To the Mountaintop!

Today we mourn the passing of Coretta Scott King, who by her great husband’s side righteously stood against American social injustice, endured illegal government spying and ultimately saw her husband martyred under still-sketchy circumstances. She made America a better place for all citizens, and we offer condolences to the King family.

It is both sad and ironic that Mrs. King’s passing comes as the powers-that-be again go on bloody military adventures, again arrogantly flout the law of the land to spy illegally upon peace activists and workers for social equality. The ACLU in Georgia has uncovered Pentagon spying upon vegans, “peace moms” and others.

Also, Mrs. King passes away as the legal protections for civil disobedience, privacy, free speech, freedom of association and the press, are all under sustained attack. Look no further than the mass jailing and long, harsh detention of protestors at the 2004 GOP convention here in New York City, where dissenters were banned from assembling on the Central Park lawn. (New York City is also where bicyclists participating in Critical Mass rides are routinely arrested). Look at all our jailed journalists. Look at the secret searches of our library records, mail, e-mail and homes.

Now, with the Supreme Court’s addition of Sam Alito, the scales of justice have tipped much further to the right. Expect the same, but more of it.

There is still much work to do for social justice, for peace and for equality in the United States. Let’s be motivated by the Kings’ good example and not falter or fail to speak up in the face of government intimidation. Let’s see the ascension of a neo-fascist like Alito as a moment to steel ourselves for the fights that will come on our way to Dr. King’s “mountaintop” rather than a moment to cower in defeat.

More than Alito on the Line

Today we will see which Democrats in the Senate are champions of the American people and which are enablers of a police state; which truly value privacy and the lives of women and which are too chicken to gun-sling for reproductive rights when the clock strikes high noon; which senators value individual rights, environmental protection, workplace rules, consumer protection, governmental checks and balances and separation of church and state and which fear a GOP-threatened “nuclear option” more than the rollback of all of these.

Never forget how your senator votes today on ending debate on Samuel Alito. Let their vote today be seared, like the vote on the Iraq War, on your memory and let it guide you in actively supporting or opposing them in 2006, 2008 -- whenever they run for re-election or higher office.

For Bush and his arrogant, incompetent cabal will have to slink away from power someday, but Alito stays on the court for a lifetime, to do his level best to return us to the Gilded Age in terms of legal protections and individual rights. The last line of defense must stop him: Democrats in the senate who haven’t been coopted or compromised by the corporate-military-industrial complex, or otherwise turned against the interests of average Americans.

There is a possible filibuster, which may be as little as three votes away, in the works. For organizing this, Americans owe Senators Kerry and Kennedy their gratitude and active support right now, today. Call 888-355-3588 and lean on your home state senator or on mine (Clinton is in the fight, Schumer isn’t yet so call him). Others to focus energy on include Barbara Mikulski.

If Democrats aren’t willing to stand up for these most basic American values now, when it counts, how can they be trusted to stand up for anything, anytime?

Hamas Solution

The surprise victory of theocratic and terrorist Hamas puts the Bush administration in a bind. It has chosen to support the exercise of democracy by the Palestinian people but reject their decision. But instead of shunning the new leaders and cutting off US and EU assistance, Washington should immediately launch a covert campaign to wield influence with key Hamas players, subverting them with potfuls of cash in numbered Zurich accounts. These guys have no idea how to run a mini-state and will need money and guidance. The Saudis and other Gulf oil states would gladly chip in to buy some stability in the region. This is what the CIA is designed to do.

Filibuster Alito

I'm still offline at home (thanks Time Warner!), and swamped at work, so this will be short and sweet.

I called my senators -- Clinton and Schumer -- and told them to lead an Alito filibuster. It looks as though John Kerry and Ed Kennedy are trying to organize this, and everyone should call their senator (888-355-3588) to demand a filibuster against the RATS (Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas) Court.

On another note: Today comes word that the oil reserves claimed by the government of Kuwait may be twice what were really in the ground. This should be no shock, since OPEC sets production quotas on a country-by-country basis based on stated reserves. (So, the more total oil you claim to possess, the more OPEC lets you pump out on a daily basis and the more money you generate.) Therefore, OPEC members have reason to vastly overstate their oil reserves.

Matthew Simmons details this phenomenon in his informative and scary Twilight in the Dessert, which I'm about halfway through right now.

