Peter N. Kirstein

The blog, Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit, has been previously praised for its elevation of the technical aspects of my article and the utilisation of links. I have also critiqued it for its reactionary politics and lack of catholicity: small “c.” There have been quite a few comments on my article which, as one would expect on a Jesuit-inspired laity weblog, are noteworthy for their civility. They are responding to the  “The People’s Historian and the F.B.I. Zinn Files.” The article mentions the joint humanitarian mission of Dr Howard Zinn and Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan to Hanoi in 1968 that freed three airpersons shot down in this genocidal conflict in which two to three million Vietnamese were ruthlessly slaughtered by American imperialist forces.

St Ignatius of Loyola: a Spaniard and founder of the Jesuits and warrior for Jesus. I prefer a different approach than his but recognise his importance in founding the greatest order in terms of Catholic academic excellence in this country if not throughout the Roman Catholic world.

I went to Saint Louis University for graduate school, a top-tier Roman Catholic university, yes there are some, which is run by the Jesuits. It was my favourite institution. I also taught there and enjoyed my greatest amount of academic freedom. I liked it more than grade school, high school, college. The Jesuits are a class act and the academic leaders in Roman Catholic higher education. They take education very seriously and are amazingly good at fund raising or as the patois of the day refers to it as institutional advancement. Why don’t they just speak truth to power, “begging for bread for buildings.”

17 comments:

Henry said…

August 9, 2010 8:47 AM

TonyD said…

At this point, I’m never surprised when I hear someone dismiss important Biblical values with “that’s just someone religious speaking”. And, on other occasions, when I’ve heard good policy dismissed with “that’s just a conservative Republican speaking”.

I’m not quite sure how God’s values have come to be associated with Communism, Democracy, Republicans, or Democrats. All of those organizations reflect a very non-omniscient perspective.

Why do we keep mistaking God’s values for our judgment?

August 9, 2010 12:46 PM

Marc said…

I suppose peace movements associate with communists because it is closer to the Christian ideal -sharing things in common and eschewing wealth and so on – at least in theory, than free-market capitalism.

Zinn was always one-sided and arrogant in his approach I thought – which lionized him on the left but relegated him to fringe off the mainstream.

Old Dan certainly led Hoover on a merry chase for awhile there didn’t he? On the FBI’s most wanted – like old Bin Laden – funny how they can’t catch that guy with all their technology and $ and all….

I agree TonyD – God does not belong to a political party but…isn’t that where the rubber meets the road with the strength of say the fundamentalists or the catholic workers? What they share in common is a refusal to compartmentalize their religion.

August 9, 2010 4:24 PM

Anonymous said…

I never much liked Zinn’s kind of advocacy history writing but I don’t think the William Bennett/Lynn Cheney celebratory approach is valid either. That’s not real history.

I am grateful for Fr. Berrigan’s faithful service to the Faith and the cause of peace,

August 9, 2010 6:11 PM

TonyD said…

I’ve spent a fair amount of time around Fundamentalists (none around Catholic Workers.) They were very Republican. As a result, their judgment was distorted. Somehow the Republican values became equated to Christian values. Very disappointing.

There was a similar issue a few days back on this blog. Some Jesuits were concerned about changes to the “credit hour” laws. We tend to confuse societal laws with God’s laws – and take a position.

August 9, 2010 8:35 PM

Anonymous said…

There were at least 10,000 other such communist ideal incidents, not counting the tens of thousands they murdered after they broke the Paris Peace Accords and the US vietcongress aided and abetted the rape and murder several hundred thousand in Vietnam, Republic of.

August 10, 2010 5:15 PM

Anonymous said…

August 11, 2010 6:52 AM

Anonymous said…

Jeez.

August 11, 2010 7:57 PM

Peter N. Kirstein said…

August 12, 2010 1:14 PM

Joseph Fromm said…

Dear Peter,
Thank for the illuminating article linking Communism, Liberation Theology and the Pacifist Movement.
JMJ

Joe

August 14, 2010 7:12 AM

Joseph Fromm said…

1.Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit gratuitously and disgracefully refers to the late Dr Zinn in its title as a “Notorious Communist” and deliberately omits that portion of my article in which that affiliation is denied.

Answer: I use the term notorious, because Dr. Zinn fits the definition
1. widely and unfavorably known:
2. publicly or generally known, as for a particular trait:

2.It also altered my article by changing “communist” to “communist.” It is customary to indicate when an emphasis is added to a quoted document. Mr Joseph Fromm changed plain test to italicized text to emphasize his disapproval of communism which he has perhaps never studied or analyzed.

Answer: I always italicize any word in quotes as a way for people to more easy read my posts.
I have studied Communism my whole life. I reject every bit of its disastrous premise and out comes.
It is at its very core is anti-reason, anti-human and most importantly anti-God.

Read Peter’s full post at http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/archives/5554

Jesus, Mary and Joseph

Joe

August 16, 2010 9:52 PM

TonyD said…

1. This is your blog. You can call someone notorious, italicize text, and disapprove of communism if you feel so inclined.

2. Dr. Zinn joked about being called a communist – he was quite clear that he was not a communist. I heard him criticize communism and communist states. Would you be surprised to hear that a person or organization can be attacked and mischaracterized for saying things that go against powerful interests?

As for Communism — a group of Catholics who understood God’s values could create an effective Communist society. Or an effective Socialist society. Or an effective Democratic society. Our souls do not depend on our society’s organization.

August 18, 2010 1:21 PM

Joseph Fromm said…

Tony D.
Thanks for your comment. You are correct a person Salvation is independent of the governmental structure one finds oneself in. However, the Communist reign of terror over the past 100 years at all points around the globe is demonic. Socialism support of abortion and its war against the family is also demonic, both forms of government seek to deny the sacraments to the faithful, in effect erasing the results of Christian charity and the civilization of Christendom.

Tony we may have to agree to disagree.

JMJ
Joe

August 19, 2010 10:35 PM

TonyD said…

I don’t think we particularly disagree.

On the religious issue, which is the important one, we seem to have a similar perspective.

I’m not too worried about perspectives on Communism – except to the extent that they displace real Church teaching.

August 20, 2010 6:53 PM

TonyD said…

Now that the readers have become a very small group, I’d like to add a few observations. These observations are not specific to Communism.

Communism may be called good. Communism may be called evil. Communism may be called both good and evil. Communism may be called neither good nor evil. Communism may be called any blend of those characteristics.

Communism must be categorized in these ways – depending on the observer, the aspects observed, and the will of God. That is, all those seemingly contradictory categorizations are correct for specific people.

So the categorization of the categorization made by a person may be good. Or may be evil. Or may be some blend of those characteristics. This categorization, too, depends on the particular person and God’s judgment.

Thus, the search for “truth” and “facts” is often misguided. This loss of “certain knowledge” is more than offset by an understanding of “higher things”.

August 21, 2010 3:57 PM

TonyD said…

I’d like to add an additional thought. On one hand, my explanation above was deliberately abstruse. But there is one implication worth clarifying.

The “golden rule” can be used to measure ones understanding of God’s laws. To the extent that a person interprets the “golden rule” to be exclusively about their own values (eg. “the truth”) they are misunderstanding God’s law. Conversely, to the extent that they interpret the “golden rule” to be about others’ values, they are understanding God’s law. (And sometimes one must adopt others’ values. Judgment is involved. I hope that no one reading this was hoping for simple rules to follow.)

Further, as one becomes more of a “vessel” one becomes more open to receiving divine revelation.

I should add that this is not a recipe for any short-term happiness. Or any “improvement” in society. In fact, the “loss of self” is a very real cost — and hard to understand until it is experienced.

August 22, 2010 2:31 PM

Peter N. Kirstein said…

Communism is good. In fact it is an ideal system because it opposes capitalism which is the true “demonic” system. I do refer principally to its devolution as theory as opposed to its excesses as state capitalism after 1917. However even “communist” nations had some positive virtues: they contained American military power and its monstrous imperialism for roughly fifty years and defeated German national socialism in the 1940s.

Abortion is a tragedy but very much ingrained as part of women’s search for equal justice. To deny a woman the right to terminate her pregnancy would be offensive to the notion of justice, the right to privacy, and the right to be left alone. Women cannot be forced to give birth against their will. It is unseemly to demand this but I recognise the competing moral visions here. I care more about the post-birth person as opposed to the pre-birth fetus as controlling the fate or actions of an individual. I teach at a Roman Catholic university but will not hestitate to maintain my sense of dignity, morality and academic freedom.

August 30, 2010 5:34 PM

It should not be forgotten that Governor Rod Blagojevich during his two terms, up to his political witchhunt of impeachment and removal, did continue the death penalty moratorium of his predecessor, George Ryan. In Illinois African-Americans and Latinos were being murdered by the state despite their innocence. Governor Ryan essentially cleared the death-row inmate population in an act still considered extraordinary and courageous. Mr Ryan, now in prison, was a Republican but in the spirit of bipartisanship, his Democratic successor, Governor Blagojevich, continued the ban of executions in Illinois due to the broken, evil and legally inept criminal justice system. The governor is not a Falstaffian figure. He is not a biopic cartoon. He is not a caricature. He saved lives by not taking them. The federal jury, incorrectly and ineptly described as a grand jury by the Huffington Post, (Grand Juries don’t decide cases but only whether to allow a prosecution of a case!) could not convict him on any charge of conspiracy, extortion, kickback schemes, racketeering, fraud and selling of Senate seats or any major criminal act. Only the charge of lying to the feds stuck and there was no court reporter during his interview with the F.B.I.

It’s true. This country has not learned from its past. I live in a community in Chicago’s suburbs that refused to allow a mosque to be built in 2000 and beyond. Our mayor courageously defended it but the Muslim community simply abandoned the project after years of draining litigation and community racist opposition. They built one in nearby Orland Park which has been a credit to the community even if it too conservative and frankly inimical to radical, progressive views. I have also spoken in a mosque in Bridgeview or more precisely in a Muslim school attached to the mosque. At the peak of the racist passion in Palos Heights facilitated by a biased city council that wanted to terminate a legal property transfer, this statement was issued: “Government has no place in this matter,” said Mayor Dean Koldenhoven, sitting beneath Norman Rockwell portraits illustrating “Freedom to Worship” and “Freedom of Speech.” The mayor was a supporter of the mosque and Caroline Kennedy presented him a Profile in Courage Award in 2002. Unlike Senator Harry Reid, who now cravenly opposes the Ground Zero mosque due to his fear of losing his majority leadership and Senate seat, Mayor Koldenhoven was willing to put principle over loathsome self-interest: He lost reelection because of his ethical defence of the Constitution with its supposed First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion. There is practically a church on every corner here in this “religious community” but no Mosque was allowed.

