My September 24th

The bus ride was tight. The bus ride was long. But it was worth every minute.
The mall was packed. The obelisk ringed with people. And the crowd was shoulder to shoulder all the way to the stage in back of the white house. There were 2 stages and a tightly controlled area for us to do our marching.
Cindy Sheehan, McKinney, Jesse Jackson, Galloway, and many others spoke for a few hours before the march. As the march was starting Nader took the mic.
The march was my favorite part(besides Barbara Lee and McKinney): There were SO MANY people marching. There was not actually a march. reader raises eyebrow.
The area for marching was a small square between 15th and 17th street. As everyone went to the streets to march….......THE ENTIRE SQUARE WAS FILLED. There was no room for marching, instead the entire procession kind of took baby steps around the ring because there were so many people.
As the march winded down the other stage opened up. Saw a couple bands that I am not familiar with, then Joan Baez took the stage.
Around the stages there was little or no violence. The violent segment (self-proclaimed anarchists[see: Young’uns]) did a good job of keeping away from the peaceful protest. I had heard they were gonna go fuck up the recruitment center.
This is exactly the kind of action that facilitates both aims. Keeping seperate from the peaceful protestors and fuckin’ with recruiters thats all good. This was the only violent altercations I had heard of. The spraypaint by the farragut north metro stop “Fuck Capitalism” it gave me a laugh, but seriously, did the person who painted this think that this was effective at doing anything, but making the media and populace reject the ideas of the protestors prima facie?
One other incident of violence I had actually heard of. The pro-war protestors(who should just put on a black bandanna and start throwin rocks at cops if they really wanted to protest the protest[but oh yah thy’re not that intelligent, after all they’re PRO WAR!]) One of the self-proclaimed anarchists snagged a sign from one of them and started beating them with it. This disgusts me, who is this kid think he is that he can enact violence on another who is peacefully expressing their opinion. His action is on the same level morally as the cops clubbing and gassing anti-war protestors. (and seriously is there ANYTHING you need to do to a pro-war protestor besides tell them: “join the fucking military if you like this war so much!”?)
There were a vast amount of factions in this rally. The central meme was stuck with though, which was the most important factor I thought going down. There was a little talk of Palestine and Haiti, but this rally focused (as it should have) on the occupation of Iraq. This IS the most pressing issue fothe day.
I do not believe in the feasibility of this action. I believe this action is 90% symbolic. I also have been asking everyone I come across(back in Chi) if they heard ANYTHING about anti-war protests in DC. The answer has so far ALWAYS been NO. The media didn’t cover it.
Public opinion is swinging though. We may get out sooner then 2008 like Wolfowitz said. I just wish people didn’t have to WORK to see the cost of war, that the media would actually explain the cost of war. Show the flag draped coffins, show the endless numbers of soldiers returning with PTSD, put another commercial after the recruitment commercial about how you’re gonna come home from Iraq and your wife will be pregnant with someone elses kid, because the white house wanted you there for 3 years straight.
So my freind and I took off during Joan Baez, we had to catch our bus and we missed Steve Earle :( . Not only that but we couldn’t go through my second home in Mt. Pleasant to roll through my favorite burrito shop(not even sure if its still in business).
22 hours on a bus, 6 hours at the rally. Well…...............................tiring to say the least…................................but again: worth every minute.
Favorite quote: Cynthia McKinney- ”...Criminal negligence on 911…”(reading a laundry list of evil and stupid things this white house has done).
Shout out to the Guy with “Al-CIAdah” poster board- Don’t look so depressed! more people then you think know that 911 was facilitated by elements within our federal government. All that ”’bout to put a bullet in my head” look, its not inspiring, just makes people think you’re a street preacher.
Anyway hopefully there will be no need for another rally, bit if there is another I hope to see you there. I’ll be the one with the cheesy american flag hat lookin’ like i’m ‘bout to go to a nascar race.

Jaded Cynic and Unwitting Imperialist Part Three

Setting: JC and UI are talking about the occupation (oh sorry zell miller i meant, Liberation snicker snicker)


Unwitting Imperialist: Did you hear we’re finally gonna put down the terrorists in Fallujah!?


