If somehow Earth and what passes for civilization on it both manage to survive for another 500 years or so, future historians and scientists may have access to the record of our times.
They'll be appalled to learn how low their species once sank.
For example:
* Males in government actually wrote laws regulating women's body parts, with rules about menstrual periods (Arizona), vaginas (Virginia), sexual activity and pregnancy protection. Doctors were actually slain for providing health care to pregnant women.
"Barbaric!" some future historian might exclaim. "A law actually requiring vaginal penetration with some kind of primitive stick! Mandated rape!" She searched in vain for laws regulating penises, testes or male heterosexual activity.
*The supreme judicial panel in the land met to consider the constitutionality of a health care law that affected every single person under its jurisdiction, from birth to death -- without bothering to read the law being considered. “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?” asked "Justice" Antonin Scalia, a member of the same political party whose members cheered when a political candidate, asked about the dilemma of seriously sick people without health insurance, said, "Let them die!"
*The executive branch of the government had the authority to track down, torture and kill any citizen it deemed to have been involved in "terrorist activities" or to have associated with or harbored any person or organization it deemed to be a possible terrorist threat. "Terrorism" and "terrorist" meant whatever the government said it meant. Citizens accepted these laws as "protection" and "homeland security."
* Having somehow survived the consequences of a generation that scoffed at climate science, these future historians and scientists might be horrified to learn that senior legislators and candidates for the highest elective office in the land scoffed at the evidence of climate change as "a hoax" for a greedy few scientists to extort government research money.
* Having developed a heat ray weapon that emitted "unbearable heat," the government decided that this was a really peachy keen thing to use for crowd control, because some people were getting uppity about little things like joblessness, sickness, oligarchy and war. After all, the government said, the heat ray was tested on military volunteers, most of whom survived when they ran away from it starting at a distance of 100 yards. Nobody tested the damage from exposure at, say, 83 yards.
*The most important government policy of all was to wage endless war. When the chief executive and his advisers feared that a war might be winding down, they simply started another one someplace else. It kept certain sectors of the economy really, really profitable.
These are just a few of the 21st Century treasurers that historians and scientists of the future might discover about us. Perhaps one of them might mention some of this within hearing of her 8- or 9-year-old daughter.
"Mommy," the child might say, "how could people have been so stupid as to allow such things?"
"Well," the future scientist might explain, "when homo sapiens first evolved, it was from apes who were much smarter than the creatures who ruled the earth in the early 21st Century."
"What does that mean," the child might ask, "homo sapiens?"
"It means wise man," the parent might reply. "Go figure."
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
In the Land of Guns and Skittles
Several years ago, in a coffee shop just off I-65 in Montgomery, AL, I saw two state troopers on coffee break. One was black, the other white. They were partners in the patrol car parked outside.
A few miles down the road, I-65 crosses U.S. 60 to Selma, one of the bloody milestones in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.
It was tempting to mark the white police officer and the black police officer in the nearby booth as symbols of the great progress the United States had made in race relations and attitudes since Selma. It would also have been wrong. The hatred, the ugly urge to violence, still lurked just beneath the surface not just in Alabama, but throughout American society.
Now, with the election of the first black President, it is emerging like sulfurous gas from the interior depths of our national soul. You could smell it among the gun-waving Tea Party zealots at a Congressional "town hall" in New Mexico, in the coded rhetoric of Christofascists in Virginia, in the instant celebrity of a politicized pop-off in Ohio who wasn't named Joe and wasn't a plumber.
It's in the air again with the tempest over the slaying of an unarmed 17-year-old black male by an armed 28-year-old Hispano-Caucasian male who had anointed himself to be a "watchman" for his gated community in Sanford, FL.
Citizens on both sides of the great and ever-widening American Schism are jumping to conclusions without knowing a lot about what happened that February night in Florida. Leaks meant to bolster the biases on both sides have simply inflamed the blind passions, but done little to enlighten public judgement. ABC news jumped all over the leaked information that the victim, Trayvon Martin, had been suspended from his high school because a plastic baggie was found in his backpack that contained traces of marijuana. The LA Times trumpeted its own exclusive finding that the shooter, George Zimmerman, "dreamed of being a cop." Republican seekers of the Presidential nomination assailed President Obama for remarking that if he had had a son, "he would have looked like Trayvon." A leak said Sanford police didn't consider charges against Zimmerman because they had "evidence" that supported the shooter's version of events that night. Then another medium unearthed two women in the neighborhood who heard the fatal shot and witnessed the "immediate aftermath" of the slaying whose version seemed to contradict the one the police had accepted. Skittles. A hoodie. An SUV. The vocabulary of the case is fraught with flash-point code words and phrases.
Surely the Sanford police did not do their job: any slaying by handgun calls for more thorough investigation than their acceptance of the shooter's story. It's not likely, either, that satisfactory answers will come from a special prosecutor's investigation by a Florida attorney whose statewide reputation as being "tough on crime" is based on the large number of black kids in hoodies she has sent to the slammer and then thrown away the key. Why does a neighborhood watch guy have to carry a weapon? We have a neighborhood watch in our community whose commitment is to call 911 if they see a crime being committed or a non-resident acting suspiciously. None of them totes heat out on the street.
Zimmerman told the police he saw Martin acting suspiciously and followed him. No neighborhood watch person in my neighborhood would follow a suspected criminal; that's what 911 is for. Maybe George the would-be cop saw the kid throwing Skittles at someone's stray cat.
Zimmerman's story reeks of untruth. Our greater society reeks of racism.
Trayvon Martin is far from the only unarmed black youth who has been shot to death this year under questionable circumstance, many of them by men wearing badges, and, I fear, he will not be the last.
Guns are roughly as easy to come by as Skittles in our sick country.
A few miles down the road, I-65 crosses U.S. 60 to Selma, one of the bloody milestones in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.
It was tempting to mark the white police officer and the black police officer in the nearby booth as symbols of the great progress the United States had made in race relations and attitudes since Selma. It would also have been wrong. The hatred, the ugly urge to violence, still lurked just beneath the surface not just in Alabama, but throughout American society.
Now, with the election of the first black President, it is emerging like sulfurous gas from the interior depths of our national soul. You could smell it among the gun-waving Tea Party zealots at a Congressional "town hall" in New Mexico, in the coded rhetoric of Christofascists in Virginia, in the instant celebrity of a politicized pop-off in Ohio who wasn't named Joe and wasn't a plumber.
It's in the air again with the tempest over the slaying of an unarmed 17-year-old black male by an armed 28-year-old Hispano-Caucasian male who had anointed himself to be a "watchman" for his gated community in Sanford, FL.
Citizens on both sides of the great and ever-widening American Schism are jumping to conclusions without knowing a lot about what happened that February night in Florida. Leaks meant to bolster the biases on both sides have simply inflamed the blind passions, but done little to enlighten public judgement. ABC news jumped all over the leaked information that the victim, Trayvon Martin, had been suspended from his high school because a plastic baggie was found in his backpack that contained traces of marijuana. The LA Times trumpeted its own exclusive finding that the shooter, George Zimmerman, "dreamed of being a cop." Republican seekers of the Presidential nomination assailed President Obama for remarking that if he had had a son, "he would have looked like Trayvon." A leak said Sanford police didn't consider charges against Zimmerman because they had "evidence" that supported the shooter's version of events that night. Then another medium unearthed two women in the neighborhood who heard the fatal shot and witnessed the "immediate aftermath" of the slaying whose version seemed to contradict the one the police had accepted. Skittles. A hoodie. An SUV. The vocabulary of the case is fraught with flash-point code words and phrases.