This brings us to the racist bigotry of the moment. The Anti-Defamation League, another adjunct of the Israel Lobby despite its dropping “of B’nai B’rith” from its nom de guerre, is the apex of defamation and hypocrisy. They have the hypocritical arrogance to declaim against blurring the separation of church and state on their website but want New York City to prohibit the Muslim faith from being practiced in a mosque!! They censored David Irving’s important book Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich that was about to be released by St Martin’s Press without having read the manuscript simply because of their hatred of the author. Who are they to determine what Americans read? Who do they think they are! Now these censors want to deny Americans who practice Islam from praying TWO BLOCKS FROM GROUND ZERO because of its hatred of Muslims. This is about racism. This is about collective guilt that all Muslims must be terrorists as if we as a nation are not mass murderers along with some of our partners such as Israel. {Read the magisterial and bold Goldstone Report!} This is about prejudice in a nation that has not learned from its past. To talk about Ground Zero as hallowed and sacred ground is nuts. There is a Roman Catholic church in the vicinity and apartment buildings. The mosque is not on the site of the former twin towers but blocks away. I know the area well when I stayed near there a couple of years ago while speaking at New York University. I walked it and took pictures of it.

Those who oppose this Lower Manhattan mosque are shameless and prejudiced. They are proof that this nation, that claims to be the beacon of freedom and democracy, is a biased, violent nation that won’t even ask itself this question: “Why were there attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001?” Maybe if this imperialistic nation would act less as a hyperpower and more modestly and listen to others it may have the answer. 1) the stationing of troops in Saudi where the holiest sites of Islam are located 2) the invasion of Iraq after Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait 3) the refusal to force Israel to abandon its occupation of Palestine and its confiscation of territory that does not belong to it.

Of course 9/11 was evil. Of course it was horrific. Of course it was tragic. However, unless one believes all Muslims are responsible and the organisers of the New York mosque are fifth columns, then one has  no rational, ethical or reasoned argument to prevent American citizens from practicing their faith in Lower Manhattan given appropriate licensing and local ordinances.

Shame on you Islamophobes. You who oppose the mosque are a disgrace to yourself and this country and you need to know exactly what you are: racists, xenophobes and ethnocentric bigots. There is no, repeat no, moral, ethical or legal justification to deny Muslims their right to construct a mosque at this location. None!!

Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit gratuitously and disgracefully refers to the late Dr Zinn in its title as a “Notorious Communist” and deliberately omits that portion of my article in which that affiliation is denied. I give precise documentation that Dr Zinn denied such as association and an opinion that such an association would confer honour especially during the time of the noxious Cold War imperialism of the United States. Nothing like objectivity I must say!! It also altered my article by changing “communist” to “communist.” It is customary to indicate when an emphasis is added to a quoted document.  Mr Joseph Fromm changed plain test to italicised text to emphasise his disapproval of communism which he has perhaps never studied or analysed. He should have added: “Emphasis added.” It was not mine to be sure!! Some might say I am too sensitive that a non-scholarly source altered a single word’s emphasis. I appreciate his generous response to my comment on his blog; it was very Jesuitical, even though he is not a Jesuit, but I needed to comment on these matters further here.

Also to the extent that communism, an imperfect ideology to be sure, advocates for the common person and excoriates economic disparities and injustices, one might at least stop to ponder whether communism in theory contains many positive attributes.

A final note: read about the Scottsboro Boys incident in 1931 which was one of the most egregious and shameful violations of due process and display of vicious racism. Who alone defended these innocents? The International Labour Defense, a communist-inspired courageous group. The N.A.A.C.P. was reluctant to defend or even cooperate with the I.L.D. to refute the charges of rape, and the African-American “boys” chose the latter to defend them. The Communist Party, U.S.A., was one of the few groups in the 1930s that spoke out against Jim Crow and American apartheid in the South. From the Share Croppers’ Union to other labour actions, it was the communists who led the fight for social justice.

A website, called Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit has added various accoutrements to my HNN article on the legacy of Dr. Howard Zinn and the execrable, recently released F.B.I. files: “The People’s Historian and the F.B.I. Zinn Files.”

1) They inserted numerous links that are reproduced below minus the ones I found somewhat ”irreverent.” No pun intended.

2) They created a podcast of the introductory paragraph and a portion of the article dealing with Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan. It was clearly a computer driven voice which mispronounced my last name. I noted with some bemusement a link to a dictionary definition of “coterminous” which simply means at the same time or happening simultaneously.

The slant of the website is rather conservative and I really do not know much about its provenance. I do know the Jesuits that educated me at Saint Louis University were one of the more liberal, progressive religious orders within the Roman Catholic Church: after all they did produce the great Berrigan.

Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J. (far left) and Howard Zinn (overcoat) from Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit blog

Excerpts of HNN article from the Jesuit blog:

Howard Zinn was the quintessential scholar activist at the time of his death at age eighty-seven in Santa Monica, California on January 27, 2010.  He had been the target of a quarter-century long FBI surveillance operation.  Just four years after his return from World War II in 1945, the FBI opened its investigatory file on Dr. Zinn (hereafter referred to as the Zinn Files).  The 423-page report monitored his activities as special agents and unscrupulous informants throughout the country recorded his growing influence in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements.  His residences, phone numbers, attendance at meetings and numerous public utterances were recorded and filed.  His spouse, Roslyn Zinn, also came under FBI scrutiny. The Zinn Files were declassified and released on July 30, 2010.  Reflecting embryonic McCarthyism before Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s Wheeling address,  (entitled “Enemies from Within”) it established early on a “Communist Party: Counterintelligence Program” dossier.  The FBI repeatedly accused Howard Zinn of being a Communist Party member from 1949-1953.  Special Agent Edward Scheidt requested on March 9, 1949 that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover investigate the “communist” Howard Zinn………

He journeyed with Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan, later of Catonsville IX glory, on a rescue mission to Hanoi in February 1968.  They secured the first release of American prisoners of war who were shot down over North Vietnam.

My article, “The People’s Historian and the FBI Zinn Files,” that was published by HNN (History News Network) at George Mason University has appeared as a link on the Philadelphia Inquirer and Dallas Morning News websites.

According to recent figures, these two papers are among the largest in circulation. I do not know what their online hits are but am pleased to see the HNN article on “F.B.I. police-state America” appear on their webpages.

While I don’t think the US deserves to have the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone as part of its geopolitical sphere, I say to those who have not been there, consider going.

1) snow-capped peaks

2) Bison grazing wildly near a road

3) waterfalls

4) clear streams driven by snow melt that one could possibly drink from

5) trams to mountain peaks such as Mt Rendezvous in Teton Village, Wyoming where you can touch and throw snow in June.

6) Swiss-like scenary of lakes surrounded by snow-capped peaks.

7) views of forests below a highway as if one is in a dream.

8) no tailgating, or crowds, or lots of people. Just nature of inestimable beauty.

9) Being enshrouded with tree-pollen mist as one sees a red squirrel scamper.

10) The oil baron and entrepreneurial thief John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil and moving force in the emergence of big oil (yikes), through his various progeny donated a huge chunk of the Grand Tetons including the Rockefeller Preserve. I went on a three-miles hike with a tour-guide of the National Park Service.  Her name is Cathee. She read poetry, passed out epigrammatic literature, had us throw a ball of thread that made a network of criss-crosses symbolising our symbiotic networking with humans and nature. Note: this was a government employee leading a group of ten down to Phelps Lake or up to it.  She was a throwback to the days of contemplation and Thoreau-like respect for nature.  President Obama did provide some funding in his stimulus package to this area: at leat 23 million extra and so the government while broke except for its war spending, did commit to keep this paradise open and thriving.

The Rockefellers stole their wealth from other companies through spying and robbing railroads through rebates and driving out competitors through predatory practices. Read Ida Tarbell’s The History of Standard Oil. John D. Jr bought with his blood money gobs of this area for fun and recreation and then gave peacemeal to the US. What about his workers? What did they get?Yeah, I am glad Laurance, one of the Rockies, gave this preserve to the government which has been open for only three years in the Grand Tetons: which are south of Yellowstone. They owned thousands of acres and again, how did they get their wealth? 

Yet aside from critical thinking, there are few places on earth as pristine, well-managed and beautiful as this area.  It is literally a wonderland. One day I imagine, they will probably nuke it as a test-range and have generals on Meet the Press talking about national security but until then, go see it if you can and you will see what I mean.

Phelps Lake: Rockefeller Preserve within Grand Teton National Park.

Yet it is disgraceful that one has to pay $25.00 to enter either Grand Tetons or Yellowstone: although both are good for the pass. Yes it is valid for a week but I spoke to some hotel staff near the area that could not afford it. I gave my pass to Lauren, a pool attendant at my hotel, which still had a few days left on it. She said: “Oh, thank you. I will give it to my father and we can go into the parks.” I thought to myself: they live here, work here and given this country’s economic venality, have to rely on guests to get a pass to see their own area where they labour their lives away serving vacationers.

I saw this geyser in Yellowstone. It was scheduled to erupt at 10:23 am but waited until 10:30 or so. I did not know that Old Faithful was in a geyser park with others right near it. Also these hot springs are constantly emitting steam. I thought they were dormant until the pressure built up and then they released their water. But really, these geysers are always doing something. I have to say I expected a somewhat more spectacular show than what I saw but if you are into geysers and wish to see one erupt fairly regularly, then Old Faithful is the one for you.

There are two-row benches that are available for  viewing that stretch about one-fifth of a mile in a semi-circle. Folks were sitting and standing and it was quite crowded despite early morn. The drive from the south entrance is about 40 miles; for me the Grand Tetons are even more spectacular but I have to admit seeing bison/buffalo grazing in Yellowstone was something I was moved to see: I also thought back to the genocide and holocaust in the west when army and other butchers came out here and killed off the buffalo so the discoverers of America–or their ancestors–would not have enough to eat or shelter derived from them. Yeah I know. the Natives sold their pelts to fashion conscious easterners into buffalo/bison coats. But the Native-Americans did not kill bison for sport, or for war-related means but for cash, food, eating implements, tents. So the three bison I saw were the remnants of the genocide.

