Monday, May 28, 2007
Sunday, May 27, 2007
In Memorium
SONG OF THOSE WHO DIED IN VAIN
Sit down and bargain
All you like, grizzled old foxes.
We’ll wall you up in a splendid palace
With food, wine, good beds and a good fire
Provided that you discuss, negotiate
For our and your children’s lives.
May all the wisdom of the universe
Converge to bless your minds
And guide you in the maze.
But outside in the cold we will be waiting for you,
The army of those who died in vain,
We of the Marne, of Montecassino,
Treblinka, Dresden and Hiroshima.
And with us will be
The leprous and the people with trachoma,
The Disappeared Ones of Buenos Aires,
Dead Cambodians and dying Ethiopians,
The Prague negotiators,
The bled-dry of Calcutta
The innocents slaughtered in Bologna.
Heaven help you if you come out disagreeing:
You’ll be clutched tight in our embrace.
We are invincible because we are the conquered,
Invulnerable because already dead;
We laugh at your missiles.
Sit down and bargain
Until your tongues are dry.
If the havoc and the shame continue
We’ll drown you in our putrefaction.
Primo Levi
Italian Chemist
Author
Auschwitz Survivor
Poem written 14 January 1985
(before Rwanda, Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur)
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Monday, May 21, 2007
Action Alert
Dear activists, colleagues, and friends,
The Gonzales hearings made plain for all to see that the highest law enforcement officer in the land is unwilling to tell the truth under oath.
Think about that.
He doesn't recall. He doesn't know. He evades, answering questions with questions, and yet, the President has not fired him. He continues to damage our country.
It's all there on TV for everyone to see, although few have the time or patience to watch. That's why we at Brave New Films have produced a 2 minute video (with an assist from George Bush) to boil the story down to its essence.
Watch it here: http://impeachgonzales.org/
Let's not be shy. Let's use the "i" word -- IMPEACHMENT. Say it, SHOUT it loud and clear. It has a good patriotic feel to it. And yes, the attorney general CAN be impeached. It is legal, it is proper, and it is time.
The Senate is expected to hold a "no confidence" vote on Gonzales sometime this week. We need to show them there is broad grassroots support to go further.
McJoan from DailyKOS notes the political importance: "Gonzales's refusal to resign and Bush's refusal to force it are part and parcel of the effort to protect Rove, Miers, and ultimately Bush. Which is precisely why Alberto Gonzales must be impeached."
So here is your ammunition for impeachment -- a video, a petition, a whole campaign to get the House Judiciary Committee to launch this action, NOW. We and our friends and partners at Democracy for America want and need your help.
Watch it here: http://impeachgonzales.org/
Don't just be angry, don't just be annoyed, don't yell at the ones you love. IMPEACH GONZALES.
Let's get to work! Watch the video and send it to everyone you know.
Democracy is a beautiful thing.
Robert Greenwald and the Brave New Films team
P.S. For some background on impeachment see this New York Times editorial from Mizzou law professor Frank Bowman.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
An open question for the President
The Department of Defense has identified 3,397 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war.
It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans over the weekend:
Mr. Bush, this is your:
What did you do this weekend?
GAUTIER, Aaron D., 19, Pfc., Army; Hampton, Va.; Second Infantry
Division.
HAMM, Jonathan V., 20, Pfc., Army; Baltimore; Second Infantry
Division.
PACKER, Steven M., 23, Sgt., Army; Clovis, Calif.; 10th
Mountain Division.
SCHOBER, Anthony J., 23, Sgt., Army; Reno, Nev.;
10th Mountain Division.
Mr. Bush, this is your:
What did you do this weekend?
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
For Mother's Day: Peace
Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us,
reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them
of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the voice of a devastated
Earth a voice goes up withOur own.
It says: "Disarm!
Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women,
to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other
as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress,
not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity,
I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
Julia Ward Howe
1870 Mother's Day Proclamation
UPDATE! For an EXCELLENT read on the real history of Mother's Day, go here.