The world may be heading for an energy disaster called Peak Oil, and this Kuwaiti revelation is yet more confirmation. Here are some links.

www.peakoil.net
www.lifeafterthecrash.com
www.fromthewilderness.com

Have a happy weekend!

Corporations Hate You

It’s hard to maintain a blog when you don’t have Internet access.

Last week, our Time Warner cable and web access went out during a bad windstorm in New York City. Also, because we have Vonage, the web-based phone service, our phone was dead too.

My wife and I figured the Time Warner outage was weather-related because there were area blackouts, etc., due to the high wind. Yet two full days later, our cable, Internet and phone were still out.

We called Time Warner and they couldn’t fix our problem from headquarters. Instead, they needed to send out service personnel. But they couldn’t do that for several business days, and someone would have to skip work, stay home and wait for the Time Warner guys who would show up between noon and 4 p.m. yesterday.

So yesterday, my wife stayed home and waited … and waited. Hours ticked by. Soon enough it was 4 p.m. and Time Warner still hadn’t showed. My wife felt like calling them, but because we have a web-based phone, it was impossible without leaving the apartment.

By 4:30, with no sign of Time Warner, my wife got restless and headed out to a pay phone, three blocks away.

“I kept glancing over my shoulder to make sure Time Warner wasn’t pulling up as I walked down the street,” she told me. “There was no sign of them.”

My wife got the phone and called TW. After negotiating their voicemail system, she finally got a breathing person on the line and explained that their cable guy had never come to fix our problem.

“Let’s see,” said the Time Warner rep. “Oh, yes. They were just there, at 4:30. They rang and nobody was home.”

“Oh I just came out to call you,” my wife explained. “Can they come back, they must be in the area.”

“No, that’s impossible,” said the Time Warner rep. “You need to reschedule for another day.”

My wife was getting frustrated. “But I took the day off work,” she said. “Can’t you accommodate me since you never came between noon and four, when you told me to be home?”

“We’re sorry, it’s too late.”

So we’ve been rescheduled for next Monday, when someone again needs to take off work. When I got home and heard the Time Warner story, I was frustrated too.

“Let’s just call their competition, and have them install the same service,” I said. “They’ll probably be here tomorrow.”

My wife explained to me what should have already been self-evident: Time Warner has no competitor in the cable market. There’s only the satellite dish company, and we live in an apartment. So Time Warner can treat you like dirt, and there’s nothing you can do about it, if you want your MTV.

Friends and Neighbors

Yesterday's inauguration of Evo Morales as Bolivia's new president marks the first time in the 500+ years since the Spanish colonized the new world that indigenous Americans have attained real political power via a democratic election anywhere in the New World.

Morales' victory is also a rebuke to the Bush regime, whose boundless obnoxiousness has rendered unpalatable long-standing policies of the U.S. government, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in South and Central America.

Evo Morales looks to be the real deal: a crusader for social justice and against the kind of rampant capitalism that has exploited Bolivia's natural (gas) resources without much benefit to ordinary Bolivians. Hopefully, Evo can accomplish progressive reforms without becoming a dictator or a victim of the CIA. For now, Redglare says Viva Evo!

It's exciting that in Latin and South America, with the rise of Morales in Bolivia, Lula da Silva in Brazil, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and top Mexican presidential contender Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a true leftist movement is underway that could influence U.S. politics eventually. Heck, even the Sandinistas are making a comeback in Nicaragua behind the renewed political strength of Daniel Ortega!

With immigration to United States from Latin American making the U.S. population more Latino everyday, perhaps the trend of progressive grassroots politics comes northward too. After all, political trends cross borders all the time -- isn't that the whole notion behind the "domino theory" that got us into Vietnam and Korea to fight communism?

And here's more proof that political winds can blow over borders: Canada is, alas, about to kick out the Liberal Party and elect a conservative pal of the Bush Regime, Stephen Harper. Harper supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq, wants closer ties with Bush, opposes gay marriage and may try and dismantle Canada's nationalized healthcare program.

I am a lover of Canada and a frequent visitor. I enjoy the country's natural beauty and laid-back personality. Canada has lately seemed like the last remaining North American bastion of political sanity. I have no idea, besides the Liberal's sponsorship kickback scandal, why Canada wants to veer right now, when the rest of the hemisphere is going left.

