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December 2006 Articles
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DV Articles
November 2003
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Gloria Williams and her twin sister Bobbie Jennings are 60 years old. They are two of the over 4,000 families who lived in public housing in New Orleans before Katrina struck who are still locked out of their apartments since Katrina. Their apartments are two of 4,534 apartments that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has announced plans to demolish. Demolition is planned even though it will cost more to demolish and rebuild many fewer units than it does to fix them up and open them. Ms. Williams and Ms. Jennings, and thousands of families like them, are fighting HUD, they want to return.....(full article)
After a hectic day of child care and phone calls, Ahmad Ibrahim decided not to attempt a San Antonio protest on Friday. "I am very thankful for the support," said Ibrahim in a late-night email Thursday. "And I hope when this nightmare is over, the Hutto women's and children jail in Taylor, Texas will be shut down forever." The T. Don Hutto jail is where Ibrahim's three nieces, nephew, and pregnant sister-in-law have been held for alleged immigration violations since early November. Ibrahim's brother was separated from the rest of the family and placed at a jail in Haskell, Texas. Ibrahim had planned to protest the jailings in front of offices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The protest has been tentatively rescheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 2 at 10:30am.....(full article)
What does the execution of Saddam Hussein mean to the public? What has the execution of captured national leaders meant in the past? . . . . Saddam's execution was a triumphal ritual by US power against an occupied -- though still unconquered -- Iraqi people, it was the political decapitation of the former Iraqi elite, a demonstration intended to show Iraqi subjugation to Western power. But, the abysmal failure by the US managers of the Iraq War has undercut any propaganda value Saddam's execution might have had with the Iraqi public.....(full article)
Hailed by President Bush as an act of “justice,” former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was executed on the morning of December 30. Hussein’s trial, Bush averred, had been a “fair” one. Yet there was little that could be regarded as fair and legal about the proceedings. The court itself was established at the Bush Administration’s behest. US dollars financed the proceedings, and US officials provided aid, training and direct involvement. The trial was fraught with problems. Three of Hussein’s lawyers were murdered and many defense witnesses were intimidated into silence. The trial was a US-directed effort, intended to paint the occupation of Iraq in the best light. The US and British invasion had, we are reminded by Western officials, overthrown this particular tyrant. But tyrants, like war criminals, are in the eye of the beholder, and actions that might win praise and support for one man might be condemned for another. Saddam Hussein found himself on both sides of that equation at one time or another. How does it happen that a man can be regarded as a friend and ally one day, and an enemy the next? How is it that as praise fades away, that same man comes to deserve capture and death? Is it because his behavior has changed, or because there has been a transformation in perception? (full article)
Think about it. It was the Bush administration and not Saddam that turned out to be lying about WMDs. As we all know now, there weren't any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Amazingly enough, it was Saddam who was telling the truth from the very beginning. Bush was the one who lied to the whole world. You may remember that in 2002, the UN Security Council ordered Iraq to put together a report detailing the entirety of its biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs. In response, Iraqi officials compiled an 11,800-page report on the past and present status of Iraq's weapons programs. From that report we learned (from the Iraqis) that Iraq once had both chemical and biological weapons, as well as a program to develop nuclear weapons. We also learned that Iraq acquired biological and chemical weapons from the US, and Iraqi nuclear scientists were trained at US government nuclear facilities. Most importantly, though, the Iraqis told us that some of the weapons and nuclear facilities were destroyed in the first Gulf War, and the rest were destroyed under the supervision of UN weapons inspectors. All of this turned out to be true.....(full article)
Congratulations America. The UK and international press is today reporting the execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein with an affected solemnity which seems to say, "Alas, it is sad that it has come to this, but this is how it had to end." This approach is perhaps best summed up by the BBC's John Simpson, who confines criticism of the show trial which preceded the execution to the following extraordinary understatement: "It proved to be divisive, and certainly did not receive international approval," before reassuring the reader, in his usual inappropriate verboseness, that "These things will certainly continue to affect the way the world will see Saddam's death. But now that he has finally been swept off the political chessboard, the Iraqi government hopes that 2007 will be a better year as a result." The use of the "chessboard" analogy is appropriate enough in that it potentially provides an unintended insight into the mindset of the reporter himself, and his sympathy with the invading power -- perhaps he sees the Iraq situation as a game of chess in which all the key actors need to be physically removed in order to achieve complete conquest.....(full article)
An American in the French Assembly before the Revolution became the Reign of Terror, spoke out against the execution of the royal monarch of France. Those who knew him were not surprised at his courage, conviction and strength of character. It was not a popular stance and he was no friend to the monarchy. He was in fact its greatest foe yet his principled position landed him in the Bastille and very nearly cost his life. His name was Tom Paine, without whom it is unlikely that the great experiment we call democracy would ever have been launched on the American continent. Saddam Hussein was hanged until the spark of life drained from his flailing limbs. It is not politically astute to defend the fallen dictator any more than it was for Paine to plea for the life of the French monarch, yet there are occasions when principle must speak. I am no more sympathetic to tyranny, despotism, oppression, brutality or crimes against humanity than Paine was to the monarchy, yet I felt only shame in observing the morbid dance of death surrounding the execution of Saddam.....(full article)
Ending the occupation will reduce violence,
immediately save more than $100 billion and respect the wishes of the
American people. Why is Washington, DC ignoring the obvious? (full
article) New York will soon be inaugurating a new governor and many liberals here and across the country are excited about the prospect of having a celebrated K Street watchdog scale the ranks of the Democratic Party. Voters ushered Spitzer into office in unprecedented fashion last November, with almost 70% casting their vote for his sweeping crusade. Spitzer, like young Barack Obama, is often seen as the face of a new, invigorated Democratic Party -- one that isn't afraid to shine its progressive credentials. Eliot Spitzer, unfortunately, is anything but progressive. In many ways he is not even a reformer.....(full article)
Commercial culture in the United States is schizophrenic towards young women. We buy and sell the myth that young women should be like “Miss America” -- paragons of virtue and walking advertisements for abstinence. Yet the culture teaches young women to present themselves as sex objects. Many celebrities are boozing, abusing drugs, and sleeping around. So it should not surprise us when our Miss Americas “go wild” and “do anything to climb the ladder of success.” I didn’t have to look far for insight into the mixed messages bombarding gals today. I’m the single father of a pre-teen drama queen, Sela, who will soon turn 13, and who lives with me here in Jamaica. So when Sela proudly showed me the video of Beyoncé’s “Sexuality,” which she found on YouTube, or came home from a birthday party singing “I’m gonna get you drunk . . . on my love humps,” I tuned in.....(full article)
Can a crowd ever be wise or good? There
seems to be no folly however mad, no crime, however savage, that a mob of
men goaded by passion cannot commit. When they are thrown into the company
of legions of their fellow men, some chemistry turns humans who are
individually of irreproachable integrity and unimpeachable prudence, into
stark raving blockheads. That this is sometimes called democracy does not
improve matters. But if we did not have the tyranny of the majority, say
the collectivists anxiously, would we not end up only with the tyranny of
the minority? If we reject democracy, won't we end up with plutocracy?
