Carter’s Foolish Journey

April 11, 2008

Dear Voice of the People,

The Tribune officially editorialized its hatred of one of the best Presidents of the 20^th Century, Jimmy Carter, pillorying him for his intention to visit the leader of Hamas, Khaled Mashaal.  This visit is unwise, the anonymous editors write, because Mashaal is a “terrorist,” accused of ordering the abduction of an Israeli soldier in 2006.  Perhaps Jimmy Carter should be equally wary of any upcoming visit with George Bush, who has ordered a large number of “extraordinary renditions” of individuals who, at his command were illegally abducted by the CIA, taken to secret military bases in countries that allow torture, and were tortured and killed.  The AP revealed yesterday that George Bush’s Inner Circle: Dick Cheney, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld sat together repeatedly in the White House and discussed in detail which methods of torture should be used in various situations.  Then Attorney General John Ashcroft expressed concern “Why are we talking about this in the White House?” because he recognized that every person in the room was violating both U.S. law and international law.  George W. Bush is responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 innocent Iraqi women and children, and for the deaths of over 4,000 American soldiers who died under false pretenses.  George W. Bush has killed more Americans that the 9/11 terrorists.  Compared with George W. Bush, Mashaal is strictly an amateur.

Texas Polygamists and Media Distractions

by Daughter Proton

National media coverage of the recent raid at the Texas compound has revealed as much about “ourselves” as about the FLDS polygamist sect.

Child abuse, domestic violence, and rape are wrong: they are some of the greatest evils a society ever knows. Yet, too often, the coverage of the raid has focused not on the abuse but on the “peculiar” culture of the people. The clothing (“long pastel dresses,” according to an April 7 Chicago Tribune article) is not the point; child abuse and misogyny are the point, and distractions confuse that important moral lesson. Both the sect members and our voyeuristic culture need to understand that. People should not be humiliated for what clothing they wear; they should be tried and punished for what harm they cause.

It is well worth questioning whether a government that does not protect its children from poverty, toxic toys, and manipulative commercial advertising, has learned any lesson from this raid. Will we recommit ourselves to helping all children escape the evils of child abuse? Is this raid to help the children or is it to soothe the smug consciences of mainstream citizens who fear “deviants?” It is also worth questioning whether a national spotlight on this sect discourages such violence, or pushes similar instances of abuse further underground.

Also illuminating is that commentary on the raid has emphasized the “Latter-Day Saints” half of the church’s name, and not the “Fundamentalist” half. While some of the community’s beliefs may come from the LDS tradition, it is the fundamentalist style of the faith that encourages a closed community structure and intolerance to other perspectives. Fundamentalism is not unique to LDS communities, and facing the dangers of this belief system in the wider Christian community may be harder than further marginalizing LDS and Mormon believers.

Spitzer’s Demise

March 13, 2008

Chicago Tribune

Dear Voice of the People:

The most alarming aspect of the demise of Governor Spitzer is the extent to which the FBI used wiretapped phone conversations and email surveillance to entrap him in the bogus charge of interstate commerce violations. This is the real reason the Bush Administration wants to have unlimited ability to snoop on American citizens. Their goal is to destroy Democrats, not terrorists. If Bush wanted to eavesdrop on a suspected terrorist, he could easily get a warrant to do so, retroactively if necessary. But because his goal is to attack political opponents who have nothing to do with terrorism, a wiretap is harder to justify. This is why Bush is working so hard to have unlimited power to violate the freedom of law-abiding patriotic Americans.

Torture just turns us into barbarians

Oak Park WEDNESDAY JOURNAL - ONE VIEW

One of the most important and timely books published in 2006 is ironically a complete and authoritative English translation of Malleus Maleficarum*, often called “The Hammer of Witches,” which was first published in 1486.

This treatise documents the medieval Inquisition, which predated the Spanish and Roman Inquisitions, and began roughly with the papal bull of 1199 by Pope Innocent III, in which heresy was equated with treason and thus awarded the death penalty. There is a magnificent introduction by translator Christopher Mackay.

Why is this 520-year-old book so important today? We stand at a crossroads of modern civilization. The Bush Administration as well as Republican presidential candidate John McCain openly espouse the legitimacy of the use of torture, based on two fundamental claims.

