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MY PERSONAL REVENGE
Tomás Borge and Louis Enrique Mejia Godoy
(English Translation by Jorge Calderon)
My personal revenge will be the right
Of our children in the schools and in the gardens
My personal revenge will be to give you
This song which has flourished without panic
My personal revenge will be to show you
The kindness in the eyes of my people
Who have always fought relentlessly in battle
And been generous and firm in victory
My personal revenge will be to tell you good morning
On a street without beggars or homeless
When instead of jailing you I suggest
You shake away the sadness there that blinds you
And when you who have applied your hands in torture
Are unable to look up at what surrounds you
My personal revenge will be to give you
These hands that once you so mistreated
But have failed to take away their tenderness
It was the people who hated you the most
When rage became the language of their song
And underneath the skin of this town today
Its heart has been scarred forevermore
It was the people who hated you the most
When rage became the language of their song
And underneath the skin of this town today
Its heart has been scarred forevermore
And underneath the skin of this town today
Red and black, its heart's been scarred
Forevermore
Man Shot in Downtown Bowling Green
BOWLING GREEN -- A Bowling Green man is in police custody. He's accused of shooting another man in downtown BG.
Shots rang out in this typically quiet community early this morning near the intersection of Wooster and Prospect Streets. Police say 22-year-old Brian Steen shot 20-year-old Matthew Llanas twice in the legs. Llanas was air-lifted to St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries. Police say a second man was not wounded, but did have a bullet go through his shirt.
[...]
"I heard it on the news this morning. I think it's kinda scary, because things like that don't happen in Bowling Green," said one resident Theresa Boggs.
"I think it's kinda freaky. I mean you really don't expect that to happen. It's mostly why you come to school someplace like this is to stay away from the big city and guns and things and stuff," said another resident Caleb Woods.
Officials: Dead Woman Had Up to 40 Drinks
FORT COLLINS, Colo. - A 19-year-old college student drank up to 40 beers and shots of liquor in an 11-hour period before she was found dead in a fraternity house, investigators said Friday.
Samantha Spady had a blood-alcohol level of 0.436 percent — above the 0.4 percent considered potentially deadly — when her body was found Sept. 6 at the Sigma Pi fraternity house at Colorado State University, Deputy Coroner Dean Beers said.
Spady drank the equivalent of 30 to 40 12-ounce beers or 1-ounce shots of liquor, Beers said, but her death was ruled an accident and there was no evidence of foul play. Spady was found fully clothed, and her body had not been moved.
Spady began drinking with companions at 6 p.m. on Sept. 5 and did not stop until about 5 a.m. the next day. Investigators said Spady and her friends started with beer but later switched to vodka.
Spady's body was found in a lounge of the fraternity house by a fraternity member giving a tour the evening of Sept. 6. Beers said Spady probably died about midmorning that day.
"This just doesn't seem like her at all," Tatro said. "Sam, she was a smart girl. If you knew her at all through high school, she wasn't getting in trouble. She wasn't out doing stupid things. She was an all-around nice girl. This was out of character."
Bruhn added, "She was the one who knew when to go home when she knew she'd had too much (to drink)."
Japanese Baseball On First Strike
Japanese professional baseball players have gone on strike for the first time since the game was introduced from the US 70 years ago.
The action was called over the players' demand that the league suspend a merger between two clubs, Orix Bluewave and Kintetsu Buffaloes.
Such a merger could cause job losses, but the clubs' owners say it is the only way to keep the teams in business.
On the day that the assault weapons ban will expire, the legislative agenda is a poster child for what is wrong with the current leadership. On the agenda:
1) Changing the name of a post office
2) Changing the name [of] the Veterans Affairs building
3) Recognizing Bill Clinton’s birthday (an acute irony in that they are letting his legislation expire)
4) Changing the boundaries on some national parks.
On a day when all of our streets are about to become less safe, the republican leadership is changing the names of our buildings. How fitting….
A mere day after the Republican-led congress allowed the assault weapons ban to expire, House Republicans are now pushing a bill that will essentially eliminate every gun control law in the nation's capitol.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.) would end a ban on handguns, remove a prohibition against semiautomatic weapons; lift registration requirements for ammunition and other firearms; and cancel criminal penalties for possessing unregistered firearms and carrying a handgun in one's home or workplace.
In a twist of bitter irony unnoticed by no one, the Republican leadership has promised a vote on this legislation before Nov 2.
Today, I took a look at the letters to the editor for the last week or so and was struck almost dumb by a few of them.
Soldiers' job is to defend their countryReading the Sept. 10 editorial, "A lethal milestone," about the 1,000 military deaths in Iraq, reminds me of something that I have not seen nor heard in the media.
Not to minimize these soldiers' deaths or take away the horror of any war, I wonder why these men signed the papers to serve and protect their country?
My time in service (1953-1961) was a period when all men of 18 were eligible for the draft and had to register. There is no draft today. It is strictly voluntary.
Were none of these men aware that there could come a time when they would be asked to defend and fight, even to the death?
Perhaps we should all wait until this country is invaded and then commence our battles (9/11 comes to mind). This could take us back to the time frame of the Revolution when the battles were fought here.
Would it not be more productive to salute these brave men on a continuing basis rather than make every statement sound as if they died in vain?
Bill Scantlen
Whitehouse, Ohio
No, let's not minimize their deaths, Bill... they signed the papers -- that relieves the Bush administration of any responsibility!
