So I’m going to try for the Ten Clubpre-sale tickets Monday (It’s too late to join now, for this round!). Will it be another miracle, or rats?
Pearl Jam plays Rats in Boston, 2006:
One thing is for sure, I won’t feel indifference!
Acoustic version of Pearl Jam’s Indifference by Ben Harper and Eddie Vedder at Madison Square Garden in 2000 (vintage, with a plug for Ralph Nader and some Bush bashing by Eddie:
More rock & roll coming soon! I just survived my first mosh pit to see Mudhoney at the West Seattle Festyesterday evening! It wasn’t intentional. . .
Iranians and Iranian-Americans carrying different and opposing flags and banners at Westlake came together tonight to protest against the stolen election and for human rights in Iran.
First, I just noticed a few Americans from different sides putting their spin on things. We had the Socialists there (as usual) and one guy who seemed to be anti-Obama, anti-UN. Definitely not people you often see on the same side of a protest, even if for a short time.
It soon became apparent the Iranians had their own factions, and some of them were having a very heated debate, although fortunately the rally leaders were able to come up with chants to unite both sides. At first I didn’t understand the issue about the flags, which was the one part of the debate in English. One of the leaders repeatedly asked people to put down the flags and unite. I thought maybe it had to do with some post 9/11 fears or fears of stirring anti-immigrant sentiments with the Iranian flags (even though their were some American ones). The kind of policy debate organizers often have within the group, though it seemed odd that would become such a major issue during the rally itself.
Then I was thinking maybe it was people for different candidates in the Iranian elections. As most of the arguing was in Persian, it was hard to know what was going on.
It wasn’t until Don from our Amnesty International group suggested some of the people were supporters of the Shah that it dawned on me, but even then slowly. I was in denial that I could be protesting with people who supported the (evil, to me) Shah, who was torturing people in Iran before he was forced to flee the country (only to be replaced by Ayatollah Khomenei, who tortured people). Then I started recognizing the regal symbol on many of the flags (then a few with a different symbols on them) and realized Don was right.
I then started realizing the significance of the banners reading, “No Monarchy. No Theocracy. Only Democracy.” My sentiments as well. Note: I’m not officially wearing my Amnesty hat at the moment, although I was literally wearing one for the rally.
I got to give the organizers credit for keeping it all together, and finding chants and songs to unite everyone, and even getting everyone together for a march around the block of the Westlake Center mall and back to the square.
Meanwhile, in Iran, the New York Times reports that thousands of people are out in the streets again.
Thousands of Iranians poured into the streets of Tehran on Thursday, clapping, chanting, almost mocking the authorities as they once again turned out in large numbers in defiance of the government’s threat to crush their protests with violence.
As tear gas canisters cracked and hissed in the middle of crowds, and baton-wielding police officers chased protesters up and down sidewalks, young people, some bloodied, ran for cover, but there was an almost festive feeling on the streets of Tehran, witnesses reported in e-mail exchanges.
A young woman, her clothing covered in blood, ran up Kargar Street, paused for a moment and said, “I am not scared, because we are in this together.”
Which is encouraging, people are coming together and marching for justice in spite of massive repression.
Takes you back to Bruce on the Jersey shore and more innocent times. OK, maybe not. . .
Sparks fly on E Street when the boy prophets walk it handsome and hot All the little girls’ souls grow weak when the man-child gives them a double shot Them schoolboy pops pull out all the stops on a Friday night The teenage tramps in skintight pants do the E Street dance and everything’s all right
Younger times, without the weight of the world or life.
Little Angel steps the shuffle like she ain’t got no brains She’s death in combat down on Lover’s Lane She drives all them local boys insane Little Angel says, “Oh, oh, everybody form a line Oh, oh, everybody form a line”
OK, less pc times, too. This is 1973!
Here’s Bruce and the E Street Band playing Sandy last year, with Danny one last time.
Well, not the most complete version, but full of emotion.
Sandy the fireworks are hailin’ over Little Eden tonight Forcin’ a light into all those stoned-out faces left stranded on this Fourth of July Down in town the circuit’s full with switchblade lovers so fast so shiny so sharp And the wizards play down on Pinball Way on the boardwalk way past darkAnd the boys from the casino dance with their shirts open like Latin lovers along the shore Chasin’ all them silly New York girls
Sandy the aurora is risin’ behind us The pier lights our carnival life forever Love me tonight for I may never see you again Hey Sandy girl
I notice Bruce went back to the original (Wild & Innocent) version about on the lyrics “Sandy, the waitress I was seeing lost her desire for me. . .” rather than the later version on the website (and the live album) about the angels, umm, that’s Hell’s Angels. . . I can’t decide which version I like more.
Then one of my favorite lines “the cops finally busted Madame Marie for tellin’ fortunes better than they do.” Alas, I heard Madame Marie passed away, I think it was last year, too.
Kitty’s Back! Now that I look at the lyrics, I’m not so sure this is about cat-like people:
Catlong sighs holding Kitty’s black tooth She left to marry some top cat, ain’t it the cold truth
or people-like cats:
Catlong lies back bent on a trash can, Flashing lights cut the night, dude in the white says he’s the man Well you better learn to move fast when you’re young or you’re not long around Cat somehow lost his Kitty down in the city pound
but it’s okay now:
Well who’s that down at the end of the alley? She’s been gone so long
Kitty’s back in town, here she comes now Kitty’s back in town
Even if she’s been unfaithful:
Now Cat knows his Kitty’s been untrue And that she left him for a city dude But she’s so soft, she’s so blue When he looks into her eyes He just sits back and sighs Ooh, what can I do, ooh, what can I do?
Wild Billy’s Circus Story – favorite line: “Jesus send some good women to save all your clowns. . .”
Incident on 57th Street – another song about, what else, loving and fighting, though I’m with Jane:
Jane moves over to share her pillow but opens her eyes to see Johnny up and putting his clothes on She says “Those romantic young boys All they ever want to do is fight” Those romantic young boys They’re callin’ through the window “Hey Spanish Johnny, you want to make a little easy money tonight?”
Vintage early Bruce.
Rosalita: Here’s Bruce in 1978 (it’s on the Video Anthology/1978–88). Check out all the girls trying to get on stage! “I ain’t here on business, I’m only here for fun. . .”
Of course, I’m wondering what happens these days when the young men must be calling for his teen age daughter. . .
Now I know your mama she don’t like me ’cause I play in a rock and roll band And I know your daddy he don’t dig me but he never did understand Papa lowered the boom, he locked you in your room I’m comin’ to lend a hand I’m comin’ to liberate you, confiscate you, I want to be your man Someday we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny But now you’re sad, your mama’s mad And your papa says he knows that I don’t have any money Tell him this is last chance to get his daughter in a fine romance Because a record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance
New York Serenade is just so gorgeous with the music, and really interesting lyrics.