Surely the Sanford police did not do their job: any slaying by handgun calls for more thorough investigation than their acceptance of the shooter's story. It's not likely, either, that satisfactory answers will come from a special prosecutor's investigation by a Florida attorney whose statewide reputation as being "tough on crime" is based on the large number of black kids in hoodies she has sent to the slammer and then thrown away the key. Why does a neighborhood watch guy have to carry a weapon? We have a neighborhood watch in our community whose commitment is to call 911 if they see a crime being committed or a non-resident acting suspiciously. None of them totes heat out on the street.
Zimmerman told the police he saw Martin acting suspiciously and followed him. No neighborhood watch person in my neighborhood would follow a suspected criminal; that's what 911 is for. Maybe George the would-be cop saw the kid throwing Skittles at someone's stray cat.
Zimmerman's story reeks of untruth. Our greater society reeks of racism.
Trayvon Martin is far from the only unarmed black youth who has been shot to death this year under questionable circumstance, many of them by men wearing badges, and, I fear, he will not be the last.
Guns are roughly as easy to come by as Skittles in our sick country.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Kidglove Goes Whoring for Votes
Here he goes again: Dr. Kidglove, who said "No" to the environmentally abominable Keystone XL pipeline, has now typically begun to say "yes" in increments.
Barack Obama is proving once again that he is incapable of staying true to principles because in fact he has no principles. He is nothing more than a Chicago ward healer of the shabbiest kind: cross the right palms, wield the right baton, invoke the right names and anything is possible -- dead people voting, regulations winked at, rules broken, laws ignored, profits multiplied.
Whoring for votes, he has gone into oil country and promised to expedite the southern portion of the pipeline from Cushing, OK, to Port Arthur, TX. Why in Hell build the terminal part of the vile thing unless you intend to build it all?
“The Gulf Coast leg would add to the fossil fuel infrastructure at a time when we critically need to transition away from fossil fuels in order to avoid climate catastrophe,” said Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Just like Keystone I, the Gulf Coast leg of Keystone XL will spill, polluting land and water and ruining important habitat . . ."
Milquetoast! What about people's health, the contamination of water tables?
“The president’s support for this pipeline is troubling,” said Greenwald. “Keystone XL may be a boon to Big Oil companies in the exporting business but those profits will come at a stiff price for our land, water, wildlife and climate.”
Another way of saying this: "The President has fucked the People of the United States so that the richest corporations in the history of money can become still more profitable."
Greenwald again: “The American people have spoken clearly against this project. Building Keystone XL in pieces doesn’t make it any less dangerous.”
The Three Stooges seeking the Republican nomination for the presidency have increasingly blathered about how Obama is at fault for the increasing price of gasoline at the pump. Rather than doing the courageous thing -- confronting this egregious lie for what it is -- Kidglove once again has "compromised" with his opposition. His version of compromise once was known -- and still ought to be -- as "unconditional surrender." He'll let Exxon, Chevron, Shell and the other fossil fuel criminals have their polluting, killer pipeline; you and I will get a dime or even a quarter off the price of a gallon of gas. Big Oil's profits will rise by 10 or 25 billion dollars.
In fact, any literate human with the capacity to reason slightly beyond 2 + 2 knows perfectly well that Wall Street speculators and hedge fund managers have driven up the price of gas at the pump. And you and I know damned well that if you took down the names of those speculators and hedge fund managers, and fed them into the data base for Republican campaign contributions, you'd hit the bloody trifecta. These unregulated hooligans have a license to steal from us, the people, thanks to the right-wing Republican congress and the contumely of Citizens United, and Dr. Kidglove's gutless unwillingness to be a real President.
We elected these scoundrels. Hey, Shylock: Carve another pound or so off our fleshy asses. We get what we deserve.
Barack Obama is proving once again that he is incapable of staying true to principles because in fact he has no principles. He is nothing more than a Chicago ward healer of the shabbiest kind: cross the right palms, wield the right baton, invoke the right names and anything is possible -- dead people voting, regulations winked at, rules broken, laws ignored, profits multiplied.
Whoring for votes, he has gone into oil country and promised to expedite the southern portion of the pipeline from Cushing, OK, to Port Arthur, TX. Why in Hell build the terminal part of the vile thing unless you intend to build it all?
“The Gulf Coast leg would add to the fossil fuel infrastructure at a time when we critically need to transition away from fossil fuels in order to avoid climate catastrophe,” said Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Just like Keystone I, the Gulf Coast leg of Keystone XL will spill, polluting land and water and ruining important habitat . . ."
Milquetoast! What about people's health, the contamination of water tables?
“The president’s support for this pipeline is troubling,” said Greenwald. “Keystone XL may be a boon to Big Oil companies in the exporting business but those profits will come at a stiff price for our land, water, wildlife and climate.”
Another way of saying this: "The President has fucked the People of the United States so that the richest corporations in the history of money can become still more profitable."
Greenwald again: “The American people have spoken clearly against this project. Building Keystone XL in pieces doesn’t make it any less dangerous.”
The Three Stooges seeking the Republican nomination for the presidency have increasingly blathered about how Obama is at fault for the increasing price of gasoline at the pump. Rather than doing the courageous thing -- confronting this egregious lie for what it is -- Kidglove once again has "compromised" with his opposition. His version of compromise once was known -- and still ought to be -- as "unconditional surrender." He'll let Exxon, Chevron, Shell and the other fossil fuel criminals have their polluting, killer pipeline; you and I will get a dime or even a quarter off the price of a gallon of gas. Big Oil's profits will rise by 10 or 25 billion dollars.
In fact, any literate human with the capacity to reason slightly beyond 2 + 2 knows perfectly well that Wall Street speculators and hedge fund managers have driven up the price of gas at the pump. And you and I know damned well that if you took down the names of those speculators and hedge fund managers, and fed them into the data base for Republican campaign contributions, you'd hit the bloody trifecta. These unregulated hooligans have a license to steal from us, the people, thanks to the right-wing Republican congress and the contumely of Citizens United, and Dr. Kidglove's gutless unwillingness to be a real President.
We elected these scoundrels. Hey, Shylock: Carve another pound or so off our fleshy asses. We get what we deserve.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Examining the Bond of Hatred
Since the Far Right and its Christofascist allies took over the Republican party, I have been searching for the Common Denominator, the central factor that drew these bedfellows together and fuels their political passions.
I think I've found it: hatred. Herewith a partial list of what the Far Right hates:
Women.
Women who have fun.
Women who earn equal pay with men for equal work.
Women who have sex.
Liberals.
Liberals who have sex.
Women and liberals who have fun having sex.
Sex. (The immaculate conception theory has special appeal for conservatives.)
Brown people.
Black people.
Red (native American) people.
People who talk funny.
People with funny ideas (examples: "All men are created equal." "All men are endowed with certain inalienable rights.")
People who don't believe in the existence of gods.
People who worship different gods.
People who worship the same god but in a different manner.
People who don't worship at all.
All religions except fundamental Christianity.
Adequate, affordable health care for anyone We hate.
Decent living conditions for anyone We hate.
Decent pay for anyone We hate.
Black people in white houses. There's a reason it's called the White House.
People who think government has an obligation to help people We hate, such as the poor, people of color, immigrants, non-English speakers.
People who think government should be on the side of all the people, not just very rich people.
People who understand the difference between Good Law and Bad Law and advocate for the Rule of Law.
People who understand the nuances of language and thought and respect them. They're called Elites and they should be kicked off the bus.
Scientists.
Scientific facts that contradict Our Cherished Beliefs.
Science that tells inconvenient truths.
Truth of any kind.
Progress. The bad old days are good enough for Us.
People who oppose Our Wars. You gotta Support Our Troops by sending them to a new Vietnam every couple of years.
Me. But, like FDR, I welcome their hatred.