Jaded Cynic: And by put down you mean kill them all right?


UI: No no, we’re spreading freedom to them.


JC: which is a great euphemism for killing everything that moves.


UI: well Fallujah is like the last part of the Iraq Liberation, kinda like space is the final frontier of Man’s voyages.


JC: So you think this means we’re coming to the end of the war?


UI: Hell yah, Iraq will have democracy our troops will be back, then we can start brow beating people I deem to be “liberals”.


JC: You realize of course that this is just another effort at “modulating distress”, right?


UI: I don’t know what you mean so I’ll prepare myself for the anti-american speech.


JC: Well despite that same slander you stick to any individual who questions the answers those in power give us, this is not anti-american. Everyone in power(we can refer to these as the “elites”) is in power because they are good at a few things. The most important being manipulation. One of the subsets of manipulation is modulation of stress.


UI: get to the point


JC:OK so remember how America used to honor its fallen?


UI: what do you mean used to? I see people saying numbers on the news all the time.


JC: exactly…numbers, because thats all they get. Our current vice president, back when he was defense secretary banned pictures of the fallen being honored. This is so the people do not make the complete psychological connection between soldiers dying and a flag draped coffin being soaked in the tears of their respective familes.


UI: I don’t buy it


JC: well its not some conspiracy its pretty simple, to get a democracy to do something you can wait until a movement boils up from the bottom and gets to the top OR you can use your influence at the top to create a want in other people. This is called marketing, for example that Quadra air thing you bought from Sharper Image, you remember that?


UI: yah it works wonders


JC: haha, yah exactly. Well they lost a lawsuit because they couldn’t prove it did ANYTHING they claimed in the commercials. So you bought a product that when in court cannot prove it does ANYTHING, but for some reason you believe it does all kinds of things. Don’t think i’m immune I do the same thing, its just an important psychological heuristic we should all know about, but lemme get back to my point-


UI: yah seriously


JC:- This fallujah offensive first of all proceeded a day after the election, which makes it blatantly obvious that this war is not being fought with our soldiers lives and morale in mind AND without a THOUGHT to the hearts and minds of Iraqis. Instead this war is fought and plans are changed, because of Political considerations.


UI: Bullshit, hes commander in chief, he wouldn’t risk our american soldiers like that.


JC: FIrst of all, that person he obstructed from getting in to the texas air nat’l gaurd probably died in Vietnam, so don’t tell me he is compassionate or not elitist. Think about it man: no pictures of coffins, “mission accomplished” banner, “transfer of sovereignty”, Interim government, and now “the final battle”.


UI: Well I believe my leader and I think that Fallujah will represent the end of the Iraqi occupation.


JC: Listen dude, how long would you let your children live without electricty or sewage? How long would you put up with military checkpoints in your neighborhood? How long would you put up with the bombs falling around the clock?

How long would you put up with foreign soldiers in your fucking backyard!?

How long would you put up with FAMILY MEMBERS AND FREINDS DYING FROM MISSILES THAT FALL ARBITRARLY WHETHER OR NOT YOU RESIST THE OCCUPATION!!!???


UI: See you are anti-american


JC: No, that is where you and your jingoist buddies are wrong. We are the real americans, the ones Bolivar was talking about. The ones that want to see true democracy not coporatism(what Mussolini said Facism should be called) spread to other countries. As our texas fuhrer proceeds to strip us of the rights gauranteed to us by the constitution, we will have to destroy the current institutions of power. You’ll be there UI with the rest of us, it’ll just take a little longer for you guys to come around.


UI: you fuckers will get crushed like the warsaw uprising, haha, stage a revolution in the era or terror and cointelpro, you truly are an idealist.


JC: i’m not the only one, my freind, i’m not the only one. LIke I said earlier though, “Fallujah is to shock and awe as Stalingrad was to the blitzkrieg”.


UI: We are starting to look more and more like nazis


JC: thats the spirit haha. Check it out ok 9/11 killed 3,000 civilians right?


