May 2007 Archives
This is excerpted from a piece written by Vietnam war veteran Kayakbiker, who is very active in Minnesota Vets for Peace, and he took the photographs. He is of my generation, so I do agree that too little was learned and remembered, and countless people had to suffer and die because of it.
Memorial Day was just like many of the previous ones except this year there are many more new participants crying for loved ones who were killed in war. I arrived early and paid my respects to war victims, including a shipmate, at the Vietnam memorial. I saw vets show up from WW II, and of course the Vietnam war. US-born persons are not the only ones who mourn dead from our wars. A large group of Laotian veterans were also on the Capitol lawn. I can imagine Iraqis having these ceremonies as well. How many Iraqis have died as a result of the US attack on their nation?
The Vets for Peace ceremony began with the reading of a poem by the late Archibald MacLeish. This is appropriate because a line from his poem -- "we were young, we have died, remember us" -- marks the top of the memorial wall that lists the names of the fallen Minnesotans from the Vietnam war.
Like many of you, for the past four years, I've been active and vocal in my opposition to the war in Iraq. But holidays honoring our veterans mess me up.
I can't watch a parade of marching veterans without getting choked up. I can't pass by collection cans for veterans without giving a donation. I can't visit a national cemetery or pass by a military monument without thinking of those who died for us. And I can't read the daily news about the dead and wounded from the war in Iraq without getting angry and asking "Why?!".
As the descendant of military veterans from the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War I & II, I was raised to believe it my patriotic and familial duty to honor all veterans & soldiers. Yet, on this Memorial Day weekend, in the midst of an unjust and illegal war, I find it very difficult to celebrate a "Happy Memorial Day." What happiness is there in 3455 American lives lost in the last four years and anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 soldiers wounded? And for what?!
I want to lose the resentment I feel when I see someone in fatigues or full dress uniform. I want to feel more compassion for the sacrifices they're making to fight a war we have no business being in. I want to be able to offer them my solemn gratitude for making those sacrifices as well as my strong commitment to peace.
Every day -- but especially today -- I want to honor our dead & wounded without honoring war.
This time of the year, right around Memorial Day, is not only a time to remember our lost brave men and women, but also to celebrate our young, aspiring best and brightest, as they graduate from college with their various degrees. We send them off into the world, not only full of knowledge, but we hope full of hope, and the desire to do good works and make the world a brighter place. We hope they’ve had inspiring role models in whose footsteps they will follow, keep pace with, or exceed.
The University of Massachusetts, in some moment of infinite stupidity, decided to award Andrew Card an honorary degree this year. You remember him, he’s the former White House Chief of Staff for George W. Bush, the leader of the Iraq Study Group tasked with marketing the lies that got us into the war in Iraq, and even the guy who joined Alberto Gonzales in a late night visit to the ICU hospital room of a very ill John Ashcroft, to take advantage of his tenuous condition and attempt to get him to re-authorize the domestic surveillance program which had recently been determined to be illegal by the justice department.
By UMass Trustee policy, "only persons of great accomplishment and high ethical standards who exemplify the ideals of the University of Massachusetts" are eligible for an honorary degree. Any student who misrepresented facts in the ways that Andy Card and his group did could be charged with a violation of the university’s Academic Honesty Policy.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Board of Trustees of UMass was mostly put in place by former Governor Mitt Romney (hence, they are Republicans), and maybe they’re trying to prove that some people in Massachusetts really do like Romney as he bids for the presidency. The trustees deny involvement in the choice, but they did nothing to change the course once the decision was made, despite this protest and the signatures of thousands of students, staff, faculty and alumni who signed a petition asking the university to rescind its offer.
Universities are about learning, about integrity, about honor and honesty. To offer an honorary degree to someone like Card who many consider a war criminal, is a slap in the face to the graduates who have worked for years to attain their degrees -- a slap to the hard work and integrity they have shown in their tremendous accomplishments. And to have to sit through the ceremony knowing that Andy Card would be receiving an honor for his crimes did dishonor to the real graduates -– including my husband, who was there to receive his doctorate in education.
The Raging Grannies were outside the arena in the 90 degree heat -– doing their thing.
The last time we used this adage for a threader title was for this blog entry.
As we go into this long weekend, in view of everything that's happened lately, it seems that the adage is truer than ever.
Thank you, GV.