Billy he’s down by the railroad tracks Sittin’ low in the back seat of his Cadillac Diamond Jackie, she’s so intact As she falls so softly beneath him Jackie’s heels are stacked
OK, a bit wild! Sometimes a bit serious. . .
It’s midnight in Manhattan, this is no time to get cute It’s a mad dog’s promenade So walk tall or baby don’t walk at all
Then this one:
Fish lady, oh fish lady She baits them tenement walls She won’t take corner boys They ain’t got no money And they’re so easy
And, oh yeah! Anytime, Bruce!
I said “Hey, baby Won’t you take my hand Walk with me down Broadway Well mama take my arm and move with me down Broadway”
But not her:
Hook up to the train And hook up to the night train Hook it up Hook up to the train But I know that she won’t take the train, no she won’t take the train Oh she won’t take the train, no she won’t take the train Oh she won’t take the train, no she won’t take the train Oh she won’t take the train, no she won’t take the train She’s afraid them tracks are gonna slow her down And when she turns this boy’ll be gone So long, sometimes you just gotta walk on, walk on
And this line:
Hey vibes man, hey jazz man, play me your serenade Any deeper blue and you’re playin’ in your grave
And there’s even poetry with the trash collection:
Listen to your junk man Listen to your junk man Listen to your junk man He’s singin’, he’s singin’, he’s singin’ All dressed up in satin, walkin’ past the alley He’s singin’, singin’, singin’, singin’
In another disturbing development, Iranian leaders have managed to torture confessions of a “conspiracy” behind the Iranian people’s popular uprising against a blatantly stolen election. Meanwhile the U.S. still hasn’t closed Guantanamo, Obama’s administration is considering indefinite detention for those we’ve tortured (who at least this administration acknowledges we can’t fairly try), and there are even reports of torture in the form of “extraction teams” continuing since the administration change.
Iranian leaders say they have obtained confessions from top reformist officials that they plotted to bring down the government with a “velvet” revolution. Such confessions, almost always extracted under duress, are part of an effort to recast the civil unrest set off by Iran’s disputed presidential election as a conspiracy orchestrated by foreign nations, human rights groups say.
As a human rights observer, I am not reassured about the truthfulness of confessions like this one:
Alef, a Web site of a conservative member of Parliament, referred to a video of Mohammad Ali Abtahi, who served as vice president in the reform government of former President Mohammed Khatami, as showing that he tearfully “welcomed being defrocked and has confessed to provoking people, causing tension and creating media chaos.”
or this report:
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, Mojtaba Zolnour, said in a speech Thursday that almost everyone now detained had confessed — raising the prospect that more confessions will be made public. Ayatollah Khamenei is supreme religious leader.
According to another article by the New York Times, “A high-ranking Iranian cleric said Friday that Iran planned to put some of the detained British embassy staff members on trial” claiming that “the embassy employees had ‘made confessions’ and would be tried for their role in inciting protests after last month’s disputed presidential election.” Authorities claim to have video showing “evidence of some embassy employees at the protests” (as were a great many other Iranians).
This BBC video also paints a chilling portrait of the repression. TV commercials to turn in your own family and robo-calls warning you not to participate in public protests.
Of course, the US (and Britain) have a bad track record with Iran, including their support of the Shah and his repressive SAVAK security, who the CIA helped put in power in the first place. Leading many on the American left to claim there must be American involvement, and giving the Iranian authorities a convenient scapegoat (with the same kind of “you’re either for us or against us” mentality the Bush administration tried to make popular here).
Certainly, even if there was US involvement, it couldn’t explain (nor negate) the genuine, popular uprising first over a blatantly stolen election, then over the brutal repression of the protests.
In her article Iran and Leftist Confusion on Truthout, Reese Erlich, returning from covering the Iranian elections and protests, responds to claims that the U.S. is orchestrating the uprising.
When I returned from covering the Iranian elections recently, I was surprised to find my email box filled with progressive authors, academics and bloggers bending themselves into knots about the current crisis in Iran. They cite the long history of US interference in Iran and conclude that the current unrest there must be sponsored or manipulated by the Empire.
That comes as quite a shock to those risking their lives daily on the streets of major Iranian cities fighting for political, social and economic justice.
Some of these authors have even cited my book, “The Iran Agenda,” as a source to prove US meddling. Whoa there, pardner. Now we’re getting personal.
To the claims that President Ahmadinejad actually won the election (one that seems to me to be really stretching it, given that the New York Times reported that Iranian authorities themselves admitted “ that the number of votes recorded in 50 cities exceeded the number of eligible voters there by three million”), Erlich cites:
A study by two professors at Chatham House and the Institute of Iranian Studies at University of St. Andrews, Scotland, took a close look at the official election results and found some major discrepancies. For Ahmadinejad to have sustained his massive victory in one-third of Iran’s provinces, he would have had to carry all his supporters, all new voters, all voters previously voting centrist and about 44 percent of previous reformist voters.
Then to the assertion that “[t]he US has a long history of meddling in Iran, so it must be behind the current unrest,” Erlich notes that:
All the arguments are by analogy and implication. Neither the above two authors, nor anyone else of whom I am aware, offers one shred of evidence that the Obama administration has engineered, or even significantly influenced, the current demonstrations.
Then her observations, from being inside Iran while this was all happening.
Let’s look at what actually happened on the ground. Tens of millions of Iranians went to bed on Friday, June 12, convinced that either Mousavi had won the election outright or that there would be a runoff between him and Ahmadinejad. They woke up Saturday morning and were stunned. “It was a coup d’etat,” several friends told me. The anger cut across class lines and went well beyond Mousavi’s core base of students, intellectuals and the well-to-do.
Within two days, hundreds of thousands of people were demonstrating peacefully in the streets of Tehran and other major cities. Could the CIA have anticipated the vote count, and on two days notice, mobilized its nefarious networks? Does the CIA even have the kind of extensive networks that would be necessary to control or even influence such a movement? That simultaneously gives the CIA too much credit and underestimates the independence of the mass movement.
As for the charge that the CIA is providing advanced technology like Twitter, pleaaaaaase. In my commentary carried on Reuters, I point out that the vast majority of Iranians have no access to Twitter and that the demonstrations were mostly organized by cell phone and word of mouth.
Umm, you mean Twitter has been overrated by the mainstream media? ; )
Frankly, based on my observations, no one was leading the demonstrations. During the course of the week after the elections, the mass movement evolved from one protesting vote fraud into one calling for much broader freedoms. You could see it in the changing composition of the marches. There were not only upper middle class kids in tight jeans and designer sun glasses. There were growing numbers of workers and women in very conservative chadors.