UI: right.


JC: we have killed 100,000 civilians in Iraq so far, so we cannot complain about the next 32, 9/11s.


UI: Those were disgusting acts SPECIFICALLY targeting civilians


JC: well despite the fact that we target civilians as well, its based on an assumption that democracy is our system of government. The truth is the elites control the civilians, so killing civilians didn’t do anything. The terrorists should start fighting the people we’re all fighting against, instead of arbitrarly blowing up buildings because of supposed symbolic meaning.


UI: Not only that but the evidence of responsibility for 9/11 always goes back to two places: Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s ISI.


JC: well years from now, we’ll see what they put in the children’s history books, and one thing I gaurantee is that it won’t be the truth.

Authority Without Leadership

Wrote this in March so it is somewhat postdated, I think its a decent analysis of Terrorism and Iraq.

The world did not change on September 11th in one way, it did not get more dangerous to live in the United States. Despite the color of the threat status we have been under the same amount of threat since before September 11th. People learned right away that small groups of people could kill large amounts of people, modern technology can give individuals great power. This is a Type III situation the solution and the problem are blurry. First of all the federal government has never come up with a cohesive definition for what “Terrorism” actually is, every agency has a different definition. A solution to try to stop terrorism is impossible, technology being inert will be used for good or evil, nothing can stop this, because the genie is out of the bottle. The way to fight Terrorism in my opinion is eradicate the perpetuation by helping countries develop so young people can work for food instead of joining barracks and being manipulated by older authority figures to do violent acts.
George W. Bush’s presidency has been the most divisive of presidencies recently. His “compassionate conservative” PR flood stated he would unite the country. Instead the president has done many things wrong in handling this threat to the United States. The first mistake was the “Phoenix Memo” to Robert Mueller which was not read or at least not paid attention to by the leaders of the FBI. The memo claims Moussaoui has been training in flight school practicing flying, but never landing or taking off. The memo was ignored and the previous strategy for preventing airplanes from becoming hijacked failed on September 11th.
The president then framed the problem a lanky cave dweller on dialysis had orchestrated an offensive on United States soil. The answer was of course, war. The war on terrorism began in a mindset that Bush created, that this was a type I problem. The terrorists are easy to spot in Bush’s mind they dislike freedom and they hate liberty with a passion. In fact there is very little to “terrorists” except that they are the “bad guys” they’re just plain evil. The idea of “terrorists” is now used to justify any policy. For instance the United States is currently occupying a country that we invaded, because Bush insinuated links between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, even though this link is completely fictional and Bush as well as Rumsfeld have admitted that there is no link in press conferences.
This is important, because we as followers are not being asked to learn. Instead we are being inundated with false news reports and false war reports, all with one thing in mind to make us afraid. We are never asked by our leaders to remember the early 80s visit to Saddam Hussein where Donald Rumsfeld shook his hand and the US presented him with technology to test chemical weapons. To learn that we may share responsibility for the only viable reason in ousting this dictator, that he gassed his own citizens, this may cause learning our president does not want this. We are not asked to remember the Mujahedin or that Bin Laden was trained by the CIA, and that the United States abandoned Afghanistan after it served its purpose fighting off communists. In my opinion many of our modern threats can be traced to horrible foreign policy during the Cold War, this is because everyone was scared of Communism so they allied with Fascist leaders in other countries. I fear the same thing will happen with our treatment of “terrorists” we have not actually investigated our position. We do not truly know why someone would be motivated to give his life to destroy our country. I do know for a fact it is not because that person “hates liberty” or “our lifestyle” like the president says.
This is a type III problem but it is being framed by our leaders as a type I problem. Also the public is not being asked to learn, instead the public is asked by the media to duct tape the windows of their house in case of chemical weapons attack. The only learning our leaders want the public to do is learning where the closest Wal-Mart is and consuming. There is no outcome to this path, the only outcome is an endless “war on terrorism” or as Rumsfeld would call it “A long hard slog.” We need to understand that essentially this problem will never be fully stopped, this is a type III Problem. The answer does not lie in more bombing and ground troops, but through a period of learning and understanding the true motivations for terrorism. This is the most important facet of our war on terrorism, just like the war on drugs, this war is endless and pointless, because it will never stop terrorism.
A few key events since 9/11 have been the deployment of ground troops to Afghanistan, formation of Homeland Security department, invasion/occupation of Iraq, Guantanimo bay prison/internment camp, resisting the 9/11 commission, and the steady encroachment upon civil liberties beginning with the Patriot act.
