeli Jew. Perhaps I have a masochistic need to receive hate mail, but my clash with fellow Jews over the latest Mideast crisis brings to mind an old saying: “My country right or wrong. If it’s right, keep it right. If it’s wrong, make it right.” I oppose the Israeli government’s “incursion” into Lebanon for precisely the same reasons I oppose our government’s war in Iraq. It is murderous, it is stupid, it is politically counter-productive, and it is morally indefensible. Complex political problems are complicated riddles. Blind and unthinking obedience never solved one.

Dread Resulting In Confusion

2006-04-15T23:57:00.000-07:00

My long blog silence has been the result of a combination of sloth, busy-ness, and consternation, particularly the latter, one dictionary definition of which is “dread resulting in confusion.”

I admire Bob Dylan for two reasons: The intense genius of the muse that flowed through him in his younger years, and his remarkable ability, or intentionally chosen willingness, to continually re-invent himself.

Each morning, I awake frustrated that I am me again, with the same concerns, worries, politics and boundaries. I have become a Johnny-one-note who can only play a diatribe in Bush major. And so, every morning I vow to loose the bonds of political perception that narrow my world and cast about for a wider and more charitable connection to the universe.

But each day that man has begun another chapter in his own one-note symphony, W’s Fugue of Destruction. Alas, I am trapped in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, for to care about the world is to engage in it, and to do that in the first decade of the twenty-first century is to take up political arms against all that is Bush, an exercise sure to invite swift and opprobrious rebuke.

To say bring the troops home now invites both criticism (from cowardly Democrats as well as chickenhawks) that one is naively unaware of realpolitik, and the concomitant and idiotic incantation of some variation on the theme that “it doesn’t matter how we got into the war, we’re here and must win it.” What a remarkable ploy, simultaneously exculpating the villainous knaves who placed us in this untenable bind, chiefly the nefarious and megalomaniacal Messrs. Bush and Cheney, from any and all moral, political, and legal liability, and depriving us of any historical references or context to show us where we’re headed. Need I remind you of Santayana? (Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.)

It’s as if a drunk driver killed an entire family and then told the judge that “it doesn’t matter how the car was destroyed, we’ve got to get it to a body shop,” leaving out the minor fact that he just butchered its occupants.

To attempt to engage others in informed and logical dialogue is suspect at best, and wholly inefficacious at worst. In this age of cultural A.D.D., people don’t want to know that the “Unitary Presidency” is a concept created not only to dangerously expand the powers of the executive branch (read: Bush), but also to end over two hundred years of Constitutional checks and balances of three co-equal branches of government. Does the public want to hear this?

No, people want to hear the pompous pontification of America’s electronic vigilante, Bill O’Reilly, who single-handedly saved Christmas and is now resurrecting Easter. They want the scoop on Jessica’s divorce, Katie’s Scientological pregnancy, and hot chocolate drippings forming a likeness of Jesus. Don’t count on the mainstream media for serious analysis of the growing number of The Uniter’s impeachable offenses.

Yet somehow, like flowers bursting through concrete, reality slowly seeps into the American consciousness. I had begun to wonder if W could put a loaded gun to a five year old girl’s head, pull the trigger on live national television, and get away with it. Surely, Scott McLellan would explain that it was a necessary exercise of the President’s Constitutional powers, and that any fault rested squarely on the shoulders of the few treasonous journalists who dared criticize the President. And then the Washington Post poll came out. Joy cometh in the morning.

If you missed it, the poll reported that 38% of the people approve of Mr. Bush’s presidency and 58% disapprove. Nothing new there, but closer analysis showed that 20% strongly approve and 18% moderately approve of Mr. Bush’s performance. More strongly approve than moderately approve? That’s quite interesting. Most of that 20% are fundamentalists cheering Mr. Bush on as he brings us inexorably closer to Armageddon. But the 18% who moderately approve are mainstream, non-fundamentalist Republicans, whose ranks are abandoning W like rats fleeing a sinking ship. But that isn’t what excited me.

Consider the other side of the equation. 11% of the president’s critics moderately disapprove of his performance, and 47% strongly disapprove of it. Let me interpret. Those who strongly approve think Bush is God’s imprimatur, and those who strongly disapprove hate his guts. 47% of the American public hate George Bush. Finally.

Congress will likely not impeach Mr. Bush, even if the Democrats take back the House in November. If only three Senators were willing to support Mr. Feingold’s Senate motion for censure last month, don’t count on the House voting for articles of impeachment. But this presidency can be rendered impotent by an increasingly disenchanted (and angry) public that no longer believes Bush’s sociopathic lies. When the Soviets stomped on Prague Spring and deposed Dubcek in 1968, the Czech people ground that country to a halt, and we can grind this presidency to a halt. If we cannot remove him from office, we can render him irrelevant.

Granted, he still has the power to continue the war, drop nuclear “bunker busters” on Iran, spend us into bankruptcy, destroy the environment, and weaken the Constitution, but power is a funny thing. One only possesses it when the people think s/he has it. 47% of Americans are now so disgusted with this President that they no longer believe he has power. And most of the non-fundamentalist Republicans are quietly but seriously questioning the legitimacy of Bush’s power. Whether or not Mr Arrogance chooses to recognize it, he now stands on thinner ice than the melting arctic glaciers he refuses to recognize.

We must keep the faith and increase the pressure on this President and his band of merry thugs if we are to save America from the fascist fate Bush and Cheney have in mind for us. Power doesn’t relinquish itself. It must be taken from those who possess it, and each of us, in his or her own meager way, must act to stop these madmen.

But how can one keep track of the criminal, immoral, amoral, unconstitutional and dangerously de-democratizing behavior of these people? Deed by deed.

And so, I will begin again to modestly opine and inform, in shorter and more frequent posts, with less concern for literary pretense, and more concern for disseminating information (it’s called journalism) on the many ways this Administration sells (out) America, from mountaintop mining to Presidential signing statements.

