Pelosi, Cheney, and the fertilized eggs
Remarks at Denver, Col., impeachment forum November 17, 2007, organized by "Be the Change."
For the past year or so, every month the moon gets full, and I suddenly get a couple of hundred emails telling me that Nancy Pelosi has announced that she will allow impeachment hearings if she gets enough emails or phone calls or handwritten letters.
And a lot of the emails I get are along the lines of: “Is it true? Because if it’s true my group can send 5,000 letters.”
And I usually reply along the lines of: “Of course it’s not true, but since when do you need an invitation to act like a citizen of a democracy? Send her 10,000 letters immediately, and do so precisely because it’s not true!”
For the past year or so, every month the moon gets full, and I suddenly get a couple of hundred emails telling me that Nancy Pelosi has announced that she will allow impeachment hearings if she gets enough emails or phone calls or handwritten letters.
And a lot of the emails I get are along the lines of: “Is it true? Because if it’s true my group can send 5,000 letters.”
And I usually reply along the lines of: “Of course it’s not true, but since when do you need an invitation to act like a citizen of a democracy? Send her 10,000 letters immediately, and do so precisely because it’s not true!”
Twenty thousand protest at Ft. Benning: eleven face federal criminal trials
In what has become the nation's largest annual gathering for peace and human rights, over twenty thousand people protested outside the gates of Fort Benning, GA on November 18, 2007. Eleven people were arrested on federal criminal charges and face up to six months in prison.
Fort Benning is the site of the internationally notorious U.S. Army training school for Latin American military and security personnel. For decades it was called the School of the Americas (SOA) - it is now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).
The school has graduated hundreds of military officers who have lead or participated in nearly every human rights atrocity in the hemisphere. Organizations across the world, including Amnesty International USA, have called for its closure since discovering copies of torture manuals used at the school. In June 2007, 203 members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to close the scandal-ridden school six votes shy of the margin of victory.
Fort Benning is the site of the internationally notorious U.S. Army training school for Latin American military and security personnel. For decades it was called the School of the Americas (SOA) - it is now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).
The school has graduated hundreds of military officers who have lead or participated in nearly every human rights atrocity in the hemisphere. Organizations across the world, including Amnesty International USA, have called for its closure since discovering copies of torture manuals used at the school. In June 2007, 203 members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to close the scandal-ridden school six votes shy of the margin of victory.
Wolf Blitzer loses Democratic debate
That does it. It's time for the Democratic Party to stage its own debate, ask its own questions, and offer the video to networks as a completed package. Allowing CNN to not just air a debate but to ask the questions proved on Thursday night (even more dramatically than in the past) to be a soul sickening disaster.
A serious debate would begin by asking each candidate (including Mike Gravel, who was locked out of the room) what he or she would do if elected president. Thursday's debate in the opening 30 minutes had me longing for even the level of honesty and substance of the MSNBC debate hosted by Keith Olbermann in Soldier Field some months back, at which Olbermann managed the superhuman feat of asking things like "Would you cancel NAFTA?"
A serious debate would begin by asking each candidate (including Mike Gravel, who was locked out of the room) what he or she would do if elected president. Thursday's debate in the opening 30 minutes had me longing for even the level of honesty and substance of the MSNBC debate hosted by Keith Olbermann in Soldier Field some months back, at which Olbermann managed the superhuman feat of asking things like "Would you cancel NAFTA?"
God bless the Senate Republicans
Into every tragically depressing world situation some light must shine if you wait long enough and the planets align just right.
That glimmer of light came yesterday from, of all places, the Death Star known by many as Washington, D.C., from deep within one of the most unfathomable quadrants of that bleakness – the chambers of the United States Senate. Even more remarkably, it sprang from what some consider a true black hole – the Republican caucus.
But light it is, and in these times we need to celebrate every photon that comes our way.
Yesterday, the Senate voted 53-45, seven votes short of the 60 needed to advance the bill, against a $50,000,000,000 “supplemental” funding measure passed earlier this week by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. What the Republicans objected to was the limp, inconsequential troop withdrawal plan supported by House and Senate Democrats – something that Groucho Marx would have much more accurately termed, “a sham of a mockery of a sham.”
That glimmer of light came yesterday from, of all places, the Death Star known by many as Washington, D.C., from deep within one of the most unfathomable quadrants of that bleakness – the chambers of the United States Senate. Even more remarkably, it sprang from what some consider a true black hole – the Republican caucus.
But light it is, and in these times we need to celebrate every photon that comes our way.
Yesterday, the Senate voted 53-45, seven votes short of the 60 needed to advance the bill, against a $50,000,000,000 “supplemental” funding measure passed earlier this week by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. What the Republicans objected to was the limp, inconsequential troop withdrawal plan supported by House and Senate Democrats – something that Groucho Marx would have much more accurately termed, “a sham of a mockery of a sham.”