This country of the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone, stolen by white settlers, homesteaders, explorers and armies is now a national park. Like taking wild animals and putting them into a zoo, this wonderland of falls, snow-capped mountains, wildlife, rapids, postcard views really is the great theft of a murderous nation from its stealing of the west, from Texas to California to say the least. This power grabbing is ongoing with the holocausts of Nagasaki, Christmas bombing and mass murder in Iraq and Afghaistan with General Petraus being urged to abandon any pretext of sparing civilian casualties. At least big-mouth McChrystal at least supposedly tried to limit the murder of babies, women and other non-combatants. Slick Petreaus may have a different game to bring: free-fire zones.

Have fun in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone in Vice President Dick Cheney’s home state of Wyoming.

Let’s be direct. Helen Thomas tried early last year on February 9, 2009 to get an American president to concede at a nationally televised press conference what everyone knows, that the State of Israel has nuclear weapons. She asked Barack Hussein Obama at a press conference if he knew of any nation in the Middle East that had nuclear weapons. Barack Obama dodged it by refusing to ”speculate” because America has accepted hook, line and sinker the dumb Israeli policy of “nuclear ambiguity.” Yet even Israel itself has conceded repeatedly it has nuclear weapons: remember Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s 2006 nuclear confession on Berlin Radio? remember Mordecahi Vanunu whistle blowing in 1986 and an eighteen year prison sentence for showing photos of Dimona, remember the nuclear test with South Africa in the South Atlantic in 1979 picked up by a Vela sateliite. The charade of “ambiguity” that Ms Thomas was attempting to puncture was a mark of journalistic courage and taboo challenging. Given the mania over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, it is essential that all nations in the region account for their nuclear materials: not just Iran. In fact Iran IS MUCH MORE TRANSPARENT IN ITS NUCLEAR FISSILE MATERIALS THAN ISRAEL IS.

Yes Israelis should get out of Palestine; yes Americans should get out of America; yes Brits and their heirs should get out of Australia and New Zealand. What Israel has done in Palestine is similar to many colonial invasions: displaced an aboriginal  population or in this case 700,000 Palestinians. Much of the US southwest for example was simply stolen in a landgrab from Mexico in the great-theft  Mexican war of 1846-1848. Huge swaths of Mexico from California to Texas were just stolen by the US. The entire continent was inhabited by Native Americans before the Columbian exchange in the 15th century. Zionism did lead to a similar pattern of disenfranchisement, displacement and tragic dispossesion of native peoples.

Ms Thomas would have been more prudent had she qualified Palestine to mean, however, the West Bank and Gaza. Afterall, even the US has called for the abandonment of the Jewish only settlements and a two-state solution. So Ms Thomas is correct in advocating Jews get out of Palestine in the near term in specifying Gaza and the West Bank. Her comments about returning to Germany, Poland and the US was provocative but hardly worthy of her forced retirement and the national opprobium that has beset her. It was exaggerated speech based on her premise that there is an aura of illegitimacy in the Israeli colonisation and tragic establishment of apartheid in Palestine.

A more nuanced approach from Ms Thomas was needed. And a  more sophisticated and tolerant response to her statement is needed. So here is mine. I believe the State of Israel is not going away  and should not. I believe a state founded on a religion is anathema to my views as would a Christian America be repellant. To have a Jewish state with 20% Arab is democratically counterintuitive. Yet that is Israel founding ethos since 1948 and its future and security are legitimate within its internationally recognised borders. However, its occupation of Palestine outside of the 1967 borders is not. Its blockade of Gaza is not. Its concentration camp wall declared illegal in the West Bank by the International Court of Justice in 2007 is not. Its arrogant annexation of East Jerusalem is not. Its annexation of the Golan is not.

The issue is not to bully an eighty-nine year old woman into retirement for her right of protected speech and who generally is an iconic supporter of the oppressed and persecuted. We should take her remarks as needing qualification and frankly legitimate probing particularly in the light of colonialism and subaltern phenomena. No, Jews should not be forced to leave Israel. No Israel should not be dismembered. Yes it must be brought to justice and forced to abandon its militant reliance on blind force that has violated International Humanitarian Law and the Crimes of War as defined partially by the Fourth Geneva Convention.

This is the New York Times article on Attorney General Richard  Blumenthal’s execrable lies about having “served”  in the genocidal Vietnam War. This person is running for the senate and is playing the love the military card to get elected. He was moaning and groaning about how Vietnam Vets were mistreated and how this flag waving coward would rectify that if elected to the mahogany-elite club of the Senate. What a guy!!  A typical liberal utterly cynical about mass murder and genocide that was the real lesson of Vietnam.

New York Times

760.

Peter N. Kirstein

Chicago

May 18th, 2010

11:08 am

Why someone would lie about being involved in an unjust, immoral war is beyond me. The issue of veterans beings spat upon is simply illusory. It did not happen and many monographs attest to that fact: veterans were generally greeted by family and friends at airports. Some even got parades. Yes they did not get Lindbergh-esque ticker tape parades but the war was unpopular. Unjust wars are hard on veterans because they are not celebrated for their actions. Mr Blumenthal despite his character flaws is intellectually weak on this issue. Namely, it is not the treatment of former combat veterans that is the most significant issue but the decision to send them to war to kill, destroy, wound and devastate a region or a people that is the most haunting.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal lied so he could brag being involved in this war of genocide and mass murder. Says a great deal about his capacity to understand human suffering and war crimes.

The Saint Louis Billikens have advanced to face Virginia Commonwealth in the championship series of the 2010 College Basketball Invitational. The best-of-three series begins Monday, March 29, at the Siegel Center in Richmond, Va. Tip time is 6 p.m. (CT), and HD Net will televise the entire championship series. The Billikens will host the second game of the series at Chaifetz Arena Wednesday, March 31, at 7 p.m. (CT). If needed, SLU will host the third and final game at Chaifetz Arena Friday, April 2, at 7 p.m. (CT).

The Billikens advanced to the finals with a 69-59 win over Princeton. Kwamain Mitchell tallied a game-high 21 points, including 17 in the first half, to lead SLU. Willie Reed notched his ninth double-double of the season with 20 points and 10 rebounds. The Billikens blazed the nets at a 54.5-percent clip, only the third time this season the Tigers had allowed a team to shoot better than 50 percent from the field. The Billikens are now 23-11, the most wins in a season since the 1994-95 squad also tallied 23 victories. The last SLU team with more victories is the 1988-89 team which set a school record with 27 triumphs.The Rams are 25-9 overall and posted an 11-7 record in the Colonial Athletic Association. VCU is a sparkling 17-1 at home and has won 10 straight in the Siegel Center. The Billikens will be playing a game in Richmond for the second time this season after facing Atlantic 10 foe Richmond Jan. 30. SLU will be the fourth Atlantic 10 team VCU plays this season. The Rams defeated Rhode Island, Richmond and George Washington.Tickets for game two against VCU are on sale now at the Chaifetz Arena box office and all Metrotix locations. Billiken season ticket holders can reserve their regular-season seats for the game on March 31, as well as the April 2 finale, if needed, but must do so by noon, Monday, March 29. After that time, those seats will be available for purchase by non-season ticket holders. For more ticket information or to reserve seats, please call the Billiken Ticket Office at (314) 977-4SLU, or by e-mail at tickets@slu.edu.

Tulsa (2008) and Oregon State (2009) won the previous CBIs. Each series went the full three games.

sources and images from Saint Louis University webpages and CBI.

Early Bob Dylan concert posters, flyers & programs from the 1960s

source: http://www.boblinks.com/

History News Network has generously featured my Constitution Day remarks on its Historians Roundup page. I had not known in advance of this prominent dissemination of my talk and was very flattered at their decision to do so. H.N.N. has been a very “intimate” part of my career since my suspension in 2002. They were one of the first to report on it in a manner that was objective, civil and impartial. H.N.N. also courageously invited me to publish articles of historical and contemporary issues shortly after my auto-da-fé which was primarily responsible for averting a possible McCarthyite blacklisting or academic-wide censorship of my progressive work. The views expressed in my remarks were presented as individual opinion and having not anticipated such a wide dissemination, such a disclaimer, however stupid and odious, is probably good sense as the ghost of McCarthyism always hovers above my shoulder.

Rick Shenkman, the editor, presidential historian and frequent guest on national cable shows has developed a website that  is ideologically neutral. It features articles and opinions from historians and other scholars that traverse the ideological spectrum. I am very grateful for this latest unsolicited gesture: running and featuring my Constiution Day remarks which it encountered on my blog.

Source: Peter N. Kirstein blog (9-15-09)

Constitution Day, which is actually on Sept. 17 as if it matters, should be ignored and this university (St Xavier in Chicago) should engage in academic freedom civil disobedience and avoid any connection with such a governmental requirement. Senator Robert Byrd, a former K.K.K. member who to his credit voted for President Barack Hussein Obama and eloquently opposed the Iraq war, initiated this boosterism with legislation, but we should not comply with unfunded federal mandates dictating higher education content since it invariably bleeds into nationalism and patriotic education which is the antithesis of critical thinking and liberal education.

Senator Byrd, Democrat of West Virigina: his head is superimposed but joined the K.K.K. in the Jim Crow south. He has distanced himself from his youthful support of domestic terrorism.

Yet I never say no to student invitations and this is the second time I have participated in such an activity that implicitly, however subtly, suggests adulation of a founding document based on racism, slavery, genocide, sexism and misogyny.

Yet the next best thing is to insure that the Constitution is seen for what it is: a fake, class-based document that selectively confers democratic freedoms as elite class interests expropriate its meaning. Americans should not revere the constitution, gush over the Founders’ alleged touch of genius, exaggerate its protections of our supposed freedoms, anoint it with Biblical reverential inspiration and bow down to this graven image as the protector and enabler of our nation and well-being.

This view was advanced by George Bancroft (1800-1891) in the nineteenth century. Bancroft was known by some as the “father of American history.” He was a secretary of the navy, an architect of the imperialistic, racist Mexican War, minister to the United Kingdom and Germany and wrote a ten volume history of the United States which, while breaking new ground in subject matter, such as exploring the colonial period and using primary sources, was basically government propaganda in the guise of history. Many of these volumes were written before the general emancipation of slavery in 1865. Since Bancroft was indeed an anti-slavery Democrat, this quotation is even more astonishing for its hyperbolic display of Constitution love:

“The Constitution establishes nothing that interferes with equality and individuality. It knows nothing of differences by descent, or opinions, of favored classes, or legalized religion, or the political power of property. It leaves the individual alongside of the individual…. As the sea is made up of drops, American society is composed of separate, free, and constantly moving atoms, ever in reciprocal action … so that the institutions and laws of the country rise out of the masses of individual thought which, like the waters of the ocean, are rolling evermore.”

