Feel Your Outrage

Let us not just put aside what has happened to us as a nation. It's Christmas, and who wants to ruin it by thinking about the stolen election November 2nd? It was like a bad dream. Maybe if we push it into the background, it will go away.

No, we cannot let up. We must not forget. We've been told to get over it. We've been called sore losers who do not love America. No, we cannot get over this. Right after the holidays there will be very important things happening. As you know, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and other members of the Black Caucus have strongly questioned Bush's purported victory. This is not just wishful thinking. There is plenty of evidence that the election was not legitimate, and it is certain that thousands of votes were not counted. Voter suppression and intimidation have been well documented. Should these things be ignored? In America? Absolutely not! One election observer in Ohio has said the election was "the crime of the century."

Kenneth Blackwell, who needs no introduction, is stonewalling every step of the way. Why would that be?

Legal proceedings are underway. Subpeonas have been issued to 10 elections officials in Ohio. Blackwell went ballistic. He filled a motion to stop the process of discovery. Attorneys refiled their election challenge suit after the Ohio Supreme court dismissed it on a technicality. The lawsuit claims that the election results in Ohio were fraudulent and incorrectly awarded the state's majority to Bush which, of course, gave the presidency to Bush.

The election challenge suit was filed December 17th. Blackwell has 10 days to respond. Then each side has 20 days to do discovery (additional evidence gathering). Many attorneys have gone to Ohio at their own expense to join in the election challenge. Hurray for them!

We need at least one US senator to stand up January 6th to dispute the Electoral College results. In a conference call December 21st, Jesse Jackson urges Senators John Kerry and Hillary Clinton to do the honors. A challenge by US representatives failed in 2000 when not one senator stood to join their motion. This time there must be a challenge again, and there must be a senator willing to stand up and speak out. Political careers aside, our democracy is at stake here. This is not funny.

John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, will you be of good courage for the sake of us all? January 6th is the Feast of the Epiphany in the Christian tradition. Light is the Epiphany theme. May America's light shine in 2005. We've been in darkness too long.

Women and Children Suffer the Most

The saying goes: Old men make war; young men fight them. However, it is not just young men who pay a price. Lucinda Marshall, founder of Feminist Peace Network, has written an article for Common Dreams, giving us a glimpse of what price our warring nation and leaders extract from the women and children of the world. The Bush administration bandies about the popular buzz words of the day: sovereignty, democracy, freedom, and liberation, as if these words are all that matter. Meanwhile, women and children account for almost 80% of the casualties of war as well as 80% of the 40 million people in the world who are now refugees from their homes, writes Marshall. Those who use military force also create unspeakable torment and pain for women who are often part of the spoils of war. "Their deaths are considered collateral damage, and their bodies are frequently used as battlegrounds and as commodities that can be traded."

"Women and girls are not just killed. They are raped, sexually attacked, mutilated, and humiliated. Custom, culture, and religion have built an image of women as bearing the 'honour' of their communities. Disparaging a woman's sexuality and destroying her physical integrity have become a means by which to terrorize, demean, and 'defeat' entire communities, as well as to punish, intimidate, and humiliate women," according to Irene Khan of Amnesty International. Sexual violence has left hundreds of thousands of women raped, brutalized, impregnated, and infected with HIV/AIDS. And hundreds of thousands of women are trafficked annually for forced labor and sexual slavery. And lest we think that the US is not involved in this, much of this trafficking is to service western troops in brothels near military bases. Even women in our own military are abused and assaulted while serving on active duty. The perpetrators are rarely punished.

Children are also the victims of our wars. In the last 10 years, two million of our children have been killed in wars and conflicts. 4.5 million children have been disabled, and 12 million have been left homeless. Today there are 300,000 child soldiers, including many girls who are forced to "service" the troops.

Environmental damage is an accepted weapon of war. We leave behind depleted uranium and napalm. This causes cancer and birth defects. Iraq is suffering a soaring rate of illness. We are also endangering our own soldiers, exposing them to the effects of these chemicals. They face higher cancer and disease rates and pass birth defects on to their offspring.

