CODEPINK : Women Say No To War

CODEPINK : Women Say No To War

Stop Throwing Around The Word "Freedom" If You Don't Understand It

I don't have a whole lot to add to the argument about the flap about the Islamic Cultural Center they want to build a couple of blocks from the World Trade Center site.

Just a couple of things.

How far away do you want this thing? Eight blocks? A couple of miles?

Are you actually suggesting we start zoning religious sites?

Yes, the people who attacked us on 9/11 were Muslims.

And on April 19, 1995, in Oklahoma City, we were attacked by white Christians. So let's agree, no Protestant churches within two blocks of the Murrow Building?

Fuck, Scott Roeder gave his life to Jesus on his knees in front of the TV because Pat Robertson told him to. How about we not allow the 700 Club to be broadcast in the Wichita area?

Let's go all the way. Anywhere there are victims of religious violence, let's pick a radius and ban that religion out of respect for the dead.

Maybe if the same people who were saying "Let them build the Islamic Center farther away," weren't also protesting the erection of Mosques in Tennessee, Wisconsin, California and, well, anywhere in America, they wouldn't sound so goddamn silly.

So please stop saying that the terrorists hate our freedom. Because you have already given them that.

You throw the word "freedom" around, but you either do not believe in it or you just don't understand it.

Either way, when you say it, it sounds hollow and I don't believe you.

U.S. attends Hiroshima ceremonies for the first time

Hundreds attended a ceremony commemorating the 65th anniversary of the first atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima.
Children sang songs and bells rang to mark the moment the bomb was dropped.
74 nations were present to honor those killed. The date is remembered every year with a somber ceremony, but this year, for the first time, representatives from the U.S., Great Britain and France were in attendance.
The ceremony focused on moving toward a goal of a nuclear-free world."A world free of weapons of mass destruction - that is the only safe path to a safer world," said Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General.
This is a shift from the normal argument of whether the use of the atomic bomb was justified to end the Pacific front of World War II.
Both arguments have raged back to the moment the bomb was dropped in August of 1945. One of the first articles to predict the fear that would dominate the public consciousness in the decades following appeared just 12 days after the bombing of Hiroshima.
The memorials and ceremonies are over for another year, but the debates over proliferation and the justification of the use of nuclear force will be with us as long as the memory of the more than 140,000 killed in the blast 65 years ago today.

An Historic Wedding

Iceland’s Prime Minister has wed her longtime girlfriend, making history by becoming the world’s first sitting head-of-state to enter into a gay marriage. While this would be unheard of in many parts of the world, fellow Nordic nations seem to be more than ready to accept the marriage of 67-year-old Johanna Sigurdardottir to her girlfriend.

Scandinavia has long been at the forefront of tolerance. Gay and lesbian lawmakers and clergy have become common.

Respected Swedish lawmaker Fredrick Federlev, who also happens to be a cross-dresser, said, “There is some kind of passion for social justice here, that everybody should be treated the same.”

In spite of the advances in gay rights over the past decades, it is all but unimaginable to think of a gay American President, much less a President entering into a gay marriage.

Across Europe, the situation varies. Many countries have high-ranking openly gay politicians, including Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe who is considered a strong contender for France ’s 2012 Presidential elections.

This is a sharp contrast to many Catholic dominated countries like Italy and the Baltic region.

In Africa, homosexuals in politics would be inconceivable, where 37 countries have anti-gay laws.

When she heard about the Icelandic leader’s marriage, Uganda ’s ruling party spokeswoman, Mary Karooro Okurutu said that Iceland ’s “Society is finished, they have no morals.” Uganda is currently considering a law that would impose the death penalty on some gays.

Many human rights groups believe Europe to be the forefront in the fight for gay rights.

"In the current climate of U.S. public opinion it is impossible to imagine a U.S. president who is openly gay and who marries their longtime partner," said Peter Tatchell, spokesman for the London-based human rights group Outrage. “In Europe the reaction is completely different – people just don’t care.”

I don't know how much I have to add to this. I'm of two minds on this one.

I think it's great that it's finally happening. Parts of the world at least are waking up and realizing that some things just aren't their goddamn business.

But there's still a part of me that truly feels that if we were as advanced as we believed, this wouldn't be news.

As Mr. Tatchell said, we ought not to even care.

And if you care, I'm listening to:

Slow Justice

Okay, the following is the story as I wrote it. I think you'll agree I showed very admirable restraint. It is not always easy maintaining objectivity. You have no idea how much I wanted to insert my comments on this one.

