Malcolm Kantzler's Open Salon Blog

“Occupy” protestors’ anger against financiers is off-target.

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 21:03:43 -0400

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

— Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios
June 12, 2005 Stanford commencement speech.

“...don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

For the 4,486 soldiers who have died in Iraq (32,223 wounded), and after ten years, the 1,802, and also still counting, who have perished in Afghanistan (with 15,322 wounded, rapidly climbing), the worst kind of waste has been realized: losing arms and legs, and dying for someone else’s life, usually foreign and corrupt, for someone else’s voice, imposed with wealth and privilege to form slithering policies of wrongful entanglements that have brought death to the thousands of soldiers and their families, and in bits and pieces for the nation, as well, as all along, the defense industries of the military-industrial complex grow their profits and wealth in a bloody occupation where the defense obligation of 9-11 was won in the first 20 months, more than eight years ago, with only 53 dead and 138 wounded U.S. soldiers.

President Obama, marking the 10th anniversary of the Afghan war, the longest in American history, said, “We are closer than ever to defeating al Qaeda and its murderous network;” this, as Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, said bringing security to his people (read, his government) has been a failure of the U.S. and his (Karzai’s) administration. Only months later, after incidents of shameful reflection, unfairly cast upon all occupation troops, of urination on the dead, burnings of the Koran, the Blackwater (now XE Services) massacre of civilians, now compounded by the latest, 16, mostly children and women, dead, at the hands of a single, maddened soldier, Karzai claims, “This is the end of the rope,” and orders U.S. troops be removed from villages, killing the U.S. multi-year plan of “winning the hearts and minds” of the Afghan people, who are regularly “collateralized” by the U.S. as damage.

Still, America’s military chiefs and politicians resist the withdrawal call, and despite the stains of America’s own, unintended, “murderous network,” like Nixon, and Johnson before him, the president looks to the future involvement in the Afghan despair based upon responsibly ending the war “from a position of strength... and stability.” Fifty-eight thousand U.S. soldiers died in Vietnam as those presidents propped up another corrupt, ineffectual government, and prolonged the war that they could not win, should never have started, looking for the unattainable “position of strength” or “peace with honor,” before finally ending the conflict and the ever-mounting deaths, and with no promised cascading of the dominoes.

This is the deadly “noise of others’ opinions” that repeats, today, as government “speak,” echoing the hollow, future promises of yesterday, where history holds no lessons for the arrogant and the proud, or those fearful of confronting mistakes and their consequences, as the bloodletting continues... to no worthwhile end. At least, the stubborn stance of the Iraqi regime has forced the president to honor his promise for a near-complete pull-out of troops from that latest national killing ground, provided courtesy of the Bush/Cheney administration, the military-industrial complex, and a Republican party’s hawks and extremists who still propose spending blood for motives of capitalist expansionism and profit.

“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

That noise is also manifest in the voices Americans hear in their politics, and those they do not, the voices bought and paid for, imposed upon the nation in sound-bites, party lines, and propaganda, through unbalanced leverage of wealth and position, detached from any sense of community or social responsibility and spread through the biased, constraining control of vast media consolidations, to limit voices, to quell regulations, to narrow opportunities, to channel prosperity, to buy votes and perpetrate travesties like turning corporations into political entities, empowered to overcome the many voices of the individuals who are the solitary, collective “People” for whom the Constitution, now so contorted by the Roberts Supreme Court, was penned to promote and protect.

Nothing will change for the better, no measure taken will make a difference, unless first, above all else, the election machine that spits out a corrupt, insulated, bought-and-paid-for government is detached from the tender of greed and avarice that fuels it: campaign contributions.

