Peter N. Kirstein

In Illinois, early voting is allowed from October 13, 2008, through October 30, 2008. I voted for the Nader/Gonzales ticket in Illinois on October 28 and was surprised at the numbers of early voters in long lines. While I hope Senator Barack Obama wins the presidency, I could not in good conscience vote for Senator Joe Biden as a result of his prowar vote to Authorise the Use of Force in Iraq in October 2002. Because of his imperialist ambitions, I could not support the Democratic ticket. I did give Senator Obama the maximun allowed under federal election law for the primaries and met him and spoke to him at a fund raiser. I was also on a conference call with him as well during the New Hampshire primary. I also gave a similar amount for the general election but they graciously returned it upon request.

I would have voted for Governor Sarah Palin for vice president due to the liberal and (some conservative savants), savage, misogynist attacks on her that reek of elitism, intolerance and meanness. She is clearly qualified to be vice president, if not president, due to her current status as governor of Alaska but I could not vote for her without voting for Senator John McCain. I revile and loathe him for his Vietnam crimes against humanity and his gratuitous support of Israel and Manichaean vision of the world. Also my trepidation in Senator Joe Lieberman having a senior position of authority such as Secretary of State in a McCain administration gave me pause to support the Republican ticket.

Ralph Nader is one of the pivotal figures in postwar America who has remained relevant and committed to peace and justice, a more open electoral system and a democratic socialism to replace the rapacious greed of American unbridled capitalism. His career as consumer advocate gives him experience and demonstrated judgment that would make him a wonderful president of the U.S. Recognising his position as one of earnest dissenter as opposed to likely candidate to be elected, I would prefer that of the major party candidates, Barack Obama prevail despite his cynical and irresponsible choice of a running mate.

It is being reported my advisor in college, Dr Howard Zinn, is endorsing Ralph Nader. He had endorsed Senator Barack Obama but is now urging voters in non-slam

http://english.sxu.edu/sites/kirstein/?p=5

The following are candidates for president and vice president of the hyperpower imperialistic American empire that will appear on Illinois ballots for the November 4, 2008 “election.” Illinois which has one of the more restrictive, ELITIST ballot access procedures, has finally allowed easier access to dissenting, creative candidates who are not part of the Democratic-Republican duopoly. In 2004 Ralph Nader was only listed as a pre-approved write-in; now he is on the ballot.

Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez (Independent) – Ballot No. 7

Barack Obama and Joe Biden (Democrats) – Ballot No. 1 Senator Biden voted for the Authorisation to Use Force Resolution in Iraq in October 2002 who asks god only to protect “American troops” as if the children slaughtered by U.S. imperialist forces are mere detritus. He should be arrested for his vote and the resulting mass murder he so ardently advocated.

John McCain and Sarah Palin (Republicans) – Ballot No. 2 Senator John McCain flew an airplane repeatedly over North Vietnam and dropped bombs on a nation that was not a threat to the United States. While he appropriately served some time for his crimes as a prisoner of war, he is not a hero but a coward who bombed high in the air over a country that did not even have an air force. Does he not feel guilt for bombing innocents below? Does he not put humans first and NOT “Country First” when the latter emulates Nazi Germany in its crimes against humanity.

Cynthia McKinney & Rosa Clemente (Green) – Ballot No. 3 Both are minority women.

Bob Barr and Wayne A. Root (Libertarians) – Ballot No. 4

John Joseph Polachek and No Candidate – Ballot No. 5

Charles O. Baldwin and Darrell L. Castle (Constitution) – Ballot No. 6

Source: http://chicago.about.com/od/governmentandmedia/a/BallotPresident.htm

217. October 27, 2008 3:22 pm

On the Campaign

Second-Guessing the Palin Pick

A big question inside and outside the McCain campaign is whether the senator would be in a better position had he not chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate…

245. October 27, 2008 3:22 pm

At the Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C.

