On the release Of two prisoners
Dear Mr. President,
From the mind’s prison, I release you – consider your time as served. However, Mr. President, be mindful that your freedom was not earned, nor was it reward for good behavior. Rather, your freedom was granted of my epiphany, after more than six years, that a mind consumed with holding one captive is a mind itself held in captivity.
I, as the jailer, had become as imprisoned as the jailed.
You were taken prisoner when you took the presidency, winning the best out of nine despite the least out of millions. I first considered your release in the days following that bright and terrible blue sky morning in September, when the eloquence of your words and the newfound poise of your presence guided our nation through its grief. Then you misled our grief to war, waged on a people who played no part in our tragedy.
For that despicable deed I condemned you, in the court of my mind, to a life sentence in my mind’s prison, without chance for parole.
I held you in the same manner that you hold your “enemy combatants”, without due process or appeal. Shameful, that, I must now admit.
From the mind’s prison, I release you – consider your time as served. However, Mr. President, be mindful that your freedom was not earned, nor was it reward for good behavior. Rather, your freedom was granted of my epiphany, after more than six years, that a mind consumed with holding one captive is a mind itself held in captivity.
I, as the jailer, had become as imprisoned as the jailed.
You were taken prisoner when you took the presidency, winning the best out of nine despite the least out of millions. I first considered your release in the days following that bright and terrible blue sky morning in September, when the eloquence of your words and the newfound poise of your presence guided our nation through its grief. Then you misled our grief to war, waged on a people who played no part in our tragedy.
For that despicable deed I condemned you, in the court of my mind, to a life sentence in my mind’s prison, without chance for parole.
I held you in the same manner that you hold your “enemy combatants”, without due process or appeal. Shameful, that, I must now admit.
Iraq, cowboys, and the enormity of 18 months
Eighteen months ago Congressman John Murtha and other pro-war Democrats had not yet developed even a muddled half-hearted opposition to the occupation of Iraq, Joe Lieberman had not lost a primary, MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress were pretending there was no such thing as Iraq, and the Democratic Party had shoved its collective head so far up… well, let’s just say the pretense was alive and well that Iraq was not the central issue in American politics.
Eighteen months from now, in November 2008, the political scene in the United States will look drastically different from what we see today. We can't predict with certainty what it will look like, but we can be sure of one thing: if we stay focused now on the election coming in 18 months, the election will go badly for us. If, instead, we focus now on trying to end the occupation, we could quite conceivably succeed in doing so before the election, and in any event significantly move the nation's political debate in a direction that will benefit humanity as well as the electoral interests of those closest to us.
Eighteen months from now, in November 2008, the political scene in the United States will look drastically different from what we see today. We can't predict with certainty what it will look like, but we can be sure of one thing: if we stay focused now on the election coming in 18 months, the election will go badly for us. If, instead, we focus now on trying to end the occupation, we could quite conceivably succeed in doing so before the election, and in any event significantly move the nation's political debate in a direction that will benefit humanity as well as the electoral interests of those closest to us.
Rep. John Conyers backs impeachment
Advocates for impeachment can take some measure of encouragement not just from the 85 cities and towns and 14 state Democratic parties that have passed impeachment resolutions, or the 11 state legislatures that have introduced them (Maine was #11 on Tuesday), but also from comments made Tuesday evening in Detroit by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers.
For about a year now there have been two Congressmen Conyers, the defender of our Constitution and the follower of Nancy Pelosi in her ban on impeachment. Citizens in Detroit organized a town hall forum on impeachment and invited the Congressman. Both John Conyerses came on Tuesday, and they both left partway through the event. But, judging by the Associated Press story, Conyers the impeachment advocate was winning the internal battle.
There's a very short version of the AP report posted on websites including http://www.wlns.com/Global/story.asp?S=6583728&nav=0RbQ and http://www.wtol.com/Global/story.asp?S=6583728
For about a year now there have been two Congressmen Conyers, the defender of our Constitution and the follower of Nancy Pelosi in her ban on impeachment. Citizens in Detroit organized a town hall forum on impeachment and invited the Congressman. Both John Conyerses came on Tuesday, and they both left partway through the event. But, judging by the Associated Press story, Conyers the impeachment advocate was winning the internal battle.
