There are six reasons why Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, will not receive the  Democratic Party presidential nomination:

1) Senator Barack Obama–a unique and rare individual of immense eloquence, charisma and an innate capacity to draw contrasts with his opponents without bitterness and rancor.

2) The Iraq War Authorization to Use Force in October 2002. Senator Clinton’s execrable support of the war “with conviction” was a fatal factor in her candidacy and totally mishandled by President Bill Clinton’s “fairy tale” charge of alleged differences over the war with the Illinois senator.

3) Her famed decisiveness proved porous with her vacillation over a proposal by the nation’ most famous john–the despicable former Democratic New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Senator Clinton could not decide whether she approved or disapproved of providing drivers licenses to undocumented workers. Neither did Senator Obama but it was her issue initially and affected her I believe in a more pronounced manner.

4) The race-baiting by both the New York senator and the former president. This galvanised in particular a skeptical African-American community and many liberals that had been unconvinced about the electability of Senator Obama and a predisposition to support anything Clintonesque into a crusade for Senator Obama. It was no longer an issue of whether he was “black” enough but one of rallying around a series of offensive race-baiting or race-innuendo remarks by the amoral Clinton combat team.

5) The personality of Hillary Clinton: While brilliant, talented, articulate and well-schooled in public policy issues, there emerged a persona of vindictiveness, rage and anything-to-get-elected that drove down her favourable ratings and reduced dramatically her capacity to increase her base of support. Unpopular candidates with huge unfavourable ratings rarely win presidential nominations, much less general elections.

6) Her defeat in the Iowa Caucus on January 3, 2008 revealed some need for revisionism of her alleged invincibility as frontrunner.

No. I don’t believe her repeated lies about narrowly escaping death in Bosnia in 1996 were significant. By then, her litany of lies and half-truths were somewhat predictable. No I don’t think the McCain-Clinton gas-tax holiday adventure was that damaging but it did lessen somewhat the racist, reactionary media obsession with the eloquent Reverend Doctor Jeremiah Wright.  Governor Howard Dean, chairperson of the Democratic National Committee, was spot on when interviewed on FOX News Sunday, May 4, 2008. He referred to it as “race-baiting.”

See Louisville Courier-Journal interview.

This is the link to the article on the status of the Clinton campaign in the Louisville Courier-Journal. The article was written by James Carroll, a Washington-based reporter for the paper. Kentucky, the land of blue grass, Muhammad Ali, Vice President  Alben Barkley and Senator/Baseball commissioner Happy Chandler, holds its primary on May 20, 2008:

WASHINGTON — While Hillary Rodham Clinton should win some of the six remaining primaries, including Kentucky’s, she doesn’t have enough money and time to prove herself a viable alternative to Barack Obama, political observers said yesterday.

And the Democratic presidential nomination, they said, is effectively beyond her reach.

“It’s over — it’s over,” said Peter Kirstein, professor of history at Chicago’s Saint Xavier University. “She is in somewhat of a delusional state. I don’t mean that literally, but she simply cannot accept the fact she has lost. … I don’t think it’s quite hit her yet that he’s going to get the nomination.”

On Tuesday, Clinton won a skin-of-the-teeth victory in Indiana and lost to Obama by a wide margin in North Carolina.

Clinton, a U.S. senator from New York, insisted yesterday that her campaign would continue.

“I’m staying in this race until there’s a nominee,” she told reporters in Shepherdstown, W.Va., where that state votes Tuesday. “And I obviously am going to work as hard as I can to become that nominee.”

Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, appears to be turning his attention to the fall campaign against the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. Still, his campaign is continuing to open offices in Kentucky in advance of the May 20 primary.

“We need change in America. And that’s why we will be united in November,” Obama told cheering supporters in Raleigh, N.C., Tuesday night. He was in Chicago yesterday, with no public events on his schedule.

The math seems to show that Clinton has little chance of overtaking Obama’s delegate lead.

A count by The Associated Press shows that Obama is only 184.5 delegates away from the 2,025 needed to claim his party’s nomination.

Rep. Ben Chandler, D-6th District, an Obama supporter, said it is time for Clinton to shut down the contest.

“She has been absolutely heroic in this presidential race,” Chandler said. “But she will not make it to (next week’s primary in) West Virginia.”

That’s what many lawmakers in both the Obama and Clinton camps are telling each other privately, he said. But at least some Kentucky Democrats are still anticipating a rare chance to have a say in the presidential campaign and energize party activists for the fall contest.

There’s no hurry for Clinton to quit, said Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3rd District, who is backing Obama.

“I don’t want her to drop out until after May 20,” Yarmuth told reporters in a conference call yesterday. To quit before then “would temper enthusiasm for the election,” he said.

“We need in Kentucky to make a show of strength for Senator Obama because we are not writing off Kentucky in the general election at all,” he said. “Because of the economic challenges Kentuckians face, I believe Kentucky can be a state that votes for Senator Obama in the fall.”

State Democratic Party Chairwoman Jennifer Moore said there is no reason for Clinton, who is slated to attend a state party fundraising event in Louisville tomorrow, to quit the race now.

“It is important for Kentucky to express its voice in the primary,” she said, adding that she doesn’t believe the battle will create any wounds that can’t be healed before November.

“There is nothing wrong with primaries,” said Moore, an uncommitted superdelegate who said she plans to make her decision after the May 20 primary. “At the end of the day, Democrats will come together because the last thing we want is to have a third Bush term and send John McCain to the White House.”

Jefferson County Democratic Party Chairman Tim Longmeyer, an Obama supporter, agreed.

“I don’t want anybody to give up on the race, both personally and as party chair, before Kentucky gets a chance to vote,” he said.

Longmeyer said he doesn’t see a problem with Clinton continuing to run a tough race in which she attacks Obama on important issues.

“It gets the two candidates in front of American people,” he said. “All the buzz, all the discussion is going to Democrats now, and I think ultimately that’s a good thing.”

But former state party chairman Bill Garmer, also an Obama supporter, said Clinton should abandon her campaign.

“It looks to me as if the time has come for the Democratic Party to close ranks behind Senator Obama,” he said.

Chandler said he doesn’t see how Clinton can continue.

“I think she clearly is out of money, and she’s got to ask herself how much she is going to invest in an effort where the math doesn’t work and she has very little shot,” Chandler said. “I think it would make sense for her to get out. I don’t know what purpose she is serving by carrying on.”

But Phil Laemmle, a retired University of Louisville political science professor, said Clinton should stay in and end her race gracefully at the end of the primary season.

“It would be best for the Obama people to agree to let the process work itself out, let her go through the process,” he said. “… Of the states left, none of them are major states; even if she won all the delegates … she still couldn’t catch him.”

While this blog has not endorsed a candidate in either party, I believe this document is historically significant. This blog will however endorse a Democratic candidate just prior to the Montana primary if both candidates are still actively pursuing the presidential nomination of the Democratic-cowardly vote-funding-for-the-war party. I have also been quite critical of Senator Hillary Clinton for her positions on nuclear deterrence, Iran and the Iraq War but have not been uncritical of Senator Barack Obama. Yet I do construe his approach to international affairs as more conducive to international peace and security. I particularly embrace his intention to engage in direct diplomacy with the heads of state of Iran, Syria, Cuba and presumably the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.

TO:                 Superdelegates

FROM:           David Plouffe, Campaign Manager

RE:                 An Update on the Race for Delegates

DA:                 May 7, 2008

There are only six contests remaining in the Democratic primary calendar and only 217 pledged delegates left to be awarded. Only 7 percent of the pledged delegates remain on the table. There are 260 remaining undeclared superdelegates, for a total of 477 delegates left to be awarded.

With North Carolina and Indiana complete, Barack Obama only needs 172 total delegates to capture the Democratic nomination.  This is only 36% of the total remaining delegates.

Conversely, Senator Clinton needs 326 delegates to reach the Democratic nomination, which represents a startling 68% of the remaining delegates.

With the Clinton path to the nomination getting even narrower, we expect new and wildly creative scenarios to emerge in the coming days. While those scenarios may be entertaining, they are not legitimate and will not be considered legitimate by this campaign or its millions of supporters, volunteers, and donors.

We believe it is exceedingly unlikely Senator Clinton will overtake our lead in the popular vote and in fact lost ground on that measure last night. However, the popular vote is a deeply flawed and illegitimate metric for deciding the nominee – since each campaign based their strategy on the acquisition of delegates. More importantly, the rules of the nomination are predicated on delegates, not popular vote.

Just as the Presidential election in November will be decided by the electoral college, not popular vote, the Democratic nomination is decided by delegates.

If we believed the popular vote was  somehow the key measurement, we would have campaigned much more intensively in our home state of Illinois and in all the other populous states, in the pursuit of larger raw vote totals. But it is not the key measurement. We played by the rules, set by you, the DNC members, and campaigned as hard as we could, in as many places as we could, to acquire delegates. Essentially, the popular vote is not much better as a metric than basing the nominee on which candidate raised more money, has more volunteers, contacted more voters, or is taller.

The Clinton campaign was very clear about their own strategy until the numbers become too ominous for them. They were like a broken record , repeating ad nauseum that this nomination race is about delegates. Now, the word delegate has disappeared from their vocabulary, in an attempt to change the rules and create an alternative reality.

We want to be clear – we believe that the winner of a majority of pledged delegates will and should be the nominee of our party. And we estimate that after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries on May 20, we will have won a majority of the overall pledged delegates  According to a recent news report, by even their most optimistic estimates the Clinton Campaign expects to trail by more than 100 pledged delegates and will then ask the superdelegates to overturn the will of the voters.

