Tag Archives: American People

Top Democrat admits that he lied to cover for Bush’s lies

Posted on by
Reply

Senator Richard Durbin, the #2 Democratic Party leader in the Senate, certainly takes the cake. He has confessed to deliberately passing Republican Administration lies to the American people, and actually has the nerve to state that he legally had to do such! He says that he was sworn to secrecy as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Let’s see now? At the time when the lies that were sold to the American people by Bush to justify an attack and invasion Iraq, there was actually a majority of 1 by Democrats on that committee. There were 9 Democrats in all, and 8 Republicans. Senator Richard Durbin now wants Americans to believe that somehow they were legally obligated back then to help Bush spread deliberate lies to go to war! That’s preposterous, Mr. Durbin.

Your party, as well as the Republicans on that committee, were actually duty bound NOT TO LIE to the world, but chose instead, not to tell the truth. You are complicit in the international crime of attacking another nation under false pretenses, and so is the entire political party you help lead, The Democrats. Shame on you, and the fact that you now openly admit your guilt is hardly to your credit at all. It shows that still, neither you nor the Democrat Party as a whole, actually understands where your responsibilities lie, both legal ones and moral ones. Shame on you as your actions show that your group of Democratic Party politicians are actually a group of lying murderers same as the Republicans as a whole are, with only an exception or two amongst the sorry lot of both parties’ political leaderships.

Until our political system is fundamentally altered, there is no peace that lies ahead , neither for America or the world. This is not a democracy in any real sense of the word at all. We need an overthrow of this rotten and corrupt con game of a system that rules over us all, where polticians will no longer swear each other to secrecy cross parties when they lie to the public as a group. Two party system your DP ass! You are just one united poltical party of liars and murderers, that’s all.

Pentagon lies blowback- from Jessica Lynch to Pat Tillman

Posted on by
Reply

Remember Jessica Lynch and the Pentagon psy-op built around her capture by Iraqis? It was all lies we were fed just like with the bull shit stories the Pentagon has been telling us regarding Pat Tilman’s death. Following is an excerpt from recent MSNBC reportage.

….On April 24, 2007, Lynch was back in the spotlight when she testified before a House committee investigating whether the Pentagon misled the American public about the experiences of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lynch was walking slowly, according to the Associated Press, when took her seat at the witness table along with relatives of former NFL star Pat Tillman, who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan.

“The bottom line,” Lynch said in a determined tone, “is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don’t need to be told elaborate tales.”
…..
—————————————————————————————————–
Comment…But they don’t want to tell the truth, simply because it is too self incriminating , Jessica. Full article at MSNBC

The Gazette and slander (libel)

Posted on by
4

Regrettable miniature body languageWhat a completely slanderous editorial the Gazette has published, suggesting that we peace marchers planned the police beating we received!
 
A couple of innocent circumstances find themselves at odds with such a conclusion. Number one, a good number of us can guarantee we would not have brought our children if we had known what the police had in store for us; number two, we parked our cars at the end of the parade route, which turned out to be quite inconvenient when we were turned back; and number three and without doubt a trump card, none of us brought video cameras! Have you ever seen a protest where every third participant did not have a video camera to document and/or deter police brutality? We had none! We’re now having to solicit video footage from eyewitnesses in the crowd to counter the official assurances that their conduct was above board.

That’s because our St Patrick’s Day message was not one of protest, but celebration. Look even at my preparatory efforts to organize the marchers! We wanted to be seen in a different light than protestors. Even in this atmosphere of war and fear, we are optimistic that mankind’s compassion for each other will prevail over war. As some seek comfort in the image of a blow-up marine on steroids, as a symbol of ass-kicking diplomacy, so we honor and want to project the principles of non-violence and peace.

Remarks are being made that the St Patrick’s Day parade was the wrong forum for a peace message. Ignoring the obvious Irish insurgent spirit, pray tell, what are any venues available to expressions of non-conformist views? In this pro-military, conservative town, there’s not a one. Otherwise we’re at the corner of Nevada and Dale on Mondays at noon, at Academy and Austin Bluffs on Wednesdays at three, and at the Fort Carson B-Street entrance every first Tuesday at seven. Have you got another opportunity to suggest? We’ll be there.

Admittedly young cops manhandling elders in front of impressionable children opened eyes less about the war in Iraq, than to the rapidly diminishing civil rights of ordinary Americans. Now everyone’s privilege to voice their opinion appears in jeopardy. We’re fighting for what, overseas? Freedom?

We didn’t march to change your mind about the war. We marched to encourage the majority of the American public who are against the war in iraq, to come out from behind thugs like you who’ve monopolized the street and airwaves with your pro-war, pro-violence message. We’ve seen the shift already as we hold our banners every week curbside, we get far more honks of support than signs of disapproval. The parade would have been a wonderful way to elicit that sentiment in front of everyone on main street. That is perhaps why your type wouldn’t allow it.

The cause for which we marched received a lot of attention as a result of the police over-reaction. But it wasn’t due to our planning, or our preparations in full view an hour before the event began. It wasn’t due to our obstinance in response to being told our permit was revoked, or being ordered to turn away while certain among us were being brutalized. The attention the marchers have received has been entirely due to the city parade organizers’ actions to silence us and the police department’s decision to be violent.

This is how you take fascism down, by showing the politicians, businessmen, chest-beaters and their backers, that they do not have the support of the people. That the common people do not share their zealousness to beat dissenters over the head with the flag. Step aside you goons and conformists, the American People want their country back.

When are ‘the troops’ going to support the rest of America?

Posted on by
Reply

Antiwar protesters repeatedly get told they are not supporting ‘the troops’. Yesterday, in fact, a woman screaming out “You Bastards!’ at our peace vigil from her car, claimed that we were not supporting her husband who was one of ‘the troops’ in Iraq. Our standard refrain has always been, ‘Support The Troops, Bring Them Back Home Now!’ But I have another reply on my mind, and that is simply to ask the pro-war hecklers when are ‘the troops’ going to support us Americans?’ What do I mean by this?

Simple. You ‘troops’ are part of a war machine that is bankrupting the funding of social programs for the elderly, children, and needy in our society. You are fighting a war that most Americans no longer want, and that will put our children into debt for a long time to come. Yet you and your families continue to want you to be considered heroes, when you sign up and join the war machine and go after the preferential benefits that are yours for joining the government imperialist team. And many of you even have the nerve to get angry at us peace activists that want money spent in better ways than in just killing foreigners for corporate profit! That takes a lotta damn gall!

Yes, when are ‘the troops’ going to start to support the American people themselves? We want you back home alive where you won’t be helping bankrupt us civilians through the love of Halliburton and your own pride. Putting on your damn uniforms does not make you heroes, a class above us tax paying commoners. You went into the military thinking that the military pseudo socialism was the way to help yourselves out, but you bargained with the Devil and he may well take your heart and soul and your very life, too, if you are not very, very careful. Reconsider what you are doing.

