Homeland dreamland

If you have not yet seen the film "Occupation Dreamland," I highly recommend it.  Co-Director Garrett Scott died on March 2, but he truly accomplished something before he left. http://www.occupationdreamland.com

Those who oppose the Iraq War often struggle with the fact that so many U.S. soldiers are willing to participate in it, are willing to attack someone else's country, raid their houses, shoot at their cars, melt the skin off their children with white phosphorous.  Why, it's easy to wonder, don't more soldiers do what a brave few have and refuse to fight?

This film of seven U.S. soldiers stationed in Falluja before its destruction does absolutely nothing to convince us that the war is any less of a crime than we've supposed.  In fact, it will convince many of that criminality who've doubted it.  But this film shows us a glimpse of the complex, fragile, and suffering minds of the U.S. soldiers we've sent over there.

Beating a dead horse

It’s been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The only thing more depressing than watching the Democratic Party cower cluelessly in a corner while the country goes to hell in a hand-basket is reading the pathetic pleas of the liberal punditocracy exhorting their party to grab the reins and forge ahead.  I hate to be the one to break the news to you, folks, but your horse is dead.  Flogging it is unlikely to lead to its revival.

What will it take for you to understand this? 

How many golden opportunities can the Democrats blow before you get a clue?

If your party can’t make hay out of illegal wire-tapping and torture, the bloody mess in Iraq, the Abramoff scandal and Hurricane Katrina, then isn’t it time to consider an alternative? 

If you really care about your country and the future of the planet, consider your options.  But understand that trying to reform a stagnant, out-of-touch, corporatized culture from within isn’t one of them.

War-loving pundits

The third anniversary of the Iraq invasion is bound to attract a lot of media coverage, but scant recognition will go to the pundits who helped to make it all possible.

Continuing with long service to the Bush administration’s agenda-setting for war, prominent media commentators were very busy in the weeks before the invasion. At the Washington Post, the op-ed page’s fervor hit a new peak on Feb. 6, 2003, the day after Colin Powell’s mendacious speech to the U.N. Security Council.

Post columnist Richard Cohen explained that Powell was utterly convincing. “The evidence he presented to the United Nations -- some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail -- had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn’t accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them,” Cohen wrote. “Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise.”

Meanwhile, another one of the Post’s syndicated savants, Jim Hoagland, led with this declaration: “Colin Powell did more than present the world with a convincing and detailed X-ray of Iraq’s

Not fighting the people who attacked us

AUSTIN, Texas -- President Bush has once more undertaken to explain to us "Why We Fight," which is also the title of an excellent new documentary on Iraq. According to the president, "Our goal in Iraq is victory." I personally did not find that a helpful clarification.

According to the president, we are doomed to stay in Iraq until we "leave behind a democracy that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself." That's not exactly getting closer every day. But, the Prez sez, "A free Iraq in the heart of the Middle East will make the American people more secure for generations to come."

So far, no good. After three years, tens of thousands of lives and $200 billion, we have achieved chaos. As Rep. John Murtha put it, "The only people who want us in Iraq are Iran and al-Qaida." Since the revisionist myth that we went to war to promote democracy keeps seeping into rational discussion, it is worth reminding ourselves that there never were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Did Milosevic or his accusers "cheat justice"? The show trial that went wrong

"It's hard not to feel that by dying in his cell, Slobodan Milosevic finally succeeded in his determined effort to cheat justice." Thus read the opening sentence of a New York Times editorial, Tuesday, March 14. The editorial cited without comment Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the United Nations tribunal, who told an Italian interviewer that "the death of Milosevic represents for me a total defeat."

In fact, Milosevic's death in his cell from a heart attack spared Del Ponte and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) -- itself a kangaroo tribunal set up by the United States with no proper foundation under international law or treaty -- the ongoing embarrassment of a proceeding where Milosevic had made a very strong showing against the phalanx of prosecutors, hearsay witnesses and prejudiced judges marshaled against him.

War protesters gather for anniversary

As the country prepares for the third anniversary of the conflict in Iraq, scores of people poured into a town hall meeting in Charlottesville on Monday in protest of a war that polls show is losing the support of the American public.

“We must impeach [President] Bush, not because he is incompetent, but because he is a danger to the world,” said David Swanson, a Charlottesville resident who co-founded the After Downing Street anti-war coalition and serves on several anti-war committees.

Swanson was one of seven people who spoke to the packed audience at McLeod Auditorium in the University of Virginia School of Nursing as part of a panel sponsored by the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice.

Congressional candidate Al Weed, a veteran who staunchly opposes the war, was the first to address the crowd. “We have to understand that these soldiers are doing their job whether or not we approve of it,” Weed said. “It is we who failed in sending them there.”

Ben Franklin

Palestinian elections as rejection of Israel's continued agenda

Coverage and analysis of the recent Hamas victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections has been prolific. Most coverage, however, fails to look at this event in a broad historical context, as one of many features of the political and cultural landscape, and in so doing misses important elements of the message sent by Palestinians to their leadership, the international community and international civil society.

This election is one representation of the Palestinian unequivocal rejection of Israel's colonial and racist project of force-creation of a state exclusively for people of Jewish descent, not for the humans living within its borders or directly under its occupation. The reaction against this fundamental construct takes many forms, there are many different targets, but all those are borne from this fundamental fact.

The resistance against Israel's colonial-racist project was a vote for Hamas and against the Fatah-led Palestinian National Authority. The Fateh-led PNA had become both a prisoner and indispensible partner in a 'peace process' which served only to further Israel's colonial-racist project in historic

Bush: internationalist and isolationist?

AUSTIN, Texas -- It's hard to keep up with George W. Bush's shuttles between internationalism and isolationism. You may recall he first ran for office declaring he was against nation-building and other such effete, peacekeeping efforts. None of that do-gooder, building-a-better-world stuff for him -- he couldn't even be bothered to learn the names of the Grecians and Kosovians.

Until Sept. 11, except for staring deep into Vlad Putin's ice-blue eyes and concluding the old KGB shark had soul, Bush evinced little interest in foreign affairs.

Then he literally became an internationalist with a vengeance. Absolutely everybody signed up to help go after al-Qaida in Afghanistan -- offers of help gushed in. Next came the campaign to bring down Saddam Hussein because he had weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear weapons program. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the world didn't think Iraq had much in the way of WMD, or at least felt the United Nations inspectors should be given more time to see if they were there.

Wallet Harvest Church

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