Paraphrasing what Michael Moore so eloquently states at the end of Fahrenheit 9/11, those who sign up to "serve and protect" this country do so with the understanding that they will not be placed in harm's way unless absolutely necessary.
Considering that (as Bush has admitted) Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks of September 11, 2001, and considering that Saddam Hussein made eleventh-hour overtures to the United States hoping to stave off the imminent attack, I would say that this war was -- to say the least -- not necessary.
Reading on...
To show Abu Ghraib photos is treasonI'm going to guess that Richard is a regular Rush Limbaugh listener since what happened in Abu Ghraib was merely "undress[ing] a few terrorists."I find it amazing that we have a commission investigating the Abu Ghraib prison "abuses." We're talking about people there who want to kill all Americans. You say the American people and the world are "shocked." What would be shocking is if our prison guards were using rubber hoses, cutting off fingers, and threatening to cut off heads like the terrorists did. How you can blame Donald Rumsfeld for Abu Ghraib is a mystery to me.
There are billboards in Florida that state "We Bare All. Couples Welcome." That doesn't seem to shock anyone. We have New Yorkers undressing in the streets as some sort of protest. That isn't shocking. We have strip clubs all over Toledo - the entire country - and that isn't shocking. We abort the unborn, and half of America doesn't care. Turn on your TV, and much of that is filth. All of the premium channels are filthy, and that isn't shocking. It must be all right: We have people paying to see it.
If I used the filthy language that is seen in many movies, you wouldn't print this letter, although I don't believe that it would shock many of your readers. But somehow some Americans find it shocking to undress a few terrorists. And call it abusive. Get real.
What is shocking is that the media published all of those pictures for the world to see. They are the ones who are responsible for giving this information to the radical Islamists to use, as you say, "as vivid recruiting tools for terrorism." That's where the treason lies.
Richard H. Baxter, Sr.
Temperance, Michigan
Clearly, the Bush administration has been successful in equating Iraqis with terrorism. Clearly, the Bush administration has been successful in making the Iraqi people appear to be nothing more than a murderous, anti-American horde.
And finally...
Stumbling on words means unfitness?To paraphrase Matt:Many people are dismissing George W. Bush's competency because once in a while he stumbles over his words, something he openly admits. People then look to John Kerry, tall of stature and tremendous in his ability to speak in public.
Flash back to the 1930s. Would we have been so quick to dismiss Franklin D. Roosevelt as a viable president had we known he couldn't stand up?
By the way, during that time a man in Germany quickly rose to power because he was a great public speaker and said what everyone wanted to hear.
Matt Sussman
Bowling Green, Ohio
Be wary of intelligent people who are capable of articulating their thoughts and ideas for they surely are holocaust inciters-in-waiting.
A WINNING KERRY SLOGAN: Here's John Kerry on the administration's North Korea policy in today's New York Times:
"I think that this is one of the most serious failures and challenges to the security of the United States, and it really underscores the way in which George Bush talks the game but doesn't deliver," he said.
I think Kerry's on to something with "George Bush talks the game but doesn't deliver." It's certainly better as a slogan than "W. stands for wrong." Not that the second line isn't apt. But the first one has the advantage of placing the burden of proof on Bush--what, exactly, have all of his wars and tax cuts gotten us, besides a big fat insurgency in Iraq and a big fat deficit at home, not too mention a big fat nuclear-armed North Korea? It also nicely captures the difference between Bush's rhetoric and his disastrous results. The second line puts more of a burden on Kerry to explain how Bush has screwed up, which is not something Kerry's proven especially good at.
"I started taking these photographs because I wasn't seeing any images of wounded soldiers. I kept hearing reports on radio, television — three wounded today, four wounded today — but I was never seeing any images, and I wanted to go out and discover, see who these people were, what happened to them and what their life is like now.
"I'm not sure why they are forgotten. There are so many of them — right now there are over 7000 from hostile fire, and many more thousand wounded from accidents, psychological trauma, sickness. I focused on the wounded, because they have stories they can tell. You can see war's effects through them.
"The soldiers all really wanted to participate in the project. They want their stories told, they want to be out there.
"So many of them are so young — I'm talking 19-years-old, 20, 21-years-old. This is not a temporary thing. This is something they will live with the rest of their lives, and people should really get a sense of what war does.
"The injuries are shocking. It's not just a simple bullet wound to the arm. These are injuries like brain damage, amputees, blindness, massive internal injuries — lifelong injuries that soldiers will never recover from.
"The pictures — there is a loneliness that comes through all the pictures, and I think soldiers are very reluctant to express any vulnerability or loneliness, but somehow the camera captures this."
