The McCain Story; Or Is It Or Who Cares?

John Stewart is unimpressed.

I'm with John on this one. Having said that, I haven't turned on the Old TeeVee since last night as Dan Abrams broke the story for MSNBC, therefore, I don't know much about it. There may be more to it. Who knows? Probably a lot less.

Sometimes it's just damned painful to watch karma whack someone, especially when no one learns a damn thing from it. Poor Cindy McCain got whacked.

Earlier in the day, I had watched Cindy McCain take a swipe at Michelle Obama because Mrs Obama had made a statement about her pride in her country the day before. She said, in the much played clip, that for the first time in her adult life, she was really proud of her country or to be an American; something like that. At some point there was another clip showing Mrs. Obama explaining her prior remark. I don't know where she was at the time. Perhaps she was giving a talk to the learning impaired, or just plain slow.

Mrs. McCain stated that she had always been proud to be an American. She stumbled over her words a wee bit, but I just figured that that was because Mrs. McCain is not a politician nor a public speaker for any other reason. Maybe she's not too good at one-liners. She does seem shy in large crowds, anyway.

I did not immediately jump to the conclusion that she was not telling the truth about her pride or non-pride in being an American. I notice that no one else did either, or if they did, I haven't heard about it and would consider anyone a true whack-job who had had such thoughts.

I have often wondered why people say they are proud to be an American, especially when that fact is due to an accident of birth. I'm not proud to have blue eyes nor that my hair is silver. I'm an American because I was born in Mobile, Alabama and have never left to live in another country, torn up my passport and decided to call that country "home," providing that country would have me as a citizen.

I can feel the building about to fall on me, but it won't be the first time, so here goes, anyway. I never understood why people were proud to be black, back in the day or today. I can see why one might be proud that one had mustered the courage to fight the good fight for civil rights for all Americans, but not because of the color of one's skin. Of course, I was white, at least in the winter months, and I felt no pride in that. I never went through what black people went through. Maybe they were simply proud to have survived. I can come somewhat close to imagining what it must have been like for a black person back then, but no white person can lay full claim to that one.

Funny, though, I knew immediately what Michelle Obama meant without her having to explain it. I'm quite a bit older than she is and have much less energy for things like pride or, even less, enthusiasm. We have lived during a slightly different bit of American history. I could easily be her husband's mother. Nevertheless, I knew what she meant. She wasn't suddenly proud to be an American because her husband might get to be president or, even, that a woman might, if he didn't. She was looking, as she had been for a year, out over ever-growing crowds of Americans; thousands who looked like Americans, white, black, red, yellow, brown, who gave a damn about the political process in this country. This, after years of way less than 50% of the eligible voters in this country getting off their butts to vote, let alone work for a candidate whose vision they shared. (Perhaps that was because no candidate had had a vision that so many could share, or maybe the last 7 years shocked Americans out of their over-work, TeeVee induced semi-comas.

Perhaps it is all a combination of forces coming together and, low and behold, as good fortune would have it, there is a guy who is saying what they had wanted to say and hear for 40 years. The first time I listened to a whole Barack Obama speech, from beginning to end, I sat there, motionless, chills running up my spine and tears running down my cheeks. I didn't want to hope with him. Sometimes, I still don't. It can be painful for me, you see. I have a forty year old wound that his words tear open, again.

She had met unbelievable crowds of people who said, give me something to do...I wanna help Obama because his dream seems much like mine. She felt like a family of strangers had embraced her and her family, not because they were black, but because they stood for something; like justice for all people, like taking care of the least of these and doing so in a way that left everyone's dignity in tact.

There is much more to it; his vision, Americans waking up, seeing what our government has done, in our names and with our blood and treasure, crawling out of the woodwork to take responsibility for it all and to re-build something together; not something built on hate or fear or a feeling of emptiness, no matter how much one has, but on something else.

Then came last night and the McCain story about a possible romantic relationship with a lobbyist for whom he, allegedly, did favors. Isn't that what all politicians do for lobbyist....favors? We all know it. Some of us try to pretend that we don't know it, but we do.

Most of us know that American politics is just a big old fascist game. If you have enough money you too can play. We also know that American institutions we used to trust; banks, the news media, print as well as electronic, real estate brokers, not to mention the institutions of government, are as corrupt as a corpse, homes to worms and maggots.

Just about 24 hours was all it took for the hand of karma to slap Cindy and John, right upside the head. That unkind, wise-crack about Michelle Obama's pride in her country and now this.

Perhaps, candidates and their staffs should learn something from this. It can take thousands of years for karma to roll around. Nevertheless, it can come much, much faster, if it has to, to balance things out and bring the gift of learning this simple but profound proverb: What you do to another you have already done unto yourself, because, you see, there is no difference, that really matters, between you and me. There is no separation. Just as there is none between Michelle and Cindy.

I feel for both of them. It's going to be a long hard summer if people just refuse to learn anything.

Stewart: McCain story 'has tired dusty feel to it'

02/21/2008 @ 9:48 am

Filed by David Edwards and Muriel Kane

News that the New York Times would be reporting on an improper relationship between Sen. John McCain and a female lobbyist broke as CNN's Larry King was doing a live interview with the Daily Show's Jon Stewart Wednesday night.

Adv

When asked by King for his thoughts on the matter, Stewart was clearly unprepared, but his first reaction was to say, "I think John McCain is someone who I have great respect for ... It's very unfortunate. ... This has an awfully tired and dusty feel to it."

Stewart went on to reflect, "If this is about lobbying and things like that, certainly that's very much in the public interest. ... But I think the general parasitical nature of lobbying to government is pretty out there for everyone to see."