There's a very short version of the AP report posted on websites including http://www.wlns.com/Global/story.asp?S=6583728&nav=0RbQ and http://www.wtol.com/Global/story.asp?S=6583728
Is our peace activists learning?
Over the past two months of repeated Congressional votes to fund the occupation of Iraq, culminating in President Bush's signing the bill on Friday, what – if anything – have we learned? Have we learned anything about individuals or political parties or activist organizations to trust or despise, or have we learned better what to demand of them regardless of such emotions? Have we learned anything about policies to support, battles to lose, pyrrhic victories, or how to talk about ending the occupation?
A clear and growing majority of Americans wants to end the occupation. Yet many people are opposed to defunding it. So, not enough of us have learned that you cannot end this occupation without defunding it. And far too few of us fully understand that ultimately we'll need impeachment before the occupation actually ends.
A clear and growing majority of Americans wants to end the occupation. Yet many people are opposed to defunding it. So, not enough of us have learned that you cannot end this occupation without defunding it. And far too few of us fully understand that ultimately we'll need impeachment before the occupation actually ends.
The holy occupation of Iraq
I picked up a pamphlet the other day that said "Just for You" at the top, so I assumed it was just for me. Much of the front page contained an image of soldiers marching, and next to them the words "What's your exit strategy?" That's easy, I thought. Impeachment, removal, indictment, and conviction. But was this really a pamphlet about peace? I read the text at the bottom of the front page:
"In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States had thousands of troops in Vietnam. Citizens sharply criticized the government. The United States wanted out, but found it hard to develop an exit strategy. More recently, the United States government came under attack for not having an exit strategy in Iraq. One writer has said that a general…"
OK, so I had to open it. And I immediately saw a bunch of quotes from "your Lord and Saviour [sic]." It turned out to be a pamphlet about personal strategies for "exiting" your life and flying off to Never Never Land.
"In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States had thousands of troops in Vietnam. Citizens sharply criticized the government. The United States wanted out, but found it hard to develop an exit strategy. More recently, the United States government came under attack for not having an exit strategy in Iraq. One writer has said that a general…"
OK, so I had to open it. And I immediately saw a bunch of quotes from "your Lord and Saviour [sic]." It turned out to be a pamphlet about personal strategies for "exiting" your life and flying off to Never Never Land.
Deadly illusions, rest in peace
The cave-in on Capitol Hill -- supplying a huge new jolt of
funds for the horrific war effort in Iraq -- is surprising only to those
who haven’t grasped our current circumstances.
Public opinion polls aren’t the same as political leverage. The Vietnam War went on for years after polling showed that most Americans opposed the war and even saw it as immoral.
Slick phrases about the need to bring our troops home can easily become little more than platitudes on wallpaper in media echo chambers.
No matter how many Democrats are in Congress, they won’t end this war unless an antiwar movement develops enough grassroots strength to compel them to do so.
Unfortunately -- and unnecessarily -- for years now the Internet powerhouse MoveOn.org has often functioned as a virtual appendage of the national Democratic Party. That close relationship has largely squandered MoveOn’s opportunities to help build strong deep independent activism for the long haul. And, on crucial issues of the Iraq war, MoveOn has failed to back the positions of such gutsy progressive visionaries as Reps. Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters.
Public opinion polls aren’t the same as political leverage. The Vietnam War went on for years after polling showed that most Americans opposed the war and even saw it as immoral.
Slick phrases about the need to bring our troops home can easily become little more than platitudes on wallpaper in media echo chambers.
No matter how many Democrats are in Congress, they won’t end this war unless an antiwar movement develops enough grassroots strength to compel them to do so.
Unfortunately -- and unnecessarily -- for years now the Internet powerhouse MoveOn.org has often functioned as a virtual appendage of the national Democratic Party. That close relationship has largely squandered MoveOn’s opportunities to help build strong deep independent activism for the long haul. And, on crucial issues of the Iraq war, MoveOn has failed to back the positions of such gutsy progressive visionaries as Reps. Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey and Maxine Waters.
What do these crimes have in common?
Another day, another impeachable offense. If this one were on a television show we'd all flip it off in disgust as too unlikely. The President phones up a hospital to demand that the ailing Attorney General (who has turned over his duties and is disoriented) admit the President's legal counsel and chief of staff so that they can ask him to sign off on an illegal spying program. The AG refuses to sign off. The acting AG, who is fully conscious but considers the program illegal, also refuses to sign off. The White House goes ahead and launches the program anyway, a program that involves the FBI, a program so dramatically illegal or offensive that the serial criminals running the Justice Department refuse to go along with it.
