By Kelly Jean Cogswell
On June 6th, the last day of the Hillary-Obama battle, fifty-six Democrats in the House of Representatives asked the Attorney General for an immediate investigation into whether Bush and Company were in violation of "the War Crimes Act ... and other U.S. and international laws."
Their letter charged new information had surfaced about top level meetings at the White House specifically approving the use of "enhanced techniques" like waterboarding. "President Bush was aware of and approved of the meetings taking place." "... the Bush administration may have systematically implemented, from the top down, detainee interrogation policies that constitute torture or otherwise violate the law."
As far as I know their request is dead in the water. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi didn't sign on. Their effort didn't make the front or even last page of the New York Times. I wouldn't have know about it all if I hadn't seen an old Nat Hentoff column in the Village Voice. He's like an anti-torture prophet crying in the wilderness, with a lot less effect. Abu Ghraib was swept under the rug with a few prosecutions of low level grunts, and Guantanamo only comes up when one more disgusted prosecutor resigns over unethical practices in the military tribunals.
Maybe Americans are blase because they've seen James Bond tortured too many times. He stands it easily, escapes, has a cocktail, and saves the world. Or maybe it's that we've tortured before with total impunity. The CIA was so good at it, they spent most of the 70's helping the right-wing governments of Latin America hold back the evil tide of Communism with a few nicely placed electrodes.
In Chile alone we helped Augusto Pinochet murder three thousand lefties, some pursued beyond their borders by death squads from the intelligence services. Thirty thousand or so were tortured with our help.
We Americans now indulge in our own kidnappings, our own disappearances and torture and murders, this time to keep America safe from terrorists. As I sit comfortably in front of my computer there's a man in a cell somewhere, battered and terrified. In fact, there are thousands of them whose excruciating physical pain is carefully redoubled with uncertainty, terror, and solitude. All in the name of my safety. We don't even know where half of them are. Our own security forces have spirited them away to Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Jordan, anywhere they can be tortured without the inconveniences of overstepping American law.
They remind me of those who died particularly horrible deaths on 9/11, trapped in the rubble, talking on cell phones until their batteries died, their voices gradually lost in the darkness, their bodies broken, suffering alone and finally in silence. They died powerless, dehumanized, terrified. For months, their lost faces covered every square inch of telephone pole and mailbox and billboard on First Avenue as relatives begged for information about people who didn't come home after the blast. People just snatched away one morning, a primary election day, under a clear blue sky. Killed by terrorists that never had to look them in the eye.
Torturers are even worse, consciously inflicting horrible suffering, not on faceless masses, but very real prisoners who cry out in real voices begging for pity. These torturers betray an ice-cold degeneration that my country now stands for. They should be locked up, and their criminal commanders tried for treason.
I don't see it happening. As Senator Schumer said, when he was asked about the possibility of bringing Bush to justice for war crimes, "People don't care about that." For getting a blow job in the oval office: national scandal, impeachment. Ditto for partisan spying a la Watergate. For killing and torturing: nada. In fact, shut up. Turn the page. It's a new era with a new President who'll want to start fresh.
For now, justice will require action from abroad. Impunity for Chilean Dictator Augosto Pinochet was only challenged by a judge in Spain, who was investigating the torture and murder of Spanish nationals in Chile. When the British police actually arrested Pinochet ten years ago during a trip to London for back surgery, it was an earthquake, a landmark, one of the first exercises of universal jurisdiction since that was included in the UN Convention on Genocide in 1948. The arrest helped propel The Hague's International Criminal Court into existence in 2002. And everywhere, it pointed the way to justice.
In 2005, an Italian court issued arrest warrants for twenty-five CIA agents responsible for snatching an Egyptian cleric off the streets of Milan and flying him to Egypt where he was tortured during interrogation. In 2007, a Munich court issued warrants for similar reasons. Also that year, former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld beat a quick retreat from France when his visit there inspired a torture suit against him.
Still, it would be better if we washed our own dirty laundry. There's plenty of evidence, just not the will to risk our delicate hands in that filth.
Showing posts with label bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bush. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Democrats Court Disaster with Sneer Campaign
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
In the distant presidential campaign of 2000, when the Democrats could have touted the flourishing economy and budget surplus of the Clinton administration, they preferred to focus instead on more important issues. Like how George W. Bush pronounced "nucular."
We also heard about W.'s cowboy hats, ridiculous big ears, terrible grades at Yale, drunkenness, and cheerleading activities, while Democratic and left-wing pundits sneered at the idea that running a baseball team, especially a losing one, could be considered "experience," and asserted that if George W. Bush wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he would have been lucky to be the bat boy. Likewise, he wouldn't have been governor of Texas if he weren't a member of the Bush royal family. Nobody'd be enough of an idiot to vote for a loser like him.
Having been so successful with their sneer tactics in 2000, Democrats repeated them in 2004. And having failed yet again, the Dems have sunk their 2008 energy into a similar campaign calling attention to McCain's white hair, internet illiteracy, and obviously senile fits of rage. His running mate, that crazy nobody, Sarah Palin, has been dismissed as a cosmetics saleswoman at Macy's, beauty queen, and white trash, fundamentalist baby-making machine that pauses just long enough between births to skin a moose alive.
