Voices of Reason!

[SpiritMan]

Don't Punish the Palestinians
     By Jimmy Carter
     The Washington Post

    Monday 20 February 2006

    As the results of the recent Palestinian elections are implemented, it's important to understand how the transition process works and also how important to it are actions by Israel and the United States.

    Although Hamas won 74 of the 132 parliamentary seats, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas retains the right to propose and veto legislation, with 88 votes required to override his veto. With nine of its elected members remaining in prison, Hamas has only 65 votes, plus whatever third-party support it can attract. Abbas also has the power to select and remove the prime minister, to issue decrees with the force of law when parliament is not in session, and to declare a state of emergency. As commander in chief, he also retains ultimate influence over the National Security Force and Palestinian intelligence.

    After the first session of the new legislature, which was Saturday, the members will elect a speaker, two deputies and a secretary. These legislative officials are not permitted to hold any position in the executive branch, so top Hamas leaders may choose to concentrate their influence in the parliament and propose moderates or technocrats for prime minister and cabinet posts. Three weeks are allotted for the prime minister to form the cabinet, and a majority vote of the parliament is required for final approval.

    The role of the prime minister was greatly strengthened while Abbas and Ahmed Qureia served in that position under Yasser Arafat, and Abbas has announced that he will not choose a prime minister who does not recognize Israel or adhere to the basic principles of the "road map." This could result in a stalemated process, but my conversations with representatives of both sides indicate that they wish to avoid such an imbroglio. The spokesman for Hamas claimed, "We want a peaceful unity government." If this is a truthful statement, it needs to be given a chance.

    During this time of fluidity in the formation of the new government, it is important that Israel and the United States play positive roles. Any tacit or formal collusion between the two powers to disrupt the process by punishing the Palestinian people could be counterproductive and have devastating consequences.

    Unfortunately, these steps are already underway and are well known throughout the Palestinian territories and the world. Israel moved yesterday to withhold funds (about $50 million per month) that the Palestinians earn from customs and tax revenue. Perhaps a greater aggravation by the Israelis is their decision to hinder movement of elected Hamas Palestinian Legislative Council members through any of more than a hundred Israeli checkpoints around and throughout the Palestinian territories. This will present significant obstacles to a government's functioning effectively. Abbas informed me after the election that the Palestinian Authority was $900 million in debt and that he would be unable to meet payrolls during February. Knowing that Hamas would inherit a bankrupt government, U.S. officials have announced that all funding for the new government will be withheld, including what is needed to pay salaries for schoolteachers, nurses, social workers, police and maintenance personnel. So far they have not agreed to bypass the Hamas-led government and let humanitarian funds be channeled to Palestinians through United Nations agencies responsible for refugees, health and other human services.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022106Z.shtml

[Curt]

  It's good to know the old statesman is stiil working hard - he got a pretty bad rap when he was in office but he is a true peace maker.

[pesoto74]

I thought this might fit best here.

Metro Times: Let's start with the Danish cartoons that have been at the forefront of the news recently. Is there something that Americans don't get about this issue?

Juan Cole: One way to explain to Americans the fervor aroused by the caricatures — and it's not right to call them cartoons, they are caricatures — is to think about it as a form of racism. In Western societies, taking away the ability of the church to suppress things was considered good and a cornerstone of our First Amendment rights and so forth. If you look at this as a matter of religious people demanding that people not say things, then, of course, one's first instinct is to side with the caricaturists. And, certainly, as a general principle, people should be free to express themselves on religious issues.

But if one looked upon it as a matter of racism, I think the American public could understand it better. If someone did a caricature of Martin Luther King as Steppin' Fetchit, do you really think that would pass without remark, that the cartoonist, that the editor, that the newspaper would face no public reprisals whatsoever?

Actually these caricatures were racist. There is a long tradition in modern Europe of thinking of Semites, which is how it was put, that they're irrational, violent people; that Aryans are calm, that they're the master race. We now think of that almost as though its a joke; it's in Mel Brooks' The Producers as a joke. It was taken very seriously in Europe.