Troops, help the rest of us Americans out, and support stopping the Iraqi war and occupation. True patriotism supports less militarism, less imperialism, and less money spent on you the troops, to the detriment of America itself. Troops and families of troops, speak out now against this thuggery you have become part of, and we wish you the best back home alive for those in other folk’s lands.

Stop the bloated war spending to help out the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the peoples of Haiti and Colombia, too. And most of all, to help out us, the people of America. America needs less of you ‘troops’ in prison guard, police, and military uniforms, not more. Patriots support more peace in the world, and less war. So do your part as you can. And try not to let the government dehumanize you, through the insane war the government has you fighting in.

Best wishes, from the antiwar community. But there is no way we are going to ‘support’ you by cheerleading the killing the government has you engaged in. Stop the constant wars. Our money for the people, not The Pentagon!

Putin- ‘nations are witnessing the almost uncontained (US) hyper use of force’

Posted on by
Reply

Russia’s Putin has given notice that though the US government is the bull running amok in the world china shop, there are also other bulls inside, too. Don’t forget. Message to American people? If you don’t want to run into another mad bull, you’d better get your government under control soon.

Yes, and there are also more capitalist bulls in the world china shop today, than just the US and Russia. China also is aware of the raging US hyper use of force to rob the shop, so to speak. Americans learn litle from history, since they know little even of where places are on the map let alone other nuances of world society. China and Russia are not just going to sit by idle forever while US capitalist imperialism runs amok in the world stealing world resources for themselves.

WW1 and WW2 were begun because capitalist imperialist countries started to butt heads with each other over world resources and who would control them. Now that China and the exSoviet Union have been de-socialized, their governments see themselves strictly as nationalist entities whose national interests must be defended strictly through military and economic might. Same as how our corporate US ruling class is acting.

Time to get our government to pull out of rampaging through the Muslim countries like they own the place. Russian and China are not going to just sit it out forever passively watching from the sidelines, as they too have world interests to defend. Our national security is not served by starting WW3.

Vietnam vet selective memory

Posted on by
Reply

Laotian spear pierces American B-52 in this Cuban Poster about the US secret war in LaosAm I to deduce by your Vietnam Veteran cap that you served in the Vietnam War? May I say, of course, thank you for your service, and sorry for what you had to endure, and I would be interested to hear about it sometime, eagerly, but that’s it. Answering your country’s call to arms was honorable, but what your country did in Southeast Asia, by means of the guns it gave you, was not. Misguided would not even be the word, our leaders were warmongers led by munitions profiteers. Misguided was your role following criminal orders but you eventually figured that out.

Our profound national sense of shame for the Vietnam War was not even a question once the true nature of the conflict became revealed. As a result the war in Vietnam ended and our troops came home under a black cloud. Sorry, Mr. Veteran, about that cloud, nothing personal, but you could have considered the karma you brought unto yourself by participating over there. Anyway, you drew the short straw. Don’t now try to dress it up.

Don’t tell me now you could have won in Vietnam if it hadn’t been for the American people turning to peace. What? Left to do your job you could have killed millions more Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians enough to have subdued them? Is that what you’re saying? America’s decimation of those peoples wasn’t enough for you?

You [We] got your butt kicked by those determined Asians is what happened. Like every single anti-colonial movement in modern times, the occupied peoples prevailed. The American public pulled your asses out of that fire is what happened, lest you be killed but take 50 Vietnamese lives with you, many of them civilian. That was the ratio of our deaths to theirs. You apologized for that, and we’ll make you apologize again if you’re now going to change your tune.

Who would have guessed we’d have to give you nostalgic vets a kick in the pants again? What part of genocide, or atrocity, or travesty, or grand scale tragedy, don’t you understand? “Vietnam” as we call it, our war on the Vietnamese, was wrong, it was an incredible abuse of power, of our superior strength, of our incredible inhumanity. You were there.

Iraqi government prefers Democrats.

Posted on by
3

Not statements from Iraqi citizens, but the top cats in Iraq have apparently resented being treated as puppets by the Bushiites. Al Maliki has said that Bush appointees give the orders, tell the Iraqi “free and democratically elected” government what to do. hhuuummmmm….

But the Democrats, he says, are less provincial, more in tune with the realities of Iraq. How’s that for a kick in the teeth for Bush?

Imagine that if you will, The Decider being rebuked by his own hand-puppet. This is Nucking futs.
This also puts a severe doubt on the statements by the Bushiites that the “real people” of Iraq are demanding the continued presence of US troops. Knowing that Bush pays no attention to polls, it just stands to reason that he believes the Iraqi people to be just as dumb and pliable as he thinks the American people to be.

To: Bush and Gates Re: OUR Plan

Posted on by
1

Dear Messieurs Bush and Gates.
    Today you have once again proposed that anybody who does not support YOU and YOUR War have some obligation to put forth a better plan for victory in YOUR WAR.
   Also Mr Gates has presented the idea once again that LEGITIMATE PROTEST of YOUR WAR somehow emboldens YOUR enemies. Which would be an accusation of Treason, (a capital offense) against the majority of Congressmen and a majority of the people of the United States.

Apparently you are both somewhat confused about what exactly your legal status is.

Mr. Bush, you are at most an elected official. In a Democracy, or if you prefer, a Republic, THE PEOPLE are the ones who are the Decision Makers. You are our employee and NOT our master.

I realize that you have the mistaken notion that as a public employee you have no obligation to listen to the clearly expressed will of the people. You call it “leadership by polls”, and sneer at the prospect that mere mortals can criticize you or tell you what to do. You call yourself the Commander in Chief. Mr Bush, there are somewhat less than 2 million members of the Armed Forces in America. That means 298 million citizens of the United States are in fact Civilians, and therefore NOT under Your command.

   Now, Mr Bush, I realize that Laura will have to read this to you. I would ask Mrs. Bush to point out that 298,000,000 is substantially a larger number than 2,000,000.  In other words, as your Poppy used to say, YOU do the math.

      You and Mr Gates and Mr Cheney are OUR employees. WE are the deciders and WE have decided to support Our Other Employees, the Men and Women of the Armed Forces. Current and Future.

These men and women, and the children your ROTC and recruiters are grooming for future employment in the Armed Forces, have been placed in Harm’s Way by your stupid policies. Your policies are based on deliberate manipulation and deception of the American People, and the Congress, for more than 6 years now.

Apparently you don’t listen to polls. You keep repeating this, so I and others like me will have to repeat our reply: When the American People voted for President in 2000, more people voted against YOU. The only way you managed to attain office was by skillful manipulation of the electoral process by your family and their henchmen. Men like Mr Cheney and Mr Gates. You again failed to get a Majority of the votes in 2004, yet somehow you have represented that failure as a mandate from the people to allow you to lead us.