Iranian youth particularly resented President Ahmadinejad’s support for religious militia attacks on unmarried young men and women walking together and against women not covering enough hair with their hijab. Workers resented the 24 percent annual inflation that robbed them of real wage increases. Independent trade unionists were fighting for decent wages and for the right to organize.
Some demonstrators wanted a more moderate Islamic government. Others advocated a separation of mosque and state, and a return to parliamentary democracy they had before the 1953 coup. But virtually everyone believes that Iran has the right to develop nuclear power, including enriching uranium. Iranians support the Palestinians in their fight against Israeli occupation, and they want to see the US get out of Iraq.
So if the CIA was manipulating the demonstrators, it was doing a piss poor job.
So now Iranian authorities are torturing confessions to “prove” the demonstrations are all the work of the U.S. and other foreign nations. Of course, this is what torture is used for – to extract forced confessions. Which makes you wonder about the U.S. use of torture at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere. We’re using methods that were used against American soldiers during the Korean War to extract false confessions for show trials. Great if we wanted show trials (well, not great, but the logic would be). Isn’t what we want real information on terrorists, so we can stop whatever they’re planning next? Am I missing something here?
It’s not un-patriotic to question America’s use of torture, even on the Fourth of July (in fact, what better day to question it – we’re talking about our Constitution, we’re talking about what America is). Listen to what some in the military have to say about our use of torture in this video by the ACLU (Warning: this video does contain photos from Abu Ghraib):
Torture is wrong and immoral, and must be confronted, whether it’s being done by the Iranian government or the U.S. government. It is un-American (and I’m sure the Iranian people would agree, if they could, that it is also un-Iranian).
I am at least a little encouraged that there’s been some change in U.S. response to coups overthrowing democratically elected, left leaning, leaders in Latin America when our President and Secretary of State are referring to the ouster by the military of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya as a coup. On the other hand, I have to agree with the assessment of some, including The Nation and the LA Times, that the Obama administration’s response is “tepid”.
Early Sunday morning, approximately 100 soldiers entered the home of the left-leaning Zelaya, forcefully removed him and, while he was still in his pajamas, ushered him onto a plane to Costa Rica.
Then:
After Zelaya had been taken to Costa Rica, a falsified resignation letter from Zelaya was presented to Congress, and former Parliament leader Roberto Micheletti was sworn in by Congress as the new president of the country. Micheletti immediately declared a curfew as protests and mobilizations continued nationwide.
Since the coup took place, military planes and helicopters have been circling the city, the electricity and internet have been cut off, and only music is being played on the few radio stations that are still operating, according to IPS News.
Telesur journalists, who have been reporting consistently throughout the conflict, were detained by the de facto government in Honduras. They were then released, thanks to international pressure.
The ambassadors to Honduras from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua were arrested. Patricia Rodas, the foreign minister of Honduras under Zelaya has also been arrested. Rodas recently presided over an OAS meeting in which Cuba was finally admitted into the organization.
The military-installed government has issued arrest warrants for Honduran social leaders for the Popular Bloc Coordinating Committee, Via Campesina and the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, according to the Weekly News Update on the Americas.
While as Truthout notes, initially on Sunday, President Obama said only that he was “deeply concerned by reports coming out of Honduras regarding the detention and expulsion of President Mel Zelaya,” and Secretary of State Clinton stated “We are withholding any formal legal determination,” they both were referring to it as a coup by Monday.
“We do not want to go back to a dark past,” Mr. Obama said, in which military coups override elections. “We always want to stand with democracy,” he added.
This definitely is an improvement from the past. However, as the LA Times notes:
But while condemning the overthrow, U.S. officials stopped short of declaring it a coup and would not demand the reinstatement of Zelaya. The administration left its ambassador to Honduras in place, while several left-wing governments in the region recalled theirs.
And despite control over millions of dollars in American aid and massive U.S. economic clout, the administration did not threaten sanctions or penalties against Honduran coup-backers for forming a new government the day after Zelaya was dragged from his bed and evicted from the country.
Wait, but President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton called the overthrow a coup, didn’t they? What does the LA Times mean when it said they “stopped short of declaring it a coup”?
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the political crisis “has evolved into a coup.” But U.S. officials have not made a legal determination that the action actually constituted a coup, a finding that would trigger cutoffs of U.S. aid.
Oh, yes! We have an administration full of lawyers, don’t we? They do say they tried to avert a coup, to give them credit. However, their response still seems a little cautious? Is that the word? No, maybe just not that enthusiastic.
Nonetheless, Obama offered a frank appraisal of U.S. history in the region, referring to its involvement in many of the region’s coups over the last century.
“The United States has not always stood as it should with some of these fledgling democracies,” he said at the White House. “But over the last several years I think both Republicans and Democrats in the United States have recognized that we always want to stand with democracy, even if the results don’t always mean that the leaders of those countries are favorable towards the United States.”
Now, why this lack of enthusiasm? Could it be because President Zelaya aligned himself with the poor and against corporations exploiting workers?
According to the Truthout article:
When Manuel Zelaya was elected president on November 27, 2005, in a close victory, he became president of one of the poorest nations in the region, with approximately 70 percent of its population of 7.5 million living under the poverty line. Though siding himself with the region’s left in recent years as a new member of the leftist trade bloc, Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), Zelaya did sign the Central American Free Trade Agreement in 2004.
However, Zelaya has been criticizing and taking on the sweatshop and corporate media industry in his country, and he increased the minimum wage by 60 percent. He said the increase, which angered the country’s elite but expanded his support among unions, would “force the business oligarchy to start paying what is fair.”
Now why are so many mainstream news agencies reporting the issue was Zelaya wanting to extend his term in office when it was actually re-writing the constitution that was going to be the issue on the ballot (to be voted on by the people)?
The key question leading up to the coup was whether or not to hold a referendum on Sunday, June 28 – as Zelaya wanted – on organizing an assembly to rewrite the country’s constitution.
As one media analyst pointed out, while many major news outlets in the US, including the Miami Herald, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, said an impetus for the coup was specifically Zelaya’s plans for a vote to allow him to extend his term in office, the actual ballot question was to be: “Do you agree that, during the general elections of November 2009 there should be a fourth ballot to decide whether to hold a Constituent National Assembly that will approve a new political constitution?”