We are polluting our water, land, and air by careless disposal of military toxins. Perchlorate, a rocket fuel, for example, is getting into our groundwater. This affects our drinking water and our food, as well as the breastmilk of nursing mothers. Perchlorate may also impact reproductive health.

Next, the economic price of war. War-making comes at the expense of funding for programs that benefit our lives and our planet. Bush can get all the money he wants out of Congress for the "War." But that means less and less money for our domestic needs. At airports, women are groped in order to board airplanes, but there is no worry about funds for prevention of domestic violence or affordable housing and decent jobs. Abroad, reconstruction funds we are supposedly sending to Afghanistan and Iraq are reportedly not being spent on helping people in those countries. Most of the money, about 97%, goes for more death and destruction.

All these things are happening in the most cavalier manner one can imagine. Bush and his military-industrial-corporate machine are usurping our lives in the name of empire, while vehemently denying it every step of the way, and the Congress seems incapable of standing up to them. What is their problem? Their own political aspirations? What is it?

The real terror is not terrorists of foreign extraction. It is our own leaders in Washington. They are terrorists, too. Why can't more people see this? If we believe the made-up world Bush is living in, we are doomed. Bush creates his own realities to serve his goals, and we cower in fear, not able to check behind the curtain to find the truth. I hope in the New Year we can get a grip and speak truth to power before it is truly too late. There is such a thing as too late.

Our Man of the Year

I was livid when I heard that Time Magazine has named George Bush their Person of the Year for 2004. The most dangerous man on the face of the earth who has destroyed so much that we once had in America and continues to plan more devastation is honored with another award. But I feel better now that I am reminded that Time's Man of the Year for 1979 was Ayatollah Khomeini, Shi'ite cleric, and Man of the Year for 1938 was Adolph Hitler.

Hitler once said, "The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one." That must be one of the present administration's mottos.

Go to http://www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/archive/photohistory/hitler.html to read more.

The Bible Tells Me So

Here's a great blog post from Dailykos. It just goes to show you that you can find just about anything in the Bible. And you can use scripture to justify just about anything if you see it that way.



Bible: newly married can't go to war

by kos Sat Dec 11th, 2004 at 12:06:27 PST

For our Christian overlords who preach values and death at the same time:

Deuteronomy 24:5:
"If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married."

Check out that verse in all the different versions of the Bible here.

Pledge To Dismantle the American Empire

One of the best articles about Iraq I've run across in a long time appeared in The Forth Worth Star-Telegram on Wednesday, December 8th. It begins like this:

The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that's a good thing.

I would bet that many Americans are holding out for a victory in Iraq, whatever that means. It is unthinkable that America could be defeated. We're bigger, better, and right. Whatever we think the world should do, that's the answer. But there are millions of Americans, I believe, who do not feel this way.

Robert Jensen, author of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram article, [click on blog title to take you to this article]
makes it clear that to say the war is lost is not to minimize the tragedy and unspeakable suffering that American and Iraqi deaths have caused. Jensen says the tragedy is compounded because these deaths haven't protected Americans or brought freedom to Iraqis.

The article further points out that, although no one disputes the fact that Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein, this does not prove our benevolent intentions or guarantee that the United States will work to bring meaningful democracy to Iraq. The Bush administration invaded not to liberate but to extend and deepen U.S. domination. So when Bush said in November of 2002 that we have no territorial ambitions and are not seeking an empire, he told a half-truth. The sinister U. S. plan is to establish control over the flow of oil and oil profits, not ownership. In other words, Bush wants his cake and eat it, too. No responsibility, just the money and power. So it is not liberation we fight for in Iraq. It is subordination. And, of course, the Iraqi people do not want to be subordinated. Jensen reminds us that occupying armies generate resistance that, inevitably, prevails over imperial power. Let those who have ears, hear.

When, not if, we pull out of Iraq, thus admitting defeat, the fate of the Iraqis will depend in part on "whether the U.S. makes good on legal and moral obligations to pay reparations and allows international institutions to aid in creating a truly sovereign Iraq." (Of course, the Bush administration is also trying its best to kill the United Nations.) This will take more than just the commitment of politicians obviously. These elected individuals are so easily swayed by personal agendas that they can hardly do their jobs of representing the people who elected them. So it will take us, the people, banding together and working hard to create pressure.