When you make a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad, and you show him with a large hooked nose, when you show him with a bomb in his turban, this is not something invented yesterday. These tropes of the violent, irrational, religious Semite go back to the 19th century, and they were implicated in the Holocaust as they were applied to European Jews, and as they were applied to the Arab world, which was mostly colonized by European powers. They were implicated in the actual massacres of people. The Algerians tried to get out from under French rule; something like a million of them were killed in the late '50s and early '60s by the French colonial apparatus. Americans typically don't study a lot of modern history outside that of the United States, and so they're not sensitive to what over 130 years of French colonialism in Algeria signifies to the Arab world.
http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=8917

[SpiritMan]

 Equality, or Not
    By David Bacon
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Friday 03 March 2006

    Oakland, California - Equality has become an unmentionable word in Congress. It doesn't come even once in the 300-page omnibus immigration bill introduced last week by Senator Arlen Specter, nor in any of the others Congress is considering. They all deny equality to millions of people. In the testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which Specter chairs, no one even dares to advocate it.

    Is this what we stand for?

    The assumption that reinforcing social inequality is a good idea defines the basic difference in direction between those in Washington, like Specter, urging new immigration restrictions, and those who want to stop them.

    Sheila Jackson Lee, Houston's African American Congresswoman, calls immigration "the civil rights struggle of our time." Immigrants crossing borders, she says, want the same thing sought by African American people trying to recover from slavery and Jim Crow -- equal rights, to really belong to the communities where they live, and economic opportunity for their families.

    Yet Congress is divided between the supposed "conservatives" who want to stop immigration and turn the undocumented into criminals, and the "liberals" who want to give employers new guest worker programs. But proposals will cause immense suffering, and benefit only a tiny elite.

    There is an alternative, in best traditions of our country - the expansion of rights for all people.

    To Linda Chavez Thompson, executive vice-president of the AFL-CIO, guest worker programs are like the old south's Jim Crow strictures. "There is absolutely no good reason," she says, "why any immigrant who comes to this country prepared to work, to pay taxes, and to abide by our laws and rules should be relegated to a repressive, second-class guest worker status."

    Specter's bill (which President Bush supports) treats migrants as people completely separate from the community surrounding them. In 1954 the Supreme Court found that such forcible separation bred inequality.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030306S.shtml

[Guardian Angel]

"Is this what we stand for?"

No, it's what Bush and his cronies stand for!..

[SpiritMan]

Twilight's Last Gleaming
     By John Cory
     t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Sunday 05 March 2006

    Who are these people? These people who line their pockets with the lives of our loved ones? These gray men who lurk in shadows and kill the sunshine of democracy? These people who wear morality like a cheap suit pilfered from the collection plate of decency? Who are these people who have turned America into their own personal ATM machine? These are the people of the lie - Republicans.

    Who are these people? These people who sit in spineless silence unable to speak in defense of America? These people who mime the words of our founders, afraid to act with independence? Who utter the words "We concede," instead of "We the People?" These are the people who lie down - Democrats.

    Newspapers no longer serve the public, only their corporate masters. They have wedged themselves firmly between the cheeks of power, a tissue to sanitize the bullshit. The media has finally achieved the ultimate self-delusion; broadcasting sitcom politics, and talking points of the throne, it has become the court jester with tinkling bells and curly pointed shoes: useless, untrustworthy, and fused in falsehoods and facades.

    This is twilight's last gleaming. Attention must be paid. Democracy is dying.

    Bush and Company wants us to be afraid. Republicans sell us fear as they sell out America.

    Democrats wait in the wings, picking up their pieces of silver to keep mum. Both political parties capitalize on all the fear.

    Democrats think we will become so fearful of Republicans that we will have no other choice but to elect them. That is their incentive. Low profile, quiet acquiescence, and they think their silence will be rewarded.

    This is not the time for silence. According to recent polls from Zogby, Fox News, Gallup and CNN, 72% of our troops believe the war in Iraq is a failure and we should withdraw. 64% of the public disapproves of Bush's handling of Iraq. 69% of Americans are against the Dubai Port deal. 52% do not find Bush "honest and trustworthy."