According to Truthout:
Leading up to the coup, on June 10, members of teacher, student, indigenous and union groups marched to demand that Congress back the referendum on the constitution, chanting, “The people, aware, defend the Constituent [Assembly].” The Honduran Front of Teachers Organizations [FOM], with some 48,000 members, also supported the referendum. FOM leader Eulogio Ch·vez asked teachers to organize the expected referendum this past Sunday in schools, according to the Weekly News Update on the Americas.
The Supreme Court ruled that the referendum violated the constitution as it was taking place during an election year. When Honduran military Gen. Romeo Vasquez refused to distribute ballots to citizens and participate in the preparations for the Sunday referendum, Zelaya fired him on June 24. The Court called for the reinstatement of Vasquez, but Zelaya refused to recognize the reinstatement, and proceeded with the referendum, distributing the ballots and planning for the Sunday vote.
Oh, wait, I forgot to mention one thing, the elephant in the room.
Vasquez, a former student at the infamous School of the Americas, now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), went on to be a key leader in the June 28 coup.
Ah, yes, as President Obama alluded to, our bad past history, of training future dictators and military leaders who overthrow democratically elected governments, and imprison, torture, kill and disappear people to hold onto their power.
And the people are rising up once again:
Members of social, indigenous and labor organizations from around the country have concentrated in the city’s capital, organizing barricades around the presidential palace, demanding Zelaya’s return to power. “Thousands of Hondurans gathered outside the presidential palace singing the national hymn,” Telesur reported. “While the battalions mobilized against protesters at the Presidential House, the TV channels did not report on the tense events.” Bertha C·ceres, the leader of the Consejo CÌvico de Organizaciones Populares y IndÌgenas, said that the ethnic communities of the country are ready for resistance and do not recognize the Micheletti government.
I, for one, would like to see a stronger response from President Obama.
If the White House declares that what’s happening in Honduras is a coup, they would have to block aid to the rogue Honduran government. A provision of US law regarding funds directed by the US Congress says that, “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available … shall be obligated or expended to finance directly any assistance to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.”
”The State Department has requested $68.2 million in aid for fiscal year 2010 [for Honduras], which begins on October 1, up from $43.2 million in the current fiscal year and $40.5 million a year earlier,” according to Reuters.
Now, to give the Obama administration credit, according to The Nation, Secretary of State Clinton did say:
“The United States has been working with our partners in the OAS (Organization of American States) to fashion a strong consensus condemning the detention and expulsion of President Zelaya, and calling for the full restoration of democratic order in Honduras,” she said Monday. “Our immediate priority is to restore full democratic and constitutional order in that country.”
That we’re fully engaged in these diplomatic efforts is a good thing, and let’s hope the regional strategy works. There is more we could be doing, however, such as pulling our ambassador and bringing our aid to a halt as long as there’s an illegal regime in power. All of which we would expect the U.S. to do, if they didn’t find the government that’s legitimately in power a little too far to the left.
Definitely some change, and considerable change to the last administration. We’d no doubt be embracing the coup right now if Bush was in power. We still could do better, and we should be on the side of democracy and the Honduran people.
So, on Friday the Washington Post and and ProPublica reported that President Obama is considering “an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely,” furthering his slide into continuing the worst of the Bush administration policies in the so-called “war on terror.”
A month ago, on May 21, President Obama proposed what the New York Times described as “a new legal system in which terrorism suspects could be held in “prolonged detention” inside the United States without trial.”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow rightly took the President to task on this, and his hypocrisy for proposing it in the same speech where Obama repudiated the abuses of the Constitution by President Bush’s administration, in front of the Constitution at the National Archives, no less.
Now, this would be just as bad as far as the constitutionality of what we’d be doing if the President got together with congress as he previously suggested, to imprison people indefinitely, without charge, because we think they may be dangerous. Something we Americans grew up to believe could not happen in this country.
Adding to the disturbing continuation of the Bush era policies though, is President Obama’s grab for executive privilege. Like Bush, he’s going to decide who is or isn’t a threat to the United States of America. Even more disturbingly, in the Washington Post article, his spokesperson claimed this is what civil liberties groups asked for!
White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said that there is no executive order and that the administration has not decided whether to issue one. But one administration official suggested that the White House is already trying to build support for an order.
“Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order,” the official said. Such an order could be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation, but civil liberties groups generally oppose long-term detention, arguing that detainees should be prosecuted or released.
Huh?!!
Thankfully Glen Greenwald’s excellent latest article in Salon on the subject challenges that statement:
Those journalistic practices produce egregious sentences like this: ”‘Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order’, the official said.” I’d love to know which so-called “civil liberties groups” are pushing the White House for an Executive Order establishing the power of indefinite detention. It’s certainly not the ACLU or Center for Constitutional Rights, both of which issued statements vehemently condemning the proposal (ACLU’s Anthony Romero: ”If President Obama issues an executive order authorizing indefinite detention, he’ll be repeating the same mistakes of George Bush”).
What makes this ironically more difficult, is that it’s harder to get people to pay attention and stand up to continuing these policies under the Obama administration. My experience with the issue tabling for Amnesty International is that many think Guantanamo and the War on Terror are ancient history. If it’s not all over now, it’s going to end. Maybe, too, after years of fighting Bush, everyone wants a break and to get back to the rest of their life. But this is our Constitution, and our lives.
As Greenwald notes:
Absent serious public opposition (and one recent poll shows overwhelming opposition), it seems highly likely that Barack Obama will wield the power to imprison people indefinitely without charges of any kind.
Then there’s the Presidential power grab, which certainly I never thought Obama would be party to. Greenwald again (and the highlighting is from the original):
There has now emerged a very clear — and very disturbing — pattern whereby Obama is willing to use legal mechanisms and recognize the authority of other branches only if he’s assured that he’ll get the outcome he wants.
That bad? Consider what’s already happened.
That, for instance, is the precise pattern that’s driving his suppression of torture photos. Two federal courts ordered the President to release the photos under the 40-year-old Freedom of Information Act. Not wanting to abide by that decision, the White House (using Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman) tried to pressure Congress to enact new legislation vesting the administration with the power to override FOIA. When House progressives blocked that bill, the White House assured Lieberman and Graham that Obama would simply use an Executive Order to decree the photos ”classified” (when they are plainly nothing of the sort) and thus block their release anyway.
The Freedom of Information Act does not apply to this President. I didn’t think I’d be writing these words again so soon after we innaugerated the good guy in January. So do we challenge it? Where is everyone?
What ultimately matters here is that we not lose sight of the critical point: no matter the form it takes, and no matter which route is used to implement it (act of Congress or executive order), indefinite detention without charges is a repugnant and tyrannical power. Democrats and progressives had no trouble understanding that fact during the last eight years, so they should have no trouble understanding it now.