As mostly secular people, it is often hard to get around the religious nature of the resistance groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and elsewhere in the so-called Muslim world. But, religion is a very real aspect of human existence, so we have to appreciate that and respect it. And deal with it. Marx said it was the opiate, but that wasn't all he said: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people." In other words, religion is a source of hope for those who have no hope. It is this aspect of religious belief that does a lot to explain why religion is not only a factor in today's world, but an incredibly popular phenomenon. Precisely because there is so little hope in terms of politics, the most oppressed have turned to religion in all its forms.....(full article)
The recent "peace" overtures between Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Abbas do not promise significantly improved conditions for Palestinians or an end to the Israeli occupation. More likely results include intensified efforts to split the Palestinian public and undermine their legally elected government. The meeting has been portrayed as an opening to relations between Israel and the PA that "boost Abbas" and exclude Hamas altogether. Olmert, Abbas, and their backers in Washington and Europe have insisted that Hamas, the popularly elected majority party, "renounce violence" and "recognize Israel's right to exist." These are the stated objectives of the crushing economic blockade that Israel and the western powers have enforced against occupied Palestine since last March.....(full article)
The impeachment of President Bush has become an important issue. For some people on the left impeachment has even become a litmus test for the "true" progressive. For example, I recently received an e-mail from a reader apparently with such a viewpoint. (I won't bait the person by naming him or her, but he or she claimed ties to the Democratic Party machine in Minnesota.) This person responded to an article I wrote about a public forum in Detroit at which Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) spoke about a "people's agenda" for the new Congress. In my article, I reported that Rep. Conyers said, among many things, that while his committee and the Democrats would hold numerous hearings on Bush's policies (from the war to corruption and attacks on civil liberties), he regards introducing articles of impeachment as off agenda when Congress returns in January. Conyers urged the people present to help Congress expose the truth about Bush, and said that in order for impeachment to be successful it must have broader public support and bipartisanship in Congress.....(full article)
No matter how awful you think our government and political system have become, odds are you do not know about this travesty of justice, an incredible failure to honor our fabled Constitution. This failure has removed the sovereignty of we the people, and made Congress much more powerful than it should be. Let me acknowledge that even though I have been pegged as "Democracy's Mr. Fix It," until recently I too was ignorant about this blatant disregard for a key part of our Constitution.....(full article)
Jimmy Carter has long cultivated an irritating public persona of the sanctimonious-yet-humble parson. Almost thirty years to the day after he famously owned up to the inner workings of his lustful heart, Carter has blurted out something far more significant and in the process has thrown a welcome shaft of light -- albeit a tiny one -- on the dirtiest secret in the West: that the long and deafening western silence that has greeted Zionist crimes in Palestine is caused by an overwhelming religious bias for Israel among American Protestants.....(full article)
During the recent conference in Iran (Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision) I was in prison in Mannheim, Germany interviewing Ernst Zuendel. Labeled a "Holocaust denier," Ernst has been in jail for almost four years without being charged with a violent crime or without even being convicted of a non-violent one. He is 67 years old.....(full article)
Just when you run out of ways to despise Tony Blair he comes up with a new one. I'm not talking about his pathetic penchant for freebie holidays. I couldn't care less where he takes his holidays; what I do care about is his habitual lying....(full article)
If you follow the sectarian and political situation in Iraq you've heard about the 80% solution. Robin Wright explains it in her December 1, 2006 Washington Post article: "U.S. Considers Ending Outreach to Insurgents." She explains that since the Sunnis represent only 20% of the 26 million Iraqis, the US administration is considering "abandoning reconciliation efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead giv[ing] priority to Shiites and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government." (Note: According to many, the Shiites and Kurds represent 80% of the Iraq population.) Helene Cooper, in the December 17, 2006 New York Times' Week in Review's lead story, "The Whispers and the Why Nots," reports that "Washington should stop trying to get Sunnis and Shiites to get along and instead just back the Shiites, since there are more of them anyway and they likely to win in a fight to the death. After all, the proposal goes; Iraq is 65% Shiite and only 20% Sunni. The other 15% are the Kurds." But, hey wait a minute! Not everyone agrees with these numbers, particularly the Sunnis who feel they have been under-counted.....(full article)
For all their legendary incompetence, Cheney and Bush have accomplished real and big missions for the people that George W. Bush once half-jokingly referred to as “my base”: the super-rich. The Bubble-Boy-King may well go down as the Worst President Ever. But let’s not fool ourselves about who policy really serves in our corporate-plutocratic “dollar democracy.” Bush and his handlers have been quite successful for those they actually represent -- the privileged few -- in numerous ways. They have quite competently enhanced the upward distribution of wealth and income (while calling for national sacrifice in their state-terrorist “war on terror”) in what was already the industrialized world’s most unequal and wealth-top-heavy society by far. They have rolled back labor and environmental protections and speeded up the deepening global warming catastrophe.....(full article)
The US administration and Israel are accelerating their coordinated meddling in the internal Palestinian divide between the Fatah-led presidency and the Hamas-led government to preempt a series of Arab mediation efforts, the latest of which is a UAE-Syrian try according to a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO official, who preferred to remain anonymous, said that President Mahmoud Abbas authorized the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to negotiate with Syria on behalf of Hamas, whose politburo chairman, Khaled Misha’al, is based in Damascus, a draft for forming a Palestinian national unity government on the basis of the national consensus document (the prisoners’ document), recognizing the PLO by Hamas, and respecting the accords signed by the PLO with Israel. However the undeclared UAE-Syrian effort-in-the-offing seems to have been overtaken by the latest Israeli-US moves to foil Arab mediation. Faced practically with choosing between national unity and lifting the Israeli-US siege, the PLO leadership has opted to give priority to the second option, a choice that led it to voluntarily accept bypassing the Palestinian government by visiting western leaders and diplomats, to turn a blind eye to the western diplomatic boycott imposed on this government and to receive selective “humanitarian aid” through the PA presidency.....(full article)
Respect Must Be Paid: Farewell Mr. Brown What can possibly be said about the loss of James Brown? A career spanning half a century, and an influence without which pop music would not be what it is today. Soul, R&B, rock, disco, hip-hop, all feel the void that Mr. Brown left. His contribution to music was iconic and revolutionary.....(full article)
Collaboration in a certain context
epitomizes progressivism: people working together for the greater good.
