Friday, December 16, 2005
Pacifica Commentary for December 14, 2005
TIME TO LEAVE THE BOX
Are you ready to leave the box now? If you are, you will find a whole new world waiting for you. The box is necrophilia, or love of death. The box is bound by the cardboard of fear, ignorance, moral illiteracy, vengeance, and stupidity. But the box feels comfortable.
Before we go on, please try to identify one instructive comment you might have heard from the spokespeople for the box. For example, Mr. Charles Krauthammer is playing parlor games with us about the usefulness of torture. He is in the box and it's dark in there. But well paid opportunists are going to tell us that just everyone agrees with Mr. Krauthammer.
Unconscious spokespeople are telling us that the death penalty is effective. Actually it is so effective that we now have one of the highest murder rates in the world to say nothing of the highest rates of incarceration. What is inside the box is death and a love of death generated by induced fear. The death people even say that we are winning in Iraq.
On the contrary, we are simply restructuring a torturing dictatorship similar to what we created in Nicaragua under Somoza or in Guatemala or El Salvador under a military facade of democracy. Friends, there is no life in the box. It is full of dead people's bones.
As we leave the box and do our homework, we find that an imposter is in the presidency. This individual was not elected in 2000 and was not elected again in the year 2004. The data is now in and documented in the book Censored 2006 by Peter Phillips and Project Censored, Seven Stories Press.
Yes, friends as you leave the box you will rise from the dead and join the global group of truth seekers. No more adoration of the nation state, no more acceptance of the state cult of cold blooded murder by execution and war.
Stanley "Tookie" Williams has just been murdered by the state of California, and many others await this cold blooded state homicide. They are to be killed as victims of class justice. In the box there is one system of justice for the poor, for people of color and another system for people who have substantial amounts of money. It is only out of the box that we find what redemption means, what rehabilitation means, what reform means. To deny that these things are possible is to be spiritually dead.
Come on friends, it is time to leave the box and to say as Stanley Williams might have regarding those still in darkness, "Father, forgive them for they have absolutely no idea what they are doing!"
Are you ready to leave the box now? If you are, you will find a whole new world waiting for you. The box is necrophilia, or love of death. The box is bound by the cardboard of fear, ignorance, moral illiteracy, vengeance, and stupidity. But the box feels comfortable.
Before we go on, please try to identify one instructive comment you might have heard from the spokespeople for the box. For example, Mr. Charles Krauthammer is playing parlor games with us about the usefulness of torture. He is in the box and it's dark in there. But well paid opportunists are going to tell us that just everyone agrees with Mr. Krauthammer.
Unconscious spokespeople are telling us that the death penalty is effective. Actually it is so effective that we now have one of the highest murder rates in the world to say nothing of the highest rates of incarceration. What is inside the box is death and a love of death generated by induced fear. The death people even say that we are winning in Iraq.
On the contrary, we are simply restructuring a torturing dictatorship similar to what we created in Nicaragua under Somoza or in Guatemala or El Salvador under a military facade of democracy. Friends, there is no life in the box. It is full of dead people's bones.
As we leave the box and do our homework, we find that an imposter is in the presidency. This individual was not elected in 2000 and was not elected again in the year 2004. The data is now in and documented in the book Censored 2006 by Peter Phillips and Project Censored, Seven Stories Press.
Yes, friends as you leave the box you will rise from the dead and join the global group of truth seekers. No more adoration of the nation state, no more acceptance of the state cult of cold blooded murder by execution and war.
Stanley "Tookie" Williams has just been murdered by the state of California, and many others await this cold blooded state homicide. They are to be killed as victims of class justice. In the box there is one system of justice for the poor, for people of color and another system for people who have substantial amounts of money. It is only out of the box that we find what redemption means, what rehabilitation means, what reform means. To deny that these things are possible is to be spiritually dead.
Come on friends, it is time to leave the box and to say as Stanley Williams might have regarding those still in darkness, "Father, forgive them for they have absolutely no idea what they are doing!"
Friday, December 09, 2005
Pacifica Commentary for December 7, 2005
The Supreme Court
The smallest and most powerful branch of our government is the Supreme Court. Citizens generally only think about the Supreme Court when a vacancy needs to be filled. But there is something much deeper at this time. The Supreme Court is simply not doing what it was designed to do. If we had a truly functional Supreme Court the nine would understand that they have the privilege of judicial review. The court would indicate by its performance that it understands the key decision supported by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1803; Marbury vs. Madison. This decision established the power of judicial review, that is the power of the courts to decide whether a governmental official or institution has acted within the limits of the constitution, and if not, to declare its action null and void. This decision applies to the performance of both the president and the congress.
The court has the power to declare presidential decisions as unconstitutional. The court has the power to declare an act of congress unconstitutional. It is up to an informed citizenry to instruct the court on the proper use of its power.
