A measure of morality in Congress

If you could secretly tell a magic genie "Yes" and receive a million dollars but cause the deaths of a million people you've never met in China, would you say No?  This is no longer just a philosophical brain teaser.  The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote Friday morning on funding for a war that has already caused the deaths of possibly as many as a million Iraqis.  Some of the money might very well go to funding an attack on another nation (Iran).  Many members of Congress are expected to vote Yes in order to keep their committee chairmanships, or in order to receive funding for projects in their districts, or in order to receive assistance or not face opposition in their next reelection campaigns.  Among the most principled few who are holding out and voting No, some of them are encouraging others to vote Yes.

Iraq @ 4: It's Not About the Troops - Either Way

Perhaps the most unremarked-upon aspect of the much-noted fourth anniversary of the Iraq debacle is the deeply confused way Americans talk about it.

Most egregious is the constant refrain from all sides that whatever they want is first and foremost about 'supporting the troops' - whether keeping them there forever, or bringing them home immediately.

While concern for American forces serving in Iraq is certainly well-intentioned, the rhetorical focus on 'the troops' is not just irrelevant, but dangerously misleading.

The most significant reason 'the troops' are not the central issue in Iraq is that they're all volunteers.

This is radically different from Vietnam, where almost all the soldiers, and certainly the grunts, were there because of a socio-economically unjust draft that allowed Bush and Cheney, for example, to avoid serving in a war they 'supported.'

As a result, the demand at that time to 'bring the troops home' had substance in both foreign and domestic realms, since the vast majority had not signed up for the armed forces, let alone guerrilla war in a tropical jungle.

New Ohio evidence exposes apparently illegal 2004 recount activity by Hocking County's GOP Election Director, and a stinging complaint is filed in Cleveland

The Republican executive director of the Hocking County Board of Elections (BOE) may have written at least one memo outlining possibly illegal behavior during the scandal-ridden 2004 Ohio presidential recount. And an explosive five-count complaint has been filed by Ohio's new Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, against two GOP directors in Cuyahoga County. It is built in part on evidence gleaned from the federal report issued by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) after the 2004 election, from stories broken at the Freepress.org website, and evidence gathered by grassroots voting rights activists in Cleveland.

After the 2004 election, the Green Party and Libertarian Party paid $113,620.00 for a recount of the state's presidential balloting.

Lisa Schwartze, the executive director of the Hocking County Board of Elections, supervised the recount in that county. On Friday morning, December 10, 2004 as the recount was about to commence there, a technician, Michael Barbian, Jr. from Triad Governmental Systems, Inc., called the Hocking County BOE and informed them he would be in that afternoon "to check

Let Rove lie

I think Karl Rove should be permitted to testify to Congress in private, without taking any oath, and without any record being kept of what he says.  I had hoped we could avoid the indecency of having to spell out the reason why, but apparently we can't.  So please remember this and then never say it aloud again: he wants to lie.  Sssshhh.  There, we said it.  And you're making it very difficult for him, and that's not very nice or respectful.

Boycott the Democratic Party wing of the War Party

Friends, Romans, Countrymen,

I'm sorry that I haven't been up-to-date with every ebb and flow of this disaster, but believe me I have been following it all. A little background, please forgive me if you have heard this before. At my neighborhood peace group, Chelsea Neighbors United to End the War, back in November we were discussing what to do with Congress member Jerrold Nadler (NY 8th CD). We were considering making him our target. We were just about to challenge him on the issue of the war, considering sitting in at his office, etc. Then he came and stood with us at our weekly action: Chelsea Stands Up Against The War. He stayed a good while and we got to express ourselves on the need to stop funding the war. On January 12th he came out with his "Protect The Troops and Bring Them Home Act of 2007. We thought that this was as good as anything we had seen, endorsed it and started working for it.

We are all familiar with what has happend since January 12th. Here is my take:

Explosive new vote fraud developments continue to rock Ohio and Florida

Breaking news in vote fraud cases in both Ohio and Florida are feeding a firestorm of controversy that is likely to continue escalating, with major implications for the 2008 election and the future of e-voting machines.