PNK: Thank you sir for meeting with me here. Allow me to begin in a provocative manner. Mr Bush are you a war criminal?

GWB: This is irresponsible. I am attempting to defend the free world from Islamic fundamentalism and will until I leave office on January 20, 2009. How can you, a professor, ask such an egregious question?

PNK: Mr Bush do you endorse the use of torture and a never ending war in Iraq?

GWB: You are a disgrace. I agreed to give you an interview in an effort to reach out to the academic community and you come up with these questions. The U.S. does not torture. The U.S. is in accord with international law. We understand our obligations under the Geneva Conventions. We are the model and leader of the free world. The surge in Iraq was successful and the country is stable and in good order. Casualties are down substantially and I am not leaving my successor a major shooting war in Iraq.

PNK: Did you not resist the McCain Amendment to prohibit, “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” of POW. You voted for him by absentee ballot so I assume you support most of his views. He does yours; at least he did before his polling data began to plummet. Also you are leaving your successor 160,000 troops in Iraq, a government that is a puppet in terms of its survival dependency on U.S. forces, a lack of consensus on the use of oil revenues, power sharing and even a status of forces agreement.

GWB: Hold on fella. We were concerned that C.I.A. operatives who were trying to prevent perhaps an immiment attack, be allowed appropriate means of inducing information. No one tortures for the U.S. and if they do, they are prosecuted. Also counterinsurgency is not microwave; it takes awhile and nervous nellies like you are always eager to disengage even when vital interests are at stake.

PNK: Some believe that the claims that President Hussein…

GWB: Former president please.

PNK: We use the title of president and senator and governor for those who previously served in that capacity, but to please you sir, “former” President Saddam Hussein you charged had weapons of mass destruction. He did not. Do you feel any remorse in starting a war on an assumption that proved to be false?

GWB: Professor, as you know, presidents do not independently verify intelligence. We received intelligence that we operated on and it was wrong. Pure and simple.

PNK: But 4,187 Americans have been killed; 125,000-250,000 Iraqis have died for a war that was fought for the wrong reasons. Are you not a war criminal or if you prefer an incompetent leader who went to war against the wishes of the international community for reasons that proved to be utterly false? Should you not be arrested or at least removed from office for such a monumental blunder if not intentional effort at deception?

GWB: Let me tell you something Professor Kirstein and all your leftist friends. We overthrew a dictator. We regime changed an animal. We know and have no doubt that Saddam was sympathetic to Al Qaeda, had contacts with Al Qaeda, and was a growing and gathering threat.

PNK: Mr Bush…

GWB: Let me finish! I am the president of the United States and had we not replaced the Baathist government, he would have been a supporter and an enabler of more Al Qaeda operations. 3000 people died on Sept. 11! Maybe you don’t care but I do sir.

PNK: Both the 911 Commission and every independent analysis has concluded that President Hussein, ok, “former” President Saddam Hussein was not involved in the 911 attacks; was not a meaningful or significant ally of Al Qaeda and that claims that Saddam was supporting terrorism, as you call it, were false.

GWB: I know who you are. You were suspended for condemning the military for using “baby killing tactics of collateral damage.” You were reprimanded for denouncing our military–our men and women who fight so you can be free. Free from censorship, free to say whatever you wish! I like the way you say, “as you call it,” when referring to terrorism. I understand people like you are not overly concerned about protecting America from terrorists. I am not questioning your loyalty but you insult me with your casual use of the term.