But of course superdelegates are free to and have been utilizing their own criteria for deciding who our nominee should be. Many are deciding on the basis of electability, a favorite Clinton refrain. And if you look at the numbers, during a period where the Clinton campaign has been making an increasingly strident pitch on electability, it is clear their argument is failing miserably with superdelegates.

Since February 5, the Obama campaign has netted 107 superdelegates, and the Clinton campaign only 21. Since the Pennsylvania primary, much of it during the challenging Rev. Wright period, we have netted 24 and the Clinton campaign 17.

At some point – we would argue that time is now – this ceases to be a theoretical exercise about how superdelegates view electability. The reality of the preferences in the last several weeks offer a clear guide of how strongly superdelegates feel Senator Obama will perform in November, both in building a winning campaign for the presidency as well as providing the best electoral climate across the country for all Democratic candidates.

It is important to note that Senator Obama leads Senator Clinton in superdelegate endorsements among Governors, United States Senators and members of the House of Representatives. These elected officials all have a keen sense for who our strongest nominee will be in November.

It is only among DNC members where Senator Clinton holds a lead, which has been rapidly dwindling. 

As we head into the final days of the campaign, we just wanted to be clear with you as a party leader, who will be instrumental in making the final decision of who our nominee will be, how we view the race at this point.

Senator Obama, our campaign and our supporters believe pledged delegates is the most legitimate metric for determining how this race has unfolded. It is simply the ratification of the DNC rules – your rules – which we built this campaign and our strategy around.

I have previously written about Senator Hillary Clinton’s threat to exterminate Iran’s civilian population if it were to attack a nuclear-rogue state-Israel. The latter, unlike Iran, has not ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968. The Boston Globe  wrote an editorial that was also critical of this despicable senator’s nuclear brinkspersonship.

Hillary Strangelove

Chris Wallace conducted one of the better interviews in recent years on national television. His interview of Illinois Senator Barack Obama on FOX News Sunday, April 27 was polite, respectful, substantive and penetrating. Unlike the ABC tandem of George Stephanopoulus and Charles Gibson’s shameful race-baiting during their Philadelphia “debate,” Mr Wallace demonstrated a capacity to rise above the usual partisanship on his own network as well and frankly display significant journalistic talents. I hope Ruppert Murdoch can tolerate such objectivity and lack of bias on this component of News Corp.

Senator Obama (l); Chris Wallace (r) Courtesy of FOX News

FOX news had made a big issue of the senator’s reluctance to appear on FOX and used a Jack Bauer ”24″ second clock–no N.B.A. pun intended–to update the period since the Democratic senator was initially offered an invitation for an interview. Perhaps, Chris Wallace ironically felt it was preferable to display journalistic independence and skill than to affirm, through an ersatz, vicious attack ad for the Republican party, Senator Obama’s hesitancy to appear on the conservative Murdoch-run network. I remember when President Bill Clinton was interviewed by Mr Wallace, that the former was so furious, so enraged and so vituperative that Mr Wallace was barely able to ask his questions. Perhaps the journalist wanted to avoid a repetition of such a failed endeavor–although Senator Obama is not prone to histrionics– and frankly to merely ask questions that could elevate the rather banal state of political discourse in the country.

This is a link to the written transcript–thanks to FOX news–of the interview. I noticed it lasted forty-five minutes which is quite a bit longer than their usual format. Perhaps that also contributed to the in depth reportage of this significant exchange.

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/04/27/transcript-obama-on-fns/

Hillary’s World.

Senator Hillary Clinton has threatened “massive retaliation” against the Islamic Republic of Iran were it to use nuclear weapons against the State of Israel. She has engaged in on-the-run extended deterrence by threatening the destruction of Iran were it to use weapons of mass destruction on third countries in the region as well. For  the record, Iran is a non-nuclear weapons state and has issued a Fatwa against pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity. Even If insincere, it is many years away from weaponising and deploying atomic systems in its arsenal. There is no urgency or hint of such a capacity on the part of Iran.

What she is advocating is the extermination of tens of millions of Iranians and a possible second-strike retaliation against the United States were it to engage in a preemptive nuclear war against Iran. The senator appears unaware that Israel is a major nuclear power and possesses between 150 and 200 nuclear warheads that can be deployed on both United States built fighter aircraft or launched by missiles.  I have never, even during the days of the Cold War, witnessed such reckless if not evil rhetoric in which innocent civilians would be slaughtered by the millions in such an indiscriminate manner. Israel hardly requires an extended deterrence from the United States: the nuclear nation which worked with South Africa during its apartheid regime to acquire and refine its nuclear capacity, does not require American nuclear protection. Iran would hardly benefit from a nuclear attack on a nuclear power in the region. The only group that needs our protection are the Palestinians who are the victims of one of the greatest violations of human rights since the end of World War II.

For Senator Clinton to be even contemplating a nuclear attack on a country as part of a political campaign strategy is unseemly and I believe an evil and despicable lack of ethics and morality. Her initial description of her nuclear plans of deterrence as “massive retaliation” was uttered during the disturbing high-tech lynching of the Philadelphia debate.  Massive Retaliation was introduced by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in 1954. At the time, the United States believed it lacked the conventional might to restrain a possible Soviet attack on Western Europe and so Secretary Dulles suggested that the U.S. might use nuclear weapons to deter both a CONVENTIONAL as well as a Soviet nuclear first-strike assault. The policy of massive retaliation ratcheted up the scenarios in which these monstrous atomic and thermonuclear weapons would be used. The policy even for the United States was quickly discredited as a doomsday strategy in which nuclear warfare would be triggered by even a limited Soviet conventional surge across the Fulda Gap–the symbolic division between the boundaries between the former West and East Germany that was closest to the Rhine River. Of course its successor, Flexible Response, was equally flawed even if never fully articulated by either Secretary of Defence Robert S. McNamara and his successors at DoD.

The New York senator has cynically and ignorantly taken a Cold War doctrine and to put it mildly given it a horrific new level of application. If a nuclear state is attacked by another nuclear state, the U.S. will attack the attacker with nuclear weapons. I have never heard of a nuclear umbrella being extended to a major nuclear power such as the State of Israel. I also construe Mrs. Clinton’s remarks to be racist, antithetical to the need for diplomacy and reconciliation and a political ploy to appear to be out Thatchering, Margaret Thatcher, the former blustering British Prime Minister.

I say shame on Senator Clinton and under no circumstances, do I see any qualities in this individual that would be worthy of an American president. She should suspend her candidacy and be condemned by the Democratic Party as unprofessional, violent-prone and a threat to global justice and the international community.

Clinton Campaign Spokesperson George Stephanopoulus.

Not only did this former Clinton administration White House official–senior advisor to the president for policy and strategy–conduct a high-tech lynching during the “debate” in Philadelphia on April  16, but also for the last month or so presented highly biased reporting on the Democratic party primary campaign on Charles Gibson’s evening newscast.  This fellow slants the news from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s perspective and the candidates’ “debate” was simply the most egregious form of his campaigning for a high-level position in a possible Clinton administration.

I have never witnessed such pandering on mainstream television during a debate to right-wing nationalism as orchestrated by this fromer Oxford  University Rhodes Scholar. This was conducted during the inquisition of the Illinois Senator Barack Obama. The questions on flag-lapel fashion, Bill Ayers’s days as a weatherperson and the supposed lack of partriotism of the senator’s pastor, former U.S. marine Reverend Jeremiah Wright, were unbecoming a supposed professional journalist and frankly an unseemly waste of time.

While Mr Stephanapoulus, ABC’s Chief Washington Correspondent, did not produce the show, I noticed that Ms Chelsea Clinton and her entourage were shown throughout the debate in full colour, but none of the Obama supporters or even the rest of the audience were: it was like night-vision videography in which the audience did not know when on camera but the Clinton elites did.

From the New York Times court liberal Frank Rich, who adorns his lengthy but uninformative columns with needlessly excessive links, to conservative writers such as Charles Krauthammer, harangues are flying against the two major Democratic candidates for president for accusing Senator McCain of accepting a century-long struggle in American occupied Iraq. Both Senators Barack Obama and the otherwise dissembling Hillary Rodham Clinton however are accurately referring to Senator McCain’s call for a possible one-hundred year occupation (Video) of Iraq.

While the senator, who disgraced himself and his nation for bombing innocent civilians in all likelihood in a genocidal war in Vietnam, did not directly advocate another hundred years of combat operations in country, he certainly is receptive to a century’s long occupation of Iraq. Such insouciance concerning American imperialism and domination of a Muslim nation is obscene. The senator from Arizona is utterly incapable of recognising the immorality of continued American occupation and indiscriminate warfighting tactics in the region. I presume if American troops could kill the phantasmagorical Al Qaeda and other “radical jihadists” for a century without any casualties, Senator McCain would approve. I would not because the planet cannot forever endure a rogue terrorist state such as the United States that despoliates the environment and slaughters non-white peoples throughout the world.

I wonder if the presumptive Republican presidential nominee believes that Iraq could be “pacified” as the Korean Peninsula and that an American military occupation of a Shi’a majority nation would not be resisted with national-liberation insurgencies or caught in the crossfire of inter-ethnic rivalries as those between Sunni and Shi’a or even Shia’ and Shi’a (Sadrists v. Prime Minister Maliki’s ragtag ineffectual Parliamentary supporters).