One of the most disturbing things about all this to me is that one of Obama’s strongest points to me as a candidate was that he was a constitutional professor. I attended an Obama Salon a year ago highlighting that fact.
ObamaSalons: Restoring the Constitution (Community Service)
Please join us for Restoring the Constitution, the first installment of ObamaSalons. Christian Halliburton, a professor of constitutional law in the Seattle University School of Law, will offer his perspective on the role of the U.S. Constitution, the importance of habeas corpus and the ongoing legal issues surrounding detentions at Guantanamo Bay. Professor Halliburton will talk about Obama’s background as a constitutional law professor and lead a discussion about what having a constitutional expert in the White House could mean for restoring America’s legal foundation.
Don’t get me wrong. I know Obama was the best we could do this time around (and all his Democratic opponents who were likely challengers are in fact in his administration, raising no protests I’ve heard of). Kucininch or the Greens or Nader couldn’t have made it. I knew we’d have to fight him to be stronger on some issues. Still. . . I didn’t expect us to be fighting on indefinite detentions and Presidential power grabs. Accountability, yeah, I figured as a Democrat he’d wimp out on holding those in the Bush administration accountable for torture (while Republican’s try to throw people out of office for affairs, only to amusingly get caught themselves).
We can’t keep going down this path and thinking it’s okay because President Obama is in charge and he’s a good guy. Our Constitution was created for a reason and without it, none of us are safe. Sure, it may be easy for people to ignore us rounding up people in other countries, many of them turned in by their neighbors or strangers for huge rewards and no real evidence of threat to the US; but who’s to say it won’t happen here – to you or me. Once the power is there, somewhere down the road we’re in danger of it being further misused.
Ironically, one of the songs I remember playing at the Obama rally I made it to early on in the campaign here, at the Qwest Field events center, was the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” I was still, rightly, a skeptic at the time (even though I already thought he was the best electable choice).
Amazing how timely that tune still stays. Here’s The Who at Live 8 in 2006:
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Guess I should have been paying more attention to that song.
While at the moment everything is looking rather grim for Iranians, I can’t help but feel a little hopeful for the long run, given the large number of people who came out during the protests, and the many acts of resistance -from Twittering to literally shouting defiance from rooftops.
A week ago Friday, I went to a very moving protest at the University of Washington. A huge turn out from the local Iranian and Iranian-American community – young and old.
Toward the end, several young men led the group in round after round of singing.
I was remembering the Iranian students protesting the Shah (who the US was supporting despite his brutality) at the University of Oregon 30 years ago, who covered their heads for fear of retribution back home. Shortly after the Shah was overthrown, the same students were back protesting the Ayatollah Khomeini, again with their faces covered, for fear of retribution. I couldn’t help but hope this would be finally the Iranian’s time for freedom.
I think it’s the fact that this election was so blatantly stolen that’s compelling the people to rise up against all odds. Of course 40 million votes couldn’t have been counted in two hours as was claimed. Then on Monday, according to the New York Times, Iran’s Guardian Council acknowledged “the number of votes recorded in 50 cities exceeded the number of voters by three million.”
Incredibly enough, the Guardian Council still tried to claim the election was fair.
“Statistics provided by the candidates, who claim more than 100 percent of those eligible have cast their ballot in 80 to 170 cities are not accurate — the incident has happened in only 50 cities,” said the council spokesman, Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei. He said this outcome could occur because people may vote anywhere they choose, not necessarily only in their district of registration.
Oh, we only had more people voting then eligible voters in 50 cities, not 80 to 170. See, everything was fair! Wait a second, not buying that? It was people voting anywhere they pleased. . .
But many districts where the excess votes were recorded are small, remote places rarely visited by business travelers or tourists, analysts said, raising questions about how so many extra votes could have been counted in so many different areas.
The Times article raises more questions:
How did the government manage to count enough of the 40 million paper ballots to be able to announce results within two hours of the polls closing? How is it that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s margin of victory remained constant throughout the ballot count? Why did the government order polls closed at 10 p.m. when they often stay open until midnight for presidential races? Why were some ballot boxes sealed before candidates’ inspectors could validate they were empty? Why were votes counted centrally, by the Interior Ministry, instead of locally, as in the past? Why did some polling places lock their doors at 6 p.m. after running out of ballots?
So large numbers of people turned out on the streets to protest in Iran.
Iran’s paramilitary Basij are carrying out brutal nighttime raids, destroying property in private homes and beating civilians in an attempt to stop nightly protest chants, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch also said the Iranian authorities are confiscating satellite dishes from private homes to prevent citizens from seeing foreign news.
Of course authorities are trying to crack down on Twitter as well, and others around the world are trying to slow them down by changing their Time Zone on Twitter to Tehran time (universal +3.30).
So, we finally seem to be in the midst of freeing 17 Uighurs held at Guantanamo since 2002, even though most of them have been cleared for release since 2003. Even though, as Amnesty International noted in a February 19 report:
The Bush administration had conceded that the Uighurs were not “enemy combatants” (even under its own definition of the concept), and had accepted that they could not be returned to their native China because they would face a serious risk of torture or execution there.
No other country would take them, the Bush administration wouldn’t let them be released into the U.S.
Wait, surely change has come? Afraid not, the Democrats wimp out again on an important principle, first Congress, then the President. As the Boston Globe reports:
Years later, after the Uighurs’ plight emerged in court, the Bush administration formally admitted they were not enemies. A judge ordered their release.
Then, a new president, who had campaigned on a vow to close Guantanamo, was on the point of admitting them to this country. But suddenly Congress was stampeded by the right, and President Obama ducked for cover. Congressional Democrats and many Republicans had applauded the call to close Guantanamo, but when it came to action, they ran for the exits. There were a few exceptions, like Senators Dick Durbin and Pat Leahy, and Congressman Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts. But they seemed like schoolteachers after the bell had rung, trying to bring order to a ruck of noisy children, looking in vain for help to the principal’s office.
The men were cleared for release by the Bush administration years ago; the federal courts that reviewed their cases concluded that there was no evidence to justify their imprisonment in the first place. Yet they languished behind bars because the United States could not return them to their native China for fear they would be tortured, or worse. Some 100 countries declined U.S. requests to take the Uighurs, in part because of Chinese threats of retaliation. U.S. lawmakers railed against the possibility of allowing the detainees into the United States, claiming that they were dangerous terrorists despite the assessments of a Republican and a Democratic president, military officers and an independent judiciary.