    And yet Democrats can find no voice, no fight, no issue to unify them to protect "we the people." Major print and media outlets can find no reason to investigate Republican scandals, bribery and lies, no reason to question an administration that started a war with a lie and failed its own citizens when Katrina hit, by lying about what they did or did not know. Katrina, like 9/11, left the boy king wide-eyed and unprepared. Leader of the free world? Most Americans think not.

    When it comes time for voting, here is what I will remember: the silence.

    If there is a voice for America, let them speak now. Let them speak for the poor women who not only will find abortion illegal, but will not be allowed birth control and contraceptives. Let them speak for the old and infirm who will not be able to have healthcare and cost-effective drug prescriptions. Let them speak for true family values of providing for our veterans and protecting our troops with proper body armor and ending a false war so no more loved ones have to die for a lie.

    But most of all, let them now speak up for the one precious gift that is America - Freedom. Freedom of speech - Freedom to dissent - Freedom from illegal domestic spying. Freedom, sweet freedom for which our fathers, brothers, and sisters have fought and died for over the past 230 years!

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030506Z.shtml

[Butterfly]

Now, this is an organization I think I could belong to:

WHO WE ARE
Mid Rivers Ethical Society is a fellowship of people of all ages committed to living an ethical life.  This commitment makes our fellowship religious in the highest sense of the word.   Our mission is to bring out the best in ourselves and others through the experience of creating caring community, developing ethical identity, and strengthening our capacity to actualize ethical ideals.

http://www.ethicallife.org/

[Tennyson]

very interesting......I have never heard of them.

[SpiritMan]

Lap Dogs of the Press
    By Helen Thomas
    The Nation

    Friday 10 March 2006

    Of all the unhappy trends I have witnessed - conservative swings on television networks, dwindling newspaper circulation, the jailing of reporters and "spin" - nothing is more troubling to me than the obsequious press during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. They lapped up everything the Pentagon and White House could dish out - no questions asked.

    Reporters and editors like to think of themselves as watchdogs for the public good. But in recent years both individual reporters and their ever-growing corporate ownership have defaulted on that role. Ted Stannard, an academic and former UPI correspondent, put it this way: "When watchdogs, bird dogs, and bull dogs morph into lap dogs, lazy dogs, or yellow dogs, the nation is in trouble."

    The naive complicity of the press and the government was never more pronounced than in the prelude to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The media became an echo chamber for White House pronouncements. One example: At President Bush's March 6, 2003, news conference, in which he made it eminently clear that the United States was going to war, one reporter pleased the "born again" Bush when she asked him if he prayed about going to war. And so it went.

    After all, two of the nation's most prestigious newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, had kept up a drumbeat for war with Iraq to bring down Dictator Saddam Hussein. They accepted almost unquestioningly the bogus evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the dubious White House rationale that proved to be so costly on a human scale, not to mention a drain on the Treasury. The Post was much more hawkish than the Times - running many editorials pumping up the need to wage war against the Iraqi dictator - but both newspapers played into the hands of the Administration.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060327/thomas

[SpiritMan]

Letter to President Bush
    By Joseph W. DuRocher
    t r u t h o u t | Letter

    Saturday 04 March 2006
Forwarded from Marni Harmony, the minister of a church in Orlando. Joe is one of her parishioners.

    President George W. Bush
    The White House
    1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
    Washington, D.C. 20500

    Dear Mr. President:

    As a young man I was honored to serve our nation as a commissioned officer and helicopter pilot in the US Navy. Before me in WWII, my father defended the country spending two years in the Pacific aboard the USS Hornet (CV-14). We were patriots sworn "to protect and defend". Today I conclude that you have dishonored our service and the Constitution and principles of our oath. My dad was buried with full military honors so I cannot act for him. But for myself, I return enclosed the symbols of my years of service: the shoulder boards of my rank and my Naval Aviator's wings.