I hope Senator Barack Obama in particular will not be intimidated by  Senator McCain’s supporters or worse New York Times liberals who are trying to bowdlerize the seventy-one year old senator’s acceptance of a hundred-year occupation of Iraq. That indeed could not be possible without significant casualties. At best Senator John McCain is unaware that an occupation of Iraq could not be bloodless as his putative enemy former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld believed; at worse, it confrims his lack of vision that America needs to rethink its strategic approach to global hegemony and adopt a less militaristic, geostrategic approach to international affairs.

The Republican senator is consumed with military images, the reliance on war and killing, the imaging of death and destruction of our endlessly shifting but perpetual enemies. His campaign is remorselessly sadistic as it eschews diplomacy, negotiations and creative non-violent alternatives to interstate violence. His world, his life, his essence is to kill, dominate and expand American hyperpower influence. He does not possess the capacity of growth or reflection but merely a fanatical, paranoid exaggeration of an America in peril and a belief that guns alone can solve the myriad problems that afflict our wayward and monstrously destructive nation.

I was asked to submit an essay that will accompany a Slovenian exhibit in display text, appear possibly in an exhibition book and in the press. Slovenia is a member of the eurozone of the European Union and was part of the former Yugoslavia. The exhibition’s principal organiser is Rado Poggi.

This is a brief excerpt from my essay,  ”American Imperialism and the Paranoid Style of American Politics.”

“Jihadists, Muslims in general, terrorists, Al Qaeda, Hizbollah, Hamas, al Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.) are designated or depicted as terrorist organisations. This is an effort to dehumanise and marginalise those who have legitimate grievances against the United States, Israel or 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 its standard of living and civil liberties.”

24-03-2008

Necessary Discourse:hysteria (ND:hysteria) _update1_

ND:hysteria  is an art exhibition.

ND:hysteria points out on the identified predicament “hysteria”.

ND:hysteria brings two generations of artists together.

ND:hysteria combines points of view of artists and scientists from other fields.

ND:hysteria gives the contemporary art museum an active role in the society.

These five points are the columns of the project. During the first month of work on the realization  of ND:hysteria we collected several interesting and stimulating impulses, we want to communicate you, even to illustrate the process that will leads us to November 2008.

Hysteria can not only be interpreted as a rich and promising instrument to get influence on public opinion building, but there are also interesting thoughts that amplifies its contemporary meaning, such as:

• - Hysteria – elections, (US-elections Nov.2008, Slovenian parliamentarian elections in Sept. 2008)
• - Hysteria – current global economic crisis (incl. low US-dollar, high energy and food prices, etc.),
• - Hysteria – trendy disease
• - Hysteria – language evolution / extinction
• - Hysteria – aging population in welfare-societies
• - Hysteria – exceeded nations identity (e.g. Slovenia – Yugoslavia, Slovenia – EU)
• - Hysteria – ecology, climatic change
• - Hysteria – gene manipulation
• - Hysteria – world religions (coexistence, dialogue)

During the 4-weeks exhibition-process we are planning to organize other activities such as symposia, lectures, performances, concerts, theatre, discussions, etc.

Some proposals that reached us:

• - Lecture by Yael Ben Shalom (hysteria-memory-utopia-Israel-neuland-cionism)
• - Lecture by Simon Bryceson (commercialisation of everyday life)
• - Cither – concert (Mlakar)
• - Music performance by Mukul Deora
• - World Cultural Forum – symposium
• - Discussion on topic “What Slovenians believe it’s not true in everyday media-news?”

The final part of the ND:hysteria will be the book in which all artworks, essays and public reactions will be documented.

So far the following partisans confirmed their participation:

Pino Poggi, Timm Ulrichs, Rainer Wittenborn,

Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa, Mladen Stropnik & Natasa Skusek, Lada Cerar & Saso Sedlacek, Saso Vrabic,

Peter N. Kirstein, Yael Katz Ben Shalom, WCF-Members, Robert Kurz, Loretta Napoleoni, Mukul Deora, Caroline Kihato, Simon Bryceson,

ND:hysteria is an ongoing process, therefore we are looking forward to collect your feedback and impulses, that we think are essential to create a relevant discourse and to legitimate its necessity.

Four thousand Americans have died as of March 23, 2008 and they have killed directly or indirectly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in this war of conquest, colonialism and mass murder. While not all of these deaths were American K.I.A., they do represent the total amount of dead in the theatre and general area of the Iraq war zone. Some are suicides; some are accidents; most, however, are combat deaths that would not have occurred if Mr George W. Bush and his acolytes such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, junior senator from New York, had not supported such an immoral and unjust military preemptive action.

Dr Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

I would echo the sentiments of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who is being used to Willy Horton the mildly progressive Senator Barack Obama, with his “god-damn America” sermon. I think if there is a heavenly engineer it would damn this country for its wars, use of torture, extraordinary renditions of alleged terror suspects, death penalty, Jim Crow, slavery, lack of universal health care and other egregious failings.

I think a Supreme Being, if there is such an entity, should not bless this country but indeed damn it with its violent efforts to secure fossil fuels, to advance Israeli interests and support of its terrorism against the long-suffering and devastated Palestinian people.

This Iraq War proves that those who opposed Vietnam were right. This is a nation drunk with blood, paranoid if it cannot dominate and power maximise a hegemonic control over the world. This is a nation that tricks Joe and Jane Six Pack into believing that supporting the troops means sending them to kill and be killed in various hyperpower adventures.

This is a nation that refers to Palestinian Terrorism and not Israeli mass murder, radical jihad and not the frenetic zionism of neo-conservatives, Iranian expansionism despite the absence of Iran military forces in ANY third country. The hypocrisy is blatant.

On this day of 4,000 American military personnel having perished, I think of Reverend Wright’s brilliant statement that the United States used nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki and never gave it a thought, never apologised, never reflected on this genocide. I noted the reverend’s denunciation of those evil, city-busting nuclear attacks was shown over and over on cable television. I found his comments to be courageous, accurate and appropriate in tone and substance.

I hope that when the accounting for this latest war is tallied, there is more than another war memorial eating into the precious real estate of the Mall in Washington, D. C. in which we memorialise the sacrifice of the troops without questioning the rationale of those evil American elites that sent them to war. I hope that eventually the smug arrogance of American imperialism will lead to criminal prosecution of America’s senior civilian and military leadership. I hope there are a million Reverend Wrights who are not deployed by a cheerleading white dominated media, to silence a candidate who dares question American military action or to marginalise, in a racist manner, a candidate who is slightly more reflective of the need to change American foreign relations. We need candidates for the presidency who are not parroting the robotic vital center that is non-partisan in its racism, imperialism and marginalisation of creative dissent.

Alan Dershowitz has equated the investigation of Governor Eliot Spitzer’s use of prostitutes with the crimes of the Stalinist era in the former Union of Soviet of Socialist Republics. The Harvard law professor, writing in the Wall Street Journal on March 12, compares the inquiry to that of the tactics of Lavrenti Beria, the ruthless chief of Stalin’s, Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (K.G.B.) Mr Dershowitz quotes Mr Beria, “Show me the man and I will find the crime.”

The professor, who is driven by a maniacal devotion to identity politics, claims that using federal prosecutorial powers to investigate prostitution rings and the possibly illegal laundering of monies, had arbitrarily decided to investigate the governor. He claims the bombastic and unsavory governor was targeted and that any individual would wilt under a sustained inquiry of illegal misconduct. These charges are in advance of any indictment or other actions that would merit such an assertion of rogue prosecutorial misconduct. He also asserted elsewhere that prostitution is a victimless crime because of the generous financial remuneration that such activities may generate.

Mr Dershowitz is the individual who was primarily responsible for the denial of tenure in June 2007 of Professor Norman G. Finkelstein of DePaul University. Enraged that his sham of a book, The Case for Israel, had been exposed as a worthless, propaganda tract, Mr Dershowitz attempted to force the University of California Press to retract its decision to publish Dr Finkelstein’s, Beyond Chutzpah. The Harvard law professor, who apparently is unfamiliar with the first amendment, unsuccessfully appealed directly to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office to censor an academician’s scholarship because of an unfavourable review.

Before Mr Dershowitz attempts to disparage federal attorneys for enforcing the law as Stalinist monsters, he should examine his own shameless, bullying tactics as reminiscent of authoritarian European regimes where books were burned, dissenters were interned, free speech eviscerated and critical thinking smashed with oppressive state intervention. Alan Dershowitz should first assess his own hate-filled, ruthless campaign to ideologically cleanse the academy of his critics and those who dare challenge the apartheid and colonialism perpetrated by the State of Israel. To paraphrase Mr Beria: “Show me a provocative professor, and I will find a way to silence him or her.”

1) I know Al Gore is wondering if he will be at the top of the ticket due to a deadlocked Democratic convention with neither candidate receiving the magical 2025 delegate majority. Will they turn to him as they did to the insipid West Virginian John W. Davis after 103 ballots during the 1924 New York city convention?

2) I don’t believe Senator Barack Obama, the more liberal of the two leading candidates, would select Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as his vice presidential running mate. The United States due to its Jim Crow, racist, patriarchal past would unlikely elect both an African-American and a woman to the nation’s two highest constitutional offices.

3) John McCain, Senator of Arizona, would defeat Senator Clinton and probably Senator Barack Obama. I believe however that the Illinois Senator would have a better chance simply because he might energise younger, more independent voters who are not quite as brainwashed into believing the United States is a besieged nation that is vulnerable to a myriad of enemies and needs a “Commander in Chief” mentality.