First, they assert that our enemies are more evil than any previously encountered, and therefore we are justified in jettisoning two centuries of enlightenment in which the United States of America was morally superior to any despotic regime that would stoop to the barbaric practice of torture.

Second, they claim that torture is effective in extracting truthful information. Both claims are prima facie preposterous. The brilliance of Malleus Maleficarum is that it reveals with clarity that dark aspect of human nature that is not simply capable of employing torture, but which is capable of doing so in a calculated, premeditated and intentional manner.

For 250 years, the medieval inquisitors used torture and the threat of torture to extract detailed “confessions” out of accused witches. The crimes for which witches were tortured and often burned to death were performing magic, which no modern American would for one second believe is real. The inquisitors believed that a Satanic sect existed, comprised of individuals whose goals were to conduct several hallmark crimes that defined witchcraft, including flying through the air to attend rituals with other witches, sexual relations with the devil, performing magic, renouncing the Church, and killing babies.

There is no evidence that any such sect ever existed, and to the modern mind, most of the activities that define witchcraft are physical impossibilities. That human beings were tortured and killed by representatives of the Church for these imaginary crimes attests to the power of mass delusion, especially when it is reinforced by authorities like the Church, universities or the government.

That thousands of individuals confessed in great detail to crimes that we know today are supernatural fantasies shows the power of torture to extract false confessions that the victim hopes will end the torture, and which reflect more closely the torturer’s delusions than any reality.

It is to be hoped that the United States moves forward into the 21st century. However, we are perilously close to regressing 800 years into medieval barbarism.

* Malleus Maleficarum. 2006. Edited and translated by Christopher S. Mackay. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.

Dennis Byrne does Science!

October 22, 2007
Chicago Tribune

re: Dennis Byrne “Snubbing cancer study will only hurt women,” October 22, 2007

Dear Voice of the People,

Dennis Byrne bemoans the lack of publicity surrounding a study published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JAPS), which reports the startling conclusion that abortion causes cancer. He does admit that this conclusion is contradicted by the vast majority of existing medical research. The journal that published the results that Byrne prefers over reality has a distinctive name. I recalled hearing it for the first time two weeks ago, when I received an unsolicited reprint (in full color on glossy paper) of another study they published. This was a study that concluded that global warming is a myth, that “there is no reason to limit human production of CO2 [carbon dioxide], CH4 [methane], and other minor greenhouse gases.” I was surprised that a study of atmospheric science would be published in what sounds like a medical journal. So I checked the standard National Institutes of Health database of medical literature, PubMed, and discovered that the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is not included in its list of peer-reviewed medical journals. This was not too surprising, because not a single peer-reviewed publication has ever disputed the reality of global warming caused by human activity.
Byrne now cites a second “scientific study” that concludes against all other scientific evidence that the radical conservative opposition to abortion is supported by science. This coincidence raises questions about the legitimacy of the journal. Checking the JAPS website reveals a clear political perspective. It includes a bold Press Release “Doctors Applaud SCHIP Veto” and you can download a speech by Ronald Reagan given to the AAPS in 1978. To be fair, AAPS did oppose the rapid passage of the Homeland Security Act in 2001, because “We want to join in urging the government not to make haste to destroy our country just to keep our adversaries from doing it first.”
The bottom line is that this journal is not a legitimate peer-reviewed medical research journal. There are hundreds of legitimate peer-reviewed medical journals. If a study is so poorly conducted that it cannot be published in any real journal, there is no reason to consider its results worth the paper they are printed on. However, Dennis Byrne is willing to accept as a legitimate scientist any charlatan who agrees with his politics.

Sincerely,

Tom DeCoursey, Ph.D.
833 S. Scoville
Oak Park, IL 60304-1408

The Media Select our Candidates

September 20, 2007
Chicago Tribune

Dear Voice of the People,

Ho-hum, another “election season,” when the media begin the process of selecting Presidential candidates for us. Well over a year before the election, when most people had no idea who most of the candidates were, the Media have already told us who we can vote for. They had begun to ridicule and marginalize several candidates long before the voting public had learned anything about them. Based on their decision of who the “real” candidates were, the media ask hardly any questions of the “fringe” candidates. Why listen to them? We will not be allowed to vote for them anyway.