Collaboration, however, also has a dark side that is anathema to
progressivist tenets: working against one's own society. In other words:
treason and sedition. In western society, those collaborating with the
enemy were condemned as traitors. In Europe, the surname of Vitus
Quisling, a Norwegian who collaborated with the Nazi occupation of Norway
has come to mean "traitor" in much the same way as dual loyalist Benedict
Arnold's name means "traitor" in American society. There are two major
contenders in the Middle East for eponymous recognition as traitors:
Lebanon's prime minister, Fouad Siniora, and Palestine's president,
Mahmoud Abbas, are willing to sell out their kinsfolk to Zionists and
imperialists.....
Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006 Competition has been fierce for the fifteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes. Many can plausibly lay claim to stinky media performances, but only a few can win a P.U.-litzer. As the judges for this un-coveted award, Jeff Cohen and I have deliberated with due care. (Jeff is the founder of the media watch group FAIR and author of the superb new book Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.) And now, the winners of the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006......(full article)
John Walsh presents a hypothetical private conversation between President Bush and James Baker on Iraq.....(full transcript)
A year ago, the FDA reclassified Paxil from a Category C drug to a Category D for pregnant women. Category C is for drugs that have been shown to harm the fetus in animals. Category D means a drug has been found to harm the human fetus. In a December 1, 2006 news release, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' Committee on Obstetric Practice advised that Paxil should be avoided "by pregnant women or women planning to become pregnant due to the potential risk of fetal heart defects, newborn persistent pulmonary hypertension, and other negative effects." An interesting comment in the announcement states: "Unpublished data regarding the use of Paxil® during the first trimester of pregnancy have raised concerns about an increased risk of congenital heart malformations." This discussion begs the question of exactly how much more "unpublished data" is out there about the dangers of Paxil that the public will hear about later, rather than sooner.....(full article)
Did Turkmenistan’s
President Saparmurat Niyazov really die of cardiac arrest or is he just
latest victim of Bush’s “regime change” epidemic? That may sound paranoid,
but it’s easy to be skeptical of an administration that openly promotes
torture, “extraordinary rendition” and “targeted assassination” as sound
foreign policy. These practices indicate that moral restraint is not high
on the list of Bush priorities. Besides, Niyazov met all the criteria for
regime change: he controlled massive natural gas reserves and he refused
to take orders directly from Washington. Typically, these are the only
factors which matter when Bush decides which leader is next on his “hit
list.”.....(full article) December 25
The fact that stores are now open on even
the biggest holidays of the year sounds rather scroogy of them. It seems
they expect to wring every last drop of effort from their “associates,”
even though Americans already work the longest hours in the West and
generate one of the highest rates of productivity anywhere. Even if some
of their employees are willing to work on a holiday for extra pay, these
multi-billion dollar businesses would have been real Samaritans had they
let all their employees take off with holiday pay. Shoppers will
understand, and they will still be there on the other days, just as they
were when stores used to be closed on Sundays. Here are a few questions
for everyone. How many of you have kept all the gifts you received or
bought for yourselves last Christmas? Of those gifts that you have kept,
how many of them are you using regularly, and how many have you allowed to
collect dust or stowed away someplace you do not check very often? Yet,
the cycle repeats every year. People max out on their credit cards and
savings to buy things they or their intended beneficiaries probably do not
need. I was guilty of this practice too, and like everyone else, I found
it a chore to decide what to buy for whom. It is no fun taking a trip to
the mall and navigating the crowded corridors looking for the “hot” item
that happens to be on the shopping lists of five million other
people. Lugging around those shopping bags full of stuff is cumbersome,
even if you have a car, and those with cars have to navigate the parking
lots for spaces. Even online shopping is not totally immune to this mess
because the huge volume of holiday mail traffic leads to inevitable
delays, and there are still the bulky gifts to carry to their
destinations. Come December 26, and the stores are again teeming with
people -- some of whom are looking for after holiday bargains, and some
who are unhappy with their Christmas gifts and want to return them. That
seems to be the spirit of Christmas nowadays.....
Jimmy Carter's Glossary
No, I haven't read THE book, Jimmy Carter's Palestine:
Peace, Not Apartheid. And I may not read it anytime soon. I was a
commercial printer and book publisher for 25 years. I experienced
firsthand what the megalopolis of national and international publishing
has become and what it has done to the world of publishing. So I've
acquired a certain aversion to dropping $27 for a hard cover book into the
corporate coffers. I'll either pick it up at a used book store someday,
borrow it from a friend, or wait until it comes out in paperback. But in
response to interviews with Jimmy Carter I have heard, as well as his
recent article in the Los Angeles Times, I take exception to some
of his assertions regarding Israel and Palestine. First things first.