I am truly sorry that I have become so bitter about this President and this government, but now I understand what Thoreau meant when he wrote, “How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.” Let us hasten the day when we can again, without disgrace, be associated with our government.

The Blood-Dimmed Tide Is Loosed - Yeats

2006-02-09T18:26:00.000-08:00

Part I. Requiem for a Revolutionary

Stew Albert died last week. You’ve never heard of him. He was the third Yippee. Abbie and Jerry’s Pete Best, always in the thick of it, never famous. I only met Stew once. A group of us convinced Jerry Rubin, whom I knew casually, to speak at the University of Florida, in the winter of 1972. My radiator overheated at the Jacksonville airport, just as Jerry arrived to see me doing a Jack Nicholson number on my car. Standing with him was a big blonde bear, who turned out to be Stew Albert. After their laugh on me, we got the car running and arrived late for Jerry’s speech, where a university official told us that the auditorium was full, and only Jerry Rubin could enter. The real Jerry Rubin, not the one I had brought. Then some ROTC cadets attacked us, the police arrived, people were arrested, and I convinced Cerberus’s sister that if she let us in, the thousand stoned freaks waiting for Jerry would tip her off if an imposter was in their midst.

After Jerry brought the house down, we retired to a wild party in the country, where the three of us crashed on our host’s floor, and talked until dawn. Stew was hilarious, a blonde-haired, Jewish Vaudeville act. He was also kind, intelligent, learned, utterly fearless (as I learned watching him during the ROTC scuffle), and deeply committed to ending the Vietnam War. The next day I drove them back to Jacksonville, and I never saw Stew again. But I read of him often. He was ceaselessly active in the quest for social justice, popping up on TV from time to time, visible enough to have the feds violate his civil liberties, wiretap his phone, read his mail, trash his cabin and harass his wife on numerous occasions.

Somewhere along the line, Stew contracted hepatitis B, which almost killed him, but he “recovered,” only to learn that he had liver cancer, to which he succumbed on January 30th, at the age of sixty-six. Stew fought the good fight to the end, blogging the gospel from his home in Portland, Oregon. During his long strange trip, he co-founded the Yippees, was named an unindicted co-conspirator at the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial, ran for sheriff of Alameda County (and carried Berkeley), penned an autobiography entitled Who the Hell is Stew Albert, and continually cautioned that democracy requires vigilance, the dereliction of which would push America down the slippery slope toward fascism.

You were a patriot, Stew, and I’m honored to have passed your ship in the night. You will be sorely missed, but rest now, and as Dylan prophesied, lay down your weary tune.

Part II. Paul Simon’s Blues

In his June, 1973 Rolling Stone review of Paul Simon’s first solo album, There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, Stephen Holden declared American Tune to be “the single greatest thing Simon has written, a classic by any standard.” In that song, Simon wrote, “I don't know a soul who's not been battered, I don't have a friend who feels at ease, I don't know a dream that's not been shattered, or driven to its knees.” Holden encouraged us to transcend the song and nation's dark lyrics, and “redeem our imaginative powers from despair and be able to live with the breakdown of the…American homeland.” Nice work if you can get it, but, lo these many years later, Holden’s advice is still apt, and Simon's words have become my theme song.

For those who take politics and democracy seriously, these are dark times in America. Times so bad, that to even suggest we have problems, let alone attempt to enumerate the damages this Administration and its supporters have visited upon us, is to invite scorn and accusations of perfidy. I shall not here proffer the comprehensive bill of particulars, with which you are all too familiar, but some of the iniquities undertaken by this Administration, and endorsed by both the right-wing loonies who have purchased the Republican Party and the too easily duped American public, bear repeating.

Bush’s war in Iraq may fiscally, morally, and spiritually bankrupt us, killing over two thousand Americans, seriously wounding fifteen thousand others, and taking the lives of something on the order of a hundred thousand Iraqis, the majority of whom are civilians, and the majority of those women and children. The war has also earned us the hatred and wrath of the world, and installed a fundamentalist Muslim ruling party in Baghdad. The President has approved of torture as official U.S. policy, sanctioned the brutality of Abu Ghraib (while assuring us that the prosecution of a few pawns in his game has solved the problem), established torture prisons throughout Eastern Europe, and most likely made plans for the invasion of Iran and Syria.

His initial ineptitude and subsequent indifference to the ravages of Katrina boggles the mind. His failure to fund and oversee the promised rebuilding of New Orleans leaves one wondering if Bush has the confidence of a single African American other than Thomas Sowell, but not to worry, he continually assure us that he’s not a racist.

As its proxy, he has essentially granted the corporate state carte blanche to do anything it wishes with impunity, including blowing the tops off of mountains in West Virginia, polluting our land, air, and water at will, stealing billions of U.S. tax dollars in Iraq, receiving billions more in corporate welfare, marketing defective products with little risk of being held accountable, and allowing its executives and lawyers to write much of our federal legislation, including the Medicare prescription drug benefits bill, that will move untold more billions from our pockets to Big Pharma’s black ink.

To anyone honest enough to look closely, there is a strong possibility the Republican Party stole the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio. For liberals uncomfortable with that suggestion, because they fear offending Republicans (as if appeasement has worked these past five years), I strongly recommend Fooled Again, by Mark Crispin Miller, or the soon to be published Rolling Stone article on this subject, by Bobby Kennedy, Jr.

Mr. Bush has also given hundreds of millions of dollars to religious organizations (almost all of them being fundamentalist Christian groups) to carry out “faith-based initiatives,” and overseen the passage of legislation that allows these churches to practice religious discrimination in their hiring practices. The wall between church and state isn’t what it used to be.