The Preamble to the Constitution appears to be progressive and inclusive:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Establish justice? Promote the general welfare? Secure the blessings of liberty? Slavery lasted over three-quarters of a century after the Constitution was adopted in 1788. We had a Jim Crow apartheid system, similar to South Africa, until 1965 almost two centuries after the meaningless little document entered into force. The subjugation of women, with particular reference to the lack of voting rights, remained in force under the Constitution for another century and a half until 1920. And these epochs of shame continued even after the Constitution was amended with the ten Bill of Rights articles in 1791.

To merely read the Constitution, and it has some rhetorical virtues to be sure, does not tell the story. It’s not what it says but whether it is enforced. It’s not what its rhetoric is but who interprets it such as the Supreme Court. It’s not about strict construction; it’s about the power elite from business to politics to the media defining how it is implemented.

For example, take the gun lobby and the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”  It does not expressly confer a federal right to bear arms outside of a state militia but just say it does, form a treacherous organisation such as the National Rifle Association, and hire Charlton Heston as your spokesperson if someone thinks killing kids in drive bys, presidents, spouses and children, Beatles’ singers, college students and professors on campuses such as Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois are appropriate prices to pay for the freedom to carry handguns and assault weapons. Tell the next dead cop’s family whether conservative law and order advocates of “right to carry” protected their father or mother in their stupid and selfish perversion of the Constitution.

Read what the Constitution says but understand the realities of power and the blinding effects of Constitution love. Who controls the government and power in this country is much more important than the Constitution’s alleged democratic provisions. Do not believe that the Constitution protects your freedoms or your rights and do not be lulled by the opium of patriotism, reverence for American founding documents and the notion of American exceptionalism.

A historian, who disagreed with Bancroft’s glorification of the Constitution was the great Charles Beard. He wrote one of the most important histories of the twentieth century: An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States in 1913. This is a quotation influenced by the materialist theories of Karl Marx whose death preceded Beard’s work by only thirty years:

“Inasmuch as the primary object of a government…is the making of the rules which determine the property relations of members of society, the dominant classes …must obtain from the government such rules as are consonant with the larger interests necessary to the continuance of their economic processes, or they must themselves control the organs of government.” Beard is stating that elites make sure those in government make rules that advance their interests and failing that take over the government to suit themselves.

Beard researched the backgrounds of the fifty-five men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 during the Constitutional Convention. Most were lawyers; most acquired wealth derived from land, chattel slavery, early manufacturing, or shipping. Forty of the fifty-five speculated or owned government bonds which would appreciate with a stronger centralised economy. (Howard Zinn, Peoples History of the United States, 90-1).

According to Howard Zinn: “Beard found that most of the makers of the Constitution had some direct economic interest in establishing a strong federal government: the manufacturers needed protective tariffs; the moneylenders wanted to stop the use of paper money to pay off debts; the land speculators wanted protection as they invaded Native-American lands; slave owners needed federal security against slave revolts and runaways; bondholders wanted a government able to raise money by nationwide taxation, to pay off those bonds.”

Beard noted in his progressive analysis that slaves, indentured servants, women and property-less males were not present at the Constitutional Convention, much less Native Americans who discovered the country.

This is why Marxism is so valuable as a component of critical thinking and pursuit of the truth. Prior to Beard, few historians adopted an economic analysis of history. It only emphasised power, politics and white-elite male rule. Marx introduced a materialist view of society that saw economic forces as the dominant motive force in political economy. While Marx exaggerated economic determinism and overlooked the essentials of non-economic forces, it drove Beard and modern progressives in many disciplines to expand the search for the truth from the vantage point of economic forces.

People do not control the Constitution but vested elite interests control the Constitution. The masses, the working class, the 46,300,000 without health insurance, the 13% unemployed Hispanics, the 15.1% of African-Americans who are unemployed, [compare to 8.9% white unemployment rate], the 13.2% of the American population living in poverty, the 18.6% of seniors living in poverty despite Medicare and Social Security and the 35.1 million on food stamps (now called Electronic Benefit Transfers!) don’t benefit from the Constitution. Adults who wish to marry others of their own gender have no national Constitutional protection. It is merely a shell, a veneer that conceals the realities of America’s class system. Those with power, with or without a rhetorically benevolent constitution, will continue to run this country and the world with bombs, arms sales, multinational corporations, nuclear non-proliferation for non-white countries and agribusiness interests with a smattering of democracy and civil rights so as to prevent a full scale insurrection here at home.

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)

It is time on this so-called Constitution Day to recognise the meaningless Constitution should be abandoned, and possibly burned as it was outside of Boston on July 4, 1854 by the glorious abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison who described the pro-slavery document as “a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell.” Let’s replace it with international law, that is creeping into Supreme Court opinions in such areas as the death penalty, which is much more progressive and supportive of democracy, the dignity of the human person, and international peace and security.

Judge Billings Learned Hand (1872-1961)

No less an authority than Learned Hand, the iconic judge of the fifth circuit United States Court of Appeals and possibly the greatest jurist never to serve on the Supreme Court, affirms much of my presentation:

We “rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts…Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.” (quote in Haridakis and Ferris, “The Use of ‘Speech Zones,’” in Morgan, 9/11 and the New Legal Landscape, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 52.)

I will contribute the highlighted entries below on J. Robert Oppenheimer and Academic Freedom.

This work has been delayed several times as a result of wanting to include the latest culture-wars phenomena of the Obama transition to power. The editor Roger Chapman has certainly undertaken an ambitious project on a topic of unending complexity and progression. While the nation is not as divided as it was during the genocide in Vietnam, there are still progressive elements that engage issues and, however meekly, demand equal justice, civil rights, women’s rights including abortion rights and an end to American imperial dominance and militarisation.

These are the current content entries which is quite comprehensive and ideologically inclusive in scope.

Abortion; Abu Ghraib and Gitmo; Academic Bill of Rights; Academic Freedom; Adler, Mortimer J.; Affirmative Action; Afrocentrism; Age Discrimination; Agnew, Spiro T.; AIDS; Alexander, Jane; Ali, Muhammad; American Century; American Civil Liberties Union; American Civil Religion; American Exceptionalism; American Indian Movement; Americans with Disabilities Act; Androgyny; Angelou, Maya; Animal Rights; Anti-Intellectualism; Anti-Semitism; Arnold, Ron; Arrow, Tre; Aryan Nations; Atwater, Lee; Automobile Safety

Baez, Joan; Bankruptcy Reform; Barbie Doll; Battle of Seattle; Beauty Pageants; Behe, Michael J.; Bell Curve, The ; Bennett, William J.; Biafra, Jello; Biotech Revolution; Birth Control; Black Panther Party; Black Radical Congress; Blackface; Bob Jones University; Bono; Book Banning; Boy Scouts of America; Bradley, Bill; Brock, David; Brokaw, Tom; Brown, Helen Gurley; Brown v. Board of Education (1954); Bryant, Anita; Buchanan, Pat; Buckley, William F., Jr.; Budenz, Louis F.; Bullard, Robert D.; Bunche, Ralph; Bush Family; Busing, School; Byrd, Robert C.

Campaign Finance Reform; Campolo, Anthony “Tony”; Canada; Capital Punishment; Carson, Rachel; Carter, Jimmy; Catholic Church; Censorship; Central Intelligence Agency; Chambers, Whittaker; Charter Schools; Chßvez, CTsar; Cheney Family; Chicago Seven; Chick, Jack; China; Chisholm, Shirley; Chomsky, Noam; Christian Coalition; Christian Radio; Christian Reconstructionism; Christmas; Church and State; Churchill, Ward; Civil Rights Movement; Clinton, Bill; Clinton, Hillary; Clinton Impeachment; Cold War; Colson, Chuck; Columbus Day; Comic Books; Comic Strips; Commager, Henry Steele; Common Cause; Commoner, Barry; Communists and Communism; Comparable Worth; Compassionate Conservatism; Confederate Flag; Conspiracy Theories; Contemporary Christian Music; Contract with America; Corporate Welfare; Coulter, Ann; Counterculture; Country Music; Creationism and Intelligent Design; Cronkite, Walter; Cuba; Culture Jamming

Dean, Howard; Dean, James; Dean, John; Deconstructionism; DeLay, Tom; Deloria, Vine, Jr.; Demjanjuk, John; Democratic Party; Diversity Training; Dobson, James; Donahue, Phil; Douglas, William O.; Dr. Phil; Drudge Report ; Drug Testing; D’Souza, Dinesh; Du Bois, W.E.B.; Dukakis, Michael; Duke, David; Dworkin, Andrea; Dylan, Bob

Earth Day; Ecoterrorism; Education Reform; Ehrenreich, Barbara; Eisenhower, Dwight D.; Election of 2000; Election of 2008; Endangered Species Act; English as the Official Language; Enola Gay Exhibit; Environmental Movement; Equal Rights Amendment; Evangelicalism; Executive Compensation

Factory Farms; Faith-Based Programs; Falwell, Jerry; Family Values; Farrakhan, Louis; Federal Budget Deficit; Federal Communications Commission; Felt, W. Mark; Feminism, Second-Wave; Feminism, Third-Wave; Ferraro, Geraldine; Flag Desecration; Fleiss, Heidi; Flynt, Larry; Focus on the Family; Fonda, Jane; Food and Drug Administration; Ford, Gerald; Foreman, Dave; Forests, Parklands, and Federal Wilderness; Foucault, Michel; Founding Fathers; France; Frank, Barney; Franken, Al; Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial; Freedom of Information Act; Friedan, Betty; Friedman, Milton; Fundamentalism, Religious; Fur

Galbraith, John Kenneth; Gangs; Gay Capital; Gay Rights Movement; Gays in Popular Culture; Gays in the Military; Gender-Inclusive Language; Generations and Generational Conflict; Genetically Modified Foods; Gibson, Mel; Gilmore, Gary; Gingrich, Newt; Ginsberg, Allen; Global Warming; Globalization; Goetz, Bernhard; Goldwater, Barry; Gonzßlez, Elißn; Gore, Al; Graffiti; Graham, Billy; Great Books; Great Society; Guardian Angels; Gun Control; Guthrie, Woody, and Arlo Guthrie

Haley, Alex; Hall, Gus; Hargis, Billy; Harrington, Michael; Hart, Gary; Harvey, Paul; Hate Crimes; Hauerwas, Stanley; Hay, Harry; Hayden, Tom; Health Care; Heavy Metal; Hefner, Hugh; Heller, Joseph; Helms, Jesse; Heritage Foundation; Hightower, Jim; Hill, Anita; Hill, Julia “Butterfly”; Hillsdale College; Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Hispanic Americans; Hiss, Alger; Hoffman, Abbie; Hollywood Ten; Holocaust; Homeschooling; hooks, bell; Hoover, J. Edgar; Horowitz, David; Horton, Willie; Human Rights; Humphrey, Hubert H.; Hunter, James Davison; Huntington, Samuel P.; Hurricane Katrina; Hutchins, Robert M.