Let's consider the source. Often touted by progressives as one of our best
Presidents ever, Jimmy Carter has been given a free pass for the egregious
international behaviors of his administration. Though he has redeemed
himself to a certain extent through his humanitarian efforts since
retiring from public life, he still has a great deal of amends to make for
his foreign policy initiatives while in office. The United States is an
imperialist nation. Our presidents are instruments of that paradigm. But
some of them have been more reckless than others......(full article)
Why Condemning Israel and the Zionist Lobby is
So Important
Many Jewish writers, including those who
are somewhat critical of Israel, have raised pointed questions about
our critique of the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in the United
States and what they wrongly claim are our singular harsh critique of
the state of Israel. Some of these accusers claim to see signs of
'latent anti-Semitism,' others, of a more 'leftist' coloration, deny
the influential role of the ZPC arguing that US foreign policy is a
product of 'geo-politics or the interests of big oil. With the recent
publication of several widely circulated texts, highly critical of the
power of the Zionist 'lobby', several liberal pro-Israel publicists
generously conceded that it is a topic that should be debated (and not
automatically stigmatized and dismissed) and perhaps be 'taken into
account.'.....(full article)
An “Islamic Civil War” The war that Western powers -- primarily US, Israel and Britain -- began against the Islamic world after September 11, 2001, is about to enter a new more dangerous phase as their early plans for ‘changing the map of the Middle East’ have begun to unravel with unintended consequences. Codenamed ‘the war against terror,’ the imperialist war against the Middle East was fueled primarily by US and Israeli ambitions. Britain’s participation is mostly a sideshow. The US and Israel have convergent aims in the region. The US seeks to deepen its control over the region’s oil. Israel wants to create regional conditions that will allow it to complete the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. As a first step, both objectives would be served by removing four regimes -- in Iran, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan -- that still resisted US and Israeli ambitions in the region. Once these regimes had been removed, the US and Israel would carry the war into Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, to dismember them into smaller, weaker client states.....(full article)
Last week, the watchdog Project on Government Oversight reported that workers at Pantex, a Texan nuclear-weapons plant, had almost accidentally detonated a W56 warhead in the spring of 2005. A W56 has 100 times the Hiroshima bomb's yield. A similar incident occurred there in 2004 when workers discovered a crack in a W56 warhead; they ended up patching it together using "the equivalent of duct tape." BWXT, the Texan plant operator, paid safety-violation fines totaling less than $125,000 in each case. Unfortunately, the sloppiness and lack of oversight demonstrated at Pantex characterize the running of many US nuclear-weapons facilities.....(full article)
The night became darker that precise moment when the room exploded into a thousand sparks that burnt your flesh, making your bones and your fragile certainties shudder. For being there, naked and blindfolded, at their mercy, there were neither smiles nor turquoise oceans, nor carnations or pink sunsets. All of a sudden life had become only a frail instant suspended in a thick and desperate breath of air, mercilessly pierced by electricity. The world was painfully reduced to that tiny space between our eyes and that filthy blindfold, a permanent reminder that our world was shattered early one cloudy morning when the Chilean military took over power and did what the military do: kill. And kill they did, but also arrest and torture myriads of men and women whose only crime was to think differently. Thinking became dangerous to this modern age inquisition that allowed no criticisms and declared the obsolescence of happiness. But brave and stubborn people decided to think and smile and even try to be happy amidst all the horror around them. We were convinced that life could conquer death. Besides, many of us could not really believe what we heard from friends or what was being talked about in the streets, for, how could human beings commit such atrocities? How was it possible that something like this was happening in Chile? Where did the snowcapped mountains go, the beautiful rainforests, our kindness and solidarity? (full article)
Alaskan attorney Jim Gottstein says that after being served with a mandatory injunction, he has returned the internal Eli Lilly documents that he obtained in litigation and provided to the New York Times to the court. Information from the documents related to Lilly's antipsychotic drug Zyprexa was highlighted two days in a row in front-page articles in the Times. The documents reveal the illegal marketing schemes used by Lilly to make Zyprexa its best seller, which the company has managed to keep hidden for years by entering into out of court settlements in civil lawsuits which included confidentiality clauses and by getting judges to place the documents under protective orders to shield them from public view.....(full article)
Whenever I hear President Bush tell another lie (or read that he has told another lie) I'm reminded of the Liar-in-Chief's former professor at the Harvard Business School, Yoshi Tsurumi, and his spot-on recollection of this president's punk past. According to Professor Tsurumi, Bush "showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that. Students jumped on him; I challenged him." (Mary Jacoby, "The Dunce," Salon.com, 16 September 2004) Tsurumi concluded: "Behind his smile and his smirk, he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy." "He was just badly brought up, with no discipline, and no compassion." [Ibid] In conservative Lebanon, Pennsylvania, where I grew up during the 1950s and 1960s, such people were called "punks." Perhaps, it's fair to say that the world would be a much better and safer place if America's mainstream news media had challenged Bush as much as Professor Tsurumi and his classmates did. Alas, it let the punk candidate slide during his first run for president, notwithstanding such smug and asinine assertions as: "I may not know where Kosovo is, but I know what I believe."....(full article)
Protest action was held in Montgomery
County, Maryland on Friday morning, Dec. 22, 2006, in front of and along
the sidewalk of a huge complex of office buildings, housing the national
headquarters of Lockheed Martin, one of the world's largest producers of
cluster bombs. Over a million of these lethal weapons were used by the
Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in the recent war this past summer in
Lebanon. As activist Patrick J. Elder began to give a talk about the
corporation's role in the making and distribution of the deadly cluster
bombs, he was interrupted by a group of three or four Montgomery County,
MD police officers. They were yelling at him to "get off the grass."
Elder, who was standing next to Gail Murphy, of the Code Pink group,
immediately complied with the officer's request. While Elder was standing
on the sidewalk discussing the need for such a hostile attitude by the
police, one of the officers walked directly up to him and in a very
aggressive manner pushed him hard with both of his arms to the ground. Mr.
Elder fell over on his back. Although he didn't appear to be injured, he
was visibly upset by the unprovoked attack. Ms. Murphy quickly rebuked the
officer in question for his over-the-top behavior, as did Kevin Zeese of
DemocracyRising.US. Mr. Elder, it is fair to say, was both shocked and
outraged by the officer's conduct. He indicated that he wasn't going to
file a criminal charges against the assaulting office, but that he might
file a complaint with the Montgomery County police department over the
totally unnecessary incident. Mr. Elder, and some of the other more than
35 protesters, did let both the officer involved and his supervisor, who
showed up later, know that he "needs training." Mr. Elder added: "We're
not disturbing the peace. We're disturbing the war!"......