A certain senator of our acquaintance posted this on dKos, at Huffpo, and on his own blog a little while ago. We repost it here not out of any partisan agenda for said senator or anyone else in particular, but because his statement speaks directly to a crucial issue on which the DCP community has made its feelings unequivocally known.
Round One is Over
Let’s be really clear about the Iraq vote coming down the pike in Congress this week.
I’m voting no on this bill. I’m tired of the false choices of Republicans and all the recycled spin of old battles and the political calculations that do nothing for our troops who bear the real costs of this war. Bottom line: we support the troops by getting the policy right, and this bill doesn’t do that. I’ve said it again and again and I’m not about to stop: we need a deadline to force Iraqis to stand up for Iraq and bring our heroes home, not watered down benchmarks and blank check waivers for this President. We support the troops by funding the right mission, not with a White House that opposes a pay raise for our brave men and women in uniform. Do we need to bring out the hand puppets and make the case again?
Reality about this legislation is as simple as it gets: The original Senate legislation offered a roadmap to change course in Iraq. I was proud of the progress we’d made. (I’ve still got the scars of the lonely fight Russ Feingold and I made in the summer of 2006 when we first introduced legislation to set a deadline to redeploy combat troops and only got 11 votes. But it was perseverance, not pessimism that made that a majority position less than a year later.) I’m voting no on this new version of the supplemental because it enables the Administration and Iraqi politicians to deliver more of the same.
So what do we do now that we’ve hit a bump in the road? Fold up our tents? No way –- doing so would be ignorant almost of the long hard legislative struggle and forceful pressure it required to get to this point. I am determined to continue pressing this issue until President Bush changes course. Why? Because we owe our troops nothing less than a strategy that is worthy of their sacrifice.
I was recently alerted to this article that Bill Maher has written about France-bashing as a tired propaganda device. Over the years, negative allusions to France have often been made as a propaganda move, one that was utilized in order to capitalize on fear and provincialism. It is always useful to have an "other" to blame; some sort of outsider. It's the flip side of the "regular guy drinking buddy" thing. Remember Freedom Fries? Remember allusions to the fact that John Kerry might actually speak French? Remember all things French as shorthand for eliteness and snobbery? If so, you may enjoy this article, as I did.
(Photo taken just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq)
Just over a week ago, I took the liberty of expanding my carbon footprint for the day by heading down to an aging industrial city that has magically transformed itself into one of the greenest cities in the country. The purpose of that trip was to participate in a presentation by and book-signing event for a couple of people who are fairly well known to most DCP readers (for historical reasons, if nothing else). I reported on that event elsewhere in the blogosphere at the time, in a different context (ahem). Today I'm going to repost my ex post facto summary of that event here because I think it says a lot about the people involved and how they interconnected around that event. The politics of the individuals involved are not the point; their passion and the commitment to critical issues that affect all of us here, however, definitely are. (P.S. -- please do click on the sublinks, check out the comments and the photos there, and watch the videos too, because collectively they'll give you a more personalized sense of just how invigorating the experience was for those who were there in the room when the stuff went down.) Gee -- if only more influential members of our political and philanthropic communities could be this darn approachable, huh?
Several months ago, the Washington Post Magazine published a rare profile of the famously publicity-averse cartoonist Garry Trudeau. The entire piece by Gene Weingarten makes for fascinating reading, and we highly recommend checking it out in situ on the WashPo's website. For purposes of this extended Special Edition threader, though, we're going to excerpt some key portions of the article that reveal the roots of Trudeau's brilliantly incisive Iraq war storylines featuring wounded-warrior B.D.
I thank God today that there are still a few sane, courageous men in the Republican Party.
In Tuesday night's GOP Primary debate, televised by Fox News, Representative Ron Paul used the few minutes of media attention that he is likely to receive in this campaign to remind everyone of our history, and what his party used to stand for. His analysis of the causes of our current problems in the Middle East was based neither on emotion nor testosterone –- but rather on cold, inescapable facts.
In contrast, the GOP's current front-runner, Rudolph Giuliani, demonstrated little but an overfed ego married to a petulant, bullying nature in his response to Paul -- only a little of which can be conveyed by the transcript below.
Yet who is really at fault here: Giuliani, whose response to the attack on the World Trade Center is the raison d’être for his candidacy, or the national media that has done nothing but lionize Rudy since the attacks -– while rarely explaining to the American people why Osama Bin Laden might see our military bases in Saudi Arabia as an impediment to his plan to overthrow a corrupt Royal Family, clinging to power through an unholy alliance with the same Wahhabi clerics who are the terrorists' spiritual godfathers?