The problem with sneer campaigns, is that while they're supposed to make the target look stupid and inept, what they actually do is reveal the values of the sneerer. And in this campaign, what the Democrats are revealing is that they think old people, poor and working class people, and women are too stupid and ridiculous to consider for any top job. Yeah, that'll win them the election.
My advice is to just drop the sneers. If the Democrats want to make the Republicans look ridiculous, they only have to stick to the issues. Like McCain's role in getting us into the mess in Iraq. McCain repeatedly insisted that Iraq played a major role in 9/11, even after the theory was totally disproved by U.S. intelligence services. He also insisted on the imaginary WMD's in Iraq, and even blamed Suddam Hussein for the anthrax attacks in the U.S. And it was the veteran warrior McCain, in his own sneering arrogance, who backed up the Bush administration in vastly underestimating how many soldiers would be needed to handle the whole invasion.
McCain has also supported Bush's economic policy, and his Republican cronies have repeatedly said that the economy is fine, and characterized suffering Americans as a bunch of whiners, even as the federal government has been forced to step in and essentially nationalize two gigantic loan programs to keep the economy from totally collapsing. Long live socialist Republicans!
To undercut Palin's effectiveness as a symbol of change, especially in the pork barrel area of Washington politics, all you have to do is point out Palin's pig dinners as Alaskan governor, where the subsidy per citizen is several times the national average. According to the Washington Post, Palin herself has apparently billed Alaskan taxpayers for travel expenses when she was sitting at home.
And when Palin sneers at Obama's foreign policy, "He's worried that someone won't read them their rights," it should be enough to point out that the top of her ticket was himself tortured during war and didn't much like it.
If they want to win, Democrats should forget the cheap shots about senior citizens, moose shoots, and beauty queens, and stick to the issues. Sure, the late days of a campaign are supposed to be all about character, but isn't that what the issues often reveal?
Which is why the attacks dismissing Sarah Palin as one more crazy evangelist only chosen as VP for her vagina and abortion stance, have been particularly disturbing. Not just because of their misogyny. But because they show just how much the left continues to underestimate American fundamentalists, especially the new wave. They're creationists, but no morons.
Sarah Palin is just the vanguard. As I said last week, yes, she wears go-go boots and has a bunch of kids. She didn't go to Harvard and get straight A's. But she's a formidable politician. She's intelligent, scrappy, and flexible with an extraordinary learning curve.
She was a town council member of Wasilla, Alaska in 1992 at 28. She took office as mayor at the ripe old age of 32, tried to bull-doze her way into establishing a fundamentalist Christian town including censoring books, but met so much opposition they tried to recall her. The difference between her and the old guard is that she then moderated her positions enough, at least publicly, to get re-elected by a fat margin.
Barely a decade later, she was governor of Alaska. Now, still anti-abortion, anti-evolution, anti-queer she's on the road to the White House. Sneer at your own risk.
In the distant presidential campaign of 2000, when the Democrats could have touted the flourishing economy and budget surplus of the Clinton administration, they preferred to focus instead on more important issues. Like how George W. Bush pronounced "nucular."
We also heard about W.'s cowboy hats, ridiculous big ears, terrible grades at Yale, drunkenness, and cheerleading activities, while Democratic and left-wing pundits sneered at the idea that running a baseball team, especially a losing one, could be considered "experience," and asserted that if George W. Bush wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he would have been lucky to be the bat boy. Likewise, he wouldn't have been governor of Texas if he weren't a member of the Bush royal family. Nobody'd be enough of an idiot to vote for a loser like him.
Having been so successful with their sneer tactics in 2000, Democrats repeated them in 2004. And having failed yet again, the Dems have sunk their 2008 energy into a similar campaign calling attention to McCain's white hair, internet illiteracy, and obviously senile fits of rage. His running mate, that crazy nobody, Sarah Palin, has been dismissed as a cosmetics saleswoman at Macy's, beauty queen, and white trash, fundamentalist baby-making machine that pauses just long enough between births to skin a moose alive.
The problem with sneer campaigns, is that while they're supposed to make the target look stupid and inept, what they actually do is reveal the values of the sneerer. And in this campaign, what the Democrats are revealing is that they think old people, poor and working class people, and women are too stupid and ridiculous to consider for any top job. Yeah, that'll win them the election.
My advice is to just drop the sneers. If the Democrats want to make the Republicans look ridiculous, they only have to stick to the issues. Like McCain's role in getting us into the mess in Iraq. McCain repeatedly insisted that Iraq played a major role in 9/11, even after the theory was totally disproved by U.S. intelligence services. He also insisted on the imaginary WMD's in Iraq, and even blamed Suddam Hussein for the anthrax attacks in the U.S. And it was the veteran warrior McCain, in his own sneering arrogance, who backed up the Bush administration in vastly underestimating how many soldiers would be needed to handle the whole invasion.
McCain has also supported Bush's economic policy, and his Republican cronies have repeatedly said that the economy is fine, and characterized suffering Americans as a bunch of whiners, even as the federal government has been forced to step in and essentially nationalize two gigantic loan programs to keep the economy from totally collapsing. Long live socialist Republicans!