So far, four Uighurs have been freed from Guantanamo and released to Bermuda, with reports of Palau and maybe Italy to take others. Unfortunately, not before “war on terror” frenzy was whipped up by some on the little island. As the Boston Globe describes it:
Bermudian Premier Ewart Brown saw the humanitarian crisis that lay beneath the politics. He offered to accept four of them into the island’s guest worker program. At 3 a.m. on June 11, I watched on the Guantanamo airstrip as four innocent men were unshackled for the last time. They climbed aboard a charter aircraft. And when the sun rose, they stepped down to free soil in Bermuda, smiling broadly.
One said, “This is a small island, but it has a big heart.”
Others will have to judge the American heart. Within hours, the lunatic fringe was feeding lies to Bermudian media. CNN joined in the mugging with a false report from a Bush-era mouthpiece that the men had “trained in Al Qaeda camps.” (Before meeting interrogators, the men had never heard of Al Qaeda, and in court the Bush administration itself conceded that there was no Al Qaeda link. But in the feeding frenzy, truth did not matter.)
A political crisis exploded in Bermuda’s parliament. The minority called for a vote of no-confidence in the government. The British loudly protested not being asked permission.
The Uighurs are a Muslim ethnic minority group in China and live in an “autonomous region” similar to Tibet. Their culture and religion is under attack by the Chinese government, as is the Tibetans. I first became aware of the Uighurs when AI was working to free Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur business woman and mother of 11, who was in prison 5 years, and Amnesty International considered a Prisoner of Conscience.
There was a time when fighting the Communist Chinese government was viewed as a good thing by ours, who would have welcomed them with open arms. Post cold-war and post Sept. 11, however, and we’re letting the Chinese define them as terrorists for us.
Washington has walked a thin line in the handling of the Uighurs. It sought China’s support in antiterrorism efforts after the Sept. 11 attacks, branded an obscure Uighur independence group as terrorist and in 2002 allowed Chinese officials into Guantánamo to interrogate Uighur captives. The four men released here said that interrogation was a low point of their Guantánamo incarceration, with Chinese officials questioning them for long hours without food and threatening them and their families.
My head kind of spins, as a former cold-war kid who grew up on our government being “anti-communist.” We’re letting the Chinese interrogate prisoners in our prisons. Oh, wait, our prisons that aren’t our prisons and are on some mythological island where our laws don’t apply.
At any rate, it is good that our government finally has freed four more of these men, and may soon release the others (most of whom even the Bush Administration acknowledged haven’t done anything against us).
OK, first, I finally was able to post the actual NBC video for Pearl Jam’s Got Some performance to my previous post via Vodpod. Totally cool!
What do I think about the news in the Rolling Stone that they recorded a commercial for Target for Cameron Crowe, though?
Well, I’m not crazy about the idea. OK, I’ll be honest. The first thing that comes to mind is their buddy, Neil Young’s This Notes for You:
Now to show you how insidious advertising is, I remember describing the original MTV video of this to my friends at the time, about how the video ended with a drunken Spuds McKenzie (the Budweiser commercial party animal dog), and their then grade school age kids were outraged: “Spuds wouldn’t do that!” What a great role model for kids – a beer swilling dog hanging around Budweiser babes!
Ouch! I feel really bad slamming the guys in Pearl Jam with Neil’s song though. As I said, I’m not crazy about the idea. I certainly don’t want to see the commercial (hey, that should be easy - I seldom watch tv and mute the commercials). On the other hand, it’s hard to totally avoid the corporations seeping into everything, and this is fairly minor as it goes (their manager, Kelly Curtis, says in the Rolling Stones article the Backspacer cd will be released to some independent stores at the same time Target has big box rights, and of course, an exclusive online release as well). Then there is the money issue in an era where fans want the music for free. Finally, Cameron Crowe’s involvement has to have something to do with it, especially with a future concert film in the works.
The film Festival Express comes to mind, about the shocking idea that bands actually want to make some money from their music. Festival Express is a great film about a cross country tour of Canada by train in 1970 by an incredible entourage of musicians, including Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, and The Band. You got to check it out – great concert footage and these incredible jams on the train. It turned out a lot of their fans, and as I recall, even the Mayor of one of the towns, expected them to play for free.
Janis Joplin from Festival Express:
Wow, almost 40 years later, and her singing still sends chills down my spine. One of the sweetest scenes in the film is when Jerry Garcia awkwardly tells Janis how sweet he’s always been on her, and she’s like “Aww! Then a while further down the road they come on stage hand and hand. What can I say, I’m a romantic!
So, the Napster generation (original Napster, not the corporate version I listen to now) didn’t start the idea that music should be free. I’m not quite sure why this is. Most of us want to be paid for our work, and especially our talents (if we have any – still working on that one myself!). People don’t complain (too much) about the money talented professional athletes make (and I think they realize it really would just be a home team of guys, or girls, out after after work if the games were free).
Now, some of the younger musicians have other ideas. Today’s Seattle PI reports that the local band H is for Hellgateis going to just “give away their music as they record it.” They’re going to have a club called the “Hellgate Club for Musically Advanced Ladies and Gentlemen” and in addition to giving away CDs of three new songs at each show and mp3s to their out of town fans, singer/songwriter Jamie Henkensiefken says they’re “going to have fun events for people in the club — listening parties, video shoots, maybe I’ll even invite them to my wedding.”
Awesome! I’m just not sure how well this is going to work in the long run. Hopefully there’s still enough to be made at their gigs or elsewhere to be sustainable. Sure, starting out, just having people come out and here you is great. Eventually people have families, or want a few more things in their life, and will be taking on day jobs, if they stick to music at all (and, like the weekend athletes, that’s not going to work too well for music.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m becoming an old curmudgeon!
Oh well!
I couldn’t help but be a little amused at some of the PI’s questioning thoughts on the matter: “Although no clear economic model has emerged, the music industry seems to be willing to try anything, including simply giving music away,” and “It’s a bold choice to give away one’s hard work,” given that the PI recently folded their print addition and is currently an online only publication giving their journalism away for free.
I’m not sure how that one is going to work, either. All this has been part of the irony and a dilemma for our on-line world. It’s been great having all this access to all the newspapers and music you want, many of it we wouldn’t have any idea existed if not for the internet. Yet if journalists and musicians can’t find a new model and make enough money from their talents, what will we have left? Yes, everyone with a blog thinks they’re a journalist, and every karoke singer and Guitar Hero player thinks they’re a star; but really. . . Will we have in depth investigative reporting? Will groups like H is for Hellgate still be together playing great music years later, with the fans wondering why they’re starting to look old?
Wednesday afternoon, James von Brunn, an 88 year old white supremacist, walked into the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC and shot and fatally wounded a security guard, Stephen Johns, before being shot and killed himself by the other security guards.