Sorry Harry

It pains me to say maybe it’s time for some new leadership blood for our feckless Senate Democrats – their current leader Harry Reid has gone all wobbly on us. Reid’s apology for a hard-hitting political memo that attacked 33 of his GOP counterparts for hypocrisy and corruption was downright pathetic. What a total wimp Reid appears to be while retreating from the memo’s assertions, none of which have been disproved.

I used to admire Reid, back when he called Dubya “a loser” or when he called Greenspan “a political hack.” The GOP plays dirty and talks tough, and Reid seemed up to the task of being an effective, hard-hitting mouthpiece for the Dems back then.

It seems this time Reid feared he’d gone too far and actually hurt the delicate feelings of his GOP Senate buddies who he must always run into at the Senate’s gym or tax-free restaurants or shops or cheap barber shop or taxpayer-financed film studios. That could be socially uncomfortable! So he’s morphed into Sorry Harry.

It’s almost as nauseating as when Dick Durbin apologized for daring to criticize our torture policies and secret prisons. Way to stand your ground, Dick!

Sorry Harry’s apology comes in the same week when his Democratic Senate caucus is utterly failing to mount any effective response/PR campaign/filibuster to stop Sam Alito from teaming up with his fellow SCOTUS Neanderthals to form the bloc of RATS (Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Scalia) that will trash civil liberties, rubberstamp the “unitary executive” dictatorship and eventually snatch away a woman’s right to control her own body.

Plus, Harry voted for the Iraq invasion, which is morally reprehensible and makes him an ineffective voice on Iraq. And Reid took at least $30,000 from Jack Abramoff's clients, making him a dubious choice to lead reform efforts or criticism of GOP corruption.

If the Democrats can get back control of the House or Senate in 2006, and get the power to investigate or impeach, the country could be well on its way to ending the long national emergency that is the Bush Administration.

But the Democrats will never get there by apologizing like Sorry Harry.

Been There, Done That

It’s always the same thing. Drudge and CNN and all American media outlets light up with urgent graphics and sirens, all warning that Osama bin Laden has just released an audio tape that will soon be broadcast on Al Jazeera (because no patriotic American news gathering organization would themselves play bin Laden’s message).

Then Al Jazeera plays bin Laden’s tape – and the tape always threatens more attacks, a la the “mushroom clouds” conjured up by Cheney, Rice, et al – and it gets replayed by American media outlets (never, mind you at any length). The basic message is: FEAR, FEAR, FEAR! It’s always the same to the point where we’re sick of it.

Next, in about an hour or so, the CIA comes out and confirms that, yep, it’s really bin Laden talking on the tape. This CIA verification always happens so fast that you wonder how it happens. Does the CIA have some bin Laden voice verification machine that can instantly pick his voice out? Do they know because they had the tape way before al Jazeera did, or what? Anyway, it’s bin Laden. A slam dunk.

This time, CIA-verified bin Laden supposedly says his Qaeda cells in the States have been preparing for an attack, one that we will soon see. He also offers a “truce” without laying out any terms. Huh? What? Does anybody speak Arabic around here?

(In response, Bush says we don’t negotiate with terrorists. This despite the fact that we are releasing women prisoners today in Iraq in hopes of securing the release of reporter Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped by, uh … terrorists).

If bin Laden is really the threat to us that the Bushies say he is, then why are we allowing him access to our nation’s publicly owned airwaves to give coded messages to his cadres, spread fear and al Qaeda propaganda, etc?

After all, when the government wants to suppress news, it can do so. Look no further than the yearlong hold the N.Y. Times put on the illegal wiretapping story that confirmed Bush’s status as an American tyrant who boastfully blows off the U.S. Constitution. Bush made the Times complicit in covering-up a constitutional crisis for a year. But bin Laden gets free reign to say what he wants, with all the attendant media hype of a presidential address.

The whole choreographed routine makes one wonder if the fanatical followers of Bush and bin Laden aren’t operating from the same playbook.

Why Hillary?

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s recent MLK day gaffe (telling an African-American audience the U.S. House of Representatives was akin to a plantation) got me thinking: What good is Hillary? I realize that she’s got the support of a lot of committed progressives, a great fund-raising network and all of that executive branch experience from when her husband was president, but I still can’t understand her appeal as a presidential candidate.