Nor, for that matter, is the Bill of Rights, and with the promotion of Roberts and Alito to the Court, those quaint Constitutional notions may end up in nostalgia museums, next to hoola hoops and Pez dispensers. Mr. Alito has bigger fish to fry than amendments, however. He wants to elevate a “unitary” Presidency above the previously co-equal branches of government, but apparently his bizarre judicial philosophy (as exemplified by his advocacy of Presidential “signing statements”) and mendacious performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee did not constitute sufficient grounds to deny him confirmation.

Aside from implementing terrible policies, this Administration has another bad habit. Almost every high-ranking member of it lies. Regularly. Scott McLellan has made it his quotidian ablution. Cheney and Rumsfeld could shatter lie detector machines, and Secretary Rice has raised prevarication to an art form. When Hamas won the Palestinian election, she said that no one could have foreseen such a possibility. Sound familiar? It should. She also told us that no one could have foreseen the possibility that terrorists would hijack planes and fly them into the Twin Towers. Except, of course, the many intelligence officers that cautioned it might happen. It’s a shame Condy didn’t hear a November 28th speech by Barry Rubin, Mideast scholar and author of the Long War for Freedom, in which he warned that Hamas would win the election. As did many other people. This woman is monumentally disingenuous, egregiously incompetent, or the most out of the loop Secretary of State in history.

I was once a Buddhist, but the ferocity of my criticism and condemnation of hypocritical politicians and the suffering they cause forced me to disassociate myself from Shakyamuni’s ideals. I am ill-at-ease with the harsh things I say about this President and the members of his Administration, but it is only that, harsh words. They, in turn, bomb, imprison, torture, starve, bankrupt, and emotionally vanquish people, and enjoy doing it. It is not in my nature to stand silent in the face of their brutality, so I invoke the Whitman defense: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”

That said, the President of the United States is a liar. Granted, lying is indigenous to the office, but W tops the cake. Here is an exemplary, but not exhaustive list. He lied about being a uniter, not a divider. He lied about not being a nation-builder. He lied about advocating a more humble foreign policy. He lied about being for smaller government. He lied when he said he was not involved in the Swift Boat ads against Kerry, while his people were funding them. He lied about WMDs (WsMD, actually). He lied about not lying about WMDs. He lied about the threat Saddam Hussein posed to America. He lied about the weapons inspectors being thrown out of Iraq when he ordered them to leave. He lied about the UN authorizing his attack on Iraq, when the UN authorization was to force Hussein’s compliance, when and if the inspectors determined Hussein to be in formal violation of the UN resolutions. He lied about Hussein being involved in 9-11, knowing full well that he (Saddam) wasn’t. He lied about not having the intelligence rigged. He lied about supporting a homeland security bill, which he opposed until he knew the vote would go against him. He lied about yellowcake uranium in his notorious State of the Union speech. He most certainly lied when he said “mission accomplished.”

He lied about supporting the troops, while refusing to this day to supply our soldiers in Iraq with sufficient numbers of kevlar combat vests. He lied about the cost of the war. He lied when he said we don’t torture prisoners of war, and he lied about what went on in Abu Ghraib. He lied about making America safer, as our ports and nuclear facilities and reactors remain remarkably vulnerable to terrorist sabotage. He lied when he said he would fire everyone involved in the “outing” of Valerie Plame. He lied about his tax breaks not going predominantly to the wealthiest few percent of Americans. He lied about the estate – now “death” tax – burdening small family farmers, when it only applies to the wealthiest two percent of Americans. He lied about leaving no child behind by failing to fund the bill. He lied to the people of Africa when he promised them fifteen billion dollars with which to fight AIDS, and then refused to disburse most of that money. He lied about pursuing energy independence from the Mideast while passing a massive energy bill that calls for a dramatic increase in our use of fossil fuels, while simultaneously giving billions of dollars in subsidies to the oil and coal industries.

He lied about not knowing the dikes might break if Katrina hit New Orleans. He lied when he said “you’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie.” He lied when he promised the residents of New Orleans that help was on the way. He lied when he told the citizens of New Orleans that he would rebuild their city. He lied about global warming, he lied by having the EPA report that the ambient air at Ground Zero was safe. He lied about wanting to preserve healthy forests, clean air, and our precious wetlands. He lied about possessing the Constitutional authority to domestically spy on Americans without first obtaining warrants, after he was caught lying that he wasn’t engaging in such unwarranted spying. He also lied about not knowing Jack Abramoff (and then appointed the chief prosecutor in the case, Noel Hillman, to a federal judgeship).

This is a brutish and angry megalomaniac, possessed by arrogance born of puerility. He is destroying our country, he is the most dangerous person in the world, and he is loved by half of the American people. Something must be done, but as Paul Simon further lamented, “tomorrow’s gonna be another working day, and I’m tryin’ to get some rest, that’s all I’m trying, to get some rest.”

Part III. A Republic, If You Can Keep It - Benjamin Franklin

Call me fussy, but I’m out of sorts over the recent theft of America, a crime yet to be reported in the media, and I wish to have it returned. I think it's time we contemplate massive civil disobedience. Haven't you had enough of these corporate fascist thugs and their neo-con lunacy? Yes, I used the F word.

The scholar Laurence Britt wrote in Fascism Anyone?, that the signposts of fascism include strong cooperation between corporations and the government, emotional appeals to religion, the scapegoating of some “other,” denigration of civil liberties and human rights, supernationalism coupled with military superiority and expansion, use of the media as an instrument of propaganda, obsession with national security, harassment of labor, disdain for intellectuals and artists, fraudulent elections, cronyism and corruption. Sound familiar?

Stew Albert was right, we live in a fascist country. That claim is always greeted by two negative responses. Liberals gasp that Republicans might be offended by such language, and conservatives are indignant that someone would compare our government to Nazi Germany, which I’m not doing. Why is it readily accepted that there are many kinds of democracy, socialism, and capitalism, but inconceivable that fascism can have at least two faces? There is no rule requiring a government to send jack-booted thugs into the streets to commit mayhem and murder, for it to qualify as being fascist. Consider these recent occurences in the land of the free.