To undercut Palin's effectiveness as a symbol of change, especially in the pork barrel area of Washington politics, all you have to do is point out Palin's pig dinners as Alaskan governor, where the subsidy per citizen is several times the national average. According to the Washington Post, Palin herself has apparently billed Alaskan taxpayers for travel expenses when she was sitting at home.
And when Palin sneers at Obama's foreign policy, "He's worried that someone won't read them their rights," it should be enough to point out that the top of her ticket was himself tortured during war and didn't much like it.
If they want to win, Democrats should forget the cheap shots about senior citizens, moose shoots, and beauty queens, and stick to the issues. Sure, the late days of a campaign are supposed to be all about character, but isn't that what the issues often reveal?
Which is why the attacks dismissing Sarah Palin as one more crazy evangelist only chosen as VP for her vagina and abortion stance, have been particularly disturbing. Not just because of their misogyny. But because they show just how much the left continues to underestimate American fundamentalists, especially the new wave. They're creationists, but no morons.
Sarah Palin is just the vanguard. As I said last week, yes, she wears go-go boots and has a bunch of kids. She didn't go to Harvard and get straight A's. But she's a formidable politician. She's intelligent, scrappy, and flexible with an extraordinary learning curve.
She was a town council member of Wasilla, Alaska in 1992 at 28. She took office as mayor at the ripe old age of 32, tried to bull-doze her way into establishing a fundamentalist Christian town including censoring books, but met so much opposition they tried to recall her. The difference between her and the old guard is that she then moderated her positions enough, at least publicly, to get re-elected by a fat margin.
Barely a decade later, she was governor of Alaska. Now, still anti-abortion, anti-evolution, anti-queer she's on the road to the White House. Sneer at your own risk.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Does the Internet Let Lying Liars Lie?
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
I'm a big fan of "Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)" just for the title alone. And if Al Franken were running for president instead of senator of Minnesota, I'd be right there handing out buttons and twisting every arm in reach. Mostly to bother national-level Democrats.
I can't believe that in an election year that should have gone down in history as "Truth (And the Truth-telling Democrats Who Let It Sweep Them Into the White House)" we're watching the two Democratic candidates sideline the catastrophic Republican presidency whose unilateral military action, the deregulation of the banking industry, and obsession with Saddam Hussein led directly to a tanking global economy, and disastrous war.
Their preferred discussion: a preacher's missteps on race. Or this week, one more thing about Clinton's husband Bill. And don't forget questions of bitterness, religion, and gun control in the heartland. That's thanks to Obama's comments that small-town voters, bitter over their economic circumstances, "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them" as a way to explain their frustrations.
As far as I remember, he said much the same thing in his famous race speech, only with more compassion. The only real note of interest in this is the proportion the comment took on, and that it was Mayhill Fowler, a pro-Obama "citizen journalist" blogger who reported it because she "was taken aback" at his elitist sneer, and didn't think it was ethical to let it slide by in silence.
Me, I'm glad she opened her mouth. Not because Obama's remarks should tip any election scale, but because Fowler redeemed my faith in the internet. As a writer and activist, I had high hopes for it as a conduit of truth. With something as accessible and "democratic" as the internet, it seemed like tons of people would uncover the smoking guns of politics, blow the whistle on hypocrites and evil-doers, speak out, dissent, Act-up.
But what seemed an amazing tool for providing alternative views has given precedence to the same handful of voices we were faced with before. The difference is that they are now amplified (and distorted) by hundreds of thousands of mouths all shouting the same thing. The comments on online articles, all seem written by the same two or three people taking the same hard lines on politics. They adamantly agree or disagree, but rarely shake their heads in skepticism, and wonder if any of it is true, even their own impulses. If there are more perspectives out there, they're buried in silence.
By contrast, there's the constant stream of information, the rattle of the blogosphere, disasters instantly brought home on our miniscule screens that confront us with every starving peasant, every corpse there to see. In essence, the internet brings details and news instead of knowledge, and where's the revolution in that?
Activists haven't figured out the medium either. I remember how the internet was supposed to help us connect, let us learn from each other. And in the brief twenty minutes of protest in New York prior to the Iraq War, it was an important organizing tool. Now what? The bickering that used to take place in community centers and church basements happens in chatrooms. Those with the quickest fingers, and a facility with language still impose their will. Beyond that, the internet is a glorified phone tree that we use to set dates for meetings.
I don't see better ideas, or analysis that carefully makes its way towards the complicated truth. I feel more and more like a dinosaur. Drop me in a tar pit and leave me be. I could use the quiet. Imagine it, silence. Sometimes I consider the drastic step of turning off my computer, but my girlfriend is clicking away across the room. It's too late. We have laptops growing from our thighs. A wave of information pounds into the room. And like greedy consumers, we drink every drop there is, and swell up like toads on the verge of bursting.
I think of sending her a message. "How about a date?" I get it typed out, but then I'm worried that if she accepts I might miss an email, a development. Something could blow-up. Or fall down. She might not recognize me. I might not know myself.
