Op-Ed
The medieval town in which Arnold Schwarzenegger grew up has rightly rejected his medieval murder of Stanley "Tookie" Williams.
The Terminator's nickname has taken on a twisted new dimension. His Austrian home town is horrified, along with sane human beings throughout the rest of the world. Above all, this was a fascist killing.
For the full horror of what Schwarzenegger has done in American terms, we must hearken back to the witch trials of the 1600s.
In Salem and elsewhere in New England, Puritan fanatics took the loud hysteria of scheming adolescents as "evidence" of deviltry. In 1692-3 a score of citizens---nearly all of them women---were "convicted" of witchcraft.
The charges were sick and absurd. Many of the accused were esteemed grandmothers. Most were independent gardeners, farmers, craftspeople or in business for themselves. In many cases, family feuds or the coveting of land and property were at the core of the accusations.
The Terminator's nickname has taken on a twisted new dimension. His Austrian home town is horrified, along with sane human beings throughout the rest of the world. Above all, this was a fascist killing.
For the full horror of what Schwarzenegger has done in American terms, we must hearken back to the witch trials of the 1600s.
In Salem and elsewhere in New England, Puritan fanatics took the loud hysteria of scheming adolescents as "evidence" of deviltry. In 1692-3 a score of citizens---nearly all of them women---were "convicted" of witchcraft.
The charges were sick and absurd. Many of the accused were esteemed grandmothers. Most were independent gardeners, farmers, craftspeople or in business for themselves. In many cases, family feuds or the coveting of land and property were at the core of the accusations.
AUSTIN, Texas -- The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Thirty-five years ago, Richard Milhous Nixon, who was crazy as a bullbat, and J. Edgar Hoover, who wore women's underwear, decided some Americans had unacceptable political opinions. So they set our government to spying on its own citizens, basically those who were deemed insufficiently like Crazy Richard Milhous.
For those of you who have forgotten just what a stonewall paranoid Nixon was, the poor man used to stalk around the White House demanding that his political enemies be killed. Many still believe there was a certain Richard III grandeur to Nixon's collapse because he was also a man of notable talents. There is neither grandeur nor tragedy in watching this president, the Testy Kid, violate his oath to uphold the laws and Constitution of our country.
The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it because he is the president, and he considers that sufficient justification for whatever he wants. He even finds lawyers like John Yoo, who tell him that whatever he wants to do is legal.
For those of you who have forgotten just what a stonewall paranoid Nixon was, the poor man used to stalk around the White House demanding that his political enemies be killed. Many still believe there was a certain Richard III grandeur to Nixon's collapse because he was also a man of notable talents. There is neither grandeur nor tragedy in watching this president, the Testy Kid, violate his oath to uphold the laws and Constitution of our country.
The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it because he is the president, and he considers that sufficient justification for whatever he wants. He even finds lawyers like John Yoo, who tell him that whatever he wants to do is legal.
Larry Beinhart, author of "Wag the Dog" and "The Librarian," has done us a remarkable service with the publication of a new small nonfiction book titled "Fog Facts." He has given language to a new and critically important concept, that of the fact that is neither secret nor known. By "fog facts," Beinhart means to indicate pieces of information that have been published on back pages of business sections of newspapers or picked up by a columnist or two, information that has perhaps been circulated on the internet by those with a passionate interest in the issue and enough free time, information that is accepted as known and established by reporters, editors, producers, and pundits, but which the vast majority of the public has never heard about and would find incredibly important and shocking.
The nation is headed for a showdown with Evil . . . or rather, with the sense-shattering, all-justifying, absolute belief in it. My God - finally!
Here, for instance, is U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, explaining to Wolf Blitzer and archconservative (but pro-Constitution) former congressman Bob Barr on CNN's "The Situation Room" last week why George Bush needs the leeway to spy on American citizens as he sees fit:
"Well, I'll tell you something, if a nuclear weapon goes off in Washington, D.C., or New York or Los Angeles, it'll burn the Constitution as it does. So I'm very happy we have a president that's going to wiretap people's communication with people overseas to make sure that they're not plotting to blow up one of our cities."