1. According to the British press, based on yet another recently discovered memo, Bush and Blair apparently said the hell with the U.N., let's just have our war. That revelation has gone essentially unnoticed in the America press.

2. The Scooter Libby trial won’t begin until January, 2007, a year from now. His attorney is busy until then. Shucks, this means the trial will be after the fall elections. Oh well, it’s pure coincidence, because the Bush Administration wouldn’t pressure a federal judge to delay the trial until after the midterms. In fact, the judge, Reggie B. Walton, expressed dismay over the trial’s delay, and I believe he’s sincere. OK, here’s a pop quiz: Who appointed Reggie B. Walton to the Federal Bench? Yes, indeed, give the reader a cigar, that would be George W. Bush.

3. The President and Vice President both had simultaneous computer glitches that erased many e-mails they now won't be able to give Pat Fitzgerald to use as evidence at Libby’s trial. By sheer coincidence, for in no way do I mean to imply tampering, all these missing e-mails pertain to the time period in 2003 when Valerie Plame was outed, but I'm sure there was nothing contained in them that might implicate or indict the President or the Vice President, and I'm certain that neither of them knew anything about the outing of Ms. Plame, for surely, they are honorable men.

4. When asked by Senator Feinstein about sanctioned violence in the U.S., at a Congressional hearing last week, John Negroponte, the guy who allegedly let the death squads in Honduras kill hundreds (or was it thousands?) of people, while he turned a see no, hear no, speak no evil eye ear voice to it all (a strategy ultimately parlayed into the Directorship of National Intelligence), told the good Senator that he hadn't heard of any killings of terrorists inside the United States, and then promptly launched into a lengthy diatribe condemning Mr. Chavez of Venezuela, who is certainly no angel, but now being portrayed by the Administration as a serious threat to national security. (For the uninformed, Venezuela, like Iraq, has a lot of oil.) I don't know about you, but when our former Honduran ambassador/alleged (libel-proofing) conspirator in mass murder speaks, I listen, because the man has integrity.

5. Cindy Sheehan was arrested in the House of Representatives last week for wearing an anti-war T-shirt to Bush's State of the Union address. Obviously, she was aiding and abetting terrorists.

The elections have been heisted, the government has been hijacked, the perps do not plan to return it, and I'm wondering how to wage a non-violent revolution to reclaim America, taking it back from the nefarious reprobates who have stolen my country. I thought very highly of the USA, and would like to see it resurrected.

American Constitutionalism is gone. Time and our options are running out. It wouldn't be a dramatic revolution, simply the removal of these ruffians, followed by the restoration of the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, and fourteenth amendments, as well as the checks and balances of three equal and non-singular branches of government.

Are we helpless in the face of economic imperialism and Bush's ever-expanding war of aggression (that practice being declared at the Nuremberg trials, sixty years ago, to be the single worst war crime), the fixing of presidential elections, substituting private church organizations for increasingly more government functions, placing someone on the Supreme Court who believes the President possesses essentially unlimited powers that should not be checked or balanced by the legislature or the judiciary, etc., et al, ad nauseum, ad infinitum?

I do not think we are helpless, but we must be resolute and we must be wise. Consider this reflection by Taylor Branch, the distinguished biographer of Martin Luther King: “Power grows against the grain of violence.”

How do we get rid of them? How do we stop this insanity? Do the American people care? I think they do, but they have political deficit disorder. They will not be stirred to action by the promulgation of regulations, but under their intellectual somnolence beats good hearts, good instincts, and the ability to eventually smell a rat. Perhaps the current 39% approval rating for God’s crusader-in-chief, indicates that it's no longer playing well in Peoria. A lot of Madges and Verns are starting to sit up and take notice.

May I tell you the real tragedy of this whole thing? The revolution could be started, waged, and won in a few days, without a weapon being raised or a shot fired. If a hundred million people walked off the job and into the street with signs saying I will not work or shop until King George and everyone in his administration resign, he would be gone within the week. That is the stupidest idea you ever heard. Except it would work. Granted, it would take a few days because he's sanctimiously obdurate, but he'd leave.

Think of it. One hundred million American citizens neither working nor shopping. Nothing bought in America. What do you think the corporate state would say about its proxy CEO if something on the order of twenty-five billion dollars in profit was lost in a few days? Why, the Board would find itself a new puppet. And we'd keep passively resisting until the directors finally installed a puppet who threw them out. A 21st century Spartacus! I know it sounds crazy, but America's missing, and I for one would like it back. I'm open to better ideas.

Brokeback Nation

2006-01-12T04:29:00.000-08:00

I played hooky today and went to see Brokeback Mountain, which might better be named Heartbroke Mountain, for the story was hauntingly sad. The beautifully filmed movie was poignantly directed by Ang Lee, and the acting by Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, and Michelle Williams is Oscar-worthy. This tale of star-crossed lovers separated by the intolerance of time and place is both depressing and politically loaded.

The plot isn't complicated. Two cowboys in 1960s Wyoming fear a fate worse than the usual censure bigots reserve for those whose love they find an abomination. Mix intolerant fundamentalism with the homophobic violence seething beneath America’s surface, and you have a recipe for tragedy. It would merely be a history of past prejudice if things weren’t changed, but still the same. Think Matthew Shepard.

The brilliant Frank Rich wrote an upbeat review of this film, naively suggesting that, as a nation, we are well on our way to accepting – or at least tolerating - the gay lifestyle. Which is true of half the country, but the other half continues to impose untold grief upon millions of GLBTs, and even the optimistic Rich admits that this film forces us to “see the cost inflicted on entire families…when gay people must live a lie,” recognizing that too many people live that lie when he observes that “it’s the all too American tragedy of what happens to these men…that neither our hearts nor consciences can so easily shake.”