I think I've found it: hatred. Herewith a partial list of what the Far Right hates:
Women.
Women who have fun.
Women who earn equal pay with men for equal work.
Women who have sex.
Liberals.
Liberals who have sex.
Women and liberals who have fun having sex.
Sex. (The immaculate conception theory has special appeal for conservatives.)
Brown people.
Black people.
Red (native American) people.
People who talk funny.
People with funny ideas (examples: "All men are created equal." "All men are endowed with certain inalienable rights.")
People who don't believe in the existence of gods.
People who worship different gods.
People who worship the same god but in a different manner.
People who don't worship at all.
All religions except fundamental Christianity.
Adequate, affordable health care for anyone We hate.
Decent living conditions for anyone We hate.
Decent pay for anyone We hate.
Black people in white houses. There's a reason it's called the White House.
People who think government has an obligation to help people We hate, such as the poor, people of color, immigrants, non-English speakers.
People who think government should be on the side of all the people, not just very rich people.
People who understand the difference between Good Law and Bad Law and advocate for the Rule of Law.
People who understand the nuances of language and thought and respect them. They're called Elites and they should be kicked off the bus.
Scientists.
Scientific facts that contradict Our Cherished Beliefs.
Science that tells inconvenient truths.
Truth of any kind.
Progress. The bad old days are good enough for Us.
People who oppose Our Wars. You gotta Support Our Troops by sending them to a new Vietnam every couple of years.
Me. But, like FDR, I welcome their hatred.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Musings on a Drab Day: the Dogs of France
I like a lot of things about the French besides their cuisine. Take their love of dogs, who love them back with a force that only dogs can muster.
Here, I couldn't take Brandi into a restaurant with me unless I were blind and he were my guide dog. Even then, in a lot of places I'd have a hassle before I got served.
But in France? I remember a fabulous lunch in a nice restaurant overlooking a pretty lake somewhere on the Massif Central. At the table to our left, two 40-ish ladies nibbled at salad while slipping an occasional morsel to the fluffburger dogs, impeccably well behaved, lounging under their chairs. I remember seeing en chien huddled in the corner of a courtyard outside a cathedral in Avignon. Thinking it a stray I sought to befriend it and look for collar ID. With coy dignity it kept itself just beyond my reach, and when I finally abandoned my adoptive instincts, it came to attention even before its master appeared around the corner. Master and animal understood that it was perfectly safe to leave the dog unattended while the human lit votive candles, or whatever he was doing inside the church.
Once in Paris we stayed at a hotel directly across a cobble-stoned street from a little cinema that specialized in old American films like "Casablanca." I jogged every morning back then but on our first morning in Paris I chose instead to make nice with two spaniels being walked by their mistress. She had excellent English. We talked dogs.
"You know," she said, with a nod toward the cinema, "I saw the most amazing thing there the other night. They were showing 'War and Peace,' and a man and his dog took seats near me. The dog watched the screen intently; when the movie was sad, the dog seemed to weep; when the movie was gay, the dog seemed to smile. All through the film he watched, rapt. When the movie ended, I couldn't help but enthuse to the man about how interested his dog was in the motion picture. 'Yes,' the man replied, 'it was quite extraordinary, since he absolutely hated the book.'"
Every dog person knows another dog person who has to spell certain w-o-r-d-s because their dog recognizes names of favorite foods, people or playmates and becomes difficult to control when he hears those words. I don't for a moment entertain the idea that a dog can make judgements about an entire book, but I swear that my friend Gregg's dog, Rusty, has a catalog of attributes that make another dog Friend (Saxon, Brandi, Chaco) or Foe (Boo,Cindy, Rascal).
Not far from my house in Pennsylvania a few years back was a tract of woodsy land set aside as a bird sanctuary and a place where dogs and their people could walk sans leashes. One of its oldest and most dedicated users was a Scotty named Digby. When Digby died, his mistress invited all dogs and people who loved to walk there to come to a ceremony where his ashes would be scattered in the stream that ran through it. A bagpiper played. There must have been 60 dogs and nearly as many people. All the dogs behaved beautifully, as if they understood this was a solemn occasion that called for best manners.
Some days, when the news is bad and the wars are raging and the politicians are lying and the skies seem especially gray, I like to fetch Brandi and go out deep in the desert, find a rock to sit on, and think about the happy chiens of France.
"Brandi," I'll ask. "Do you think you'd like 'War and Peace?""
Here, I couldn't take Brandi into a restaurant with me unless I were blind and he were my guide dog. Even then, in a lot of places I'd have a hassle before I got served.
But in France? I remember a fabulous lunch in a nice restaurant overlooking a pretty lake somewhere on the Massif Central. At the table to our left, two 40-ish ladies nibbled at salad while slipping an occasional morsel to the fluffburger dogs, impeccably well behaved, lounging under their chairs. I remember seeing en chien huddled in the corner of a courtyard outside a cathedral in Avignon. Thinking it a stray I sought to befriend it and look for collar ID. With coy dignity it kept itself just beyond my reach, and when I finally abandoned my adoptive instincts, it came to attention even before its master appeared around the corner. Master and animal understood that it was perfectly safe to leave the dog unattended while the human lit votive candles, or whatever he was doing inside the church.
Once in Paris we stayed at a hotel directly across a cobble-stoned street from a little cinema that specialized in old American films like "Casablanca." I jogged every morning back then but on our first morning in Paris I chose instead to make nice with two spaniels being walked by their mistress. She had excellent English. We talked dogs.
"You know," she said, with a nod toward the cinema, "I saw the most amazing thing there the other night. They were showing 'War and Peace,' and a man and his dog took seats near me. The dog watched the screen intently; when the movie was sad, the dog seemed to weep; when the movie was gay, the dog seemed to smile. All through the film he watched, rapt. When the movie ended, I couldn't help but enthuse to the man about how interested his dog was in the motion picture. 'Yes,' the man replied, 'it was quite extraordinary, since he absolutely hated the book.'"
Every dog person knows another dog person who has to spell certain w-o-r-d-s because their dog recognizes names of favorite foods, people or playmates and becomes difficult to control when he hears those words. I don't for a moment entertain the idea that a dog can make judgements about an entire book, but I swear that my friend Gregg's dog, Rusty, has a catalog of attributes that make another dog Friend (Saxon, Brandi, Chaco) or Foe (Boo,Cindy, Rascal).
Not far from my house in Pennsylvania a few years back was a tract of woodsy land set aside as a bird sanctuary and a place where dogs and their people could walk sans leashes. One of its oldest and most dedicated users was a Scotty named Digby. When Digby died, his mistress invited all dogs and people who loved to walk there to come to a ceremony where his ashes would be scattered in the stream that ran through it. A bagpiper played. There must have been 60 dogs and nearly as many people. All the dogs behaved beautifully, as if they understood this was a solemn occasion that called for best manners.
Some days, when the news is bad and the wars are raging and the politicians are lying and the skies seem especially gray, I like to fetch Brandi and go out deep in the desert, find a rock to sit on, and think about the happy chiens of France.
"Brandi," I'll ask. "Do you think you'd like 'War and Peace?""
Monday, March 12, 2012
Rush, Rick and the GOP Sex Obsession
When the Republican obsession with s-e-x emerged during the Clinton impeachment fiasco, Freudian analysts both amateur and professional sought to explain it.
Serial infidelities and perversions by some of the President's harshest foes in Congress, and the unnecessarily pornographic nature of the prosecutor Ken Starr's indictment document, spawned what has now become a small industry.