As I’ve stated in this space previously, if I ever got my hands on Bin Laden, I would be tempted to tear him apart, limb-by-limb. But my rage would never blind me, as it obviously has Rudy and nearly every other candidate of either party in this primary season, to the inescapable causes that made my city Bin Laden's target.
Blowback is real. It's our response to the events of 9/11 that's been the fantasy, a fantasy on a truly imperial scale. We fall farther and farther behind in the "War on Terror" every day, that much closer to the rising of a mushroom cloud over an American city, and no one even notices.
My friend Kayakbiker checked in on and photographed a Youth-Run Encampment Against the War in front of the state capitol in St. Paul, MN. The event was a collaboration by Youth Against War and Racism (YAWR), Veterans for Peace, Miltary Families Speak Out (MFSO), and Socialist Alternatives.
A series of remarkable events:
Saturday morning: Oprah Winfrey spoke at the Howard University graduation; she was inspiring, compelling, and full of integrity. But the graduation itself was a total unadulterated joy. I sat in front of the divinity students and that was a heart-and-soul-filled experience, as they wept and gave witness, and hugged each other, grateful for the journeys they had taken together. It was a commencement and we all felt it.
As I have said before, there is Washington and there is DC. This morning was all DC. We all sang "Lift Every Voice" (Oprah sang too) and she spoke directly to the students graduating, telling them "As we climb, we must also lift."
Oprah wept when she received the accolades of the Howard community and turned to face the crowd, so proud of her, so much in awe of her, and so ready to hear from her. This was family, and I was touched to be present.
Today's Washington Post carries my impressions of her nonverbal style but I will give you a preview: I was transported.
And then it was off to the Code Pink House, where there are more women, from more places, and more anticipation than I would have predicted.
Desiree cooks for the peace troops
A sampling of comments:
Midge: "OK, I'm inspired by all the women who have come from across the country and I feel we have won the battle already. We're a snowball, rolling downhill and there's no stopping the energy of the mothers!"
Barb Cummings from San Diego: "It's been a rough week but on the other hand, there are some new people coming out. We met with the MoveOn folks in California and told them they have to start with impeachment. We gave them the message that WE are moving on and in the direction of being more relevant. They got the message."
Lori, who spent Thursday night in the DC jail for looking like she was about to unfurl a banner after a hearing had ended: "Though it's been a tough week personally, I look at all of these people here and all of the new people I've met and it reminds that the grassroots are growing and that makes me hopeful. I'm not the only Hoosier here anymore, for one thing! And the young girls here are so right on with their messages--why they want to end this wear. I'm inspired by Diane Wilson and Faith Flippinger. There is so much power in solidarity."
Diane Wilson: "I know I never get too far ahead of myself. Because I'm a fisherwoman and I've been on the water all my life, I have a faith in things unseen. The energy of the universe is an ally, and then when I do something I have a total faith that all I have to do is have a commitment and a faith and it will work. Things are going to happen. People can just create action. And that's why I'm hopeful. If I had only rational mind I'd have given up a long time ago."
It's the women, isn't it? Women take responsibility for cleaning up the mess again. Moms from all over the country are flocking to DC, and our house is going to be full this weekend too. I hope every Mom here, or everyone who has a Mom here will celebrate the awesome power of a mother protecting her children, her community, and her country from harm caused by stupidity. Because that is what it is going to take!
We must, as Julia Ward Howe wrote back in the day, RISE UP. So feel those stirrings inside you to speak loudly, write passionately, or engage in actions that STOP WAR NOW.
Gael Murphy at last year's celebration
This year, we are ready with a plan and some great focus!
drawing by DiAnne Greiser
A new study has been done at Indiana University, without the involvement of any special interest group, that analyzes the editorial communication style of news commentator Bill O'Reilly. It was published May 2 and has just been put out as a press release and the article will appear in the Spring issue of Journalism Studies.
O'Reilly was chosen because in a 2005 Annenberg survey, 40 percent of respondents considered him to be a journalist. The intent was not to highlight political left or right, but to examine the premise of whether his television editorials are indeed fair and balanced, as represented by its host network.
The methodology involved studying six months worth (115 episodes) of O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo", using propaganda analysis techniques.