The deployment of ground troops to Afghanistan was seen as an obvious response, basically a catch Osama task force. While we were deploying troops to catch a Bin Laden in Afghanistan the only flights to take off on 9/12 were those that flew Bin Laden relatives living in the United States to Washington, DC and then to Paris, France by the FBI, before they could be questioned. This story was not latched on to by the media, instead the media focused on our first kneejerk reaction which was the deployment to Afghanistan. These ground forces have been dying since they were deployed and Osama Bin Laden has still not been found. In this specific areas Bush failed to form any semblance of leadership. He framed the problem as finding the culprit, he regulated distress by assuring us that he would catch the criminal responsible, and focused our attention on the fact that we are under threat. The fact that simultaneously at this very moment and every moment since this paper was written, thousands of nuclear weapons have been pointed at you, your friends, and family. Although this threat is far more dangerous and real, our leaders have decided what they are focusing on. Bush has shifted responsibility, maybe not to stakeholders but to followers in the military. Bush has started a new PR blitz that claims the U.S. will find Osama Bin Laden soon. This is another example of regulating stress, people were starting to get tired of waiting for the person responsible for 9/11 so our leader held a press conference.
The formation of the Homeland Security department goes with the framing of the problem as a type I. The problem was lack of horizontal communication and in group/out group dynamics, so the simple answer is to combine all the agencies involved. This has now become the largest reorganization of the federal government in history. This action has given us a color coded threat level that is the mascot for the PR stupidity of our administration. Although the threat level was created to give comedians fodder during stand-up routines, it actually serves a purpose. It is very expensive to raise the threat level and puts things like the coast guard on a little higher alert. This is probably the closest to leadership George W. Bush gets. The homeland security department seems to increase communication and reduce the rivalry between group like the CIA and FBI. So it will help catch some attacks before they happen, like 9/11 should have been stopped because of the “Phoenix memo”.
The invasion of Iraq has also been a cornerstone of the Bush neo-conservative foreign policy. Since Bush’s election Paul Wolfowitz has been searching for a way to steer us in to war with Iraq. The opportunity presented itself in the form of thousands of Americans dying in the WTC and pentagon attacks. The problem was framed in a way that will seem so simply in hindsight in a few years idiotic. We brought up the usual suspects Saddam, Kim Jong Il, and Iran. This is where Bush’s foreign policy changes from not very smart, to catastrophically bad. The problem was framed that Iraq had chemical weapons that could not be found by the UN. Also the fact that Iraq had violated a UN code (in the opinion of the US) justified a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, which itself violated two UN policies. The United States foreign policy has been led astray, the problem has been framed that “If you don’t get them first, they’ll get you.” If we follow Bush’s framing of the problem we can only win by destroying everything and everyone that isn’t American! The war’s justification changed as time has passed, we know there are no Weapons of Mass Destruction, we know that Saddam used technology from the US to build his chemical weapons in the first place, and now the only justification left is that Saddam is generally an evil person. Saddam is George W. Bush’s scapegoat, he is the proverbial deer strapped to the hood of the car, a trophy to show the public that he has done something.
The jailing of “enemy combatants” at Guantanimo bay Cuba is also another example of authority without leadership. Essentially Bush used a technicality in the Geneva convention and abused it on such a level to fill Gitmo detention center. As civil rights groups asked that the American citizens at least be able to contact a family member or attorney. Their families were not even allowed to know they were being held without trial by the United States government. To regulate distress the Bush administration assured America that these people were all terrorists, even though the only definition of terrorists Bush has given us is that they are people who “hate liberty”. This catch-22 worked out nicely and is even comical to read, because if terrorists hate liberty, we’re playing right in to their hands jailing them without trial. Recently the courts decided that Jose Padilla can see a lawyer and talk to his family, which opened the doors for other U.S. citizens being held at Gitmo to finally receive some sort of justice. The Bush administration focuses attention away from Guantanimo bay, because logically everyone makes mistakes many people in Gitmo are innocent and deserve a trial to determine their innocence.
Another example of the poor leadership being displayed is the encroachment on constitutional rights and resistance to the 9/11 commission. The Patriot act made it easier for law enforcement to do a lot of things, but the most important was invade privacy. There is a easier brightline to establish the need for a warrant to tap phones, although these rights have seen a slow encroachment as technology has advanced the mass fear has catalyzed this process.
The leadership President Bush is displaying is very weak. He refuses to deal with Terrorism as a type III problem. He instead will be fighting the symptoms of Terrorism for ever, because he does not frame the problem in the right way.
Terrorism will be here after Bush’s presidency no matter what. The things we will remember are the two wars we are simultaneously fighting overseas, while installing a non-elected leadership council in Iraq, and suspending habeas corpus for American prisoners. Framing the problem as a type I and using fear to build political capital is horrible leadership.
I hope that the United States comes to its senses and the wild rage that has taken hold after 9/11 turns in to a spirit of inquisition. Killing terrorists as we catch them or locking them up and throwing away the key in Cuba are not viable strategies. Only through investigation and understanding of how terrorists are created can we hope to reduce the threat of terrorist attack in the future. Until then I will be ever cognizant of the thousands of nuclear missiles pointed at my head and remember that terrorism is really nothing new.