Back then we had House stonecasters regretting their "constiTOOshunal" responsibility to (tee-hoo, ha-ha, wink) probe deeply into these otherwise personal matters. And we had Starr writing into the indictment so much steamy detail of the Clinton-Lewinsky encounters that even a federal judge (appointed by Reagan) found it tawdry. One commentator at the time imagined Starr at home every night panting over his text with masturbatory ecstasy. After all, another noted, Freud himself once commented that "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
But that was then and now we have people like Gingrich, Cain, Bachmann and Santorum actually running for president, cheered on by commentators like Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Drudge. The collective personal histories of this cast could fill an entire edition of a supermarket tabloid -- multimillion dollar settlements of sexual harassment litigation, youthful spousal indiscretions, non-denial ("I do NOT love sex with men") denials of homosexuality, religious "cures" of socially controversial sexual orientation, a paramour telling the press, "We had oral sex; he prefers (that) because then he can say, 'I never slept with her.'" On and on.
Limbaugh, that paragon of personal virtue, and Santorum, whose first act if elected President will be to repeal the 18th and 20th Centuries, take the cake for sexual obsession.
Surely no literate person alive today is ignorant of the great talk-radio blowhard's "slut" and "prostitute" rants against a Georgetown University student. (I think this stuff is actionable and I hope the young lady sues for gazillions in damages.) But when he asked her to videotape a sexual encounter and send it to him "so we can all watch," he descended into deviant voyeurism the Freudian analysts can run with for months.
And then there's St. Rick, the supremely Roman Catholic public figure who goes ex cathedra on s-e-x if you ask him the time of day. His public utterances prompted a commentator to write Sex Education 101 for Republicans, a pre-junior high curriculum proposal that was the most read item on the Common Dreams website last week. Another hot item was Charles M. Blow's New York Times post on Santorum's 2008 appearance at the Center for Religion and Public Life (repeal the First Amendment!) in Washington, DC.
Asked about his experiences regarding "religion and politics" when he was in the Senate, St. Rick went right to the core of the matter:
“It comes down to sex. That’s what it’s all about. It comes down to freedom, and it comes down to sex. If you have anything to do with any of the sexual issues, and if you are on the wrong side of being able to do all of the sexual freedoms you want, you are a bad guy. And you’re dangerous because you are going to limit my freedom in an area that’s the most central to me. And that’s the way it’s looked at.”
Rick was asked to respond to a columnist's comment that "Republicans want their payback for Watergate, for Bork, for Iran-contra, even for Woodstock. Like Kenneth Starr, the Republicans are attempting to repeal the 1960s.”
He said:
“Woodstock is the great American orgy. This is who the Democratic Party has become. They have become the party of Woodstock. They prey upon our most basic primal lusts, and that’s sex. And the whole abortion culture, it’s not about life. It’s about sexual freedom. That’s what it’s about. Homosexuality. It’s about sexual freedom. All of the things are about sexual freedom, and they hate to be called on them. They try to somehow or other tie this to the founding fathers’ vision of liberty, which is bizarre. It’s ridiculous. That’s at the core of why you are attacked.”
Question:
“Do you see any possibility for a party of Christian reform, or an influx of Christian ideas into this [Democratic] party?”
Answer:
“What changed was the ’60s. What changed was sex. What changed was the social and cultural issues that have huge amounts of money because if you look — I haven’t seen numbers on this, but I’m sure it’s true — if you go socioeconomic scale, the higher the income, the more socially liberal you are. The more you know you can buy your way out of the problems that sexual libertinism (sic) causes you. You have an abortion, well, I have the money to take care of it. If I want to live an extravagant life and get diseases, I can. ... You can always take care of everything. If you have money, you can get away with things that if you’re poor you can’t.”
“You’re a liberal or a conservative in America if you think the ’60s were a good thing or not. If the ’60s was a good thing, you’re left. If you think it was a bad thing, you’re right. And the confusing thing for a lot of people that gets a lot of Americans is, when they think of the ’60s, they don’t think of just the sexual revolution. But somehow or other — and they’ve been very, very, clever at doing this — they’ve been able to link, I think absolutely incorrectly, the sexual revolution with civil rights.”
Chatting with a friend in Washington the other day, I mentioned some of this and he chuckled and said:
"Did you hear about the Republican presidential candidate who took a Rorschach inkblot test? The shrink showed him an image and asked, 'What do you see?' 'F--king,' he replied. Another image. 'F--king.' Next image, same answer. Next image, same answer. The shrink threw down his image cards and said, 'You're a pervert!'
"The Republican shouted back: 'Don't blame me! You're the one with the dirty pictures.'"
Serial infidelities and perversions by some of the President's harshest foes in Congress, and the unnecessarily pornographic nature of the prosecutor Ken Starr's indictment document, spawned what has now become a small industry.
Back then we had House stonecasters regretting their "constiTOOshunal" responsibility to (tee-hoo, ha-ha, wink) probe deeply into these otherwise personal matters. And we had Starr writing into the indictment so much steamy detail of the Clinton-Lewinsky encounters that even a federal judge (appointed by Reagan) found it tawdry. One commentator at the time imagined Starr at home every night panting over his text with masturbatory ecstasy. After all, another noted, Freud himself once commented that "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
But that was then and now we have people like Gingrich, Cain, Bachmann and Santorum actually running for president, cheered on by commentators like Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Drudge. The collective personal histories of this cast could fill an entire edition of a supermarket tabloid -- multimillion dollar settlements of sexual harassment litigation, youthful spousal indiscretions, non-denial ("I do NOT love sex with men") denials of homosexuality, religious "cures" of socially controversial sexual orientation, a paramour telling the press, "We had oral sex; he prefers (that) because then he can say, 'I never slept with her.'" On and on.
Limbaugh, that paragon of personal virtue, and Santorum, whose first act if elected President will be to repeal the 18th and 20th Centuries, take the cake for sexual obsession.
Surely no literate person alive today is ignorant of the great talk-radio blowhard's "slut" and "prostitute" rants against a Georgetown University student. (I think this stuff is actionable and I hope the young lady sues for gazillions in damages.) But when he asked her to videotape a sexual encounter and send it to him "so we can all watch," he descended into deviant voyeurism the Freudian analysts can run with for months.
And then there's St. Rick, the supremely Roman Catholic public figure who goes ex cathedra on s-e-x if you ask him the time of day. His public utterances prompted a commentator to write Sex Education 101 for Republicans, a pre-junior high curriculum proposal that was the most read item on the Common Dreams website last week. Another hot item was Charles M. Blow's New York Times post on Santorum's 2008 appearance at the Center for Religion and Public Life (repeal the First Amendment!) in Washington, DC.
Asked about his experiences regarding "religion and politics" when he was in the Senate, St. Rick went right to the core of the matter:
“It comes down to sex. That’s what it’s all about. It comes down to freedom, and it comes down to sex. If you have anything to do with any of the sexual issues, and if you are on the wrong side of being able to do all of the sexual freedoms you want, you are a bad guy. And you’re dangerous because you are going to limit my freedom in an area that’s the most central to me. And that’s the way it’s looked at.”
Rick was asked to respond to a columnist's comment that "Republicans want their payback for Watergate, for Bork, for Iran-contra, even for Woodstock. Like Kenneth Starr, the Republicans are attempting to repeal the 1960s.”
He said:
“Woodstock is the great American orgy. This is who the Democratic Party has become. They have become the party of Woodstock. They prey upon our most basic primal lusts, and that’s sex. And the whole abortion culture, it’s not about life. It’s about sexual freedom. That’s what it’s about. Homosexuality. It’s about sexual freedom. All of the things are about sexual freedom, and they hate to be called on them. They try to somehow or other tie this to the founding fathers’ vision of liberty, which is bizarre. It’s ridiculous. That’s at the core of why you are attacked.”
Question:
“Do you see any possibility for a party of Christian reform, or an influx of Christian ideas into this [Democratic] party?”