Mark Clements spent 28 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. On Monday, he and a group of activists and other torture victims found themselves in the federal court building in downtown Chicago, waiting for the verdict in the Jon Burge trial.

Clements choked up when he heard the news. Burge had been convicted of all counts against him: one count of lying under oath and two counts of obstruction of justice.

Jon Burge is a former Chicago Police Lieutenant who led unit of cops that tortured black suspects in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Burge’s trial lasted five weeks. Five victims testified about how they signed false confessions after being suffocated, electrically shocked, beaten and threatened with guns placed in their mouths.

Burge was not on trial for the tortures themselves, but for lying under oath in a 2003 civil lawsuit about what he knew about the torture. The statute of limitations on the tortures ran out long ago.

Mark Clements was 16 years old when he was tortured by men under Burge into signing a false confession. He cried when he talked about how he felt about Burge’s conviction.
“My daughter is 29 years old,” said Clements through sobs. “I missed all those years with my daughter, sitting in those prison cells for a crime I didn't commit. I do not feel sorry for Jon Burge."

Many call the guilty verdict significant. One juror said it was hard to find a police officer guilty because most people, by instinct believe an officer’s side of the story. Many human rights groups believe that is why New York City officers were not convicted in the killing of Sean Bell or why the LA Police who were caught on tape beating Rodney King got off.

Whether or not this verdict reflects a shift in the public’s willingness to hold police accountable for their actions is not clear, but Clements said that he’s “Relieved that at least one of these people is now going to finally feel the pain.”

And that was the objective story I wrote. Good work. Straight and to the point without a lot of my input.

Now that I'm here on my own time, I can commentate, right? (Right, Josh, go nuts!) Because writing that without bursting out into a tirade took a lot of self-control and I think I've earned a rant.

Okay, forget the fact that innocent men like Mark Clements, Ronnie Kitchen, Melvin Jones, Martin Reeves and countless others suffered at the hands of police like Burge and his thugs. Forget the 22 torture victims who are still in prison because of confessions that were forced from them.

Wait, don't forget them. Never forget it. Let's just put it aside for a second so I can make an intellectual appeal to those reading this who aren't the bleeding heart type.

Because I know what many of you are thinking.

You're thinking, even if you're not going to say it out loud, that at least some of these guys probably did the crimes they were locked away for, regardless of whether their confessions were beaten out of them.

Actually, I take that back. I've gotten tired of making intellectual appeals to people who don't care.

Are you really okay with police doing anything they want with impunity? Have you stopped to think what kind of person wants to become a cop under those circumstances?

Two kinds of people: naive idealists who really want to help people and Droogies.

This is not about hating cops.

This is about living in a society that allows monsters to be police. Nothing gives a sadistic bully a hard-on like the idea of walking around with a gun, a badge and absolute impunity. And as long as we refuse to hold police accountable, we will have psychopaths lining up, just itching to join the force.

This isn't an insult to police who truly want to help their fellow man. Quite the opposite.

If we let the thugs and monsters blend in with them, then we're dishonoring all of them, aren't we?

So try to understand that celebrating the conviction of Jon Burge has nothing to do with hating cops.

Next stop, Stark County, Ohio. If there is a God and if he is just, maybe Sheriff Tim Swanson and the 7 sexual predators he has been protecting will be prosecuted at some point.

But that's another post. And you know what? I think it's gonna come soon.

And in case any of you care, I know I should be listening to Rage Against the Machine or N.W.A. or something like that given the topic, but I'm in an ethereal pop mood, so I'm listening to a gorgeous new 180g re-release of:

Heartbreak for a Hero

President Mandela, a man like you, who has already endured such suffering and showed the spirit of Christ more than anyone who claims his name here in the west, should never have to know heartbreak like you have suffered today.

My family is grieving with you and praying for your family.

Thank you for everything and we love you.

Make that Change

The political center of America has been moving decidedly to the right for decades.

Actual liberals have been all-but banished from the Democratic Party.

Ask yourself, do we have any heroes in America like Marek Edelman, who left us this past October? Uncompromising and fierce, even in the face of death, even in the face of the scorn of his countrymen and allies?

The Democrats will not get their shit together on issues like marriage equality or reproductive rights and they have caved on every economic issue there is.

The Clinton 90's heralded an era of Democratic Reaganomics.

The Democrats are now on the wrong side on the death penalty, the war on crime, the war on drugs, and more or less every other aspect of both our foreign and domestic policy.

