Politics

Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.

What Bush wants us to forget

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Things that Bush wants us to forget:

  • Forget for a moment that we still can’t prove Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons.
  • Forget that the latest Bush speech was just a re-hash of all the “ifs” and “mays” and “coulds” in Tony Blair’s flimsy 16 pages of allegations in his historically dishonest “dossier”.
  • Forget that if Osama bin Laden ever acquired a nuclear weapon, he’d probably use it first on Saddam.
  • Forget the 14 Palestinians, including the 12-year-old child, killed by Israel a few hours before Mr Bush spoke…
  • …forget that when his aircraft killed nine Palestinian children in July, along with one militant, the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon — a “man of peace” in Mr Bush’s words — described the slaughter as “a great success”.
  • Forget that President Ronald Reagan dispatched a special envoy to meet Saddam Hussein in December 1983. It’s essential to forget this for three reasons.
    • Firstly, because the awful Saddam was already using gas against the Iranians — which is one of the reasons we are now supposed to go to war with him.
    • Secondly, because the envoy was sent to Iraq to arrange the re-opening of the US embassy — in order to secure better trade and economic relations with the Butcher of Baghdad.
    • Thirdly, because the envoy was — wait for it — Donald Rumsfeld.
  • We must forget, too, that in 1988, as Saddam destroyed the people of Halabja with gas, along with tens of thousands of other Kurds — when he “used gas against his own people” in the words of Messrs Bush/Cheney/Blair/Cook/Straw et al — President Bush senior provided him with $500m in US government subsidies to buy American farm products.
  • We must forget that in the following year, after Saddam’s genocide was complete, President Bush senior doubled this subsidy to $1bn, along with germ seed for anthrax, helicopters, and the notorious “dual-use” material that could be used for chemical and biological weapons.
  • Forget how the Americans promised Pakistan and Afghanistan a new era of hope after the defeat of the Soviet army in 1980 — and did nothing.
  • Forget how President Bush senior urged the Iraqis to rise up against Saddam in 1991 and — when they obeyed — did nothing.
  • Forget how America promised a new era of hope to Somalia in 1993 and then, after “Black Hawk Down”, abandoned the country.
  • Forget how President Bush junior promised to “stand by” Afghanistan before he began his bombings last year — and has left it now an economic shambles of drug barons, warlords, anarchy and fear.
  • We must forget, as we listen to the need to reinsert arms inspectors, that the CIA covertly used UN weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq.
  • And of course, we must forget about oil…in all of Bush’s 30 minutes of anti-Iraq war talk yesterday — pleasantly leavened with just two minutes of how “I hope this will not require military action” — there wasn’t a single reference to the fact that Iraq may hold oil reserves larger than those of Saudi Arabia, that American oil companies stand to gain billions of dollars in the event of a US invasion, that, once out of power, Bush and his friends could become multi-billionaires on the spoils of this war.

We must ignore all this before we go to war. We must forget.

— Robert Fisk: What the US President wants us to forget

A proposal

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If/when we catch the Maryland sniper, howabout we just airlift him into Iraq and set him loose on Saddam?

No, this isn’t entirely serious. Just a brain fart.

Talk about killing two birds with one stone, though. Remove Saddam from power (okay, via assassination, which the U.S. really isn’t supposed to condone, even though Ari Fleischer doesn’t seem to know that), and since the sniper isn’t likely to make it out of Iraq alive after offing Saddam, we save the trouble of all the trials, media frenzy, and eventual death sentence over here. Hmmm….

Again — this is not a serious suggestion. Just some random rambling.

If the shoe fits…

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I’m trying to avoid reposting entire articles from other sources here, but as Yahoo! News has a tendency not to keep articles live for more than a couple weeks at most, I’m making an exception in this case.

Often controversial cartoonist and columnist Ted Rall creates a brilliant essay, in which Iranian President Mohammad Khatami calls for U.N. intervention against the United States, decrying everything from the stockpiles of nuclear weapons to civil rights violations.

Excellently done.

Read more

The argument for war

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So it seems that Bush will be making his case for war against Iraq tonight on television. Unfortunately, I’ll be at work, and won’t be able to listen in. Bummer.

Any bets on how much actual content is in the speech?

Not In Our Name rally

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NION at Volunteer ParkAs mentioned in my previous post, today was the day for NION rallies across the country. Prairie was visiting for the weekend, and she and I decided to head up and participate. Something of a new experience for me — I’m fairly vocal with my friends and occasionally here on my site about my beliefs, but I’d yet to ever actually participate in anything like this. I figured it was time to ‘put my money where my mouth is’, so to speak, and so about 12:30pm we started walking up to Volunteer Park for the rally, in time to get there right about 1pm when it was scheduled to start.

