Three Cheers for the Grannies!

“Eighteen "grannies" who were swept up by New York City police, handcuffed and jailed for four and a half hours were acquitted today of charges that they blocked the entrance to the military recruitment center in Times Square when they tried to enlist.” – The NY Times.

The government has learned to ignore and repress youth movements, letter writing campaigns, and they can even rig election results. But they apparently don’t have balls brass and brazen enough to jail old women for protesting the war in Iraq.

More power to the Grannies, I say. Keep it up. To topple this administration and get rid of the corruption of corporate cash in Washington D.C. is going to take the efforts of many groups who do not typically see themselves as political activists. Old (and experienced) people, illegal immigrants, many unlikely groups are currently flustering the business as usual politicos. So which groups need to get involved next? Kindergarteners for Justice? Pregnant Women for Peace?

Whatever it takes. Everybody needs to take a hard look at what is going on (and not going on) in Washington D.C. and decide if this government represents you and your best hopes for the future of this country. I do not believe anymore that the question is: What will the government do? The question is: What will the people do? How much are we willing to let happen in our names?

Three Cheers for the Grannies. It is a small victory, but it is a victory all the same.

my small misery...

The plumbing in my family’s old farm house died a violent death last week. The plumbers worked all day yesterday tearing out the ALL the plumbing in our house—All Of It. Today they begin the more complicated job of putting new plumbing in. We hope to have water restored by Friday, if we are lucky.

In one fell stroke our American home has become part of the undeveloped world. Thank goodness we still have electricity. We are hauling water in from the well. Heating water on the stove. Begging our neighbors to let us use their showers (Thank you Pam and Ed!!!).

Our inconvenience is just that, an inconvenience. We are fortunate enough to have good friends and neighbors. We are fortunate enough to have a clean water supply near by. We are fortunate to have the means to hire professionals who are working hard to restore our water system. In a few days our house will move back into the developed and peaceful world of modern America. Hot water will flow magically from silver faucets.

But I can’t help thinking about the people in Iraq (and other parts of the world) who are not so fortunate. When I read that many neighborhoods in Iraq have no water, or only have water for a few hours a day, I wonder how I would be feeling if I were in that situation and could not open the Yellow Pages and call a dozen companies for competitive quotes and rapid repairs. When I read about dealing with sporadic or no electrical supply, I wonder how I would cope, especially if I was faced with the prospect of an apparently never-ending foreign occupation and local violence that makes rebuilding infrastructure nearly impossible.

My small misery is just a taste of what the Iraqi people are forced to swallow every day.
I want clean water and hot baths for myself and my children. But I am sure the Iraqis want these things for themselves and their children as well.

Stop Hitting Your Brother or I Will Smack You!

Remember how stupid that sentence made grownups look when we were kids? “If you don’t stop hitting your brother I will smack you into next week.” And the adult looked even dumber if they had just hit you before delivering that ultimatum.

I once had a policeman at the mall tell me and a group of my friends, “If you kids want to hang out here, you are going to have to move along.” That one didn’t make much sense either. Hmm, wait officer, what if I don’t want to be here, can I hang out some more? No? I want to be here, so I have to go? Yeah, that makes sense.

I know that adults get frustrated when the world and the children in it don’t behave. I’m officially grown up now and I have kids, I get it.. But it doesn’t take away the idiocy of trying to teach kids to be nice by threatening violence against them, or telling them to give up what they want to get what they want. I get confused just trying to explain the illogic of the situation, but let’s just press on ahead, shall we?

So I realize the Bush Administration must be frustrated when the world doesn’t react the way they want (no flowers and candy in Iraq). And I realize that frustrated and angry people say stupid things, but damn it we pay these guys to be the adults around here.

“All options are on the table,” says Mr. Bush when asked about his plans for Iran. Read that as “If you develop nukes, I am going to nuke you into next week.”

Meanwhile the “adult” in Iran is promising to “cut off the hand of the aggressor” if attacked. Read that as “I’ll do what ever the fuck I want, Old Man, even if you do kick my ass.”

Well I don’t know about the rest of you kids, but I’m feeling kind of queasy stuck here in the middle between two angry drunk adults who should know better but seem intent on starting a fight. Read that as “We would like to keep hanging out here (on planet Earth), so why don’t you guys move along. I hear Mars is a great place to have a nuclear battle—lots of room and no innocent civilians to die horrible deaths. And the place is named after the god of war, so you should feel right at home. Take your lunatic logic and your angry posturing and your ICBMs and get the heck out of here. This was a nice quiet neighborhood before you thugs moved in. Go on, bombs away, as in take your bombs and go away.”

Oh well, I don’t think these guys are listening to us. Maybe we should spray them with cold water?

Iraq 2 is spelled I R A N

Is it just me or does the hyperbole and just plain hype about Iran sound a lot like the hype surrounding the lead up to the Iraq invasion?

Yes, Iran is ruled by evil bastards (just like Iraq was).
Yes, Iranian oil is strategically important (just like Iraqi oil was).
Yes, Iran admits it is enriching uranium (just like Iraq did).

But the experts at the UN say that Iran is hyping its nuclear capabilities, that Iran’s newest claims are “little more than vacuous political posturing”, (just like Iraq, the UN said Iraq was disarmed but the Iraqis were posturing to maintain face at home).

The US generals say that Pentagon plans to attack Iran and possible nuke Iran are horrible plans, (just like generals complained about the plans to invade Iraq).

But the Bush Administration keeps on pumping the rhetoric that Iran is an immediate threat to US interests, a threat that must be dealt with now, (just like the claims the White House made about Iraq before the invasion).

George W. Bush says that even knowing what he knows now, he would still invade Iraq.
I am sure that four years from now he will be saying that even knowing know what we know about Iran’s real nuclear capabilities, he still would have attacked Iran.

I don’t expect the Bush Administration to act differently this time around. The Administration has proven themselves immune to the effects of experience and facts. If they have made up their minds about Iran the same way they made up their minds about Iraq, then they will act in a similar fashion.

The question isn’t really, Is George W. Bush seriously considering attacking Iran?
The question is this: What will the American People do differently this time around to stop George W. Bush from attacking yet another country?
What will we do differently? Or will we respond just like we did to the Iraqi proposition?

Will we hold our elected representatives responsible?
Will we demand verifiable proof?
Will we require a lawful declaration of war by the Congress before invading a country proactively?
Will we figure in the actual costs in lives and resources of additional military operations in the Middle East?

Or will we just complain and protest and blog (just like we did about Iraq)?

What Would MLK Do?

Sometimes the quagmire in Iraq and the corruption here in America seem like problems too big to tackle. There is a growing opinion that we just have to wait until after the 2008 elections to solve these problems. Even President Bush has said that getting out of Iraq will the be the job of a future president. We all just need to stay the course.

During Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life time, the great quagmire was the Vietnam War. On April 4th, 1967 Dr. King made it clear where he stood on the issue of Vietnam. At a meeting of concerned clergy and laity at Riverside Church in New Your City, Martin Luther King made it clear that people of conscience, himself included, could not wait and remain silent as America conducted a war in Asia.

Read, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”, and I think you will agree that our situation is very similar to that situation. You can almost replace the word “Vietnam” with the word “Iraq.” The entire text is available online at: http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html

We cannot remain silent and wait for 2008. Many lives can be saved by our actions today.

Below are some excerpts from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech:

“I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.”

“I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government.”

‘The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

“These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.”

“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

“The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”