At the beginning of his program, O'Reilly tells Fox News viewers that they are entering the "No Spin Zone." The new study reveals the ways in which he is actually and consistently painting certain people and groups as villains and others as victims.
Three years ago I met some very committed students at one of Seattle's Street fairs. This is a letter about what they have done in the last couple of weeks. They just don't stop!
Hi Everyone,
We created quite a sir at the Seattle School Board meeting Wednesday, keeping the pressure on the School Board which we generated two weeks ago in the city wide walkout of 800 students against the war in Iraq.
Students and community activists spoke forcefully throughout the one hour public comment period, and were frequently interrupted with loud applause. We explained why military recruiters have no place in our schools and demanded the School Board implement its existing policy restricting recruiters access to schools, close the loopholes recruiters have found, and send the federal government a letter protesting the “No Child Left Behind Act” and the military recruiters’ presence in our schools. Many also spoke against the School Boards plans to shut down seven schools next year, demanding money for education rather than the war!
Our action was covered by one of the main local TV news programs, Komo TV, as one of their main news stories (though as usual full of inaccuracies and misstatements). You can watch their coverage at: http://www.komotv.com/news/7306801.html
However, once again the Board members basically failed to discuss or respond publicly to the issues we raised in an all too familiar pattern, as we saw the Board also ignore the issues raised at this meeting by dozens of parents, teachers, and community activists from African American Academy over the recent imposition of a new principal without the agreement of the local school. We received many promises that the issue of military recruitment is being discussed and worked on, but it is clear that the School Board will need to feel more pressure from students, parents, teachers and the antiwar movement to finally force them to take meaningful action.
--
Philip Locker
Youth Against War and Racism
http://www.yawr.org
KOMO TV coverage: http://www.komotv.com/news/7306801.html
First of all, watching this video *will* upset you. You have to log in and state that you are over 18 to see it, but even then, be prepared for some strong reactions:
Then read the comments posted below the video on the YouTube site, because the comments and the contents of that video pretty much define the range of what we, as responsible citizens, have to understand and reconcile.
The man on the video, Iraqi Member of Parliament Mohammed al-Dynee, shared his insights on the current situation with several DC-based activists and the women of Code Pink Monday evening last, at a dinner at the Code Pink house on Capitol Hill. Now, to disclaim, I have no idea if Mr. al-Dynee is a secret partisan or has a particular agenda at all. But he is a terribly serious man, and is someone who is thoughtful and generous, a humanist, if you will. At least that's the man I met at dinner.
The reason this blog thread header was held until now is that CBS News apparently had an exclusive hold on the story until Thursday. A quick Google search reveals nothing online as of Saturday morning. So either CBS decided the story did not hold water, or there is some obfuscation going on.
To those who ask: I found him credible and calm, but I have no way of evaluating his perspective. I am inclined to believe that his sense of what is happening in Iraq is more valid than, say, press releases from the White House. But I am learning, as all of us are, that there is still much that we do not know.
(Eh? How's that? Get thee behind us, Shrub! Er, I mean, um, Satan that is. Yeah, that's it.)
Ahem.
Anyway.
"Now, as you may have noticed, we here at the Democracy Cell Project..."
No, wait.
Strike that.
As Mark Twain would ask, "Is that the royal 'we', the editorial 'we', or the 'we' of people with tapeworms?"
Okay, then.
So, as you may have noticed, *I* here at the Democracy Cell Project didn't change this thread header until it hit almost 200 comments in the message queue tonight.
That wasn't a deliberate thing, it's not like I held the thread header hostage waiting to see if anybody noticed that it hadn't changed in a couple of days. But since that's how it worked out this time, it does give me a good hook to hang this (pre-planned, ahem) new thread header on tonight.
The Eastern Market burned down yesterday.
The Market was where we shopped every day, where we ran into neighbors and friends. I used to see Paul Wellstone in there, buying cheese, and Eleanor Holmes Norton picking up salad ingredients. It's where my son would try and slap the lightning-fast hand of Mr. Kim, who ran the smaller of the two produce counters, and who was as placid as an unruffled lake, but who was also a black-belt in Karate. Larry never ever won, except for one magical day when, for whatever reason, Mr. Kim's hand withdrew just a tad slower, and Larry did it -- he touched the very very edge of Mr. Kim's fingertips.
It's where I was going to host the Blogger's Ball, after the 2004 election. That is, if he won...
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