I know you can not read fast, so I am writing this very slowly… The people who you feel should obey you, are not going to obey you.

Your policy has continually failed since the day you stole your job. It has specifically failed with respect to YOUR personal war against Saddam Hussein. You have, through a long series of Lies, unlawfully targeted the people and government of Iraq as the Enemy, and demanded that we do the same. You have had Mr Hussein killed. You have done what you said you wanted, i.e.; Killed Mr Hussein, been allowed to search for Weapons of Mass Destruction throughout Iraq, been allowed to install a New Puppet dictator in Iraq, taken the Oil Fields of Iraq to give to Mr Cheney and your other Henchmen in the petroleum industry.

    In the 4 years since the unlawful conquest and pillage of the nation of Iraq began, exactly zero none nada zip bupkas of your promised Glorious Victory have emerged. You have murdered more than 3,000 members of the Armed Forces. At the lowest count, you have Murdered 75,000 citizens of the nation of Iraq. The higher count of up to 300,000 Iraqis is disputed by you and your Lying cabinet and lying supporters.

     Your unofficial Spokes Freaks at the FOREIGN owned Fox Television Networks have made the threat, repeatedly, that people who oppose this systematic Murder and Theft and Deception that you have been doing for so long, should be rounded up and punished for their Patriotic defiance of your unlawful policies.

      Today, YOUR henchman Mr. Gates has used the same lie, that not supporting you is giving “aid and comfort” to the alleged Enemies .

These people did not declare war against the United States. The people of the United States did not declare them to be the enemies. YOU and your Chicken Hawk Cabinet and advisors did. By allowing your spokespersons, either the official ones like Cheney and Gates, or the unofficial ones like the employees of Mr Rupert Murdoch, to threaten Americans with nothing short of DEATH for opposing your murderous policies, is Terrorism.

Mr Gates and you, and the people at Fox Networks, and other corporate information media, know very well that threatening Americans with death or in fact any punishment for engaging in conduct which is not only Lawful, but mandated by Our consciences, is unlawful in and of itself.

       Perhaps you believe that Americans who oppose you have no resolve. To cling to that mistaken belief, you would have to neglect and ignore the fact that we have not been cowed into submission, We Have Not Backed Down, but instead grown stronger in our Resistance.

       Many of us are former members of the Military, like you, Mr Bush. However, most of the former military who oppose you, unlike you or any member of your cabinet, are actually combat veterans. The Congressmen you and Mr. Gates say are traitors, AND MAKE NO MISTAKE you have openly accused us of TREASON, are likewise Combat Veterans.

      The fact that we have been using every Lawful Means to resist and defy your so called “leadership” is not an indication of weakness on our parts, it is instead a strong resolve to not destroy our nation further by abandoning Rule of Law.

         This restraint has kept the Opposition to your Dictatorship from taking up arms against our fellow citizens, in spite of you and your henchmen making terroristic threats and in many cases actually carrying out such threats.

The time for such restraint is rapidly approaching its end. If you and your lapdogs insist on making war against The American People, you and your lap dogs will have to be restrained, by force if necessary.

     Your New Plan for Victory, which you have arrogantly commanded us to support or propose a better, is the same Old Plan, which you have insisted on following, at the cost of our National Treasure, in short our relatives and friends who are in the military. Also you have spent the National Treasury and any conceivable payments into that Treasury, for generations to come. You have taken away our ability to respond to Real National Threats, as opposed to Non-existent threats from people like the late Mr Hussein.

Your plan has been given 4 years to work, it is not working and, even though you and your goon squads and lying henchmen keep saying otherwise, We The People are capable of seeing that it has not worked, and will not work.

      We do not owe you a better plan. You owe us your respect, and your obedience to the People. You, and your cabinet, owe us your resignations. You owe our fellow citizens in the military your respect, for their lives and for their service.

You can no longer hide behind the lies that a dictatorship is somehow a guarantee of freedom.

    Your incompetent dictatorship is instead a guarantee of slavery, but ONLY if we fail in our real duties, to bring your dictatorship to an end.

The people who you and Mr. Gates threaten, are quite capable of forcibly ending that threat. Mr. Bush, Mr. Gates, I strongly caution you not to make the rash mistake of continuing in your terroristic campaign.

Ney gets 30

Posted on by

Representative Bob Ney gets 30 months? What in the name of sleezy Ohio politics is that for justice?! I’m sorry to sound so punitive, but where can a corrupt bureaucrat get a fitting reprimand? Abramoff payeeIn developing nations, government officials who profit illegally from their station are executed in public. This is meant as a lesson to others who may be tempted to take advantage of the public trust. It’s a trust the public has no recourse but to offer. That’s why punishment must be severe.

What of the misrepresentation for which Ney was convicted? How many people were hurt by Ney not representing them? What public-good legislation was prevented from passing because of Ney and the corporations he was protecting? What detrimental laws were passed for their benefit? Going further, who did Ney help get elected, and what wave of murderous manslaughter did Bob Ney and his fellow cronies help unleash? Should those consequences not have weighed into his sentencing?

Compounding Bob Ney’s crime of misrepresentation is that the results persist. The laws he was influenced to pass still stand. It’s as if a bankrobber, caught, is let to keep the money. Bob Ney was fined $6,000. Is that restitution?!

There is no restitution for the victims, the American people, who suffer from corrupt laws and elected administrators. And fellow cronies continue to represent their malevolent corporate interests against the voters who thought their candidates represented them.

You may say even thirty days in jail is a sufficient deterrent. I say we should demand the heads and bank accounts of all a crony’s progeny. And business partners. Everyone who benefited from the crime of corruption. I’ll be satisfied to meet in the middle, a pound of flesh.

Open letter to Bill O’Really…

Posted on by
Reply

yeah I know the name isn’t spelled exactly the way you want, bill, but I have lots of Irish relatives who feel the same way I do. Since you and Rush LimpDog and Anne Coulter appear to be the only ones on the planet that Mr Bush listens to, try giving him this message from the American People.

It is readily apparent that when he and you and others of your ilk say that he doesn’t make decisions based on polls, he means it. He doesn’t even listen to the Official Poll on election day.

It doesn’t help that trash like you help by insisting on the pretense that the overwhelming outcry at the polls and massive defeat you suffered is actually a mandate for “let’s have more constructive bi-partisan dialogue to help us win the War.”

The message and mandate is YOU and your henchmen have been de-selected by the American people. You have been evicted from the seat of power. You are no longer entitled to run a damn thing.

The eviction papers were served two months ago. You have been given plenty of time to pack your bags, get it cleaned for the new occupants. The Sheriff is at the door. Get the Hell out!