UPDATE! For an EXCELLENT read on the real history of Mother's Day, go here.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Moving Beyond Anti-War Politics
ZNet CommentaryBy Phylis Bennis and Robert Jensen
As Congress sends its bill requiring partial troop withdrawals from Iraq to the White House for a certain veto, it has never been clearer that mobilizing against this war is necessary, but not enough.Congressional Democrats may be willing to stop there, but demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is only the first of our obligations to help create the conditions for real justice and peace in the Middle East and around the world. It's crucial that we also advocate for an entirely new foreign policy based on opposition to the long U.S. drive toward empire.
That first step is, of course, crucial. When 78 percent of the Iraqi people oppose the presence of U.S. troops and 61 percent support attacks on those troops, it's clear that our presence in the country is causing -- not preventing -- much of the violence. Pulling out U.S. troops (including the 100,000-plus mercenaries who back the U.S. military) won't eliminate all Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence, but it will remove the reason many Iraqis are fighting. That would take away the protective umbrella that the widely supported anti-occupation violence currently gives the real terrorists -- those engaged in killing civilians for political or sectarian reasons. Once U.S. forces are gone and the reason for the legitimate resistance to foreign occupation is eliminated, the ugly terrorist violence will be exposed for what it is - and it will be possible for Iraqis themselves to isolate the terrorists and eliminate them as a fighting force.
But what comes after a U.S. withdrawal? We clearly owe the Iraqi people massive reparations for the devastation our illegal invasion has brought. Only in the United States is that illegality questioned; in the rest of the world it's understood. Equally obvious around the world is that the decision to launch an aggressive war was rooted in the desire to expand U.S. military power in the strategically crucial oil-rich region, and that as a result the war fails every test of moral legitimacy.
As we organize against the occupation, we also must work to end U.S. support for Israeli occupation and try to prevent an aggressive war against Iran. But all of this is part of a larger obligation of U.S. citizens: We must challenge U.S. empire. The U.S. troop withdrawal and reparations should be accompanied by a declaration of a major change of course in U.S. foreign policy, especially in Iraq and the Middle East. We need a new foreign policy based on justice, relying on international law and the United Nations, rather than the assertion of might-makes-right.
This takes us beyond a critique of the mendacity of the Bush administration, to recognize that similar dreams of conquest and domination have animated every administration, albeit in different forms. From the darling of the anti-communist liberal elite (John F. Kennedy) and the champion of so-called "assertive multilateralism" (Bill Clinton), to the crude Republican realist (Richard Nixon) and the patron saint of the conservative right (Ronald Reagan), U.S. empire in the post-World War II era has been a distinctly bi-partisan effort.
In his 1980 State of the Union address, President Jimmy Carter called for domination of the Middle East: "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." In other words: We run the region and control the flow of its oil.
George W. Bush took earlier administrations' power plays to new heights of reckless militarism and unilateralism, seizing the moment after 9/11 to declare to all nations: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." In other words: We demand global capitulation.
The only way to transcend this ugly history is through an honest national dialogue and a promise of a sea change in U.S. policy.
Look around the world at the results of U.S. strategies. Rhetoric about democracy and free trade has masked the enforcement of political and economic subordination to the United States and U.S.-based multinational corporations. The people of Latin America, much of Africa and the Middle East, and many parts of Asia can offer compelling testimony to the impact of those policies, enforced now through more than 700 U.S. military bases spread across the globe in over 130 countries.
Such empires are typically brought down from outside, with great violence. But we have another option, as citizens of that empire who understand how this pathology of power damages our country as well as the world. Imagine what would be possible if we -- ordinary citizens of this latest empire -- could build a movement that gave politicians no choice but to do the right thing.
Imagine what would be possible in the world if an anti-empire movement were strong enough to make it clear that ending military violence requires a just distribution of the resources of this world.
Imagine what is possible if we work to make inevitable one day what seems improbable today -- the justice that makes possible real peace.
Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and author of Challenging Empire: How People, Governments and the UN Defy U.S. Power. She can be reached at pbennis@ips-dc.org
Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Citizens of Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu
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