What Eisenhower got wrong

Fifty years ago this Monday, President Dwight Eisenhower gave a farewell address in which he famously warned of the dangers of influence on our government by the "military industrial complex." Our current Secretary of War, Robert Gates, has proposed to retire this year and has recommended that his successors stop increasing the military budget. But Eisenhower didn't just bring this up on his way out the door. It was seven years earlier that he had remarked:

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed 8,000 people."

Bradley Manning and the rule of law

The case of Private Bradley Manning raises legal issues about his pre-trial detention, freedom of speech and the press, as well as proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Putting aside Manning’s guilt or innocence, if Bradley Manning saw the Afghan and Iraq war diaries as well as the diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks what should he have done? And, what should be the proper response of government to their publication?

A high point in the application of the rule of law to war came in the Nuremberg trials where leaders in Germany were held accountable for World War II atrocities. Justice Robert Jackson, who served as the chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials while on leave from the U.S. Supreme Court, said “If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

The Second Amendment DEMANDS gun control

The Second Amendment supports those of us who would CONTROL guns---and thus prevent the insane slaughter that compromises our security.

James Madison and the Founders of this nation would be enraged to see the Second Amendment being used to put guns in the hands of the Tucson shooter and so many others like him.

The debate over the violent hatespeak of Sarah "Lock & Load" Palin and her Foxist ilk is long overdue.

But so is a careful national reawakening to what the Second Amendment actually says:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Of the first Ten Amendments, this is the only one that contains a rationale for what it requires.

The Bill of Rights is the law of the land, clearly stated. Guarantees of religion, speech, assembly, the press, freedom from torture and so much more are natural rights, inherent to the human condition.

But the right to bear arms is granted only in the context of a well-regulated militia and thus the security of a free state.

What?

One more year of inhumanity coming to a close. What happens next?

This year the list of atrocities committed under the guise of representative democracy is extensive, as anyone concerned in analyzing the actions of governments in the West can ascertain. If it was our wish, we could bombard the airwaves with images of suffering people from around the world, and swiftly link their pain to the corrupt institutions of government we have accepted as legitimate. With similar ease, we could trace the wealth accumulated by a small minority of ruthless economic elites, to their governmental bonds. But I see little need in contributing to this exercise considering the amount of relevant information already available. Instead, I find it more useful to speculate about what happens next. I am fairly confident that is what those bearing the brunt of our inhumanity must wonder. Will we end the bombs? Will we stop the banks? Will we transform our democracies?

Declaring Palestine: Revisiting hope and failure

When late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat read the Declaration of the Palestinian Independence just over 22 years ago, Palestinians everywhere were enthralled. They held onto his every word during the Palestinian National Council (PNC) session in Algeria on November 15, 1988. The council members incessantly applauded and chanted in the name of Palestine, freedom, the people and much more.

Back in Nuseirat, a refugee camp in Gaza, a large crowd of neighbors and friends watched the event on a small black and white television.

The Declaration of Independence read, in part: "On this day unlike all others…as we stand at the threshold of a new dawn, in all honor and modesty we humbly bow to the sacred spirits of our fallen ones, Palestinian and Arab, by the purity of whose sacrifice for the homeland our sky has been illuminated and our Land given life."

Many tears were shed, as those watching the historic event recalled the innumerable "spirits of the fallen ones". The Nuseirat refugee camp alone had buried scores of its finest men, women and children the previous year.

A new edition

The Tuscon shooting: We must place blame where it belongs

It's been quite disconcerting to see how lamely the mainstream news media has been handling the aftermath of the tragic shooting spree in Tuscon Saturday which killed six people (including a 9-year-old girl) and wounded fourteen others, including Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords(D). There are those, like me, who seek to place the blame squarely where it's deserved: on the backs of right-wing hate-mongering radicals like Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. But there's a growing politically-correct chorus of "let's not blame" hitting the airwaves that is both shocking and extremely disappointing.

Will Karl Rove bury the record of his 2004 election theft?

An epic legal battle now rages between Karl Rove and Ohio election rights attorneys. The question is whether the public has the right to see full transcripts of a court deposition that could shed explosive new light on the bitterly contested presidential election of 2004.

The deposition came from the late Michael Connell, Rove's IT guru. Connell died in a mysterious plan crash in December 2008, one month after he spoke under oath to election protection attorney Clifford O. Arnebeck. Connell had implanted the state-contracted software used to compute Ohio's electronic voting tabulations during the contest between Bush and John Kerry.

On December 10, 2010, attorneys in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville Neighborhood Association case moved to release the Connell transcript in an ongoing legal struggle with Rove and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The King-Lincoln case was filed in 2006 by attorney Arnebeck alleging civil rights violations against blacks, young voters and others in Ohio's 2004 election process.

Obama signs into law the Local Community Radio Act: FCC Chairman pledges “Swift action to open the dial”

WASHINGTON, DC – This week President Obama signed the Local Community Radio Act, the most recent victory in a ten-year grassroots effort to open up the airwaves to new community radio stations. At the Federal Communications Commission, Chairman Genachowski promised swift action to open the dial to these new stations.

“The Local Community Radio Act signed by President Obama is a big win for radio listeners. Low-power FM stations are small, but they make a giant contribution to local community programming,” said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

The news is hailed by community radio hopefuls who are ready to start new stations, as well as a coalition of national advocates led by the Prometheus Radio Project. The new law paves the way for what could be the biggest expansion of community radio in US history.

“In this day of way-too-much media consolidation, stifling program homogenization and the decimation of local news, new voices are critically important to sustaining America’s civic dialogue and citizen engagement,” said FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps.

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