We get caught up in the Net Stream, forget what we were looking for, or get intoxicated by the sound of our own voices when they join the agreeing mob. Which is why I congratulate Mayhill Fowler. She began blogging to get the truth out about a candidate she believed in, but when he showed a private face different from his public one, she stuck to her guns and reported that truth, too. It's a small step, but in the right direction.
I'm a big fan of "Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)" just for the title alone. And if Al Franken were running for president instead of senator of Minnesota, I'd be right there handing out buttons and twisting every arm in reach. Mostly to bother national-level Democrats.
I can't believe that in an election year that should have gone down in history as "Truth (And the Truth-telling Democrats Who Let It Sweep Them Into the White House)" we're watching the two Democratic candidates sideline the catastrophic Republican presidency whose unilateral military action, the deregulation of the banking industry, and obsession with Saddam Hussein led directly to a tanking global economy, and disastrous war.
Their preferred discussion: a preacher's missteps on race. Or this week, one more thing about Clinton's husband Bill. And don't forget questions of bitterness, religion, and gun control in the heartland. That's thanks to Obama's comments that small-town voters, bitter over their economic circumstances, "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them" as a way to explain their frustrations.
As far as I remember, he said much the same thing in his famous race speech, only with more compassion. The only real note of interest in this is the proportion the comment took on, and that it was Mayhill Fowler, a pro-Obama "citizen journalist" blogger who reported it because she "was taken aback" at his elitist sneer, and didn't think it was ethical to let it slide by in silence.
Me, I'm glad she opened her mouth. Not because Obama's remarks should tip any election scale, but because Fowler redeemed my faith in the internet. As a writer and activist, I had high hopes for it as a conduit of truth. With something as accessible and "democratic" as the internet, it seemed like tons of people would uncover the smoking guns of politics, blow the whistle on hypocrites and evil-doers, speak out, dissent, Act-up.
But what seemed an amazing tool for providing alternative views has given precedence to the same handful of voices we were faced with before. The difference is that they are now amplified (and distorted) by hundreds of thousands of mouths all shouting the same thing. The comments on online articles, all seem written by the same two or three people taking the same hard lines on politics. They adamantly agree or disagree, but rarely shake their heads in skepticism, and wonder if any of it is true, even their own impulses. If there are more perspectives out there, they're buried in silence.
By contrast, there's the constant stream of information, the rattle of the blogosphere, disasters instantly brought home on our miniscule screens that confront us with every starving peasant, every corpse there to see. In essence, the internet brings details and news instead of knowledge, and where's the revolution in that?
Activists haven't figured out the medium either. I remember how the internet was supposed to help us connect, let us learn from each other. And in the brief twenty minutes of protest in New York prior to the Iraq War, it was an important organizing tool. Now what? The bickering that used to take place in community centers and church basements happens in chatrooms. Those with the quickest fingers, and a facility with language still impose their will. Beyond that, the internet is a glorified phone tree that we use to set dates for meetings.
I don't see better ideas, or analysis that carefully makes its way towards the complicated truth. I feel more and more like a dinosaur. Drop me in a tar pit and leave me be. I could use the quiet. Imagine it, silence. Sometimes I consider the drastic step of turning off my computer, but my girlfriend is clicking away across the room. It's too late. We have laptops growing from our thighs. A wave of information pounds into the room. And like greedy consumers, we drink every drop there is, and swell up like toads on the verge of bursting.
I think of sending her a message. "How about a date?" I get it typed out, but then I'm worried that if she accepts I might miss an email, a development. Something could blow-up. Or fall down. She might not recognize me. I might not know myself.
We get caught up in the Net Stream, forget what we were looking for, or get intoxicated by the sound of our own voices when they join the agreeing mob. Which is why I congratulate Mayhill Fowler. She began blogging to get the truth out about a candidate she believed in, but when he showed a private face different from his public one, she stuck to her guns and reported that truth, too. It's a small step, but in the right direction.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Screw Unity, Save America!
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
I'm definitely a freak. There's a drum beating out there and I'm no where near in step. In fact, I don't even hear it. Just a dripping in the kitchen sink that calls for a plumber rather than some political savior like Obama.
I finally managed to have a look at his recent speech on race after reading glowing reports from both sides of the aisle. Expecting to bask in the warm glow of his great vision for America, I felt my skin crawl at his insistence on unity, unity, unity.
In my experience, unity usually translates as "Shut your trap, Bitch," or more nicely, "We'll get to your issue when we've solved the really important ones. It's just not the right time." Funny, the right time never does come.
After all, isn't unity what we've had under Bush? The minority Democrats voted in lockstep with Republicans for an Iraq War which is now costing us $5000 per second, burdening a family of four with about $330 per month, a failed economy, not to mention dead American relations, whole cemeteries of Iraqis, and a Middle East that may well be destabilized for generations to come.
Then there're the boatload of democratic perversions in the name of Homeland Security like wire-tapping, racial profiling, oh, and Guantanamo, that have continued even with a Democratic majority in Congress, all because we have to be unified to fight that endless War on Terror that has as many definitions as that soporific word, "nice."
Obama, above all, seems like a nice man. His heart is in the right place wanting to welcome everybody into his big tent, though I still balk at his campaigning down South with the same black preachers that Bush used for their popular rabble-rousing and money-raising capability. You just have to ignore their hellfire and brimstone conviction that all us queers are going to burn eternally. Come on in.