self evident [listen]
yes,
us people are just poems
we're 90% metaphor
with a leanness of meaning
approaching hyper-distillation
and once upon a time
we were moonshine
rushing down the throat of a giraffe
yes, rushing down the long hallway
despite what the p.a. announcement says
yes, rushing down the long stairs
with the whiskey of eternity
fermented and distilled
to eighteen minutes
burning down our throats
down the hall
down the stairs
in a building so tall
that it will always be there
yes, it's part of a pair
there on the bow of noah's ark
the most prestigious couple
just kickin back parked
against a perfectly blue sky
on a morning beatific
in its indian summer breeze
on the day that america
fell to its knees
after strutting around for a century
without saying thank you
or please
and the shock was subsonic
and the smoke was deafening
between the setup and the punch line
cuz we were all on time for work that day
we all boarded that plane for to fly
and then while the fires were raging
we all climbed up on the windowsill
and then we all held hands
and jumped into the sky
and every borough looked up when it heard the first blast
and then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed
and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar
looked more like war than anything i've seen so far
so far
so far
so fierce and ingenious
a poetic specter so far gone
that every jackass newscaster was struck dumb and stumbling
over 'oh my god' and 'this is unbelievable' and on and on
and i'll tell you what, while we're at it
you can keep the pentagon
keep the propaganda
keep each and every tv
that's been trying to convince me
to participate
in some prep school punk's plan to perpetuate retribution
perpetuate retribution
even as the blue toxic smoke of our lesson in retribution
is still hanging in the air
and there's ash on our shoes
and there's ash in our hair
and there's a fine silt on every mantle
from hell's kitchen to brooklyn
and the streets are full of stories
sudden twists and near misses
and soon every open bar is crammed to the rafters
with tales of narrowly averted disasters
and the whiskey is flowin
like never before
as all over the country
folks just shake their heads
and pour
so here's a toast to all the folks who live in palestine
afghanistan
iraq
el salvador
here's a toast to the folks living on the pine ridge reservation
under the stone cold gaze of mt. rushmore
here's a toast to all those nurses and doctors
who daily provide women with a choice
who stand down a threat the size of oklahoma city
just to listen to a young woman's voice
here's a toast to all the folks on death row right now
awaiting the executioner's guillotine
who are shackled there with dread and can only escape into their heads
to find peace in the form of a dream
cuz take away our playstations
and we are a third world nation
under the thumb of some blue blood royal son
who stole the oval office and that phony election
i mean
it don't take a weatherman
to look around and see the weather
jeb said he'd deliver florida, folks
and boy did he ever
and we hold these truths to be self evident:
#1 george w. bush is not president
#2 america is not a true democracy
#3 the media is not fooling me
cuz i am a poem heeding hyper-distillation
i've got no room for a lie so verbose
i'm looking out over my whole human family
and i'm raising my glass in a toast
here's to our last drink of fossil fuels
let us vow to get off of this sauce
shoo away the swarms of commuter planes
and find that train ticket we lost
cuz once upon a time the line followed the river
and peeked into all the backyards
and the laundry was waving
the graffiti was teasing us
from brick walls and bridges
we were rolling over ridges
through valleys
under stars
i dream of touring like duke ellington
in my own railroad car
i dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches
in a grand station aglow with grace
and then standing out on the platform
and feeling the air on my face
give back the night its distant whistle
give the darkness back its soul
give the big oil companies the finger finally
and relearn how to rock-n-roll
yes, the lessons are all around us and a change is waiting there
so it's time to pick through the rubble, clean the streets
and clear the air
get our government to pull its big dick out of the sand
of someone else's desert
put it back in its pants
and quit the hypocritical chants of
freedom forever
cuz when one lone phone rang
in two thousand and one
at ten after nine
on nine one one
which is the number we all called
when that lone phone rang right off the wall
right off our desk and down the long hall
down the long stairs
in a building so tall
that the whole world turned
just to watch it fall
and while we're at it
remember the first time around?
the bomb?
the ryder truck?
the parking garage?
the princess that didn't even feel the pea?
remember joking around in our apartment on avenue D?
can you imagine how many paper coffee cups would have to change their design
following a fantastical reversal of the new york skyline?!
it was a joke, of course
it was a joke
at the time
and that was just a few years ago
so let the record show
that the FBI was all over that case
that the plot was obvious and in everybody's face
and scoping that scene
religiously
the CIA
or is it KGB?
committing countless crimes against humanity
with this kind of eventuality
as its excuse
for abuse after expensive abuse
and it didn't have a clue
look, another window to see through
way up here
on the 104th floor
look
another key
another door
10% literal
90% metaphor
3000 some poems disguised as people
on an almost too perfect day
should be more than pawns
in some asshole's passion play
so now it's your job
and it's my job
to make it that way
to make sure they didn't die in vain
sshhhhhh....
baby listen
hear the train?
9/12/2001
Yesterday, almost an hour after it occurred, I heard about the airplane attack on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. I had been reading The Red Tent most of the morning and for some reason had decided not to turn on my radio at 9AM for the replay of NPR's Morning Edition's second hour. I looked at the clock just a couple of minutes before 9:00 and had thought about it. "Nah," I thought. "I'll keep reading."
After hearing the news, I was also told that there was a TV on in one of the vacant offices. As I came into the room I was told that one of the towers had just fallen. I could hardly imagine the number of people who were instantly, suddenly dead. The thought that came to me -- and which I spoke out loud -- was, "and to imagine that someone is celebrating this!"
I turned and walked out.
Without a shred of real evidence, I immediately came to the conclusion that Osama bin Laden was the instigator of all this, but in thinking more and more about it as the day wore on, I had become less and less concerned with who was responsible for these catastrophic, heinous events.
My attention turned to the whys of the event. I thought about all the proclamations of our government officials of how this was such a horrific attack on innocent people... then I thought about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I thought about how we pay lip service to peace in the Middle East and around the world, then do nothing about it when we have the chance. I thought about all the people dead and dying on the streets and rubble of New York -- that they were victims of our foreign policy; victims of our corporate greed.