Answer:
“What changed was the ’60s. What changed was sex. What changed was the social and cultural issues that have huge amounts of money because if you look — I haven’t seen numbers on this, but I’m sure it’s true — if you go socioeconomic scale, the higher the income, the more socially liberal you are. The more you know you can buy your way out of the problems that sexual libertinism (sic) causes you. You have an abortion, well, I have the money to take care of it. If I want to live an extravagant life and get diseases, I can. ... You can always take care of everything. If you have money, you can get away with things that if you’re poor you can’t.”
“You’re a liberal or a conservative in America if you think the ’60s were a good thing or not. If the ’60s was a good thing, you’re left. If you think it was a bad thing, you’re right. And the confusing thing for a lot of people that gets a lot of Americans is, when they think of the ’60s, they don’t think of just the sexual revolution. But somehow or other — and they’ve been very, very, clever at doing this — they’ve been able to link, I think absolutely incorrectly, the sexual revolution with civil rights.”
Chatting with a friend in Washington the other day, I mentioned some of this and he chuckled and said:
"Did you hear about the Republican presidential candidate who took a Rorschach inkblot test? The shrink showed him an image and asked, 'What do you see?' 'F--king,' he replied. Another image. 'F--king.' Next image, same answer. Next image, same answer. The shrink threw down his image cards and said, 'You're a pervert!'
"The Republican shouted back: 'Don't blame me! You're the one with the dirty pictures.'"
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
A Lament
When Prof. Rudolph Fehring of the University of Cincinnati confronted an especially stupid bit of classwork by a student, he was wont to grasp his forehead, close his eyes, and lament, ". . .and they shot men like Lincoln!"
Voters in Ohio have "shot" another man like Lincoln. A man of principle, and an articulate spokesmen for them; a man willing, as one Ohio paper put it, "to take a political hit" for sticking to those principles; a man who proudly stood for peace in a land dedicated to endless war; a man who understood, pledged himself to, and fought bravely to preserve every jot and tittle of the Bill of Rights; a man who embodied all the change that might have saved this country as a democracy.
Stay around, Dennis Kucinich. Keep saying the things you've always said so well, the things Americans need to hear even if they don't want to hear them, don't want to heed them, willingly place their collective heads in the guillotin of an authoritarian, bellicose police state.
Keep saying what you said ten years ago last month, Dennis Kucinich. Keep saying:
I offer these brief remarks today as a prayer for our country, with love of democracy, as a celebration of our country. With love for our country. With hope for our country. With a belief that the light of freedom cannot be extinguished as long as it is inside of us. With a belief that freedom rings resoundingly in a democracy each time we speak freely. With the understanding that freedom stirs the human heart and fear stills it. With the belief that a free people cannot walk in fear and faith at the same time.
With the understanding that there is a deeper truth expressed in the unity of the United States. That implicit in the union of our country is the union of all people. That all people are essentially one. That the world is interconnected not only on the material level of economics, trade, communication, and transportation, but innerconnected through human consciousness, through the human heart, through the heart of the world, through the simply expressed impulse and yearning to be and to breathe free.
I offer this prayer for America.
Let us pray that our nation will remember that the unfolding of the promise of democracy in our nation paralleled the striving for civil rights. That is why we must challenge the rationale of the Patriot Act. We must ask why should America put aside guarantees of constitutional justice?
How can we justify in effect canceling the First Amendment and the right of free speech, the right to peaceably assemble?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for indefinite incarceration without a trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Eighth Amendment which protects against cruel and unusual punishment?
We cannot justify widespread wiretaps and internet surveillance without judicial supervision, let alone with it.
We cannot justify secret searches without a warrant.
We cannot justify giving the Attorney General the ability to designate domestic terror groups.
We cannot justify giving the FBI total access to any type of data which may exist in any system anywhere such as medical records and financial records.
We cannot justify giving the CIA the ability to target people in this country for intelligence surveillance.
We cannot justify a government which takes from the people our right to privacy and then assumes for its own operations a right to total secrecy.
Let us pray that our country will stop this war. "To promote the common defense" is one of the formational principles of America.
Our Congress gave the President the ability to respond to the tragedy of September 11. We licensed a response to those who helped bring the terror of September 11th. But we the people and our elected representatives must reserve the right to measure the response, to proportion the response, to challenge the response, and to correct the response.
Because we did not authorize the invasion of Iraq.
We did not authorize the invasion of Iran.
We did not authorize the invasion of North Korea.
We did not authorize the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan.
We did not authorize permanent detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
We did not authorize the withdrawal from the Geneva Convention.
We did not authorize military tribunals suspending due process and habeas corpus.
We did not authorize assassination squads.
We did not authorize the resurrection of COINTELPRO.
We did not authorize the repeal of the Bill of Rights.
We did not authorize the revocation of the Constitution.
We did not authorize national identity cards.
We did not authorize the eye of Big Brother to peer from cameras throughout our cities.
We did not authorize an eye for an eye.
Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan.
We did not authorize the administration to wage war anytime, anywhere,anyhow it pleases.
We did not authorize war without end.
We did not authorize a permanent war economy.
Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent war economy. Yet the defense budget grows with more money for weapons systems to fight a cold war which ended, weapon systems in search of new enemies to create new wars. This has nothing to do with fighting terror.
This has everything to do with fueling a military industrial machine with the treasure of our nation, risking the future of our nation, risking democracy itself with the militarization of thought which follows the militarization of the budget.
Let us pray for our children. Our children deserve a world without end. Not a war without end. Our children deserve a world free of the terror of hunger, free of the terror of poor health care, free of the terror of homelessness, free of the terror of ignorance, free of the terror of hopelessness, free of the terror of policies which are committed to a world view which is not appropriate for the survival of a free people, not appropriate for the survival of democratic values, not appropriate for the survival of our nation, and not appropriate for the survival of the world.
Let us declare our love for democracy. Let us declare our intent for peace.
Let us work to make nonviolence an organizing principle in our own society.
Let us recommit ourselves to the slow and painstaking work of statecraft, which sees peace, not war as being inevitable.
Let us work for a world where someday war becomes archaic.
That is the vision which the proposal to create a Department of Peace envisions. Forty-three members of Congress are now cosponsoring the legislation.
Let us work for a world where nuclear disarmament is an imperative. That is why we must begin by insisting on the commitments of the ABM treaty. That is why we must be steadfast for nonproliferation.
Let us work for a world where America can lead the day in banning weapons of mass destruction not only from our land and sea and sky but from outer space itself. That is the vision of HR 3616: A universe free of fear. Where we can look up at God's creation in the stars and imagine infinite wisdom, infinite peace, infinite possibilities, not infinite war, because we are taught that the kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.
Let us pray that we have the courage to replace the images of death which haunt us, the layers of images of September 11th, faded into images of patriotism, spliced into images of military mobilization, jump-cut into images of our secular celebrations of the World Series, New Year's Eve, the Superbowl, the Olympics, the strobic flashes which touch our deepest fears, let us replace those images with the work of human relations, reaching out to people, helping our own citizens here at home, lifting the plight of the poor everywhere.
That is the America which has the ability to rally the support of the world.
That is the America which stands not in pursuit of an axis of evil, but which is itself at the axis of hope and faith and peace and freedom. America, America. God shed grace on thee. Crown thy good, America.
Not with weapons of mass destruction. Not with invocations of an axis of evil. Not through breaking international treaties. Not through establishing America as king of a unipolar world. Crown thy good America. America, America. Let us pray for our country. Let us love our country. Let us defend our country not only from the threats without but from the threats within.