I get the idea he just can't abide anger. Not that he doesn't understand it. In this speech, Obama gives one of the more passionate defenses of anger in black and working class communities that I've seen, citing its deep roots, the damage it can do, how it can embitter, paralyze and blind. All true, including the fact we have to see past our anger to find solutions.
The problem is that he'd be happier if we put our anger entirely aside. It "... is exploited by politicians." "It distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition..." "Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits..."
He's forgotten, or never knew, that anger is one of the few things, maybe the only thing, that gets us into the street. Fury about injustice was what sent Jesus on a rampage in the temple knocking over the tents of moneylenders. Anger freed Malcolm X, ACT-UP, the Lesbian Avengers. It is an essential engine for change.
I am afraid we Americans are not angry enough, and that insistence on unity will lead to a white-washing of the past eight years, skipping the justice stage for reconciliation, and leaving Bush's damage intact.
No one except the grunts will be responsible for the men and women we've tortured in American prisons. No one will be responsible for lying about the imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction that got us into Iraq, or for deregulating the banks that are self-destructing, preaching the hate that translates into dead queers, refusing jobs and basic respect to people because of their accents or skin.
I find rage coordinates nicely with the Timberlands I wear to demos, though I understand the exigencies of politics. You can't only work from the margins, though it's the best place to be an activist. Politicians have other needs. To them I say, "Forge alliances if you must, hold hands, sing Kumbaya, but keep your eyes on justice."
For that reason, I'm wary of Obama. I'm troubled by how easily unity translates into silence and amnesia, and hope into absolution. I'm afraid of his Christian rhetoric that makes it seem like his victory is sanctified by Jesus, a manifestation of divine will, and genetics. "...Seared into my genetic makeup [is] the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one."
In Obama's America, what will happen to those of us that are part of the devil named Multitude, and insist on dissent? How will we be labeled? Will the censorship that was imposed by Bush and the Republicans in the name of patriotism and fear, be replaced by that other American fascism of Niceness, Unity, and Hope? Will anybody have the guts to speak the truth?
I'm definitely a freak. There's a drum beating out there and I'm no where near in step. In fact, I don't even hear it. Just a dripping in the kitchen sink that calls for a plumber rather than some political savior like Obama.
I finally managed to have a look at his recent speech on race after reading glowing reports from both sides of the aisle. Expecting to bask in the warm glow of his great vision for America, I felt my skin crawl at his insistence on unity, unity, unity.
In my experience, unity usually translates as "Shut your trap, Bitch," or more nicely, "We'll get to your issue when we've solved the really important ones. It's just not the right time." Funny, the right time never does come.
After all, isn't unity what we've had under Bush? The minority Democrats voted in lockstep with Republicans for an Iraq War which is now costing us $5000 per second, burdening a family of four with about $330 per month, a failed economy, not to mention dead American relations, whole cemeteries of Iraqis, and a Middle East that may well be destabilized for generations to come.
Then there're the boatload of democratic perversions in the name of Homeland Security like wire-tapping, racial profiling, oh, and Guantanamo, that have continued even with a Democratic majority in Congress, all because we have to be unified to fight that endless War on Terror that has as many definitions as that soporific word, "nice."
Obama, above all, seems like a nice man. His heart is in the right place wanting to welcome everybody into his big tent, though I still balk at his campaigning down South with the same black preachers that Bush used for their popular rabble-rousing and money-raising capability. You just have to ignore their hellfire and brimstone conviction that all us queers are going to burn eternally. Come on in.
I get the idea he just can't abide anger. Not that he doesn't understand it. In this speech, Obama gives one of the more passionate defenses of anger in black and working class communities that I've seen, citing its deep roots, the damage it can do, how it can embitter, paralyze and blind. All true, including the fact we have to see past our anger to find solutions.
The problem is that he'd be happier if we put our anger entirely aside. It "... is exploited by politicians." "It distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition..." "Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits..."
He's forgotten, or never knew, that anger is one of the few things, maybe the only thing, that gets us into the street. Fury about injustice was what sent Jesus on a rampage in the temple knocking over the tents of moneylenders. Anger freed Malcolm X, ACT-UP, the Lesbian Avengers. It is an essential engine for change.
I am afraid we Americans are not angry enough, and that insistence on unity will lead to a white-washing of the past eight years, skipping the justice stage for reconciliation, and leaving Bush's damage intact.
No one except the grunts will be responsible for the men and women we've tortured in American prisons. No one will be responsible for lying about the imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction that got us into Iraq, or for deregulating the banks that are self-destructing, preaching the hate that translates into dead queers, refusing jobs and basic respect to people because of their accents or skin.
I find rage coordinates nicely with the Timberlands I wear to demos, though I understand the exigencies of politics. You can't only work from the margins, though it's the best place to be an activist. Politicians have other needs. To them I say, "Forge alliances if you must, hold hands, sing Kumbaya, but keep your eyes on justice."