Bibliography

Rowley, Colleen. “Coleen Rowley’s memo to FBI director Robert Mueller” http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.html May 21, 2002

Associated Press. “Pelosi pushes for new 9/11 deadline” New York Times Feb 26, 2004

Heifetz, Ronald. “Leadership without easy answers”

The Yes-or-No Party System (and other infrastructure problems)

So voting is here again, finally our participatory democracy provides us with the extent of our participation. We poke a hole in a card or touch a button on a screen and pray to our respective deities that Katherine Harris, a house of Bush relative, and/or Scalia won't be able to not count it(Oh I'm sorry I mean not abrogate "state's rights" with a "federal chad standard", but will abrogate "state's rights" when the medicinal marijuana case comes up next season).
   If you've ever seen the movie "Waking Life", a movie that follows different actors as they give melodramatic monologues on philosophical and political issues(the cool thing about the movie is they had different artists paint on the film, and then in the final cut removed the film, so it is a cartoon of sorts, but very intricate and beautiful if you can sit through some of the more boring dialogue[reminds me of someone else hah]). One character complains that his right to self-determination is not being granted by Democracy and only having one chance every 2 years to vote for certain representatives and 4 years for the president is not enough political power to give to the people. This man soaks himself in gasoline and sets himself on fire on a streetcorner(following the example of some monks protesting China's annexing of Tibet).

Our general public seems to be losing faith in this yes-or-no system. Where is the anti-pre-emptive war candidate????  Where is the candidate who doesn't blame 9/11 on security procedures, but on the massive horizontally organized net of militant Islamic fundamentalists.     This network is the network that the United States created, funded, and trained called the Mujahadin(spelling is always different so I made up my own). The Carter and Reagan administrations started funneling money to these militant Islamic fundamentalists to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. These administrations thought they were pretty smart: just use the Muslims as cannon fodder and when the cost for the USSR is too much they'll pull out with a major defeat. It worked and the "evil empire" was halted in its' tracks.
The problem was we then ignored Afghanistan and left the entire apparatus of a network of militant Islamic extremists. These people helped secure like 70% of the country for the Taliban and became what we today call Al-Qaida(Craig Unger talks about this in his book "House of Bush, House of Saud").

Our candidates are not dealing with reality.
How can I act, as Sartre would say in "good faith", voting?