Things have improved notably for the GLBT community, especially if one happens to live in New York, San Francisco, L.A., or Seattle, but the frenzy that follows even the mention of gay marriage indicates that we’ve a long way to go. For all the discussion of civil rights and discrimination at the Alito confirmation hearings, the prejudice gays confront daily was alluded to by Mr. Kennedy, but went conspicuously unmentioned by the rest of the senate judiciary committee.

The Christian right and reprobate politicians who cater to its members, openly persecute gays with impunity, in large part because straight society allows them to do so. We cry over movies like Brokeback and contribute well-intended dollars to PFLAG, but have yet to provide legal sanctions sufficient to protect GLBTs from the virulently anti-Christian and homophobic cruelties regularly visited upon them by millions of professed believers.

While we await the second coming, at which Christ will read the riot act to these sanctimonious prigs who have memorized Leviticus, but forgotten both the spirit of Matthew, and its letter to “judge not, that ye be not judged,” perhaps each of us can find his or her own way to translate the compassion in our hearts into action that will hasten a long overdue end to the anguish gays still live with in Brokeback Nation.

Memoriam to a Patriot

2006-01-07T12:31:00.000-08:00

Last night, Air America’s Mike Malloy interrupted his nightly attack on George Bush to announce that Hugh Thompson, Jr., had died of cancer at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, in Alexandria, Louisiana, at the age of 62. Malloy then read a moving statement from a woman who explained that Mr. Thompson stunned her high school class in Lafayette, Louisiana many years ago, with the story of how he happened upon the My Lai massacre and what he saw and did there.

In the late 1980s, my friend, Page Cortez, then a history teacher at Lafayette High School, decided to invite a Vietnam War protester and a combat veteran to speak to his students on successive days. I was the “protester,” armed with detailed maps and grandiose plans to explain our involvement in the war, highlights of which – the Gulf of Tonkin, Tet, Khe Sanh, My Lai, the bombing of Hanoi, etc. - I found time to share, during my forgettable speech to the students.

A few days later, some twenty years after the event, Thompson spoke to the same class about his intervention in the My Lai massacre. Cortez later told me that many students cried as Thompson described the gruesome events of that day. At the time of that speech, Thompson was essentially unknown, except by other military men who had ridiculed and made him an object of calumny and opprobrium, sometimes leaving dead animals on his front porch, or telephoning anonymous death threats. One U.S. Congressman said that Thompson was the only U.S. soldier who should be punished for the massacre at My Lai.

What did Thompson do to deserve this scorn? The story is long and complicated, but it can be accurately summarized in the following manner. On March 16, 1968, Thompson was returning from a reconnaissance mission with his chopper crew, gunners Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotta, when he saw many Vietnamese bodies strewn across the landscape of My Lai. Wondering what happened, Thompson landed his chopper twice at the scene of carnage. The first time, he and his crewmates searched among the bodies and placed markers by survivors to identify them for evacuation. As they returned to the chopper, they saw Captain Ernest Medina run toward the marked survivors and appear to shoot them. Realizing that a massacre was underway, Thompson flew his chopper to another point in the village where he found Lieutenant Stephen Brooks about to throw a hand grenade into a hooch of scared and wounded Vietnamese civilians, and strongly suggested to Brooks that he ought not toss that grenade.

Thompson then turned to his machine gunners and ordered them to kill any American soldiers who shot at the civilians. Next, he called in two other choppers and the three ships “medavaced” the villagers in the hooch, along with a young boy found amidst dead bodies in a ditch, to the hospital at Quang Ngai. Finally, he flew to headquarters and angrily reported the slaughter, which was ultimately stopped by order of his superiors.

After the incident, Thompson continued to fly helicopters and was shot down five times, breaking his back in the final crash. He eventually testified before Congress, and at the court-martial of Lieutenant William Calley, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison by a military tribunal. Calley served three years under house arrest, and was then pardoned by President Nixon. Captain Medina was acquitted at his court-martial and no one else was convicted of any wrongdoing at My Lai.

Thompson’s heroic actions were discussed at length by Seymour Hersh, in his Pulitzer prize-winning series on My Lai, but he remained virtually unknown until retired Clemson professor, David Egan, saw him in a documentary and began a campaign to have the military publicly recognize Thompson’s exemplary behavior. In 1998, thirty years after My Lai, and ten years after Thompson spoke in Cortez’s classroom, the Army honored Thompson, Colburn, and Andreotta (posthumously - he was killed in combat three weeks after My Lai) with the Soldier's Medal, the military’s highest award for bravery not involving conflict with the enemy.

Trent Angers, author of a 1999 biography of Thompson, entitled The Forgotten Hero of My Lai, says “he was treated like a traitor for thirty years.” The ostracism ended with Thompson’s belated recognition by the army. Historian Douglas Brinkley said “he was a moral example at a time when things were pure evil.” Hersh called Thompson “one of the good guys,” and said “You can't imagine what courage it took to do what he did.” Sulie Bourque, a close friend of Thompson’s said, "I'm at a loss of words to describe the kind of courage that he had. He was different. He's going to be very much missed. What a man."

An obituary by Amanda McElfresh, of the Lafayette Daily Advertiser, quoted chief My Lai prosecutor William Eckhardt, who said “Thompson put his guns on Americans, said he would shoot them if they shot another Vietnamese, had his people wade in (a) ditch in gore to their knees ... took out children, took them to the hospital .... flew back to headquarters (and) standing in front of people, tears rolling down his cheeks, pounded on the table saying, 'Notice, notice, notice' ... then had the courage to testify time after time after time.”

Later in life, Thompson lectured annually to West Point cadets, on visits arranged by Colonel Tom Kolditz, head of West Point's behavioral sciences and leadership department. Upon Thompson’s passing, Kolditz said, "He will be terribly missed by West Point. What a great man. There are so many people today walking around alive because of him, not only in Vietnam, but people who kept their units under control under other circumstances because they had heard his story. We may never know just how many lives he saved."

