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4 Jul 2008
http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=2049
Okay– besides being a master link you should keep, Michael Jackson’s radio Show…[ and NO its not the child perv]… watch this meeting regarding contract fraud and waste!!!! I don’t really even want to know the cost of all the contract abuse and waste etc from Bushes war! Dangerous, costly… and who was supposed to oversight this crap?!!! … and they are all still in office because of???? PLEEEEEEEEEZE! My angry mind is exploding. The world has gone far too mad for me right now. Anyway– HAPPY 4th of JULY!
8 Jun 2008
Each generations war gets worse on the soldiers! What the hell are we doing folks!! What the hell are we doing ? OMG- what are we allowing to happen !! I don't think medication alone is going to fix this hell for these folks.
Love Letters Just Aren’t The Same http://www.theonion.com/content/news/repor...etters_from_u_s  WASHINGTON—According to a Pentagon report leaked to the press Monday, love letters written by U.S. troops have nearly tripled in their use of disturbing language, graphic imagery, and horrific themes since the start of the war. The report, which studied 600 romantic notes sent over a period of two years, found a significant increase in terrifying descriptions of violence and gore, while references to beautiful flowers, singing bluebirds, and the infinite, undulating sea were seen to decrease by 93 percent. “Not only are U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq less likely to compare their lover’s cheeks to a blushing red rose,” the report read in part, “but most are now three times more likely to equate that same burning desire to the ’smoldering flesh of a dead Iraqi insurgent,’ and almost 10 times more likely to compare sudden bursts of passion to a ‘crowded marketplace explosion.’” According to detailed analysis of the letters, the longer a U.S. soldier had been stationed in Iraq the more macabre the overall tone of his correspondence became. Troops who had been fighting for less than a year lapsed into frightening allegory only 15 percent of the time, while those who had been serving between two and three years described their affection for loved ones back home as more vibrant and alive than any of the children in the village of Basra. Troops stationed in Iraq for four years or longer composed their letters entirely in blood. “The more often U.S. soldiers are confronted with images of carnage, the more these elements become present in their subconscious and, ultimately, in their writing,” said Dr. Kendra Allen, a behavioral psychologist who reviewed the Pentagon’s findings. “This is precisely why we see so many passages like, ‘Darling, I miss the way your bright green eyes always stayed inside your skull’ and ‘Honey, how I dream of your soft, supple arms—both of them, still attached as ever, to the rest of your body.’” Allen went on to say that many of the harrowing details found in the love letters were linked to specific events in Iraq. A bloody clash with Islamic extremists in late March resulted in more than 40 handwritten notes from a single battalion, all of which contained some version of the message “My love for you spills out of me like my lower intestine, my gallbladder, and my spleen.” The most noticeable change came after a violent border skirmish in May that left four U.S. soldiers dead and dozens more severely injured. Since the incident, a number of letters, which had previously signed off with “Yours forever,” instead ended with “Please God, deliver me from this nightmarish hellhole! The screaming—it never stops! Christ, I beg you, make it all go away! Make the parade of blood and pain and tears go away!” A number of wives and fiancées of servicemen in Iraq, many of whom are now unsure how to reply to their partners abroad, provided personal accounts of how the tone of their correspondence has changed. “Getting love letters from my husband used to be my favorite part of the week. But these days, they’re almost impossible to get through,” said Sheila Miller, whose husband, Michael, has been in Iraq since 2004. “Yes, it’s still flattering to be told that you’re as beautiful as a syringe full of morphine, or that you’re as much a part of his being as the shrapnel near his spine. But I’m really starting to worry about him.” “My husband has never really been the romantic type, but even this is strange for him,” said Margaret Baker, the wife of Sgt. Daniel Baker. “How am I supposed to react to hearing that my name is the sweetest sound in a world otherwise filled with desperate cries of anguish? I made the mistake of showing [daughter] Gracie the birthday card her father sent her from Tikrit and she hasn’t spoken for a month.” In response to the damaging report, Defense Secretary Robert Gates spoke on behalf of the thousands of soldiers on active duty in the Middle East, saying the study’s findings were “misrepresented” and any rise in horrific metaphors and similes was in no way related to the situation in Iraq. “I’ve been to our bases overseas and let me be the first to tell you that conditions in Iraq are the best they’ve ever been,” Gates announced at a press conference Friday. “In fact, I would go so far as to say that we’re making as much progress here as, say, an army private who accidentally falls on a land mine, and instead of choosing to die in the middle of the road like some dog, drags his bleeding trunk—inch by throbbing inch—to the side of a nearby ditch.” Added Gates, “It’s that good.”[color="#FF0000"][/color]