More news, really bad all of it

Posted on by
Reply

Baghdad Dick claims unqualified victoryCheney said on DumFox news last night that the president has the final say on the course of the war, Mr Bush is about to make the same announcement tonight, I think in a few minutes.

Cheney also said that the policy course is going to be for the next 3 or 4 decades.

Apparently congress doesn’t matter, and neither do the American People.

Also on Yahoo news they finally admitted to the kids hanging themselves, added 5 more to the list and said that there were others, but not confirmed.

PPJPC condemns US bombing of Somalia

Posted on by
Reply

Instead of admitting that the US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are immoral violations of international law, the US government has extended their war into more and more regions of the world. The Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission opposes the most recent US bombing strikes in Somalia. These bombings are acts of war that have not been discussed or voted upon by anyone in the US congress. Further, they follow US government approval and encouragement of Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia, in itself a violation of international law.

The American people are asked to believe that only ‘terrorists’ are being killed and injured when the US conducts bombing raids in countries such as Somalia and Pakistan. In fact, the US is killing many innocent civilians and those casualties are being considered acceptable collateral damage by the Pentagon and the Bush Adminstration. We do not agree.

There is no way to pinpoint targets without unacceptable civilian bloodshed, especially when American forces do not even speak the local language, as is most often the case. We must not sit by and passively accept the resulting carnage without raising our voices in protest and condemnation. Essentially, the American people are being asked by their government to condone a policy of political assassinations that convicts others without trial or jury, and also maims and kills scores of innocent bystanders.

We at Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission reject these illegal acts of war and call on all our elected representatives to help stop this continual warmaking. We encourage everybody to do what they can to actively oppose the US military intervention in the Horn of Africa. Stop the bloodshed, do not feed into it. Do not encourage regional and ethnic conflict.

Download PDF

Taking to the streets on Thurs Jan 11

Posted on by
2

Plenty of banners availableThough long delayed, the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission is coordinating an action for January 11. We’re going to petition our Senators Allard and Salazar to end US torture and to close down Guantanamo. Cindy Sheehan is visiting Cuba to make that plea and efforts are being coordinated nationwide to call for an end to torture.

Now January 11 will be the day after George Bush’s announcement to increase troop levels in Iraq, in defiance of the will of the American people.

And of course there is the new issue of the US extra-judicial, undeclared-war bombing of Somalia.

And the new Democratic congress which has opted to abstain from discussing the war(s) until its 100 hour domestic reform agenda.

If any of those issues grab you, join us at 1pm Thursday when we’ll march from the J&P offices to Allard’s and then on to Salazar’s, followed by a car-pool to see Congressman Lamborn. Or join MoveOn and others at 5pm in Acacia Park for an impromptu rally.

US aggression against Somalia shows that America’s rulers are truly sick

Posted on by
2

How much of this continual US military aggression is going to be tolerated by the American people? Both the Democrats and Republicans are criminally responsible for continually breaking international law. They seem to think that they have carte blanche to make war, assassinate, torture, and invade other people’s countries at will! And worse, they have our government continually pushing other countries to do the dirty work for them.

The American people are not for this. We do not have a democratic system in place that gives us recourse to stop these continuous atrocities our government is continually making in our name. God spare us the revenge that will eventually be extracted on us for sitting by passively while these atrocities continue. We may not have a real democracy in place where thesse criminals that call themselves politicians can be removed at the voting booths, but we do have the ability to get out into the streets, make noise, and stay there until we can cause a popular rebellion to change our corporate dictatorship to something more humane.

Get involved! Make sure your local antiwar groups protest this latest military aggression against yet another downtrodden third World country, and get out into the streets with signs, banners, and your physical and personal presence!

Ethiopia Out of Somalia! Get the US out of Somalia! Stop the US government murder and mayhem everywhere! And throw these top Democratic Party and Republican Party politicians into jail where they truly belong.

James Brown vs Nixon’s Pardner

Posted on by
5

Two well known people have just passed away this week. One was Black and proud, while the other was a criminal and proud.

I remember well the billboards for concerts that James Brown seemed to do on a routine basis in Dallas where I grew up. He was a spokesperson and entertainer for a community that got no respect and still gets none. His message was simple to the Black community. It was that they had nothing to be ashamed of and everything to be proud of.

His style stood in vivid contrast to the prayerful and begging pastors who occasionally would pray on the steps of the Dallas City Hall abubble with their Jesus nonsense. JB brought thousands out in Dallas, while the chattering preachers brought few forward to any action. Instead, they bored any church listeners to sleep all together. They presented a sad picture to me in deed with their minute Dallas prayer vigils on the City Hall steps.

Today, James Brown’s death leaves many saddened, and more than his music it was his message that stirrred peoples hearts. And it was a message brought forward in style and pride. Contrast him to the supposed ‘activists’ from the Black churches of his time, who folded up ship as soon as they got a postion or two handed down to them as crumbs by the White power structure. A Condoleeza here, and a Clarence there are about all there is to show really for so many Black folk. And lots of jail cells.

Also, contrast James Brown to Gerald Ford. The current news accounts are utterly nauseating about this criminal, Ford, that colluded with another criminal, Nixon, and ultimately led the way to the criminality of the Reagan era, and the criminality of the Bush Klan being accepted as today’s societal norm. Instead of this easily remembered reality being recognized publicly, the American media has been aglow with comments about what a supposedly nice man, Ford was. In actuality, both him and Nixon belonged in a jail cell together. They burglarized together in fact.

Gerald Ford was Nixon’s vice president, and the one that colluded to let him go without criminal charges being filed for the Watergate burglaries. The Democrats, as usual, went along readily with the con that was done on the American people. They burglarized the moral and spiritual fiber of the American people. Shop ’till you drop is about all we have left. Thanks DP for going along with Gerald and letting Nixon off the hook. You really got us all a great deal!

Unfortunately, so many liberals seem utterly prepared to accept today, a repeat of the Nixon ‘pardon’. They have seemed to learn nothing from history, and that is what is leading our country down deeper into a dead end alley, more than even the Republican supporters themselves.

The only possible cure I can see for these sad sack liberals might be to just listen some to James Brown’s music. They might realize then, that they lack the pride in themselves that is the core of the message that JB brought forth to his own racial community. Liberals today are not proud, they are just demoralized from theconstant use of their own supposed eternal pragmatism they constantly praise themselves for supposedly having. They need a little soul, and soul without so much Jesus in it, too. And a lot less of the supposedly pragmatic approach fo depending mainly on elections to accomplish anything.

Can one imagine though?, a White James Brown singing loudly while dancing across the stage… “Say it loud, I’m Liberal and proud!”

It’ll never happen it seems. Just more lit candles as they count more dead. No soul to them at all. And a lack of rythym, too.