^{Protestors rant against multiple ills, all symptomatic of one}

^{abuse — campaign contributions poisoning democracy.}

The Occupy Wall Street protestors are on the wrong track when they focus anger on bankers and the wealthy. You don’t blame the bear for killing the man who gets too close to the cubs—you blame the man. Those financial “takers” are being human, doing what opportunity allows and greed compels for them, doing what comes naturally, succumbing to human weakness and vice, the very characteristics of which the Founders so clearly recognized as unchangeable and dangerous, and against which they knew only a “democratic government,” with checks and balances, serving and responsive to the common good, could prevail. What they could not foresee was a society so fraught with diversions aside from work: TV, games, malls, clubs and other avenues for self-indulgence and distraction of citizens in matters of no consequence to the foundation of their lives. The activities of citizens in the Founders’ time were centered upon occupation, neighbors, government and learning. The protestors should be angry at themselves, for not paying attention to things that matter so much, for paying too much attention to trivia, for waiting so long to see and to object, for letting it go this far, get this bad. And they should be angry at their legislators, most for not having the intellect to see the problem and/or the strength of character and ethics to turn away from the system or change it and uphold the Constitution.

But the seemingly, awakening sight of the demonstrators on Wall Street, growing to other cities, points out how all democratic governments are vulnerable, especially to apathy and ignorance, heightened when the unwritten branch of government, the “Fourth Estate” press, is swept from the streets and airways into a very few, towering centers of control, killing objectivity, repressing the reporting of independent investigation, limiting the inputs and outlets, channeling the rainbow of thought into extremes of black and white. The Federal Communications Commission, politically staffed by Republican presidents, accomplished most of this reduction during the Reagan and Bush terms. The tentacles of control writhed out from the few electronic-media conglomerates, spread with the growth of cable, the internet, and the means to access it, and are made all the more powerful as, at the same time, the market forces of media and technology change began to diminish and eventually strangle many of the independent providers of the airwaves and printed page.

Party control of the fund-raising and election process, from districting to post-election committee appointments, is separated from the view or control of the People, forming a government that is built in cloakrooms and behind closed doors, upon favors and the cash-and-carry success of legislators and their mini-machines, an industry that creates and reenforces extremism and gridlock while robbing the People of their representatives’ most important asset: the time that is spent on fundraising, from strategy meetings to time spent with donors, pursuing donors, servicing the desires of donors and looking to the future, not to secure the long-term policies needed by the nation, but rather to acquire the campaign funds and promises that will assure the next election’s continuation of the entire, abortive process.

“I only have two years,” think the House representatives, “and I have to make sure I put in the time and effort required to win the next election, above all else.” This is the situation facing the People, and what chance is there for productive, constituent-responsive government to address complex, long-term problems when the highest priority is to do whatever, twist whatever, say whatever, half-truths or outright lies in the rush to get re-elected, and to spend the working hours of at least six months of the two-year term working toward that end?

When the Constitution was framed, the population and the challenges and diversity of America’s interests and needs were such that elections every two years for representatives was not a burden and was effective enough for government’s purposes. But times have changed, and as the population has grown, the number of representatives has not increased in proportion, which contributes to the unresponsive government in two ways: reducing constituent accountability through increased difficulty of access as the number of constituents for each representative increases, and increasing the power of representatives, through the increased number of constituents they represent and from whom they are inherently more insulated. And since the Founders erred in not providing a Constitutional mandate for a per-capita increase in House seats, no member has incentive to initiate a change that will reduce his or her power by providing additional seats to make representative government as close and accessible and responsive to the People as the Founders intended it to be for the House.

Representation, the vital function of democratic process, has been under attack far longer than the generation which began with the Nixon administration. In 1913, Congress raised the number of House seats to today’s 435. But in 1921, the newly elected, Republican-majority Congress failed to reapportion the House membership after the census, as required by the United States Constitution, politically motivated, because the effect such a reapportionment would have on future Republican electoral prospects was feared. Then, in 1929, Congress (with Republican control of both houses and the presidency) passed the Reapportionment Act of 1929, which capped the size of the House at 435, a step to control representation, and power, which has since become a bipartisan objective.