Listening to the speakersNot really knowing what to expect, or how these things generally go, we just wandered into the park and found a spot on the grass to sit and listen to the various speakers they had. I didn’t have anything to write on with me, so I don’t remember who all spoke, but there was a lot of interesting stuff, if fairly predictable for the crowd and event (that sounds horribly cynical, but it’s not meant to be at all — forgive me, I’m tired and need to go to bed, but I wanted to get this in first). One thing I thought was really interesting was the broad spectrum of people there. There’s something of a preconceived notion of the people you’d ‘typically’ find at a political rally like this, usually leaning more towards the obviously leftist/radical side of the population. This rally seemed to attract a very wide range of the population, however — rather nice, it makes it seem like more and more people are starting to question where our government is taking us, rather than just accepting everything that comes down the line. Definitely neat to see.

Dubya puppetAt about 3pm, everyone started moving to begin the march portion of the day’s events (no small feat with an estimated 7,000 people gathered at the park). A giant inflated globe carried by a bunch of kids led the march, followed by a bunch of giant puppets, then all the rest of the gathered masses. We marched out of Volunteer Park down to Broadway, down the main drag of Broadway to Pike St., then hung a right and went down the hill into downtown Seattle, ending at the plaza in front of Westlake Center.

Marching down BroadwayThe entire event (rally and march) went quite well from what I saw. After reading things like the account of the march in Portland that ended up in conflicts with the police, I knew that it was possible for things to get a bit hairy, but thankfully enough, that didn’t happen. I did see a few people in the crowd that came prepared for conflict — dressed in black, with black stocking caps, black bandannas tied across their face, and goggles — which made me a little nervous, but apparently none of them actually felt like causing any problems.

Looking for trouble?I don’t entirely understand people who would take this approach to a protest. If they were just bringing along facemasks and such in case things did get out of hand, and they had them ready to wear if necessary, that would be one thing. However, coming to the event and spending the entire event ‘dressed for battle’, if you will, gives the definite impression that not only are they expecting conflict, but they might even welcome it — if not instigate it. Not very encouraging when the intent is for a peaceful protest, and when the protest is focused on crying for peace.

Riot policeI was also rather pleasantly surprised that there didn’t seem to be an overbearing police force out (something that Seattle seems to have an issue with in recent history). They were definitely present, but didn’t at any point take an aggressive attitude — at least, not that I saw or heard of. About the only time I noticed tensions rising at all was as we passed one street in Downtown, where there was a line of riot troops blocking off the street about halfway down. This, unfortunately, did attract some amount of boos and catcalls from some of the marchers as we went by, however the troops did nothing except stand there, and march organizers made sure that noone broke ranks to actually try and directly confront any of the officers. I’m pretty sure that the only reason they were there (especially since it was only on that street) was that a protest last summer suddenly changed direction and blocked traffic on I-5 for a couple hours, and they were blocking off the access ramp to I-5 to ensure that this march didn’t try to do the same thing. Nobody went after them, though, and they left us alone, so aside from a few unnecessary taunts tossed their way, it was pretty uneventful.

The Reagan administrationEventually we made it down to Westlake Plaza, where a post-march rally was being held. I saw one of my favorite rally signs being held up here by a guy probably in his late teens: “And I heard the Reagan administration was bad”. It made me laugh, at least. We hung around for a while longer and listened to a few of the speakers that were at this rally, then decided that we were hungry, it was a good time to duck out, and did just that. All in all, a very entertaining day, and it felt good to actually get involved and give some more visible, vocal support for the NION movement.

Some other reports on the march:

A crowd estimated by march organizers at 6,000 to 8,000 people registered their dissent yesterday, rallying and marching in a nearly mile-long procession from Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill to Westlake Center as part of a nationwide anti-war protest.

They chanted “Drop Bush, not bombs,” carried origami birds on long poles, wore Uncle Sam costumes on stilts and sported signs that said “Save us From Mad King George.”

There were the occasional whiffs of patchouli, John Lennon buttons and refrains of “we ain’t gonna study war no more.” But this wasn’t a repeat of the 1960s.

Mennonites mixed with anarchists. There were groups of Vietnam veterans, social workers and blue-haired teenagers — all opposed to a brewing war.

Strollers got stuck in potholes and baby boomers in Dead Kennedys T-shirts carried camcorders.

— Seattle P-I: Thousands walk for peace

Yesterday’s march attracted a broad collection of protesters — young and old, students and professionals, and many who said they rarely, if ever, attended rallies.