Princess Diana and the end of civility

Posted on by
12

Princess Diana on Dodi Fayed's yacht a week before her deathThe Queen is the first film to be made about the woman who has presided over England for half a century. The story deals with the days following Princess Di’s fatal crash in 1997 and the personal challenge her death might have posed for the monarchy’s public relations. The same period saw Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ascendancy to power. The story gives Blair credit, where the queen appeared to faulter, for recognizing Diana as being the “People’s Princess.” And then some.

Asked about his fawning depiction of Tony Blair as man of the hour, director Stephen Frears thought it “a mark of my incredible maturity” to cast Blair in the light of his glory days, this at a time when Blair and his government have fallen irrecoverably, adding that “it’s preposterous that he’s not in jail.” In the interview Frears also makes light of whether Queen Elizabeth II is possibly really as bright as her character portrayed by Hellen Mirren. The Queen celebrates the resolve of royal blood facing a crisis. Elizabeth is both humanized and lionized, by sticking to the stiff upper lip “the world expects of us.” Frears interweaves real news footage of celebrities and the flowers flooding the Buckingham Palace gates, counting the days from Lady Di’s death to the climax when the queen finally makes her long delayed statement.

That’s when Frears lies. He lays the behind the scenes personal anguish which might have explained the dishonor the royals paid to Diana, leading to the Queen’s famous address, but then rewrites the ending. As if Mighty Casey, his vainglorious ambitions thwarted in the minor leagues, stays true to his character that day in Mudville, and now because we can all feel a little sympathy for the self-centered fella, he swings and DOES NOT strike out!!

We all were there when Queen Elizabeth took to the microphone, and no close-ups of a fictional Tony Blair’s tearing eyes, proud of his stalwart sovereign, are going to recast the disgraceful blue-blooded reaction for what it was.

And what of lingering accusations of the royal family being behind Diana’s death? What of the rape tape which Diana posited with a servant for safe-keeping which tells, it’s conjectured because the British press are forbidden to tell us, of Prince Charles interrupted sodomizing a valet. What of Lady Diana being, not even arguably, by the power of her personality, the most powerful woman in the world? But unlike Oprah or Martha Stewart, Diana was a loose cannon championing the cause of AIDs in Africa, and the fight to ban land mines, both subjects the powers that be, certainly in America, did/do not want highlighted.

The Queen‘s smartest character, Tony Blair’s advisor who supposedly coins the term People’s Princess is let to murmur early on, “It wasn’t the press that killed her.” But the subject is dropped there. Instead Blair and his crew seize upon Diana’s death like Mayor Giuliani to 9/11, being seen offering bedside comfort to a traumatized populace, and reaping the accolades. Except director Frears offers nothing behind such scenes. Blair is shown as the earnest surrogate, standing in for his monarch until she can regrasp the helm.

With the ensuing years having shown us Blair’s true colors, what do you think was the more likely scenario? A self-effacing Danny Kaye Pauper Prince or a Rudy Giuliani? I find Frears’ characterization of Blair even more disingenuous, showing Tony living in a modest flat strewn with children’s messes, taking the dinner plates to do the “washing up,” and keeping watch on world events on a television with a Nintendo game atop it. This coming from a “labor” minister who was leading the conservative counter-revolution to restructure the British economy for the elites. Perhaps Frears’ adopted class.

The Queen owes its entire first act to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911, the music, the build, the black out of the familiar awful moment, and the protracted montage we needed to absorb the tragedy and understand how it’s changed us.

The great disservice that Stephen Frears does to history, and to all of us because we are still living it, is amplified by the fact that he did get Diana’s death right. Princess Di’s sudden death did change the world, perhaps more than did 9/11. The World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was a comeuppance. If the American people did not see it coming, the world did. That such a terrorist act was bound to happen was attested to the fact that the same people had already tried it and at the very same location.

But Diana’s death marked the end of civility, and people felt it. The third world may have been fit to burst under the weight of its post-colonial oppressors, but a great English civility had prevailed since the days of Ghandi. This was a sense that disagreement could be visceral, but apart from the brutality of the unwashed French or the uncouth Americans, a British sense of decency would rule out. Britain, not long ago the Empire, was where we got the rule of law, our rights, and everyone’s concept of a representational parliament.

The circumstances around Diana’s death would present an incredibly interesting lesson in power usurped from the people; Tony Blair’s arrangement with Rupert Murdoch for starters, instead of showing Blair reacting to the newspapers and coaxing his old queen along. The Queen is a marvelous story of two people facing adversity introspectively. Fine, except those personages were at the center of the unification of global corporate power and could not have been idle participants. As if Frears had made a film about the Titanic and chose to focus on the captain’s preoccupation with feng shui.

The 1990s saw a decline in every aspect of benevolent leadership, and I believe the premature death of Lady Diana was the curtain. It was hard those days after her death to imagine a world without her, and indeed events have proved that we were to face the worst. The turn of the century marked the ascendency of the Neocons, the political face of the globalization overlords. It meant corporate overseers with gloves off, Zionist zealotry unabashed, banks with no limits on their usury, and the world media watchdogs in the hands of the wolves.

The ruling few have their hands bloody in genocides the world over, endless wars, massacres, slavery, epidemics, poverty, famine and reckless abandonment. Before Diana’s death at least I believe they would have been concerned to wash the blood off.

What Bush and Osama together have taught the world

Posted on by
Reply

September 11 was important in world history, because Osama bin Laden taught the world that resistance to US domination was most effectively fought on US soil, and not the soil of the world’s oppressed nations.

Seems simple enough, but most victims of US foreign policy up to then had fought back directly against their own US propped-up puppet governments. Osama bin Laden globalized the resistance to US imperial policies by taking the fight to US soil. His message? Not to let D.C. fight the war solely on your home territories.

The 9/11 attacks might have not alone taught the world much of anything, if there had not been the Bush Adminstration team in office. That was the genius of Osama. He knew how elite American arrogance would most likely respond, being of elite lineage himself. He knew that the US ruling class would tend to try to destroy this new resistance against their world domination by using pure and total violence, much as the ruling class in Osama’s native Saudi Arabia does when threatened. But pure violence is dangerous since it tends to overheat like a nuclear meltdown occurring within the core of a reactor.

At present glance, it appears that nothing much has changed. The response of the Bush Administration to 9/11 was to up the level of violence against the peoples of the Third World states of Afghanistan, then Iraq, and next Lebanon No new attacks have occurred on American soil meanwhile. And as usual, there have been yet new hundreds of thousands of victims of the US military and its ME Frankenstein, the state of Israel’s IDF. The European governments have done their part, as junior cheerleaders of the US mandated blood bath outside their own continent.

But what will be the ultimate cost that the American people will eventually pay for sitting by and silently allowing its corporate-run government to go bezerk after 9/11? I talk not of the trillions of dollars in national debt that is being run off, but rather of the fact that the Bush Adminstration has practically guaranteed that Osama’s message did take root in the populations of the world.

