Op-Ed
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with a gang of lawless thugs and insist on the appointment of a special prosecutor to enforce the laws of the land even against those until recently holding the reins of Power, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Prosecution.
Lawless detention is the least of it. State secrets and warrantless spying scrape the surface. Drone attacks and ongoing torture begin to touch it. But central to the power of an emperor, and the catastrophes that come from the existence of an emperor, is the elimination of any other force within the government. Signing statements eliminate congress. Not that congress objects. Asking congress to reclaim its power produces nervous giggles.
It is our patriotic duty to honor our Founding Heroes, America’s greatest hemp growers.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison---virtually all Revolutionary Americans who had access to land---embraced hemp’s critical role in our early economy.
Accordingly, they raised it in mass quantities.
We must now honor them by demanding its immediate legalization, to save our economy and our ecology.
For rope, for paper, for clothing, for food, for fuel, this miracle plant has been a critical crop for cash and survival for 6,000 years, since the onset of ancient China.
Today it is a multi-billion-dollar product there and in Germany and Canada, among other major economies.
There is no rational reason for hemp to be illegal. Some law enforcement “experts” say it resembles marijuana, and therefore must be banned.
What are they smoking? Certainly not hemp, which gives its imbibers little more than a splitting headache and a nasty cough.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison---virtually all Revolutionary Americans who had access to land---embraced hemp’s critical role in our early economy.
Accordingly, they raised it in mass quantities.
We must now honor them by demanding its immediate legalization, to save our economy and our ecology.
For rope, for paper, for clothing, for food, for fuel, this miracle plant has been a critical crop for cash and survival for 6,000 years, since the onset of ancient China.
Today it is a multi-billion-dollar product there and in Germany and Canada, among other major economies.
There is no rational reason for hemp to be illegal. Some law enforcement “experts” say it resembles marijuana, and therefore must be banned.
What are they smoking? Certainly not hemp, which gives its imbibers little more than a splitting headache and a nasty cough.
“From now on, the war they started is ours.”
Seemingly these words of an Iraqi soldier, noted in a Guardian U.K. story, were uttered in pride. This was on June 30: National Sovereignty Day, the day U.S. troops withdrew from Iraqi cities. Sorry, but it sounds more like someone enthusing over a case of venereal disease.
Oh national sovereignty! Could its inadequacies as a concept – as a means of dividing and governing the human race – be more painfully exposed than in Iraq on its day of faux-celebration? Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki got his chance to strut and reclaim some of the old glory from the, ahem, Saddam era. Fireworks went off. Troops marched in review. Trucks hauling scud missiles were part of the day’s show-and-tell.
“The war-ravaged state’s new military and police force rolled around the giant war memorial that its executed president built,” the Guardian article explained.
“Yesterday’s parade started and finished near Saddam’s crossed swords. . . . Iraq’s new leaders seemed willing to stake a claim on their country’s former glory, but not by stirring too many ghosts of its past.”
Seemingly these words of an Iraqi soldier, noted in a Guardian U.K. story, were uttered in pride. This was on June 30: National Sovereignty Day, the day U.S. troops withdrew from Iraqi cities. Sorry, but it sounds more like someone enthusing over a case of venereal disease.
Oh national sovereignty! Could its inadequacies as a concept – as a means of dividing and governing the human race – be more painfully exposed than in Iraq on its day of faux-celebration? Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki got his chance to strut and reclaim some of the old glory from the, ahem, Saddam era. Fireworks went off. Troops marched in review. Trucks hauling scud missiles were part of the day’s show-and-tell.
“The war-ravaged state’s new military and police force rolled around the giant war memorial that its executed president built,” the Guardian article explained.
“Yesterday’s parade started and finished near Saddam’s crossed swords. . . . Iraq’s new leaders seemed willing to stake a claim on their country’s former glory, but not by stirring too many ghosts of its past.”