Districting is so important because it determines representation, and the lack of strong representation is a big part of the reason why government is unresponsive and unaccountable to citizens. Gerrymandering, as Republicans did to the Ohio 1st District this year, among others, further damages representation, in Ohio-D1, giving Republicans a better-than 2:1 ratio of registered voters over Democrats. Where is the political equality in that? And any good government scholar will tell you, without political equality, which is one of three pillars supporting the foundation of democratic government, you have no viable democracy. In that district, the whole of Butler and Warren counties were swapped, and a part of Hamilton County was cut out, immediately disenfranchising the voters in three counties, with voters, incumbents, and candidates suddenly unfamiliar with one another. Districting should strengthen and broaden the ties of representation, not tear them apart to provide unfair political advantage, which is both un-American and undemocratic... and unneighborly.

Districting is also important as it affects apportionment of House seats. 223 years ago, on March 4, the First Congress convened with about 65 House members, each representing about 75,000 of today’s-suffrage-adjusted voters. Now, with only 435 House members, the number in place for the most part since 1913, the representative for most districts will stand for more than 470,000 voters—more than 700,000 citizens, and that is far too many for effective representation in the House, and most significantly, with fewer representatives over which to gain control, they are made more susceptible and accessible to the influence of wealthy and powerful special interests, including political parties.

Career politicians have become complacent about what voters think and are happy with the system the way it is, keeping them wrapped in comfortable districts and in office, serving their interests before the People’s and the nation’s, and they won’t alter the system and reduce their power by voting to increase the number of House representatives and provide more responsive and accountable representation. It does not require a constitutional amendment, so put the light on your representative to ask why he or she allows the dilution of representation (and the reduced government responsiveness and accountability that comes with it) by keeping the 435 cap?

And adding representatives will also result in an increased number of smaller districts, making it easier for states to provide equality with more contiguous district mapping, improving representative government. A bonus is that no new office buildings would have to be built to house the new representatives, even if the number were doubled, because of the glut of empty federal buildings within a quarter-mile of the Capitol. This is one of the fundamental changes that must happen if democracy is to be restored, government improved, and the gulf of disparities and unfair advantage raging within the nation narrowed.

But more than population has changed. The complexity of life, and of all the attendant prerequisites of government responsibility to provide for public liberty, welfare, and safety have increased as well, and two years is no longer a sufficient period for representatives to become familiar with and effectively carry out their committee assignments, let alone meet their legislative and constituent-relations responsibilities (fund-raising time is not included because it should and must be eliminated), or to be able to look ahead to the nation’s future and develop policies meant to address problems and challenges extending, beyond the next election, over the horizon.

Just think of committees. They are created to divide the focus of the total membership of the House and Senate on individual problems and goals, to provide a means by which legislators can become expert in the industries and activities that fall within the scope of their committees’ charters and thereby guide their colleagues in passing useful legislation. This is how a legislator’s committee-responsibility time is supposed to serve the People, by developing the expertise to provide effective legislation to provide for safety and promote prosperity—a balance in which safety must always carry the greatest weight, but often has not, as one tragedy after another in every decade of American modern history attests. Often, legislators, especially in the House, have not become knowledgeable enough about the complexities that exist within the activities their committees are intended to oversee, and just as often they have only turned an ear to the interests of the lobbyists for those industries, always at their ears, and often on their staffs, sitting at their right shoulders in hearings. This is how disasters, like Gulf oil spills, sub-prime-loan-deflation recessions, commuter-airline crashes, profit-motivated drug unavailabilities, drug and food illnesses and deaths, mining explosions, and Shuttle disasters, etc., etc., happen, and why government is mostly reactive to these disasters instead of proactive to prevent them. This will improve, if and when legislators’ ears are ever freed of lobbyists and their time freed from fundraising, and the revolving door of legislators, turned by two-year elections, is slowed, a revolving door that is self-serving to the election machine, elected officials’ post-legislative careers, and special interests... not the People.