4) I do not believe Senator John Edwards, Governor Bill Richardson or for that matter Vice President Al Gore will endorse a candidate for the forseeable future. It would doom their vice presidential or presidential aspirations if they supported a candidate who did not garner the nomination during the Denver August convention or if they appeared too partisan. Yet an Albert Gore endorsement would possibly be an enormous catalyst in pushing a candidate toward the nomination. Yet Mr Gore would benefit from a deadlocked convention because I would presume only he would have the stature to be a compromise candidate.

5) I would advise the war criminal sociopath Senator John McCain to select Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, particularly if a woman is on the Democratic ticket. She would be quite formidable due to her knowledge of national security issues and her bona fides as a “pure” conservative. At age 65 at the time of the inaugural, she would somewhat balance the seventy-two year cancer survivor former bomber of North Vietnamese noncombatants.

6) I think it is rather humorous that the overly tanned Republican Florida governor, Charlie Crist is so concerned that the Democratic voters not be excluded from the electoral process and have a second chance at a primary. Florida and Michigan arrogantly and selfishly violated Democratic National Committee rules and held their primaries prior to indecisive, “Unsuper” Tuesday: Michigan on January 15 and Florida on January 29. Hence, their delegates are mute at the Democratic convention. Senator Obama did not even appear on the Michigan ballot. As a supporter of the sociopath Mr McCain, Governor Crist would benefit, as would his candidate, by extending the acrimonious primary season to delay and further fracture the selection of a Demcratic presidential candidate. Mr Crist is a typical elitist governor who would rather see the U.S. fight immoral wars than assert any ethical reservations about a rogue state that may elect a war criminal. What a despicable, political hack governor who is so patently political, that he makes a mockery of his state and his position: after all he followed Governor Jeb Bush which tells you something about the unenlightened nature of many Florida voters. Yet they honoured themselves and their nation in their not insignificant support of Ralph Nader in the 2000 general election. So I suppose things even out in the long term.

Before my presentation at New York University’s “Freedoms at Risk Conference” on February 23, I looked for Bob Dylan’s place at 161 West Fourth Street. I walked out of the Kimmel Center at Washington Square, turned left and headed west on fourth street. I walked  a couple of blocks and crossed MacDougal street and saw Dave Van Ronk carrying a guitar without a case. I said, “Dave where is Bob’s place.” He said, ”I don’t know if he split the Village for awhile or not, it’s, “Wintertime in New York town, The wind blowin’ snow around.” I said “Yeah, maybe he’s gone back to Hibbing to warm up, huh?”

Then a couple of more short blocks and I get to Sixth Avenue, or the Avenue of the Americas as it is now called, and I see this prepossessing woman with long hair coming toward me. “Suze Rotolo, is that you?” “Yeah how are you, Peter,” and I say “How is Bob doing and how are you all getting along? Where is his place?” She said, “You mean where is our place because we live together.” We talked briefly about her recent photo shoot with Dylan.  “He is probably home warming up: we walked forever to get photos for the album.” Don Hunstein, a Columbia records photographer took the photos for the new The Freewheelin Bob Dylan album. But is this  a snowy February 1963 or 2008? The cars look different you know.

So I cross Sixth Avenue and ask a man who is cleaning the windows of an establishment if he knows where Dylan lives. I then give the exact address for 161 West Fourth which is between Sixth Avenue and Jones Street, which is a block west of Sixth. I have trouble talking to him because I am distracted by a lamentation or some poetic musings of Allen Ginsberg who appears out of the blue and says, “Look, his place is there, just practically right across the street.” Indeed, just a few buildings west of the avenue, is Dylan’s place on the north side of the street.

I am baffled; I can’t believe it, the bannister, the fourth floor walkup, Dylan lives on the third floor. Is this really where he lives? The same address; no gentrification; frozen in time; Ahhh, but is he in? Will I be able to talk to him? There is a sign on the door written in pencil that says: “I’ll be back later Suze. I am at Cafe Wha? and then will catch Tom Paxton at Gerde’s Folk City. Maybe Mike Porco will give me a gig. Maybe I will change the world! Hahaha. Peace, Bob”

The entire walk from N.Y.U. to Dylan’s place is about three minutes or so. There is a Tic Tac Toe women’s lingerie shop on the basement floor of the great folksinger’s building. It sells shoes and women’s stuff as if it were a tawdry storefront cousin of Victoria’s Secret. A mannekin of a nude-topless woman with red ribbons covering the nipples can be seen inside the front window. A brusque employee comes out who was rather unresponsive when I said, “Bob Dylan lived here.” I think I am in Dylan’s dream now. “I wish, I wish, I wish in vain, That we could sit simply in that room again.”

A car drives pass me on fourth street as I scamper to avoid getting snow showered. I take out my new Samsung cell phone which is my first one with a camera. I take my first ever mobile phone photos of Dylan’s place. Three of them! I look up at the third floor of this modest edifice which is positively caddy corner to Fourth Street and Sixth and I hear a unique voice singing and composing. I touch the bannister, the famous bannister.

My eyes water; I am hearing a genius from an open window slightly ajar due to wintry New York’s Greenwich Village on the island of Manhattan in the warrior kingdom of America. He is singing. I hear the voice and the sound of protest against the many crimes and irresponsible behaviour of this violent and selfish nuclear, escalation dominance, counterproliferator of only other nations. Not its smug self:

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

Then I go to Bleecker Street and asked my pal Richard Fariña–who was married to Joan Baez’s sister Mimi–who would die in a few years at age twenty-nine, “Where is the Gaslight?” “Oh, Dylan’s singing there tonight. I will show you the way. They say he will do a new song. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” 

And I woke up, returned to the N.Y.U. Kimmel Center, gave my talk and thought what a wonderful day! Dreams, Dylan and the comeback kid from October 31, 2002.

Are these darlings really worthy of our love??

I am struck by the fact that this violent nation does not address gun control. The killings at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb has revealed the typical dearth of courage. Where is Senator Barack Obama, the prowar Senator Hillary Clinton and war criminal Senator John McCain on fighting the gun lobby? Democrats talk about the drug lobby, the insurance lobby, the oil lobby but not the gun lobby–the National Rifle Association that worships guns and distorts the Constitution’s 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.

That amendment restricted the right to bear arms to citizen militias not the right to buy shotguns, handguns and assault weapons on a whim and a wish. Militias were the forerunner for national guard and reserves–the citizen soldier. Now we have evil peacetime, permanent constabularies and the bloated presence of national guard and reserve units. True the difficulties in recruiting canon fodder for war in Iraq and Afghanistan have placed unprecedented presssure on the guard and reserves but they are the residual evolutionary product of the militias that fought against the British during the revolution.

The cowardice and hypocrisy of politicans who mourn the dead but don’t protect the living is palpable. All this killing on campuses and schools, on city streets, in Lane Bryant stores in Tinley Park, Illinois and not one word about legislation or challenging the purveyors of death. I do not care about hunters but I believe even that lobby could be handed out weapons in various locations. Our worship of firearms and sidearms is obscene.

Without gun control and political backbone, these tragic and horrid incidents do not deserve mere solace and expressions of pain from the pusillanimous political leadership in this warrior kingdom but targeted and tough legislative efforts to remove these weapons from civil society.

Support your police and get these barbaric instruments out of our country.

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has also attempted to ride the path to power and influence due to his extremely violent activities as a navy pilot. Mr George W. Bush, who visited Vietnam in November 2006, visited Truch Bach Lake where the senator was apparently shot down in October 1967. His plane had been hit by anti-aircraft artilery–A.A.A.– and after he parachuted to safety, was apprehended and served justifiably five and a half years (1967-1973) as a P.O.W. He flew over twenty immoral bombing missions. What was he doing flying over a nation’s capital city and why did he not have the courage to refuse an unjust order to kill in this manner: To use a plane to bomb power stations which provides basic amenities to citizens and in all likelihood innocent civilians and little children?

Terror Bombing in Vietnam: Tough Guy John McCain Style

Was he bombing civilian areas as the Nazis attacked Rotterdam, the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the allies destroyed Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo and Nagasaki? Are we supposed to admire this Arizona warmonger, who opposed a national holiday for Dr Martin Luther King Jr., for flying an aeroplane and dropping bombs in an imperialistic, unjust war? Yes he was following orders and did not make policy but he was an officer and we have the right to assess a major national figure’s record in war in a critical manner.

He should apologise to the Vietnamese for his actions and stop playing on his alleged torture as a P.O.W. I oppose torture and hoped the former pilot did not have to endure such actions, if they indeed happened. I support his recent initiatives, however meekly pursued and non-binding on a criminal, defiant president, to prevent U.S. torture of P.O.W. or enemy combatants.

Senator McCain likes to recount his detention at the Hanoi Hilton, a euphemism for a detention facility in Hanoi for American pilots captured after bombing an innocent people in a developing country that was no threat to the U.S. I am certain American pow were treated no worse than the barbaric transgressions at Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo. There Americans killed pow as well as tortured, freezed, denied food, waterboarded and undressed them. Of course, any mistreatment of prisoners of war, enemy combatants or even “enemy” soldiers should be denounced as cruel and inhumane.

Senator McCain is a figure who has blood on his hands from Vietnam. As a candidate running as a supporter of the murderous surge and the putative slayer against terrorism, Americans should oppose this RACIST senator who slaughtered non-white Asians and now wants a global war against oppresseed, innocent, non-white Muslims. You are not a figure worthy of respect but of condemnation and obloquy

Lesson: Stop war; politicians should desist from campaigning on war records and the glorification of military combat; stop the bestiality of American imperialsim and resist this hegemonic compulsion for global domination.