The New York Times used three square inches of newsprint on Tuesday to dispatch two U.S. Army soldiers under the headline “Names of the Dead.” Their names -- Peter K. Cross and Steven T. Drees -- were listed along with hometowns, ranks and ages. Cross was 20 years old. Drees was 19.
They were, the newspaper reported, the latest of 706 Americans “who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations.” There wasn’t enough room for any numbers, names or ages of Afghans who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations.
That’s the way routine death stories go. But of course no amount of newsprint or airtime can do more than scratch the human surface. Reporting on life is like that, and reporting on death is like that: even more so when the media lenses are ground with ideology, nationalism and economic convenience.
But real grief isn’t like that. It twists and burns and has only names and adjectives unworthy of itself. That doesn’t stop many journalists or politicians from claiming to describe what’s beyond description.
They were, the newspaper reported, the latest of 706 Americans “who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations.” There wasn’t enough room for any numbers, names or ages of Afghans who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations.
That’s the way routine death stories go. But of course no amount of newsprint or airtime can do more than scratch the human surface. Reporting on life is like that, and reporting on death is like that: even more so when the media lenses are ground with ideology, nationalism and economic convenience.
But real grief isn’t like that. It twists and burns and has only names and adjectives unworthy of itself. That doesn’t stop many journalists or politicians from claiming to describe what’s beyond description.
Have you ever held a little baby in your arms? Raise your hand if you have. A toddler is as delicate and precious as a baby, but able to move around and get hurt. Bigger kids can move faster and farther. Our instincts should be to protect them.
I was reading yesterday about a boy who was probably 12 years old when our nation imprisoned him in 2002. We held him in Afghanistan, but I don't mean "held" in the sense in which one lovingly holds a baby. We put a hood on him, stripped him, shackled him and shoved him down stairs. We brought him to Guantanamo, kicked him, beat him, broke his nose, pepper sprayed him, and deprived him of sleep for many days. In 2003 he tried to kill himself by slamming his head against a wall.
I was reading yesterday about a boy who was probably 12 years old when our nation imprisoned him in 2002. We held him in Afghanistan, but I don't mean "held" in the sense in which one lovingly holds a baby. We put a hood on him, stripped him, shackled him and shoved him down stairs. We brought him to Guantanamo, kicked him, beat him, broke his nose, pepper sprayed him, and deprived him of sleep for many days. In 2003 he tried to kill himself by slamming his head against a wall.
When approaching Iran, the Republican Party line and the Hugo Chavez line are running in opposite directions -- but parallel. The leadership of GOP reaction and the leadership of Bolivarian revolution have bought into the convenient delusion that long-suffering Iranian people require assistance from the U.S. government to resist the regime in Tehran.
Inside Iran, advocates for reform and human rights have long pleaded for the U.S. government to keep out of Iranian affairs. After the CIA organized the coup that overthrew Iran’s democracy in 1953, Washington kept the Shah in power for a quarter century. When I was in Tehran four years ago, during the election that made Mahmoud Ahmadinejad president, what human rights activists most wanted President Bush to do was shut up.
But Bush played to the same kind of peanut gallery that is now applauding the likes of Sen. John McCain. The Bush White House denigrated the 2005 election just before the balloting began -- to the delight of the hardest-line Iranian fundamentalists. The ultra-righteous Bush rhetoric gave a significant boost to Ahmadinejad’s campaign.
Inside Iran, advocates for reform and human rights have long pleaded for the U.S. government to keep out of Iranian affairs. After the CIA organized the coup that overthrew Iran’s democracy in 1953, Washington kept the Shah in power for a quarter century. When I was in Tehran four years ago, during the election that made Mahmoud Ahmadinejad president, what human rights activists most wanted President Bush to do was shut up.
But Bush played to the same kind of peanut gallery that is now applauding the likes of Sen. John McCain. The Bush White House denigrated the 2005 election just before the balloting began -- to the delight of the hardest-line Iranian fundamentalists. The ultra-righteous Bush rhetoric gave a significant boost to Ahmadinejad’s campaign.