Today, policies are designed to meet the needs of what will get a representative re-elected 24 months after the oath of office is taken, or a president in four years, all eyes on the next election after three. America’s future depends upon better governance than has been serving the privileged and wealthy in this generation, and legislators, even free of fundraising, need more time to master their responsibilities serving America, and everyone needs fewer elections. A constitutional amendment extending the terms of office of the House of Representatives to four years, and to preserve the Founders’ intent for overlapping stability, the Senate to eight, must be included with the ban on campaign contributions. And to insure that the behavior and performance of representatives is not separated from the people by the lengthened terms, to whom the House chamber is intended to be closest, or left to the ineffective, internal rules of the House, a district-level recall procedure must also be specified which provides the people of a representative’s district reasonable means by which to stage a recall election, if desired, at the mid-term.

These are the first changes upon which Americans must focus. When accomplished, other necessary changes will more easily follow, like ending the income-tax code in favor of a value-added tax, with fixed exclusions for medical products and services, most food, and some non-food-derived fuels, and percentage levels within categories of goods to insure fair-share payments for all and loopholes for none; and unwinding the knot of media consolidation that muffles voices and constricts the oversight of investigative journalism; and also reining in the dangerous and unnecessary military expansionism and unconstitutional, presidential military authority that has been allowed by Congress to develop, and which has cost America so much in this generation and which is irrevocably bleeding into the next.

In that commencement address, Jobs also said:

“...you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

Looking back, the connected dots form a clear enough picture of how government in America has changed for the worse. The underlying causes are often less clear, hidden in things like secret, pre-war, vice-presidential “energy” meetings. But Jobs wasn’t entirely correct when he said that the dots of our futures can only be derived through trust, at least, where our political futures may lead. That’s because we have a precious gift to guide us, one that was fashioned by minds as great as any this nation has ever produced, men with sharp insights into the pitfalls of human nature and interaction, and who, through times of the greatest possible danger and uncertainty, and divisive discord, devised a system that would both protect against the worst abuses of man’s nature and preserve the greatest opportunity for realizing the hopes for future and liberty and prosperity, for themselves, their children, and for generations to follow. That is the Constitution, defining a system of government, nonetheless so reviled by the “dogma” of Republicans, which the Founders made for the preservation of their heritage, and ours, if it is not spit upon, or relegated to be a relic, encased in gas and glass and displayed to tourists, as it has been with the power grabs of presidents, the failures of Congress to jealously guard its powers, and the axe-swings taken by the conservative-Republican majority on the Supreme Court, which have chopped two of democracy’s three foundations, popular sovereignty and political equality, into splinters.

For this purpose, of following and connecting the dots to restore a bright future for America, all that need be done is to follow the Constitution, and the money, to purge it from all influence in government activity.

Tweet this:
Why is democracy dying? Think of gov’t/conservative-court effect on its framework: popular sovereignty/political liberty/political equality.

Then this:
If any one leg breaks, democracy falls. Each leg has been under sustained Republican attack since Nixon was president—a generation of decay.

Bush book will not change history or legacy.

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 19:11:30 -0500

Hope prevails for a final passage.

Any elected official who is not ignorant should know, above all, that tyranny begins in the assertion by those in power that the end justifies the means. This is where Bush and Cheney crossed the line, by again and again subverting the Constitution, in addition to their moral and legal trespasses, for which, whether or not they ever admit to wrong, they are both guilty and should have been impeached and more... jailed, annuities repealed, and all revenues from speaking and publishing redirected to families of the dead who fell on their coat tails. No biography or memoir can re-write the history that will forever mark the Bush administration as one of the blackest and most unjustly-killing in America’s history.

This new Bush book does nothing to justify or apologize for anything. It is merely an attempt to change, or at best, soften history and attempt to pull a legacy out of quicksand. Even if his ghost writer used perfect grammar and spelling, the book could only rate one or two stars because it has little substance and little that historians either do not already know or would not find out for themselves.