Illegal Immigrants; Immigration Policy; Indian Casinos; Indian Sport Mascots; Individuals With Disabilities Education Act; Internet; Iran-Contra Affair; Irvine, Reed; Israel

Jackson, Jesse; Jackson, Michael; Japan; Jehovah’s Witnesses; Jesus People Movement; John Birch Society; Johnson, Lyndon B.; Jorgensen, Christine; Judicial Wars

Kennedy Family; Kerouac, Jack; Kerry, John; Kevorkian, Jack; Keyes, Alan; King, Billie Jean; King, Martin Luther, Jr.; King, Rodney; Kinsey, Alfred; Klein, Naomi; Koop, C. Everett; Kristol, Irving, and Bill Kristol; Krugman, Paul; Kubrick, Stanley; Kushner, Tony; Kwanzaa; Kyoto Protocol

La Follette, Robert, Jr.; La Raza Unida; Labor Unions; LaHaye, Tim, and Beverly LaHaye; Lapin, Daniel; LaRouche, Lyndon H., Jr.; Lear, Norman; Leary, Timothy; Lee, Spike; LeMay, Curtis; Leopold, Aldo; Lesbians; Lewis, Bernard; Liddy, G. Gordon; Limbaugh, Rush; Literature, Film, and Drama; Lott, Trent; Love Canal; Loving, Richard, and Mildred Loving; Lynching

MacKinnon, Catharine; Madonna; Mailer, Norman; Malcolm X; Manson, Marilyn; Mapplethorpe, Robert; Marriage Names; Marxism; McCain, John; McCarthy, Eugene; McCarthy, Joseph; McCarthyism; McCloskey, Deirdre; McGovern, George; McIntire, Carl; McLuhan, Marshall; McVeigh, Timothy; Mead, Margaret; Media Bias; Medical Malpractice; Medical Marijuana; Medved, Michael; Men’s Movement; Mexico; Microsoft; Migrant Labor; Militia Movement; Milk, Harvey; Millett, Kate; Million Man March; Miranda Rights; Mondale, Walter; Montana Freemen; Moore, Michael; Moore, Roy S.; Moral Majority; Morgan, Robin; Morrison, Toni; Mothers Against Drunk Driving; Motion Picture Association of America; Moynihan, Daniel Patrick; Ms.; Multicultural Conservatism; Multiculturalism and Ethnic Studies; Mumford, Lewis; Murdoch, Rupert; Murrow, Edward R.; Muslim Americans; My Lai Massacre

Nader, Ralph; Nation, The ; Nation of Islam; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; National Endowment for the Arts; National Endowment for the Humanities; National Organization for Women; National Public Radio; National Review ; National Rifle Association; Nelson, Willie; Neoconservatism; New Age Movement; New Deal; New Journalism; New Left; New York Times, The ; Niebuhr, Reinhold; Nixon, Richard; Norquist, Grover; North, Oliver; Not Dead Yet; Nuclear Age

Obama, Barack; Obesity Epidemic; Occupational Safety; O’Connor, Sandra Day; O’Hair, Madalyn Murray; O.J. Simpson Trial; Operation Rescue; Oppenheimer, J. Robert; O’Reilly, Bill; Outing

Packwood, Bob; Paglia, Camille; Palin, Sarah; Parks, Rosa; Penn, Sean; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; Perot, H. Ross; Phelps, Fred; Philadelphia, Mississippi; Pipes, Richard, and Daniel Pipes; Planned Parenthood; Podhoretz, Norman; Police Abuse; Political Correctness; Pornography; Postmodernism; Premillennial Dispensationalism; Presidential Pardons; Prison Reform; Privacy Rights; Privatization; Progressive Christians Uniting; Promise Keepers; Public Broadcasting Service; Punk Rock

Quayle, Dan

Race; Racial Profiling; Rand, Ayn; Rap Music; Rather, Dan; Reagan, Ronald; Record Warning Labels; Red and Blue States; Redford, Robert; Redneck; Reed, Ralph; Rehnquist, William H.; Relativism, Moral; Religious Right; Reparations, Japanese Internment; Republican Party; Revisionist History; Right to Counsel; Right to Die; Robertson, Pat; Rock and Roll; Rockwell, George Lincoln; Rockwell, Norman; Rodman, Dennis; Roe v. Wade (1973); Rosenberg, Julius, and Ethel Rosenberg; Rove, Karl; Ruby Ridge Incident; Rudolph, Eric; Rusher, William A.; Ryan, George

Said, Edward; Same-Sex Marriage; Sanders, Bernie; Saudi Arabia; Schaeffer, Francis; Schiavo, Terri; Schlafly, Phyllis; Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr.; School of the Americas; School Prayer; School Shootings; School Vouchers; Schwarzenegger, Arnold; Science Wars; Secular Humanism; Seeger, Pete; September 11; September 11 Memorial; Serrano, Andres; Sex Education; Sex Offenders; Sexual Assault; Sexual Harrassment; Sexual Revolution; Sharpton, Al; Sheen, Fulton J.; Shelley, Martha; Shepard, Matthew; Shock Jocks; Sider, Ron; Silent Majority; Simpsons, The ; Smoking in Public; Socarides, Charles; Social Security; Sodomy Laws; Sokal Affair; Soros, George; Southern Baptist Convention; Soviet Union and Russia; Sowell, Thomas; Speech Codes; Spock, Benjamin; Springsteen, Bruce; Starr, Kenneth; Stay-at-Home Mothers; Steinbeck, John; Steinem, Gloria; Stem-Cell Research; Stern, Howard; Stewart, Jon; Stone, Oliver;
Stonewall Rebellion; Strategic Defense Initiative; Strauss, Leo; Structuralism and Post-Structuralism; Student Conservatives; Students for a Democratic Society; Summers, Lawrence; Supply-Side Economics; Symbionese Liberation Army

Taft, Robert A.; Talk Radio; Tax Reform; Televangelism; Teller, Edward; Ten Commandments; Terkel, Studs; Thanksgiving Day; Think Tanks; Third Parties; Thomas, Clarence; Thompson, Hunter S.; Three Mile Island Accident; Thurmond, Strom; Till, Emmett; Tobacco Settlements; Tort Reform; Transgender Movement; Truman, Harry S.; Turner, Ted; Twenty-Second Amendment

Unabomber; United Nations; USA PATRIOT Act

Ventura, Jesse; Victimhood; Vidal, Gore; Vietnam Veterans Against the War; Vietnam Veterans Memorial; Vietnam War; Vigilantism; Voegelin, Eric; Voting Rights Act

Waco Siege; Wall Street Journal, The ; Wallace, George; Wallis, Jim; Wal-Mart; Walt Disney Company; War on Drugs; War on Poverty; War Powers Act; War Protesters; War Toys; Warhol, Andy; Warren, Earl; Warren, Rick; Washington Times, The ; Watergate; Watt, James; Watts and Los Angeles Riots, 1965 and 1992; Wayne, John; Wealth Gap; Weekly Standard, The ; Welfare Reform; Wellstone, Paul; West, Cornel; Weyrich, Paul M.; Whistleblowers; White, Reggie; White Supremacists; Wildmon, Donald; Will, George; Williams, William Appleman; Wilson, Edmund; Winfrey, Oprah; Wolf, Naomi; Wolfe, Tom; Women in the Military; Women’s Studies; Woodward, Bob; World ; World Council of Churches; World War II Memorial; Wounded Knee Incident

Young, Neil

Zappa, Frank; Zero Tolerance; Zinn, Howard

I have been touring the Pacific Northwest and the Canadian province of British Columbia. I happened to be in Seattle on Sunday, June 28th, the day of Gay Pride parades commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall gay-bar resistance in Manhattan. It launched, so they say, the gay liberation movement. While some historians actually believe the resistance began at a gay sit-in at Dewey’s Restaurant in Philadelphia and NOT Stonewall, history has a way of creating “facts” which may be more or less true. I think the heroes of Dewey, whose names are buried in history, should be lauded for the non-violent actions of that event. Stonewall was violent but certainly liberationist in effect.

I was walking with my backpack on the way to Cafe Presse on Capitol Hill in Seattle when I saw the preparatory staging of the Pride parade. It had not started but I could see a marching band rehearsing, corporate sponsored logos such as Orbitz Gay travel floats and Microsoft-sponsored platforms. Anyway, I walked up a steep hill to the Cafe, then north on 14th Avenue to Volunteer Park to see the Conservatory and the Water Tower view of the sparkling city. As I headed back to my hotel down Pine Street, I could see the Space Needle again. I had seen it from a ship traversing Puget Sound on the west and through the “Black Sun” sculpture of Isamu Noguchi which is right in front of the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park. It looks more like a doughnut but according to the New York Times inspired Soundgarden’s grunge anthem “Black Hole Sun.”

http://tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:pbZ791SOdAf_yM:http://farm4.static.flickr.com

Anyway on my downhill return to the waterfront, I got to Union and the Pride Parade was still in full swing some two hours after my initial pre-parade encounter. I had never witnessed a gay-pride parade before or any parade since my parents would take me to a July 4th event every year on Lindell Blvd. in St Louis. I was able to catch a space between floats and dash across 4th Avenue but decided to stop and watch the extravaganza.

The parade was mobbed. I noticed a float with: “Atheists believe in you” and smiled, applauded and admired the touch. Then I saw some HIV/AIDS sponsors as they passed out written information. Signs declaring “Use a condom” were passing me as I stood on the corner as a policeperson tried to get the crowd back onto the sidewalk. Then the United Church of Christ displayed its solidarity. Folks were screaming with joy and clapping as display after display rolled by. Yes there were the narcissistic bare-chested-only-underpants wearing men on a float and one or two drag queens but most of the parade thematics were quite educational and progressive in substance. “Remember Stonewall.” “Marriage should be Equal.” “Our time has come.”  “Don’t Discriminate by Gender” etc.