Crown thy good, America. Crown thy good with brotherhood, and sisterhood. And crown thy good with compassion and restraint and forbearance and a commitment to peace, to democracy, to economic justice here at home and throughout the world.
Crown thy good, America. Crown thy good America. Crown thy good.
* * *
Dare not to say, America, dare not to even think that he wasn't tall enough to be President. He is a giant.
Voters in Ohio have "shot" another man like Lincoln. A man of principle, and an articulate spokesmen for them; a man willing, as one Ohio paper put it, "to take a political hit" for sticking to those principles; a man who proudly stood for peace in a land dedicated to endless war; a man who understood, pledged himself to, and fought bravely to preserve every jot and tittle of the Bill of Rights; a man who embodied all the change that might have saved this country as a democracy.
Stay around, Dennis Kucinich. Keep saying the things you've always said so well, the things Americans need to hear even if they don't want to hear them, don't want to heed them, willingly place their collective heads in the guillotin of an authoritarian, bellicose police state.
Keep saying what you said ten years ago last month, Dennis Kucinich. Keep saying:
I offer these brief remarks today as a prayer for our country, with love of democracy, as a celebration of our country. With love for our country. With hope for our country. With a belief that the light of freedom cannot be extinguished as long as it is inside of us. With a belief that freedom rings resoundingly in a democracy each time we speak freely. With the understanding that freedom stirs the human heart and fear stills it. With the belief that a free people cannot walk in fear and faith at the same time.
With the understanding that there is a deeper truth expressed in the unity of the United States. That implicit in the union of our country is the union of all people. That all people are essentially one. That the world is interconnected not only on the material level of economics, trade, communication, and transportation, but innerconnected through human consciousness, through the human heart, through the heart of the world, through the simply expressed impulse and yearning to be and to breathe free.
I offer this prayer for America.
Let us pray that our nation will remember that the unfolding of the promise of democracy in our nation paralleled the striving for civil rights. That is why we must challenge the rationale of the Patriot Act. We must ask why should America put aside guarantees of constitutional justice?
How can we justify in effect canceling the First Amendment and the right of free speech, the right to peaceably assemble?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Fourth Amendment, probable cause, the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due process, and allowing for indefinite incarceration without a trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Sixth Amendment, the right to prompt and public trial?
How can we justify in effect canceling the Eighth Amendment which protects against cruel and unusual punishment?
We cannot justify widespread wiretaps and internet surveillance without judicial supervision, let alone with it.
We cannot justify secret searches without a warrant.
We cannot justify giving the Attorney General the ability to designate domestic terror groups.
We cannot justify giving the FBI total access to any type of data which may exist in any system anywhere such as medical records and financial records.
We cannot justify giving the CIA the ability to target people in this country for intelligence surveillance.
We cannot justify a government which takes from the people our right to privacy and then assumes for its own operations a right to total secrecy.
Let us pray that our country will stop this war. "To promote the common defense" is one of the formational principles of America.
Our Congress gave the President the ability to respond to the tragedy of September 11. We licensed a response to those who helped bring the terror of September 11th. But we the people and our elected representatives must reserve the right to measure the response, to proportion the response, to challenge the response, and to correct the response.
Because we did not authorize the invasion of Iraq.
We did not authorize the invasion of Iran.
We did not authorize the invasion of North Korea.
We did not authorize the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan.
We did not authorize permanent detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
We did not authorize the withdrawal from the Geneva Convention.
We did not authorize military tribunals suspending due process and habeas corpus.
We did not authorize assassination squads.
We did not authorize the resurrection of COINTELPRO.
We did not authorize the repeal of the Bill of Rights.
We did not authorize the revocation of the Constitution.
We did not authorize national identity cards.
We did not authorize the eye of Big Brother to peer from cameras throughout our cities.
We did not authorize an eye for an eye.
Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan.
We did not authorize the administration to wage war anytime, anywhere,anyhow it pleases.
We did not authorize war without end.
We did not authorize a permanent war economy.
Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent war economy. Yet the defense budget grows with more money for weapons systems to fight a cold war which ended, weapon systems in search of new enemies to create new wars. This has nothing to do with fighting terror.
This has everything to do with fueling a military industrial machine with the treasure of our nation, risking the future of our nation, risking democracy itself with the militarization of thought which follows the militarization of the budget.
Let us pray for our children. Our children deserve a world without end. Not a war without end. Our children deserve a world free of the terror of hunger, free of the terror of poor health care, free of the terror of homelessness, free of the terror of ignorance, free of the terror of hopelessness, free of the terror of policies which are committed to a world view which is not appropriate for the survival of a free people, not appropriate for the survival of democratic values, not appropriate for the survival of our nation, and not appropriate for the survival of the world.
Let us declare our love for democracy. Let us declare our intent for peace.
Let us work to make nonviolence an organizing principle in our own society.
Let us recommit ourselves to the slow and painstaking work of statecraft, which sees peace, not war as being inevitable.
Let us work for a world where someday war becomes archaic.
That is the vision which the proposal to create a Department of Peace envisions. Forty-three members of Congress are now cosponsoring the legislation.
Let us work for a world where nuclear disarmament is an imperative. That is why we must begin by insisting on the commitments of the ABM treaty. That is why we must be steadfast for nonproliferation.
Let us work for a world where America can lead the day in banning weapons of mass destruction not only from our land and sea and sky but from outer space itself. That is the vision of HR 3616: A universe free of fear. Where we can look up at God's creation in the stars and imagine infinite wisdom, infinite peace, infinite possibilities, not infinite war, because we are taught that the kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.
Let us pray that we have the courage to replace the images of death which haunt us, the layers of images of September 11th, faded into images of patriotism, spliced into images of military mobilization, jump-cut into images of our secular celebrations of the World Series, New Year's Eve, the Superbowl, the Olympics, the strobic flashes which touch our deepest fears, let us replace those images with the work of human relations, reaching out to people, helping our own citizens here at home, lifting the plight of the poor everywhere.
That is the America which has the ability to rally the support of the world.
That is the America which stands not in pursuit of an axis of evil, but which is itself at the axis of hope and faith and peace and freedom. America, America. God shed grace on thee. Crown thy good, America.
Not with weapons of mass destruction. Not with invocations of an axis of evil. Not through breaking international treaties. Not through establishing America as king of a unipolar world. Crown thy good America. America, America. Let us pray for our country. Let us love our country. Let us defend our country not only from the threats without but from the threats within.
Crown thy good, America. Crown thy good with brotherhood, and sisterhood. And crown thy good with compassion and restraint and forbearance and a commitment to peace, to democracy, to economic justice here at home and throughout the world.
Crown thy good, America. Crown thy good America. Crown thy good.
* * *
Dare not to say, America, dare not to even think that he wasn't tall enough to be President. He is a giant.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Why Don't We Listen to Those in The Know?
Most Americans who actually know something about the Middle East -- including fluency in its languages -- are appalled by the ease with which AIPAC and its allies in the endless wars movement have duped our media into once again shilling for a wrongful war over there.
The idea that Iran is developing a nuclear war capability -- absolutely false, and even the U.S. and Israeli intelligence factories admit it -- is being repeated nolo contendere on front pages and TV broadcasts every day.
AIPAC (the American Israel Political Action Committee) waved its magic checkbook again this week, and again a horde of our politically powerful, led by Dr. Kidglove himself, rushed to toady up to them at their meeting in Washington. Kidglove fell all over himself assuring the assembled Jewish hawks that he was covering Israel's ass. The nub of what he said was that the only issue dividing Israel and the U.S,. is not whether to bomb bomb bomb Iran, but when. Let's wait a while, he urged his friend, Bibi Netanyahu. A nuclear Iran just isn't acceptable, so let's do the big bombing thing before there is such a thing as a nuclear Iran.
