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The Palestinian left: a lost opportunity for relevance

When Hamas members were elected as the majority bloc of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and as it became apparent that a US-led international embargo would be an adjoining price to that victory, I contacted many intellectuals and writers in Palestine, mostly those who often positioned themselves as part of the Palestinian Left. I asked them to solidify behind the collective choice of the Palestinian people and to shield Palestinian democracy at any cost.

Want to impeach Cheney? Think July 23rd

The impeachment movement is gaining traction, and now - over the next two weeks - is the time to push it all the way to success.  Over the weekend, supporters of impeachment made "Impeach Cheney" the number 1 video on Youtube.  On Friday, for the first time, a polling company asked Americans if they want Cheney impeached. A majority of 54% said Yes, and the poll was reported in the media. Congressman John Conyers even cited it on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday.

On July 4, the day of throwing off King Georges, an Impeach Bush and Cheney petition passed 100,000 signatures! So now we're raising the bar to 1 million: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/petition  Also on July 4, Los Angeles opened an Impeachment Center, and on July 5 Philadelphia held an impeachment forum (here's the video).

More crony baloney

PARIS -- You do not need to speak good French to understand the meaning of noblesse.

            Just look at how swiftly Scooter Libby avoided prison time. Nothing lost in translation there.

            Same for what the Germans call Schadenfreude. That's when someone takes pleasure in someone else's misfortune, such as the outing of a covert American spy just to watch her tattletale husband squirm.

            It was Machiavellian how the neo-cons let the melodrama unfold in public, starting with letting Patrick Fitzgerald believe justice would prevail, followed by Valerie Plame's testimony, along with some congressional grousing. As though any of it would make a difference to our imperial co-presidency.

            As they say in Mayberry, USA, "Au contraire, Aunt Bea."

            Dubya thought it unfair that the veep's consigliore should do time pending appeal. So on behalf of Cheney Inc.'s fall guy, the Prodigal Compassionate Conservative Son returned.

Mother Earth can't live without a Solartopian vision

At last our dying Mother Earth has taken center stage.

Thanks to Al Gore's global concert, the major media are finally filling with coverage of the climate crisis. It all comes with a dire dual realization: our economy will collapse, and we could all die, if something drastic is not done.

But what?

There are many piecemeal formulas out there. But there's also a holistic vision of a post-pollution civilization that is clear, absolute and all-encompassing.

It's a "Solartopia" built around a democratic, green-powered millennium. It is as simple as it is necessary:

Technologically, the vision rests on four pillars:

1. Total renunciation of all fossil and nuclear fuels. In a sustainable, survivable future, they are a 20th Century pox, neither green nor clean.

2. All-out conversion to renewable energy, led by the "Solartopian Trinity" of wind, solar and bio-fuels. Mother Earth gives us the natural power we need.

Harvey Wasserman appearing live at the 2007 Starwood Festival

The Starwood Festival, held July 24th-29th, 2007 at Brushwood Folklore Center in Sherman, NY (about 30 miles South of Jamestown) features over 15 performances of music, drumming, dance and theatre. Its a multiversity featuring over 150 classes, workshops and ceremonies offered by teachers from many fields, disciplines, traditions and cultures. Its a magical family camping event with tenting and hiking, a pool and a hot-tub, a food court, co-op child care, a Kid Village and multimedia shows. Starwood is also a social event with costume parades, jam sessions, merchants, parties, all-night drumming and much more, including our hugely fabulous and infamous Bonfire!

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of personal gratification: “Here there be monsters”

“America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”
—John Quincy Adams

While it certainly was not his intent, Adams’ assertion serves to remind us of a truth revealed by vast oceans of tears, torrential rivers of blood, and formidable piles of human remains. Leaving murder, mayhem, and misery in its wake, America does “go abroad,” but not, as Adams noted, “in search of monsters to destroy.” What Adams failed to perceive, despite living in the midst of the Native American genocide and the abject evil of chattel slavery, is that America is the monster.

Yet like most monsters that exist outside the boundaries of imagination, the printed word, celluloid, or digital imagery, the United States and its denizens ostensibly appear rather harmless and mundane. In fact, it would probably be more accurate to say that a fair number of people still perceive us as downright heroic, cloaked as we are in our beguiling raiment of freedom and democracy.

The patriotic service of Leonard Peltier versus the treason of Scooter Libby

In all the hand-wringing about George Bush's ghastly commutation for Scooter Libby, the name that should resonate most is that of Leonard Peltier.

While the junta's henchmen walk free, this great Native American activist still sits in a federal penitentiary after thirty-one years.

In 1977, Leonard was wrongly convicted in the killing of two FBI agents. The case is so laden with fraud and illegalities as to tear at the fabric of our entire criminal justice system. Any president since Jimmy Carter---including Bill Clinton---could at least have granted him a fair trial.

Evidence weighed by Amnesty International and a very wide range of other powerful and prestigious global observers confirms that the FBI intimidated witnesses, withheld evidence, falsified affidavits and did every other dirty trick in the book to get Peltier convicted. Thirty-one years later, the FBI is still withholding over 140,000 pages of critical documents about this case, in violation of a wide range of federal laws. Peltier's sentence has been wrongfully extended. And his repeated requests for a retrial have been routinely denied.

We will sit in for impeachment

On the 5th Anniversary of the Downing Street Meeting and the same day as a Dem Prez candidates debate in the evening on CNN, Youtube, and Google, July 23, 2007, Cindy Sheehan plans to lead a delegation to Congressman John Conyers' office in DC to demand impeachment. We will be willing to risk arrest. Let's bring a crowd!

This is part of a march that Cindy and others are making from Texas to New York. The march may make stops at the district offices of other House Judiciary Committee Members, such as Rick Boucher, Mel Watt, and Bobby Scott.

You can organize a meeting, protest, honk-a-thon, or sit-in at your Congress Member's office. One way to get organized is with this system. You can find events and create them here. And you can meet people in Facebook.

We need a nonviolent revolution to compel our Congress Members to revive our Constitution. Sitting in their offices and reading the Constitution out loud, if enough of us do it, may save our democracy.

Strike the root!

"We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men"~~George Orwell

Recently, Nova M Radio's Mike Malloy suggested the lethargy that appears to have descended on the American people is more "rage fatigue" than a lack of knowledge or comprehension of the damage wrought by this administration. I agree, although for many of us, rather than fatigue, it's more an inability to "focus" on any single atrocity about which to be enraged. There are just too many incoming horrors at any one time. We are in the throes of a national paralysis.

It's not that we don't know enough to be enraged. We know too much. About too many things. Our rage is splintered, spread too thin to be effective. For the past five years, people in this country and around the world have protested against Bush and Cheney's genocidal assault on two helpless nations. As they prepare openly for yet another bloody attack on yet another nation, we continue to sign petitions, hold meetings, march against the corporate machine -- all to no avail.

John Perkins:  jerk, con-man, shill

I remember John Perkins.  He was a real jerk.  A gold-plated, super-slick lying little butthole shill for corporate gangsters; a snake-oil salesman with a movie-star grin, shiny loafers, a crooked calculator and a tooled leather briefcase full of high-blown bullshit.  

This was two decades ago.  The early 1980s. I wore sandals, uncombed hair down to my cheap collar and carried a busted ring-binder filled with honest calculations and sincere analysis.  It was Economic Hit Man Perkins vs. Economic Long-Hair Palast.  I didn't stand a chance.  The EHM was about to put a political bullet hole through me wider than a silver dollar.

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