Gains are small and usually immediately taken away. Resistance is met with either scorn, or muscle.

We, the left, caught a great deal of grief from the Democratic Party when we dared to refuse to support Gore and Lieberman who might as well be Republicans.

I’m sorry, but you can’t move that far to the right and then complain that the left has abandoned you.

And anyone who has spoken out in the last eight years, from Ward Churchill to Bill Maher to the Dixie Chicks can tell you what it’s like be responded to with simple, brutal, unmoving force.

And now, we are at a crossroads. Did we really mean what we said when we voted for change, or are we just jerking off?

Are we pissed off enough about this recession to demand that the people we just put into office reverse the past 28 years of systematic deregulation that led to this whole mess?
The hubris of the last eight years, the prioritizing of power over party, and party over country has imploded the Republican Party and we have been given a magnificent opportunity. It would be a crime to waste it. But the Democrats have indeed wasted the opportunity.

They could not get meaningful health care for all Americans even with a Super-majority in both houses. You know why? Because they didn't fucking try!

They talked of bi-partisanship as if it were the primary virtue for any politician. As if making friends with the enemy were more important than principle.

They've put Blackwater into Pakistan for Christ's sake!

No more. I've come to a crucial decision. When you choose between the lesser of two evils, you are still choosing evil.

Go ahead and tell me I'm throwing my vote away.

But from now on, every vote will go to a Socialist, Green or Independent candidate.

I used to think the Democrats' problem was weakness. Now I see that it's a lack of conviction.

And for the record, to you, the Democratic Party, you left us. Adieu.

Contact Your Lawmakers! Get Out of Afghanistan!

Below is a link you can click to send messages to your Senators and your Rep asking them to support legislation getting us out of Afghanistan.

http://www.winwithoutwar.org/page/speakout/timeline

They have their own pre-written message, but I suggest writing your own. I think when politicians get the same thing over and over they tend to think a lot of people are clicking without thinking and probably don't give it the weight they should.

So, in the hopes that Sen. Bond, Sen. McCaskill and Rep. Graves will actually read something I took the time to compose myself, here's what I wrote:

With due respect, the arrogance with which we are fighting this war is staggering.

I know that you are educated. You don't get to where you are if you're not smart.

No superpower in history has been able to conquer Afghanistan and many have tried.

First, the terrain is prime for defense and second, this is not a culture that surrenders. EVER.

What's happening there now is a civil war and we have got to get out. Please, I care about my country too much to stand by and watch it continue in its imperialism.

I'm writing to ask that you support legislation introduced by Senator Feingold (S.3197) or Representatives McGovern and Jones (H.R. 5015) requiring the president to submit to Congress a plan for the "safe, orderly and expeditious redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Afghanistan."

President Obama promised change and he has not delivered it. It is up to the legislative branch to stand up and get our troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Please, don't let any more of them die over there.

Please don't let any more of our young people become killers.

Thank you for listening.

Joshua D. Lucht

Blue Springs, MO 64015

joshlucht@yahoo.com

In Her Wake: An Interview with Dr. Nancy Rappaport

I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Dr. Nancy Rappaport, author of "In Her Wake," about her mother's suicide.

This is an unbelievable book that everyone who is depressed or knows someone who is mentally ill needs to read.

Severe Clear - Kristian Fraga (2009)

I don't think I've looked forward to a documentary like this since Paradise Lost 2.

Severe Clear, comprised of clips from a video journal shot by Lt. Mike Scotti has made the festival circuit and is about to see a limited U.S. theatrical release.


Whether it will come to Kansas City remains to be seen.

From the clips I've seen, Scotti and the film's director, Kristian Fraga showed a great deal of courage in releasing footage that shows every aspect of what I can only imagine what it must be like to be over there.

I saw desperation, grief, terror, courage, determination, horror, more grief, more terror and above all, desperation again.

My heart sank as Lt. Scotti told about how he and his squad fired on a car they thought was hostile, but turned out to be a man with his daughter.

He talks about killing and burying a little girl with her pink shoes. I felt anger, grief, hatred, pity and revulsion all within the span of about ten seconds.

The rate, range and intensity of emotions was staggering.

And this was in a couple minutes worth of clips that I managed to see.


That's my review of the couple of minutes. Severe Clear has made the festival circuit and from what I've heard, it's amazing.

I'm going to watch it as soon as possible and let you all know how it is.

Why Did We Elect You?

You ran on a platform of opposition to the war.

We elected you and you failed to end them.

You told us you supported gay rights.