In Ohio, Jennifer Brunner, the newly elected Secretary of State, has received two of the four resignations she requested from the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections (BOE). The two Democrats on the Board, Edward Coaxum, Jr. and Loree Soggs, have complied with her call for their departures from Cleveland's scandal-ridden election authority.

However, Robert Bennett, who chairs both the Cuyahoga BOE and the Ohio Republican Party, has thus far refused Brunner's request. So has Sally Florkiewicz, Bennett's fellow Republican on the BOE. Should they continue with their refusal to resign, Brunner has threatened to hold public hearings, in the wake of which she could force the resignations.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that a criminal investigation is underway which centers on the Cuyahoga BOE's conduct of the November 2006 election. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason has turned again

Progressives stand strong against funding war

As I was walking across Memorial Bridge a young man I know ran up to me. He's a veteran of this war and a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. After saying hello and a few words, he burst into tears. He said he had just been spat on, and it had just hit him what that meant. The people who spat on him were part of a relatively tiny group of pro-war demonstrators. The young man I was talking to did not spit back at them. He joined a group of other vets for peace and led the march to the Pentagon nonviolently.

The leaders of the marches for peace care what the war supporters think of them. The reverse is also true. The pro-war demonstrators were not executives of weapons and oil companies cynically promoting their own profits. Many of them were aging veterans of a previous war that had sent them into the horrors of death and violence for previous power and profit motives that they do not want to think about.

These people have identified themselves so closely with war and obedience that they feel compelled to denounce and threaten and spit on other people wearing the same uniform and waving the same flag. And they waive signs

Why the progressive caucus should vote no on war money

The Supplemental spending bill proposed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi funds the war.  It gives Cheney and Bush roughly another $100 billion.  And you can be quite sure they will spend it as they choose, which may include attacking Iran.  In fact, a measure in the bill requiring Bush to get Congress's approval before attacking Iran (an attack that would violate the US Constitution and the UN charter) has been removed. 

The bill also requires Iraq to turn much of its oil profits over to foreign corporations.  This illegally rewards the Bush and Cheney gang for their illegal war.

Beyond that, the bill does a number of things to nudge Bush in the direction of limiting the war, but most of them are for show. 

Four years later

Pick almost any date on the calendar, and it'll turn out that the United States either started a war, ended a war, perpetrated a massacre or sent its U.N. ambassador into the Security Council to issue an ultimatum. It's like driving across the American West. "Historic marker, 1 mile," the sign says. A minute later, you pull over and find yourself standing on dead Indians. "On this spot, in 1879, Major T and a troop of U.S. cavalry beat off … "

            Last Sunday, I was in a used paperback store in a mall in Olympia, Wash., flicking through Tina Turner's side of the story on life with Ike. It was 3 in the afternoon, March 18, one day short of the anniversary of U.S. planes embarking on an aerial hunt of Pancho Villa in 1916; of the day the U.S. Senate rejected (for the second time) the Treaty of Versailles in 1920; of the end of the active phase of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2002; of the 10 p.m. broadcast March 19, 2003, by President G.W. Bush announcing that aerial operations against Iraq had commenced.

Forced resignations and stiff prison sentences intensify the escalating blowback from Ohio's 2004 stolen election

In a bold move "to restore trust to elections in Ohio," Ohio's newly-elected Secretary of State, Jennifer Brunner, has requested the resignation of all four members of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. The two Democrats and two Republicans were formally asked to resign by the close of business on March 21. Cuyahoga County includes the heavily Democratic city of Cleveland. Brunner is a Democrat who was elected to be Ohio's Secretary of State in November, 2006.

Felony convictions have also resulted in 18-month prison sentences for two employees of the Cuyahoga BOE as a result of what the county prosecutor in the case calls the "rigging" of the outcome in the recount following the 2004 presidential election. Further problems surfaced in the conduct of Cuyahoga County's May, 2006 primary, in the wake of which Michel Vu, Executive Director of the county's Board of Elections recently resigned.

In tandem, the shake-up in Ohio's biggest county reflects a widening storm surrounding the outcome of the 2004 presidential election and the conduct of elections overall in the nation's most pivotal state.

Pages

Subscribe to Freepress.org RSS