I thought about our lame-brained president uttering his by-the-book castigation of the villains of this crime: "Cowards" he called them; then I thought about how much of a coward he is for not pursuing peace in the Middle East; for not having a spine when it comes to promoting environmental issues; for not being anywhere near concerned for the thousands of people that die every day in this country as a result (either directly or indirectly) of the policies of our corporate-run government.
I thought of all the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and sons and daughters who will never make it home or who are waiting at home for someone who will never return.
Last night, I watched "our president" quote from his Bible, from Psalms. I watched as our elected representatives -- instead of taking action towards affecting a real peace in this world -- sang "God Bless America" for the TV cameras.
I am appalled at our short-sightedness with regard to our planned or anticipated actions against those who devised this mass murder. Even friends I have spoken with agree with the "need" to extinguish those at the heart of the terrorism.
Perhaps I'm hopelessly pacifistic, but until we turn our attention to the reasons these terrorists have unleashed their hatred as they have, we will continuously, foolishly chase our tails.
From the moment our first retaliatory missile or bomb or bullet flies, we will continue to be perceived as scurrilous murderers by those who already see us, the United States, as the devil incarnate.
The only way to combat the hatred is to show we are not worthy of it. I have no doubt that our violent knee-jerk reaction will breed more sensless murders. The children of these terrorists will murder our children -- if our children live through Bush's war.
Significantly, it showed the unit joined a "24-hour active alert mission to safeguard against surprise attack" in the southern United States beginning on Oct. 6, 1972, a time when Bush did not report for duty, according to his pay records.
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Memos: Bush Suspended From Guard Flying
WASHINGTON - Addressing questions that have lingered for years, newly unearthed memos state that George W. Bush failed to meet standards of the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war, that he refused a direct order and that his superiors were in a state of turmoil over how to evaluate his performance after he was suspended from flying.
One military official "is pushing to sugar coat it," one memo says of a proposed evaluation of Bush.
"On this date I ordered that 1st Lt. Bush be suspended from flight status due to failure to perform to USAF/TexANG standards and failure to meet annual physical examination ... as ordered," says an Aug. 1, 1972 memo by a superior officer, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who is now dead. Killian said in the memo that he wanted a formal inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the flight suspension. No records have surfaced that one was ever conducted.
"I conveyed my verbal orders to commander," Killian's memo stated.
The same memo notes that Bush was trying to transfer to non-flying status out of state and recommends that the Texas unit fill his flying slot "with a more seasoned pilot from the list of qualified Vietnam pilots that have rotated."
The Vietnam-era documents add details to the bare-bones explanation of Bush's aides over the years that he was suspended simply because he decided to skip his flight physical.
[...]
Records released this year when Bush's military service re-emerged as a campaign issue contain no evidence that he showed up for duty at all for five months in mid-1972 and document only a few occasions later that year.
Robb's vote may not go to Bush
GOP mayor may use Electoral College
to lodge protest against president
South Charleston Mayor Richie Robb said today he may vote against George W. Bush in the Electoral College, even if the president carries West Virginia's popular vote.
Robb, long known as a maverick Republican, said he is considering using his position as one of the state's five Republican electors to protest what he believes are misguided policies of the current administration.
"It's not likely that I would vote for Kerry," Robb said. "But I'm looking at what my options are when it comes time to cast my vote."
State election law dictates that the party of the candidate who wins the popular vote for president gets to send its five electors when the Electoral College convenes in mid-December.
At their state convention in June, the members of the West Virginia Republican Party chose the top five runners-up from their gubernatorial primary to serve as electors. Robb, who finished fourth in the May primary, will be among them.
Robb, who said he might reconsider if Bush changed his foreign and domestic policy priorities, said he is researching his options under state law.
There is no provision in the West Virginia code that controls what an elector does at the Electoral College or provides any punishment for faithless electors.
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GOP Convention's Looney Tunes
An advertising guru once warned his acolytes never to confuse the thing being sold with the thing itself. Good sizzle can always sell a lousy steak.
This strategy is on brilliant display these days as the Republicans emerge post-convention bristling with tough-sounding talk about "girlie men" and shamelessly attacking decorated war veteran John F. Kerry as some kind of traitorous wimp. The same leaders who have never apologized for being totally oblivious to the terrorist threat before Sept. 11 continue to mawkishly exploit the tragedy for political gain, all while trumpeting far-off victories for democracy that dissolve like mirages under the mildest scrutiny.
The Republicans' strategy is to counter critique with caricature, and they do it with all the panache of an old Road Runner cartoon, effectively smashing Kerry with rhetorical frying pans.
"Even in this post-9/11 period, Sen. Kerry doesn't appear to understand how the world has changed. He talks about leading a 'more sensitive war on terror,' as though al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side," Dick Cheney mocked in his convention speech, reusing a joke that wasn't funny the first time.
This from a man who secured five deferments from Vietnam because he had "other priorities" at the time. But it was Cheney's own war "fever," as Colin Powell described it to the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, that was crucial in the president's reckless decision to chase U.N. inspectors out of Iraq – lest they confirm that the White House was hyping a WMD threat that didn't exist.
[...]
And if you disagree with this son of privilege – a man who never earned an honest dollar on his own but acts as if the lives of the unemployed and working poor are of no consequence – well, you must be an "economic girlie man." At least, so says mega-millionaire Arnold Schwarzenegger, the macho Hollywood warrior who has never experienced combat himself.