Never mind that this is an even more bellicose stance than that of the Bush administration, which Democrats used to decry. Never mind that it's unprovoked, preemptive war, which is an international crime. Never mind anything other than the relentless, obscenely profitable war industry, a worldwide alliance of which AIPAC is only one very visible part.
Chris Hedges, journalist and author, has lived and worked in the Middle East as bureau chief and correspondent. He spoke to the "Occupy" protesters outside the AIPAC meetings last weekend and this is what he said:
What is being done in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison, is a pale reflection of what is slowly happening to the rest of us. It is a window into the rise of the global security state, our new governing system that the political philosopher SheldonWolin calls “inverted totalitarianism.” It is a reflection of a world where the powerful are not bound by law, either on Wall Street or in the shattered remains of the countries we invade and occupy, including Iraq with its hundreds of thousands of dead. And one of the greatest purveyors of this demented ideology of violence for the sake of violence, this flagrant disregard for the rule of domestic and international law, is . . . AIPAC. . . . AIPAC does not speak for Jews or for Israel.
I am no friend of the Iranian regime, which helped create and arm Hezbollah, is certainly meddling in Iraq, has persecuted human rights activists, gays, women and religious and ethnic minorities, embraces racism and intolerance, and uses its power to deny popular will. And yes, it is a regime that appears determined to build a nuclear weapon, although I would stress that no one has offered any proof this is occurring. I have spent time in Iranian jails. I was once deported from Tehran in handcuffs. But I do not remember Iran orchestrating a coup in the United States to replace an elected government with a brutal dictator who for decades persecuted, assassinated and imprisoned democracy activists. I do not remember Iran arming and funding a neighboring state to wage war against our country. Iran never shot down one of our passenger jets, as did the USS Vincennes—nicknamed Robocruiser by the crews of other American vessels—when in June 1988 it fired missiles at an Airbus filled with Iranian civilians, killing everyone on board. Iran is not sponsoring terrorist strikes within the United States, as our intelligence services and the Israeli intelligence services currently do in Iran. We have not seen five of our top nuclear scientists since 2007 murdered on American soil. The attacks in Iran include suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, sabotage and “targeted assassinations” of government officials and other Iranian leaders. What would we do if the situation were reversed? How would we react if Iran carried out similar acts of terrorism against us?
Juan Cole is professor of history at the University of Michigan; recognized throughout the world as an expert on the Middle East, where he has lived, studied and taught; author of several peer-reviewed books and a translator of Arabic and Persian languages. He writes:
Returns in Iran’s 9th parliamentary election since the 1979 revolution show that Ahmadinejad's lay populists have taken a drubbing, and that hard line supporters of clerical Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are ascendant. A week and a half ago, in a major policy speech, Khamenei said:
“The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”
It has been alleged that Ahmadinejad is a mass-murdering hard liner, seeking nuclear weapons with which to destroy Israel. This puzzling emphasis on Ahmadinejad comes despite the president’s relative lack of power in the Iranian system. The commander in chief of the armed forces is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Who sets nuclear policy? Ali Khamenei. In Iran, the “president” is more like a vice president (think Joe Biden) than a real executive. Ahmadinejiad could noit even fire an intelligence minister (Haidar Moslehi) he disliked. Khamenei reinstated him.
(Now) Khamenei’s hand has been significantly strengthened. And he has signalled to the Iranian people yet again that he won’t use that strength for belligerent purposes or to pursue a nuclear warhead, which the Iranian ayatollahs consider a tool of the devil– since you can’t deploy it without killing large numbers of civilian non-combatants.
So despite the consistent anti-nuclear position of the most powerful man in Iran; because of the mistranslation of a non-policy statement he made about the Netanyahu regime several years ago; despite the fact that on the ground inspections in Iran by the international nuclear inspection teams found no evidence of an Iranian weapons program; despite the fact that whatever nuclear technology Iran has (enrichment of uranium at far less than weapons levels) was sold to them by the United States 40 years ago; because the media and Congress and the White House eagerly buy the lies and misrepresentations of AIPAC, the United States now has an official policy that is perilously close to unilateral, preemptive war on another sovereign nation. What madness!
That's the very word -- "madness" -- used by William O. Beeman, yet another world-recognized Middle East expert and academic, who is chairman of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota. Beeman points out that the former head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, has called an Israeli preemptive strike on Iran “the stupidest thing I have ever heard.” AIPAC, says Beeman, "has a completely unrealistic view of the interests of Israel. They reflect only the views of its most rabid right-wing politicians.”
Unless a great many more Americans wake up to what Hedges, Cole, Beeman and others are telling us, we'll soon be pasting those plastic ribbon decals on our SUV's to "Support Our Troops" in yet another unwinnable, unspeakable, illegal, immoral and devastating war in the Middle east.
When will they ever learn?
The idea that Iran is developing a nuclear war capability -- absolutely false, and even the U.S. and Israeli intelligence factories admit it -- is being repeated nolo contendere on front pages and TV broadcasts every day.
AIPAC (the American Israel Political Action Committee) waved its magic checkbook again this week, and again a horde of our politically powerful, led by Dr. Kidglove himself, rushed to toady up to them at their meeting in Washington. Kidglove fell all over himself assuring the assembled Jewish hawks that he was covering Israel's ass. The nub of what he said was that the only issue dividing Israel and the U.S,. is not whether to bomb bomb bomb Iran, but when. Let's wait a while, he urged his friend, Bibi Netanyahu. A nuclear Iran just isn't acceptable, so let's do the big bombing thing before there is such a thing as a nuclear Iran.
Never mind that this is an even more bellicose stance than that of the Bush administration, which Democrats used to decry. Never mind that it's unprovoked, preemptive war, which is an international crime. Never mind anything other than the relentless, obscenely profitable war industry, a worldwide alliance of which AIPAC is only one very visible part.
Chris Hedges, journalist and author, has lived and worked in the Middle East as bureau chief and correspondent. He spoke to the "Occupy" protesters outside the AIPAC meetings last weekend and this is what he said:
What is being done in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison, is a pale reflection of what is slowly happening to the rest of us. It is a window into the rise of the global security state, our new governing system that the political philosopher SheldonWolin calls “inverted totalitarianism.” It is a reflection of a world where the powerful are not bound by law, either on Wall Street or in the shattered remains of the countries we invade and occupy, including Iraq with its hundreds of thousands of dead. And one of the greatest purveyors of this demented ideology of violence for the sake of violence, this flagrant disregard for the rule of domestic and international law, is . . . AIPAC. . . . AIPAC does not speak for Jews or for Israel.
I am no friend of the Iranian regime, which helped create and arm Hezbollah, is certainly meddling in Iraq, has persecuted human rights activists, gays, women and religious and ethnic minorities, embraces racism and intolerance, and uses its power to deny popular will. And yes, it is a regime that appears determined to build a nuclear weapon, although I would stress that no one has offered any proof this is occurring. I have spent time in Iranian jails. I was once deported from Tehran in handcuffs. But I do not remember Iran orchestrating a coup in the United States to replace an elected government with a brutal dictator who for decades persecuted, assassinated and imprisoned democracy activists. I do not remember Iran arming and funding a neighboring state to wage war against our country. Iran never shot down one of our passenger jets, as did the USS Vincennes—nicknamed Robocruiser by the crews of other American vessels—when in June 1988 it fired missiles at an Airbus filled with Iranian civilians, killing everyone on board. Iran is not sponsoring terrorist strikes within the United States, as our intelligence services and the Israeli intelligence services currently do in Iran. We have not seen five of our top nuclear scientists since 2007 murdered on American soil. The attacks in Iran include suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, sabotage and “targeted assassinations” of government officials and other Iranian leaders. What would we do if the situation were reversed? How would we react if Iran carried out similar acts of terrorism against us?