Here, for instance, is U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, explaining to Wolf Blitzer and archconservative (but pro-Constitution) former congressman Bob Barr on CNN's "The Situation Room" last week why George Bush needs the leeway to spy on American citizens as he sees fit:
"Well, I'll tell you something, if a nuclear weapon goes off in Washington, D.C., or New York or Los Angeles, it'll burn the Constitution as it does. So I'm very happy we have a president that's going to wiretap people's communication with people overseas to make sure that they're not plotting to blow up one of our cities."
Memorial Service for Stanley Williams
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Los Angeles, California
When I visited Stanley three times and had prayer with him, he said, "I regret I was a predator upon my people. We were programmed to attack Black people. Whites were safe around us. The tragedy of my situation today is that I will not be killed for what I did, but for what I didn't do. I would rather die, than lie to get clemency. I will not join the corrupt system of jail house informers and snitches, in the name of redemption."
[By the way, it was an informant, in desperation, that gave President Bush the information that led us to war in Iraq; the informant has since recanted.]
He said, "Reverend, there is a system. Since we don't make drugs or guns, there is a system – a relationship between gangs, corrupted police, traffickers, and transportation at the borders and pick up points in the fields where drugs are grown."
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Los Angeles, California
When I visited Stanley three times and had prayer with him, he said, "I regret I was a predator upon my people. We were programmed to attack Black people. Whites were safe around us. The tragedy of my situation today is that I will not be killed for what I did, but for what I didn't do. I would rather die, than lie to get clemency. I will not join the corrupt system of jail house informers and snitches, in the name of redemption."
[By the way, it was an informant, in desperation, that gave President Bush the information that led us to war in Iraq; the informant has since recanted.]
He said, "Reverend, there is a system. Since we don't make drugs or guns, there is a system – a relationship between gangs, corrupted police, traffickers, and transportation at the borders and pick up points in the fields where drugs are grown."
Three days before Christmas, the Bush administration launched a new
salvo of bright spinning lies about the Iraq war. “In an interview
with reporters traveling with him on an Air Force cargo plane to
Baghdad,” the Associated Press reported Thursday morning, Donald
Rumsfeld “hinted that a preliminary decision had been made to go
below the 138,000 baseline” of U.S. troops in Iraq.
Throughout 2006, until Election Day in early November, this kind of story will be a frequent media refrain as the Bush regime does whatever it can to prevent a loss of Republican majorities in the House and Senate. By continuing to fortify large military bases in Iraq -- and by continuing to escalate an air war there courtesy of U.S. taxpayers but largely outside the U.S. media frame -- the White House is determined to exploit every weakness and contradiction of antiwar sentiment inside the United States.
Throughout 2006, until Election Day in early November, this kind of story will be a frequent media refrain as the Bush regime does whatever it can to prevent a loss of Republican majorities in the House and Senate. By continuing to fortify large military bases in Iraq -- and by continuing to escalate an air war there courtesy of U.S. taxpayers but largely outside the U.S. media frame -- the White House is determined to exploit every weakness and contradiction of antiwar sentiment inside the United States.
AUSTIN, Texas -- It is clear we will need to practice hard on our credulity in the future just to get a grasp on how dumbfounding the entire Iraq War is. We need credulity up to the Wonderland White Queen's standards, believing as many as six impossible things before breakfast every day -- practice, practice, practice.
For starters, we find the Pentagon investigating itself over the secret military practice of paying to plant news stories in Iraqi papers. Now, since it's a secret practice, I don't know if the Pentagon will be able to find out much, but the way it works is U.S. military personnel, also known as soldiers, write "news" stories full of reassuring news.
National Public Radio reports that stories are filled with hyperbole and pro-U.S. rhetoric. One story written by the military and obtained by NPR dated Nov. 22 says military leaders are succeeding in stopping terrorists. It continues, "They have proven this as quiet slowly begins again to settle on the streets of western Iraq. " At the time, insurgents were staging over 700 attacks per week -- up from 150 a week the previous year.