After Vietnam, Thompson went to Washington, trying to help veterans receive deserved benefits, and then became a veterans’ counselor in Louisiana. On March 16, 1998, Thompson and Colburn attended a touching and tearful thirtieth reunion at My Lai, meeting with survivors of the massacre, including the boy they pulled from the ditch. On that occasion, Thompson said, "Something terrible happened here 30 years ago today. I cannot explain why it happened. I just wish our crew that day could have helped more people than we did."

Mr. Thompson’s wife, Mona, his three sons, Bucky, Brian, and Stephen, and Mr. Colburn were with him when he died. I never served in the military, so I am not familiar with its protocol. On this occasion, however, I rise to salute the passing of a true American patriot, Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, Jr., a brave and noble man.

Et tu, C-SPAN?

2006-01-03T16:43:00.000-08:00

In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I love C-SPAN and I revere Brian Lamb. I really do. Last week, Brian looked unusually pale and peaked, and I was so concerned that I called several friends to see if they thought he looked ill. He looks better this week, but I’m now worried that my hero is suffering from human imperfection. I’ve never met Mr. Lamb, of course. I am merely one of the many C-SPAN junkies who have mothballed our advanced degrees to pursue a citizen’s education at the school of Brian.

We do this because we trust Brian and we trust C-SPAN, an American treasure. Even PBS has succumbed to the corporate state, driven into its arms by the right-wingers who convinced the loony-leaning majority in Congress that PBS is subversive and should not be adequately funded. (For further discussion of PBS’s demise, see Bill Moyers’ commentaries on now-deposed Center for Public Broadcasting Chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, or simply note the preponderance of conservatives who appear on PBS.) Brian Lamb and C-SPAN are all we have left, an oasis of integrity in Newton Minow’s wasteland.

I passionately defend Brian when callers have the temerity to suggest that he isn’t more balanced than the most precise scale at weighing viewpoints in the political marketplace. I also play the junkie’s game of guessing Brian’s politics, and have long suspected that he is a moderately conservative Republican, but what better evidence of Brian’s sterling impartiality than the fact that no one can pin down his personal inclinations? I occasionally notice that guests of Washington Journal and the now defunct Booknotes tend toward status quo conventionality, but surely this is an inadvertent consequence of C-SPAN’s proximity to the D.C. Beltway, land of unoriginality.

There was an unusual lapse in judgment earlier this year, when C-SPAN planned to carry a speech by Emory University holocaust scholar, Deborah Lipsdadt, immediately preceding a speech by holocaust denier, David Irving. Granted, Lipsdadt had written about Irving and recently won a notorious libel suit he brought against her in England, so some juxtaposition could be claimed. Still, one must wonder if C-SPAN has adopted the Fox network’s ethic that both sides of every controversy deserve coverage, even if the debate is whether or not the moon exists. Does C-SPAN believe that fairness necessitates granting equal time to a holocaust denier? That incident may have been the result of misguided good intentions, but three other unsettling patterns have perplexed me lately.

The first of these is C-SPAN’s increasing deference to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). AEI think-tankers make for interesting and informative guests, but the organization is philosophically far right of center, its fundamental tenet being the simplistic notion that all markets are good and all regulation is bad. A recent study of C-SPAN’s objectivity, conducted by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) revealed that between November, 2004, and April, 2005, AEI tied with the centrist Center for Strategic and International Studies as the organization with the most guest appearances, but that study does not take into account the disproportionate number of Book TV speakers who present at AEI events, where they almost always support AEI’s agenda.

The second thing that bothers me is C-SPAN’s growing habit of having “panels” or “roundtables” populated by only conservative (or at best, centrist) commentators. How does that practice fit into C-SPAN’s insistence upon fairness and impartiality in its presentation of competing perspectives? I was hesitant to post this blog until I read today’s programming blurb, which said, “First up is a roundtable discussion on China's rise as a worldwide military, economic and trade power.” The roundtable consisted of two panelists, one from the CATO Institute and the other from the American Enterprise Institute.

My third concern is a pattern developing on C-SPAN’s new program, Afterwords, whose format is to have a well-known author interviewed by another politically familiar person, who serves as host. A tendency has developed to have conservative authors interviewed by like-minded or sympathetic questioners, while liberals are often interviewed by hostile hosts. An early Afterwords featured prominent neo-con, Ken Adelman, interviewing Howard Friel, co-author of "The Record of the Paper: How the New York Times Misreports US Foreign Policy." Adelman’s style that day could be charitably described as prosecutorial, and accurately described as vicious. In over twenty viewing years, I have never seen more brutish behavior on C-SPAN, excepting the O’Reilly/Franken caper.

Recently, Brent Bozell interviewed Mary Mapes (producer of CBS’s infamous show on Bush’s military service) about her book, Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power. The interview was a relatively civil, but ceaseless assault on Ms. Mapes character and her book’s veracity. Mr. Bozell continually claimed that Ms. Mapes book had been faulted in this or that way, failing to mention that most of these criticisms had been leveled by the right wing Media Research Center, of which Mr. Bozell himself is president. Compare the hostile adversity liberal guests frequently face, with the treatment of conservatives such as Republican Congressman John Linder, who was congenially interviewed about his new book on tax reform, by Wall Street Journal Reporter, David Wessel.

In May, 1997, Brian moderated a debate between Bozell and Washington Post ombudsman Gena Overholser, who pointedly asked Mr. Lamb, “Do you typically have a conservative and then somebody who is just a journalist? Is that the typical matchup?” Apparently so. On Q & A, another C-SPAN show, a recent interviewee was Roger Ailes, head of Fox News, followed the next week by NBC anchor Brian Williams. Does anyone think that Brian Williams is the liberal counterpart to Roger Ailes? These incidents are the norm, not the exception. It disturbs me greatly if this pattern does not disturb Mr. Lamb.