Plus, after years of complaining about a two-party system dominating American politics, with the election of Hillary, we’d be down to a two-family political system. I think the country would be better off with no more Clintons or Bushes anywhere near the White House.

Do we not remember the Marc Rich pardon? Travel-gate? Whitewater? Etc. Do we want more of the same thing?

I would love to see a woman as president, and it’s long overdue. I admire Hillary’s support for abortion rights, the environment and social welfare programs, but that’s about where it ends.

Otherwise, she’s downright Lieberman-esque in her endless support for Bush’s psychotic Iraq War. In a page from the Republican culture war playbook, she actually wants to criminalize burning the U.S. flag. In many ways, Hillary has morphed into a Republican Lite, or a Democrat in Name Only (DINO).

Then, there’s sex and adultery. How could the thought of Bill Clinton residing in the executive mansion sit well with anybody? Did Bubba not spend enough time around White House interns during the 1990s? Do we really need a repeat performance of Bill Clinton’s shameful carousing? The man basically lost the country and gave a bad name to the Democratic Party all for a little sexual gratification. He should have resigned and let Al Gore take on Dubya as an incumbent president in 2000, with the presidential seal, Air Force One and “Hail to the Chief” playing at every campaign stop. He would of kicked Dubya’s ass. Oh, yeah. He did anyway. I keep forgetting.

For my money, I like Russ Feingold or John Murtha in 2008. I haven't heard any talk about Murtha running, though. The GOP would try and Swiftboat him (already have), but the guy’s Marine Corps demeanor is more military, and less effete and Ivy League, than John Kerry's. I think he’s a true American patriot beyond reproach and the GOP would have a hard time beating him with anybody but McCain.

Impeach Dubya

Over the long Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, my daughter caught a rotavirus or something. There was a lot of throwing up. I spent my time taking care of her and doing urgent loads of laundry. (There is something nasty going around New York City day cares – the little girl who lives two floors below us was sick with the same bug).

As a result, I missed a lot of stuff. I missed coverage of our bungled attempt to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri and collateral killing of innocent Pakistanis.

While it’s certainly a good idea to be going after al Qeada wherever they’re hiding (including Pakistan), it looks like another instance in a long series where we’ve been let down by the intelligence-gathering mistakes of the CIA. The result: more Pakistanis hate our guts. Can’t we put some eyes on the ground over there, three years after 9/11, or are we going to stay dependant on Predator drone videos and NSA spying upon Americans for our battlefield intelligence?

Speaking of illegal NSA spying, I also missed Al Gore’s speech on Bush’s illegal wiretapping of Americans without search warrants. But the transcript has great stuff:

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution - our system of checks and balances - was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men."

An executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free. In the words of James Madison, "the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Thomas Paine, whose pamphlet, "On Common Sense" ignited the American Revolution, succinctly described America's alternative. Here, he said, we intended to make certain that "the law is king."

I wish Gore had talked like this back in 2000. He would have kicked Dubya's ass. Oh, wait a minute. He did!

Besides impeaching Bush, shouldn’t we simply do away with the entire NSA at this point? The agency proved itself useless prior to the 9/11 attacks and clearly cannot help itself from violating Americans' civil rights, whether in the 1970s or 2000s. The functions of this spying agency should be broken up and spread among other intelligence agencies more capable of operating within the limits of the law.

I was heartened to find most Americans think Bush deserves impeachment if he approved illegal wiretaps. By 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval, according to a new Zogby poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org.

52% agreed with the statement: "If President Bush wiretapped American citizens without the approval of a judge, do you agree or disagree that Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment." 43% disagreed, and 6% said they didn't know or declined to answer.

I say: let’s impeach Dubya.

Losing Democracy in America

Could we be the generation that loses democracy in America? What a shameful state of affairs: dumbed down by mainstream media and failed schools, numbed by violence and fear, cowed by groupthink and distracted by celebrity, sports and porn, today's Americans obediently shuffle towards despotism.

Previous generations of Americans fought and died to end English domination, to stop slavery, to form labor unions, to get the right to vote and to abolish segregation.

Yet, our current crop of citizens lounges slothfully upon overstuffed couches as their government taps their phones without warrant, searches their mail without cause, imprisons fellow citizens without bringing charges, suspends habeas corpus and due process, and carries out torture in violation of international law, numerous treaties, basic common sense and Judeo-Christian morality.

