Baghdad in middle America

Honoring vets means nothing at all unless it means honoring the deeply gouged personal truths each experienced during deployment. But the dismissal of such truths is as much a part of war, and its aftermath, as the propaganda and geopolitical whoppers necessary to launch it.

The problem with these individual truths is that they seldom smack of glory. More often, they’re simply mundane and hellish, and slowly eat the vet’s soul. The clinical name for this is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and it’s the phrase I heard most frequently and most distinctly this past weekend, during the grim, pained acknowledgement — I can hardly call it celebration — of Veterans Day.

Ray Parrish, a vets’ counselor and Vietnam vet, was adamantly pessimistic as he spoke to 100 or so people gathered on a bitter, gray Sunday morning at the river in downtown Chicago, about the psychic toll our current wars are exacting on the ones who are fighting them.

Another Clinton campaign fraud

It sounds silly, but for a long time it just didn't occur to me what the implications would be. Thus spake a college student who agreed to ask Senator Clinton a planted question. And thus, alas, must I speak as well.

Senator Clinton asked me to impersonate a citizen of the United States, and I was tempted to play along. The assignment she had marked "(citizen)" on the script on her clipboard, read:

"A citizen is a member of an electorate. A citizen's job consists of voting. A citizen may also spend the two years in between elections thinking about how he or she will vote (but not about who will count the votes). In between elections, citizens should not imagine they can influence their representatives. Public demonstrations, lobbying, media activism, media production, and civil disobedience are not proper citizen activities unless professionally organized to target exclusively Republicans. A citizen's loyalty is to his or her Party. For the sake of your Party you must accept such compromises as voting for a candidate who supports a massive military and empire that you oppose, or corporate

Mentes Peligrosas: confession of an American thought criminal

“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.”
–Winston Smith from George Orwell’s 1984

If you needed more evidence that most of our “esteemed” members of Congress are members of a criminal class of ruling elites, who regard the likes of us in the poor and working classes with the disdain most people reserve for cockroaches, look no further than H.R. 1955.

93% of the filth “representing” us in the House voted in favor of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. Once this vile piece of legislation sails through the Senate and the sociopath on Pennsylvania Ave gleefully slaps his endorsement on it, the mechanisms will be in place for our lords and masters to initiate programs that will make Cointelpro and the murder of Fred Hampton look like child’s play.

Disease-ridden invaders

http://mattbors.com

Bolton and me

http://mattbors.com

U.N. me: a Campus Progress cartoonist can’t resist John Bolton

(Click here to view the comic Matt drew for this article.)

Political cartoonists are in the strange position of benefiting when the country suffers. The more absurd the world becomes, the easier it is to draw comics. Over the past seven years, the Bush administration has presented my fellow cartoonists and me with an unforgettable cast of characters: the brooding madman Dick Cheney, the crazed evangelical John Ashcroft, and the sweating and stammering Scott McClellan. But there was a time when one Bush administration character shined brightly above the rest. That was U.N. Ambassador John Bolton.

With his red-faced anger and chalk-white mustache, Bolton presented a position to the United Nations that can only be described as right-of-hawkish. He physically and ideologically resembled Yosemite Sam—a walking, talking (or rootin’, tootin’) caricature sent to make cartoonists’ lives a little easier. So it was a bittersweet moment when Bolton resigned in December 2006. The world was better off, but cartoonists certainly were not.

Lords of the Land

Lords of the Land - The War Over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007.
Akiva Eldar and Idith Zertal. Nation Books, New York, 2007.

In my previous article I entered into a direct discussion on possible outcomes for the Israel-Palestine question based on a CBC radio interview between two different proponents and the most recent books they had written. Within that, while I was not fully receptive of Akiva Eldar's arguments for the two-state outcome, I also mentioned his most recent book, co-authored with Idith Zertal, identifying it as an excellent political read concerning the issue of settlements in the occupied territories. To do justice to this book, as it is an important view of the settlement process from within the Israeli political structure and from within the settlers themselves, I feel it needs more emphasis as a positive work in relationship to the historiography of Israel-Palestine.

Veterans Day: A day for peace or a day for war?

Could you ever imagine that Veterans Day was originally enacted as a day for world peace? Not by the way veterans who stand for peace are treated in Veterans Day ceremonies!

Yet, according to Veterans Affairs website, Veterans Day, formerly known as Armistice Day, was originally a U.S. legal holiday to honor the end of World War I and to honor the need for world peace. When it passed a concurrent resolution on June 4, 1926 to honor the end of World War I, the US Congress stated:

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations;

In 1938 the US Congress codified its earlier resolution by legislation naming November 11 as Armistice Day and dedicating the day “to the cause of world peace.””

GOP election theft machine

My gut instinct, which is usually pretty much right on, tells me it certainly could happen again. I think it behoves the Left to know what Karl Rove is doing almost every minute, his contacts, his movements. He left the Whitehouse with such a smirk on his face and currently is doing his utmost to keep under the radar. Perhaps voting results are not of the greatest concern. Having read all of Bush's latest executive orders and directives, along with his October 17,2007 quip at a press briefing. perhaps he intends to borrow a page from the current headlines in  Pakistan.

It is inconceivable that everyone is not extremely suspicious of this regime now in power. It will get much more contentious before Nov. 2008. Does anyone question all the last minute changes in directives concerning the continuity of Government, the shuffling of Nukes, expansion of Blackwater and the State dept defense of same. I am just an old great Grandmother but I spend a lot of time watching Bush, Congress, Neo cons and the Press. My bigger question, are we going to have a election???

Respectfully,
Shirley A. Willford

Tasered Florida student on Palast Report Today on Air America Radio: It’s not the volts, it’s the votes

The student shocked by a taser gun last month at the University of Florida while questioning Senator John Kerry will appear today on The Palast Report on Air America Radio.

Andrew Meyer will join Greg Palast's investigative segment on the Air America program "Clout." Check www.GregPalast.com for listings and AirAmericaRadio.com.

Palast's office is in contact with the Senator's office to see if Kerry will answer Meyer's question - without an armed guard.

Meyer, who appeared this morning on the Today show (check out the clip here) sandwiched between reports on Britney Spears, Oprah Winfrey and Heather Mill's, was the only guest who managed to sneak in a matter of substance on the gossip and title broadcast. Meyer told Today that the real issue isn't the volts he received, but the votes uncounted.

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