Consider some of the findings of the FAIR investigation mentioned above. Republicans appeared by an almost two to one margin (134 to 70). Male guests outnumbered female guests by a factor of four to one. Journalists accounted for 32% of the guests (and among columnists, 34 were right of center and 19 were left of center). Citizen-based and public interest groups accounted for only 9% of the total guests. Of the 97 members of Congress that appeared, 58 were Republicans and 39 were Democrats. When presented with this study, C-SPAN replied that it would “keep it under advisement,” and declined FAIR’s request to discuss these findings on the air.

C-SPAN is vital to me. I pass up football games and road trips to watch it. I plan weekends around Book TV. Brian Lamb is a great American, but he is human, and perhaps his preferences are beginning to show. This critique pains and saddens me. I will be devastated if C-SPAN goes the way of the mainstream media. There are too few independent broadcast outlets left in America, and the number is shrinking at an alarming rate. I fervently hope – no, I pray – that C-SPAN will not be the next casualty of the corporate state’s war on truth. Say it ain’t so, Brian.

An Unpopular Subject

2006-01-01T14:40:00.000-08:00

During the holiday season, I attended the local Vets for Peace chapter’s annual Christmas songfest, replete with carols, poetry readings, and Dylan tunes galore. A fine time was had by all, and one would have been hard-put to find a warmer and fuzzier feeling of cause-focused communalism elsewhere. The ambiance was gentle and loving, with pithy entreaties for peace sung and spoken in mellifluous and sometimes profound eloquence.

The sincerity of the attendees' desire for a world without violence could not be questioned. Most of the people there, especially the older fogies, have worked long and hard on behalf of worthy and honorable causes. As we filed out of the hall at evening’s end, friends warmly discussed holiday plans, which centered round Christmas meals and the traditional sumptuous turkeys, roasts and hams that would be served.

Politically incorrect observation time: Does anyone see an incongruity here? Wasn’t this a gathering to protest - however modestly - violence? Mightn’t we stretch our comfort zones farther on behalf of peace? I was once asked what movement I am aligned with, and I spontaneously replied that there is only one movement, the movement to end suffering. I believe that. To end suffering we must have peace, and to have peace, there must be justice. The worthy pursuit of justice has led to the so-called movements for peace, environmental protection, civil rights, GLBT equality, progressive politics, AIDS care, the end to poverty, fair trade and globalization, religious freedom, and many other important causes. But all of these worthy endeavors are ultimately important aspects of the movement to end suffering.

Suffering is a trans-species phenomenon, which is why the quest for animal rights is an inseparable part of the mega-movement. It has always surprised me that two things many liberals scoff at are religion and animal rights. Religion transcends this discussion, but I would ask the more spiritually devout souls if, in the cosmic scheme of things, animals could be anything less than God’s children wearing a different uniform than us. Too many liberals can’t be bothered with animal rights. “How silly to think of an animal demanding a driver’s license or an education.” It is far sillier for normally intelligent people to use this unconscionably facile rationale to exculpate themselves from having to consider their relationship with and ethical obligations toward the nonhuman animal kingdom.

Whatever conclusion one reaches after facing that question should be accepted by others as his or her line in the sand, but refusing to consider the question is morally unacceptable. Are you for peace and opposed to violence? Consider the following two points: 1. Americans eat over ten billion animals each year. Really. 2. Almost all of those animals suffered painful deaths and worse lives during their rearing on brutal factory farms. I’ll spare you the particulars, but it is irrefutable that animals have the capacity to suffer acutely, and that their lives on (what Agribusiness euphemistically calls) “intensive farms” are a nightmare that the late Nobel Laureate, Isaac Bashevis Singer, compared to “eternal Treblinka.”

Here’s the rub: You either eat animals or you don’t eat them. And here’s the problem: Compassion is insidiously borderless. When one begins to think of these things honestly, s/he soon realizes that to eat animals is to be complicit in causing them suffering. When one grows uncomfortable at being party to that suffering, s/he either faces the question head-on or avoids it entirely. How long can one believe that hiring assassins to do the killing and package the innocent victims’ body parts in clever and inoffensive ways, exonerates the diner from moral collusion in this horror?

Alas, I have offended polite society. Well-intended people give to the Red Cross and United Way, and hipper ones give to Oxfam and PFLAG, and these things are good. I am speaking to fine and decent and compassionate people, or I wouldn’t waste my cyber-breath. It is not a question of my judging others. I did not think I was a bad person the last day I ate animals. But, in the sense of mitigating suffering on this planet, I became a better person the day I quit eating animals.

I shall eschew the temptation to share more facts and figures, for the Buddha merits the last word here. “All beings tremble before violence. All fear death, all love life. See yourself in others. Then whom can you hurt? What harm can you do?”

Happy New Year.

Bon Appetit.

Stop Hillary. Or is the fix in?

2005-12-30T14:53:00.000-08:00

Lady walks into a bar, orders a round, and announces that she opposes a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. Next day, she walks into the United States Senate and sponsors a bill to ban flag burning. Sounds like Presidential material to me.

OK, she didn’t sponsor a bill to ban flag burning, she sponsored a bill that bans flag burning if it’s done in a way that intimidates or threatens other people. Admittedly, it gets a bit confusing, but I suppose it all depends upon what the meaning of is is. Even Antonin Scalia, that rabid supporter of civil liberties, voted with the majority in 1989 that flag burning, however tasteless, is constitutionally protected speech. In fact, he reiterated that in a recent rare interview with Norman Pearlstine, soon to retire editor-in-chief of Time, Inc.