Well before meaningful “polls” could be taken, the selection was already made. How do the media and pundits determine who they will allow us to vote for? The main criterion is money. The candidate must either be very wealthy or be able to collect huge amounts of cash from “special interests.” A “realistic” candidate is thus a classical old-time politician, with monetary ties to large corporations and political interest groups. We all “know” that politicians are corrupt and politics is dirty, so a “real” candidate must show that they are willing to compromise their ideals to get funding. Candidates who stand the high ground and refuse to take special interest money are laughed at for their lack of realism.

The result is completely predictable – we end up with candidates whom we do not like, who represent the corporate and other special interests who funded their campaigns, but who do not represent us. A huge majority of Americans want us to get out of Iraq, but we are still there. A huge majority of Americans want alternative energy, but instead, we are killing our soldiers to protect the oil source for our petroleum addiction. A huge majority of Americans want national health coverage, but the only candidates who propose anything like what we want and desperately need are the “fringe” candidates (like Kucinich). Americans are sick and tired of being manipulated by fear-mongering and fake “Level Orange Terror Alerts,” but the candidate who tells the truth about this has already been marginalized by the media (Ron Paul). Why can’t we at least hear their ideas for a few brief months before they are banished from all media coverage? Are the media afraid to let us see that there really are candidates who would do what the American Public wants instead of what corporations want? Are they afraid there would be a revolt, or that people might actually vote for the “fringe” candidates who would represent the People instead of Big Money, rather than anoint the candidate hand-picked by the media for us?
Media, please give democracy a break! How about letting us hear all the candidates, unfiltered, and allow the American Public decide who they want to represent them?

FREE BURMA

“OK! Now. I. Am. Mad.”

by the BP

“Congress Quietly Approves Billions More for Iraq War.”

- thus writes the Nation magazine. My partner’s comments, quoted in this post’s title, reflect well my sentiments.

Back in the 1960s, peace activists knew that neither party would be their salvation from the collective sin of war. It was Dems, after all, who charged into Viet Nam. But now, too many seem to feel that voting out the Repubs will usher in peace and freedom. And while the Dems surely couldn’t be WORSE, they have not been proving themselves worthy of the depth of our hope in them.

Our government seems to be united against us. Burma’s junta is at least open in its antipathy for its people (in the form of, say, shooting into unarmed crowds). The US Congress and White House don’t seem to feel threatened enough by their people to insult us that directly.

General Betrayus: The Senate’s censure of MoveOn is the last straw

Dear Voice of the People,

That 22 Democratic US Senators voted shamefully to censure MoveOn.org for their patriotic ad supporting US troops who were betrayed by General Petraeus has caused me to lose all allegiance to the Democratic Party.  Although I am a life-long Democrat, this is the last straw.  One bill after another is killed by Republican filibuster threats, so that a Democratic majority cannot even manage to pass a law to restore the centuries-old Right of habeus corpus.  Instead they condemn concerned Americans for exercising their sacred right of free speech.  Did the Democrats ever filibuster to stop Republicans from abolishing our Constitutional rights”?  Did they filibuster to stop the GOP from abolishing all environmental laws, to allow corporate polluters to wreak havoc on the environment?  No, they were too polite to stand up for Americans.

A huge majority of Americans expressed their outrage over the continuing Iraq War by kicking out the Republicans en masse in 2006.  Bush has the support of 29% of Americans.  But the Democrats are still too cowardly to stand up to the threat that Republican liars will accuse them of “not supporting our troops” if they stop funding the war.  The cowardly Senators (Lieberman and McCain) who pranced around Baghdad while surrounded by hundreds of US troops with heavy air support and claimed it was like a picnic, never talked to any real soldiers.  The soldiers I know in Baghdad would leave Iraq in a second, given the chance, but they are held there like slaves without any hope of ever leaving.  Lieberman and McCain choose instead to listen to General Betrayus, who was coached extensively by the White House before his “independent” testimony to Congress.  He was coached by the likes of Bush and Cheney, cowards who refused to serve their country when they had the chance, even though they supported the concept of others going to fight and risk their lives on their behalf.  Telling the troops they have to spend the rest of eternity in Iraq is NOT supporting them.  It is condemning them to death.