When I read about the Defense Department’s plans for my future security, why do I feel so insecure?
The New York Times privileged us the other day with another dispatch from what we used to call — back in my days as a toiler in the journalistic trenches of Chicago’s teeming neighborhoods — the Iron Triangle: that tight configuration of news bounded by reporter, editor and source, into which extraneous concerns, such as what the reader might care about, are never allowed to penetrate. We worried about the Iron Triangle in those days. It yielded only half-stories, the “official” half, dry, pat, seemingly innocuous.
Such grind-’em-out stories are more than the products of a beat reporter’s hardened routine. They’re a default conspiracy on the part of a closed system, involving all parties concerned, to dictate what matters, and are frustrating enough, from a reader’s point of view, when they emanate from the local school board or police department. When they emanate from the Pentagon . . . well, uh, this is about the future of the human race, bitten off in chunks half a trillion dollars at a time.
The New York Times privileged us the other day with another dispatch from what we used to call — back in my days as a toiler in the journalistic trenches of Chicago’s teeming neighborhoods — the Iron Triangle: that tight configuration of news bounded by reporter, editor and source, into which extraneous concerns, such as what the reader might care about, are never allowed to penetrate. We worried about the Iron Triangle in those days. It yielded only half-stories, the “official” half, dry, pat, seemingly innocuous.
Such grind-’em-out stories are more than the products of a beat reporter’s hardened routine. They’re a default conspiracy on the part of a closed system, involving all parties concerned, to dictate what matters, and are frustrating enough, from a reader’s point of view, when they emanate from the local school board or police department. When they emanate from the Pentagon . . . well, uh, this is about the future of the human race, bitten off in chunks half a trillion dollars at a time.
Single-payer health care supporters rally in Los Angeles in April. (Photo: Getty Images)
Health care reform plans are being drafted and passed around on both sides of Capitol Hill, but the plan with the greatest number of Congress members behind it was first introduced as a bill six years ago. With two new co-sponsors having just signed on, Congressman John Conyers's single-payer health care plan, HR 676, now has 80 Congress members supporting it.
A House committee held a hearing on single-payer health coverage on Wednesday, and a Senate committee included single payer in a hearing on Thursday. Many opponents of single payer, including President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, say it would be the ideal solution if it were possible.
Health care reform plans are being drafted and passed around on both sides of Capitol Hill, but the plan with the greatest number of Congress members behind it was first introduced as a bill six years ago. With two new co-sponsors having just signed on, Congressman John Conyers's single-payer health care plan, HR 676, now has 80 Congress members supporting it.
A House committee held a hearing on single-payer health coverage on Wednesday, and a Senate committee included single payer in a hearing on Thursday. Many opponents of single payer, including President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, say it would be the ideal solution if it were possible.
On Tuesday my local newspaper reported on an event here in town on Monday. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer had come down to Charlottesville and spoken publicly with local Congressman Tom Perriello, generating a story and big color photo on page 1 of the Charlottesville Daily Progress. The headline was "In UVa visit, Democrats call deficit reckless."
The newspaper reported on Congressman Perriello warning that he could not vote for healthcare without a way to pay for it. There was no mention of the fact that the previous week, the day before Hoyer introduced his bill to fight deficits, both of these gentlemen had voted to spend another $97 billion on wars and to loan $100 billion to European bankers through the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Nobody in Washington had even hinted at where any of that money would come from, and apparently Hoyer and Perriello didn't care.
The newspaper reported on Congressman Perriello warning that he could not vote for healthcare without a way to pay for it. There was no mention of the fact that the previous week, the day before Hoyer introduced his bill to fight deficits, both of these gentlemen had voted to spend another $97 billion on wars and to loan $100 billion to European bankers through the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Nobody in Washington had even hinted at where any of that money would come from, and apparently Hoyer and Perriello didn't care.