    Until your administration, I believed it was inconceivable that the United States would ever initiate an aggressive and preemptive war against a country that posed no threat to us. Until your administration, I thought it was impossible for our nation to take hundreds of persons into custody without provable charges of any kind, and to "disappear" them into holes like Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram. Until your administration, in my wildest legal fantasy I could not imagine a US Attorney General seeking to justify torture or a President first stating his intent to veto an anti-torture law, and then adding a "signing statement" that he intends to ignore such law as he sees fit. I do not want these things done in my name.

    As a citizen, a patriot, a parent and grandparent, a lawyer and law teacher I am left with such a feeling of loss and helplessness. I think of myself as a good American and I ask myself what can I do when I see the face of evil? Illegal and immoral war, torture and confinement for life without trial have never been part of our Constitutional tradition. But my vote has become meaningless because I live in a safe district drawn by your political party. My congressman is unresponsive to my concerns because his time is filled with lobbyists' largess. Protests are limited to your "free speech zones", out of sight of the parade. Even speaking openly is to risk being labeled un-American, pro-terrorist or anti-troops. And I am a disciplined pacifist, so any violent act is out of the question.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031106A.shtml

[Butterfly]

It seems to me, if you start out by calling this Senator a "liberal Democrat", you are claiming bias right off the bat.  The president DID break the law and he should be held accountable, but I doubt that he will be.


Senator calls for censure of Bush: Domestic eavesdropping program
 
A liberal Democrat is proposing that Congress censure President George W. Bush for authorizing domestic eavesdropping.

"The president has broken the law and, in some way, he must be held accountable," said the Democrat, Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. He spoke in an interview Sunday.

A censure resolution would, in effect, simply scold the president. Such a resolution has been used just once in U.S. history - against Andrew Jackson in 1834.

Story

[SpiritMan]

Hungering for Justice at My First Congressional Testimony
    By Mike Ferner
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Tuesday 14 March 2006

    Washington - Last Wednesday evening, the House Appropriations Committee voted to throw another $67,000,000,000 at the murderous work in Iraq and Afghanistan. That night members of the committee, righteously indignant and nearly unanimous, gave President "Bring 'Em On" Bush a loud slap in the face.

    Whoa! You mean the most powerful committee in Congress voted 62-2 to stop funding our national war crimes orgy? Of course they did ... and then we all lived happily ever after.

    No, the killing will proceed as planned, with no congressional intervention, although chances are you heard absolutely zip about the 67 Billion Dollar Question, thanks to the Guardians of Reality who insured the news from that hearing was the Dubai port deal, not the unimaginable sum of our money Congress voted for war, nor the voices raised against it.

    That news must come from places like the internet site you're now reading, not the corporate press. And I'm here to tell you the story.

STORY

[SpiritMan]

Lessons of Iraq War Start With US History
     By Howard Zinn
     The Progressive

    Tuesday 14 March 2006

    On the third anniversary of President Bush's Iraq debacle, it's important to consider why the administration so easily fooled so many people into supporting the war.

    I believe there are two reasons, which go deep into our national culture.

    One is an absence of historical perspective. The other is an inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism.

    If we don't know history, then we are ready meat for carnivorous politicians and the intellectuals and journalists who supply the carving knives. But if we know some history, if we know how many times presidents have lied to us, we will not be fooled again.

    President Polk lied to the nation about the reason for going to war with Mexico in 1846. It wasn't that Mexico "shed American blood upon the American soil" but that Polk, and the slave-owning aristocracy, coveted half of Mexico.

    President McKinley lied in 1898 about the reason for invading Cuba, saying we wanted to liberate the Cubans from Spanish control, but the truth is that he really wanted Spain out of Cuba so that the island could be open to United Fruit and other American corporations. He also lied about the reasons for our war in the Philippines, claiming we only wanted to "civilize" the Filipinos, while the real reason was to own a valuable piece of real estate in the far Pacific, even if we had to kill hundreds of thousands of Filipinos to accomplish that.

    President Wilson lied about the reasons for entering the First World War, saying it was a war to "make the world safe for democracy," when it was really a war to make the world safe for the rising American power.

    President Truman lied when he said the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima because it was "a military target."