This cartoon is all a great joke, except for the price we will pay if the audience buys into it. We are not watching a movie, and the stakes are very real. Bush's convention acceptance speech was a clear ideological endorsement of the neoconservative vision that America can and should dominate the world with military force.
Four more years of George W. Bush would mean more blood flowing – and none of it would be fake.
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So Kitty Kelly's new book rehashes some of the more pharmacological conspiracy theories about the Bush family, which even Drudge has to admit is more interesting than Hurricane Frances. How come the nutty allegations damaging to Kerry's campaign make him sound like a two-faced quasi-coward, but the stuff that's potentially damaging to Bush's campaign makes him sound like someone we'd want to party with? Kerry shoots himself. Uhm, not only painful, but kind of hard to do! As for Bush: Drunk driving, snorting coke while your old lady tokes up and runs over ex-boyfriends? Now that's a fun weekend! And as for the classmate that laments, "Poor Georgie. He couldn't relate to women unless he was loaded." Well, we find it being loaded makes it much easier for us to relate to George! Bush may have gotten through the last four years sober (emphasis on the "may"), but we sure couldn't have.
We have no idea if these allegations are true or not. We really don't care. But let's say that they're probably as true as, dunno, the Swift Boat Vet ads. Let's just hope the media treats them that way.
BUSH 'TOOK COCAINE AT CAMP DAVID'
Let us imagine you had a corporation with annual gross revenues of about $2 trillion. And let's say that in 2000, it had profits of $150 billion. So you bring in a new CEO, and within four years, the profit falls to zero and then the company goes into the red to the tune of over $400 billion per year. You're on the Board of Directors and the CEO's term is up for renewal. Do you vote to keep him in? That's what Bush did to the US government. He took it from surpluses to deep in the red. We are all paying interest on the unprecedented $400 billion per year in deficits (a deficit is just a loan), and our grandchildren will be paying the interest in all likelihood.
And what if you had been working for America, Inc. all your life, and were vested in its pension plan (i.e. social security)? And you heard that the company is now hemorrhaging money and that the losses are going to be paid for out of your pension? What if you thought you were going to get $1000 a month to retire on, and it is only going to be $500? Or maybe nothing at all? Because of the new CEO whose management turned a profit-making enterprise into an economic loser? Would you vote to keep him on?
What if the CEO convinced himself that the Mesopotamia Corp. was planning a hostile takeover? What if he had appointed a lot of senior vice-presidents who were either incompetent boobs or had some kind of backroom deal going with crooked brokers, and fed him false information that Mesopotamia Corp. was making a move and had amassed a big war chest for the purpose? And what if, to avoid this imaginary threat, he launched a preemptive hostile takeover of his own, spending at least $200 billion to accomplish it (on top of the more than $400 billion he is already losing every year)? Remember, it was a useless expenditure.
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Protesters are the Foundation of Hope
— By Joel Stonington, Utne.com
On Tuesday, the protest group, "A31" held a press conference in front of a statue of Gandhi in Union Square. They announced plans for a day of nonviolent civil disobedience and direct action. "We are resisting creatively and openly," said Elizabeth Broad, an A31 organizer, "It's about a celebration of life."
Another organizer, Raquel Lavina, said, "Young people know there's a problem when their only opportunity in life is to go to war. Saying 'no to Bush' is saying 'yes to the world.'"
People in America may not understand why people were so adamant about their protest in New York. Mainstream media has consistently portrayed them as anarchists, disruptions, peaceniks, disaffected youth, and, for the most part, inconsequential.
This could not be further from the truth. The young people who held this press conference were some of the most well spoken, educated, passionate youth in this country. The crowd who marched on Sunday was one of the most diverse I have ever seen. Allison Ramer, from the A31 youth cluster, was entirely correct when she said, "We are the future."
However, as the New York Times reported on their front page Thursday, "Tactics by Police Mute the Protesters, and Their Messages." While the New York Times, and other national media, should acknowledge complicity in that muted message, the real story here is that a huge story -- the message -- is being missed.
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Flip a penny, reverse the Curse
Sox vendors say 1918 coin is talisman
By Paysha Stockton, Globe Correspondent
September 6, 2004
Could the Curse finally be broken?
Joseph Coen, a 28-year-old beer seller at Fenway Park, believes it is.
Coen and John Redding, a fellow brewmeister, received what they interpret as an irrefutable sign yesterday, just before the Red Sox took on the Texas Rangers: a 1918 penny stuck to the counter of their Heineken and Miller beer stand.
They don't know who planted the coin, alongside a few others, in a patch of sticky beer on the counter of the right field concourse stand.
But its meaning is undeniable, they say: Every fan knows 1918 was the last year the Sox won the World Series, the year before George Herman ''Babe" Ruth was sold to the evil Yankees, reputedly unleashing the legendary Curse of the Bambino.
''Everyone gets it," said Coen of the penny's significance.
The good-luck penny is now taped to the stand's beer fridge, where the men plan to display it for the rest of the season. ''If you're a Red Sox fan and you've been around for this long, you get it."
In fact, the penny is the latest in a series of encouraging signs, said Coen, of Milton. ''It goes around with the other crazy stuff that was going on this year."
The Sox have won 81 games this season and lost 54. With 27 left to play, they're leading the wild-card race, and winning it would take them to the American League playoffs. Yesterday they beat the Texas Rangers, 6-5.
Rumors, superstition, and unbridled hope abound amongst vendors and fans at the park, Coen said. And signals that the team's sixth World Series win could be imminent just keep coming.