If I vote for Bush I would be advocating my own death and the death of thousands of civilians, I would be advocating a Draft, war with Iran, war with North Korea, and torture.

If I vote for Kerry then I am voting for the individual who voted for the Iraq war resolution. The candidate who will not get our troops out of this Vietnamesque hellhole immediately and another slave of soft money given by large corporations.

If I vote for Nader I am complicit in the election of Bush and basically ceding that he is the best candidate for the country. Although Nader is the only candidate who will bring up issues I feel are most important like the injustice in the justice system, pre-emptive war, soft money reform, and most importantly drive a wedge between the state and the corporation.
So who?

I already know the answer: Kerry, there is no way I can risk in any way having Bush in office again, its like asking for a bloody revolution. This man centralizing power in the executive branch and spouting his religious fundamentalist rhetoric. Guess what asshole? If there is a god he or she doesn't favor the individuals from the United States over everyone else in the world, if anything he or she is learning to dislike us from our current track record(Pre-emptive war, erosion of civil rights, torture and rape of civilians, etcetera etcetera). I can't be complicit in the continuing unilateralism. I am a US citizen, but also a citizen of the world. I'm sure if I met some guy or girl from Iraq and we had a chance to chill I think we'd get along. The last thing I'd think is we need to bomb them, occupy them, search them, degrade them, torture them, rape them, steal from their oilfields, and I heard this one jackass on Fox News saying he thought IRAQ SHOULD PAY US BACK FOR INVADING THEM!!!!!!
I will vote for sanity.
I will give Kerry and the democratic party a chance. Once they have the bully pulpit they better start speaking their minds again, forget the fact that the mainstream media has completely shifted far right after 9/11, and hopefully bring home our soldiers.
Politicians say "We need to say until the job is done."
The problem is that there is no done, all the leaders and even the Rupert Murdoch crowd can't articulate when this could possibly be done.
Remember this also: We lost Fallujah early, we will not win Fallujah in a ground war. If staying until the job is done means killing all Iraqi rebels then Fallujah will need to be completley and totally destroyed through a campaign of mass bombing which will be tantamount to genocide.
Fallujah is to Iraqi Occupation(US v. Iraq)
as
Stalingrad is to World War II(Germany v. Russia)
So if controlling Fallujah is neccesary to "be done" we will lose hundreds more young men and women. Thousands more will be wounded and our country's image and history will become a little more tarnished.

You gotta know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em


So why is a two party system bad?
The two party system is fundamentally flawed in my opinion. By only having a yes and no answer there is very little room for dissent. Without dissent, opinions are not heard, with less variety of opinions there is less scenario planning, without an abundance of feasible scenarios our policy options become EXTREMELY limited.
By only allowing two points of view we have eroded the right of self-determination.

So you whiny "Liberal"(this is what people say who are convinced all political and philosophical thought can be boiled down to a simple left-right dichotomy) how do we get outta this and why don't you go to Canada if you don't like it?"  Well you get out of this by dismantling soft money fundraising apparatus (by making it illegal to donate so much damn money from one individual or interest) to decrease the parties' power, which will simultaneously choke corruption and corporate influence out of politics. This will be the only enforcement needed in this policy, and there is already an enforcement agency that enforces these laws on Hard money, but after this it will be called what it really is.................money and the enforcement will make no exceptions for party donations
   This will give rise to Libertarian interests and social-democratic interests. Marxists and Anarchists. Neo-Nazis and Black Panthers. Poor, middle class, rich. Jingoists and Facists(these are the two ideologies overrepresented in the current regime).
This will not fragment the US, it will only strengthen by providing representation for a wider spectrum of political views.