Osama said let’s start a dirty war of attrition against the US rulers on their home soil. Osama had the ability to give the lesson that this was the Achille’s heel of US imperialism, but he didn’t have the organization to do much more than just explode one big bonfire or two for the passive and impoverished crowd he was trying to wake up to see. Bush has now given this previously dormant crowd the knowledge of the technique to create one, two, a thousand mini or maximum 9/11s in the years ahead.

It does not involve airports nor planes, And the world is more awake now. It is probably only a matter of weeks, or months at best, before the war stirs once again on the US mainland soil, but this time with newer techniques learned on Afghan and Iraqi soil. The ultimate price to be paid by Americans for their acceptance of this carnage, is that the carnage will most likely hit our soil once again, just like it hit New York previously.

So let’s look some at the new techniques to wage war on American soil. Let’s look at the Improvised Explosive Device (IED), which is close cousin to the cluster bomb. The IED has accounted for about 1/3 of the US casualties in Iraq. The components of an IED are cheap and its materials easily found. And let us not think that only Muslims can use these devices within the US. Anybody can.

Ex- US soldiers can come back and construct them. Hispanics tired of the US messing with their countries can put them together. Gang members trafficking in illegal substances and human flesh can do the same. That’s what a dirty war is all about. The weak use weaker weapons against the more powerful, but weapons they do begin to use. Iraq plus 9/11 = the ability and desire by yet more people, to use cheap weapons against the US government on US soil. Bush has given that little shove that was needed to make Osama’s lesson to the world more effective.

These IEDs are what has been giving the Iraqi resistance its sharpening edge. But where might this dirty war of attrition begin to play out in yet another battlefield? See William S. Lind’s commentary, The Boomerang Effect that shows how one scenario most likely might occur.

Osama taught us that what goes around comes around. Americans have just yet to learn that lesson, though the Bush Klan is determined that we certainly will. Dubya, Dick, and Donald helped the world find the most hard to stop weapon that could be used against the American people. The IED. The lesson was learned in Iraq, but the whole world has been watching.

The Silent Death

Posted on by
1

Malachi Ritscher 1954-2006, his own obituaryI have tried to write this commentary all day, yet each time I began, depression overtook me. On November 3, less than 3 weeks ago, a man set himself ablaze in Chicago to protest the US government’s wars. In effect, he was protesting against the American people too, for allowing these wars to be continued over and over again.
 
At age 52, Malachi Ritscher certainly had seen his country repeatedly ignore the suffering that its politicians and generals were inflicting on the other peoples of the world. He had been an antiwar protester for years, and yet the American people seemed little to have changed during his lifetime.

He hoped to help change all that with the dramatic sacrifice of his life. That decision and action, as gruesome and horrible as his death certainly was, is not alone what has me depressed though. It is simply that we have failed him once again, even though through his efforts he hardly could be said to have failed others, as he tried repeatedly to change the horrible society we live in through less dramatic means.

So why have we not hear about this courageous and totally desperate act? That is quite simple. The corporate media decided to keep it secret from us. Yet word begins to leak out, and IndyMedia is now helping inform people about what was done by Malachi to try to move us out of our pathetic cynicism and apathy. Word is being whispered here and there about what Malachi did, and the secret will come back to haunt those who kept it silent.

What was the media’s excuse to hide this man’s sacrifice away from us all? Simple. They treated his protest of our society’s war making and criminality, as if it was merely the action of a suicidal madman killing himself because of personal depression. No protest there, doesn’t mean anything what he did! How sorry are they, these assholes, to decide for us the meaning of this man’s actions! How much more does it say about their own motivations, than about Malachi Ritscher’s? How sick and controlled we have become for this silence and censorship to be let stand? How sad, that even this act of setting oneself on fire, fails to move us. Or at least to move those in the corporate world that control information flow and news.

It makes me yet more ill to think that the decision to keep this man’s protest hidden from us, was made principally to not effect the US mid-term elections that were to be happening a couple of days later. How petty, how disgraceful, the real reasons and real motivation of the US media to not broadcast news of what Malachi had done to himself. Malachi took his final action out of self sacrifice, and his drive to make a statement, simply in order to try to move our country into action to stop the Iraqi madness. Keep it local, keep the meaning of it distorted, all so that Bush and his minions might fare better at the polls! That was the counter response from the media. Make Malachi look sick and deranged, instead of a very decent human being. That’s what makes me so very depressed. I’m depressed because the US seems so hopeless, and this sad event just goes to underline our societal decay, yet once again.

Malachi Ritscher posterHis friends have organized a campaign to get news of his death out to the press. Write to the local rags and see if it helps since all we can do is keep trying? It is a shame that with Malachi Ritscher gone, we have one activist less. We have one genuine human being less. We have one less person who cares about others. He tried to change things, and many of us do care. It’s just that neither our press, nor our politicians, nor our economic elites care. It is common folk like Malachi Ritscher that actually do concern themselves most often about others in the world and not just themselves. And they desperately try to find ways to make a change possible. They are the true patriots, not the war mongers.

Mexican government documents its criminal behavior in official report

Posted on by
Reply

In the waning last 2 weeks of the Fox Adminstration in Mexico, the Mexican government put a report quietly online admitting government criminality over 2 decades in the past. The criminality consisted of murder, torture, death squad activity, etc. in what is referred to as a ‘dirty war’ against Left activists. The time frame investigated by the authors of the report was from the late ’60s into the early ’80s, but nothing really has changed at all since then. The NY Times article about this report can be easiest read by going to antiwar.com. It is listed under their ‘Americas’ section.

Just this year, Mexican governmental forces have engaged in the same sort of activities, using them against striking miners and other Left activists in Atenco, Chiapas, and Oaxaca, where scores have been disappeared, beat up, tortured, and murdered. And that is not to mention other regions of Mexico which are less under observation by international observers. Actually the report is being used to make it appear as if Fox has taken responsibility for admitting occurrences of the past that are no longer being engaged in today. So the report is actually a style of coverup, rather than admittance of any guilt. That’s why no charges are being brought against any of the guilty parties.

All this being said, just what has been the role of the US press and the US government in its continual backing of the Mexican government? Let’s look at the New York Times, which while running the reportage of this Mexican government ‘confession’, just days previouusly was mocking Manuel Lopez Obrador for refusing to accept the fraud that put the losing candidate in office at Los Pinos, the Mexican White House. And what about admitting the US government’s role in accepting and even sponsoring the Mexican government’s terroristic counter insurgency campaigns? Silence. And the role of the American press in never coveri ng this terrorism, and in not informing the US public of the true state of affairs down South? Silence. The New York Times often times acts as if Mexico was on the other side of the moon when it comes to reporting activities there.

