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Don't retreat

Punishing Bradley Manning for the crimes of others

Bradley Manning, alleged U.S. Army whistleblower, is in two ways -- one likely, the other certain -- being punished for the crimes of others.

On Monday a crowd that I was part of staged a protest at Quantico, where Manning has been imprisoned for several months with no trial. At the last minute, the military denied us permission to hold a rally on the base, so we held it in the street blocking the entrance to the base. This visibly enraged at least one of the guards who attempted unsuccessfully to arrest a couple of us.

On Tuesday, for no stated reason whatsoever, Manning's jailers put him on suicide watch. This meant that he was isolated for 24 hours a day instead of 23, the glasses he needs to see were taken away, and other harsh conditions imposed. Two days later, for no stated reason whatsoever, Manning was taken off suicide watch again. It appears likely that he was punished in response to our protest. As a result, we're all going to crawl under our beds and hide, promising never to use the First Amendment again in our lives.

Obama & our Disney nukes

Barack Obama is about to address a nation whose greatest potential liability is its Disneyesque illusion of atomic power.

Despite the nation's huge debts and fears of foreign terror, America's 104 licensed reactors are the most dangerous threat to our future. After a half-century of operations, the industry still cannot get more than $11 billion in private insurance against possible accidents whose human and property damage could easily run from mere trillions to the simply incalculable.

In the face of terror or error, earthquake or tidal wave and more, every tick of the atomic clock marks a moment in which a single glitch at a single reactor could forever bankrupt the nation.

Escalating decay at clunkers like Vermont Yankee, New York's Indian Point and so many others define our worst untold crisis.

Yet Obama may ask Congress to bilk taxpayers to build still more.

An extremist for love: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: Then and now

Turning Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday into a national holiday is one of the things that America got right. It's a day set apart from all others, when all generations will pause to think about a great man, his legacy and what it should mean to us.

So far that sounds great, and to a large extent it's what's happened. But I've been around for all of the MLK birthday celebrations so far, and the yearly "celebration of his life" is starting to look in ways like a Disneyized version of both the man and his legacy. The last thing we need today is a romanticized version of Martin Luther King, Jr., much less an idealized version of the struggle that he stood for.

In l945, when Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower toured the former German concentration camp at Ohrdruf, he famously said to an aide, "Take pictures. Take lots of pictures. Some day some sons of bitches are going to try to say this never happened."

Response to Fitrakis Vang Pao article #3

To: Dr. Bob Fitrakis, the editor of the freepress.

I want to complain to you about your article which has been posted by New York Time on Thursday 20th 2011 about Vang Pao was one of the world's most notorious drug dealers. First of all I want to ask you a few questions as follow:

1. How do you know that Vang Pao was a drug dealer?
2. Have ever been with Vang Pao for the last fifty years?
3. Have you ever been in Long Tieng before?
4. Who to believe?
a.) All the American personnels who woked in Long Tieng including the raven.
b.) All Vang Pao military personnels including muself and my friends T-28 pilots.
c.) Albert McCoy and Mr. Poe (Tony).  

To me, all the accusations in your article are a big liar, not even one percent true. If you want to know the fact, I suggest you to contact General Craig.W.Duehring, the former Assistant Secretary of Air force who was a raven during that period of time.

Response to Fitrakis Vang Pao article #2

Dear Dr. Fitrakis,

My name is Teng Vang.  I live in the beautiful state of North Carolina.  I happened to read your column dated January 18, 2011 about our leader General Vang Pao.

I am dismay in reading your article.  Your article does not reflect your professional degrees at all because apparently you haven’t done any homework and simply wrote what you have heard from others, especially Mr. Tony Poe.  Is this the way you as a JD and columnist, editor, etc.. doing???

Please allow me to share some of my “facts”:

1.      Your information from Mr. Tony Poe about General Vang Pa was nothing but a lie:  

A.    Mr. Tony Poe served as a military advisor to Colonel Moua Sue in the Heui Xay military district in Sayabori Province.  Mr. Poe was constantly drunk and had run into many issues with Colonel Moua Sue including military tactical battles.   Colonel Moua Sue brought him to Long Tieng to talk to General Vang Pao many times but the General said since he was an American and also a “Hmong son-in-law” of Mr. and Mrs Chai Zong Ly (Tony’s wife is Sheng Ly), the Hmong shall excuse him and let him do what he wanted.

Response to Fitrakis' Vang Pao column

Good evening Dr. Fatrikis,

In reading your article about General Vang Pao, I have found your article to be baseless, frictional and absolutely irresponsible as a professional. I am a Hmong and many of my extended family members served during the war, and some were very closed to Maj.General Vang Pao. None have ever observed such disgraceful accusation.

As an American, I sense your intention to be nothing more than an act of character assassination to an honorable figure due to questionable reasons. The facts that thousands of Americans today are in jail around the country does not make president Obama a criminal for their crime. Another fact, according to law enforcement report, tons of illegal drugs are floating around the country daily, does not make president Obama and governmental leaders drug traffickers.

It is this kind of unfair and bias writing such as yours which created hatred and human rights violations around the world because people like you abuse your role and responsibility.

Spiritual death

The easy violence of empire washes over everything. It washes into our psyches.
I’m thinking about this in connection with the juxtaposition of anniversaries this week: Martin Luther King Day; President Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation in 1961, in which he sounded the warning about the military-industrial complex; and George H.W. Bush’s bombing campaign that launched the Gulf War in 1991, pounding not only Saddam (our kill ratio was 1,000-to-1) but also the so-called “Vietnam Syndrome” and America’s post-modernist aversion to war, thus re-energizing . . . the military-industrial complex.

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death,” King said in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech a year before his death, sounding a warning that converged with Eisenhower’s. Poke any dark corner of American life and a warning will emerge.

The context of Cuba's crisis

On December 18, 2010, Cuban President Raúl Castro warned Cubans: the nation faced a crisis. The disastrous condition of Cuba's economy no longer allowed the state any maneuvering room to walk the dangerous “precipice” of inefficiency, low productivity and corruption. Without reforms, Cuba would sink -- and with it the effort of every generation seeking a free Cuba since the first native revolt against Spanish colonial rule.

Cubans understood that since 1959 the Revolution, with all its faults, had safeguarded the nation's independence – national sovereignty. From 1492 (Columbus' landing) through December 1958, foreign powers had decided the fate of Cubans.

By the early 19 th century a " Cuban " had emerged -- not a Spaniard on a faraway island or an enslaved African, but a hybrid product of three centuries of colonialism who sought self-determination -- like the American colonial population in 1776.

A Time for Action -- Not Servility

While Washington pundits are talking up a new civility, many progressives are bracing for the old servility -- a bipartisanship that is servile to a corporate elite that is unquenchably greedy and more powerful than ever.

But this is not a time for despair. It’s a time for new activism -- built upon one of the great achievements of the last decade: the rise of independent media.

Every day, millions of people in the U.S. get their journalism from independent news outlets that expose not just the extremist antics of Republicans, but also the corporate corruption among Democrats. These informed Americans -- fearful of Speaker Boehner and alarmed by a White House now administered by a JPMorgan Chase executive -- represent a huge base ready to mobilize in new ways.

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