4 Jun 2008
Declaration of Independence Presented at the “Building a New World” Conference May 22, 2008 When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, a decent respect for the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that the entirety of humanity, the entire creation, constitutes one family in which no individual has been given the right to hoard wealth while the remainder of the family dies for lack of a handful of grain; in which no individual has been given the right to mass murder, in the name of perverse patriotism, for a small piece of this planet; in which no individual has been given the right to exterminate countless animal and plant species in the pursuit of profit. Rather, we affirm our commitment to fulfill our responsibility to every member of our family as part of our human family values. We further hold that all human beings are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable political and human rights – among them the right to free speech, free assembly, free press, free worship, trial by jury, and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. These are our most fundamental rights to life and liberty. We assert that as all human beings are created equal, there can be only one chosen people, and that is the entire human and ecological family. No member of this family can be considered an outcast, heathen, foreigner or exploitable natural resource. We further hold that all human beings are endowed with the inalienable right to be provided with the five basic necessities of life – including food, clothes, housing, free health care and free education. Fundamental morality demands that no human being be denied these five basic necessities of life. We further hold that all human beings are endowed with certain inalienable economic rights – among them the right to adequate purchasing power. These are our rights to economic security and economic independence – an absolute necessity in the pursuit of happiness. Inalienable economic rights include the right to a useful and remunerative job; the right to earn enough to provide adequate food, shelter, and clothing; the right of every farmer to raise and sell his produce at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; the right of every person to join a business cooperative in their locality; and the right to full protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among people, with those governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government. Prudence will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; experience has also shown that human beings are more disposed to suffer, so long as oppression is sufferable, than to abolish the systems to which they are accustomed and which are the source of their oppression. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same goal, evinces a design to reduce the people under them to absolute despotism, it is the right of the people, it is their duty, to throw off such a government, and to bring strict moralists and lovers of humanity to positions of leadership for the welfare of all. The history of the American Presidency has been one of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having as its direct object absolute tyranny over the common people. It is an unholy fusion of corporations, governments and organized crime networks. To prove this, let the Facts be submitted to the oppressed American people. — The American Presidency is the single most dangerous institution in the world. The President has the power to murder, and obliterate by bombing, anyone, anytime, anywhere. The President is bound by no laws, domestic or international. To speak of obliterating other nations is to be a global tyrant. We are no longer a nation and planet of laws – we are at the mercy and whim of Presidential tyrants, for whom constitutions and the rights enshrined therein are mere pieces of paper. This cannot be reformed or controlled by the electoral process. — The Government has adopted a policy of serial, imperialist wars, for the sole goal of profit for members of the military-industrial complex. The cry of “terrorism” is a hoax and a fraud to hoodwink the people of America and the world. The US Government has long supported terrorists who are allies of the Empire. The government lures the people to fight its brutal and bloody wars and calls it patriotism. While committing such crimes against humanity, they propose to be our moral instructors. — The American president is now the Torturer-in-chief, who presides over a vast network of illegal torture prisons in the US and around the world, all the while piously presiding over prayer breakfasts. — The Government promotes covert military actions that include illegal drug trafficking, illegal weapons trade and assassinations. It maintains nearly 700 military bases in other countries, often against the wishes of the population. — The Government uses depleted uranium, napalm, phosphorous and laser weapons in direct violation of international law, hence relegating itself to the status of a renegade country, and rendering its leaders open to war crimes trials. — The President repeatedly subverts legislation with signing statements and uses presidential orders to override constitutional rights. It has built more than 600 new prison camps in the U.S. in order to imprison people who might be regarded as enemies of the Government. — The Government has willingly allowed itself to be infiltrated and criminalized by corporate and elite regimes that now direct all branches of government to serve purposes wholly