A war based on outright lies "that will not end in our lifetimes" is waged to further enrich the super-wealthy, while fearful Americans allow the banning of photography of flag-draped coffins or of killed Iraqis or Americans. Meanwhile, the Defense Secretary uses an automatic pen to "sign" letters of condolence to the parents of killed U.S. service members.

Electronic voting machines made by partisan corporations make American elections unverifiable; exit polling says one presidential candidate is the winner, while supposed election results favor the man from the regime in power. Nobody seems to care, except John Conyers.

The regime in power wages culture wars upon liberals, journalists, women, homosexuals and minorities. They hate Michael Moore and the Dixie Chicks with more venom and vitriol than they can muster up for Osama bin Laden himself, who enjoys apparent total immunity in Pakistan.

Meantime, debt-laden, bargain-addled American shoppers clobber one another to be first through Wal-Mart's doors to consume cheaply made products produced entirely in near-sweatshop conditions in Asia and Latin America. Factories and businesses throughout this country close their doors and fire their employees, undone by antique business models that incorporate workers rights, pensions and the environment into the equation. America's once mighty manufacturing base lies in smithereens, as China becomes an exporting giant, giving us mind-boggling trade deficits.

I still love my country, but these are bad times for the U.S. How will future generations of Americans, our grandchildren, view us and judge our actions? How can we redeem ourselves in the eyes of the world? Where do we go from here?

Freedom Jeans

Dear Levi Strauss & Co.,

I think it’s really, really great that you’ve developed a line of denim jeans specifically for iPod users. It’s so hard carrying those little music machines around without custom made clothing. Now, I can listen to the latest Wheat album without having to stuff my cumbersome iPod into my breast pocket, which I fear makes it look like I have one boob (not good, since I’m a dude!).

Now that you’re making high tech RedWire DLX jeans, however, I have a suggestion/request for your company: civil rights dungarees. Maybe as part of your tech line, you could manufacture jeans that prevent unwanted wiretapping of the wearer, either by a metallic lining or an alarm near the fly.

Also, it would be useful to have jeans with a metallic-lined pocket to prevent unwanted RFID transmissions from a new U.S. passport, which will soon broadcast unencrypted information that will be readable to anyone with a cheap, commercially available RFID transmitter.

With Wranglers on, terrorists could pick you out at a train station in Europe. But with these newfangled Levi’s I propose, nobody would know the nationality, name or passport number of the wearer. I suggest you call them Levi’s 1776 Jeans. A workplace line could be called “Dockers Blockers.”

Perhaps Levi’s 1776 Jeans could render the wearer invisible to surveillance cameras, or data-miners, or NYC subway bag searchers, or government agents snooping though the wearer’s library records. But these functions will probably require some R&D on you part.

While a fraction of the American population is sufficiently well off to afford an iPod, no American is safe from these intrusions upon our civil rights. And with the “War on Terror” supposedly not ending in our lives, the sales growth potential of Levi’s 1776 Jeans (and Dockers Blockers) seems limitless to me.

Thanks for considering my proposal.

--Redglare

Altio Goes a Long Way

It looks like Samuel Altio is sufficiently non-threatening to be confirmed by the Senate for Sandra Day O’Connor’s Supreme Court seat. He is holding his own with the windbags on the Judiciary Committee. What a strange political farce this confirmation ritual seem to be!

The N.Y. Times had an interesting piece today on the fact that most Senators spend the lion’s share of their allotted question time on their own soapbox, hamming it up for the voters back home. There is hardly time for a nominee to get in a response edgewise, although the purpose of the hearing is purportedly to shed light on the nominee’s views and temper.

Biden is the worst of the wordy, followed closely by Kennedy, Schumer and that awful Mike DeWine of Ohio.

On the part of the Dems, their strategy is to grandstand in the hearings, without throwing up any real roadblocks to Alito’s eventual passage. Like, say, a filibuster.

But Alito’s record is anything but non-threatening -- no matter his reasonable (if vaguely creepy) outward demeanor.

This website, Altio’s America, does a good job of covering the basics. On guns, strip searches, workplace safety, health care, pollution and privacy this guy is about as reactionary and right wing as you can be whilst claiming belief in the ideals of the U.S. Constitution at the same time.