Don't Ask-Don't Tell is still in place.

You pretended to support a woman's right to choose.

And now comes a sweeping anti-choice executive order so you can get your watered-down 'reform' passed and claim a victory.

I desperately wish I had voted for Cynthia McKinney. Most would tell me that doing so would have been throwing my vote away.

At least I would have been voting for someone with principles.

Never a democrat. Never again.

Les Chats Persians - Bahman Qobadi (2009)

Qobadi's masterpiece out of Iran doesn't just embody what's great about independent film. It represents everything good in rock and roll.

Hell, I'll go you one better. Les Chats makes a statement about the function of art in general.

That function? Rebellion.

The connection this film makes between political uprising and art isn't a new concept, but Qobadi makes his argument with an eloquent rage I don't think I've ever seen.

Maybe that's because we have the luxury of taking for granted this concept of living in a relatively free country.

The films quieter moments are just as powerful as its raucous, sometimes gleefully angry musical interludes.

One of the most memorable is a scene where one character, mostly obscured by a door, begs for mercy from a harsh judge.

The underground Iranian filmmaker rails against government and religion for just under 2 hours.





It's eerie that the film won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival just weeks before the now notorious riots following the disputed (stolen) Iranian elections. In retrospect, the film feels prophetical.

Qobadi is filled with fury at how his government treats his people. In an interview, he railed against the treatment of women as 'the voice against God.'

The film, as angry as it will make you does have its share of humor and that is what makes now exhiled Qobadi a gift.

The cinema community embraces him and every one of you should desperately seek this film out.

The UK Inquiry With No Teeth: It's Better Than Nothing

There was a very interesting article in the Socialist Worker on the UK inquiry into the Britain's involvement in the invasion of Iraq.

At the heart of the inquiry is the question of whether Tony Blair’s administration promised to join the U.S. in invading Iraq with or without UN approval as early as 2002.

And the article has a point. The inquiry is largely meaningless and impotent because its bite has no fangs.

There are going to be no real repercussions for anybody except for some public discomfort.

That’s true. However, this public discomfort does have some value.

Nobody here in the U.S. is going to have to answer for their crimes, even in a meaningless PR nightmare of an inquiry.

What do you think Bush is doing right now? Fishing? Drinking? Duck hunting? Undocumented worker hunting? Maybe he’s out there participating in a couple of these sports at the same time?

One thing I’m sure he’s not doing is squirming.

He’s not somewhere with advisors and lawyers worrying about what he’s going to have to tell prosecutors or a Congressional Committee or even a journalist.

He has nothing to worry about and he knows it.

So, even if the U.K. hearings have no bite, at least they’re happening.

The hearings culminated in the testimony of Tony Blair at the end of January.

Incidentally, someone tried (unsuccessfully) to make a citizens arrest of Blair outside the proceedings.

Hell, there’s a website, http://www.arrestblair.org/ that has a bounty for anybody who makes a citizen’s arrest on the bastard. (Incidentally, yours truly did a piece on this. That’s right, I’m not above shamelessly pimping myself.)

Also, people arriving at the Westminster underground station were greeted by people gathering signatures for a petition for Blair to be tried as a war criminal.

So, some good has come out of this.

To me, the highlight of the Blair's testimony was when he talked about threat versus perception.

"It wasn't that objectively he (Saddam) had done more, it was that our perception of the risk had shifted," Blair said.

Holy Jesus, did anyone catch the significance of those words? Blair said that we went to war because our paranoia level went up even though the actual threat didn’t. And he’s unapologetic about that! Holy Jesus!

Blair did deny promising military aid at the 2002 Crawford meeting.

"The only commitment I gave (at Crawford) was a commitment to deal with Saddam," Blair said. He said he told Bush "we will be with them in dealing with this threat."

A former legal advisor to the Blair administration, Michael Wood told then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in January of 2003 that any invasion in Iraq would be illegal.

Wood testified that his warnings fell on deaf ears. “He took the view that I was being very dogmatic and that international law was pretty vague and that he wasn't used to people taking such a firm position. When he had been at the Home Office, and had often been advised things were unlawful but he had gone ahead anyway and won in the courts."

The reason these warnings went unheeded may have been that the decision to go to war had already been made.

Britain's former ambassador to the U.S., Christopher Meyer, has told the inquiry that Bush and Blair used an April 2002 meeting at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, to "sign in blood" an agreement to take military action.