People were killed by Three Mile Island & other nuclear disasters
One of the biggest lies ever told in American industrial history is that “no one died at Three Mile Island.”
In the frenzy to get public funding for still more nuclear reactors, some industry backers now say no one has ever been killed by the nuclear industry AT ALL.
These absurd statements reflect atomic energy's desperate need for federal loan guarantees, which have been slipped into the Energy Bill now before Congress. After fifty years of proven failure, no private sources will invest in this lethal, expensive technology.
Meanwhile billions are pouring into the booming business of green power, including wind, solar power and increased efficiency. These technologies are not only profitable and clean, they don't kill people.
And the reality is that people have, in fact, been killed by the fallout from atomic power, and not just at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
At the very birth of fission technology, Lewis Slotin, a top researcher on the Manhattan Project, was fatally irradiated in an early experiment. Patriotic workers were exposed to high radiation doses while building the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In the frenzy to get public funding for still more nuclear reactors, some industry backers now say no one has ever been killed by the nuclear industry AT ALL.
These absurd statements reflect atomic energy's desperate need for federal loan guarantees, which have been slipped into the Energy Bill now before Congress. After fifty years of proven failure, no private sources will invest in this lethal, expensive technology.
Meanwhile billions are pouring into the booming business of green power, including wind, solar power and increased efficiency. These technologies are not only profitable and clean, they don't kill people.
And the reality is that people have, in fact, been killed by the fallout from atomic power, and not just at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
At the very birth of fission technology, Lewis Slotin, a top researcher on the Manhattan Project, was fatally irradiated in an early experiment. Patriotic workers were exposed to high radiation doses while building the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Baghdad in middle America
Honoring vets means nothing at all unless it means honoring the deeply gouged personal truths each experienced during deployment. But the dismissal of such truths is as much a part of war, and its aftermath, as the propaganda and geopolitical whoppers necessary to launch it.
The problem with these individual truths is that they seldom smack of glory. More often, they’re simply mundane and hellish, and slowly eat the vet’s soul. The clinical name for this is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and it’s the phrase I heard most frequently and most distinctly this past weekend, during the grim, pained acknowledgement — I can hardly call it celebration — of Veterans Day.
Ray Parrish, a vets’ counselor and Vietnam vet, was adamantly pessimistic as he spoke to 100 or so people gathered on a bitter, gray Sunday morning at the river in downtown Chicago, about the psychic toll our current wars are exacting on the ones who are fighting them.
The problem with these individual truths is that they seldom smack of glory. More often, they’re simply mundane and hellish, and slowly eat the vet’s soul. The clinical name for this is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and it’s the phrase I heard most frequently and most distinctly this past weekend, during the grim, pained acknowledgement — I can hardly call it celebration — of Veterans Day.
Ray Parrish, a vets’ counselor and Vietnam vet, was adamantly pessimistic as he spoke to 100 or so people gathered on a bitter, gray Sunday morning at the river in downtown Chicago, about the psychic toll our current wars are exacting on the ones who are fighting them.
Another Clinton campaign fraud
It sounds silly, but for a long time it just didn't occur to me what the
implications would be. Thus spake a college student who agreed to ask
Senator Clinton a planted question. And thus, alas, must I speak as well.
Senator Clinton asked me to impersonate a citizen of the United States, and I was tempted to play along. The assignment she had marked "(citizen)" on the script on her clipboard, read:
Senator Clinton asked me to impersonate a citizen of the United States, and I was tempted to play along. The assignment she had marked "(citizen)" on the script on her clipboard, read:
Mentes Peligrosas: confession of an American thought criminal
“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.”
–Winston Smith from George Orwell’s 1984
If you needed more evidence that most of our “esteemed” members of Congress are members of a criminal class of ruling elites, who regard the likes of us in the poor and working classes with the disdain most people reserve for cockroaches, look no further than H.R. 1955.
93% of the filth “representing” us in the House voted in favor of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. Once this vile piece of legislation sails through the Senate and the sociopath on Pennsylvania Ave gleefully slaps his endorsement on it, the mechanisms will be in place for our lords and masters to initiate programs that will make Cointelpro and the murder of Fred Hampton look like child’s play.
–Winston Smith from George Orwell’s 1984
If you needed more evidence that most of our “esteemed” members of Congress are members of a criminal class of ruling elites, who regard the likes of us in the poor and working classes with the disdain most people reserve for cockroaches, look no further than H.R. 1955.
93% of the filth “representing” us in the House voted in favor of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. Once this vile piece of legislation sails through the Senate and the sociopath on Pennsylvania Ave gleefully slaps his endorsement on it, the mechanisms will be in place for our lords and masters to initiate programs that will make Cointelpro and the murder of Fred Hampton look like child’s play.