Photo by Don Hunstein, February 1963

Bob Dylan’s second album, perhaps the greatest folk album of topical songs ever released, was titled the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. (1963)  For some reason there has been an upsurge in interest in the photo shoots for the cover. The cover contains an iconic image of the twenty-one year old Minnesota transplant walking down a snowy street in Greenwich Village with a girl friend, Suze Rotolo.

On the cover booklet of liner notes for the soundtrack of Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, the 2005 film by Martin Scorsese, is another outtake of the Bob Dylan neighborhood sojourn with Ms Rotolo. On p. 13 of the liner notes is still another photo, quite similar to the above, but without Ms Rotolo. Mr Dylan at the time was living on 4th Street in New York City’s, The Village and the bannister leading to his apartment  is clearly shown in the photo above, for sale by the New York Times. One of Mr Dylan’s greatest songs is “Positively 4th Street” with the obvious autobiographic reference.

The song is remarkably similar to “Like a Rolling Stone.” Both were recorded in 1965 at the Highway 61 Revisited sessions but “Positively” did not make the cut. It was released as a single and rose to seven on the charts. Not until 1967, does it appear on an album, Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits. Its sound and lyrics, while not as rich and surreal, are more than a little suggestive of “Rolling Stone.” Mr Dylan was evolving from his politically revolutionary music into a pathbreaking counter-romantic genre. The love song was now the anti-love song. Falling in love was now bitter disapointment with a failed relationship. Traditional songs celebrating friendship and mirth are now undergoing a Dylanesque revolution of spite and resentment.

I have always felt the single most dominant characteristic of Dylan’s genius was anger. It is the motive force behind his inspired music and frankly the engine of his greatness. While it is inexact to be too reductionist in assessing such a complex figure, I believe it is his anger that forms the context of his creativity and which spurred the music that endures forever.

“Positively 4th Street”

You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning

You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that’s winning

You say I let you down
You know it’s not like that
If you’re so hurt
Why then don’t you show it

You say you lost your faith
But that’s not where it’s at
You had no faith to lose
And you know it

I know the reason
That you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd
You’re in with

Do you take me for such a fool
To think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide
What he don’t know to begin with

You see me on the street
You always act surprised
You say, “How are you?” “Good luck”
But you don’t mean it

When you know as well as me
You’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once
And scream it

No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I’d rob them

And now I know you’re dissatisfied
With your position and your place
Don’t you understand
It’s not my problem

I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you

Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is
To see you

Copyright © 1965; renewed 1993 Special Rider Music

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in addition to her misreading of the role of Dr King’s prominence in the civil rights movement, demonstrated additional partisan and revisionist history that is inaccurate. Revisionist history is the motive force behind historiography but it can be wrong.

In her assertion that it was war criminal Lyndon B. Johnson who “passed” the Civil Rights Act of 1964, she states President Kennedy had been “hopeful” in doing so. What does that mean? Mr Kennedy (1961-1963) for several years resisted sending a civil rights bill to the Congress because he was afraid it would alienate southern voters. His own Nixonian southern strategy was evident in his appointment of racist, apartheid judges to lifetime appointments on the federal bench. Senator Clinton is attempting to state that idealism means nothing; implementation means everything and that the former is irrelevant or certainly secondary in the success of the latter. Well, being “hopeful” is hardly decisive presidential action but pusillanimity. While J.F.K. did assist James Meredith in integrating the University of Mississippi and ultimately supported the epochal August 1963 March on Washington, his presidency was not particularly decisive or proactive in the area of civil rights.

President Dwight David Eisenhower (1953-1961)

Hillary Clinton also dismissed entirely President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s role in the civil rights struggle even though he sent troops in 1957 to Little Rock, Arkansas to desegregate Central High School and was president when the significant 1957 Civil Rights Act was passed, the first civil rights law since the 1866 Reconstruction act. Yes it is true Mr Eisenhower was not generally sympathetic to Brown v. Topeka desegregation guidelines and was not a strong supporter of civil rights, but his record is not devoid of any accomplishment and she should have mentioned the civil rights act passed during his presidency.

As a senator who voted for war in October 2002 and subsequently lies on Meet the Press, that her vote was NOT a vote for the possibility of preemptive war, I can understand her dismissive statement of President Eisenhower. The latter warned against the military-industrial-complex to which the New York senator is so completely intertwined as she assumes the basic virtues of American imperialism, expansionism and its virtually unlimited right to use force.

Much has been made of recent comments directed at the Obama campaign by President Bill  and Senator Hillary Clinton. The House majority whip and highest ranking African-American in Congress, Democratic Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, is contemplating an Obama endorsement prior to the Democratic South Carolina primary on January  26, 2008. Bizarrely, the state holds its Republican primary on January 19.

1) Senator Hillary Clinton stated that it was President Johnson’s passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that implemented Dr King’s dream.  Of course presidents don’t pass legislation; the Congress does but perhaps the senator missed that class in Government 101. This was her exact statement: “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” The clear implication was that Senator Barack Obama’s campaign of hope is pyrrhic without a strong change agent as president. That to merely talk about change is not enough; one has to have the skills and determination to make change. That may be true but her example is egregious and factually in error. Her statements were needlessly self-serving and revealed great ignorance about the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Without marches, civil-disobedience, sit-ins, freedom rides, and the genius of Dr King, there would not have been a Civil Rights Act of 1964.  President Kennedy had dallied some two and half years before he sent a civil rights bill to the Hill in 1963. L.B.J., a nazi-style war criminal for his genocide in Vietnam, was certainly an advocate of domestic racial equality and integration. Yet the 1964 law would not have been possible had it not been for the massive demonstrations and creative non-violent civil disobedience of Dr King, the S.C.L.C., S.N.C.C., C.O.R.E., N.A.A.C.P. and other civil rights groups. Therefore, Senator Clinton underestimated the power of vision and speech and direct action prior to her rather narrow-minded, simplistic view of presidential power. Her comment was not explicitly racist but vastly underestimated the role and sacrifice of many African Americans in the struggle to end Jim Crow apartheid in the United States.

2) William Jefferson Clinton compared Senator Obama’s position on the Iraq War to a “fairy tale.” He alleged the press had ignored various statements by the Illinois Senator in 2004 which he claimed repersented a cautious reluctance to distance himself from Mr Bush and the prior Senate authorisation to use force in October 2002. I don’t believe the president was stating that the campaign of Obama in general was a “fairy tale” but the tenor of his remarks were certainly bound to offend those who take quite seriously the burgeoning candidacy of a minority.  President Clinton took pains to explain himself subsequently that he was referring to the press’s treatment of Sen. Obama’s positions on the war, and not the legitimacy or growing strength of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Yet Mr Clinton is shamefully engaging in propaganda which is contemptuous and unseemly. Barack Obama opposed the war BEFORE the Senate and a majority of its Senate Democrats voted to authorise war in October 2002 and the commencement of hostilities in March 2003. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton supported the war before it began “with conviction” and unlike the intrepid Senator John Edwards, has never diavowed her vote. So it is accurate to say that Senator Obama would have opposed the war-authorisation resolution, given his prewar public comments, and Senator Clinton cynically for political purposes supported it. That is a difference in judgment, honour and ethics that hopefully will render the Clinton candidacy as failure and unsustainable as the surge and American and Iraqi deaths slogs on in the killing fields of that widowed land.

The New Hampshire primary is scheduled for Tuesday, January 8, 2008. Twenty New Hampshire military personnel were killed in the immoral, terrorist Iraq War. Both Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards voted to authorise the use of military force in October 2002. Mr Edwards, a principled, admirable populist, has renounced his vote as a mistake. Yet he showed critical error in voting for this aggesssion. The New York Senator has not disavowed her vote and ran third in the Iowa caucuses.

Barack Obama, while not in the United States Senate when it authorised Mr Bush to use force against defenceless Iraq, did oppose the war prior to its inception when serving in the Illinois State Senate. The last presidential election in 2004, the Democratics nominated a confused, indecisve but prowar candidate in Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts. It is time to end the war and while elections may not reverse the militarism and imperialism of America, it is currently the only game in town.

Source: Iraq Coalition Casualty Count

I was part of a conference call that started at 9:01 at ended at 9:12 pm C.S.T. Senator Barack Obama predicted he would win the Iowa caucuses on January 3, 2008. There was no equivocation in his prediction. He stated the issue of his voting “present” while in the Illinois legislature was not a very significant issue. Judge Abner Mikva who was also part of the conference call stated that voting “present” was akin to a “no” vote. As a former United States Representative, member of the Illinois House, and White House Counsel (1994-1995) under Mr Bill Clinton, he should know.  

Senator Obama said, “He has lived a pretty clean life” and that the effort to find negatives in his past are not working. The senator said he did not feel a need to publicly respond to the “present” vote imbroglio but that if it had legs, he would. The Clinton campaign is trying to portray him as indecisive in not voting “yes” or “no” on some votes when he was in the Illinois State Senate. I know one thing; Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton voted “yes” to authorise a criminal war in October 2002 which in my estimation disqualifies her from serving as president. Such poor judgment, if not lack of ethical standards, do not suggest a capacity to be president of the United States.

Sen. Obama said the issue of experience was really a test to see if one would continue the inside the beltway foibles and misdirections of the past. He said he represented a different direction. He said he is young, is named Barack Obama and is an African-American and for some, that is the real issue. Generally, he sounded upbeat, refreshed and is quite gripping and alluring even on the telephone. There is charisma and magic about him. Whether he will change America in a progressive direction, even if elected, only time will tell.