Senior Blair aides deny that. Former British Secretary of State for Defense Geoff Hoon said that Britain did not unconditionally decide to resort to military action before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Hoon said he did not think Blair gave a promise to Bush to support war come what may.

Hoon’s major concern wasn’t the legality of the war, but the logistics of the whole affair.

He testified that he had shared his concerns about planning with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in February 2003, a month before the invasion.

He said the British government also did not fully understand the challenges occupying forces would face.

He criticized Britain's Foreign Office and Department for International Development for delays in sending civilian staff to take over reconstruction work from the military.
With the bloodthirsty amateur hour carnage that Blackwater, (now Xe Services) caused in 2007 that nobody in the Bush administration or at Blackwater is willing to accept any accountability for, it’s good to hear somebody saying that outsourcing military work to civilian staff might not be such a good idea.

Since it's obvious that nobody here is going to hold companies like that accountable for their actions, at least somebody is speaking up.

But back to the invasion of Iraq.

If there's one thing that Bush is, it's decisive.

He's not the kind of man to sit and do nothing when action has to be taken.

I mean, you can't imagine the guy just sitting there for several minutes during a crisis not knowing what to do.

No, he's a take charge kind of guy.

Oh, wait.

Hoon said that former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had initially been suspicious of the British Government. I’m wondering what exactly he meant by ‘suspicious.’

Like if Britain wasn’t going to be as willing as we wanted that somehow that would make them less of an ally?

That attitude is chilling. It’s the ‘you’re either with us or with the terrorists’ mindset. This is a sentiment I resent the hell out of by the way since my response upon hearing that was, “No, I’m not with you or the terrorists.”

I think that by ‘suspicious’ he meant that Rumsfeld thought that Britain might turn out to be a holdout like France and would need to be vilified as such.

Hoon also said it was obvious as early as the summer of 2002 that the U.S. wanted to invade Iraq.

He testified, "There was a real sense of the Americans thinking through in a very practical way the consequences of the 'axis of evil' speech and focussing on Iraq, so we had no doubt at that stage in the summer that they meant business."

British officials worried before the invasion of Iraq that the Americans weren't putting enough thought into postwar planning, the head of Britain's defense ministry at the time said Tuesday.

Hoon told the inquiry that planning was not as "detailed and comprehensive as we would have liked."

He acknowledged the aftermath of the 2003 invasion "did not go as well as we wanted it to go."

No fucking shit, fuck-nuts.

To me, the hero of the hearings (if indeed a hero was to be had) was Former British International Development Secretary Clare Short.

I know nothing about her career up to the invasion. I had never even heard of her until these hearings, but I now adore her.

She talked about the need to speak the truth to friends.

"I think this gets to the root of why we went (to war.) And I think now you can see the leaked documents, the Americans were determined to go, Blair had said he'd go with them, he couldn't get Britain there without going through the UN but in the end if the Americans were going he was determined to go with them. And I repeat, I've said it before but it's very important - there was no need to go at that time, there was no emergency."

She went on to say that, "Britain needs to think about this - the special relationship. What do we mean by it? Do we mean that we have an independent relationship and we say what we think or do we mean we just abjectly go wherever America goes because we think that puts us in the big league. And I think that was it and it's a tragedy. That is the tragedy."

She is absolutely right. Being an ally does not mean blindly following, right or wrong.

By the way, Short resigned in protest of the invasion. A politician with a conscience. I love this woman.

Sometimes our friends our wrong and when they are, it’s our responsibility to stand up and tell them ‘no.’

Meanwhile, outside the hearings, the people who knew what they were talking about more than anybody and had the most authority to speak did so very loudly.

"The Iraqi people are having to live every day with aggression, division, and atrocities," said protester Saba Jaiwad, an Iraqi who opposed the war. "Blair should not be here giving his excuses for the illegal war, he should be taken to The Hague to face criminal charges because he has committed crimes against the Iraqi people."

It’s true. Now we need to have to prosecute Donald Rumsfeld. We have the documentation.

His signature is on virtually every memo authorizing torture. The paper trail is there and the Justice Department could easily prove his guilt as a war criminal beyond a reasonable doubt.

I think they could make a case against Cheney, too.

What are they waiting for?

I think it’s our arrogance as a people.

We want to be untouchable as a country and as much as these men should be in prison, we’re not going to punish them because we want to live in the country that can act with impunity.

Sure, we'll hold the occasional demonstration and protest the actions of those in power, but deep down, we don't really want to punish them.We simply do not hold our leaders responsible for their actions. And, as Ms. Short pointed out, that is tragic.