Jensen's article blames, not just the present regime, but also Republican and Democratic administrations of the recent past who have made fateful policy decisions, leaving us and the Iraqis in the mess we are in.

Nevertheless, we must courageously pledge to dismantle the American empire.

Let us be reminded: This fragile planet does not belong to the United States. The new century is not America's. We own neither the world nor time. If we don't find our place in the world and not on top of the world, there is little hope for a safe, sane and sustainable future.

[Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of "Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity."]

Postpone the Inauguration

In light of the many lawsuits and the sea of complaints and protests surrounding the November 2nd presidential election, I believe the inauguration planned for January 2005 should be postponed until, at a minimum, all the votes cast are counted. There is nothing more basic than the votes of our citizens. Thousands of votes still remain uncounted. Yet we are expected to "move on." "Get over it!," the annoyed Republicans shout. Why are the Republicans so angry? They are the "winners." They seem to feel that the election was fair and well-run. Either that or they really don't care if it was fair as long as George Bush is declared the winner. But have you ever heard of declaring a winner before the votes are all counted? (Oh, yes! There was Florida in 2000.) Are we to be satisfied with an estimate of votes? And whose estimate will it be?

How can we know which candidate actually won? There are a multitude of serious questions about the election: voter suppression, voter intimidation, voter registration failures, voting machine malfunctions and lack of paper trail, provisional ballot issues, and many other problems, not just in Ohio, but in many states. In Virginia, Rep. Bobby Scott, 2nd District, reported this week that there were 500 complaints about the election. In his own district, some voters were given ballots that did not have his name on them! Imagine.

Wednesday, December 8th, Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, convened a hearing in Room 2237 of the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. The purpose was to discuss the very future of participatory democracy in America and the serious problems that the future holds if the allegations of vote fraud in Ohio and elsewhere are true.

One of the speakers on Wednesday was Rep. Watt who remarked that in Afghanistan, ballots were delivered to rural voters by donkey. He said that we should be capable of having fair elections in America, too. Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, reported that, in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, there were fewer voting machines available to the voters during the Presidential election than there were during the primary election. He said, "Secretary of State Blackwell, he of the paper-weight obstructionism, wins the Katherine Harris Award this time around. There should be prosecutions over all this, and people should go to jail." Cliff Arnebeck, Chair of Common Cause Ohio, said with indignation in his voice,

How can we, with a straight face, talk about democracy in Iraq when we cannot guarantee democracy here at home?

Jesse Jackson insisted, "The 2004 election is not past-tense. We are not whining. It is time to take this struggle to the streets and fully legitimatize this struggle." He spoke of the long line that reached from Selma, Alabama, to Ohio, and into the room where they were meeting.

Rep. Conyers intimated Wednesday that he might object to the seating of the Ohio Electors when the certification process begins. I hope he will do just that. Do you recall the moment in Michael Moore's film, "Fahrenheit 911," when we saw the macabre scene in the Senate, presided over by Vice President Al Gore in 2000? Twelve African-American Democrats and Rep. Peter Deutsch raised a formal objection to the certification of the results. The objection could not stop the Bush victory because the objectors needed support from at least one U. S. senator, and, of course, Gore had conceded. Not one senator stood up to object. Not one. Why? Because the Democratic senators had apparently decided to support the "power-sharing" agreement mandating equal representation on Senate committees. I believe Al Gore was in agreement with this, too. In Moore's film, the scene was agonizing to watch. Why hadn't we heard about this when it happened? The media didn't cover it I guess. But what a defining moment it was in history! The whole future of America was at stake, and no one stood up to challenge the Florida votes EVEN THOUGH MANY THOUSANDS OF VOTES WERE LEFT UNCOUNTED! Here we are in 2004, and it is deja vu! Our worst nightmare come true- again.

Those courageous, patriotic objectors believed that Gore was the true Electoral College winner and thus should rightfully have been installed as our 43rd president. And a subsequent recount initiated by journalists like Greg Palast proved that in fact Gore did win Florida in 2000. We found out the truth too late. A real tragedy.