From the interviews and snippets from public appearances since leaving office, it is clear that both Bush and Cheney laugh too easily and share a too-smug satisfaction with themselves, unaccountable for having brought death and misery to so many for so unjust reasons, which are not at all related to the defense of the nation, returning the Department of Defense to a War Department, an effective overlord of fear and aggression. That is undeniable from the standpoint of those unfortunate enough to have been and who are under the muzzles of the guns of American soldiers and unconstitutional private armies as they pass in streets and break-down doors in the dead of night, and as they have, do NOT forget, also murdered. If that is not terror, even if one cannot place one’s self and family in other shoes, than what is? Can anyone be so obdurate not to see how Bush has grown the enemy at the same time he has decimated the image and war-power capacity and legitimacy of America?

The fact Bush says he has no regrets that he (and many others already gone, their blood on his hands) will not live to see the judgement of history on his conduct in office is a conscious rebuke of the global, widespread scorn with which his two terms are viewed, and his subconscious acceptance that the future judgement will be at least as condemning, that the history of his stretch in the office of president, and on many, many, many vacations, is eternally marked by the unjustifiable graves of more than 100,000 men, women, and children, including more than 4,400 U.S. soldiers, their fingers pointing to the decision on his deadly, nightmare legacy. It is this enormous weight that drives him now, willingly or not, so adamantly to the side of the military members, that it may be forgotten he callously used their service and lives as a tool of industrial expansionism in Iraq.

Now, that is the case in Afghanistan, where the mission to remove the Taliban government, responsible for abetting al Qaeda, was accomplished within the first few years after invasion, al Qaeda also having been exiled and no longer a widespread, local force, the mission there morphing into an extended program of the military-industrial complex (MIC): an occupation, its purpose to remove the Afghan tradition of tribal authority and control, eliminating opposition to commercial and resource development—no “defense of America” necessity in sight, except in lies and propaganda, tied to a struggle, “long” and “difficult” and “hard,” to prevent a vague, possible, maybe, future threat, trying to touch upon fear in the American people while orders for planes and tanks, like those recently made in Iraq, are the only things of major importance to the interests controlling the MIC that are really expected to cross America’s borders, targeting the defense plants of the MIC! But the unnecessary extension of military operations in Afghanistan is a down-side part of the Bush legacy, now shared with President Obama as he is seduced by the MIC, and really is an aside to Bush’s memoir, if not a contributing factor in the accelerating, multi-faceted decline of America.

Is America really paralleling the Roman destiny of decline? Bush’s book maps the outlines between the lines, and with the Bush “W” administration, never in the history of America has the military been so widely deployed around the “empire of commercial and industrial influence,” the government so detached from the people and corrupted by wealth and greed, never has the populace seen a government so twisted in its purpose and execution placed into authority over them, to act in their name, disgracing them, and in the Bush-loaded, Republican-extremist Supreme Court, drowning out their voices with such scathing abuses. That is the dire legacy of Bush, Cheney, Rove, and those who steered their crippled design of socio-political travesty into power. It is a legacy to which many forces contributed and joined to create, but which only Bush could have prevented, had he the knowledge, ethic, and the courage that marks the heart of a patriot—the legacy that might have been would, then, have evolved, not the fiction Bush or Cheney would see ghost-written as memoirs of unfounded justifications and dubious truths, particularly on Bush’s feelings, regrets, and beliefs, for which there is no basis to judge the value, except the contradictory facts and consequences of his arrogant, usurping string of actions, and the harm done to the nation at the expense of the Constitution and those uncountable, irreplaceable, relinquished lives.