I did not ask spectators what their orientation was but I was struck at the large numbers and wondered, “Were they all gay?” Probably not since I am straight and folks like a good parade. A great parade actually in a very progressive city. The Seattle Times on its front-page covered the event and also listed Pride events for the weekend.  I did not see President Barack Obama in the parade or Hillary Clinton but I suppose Barack was getting ready for his chat in the White House on Monday with gay and lesbian organisational leaders and Hillary was probably just being Hillary. Wondering if those “Hard working Americans. White Americans” which was her racist mantra during the primaries in 2008 would ever be able to vote for her again for president. I hope not as the wife of Mr Racist (remember the South Carolina primary remarks?)  D.O.M.A. revels in her splendour.

That evening I went out for dinner to Wild Ginger to get some clams and scallops and the parade was over and the area was pretty empty.  Later as I was getting read for bed, I thought well the police this time were protecting spectators and Pride participants, watching to preserve order and basically just doing their job. Not hassling, or breaking up folks enjoying what was then one of the few public spaces where homosexuals could socialise: gay bars. So some manifestations of overt persecution have ended as evidenced with the reversal of the sodomy is a crime Bowers v Hardwick (1986) case with the Lawrence v Texas case in 2003. A little stare decisis can be dangerous and oppressive. I am glad it was eviscerated in this instance.

One of the reasons I used “Coming Out Straight” as part of the subject title was up until a few years ago I was afraid to discuss the Gay Liberation struggle in my history classes. It was like well they may think I am gay or something as if that would be so bad. In my syllabus I first stated I was straight. Then I removed that but when distributing a handout outline, I indicated  I did not participate in the gay lifestyle. This year I hope to treat it more as a normal topic for a history survey course like women’s or African-American history. Historians have generally avoided the gay and lesbian topic for reasons which may be either fear of misidentification or underestimating its importance in the tapestry of American history.

Coming out straight may be necessary in achieving a comfort level in discussing the topic of homosexuality for some–especially those teaching at a conservative (at least by my standards to be sure), Catholic university. Yet avoiding the topic ignores a significant contemporary and historic phenomenon of  the struggle for human rights and equal justice. One’s orientation is irrelevant in terms of character and ability and citizenship. The more open gays and straights are about the persecution of gays and lesbians and transgender and bisexuals then the veil of silence will be lifted further and a just society more comprehensively advanced.

The essay below has been published in a book, Necessary Discourse on Hysteria, that accompanied a major art exhibit at the Koroska Gallery of Fine Arts, Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia that was held in November-December 2008. Its chief curators were Jernej Kozar and Rado Poggi. While the essay was written before the 2008 presidential election, it has been updated and its main arguments remain valid. I just received a copy of the exhibit publication with essays from other international contributors and images of the exhibit. This is the full citation: Necessary Discourse on Hysteria. Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia: The Koroska Gallery of Fine and Applied Arts Slovenj Gradej, 2009. {ISBN: 978-961-91463-5-4}

“American Imperialism and the Paranoid Style of American Politics.”

Richard Hofstadter, a major American historian of the postwar era, wrote an essay for Harper’s magazine, The Paranoid Style in American Politics in 1964. Whether it was Roman Catholicism, populism or masonry, communism or McCarthyism, this tendency to construe America as a nation under siege is a strong undercurrent of its oppressive culture and ethos. Yet I think paranoia is to a large extent cynically manufactured by the ruling classes in order to advance their personal quest of power projection and global domination.

An example was the shameless political advertisement of Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York. It depicted a phone ringing in the White House at 3:00 a.m. to suggest that then Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, could not be trusted as Commander in Chief and lacks the capacity to deal with an unannounced threat to the national interest. The ad was also inherently racist, as it depicted non-African-American children sleeping at that hour, but vulnerable if an African-American were elected president. It simply pandered to age-old hysterical themes of racial and national-security insecurities. Hysteria is frequently a manufactured by-product of power maximizing. An imperial, racist nation that practices global state terrorism is unwilling to encounter its own malevolence and so it projects onto others irrational qualities of evil and power. Recall the criminal invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003 was fueled by a hysterical overreaction to both the potential power and putative presence of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

Jihadists, Muslims in general, terrorists, Al Qaeda, Hizbollah, Hamas, al Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.) are designated or depicted as terrorist organisations. The Department of State would be well served to designate the United States as a terrorist organisation if that term is going to be utilised to designate crimes against civilians committed for political objectives. The deemphasis on using the word “terror” is noticeable since Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th president on January 20, 2009.

Yet the continued listing of so-called terrorist nations or non-state actors is an effort to dehumanise and marginalise those who have legitimate grievances against the United States, Israel and other oppressive governments. No other nation is as frightened as the United States about the external world and yet ironically no other nation can project power across the full spectrum of military assets. Yet this power has led to a perpetual unease, a sense of hysteria, a compulsion and addiction to war, a rogue state status of human rights violations and a slow but palpable decline in both the standard of living and civil liberties.

America’s greatest enemy is not external but internal. The power elites ranging from the neo-conservatives, the Israel Lobby, the centrist supporters of imperial overstretch such the Council on Foreign Relations, the Democratic and Republican parties, the immoral and unethical rulers of Wall Street and the Pentagon are the true enemies of the people. Great nations cannot sustain popular support of its endless wars and military adventurism unless it convinces the populace that their freedoms are enhanced by this madness.

Most Americans are proud of their country’s superpower status and are convinced that their freedom and putative democracy are sustained and nourished by constant muscular vigilance, frequent wars and an unrestrained worshipping of its military culture. Indeed, patriotism and love of country are to a large extent predicated on the belief that the American military is the sine qua non for our prosperity, protection and stability as a nation. Military academies, think tanks, specialised military universities, war-memorial monuments as prolific as McDonalds’s restaurants, veterans groups, Air Force Ones, marine presidential helicopters, colour guards, bellicose “bombs bursting in air” national anthems, p.o.w. flags, national holidays such as Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Independence Day and lesser ones as Armed Forces Day and the universality of the American flag are constant reminders of martial attributes that embrace war and violence to resolve interstate conflict. Washington, D.C. is virtually a military theme park that reflects the core values of the nation with scant attention to international peace and security.

At some point, the military empire that undermines our nation’s security needs to be dismantled and downsized in a manner that would not lead to unilateral disarmament beyond legitimate self-defence, but would clearly reduce the capacity of the arrogant hyperpower to wage war. Speaking truth to power, the United States of America is such a dangerous, irresponsible and destructive force, that for the sake of international peace and security, America must become a less powerful and more rational-state actor. The Fate of the Earth hangs in the balance.

Presidential Election, 2008:

I would prefer that one of the major candidates would have stated categorically that American imperialist forces would be withdrawn from Iraq without the usual qualifications of “orderly,” “systematically” etc. and critique the war in a manner that does not merely emphasise its impact on United States vital strategic interests in Afghanistan but as an immoral and ruthless projection of American power. The only candidate that did not vote for the authorisation to use force was former Senator Barack Obama. Even though he was not serving in the United States Senate but the Illinois State Senate, he publicly opposed the war on October 2, 2002, nine days before the Senate, with a Democratic party majority I might add, approved the evil joint-war resolution to send American military forces to Iraq.

In comparison to then Senator Clinton, there could be construed a greater credibility in the Illinois senator’s plan to withdraw one to two combat brigades a month and complete the withdrawal in sixteen months. As president, he appears to be implementing this phased withdrawal from Iraq and then deploying them to Afghanistan.

Senator Obama stated before his election as president he would engage in direct diplomacy with heads of state with which the United States has adversarial relations. These would include Iran, Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Venezuela and Syria that would be diplomatically engaged without preconditions but with a suggested agenda of relevant items. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Mrs. Clinton, now ironically secretary of state, rejected such a rapprochement as naïve and as giving aid and comfort to our enemies.

The old politics of Cold War era confrontation does not quickly subside from this ruthless nation. A new politics is certainly needed where hegemonic aspirations are tempered with a more collegial and internationalist view of world politics. I think it naïve that America’s role in the world can be more constructive and less lethal in the absence of a more creative inter-state diplomatic agenda.

The costs of the Iraq war may reach three trillion dollars according to Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. The war budget alone is annually about one trillion when, in addition to the Pentagon, one includes the intelligence services, the Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Also the soaring health care costs for tens of thousands of wounded and psychologically damaged Iraq War veterans are part of the unsustainable economic burdens of the war to the United States economy. Rich nations do not have unlimited resources to police the world. Forty eight million Americans are without health insurance and the gap in life expectancy between the rich and poor is growing. Poor African-American males die at age 66.9 but the life expectancy of affluent white women is 81.1 years. This is not entirely the result of the Iraq War but it is arguable that the priorities of war, hegemonic domination and white Judeo-Christian supremacy demonstrate that a militarised society does not emphasise social equality at home, much less abroad.

This magnificent ad and I don’t wear LensCrafters products and have absolutely no desire to peddle their product, contains an unidentifed song and artist. Cutwater, the ad agency does not identify the artist in any of its literature nor does extensive online ad company trade sites and promos reveal the musician’s name. However, this is a great ad, digitally mastered from a studio version with acoustic guitar of course and virtuoso banjo and it really infuriates me that the singer is not acknowledged online. The Internet is full of inquiries over who the singer is? Well it’s the Scottish-born Donovan singing “Colours” which appeared on the Universal Soldier album. This was released the same year when Donovan was chastened in a hotel room by Dylan’s winging of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” in Don Pennebaker’s epic Dylan-centered masterpiece, Dont Look Back (1967)! {without an apostrophe in “Dont.”}

President Barack Obama was asked twice at his initial prime time press conference on Monday February 9  by Helen Thomas whether there were any countries in the Middle East that had nuclear weapons. This courageous reporter, who was essentially banned by the Bush administration from asking questions at press conferences, knew precisely what she was doing.

America’s political elites, in the grip of fear to challenge the Israel lobby or its client state, Israel, will not concede what is absolute fact. Israel is a major nuclear power with both fission and thermonuclear weapons. While I admit the latter is not 100% verifiable, the existence of Israel as a nuclear state is. There is not one arms control specialist or nuclear weapons’ expert who does NOT know that Israel, with the help of the French and Americans, has developed a nuclear arsenal. Dimona is their primary nuclear research center. They even jointly tested  in 1979 a nuclear device in the South Atlantic with then-apartheid South Africa.