For that reason, I'm wary of Obama. I'm troubled by how easily unity translates into silence and amnesia, and hope into absolution. I'm afraid of his Christian rhetoric that makes it seem like his victory is sanctified by Jesus, a manifestation of divine will, and genetics. "...Seared into my genetic makeup [is] the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one."
In Obama's America, what will happen to those of us that are part of the devil named Multitude, and insist on dissent? How will we be labeled? Will the censorship that was imposed by Bush and the Republicans in the name of patriotism and fear, be replaced by that other American fascism of Niceness, Unity, and Hope? Will anybody have the guts to speak the truth?
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Reassessing Bush as America Falls
by Kelly Jean Cogswell
I was relieved to hear in Bush's State of the Union address that we had Al Qaeda on the run in Iraq, the economy was fine, even if, just a little teensy bit, for the moment, uncertain. And above all that, "From expanding opportunity to protecting our country, we have made good progress."
The speech was almost pure fantasy for a president with a 29 percent approval rating, and 81 percent of an electorate thinking the country is on the wrong track. But to be fair, I suspect that next president, faced with having made minimal progress on the same intractable fronts, will deliver the same kind of pie-in-the-sky pronouncements.
Even stiff-upper-lip Britain rarely produces a Churchill who started off one famous speech with the simple declaration, "The news from France is very bad." And it was. France had just fallen to the Germans and the Brits were left alone in Europe.
America, the land of the most gung-ho people in the world is never going to warm to a president from any party admitting we face an uphill battle managing a tanking economy, a Middle East quagmire, and faltering super powers. No, what we demand from our leaders is hope. A shining new Kennedy or Reagan.
We should remember that this trafficking in perpetual optimism that characterizes America, especially post-Baby Boom, is largely why Bush was elected in the first place. He had a charismatic sense of destiny and wore the greatness of this country in his heroic Texas swagger. Along with a few lies about WMDs, our willing wardrobe of rose-colored glasses was why he could so easily drag us into Iraq with feeble promises of a quick victory.
That same degenerate optimism is also at the root of the banking crisis. The hubris of Bush deregulating everything with the convenient credo that the market always takes care of itself was matched only by all those delusional borrowers who now want to be absolved for grabbing every dollar on offer instead of leaving a little cautious cushion for disasters, job loss, a downturn in investments.
It was a symbiosis -- the guys running the shell game, and the marks that hand over their hard-earned money hoping to make a quick buck. They're feeling lucky.
When did modesty become a dirty word? And, in that light, should we immodestly blame all our messes on George W. Bush? I'm starting to reconsider.
Even George Soros, who's no Bush-lover, wrote recently in the Financial Times that while the administration played its part, "The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years."
Likewise, our diminishing role in the world is not only the result of Bush's tendency for preemptive and unilateral action plus nose-thumbing at the international community, but the consolidation and growth of the European Union and the rise of China as a third pole analyzed in depth by Parg Khanna in the New York Times last week.
As we get a peek behind the curtain, what we're beginning to see is that in many ways Bush merely pushed some of the dominoes that were already aligned to fall. Just not so far so fast.
Which means the news from France is very bad. Because if seven years of Bush is not largely responsible for America's current crisis, it's not enough for a president of either party just to be a hopeful anti-Bush. The situation is much more profound, and it would be great if we had a politician willing to break the news. If they've noticed at all.
Americans aren't known for their interest in international affairs, the big picture. Or even big maps. (Just where is Uzbekistan?) And much of the current slump in American confidence is due to good old dollars and cents, plus a little intuition.
We leave historical trends for academics. Even though the latest ones affect us beyond our identity as a super power with X-ray vision.
I'm not sure the downward slide is all bad. What is America anyway? Are we the land of the free? Or only the land of the super-sized fries, lending empires and international conglomerates all on their way out?
Freedom is something we do have control over. And while Bush can't be blamed for everything, the erosion of civil liberties in the States can certainly be laid at his feet, along with the Congresses that aided and abetted him. Even now, our newly Democratic congress is anything but democratic.
And then there are all the times that we Americans could have taken to the streets and didn't, preferring to sit on our metaphorical front porches and complain. Forget baseball and football. The blame game is the real American pastime. Our favorite recourse when false hope fails.
I was relieved to hear in Bush's State of the Union address that we had Al Qaeda on the run in Iraq, the economy was fine, even if, just a little teensy bit, for the moment, uncertain. And above all that, "From expanding opportunity to protecting our country, we have made good progress."
The speech was almost pure fantasy for a president with a 29 percent approval rating, and 81 percent of an electorate thinking the country is on the wrong track. But to be fair, I suspect that next president, faced with having made minimal progress on the same intractable fronts, will deliver the same kind of pie-in-the-sky pronouncements.
Even stiff-upper-lip Britain rarely produces a Churchill who started off one famous speech with the simple declaration, "The news from France is very bad." And it was. France had just fallen to the Germans and the Brits were left alone in Europe.
America, the land of the most gung-ho people in the world is never going to warm to a president from any party admitting we face an uphill battle managing a tanking economy, a Middle East quagmire, and faltering super powers. No, what we demand from our leaders is hope. A shining new Kennedy or Reagan.