PNK: Mr Bush, the term “terrorism” some believe sir is used as a means to dehumanise the “enemy” and as a gratuitous effort to deny the legitimacy of any group that opposes US or Israeli foreign policy. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are labeled “terrorist” and Israeli policies of assassinations, settlement expansions in the West Bank, Golan, wanton destruction of housing, concentration-camp barrier construction, refusal to recognise the Palestinian right to a homeland is never condemned. Iran’s nuclear programme is construed as unacceptable and Israeli’s status as a nuclear weapons state is ignored by my country. Some believe that your use of military force is terrorism. Your destruction of Falluja was terrorism. The sanctions against Iraq were terrorism. The use of white phosphorous weapons are terrorism. The bombing of civilian population centers is terrorism. Abu Ghraib was terrorism. Bagram torture in Afghanistan was terrorism. Shock and awe was terrorism. Guantánamo crimes in that gulag are terrorism.

GWB: Are you here to get an interview or a supporter of Barack Obama? I wonder sir if your students are subjected to this reasoning? I wonder if you are even capable of discerning between rhetoric and reality? We are in a war against savage Islamic Jihadists and on my watch we will do everything we can to kill and capture them.

PNK: “Kill and capture them.” Shouldn’t presidents be a better role model? Killing people is wrong isn’t it? Could you imagine Dr King speaking like this–advocating the killing of humans? Don’t you think of the children who listen to this and grow up to be the next carriers of ethnocentrism and violent nationalism? Can’t we move from war to peace? Can we tone down the rhetoric of empire and live creatively with each other? “Kill and capture.” I am not pleased at this level of discourse.

GWB: Professor Kirstein, I have one more thing to say. It was people like you that caused our defeat in Vietnam. People like you who undermined the president’s capacity to wage war against the communists in North Vietnam. Again, you are entitled to your opinion but the left in this country is soft on security, unwilling to recognise the realities of international power and I believe are not helpful to the United States. I am responsible for defending this country and will do everything in my power to do so for the next three months of my term.

PNK: During Vietnam, many allege you shirked your duties when in the Air National Guard and kinda dropped out of sight if not worse. You may wish to compare your military record with mine Mr Bush. But I assume when you say “everything in my power,” that includes illegal spying on Americans by the N.S.A. (Ed: National Security Agency) without a court warrant as required under F.I.S.A. (Ed: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) and holding American citizens incommunicado without counsel or a writ of habeas corpus. I thank you for your time Mr Bush. I wish you peace.

GWB: I wish we had less professors like you giving aid and comfort to the enemy. It would make my job a lot easier. Good day and I hope your students learn a lot in your classes!!

PNK: Oh they do sir. They are free because I am free and I declare that and dare anyone ever again to violate my rights. Thanks again Mr Bush.

[This was a notional interview.]

Some of the REAL maverick’s views on public policy.

Ralph Nader:

Because he is the only presidential candidate who supports:

• Health Care that’s Truly Universal
• Actual Campaign Finance Reform
• Sound Financial Policies (Including the Abolition of the Income Tax for those Earning Under 50k a Year)
• An End to the Iraq War and the Foreign Policy that Brought it About. Why did Senator Barack Obama, who parlayed his 2002 opposition to the Iraq war as his primary issue in defeating the prowar, militarist Senator Hillary Clinton, then cynically select Joe Biden who also voted for the Iraq war? Inquiring minds want to know.
• An End to the Corporate Strangle Hold on US Politics.

So there’s the issues. There’s that.

But beyond even that, you need to donate to the Nader campaign today because he is the only candidate capable of broadening the discussion and actually governing.

Not just running for office while in office, but actually governing. Showing up every day, trying to make people’s lives better.

What’s at Stake:

Q: If on your first day in office as president, you had one trillion dollars to spend, what would be your priorities?

A: [My priorities would be]:
1. I’d rebuild public works – all those things underground. Mass transit and public transit should be built in city after city.
2. I’d do more to abolish child poverty.
3. I’d upgrade preventive health care.

That’s what’s on the table:

• Food
• Health
• and Infrastructure

Those are the stakes. Those are the stakes, and the system’s broken.

Help us fix it.