A functional and conscious Supreme Court would proceed with the following decisions immediately:
1. The court would order the president to cease and desist in his war making because the president has no constitutional right to start any war.
2. Major portions of The Patriot Act would be declared null and void as unconstitutional.
3. Major portions of the No Child Left Behind legislation would be declared unconstitutional.
4. A conscious court would immediately repent of its long practice of class justice. We have one form of justice for the majority and another form of justice for the minority for people of color, for the poor. Any justice of the Supreme Court would have to be sociologically illiterate not to see this. This is known as the tyranny of the majority.
The death penalty which was unconstitutional in our country and later declared constitutional would immediately take its place with the trash of history where it belongs.
5. A conscious court would declare such various secret governments including the CIA to be unconstitutional. Their structures are foreign to United States government.
6. A Supreme Court that was alive and conscious would immediately inform Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush that their love and promotion of torture is illegal and contemptible. It is our responsibility as citizens to demand that the life long appointees on the Supreme Court protect us from the incompetence of the executive and legislative branches of government.
Pacifica Commentary for November 30, 2005
Victory
Historians will eventually reach an accurate consensus on our warfare state. I think it will go something like this:
The Korean War has never ended. There was a cease fire but no peace treaty. Some three million Koreans and Chinese were killed together with 50,000 of our citizens. Our country did not win that war and it is not over.
The War in Vietnam? Yes, this long war had an end. The United States lost the war together with some 60,000 of our finest young people while three million Vietnamese perished, mostly civilians. U.S. attacks included the carpet bombing of civilians and chemical warfare by way of dioxin (agent orange).
Then there was a war in El Salvador, where our country supported the dictatorship and spent billions on munitions and on command and control of counter-insurgency. No, we did not win in El Salvador but the very same people who trained the Salvadoran death squads are now in Iraq training death squads. And the rebels we fought in El Salvador now make up a major political party known as the FMLN.
Then there was the Contra War in Nicaragua where the United States spent billions to pay and arm mercenaries to attack exclusively civilian targets, teachers, social workers, religious people and farmers. It was sheer terrorism against Nicaraguan civilians. 40,000 Nicaraguans slaughtered. What did we win in Nicaragua? Nothing. The Sandinistas are the largest political party in the country today. When the secret war was running out of money the United States illegally sold arms to the Ayatollah Khomenieh to get funds for more mercenaries and more arms. The same aircraft from the United States that shipped arms to Nicaragua for the Contras were used to bring cocaine back to this country on the return trips. The Contra mercenaries evolved into the private military corporations who are fighting and torturing people in Iraq today and who remain exempt from the Code of Military Justice.
And what did we win in Guatemala after supporting one of the most brutal and bestial military forces on earth for four decades? After spending billions of dollars which resulted in the killing of 200,000 Guatemalans, the very rebel force we fought is now a respected political party.
Need we mention the on-going Plan Colombia which is actually a US Plan for Colombia which includes each and every one of the errors we have made in past wars.
Did our country have no victories? Well its seems we did win the war in Grenada in 1983. The island has a population the size of Santa Monica has no military and, of course
there was absolutely no reason for war.
This endless and failed militarism should help us to understand why the United States cannot deliver health care, education and a vibrant public infrastructure to our population.
To repeat the same action again and again and to expect different results is a sure sign of
insanity.
Pacifica Commentary for November 23, 2005
Government Logic
The logic of the administration is the logic of Advertising 101. If you have taken Advertising 101 you know that one of the key principles is to take the weakest point in the product and put it up front as if it were a strong point.
If the truck you are trying to sell falls apart in one year, your ad will say, "Our Trucks last longer." If your cigarette gives cancer of the lungs, it will be advertised as ..springtime.
Another example; many of our troops did not want to go to Iraq. They went to Iraq against their will. But they either went to Iraq or they had the option of going to a military prison.
And how does the government propaganda advertise this? It says, SUPPORT OUR TROOPS with the clear implication that those troops are exactly where they want to be. The full sentence would be, "Support our troops because they want to be in Iraq and they went there of their own will." And this propaganda continues as thousands of our troops have defected and many heroic veterans have come home to denounce the torture, the killing of civilians, the destruction of an entire nation.
Just think about the phrase, "We must stay in Iraq so that our troops will not have died in vain." In other words, "Let's have more young people and more Iraqis die so that no one will think that those who preceded them died in vain.
As in advertising, our leaders have shown a reckless contempt for truth. Cheney refers to people who have his number as dishonest, cowardly, reprehensible and unpatriotic.
I think he is looking in a mirror.
The tragedy is that many fine young people died cruelly and unnecessarily in Vietnam together with millions of civilians. Fine young people have died in Iraq together with yes, millions of Iraqis if we start the count in January of 1991 when the war actually began.. Yes, they died because of a mendacious government which is lost in its own hubris.