When does all this hatred and bigotry end? Past and present mingled together, as reported by the Washington Post:
Visitor Liliane Willens was heading into a basement auditorium to listen to a Holocaust survivor talk about her wartime experiences when she heard a noise that sounded like a roof falling in.
The audience in the crowded auditorium was told to stay put and that there had been a shooting but that people were safe where they were, she said.
Eventually, the Holocaust survivor went on with her presentation.
“It was quite ironic, because here was somebody talking about a tragedy in World War II, and here was this tragedy going on outside,” Willens said.
Another Washington Post article contains, to me, the most disturbing quote of the day, by an acquaintance and fellow white supremacist, John de Nugent:
“The responsible white separatist community condemns this,” he said. “It makes us look bad.”
Where have I heard this kind of thing before? Well, of course, a lot of places; but most recently, after another right-wing spurred killing, by the extremists in the anti-abortion movement.
Bill O’Reilly repeatedly referred to the recently murdered Dr. George Tiller as “Tiller the baby killer.” Yet, he’s “shocked, shocked” when a fellow anti-abortionist guns down Dr. Tiller, who was handing out church programs at his Kansas City church.
As Leslie Savan describes of O’Reilly’s broadcast the next day in The Nation’s blog:
O’Reilly briefly explained–after Dr. George Tiller was murdered, not before–why vigilantism and murdering those with whom you disagree is wrong. Then, he spent the rest of the four minutes bolstering his story–”no back-pedaling here…every single thing we said about Tiller was true”–and performing the old “I’m the victim” Fox-trot. “When I heard about Tiller’s murder,” he said, “I knew pro-abortion zealots and Fox News haters would attempt to blame us for the crime, and that is exactly what has happened.”
Tiller’s name first appeared on “The Factor” on Feb. 25, 2005. Since then, O’Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as “Tiller the Baby Killer.”
Tiller, O’Reilly likes to say, “destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000.” He’s guilty of “Nazi stuff,” said O’Reilly on June 8, 2005; a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida, he suggested on March 15, 2006. “This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao’s China, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Soviet Union,” said O’Reilly on Nov. 9, 2006.
While O’Reilly feels no guilt, as Leslie Savan also notes on the Nation’s blog, former anti-abortion activist Frank Schaeffer does see how his and other’s words contributed to the murder of Dr. Tiller and other doctors, as he notes in the Huffington Post:
My late father and I share the blame (with many others) for the murder of Dr. George Tiller the abortion doctor gunned down on Sunday. Until I got out of the religious right (in the mid-1980s) and repented of my former hate-filled rhetoric I was both a leader of the so-called pro-life movement and a part of a Republican Party hate machine masquerading as the moral conscience of America.
Here is Frank Schaeffer being interviewed by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC:
Now, Dr. Tiller was one of the few doctors providing third trimester abortions. In the Huffington Post, Mr. Schaeffer claims
Contributing to an extreme and sometimes violent climate has not only been the fault of the antiabortion crusaders. The Roe v. Wade decision went to far, too fast and was too sweeping. I believe that abortion should be legal. But I also believe that it should be re-regulated according to fetal development. It’s the late term abortions that horrify most people. that this is where the law goes to far, contributing to the climate of violence.
Who are these women who have late term abortions. Are they as Salon says O’Reilly portrays them?
Tiller’s excuses for performing late-term abortions, O’Reilly suggested, were frou-frou, New Age, false ailments: The woman might have a headache or anxiety, or have been dumped by her boyfriend. She might be “depressed,” scoffed O’Reilly, which he dismissed as “feeling a bit blue and carr[ying] a certified check.”
Barbara Shelly in the Kansas City Startells the story of one couple who came to Dr. Tiller’s clinic for help.
Phillip Wood and his wife were joyfully preparing for the births of twin boys when, midway through the pregnancy, everything went wrong.
They drove from their home in Missouri to a hospital in Florida in hopes of a surgical procedure to save the boys.
Doctors at the Catholic-affiliated hospital told them neither twin would survive, and his wife was at risk of a ruptured uterus. That would make her infertile and could threaten her life.
After being turned away at a clinic in Illinois because the fetuses were too far along by the guidelines they had to follow.
They ran the gantlet of protesters, who pleaded with Woods’ wife not to end her pregnancy. Inside, they signed forms required by the state informing them, among other things, that their sons looked human and could feel pain.
About Dr. Tiller, Mr. Wood said: “He took time to listen to us. He was very appropriate and involved me in all steps of the abortion.”
After the twins had been aborted, Tiller gave the parents time with them. They performed a brief baptismal ceremony.
“While I held the bodies of my sons he stood to the side and wept, very quietly and very briefly,” Wood said.
So we meet one of the couples the anti-abortionists are demonizing on the issue of late term abortion.
Tiller, the physician slain on Sunday in Wichita, was too often defined by his adversaries. On Web sites, TV and radio talk shows, and in legislative hearings, they portrayed him as the reckless “abortionist,” willing to euthanize babies close to birth just so the mother could fit into a prom dress or attend a rock concert.
That portrayal always defied logic. Would someone in the third trimester of pregnancy really travel to the heart of Kansas and pay a $6,000 medical fee just to fit into a size 6 party dress?
The Woods are very much the typical patient who after much agonizing, choose a late abortion, or the 9–year-old girl raped by her father who Judith Warner writes about in her blog in the New York Times. As Barbara Shelly’s Kansas City Star blog notes:
The overwhelming majority of the 250 to 300 women a year who sought late-term abortions from Tiller had planned their pregnancies. They came to him heartbroken and afraid, carrying fetuses with malfunctioning kidneys, missing organs and syndromes certain to cause death in the womb or soon after birth.
A much smaller number of late-term patients were rape and incest victims, sometimes very young girls. Some were directed to Tiller by prosecutors.
Contrary to the false portrayal of him by anti-abortion activists and politicians, Tiller didn’t automatically consent to perform an abortion for any patient who requested one. He understood the constraints of Kansas law and he knew he was being watched.
But even in those instances, he tried to help. Over the years, Tiller arranged dozens of adoptions, Brownlie said.
If those of us on the left have made an error, it’s in our zeal to protect a woman’s right to choose many of us have not examined this issue and have not realized either what kind of choice women are likely going through when their pregnancy gets to this point and then chooses to end it. Those of us willing to defend late term abortion are usually doing it from the point of view that we defend a woman’s choice at any point, while maybe because they think these abortions are frivolous and heartless as O’Reilly depicts it, ending pregnancy this late is beyond the point other women are willing to defend. Precisely because most of us don’t realize these are women (and couples) in desperation because of serious birth defects, or children who are victims of incest or rape so young they will be in danger if they give birth. I had wrongly thought that, of course we protect women in both those circumstances.