    And everyone lied about Vietnam - President Kennedy about the extent of our involvement, President Johnson about the Gulf of Tonkin and President Nixon about the secret bombing of Cambodia. They all claimed the war was to keep South Vietnam free of communism, but really wanted to keep South Vietnam as an American outpost at the edge of the Asian continent.

    President Reagan lied about the invasion of Grenada, claiming falsely that it was a threat to the United States.

    The elder Bush lied about the invasion of Panama, leading to the death of thousands of ordinary citizens in that country. And he lied again about the reason for attacking Iraq in 1991 - hardly to defend the integrity of Kuwait, rather to assert U.S. power in the oil-rich Middle East.

    There is an even bigger lie: the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0314-24.htm

[SpiritMan]

Day of Reckoning for the Current Occupant
    By Garrison Keillor
    The Chicago Tribune

    Wednesday 15 March 2006

    Spring arrived in New York last week for previews, a sunny day with chill in the air, but you could smell mud, and with a little imagination you could sort of smell grass. I put on a gray jacket, instead of black, and went to the opera and saw Verdi's "Luisa Miller," a Republican opera in which love is crushed by the perfidiousness of government. A helpful lesson for these times. I am referring to the Current Occupant.

    The Republican Revolution has gone the way of all flesh. It took over Congress and the White House, horns blew, church bells rang, sailors kissed each other, and what happened? The Republicans led us into a reckless foreign war and steered the economy toward receivership and wielded power as if there were no rules. Democrats are accused of having no new ideas, but Republicans are making some of the old ideas look awfully good, such as constitutional checks and balances, fiscal responsibility, and the notion of realism in foreign affairs and taking actions that serve the national interest. What one might call "conservatism."

    The head of the National Security Agency under President Ronald Reagan, Lt. Gen. William Odom, writes on the Web site NiemanWatchdog.org that he sees clear parallels between Vietnam and Iraq: "The difference lies in the consequences. Vietnam did not have the devastating effects on US power that Iraq is already having." He draws the parallels in three stages and says that staying the course will only make the damage to US power greater. It's a chilling analysis, and one that isn't going to come from the Democratic Party. It's starting to come from Republicans, and they are the ones who must rescue the country from themselves.

    I ran into a gray eminence from the Bush I era the other day in an airport, and he said that what most offended him about Bush II is the naked incompetence. "You may disagree with Republicans, but you always had to recognize that they knew what they were doing," he said. "I keep going back to that intelligence memo of August 2001, that said that terrorists had plans to hijack planes and crash them into buildings. The president read it, and he didn't even call a staff meeting to discuss it. That is lack of attention of a high order."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031506T.shtml

[SpiritMan]

Why I Fully Support Bush Censure
    By Tom Harkin
    Tomharkin.com

    Thursday 16 March 2006

    We have a President who likes to break things. He has broken the federal budget, running up $3 trillion in new debt. He has broken the Geneva Conventions, giving the green light to torture. He has repeatedly broken promises - and broken faith - with the American people. And now, worst of all, he has broken the law.

    In brazen violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), he ordered the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless wiretaps of American citizens. And, despite getting caught red-handed, he refuses to stop.

    Let's be clear: No American - and that must include the President - is above the law. And if we fail to hold Bush to account, then he will be confirmed in his conviction that he can pick and choose among the laws he wants to obey. This is profoundly dangerous to our democracy.

    So it is time for Congress to stand up and say enough! That's why, this week, Senator Russ Feingold proposed a resolution to censure George W. Bush for breaking the FISA law. And that's why I fully support this resolution of censure.

    Nothing is more important to me than the security of our country. Of course, we need to be listening to the terrorists' conversations. And sometimes there is not time to get a warrant. That's why the FISA law allows the President, when necessary, to wiretap first, and obtain a warrant afterward. But that's not acceptable to this above-the-law President. He rejects the idea that he should have to obtain a warrant before or after wiretapping.

    We have an out-of-control President whose arrogant and, now, illegal behavior is running our country into the ditch. It's time to rein him in. And a fine place to start is by passing this resolution of censure. I hope that Senator Feingold's measure will be brought to the floor. And when it is, I will proudly vote yes.

http://www.tomharkin.com/