It always amazes me to hear our own, mainly ignorant US population spout off constantly that the Mexican government operates independently of the White House,and is independent of ‘our’ control. Yet, the same ignorant types that do this realize that the US government micro-manages areas off in the total boonies of Asia and other parts of the world. Our corporate daily press is totally complicit in keeping the US public this uninformed and backward in their views, and in keeping them believing that Mexico, which is the most important country to the US outside our own, is somehow on independent auto-pilot rather than in US control, unlike Afghanistan or Kosovo, say!

The truth is far different, and I just got through reading a John Ross report about how Halliburton is all over the still nationalized Mexican petroleum and gas industry. In fact, the man, Felipe Calderon, who stole Mexico’s presidency’s with the total support of Bush and the NY Times, has his principal goal to privatize Pemex, the government owned oil company. The Mexican government under the push by the US to do so, has already done the same with previously nationalized industries in power, communication, and transport. Now only PEMEX remains in state hands, and Halliburton certainly wants that to change as fast as possible.

The US antiwar movement needs to watch Mexico closely, and oppose our US government’s militarism promoted to the South of us. That’s where the counter insurgency programs that the Mexican government of Fox just admitted ran the country in a totally criminal manner throughout Mexico for 2 decades sprung from. That’s where the same criminality of the present springs from, US support for Mexican state terorism used against its own population. The US is messing up Mexico, messed up Mexico, and will not stop doing that until the American people begin to observe, resist their own government,and demand that the US intervention into the internal affairs of Mexico stop.

Stop the US militarization of the US-Mexican Border. Stop the phoney ‘drug war’ that is destroying Mexico, and stop training and supporting the Mexican military’s counter-insurgency against its own population!

Let OJ say he did it

Posted on by
1

OJ ponders what if the gloves fitMy favorite argument of Michael Moore’s was in his book Downsize This. He had a chapter about the OJ trial. Moore’s conclusion? OJ didn’t do it because the rich can’t be bothered to do anything themselves. OJ couldn’t pick up late night drive-through burgers. Was he going to traverse Brentwood to give the time of day to a blonde who was sleeping with someone else, actually a waiter?

The ownership class does no labor. It even lives off the labor of its money, the interest of wealth. Michael Moore made points too about the racism of the LAPD, as well as the scavenger nature of the media, also racist.

Now OJ wants to exploit his own notoriety. He flat beat the case in court, but he simply can’t convince the American public. He has to live everyday with the accusations. Maybe OJ has nowhere to go but to give the people what they want. If they’re going to insist he killed Nicole, certainly he should deliver. That would be poetic justice.

For the historic record, I have no problem with learning what really happened. The American people were subjected to endless speculation, their morbid appetite was fed and developed. Let them get a dose of the answers. What’s OJ going to say, he didn’t do it again?

Democratic Party- Can you hear me now?

Posted on by
2

If you put your ear to the wind, you hear only silence. Sure, it is only 4 days post election and today was Veterans Day, but the media has been talking about how there was some sort of revolution that occurred last Tuesday. So why so silent? Where is the voice of this revolution’s leaders, or are these merely rebels without a cause? Their leaders’ silence is deafening. Murtha, Dean, Pelosi, Clark, Obama, Slick’s slick wife? Does anybody hear anything? These are the supposed antiwar rabble-rousers, or so has been announced to us by the image churning US media, at one time or another. Can you hear their outrage and anger now, reaching a crescendo of fury post glorious victory? Pretty sad, isn’t it. Only the coyotes and the wind.
 
But really? Has any DP voting liberal really asked themselves, is this a party truly against the war and US militarism, or one that is for it every much as the Republicans are? That silence….? There is possibly some explanation that the addicted DP liberal might give. Something like this.

“Our leaders are silent this week, better to organize their resistance ahead. It’s coming.”

Yeah right. Their silence is coming, IS, and WAS. They will continue their silence when a Bush directed Israel, in the days ahead, launches the bombing campaign on Syria, Iran, and Lebanon, too, once again. The sale to the American people for war will come from yet another angle. And yet, it is the same old angle repackaged, is it not? The argument will be, that ‘we’ have to help save the ‘Jewish democracy’ from future nuclear attack by the surrounding savages. And the Democratic Party leadership will remain silent, yet regain its voice at both one and the same time. That voice, then rising up, will be the voice of them supporting the Bush Adminstration’s use of Israel as US assault platoon.

Everbody hear the silence of the Democratic Party leadership now? They are silent because they do not oppose this war.

So long GOP, hello SOP

Posted on by
Reply

Blue campaign mugThe GOP is dead, long live the SOP.
 
That’s my take. If the Dems don’t immediately show the American people their determination to turn Bush’s machinations around, we’re going to see that Democrats and Republicans are the SOP, the Same Old Party.

I could be wrong, because the new congress is getting no help from the media. Post election headlines proclaim the Democratic landslide, but add that the stench of corruption persists over the Legislative Branch. When last did you hear Congress described so? Was Reagan the president? Was it when Congress was in the hands of Democrats? I bet if you close your eyes, you’re picturing Tip O’Neill.

The GOP is the party of big business and big media. It acts at the behest of corporations, and the corporate owned television networks. Naturally the talking heads on TV have to complain if anyone threatens to redo the undoings of the GOP.

The only liberal bias in the media is a presumed intellectual bias. The media personalities look like they’re smart enough that they must be progressive thinkers. That’s an interesting presumption, don’t you think? It’s based on an obvious truth. Smart, honorable people are humanitarian, compassionate, social reformers. The ugly truth is that media people are actually actors, courtiers, con-men and shills running a confidence scam. They are well paid and in the tax bracket of the usual GOP beneficiaries.

It’s fitting that the press and pundits and poll takers are already berating the new congress. It gives me a little optimism that the Dems may act.

Support your local war memorial

Posted on by
2

I’m working on an address to our city council. I only have three minutes:

MemorialMr. Mayor, distinguished members of the City Council: as a member of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, I’ve come once again on their behalf to ask the City Council for your support of the traveling Iraq War Memorial, known as Eyes Wide Open, which is coming to Colorado Springs on October 12 and 13.
 
Two weeks ago, at the previous opportunity to address the council, the Justice and Peace Commission asked for the use of Memorial Park as a fitting site for a memorial. We also asked the City of Colorado Springs to adopt a resolution similar to that of the City of Baltimore, proclaiming the two day visit as “Days of Reflection on the Human Cost of War.” To this day we’ve received no formal response from the council. I’m here today to repeat our requests.

Actually we did hear one reply from Councilman Bernie Herpin, a resounding no, because he considers any such memorial to be a blatant anti-war statement. I’d like to ask Mr. Herpin: do you have such little faith in the patriotism of the general public, in the wisdom of your constituents, that were they to reflect -on the many lives the war in Iraq has cost us- that you think they would automatically be against the war?