Are anti-abortion attacks domestic terrorism, as the PBS show NOW asks in yesterday’s episode chronicling what another doctor and his family go through because of his work at an abortion clinic? I’d say definitely yes, and unfortunately one that authorities often don’t want to look as closely at.
Do words have consequences, and are calls to extremism, whether by the right or left incitements to violence, as Mr. Schaeffer says (and many columnists on the left say in reference to O’Reilly?):
Angry speech has become the norm in American religion from both the right and the left. Words are spoken which — when taken seriously — lead directly to violence by the unhinged and/or the truly committed.
When evangelicals on the right call President Obama a socialist, a racist, anti-American, an abortionist, not a real American, and, echoing the former Vice President, someone who is weakening America’s defenses and making us less safe, the logical conclusion is violence. If you take these words literally you might pull the trigger to “make America safe” and/or free us from communism or to even protect us from — what some “Christian” leaders claim — Obama as the Antichrist.
Here is the problem. I believe it does, and we are in for truly dangerous times from the far right. To be fair, I think the rhetoric of the far edge of the left in the 60’s led to a few extremists who killed people (something, ironically, O’Reilly likes to dredge up from the past).
Yet, there’s O’Reilly’s defender in his right to free speech, who I agree with, too. Yes, ironically, it’s the ACLU. You didn’t think they just defended us lefties! When questioned about the accusations O’Reilly was to blame for Dr. Tiller’s murder by some liberal journalists and bloggers (bringing up footage of O’Reilly repeatedly saying “Tiller the baby killer”) in the New York Times:
Burt Neuborne, a professor of law at New York University and a former legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union, said that while the debate was not new, “the ability to technologically call up snippets of speech” is.
Mr. Neuborne said that a commentator’s language, no matter how colorful, generally cannot be treated as an incitement unless it directly instructs individuals to commit violence.
“In every complex political setting, there’s a tendency to single out the loudest of the other side and claim that what they’re doing is not political speech but is incitement,” he said. “It’s important not to allow that to happen. It would have a dramatic effect on the ability to speak vigorously.”
To some extent I agree here, too; even though it’s contradictory. It is the dilemma of freedom of speech. On the one had, I don’t want to see people’s right to say what they believe censored (even if it’s the total opposite of what I believe). Yet, what about when the speech is urging people to violence and urging them to de-humanize others? It was very much the use of hate filled speech that started things off in Hitler’s Germany and by the government controlled radio in Rwanda.
On the other hand, Bill Moyers brought up another important part of the equation on his commentary at the end of Bill Moyers Journal last night, and in Truthout online: “Why have we stopped talking about guns?”
As Moyers noted, the Holocaust Museum shooting, Tiller’s murder and a less well known case of a shooting at a military recruiting office in Little Rock were not the only ones this year.
Soon, however, these terrible deeds will be forgotten, as are already the three policemen killed by an assault weapon in Pittsburgh; the four policemen killed in Oakland, California; the 13 people gunned down in Binghamton, New York; the 10 in an Alabama shooting spree; five in Santa Clara, California; the eight dead in a North Carolina, nursing home. All during this year alone.
Certainly I wouldn’t classify all these murders as hate crimes. The terrible shootings of immigrants and those helping them, by another immigrant, in Binghamton, New York, near where I grew up was obviously the work of a crazy man (come to think of it, many hate crimes are as well). Then there are the killings by criminals in the midst of their crimes.
So, Mr. Moyers takes issue with us only talking about hate:
There is much talk about hate talk; hate crimes against blacks, whites, immigrants, Muslims, Jews; about violence committed in the name of bigotry or religion. But why don’t we talk about guns?
We’re arming ourselves to death. Even as gunshots ricocheted around the country, an amendment allowing concealed weapons in national parks snuck into the popular credit card reform bill. Another victory for the gun lobby, to sounds of silence from the White House.
As Moyers points out “neither party will stand up to the National Rifle Association, the best known front group for the arms merchants.” He goes on to mention a conservative organization who, after the Holocaust Museum shooting on Wednesday, offered him and others in the media “a chance to interview the founder of ‘Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership,’ whose expertise, it was said, is in helping people understand why gun control doesn’t belong in a civilized society.”
Thanks, but no thanks. And no thanks to his counterparts among Christians and Muslims who use every violent shedding of blood to try to promote the worship of guns. Guns don’t kill people, they say. People kill people. True. People kill people – with guns.
So let the faithful of every persuasion keep their guns for hunting and skeet, for trap and target practice, for collecting. They can even have a permit for a gun to protect their business or home, even though it’s 22 times more likely to shoot a member of the family (including suicides) than an intruder.
But please, there are already some 200 million, privately owned firearms in America. Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and in some years more than 400,000 non-fatal, gun-related assaults. The next time someone wades through a pool of blood to sidle up and champion the preservation of firearms, can’t we just say, no thanks?
Enough’s enough.
Which, ironically, brings me back to the actual lyrics for the misheard one’s I joked about from Pearl Jam’s Glorified G in my last post. While contemplating what the band means by the metaphor of “four or five virgins and a pelican” must make for some interesting discussions, what Eddie’s actually singing is “glorified version of a pellet gun” and that odd (but too common) juxtaposition of God and guns that Moyers also noted:
Got a gun, fact I got two
That’s ok man, cuz I love god
Glorified version of a pellet gun
Feels so manly, when armed
Glorified version of a pellet gun
Glorified version of a pellet gun
Glorified version of a pellet gun
Glorified version of a pellet gun
While whether words kill people is subject to debate (and I think they can contribute), one thing is certain, guns kill people; or rather, as Bill Moyers noted, people with guns kill people. Why aren’t we talking about guns? At least, most of us.
Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, wrote – just days before the Holocaust Museum incident – that “rather than propose concrete action that makes it harder for dangerous people to get firearms – while still respecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners – all Washington can seem to muster after high-profile shootings are ‘thoughts and prayers’ for the victims and their families.
Why can’t we come up with some common sense gun laws? Should people with criminal records or mental illness be able to easily buy guns? I know gun rights advocates always claim laws are already on the books. If so, why aren’t they being enforced? How about some limits as to where people can have guns? Guns in National Parks? Seriously?!! Seattle had the common sense to ban them from our Folklife concerts at Seattle Center (following a shooting).
There’s still this frontier mystique by gun lovers, that somehow we’ll all be safer if everyone started packing a six shooter on our hip.
Sorry to intrude with reality, but too many people are already being killed by guns. No, I won’t feel any safer being caught in the middle of shoot outs on the bus or during highway road range, or from someone a little crazy trying to get away from the voices in his head at a National Park.
What I am certain of is that we could use less hate and fewer guns.