While this blog would not be adding much to the public knowledge in reiterating  the tens of thousands of reports on Israel’s status as a nuclear power, it is essential that President Obama muster the courage to speak truth to the American people. His response to Ms Thomas was, “I will not speculate,” and glossed over the question. Part of the reason for this lack of candor is Iran. If the United States concedes that Israel is a nuclear-weapons state, it would diminish its argument that Iran, a Muslim state, should not be allowed to develop a fission device. It would render the hypocrisy in attempting to thwart a Muslim bomb in the region while ignoring the fact that a “Jewish” bomb exists. It would reveal the inconsistencies of counterproliferation.

While the Obama administration should be lauded for its tone and willingness to engage in dialogue with Iran, it should seek a nuclear weapons free zone. No nuclear weapons in the Middle East should be U.S. policy. Of course that would antagonise the Israel lobby for daring to concede that Israel must make concessions in bringing peace and stability to the region, but the primary purpose of an American president is to protect the national security of the American people. America’s interests in a denuclearised region are served by reducing horizontal proliferation. With a hectic arms race whereby Muslim states are attempting to match Israel, little is served except continued tension.  I am sure Iran is acutely aware that a non-nuclear Iraq was invaded and that a proto-nuclear state of North Korea was not.

I love his name by the way and when he took the oath of office from the unprepared chief justice, his entire name was used. The New York Times has also used it liberally after his nomination and his electoral victory. President Woodrow Wilson gave a seminal speech during World War I on January 8, 1918 known as the “Fourteen Points Address.” He called for reduction in armaments, an international organisation to resolve interstate rivalries and war, less secrecy in diplomacy (open covenants, openly arrived at) and open access to the seas and trade routes. This is relevant idealism in today’s world of war, power aggrandisement, sadistic realism and utter anarchy.

President T Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) 

http://www.historicaldocuments.com/WoodrowWilson.jpg

1) Quit referring to the middle class all the time and focus on the endemic poverty in America. In particular, the life expectancy gap between whites and African Americans, the income gap and the health insurance gap are monstrous and growing.

2) Declare it is American policy to recognise democratically elected governments such as Hamas in Gaza.

3) Confirm or deny the Los Angeles Times article that torture by other means will be allowed. Extraordinary rendition by the C.I.A. which is nothing more than snatch and grab Muslims and whisk them to a third country is apparently going to continue with your adminitration. I hope you have the qualities of “change” to tell the C.I.A. that their worldwide terrorist network which is much more sophiticated than Al Qaeda will be dismantled.

4) Resist the build up of troops in the creeping Vietnamization of Afghanistan. Tell General David McKiernan that there will be no more surges, no more brigades of death, no more war in that country. American forces will merely go to enclaves to preserve what territory is currently not under the Taliban but aggressive offensive operations will not be tolerated in what is increasingly looking like a war without end in that miserable, poverty-drenched country. It is also destablilising Pakistan as the Taliban are driven east into that country.

5) Reaffirm the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq will be withdrawn in sixteen months as promised. Do not allow yourself to be sucked into the vortez of a permanent military presence in Iraq. Our departure indeed might slow down or cause Iran to consider the value of a rapprocchement with the United States.

6) Spend, spend, spend as much money as you can to end the economic stagnation in America. Recall Keynesian economics: spend, borrow, build public works.

7) Declare an objective of your administration to cover all Americans with health insurance. It is your moral responsibility to do so and it would facilitate the eradication of poverty.

8) Give an official unambiguous apology for slavery.

9) Apologise for the Vietnam War and the deaths of two to three million Vietnamese.

10) Reestablish the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

11) Actively pursue a Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty and cancel N.A.T.O. enlargement and the basing of interceptors and radars in Poland and the Czech Republic.

12) Join the International Criminal Court.

13) Apologise for the atomic genocide in Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945.

14) Do not pardon or even think of commuting the sentence of traitor-spy, Jonathan Pollard

I was told by Roger Chapman, the distinguished editor of the Encyclopedia of the Culture Wars, that the original publication date of December 2008 has been extended. Additional entries reflecting the new era of Barack Hussein Obama were being added to the two-volume compendium. I was informed by a library professional staff person at my university that the publisher M.E. Sharpe had indicated August 2009 would be the release date.

Projected to be over 400,000 words in two volumes of text, and illustrated, the Encyclopedia of the Culture Wars  will be published by M.E. Sharpe of Armonk, New York.

I am contributing articles on J. Robert Oppenheimer and Academic Freedom:

Albert Einstein, whose 1939 letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt triggered the atomic bomb Manhattan Project and Dr Oppenheimer, director of Los Alamos laboratory near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Ironically, Dr Einstein was excluded from the Manhattan Project by some who felt he was too independent and too radical. He later became a strong opponent of atomic weaponry.

Beware of groups such as Campus Watch, the David Project, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and occasionally David Horowitz for attempting to move beyond critiquing progressive academicians into pressuring institutions or the public at large to remove or sanction such scholars.

The economic bailout package of the Bush-Obama presidencies is pure Keynesian economics. Yet no one calls it that since the Laffer Curve simplistic macroeconomic nonsense of the Reagan Era which postulated tax cuts ALONE stimulate economic activity and greater revenues. John Maynard Keynes was the true architect of the New Deal, rarely mentioned by historians including the fraudulent, plagiarising, corrupt, faux historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. The British Cambridge-educated economist wrote the seminal General Theroy of Employment, Interest and Money in 1936 which is probably the single most important book in economics since Marx’s Das Kapital.

Only in post-Reagan America would there be fear of describing the great Democratic Socialist’s economic strategy of governmental activism for what it is: The roadmap of the current order. Keynes attempted to put finality on the discredited classical, Smithian world of economic laissez-faire capitalism. Yet he did not wish to eliminate the market, but to manage it. “Market” refers to private economic activity of suppliers, producers and consumers like you and me. Keynes believed that governments must play a pivotal role in transforming market capitalism by regulating and indeed subsituting government capital for private capital in times of economic stagnation.

Keynes believed three major fiscal policies should be applied during depressions. Fiscal policy refers to the tax and spend decisions of a governmental authority.

1) Increase deficit spending: Governments should spend themselves out of depression. When the private sector fails to adequately address issues of employment, then the government must. Balancing budgets and attention to the deficit should become marginalised in importance while economic stagnation is at hand. Governments don’t have credit cards but they issue treasury notes and bonds which pay interest to the lender. That is basically how governments borrow money when in deficit. Issue I.O.U.s to lenders which are governments, central banks, currency speculators and private citizens.

2) Tax reduction: Governments should be smart and not burden a distressed population with more taxes. The Bush plan of tax cuts was actually part Keynesianism if only for the well to do. In times of economic challenges, tax cuts should be widely implemented. Whether Barack Obama will extend the Bush tax cuts through 2010 for incomes above 250,000 or repeal them before then in order “to level the playing field” is unknown. Yet Keynesian economics would reject tax increases during a depressionary cycle of unemployment, decline in industrial activity, credit seized and growing destitution in general.

3) Public Works: If one combines the first two components of Keynesian economic activism, there is inevitably a huge deficit: Increase spending and tax reduction means less money for the treasury and, therefore, growing deficits. A deficit is when income is exceeded by spending. Keynes believed that public works is the best application of fiscal policy. Create jobs, hire the unemployed, pay them. They will spend, create effective demand, stimulate the need for production, reduce the unemployment rate and pump money into the system.

Combined, this triad of welfare-state capitalism is “priming the pump.” This is what is contemplated with a $750 billion minimal stimulus package. So let’s call it what it is. The return of Keynesian economics and a rejection of free-market unregulated capitalism: at least for the short term. If neo-classical economics is dead, I will provide the casket since Keynes provided the shovel and dirt.

Governor Rod Blagojevich has apppointed former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to Barack Obama’s vacated senate seat on December 30, 2008. A couple of weeks ago I took my car in for service at a dealership on 159th Street in Orland Park, Illinois. Former Attorney General Burris, who I believe would make an excellent United States Senator, was just a few feet from me as we were checking in our cars. My “advisor” as he was test driving my car after repairs told me, “Roland Burris is seeking the Senate seat.” I said I heard that but I wonder if that is possible given the “politiking” going on.

Governor Blagojevich, who has not been indicted or convicted of any criminal misconduct, has a history of making astute political decisions. Giving seniors free riding passes on the Chicago Transit Authority, attempting heroically to cover Illinois children with health insurance and his rather significant effort to purchase Canadian pharmaceuticals at discounted prices.

I think his appointment of Attorney General Burris is quite remarkable. It is his right under the state of Illinois constitution and his way of asserting that political witchunts by the headline-hunting US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and the unseemly campaign to unseat him by Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Lt Governor Pat Quinn will not deter him from his responsibilities. Most thought the governor would eschew making an appointment and that the impeachment proceedings in the Illinois House would cow him into submission. Illinois needs a senator and Roland Burris would be a mainstream Democrat not given to histrionics or sensational pr campaigns such as Represenative Jesse Jackson Jr of the second congressional district or Jan Schakowsky of the ninth congressional district. He is also a historic figure being the first African-American to win statewide office in 1979 when elected comptroller in Illinois.

Also there is no evidence that Chief of Staff-Designate Rahm Emmanuel lobbied for Mr Burris as he did for the other two representatives. In addition there is no evidence that any quid pro quo ever arose between the governor and Mr Burris. Mr Burris is a modest individual, of little pretense and would serve Illinois well in the senate. As an African-American this would insure that a capable minority would represent Illinois and that at least one United States Senator would be representative of that ethnic group.

I think Governor Blagojevich is acting with principle, honour and integrity with this particular action in filling a vacant senate seat in the “Adopted Land of Lincoln.”

Governor Rod Blagojevich proclaimed he had done “nothing wrong” at the James R. Thompson Center office building in Chicago’s Loop on December 19, 2008. Referring to the unseemly campaign of Lt Governor Pat Quinn and Attorney General Lisa Madigan to force him from office, he referred to their shameful “thirty-second sound bites” on “Meet the Press” on December 14. I am pleased he is fighting this inquisition and has the courage NOT to resign under pressure. His vulgarity and lack of popularity appear to be more important to the political elites, than the questionable practices and gratuitous arrest by the United States Attorney for Northern Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald.

While the governor’s wiretapped phone calls are hardly the substance of political greatness, it is always a concern when the government intrudes upon a citizen’s privacy and then releases the information in such a public manner. Big government has a responsibility to use its power with restraint and maturity. This was so egregiously violated in this instance that one may opine that the public interest is indeed enhanced when a defiant governor demands his day in court prior to bending to the will of his politically ambitious enemies to resign or surrender his authority.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

The Democratic governor’s quoting the first verse, except wisely for the last line, of the British poet Rudyard Kipling’s “If” was a clear affirmation of his determination not to be forced from office without the benefit of a trial or an appropriate response in a judicial setting.

