Duty to Warn

KANANASKIS, Alberta -- Make that a big Canadian, "Oh dear." These nice Canadians, whom George W. Bush once managed to triumphantly identify as "our most important neighbors to the north" are famous for their reticence. Canada, Land of the Understatement. I once proposed their national motto should be: "Now, Let's Not Get Excited." Not that I would ever generalize. I attribute their commendable phlegm to being too cold to waste much energy and regular ingestion of oatmeal.

        Nice, polite, calm, reserved, chock full of common sense and living next to us -- what a fate. For them, it's like having the Simpsons for next-door neighbors. A few years ago, during the height of our national meltdown over Monica Lewinsky, a host on the Canadian Broadcasting Co.'s evening news program began an interview by gingerly asking me, "So, having another of your little psychodramas down there, eh?"

We saw butterflies turning into bombers. And we weren't dreaming. At the time when the Woodstock festival became an instant media legend in mid-August 1969, melodic yearning for peace was up against the cold steel of American war machinery.

The music and other creative energies that drew 400,000 people to an upstate New York farm that weekend rejected the Vietnam War and the assumptions fueling it. Thirty-five years later, the Jimi Hendrix rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner could still serve as an apt soundtrack for U.S. foreign policy, with bombs bursting in air over urban neighborhoods across much of Iraq.

A Woodstock reunion, scheduled for Aug. 20-22 in the town of Bethel, N.Y., comes while the gap between the nation's commander in chief and huge numbers of its citizens is enormous.

A recent obituary in the New York Times told about Frank Smith, "who as an inmate leader at Attica prison was tortured by officers in the aftermath of the prisoner uprising of 1971 and then spent a quarter century successfully fighting for legal damages." Working as a paralegal after his release, Smith was a pivotal force behind a 26-year civil action lawsuit that won a $12 million settlement.

Smith's life changed forever on Sept. 13, 1971 -- the day when New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller ordered 500 state troopers to attack the upstate Attica Correctional Facility, killing 29 inmates and 10 guards held as hostages. The raid wounded at least 86 other people.

The media coverage was atrocious. Outright lies were front-page news, "informing" the public that prisoners had slit the throats of hostages when the troopers' assault began. Corrective facts came later, with much smaller headlines, after autopsies revealed that no throats had been cut. Only when their claims were exposed as deceptions did top state officials admit the truth.

The same broadcast networks that eagerly devote endless prime-time hours to vacuous sitcoms and unreal "reality shows" couldn't spare a total of more than a few hours last week for live coverage of the Democratic National Convention.

It's true that complaining about scant news coverage from NBC, ABC and CBS is a bit like griping about small portions of meals from restaurants that serve lousy food. But still: the conventions are worth watching, if only to keep up with the rhetorical needles that party strategists are trying to thread these days.

Gathering for the convention in Boston, several network anchors participated in a high-profile panel at Harvard University. One of the more interesting moments came when the panelists responded to a question about the scant amount of air time the commercial broadcast networks were devoting to the convention.

The hype and hysteria reached even the sleepy North Shore of Boston. In the weeks leading up to the summer's seminal event in The Big City, local police chiefs were predicting endless commutes and near-constant gridlock. Many advised locals to "go to New Hampshire for the week and don't look back." Thanks to the comfort of an overwhelming Police (State) presence, the terrorists, tourists, troublemakers and travelers were kept at bay.

More investigation needed: Bush conflicts of interest; who paid for the 9/11 hijackings; the role of US foreign policy; exploitation of 9/11 to justify war on Iraq.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Leaders of the Green Party called the results of the 9/11 Commission a valuable first step in the probe of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., but called for more far-reaching investigation into the failure to discover and prevent the attacks and into the White House's response to the attacks.

"Instead of merely extending the current commission, which Sen. Kerry favors, we need to see a new, independent Commission to continue to the investigation into the 9/11 attacks, with family members of 9/11 victims given a prominent role," said Patrick Driscoll, Green candidate for Congress in California (5th District).

Greens note that, contrary to President Bush's claims that Americans are now safer, the U.S. response to 9/11 has increased the risk of terrorism throughout the world. At home, the response has included curtailment of civil liberties, including the detention of thousands of Americans without being charged with any crime.

No, hope does not gallop in like Paul Revere. And it certainly doesn't arrive breathless from a corporate party convention.

Movements for peace and social justice can bring realistic hope -- not with rhetoric but with the tough daily tedious uplifting work of political organizing.

Yes, we'd be better off with John Kerry in the White House instead of the Rove-Cheney-Bush regime. And the only way that's going to happen is if enough people in swing states vote for Kerry on November 2.

But I'm already getting tired of the bulk email messages claiming that Kerry is the embodiment of progressive dreams. Please. We can simultaneously walk, chew gum and be clear about the reality that Kerry embraces a centrist matrix of militarism and corporatism -- and, at the same time, in a world of contradictions, it's extremely important that George W. Bush lose the election on November 2... Let's not make stuff up. And let's not imitate the Democratic Party's hype machine. Just because you think people should hold their nose and vote for Kerry, don't act like there isn't a stench.

This week the Democratic Party successfully launched a great ship of hope from Boston harbor. And while the winds of change that would guide it grow mightier, it is by no means certain that it will reach its destination come this November.

As the election draws nearer, the many millions of us aboard this great ship should expect to be told and told again by the powers that be to be frightened of our voyage. They will dare us to imagine what terrors lie in wait within the seas of change. They will manufacture a dense fog of fear, and then claim only they can protect us from the unspeakable dangers that only they can see within it.

If Kerry is a "flip-flopper" because he won't end the war (or the "Patriot Act" or NAFTA or private health insurance) even as he speaks against these horrors, what do we have to call Kucinich, who insists on ending these things even as he endorses Kerry? And what can we expect Dennis to say on Wednesday when he delivers a Kerry-approved speech to the Democratic National Convention? Will he speak against the war, as he told "Democracy Now"'s Amy Goodman he would?

I expect in fact that Dennis will not need to tie himself in knots or reverse any positions. Understanding this helps me to accomplish something I find extremely difficult – sympathizing with John Kerry.

The details and media reaction to missing government record concerning former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and Resident George W. Bush is very important. Sandy Berger made some notes on the efforts of the Clinton Administration and accidentally removed COPIES of some documents on the subject. No original documents are missing and no facts are being hidden from public view by Berger’s actions. Berger screwed-up but there is no cover-up! Bush’s military records have been found to be conveniently and permanently destroyed.

Right Wing Talk Radio, Fox News and Republican politicians have been spinning the Berger incident as some kind of Clinton cover-up. The facts make their arguments bad jokes on the voting public. Taking copies of documents and leaving the originals are not cover-up behavior. The timing of the leak about the Justice Department investigation certainly looks fishy. The 9-11 Investigative Commission report is due to be released this week. Creating a non-issue controversy to distract voters from the failures of the Bush Administration seems to be a standard operating practice for the Bush Republicans.