Those who seek the truth are seeking a spiritual value. Those who create the lies are adversaries of the truth. They are not free.
Let's clarify the point. These shortened lives were not in vain. These lives as all lives are an ongoing miracle. But their death was too soon and also unnecessary. Those responsible for these unnecessary deaths must be brought to justice as quickly as possible.
Let's junk Advertising 101 and all that it implies.
Pacifica Commentary for November 18, 2005
Twenty-Second Anniversary Of The Office Of The Americas
The Office of the Americas will honor Cindy Sheehan this Saturday, November 19th. Cindy has galvanized the world with her demand to know for what noble cause her son Casey died.
We will also honor Daniel Ellsberg who remains an international voice of conscience. Dan risked 115 years in prison by releasing 7,000 pages of Pentagon policy papers to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later to the New York Times.
We will honor Dolores Huerta who co-founded the United Farm Workers Union together with Cesar Chavez and is bringing to farm workers the benefits enjoyed by members of other unions. In addition to her great work with farm workers, Dolores has become a world wide spokesperson for justice and peace.
We will honor Jodie Evans who co-founded Code Pink with Medea Benjamin. Major media have been unable to ignore the courageous actions of Code Pink as these women intervene at high level government meetings to demand an end to an unnecessary war.
Speaking on behalf of these great people, I am certain they don't want us to put them on a pedestal and then to regress into admiring bystanders. On the contrary, what they have done in their way we can do in our way. Every conscious human being in our society must be mobilized to overcome the international disgrace created by our administration as it conducts an illegal and immoral war, while seeking new conflicts, threatening nuclear disaster and dedicating itself to the promotion of torture. Such behavior has led international resistance which will continue until we cease and desist from our belligerence.
We simply cannot be spectators watching life go by. We cannot leave the work of justice and peace solely to these four wonderful people. We must join with like-minded people to expand on what these honorees have done; demanding truth in government, identifying and punishing criminal behavior and denouncing the war mongering crony capitalism and greed which has infected our government.
The smallest and most powerful branch of our government is the Supreme Court. Citizens generally only think about the Supreme Court when a vacancy needs to be filled. But there is something much deeper at this time. The Supreme Court is simply not doing what it was designed to do. If we had a truly functional Supreme Court the nine would understand that they have the privilege of judicial review. The court would indicate by its performance that it understands the key decision supported by Chief Justice John Marshall in 1803; Marbury vs. Madison. This decision established the power of judicial review, that is the power of the courts to decide whether a governmental official or institution has acted within the limits of the constitution, and if not, to declare its action null and void. This decision applies to the performance of both the president and the congress.
The court has the power to declare presidential decisions as unconstitutional. The court has the power to declare an act of congress unconstitutional. It is up to an informed citizenry to instruct the court on the proper use of its power.
A functional and conscious Supreme Court would proceed with the following decisions immediately:
1. The court would order the president to cease and desist in his war making because the president has no constitutional right to start any war.
2. Major portions of The Patriot Act would be declared null and void as unconstitutional.
3. Major portions of the No Child Left Behind legislation would be declared unconstitutional.
4. A conscious court would immediately repent of its long practice of class justice. We have one form of justice for the majority and another form of justice for the minority for people of color, for the poor. Any justice of the Supreme Court would have to be sociologically illiterate not to see this. This is known as the tyranny of the majority.
The death penalty which was unconstitutional in our country and later declared constitutional would immediately take its place with the trash of history where it belongs.
5. A conscious court would declare such various secret governments including the CIA to be unconstitutional. Their structures are foreign to United States government.
6. A Supreme Court that was alive and conscious would immediately inform Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush that their love and promotion of torture is illegal and contemptible. It is our responsibility as citizens to demand that the life long appointees on the Supreme Court protect us from the incompetence of the executive and legislative branches of government.
Pacifica Commentary for November 30, 2005
Victory
Historians will eventually reach an accurate consensus on our warfare state. I think it will go something like this:
The Korean War has never ended. There was a cease fire but no peace treaty. Some three million Koreans and Chinese were killed together with 50,000 of our citizens. Our country did not win that war and it is not over.
The War in Vietnam? Yes, this long war had an end. The United States lost the war together with some 60,000 of our finest young people while three million Vietnamese perished, mostly civilians. U.S. attacks included the carpet bombing of civilians and chemical warfare by way of dioxin (agent orange).
Then there was a war in El Salvador, where our country supported the dictatorship and spent billions on munitions and on command and control of counter-insurgency. No, we did not win in El Salvador but the very same people who trained the Salvadoran death squads are now in Iraq training death squads. And the rebels we fought in El Salvador now make up a major political party known as the FMLN.
