Posted on Saturday, 31 July, 2010 By yours truly | TOOLS:Talk or Share
“When the United States is on the side of injustice, it harms our country, it harms our integrity, it harms our principle, it harms our standing in the world. People want to believe that we, as the world’s leading superpower, live up to our highest virtues. And when we fail to do that, it threatens, and endangers, and undermines us.”
I hear you’re stepping down from Congress soon. Sorry to hear about it, really. It seems like you’ve finally arrived to a place where I could vote for you again, and now the whole process has to start over and I have to listen to a new representative get it wrong for years upon years. Perhaps you’ve decided that your awakening has come with the unfortunate side effect of being unable to win another election while also saying what you believe. That may be true, but so what?
I think that’s the best time to run for re-election. As much as possible, we need it on the public record how many people actually vote and campaign against rationality. Elections are when these people out and say things which can be recorded. We need that. When need to know which fellow Democrats, Republicans and other parties will or won’t do so, because more importantly than serving democracy for yet another election cycle, we can measure public reaction and see exactly where your part of the United States stands.
So, put it to the test and run again. You’ve got nothing to lose.
Posted on Wednesday, 4 November, 2009 By yours truly | TOOLS:Talk or Share
H. Res. 867, calls on the President and the Secretary of State to pretend Israel never attacked Gaza last year with all the weapons the U.S. sold to it and to blame Palestinians for being killed in the attack in order to drum up anti-Israel sentiments.
Thanks to the 36 representatives who voted against it. From Washington State, Brian Baird and Jim McDermott voted against it. Many of the people voting against the UN report also voted for the Iraq war. I’m sure their reasons for rejecting this report had something to do with being confronted by the actual existance of accurate facts about the situation, which must have been very scary for them.
This all centers around Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, otherwise known as the Goldstone Report, or in some circles rightwing circles in Israel, “that self-hating, traitor basterd’s scribblings.” For short, please just refer to it as “the facts.” Word has it that the U.S. was most upset that it’s suggested edits, which blacked out every sentence not starting with the word “Hamas” was rejected. Will President OBama actually sign up and voluntarily blind himself remainst to be seen. It would be a forgone conclusion under Bush, but as the current president can read, his endorsement or rejection of this slop will offer some insight whether the White House wants to continue bombing Palestinians via the Israeli military or not.
“The United States won Israel a reprieve on the Goldstone report, so now it must ensure that Israel genuinely investigates allegations of abuse. If this doesn’t happen by March, then the US should endorse the Goldstone report’s call for international mechanisms of accountability.” — Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch
Posted on Tuesday, 3 November, 2009 By yours truly | TOOLS:Talk or Share
Drug policy should be based on science not hysteria. Scientists expressing their honestly held expert opinions should not find themselves in fear of losing their jobs.
Posted on Friday, 9 October, 2009 By yours truly | TOOLS:Talk or Share
In celebration of the Nobel Peace prize going to a United States president presiding over two occupations in which an insurgency still thrives and no plan has yet emerged, let us recall that the award was the creation of Alfred Bernhard Nobel, a weapons manufacturer and the inventor of dynamite, who in 1888 read his own obituary mistakenly published by a French newspaper and decided he did not want to be recorded in the history books as “the merchant of death.” Nobel was lauded indirectly just three years earlier than that in the February 21, 1885 edition of the Marxist publication The Alarm by Albert Parsons, one of the Haymarket anarchists, who wrote: “Dynamite! Of all the good stuff, that is the stuff! Stuff several pounds of this sublime stuff into an inch pipe … plug up both ends, insert a cap with a fuse attached, place this in the immediate vicinity of a lot of rich loafers who live by the sweat of other people’s brows, and light the fuse. A most cheerful and gratifying result will follow. In giving dynamite to the downtrodden millions of the globe, science has done its best work.”
The prize always makes strange bedfellows. Thus far an a brief Google news search, those decrying President Obama’s award include nearly all the Republican party, a number of UK Tory pundits, right-wing pro-settlement Israelis, the conservative religious party of Pakistan, Hamas and the Taliban. Or maybe that makes some sense. At any rate, blowing holes in the moon with a couple rockets was a great way to celebrate.
My name is Vash the Stampede, I am a hunter of peace, chasing the mayfly known as love.