He said if he were to win New Hampshire in addition to Iowa, then “we might just win this thing.” He was in New Hampshire and was about to leave for Iowa where he will be staying until Christmas Eve. Senator Obama said he had the best organisation of any candidate which may or may not be true but his rise in the polls certainly could be attributed at least in part to a well-organised and skilled political coterie of supporters.

The Des Moines Register, a rather supercilious newspaper that receives inordinate, quadrennial attention when it endorses candidates for the obscure, impenetrable Iowa caucuses, prefers two prowar, militant radical senators: John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Hillary Clinton, Democrat of New York, for their caucuses on Thursday, January 3, 2008. The Boston Globe which is owned by the New York Times, but editorially independent, endorsed one antiwar senator, Obama, and one prowar senator, McCain, for the Democratic and Republican primaries in New Hampshire on Tuesday, January 8, 2008. It is somewhat comforting that the Globe endorsed at least one candidate for president who is opposed to mass murder and state terrorism. I would have preferred an endorsement by the Boston Globe of enigmatic Congressperson Ron Paul or a non-endorsement for the Republican primary. Note the quality of writing in the Boston Globe is much more sophisticated and analytical than the sophomoric, banal writing of the Iowa paper’s editorial board.

For Democrats: Barack Obama

(Associated Press)

THE FIRST American president of the 21st century has not appreciated the intricate realities of our age. The next president must. The most sobering challenges that face this country – terrorism, climate change, disease pandemics – are global. America needs a president with an intuitive sense of the wider world, with all its perils and opportunities. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois has this understanding at his core. The Globe endorses his candidacy in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary Jan. 8.Many have remarked on Obama’s extraordinary biography: that he is the biracial son of a father from Kenya and a mother who had him at 18; that he was raised in the dynamic, multi-ethnic cultures of Hawaii and Indonesia; that he went from being president of the Harvard Law Review to the gritty and often thankless work of community organizing in Chicago; that, at 46, he would be the first post-baby-boom president.

What is more extraordinary is how Obama seals each of these experiences to his politics. One of the lessons he took from organizing poor families in Chicago, he says, was “how much people felt locked out of their government,” even at the local level. That experience anchors his commitment to transparency and accountability in Washington.

Similarly, his exposure to foreign lands as a child and his own complex racial identity have made him at ease with diversity – of point of view as well as race or religion. “I’ve had to negotiate through different cultures my whole life,” he says. He speaks with clarity and directness, and he is also a listener, a lost art in our politics.

In what looks like prescience today, Obama was against the Iraq war from the start. But his is not the stereotypical 1960s antiwar reflex. “I don’t oppose all wars,” he said in the fall of 2002. “I’m opposed to rash wars.”

When it comes to waging peace, Obama has the leadership skills to reset the country’s reputation in the world. He notes, for example, that the United States would be in a stronger position with Iran if it took more seriously its own commitment to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. His bill, cosponsored with Senator Richard Lugar, to add conventional weapons to the nation’s threat reduction initiative, became law this year.

On domestic issues, the major Democratic candidates are reduced to parsing slivers of difference. But Obama has been more forthright in declaring his slightly heterodox positions to traditional Democratic constituencies. His support for merit pay for teachers, or a cap on carbon emissions, suggests a healthy independence from the established order.

The first major bill to Obama’s name in the Illinois Legislature was on campaign ethics reform. In Washington, he coauthored this year’s sweeping congressional lobbying reform law. When he describes his approach to healthcare negotiations, he says, “The insurance and drug companies will get a seat at the table, but they won’t get to buy every chair.”

Obama’s critics, and even many who want to support him, worry about his relative lack of experience. It is true that other Democratic contenders have more conventional resumes and have spent more time in Washington. But that exposure has tended to give them a sense of government’s constraints. Obama is more animated by its possibilities.

In our view, the choice on the Democratic side is between Obama and Hillary Clinton. Clinton has run a diligent, serious campaign, and her command of the issues is deep and reassuring. But her approach is needlessly defensive, a backward glance at the bruising political battles of the 1990s. Obama’s candidacy looks forward.

Obama’s memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” is divided into three main sections. The first is a reflection on his youthful search for identity. The second recounts his days in Chicago, which include the first stirrings of a religious life. The third is a roots pilgrimage to Kenya, to better understand his often absent father. It is hard to read this book without longing for a president with this level of introspection, honesty, and maturity – and Obama published it when he was only 33.

“I genuinely believe that our security and prosperity are going to depend on how we manage our continued integration into the rest of the world,” he says. Obama’s story is the American story, a deeply affecting tale of possibility. People who vote for him vote their hopes. Even after seven desolating years, this country has not forgotten how to hope.

© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

Saint Louis University which recently was honoured as having the best mascot in N.C.A.A. sports, the Billikens, defeated the disgraced and academically sullied Southern Illinois University Salukis. The sleaze is so great, we can feel it up here in Chicago as the great faker, the great impostor, the unethical one, the fraud, the disgraced Glenn Poshard, who plagiarised BOTH his doctoral dissertation and in all likelihood his master’s thesis, continues to steal money from Illinois citizens as the president of S.I.U. Pity the basketball players and all other students who came there for an education to have such an immoral, dishonourable and frankly cowardly person as their university system president. 

As long as this charlatan, Mister Glenn Poshard, remains president, S.I.U. will be tarnished as a system (Carbondale, Springfield, Edwardsville, East St Louis) that does not uphold ethical norms in higher education or even openly promote academic excellence. Even though a faculty committee found plagiarism, he remains. Even though he admittedly does not know how to do honest research, he remains. Even though his degree is worthless and his dissertation removed from S.I.U. archives, he remains.  This is the state of America: from steroid use in baseball, to university presidents–although not all of course are this venal– who will do anything to retain their power and wealth even if it discredits their own institution.

St. Louis - Kevin Lisch hit five free throws in the final minute as Saint Louis overcame a nine-point Southern Illinois University lead to rally for a thrilling 56-51 victory on Saturday night at Scottrade Center. Luke Meyer hit a crucial 3-pointer with just over one minute left to play in the game, and Tommie Liddell III drew an important charging call to key the Billiken comeback. The Billiken defense gave up only three points over the final eight minutes.

The Billikens stretched a one-point halftime lead to six at the 16:14 mark, their largest of the evening. Meyer scored on a layup, and Liddell drained a jumper. After one SIU free throw, Liddell scored again to push the Billikens on top by a 34-28 count. SLU still led 36-32 before the Salukis got hot from beyond the arc and went on a 16-3 run. The Salukis hit four treys to fuel the run and open up their largest lead of the evening at 48-39 with 8:35 left in the game. Lisch hit a jumper, and Liddell’s shot cut the lead to 48-43. Matt Shaw sank another trey for SIU to push the Salukis on top 51-43 with 4:17 left in the contest. Lisch drilled a 3-pointer from the top of the key to answer and give SLU a huge lift. Liddell converted two charity tosses as SLU drew to 51-48 with 2:46 remaining. The Billikens finally knotted the score at 51-51 when Meyer swished a trey from the right corner. SIU turned the ball over, and Lisch hit both ends of a one-and-one to give the Billikens the lead with 43 seconds left. On the next Saluki possession, SIU looked inside, but Liddell drew a charge call with 20 seconds remaining in the game. Lisch went to the line and hit the first free throw but misfired on the next. SIU looked to tie, but the Salukis stepped out of bounds. SIU again fouled Lisch, and the junior sealed the win with two free throws with nine seconds left on the clock.

The Billikens opened the game with a flourish as Kevin Lisch drained a jumper from the top of the key to open the game. Tommie Liddell III spun on the right baseline and flew in for an emphatic two-handed dunk as the Billikens went up 6-2. Lisch and Bryce Husak scored on consecutive trips as the Billikens stayed hot from the field. Liddell drained a 3-pointer as the SLU advantage grew to 13-8 as the Billikens hit five of their first nine shots seven minutes into the game.

However, the Billikens’ offense stalled as the Salukis scored eight straight points to edge ahead. SIU led by as many as seven points with just under five minutes left in the first half at 23-16. The Billikens responded with a rush. Danny Brown hit two free throws, and Barry Eberhardt had a tip-in to draw SLU to 23-20. Lisch rattled in a jumper in the final minute to cut the Saluki lead to one. After an SIU turnover, the Billikens looked for the final shot of the half. In the waning seconds, Danny Brown tracked down a loose ball and put up a shot from the right that hit the rim, bounced off the backboard and spun in to put the Billikens put 24-23 at intermission.

Lisch led the Billikens with 20 points, while Liddell added 16 points. The junior duo combined to shoot 12-of-17 from the field. Lisch also had four assists and did not commit a turnover. Matt Shaw led the Salukis (4-4) with 21 points. The Billikens shot 68.8 percent in the second half (11-of-16) and finished the night hitting 19-of-37 from the field (51.4 percent).

The Billikens (7-5) play the third game of a four-contest home stand when they host Loyola (Chicago) on Wednesday, Dec. 19, for a 7 p.m. game.

We are a nation in which 35,500,000 are hungry ranging from short-term to long-term incapacity in satisfying dietary needs in 2006. This number of hunger-challenged Americans increased from 35,100,000 in 2005. About 10% of adults and 13% of children are hungry in a nation that Senatory Hillary Clinton and Mr  George Bush believes should be fighting a terrorist war in Iraq; one voted for it and the other waged it in a manner that has disgraced the criminal, venal behaviour of America. That war has cost over a trillion dollars with no end in sight.

