Duty to Warn

AUSTIN, Texas -- It occasionally occurs to me that if I could understand the Bush administration's foreign policy, I might like it. After months of threatening Iran with everything up to and including nuclear war, we are now full of Sweet Reason and offering to have diplomatic talks with the very people we have been denouncing as Beyond Vile.

I never mind a good about-face in foreign policy myself. Always reminds me of the times when that great duo Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger decided it would be a good thing to convince the world they were both quite perfectly mad. They succeeded. (Bonus point: What did Richard Nixon say upon first seeing the Great Wall of China? He said, "This is, indeed, a great wall." Almost as good as the time George H.W. Bush barfed on the prime minister of Japan.)

"Governments don't keep secrets to protect the public, but to deceive the public."

Greg Palast happens to be talking about a certain Big Oil-friendly blueprint for the future of the Iraqi oil industry when he makes this point, almost in passing, in his just-released book, Armed Madhouse (Dutton), but he could be stating the general premise of the whole book, or of his career as a journo-sleuth in the Jack Anderson mold and stand-in for the little guy in the global economy. His raison d'etre is to ferret out those secrets and those deceptions and present them in all their cynical glory to the people for whom such knowledge is vital: you and me.

In my humble opinion, Palast, an American investigator better known beyond our borders, through his BBC current-affairs show "Newsnight," than here at home, is exactly what a journalist is supposed to be - a truth hound, doggedly independent, undaunted by power. His stories bite. They're so relevant they threaten to alter history - simply by letting the hoodwinked public in on the game while it's happening, which is precisely the role America's mainstream media have abdicated.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Thank goodness the Republicans are around to tell me what to worry about. The flag-burning crisis -- here in Austin, there's that pall of smoke rising from the West every morning (it's from an area called Tarrytown, where they burn hundreds of flags daily).

You didn't know hundreds of flags were being burned daily? Actually, you can count on your hand the number of incidents reported over the last five years. For instance, there was one flag burned in 2005 by a drunken teenager and one by a protester in California in 2002. This appalling record of ravishment must be stopped. You're clearly not worried about what matters.

Gay marriage, now there's a crisis. Well, OK, so there isn't much gay marriage going on here in Texas. None, in fact. First, we made it illegal. Then, we made it unconstitutional. But President Bush is all concerned about it, so I guess we have to alter the U.S. Constitution.

Gus and Captain Call (of "Lonesome Dove" fame) will be an item -- with who knows who waiting in line right after them.

Of Faustian bargains and disposable human beings

(I am dedicating this essay to the memory of the millions of victims of the Capitalist Imperial wars of conquest waged by the United States under the patently false pretexts of spreading freedom and liberty).

Rolling through virtually any reasonably populous city or town in America, one encounters a surreal landscape blighted by grotesque temples to America’s twin gods of Capitalism and Consumerism. As an increasing number of individual proprietors are driven to extinction, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, and hundreds more leviathan corporations continue their rapid construction of more houses of worship to serve their zealous congregation. Once inside, many Americans gleefully sacrifice an abundance of their greenbacks at altars attended by Consumerism’s unwitting acolytes.

For appallingly meager wages and benefits, the cashiers tending the sacred Churches of Capitalism and Consumerism gather the offerings which enable their fellow faithful to reap the fruits of practicing their devotion.

President Bush in Washington Monday told a room full of revved up anti-gay Christian conservatives that, rather than focus attention on the pressing issues of the day--Iraq, Iranian nukes, the economy, gas prices--one of the biggest priorities facing the country today is making sure homosexuals cannot legally marry. If you believe Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage is critical to the moral survival of the country. No matter that recent polls show that Americans view the gay marriage issue as #7 on the priority list. We're in an election year here, folks, and these Repugs desperately need their wedge issue to rile up the base.

"Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them," Bush said in his speech. "And changing the definition of marriage would undermine the family structure." Honestly, has there ever been a more non-issue than this?

He's getting quite creative, this coy former vice president of ours. When asked if he's running for president in 2008, Al Gore devises every possible answer to throw his questioners off the trail: "I have no intention of running." "I have no plans to be a candidate for president again." "I don't expect to run." "I can't imagine any circumstances in which I would become a candidate again." "Politics is behind me." Every answer, that is, except the one that has any meaning: "If nominated I will not run; if elected I will not serve." That was the unequivocal answer famously given by Civil War-era general William Tecumseh Sherman when asked about his presidential aspirations upon retiring from the Army in 1884. Sherman, unlike Gore, left no doubt of his "intention."

"I haven't made a so-called Sherman statement, because it just seems unnecessary, kind of odd to do that....but that's not an effort to hold the door open. It's more the internal shifting of gears," said Gore in an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

The grass roots are just that--roots. The thought is often lost on those at the top of the political food chain. Without roots, the top topples. The grass roots are not impressed with the way that John Kerry conceeded in the face of overwhelming upset at fact and suspicions of foul play, fraud and supression. Some of the 'roots' are disillusioned to the point of jumping ship to Green territory. Some are just not going to choose any alternative. Some secretly wish Al Gore would reconsider and enter.

What the top seldom realizes as they create the campaign blueprints that they expect everyone like sheep to line up and follow, providing the competitive footwork and fund with every agressive email solicitation, is that the grass roots on the last campaign, staked not only their credibility, but took considerable abuse for doing so in backing Kerry. Many of them worked volunteer for many long months at considerable personal sacrifice and negative personal cash flow because they believed it that important to stop the agenda of this Administration.

I’ve been thinking about Tariq Aziz a lot since the New York Times printed a front-page story on the former Iraqi deputy prime minister in late May. A color photograph showed him decked out in what the article described as “an open-necked hospital gown, with a patient’s plastic identification tag on his wrist.” He looked gaunt.

The last time I saw Aziz, at a Baghdad meeting two months before the U.S.-led invasion began, he was still portly in one of his well-tailored business suits. If Aziz was worried, he didn’t show it.

Now, he’s playing a part that U.S. media seem to relish. The Times headline said “Hussein’s Former Envoy Gushes With Adulation on Witness Stand,” but to sum up the coverage it might have just as aptly declared: “How the Mighty Have Fallen.”

AUSTIN, Texas -- Thank goodness the Republicans are around to tell me what to worry about. The flag-burning crisis -- here in Austin, there's that pall of smoke rising from the West every morning (it's from an area called Tarrytown, where they burn hundreds of flags daily).

You didn't know hundreds of flags were being burned daily? Actually, you can count on your hand the number of incidents reported over the last five years. For instance, there was one flag burned in 2005 by a drunken teenager and one by a protester in California in 2002. This appalling record of ravishment must be stopped. You're clearly not worried about what matters.

Gay marriage, now there's a crisis. Well, OK, so there isn't much gay marriage going on here in Texas. None, in fact. First, we made it illegal. Then, we made it unconstitutional. But President Bush is all concerned about it, so I guess we have to alter the U.S. Constitution.

Gus and Captain Call (of "Lonesome Dove" fame) will be an item -- with who knows who waiting in line right after them.

"It's past time for HIV and AIDS to be relegated to history so that 25 years from now, we can look back at what was and what is no more," said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese.

WASHINGTON - Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese made the following statement on the 25th anniversary of the first reported case of AIDS:

"In a heartbeat, a generation of Americans was lost to AIDS," said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. "While the government's reaction was slow, the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community united into a political force that demanded action and, with an enduring commitment, secured it. Today is a day to honor the lives lost, to pay tribute to the many who took action, and to recognize the great challenges that still stand before us in fighting the scourge of HIV and AIDS.