This book and it’s reviews, in whatever venues they exist, have become Bush’s third war—the war of the stars, where the one- and five-star reviews slug it out without much regard to the book on either side, the extremists of both sides, who have the time, frantically clicking “no’s” to rate the reviews of the other, not realizing the first rating is often the only one counted, even after reload. Those looking for a more objective book review should start by ignoring all of those which are posted without the courage and assertion of a real name, and then just stick to the two- thru four-star comments, giving most weight to the three-star, which will probably turn out to be evenly split between those believing Bush is either a hero or a war criminal, and that the book reveals some truths among some obvious lies, deceptions and redirects, but still, giving it only two stars, those for putting heat on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on opposing the Iraq occupation.

But, a shiny jacket on a new book is not a change of skin... or anything lying beneath.

From this bad president comes a bad book, and neither it, nor any among the lunatic fringe who support its tired premises, openly, or with a secluded eye looking to 2012, will change the facts, bring back the dead or alter the history that will bury Bush’s legacy with them. Bush has already said he is resigned to live and die accepting the judgement without regrets, though, one with no regrets, and wealth enough, hardly has the need or drive to supervise the writing of a memoir that isn’t a pure labor of love, so how could any book that attempts to paint a kind perspective on the eight years of war and terror and torture and kidnapping and domestic law-breaking and constitutional stomping by the chief perpetrator of the crimes be anything but an exercise in... vanity?

Regardless that he seemingly just says he has no regrets, providing another preview into the lack of credulity bound into the spine of the book, and the man, for not having the courage to finally accept accountability that the awful reality of the truth that buried the dead, and remains, still, for the living, is to be found in his failures: personal, political, strategic, and economic, then maybe those who so quickly rush to defend the wreckage wrought by his wrong-headed, wrangling ways should begin to live with it instead of, like him, trying too hard?

Hope prevails that Bush’s book and its introductory accompaniments will, outside of a courtroom, at last mark his final goodbye and passage out of provoked memory.

Bush’s great achievement: straight face chastising invasion.

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:08:40 -0400

A straight face chastising Russia’s invasion
of Georgia is Bush’s greatest achievement

Bush has absolutely no traction speaking against the Russian incursion into Georgia. He threw away any legitimacy in speaking for the free world against aggression when he and Cheney invaded Iraq. Aggressive acts are commonplace for the Bush administration: aggression against other nations, aggression against the concept of co-equal branches of his own government, i.e. aggression against the Constitution, and aggression against the courts and the people. The transgressions of the Bush-Cheney administration have left their marks upon all of these, and upon the families of more than 4,100 dead American soldiers, and rising, and untold hundreds of thousands of others.

Bush and Cheney have created and left for the next president and the American people as difficult a world and domestic stage to navigate as has ever confronted any new administration in America’s relatively short history, and the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress, who to this day continue to shirk their constitutional oversight responsibilities, will remain wholly responsible for every failure and consequence of tragedy that is traced to be a repercussion of their tainted regime. Those repercussions could domino for decades, or longer, and whomever the president is, there will be cause for the finger pointed to the past (and at self, if McCain), consequences for which the sign over the door to any Bush library should remind: The blame stops here.

Consider only half of what is known of the acts of Bush and Cheney, of their administration, and the attendant consequences of its many abuses, and compare those against any others to hold their high offices who faced impeachment, and it is immediately apparent that impeachment for them becomes mandatory if historical precedent, the rule of law, and the principles of Democracy are to be retained as American ethics and standards.