For example, Gabe Kapler and Johnny Damon sometimes stand together in the outfield, Coen said. Their numbers: 19 and 18.
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As for me, I'm just trying to understand our world. If the understanding I attain is found useful by others, I am gratified, and I think understanding is a prerequisite for making good policy. I fear a lot of policy has been being made by people who are simply uninterested in understanding, and who have all sorts of ulterior motives for trying to shove a policy down the world's throat regardless of the realities of the situation. That is how we got the Iraq debacle.
Real understanding requires that an analyst be unafraid to go wherever the evidence leads, be unafraid to step on toes or offend. Risking being perceived as "shrill" on occasion, in other words, is essential to the enterprise.
The other thing I insist on is trying to build a global civil society. Civil society means we have to be willing to dialogue with others, with whom we disagree. Professional diplomats know this, and do it all the time, otherwise they would never accomplish anything (the rest of the world doesn't look very much like the U.S. politically). Likewise, in the Senate, cooperation and friendship across party lines has until recently been quite common, though perhaps the situation is worse now that ever before.
Reconstructing one day on a Swift boat
By ROBERT PRICE
Californian staff columnist
Saturday September 4th, 2004
Bill Means needed to talk to me, he said. Right away.
I didn't ask why; I figured it had something to do with Vietnam. We'd talked briefly a couple of months earlier about the war and about Swift boats. Thirty-five years ago, as a Navy seaman, Means had patrolled the southern coastline of the South China Sea and the mangrove-dense rivers of the country's interior -- 12 months in all, mostly spent in the pilot house of one of those 55-foot, aluminum-hulled Navy fighting boats.
About a week ago, we made tentative plans to talk again. Then I didn't hear from him until he called abruptly, urgency in his voice.
We sat down together and, agitated and emotional, he laid it all out for me.
It bothered him, seeing Vietnam brought back into play as a political game piece. The left had done it to war veterans three decades ago. Returning servicemen had been vilified -- spat upon, in fact, as if they'd been the architects of U.S. foreign policy rather than just the young men and women obligated by law and duty to carry it out.
Now the right had seized upon the Vietnam War, too -- specifically the role, in uniform and out, of Sen. John Kerry. And to Means, it seemed just as wrong.
Means, a 55-year-old investigator for several Bakersfield law firms, was particularly annoyed by the words of one retired admiral. Roy F. "Latch" Hoffman, one of the co-founders of the pro-George W. Bush group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, had publicly criticized Kerry, a former Swift boat commander, for having brought back stories about alleged war crimes by U.S. forces -- often carried out, Kerry said in 1971, "with the full awareness of officers at all levels."
Seemed to him, Means said, his own Swift boat crew had come close to committing a war crime themselves one day. A senior officer, hitching a ride up the coast aboard their Swift boat, had ordered the crew to fire on a small group of unarmed Vietnamese fishermen working their nets in unrestricted waters, Means said. The boat's commanding officer had refused to comply.
Was that the way the boat's commander remembered the incident too, all these years later? Means had to know.
So he got on the Internet and hunted down Thomas W.L. "Tad" McCall, the retired Navy captain who'd commanded Means' boat, PCF 88, as a newly minted ensign. Means called him.
Not only did McCall remember the day in question, and that confrontation off the coast of South Vietnam, he remembered the name of the officer who had given the command to shoot: "Latch" Hoffman himself, then a Navy captain in charge of the entire Swift boat task force in Vietnam.
The next morning Means told me the whole story. Then I called McCall myself.
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We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore
How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk?
By Garrison Keillor
Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street busi-nessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeoned-and there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were giants compared to today's. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor.
In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated southward down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a pass and made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry white men who rose to power on pure punk politics. "Bipartisanship is another term of date rape," says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the GOP. "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." The boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy.
The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we're deaf, dumb and dangerous.
Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace.
Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy-the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president's personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.
The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours. The omens are not good.
Our beloved land has been fogged with fear-fear, the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich.
There is a stink drifting through this election year. It isn't the Florida recount or the Supreme Court decision. No, it's 9/11 that we keep coming back to. It wasn't the "End of innocence," or a turning point in our history, or a cosmic occurrence, it was an event, a lapse of security. And patriotism shouldn't prevent people from asking hard questions of the man who was purportedly in charge of national security at the time.
Whenever I think of those New Yorkers hurrying along Park Place or getting off the No.1 Broadway local, hustling toward their office on the 90th floor, the morning paper under their arms, I think of that non-reader George W. Bush and how he hopes to exploit those people with a little economic uptick, maybe the capture of Osama, cruise to victory in November and proceed to get some serious nation-changing done in his second term.
This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray us Democ-rats as embittered academics, desiccated Unitarians, whacked-out hippies and communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the party of the Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow over and over the footage of firemen in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and bodies being carried out and they will lie about their economic policies with astonishing enthusiasm.
The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the town and clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and mark up the constitution on behalf of intolerance and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them.
This is a great country, and it wasn't made so by angry peo-ple. We have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchil-dren in better shape than however we found it. We have a long way to go and we're not getting any younger.
Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you, dear reader. It's a beautiful world, rain or shine, and there is more to life than winning.
Is Strange Space Signal A Sign That ET's Mother Has Called Back?
AMATEUR radio hams are usually excited by the faint buzz of a distant shortwave station, but a group of scientists believe they have received a message from extra-terrestrials.