I wish he could be stopped via a filibuster or some other means. But the Dem windbags are only willing to go on endlessly in the context of the hearing, not to prevent a Senate confirmation of this man with an anti-democratic agenda.

No-Fly Enemies List

The Emmy-award winning author of a book critical of Karl Rove and the Bush gang has landed on the government’s terrorist watchlist used by airlines. Jim Moore, co-author of Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, “cannot get pre-printed boarding passes and must submit to time-consuming security checks of his identity before boarding commercial flights,” according to the Houston Chronicle.

I believe this means Moore made the “Selectee” list rather than the "No Fly” list, since he can still board a plane after extra scrutiny.

I bet Turd Blossom and Dubya are chuckling over their use of a national security instrument to exact political revenge on an author. But someday inclusion on their “No-Fly” or “Selectee” list may be viewed as a mark of high distinction, like having been on Nixon’s Enemies List.

Here is Moore’s description of the situation as posted at the Huffington Post.

There are times in which it is easy to be suspicious. We can get to that feeling fairly quickly if we even pay slight attention. I've been trying to get over this odd emotion for at least a year. I can't find any rationale for letting it go, though I want desperately not to have these thoughts.

This week last year I was preparing for a trip to Ohio to conduct interviews and research for a new book I was writing. My airline tickets had been purchased on line and the morning of departure I went to the Internet to print out my boarding pass. I got a message that said, "Not Allowed." Several subsequent tries failed. Surely, I thought, it's just a glitch within the airline's servers or software.

I made it a point to arrive very early at the airport. My reservation was confirmed before I left home. I went to the electronic kiosk and punched in my confirmation number to print out my boarding pass and luggage tags. Another error message appeared, "Please see agent."

I did. She took my Texas driver's license and punched in the relevant information to her computer system.

"I'm sorry, sir," she said. "There seems to be a problem. You've been placed on the No Fly Watch List."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm afraid there isn't much more that I can tell you," she explained. "It's just the list that's maintained by TSA to check for people who might have terrorist connections."

"You're serious?"

"I'm afraid so, sir. Here's an 800 number in Washington. You need to call them before I can clear you for the flight."

Exasperated, I dialed the number from my cell, determined to clear up what I was sure was a clerical error. The woman who answered offered me no more information than the ticket agent.

"Mam, I'd like to know how I got on the No Fly Watch List."

"I'm not really authorized to tell you that, sir," she explained after taking down my social security and Texas driver's license numbers.

"What can you tell me?"

"All I can tell you is that there is something in your background that in some way is similar to someone they are looking for."

"Well, let me get this straight then," I said. "Our government is looking for a guy who may have a mundane Anglo name, who pays tens of thousands of dollars every year in taxes, has never been arrested or even late on a credit card payment, is more uninteresting than a Tupperware party, and cries after the first two notes of the national anthem? We need to find this guy. He sounds dangerous to me."

"I'm sorry, sir, I've already told you everything I can."

"Oh, wait," I said. "One last thing: this guy they are looking for? Did he write books critical of the Bush administration, too?"

I have been on the No Fly Watch List for a year. I will never be told the official reason. No one ever is. You cannot sue to get the information. Nothing I have done has moved me any closer to getting off the list. There were 35,000 Americans in that database last year. According to a European government that screens hundreds of thousands of American travelers every year, the list they have been given to work from has since grown to 80,000.

My friends tell me it is just more government incompetence. A tech buddy said there's no one in government smart enough to write a search algorithm that will find actual terrorists, so they end up with authors of books criticizing the Bush White House. I have no idea what's going on.

I suppose I should think of it as a minor sacrifice to help keep my country safe. Not being able to print out boarding passes in advance and having to get to the airport three hours early for every flight is hardly an imposition compared to what Americans are enduring in Iraq. I can force myself to get used to all that extra attention from the guy with the wand whenever I walk through the electronic arches. I'm just doing my patriotic duty.

Of course, there's always the chance that the No Fly Watch List is one of many enemies lists maintained by the Bush White House. If that's the case, I am happy to be on that list. I am in good company with people who expect more out of their president and their government.

Hell, maybe I'll start thinking of it as an honor roll.