contrary to the true and proper purpose of government. — The Government promotes economic profit over humanity by failing to punish corporations that participate in sweatshop slavery, agricultural slavery and sex trafficking in America and around the world. It engages in economic wars to destabilize nations that resist corporate takeover. Millions have died due to US economic terrorism and genocide. — The Government has carried out a campaign of heightened racism, evidenced by ruthless police brutality directed at minorities and the poor. It keeps inner cities in conditions of acute poverty, passes laws designed to incarcerate generations of African-American youth, whom corporations then exploit inside prisons. On their release, they are denied the right to vote, to be educated and to return to their families. They are forced back into a life of crime, and ultimately, back into prison. — The Government has turned over control of United States currency to private individuals, operating through the Federal Reserve, who manipulate it for their own personal gain rather than for the benefit of the world. — The Government supports corporate financial strangulation of the American masses who labor in poverty, often forced to work at two or more jobs and working up to 80 hours per week, only to profit those who do no labor. Furthermore it supports a judicial system that passes laws which serve to keep the working class perpetually chained in poverty, neglect, vice, disease and soon starvation. — The Government has made the word “democracy,” for which our ancestors fought and died, into a mockery, by giving corporations control over our legislators. Through this control, speculators have freed themselves from all regulatory controls and have made immense fortunes while bringing the global economy to its knees. It has blocked state governments from prosecuting criminals responsible for the current economic crisis and coming Great Depression. Instead, the Presidency has financed the survival of these corrupt financial institutions with the money of the American people. If a hungry man robs a store, he is jailed as a criminal, but if a financial executive robs millions of people of millions of dollars, he is bailed out by the Government and his debts are paid by the American public. This is the morality of our plutocracy. Those criminals who made money in the housing bubble now speculate on the prices of food and fuel, while people in this country face inflation and people in American economic colonies face starvation. — The Government has created a global economic order in which countless people face starvation so that a few nations can monopolize the world’s resources. Developing countries, in the process of raising their own living standards, now keep their own raw materials out of the grasp of Western countries. It is the greatest threat to the American Empire, and hence the US Pentagon, in the name of democracy and freedom, bombs those who resist. — The Government has accrued a national debt of over one trillion dollars, potentially causing untold economic suffering to future generations. — The Government forces struggling people to pay an inordinate share of the taxes, which are used to carry out the criminal activities of the Government, including wars, assassinations and domestic oppression. — The Government has promoted a medical-industrial complex that provides obscene profits to pharmaceuticals, private hospitals, doctors and insurance companies, and has silenced development of far less profitable but often far safer alternative medical treatments. Senators and congressmen who vote to deny health care to millions, while provided their own health care at taxpayer expense, are complicit in the premature death, nay murder, of thousands of American citizens. — The Government has intentionally promoted a system of education that keeps the people dumbed down rather than developing their vast intellectual potential. There is a total lack of accountability to parents and student and communities in the inner cities and a diluted accountability elsewhere. The Government has further allowed corporations and organized religions to control school curriculums. — The Government has deliberately employed deceit and violence to rob the indigenous people of America of their lands and their resources. It has deliberately sponsored puppet leaderships in these communities so that their members continue to live in conditions of abject poverty and exploitation. — The Government has promoted an unsustainable culture of waste that multiplies corporate profits while devouring natural resources and producing mountains, rivers and seas of toxic wastes. It further allows corporations to carry out unbounded torture of cows, pigs and poultry, destroy groundwater and farmlands, carry out rampant deforestation, and create dependence on pesticides and fertilizers that eviscerate economies but rake in huge profits for those corporations. — The Government colludes in the monopolization of the world’s media by a handful of corporations, which promote a culture of violence and vulgarity throughout the world. These corporations first debased American culture and now market that pseudo-American culture to the rest of the world. They encourage their minions in other countries to debase their own cultures. While criminalizing dissent, the Government allows criminal networks to globalize pornography, which promotes violence against women. — The Government, in an unholy nexus with corporations, promotes the infiltration of GM organisms into the