Astronomers think that a signal picked up by a radio telescope last year shows the highest probability yet that ET’s family may have returned his call.
In February 2003, scientists involved in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) pointed the huge radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, at about 200 sections of the sky.
Unexplained radio signals had been detected twice by the same telescope in these areas and scientists were trying to confirm the findings.
It may sound fanciful, but a report in the journal NewScientist reveals how the team has now finished analysing the data, and all the signals seem to have disappeared - except for one which has got stronger. Detected on three separate occasions, the signal is "an enigma", say researchers.
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Big Tent: To give the outward appearance of embracing moderate viewpoints; something that is easily folded up and carted away during the night. [See also "Tolerance"]
Catastrophic Success: What happens when a dog chases a car, but has no plan for after he catches it.
Compassionate Conservative: Go fuck yourself.
Economic Recovery: The hope that people who can't afford medical insurance will die before they begin to draw Social Security.
Flip-Flop: Something your opponent does frequently that you hope everyone will remember; something you do frequently that you hope no one will remember.
Free Speech Zone: Go fuck yourself.
No Child Left Behind: A phrase that has no real meaning, used as a diversion or to fill dead air. [Synonyms: uh, er, um, duh]
Speaking Points: [See "True Lies"]
Special Interest Groups: Patriotic, selfless, generous Americans who only have the best interests of the country at heart. [This definition sponsored by Haliburton, Viacom and Wal-Mart.]
Tolerance: Go fuck yourself.
True Lies: Repeating disinformation so much, it drowns out the truth; also, a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Uniter: Divider.
Vietnam Veterans: You didn't join them, but you want them to join you.
War on Terror: The only thing we have is fear itself.
Nicholas I, Czar of Russia
"The motto autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality, expressing the principles applied to a new system of education, was also used by Nicholas in suppressing liberal thought, controlling the universities, increasing censorship, persecuting religious and national minorities, and strengthening the secret police."
There was plenty of hatred in Manhattan, but it was inside, not outside, Madison Square Garden.
Barack Obama, who gave the Democratic keynote address, delivered a message of uplift and hope. Zell Miller, who gave the Republican keynote, declared that political opposition is treason: "Now, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief." And the crowd roared its approval.
Why are the Republicans so angry? One reason is that they have nothing positive to run on (during the first three days, Mr. Bush was mentioned far less often than John Kerry).
The promised economic boom hasn't materialized, Iraq is a bloody quagmire, and Osama bin Laden has gone from "dead or alive" to he-who-must-not-be-named.
Another reason, I'm sure, is a guilty conscience. At some level the people at that convention know that their designated hero is a man who never in his life took a risk or made a sacrifice for his country, and that they are impugning the patriotism of men who have.
That's why Band-Aids with Purple Hearts on them, mocking Mr. Kerry's war wounds and medals, have been such a hit with conventioneers, and why senior politicians are attracted to wild conspiracy theories about Mr. Soros.
It's also why Mr. Hastert, who knows how little the Bush administration has done to protect New York and help it rebuild, has accused the city of an "unseemly scramble" for cash after 9/11. Nothing makes you hate people as much as knowing in your heart that you are in the wrong and they are in the right.
But the vitriol also reflects the fact that many of the people at that convention, for all their flag-waving, hate America. They want a controlled, monolithic society; they fear and loathe our nation's freedom, diversity and complexity.
The convention opened with an invocation by Sheri Dew, a Mormon publisher and activist. Early rumors were that the invocation would be given by Jerry Falwell, who suggested just after 9/11 that the attack was God's punishment for the activities of the A.C.L.U. and People for the American Way, among others. But Ms. Dew is no more moderate: earlier this year she likened opposition to gay marriage to opposition to Hitler.
The party made sure to put social moderates like Rudy Giuliani in front of the cameras. But in private events, the story was different. For example, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas told Republicans that we are in a "culture war" and urged a reduction in the separation of church and state.
Mr. Bush, it's now clear, intends to run a campaign based on fear. And for me, at least, it's working: thinking about what these people will do if they solidify their grip on power makes me very, very afraid.
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Unmitigated Gall
Stephen Colbert, correspondent for "The Daily Show," the only news program to watch during the Republican convention, found the theme of this convention like a homing pigeon: "Unmitigated gall."
This convention alone would be enough to convince me that John Edwards is right about "two Americas," except I don't think he's gone far enough. These folks are in from another planet. They're living in an alternative reality. When is a fact a fact to these people? When did anyone ever find evidence Saddam Hussein had dog to do with Sept. 11?
[...]
One of my favorite moments of non-reality came from Education Secretary Rod Paige, formerly school superintendent in Houston, where the stats on student performance have been so badly twisted it is now a national scandal. It was Compassion Night at Madison Square Garden, so we were celebrating Republican domestic achievements, a short list unless you just make stuff up, such as, "All across America, test scores are rising, students are learning, the achievement gap is closing, teachers and principals are beaming with pride." Now you tell me if this guy is living in Never Never Land.
[...]
The real theme of the convention is "George Bush Makes Us Safer," as dubious a proposition as Madonna's virginity. Tom Ridge is not only not speaking in primetime, he's not addressing this convention at all – he's a non-person. In the current issue of Mother Jones magazine is a must-read by Matthew Brzezinski called "Red Alert." The "pull quote" is: "It was billed as America's frontline defense against terrorism. But badly underfunded, crippled by special interests and ignored by the White House, the Department of Homeland Security has been relegated to bureaucratic obscurity."
