Op-Ed
If this comes as news to you, thank your friendly media, who are much too busy reporting lies abut John Kerry's heroism in Vietnam to bother with this story affecting your life. But next time you hear someone say, "Oh, I just don't care much about politics," you might want to recall this particular connection -- especially if it means you have to go out and get another job.
This stunner is brought to you by President Bush and his big-business campaign donors. The Senate has voted twice to stop the change, so there's no point in raising hell with them. The House of Representatives, the "people's house," dodged the question. So Bush's Department of Labor just up and issued hundreds of pages of new rules on who gets overtime pay.
As the president put it, we couldn't afford to wait until the smoking gun was a mushroom cloud.
"To think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just another attempt to disguise one's unmanly character; ability to understand the question from all sides meant that one was totally unfitted for action; fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man. ... .Anyone who held violent opinions could always be trusted, and anyone who objected to them became a suspect."
The U.S.-centric nature of American politics often affects the
U.S. left. It's hard to get out of USA mindsets long enough to grasp
the global implications of decisions made here at home. Yet the
effects of U.S. government policies are so enormous across the
planet that some people have suggested -- with more than a little
justification -- that every person on Earth should get to vote in
U.S. presidential elections.
On the international left, no one has more credibility as an
unwavering opponent of U.S. foreign policy than Tariq Ali. Raised in
Pakistan, he was a leader of Britain's Vietnam Solidarity Campaign
in the 1960s, and is now a prominent London-based writer and an
editor at New Left Review. His recent books include "Bush in
Babylon" and "The Clash of Fundamentalisms." As progressives in the
United States try to make sense out of the current presidential
campaign, Ali's perspective on the global significance of Bush's
electoral fate deserves serious consideration.
Nice, polite, calm, reserved, chock full of common sense and living next to us -- what a fate. For them, it's like having the Simpsons for next-door neighbors. A few years ago, during the height of our national meltdown over Monica Lewinsky, a host on the Canadian Broadcasting Co.'s evening news program began an interview by gingerly asking me, "So, having another of your little psychodramas down there, eh?"
The music and other creative energies that drew 400,000 people to an upstate New York farm that weekend rejected the Vietnam War and the assumptions fueling it. Thirty-five years later, the Jimi Hendrix rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner could still serve as an apt soundtrack for U.S. foreign policy, with bombs bursting in air over urban neighborhoods across much of Iraq.
A Woodstock reunion, scheduled for Aug. 20-22 in the town of Bethel, N.Y., comes while the gap between the nation's commander in chief and huge numbers of its citizens is enormous.
It's true that complaining about scant news coverage from NBC, ABC and CBS is a bit like griping about small portions of meals from restaurants that serve lousy food. But still: the conventions are worth watching, if only to keep up with the rhetorical needles that party strategists are trying to thread these days.
Gathering for the convention in Boston, several network anchors participated in a high-profile panel at Harvard University. One of the more interesting moments came when the panelists responded to a question about the scant amount of air time the commercial broadcast networks were devoting to the convention.
As the Libertarian Party of Ohio's Executive Director Robert Butler initially predicted on June 14th, another terror warning has been issued for a swing state crucial to the Bush-Cheney re-eletion . This time it's New Mexico.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge just announced that the State of New Mexico may become a terrorist target, but the information was unsubstantiated and uncollaborated.
It's unfortunate that the current administration continues to issue vague warnings. This only serves to increase the level of anxiety in states crucial to the election of George W. Bush.
In June, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a bomb plot for a Columbus, Ohio shopping mall. The FBI later contradicted Ashcroft by stating no target had been identified.
We again hope that the media reports these warnings for the scare tactics they are.
For the full June 14th comments from Robert Butler, please see below:
Columbus Terror Target No Surprise
Movements for peace and social justice can bring realistic hope -- not with rhetoric but with the tough daily tedious uplifting work of political organizing.
Yes, we'd be better off with John Kerry in the White House instead of the Rove-Cheney-Bush regime. And the only way that's going to happen is if enough people in swing states vote for Kerry on November 2.
But I'm already getting tired of the bulk email messages claiming that Kerry is the embodiment of progressive dreams. Please. We can simultaneously walk, chew gum and be clear about the reality that Kerry embraces a centrist matrix of militarism and corporatism -- and, at the same time, in a world of contradictions, it's extremely important that George W. Bush lose the election on November 2... Let's not make stuff up. And let's not imitate the Democratic Party's hype machine. Just because you think people should hold their nose and vote for Kerry, don't act like there isn't a stench.
As the election draws nearer, the many millions of us aboard this great ship should expect to be told and told again by the powers that be to be frightened of our voyage. They will dare us to imagine what terrors lie in wait within the seas of change. They will manufacture a dense fog of fear, and then claim only they can protect us from the unspeakable dangers that only they can see within it.
I expect in fact that Dennis will not need to tie himself in knots or reverse any positions. Understanding this helps me to accomplish something I find extremely difficult – sympathizing with John Kerry.