The Sacramento Catholic Worker House, Grandmothers for Peace and other local peace activists held a rally and march in Sacramento on Friday, December 15 demanding that the California National Guard be withdrawn from Iraq immediately. After rallying briefly at the Peace Garden at the State Capitol, ten anti-war activists then marched to the Governor's Office to request a meeting with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Before going through security, California Highway Patrol Officers forced the activists to leave their signs behind, since under the current rules, no signs are allowed in the State Capitol. The organizers presented a letter to the Governor's staff, signed by the protesters and other supporters, demanding that he ask Bush to bring the troops home from Iraq. However, the staff directed the activists to present the petition to the mailroom -- and they refused to comment on the letter or the issue.....(full article)
Failure is an f-word obscenity that we need to stop using when it comes to the USA-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. How can something be a failure when it has no purpose to begin with? In fact, the Iraq war is endless, because it seeks a purpose still.....(full article)
In violation of the U.S. Code and international law, the Bush administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion spent in World War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb. So says Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress. He states the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and 'win' biological warfare" pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted "without public knowledge and review" in 2002. The Pentagon's Chemical and Biological Defense Program was revised in 2003 to implement those directives, endorsing "first-use" strike of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) in war, says Boyle, who teaches at the University of Illinois, Champaign. Terming the action "the proverbial smoking gun," Boyle said the mission of the controversial CBW program "has been altered to permit development of offensive capability in chemical and biological weapons!".....(full article)
George Bush, a.k.a. the Decider, seems to be
struggling with what to do with in Iraq. He can't decide. He was
supposed to announce his decision on a "new way forward" last week. But,
he put it off. Late last week the indications were that he was going to
increase the troops in Iraq -- a surge of 20,000 to 30,000 additional
troops -- in an effort to get control of Baghdad and then move on to other
areas of Iraq. But then The Washington Post reported that the
Joint Chief of Staff unanimously opposes additional troops. What is the
decider to do? (full article)
A Complicated Kindness: Vancouver's Heroin
Prescription Trial Though North America's first heroin prescription trial is being described as successful in its early stages, it is being plagued with ethics questions regarding its research design and manner in which addicts are leaving the study.....(full article)
“To many politicians,” once explained Rep. Ron Paul, the Republican Texan libertarian congressional loner, "the American government is America," thus explaining why every war or national "emergency" creates a national fervor for a draft. "Conscription is wrongly associated with patriotism," said Paul after Rep. Charles Rangel tried recently to reintroduce a draft, "when really it represents collectivism and involuntary servitude." For whatever reasons, including opposition to the Iraq death trap, most Americans have for now turned against a draft and its illegitimate child, compulsory national service for all eighteen year olds (girls and gays too?) which Gold correctly described in a 2004 article in Washington Law & Politics as a "kind of allegedly desirable work done via the creation of a monstrous new teenager-herding bureaucracy.".....(full article)
It was one of those flukey things that we've all experienced at some point in our lives. While lying in bed last night, one of the fillings in my teeth started to receive radio transmissions that reverberated inside my skull. If I turned my head in the direction of Washington D.C., I seemed to be tuned into one of President Nixon's covert listening devices in the Oval Office that, somehow, the Secret Service had failed to remove. Incredibly, Nixon's secret little bug was still transmitting after all these years, and I heard these voices talking about foreign policy in the White House....(full article)
The TV show West Wing provided ordinary people with an emotional look behind the scenes in the White House, complete with political manipulations, personal drama and a sense of being in the center of political history. While conservatives lack their own TV drama, they have reactionaries such as Bill O'Reilly, Ollie North and Rush Limbaugh to play on their emotions and provoke them to anger. Political anger, campaigns, lobbying and elections are, of course, hallmarks of democracy and today's "cultural war" spurs more of the electorate into taking part in the political process. No doubt, such urgency provides some with a sense of purpose, but it can also lead to an overblown sense of self-importance and promote an emotionalism that is a disservice to the political process. Emotional responses polarize the electorate and lead to stalemates.....(full article)
(Letter from Fred Wilhelms): Michael Neumann has grossly misrepresented both the facts and the intent of my anecdote regarding Ahmet Ertegun. I am writing to counter the second-rate hatchet job that appeared under his byline on your website. You have to really wonder how accurate Professor Neumann's criticism of my comments is when he repeatedly misstates the facts of the story itself. That displays an almost tragic lack of attention, as if he was intent on making some point regardless of what actually happened. Follow the link he provides. See if he's got it straight. Figure out for yourself what that should tell you about the rest of his article.....(full exchange)
It has been reported that George W. Bush is
counting on the judgment of history to redeem the perception that he has
been at the helm of a failed presidency. This notion is as
muttering-at-the-wallpaper crazy as had Jeffery Dahmer, before his murder,
been expecting gourmet chefs to someday champion his culinary choices. In
the present day United States, our insulated leaders (who merely reflect
the insularity of the daily lives of the nation's people) have shunned
reality to such a degree, one would think that they spend their time
writing wishful letters to Santa Claus instead of creating policy and law.
There's a well-known witticism from the 1980s about Ronald Reagan that
played off a ubiquitous television commercial of the time that went,
"Ronald Reagan is not the president: He just plays one on TV." A similar
trope can be said of the present day United States. We're no longer an
empire: We just resemble one on TV. How did it come to be that our ability
to apprehend reality is in such short supply, at a time when the
consequences of such dangerous folly will prove so tragic and lasting?