Juan Cole is professor of history at the University of Michigan; recognized throughout the world as an expert on the Middle East, where he has lived, studied and taught; author of several peer-reviewed books and a translator of Arabic and Persian languages. He writes:
Returns in Iran’s 9th parliamentary election since the 1979 revolution show that Ahmadinejad's lay populists have taken a drubbing, and that hard line supporters of clerical Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are ascendant. A week and a half ago, in a major policy speech, Khamenei said:
“The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.”
It has been alleged that Ahmadinejad is a mass-murdering hard liner, seeking nuclear weapons with which to destroy Israel. This puzzling emphasis on Ahmadinejad comes despite the president’s relative lack of power in the Iranian system. The commander in chief of the armed forces is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Who sets nuclear policy? Ali Khamenei. In Iran, the “president” is more like a vice president (think Joe Biden) than a real executive. Ahmadinejiad could noit even fire an intelligence minister (Haidar Moslehi) he disliked. Khamenei reinstated him.
(Now) Khamenei’s hand has been significantly strengthened. And he has signalled to the Iranian people yet again that he won’t use that strength for belligerent purposes or to pursue a nuclear warhead, which the Iranian ayatollahs consider a tool of the devil– since you can’t deploy it without killing large numbers of civilian non-combatants.
So despite the consistent anti-nuclear position of the most powerful man in Iran; because of the mistranslation of a non-policy statement he made about the Netanyahu regime several years ago; despite the fact that on the ground inspections in Iran by the international nuclear inspection teams found no evidence of an Iranian weapons program; despite the fact that whatever nuclear technology Iran has (enrichment of uranium at far less than weapons levels) was sold to them by the United States 40 years ago; because the media and Congress and the White House eagerly buy the lies and misrepresentations of AIPAC, the United States now has an official policy that is perilously close to unilateral, preemptive war on another sovereign nation. What madness!
That's the very word -- "madness" -- used by William O. Beeman, yet another world-recognized Middle East expert and academic, who is chairman of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota. Beeman points out that the former head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, has called an Israeli preemptive strike on Iran “the stupidest thing I have ever heard.” AIPAC, says Beeman, "has a completely unrealistic view of the interests of Israel. They reflect only the views of its most rabid right-wing politicians.”
Unless a great many more Americans wake up to what Hedges, Cole, Beeman and others are telling us, we'll soon be pasting those plastic ribbon decals on our SUV's to "Support Our Troops" in yet another unwinnable, unspeakable, illegal, immoral and devastating war in the Middle east.
When will they ever learn?
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Beware of Yanks Bearing Gifts of 'Democracy'
Neal Shine, the nonpareil city editor of the Detroit Free Press, used to say of certain politicians: "He has the reverse Midas touch: everything golden that he touches turns to shit."
Paul Craig Roberts, the former Nixon administration official who has become one of the most enlightened foreign policy critics in these parts, points out in a recent post how the reverse Midas touch applies to the United States role in the Middle east.
Syria has a secular government as did Iraq prior to the American invasion. Secular governments are important in Arab lands in which there is division between Sunni and Shi'ite. Secular governments keep the divided population from murdering one another.
When the American invasion, a war crime under the Nuremberg standard set by the US after WWII, overthrew the Saddam Hussein secular government, the Iraqi Sunnis and Shi'ites went to war against one another. The civil war between Iraqis saved the American invasion (but) the consequence of the US invasion was not democracy and women's rights in Iraq, much less the destruction of weapons of mass destruction which did not exist as the weapons inspectors had made perfectly clear beforehand. The consequence was to transfer political power from Sunnis to Shi'ites. The Shi'ite version of Islam is the Iranian version. Thus, Washington's invasion transferred power in Iraq from a secular government to Shi'ites allied with Iran.
Now Washington intends to repeat its folly in Syria.Washington's hostility toward Assad is hypocritical. On February 26, the Syrian government held a referendum on a new constitution for Syria that set term limits on future presidents and removed the political monopoly that the Ba'ath Party has enjoyed.
The Syrian voter turnout was 57.4%, matching the voter turnout for Obama in 2008. It was a higher voter turnout (despite the armed, western-supported rebellion in Syria) than in the nine U.S. presidential elections from 1972 through 2004. The new Syrian constitution was approved by a vote of 89.4%. But Washington denounced the democratic referendum and claims that the Syrian government must be overthrown in order to bring democracy to Syria.
Washington's allies in the region, unelected oil monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have issued statements that they are willing to supply weapons to the Islamist rebels in order to bring democracy -- something they do not tolerate at home -- to Syria.
For Washington "democracy" is a weapon of mass destruction. When Washington brings "democracy" to a country, it means the country's destruction, as in Libya and Iraq. It doesn't mean democracy. Libya is in chaos, a human rights nightmare without an effective government.
Washington installed Nouri al-Maliki as president of Iraq. He lost an election, but remained in power. He has declared his vice president to be a terrorist and ordered his arrest and is using the state police to arrest Sunni politicians. Syria's Assad is more democratic than Iraq's Maliki.
Or, to paraphrase a character in Walt Kelly's comic strip Pogo, "Declared Democracy on 'em, eh? Didn't know we wuz even mad at the rascals."
Paul Craig Roberts, the former Nixon administration official who has become one of the most enlightened foreign policy critics in these parts, points out in a recent post how the reverse Midas touch applies to the United States role in the Middle east.
Syria has a secular government as did Iraq prior to the American invasion. Secular governments are important in Arab lands in which there is division between Sunni and Shi'ite. Secular governments keep the divided population from murdering one another.
When the American invasion, a war crime under the Nuremberg standard set by the US after WWII, overthrew the Saddam Hussein secular government, the Iraqi Sunnis and Shi'ites went to war against one another. The civil war between Iraqis saved the American invasion (but) the consequence of the US invasion was not democracy and women's rights in Iraq, much less the destruction of weapons of mass destruction which did not exist as the weapons inspectors had made perfectly clear beforehand. The consequence was to transfer political power from Sunnis to Shi'ites. The Shi'ite version of Islam is the Iranian version. Thus, Washington's invasion transferred power in Iraq from a secular government to Shi'ites allied with Iran.
Now Washington intends to repeat its folly in Syria.Washington's hostility toward Assad is hypocritical. On February 26, the Syrian government held a referendum on a new constitution for Syria that set term limits on future presidents and removed the political monopoly that the Ba'ath Party has enjoyed.
The Syrian voter turnout was 57.4%, matching the voter turnout for Obama in 2008. It was a higher voter turnout (despite the armed, western-supported rebellion in Syria) than in the nine U.S. presidential elections from 1972 through 2004. The new Syrian constitution was approved by a vote of 89.4%. But Washington denounced the democratic referendum and claims that the Syrian government must be overthrown in order to bring democracy to Syria.
Washington's allies in the region, unelected oil monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have issued statements that they are willing to supply weapons to the Islamist rebels in order to bring democracy -- something they do not tolerate at home -- to Syria.
For Washington "democracy" is a weapon of mass destruction. When Washington brings "democracy" to a country, it means the country's destruction, as in Libya and Iraq. It doesn't mean democracy. Libya is in chaos, a human rights nightmare without an effective government.
Washington installed Nouri al-Maliki as president of Iraq. He lost an election, but remained in power. He has declared his vice president to be a terrorist and ordered his arrest and is using the state police to arrest Sunni politicians. Syria's Assad is more democratic than Iraq's Maliki.
Or, to paraphrase a character in Walt Kelly's comic strip Pogo, "Declared Democracy on 'em, eh? Didn't know we wuz even mad at the rascals."
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