Impeachment will challenge and charge the men who were contentiously entrusted with the power and prerogatives of the offices of President and Vice President of the United States, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney, who, in collusion and contrary to their oaths to uphold and defend that Constitution, side-stepped it and diluted it by authorizing torture, kidnapping, political corruption of Justice, treasonous war, by support of dictators destroying and threatening other democracies (Pakistan, Georgia) contrary to the national interest, by failure to fully prosecute America’s attackers (al Qaeda in Afghanistan), by conducting operations against the people (illegal wiretaps), programs set above the law and the Constitution, by the creation of a criminal, murderous, unaccountable mercenary army (Blackwater), all unconstitutional acts of impunity and arrogance, subordinating the national interest and the welfare of the people for special-interest goals and profit, and further, diminishing and besmirching the authority of the courts, usurping the lawful bills of Congress (unconstitutional signing statements; refusing to recognize constitutional, congressional war-power directives); failing to uphold the laws of federal jurisdiction (illegal immigration/employment practices; drug trafficking; human smuggling/slavery), properly administer the national disaster-response resources (Katrina), leaving the states open, unaided victims to an onslaught of crime and disaster; and by twisting the vesting of government authority to be incarnate, and the actions of the People’s government, administered by them, to be solely according to their will and the religious belief and vision of George Bush, regardless of and contrary to the will of the People and their collective voice, expressed through constitutional vote and their elected, legislative representatives, the consequences of which have been the unwarranted death of more than 4,100 U.S. soldiers and the maiming of tens of thousands more, lives neither lost nor damaged in the interest of national security, and compounded by the deaths and maiming of tens upon tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of innocent foreign nationals, not guilty of harm or threat against the national-security interests of the United States, further eroding national security through incitement of foreign nationals to act against the U.S., and diminishing of the military state of readiness, including the destruction of government property, and world-wide erosion of U.S. national integrity.

In the history of this nation, there have never been any to hold the offices more deserving of impeachment than Bush and Cheney, which would condemn them and their acts as wrong, not representative of America, and reinforce for future officials what they cannot do, and in so doing, impeachment would allow Americans to face the world again without shame and guilt, having made right a great, but nonetheless enduring and unmitigable wrong. America’s world standing and historical legacy must be sharply delineated from that of Bush and Cheney’s, a paramount reason that impeachment is both necessary and justified. Yet, although impeachment is not sufficient recourse for justice in the face of such magnitude of crimes perpetrated upon the nation and the world, impeachment can help to ensure there will never be the likes of Bush or Cheney to again darken, with their colluded, corrupting shadow, a flag that once flew proudly in the light of day and right, and which will not see that light again until their stain is finally removed from the People’s government.

Beijing Olympiad: a shining history dimmed by dark legacy.

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:08:35 -0400

While the opening ceremony at the 2008 Beijing Olympiad was an unparalleled production of imagination, choreography, and technical mastery, accomplishing the Chinese regime’s objective of demonstrating that its social order can match the hosting capabilities of any nation, it also serves to remind every person of conscience that this source and carriage of excellence is badly misplaced, because in all of the national pursuits of social and human value, China has failed to produce anything that can stand so proudly in the world as an example of progressive quality.

The magnificent facilities will be remembered... along with the still-unilluminated shadow of Tiananmen Square;
the massive, human interaction of visual animations in the artful opening ceremony will be a standard of attainment in memory... along with the genocide in Darfur, where China holds the leveraged position to attain a halt in the killing, and does not;

the expressive dances of tribute to individuality and national identity will shine long after the last medal is placed over the head and around the neck of the last Olympian... as the yoke of repression clinching the necks and over the heads of those in Tibet and Xinjiang remain the darkened prophecy for the inner spirit of the people who are captured to be repressed under the red flag;

and the Torchbearer, elevated to soar above the heads of the people, carrying the spark to light the flame of competitive spirit and international peace and cooperation, will not be forgotten... but will not cause to be forgotten the freedom of choice to speak, to pray, and to express the voice of the soul, which remains harshly contained under the controlling thumb of a non-representative, quasi-communist regime.

The light created for the world vision, to shine upon the gold, silver, and bronze that will mark the history of the Beijing Olympics, is obliterated by the darkness shadowing the flip-side of the reflective medals and venues, the darkness of death and suffering that, for every gleaming memory, will accompany to dim the luster and represent the true legacy of the Chinese-hosted games, unerasable by any achievement of showmanship or technology.