Now we find ourselves in the same exact predicament. This time the state of Ohio has replaced Florida as the crucial state. There is no need to rush to inaugurate George Bush in January 2005. The votes have not all been counted yet. Even if the recount does not change the result, it is still vitally important to count all the votes. Otherwise, millions of Americans will remain in a state of suspicion. We can never really know if Bush won. If it had been a fair election, perhaps we could have accepted the results. As it is now, there is no way. The 2004 election will be remembered as a stolen election.

Here's the deal: Our Constitution says the states have to tally the votes of their citizens before they can send their electors to the Electoral College. If Ohio doesn't finish its recount before the College votes, or before the vote is unsealed before Congress on January 6th, shouldn't a member of Congress raise a formal objection to those Ohio electors' votes?

I say yes!

Hear what Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University had to say recently:

"Though the Electoral College votes on November 13th, there is a subsequent window, and a process, for challenging whether voters from a state, pledged to one candidate and not the other, should be allowed to vote. If there are controversies, such as some disclosure that a state actually went for Kerry (instead of Bush), there is the ability of members of Congress to challenge. It requires a written objection from one House member and one Senator.

Once that objection is raised, the joint meeting of the two houses, convened to formally count the Electoral College votes and certify the winner of the presidential election, would be immediately discontinued. Then both Houses separate again and they vote by majority vote as to whether to accept the slate of electoral votes from that state." (Of course, should that happen, with the Republican majorities in both House and Senate, we all know how the vote would go. I still think it should be done.)

The threat was raised in 2000, but Al Gore insisted no Democratic representative or senator should object. (I think this situation had last come up in 1876.) Now in 2004, should Congress do something? Yes, it should. If the Ohio vote was rotten, even if by some legitimate error, one representative and one senator should raise an objection. A loud one! Of course, for a formal challenge to get anything but token support in the Senate and the House, it would take a miracle. We know that. In all likelihood, the election results will not be reversed. However, "the challenge itself would be a powerful protest," said Keith Olbermann of MSNBC on Wednesday. It could further energize those who are determined to mount and complete a full investigation of what happened in Ohio and could even be relevant in terms of the impounding of voting machines and records to serve as the basis for some later examination. We do not want this to ever happen again.

Our Great Record in Iraq: Suffering Children

Who do we believe? Not Bush. Not anyone who says everything is going well in Iraq. UNICEF, an organization of great integrity and long-standing record of compassion, reports that the children of Iraq are in dire straits. Hundreds of thousands of them are today suffering the severe effects of diarrhea and nutrition deficiencies. Malnutrition has doubled since the US invasion. Didn't anyone in our government think of the catastrophic result of unsafe water and sewage treatment? Why can't the most affluent country on the planet provide water for the people in Iraq? Why can't we provide electricity? What are the billions and billions of dollars going for?

Almost eight percent of Iraqi children younger than five suffer from chronic diarrhea and protein deficiency, according to UNICEF's latest reports. Diarrhea is responsible for 70% of child deaths there. Most are caused by unsafe water. Water treatment plants have suffered greatly. Forty percent of the water system has been damaged. Sewage treatment plants no longer work because of problems with the electrical supply, poor maintenance, and damage caused since the invasion.

We are destroying Iraq to save it, so they say. This is insanity. We removed a brutal dictator. Yeah for us. However, the greatest sin is that we have destroyed Iraq and left it in shambles. We have destroyed the lives of the Iraqi people. They have few jobs. They have minimal electricity. The price of petrol is sky high, and the lines at the gas pumps go for miles. It takes hours, if not days, to get gas. The cost of food is extremely high. The hospitals are destroyed, and doctors have very little medicine. (The US troops destroy the hospitals because they do not want anyone to know how many have died, and hospital staff can provide that information.)

But the worst tragedy of all is the suffering children. They have done nothing to deserve this. You would think that the US could have foreseen the needs that are now in crisis mode. Did our president and our department of defense just not care? Of course, we know that they do not listen to anyone, except those who praise them. So I guess they haven't heard. Do they deserve the benefit of the doubt?

I think not.

[Click on the blog title to read an article about malnutrition in Iraq since the US invasion.]