Globalized Gulag: Palestinian Refugees and
Children Held at Hutto Jail Some of the children and a pregnant woman being held in an immigration jail in Texas are Palestinian refugees whose families came to the USA with visas, says a Dallas lawyer. Immigration attorney John Wheat Gibson represents two families that include a pregnant woman and children ages 2, 3, 5, 12, 14, and 17. The families have been incarcerated since their midnight arrests in early November by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "The children, imprisoned with their mothers, have never been accused of any wrongdoing. Neither have their mothers," says Gibson. "All are Palestinian refugees who entered the U.S. legally, but have been denied asylum." The fathers were separated from their families, the two-year-old was placed into foster care, and the remaining women and children were sent to the privatized Hutto jail in Taylor, Texas. The education of the school-aged children has been interrupted. In an affidavit supplied by Gibson, one of the fathers, Adel Said Suleiman, says that he was identified as a refugee by the United Nations before coming to the USA in 1995. He claims that his immigration status has been mishandled by others, but that he has never been accused of any crimes or wrongdoings.....(full article)
The era of the Middle East strongman, propped up by and enforcing Western policy, appears well and truly over. His power is being replaced with rule by civil war, apparently now the American Administration’s favored model across the region. Fratricidal fighting is threatening to engulf, or already engulfing, the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon and Iraq. Both Syria and Iran could soon be next, torn apart by attacks Israel is reportedly planning on behalf of the US. The reverberations would likely consume the region. Western politicians like to portray civil war as a consequence of the West’s failure to intervene more effectively in the Middle East. Were we more engaged in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or more aggressive in opposing Syrian manipulations in Lebanon, or more hands-on in Iraq, the sectarian fighting could be prevented. The implication being, of course, that, without the West’s benevolent guidance, Arab societies are incapable of dragging themselves out of their primal state of barbarity. But in fact, each of these breakdowns of social order appears to have been engineered either by the United States or by Israel. In Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq, sectarian difference is less important than a clash of political ideologies and interests as rival factions disagree about whether to submit to, or resist, American and Israeli interference. Where the factions derive their funding and legitimacy from -- increasingly a choice between the US or Iran -- seems to determine where they stand in this confrontation....(full article)
“Jewish leaders” have latched onto the wiry figure of beleaguered Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the latest straw man for the crimes of zionism. Meeting in New York, "Jewish leaders" declared their intention to bring Ahmadinejad to trial for inciting genocide. The case against Ahmadinejad is based upon the regurgitated canard that he had called for "wiping Israel off the map." Second, is the absurd complaint that Ahmadinejad is a holocaust-denier, as if denying or questioning history should be a crime. The forced acceptance of an "official" history of the World War II Holocaust is paradigmatically similar to the compelling of Winston Smith (in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four) to believe that "2+2=5." Third, is Iran's alleged pursuit of nuclear and ballistic missile capacity. So far, Iran's pursuit of nuclear technology has been within the parameters of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel, however, arrogantly grants itself the right to actions and attempts to deny the same right to others. Logically, if Iran is guilty of inciting genocide for pursuing nuclear and ballistic missile technology, then Israel must be guilty of the same, or worse, since it has already attained both nuclear and ballistic missile technology. Besides, even if Iran were inciting genocide, and as wicked as this would be, it pales in comparison to the malevolence of the actual perpetration of genocide, of which the Israeli regime is guilty among other crimes. But these are not stupid "Jewish leaders," so a question arises: what do these leaders really intend to accomplish with their fraud? (full article)
Both in the United States, Latin America and in the world at large, profound and deepening divisions are driving policy and provoking increasing conflicts. The lines of division in the United States on the fundamental questions of confrontation or negotiation in the Middle East and Latin America cut across the two major parties, and the liberal-conservative spectrum. On the one side the White House, backed by pro-war Democrats, Republicans, the Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations, right-wing veteran groups and neo-conservative intellectuals and the majority of the corporate mass media. On the other side, minorities in the major parties and mass media, the majority of public opinion, sectors of the active and retired military officers, establishment intellectual and prominent political critics of the Zionist lobby and war policies like Brzezinski, James Carter, James Baker among others. Similar divisions appear with regard to Latin American policy. The White House, backed by the Cuban (exile) lobby, the Pentagon and a minority of right-wing ideologues and business groups favor forceful pressure and intervention against Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia and support of illegitimate President Calderon, the Santa Cruz separatists in Bolivia and other authoritarian extremists in the region. In varying degrees of opposition, stand liberal and conservative congress-members backed by agro-business exporters, tourists agencies, a majority of public opinion and sectors of the State Department headed by Undersecretary for Latin American Affairs, Shannon, who support greater emphasis on diplomacy, negotiations and a ‘two-track’ approach.....(full article)
Reading Fred
Wilhelms'
poisonous goodbye to Ahmet Ertegun, it came to me. There is something
more here than a Nashville royalties lawyer putting in the boot.
Wilhelms has a nice story about him and Sam
Moore (of Sam and Dave) and Ahmet and how he, Wilhelms, had a good laugh
with Sam Moore about how Ahmet had bought his fancy shoes by ripping off
Sam and how Ahmet didn't get it. I got it, though: Wilhelms is just so
DOWN with those black folks. The story was lame, though, because the
Erteguns were wealthy before Ahmet ever got into the music business, so he
didn't have to rip off Sam Moore to get those shoes. On the other hand,
you might wonder what kind of shoes Wilhelms could buy with the money he
makes defending Artists Who Have Been Unjustly Denied Their Royalties. Not
that, having cut himself some nice turf in the unjustly-denied-royalties
biz, he would ever be anywhere but on the side of the angels. The absolute
worst thing Google can find out about him is that he's got Bob Dylan on
his wish list at Amazon, which I suppose most aging yuppies do. (He's also
got Solomon Burke, who spoke of Ahmet with generous affection on my radio
last night.)......
Any regular person who does not understand
that Americans are in a class war is out of touch with our economic
reality. Rich and powerful elites that are running and ruining our country
have the upper hand. Wiping out the middle class to create a two-class
society nationally and globally suits them. The Upper Class can steer most
wealth to themselves and spread a small amount around to keep the Lower
Class content enough not to revolt. Ordinary people have a powerful weapon
to fight their oppressors, yet have not yet used it. It is their money,
more specifically their discretionary consumer spending. The reasons for
not controlling and politicizing their spending merit examination. Time is
running out to understand why millions of supposedly rational people spend
themselves into economic slavery....
