Yeah, I watched it… at least parts of it. Who can resist partaking of at least a slice or two of such rich political theatre? The DNC nominating convention in Denver had some odd moments, to be sure, at least from the television viewer’s perspective. I’m still trying to work our, for instance, why they were playing the ’70s disco number “Rollercoaster of Love” when Dennis Kucinich was walking up to the podium. (Coincidence? I think not!) Dennis gave a volcanic speech that certainly touched on most of the issues I hold dear, and for that I love him. Jimmy Carter got a video but no speech – his reward for being the only sane mainstream voice on Israel/Palestine. Bill Clinton delivered a senior statesman-like address, making many wonder (myself included) where that particular B.C. was during the primary season. (For a while there, he was replaced by a look-alike good ol’ boy. Gratefully, that fucker got put back in the box.)

Obama gave a very Obama-like acceptance speech, a performance of the caliber Democrats have been wishing for from their nominees since Moses was a pup. I mean, this guy tosses inspiring speeches out like it’s nothing – so much so that people, including many in his own party, complain about how good he is. (His wife’s good, too. What are the chances of that?) The complaints are mostly that he’s short on substance, but he’s hawking mostly the same policy positions that Democrats have been promoting for years, under much lamer nominees. Honestly, what have they got to be unhappy about? For me, there are plenty of policy differences that will keep me from being ecstatic, but never to the point where I’d be willing to even contemplate another four years of the G.O.P. in the White House. So guess what? I’m voting for the fucker, and I suggest you do the same. Not suggesting that’s all we need to do, not by a long shot, but that, certainly.

Now, if Obama really wants things to change in this country, there is something he could do about it. If he really thinks this election is, as he says, about all of us and not just him, he could look us in the eyes and say that he needs our vote, but not just that. He could say that he needs us to be there with him when he goes back to Washington. He could tell us that when he pushes for, say, national health care, he needs us to push for it, too…. because if we don’t, it’s never going to happen. Same with ending the occupation of Iraq. Same with closing Gitmo. Same with everything. Yeah, I know how unlikely this is. Politicians don’t like it so much when people get engaged – they don’t tend to encourage movements they can’t control. But those are the only ones that bring about meaningful change.

Sure, we can have empty change, like an anti-choice, mooseburger-eating “hockey mom” as Vice President. But what we really need is action on the same scale as the titanic problems we face.

luv u,

jp

I guess by now everybody knows about how many houses John McCain owns, even if he seems to be a little unclear on the subject. And it’s likely that even I know by now who Obama’s running mate will be (my guess: Pat Paulson). Call me morbid, but my mind is more focused on what appears to be a strong indication of how a President McCain might be expected to rule the American empire. His stance and rhetoric on the Georgian conflict have been jaw-droppingly bellicose – torn as they may be from the playbook of paid Georgian lobbyist (and former Rumsfeld advisor… and former Chalabi promoter) Randy Scheunemann, one of McCain’s chief advisors, they represent a side of the candidate that has been chillingly consistent for as long as he’s been in public office: a knee-jerk preference for military force. As much as he’s milked his own wartime experience and mouthed platitudes about the horrors of war, McCain has been fully on-board with virtually every invasion, attack, bombing run, etc., we’ve undertaken since his return home from Hanoi. He apparently has never met a war he didn’t like.

Now the admiral appears to be drawing a line in the Caucasus, calling this the first serious crisis of the post cold war era. I’m not sure what creeps me out more – the notion that he actually believes that to be true, or the fact that no one seems to recognize that it’s crazy talk. Actually, I think the second part is scarier. We’ve really reached kind of a sad day in America when, in the wake of five years of pointless bloody war in Iraq, we don’t recoil violently from the kind of blather that’s emanating from McCain and his neocon colleagues. Remember that McCain has taken a position distinctly to the right of the Bush administration on this. In light of the fact that we’ve been stoking up Georgia’s military for years, under both Bush and Clinton, and that both Bush and McCain have been pushing to make Georgia part of NATO, it’s a little disconcerting to know that this man who would be president is willing to turn this dispute into a full-blown confrontation between ourselves and Russia, still possessed of thousands of ICBMs (real ones, not the imaginary kind Bush officials keep referring to in places like Iran).