The person with the blue shirt–#187 over a Chicago Cubs logo– and black cap-ExxonMobil–{I got it free from robber barons} is Peter N. Kirstein running next to a virtual ”Ms Illinois” in the red shirt. I ran a comeback personal best, breaking my previous effort a year ago by 1m 35sec even though my training was interrupted for months with an unexpected medical condition. I am not satisfied with my lousy time but I know what I did in previous years would have placed me easily in the top twenty-five.

Having not run competitively since I was injured running in Amsterdam in 1990–I tripped and sprained my ankle and almost fell in a canal–I guess I should be somewhat satisfied with my recrudescence. At Boston University in my junior year I received an “Athlete of the Year” plaque from my fraternity as we had a very good intramural athletic programme of basketball, touch football and fastpitch softball. Hey, it’s my blog and if I want to indulge in athletic moments, so be it. Not everything has to be about “politics” and “academic freedom”–or the lack thereof as we resist the forces of suspension, persecution and Procrustean conformity. :-)

Which Vietnam vet John McCain and the plagiarist Joe Biden so ardently support.

http://www.zombietime.com/us_out_of_iraq_now_sf_3-18-2007/IMG_2515.JPG

I think it ironic that the charge of incompetence and lack of preparation in being able to assume the august position of vice president is solely aimed at the charming Republican Governor  of Alaska, Sarah Palin. While she would not have been my choice, probably Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, should have been selected by Arizona Senator John McCain, Vietnam war criminal. I think Senator Joseph R. Biden, Democrat of Delaware, is even less competent and qualified to serve as vice president of the United States.

This warmonger voted for the Iraq War in October 2002 which was the single most important foreign policy issue of his Senatorial career. He thought there were weapons of mass destruction. He thought murder and invasion were necessary to replace a feckless President Saddam Hussein. Senator Biden’s lack of judgment in authorising Mr Bush to go to war has led to the deaths of 4,176 Americans, roughly 30,000 injured and perhaps 100,000s of Iraqi deaths. It has bankrupted the country, destroyed our reputation in the world, and was an act of Hitlerian aggression similar to the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and the Low Countries in Spring 1940.

I find it deeply disturbing that Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, who campaigned as an anti-Iraq War peace candidate versus the militant, prowar Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, would then select as his own vice-presidential running mate, a senator who voted for the war. If Senator Obama were truly opposed to the Iraq War, the defining issue of our time, he would have  chosen an antiwar Democrat who shared his prescience and loathing of war. Senator Biden demonstrated incompetence, meanness and a willingness to gratuitously use military force with immoral insouciance and ethical failings.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, supported the criminalisation of flag desecration by supporting what would be the Twenty-Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. She is considered a major player in the Democratic Party; the fawning press is mesmerised by her monotone gravitas. She is adored, respected and indeed her D.C. home was used for a secret encounter between the flip-flopping prowar? Illinois Senator Barack Obama and the racist, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York. ["Hard working Americans, white Americans," vote for me dear superdelegates.] Senator Feinstein is a threat to America and a vile and reprehensible figure ensconced in her bubble of power and privilege with vast millions and numerous homes. I can well understand why she wants to censor and silence those who challenge the system and the core values of a nation from which she has so profited.

I have never burned the American flag but would not hesitate to do so if it were banned by constitutional amendement. Unlikely with a Democratic majority but a possibility nonetheless. Yet when the Republicans controlled the Senate, Senator Feinstein, with cowardice and shame, voted to amend the Constitution to eviscerate the First Amendment and carve out an egregious taboo on protected speech. The flag is not a sacred symbol for me. It does not represent a positive, progressive, nationalistic ideal. It symbolises Jim Crow, war, greed, colonialism, poverty, genocide and millions of sick Americans who are not provided health care.

We need to deemphasise the sacredness of nation-state and develop a greater sense of planetary solidarity. Love of country unfortunately has created a terrorist democracy that uses war as its pretext for defining its greatness. Until that is shattered, there must be sustained resolve to dissent and protest. Otherwise, one is merely surrendering to autocracy and an ultra-nationalist, ethnocentrism.