. . . While these two news pieces were important, perhaps the most shocking story to emerge amidst the flurry of news stories published last week was a Dec. 8 NBC 10 story reporting that two more people now say that they heard Abu-Jamal confess at the hospital before treatment for his gunshot wound. NBC 10 reports that on Dec. 9, 1981 William Colarulo (now a Chief Inspector for the Philadelphia police) was a "rookie cop assigned to guard the door to the emergency room." Colarulo told NBC 10 that after Abu-Jamal arrived at the hospital, he confessed to his then partner Tom Brady. "He said to my partner something to the effect, 'I'm glad I shot the M-F'. That's what my partner said (Abu-Jamal) told him," said Colarulo. The second new account from that morning comes from Kathleen Gerrow. Now an executive producer at NBC 10, Gerrow was a radio reporter in 1981 covering the story at the hospital. "I distinctly remember a very distinctive voice shouting, 'I shot the mother f----er, I shot the mother f----er," said Gerrow. Pam Africa argues that these two new accounts show that the pro-execution lobby "is getting desperate. While these new accounts are supposed to strengthen the case against Mumia, it actually further exposes the confession story for what it is: a fraud. In 1982 it was unbelievable that police forgot about the confession for two months, Now we're supposed to believe that it took 25 years for these new people to remember it?" Africa emphasizes that these new accounts come just months before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments and then decide if Abu-Jamal deserves a new trial. The FOP and other pro-execution forces "are scared that Mumia will get a new trial and years of injustice will be exposed. This is a desperate attempt to sway public opinion against Mumia.".....(full article)
Given the conservative-nationalistic populist refoundation of the Democratic Party, most likely Kucinich will stand out as the only even slightly anti-militarist and anti-imperialist Democratic candidate. Short of a run by Nader, Bill Moyers, or someone like that, he'll probably also be the only worthy candidate with any public recognition. Still, despite numerous fatuous proclamations of his, there's absolutely no way he will win or even make a respectable showing, and so one must consider what is to be gained from supporting him.....(full article)
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a man seemingly
custom-made for the White House in its endless quest for enemies with whom
to scare Congress, the American people, and the world, in order to justify
the unseemly behavior of the empire. The Iranian president has declared
that he wants to "wipe Israel off the map." He's said that "the Holocaust
is a myth." He recently held a conference in Iran for "Holocaust deniers."
And his government passed a new law requiring Jews to wear a yellow
insignia, a la the Nazis. On top of all that, he's aiming to build nuclear
bombs, one of which would surely be aimed at Israel. What right-thinking
person would not be scared by such a man?
Fifteen months after New Orleans became an international symbol of governmental neglect and racism, the city remains in crisis. Students are still without books, healthcare is less available to poor people than ever, public housing is still closed, and infrastructure is still in desperate need of repair. In an open letter to funders and national nonprofits released on 15 December, a diverse array of New Orleanians declared, "From the perspective of the poorest and least powerful, it appears that the work of national allies on our behalf has either not happened, or if it has happened it has been a failure." In conversations this week with scores of New Orleans residents, including organizers, advocates, health care providers, educators, artists and media makers, I heard countless stories of diverted funding and unmet needs. While many stressed that they have had important positive experiences with national allies, few have received anything close to the funding, resources, or staff they need for their work, and in fact most are working unsustainable hours while living in a still-devastated city.....(full article)
The December issue of Le Monde diplomatique features "A Different Future in Different Circumstances": articles on the future of Palestine and Israel. In one article, former Lebanese finance minister George Corm offers a "dissident view": to obey international law, return stolen land, and pay compensation. This is in line with the reputation of Le Monde diplomatique, known for articles that are "long, thoughtful, scholarly, and opinionated, usually from an uncompromising leftist position." Writing in Le Monde diplomatique on Israeli society, Haaretz' Akiva Eldar comes from a leftist position, but it is a compromised position. Eldar is puzzled by the deficit of protest over the appointment of Avigdor Lieberman, a far-right winger, as deputy prime minister in Israel. Eldar asks, "What has happened to Israeli society that it is producing racist leaders such as Lieberman and, more importantly, why is it only happening now, almost 60 years after the state of Israel was established?" (full article)
There is something about the death of a ninety-one year old dictator that reminds you of the quote "only the good die young." And yet, days after Augusto Pinochet's death, we are already subjected to those trying to forgive his horrific legacy. Whether he was a bulwark against "communism," or made Chile's economy what it is today, the 30,000 tortured and killed on his watch are somehow worth it. Tell that to the thousands in the soccer stadium that week in 1973. The thousands of dissidents and activists who were raped, tortured or killed as Pinochet consolidated his rule. Among those thousands was Victor Jara, the songwriter and revolutionary. But Jara didn't just happen to be among those in the Estadio Chile that day. Like everyone else, he was there because he was a radical; and in his case, a songwriter and poet; a deadly combination to any iron-fisted regime.....(full article)
When Colin Powell endorsed the Iraq Study Group report during his Dec. 17 appearance on Face the Nation, it was another curtain call for a tragic farce. Four years ago, "moderates" like Powell were making the invasion of Iraq possible. Now, in the guise of speaking truth to power, Powell and ISG co-chairs James Baker and Lee Hamilton are refueling the U.S. war effort by depicting it as a problem of strategy and management. But the U.S. war effort is a problem of lies and slaughter.....(full article)
Bursting forth with renewed intensity, the
"War on Christmas" is back in 2006. So just what does this alleged war
against an impalpable enemy entail? Have "Islamofascists" captured and
decapitated Santa Claus? Did a US-made IDF "smart bomb" strike Bethlehem
and obliterate baby Jesus as he lay in the manger? Did the Grinch go
global with his nefarious thievery? Actually, the answer can be found
amongst the corporate media's nearly countless obfuscations and
deceits.....(full article) December 15
Iraqi doctors and medical staff are outraged over yet another U.S. military raid at Fallujah General Hospital. The raid followed a roadside bombing Dec. 7 where four Iraqi policemen were killed and two civilians injured. The injured were taken to Fallujah General Hospital. Shortly after this attack, a U.S. Marine who was on a patrol in the city was wounded by a gunshot. "U.S. soldiers replied to the source of fire then headed straight to the general hospital across the (Euphrates) river hoping that they had shot and injured the sniper," an eyewitness told Inter Press Service (IPS). "American soldiers seem to have some imagination to think wounded fighters might go to that so-called hospital," a retired surgeon told IPS. "We know that they do not trust that place because of the continuous raids by the U.S., and lack of everything in that hospital." The hospital is functioning at minimal capacity due to lack of medicines and equipment, the surgeon said. Eyewitnesses at Fallujah General Hospital said U.S. soldiers raided the hospital "as if it were a military target.".....(full article)
The problem facing the Palestinian leadership, as they strive to bring the millions living in the occupied territories some small relief from their collective suffering, reduces to a matter of a few words. Like a naughty child who has only to say “sorry” to be released from his room, the Hamas government need only say “We recognize Israel” and supposedly aid and international goodwill will wash over the West Bank and Gaza. That, at least, was the gist of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s recent speech during a visit to the Negev, when he suggested that his country’s hand was stretched out across the sands towards the starving masses of Gaza -- if only Hamas would repent. “Recognize us and we are ready to talk about peace” was the implication.....(full article)
The booming credit card business is one of
the most profitable and destructive industries to ever emerge from the
inventive capitalist mind. Citibank is raking in more money than Microsoft
and Wal-Mart. Obscene profits are realized without lifting a finger to
perform any physical work. In 2004, a single credit card company, the MBNA,
realized 1.5 times the profits of fast food industry giant McDonald's.