So anyway… let’s see a show of hands. Who wants to die or send their child to die over a dispute between Russia and Georgia about a region that most Americans can’t even pronounce let alone find on a globe? Anyone? Honestly, I have to think the numbers are pretty low. And yet… why do I keep hearing that McCain is more trusted on national security and foreign policy than is his opponent? The man has neocon-fueled Napoleonic delusions about putting Russia in its place. He clings to a war that never should have been fought, and seems more than eager to start yet another. He referred to Iraq as “phase II” of the War on Terror back in 2001, working with the administration to link that country to the anthrax attacks on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. He has been dangerously wrong on pretty much every major foreign policy issue of the last decade. This man is more qualified?

Note to the Obama campaign: take a page out of LBJ’s book. He rightfully painted Goldwater as a dangerous extremist. McCain has done half of that job for you…. take it from there, folks.

luv u,

jp

“This isn’t 1968.”

That was Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice just before embarking on her diplomatic mission to Georgia (the Republic of), to carry a cease fire agreement and presumably get a first-hand look at the smoldering ruins of yet another brilliant foreign policy initiative, this time played out in the region of her supposed expertise. If she was at all aware of the irony in her statement, she certainly gave no hint of it. She was, of course, referring to the USSR’s invasion of Czechoslovakia (a country still very much in John McCain’s world atlas) as a means of calling out Russia on its brutal violation of a neighboring nation’s sovereignty. In her eagerness to link present-day Russia with the Soviet invasion of four decades ago, she appears to have forgotten somewhat more recent history… like her own administration’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and subsequent occupation of both countries; like the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the displacement of millions as a result of said invasion. If her point is, as she put it, that it is no longer acceptable for nations to behave in this way, this new order must be a very recent development. News of it has yet to reach Washington.

Because she is not technically “stupid,” I assume what she’s saying is that nowadays only the United States can act as though we own the world and can invade any country we want without provocation. This comports with the “what we say goes” principle articulated by her husb… I mean, her boss’s father some 17 years ago or so. Of course, there are many ways in which this is quite a bit like 1968. If you cast your mind back to that awful year, you might ask yourself if the Soviets were the only ones rampaging through a sovereign country. The answer would be, well, not as such. Our military was in the fourth year of a far more brutal invasion of Vietnam, reducing that nation and its immediate neighbors to “a land of ruin and wreck”, as Arthur Schlesinger put it, with an expeditionary force of more than half a million and the most devastating campaign of sustained aerial bombing in history. We now appear to be just as stuck in Iraq as we were in Southeast Asia in 1968, for reasons every bit as illegitimate.

It’s not surprising to hear our leaders speaking arrogantly or ignorantly – or with a presumption of ignorance on our parts. Nor is it surprising to hear a hallelujah chorus of pundits, journalists, and pols deploring this notion of invading another country while never once referring to the Iraq exemption. (Aggravating, but not surprising.) What did sort of astound me over the past few days was the impossibly ham-fisted timing of our pact with the Polish government to base “missile defense” (a.k.a. “defense contractor defense”) within their national territory, something the Russians (and many Poles) deplore. I truly believe the administration hopes for war to break out – that seems to work for them. No one could be that incompetent. (Or… could they… ?) I think back to Israel’s attack on Lebanon two years ago, when Condi Rice and company were actually blocking a cease fire. The bombing and abortive invasion were the “birth pangs” of a new Middle East, we were told then. Perhaps Russia will argue with similar conviction that their overreaction in Georgia amounts to the birth pangs of a new Southeastern Europe.

Hey – Russia was invaded twice in the last century, and they’re still a little sensitive to adversarial military alliances on their borders. Maybe we should be trying to ratchet this down a little… before somebody else gets hurt, eh?

luv u,

jp

Looking for something to take your mind off the media marathon they call the Olympic Games? I know I am. Never been big on sports, frankly – I just can’t get interested enough, particularly in the win/lose part of it all. Anyway, if you’re like me and constitutionally disinclined to sit in front of the television hour after hour watching athletes run, hop, swim, or do something with a ball, join me in thinking about a few other things this weekend and beyond. Stuff like:

The Cheney War Plan – Sy Hersh said last week that one of his sources related a story to him about some high-level planning meeting regarding how to get up a war with Iran. According to this source, Cheney was fond of a scheme to assemble a small fleet of bogus Iranian PT boats, man them with disguised Navy Seals, and have them fire on U.S. vessels in the Straits of Hormuz, thereby provoking a kind of Gulf of Tonkin incident (except even more contrived than the original). This brought two things to mind. First was the administration’s empty rhetoric about “supporting the troops.” Second, that close encounter some months back between Iranian PT’s and a Navy ship, wherein a mysterious radio voice (not from the Iranians) called in a cartoon-like threat, apparently with the intent of provoking a confrontation.

Cheney’s fratricidal plan was shot down, according to Hersh’s source. Was the mystery taunt Plan B?

Candid Camera. Video cameras are playing an increasingly important role in activism and the protection of human rights around the world. I’m thinking not only of the footage of a NYC police officer “checking” a rider in the critical mass ride last week, but of the very productive deployment of cameras by B’Tselem in the form of the “Shooting Back” project in the occupied territories. Not only do these efforts document abuses beyond the power of official denial, but the mere presence of cameras (and outside observers) can serve to shield the vulnerable from harm. In a place like the West Bank, the more Web videos the better. Same goes for Iraq. Great work, B’Tselem!

Shocked, Shocked. The Bush administration tried to coax an exiled Iraqi security chief into claiming Saddam helped train the 9/11 hijackers? They also tried, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that Iraq was behind the anthrax attacks of late 2001? The sun rose yesterday? All part of a pattern.

That’s what’s on my mind, folks. And yours?

luv u,

jp

In case the power’s been off in your neighborhood this week, I should mention that the first American war crimes tribunal since the end of World War II has been in session. Who’s the first accused war criminal to take the stand, the Herman Goering of the global war on terror? Well, it’s some dude who drove Bin Laden’s car. Or so they say. Actually, the evidence about that is a little thin, and some of that is testimony extracted under torture (or “enhanced interrogation techniques” as the dark comedians of the Bush administration term it). Another problem: a lot of the folks at Gitmo (Hamdan included) were handed over by surrogates in exchange for a bounty, so you tend to get a high error rate on your collars (e.g. a lot of people who owed a neighbor money or just got on the wrong side of somebody). Happily, the tribunal doesn’t rely on the same standard of evidence as one might expect in, say, a mainland American court of law. I suspect many of these cases, like that of Hamdan the “driver”, would simply fall apart in domestic courtrooms. Not on Fantasy Island, however.

Okay, so you’ve got one of Bin Laden’s alleged schleppers. He’s standing trial in a military courtroom. He is a Yemeni man accused of working with el primo terroristo, and the jury is made up of uniformed American military officers. (Wonder how that is going to come out?) And if that isn’t sure-fire enough for you, the jury need only render a majority vote to convict. Now, these proceedings have a history of questionable policies and practices, including credible accusations (some by senior military officers) against the commanders in charge of stacking the legal deck against the defendants (like insisting there be no acquittals). Still not comfortable with the potential outcome? How about the fact that, if acquitted, the defendant will stay at Gitmo until the end of the global war on terror (i.e. forever)? Same deal if he is convicted and sentenced to time served. (These Bush critters sure are risk-averse, aren’t they?)

With this monstrous individual on trial and Radovan Karadzic at the Hague, we should be feeling pretty safe, right? Well…. there are a few bad characters still on the loose, my friends. In fact, there’s one group of people currently at large that are responsible for what’s probably the most serious war crime of recent years. These criminal leaders:

• invaded a sovereign nation that posed no threat to their country;

• brought about the deaths of as many as one million civilians, both directly and as a result of their actions;

• allowed the total dissolution of order, massive looting, destruction of public property, and collapse of public services while acting as an occupying power;

• created a situation that produced 4 million refugees, more than 2 million of whom have fled the country;

• violated their own laws of land warfare as well as international law by fundamentally altering the economy of the invaded nation;

…and actually quite a bit more than that. Pretty heinous, eh? Makes Karadzic look like a piker, frankly. And yet they hide in plain sight… even dancing on national television, with no worries about being carted away.

Schleppers beware: this war is on you.

luv u,

jp