No One Seemed to Notice

Here is a little more news from Kansas – the Dept. of Homeland Security is opening the mail of Americans. Not big boxes shipped from the Middle East with wires sticking from the sides, mind you. These are private letters between law-abiding, patriotic Americans and their friends, family and associates abroad (and, who knows, maybe domestically was well).

My dad’s cousin e-mailed her friends and family an apt citation over the weekend, which I will share here:

What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people. And it became always wider.....the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting, it provided an excuse not to think....for people who did not want to think anyway gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about.....and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated.....by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.....

Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures'.....must some day lead to, one no
more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing.....Each act is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.

You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will joinyou in resisting somehow. You don't want to act, or even talk, alone.....you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble.' But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes.

That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves, when everyone is transformed, no one is
transformed.

You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father.....could never have imagined."

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955)

My Lai Hero

Because we have such a short collective memory in the United States, we’re doomed to repeat our collective mistakes. Iraq is so much like the Vietnam era my parents described to me.

My parents met at an antiwar demonstration at Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza. My mom was a marcher, and my dad was covering the protest for Army radio. He’d been drafted.

My mom was a regular protestor of the Vietnam War. She was even spat upon by Johnson/Nixon/Vietnam War-loving Americans for exercising her First Amendment rights.

Five more Americans in the service of this country have died in Iraq since my entry on Friday, from small arms fire and roadside bombs.

We’ve already regressed to Abu Ghraib, plus Nixon-esque illegal domestic wire tapping and enemies lists (now called the “no-fly list”).

Before we declare victory and leave Iraq, do we have to endure another Kent State? Another My Lai?

I read the most amazing obituary yesterday in the Times, the story of a real American hero, Hugh Thompson.

Thompson, who died too young from cancer at 62 years old, was a Chief Warrant Officer in 1968, flying his helicopter over South Vietnam, when below he witnessed war criminal U.S. Army Lt. William L. Calley Jr. and his platoon/death quad carrying out the My Lai massacre. Thompson landed and risked his own and his crew’s lives to save villagers, even drawing guns on Calley’s executioners. Back at base, he reported the cold-blooded mass killings, and demanded action.

“I just wish our crew that day could have helped more than we did,” he said afterwards.

Back home in the States, predictably, this hero Thompson received death threats over the phone and mutilated animals left on his front porch.

“Don’t do the right thing looking for a reward, because it might not come,” said Thompson.

May he rest in peace.

Bad Days in Baghdad

Alas, eleven members of our armed forces lost their lives in the Bush Administration’s Iraq War yesterday. I think the United States needs to leave Iraq. I thought it was madness to invade in the first place.

My brother was supposed to be in Iraq right now with the 10th Mountain Division, but he was discharged from the Army for health reasons (after serving this county in Afghanistan). I'm so happy about that.

Congressman Murtha is right that a “beyond the horizon” presence should suffice to fulfill our obligations to give strategic support to the Iraqi army we’ve had several years to train and equip. In fact, we should continue to train the Iraqis, support them with money and expertise and fund civil reconstruction projects.

Perhaps, with competent civilian and military leadership, it would be wise for the U.S. to “stay the course” in Iraq. However, the current administration’s record in Iraq – from the WMD lies to Abu Ghraib torture, from under-armored Humvees to no-bid crony contracts – suggests that these people will never be capable of learning from mistakes or seeing the world from outside the distorted lens of ideology.

As a result, more bloodshed and chaos (and U.S. domestic division) will be in the offing, rather than the flowering of Iraqi democracy we’ve been promised for years now. From what I’ve seen, the odds of a full-fledged Sunni versus Shiite civil war are far higher than those of a peaceful democracy.

This war has been a strategic, diplomatic and moral catastrophe for our nation. A disgrace. And hundreds upon hundreds of American families have paid the ultimate cost for this miscalculation and mismanagement. It’s time to go.

Spies Like U.S.

How in the world would tapping Christiane Amanpour’s telephone enhance our country’s national security? Apparently, according to questions posed by NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell there’s some reason to believe this has happened under one of the Bush Administration's out-of-control Special Access Programs (SAPs) allowing the National Security Agency to secretly monitor Americans without court warrants.

This is all such a blatant violation of the FISA law and the U.S. Constitution that I’m amazed we’re not talking seriously on a national level about impeachment proceedings, as we should have been doing long ago.