The Republicans are bent on destroying the US government.  One needs only to hear the manifesto by Grover Norquist, one of GW Bush’s favorite neo-con advisors.  He advocated bankrupting the US Government by outrageous deficit spending combined with cutting taxes on the rich, both of which Bush has done in record time.  Norquist said, “I don’t want to abolish government.  I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”  Bush has managed to abolish most of the Constitutional Rights that all Americans enjoyed for 240 years.  He has nearly destroyed the “safety net” for poor or disabled Americans.  He has refused to accept international law including the Geneva Convention.  Bush has declared himself to be an absolute dictator, and Congress has fallen all over themselves bowing to their new King.

Clearly the Republicans are anarchists, so we cannot vote for them.  But the Democrats are such cowards, they will not do what they promised, even when they have the support of 2/3 of the American people, and even when their goals are to end a war for oil, to stop pollution and global warming, and to restore democracy to America.  If the Democrats will not defend American rights, who will?  The only choice is to vote for third party candidates.  I see no other option.

Sincerely,

Captain Proton

Open Letter to Democrats

August 4, 2007

Open Letter to Democrats:

Starting with Nancy Pelosi’s infamous “Impeachment is off the table” declaration, the Democratic majority in Congress, with the exception of a scant few courageous heroes like Dennis Kucinich, have refused to begin impeachment hearings against the most corrupt, anti-democratic, secretive, and destructive Administration in US history. Presumably, this decision to avoid doing their sworn duty to defend the Construction against attack is a strategic decision, based on some hypothetical political advantage proposed by a Party strategist. Likely this is the same Democratic Party strategist who told war hero John Kerry to refuse to flaunt his purple hearts in debates with AWOL coward GW Bush, thus negating Kerry’s enormous advantage.

The failure of Congressional Democrats to react to repeated insults and abuses by the present Administration is a colossal error that is certain to backfire. Americans will conclude, justifiably, that Democrats do not have the moral courage to defend the US Constitution from vicious, unrelenting, conscious, and premeditated attacks. This Administration has, by Presidential decree, declared its intention to violate the law and conduct illegal surveillance on US citizens who are accused of no crime. This Supreme Court-appointed “President” rarely signs a bill into law without attaching a “signing statement” which is an explicit assertion that the President refuses to recognize the Constitutionally mandated authority of Congress to enact legislation. This Administration has declared itself exempt from International Law and the Geneva Convention, and has authorized the use of torture. This Administration has decreed that the President is above the Law, a supreme dictator, and that everything he does is therefore legal. This Administration has refused to provide documents requested by Congressional subpoenas, and instead has destroyed evidence of their crimes. The Attorney General has openly lied to Congress about his firing of US Prosecutors who refused to obey Administration demands to selectively indict Democrats and exempt Republicans from prosecution. By a recent Presidential decree, Bush declared that at his own discretion, he can seize the property of any US citizen whom he considers to oppose his policies in Iraq. A large majority of Americans have stated that they support the impeachment of Bush if it is proven that he lied about the reasons for starting the Iraq War, which we know now that he and Cheney did repeatedly. Why does Congress refuse to do their job? If all of these outrageous high crimes and misdemeanors do not constitute grounds for impeachment, then what would? If Congress refuses to protect the American citizens from these egregious attacks, then who can we turn to?

If a police officer witnesses a brutal murder, he/she does not have the option of deciding to ignore it because it is inconvenient to arrest the murderer, possibly because the work shift is nearly over and paperwork might be involved. No, the police officer must arrest the murderer - there is no option but to do the job. A Democratic Congress was elected because the American Public is fed up with the unrelenting abuse of power by this Administration. Even a prominent Republican (Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration) declared that the systematic attempts by the Bush Administration to assume supreme dictatorial power are precisely the kind of abuses the Founding Fathers had in mind when they created the option of impeachment. In the face of the extraordinary attempts by this Administration to destroy our democratic system of government, why does Congress refuse to do their job? The very fabric of our Nation is being systematically destroyed by a pack of ruthless, brutal despots. Congress alone has the power and authority to restore democracy, but they evidently are too timid to confront the sociopathic criminals who have stolen our Democracy. Martin Luther King stood up to police dogs, but our present Congress is afraid to stand up to Karl Rove and the rest of the neocon media attack dogs.