We approach 4000 killed in action or in theatre in Iraq. They have died for nothing in a meaningless war that had nothing to do with “National Security” but everything to do with anti-Muslim rage and a desire for imperialistic domination of adversarial regimes.

We approach 48  million Americans who are without health insurance.

We debate whether undocumented workers should be able to drive legally in the United States which, except for the Native American victims of genocide, is a nation of settlers, colonialists and immigrants. White folks want to close the door after them. A less racist nation would welcome poor, hungry immigrants seeking a better life in a large, wide-open nation that has plenty of room to house, educate and benefit from their labour.

The numbers of homeless is about 1% of the population or approximately 1,350,000. A growing number of veterans, who the warhawks claims are the Greatest Generation and the Pride of America, are in this category of destitute Americans whose residence is the outdoors. The ”Vital Center” says one can’t be a patriot if one opposes the Iraq-Vietnam quagmire because they are not supporting the “guardians” of American democracy. Yet the warriors who send others to die display little preoccupation over the soldiers’ fate upon return. It is all about social class. The rich and comfortable wage wars to advance their socio-economic interests and the poor do the fighting and dying and get little in return but metals and a spot of Earth at Arlington.

The richest, most powerful nation in the world has one of the worst human-rights records and among “western” democracies is the least successful in providing a social safety net for its citizens.

The shame of America is its unbridled selfish racism and refusal to spread its bounty to even its own citizens much less other oppressed peoples of the Earth.

Thanksgiving is a farce and a charade because we should not emphasise the nation’s bounty and wealth, but as a result of this monstrous nation’s actions, why so many have so few. The purpose is not to be thankful for what some have but determined to see a radical distribution of the nation’s resources in a manner whereby the ruling elites are brought to account for their policies of blind pursuit of wealth, imperial overstretch and lack of redistributive justice.

This afternoon I was at an event in Chicago, at the invitation of a friend, that featured Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois. The event was held in a residence and lasted from 1200 to 130 CDT. I asked the Senator as he was shaking hands about his controversy with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, over whether American presidents should talk to heads of state from nations that have diplomatic or other conflicts with the U.S. I told him that Mark Shields on the Newshour With Jim Lehrer said, “You do not have a glass jaw” because you did not retract or waver in your responses. I told him that I was impressed that he did not back down when she said it would be “irresponsible and naive” for an American president to talk to heads of state without preconditions. The Illinois Senator had previously averred it was “naive and irresponsible” for Senator Clinton to vote for an authorisation for war without an exit strategy. I said the prowar Mrs. Clinton’s attacks seemed to resonate from the old Cold War game of trying to paint a candidate as insufficiently willing to defend American interests.

The Senator said: “I am skinny but I am tough.”

Hillary Rodham as Wellesley College student in 1969. Photo courtesy New York Times

Later he spoke in front of the group of about seventy to eighty people and took three questions. I asked the first question: “How do the American people begin to see that national security and international security are interrelated? These concepts have been bifurcated but they are related. Your main opponent in the Democratic presidential contest (Senator Hillary Clinton) is trying to suggest there is something wrong for an American president to speak to heads of state that we have differences with.”

Without quoting him directly because I did not tape his answer, he addressed my question for about five minutes. These were some of his points.

1) No one can fool him and he would never be outfoxed or propagandised by a foreign leader. He would not just walk into a conversation but would have specific agendas and planning in advance.

2) Americans are looking for change. The Iraq War has caused over 3600 American deaths and Americans are looking for a different approach to external affairs. He indicated that the role of the president is also to repair America’s image abroad. He was concerned by the global perception that the U.S. is too arrogant and too willing to resolve differences through force. He said American presidents have a habit of only wanting to talk to heads of state with whom they already agree. He said almost verbatim, “In the past, we wanted heads of state to agree to everything before we would talk to them and that is wrong.” He said yes the American people want to know that their president would use military force as needed to protect them. That an American president would be willing “to blow up people.” He indicated that an American withdrawal from Iraq must be well-planned and disciplined unlike the invasion that was not. He did not get into specifics on timetables but it was clear he was eager to end the conflict.

He said he has spoken recently to Richard Clarke, the noted expert on terrorism. Senator Obama said Mr Clarke told him there were thousands of young people willing to commit suicide attacks, (I think he said 20,000) but that there are a billion other Muslims whom we need to interact with and improve our image with. He said many European nations as well, such as France, have also expressed concern about American unilateralism in the world.

3) He was asked by an African-American woman whether whites would vote for him and whether his standing in the polls is inflated due to white voters not wanting to reveal their true preferences for a non-white candidate. He indicated there was a time when polling data such as Governor Douglas Wilder (lost a Senate bid in 1994) in Virginia and former Mayor David Dinkins (lost to Rudy Giuliani for mayoral reelection) in New York did exaggerate white support for an African-American seeking high office. He said, however, in the case of Harold Ford in Tennessee, who almost won a Senate seat, that polling data underestimated his strength among whites and that he lost by “a point.” Mr Obama said that, “yes there are some whites who would not support my candidacy because of race, but they probably would disagree with my philosophy and not vote for me anyway.” He indicated that he had faith in America and that he was being judged for his qualifications and that Americans are a decent, fair people.

Senator Obama wore a white shirt with an open collar, sleeves rolled up and dark slacks. Many of the male guests wore suits and ties and he urged them to take off their jackets due to the hot summer day in Chicago. The presidential candidate had a cell-phone attached to his belt. It did not ring during the event. He is quite thin but looks well rested for a presidential candidate who is in pursuit of a rendezvous with destiny.

During the Democratic presidential Charleston debate last night at The Citadel, which only recently admitted women I might add, Senator Barack Obama stated he would meet with the leaders of nations with which the U.S. has antagonistic relationships. These include Cuba, North Korea (D.P.R.K.), Venezuela, Iran and Syria. It actually includes dozens more due to the Bush-Clinton quagmire we are currently suffering as the result of the March 19, 2003 invasion of Iraq. Senator Hillary Clinton said she would not promise to meet or explore that possibility for fear of being subjected to propaganda. She is was very forceful in expressing the usual arrogance of America: we want to dominate or rule and not engage in dialogue for that would lessen our power and influence. Yes she did indicate some willingness to assign lower-ranking officials but is playing the Thatcher card very consistently.

Is Senator Clinton Afraid of President Castro?

Is Senator Clinton that insecure and afraid of America’s vulnerability to ideas and principles that would damage our national security interests to meet with a Fidel Castro or a Hugo Chavez or a Kim Jong-il or an Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or a Bashar Al-Asad? The conservative senator is rather traditional and old school. She says she might send an envoy but has a fear of losing control of the agenda and being out foxed by a foreign head of state. While I preferred at least her “agnosticism” on increasing nuclear power as an energy source as opposed to Senator Obama’s apparent willingness to utilise fission-generated energy, I think that the fate of the Earth is better guided by a president who is willing to talk to other human beings. I am concerned that Mrs. Clinton is not committed to progressive internationalism or possesses a sense of global responsibility but remains essentially an orthodox prisoner of the Cold War notion that diplomatic outreach should be carefully circumscribed. Yet as Senator Obama stated, even during the Cold War the U.S. had bilateral talks between heads of state and conducted “summits” with the Soviet Union on a fairly regular basis.

While I am not yet endorsing a candidate on a university-server blog, I am extremely concerned that Sen Clinton would essentially pursue the neo-conservative muscular preemption of the Neo-Cons. After all, she voted for the war and has stood by that decision as the body count approaches 4,000 K.I.A.

I think any candidate for the presidency who voted to authorise the use of force to dismantle illusory weapons of mass destruction and replace the Saddam Hussein autocracy is not competent to assume the American presidency. While I am impressed with Senator John Edwards’s decency, passionate apology for his vote for war and Bobby Kennedyesque campaign against poverty and income inequality, he did support one of the more egregious strategic disasters since the deployment of Marines to Danang in 1965. This led to the total Americanisation of the Vietnam War.

No candidate running for president, other than the decent and honourable Congressperson Dennis Kucinich and former Senator Mike Gravel, opposed the Iraq War prior to March 19, 2003. Mr Kucinich, a former mayor of Cleveland, is the only member of Congress running for president to have voted against the war, since Senator Obama was in the Illinois State Senate when war was authorised by the Congress–including a majority of Democratic Senators I might add.

However, the facts are that the Illinois Senator remains the only front-line candidate for the American presidency that had the vision and the capacity to understand what such an invasion would mean for American vital strategic interests. Nothing is as important as the decision to deploy American combat forces. They will die; others will die; areas will be devastated; families will be destroyed; mothers and fathers will lose their children. War is tragic, terrible and in this instance of muscular neo-conservative preemption, utterly without an exit strategy or a rationale that would merit such loss of life and the destruction of a small country. Senator Barack Obama opposed this war from the beginning and I think this confers upon him a capacity of leadership that Senators Clinton, Biden, Dodd and even John Edwards unfortunately do not possess.

With the exception of Hillary Clinton who stated when voting for this disaster, “This is probably the hardest decision I have ever had to make — any vote that may lead to war should be hard — but I cast it with conviction,” the Democrats have an impressive array of candidates who seem committed to expressing their views without calibrating each statement to garner votes. Yet it seems to me the war is the central issue of our time and when we have an opportunity to measure and compare candidates on their position BEFORE the war, I believe the Illinois Senator reflects the wisdom necessary to enhance international peace and security.