Then there was the Contra War in Nicaragua where the United States spent billions to pay and arm mercenaries to attack exclusively civilian targets, teachers, social workers, religious people and farmers. It was sheer terrorism against Nicaraguan civilians. 40,000 Nicaraguans slaughtered. What did we win in Nicaragua? Nothing. The Sandinistas are the largest political party in the country today. When the secret war was running out of money the United States illegally sold arms to the Ayatollah Khomenieh to get funds for more mercenaries and more arms. The same aircraft from the United States that shipped arms to Nicaragua for the Contras were used to bring cocaine back to this country on the return trips. The Contra mercenaries evolved into the private military corporations who are fighting and torturing people in Iraq today and who remain exempt from the Code of Military Justice.
And what did we win in Guatemala after supporting one of the most brutal and bestial military forces on earth for four decades? After spending billions of dollars which resulted in the killing of 200,000 Guatemalans, the very rebel force we fought is now a respected political party.
Need we mention the on-going Plan Colombia which is actually a US Plan for Colombia which includes each and every one of the errors we have made in past wars.
Did our country have no victories? Well its seems we did win the war in Grenada in 1983. The island has a population the size of Santa Monica has no military and, of course
there was absolutely no reason for war.
This endless and failed militarism should help us to understand why the United States cannot deliver health care, education and a vibrant public infrastructure to our population.
To repeat the same action again and again and to expect different results is a sure sign of
insanity.
Pacifica Commentary for November 23, 2005
Government Logic
The logic of the administration is the logic of Advertising 101. If you have taken Advertising 101 you know that one of the key principles is to take the weakest point in the product and put it up front as if it were a strong point.
If the truck you are trying to sell falls apart in one year, your ad will say, "Our Trucks last longer." If your cigarette gives cancer of the lungs, it will be advertised as ..springtime.
Another example; many of our troops did not want to go to Iraq. They went to Iraq against their will. But they either went to Iraq or they had the option of going to a military prison.
And how does the government propaganda advertise this? It says, SUPPORT OUR TROOPS with the clear implication that those troops are exactly where they want to be. The full sentence would be, "Support our troops because they want to be in Iraq and they went there of their own will." And this propaganda continues as thousands of our troops have defected and many heroic veterans have come home to denounce the torture, the killing of civilians, the destruction of an entire nation.
Just think about the phrase, "We must stay in Iraq so that our troops will not have died in vain." In other words, "Let's have more young people and more Iraqis die so that no one will think that those who preceded them died in vain.
As in advertising, our leaders have shown a reckless contempt for truth. Cheney refers to people who have his number as dishonest, cowardly, reprehensible and unpatriotic.
I think he is looking in a mirror.
The tragedy is that many fine young people died cruelly and unnecessarily in Vietnam together with millions of civilians. Fine young people have died in Iraq together with yes, millions of Iraqis if we start the count in January of 1991 when the war actually began.. Yes, they died because of a mendacious government which is lost in its own hubris.
Those who seek the truth are seeking a spiritual value. Those who create the lies are adversaries of the truth. They are not free.
Let's clarify the point. These shortened lives were not in vain. These lives as all lives are an ongoing miracle. But their death was too soon and also unnecessary. Those responsible for these unnecessary deaths must be brought to justice as quickly as possible.
Let's junk Advertising 101 and all that it implies.
Pacifica Commentary for November 18, 2005
Twenty-Second Anniversary Of The Office Of The Americas
The Office of the Americas will honor Cindy Sheehan this Saturday, November 19th. Cindy has galvanized the world with her demand to know for what noble cause her son Casey died.
We will also honor Daniel Ellsberg who remains an international voice of conscience. Dan risked 115 years in prison by releasing 7,000 pages of Pentagon policy papers to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later to the New York Times.
We will honor Dolores Huerta who co-founded the United Farm Workers Union together with Cesar Chavez and is bringing to farm workers the benefits enjoyed by members of other unions. In addition to her great work with farm workers, Dolores has become a world wide spokesperson for justice and peace.
We will honor Jodie Evans who co-founded Code Pink with Medea Benjamin. Major media have been unable to ignore the courageous actions of Code Pink as these women intervene at high level government meetings to demand an end to an unnecessary war.
Speaking on behalf of these great people, I am certain they don't want us to put them on a pedestal and then to regress into admiring bystanders. On the contrary, what they have done in their way we can do in our way. Every conscious human being in our society must be mobilized to overcome the international disgrace created by our administration as it conducts an illegal and immoral war, while seeking new conflicts, threatening nuclear disaster and dedicating itself to the promotion of torture. Such behavior has led international resistance which will continue until we cease and desist from our belligerence.
We simply cannot be spectators watching life go by. We cannot leave the work of justice and peace solely to these four wonderful people. We must join with like-minded people to expand on what these honorees have done; demanding truth in government, identifying and punishing criminal behavior and denouncing the war mongering crony capitalism and greed which has infected our government.