I believe Hillary is an honors graduate of Yale Law School, and I’m certain her husband once taught constitutional law, so she probably knows this as well. She also knows that if her bill, co-sponsored by conservative Republican Senator Robert Bennett of Utah, becomes law and is judicially challenged, it will probably be struck down as an attempted end run around the first amendment.

So why would she dabble in such silliness? Obviously, because Commander-in-Chief trumps First Lady. You’ve got to love Presidential aspirants who display their bona fides by making principle the first casualty of politics. I give all Democrats a political pass (but ethical wince) for their 2002 pre-election votes to authorize Bush’s bash in the desert because that was a mugging, and few of us emulate Gandhi with a gun to our head. But now, Hillary refuses to call for a phased withdrawal, and until recently wanted to send more U.S. troops into the fray. Ours is not to reason why, ours is just to - wait a minute, whose is it to reason why? Cheney, Bush, and Rumsfeld? They haven’t done too well. Nor have the corporate media, whose loyalties were made manifest in the war eve and post-invasion frenzy to fill television screens with jingoistic icons, in lieu of honest news.

Hillary is sliding so far to the right that one must wonder if she actually thinks she will garner right-wing votes in the primaries or the ’08 general election. She won’t. They hate her guts. And she knows that, so perhaps she hopes to complete the transformation of the Democratic party into the (right-wing dubbed) Democrat Party, which will become the moderate Republican alternative to the sheer lunacy the official Republican party has become, with her as its proud standard-bearer.

This would all be fun if it weren’t for the chilling suspicion that the Democratic National Committee thinks Hillary will lead us out of the wilderness. She won’t. Repeat after me: They hate her guts. How does Northeastern Hillarymania translate into electoral votes west of the Mississippi, short of the left coast? It doesn’t. Given her rightward trek, Hillary is further capable of losing the several million lefties who resignedly swallow the democratic castor oil every four years, but simply could not do so in her case. I vote similarly to most lefties and the new Hillary would be too much. The right-wing talking heads and print pundits are all feigning fear of running against Hillary. Doesn’t that give you a hint? Let’s not do this again.

“But no one else can win,” claims conventional wisdom. John Edwards can win. You’re horrified. “But Edwards is an opportunist as well.” And so was Abe Lincoln and anyone else who ever ran for President of the United States. It’s not a modest aspiration. “Edwards is just positioning himself for another Presidential run.” Let’s hope so. How else does one mount a national campaign?

But Edwards isn’t proposing bans on flag burning, and Edwards wrote a Washington Post OpEd that began with the words, “I was wrong” on the Iraqi war vote, rather than calling for more troops or arguing against troop withdrawal. Edwards runs a poverty center at the Chapel Hill law school and goes around the country speaking about the shame of poverty. Edwards, as did Bobby Kennedy long ago (no, I am not saying Edwards is Bobby Kennedy), has come to truly care about poor people and disenfranchised minorities.

“But he stunk in the campaign.” He wasn’t great, I’ll grant you that, but consider three things: First, from the moment he was chosen as Kerry’s Veep, he disappeared from network media for over a month. He was blackballed by the media, pure and simple. Second, he did indeed perform less than charismatically after his selection, but ask yourself why. He was burning up the stump prior to being chosen, and then turned to pablum. Is it not possible the Kerry people put a lid on him? How else does one explain the post-selection chilling of John Edwards? Finally, every time he tried to talk about poverty, public health, or global development, he was excoriated for “being a downer.” He may be a downer, but an Edwards administration would include people seeking solutions to war, poverty, disease, and racism, as opposed to the Beltway brunchers Hillary prefers.

Perhaps I’m naïve about Edwards, but I like him. If you don’t, back someone else. Joe Biden’s bright, if you overlook his refusal to oppose the war, and Virginia Governor Mark Warner plays well in the press. Choose your own candidate, but let’s not be lemmings flinging ourselves into the sea of Hillary. America no longer has time for such nonsense.

N.O. Cops Kill Negro?! What a shocker!

2005-12-28T06:46:00.000-08:00

It's hard to describe southern Lousiana to those who've never been there, but the bayous, rice fields, swamps, and Old Man River all roll down to New Orleans, the most racially tense city I have ever been in, and having once lived in Lousiana for twenty years, I visited New Orleans many times.

In my meager experience, the N.O. police have clearly adopted an unofficial policy the department finds most efficacious for dealing with this racial tension. They beat the hell out of Negroes, and when necessary, well, they kill them.

It all gets complicated in the crazy world of Louisiana, and the latest twist in that cultural gumbo is to appoint black police superintendents to show that all is well between the races, but darn, every few months some officer on the street gets a bit carried away and kills a Negro. Fortunately, there are still plenty of them around (even after Katrina, no mean feat) to serve as fodder, but another incident occurred yesterday.

By the police department's own admission, SIXTEEN OFFICERS were on hand when a husky black fellow in his late thirties and wearing a suit began threatening and harassing the assembled authorities. The story line is that the "assailant" lunged at one of the officers with a three inch knife.

Hmmm...let me see, sixteen officers with guns at the ready versus a chubby Negro wielding a three inch knife. OK, they killed him. Yes folks, it seems three (or more?) of the officers shot the perp. Lethally. Sixteen officers, one dude with a small knife. Killed him. No tasers, which are nasty enough. No warning shots. No bringing him down with a bullet to the leg or arm, just killed him. Had to do it.

Now the black superintendent is all over the news defending the officers' behavior. Nice, huh?

Remember that post-Katrina incident when several officers brutally beat an old black man on a street in the Quarter? Caused a lot of messy press, and then the fellow disagreed with the police version of what went down. No such problem this time, just killed the guy.

Forgive my sarcasm. I understand how difficult it must be to wear a uniform and keep the peace. It' easy for me to sit here in my white suburban neighborhood and take potshots at officers on the job, when I'm not the one in range of the allegedly flailing knife. That's true, that is indeed true.

But the police sure kill a lot of Negroes in New Orleans.