Tracey Marsh, a graduate student at the University of Washington, had begun to wonder if anybody paid attention to demonstrations anymore. Taking a break from the procession, she said she now feels a new urgency to be in the streets.

“It does give me a sense of hope,” she said as the people flowed by. “It’s really important to let Congress know we don’t support (an invasion).”

— Seattle Times: Thousands hit Seattle’s streets to protest war

After rallying in the park for several hours, the group moved en masse towards Westlake Park, bringing their message of peace to the downtown streets of Seattle.

Speakers included Congressman Jim McDermott, who recently traveled to Iraq; Rev. Jeffrey of New Hope Baptist Church; Peggi Thompson, mother of Seattle political prisoner James Ujaama; and Mark Kolner of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“If theres a problem well work through the United Nations, we cannot go alone,” McDermott told KING 5 News. “If we go alone we lose the whole world.”

— King-5 News: Thousands rally for peace in Seattle

Death penalty unconstitutional

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Rock on — I’m a couple days late hearing about this, but on Tuesday U.S. District Judge William Sessions declared the federal death penalty to be unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions said the law does not adequately protect defendants’ rights.”If the death penalty is to be part of our system of justice, due process of law and the fair trial guarantees of the Sixth Amendment require that standards and safeguards governing the kinds of evidence juries may consider must be rigorous, and constitutional rights and liberties scrupulously protected,” he said.

According to the article, this won’t affect individual states’ death penalty statutes, and he’s actually the second judge to make this ruling.

For me, the death penalty has never been something I’ve supported. I fully realize that there are some amazingly heinous crimes committed, and I can sympathise with those who feel that the death penalty is the only recourse (it’s entirely possible that I’d feel the same way if I was faced with the violent death of a loved one), but I’ve never seen anything to convince me that it’s an actual deterrent.

Hrm. This should probably get more thought and exploration than I’ve got time to give it this morning. Maybe I’ll come back to this post later on.

Why can’t Bush speak?

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Mark Miller comments on Bush’s recent “Fool me once…” flub:

Bush actually believes that he can do no wrong. This fixed conviction of his own infallibility has come out often, in remarks not laughably sub-literate or confused. He’s boasted that he knows what he believes, and that he never changes his position, or his mind, and that he sees the world in black and white, and so on. He’s made it clear repeatedly: George W. Bush is always right, George W. Bush can do no wrong. And now he’s accidentally made the point again, by showing himself incapable — psychologically, and therefore physically — of saying “Shame on me.”

Without really knowing anything about Mr. Miller’s credentials, I’m tempted to chalk this little bit of armchair psychoanalysis up to being just another off-the-wall theory by someone unimpressed with Bush. However, it does make me wonder if this really could be the case? It seems a bit far-fetched for me to jump into believing right off the bat, but it doesn’t seem to be an unthinkable premise. A fairly frightening premise, also, especially for the President of our country, and moreso given the current state of the world. It’s worth thinking about, at least.

Also, ‘Quiddity Quack’ posits this theory:

While plenty of folks chuckle at the Presidents verbal stumbling, we think that it’s more serious. It appears that Bush’s inability to handle complex thoughts may have led him over time to forsake rationalistic approaches, and instead, make decisions based on his feelings. This may explain why he disdains nuance (as he’s said), and why he has simple solutions for everything. E.g.

  • Tax cuts always help.
  • Good people will make any controversial program (like drilling in ANWR) come out all right.
  • American military power is benevolent. (Again, Americans are “good people”).
  • Evil is the reason for misfortunes.
  • …and so on…

I’ve got to admit, this theory sounds a bit more sound to me than a psychological disorder so severe that Bush physically cannot utter any self-deprecating remark, no matter the context. Now, neither of them are qualities that I’d really like my President to have, but, in a ‘lesser of two evils’ situation, I’ll take the latter over the former.

If I had my druthers, though, I’d like a third option.

Found via Anger Management Course

Violence in the media

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I was browsing through /. tonight when someone mentioned an interview with Joss Whedon over at The Onion from last year (oh, except I’m not supposed to link directly to articles inside The Onion…I guess I better just link to the /. post that has the entire interview copied into it — so, which is the greater copyright breach? Anyway…). It’s a good interview on its own, but this quote is as a followup /. post said, “I think that’s just about the most intelligent and responsible thing I’ve ever read about the influence of culture on behaviour.”

People say, “After Columbine, do you feel a responsibility about the way you portray violence?” And I’m like, “No, I felt a responsibility about the way I portrayed violence the first time I picked up a pen.”