The problem is multiparty democracies are fragile. The current multi-party democracy of Italy and the past multi-party democracy of the Weimar Republic are examples of this. It seems that in Italy the governments ends up being a coalition of allied ideologies that can gain majority acceptance. The remaining opinions end up being deemed the opposition parties. So these coalitions last for long periods of time and the opposition party grows stronger and we see a bi-partisan democracy forming again. Also we all know that happened to the Weimar republic(and if you don't, go read about it, the years after the Weimar are surprisingly similar to present day United States Foreign Policy and civil rights for Muslims).
So after empirical analysis I can't say the evidence supports the need for all voices to be represented, but does the logic outweigh the empirical analysis? Isn't it the most important thing in a Democracy to have political equality? or is the chance of a disenfranchised party system leading to an increase in Executive power to much to risk?  
So as politicians run towards the middle they lose the ability to actually lead, to cause CHANGE. This is the stagnation I feel is affecting our government today and another reason I support dismantling the current soft money system.

Three other reforms which are necessary for the continuing function of our democracy are:
-Dissolve the Senate. The "Millionaires Club" should be abolished and its duties bestowed upon the house of representatives. A unicameral legislature will run a lot smoother and be closer to the people to be held accountable for their actions. Maybe when the foreign policy is placed in the hands of the House they will enact things like CTBT or the Kyoto Protocols, because the people like clean air and surprisingly they do not want to be killed in a fiery blaze of radioactive energy, so banning testing will slow proliferation and make it obvious who the real threats are. Or this analysis is based on the fact Jessie Helms is a backwards racist who has worked dilligently to bring American foreign policy back to the habits of the early cold war.

-Dissolve the Electoral College. Jefferson disagreed with the electoral college and I agree with him. This "safeguard" is the definition of aristocratic rule, meant to check "the people's" power in case they elected someone that wouldn't be good in the eyes of the landed elite. The electors are now merely a formality, they will never change their votes if their state is won(unless state law has guidelines about sharing electoral votes). So its time to dispense with the formalities and get back to work on creating a genuine right to self-determination. No one can define an argument for the electoral college that has contemporary application, so why is it still here? I for one am not afraid of the people and their choice for president, because I am a person in that crowd of people. Its like some arrogant Americans remark "Well why has UK got a queen?". Well why the hell do we have The Electoral College?

-Voting reform. We need to have a comprehensive reform effort that goes county by county over a period of time to make sure our voting system actually works. Yes I also advocate having the United Nations oversee our elections and Iraq's(because call me crazy but I trust the UN more than Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris when it comes to electing their good friend George Jr.). I do not want the supreme court deciding my President again.

If Bush wins and continues on his path.
If Kerry wins and continues the pre-emptive war in Iraq for years.

I will be through with both of them. Bill O'Reilly is always talking about how he wants liberals on his show to learn how they developed their philosophy. If you've seen that clip from Outfoxed of him telling tons of people to shut up its hilarious. I thought about going on his show with the "Hope and Memory" copy of Adbusters with this history of US imperialism spanning a great breadth of time. Ask him about a few recent stints in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.  
How can he justify the neo-manifest destiny?
How can he feel military action is justified unless in defense of an imminent and obvious attack or to halt genocide? These are the only two reasons I believe a war should be fought and many would disagree with me on the second reason saying that is too large a window. I'll put it this way: these are the wars I would die for my country for. But we all have to remember that fighting FOR your country is not the only way to die FOR your beliefs. You can also die fighting for your country but not for your military, like in the protests in Seattle, people fought against the country's muzzling of their opinions, and died for the constitutional right to free speech(although they were truly there to voice their opposition to neo-slavery otherwise branded "free trade" for marketing purposes). They had the opportunity to listen to O'Reilly and shut up. Instead they chose to have their voices heard and celebrate the first amendment in our consitution. They took the idea of America and held it in the highest esteem by actually employing their right to free speech. The internal security force beat that right, right out of their skull along with their brains.
They died so the rest of us don't have to, we are reminded again that freedom of speech is important, but obviously it isn't good enough. If you have read about the "free speech zones" being set up at the conventions. Messing up their photo ops I guess. This era will be documented in history books. When the leaders regain their sanity and start to recall that the entire country is a "free speech zone".

 
"Count bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums
the bogeyman comin' , the bogeyman comin'
keep your head down go to sleep to the rhythm of the war drums"
-A Perfect Circle

 
-Jimothy J. Jones

How did we let this happen?