general food chain, for the express profit of those corporations and potential endangerment to humanity. — The Government, in an unholy nexus with other governments, promotes the rise of a global police state in which every person will be monitored with cameras, ID cards, thumb prints, retina scans and microchips. Much dissent is either criminalized, suppressed or punished in any number of ways. — The Government consistently legislates in favor of a petro-based economy that multiplies corporate profits while causing ecological havoc in the form of greenhouse gases, to the point that entire humanity is threatened with the dire effects of global warming and consequent climate change. The Government has bound us to filling our gas tanks with oil laced with Iraqi blood or ethanol made from food taken from the mouths of the starving in Haiti, Egypt and the Philippines. In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by newer and greater oppressions. The American Presidency, when characterized by acts of tyranny, is unfit to rule the people. We have warned the government repeatedly regarding their flaunting of the constitution. We have reminded them repeatedly of the fundamental rights of all human beings as laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and numerous other treaties and conventions of international law. We have appealed repeatedly to their sense of justice and magnanimity, but have been met only with inhuman injustice. The government has been deaf to the call for equity and justice by millions of Americans and our brothers and sisters around the world who have suffered the most from its crimes. While our government builds concrete walls at home and abroad, we the people assert that our hearts recognize no borders, because we believe that to live is to love without limits. If we define evolution as gradual change and revolution as accelerated change, then we the people declare that the time has come for radical, accelerated change – a revolution - in America and in the world. The criminal nature of the present government leaves the moral, law-abiding citizens no alternative. The network of global tyranny mandates that the multitudes of humanity must unitedly resist and remove the dictatorship of multinational corporations and the governments they own. We start this process today by facing the corporate government of America with this Declaration of Independence. We, therefore, the people of the United States of America, having the sanctity of all life as the basis for our intentions, do, in the name and authority of fundamental human decency and dignity, declare that we the people are absolved from all allegiance to the present government, as well as to any future government that continues to deny the people their political and economic rights; that all political connection between the government and the people is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as interdependent states, we will endeavor to promote economically sovereign and sustainable bioregions. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
4 Jun 2008
Having worked in the field prior… I can not even begin to understand who decided to build/house this population next to a gun range!! How inhumane!!!!! Now having to up meds and extend treatment… my God, what are we doing with our soldiers??!!!! We owe these young people… we allowed them to go into hells own war following a lie… and then to not treat them correctly and properly is unforgiveable!
By Ann Scott Tyson Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, June 3, 2008; Page A01 FORT BENNING, Ga. — Army Sgt. Jonathan Strickland sits in his room at noon with the blinds drawn, seeking the sleep that has eluded him since he was knocked out by the blast of a Baghdad car bomb. Like many of the wounded soldiers living in the newly built “warrior transition” barracks here, the soft-spoken 25-year-old suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. But even as Strickland and his comrades struggle with nightmares, anxiety and flashbacks from their wartime experiences, the sounds of gunfire have followed them here, just outside their windows. Across the street from their assigned housing, about 200 yards away, are some of the Army infantry’s main firing ranges, and day and night, several days each week, barrages from rifles and machine guns echo around Strickland’s building. The noise makes the wounded cringe, startle in their formations, and stay awake and on edge, according to several soldiers interviewed at the barracks last month. The gunfire recently sent one soldier to the emergency room with an anxiety attack, they said. “You hear a lot of shots, it puts you in a defensive mode,” said Strickland, who spent a year with an infantry platoon in Baghdad and has since received a diagnosis of PTSD from the military. He now takes medicine for anxiety and insomnia. “My heart starts racing and I get all excited and irritable,” he said, adding that the adrenaline surge “puts me back in that mind frame that I am actually there.” Soldiers interviewed said complaints to medical personnel at Fort Benning’s Martin Army Community Hospital and officers in their chain of command have brought no relief, prompting one soldier’s father to contact The Washington Post. Fort Benning officials said that they were unaware of specific complaints but that decisions about housing and treatment for soldiers with PTSD depend on the severity of each case. They said day and night training must continue as new soldiers arrive and the Army grows. “Fort Benning is a training