Brzezinski reports, "... the administration's misplaced priorities – - particularly its obsession with Iraq – - have come at the expense of homeland security." What a mess. What a waste of money. What colossal ineptitude. It's so dispiriting to read about it, one can't even work up a Henry Higgins-like: "Safer? Ha!"
[...]
Look, the Coalition of the Willing is a public embarrassment, a monument to diplomatic witlessness, not to mention open bribery. To blame others for our diplomatic failure is both fatuous and offensive. Then to repeat Bush's obnoxious little bully line, "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists," is both stupid and dangerous.
The perception that we lack a decent respect for the opinions of mankind itself contributes to terrorism. Why encourage Americans, many of whom are already dangerously xenophobic, to treat the arguments of other nations with contemptuous dismissal? Especially when so many of them have been proved right?
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It is good to be back in Georgia and to be with you. I have been coming to these dinners since the 1950s, and have missed very few.
I'm proud to be Georgia's junior senator and I'm honored to serve with Max Cleland, who is as loved and respected as anyone in that body. One of our very highest priorities must be to make sure this man is re-elected in 2002 so he can continue to serve this state and nation.
I continue to be impressed with all that Governor Barnes and Lieutenant Governor Taylor and the Speaker and the General Assembly are getting done over at the Gold Dome. Georgia is fortunate to have this kind of leadership.
My job tonight is an easy one: to present to you one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders – and a good friend.
He was once a lieutenant governor – but he didn't stay in that office 16 years, like someone else I know. It just took two years before the people of Massachusetts moved him into the United States Senate in 1984.
In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington.
Early in his Senate career in 1986, John signed on to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Bill, and he fought for balanced budgets before it was considered politically correct for Democrats to do so.
John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment. Business Week magazine named him one of the top pro-technology legislators and made him a member of its "Digital Dozen."
John was re-elected in 1990 and again in 1996 – when he defeated popular Republican Governor William Weld in the most closely watched Senate race in the country.
John is a graduate of Yale University and was a gunboat officer in the Navy. He received a Silver Star, Bronze Star and three awards of the Purple Heart for combat duty in Vietnam. He later co-founded the Vietnam Veterans of America.
He is married to Teresa Heinz and they have two daughters.
As many of you know, I have great affection – some might say an obsession – for my two Labrador retrievers, Gus and Woodrow. It turns out John is a fellow dog lover, too, and he better be. His German Shepherd, Kim, is about to have puppies. And I just want him to know … Gus and Woodrow had nothing to do with that.
Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Senator John Kerry.
George W. Bush's missing year
By Mary Jacoby
Before there was Karl Rove, Lee Atwater or even James Baker, the Bush family's political guru was a gregarious newspaper owner and campaign consultant from Midland, Texas, named Jimmy Allison. In the spring of 1972, George H.W. Bush phoned his friend and asked a favor: Could Allison find a place on the Senate campaign he was managing in Alabama for his troublesome eldest son, the 25-year-old George W. Bush?
Linda Allison's story, never before published, contradicts the Bush campaign's assertion that George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama National Guard in 1972 because he received an irresistible offer to gain high-level experience on the campaign of Bush family friend Winton "Red" Blount. In fact, according to what Allison says her late husband told her, the younger Bush had become a political liability for his father, who was then the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and the family wanted him out of Texas. "I think they wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on him," Linda Allison said.
[...]
Allison's account corroborates a Washington Post investigation in February that found no credible witnesses to the service in the Alabama National Guard that Bush maintains he performed, despite a lack of documentary evidence. Asked if she'd ever seen Bush in a uniform, Allison said: "Good lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way." Allison also confirmed previously published accounts that Bush often showed up in the Blount campaign offices around noon, boasting about how much alcohol he had consumed the night before. (Bush has admitted that he was a heavy drinker in those years, but he has refused to say whether he also used drugs).
"After about a month I asked Jimmy what was Georgie's job, because I couldn't figure it out. I never saw him do anything. He told me it basically consisted of him contacting people who were impressed by his name and asking for contributions and support," Allison said.
Columbus Swift Boat Vet Angry About Letter
By LINDA HALSTEAD-ACHARYA
Of The Gazette Staff
COLUMBUS - Swift boat veteran Bob Anderson of Columbus is ticked.
It bothers him that Sen. John Kerry's swift boat history has become such a political hot potato. But he's even more irritated that his name was included - without his permission - on a letter used to discredit Kerry.
"I'm pretty nonpolitical," the 56-year-old Anderson said Tuesday. So, when he found out last week that his name was one of about 300 signed on a letter questioning Kerry's service, he was "flabbergasted."
"It's kind of like stealing my identity," said Anderson, who spent a year on a swift boat as an engine man and gunner.
The letter, which was posted on the Swift Boat Veter-ans for Truth Web site, claims the Demo-cratic presidential candidate has "grossly and knowingly distorted the conduct of the American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen of that (Vietnam) war."
The letter also criticizes Kerry for trying to change his image from a critic of the war to a war hero.
"After reading the letter," Anderson said, "it kind of got under my skin. I had never come across a situation where someone used my name without my support or approval. It's not a very comforting feeling."
What's worse, he said, he disagrees with the letter.
"Had they asked me to use my name, I wouldn't have allowed them to," he said.
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