                      “If”

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son! 

~Rudyard Kipling

I have argued that the Illinois governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, was set up and not guilty of any crime with regard to his “dispensing” of the vacant senate seat due to the presidential ascension of Barack Obama. David Johnston of the New York Times has written on December 15, 2008 an article also questioning whether actual criminal conduct was committed in his taped phone calls concerning “pay-to-play” schemes with senatorial aspirants.

When an out-of-control U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald uses smoke and mirrors to prosecute a high-profile official, that person is treated under the glare of the klieg lights as if he or she is guilty before proven innocent: a disgraceful and arbitrary method of law enforcement and an example of vigilante, arbitrary justice.

The stench of political blind ambition is spreading. You have the Illinois attorney general, Lisa Madigan, a child of nepotism, of modest legal abilities and perfervid political ambitions, attempting to sack a democratically elected governor through judicial removal. It is clear her motivation is not clean government but the continuation of the “Madigan Dynasty.” Her father Michael Madigan is the speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives and the leader of the impeachment movement. This hijacking of a governor’s right to stay in office at least until indictment or conviction is nothing more than a power grab and a ruse for personal ambition. Popularity is not a requirement for continuation in office until the fulfillment of one’s elected term.

Rod R. Blagojevich is one of the most compassionate and creative governors in my state since Adlai Ewing Stevenson (1949-1953) or John Peter Altgeld (1893-1897), who spared by commutation some of the Haymarket Martyrs. As a result of Governor Blagojevich’s leadership, Illinois children are largely insured; because of him seniors ride gratis on the Chicago Transit Authority; he also tried rather heroically to get more affordable Canadian pharmaceuticals to be imported by the state suppliers but was stymied by the criminal Bush administration. He has saved lives in a nation that so gratuitously spills their blood in foreign wars or in emergency rooms as close to 50 million Americans suffer without health insurance. He has stood in solidarity with sit-in workers at the Republic Windows and Doors company displaced from jobs without adequate notification or severance pay. He has suspended all business with Bank of America that withdrew its credit lines for the company.

While he is presumed innocent until proven guilty according to the hyperbolic US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald, I can see that the application of this principle is null and void in this instance. Obviously elected officials should not engage in personal or spousal enrichment through unethical “pay to play” schemes but the hypocrisy in the criminal complaint and the obscene early morning “Entertainment Tonight arrest” at the Chicago home of Governor Blagojevich is unseemly. The FBI stated they did not want to wake up his children yet called him at 600am! The Democratic governor could have merely surrendered himself which is standard operating procedure v. arresting a governor at his home in handcuffs. Please!! This governor saved lives; this governor refused to reinstate the death penalty and continued the courageous moratorium instituted by his grandiose, if morally inconsistent, predecessor, George Ryan.

I am sure the replacement senator for Barack Obama will sell out to American militarism, vote to fund the Iraq War, oppose equal marriage, oppose ending the persecution of gays in the military, oppose a single payer health care system and adopt the smoke and mirrors of the Obama health plan. What difference does it make whether Rod discussed profiting from selling a senate seat or the senator-select becomes another prowar liberal who sells his or her soul to the “vital center?”

Our values should respect those who succor to the poor and weak and not parade these officials before a media inquisition that has essentially convicted him due to talking trash with the f-word and maybe scheming to defraud somebody for the president-elect’s senate seat. Did anyone actually take a bribe? Was one actually offered? Or is the wiretapping of speech leading to trumped up conspiracy charges the US Attorney’s gambit for glory in which possibly no illegal actions were committed?

Governor Blagojevich should be lauded for what he has done for the vulnerable in the state, and since he is supposedly innocent until proven guilty, remains a positive and constructive force for Illinois and its people. Mr George Bush should pardon him prior to his fiefdom’s exeunt on January 20, 2009. Unfortunately, he will probably not pardon or commute the sentence of Governor Ryan given the glare of publicity concerning his successor.

Much has been made about the “insults” and “slurs” directed against Barack Obama by Al Qaeda’s deputy Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, the brilliant Egyptian physician, in a videotape released on November 19. The New York Times described the reference to “house negro” as an “insult” and the Chicago Tribune as “slurs.” The American press also disparaged Malcolm X, who was praised by Dr al-Zawahiri, as a “militant.” I did not see any press accounts that even mentioned that President-elect Obama has threatened to kill Dr Zawahiri and Osama Bin Laden. I would assert that Dr al-Zawahiri exhibited restraint and a more conciliatory approach than Obama. There was no threat directed against the American future president. There was no boasting of capturing or killing the Illinois president-elect. I would aver that an insult directed against an individual in response to a death threat does suggest a less belligerent and hostile attitude. If Obama indeed is willing to speak to our adversaries, then why has he consistently excluded Al Qaeda from that conversation and refreshing diplomatic approach?

In fact, Barack Obama wants to merely transfer the war from Iraq to Afghanistan. While the term “house negro” is unfortunate, I think Dr al-Zawahiri was correct in claiming Mr Obama appears to be adopting the Bush-Clinton approach to the Muslim world. Vice-President Elect Joe Biden and Senator Hillary Clinton voted for the 2002 Authorisation to Use Force resolution in Iraq. Senator Clinton threatened to devastate Iran if it attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. Such murderous and hate-filled speech was not only vicious but also utterly ignorant of key foreign affairs issues. Senator Clinton never mentioned that Israel possesses an enormous nuclear deterrent and that no nation would attack it preemptively with nuclear weapons for fear of a second-strike devastating retaliation.

Yet the racist Hillary Clinton who gloated in the primaries that she gets “the hard-working Americans, the white American” vote and lied about being almost killed in Kosovo at a flower-festooned reception at the airport, is apparently going to become Secretary of State. Twenty-three Senators and 133 members of the House of Representatives voted against the war in Iraq. Why did not President-elect Obama ask one of them to serve as Vice President or Secretary of State or Secretary of “War” or U.N. Ambassador? Where is the peace dividend, that so many of us who supported him initially in the primaries with our financial support and time, hoped would come?

While I have little regard for Al Qaeda due to their use of force and disregard for sparing noncombatants, I do believe President-elect Obama has become captive to the Clinton crowd and the establishment support of Israel that is beyond our geopolitical and national security interests. The crimes against humanity in Gaza and the destruction of the Palestinian people by Israel and the United States is a legitimate concern of Al Qaeda and those who seek justice through PEACEFUL means.

Malcolm X was a great figure. He ultimately did seek reconciliation between Muslims and non-Muslims after he saw white Muslims on his hajj to Mecca. He was an advocate of internationalism and bringing people of colour together from all regions of the world. He was not a captive of the vital center in this country that is frozen in hatred of the Arab nation and is intimidated in even acknowledging that Israel has nuclear weapons but is determined to ultimately go to war with Iran that dares to explore and develop nuclear properties and reactors.

Following the November 4, 2008 presidential elections, I offer the following predictions.

I see more militaristic, vulgar Rahm Emanuels and his Machiavellian ilk infecting the hope and change of an Obama administration.

I see a push to the center as they already prepare for 2012 which will confer only modest change in America.

I guarantee that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be substantially reduced before 100s more Americans die. If wrong, I will openly admit my error and lack of perspicacity.

I see no change in deployment of missiles and interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic. Senator Obama was disgracefully pandering to militaristic America in the campaign with his denunciations of Russia, knowing full well it was Georgia who tried to settle the South Ossetia question by force and Russia attempted to reverse this naked imperialism.

I see no direct negotiations with adversarial heads of state such as Raul Castro or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il or with Al Qaeda, despite President-Elect Obama’s repeated avowals to do just that–except in the case of the latter.

I see no ending of the blockade against Cuba.

I see no “war” on poverty but merely pandering to the white middle class recognising other ethnic groups are in it.

I am sure the Obama of the Ayers, Khalidi, Hyde Park liberal, community organising days will be sufficiently “liberalised” as to make him virtually indistinguishable from a Senator Chuck Schumer or even worse Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mildly progressive but no war on poverty, no support of gay marriage, no ending of vouchers, continued hate speech against “Middle Eastern oil” and support of the continued genocide by Israel against the Palestinian martyrs in Gaza and West Bank.

At the end of an Obama presidency, the current number of medically uninsured, about 47,000,000, will probably not be reduced by more than 15%-20% of the current total.

I am pleased an African-American is president. I was touched by Congressperson John Lewis and the Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson’s emotional response. It was they who did the heavy lifting to make this possible.

I believe America’s military will never allow a significant reduction in budget, weapons systems or personnel. Their wicked monstrosity of empire and racist murder will not confer an easy surrender. So American militarism and Hitlerian arrogance of racial superiority will not be significantly attenuated due to the fragility of civil-military relations in the U.S. I have no “hope” that I can believe in that Barack can stay true to his earlier ideological instincts. He will be too isolated and feted by royalty to truly stick to his promises.

I “HOPE” I am wrong but Reverend Jeremiah Wright was so correct when he “God damned” America for its atomic genocide and racist history. An attack on him was an attack on progressivism which Barack has convinced so many he represents despite a misogynist Larry Summers-fired from Harvard as president although still teaching there-as key economic advisor and possible return as Treasury secretary. Can’t Mr Summers just go quietly into the night?

Unlike the Democrats who seek mere increases in the minimum wage, Ralph Nader, a graduate of the Harvard Law School, demands a living wage in which the basic necessities of life are attainable and not a mere flirtation with escaping poverty. Example, Ralph Nader supports health insurance for all Americans unlike Senators Barack Obama and John McCain who have NO intention of insuring all Americans through a single-payer plan.

It is being reported my advisor at Boston University and academic role model, Dr Howard Zinn, is endorsing Ralph Nader for president of the United States in the 2008 election. He had endorsed Senator Barack Obama but is now urging voters in slam-dunk states to vote for Nader. It appears in toss-up states he is still recommending a vote for the Illinois senator. I also had supported Senator Obama financially and attended fundraisers and participated in numerous foreign-policy network conference calls. I began to have grave misgivings after his selection of Senator Joe Biden who voted for the Iraq War.

Dr Zinn is one of the preeminent historians of the 20th Century in his approach to revisionist history and giving voice to those who lurked in the shadows of consensus historiography: Namely women, African-Americans, union organisers, immigrants, blue-collar workers, antiwar patriots and socialists.