unit, so there is gunfire around us all the time,” said Elaine Kelley, a behavioral health supervisor at the base hospital. If a soldier had a severe problem, it would have been identified, she said. Lt. Col. Sean Mulcahey, who recently took command of the Warrior Transition Battalion, where wounded soldiers are assigned, said: “No soldier has talked with me about the ranges.” If it is an issue, “we will address it,” he said, stressing that the battalion’s mission is “getting those soldiers to heal.” Under Army rules, commanders of warrior transition units are supposed to enforce “quiet hours.” Officials said the location of the barracks for wounded soldiers, along with a $1.2 million Soldier and Family Assistance Center, was chosen for its proximity to central facilities such as the hospital. About 350 soldiers are assigned to the battalion — including 176 who live in the barracks near the ranges — where they stay an average of eight months, Mulcahey said. An estimated 10 to 15 percent of the soldiers have PTSD, he said. The soldiers are part of a growing group of an estimated 150,000 combat veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have PTSD symptoms. The mental disorder has been diagnosed in nearly 40,000 of them. PTSD symptoms include flashbacks and anxiety, and noises such as fireworks or a car backfiring can make sufferers feel as though they are back in combat. Health experts say that housing soldiers near a firing range subjects them to a continual trigger for PTSD. “It would definitely traumatize them,” said Harold McRae, a psychotherapist in Columbus, Ga., who counsels dozens of soldiers with PTSD who are at Fort Benning. “It would be like you having a major car wreck on the interstate” and then living in a home overlooking the freeway, he said. “Every time you hear a wreck or the brakes lock up, you are traumatized.” Fort Benning, which covers more than 180,000 acres, is one of the Army’s main training bases, with 67 live-fire ranges. The base has thousands of housing and barracks units. “There is no excuse” for the housing situation, said Paul Ragan, an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, who treats veterans with PTSD. “Charitably put, it’s very untherapeutic.” Brig. Gen. Gary Cheek, director of the Army’s Warrior Care and Transition Office, which oversees 12,000 wounded soldiers, said: “I can see how that would be a problem. It’s something we haven’t considered” but should. “We have alternatives for housing the soldiers who have issues” with the ranges, he said, adding that the barracks for wounded troops at Fort Benning are an interim facility. The gunfire “makes me crazy,” said a soldier who lives in the barracks and has PTSD and traumatic brain injury from a roadside explosion in Iraq. “It makes me jump and I get flashbacks.” He spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the Army. Soldiers living at the barracks say their rooms are in good condition and have recently been outfitted with flat-screen TVs, laptop computers and free Internet service. They say that their rooms are inspected frequently for cleanliness and that even soap scum on a sink or sunflower seeds left on a counter are noted in records. But the soldiers said they have received no explanation for why they must live so close to the firing ranges, even though they said at least one soldier raised the question at a town hall meeting with battalion leaders several weeks ago. “It . . . freaks me out,” said Sgt. Jonathon Redding, 27, of Little Rock. He said the gunfire has required him to increase his sleep medication. “I was under the impression I would get help here,” he said. Instead, he said, he “got considerably worse.” It Just Kind of Drains You’ Rolling through Iraqi towns with his artillery unit during the 2003 invasion, Redding saw and smelled the charred corpses of Iraqis he helped kill. “You can never forget that,” he said, sitting in his room at Fort Benning last month. When he returned home in August 2003, the Army did not screen him for behavioral health problems, he said. Redding began “self-medicating” — which is common for PTSD sufferers — drinking several fifths of Southern Comfort a week. His weight dropped 30 pounds, to 135, in two months, and he grew withdrawn, sleepless and depressed. According to Pentagon data, up to 15 percent of returning U.S. troops now show signs of PTSD, and the total number who receive diagnoses of chronic PTSD rose by nearly 50 percent last year. Redding went home and joined the Arkansas National Guard. With help from a civilian doctor who gave him medicine for insomnia and anxiety, he limited his drinking and took a part-time job carrying caskets at the funerals of fallen soldiers. “I did about 90 funerals, I loved it,” he said. But Redding was informed in September that he would be mobilized with a military police unit bound for Iraq. At Camp Shelby, Miss., where he went for training in January, gunfire and artillery practice caused him to “freeze up,” he said. He asked his civilian doctor for a prescription, but the company medic told him it was for a “non-deployable” medication, so if he was planning to deploy, his family would have to fill it and mail it to him — skirting the rules. Redding took the prescription through proper channels and was sent to a behavioral health expert, who determined he had PTSD and depression. The expert advised that he not deploy and that he go to a community health organization at home in Arkansas. Instead, in February, Redding was sent to Fort Benning, where he awaits orders to leave. “I went from a