Flag desecration is a legitimate and non-violent form of disobedience. People have died to protect that right or so we are told. Senator Feinstein, you cannot take away this precious right: To burn, tear or bespatter a flag in protest must survive assaults on protected speech in our putative democracy.

What does Hillary want is the new refrain as she delayed her endorsement of Senator Barack Obama? Now speculation is centering on what her future role will be as the putative pioneer for women’s breakage of the Oval Office glass ceiling: Supreme Court Associate Justice, vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket, majority leader of the Senate?  

It is true that Senator Clinton came the closest to being nominated by a major political party and perhaps subsequent opportunities for women to seek the presidency will be easier.  However, one should not forget Senator Margaret Chase Smith, Republican of Maine, who ran in 1964 in many primaries and received twenty-seven delegates at the frenetic, raucous GOP convention at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. In the Illinois primary she received 206,000 votes and 26% of the total vote! In some ways she is more of a pioneer and pathbreaker than was Mrs. Clinton. Senator Clinton is not the kind of woman I want to see as the political leader of American women or as a role model for subsequent women seeking higher office.

A) She is a warmonger, a vicious killer without conscience or affect. She voted for a barbaric, inhumane, unjust war in Iraq in October 2002. She is not qualified to lead but to be condemned for what she is: a person with blind ambition who supports mass murder to advance her political machinations.

B) Her stand on abortion was beginning to unravel as she initially emphasised prevention, reducing and finding alternative strategies for reproduction. I am not condemning that but I know she was beginning to play the bubba card and seek approval from the center-right abortion is ok, but really objectionable crowd. That is why NARAL Pro Choice America courageously endorsed the Illinois senator. They knew she would throw away women’s rights in a heartbeat if she thought it would advance her political ambitions. They knew this is not a person with values and commitment but merely a Machiavellian pursuit of power and influence.

C) I don’t want a woman as role model for other women who is a racist. Senator Clinton is a racist and there is no need to be diplomatic or imprecise here. She is a virulent racist who is the first candidate that I can recall who openly used her skin colour to advance her career. Her argument to the Superdelegates to bypass the democratic, if not the Democratic process, and anoint her as candidate due to her capacity to appeal to ”hard working Americans, white Americans” should have driven her out of the Democratic party. Such a statement will not be forgotten by me and will be used as a constant reminder that Senator Clinton is a vile individual, without moral compass and is unscrupulous.

D) She is also a liar that is a quality that I don’t think “hard working Americans, white Americans” wish to emulate. Her constant invention of being fired upon in 1996 by snipers as she landed in Tusla, Bosnia with her daughter Chelsea after the civil wars there was obscene. Here we have a pampered, multimillionaire, surrounded by Secret Service who perhaps has not driven a car for decades due to her privileged status as Arkansas First Lady, U.S. First Lady and now senator from New York since 2001, using her “I am a male too you know” tough guy proof that she has been in combat as it were. On three occasions, she mentioned this sniper fire incident on the tarmac which video demonstrated was a lie. She was greeted by a young child with flowers and walked with her daugher ever so slowly across a tarmac. It was a reception not a bunker that she graced with her presence.

E) Father Michael Pfleger had it about right. There is a sense of white entitlement to this person that is most objectionable. She did believe she had the right to the Democratic nomination due to her “name” and privileged position in the party. She did resent the race of Senator Obama and as Geraldine Ferraro, another race baiter Democrat, began to play and feel the white resentment game of reverse discrimination. “Well, these blacks are getting where they are only because they are black, you know. Well Barack won South Carolina as did Jesse Jackson you know, because you know they are all black.” President Bill Clinton made a reference quite similar in substance if not in actual rhetoric to my invented quotation.