Do you consider it patriotic, and showing support for our troops, Mr. Herpin, to hide the Iraq War casualties from the sight and memory of their friends, neighbors and community? If the war in Iraq, or as you call it, the War on Terror, is indeed worth fighting, why do you want to conceal its cost from the people of Colorado Springs, the people who more than nearly any other community in the country, must bear the cost of this war? The cost being measured, in their lives, the lives of their loved ones, the lives of their friends and coworkers. This is to say nothing of the many more who are injured and maimed.

Are you afraid to let the people of Colorado Springs gaze upon the boots of 2,700 soldiers -only the official count of the US casualties in Iraq- boots that stretch across vast green fields, nearly to the horizon? One hundred and seventy pairs of those boots will correspond to the Fort Carson soldiers who’ve died in Iraq.

The latest count of soldiers wounded in Iraq according to the V.A. hospital system is over 40,000. If the ratio of US soldiers wounded to US soldiers killed in Iraq holds for Colorado Springs, by a terrible coincidence, the 2,700 pairs of boots that Colorado Springs residents will see on October 12 and 13 will also correspond to the number of Colorado Springs residents -Iraq War veterans- who now move about in wheelchairs and on prosthetic limbs.

Is this your way to show support for the troops? To keep their sacrifices unseen from their countrymen and their city? Why are you so quick to send them off, to fight a war on foreign soil, and so quick to hide the cost they’ve paid or will pay? The media networks aren’t even allowed to show their coffins on television! Why are you conspiring to keep a soldier’s most ultimate sacrifice a secret? -because you think the American people would not support your war?

If you are so gung-ho to have someone fight this war on terror, why don’t you do it yourself? You go over there and do it! And reflect, please, whether you want your effort to go seen or unseen. Otherwise please know that you can count on us, that if you pay the ultimate price to defend our freedom, that we intend to make sure the people of this country and this city see it and show their thanks. Good luck and bon voyage.

Please accord the people of Colorado Springs the respect of honoring their sacrifice. I’d like to see the proclamation we ask for in writing as soon as possible, or I’d like to see each of you fill out the Defense Department paperwork to enlist to go to Iraq yourself. Thank you.

Democrats Pelosi and Rangel defend Bush

Posted on by
1

Chavez also called Bush a donkeyCan you make the argument that Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Charles Rangel are above all politicians, or diplomats shall we say, who like their political discourse to be civil? Hugo Chavez referring to Bush as a devil who behaves as if the world belongs to him may have been, in their minds, undiplomatic, shall we say?

That sort of logic would have Hans Christian Anderson’s courtiers reluctant to tell the emperor he had no clothes for fear it would be undiplomatic to make the emperor feel naked.

Pelosi resorted to name-calling herself, labeling the several-time democratically elected, survivor or two US coup attempts, liberator of Venezuela’s poor, Mr. Chavez, an “everyday thug.” Considering Chavez rose from poverty himself, Pelosi’s remark comes off bigoted as well.

There’s a simpler explanation. Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Charles Rangel are not what we want them to be. They are not in true opposition to the ruling party. Like their Democratic Party, they are imposters.

House Minority Leader Pelosi may have stood up for the American people once, not once-upon-a-time, but one time, having to do with the election. Charles Rangel I’m sure will champion something one day. But that is all, and it’s sufficient I guess. It gets politicians noticed by the press and gives the party apparent credibility. But, critically, it doesn’t allow a momentum of support to build because it’s only ever one diplomat at a time. When Pelosi speaks out about something, where are the others? When Boxer speaks out, where’s Pelosi? When Murtha speaks out, where are Boxer and Pelosi? Ad dystopium.

Who do you know around you that’s only a single issue person? Activists and scholars and intellectuals seem to be able to advocate for several things at a time. Good leaders certainly do to. So does your neighbor I bet. It’s inadvertent isn’t it? Can you picture an advocate of universal health care saying: oh, never mind about civil liberties? Have you met an antiwar protestor who is not also concerned about immigrant rights? It’s not just that social justice issues are interrelated, they have a common urgency and they affect us all.

Single episode politicians are imposters. They are not advocates for the people, they are but actors who speak the lines given them and no more. Something for the camera please, but do not upset the applecart.

Approach your local candidate, even for the teeniest, least promising office. Ask them to say something of consequence, even just to you. If they belong to a party, they cannot say a thing. That’s what it means to be accepted by the party and to have its endorsement. You can’t speak. And when you get to be House Minority Leader you get to tell others not to speak, even a leader of another nation. In this case the little boy who is saying you people are butt-naked and ugly too.

Taking it to the streets

Posted on by
Reply

Protests in Nepal
This picture was taken in Nepal shortly before soldiers began swinging their sticks and firing into the crowd. Recent events have wrought inumerable protests such as this. Except for the Ukraine, Haiti and Bolivia, few have ended favorably. Protestors in western nations have thus far faced only tear gas, rubber bullets and trunchons, nothing like the massacres in Uzbekistan and China.

Look hard at this picture. Do you think the American People could ever see themselves brave enough to face this moment?

Americans have seen their elections stolen, their treasury looted, their sons and daughters killed to enrich war profiteers. They’ve seen a president lie to take them into war, try to steal their Social Security, stack the Judicial Branch to a marked imbalance, hold himself above the law against invasion of privacy, exempt himself from new laws with “signing statements,” imprison people without due process, insist on being able to torture, limit free speech to “free speech zones,” declare a war on terror but refuse to acknowledge prisoners of war, weaken pollution standards and call it a “Clear Skies Initiative, ” sell protected public lands, promote the outsourcing of jobs overseas, seek to legalize the payment of poverty waves to illegal immigrants, inhibit states and foreign nations from taking action to avert global warming, double the U.S. deficit in order to give a tax break to the super rich, launch the thoroughly illegal war against Iraq and supervise the killing of now upwards of 250, 000 Iraqi lives, more than half of them children.

Feel free to add to this list if I’ve missed something.

Most recently we’ve learned that the president considers it his right to intimidate political opponents like Ambassador Joe Wilson by “declassifying” the CIA status of Wilson’s wife, thereby endangering the life her colleagues, her contacts, her friends, and all of their contacts and friends, everyone who foreign governments now suspect might have been CIA informers.

More Americans are coming to see that our president might have conspired, abetted or at the very least permitted the mass murder of 2,986 Americans on September 11th, 2001, to create the rallying cry of “9/11” not dissimilar to Remember the Main, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin before it. Each as dubious as the Reichstag fire.

Is it time as well to consider that the fate of the world rests in the hands of a man who believes in the end times as foretold in the Book of Revelations? Is it possible that our president does not care if Armageddon is hastened in the Middle East because anyhoo it has been prophesied?

If President Bush attacks Iran, this time using nuclear weapons, will it finally occur to the American people to do something to stop him? Are they up to the task?