Collecting on credit card debt is a very lucrative business. With origins
in South Dakota, the modern credit card industry began realizing obscene
profits as a result of deregulation. The Supreme Court also played a
pivotal role in expanding banking industry profits by lifting limits to
the amount of additional fees credit card companies could charge their
customers. The sky is the limit now. Industry deregulation has resulted in
the systemic fleecing of consumers by practices that can only be described
as willful and predatory in nature.....(full
article)
Andy Young's Love Fest with Paul Wolfowitz --
“The more I read about Paul Wolfowitz, the more I realized we had in common,” confessed Atlanta's former mayor and shameless son Andrew Young, in his opening remarks before a Wolfowitz speech at an Atlanta synagogue, Sunday night. “We had a common mentor, [in] George Schultz... We had come from a completely different direction but found ourselves with a common agenda, to spread peace.” Andrew Young's "mentor" George Schultz was secretary of state during the Reagan Administration's murderous contra wars in Central America, and during the Iran-Iraq war, in which more than a million people perished while America provided military intelligence and aid to both sides. Schultz is also a former CEO of Bechtel, a distinction he shares with Donald Rumsfeld. Paul Wolfowitz was until a few months ago Deputy Secretary of Defense, an early advocate and leading architect of the current war in Iraq as well as the next ones in Iran and/or Syria, and the current head of the World Bank. These days Andrew Young is an "international business consultant," a polite term for flack, fixer and corporate whore. For years Young has traded on the dwindling stock of personal credibility owing to his participation in the Freedom Movement of the 1960s. His consultation consists of press conferences, media events, interviews, public appearances and speeches in which he shills for Big Oil in West Africa, privatizers in the Caribbean, Nike and Wal-Mart world-wide. His firm, Good Works International is credited with teaching the famously corrupt Nigerian president Obansanjo a brand new American-style way to solicit bribes -- the creation of Africa's first "presidential library.".....(full article)
Blaming everything on a handful of people at the top, no matter how destructive and abusive they've been, misses a critical point. Systems tend to self-perpetuate. Remove one player and the next comes in to ensure business as usual. Remove Rumsfeld, a man who helped prop up Hussein in the '80s and skewed intelligence towards war, and who do you get? Robert Gates, a man who helped prop up Hussein in the '80s and skewed intelligence towards war. Replacing those in power won't help if the power structure itself doesn't change. And that means addressing how our own actions maintain this dysfunctional system......(full article)
On December 12, 2006 the anti-war movement got a standard bearer on the road to the White House. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, former mayor of Cleveland (the youngest person ever elected to be mayor of a major city) and a five term Congressman announced his second run for the presidency. In his announcement he made the centerpiece of his campaign opposition to the Iraq War. Further, he is running against the leadership of the Democratic Party who is supporting the continued funding of the war.....(full article)
On November 14, in a
move indicative of President Bush's intention to continue to surround
himself with political cronies with questionable ethics records, Kenneth
L. Tomlinson was re-nominated by the president as chairman of the
Broadcasting Board of Governors -- the agency that supervises the Voice of
America, Radio Free Europe, the Arab-language Alhurra, Radio Marti and
other government radio and television operations that are heard by an
estimated 100 million people worldwide. Tomlinson, a close friend of Karl
Rove, has a decidedly spotty record in government service, having been
previously forced to resign from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
over charges that he tried to politicize that agency.....
In the dark days of approaching winter here in the Northern Hemisphere, Alice Walker's new book, We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For: Inner Light In A Time Of Darkness, offers an inspiring path of peaceful courage. In this short but eminently wise volume, Walker talks about many things, including a tribe, the Swa, where it is the job of women to say stop when behavior and actions are in damaging excess. As Walker eloquently states, in our own society and time, now is the time not only for women to say stop, but also for men to listen.....(full article)
If one is looking for a publication that upholds a left of center viewpoint, it won't be found these days in In These Times, a 30-year-old periodical founded by James Weinstein in collaboration with such as Herbert Marcuse, Noam Chomsky and Barbara Ehrenreich, ostensibly to "identify and clarify the struggles against corporate power now multiplying in American society." The December 2006 issue contains an amazingly Fox Network-like piece by Laura Washington, in which she claims to be "salivating at the prospect of the Democrats reclaiming the middle." The "middle," that part of the political road Jim Hightower accurately described as populated with road kill, is where every corporate interest in the country has sought for years to contain Democrats. These interests include the "Republican-lite" Democratic Leadership Council as well as mainstream media pundits, those on Fox included. "Stay in the middle and win" has been a drumbeat applied to keeping views from the left from being heard, and it's a drumbeat that has resulted in a country that correctly sees the Democratic Party as representing nothing in particular. Washington argues that the Democratic Party has been too far in "the wilderness of the left." With this assertion she is, of course, taking the position that it should move rightward. In These Times is a magazine with a progressive voice? (full article)
Where was the American left in the campaign that ended in recapture of both houses of Congress by the Democrats on November 7, 2006? Was it in the streets, fomenting opposition to the war in Iraq? Not at all. The antiwar movement has been inert for months. When I was asked to give the keynote speech at a rare antiwar rally in my local town of Eureka, northern California, in early October, three | |