Senator Clinton I have no respect for you but only loathing. I can think of many women who are qualified to be president but you are not one of them. If you are on the ballot as vice president, I will look to see if Ron Paul’s or Bob Barr’s name is on a third-party here in Illiniois. Dr Paul voted against the war and wants to remove our troops from Europe and Korea as well. I may very well vote for  Ralph Nader. Mrs. Rodham Clinton, you do not represent progress or the advancement of womyn’s rights but more war, more dishonour, more selfish nationalism and more disinterest in the sufferings of real Americans.

Two ideological confrere. I am certain Senator Clinton will vote for the Vietnam war criminal, John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who initially opposed the Martin Luther King Jr national holiday. Why not run with him?

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton ran a campaign that disgraced the nation and hopefully will shame her reputation and drive her permanently off the national stage. Her vote for the Iraq War was a politically calculated move either to pacify the Israel lobby and Jewish voters in New York-although many Jews opposed the war-or to Thatcherise herself for a pending presidential run. I believe this action more than anything else destroyed her prospects for winning the Democratic party nomination. It allowed Senator Barack Obama to register quite poignantly the issue of change to a war-weary public.

Senator Clinton’s declaratory policy of destroying Iran’s civilian population if the nation were to attack Israel-a major nuclear power-with atomic weaponry was utterly gratuitous and shameful. Such a threat debased her claim to moral authority, revealed her lack of judgment in major national security matters and linked her lack of vision to the traditional themes of empire, war, American exceptionalism and indiscriminate use of force.

Her racist remarks and that of her husband, President Bill Clinton, were not what one would have anticipated from a Democratic candidate much less from the first “black president.” I have never heard a candidate directly appeal to white voters even though there have been candidates and presidents less inclined to promote racial harmony than the New York senator. Her comment that she deserved the nomination because only she could attract the “hard-working Americans, white Americans” was an appeal to our worst tendencies: that her race, as opposed to her opponent’s, could be leveraged for political purposes and used by the superdelegates to annoint her as their presidential candidate.

Her refusal to drop out of the race even as she lost the majority of the pledged delegates revealed the hypocrisy of her purported “populism.” Her beer and a chaser photo-ops and supposed champion of rural, Appalachian, “hard working” European Americans apparently did not extend to Demcratic Party voters who had sealed the nomination for Senator Obama after the Indiana and North Carolina primary evening. She then appealed to the elites–the elected officials and Democratic party hacks–who gave us this inchoate and unruly electoral process to choose her over Senator Obama despite his electoral victory in the primaries and caucuses. Her claim of having an electoral-vote majority was equally dishonest in that she counted Michigan where Senator Obama, in playing by the rules, decided not to have his name on the ballot. She left hers on although she did not campaign in the breakaway state that scheduled its primary before Super Tuesday (Feburary 5, 2008).

She does not need sympathy. She does not need to be coddled. What I saw in her New York speech the day Senator Obama secured the nomination on June 3 is proof of that. No concession, a continuous campaign, scant praise for the senator from Illinois who defeated her in an epic primary marathon. I believe the Democrats would lose with her on the ticket–both their moral authority and the election. An African-American and a woman cannot win in this country and on that point I do not err. Senator Obama must select a progressive white male or he will lose. If he must select a woman, there are several who do not have the stain of militarism, dishonour and racism on their political and moral reputation. Examples would be the fresh face of a Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri or a governor such as Kathleen Sibelius of Kansas. If he needed a more experienced woman as his running mate, he could indeed consider one of Maine’s two Republcian senators–Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins. Their vote for war is egregious but perhaps a pragmatic choice to get Sen. Obama into the White House. In any case he need not select such an unworthy and polarising figure such as Senator Clinton.

Number of delegates Senator Obama needs to secure the nomination: 62

Including the projected 31 delegates Senator Obama won in Oregon, the 14 the antiwar candidate won in Kentucky and the support of superdelegate Congressperson Joe Courtney, Democrat of Connecticut 2nd congressional district, that was announced this morning, the Illinois senator has now won a majority of pledged delegates and is just 62 delegates away from securing the nomination.