bad situation to a worse situation,” he said. “In formations, they would be shooting and I would just be cringing. . . . I’d want to see where it’s coming from.” Redding complained to his doctor about his housing. “She said it didn’t make any sense,” he said. He said his psychologist at the base hospital called the location “stupid.” His chain of command said they would “look into it,” he said. But he still waits for relief from the constant gunfire. “It just kind of drains you,” he said. ‘Near-Constant Fear’ The 29-year-old Army specialist palmed the wheel of his 2003 Cadillac on the way to his psychotherapy appointment in downtown Columbus, just outside Fort Benning. He reached into the leather armrest, filled with bottles of prescription medicine: tranquilizers, antidepressants, pills to calm anxiety. He popped a couple of tablets in his mouth and turned into the clinic parking lot. Spec. Keith, who spoke on the condition that only his first name be used in order to protect his privacy, has what he calls “daymares” — flashbacks caused by chronic PTSD that has left him paranoid. “Anytime I see a U-Haul truck pull up, in my mind I think it might be a car bomb,” he said. Last July, Keith was nearly killed in Iraq when insurgents fired 107mm rockets, hitting his tent. Shrapnel shredded his uniform, narrowly missing him. He soon began suffering headaches, dizziness and nausea. Doctors told him his ailments would go away, but they “only got worse,” he said. In November, he arrived at Fort Benning, where the live ammunition reminds him of the attack. “I have a hard time sleeping at night when they do night firing,” Keith said. “For a moment I think something bad is going to happen, then I try to sit back and realize that it is a firing range.” Keith lives in “near-constant fear of being shot or killed,” said an Army evaluation written by a doctor at Fort Benning in April. Two weeks ago, the Army released him, so he loaded his car, pills close at hand, and drove away. Strickland, who says he is lucky if he can get four hours of sleep a night, said the sounds from the firing ranges return him to the sweltering August night in Baghdad when the bomb threw him to the ground. He came home from Iraq in March 2005 and PTSD was diagnosed. But when his unit was called up to serve in Iraq late last year, his superiors encouraged him to go. The “commander told me if I got back on the deployable list, I’d get my promotion,” said Strickland, whose wife is expecting their second child. “I was trying to look after my family and get more pay.” He was ultimately pulled from the deployment and sent to Fort Benning, where he awaits paperwork to allow him to return to Arkansas. In the meantime, he looks out the window of his third-floor room onto firing ranges where recruits blast at targets. “We’ve been there, we’ve fought in it, we’ve lost friends there,” Strickland said, his mind in a distant war zone. “I’m not going to get any better in this environment.”
7 May 2008
The Power of an American Tradition: The Assassination
I came of age in the 60's and early 70's, as turbulent an era as any in recent memory. There were wars, nuclear crises, race riots, political polarization, cultural conflicts, generational gaps, the explosion of drug use, left wing radical terrorists, yippies, hippies, antiwar protests, the Kent State shootings, and the exposure of high crimes and misdemeanors by a standing President who was forced to resign in the face of impending impeachment proceedings. Yet nothing hit home more than the rash of political assassinations and assassination attempts that marked that era. I was 13 years old when John F. Kennedy was killed, either by the incredible marksmanship of a disturbed loner , ex-Marine and Soviet sympathizer, or by the collective efforts of unknown conspirators. It didn't really matter at the time to me. I was too young to be aware of the possibility that Oswald had not acted alone… or not acted at all. Kennedy was the first President of whom I have a clear memory. He was young, attractive, and even to my youthful ears a powerful orator. He exuded charisma every time you saw him on television. His loss was inexplicable, deeply disturbing and has haunted me throughout my life. Just as everyone remembers where they were when the towers were attacked, so too when JFK was killed. JFK had been my hero, especially after he had resolved the Cuban missile crisis peacefully, and to my young mind literally saved my life and the lives of my family. I still remember standing in line for hours in the cold merely to walk past his recently dug gravesite at Arlington cemetery with it temporary eternal flame amid the upturned sod. Ever since that day I have distrusted the “tradition” teachings of the goodness and greatness of America. Yet, perhaps I would have recovered my initial belief and faith in America's greatness if that assassination had not been followed by a flood of others. Malcolm X in 1965. And then that terrible year of 1968 when Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down in Memphis on April 4, 1968, only to be followed two months later by the assassination of Bobby Kennedy the night he won California's primary on June 5, 1968. To say that these horrific events, one right after the other, caused me to experience deeply surreal and absurd sense of reality would be to understate the impact they had on me. I may have been young, but already I admired both men tremendously for their courage and their passion. Yet within a short time two of the greatest voices for a progressive and liberal causes, for