SiCKO is one of the greatest movies in the history of cinema. It ranks with Citizen Kane, Apocalypse Now and On the Waterfront as an epic masterpiece. Michael Moore combines wit, information and courage in presenting this tour de force. He demonstrates with understatement the hypocrisy of American exceptionalism in which 50 million of its own citizens do not have health insurance; Americans die due to lack of financial assets; Americans are kicked out of hospitals and on to the streets and even retroactively forced to pay for previously approved procedures from heartless insurance companies; Americans flee abroad to get health care. Only the United States, the leader of the “Free World,” among western, democratic developed nations fails to provide health care coverage for all its citizens. These are “fellow Americans” who have to stitch their own wounds; these are our neighbors that have to flee to Canada or France to receive basic health coverage.

In one of the more gripping segments ever to be filmed in an American documentary, Mr Moore directly challenges the sixty-year Cold War battle against Cuba. He enters the Guantánamo Bay naval station with four rescue-victims of the 9/11 attacks and notes how the internees get health care but not Americans who volunteered to assist the dead and dying at Ground Zero in Manhattan. He is able to see the concentration camp and red cross-festooned hospital but is not allowed to enter the facility. The director and his patients then enter non-American occupied Cuba and are given physicals, M.R.I.s and medications that the 9/11 victims cannot afford to purchase in the U.S. Mr Moore directly challenges the official perception of Cuba as a totalitarian, evil Communist state by demonstrating its concern for the health of its own people: Cubans live longer and have less infant mortality due to universal health care despite its poverty and status as a developing nation.

SiCKO uses striking cinematic amplification of the text of insurance companies’ rejection of Americans applying for health insurance. The movie quotes hard working Americans as wondering, “Why has the U.S. become this way?” “I did not know American could ever be like this.” The documentary achieves true brilliance, a magisterial power, when Mr Moore shows the cynical journey of First Lady/Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton from avid supporter of socialised medicine during her husband’s first term to paid pawn of the insurance companies who fails to even mention the topic today. {She has raised the issue in her cyncial presidential campaign but I agree with Mr Moore, the prowar senator’s commitment to helping those in need is more rhetoric that true commitment.} Such is the price of not alienating the moral majority, white middle class.

Mr Moore wears his usual proletarian baseball cap but what a myriad variety! While most are reflective of his roots as a Michigan native such as a Detroit Tigers and a Michigan State cap, the director also wears a red and white Rutgers University logo that is obviously a gesture of support for the women’s basketball team that was the victim of a sexist, racist tirade by Don Imus.

Those who see this wondrous film should stay for the credits. They are in a sense a movie within a movie: Kudos to Kurt Vonnegut, quotations from De Tocqueville, statements of criticism of U.S. unstinting emphasis on competitive capitalism.

America’s image in the world has become one of a pariah state. Flag burnings and general revulsion against this warrior, terrorist-democracy that commutes privileged convicted felons’ sentences have escalated and for good reason. We need to address not only our image abroad but also our actions here at home. Let us repair our failed democracy and our emphasis on wealth at any price and begin to construe our nation as a community in which the strong succor the weak. A transformation of values domestically may over time lead to a less violent, preemptive approach to international relations abroad. To a large extent our wars abroad are reflective of a lack of compassion here at home.

Remember the extermination during the Vietnam genocide when innocent babies and children were napalmed to death by American imperialist forces. I MEMORIALISE them this MEMORIAL Day. Nick Ut won a Pulitzer Prize for this June 1972 photograph of nine-year-old napalm victim, Kim Phuc, et al.

Memorial Day is a perversion and a distortion of reality because it exonerates the evil elites that send our women and men into battle. It focuses on the victims of their actions but does not assess the immorality and cruelty of these American militant-elites in suits and pantsuits. Of course it is appropriate to commemorate military personnel who have died in war, but for this country, Memorial Day has developed in an unseemly and despicable manner. It glorifies war. It should condemn war and commemorate those who died on all sides of a conflict.

We use this day to glorify the act but rarely the tragedy of death in war. Our soldiers, and why marines are not called soldiers is beyond my powers of comprehension, have frequently died in vain; a needless termination of their lives. This is hard for families and others to accept. The notion of dying in battle ideally would represent sacrifice for a noble cause; falling in combat and dying in the mud of a foreign nation should be the ultimate sacrifice for a greater good. But this is America and our soldiers AND marines are exploited in the name of “terrorism,” “jihadism”, “anti-Iranism,” and imperialism. They are not heroes even though many are innocent victims in wars that cowards in Washington have sent them to wage for reasons that reflect on the bestiality and racism of American life.

Memorial Day is also a diversion and a soporific to divert attention from the evil of America. By emphasising the sacrifice of those who died in the name of their country, it reduces the capacity for self-reflection on why America’s fighting women and men had to die in the first place. Memorial Day also is somewhat ethnocentric and xenophobic. Our dead are no more precious than other parent’s children who have died at our hands as well. I will not prioritise our soldiers as more worthy of respect and commemoration than other soldiers and non-combatants that have died from our “superior firepower.” It discourages and even disparages reflections on those millions whom we murder in war: Innocent Japanese in Nagasaki; innocent Pashtuns getting married or shopping in a market in Helmand Province, Afghanistan; 100,000s of Iraqis blown to bits by shock and awe or white phosphorous at Falluja or by baby-killers at Haditha; innocent Vietnamese incinerated from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City.

Memoral Day obscures those air force pilots who may have been shot down after dropping ordinance on a village; soldiers might be killed by a roadside bomb after sweeping a village and shooting civilians for sport; soldiers might be tortured having slit the throats of babies or throwing grenades into a hootch or an apartment building; a tank-crew might be killed by an anti-tank missile after it blew up a hotel or home full of non-combatants. Yes American military personnel have died while trying to save the lives of their comrades and perhaps innocents as well. I am not suggesting the total lack of “in situ” heroics in a combat setting.

Yet the lesson of Memorial Day is not to remember merely those AMERICANS who died in war, but to demand that the killing stop and no more American deaths be tolerated; that no more Americans will die for nothing that diplomacy could not resolve; or die for nothing that international peace-keepers could not resolve; or die for nothing that INSPECTORS might resolve; or die for nothing that lying, arrogant, pampered American power-elites have perpetrated in the name of national security and defence.

My father was in combat in the Pacific during World War II in the Aleutian Islands and was an officer (captain) in the army. He was in the medical corps as a physician but was in combat at least once according to V.A. files. He was attached to the 37th infantry at Attu in 1942-1943. He developed a cardiac-related problem while in the service and was on a life-time pension which my mother received after his death. I have a brother-in-law who was in country as a naval officer during the Vietnam War who was also a physician. Of course few American families are not related to some military veteran or active duty person. I was in the U.S. army reserves and was stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. I am not proud of that service and thought it was the most miserable, least productive and immoral part of my life.

Happier days when the architect of war was presiding over the “liberation” of Iraq.

This is his threatening vulgar statement to some senior officials of the World Bank if they were to reveal the special favours he dispensed for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, a World Bank employee; I understand he lives with her in Chevy Chase, Maryland. A cushy raise, salary paid for by the World Bank and a job transfer to the terror network’s propaganda arm: the State Department of the United States. Unlike American newspapers that seem muted in their condemnation of this criminal, neoconservative former deputy secretary of defence, The Guardian is more comprehensive and direct in its coverage:

[Excerpts] Sounding more like a cast member of the Sopranos than an international leader, in testimony by one key witness Mr Wolfowitz declares: “If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too.” [Emphasis added.]

The remarks were published in a report detailing the controversy that erupted last month after the size of Ms Riza’s pay rises was revealed. The report slates Mr Wolfowitz for his “questionable judgment and a preoccupation with self-interest”, saying: “Mr Wolfowitz saw himself as the outsider to whom the established rules and standards did not apply.”

The report brushed off Mr Wolfowitz’s defence that he thought he had been asked to arrange Ms Riza’s pay package, observing that “the interpretation given by Mr Wolfowitz … simply turns logic on its head”…

The angry comments attributed to Mr Wolfowitz came from damning testimony by Xavier Coll, head of human resources at the bank, who provided investigators with his notes of a meeting with Mr Wolfowitz last year. The notes directly contradict Mr Wolfowitz’s assertions that the details of Ms Riza’s treatment were properly shared with senior bank officials.

In March last year, when a mention of Ms Riza’s secondment outside the bank to avoid rules about partners was first published in the magazine US News & World Report, an angry Mr Wolfowitz accused Mr Coll of leaking the information.

According to Mr Coll’s notes: “At the end of the conversation Mr Wolfowitz became increasingly agitated and said that he was ‘tired of people … attacking him’ and ‘you should get your friends to stop it’. Mr Wolfowitz said, ‘If they fuck me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too’,” naming several senior bank staff he felt were vulnerable. [Emphasis added.]

Mr Wolfowitz appears before the bank’s executive board today to make a final defence of his actions, with the board meeting tomorrow to consider the report and make a statement later in the week.

With Mr Wolfowitz so far refusing to step down, the board may need to take radical action to break the stalemate. Members have discussed a range of options, including sacking Mr Wolfowitz, issuing a vote of no confidence or reprimanding him. Some board members argue that a vote of no confidence would make it impossible for him to stay in the job.

Professor Kirstein comment: I recognise this language is offensive and degrading. I am also aware my blog is on a university server. This quotation, however, is from a major world figure and the source is from one of the world’s preeminent newspapers. I have chosen to include it to demonstrate how the World Bank president approaches his colleagues and attempts to retain his position despite execrable conduct.