Duty to Warn

AUSTIN, Texas -- Happy birthday, America! Ye Olde Fourth of July rolls around again and finds the Great Nation in, frankly, a somewhat pissy mood. Lots of blame game, name-slinging and general unpleasantness. But there's always an upside. The vice president reports that if you go ahead and let fly with the f-word, it makes you feel better. Anything to get that fun Dick Cheney back to his usual sunny self, I always say.

        True, we seem to have had more halcyon national natal days, but if we ignore I--q for the day, we should be able to celebrate our national heritage without punching each other in the eye.

Fahrenheit 9-11 reminds me of Howard Dean. Both were wildly promoted by the media in a manner not carefully thought through by media bigwigs, and then both were savaged by the media just before opening day.

The size of the audiences seeing this movie was guaranteed by the media hype, and the notion that the audiences consist mainly of liberal activists is disproved by the size of them. More people have already seen this movie than subscribe to progressive magazines or participate in political primary MeetUps. The question is what will happen in the heads of people who had never heard any of this stuff before.

Michigan State University received national notoriety as a result of a 1966 Ramparts magazine cover article that described it as a "University on the Make." The Ramparts cover depicted the wife of South Vietnam's dictator/President Diem, as an MSU cheerleader, with green garb and white pompoms.

When MSU invited Iraqi war strategist Condoleeza Rice to deliver its commencement address on May 7, the cheerleader image was resurrected. The cover of Lansing's popular alternative weekly City Pulse featured Condi Rice as a giddy MSU cheerleader on May 5th.

Throughout the past half century, MSU has continued the work of empire, in a manner as profound and arrogant as ever. Between 1955-62 MSU provided academic cover to CIA agents and provided police training and weapons to Diem's regime. Until a few months ago, the MSU president, who once was a minion to those pressing the Iran-Contra affair in the Reagan White House, was directly helping to run an imperial war in Iraq.

It's funny. I'd seen all this stuff before--I mean it isn't as if there was anything really new here for anyone who's been paying attention for the past few years. And yet, I cried. Maybe it's the deprogramming of having at least some of what we've seen replayed with any decent focus for One Brief Shining Moment, beyond the self-imposed straitjacket of a docile and dangerously inept US press. Maybe it's just the oxygen given to all those impulses so many of us have kept in check, all those shoots of anger, sadness and embarrassment blossoming into full blown consciousness.

My own thought process in response to Michael Moore's new film reminded me of one of those dessicated sponges you put in water-a few hours later and voila: your tiny piece of foam has bloated into a full blown fish, or frog, or palm tree ten times its original size. Or maybe like opening an archive, unzipping a million saved files at once. My brain fairly exploded with repressed anger going back to the Florida recount disaster: things I had known in much more detail before Moore scratched the surface again and brought it all flooding back..

AUSTIN, Texas -- When it comes to religion, I've always believed it's more important to walk the walk than to talk the talk. I come from a tradition (Episcopal) that considers it rather in bad taste to wear your religion on your sleeve, presumably from Matthew, Chapter 6, Verses 5 and 6:

        "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.

        "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."

        Of course, I also had some Baptist input and so am fond of making a joyful noise unto the Lord. Texans even like to sing hymns around campfires while drinking beer -- I'm not sure if that counts.

AUSTIN, Texas -- As I.F. Stone used to say, "All governments lie," so that's no shockeroo. What's peculiar is the reaction in the media.  

        -- You may recall that when even the administration finally admitted Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction (with that adorable video of President Bush on his hands and knees searching under sofas in the Oval Office for the missing WMD -- oh, it was so amusing. Eight hundred American dead.), we were treated to the following rationales:

        1) Didn't make any difference because Saddam Hussein was a really, really bad guy anyway.

        He was, of course, and it was always the only decent rationale for getting rid of him. It was the argument made by Tony Blair but specifically rejected by the Bush administration. Paul Wolfowitz explained in Vanity Fair that human rights violations were not a sufficient consideration for invasion.

Political myth-making goes into overdrive every four years. With presidential campaigns fixated mostly on media, an array of nonstop spin takes its toll while illogic often takes hold: When heroes are absent, they're invented. When convenient claims are untrue, they're defended.

Many supporters come to function as enablers -- staying silent or mimicking their candidate's contorted explanations to try to finesse the gaping contradiction. Fast talk substitutes for straight talk. A kind of "covering fire" across media battlefields makes it easier for the candidate to just keep on dissembling.

There are true believers, of course -- people who believe every word that comes out of their own mouths when, for instance, they stand at the podium of the Republican or Democratic convention. Whatever the extent of their sincerity, only superlatives will do as speakers unequivocally praise George W. Bush or John Kerry.

AUSTIN, Texas -- No sooner do we win a long struggle to clean up politics and restore democracy in this country than we find the whole thing under attack, and we have to go out and re-fight the same battle all over again. Good thing we're not easily discouraged.

        This is what's happening in Arizona, where the successful Clean Elections law is now under attack by the big special interests and national conservatives with ties that run from Tom DeLay (surprise!) to Bush's fund-raising machine.  

        Micah Sifry of Public Campaign reports, "They've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that doesn't mention anywhere its true intent, to de-fund the Clean Elections system." This charming endeavor is masquerading under the misnomer "No Taxpayer Money for Politicians," a misleading moniker right up there with Bush's "Clear Skies and Healthy Forests" initiatives. What a shame they couldn't figure out a way to call it the Patriot Amendment.

(COLUMBUS, OH, 6/15/04) - On Wednesday, June 16, the Ohio office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Ohio) will hold a news conference in reaction to the arrest of Nuradin Abdi, a Columbus Muslim who was indicted Monday on four counts of conspiring to provide support for Al-Qaeda.

The news conference will take place following the conclusion of Nuradin's bond hearing on Wednesday afternoon at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Columbus, Ohio.

WHERE: U.S. Federal Courthouse, 85 Marconi Blvd., Columbus, Ohio WHEN: Following conclusion of bond hearing (Hearing at 1:30 pm)

"Given previous cases involving American Muslims in which evidence proved to be faulty or non-existent, we are concerned about the strength of the charges against Mr. Abdi," said CAIR-Ohio Executive Director Jad Humeidan.

Humeidan cited the cases of Army Chaplain James Yee and Oregon attorney Brandon Mayfield. Both men were cleared of all charges following extensive damage to their reputations.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Such comfort. At the close of the G-8 summit, described by President Bush as "very successful" (except we didn't get anything we wanted), the president offered us comfort on the uncomfortable topic of torture: "Look, I'm going to say it one more time. The instructions went out to our people to adhere to the law. That ought to comfort you."

        "We're a nations of laws," he went on. "We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might look at those laws, and that might comfort you."