the very dignity of every human life, were snuffed out. The result was predictable. The left lost its bearings, some degenerating into the violence of groups like the Weatherman, the SLA and others, while many simply gave up on party politics altogether. Nixon ran against LBJ's designated successor, and the rest is they say, history. The greatest dreams of a generation were extinguished, and both the Republican and Democratic parties began their slow march toward domination by the big money interests of multinational corporations, and the abandonment of populist causes. Even the failed assassination of George Wallace in 1972 can be seen in this light. Wallace, despite all his bigotry, was still at heart a southern populist, and more importantly, the biggest obstacle to a clear sweep of the South by Nixon in his 1972 re-election campaign. There could have been no successful Republican southern strategy if Nixon had had to contend with the regional third party candidacy of George Wallace, which would have siphoned off numerous votes in the Southern states. So, in a very broad sense, all of those assassinations changed this country forever, and for the worse. The gains made under FDR and Truman for ordinary Americans came to a standstill, and many of them have since been reversed and even eliminated. The idealism and progressive principles epitomized by JFK, RFK and MLK during the sixties gave way to the disenchantment, cynicism and economic malaise of the seventies. This in turn allowed the rise of the conservative movement, fueled by wealthy ideologues and corporate interests and energized with the fanatical followers of a revitalized and profoundly intolerant religious extremism. The last 25 +plus years of crimes, political polarization and misrule by the republican administrations of Reagan, Bush the elder and his idiot son, aided and abetted by Republicans in Congress and their allies in the new right wing media infrastructure that has been contracted to mislead and misinform the American public about their multiple lies and failures is the direct result of the murders of our greatest liberal and progressive leaders. But I am not writing this now merely to mourn the tragedies of a bygone era when hope and dreams of real change seemed capable of realization, and a true transformation of this country into a land "of the people, by the people and for the people" seemed truly within our grasp. No, this retrospective look at an earlier time of political tumult has, in my view, a great deal of relevance to our own era, and particularly to the political situation in which we currently find ourselves. True, the differences are great, but the similarities are even greater. Both involved political and cultural infighting of a particularly virulent nature. Both eras are faced with an unpopular foreign war and an equally unpopular President whose policies, both foreign and domestic have been failures. Indeed, the case can be made that the failures of the Bush administration vastly outweigh the failures by LBJ, who at least saw the enactment of civil rights laws that ended what was essentially apartheid in the South, enfranchised African Americans and other minorities and extended to them the legal protections that white Americans had long reserved for themselves. What both eras share most of all is a great divide between a truly people powered politics and the politics of powerful conservative interests among the corporate, religious, military and media elites. The people powered politics of the sixties was tied to antiwar candidates like Eugene McCarthy, civil rights leaders like Martin Luther king Jr. and the charisma and idealism of Robert Kennedy. And when Kennedy and King were killed, the heart and soul of that movement was torn apart and left bleeding on the terrace and in the cramped hotel hallway were they fell. And this is what makes it so dangerous for those political figures who dare to appear different, or to suggest that the traditional answers, solutions and wisdom we have had spoon-fed to us by the establishment figures in both parties and the media are dead wrong, and that new approaches are needed if we are to have any hope of salvaging our democracy and even our world. For make no mistake, the problems we face at the dawn of the 21st Century are even greater than those faced by the "Greatest Generation" or by the leaders who led us through the terrors and vicissitudes of the Cold War. Global warming, Peak Oil, the current health care disaster, the debt bomb, the coming water crisis, nuclear proliferation, the threat of religious fundamentalism, the rise of conflicts among the great powers, both economic and military, and a possible economic collapse of the world economy are the stuff of nightmares for those whose job it is to objectively assess present conditions and trends in America and around the world. Yet, the established political powers, the corporatists, the free market ideologues of the international banking system, the leaders of the major religions -- none of them -- are willing to face these issues with anything but their own failed and outdated theories, ideas and well worn assumptions and talking points. Whether blinded by ideology, greed or mere stubborn, inflexible stupidity, they will continue to refuse to recognize that we must change our politics and the way our democracy operates, and change soon, before it is too late. Up to now, these elites have been able to sabotage any political leader who championed different viewpoints than their own, or whose appeal was broad based