For starters, we find the Pentagon investigating itself over the secret military practice of paying to plant news stories in Iraqi papers. Now, since it's a secret practice, I don't know if the Pentagon will be able to find out much, but the way it works is U.S. military personnel, also known as soldiers, write "news" stories full of reassuring news.
National Public Radio reports that stories are filled with hyperbole and pro-U.S. rhetoric. One story written by the military and obtained by NPR dated Nov. 22 says military leaders are succeeding in stopping terrorists. It continues, "They have proven this as quiet slowly begins again to settle on the streets of western Iraq. " At the time, insurgents were staging over 700 attacks per week -- up from 150 a week the previous year.
Start with Bush. Never at ease before the cameras, he now has the hunted blink and compulsive nasolabial twitch of the mad dictator, a cornered rat with nowhere left to run. Nixon looked the same in his last White House days, and so did Hitler, according to those present in the Fuhrerbunker. As Hitler did before him, Bush raves on about imagined victories. Spare a thought for the First Lady, who has to endure his demented and possibly drunken harangues over supper. The word around Washington is that he's drinking again. At this rate he'll be shooting the dog and ordering the First Lady to take poison, which I'm sure she'll have great pleasure in forwarding to her mother-in-law.
Certainly it's hard to escape Bush's voice. Every time I turn on the radio, there he is giving a press conference, or yet another bulletin on the great triumphs in Iraq (where the recent election produced utter defeat for the United States and total victory for Iran).
Certainly it's hard to escape Bush's voice. Every time I turn on the radio, there he is giving a press conference, or yet another bulletin on the great triumphs in Iraq (where the recent election produced utter defeat for the United States and total victory for Iran).
There is a solution that most of us are not seriously considering but should be. We are all increasingly aware of the problem: a world that lacks peace, democracy, an equitable distribution of resources, and practices that can be sustained without risking the viability of human life.
We can shift blame to the powerful, but were we all willing to do a bit more, we would ourselves become the powerful. There are no excuses. We must look at ourselves and our neighbors and ask what it is about us that allows us to tolerate such injustice, cruelty, and destruction of resources needed by future generations.
There are habits of thought that prevent us from putting up a sufficient fight for life and decency, habits that can be dropped much more easily than we can create a democratic media or put some spine in the Democratic party or end the war on Iraq. In fact, if we drop these habits of thought, each of those tasks and many others will become much easier.
We can shift blame to the powerful, but were we all willing to do a bit more, we would ourselves become the powerful. There are no excuses. We must look at ourselves and our neighbors and ask what it is about us that allows us to tolerate such injustice, cruelty, and destruction of resources needed by future generations.
There are habits of thought that prevent us from putting up a sufficient fight for life and decency, habits that can be dropped much more easily than we can create a democratic media or put some spine in the Democratic party or end the war on Iraq. In fact, if we drop these habits of thought, each of those tasks and many others will become much easier.
In a new twist, Republican Gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell has distributed emails to his supporters using Libertarian candidate Bill Peirce's campaign theme, "Freedom to Prosper".
Peirce, an economist from Case Western University, unveiled his "Freedom to Prosper" plan during the initial announcement of his campaign for Ohio Governor this past summer.
The plan proposes to cut taxes across the board, eliminate Taft's increases, protect homeowners and business people from eminent domain abuse, and create real school choice for parents and teachers.
"I’m well aware of the linkage between low employment and high tax rates. There’s a growing consensus among many economists that economic freedom is closely linked to economic growth," notes Peirce. "The only way to get more rapid growth is to get more economic freedom."
Peirce, an economist from Case Western University, unveiled his "Freedom to Prosper" plan during the initial announcement of his campaign for Ohio Governor this past summer.
The plan proposes to cut taxes across the board, eliminate Taft's increases, protect homeowners and business people from eminent domain abuse, and create real school choice for parents and teachers.
"I’m well aware of the linkage between low employment and high tax rates. There’s a growing consensus among many economists that economic freedom is closely linked to economic growth," notes Peirce. "The only way to get more rapid growth is to get more economic freedom."