By the way, NBC has scrubbed the transcript of the Mitchell interview with James Risen, the Times reporter who broke the warrant-less spying scandal, of any reference to Amanpour. Nice going there, NBC.

Russ Tice, a former NSA analyst, wants to come forward to tell Congress and the American people more still. Here’s the text of a letter he has sent to the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in mid December 2005:

Dear Chairman Roberts,

Under the provisions of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA), I intend to report to Congress probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts conducted while I was an intelligence officer with the National Security Agency (NSA) and with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). These acts involve the Director of the National Security Agency, the Deputies Chief of Staff for Air and Space Operations, and the U.S. Secretary of Defense.

These probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts were conducted via very highly sensitive intelligence programs and operations known as Special Access Programs (SAP)s. I was a technical intelligence specialist dealing almost exclusively with SAP programs and operations at both NSA and DIA.

Due to the highly sensitive nature of these programs and operations, I will require assurances from your committee that the staffers and/or congressional members to participate retain the proper security clearances, and also have the appropriate SAP cleared facilities available for these discussions.

Please inform me when you require my appearance on Capitol Hill to conduct these discussions in relation to this ICWPA report.


Very Respectfully,


Russell D. Tice
Former Intelligence Officer, NSA

Will the Republicans in charge of Congress give this man a hearing?

For further reading on our American shadow government, I highly recommend William Arkin’s Code Names, a book that should freak out any patriotic American over the extent to which crucial functions and decisions of the U.S. government are carried out in total secrecy, with disregard for the basic tenets of democracy. It has been an indispensable guide for understanding this still-unfolding NSA spying debacle.

Kansas Fossils

Because my parents split when I was a little kid, I grew up like a transient, never staying in one house for more than a year or two.

I was born in northern New Jersey, where I lived until I was eight years old, moving from a Victorian house into a two-bedroom apartment when my folks separated. Then, my mom bought a 1976 Trans Am, and we moved to northeastern Kansas, where I was raised by my mom and grandmother until I was fifteen (aside from a brief spell in a Missouri military school). I moved back to live with my dad at fifteen, and then went to college in western Massachusetts.

But it is Kansas that I still consider “home.” Although my mother passed away a couple of years ago, I still have family there. And friends. In fact, my wife and I talk about moving back there all the time since NYC is so flipping expensive, and we have a little kid.

But something is the matter with Kansas. One example is that the Kansas school board has re-written the criteria for science education to include explanations that go beyond natural explainations. Basically, religious freaks have hijacked the board, hoping to ding Darwin with their inane Intelligent Design hokum.

My uncle in Lawrence, Kan., works with paleontologists on computer programs that automate taxonomy, or the scientific naming of organisms found in the fossil record. It’s all premised upon the theory of evolution. Anyway, my uncle is selling shirts and hats with beautiful illustrations of fossils that double as political statements. Basically, you’re saying, “Here’s the fossil record. Deal with it.”

Here’s a link to the Kansas Fossil Store.

New Orleans Darlings

I went down to New Orleans about three weeks following Katrina, and that changed me. I stayed in the French Quarter in a hotel with power but no running water and basically walked around taking pictures, talking to people, taking notes.

I also drove through the Gulf Coast to see Slidell, Gulfport, Biloxi. Folks, it’s like a nuclear bomb went off down there, but there’s no radiation. It’s the new America, though. A future view perhaps of citizens sold out or forgotten by the government, without basic utilities, scrounging through trash bags for food and clothing in the hot, humid weather.

Here’s something you haven’t heard, however. I met volunteers who went down to help people and are planning to stay. They say New Orleans gives them meaning in that they feel genuinely needed. It’s also the new frontier in the Horace Greeley sense of opportunity and adventure. We’ve been needing a new frontier, America.
_____________________________

This is a new blog for a new year! I aim for 250 words a day – a resolution. For those not in the know, I started and maintained a blog for a few months last year. But nobody came except my dad. For a number of reasons I eventually abandoned the thing. I took off all of August just like George W. Bush, except I never came back from vacation.

Really, I missed the chance to sound off. It’s still the right of every American! (Be forewarned, the NSA is probably listening … um, data-mining).

Now, I am reborn as REDGLARE! I quite like my new nom de blog.