and not founded upon traditional sources of campaign funding, toadying to lobbyists and the advice of established and backward looking consultants. Think of the manner in which Howard Dean was taken down by the media in 2004 as the classic example. But I fear the time when the media and it's beltway pundit class of sheepish shills can make or break a candidate, or turn the tide of an election, is on the wane. Try as they did, the media elites were unable to prevent the Democratic tsunami in 2006, even though they have done their best to downplay its significance. No, to quote Bob Dylan, the times, they are a changin' and much like the late sixties people are looking for new ways to participate in the political process and for new leaders who will promote those interests. Leaders who will courageously and unabashedly stand up for principles that can unite, rather than divide Americans, one from another based on class, religion or race. leaders who will unashamedly promote a progressive agenda that people come first: before wealth, before the profits of corporations who depend on overcharging us for weapons systems we don't need and medicines that the citizens of other countries receive at less than a third the cost, before the demands of hypocritical religious moralists whose culture of life is nothing more than a narrow and cynical manipulation of their own faith's precepts, before the failed ideologies of free market economists whose abstract theories have proven disastrous when applied to real world situations, and before the interests of politicians whose loyalty is to anyone but the people they are supposed to represent. So what does that leave them with, if they cannot upend the these new leaders. I fear it sets the stage for a return for that time honored tradition of American politics: the assassination of political opponents. Lincoln fell victim to an embittered supporter of an immoral "cause." Roosevelt was almost killed by an assassin in Chicago, and was the object of a coup attempt proposed by some of the largest industrialists and right wing fascist sympathizers of his time. The rumors about who was behind JFK's assassination are rampant, but hardly anyone accepts that Oswald, an itinerant bookseller, communist pamphleteer and Castro supporter acted alone.; if at all. A white racist, whether acting alone or with help, gunned down Martin Luther King Jr. And who really believes that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy al by his lonesome. It is not that far fetched to imagine that groups of individuals or ’lone wolves’ inspired by vicious and violent rants by the likes of Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and other rapid right wing attack dogs might take the elimination of popular progressive and Democratic politicians into their own hands. There are any number of potential victims. Al Gore comes to mind, for his principled and determined stance on the threat of global warming. The hatred that many on the right have for Hillary Clinton and her husband is well known, and even with the protection by the secret service details provided to them, attempts to murder one or the other by some fanatic misogynist or religious nutcase isn't that far fetched. If John Edwards campaign took flight, his populism could become the basis for anger and assassination plots by those fearful of his growing national prominence. And then there is Barack Obama. It doesn't really matter that his views are less progressive and liberal than are often portrayed in the media. What matters is that he is a Democrat, a black man, and a charismatic politician who may become the first junior senator since JFK to receive the Democratic nomination. The numbers of racists and white supremacists out there who would be more than willing to place them in their gun sights can probably be numbered in the thousands, and with him running for President on the campaign trail they will have numerous opportunities to execute those violent fantasies. I don’t mean to be a prognosticator here, or suggest that such violent and politically motivated crimes are the likely result of current trends. But neither can I ignore that possibility. All one has to do is study your history folks-- open your eyes to get a good idea of how ingrained are right wing fantasies of murdering political adversaries and others despised groups-- much less the killing of the “people of proof” ie: Marilyn Monroe… Deborah Pelfrey-- and countless others that just disappeared, drowned, were shot… run over… etc etc Al for various reasons.. Maybe even just because they tarnished the self made images of those power whores in office and their sad ‘suicides’ become the end result in ’hiding the shattered image’ If Robert Kennedy had run against Nixon in 1968, I believe Nixon would have lost, and lost badly, and the course of our subsequent history would have been effected in ways that we cannot begin to imagine. We are at the cusp of another such momentous Presidential election, between a Republican candidate, like McCain, who will likely continue the failed domestic and foreign policies of the Bush administration, or a Democratic candidate who will propose a dramatic return to the progressive politics of FDR, JFK and RFK. Let’s hope that this time our generation’s RFK, whomever she or he may prove to be, gets that opportunity without first being forever silenced by an assassin's bullet. |
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| Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 30th August 2008 - 05:58 AM |
4 Jun 2008 - 8:38