There is a video of male soldiers of the United States Military raping young boys in the Abu Ghraib prison.
This is a link to a transcript of the Speech given to the ACLU by Seymour Hersh, who is trying to spread the truth:
http://www.pastpeak.com/archives/2004/07/post_1.htm

New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh the same individual that brought the truth of the My Lai massacre to the public has let the public know the truth again. The original torture story which had been a story since the red cross recognized the brutal tactics being used, but was not even TALKED about by the mainstream media until the New Yorker broke the story.

This is the most disgusting display of brutishness that we could possibly perpetuate upon innocent children. THIS IS A DEMOCRACY WE ARE ALL GUILTY FOR THE RAPE OF CHILDREN. When shit like this happens we need to step back and think about what THE FUCK WE"RE DOING IN IRAQ!!!!!!!

Think about this: so the CIA gets orders from the pentagon and defense department to obtain intelligence, because the soldiers don't know who the hell they're fighting(because there is no uniform for a guerilla/terrorist insurgency). So soldiers begin interrogation and CIA officers who are known to have been at the scene at Abu Ghraib and are pointed out in photos taken of the toture. Some sick individual somewhere in the chain of command had the idea to rape children for the safety of democracy.

These actions cannot be justified, the hiding behind the flag does not work when tactics such as this are used. The people of the United States will see straight through the red, white, and blue disguise. Anyone who truly believes in our constitution and the theory of democracy itself as the only rational governmental form of the right to self-determination need to step forward. Email your 2 senators and your representative let them know that you are against the raping of children and therefore want our country to leave the sovereign nation of Iraq THE HELL ALONE IMMEDIATELY!!!!

Your government's military raped children and video taped it

Your Leadership of the executive branch is trying to suppress the release of this video.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, and Powell must be brought to trial for their war crimes. THIS ADMINISTRATION HAS OPENLY FLOUTED THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS!
Sorry for the caps. I am just enraged by the fact that I stood by and did nothing as my country raped children, RAPED CHILDREN AND WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO UNLESS WE DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!!!

No American would vote for the rape of children, WE MUST FIND THE PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE AND MAKE SURE THEY WILL NEVER OBTAIN A POSITION OF POWER IN WHICH THEY CAN PERPETUATE BLATANTLY EVIL ACTIONS SUCH AS THIS.

I am a post-modernist I don't believe in universal truth, but it does not get more obviously evil than the rape of children.

This is not just one child either, THIS IS SYSTEMATIC!!!!  As the military continues to pretend it is doing something to the next ranking officer and as the yes men climb the hierarchy it reaches George Bush Jr. Himself.
The military has to fight against an enemy who does not wear a uniform or fight on a battlefield, this enemy acts and looks exactly the same as the people we are trying to protect.
It would be completely naive to believe that this prison is not populated densely(if they don't' comprise the majority) by innocent Muslims, whose only crime was being born in a different part of the world than you or I.

We can find solace in the fact that the mainstream media cannot ignore this forever. If they do then history books will pick up on it. WE NEED TO MAKE A CONSCIOUS EFFORT TO MOVE AS A NATION AWAY FROM THE PRECEDENT THE IRAQ WAR HAS SET. 

Public relations disinformation campaigns, intelligence agency group-think, followed by pre-emptive military action, then systematic torture and rape, and finally endless troop presence(that's right Wolfowitz said we could be there until 2010).

I am not a believer in an omnipotent, omniscient, infallible, and infinite entity; but for those of you that do, you should start praying for your and your neighbor's soul, because we just sold it for a few dollars saved at the pump and replaced it with anti-Muslim fervor.

YOUR GOVERNMENT'S MILITARY IS SYSTEMATICALLY RAPING CHILDREN IN IRAQ

 
-Jimothy J. Jones

There has to be some good left in our country, please help stop this blatantly evil action.

Probably no one will even read this, but for that one person that does, make sure you tell your friends and family what is being done in our name in Iraq.