The Math

Total Pledged Delegates from Primaries and Caucuses: 3,253

Pledged Delegates needed for majority: 1,627

Total delegates needed for nomination: 2026

Pledged delegate projections from May 20 primaries:

Oregon: Obama 31, Clinton 21

Kentucky: Clinton 37,  Obama 14,

Senator John Edwards’s pledged delegates now supporting Obama: 9

Obama Pledged Delegates: 1,647.5 (20.5 more than needed for the majority)

Obama Superdelegates: 307.5

Obama Total Delegates: 1,964 

For various reasons, the defeat of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination is being cast as a defeat for women: an Oval Office glass ceiling. Indeed there may have been voters who could not have supported a woman for president but I imagine her gender was more of an asset than a liability–not to mention her Clinton brand prior to its tarnish. Her defeat for the presidential nomination was due to her policies, racism and utter lack of ethical compass, not to mention an amateurish bunch of campaign managers who ignored caucus states as the pledged delegate pool mounted for Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois.

I have voted for several women for president over the years from Angela Davis to Shirley Chisholm and rooted for Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder. Hillary Clinton, however, is the least qualified of any woman candidate I have seen campaign for the presidency. She is a warmonger which means she relishes and enjoys sending young Americans to die for the hyperpower and kill innocents abroad. Her cynical vote for the Iraq War and threat to wipe Iran off the map through a nuclear exchange are beneath contempt. This is emblematic of a violent woman whose hatred of Muslims and those who dare resist Isreali apartheid and extermination is out of control. To think that the Democratic Party would nominate its second prowar candidate since the inception of the Iraq War would utterly eviscerate the party and render it as indistinguishable from its duopolistic Republican brethren (sisters too).

The racism of Hillary Clinton is similar to the racist motif of Harry Dent’s Southern Strategy and its refinement with Lee Atwater during the Reagan Era appeal to lower income, rural white voters. Senator Clinton’s appeal to superdelegates to vote for her because she appeals to working-class whites is racist and abominable. To claim, through her husband, that Senator Obama’s victory in South Carolina was due only to race and that his candidacy was racially focused as that of Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson was racist. The constant gratuitous repetition in the debates that Senator Obama was the “African-American candidate” and she was the “woman” candidate I think was a trick to highlight his blackness to drive white voters away. It was not a celebration of diversity but a ruse to sharpen the fact that a white-establishment conservative woman as president could protect children at 3:00 in the morning but a young, humanistic, Afro-American male could not. I think the 3:00 A.M. politcial advertisement that ran in Texas and elsewhere was racist. She deserves not our sympathy for her defeat but this unscrupulous multi-millionaire merits our condemnation for her anything-to-get-elected strategy.

Her foreign policy is identical to Senator John McCain, the Republican presumptive presidential nominee: narrow nationalism over international peace and security; mass murder through American nuclear bombast and not denuclearisation; a vote for the Iraq War; the preference to use American military power over diplomacy and constructive engagement.

My only hope is that Senator Obama will not invite this failed, cyncial, amoral and imperialistic senator to run as vice president. I simply could not vote for an individual who has never apologised much less conceded the outrage of having voted “with conviction” in October 2002 to destroy and desiccate a little country in the Middle East–Iraq. Shame on her and may the New York senator finally disappear from the nation’s headlines and news and perhaps atone for her immorality and lack of respect for non-white peoples from presidential candidates to Muslim people striving to be free from the yoke of Western colonialism and apartheid.

Nota bene: Even N.A.R.A.L. Pro-Choice America , the leading women’s organisation in the country, that is not blinded by narrow gender politics (pace N.O.W.), endorsed Senator Obama because of his consistent support for women’s reproductive freedoms including the right not to have children. One could hardly claim that N.A.R.A.L. is sexist or anti-woman.

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.