We should remember that this trafficking in perpetual optimism that characterizes America, especially post-Baby Boom, is largely why Bush was elected in the first place. He had a charismatic sense of destiny and wore the greatness of this country in his heroic Texas swagger. Along with a few lies about WMDs, our willing wardrobe of rose-colored glasses was why he could so easily drag us into Iraq with feeble promises of a quick victory.
That same degenerate optimism is also at the root of the banking crisis. The hubris of Bush deregulating everything with the convenient credo that the market always takes care of itself was matched only by all those delusional borrowers who now want to be absolved for grabbing every dollar on offer instead of leaving a little cautious cushion for disasters, job loss, a downturn in investments.
It was a symbiosis -- the guys running the shell game, and the marks that hand over their hard-earned money hoping to make a quick buck. They're feeling lucky.
When did modesty become a dirty word? And, in that light, should we immodestly blame all our messes on George W. Bush? I'm starting to reconsider.
Even George Soros, who's no Bush-lover, wrote recently in the Financial Times that while the administration played its part, "The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years."
Likewise, our diminishing role in the world is not only the result of Bush's tendency for preemptive and unilateral action plus nose-thumbing at the international community, but the consolidation and growth of the European Union and the rise of China as a third pole analyzed in depth by Parg Khanna in the New York Times last week.
As we get a peek behind the curtain, what we're beginning to see is that in many ways Bush merely pushed some of the dominoes that were already aligned to fall. Just not so far so fast.
Which means the news from France is very bad. Because if seven years of Bush is not largely responsible for America's current crisis, it's not enough for a president of either party just to be a hopeful anti-Bush. The situation is much more profound, and it would be great if we had a politician willing to break the news. If they've noticed at all.
Americans aren't known for their interest in international affairs, the big picture. Or even big maps. (Just where is Uzbekistan?) And much of the current slump in American confidence is due to good old dollars and cents, plus a little intuition.
We leave historical trends for academics. Even though the latest ones affect us beyond our identity as a super power with X-ray vision.
I'm not sure the downward slide is all bad. What is America anyway? Are we the land of the free? Or only the land of the super-sized fries, lending empires and international conglomerates all on their way out?
Freedom is something we do have control over. And while Bush can't be blamed for everything, the erosion of civil liberties in the States can certainly be laid at his feet, along with the Congresses that aided and abetted him. Even now, our newly Democratic congress is anything but democratic.
And then there are all the times that we Americans could have taken to the streets and didn't, preferring to sit on our metaphorical front porches and complain. Forget baseball and football. The blame game is the real American pastime. Our favorite recourse when false hope fails.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Bush Screws Women Globally: Still Gagging on the Rules
By Kelly Jean Cogswell
802 words
Now that Gore's got his Oscar, and Barbara Boxer's in charge of the Environment and Public Works Committee, a safer home for those cute little arctic seals is practically in the bag. But what about that other endangered category: women?
Since George W. Bush took office in 2001 imposing his global gag rule, we've been crushed between the rock and the hard place with no end in sight.
The gag rule cuts off U.S. funds to any foreign organization making any mention of abortion for any reason, no matter where the funding for those services came from. So even mention abortion among a hundred other things, and women in developing countries can kiss goodbye prenatal care and cancer screening and open their arms wide to the half a million women that will die this year during pregnancy or childbirth -- from largely preventable causes.
That's the rock. The hard place is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which does do some good in providing money for treatment and prevention of AIDS in developing countries, but again has a crushing provision that a full one-third of the prevention money go to programs preaching only abstinence.
For Bush, sex workers are garbage. Girls that aren't given the chance to say "no" are crap along the side of the road. Girls forced to marry young are what you scrape off your shoe. Women that already have HIV and have no means to prevent transmitting it aren't even on the map.
When are we going to roll that back?
Is it even on the agenda of the macho Dems when the bad news from Iraq takes half the newspaper every day, and the other half is consumed by presidential wannabees grunting at each other while garden variety torture cases barely get a mention. If another Abu Ghraib was uncovered now, or even if anyone wanted to follow-up on the old one, they'd have to wait in line behind whatever Hillar-Ama brainfart hits the stands next.
There's been little coverage of that lug José Padilla, the "enemy combatant" from Chicago that could barely spell his own name, but was nabbed in 2002 and thrown in an army brig for supposedly coordinating more deadly attacks. He's finally come up for trial and it turns out they tortured him so much he's almost completely insane. Forget poor women dying slowly of AIDS, or during deliveries.
I even resent all the coverage of Academy Awards, though Helen Mirren won best actress and I've had a crush on her for ages, except during her recent incarnation as the pin-curled, blue-rinsed Queen.
If I had my druthers it would other women on the front page this morning, all the forgotten ones dying and at risk, and the handful trying to do something about them.
As it turns out, overturning the gag rule is on the Democratic agenda, kinda, just not far up enough to make it to most newspapers. On January 22, Democratic Representative Nita Lowey from New York re-introduced the timeworn Global Democracy Promotion Act expressly devoted to overturning the gag rule. A couple of weeks ago, California's Rep. Barbara Lee, re-introduced the Pathways Act, which would remove the requirement that one-third of PEPFAR AIDS prevention programs be abstinence-based.