Dancing with fear
I knew there was a war on against cancer and, oh yeah, drugs, illiteracy, poverty, crime and, of course, terror, and that many arenas — sports, religion, business and politics, to name a few — are often portrayed as war without the body bags. But I was still surprised to read recently in the New York Times that we’ve opened up a fat front:
“It is a scene being repeated across the country as schools deploy the blood-pumping video game Dance Dance Revolution as the latest weapon,” the Gray Lady informed us, “in the nation’s battle against the epidemic of childhood obesity.”
Enough already! If I were an overweight kid, would I want Braveheart in my face? My impatience here reaches into the language center of the American brain, or at least the media brain. When chubby 9-year-olds are inspiring the language of Guadalcanal and 9/11, maybe as a nation it’s time to rethink our rhetorical default settings. Maybe it’s time to stop regarding every challenge, danger, obstacle, mystery and fear we encounter as a military operation, to be won or lost. We should at least be aware we have a choice in the matter.
“It is a scene being repeated across the country as schools deploy the blood-pumping video game Dance Dance Revolution as the latest weapon,” the Gray Lady informed us, “in the nation’s battle against the epidemic of childhood obesity.”
Enough already! If I were an overweight kid, would I want Braveheart in my face? My impatience here reaches into the language center of the American brain, or at least the media brain. When chubby 9-year-olds are inspiring the language of Guadalcanal and 9/11, maybe as a nation it’s time to rethink our rhetorical default settings. Maybe it’s time to stop regarding every challenge, danger, obstacle, mystery and fear we encounter as a military operation, to be won or lost. We should at least be aware we have a choice in the matter.
Peace movement not so good with media or elections
The corporate media in the United States will not allow a real peace candidate any time or substantive or respectful coverage. It will slander and mock and, above all, ignore. Then it will find people outside the media to quote as saying that they don't believe the candidate is "viable." The ideal spokespeople to make this announcement will be those perceived to agree with the peace candidate - that is, leaders of the peace movement. Then the story will be made to look like the media is reporting on who the public calls "viable," rather than determining who is viable and imposing that on the public. This is basic, fundamental electoral manufacturing of consent. And yet, every election, the peace movement plays along.
In this article from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a CODE PINK activist is quoted as follows:
"'Dennis is saying all the right things, but I just worry that he isn't getting the exposure that he needs and that he is not being taken seriously,' said [Rosalie] Yelen. She hasn't settled on a candidate to support but says she likes former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards' stance on poverty."
In this article from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, a CODE PINK activist is quoted as follows:
"'Dennis is saying all the right things, but I just worry that he isn't getting the exposure that he needs and that he is not being taken seriously,' said [Rosalie] Yelen. She hasn't settled on a candidate to support but says she likes former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards' stance on poverty."
Intelligence officials write open letter to George Tenet
28 April 2007
Mr. George Tenet
c/o Harper Collins Publishers
10 East 53rd Street 8th Floor
New York City, New York 10022
ATTN: Ms. Tina Andredis
Dear Mr. Tenet:
We write to you on the occasion of the release of your book, At the Center of the Storm. You are on the record complaining about the “damage to your reputation”. In our view the damage to your reputation is inconsequential compared to the harm your actions have caused for the U.S. soldiers engaged in combat in Iraq and the national security of the United States. We believe you have a moral obligation to return the Medal of Freedom you received from President George Bush. We also call for you to dedicate a significant percentage of the royalties from your book to the U.S. soldiers and their families who have been killed and wounded in Iraq.
Mr. George Tenet
c/o Harper Collins Publishers
10 East 53rd Street 8th Floor
New York City, New York 10022
ATTN: Ms. Tina Andredis
Dear Mr. Tenet:
We write to you on the occasion of the release of your book, At the Center of the Storm. You are on the record complaining about the “damage to your reputation”. In our view the damage to your reputation is inconsequential compared to the harm your actions have caused for the U.S. soldiers engaged in combat in Iraq and the national security of the United States. We believe you have a moral obligation to return the Medal of Freedom you received from President George Bush. We also call for you to dedicate a significant percentage of the royalties from your book to the U.S. soldiers and their families who have been killed and wounded in Iraq.