Spell Check Faux Pas or Freudian Slip

Today's amusing (?) clip from Sunday's Washington Post (p. A05):

Words Fail Us

"We think of the patient hope of men and women across the centuries who listened to the words of the profits and lived in joyful expectation."

-- A White House transcript of President Bush's speech at the Christmas tree lighting on Thursday. Nineteen minutes later, a corrected transcript changed "profits" to "prophets."


I rest my case. Merry Christmas!

The Pentagon Report Tells of US Failure in Iraq

Well, it can't be much clearer than this when our own pentagon releases a report saying that the US has been a failure in Iraq. In a huge mea culpa, the Defense Science Board admits that

• the war on terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq have increased support for al-Qaeda
• made ordinary Muslims hate the US
• caused a global backlash against America because of the "self-serving hypocrisy" of George W. Bush's administration over the Middle east.

Yet George W. Bush goes right on as if everything is coming up roses. He thinks he has a mandate to ruin America. He thinks we voted for him to keep on doing his deeds of destruction. When he visited Canada, he bragged that the American people support him, especially on foreign policy, and he cited the election as proof positive. I hope there are some foreigners still left who know better. I hope they realize that most Americans are against Bush and his policies. We're not all idiots.

Will we as a nation ever wake up to the real issues as presented in this Pentagon report:

• American efforts have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended.
• American direct intervention in the Muslim world has elevated the stature of, and support for, radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the US to single digits.
• Muslims do not hate our freedoms. They hate our policies.
• Muslims object to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights.
• Muslims object to our long-standing, even increasing support, for what they see as tyrannies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and the Gulf states.
• In the eyes of Muslims, the American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy, but only more chaos and suffering.
• American actions have elevated the authority of jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims.
• The US has zero credibility among Muslims.
• More than 90% of the populations of some Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia, are opposed to US policies.
• The increased mistrust of America in Europe, due to our invasion of Iraq, has weakened support for the war on terrorism and ultimately poses a threat to US national security.
• The US is perceived as arrogant, hypocritical and self-indulgent.

This is just about the worst case scenario, wouldn't you agree? Bush swaggering around everywhere, basking in this fantasy world he lives in. I don't think there is anything that can be done about him now. Nothing. That is what makes me so furious about the people who voted for him AND, of course, the election fraud which gave him a second term. The fraud is the worst pill to swallow. Oh, we'll count as many votes as possible, given that the electronic voting machines are not auditable. But this exercise, though important and essential, will not reverse the results.

I guess things haven't gotten bad enough for many Americans. Only then will we be able to come together and really insist on saving our democracy. Until then we are relegated to enduring the decline of everything we have accomplished in the last 50 years. I know for a fact that I am not the only one who is outraged, but I wonder why more people are not outraged. We need more outrage.

Well, of course, we will not give up. We will keep on protesting and being more and more vigilant. I know I wasn't paying enough attention until Bush was selected. So we're getting better and better at paying attention. And we are now a lot less naive, a lot less trusting. All that is good. We'll keep getting better at strategy, and we'll never again sit back and assume our government has our best interests at heart. What a joke!

The Pentagon report had an attachment, a document from Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defense secretary. It says:

Our military expeditions to Afghanistan and Iraq are unlikely to be the last such excursion in the global war on terrorism.

Well, we can't say we weren't warned.

[Click on the blog title to read the complete article by Neal Mackay for The Sunday Herald 12/05/2004.]

[To read the entire report of the Defense Science Board September 2004, click here: http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/2004-09-Strategic_Communication.pdf. The file is 111 pages.]

I'm with Helen

Suffice it to say, I am with Helen Thomas. The US should leave Iraq ASAP. This nonsense that we must stay to protect the Iraqis against chaos is not good thinking. We kill and kill and kill. Why? To help the Iraqi people? We used the same rationale in Vietnam. It was a disaster.

Read Helen's article here: http://www.thebostonchannel.com/helenthomas/3970162/detail.html

I know that Bush will never do it, but that's what we should do. I can't think of anything Bush has done or will do that is the right thing anyway. It is going to be an excruciating four years. I dread it.