The problem is neither bill will go anywhere this time either. Even if the new clench-fisted, testosterone stoked Dems suddenly admitted sympathy for the problems of women, Bush would veto the bills anyway.
Pressure probably won't come from outside, either. Dr. Margaret Chan, the new director-general of the World Health Organization has announced that women's health is one of her top priorities, but she also seems to be courting America's Big Pharma in recent comments in Bangkok criticizing Thailand for challenging intellectual property laws to develop generic AIDS and cardiac drugs.
Will she turn a blind eye to the United States' global gag rule and PEPFAR policies that are based on moral crusades than good science and public interest? WHO knows?
Sexual and reproductive health worldwide is a mess. According to a global study published in the British medical journal the Lancet last November, international aid for family planning dropped from $560 million in 1995 to $460 million in 2003.
We need Helen Mirren to return, not as queen, but President, a kind of unsmiling, childless, tough-as-nails Inspector Tennyson to defend the rights of women.
Hillary is tough, and Pelosi, too, but I don't like seeing the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives doing photo shoots with a grandkid on her hip. She's being the dog that rolls over to expose her belly and show how non-threatening she is to all the male voters out there. Yeah, I understand the game, but it creeps me out.
Show your soft side long enough, some wolf'll rip it to shreds.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com.
802 words
Now that Gore's got his Oscar, and Barbara Boxer's in charge of the Environment and Public Works Committee, a safer home for those cute little arctic seals is practically in the bag. But what about that other endangered category: women?
Since George W. Bush took office in 2001 imposing his global gag rule, we've been crushed between the rock and the hard place with no end in sight.
The gag rule cuts off U.S. funds to any foreign organization making any mention of abortion for any reason, no matter where the funding for those services came from. So even mention abortion among a hundred other things, and women in developing countries can kiss goodbye prenatal care and cancer screening and open their arms wide to the half a million women that will die this year during pregnancy or childbirth -- from largely preventable causes.
That's the rock. The hard place is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which does do some good in providing money for treatment and prevention of AIDS in developing countries, but again has a crushing provision that a full one-third of the prevention money go to programs preaching only abstinence.
For Bush, sex workers are garbage. Girls that aren't given the chance to say "no" are crap along the side of the road. Girls forced to marry young are what you scrape off your shoe. Women that already have HIV and have no means to prevent transmitting it aren't even on the map.
When are we going to roll that back?
Is it even on the agenda of the macho Dems when the bad news from Iraq takes half the newspaper every day, and the other half is consumed by presidential wannabees grunting at each other while garden variety torture cases barely get a mention. If another Abu Ghraib was uncovered now, or even if anyone wanted to follow-up on the old one, they'd have to wait in line behind whatever Hillar-Ama brainfart hits the stands next.
There's been little coverage of that lug José Padilla, the "enemy combatant" from Chicago that could barely spell his own name, but was nabbed in 2002 and thrown in an army brig for supposedly coordinating more deadly attacks. He's finally come up for trial and it turns out they tortured him so much he's almost completely insane. Forget poor women dying slowly of AIDS, or during deliveries.
I even resent all the coverage of Academy Awards, though Helen Mirren won best actress and I've had a crush on her for ages, except during her recent incarnation as the pin-curled, blue-rinsed Queen.
If I had my druthers it would other women on the front page this morning, all the forgotten ones dying and at risk, and the handful trying to do something about them.
As it turns out, overturning the gag rule is on the Democratic agenda, kinda, just not far up enough to make it to most newspapers. On January 22, Democratic Representative Nita Lowey from New York re-introduced the timeworn Global Democracy Promotion Act expressly devoted to overturning the gag rule. A couple of weeks ago, California's Rep. Barbara Lee, re-introduced the Pathways Act, which would remove the requirement that one-third of PEPFAR AIDS prevention programs be abstinence-based.
The problem is neither bill will go anywhere this time either. Even if the new clench-fisted, testosterone stoked Dems suddenly admitted sympathy for the problems of women, Bush would veto the bills anyway.
Pressure probably won't come from outside, either. Dr. Margaret Chan, the new director-general of the World Health Organization has announced that women's health is one of her top priorities, but she also seems to be courting America's Big Pharma in recent comments in Bangkok criticizing Thailand for challenging intellectual property laws to develop generic AIDS and cardiac drugs.
Will she turn a blind eye to the United States' global gag rule and PEPFAR policies that are based on moral crusades than good science and public interest? WHO knows?
Sexual and reproductive health worldwide is a mess. According to a global study published in the British medical journal the Lancet last November, international aid for family planning dropped from $560 million in 1995 to $460 million in 2003.
We need Helen Mirren to return, not as queen, but President, a kind of unsmiling, childless, tough-as-nails Inspector Tennyson to defend the rights of women.
Hillary is tough, and Pelosi, too, but I don't like seeing the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives doing photo shoots with a grandkid on her hip. She's being the dog that rolls over to expose her belly and show how non-threatening she is to all the male voters out there. Yeah, I understand the game, but it creeps me out.
Show your soft side long enough, some wolf'll rip it to shreds.
Visit Kelly Sans Culotte at http://kellyatlarge.blogspot.com.
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