"I think this sounds like a pretty hurtful personal thing," Stewart concluded. "It's a shame, and I feel badly for him and I feel badly for his family, because they're lovely people."

John McCain has made more appearances on the Daily Show than any other guest, with last September's appearance being his eleventh, and John Stewart has described him as a friend.

Stewart also downplayed King's suggestion that the fact that the story is running in the Times makes it more credible, saying, "There are very few organizations left that have a credibility savings account that they can draw on any more."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Man's Inhumanity To Man

Go, ahead, fire on unarmed men in Saffron robes, you sub-animal sociopaths. The karma for this one will be swift and a devastating for the powerful in Burma.

Odds against monks facing Myanmar troops

By DENIS D. GRAY, Associated Press WriterThu Sep 27, 4:06 PM ET

Confronted by a military junta willing to pull the trigger, Buddhist monks and democracy activists in Myanmar face long odds in trying to uproot an institution that has wielded absolute power for 45 years.

Every sign of dissent over the decades has been crushed, including a major uprising in 1988 that ended when troops gunned down thousands of peaceful demonstrators and imprisoned the survivors.

The world has changed in many ways since 1988. The Iron Curtain fell a year later, showing freedom can emerge if authoritarian regimes aren't ruthless. Globalization brought increasing economic integration to Asia, including investment in a poor place like Myanmar. The Internet has made it increasingly difficult for governments to control information and dissent.

But in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, there are no outward signs of any change in the cardinal principle of the generals: Retain power at all costs, no matter international pressure and condemnation.

"The risk of not cracking down is infinitely greater than risk incurred in cracking down," said Mary Callahan, an expert on Myanmar at the University of Washington. "What we've seen in the last two days is a very clear message they are moving to put down what they consider a threat to the nation."

The protests began more than a month ago, involving a few hundred activists who used a sudden increase in fuel prices as their catalyst. The regime uncharacteristically allowed the demonstrations to escalate, and by Monday some 100,000 people led by Buddhist monks were in the streets of Yangon, the country's largest city.

First came official warnings, then a curfew, and on Wednesday and Thursday the army finally flexed its muscles, sending its soldiers to beat demonstrators, arrest monks and political opponents and shoot into some crowds, killing several people.

Typically, the junta blames the protests on a conspiracy by "domestic and external elements," meaning the West and those in Myanmar who look to its support in the demand for civilian rule. The military trots out a motto underlining a different value system — "peace, stability, unity."

By Myanmar standards, the crackdown so far has been muted. Though the military will not be satisfied until it has won, several restraining forces may be at work that would prevent a replay of 1988 and indicate some willingness to make compromises later.

One is the rise of neighboring China — the regime's leading trade partner and military supplier. Beijing has recently made low-key but telling statements urging the rulers to reconcile with the opposition and restore stability.

Some analysts say Beijing would hate to be viewed as party to a bloodbath as it prepares to host the 2008 Olympic Games, a sort of coming-out party for China after the bloody crushing of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989.

Support from China — and to a lesser extent other Asian nations investing in Myanmar, notably India, South Korea and Singapore — has undercut the effectiveness of economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and other Western nations.

Another mitigating factor is the prominent protest role of Myanmar's monks, who outnumber the military 500,000 to 400,000. They are highly revered in the deeply Buddhist nation, and the regime knows killing them in large numbers could trigger a maelstrom of fury.

"Will the soldiers shoot at the Buddha? Or will the generals try something else this time? A `straightforward massacre' as in 1988 may not be possible this time," said Bertil Lintner, a Myanmar expert and author of a book on that uprising two decades ago.

They can shoot at the Buddha if they want to, but they can never kill the idea that the monks are prepared to die for not can they destroy the religion/philosophy of peace. They may, however, create a situation so horrible that the peacemakers and others cannot ignore the cries of true righteousness.
The military does have a new card to play: Its policemen and soldiers have been better trained in riot control and the use of non-lethal force, Myanmar journalists say.

The protests, meanwhile, have failed to produce a visible leader for anti-junta forces to rally around. The iconic democracy activist and Nobel Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, remains under house arrest while others are jailed or have fled abroad. The only opposition party — Suu Kyi's decimated National League for Democracy — has shown no initiative over the past month.

Leaderless movements are in vogue these days it seems and perhaps that is s it should be. We all know what happens to revolutionary leaders, be they peacful or not. JFK, RFK, MLK? Gandhi G?

Although monks have been spearheading the demonstrations and filling most of the ranks in protest marches, they aren't likely to emerge in a leadership role, Lintner said.

"They can mobilize the people, get them to rise up, but as monks they cannot provide political leadership," he said. "It's in a sense leaderless and rudderless. No one can bring (the protests) forward, to come up with specific demands. The monks can take the moral high ground, but not more than that."

Some experts think that once the unrest is quelled, the regime may be willing to take some conciliatory steps, depending on the intensity of pressure from China, the United Nations and others in the world community as well as from within.

These could include speeding up work on drafting a constitution, already a decade old, and holding a referendum and election along a so-called "roadmap to democracy." The regime also could open talks with Suu Kyi and her party.

But there are no signs the generals, ensconced and safe in the remote new bunker-like capital of Naypyitaw, intend to relinquish any of the real power they have held since the last civilian government was toppled in 1962.

Questions have been being raised about whether soldiers — who are virtually all from the Buddhist ethnic Burman majority — would defy the taboo on mistreating monks and other countrymen. Most Burmese males spend at least a token few weeks as monks as a show of devotion.

However, there are no signs of cracks among the military's rank and file. Soldiers have shown no sympathy for protesters, and none has changed sides as happened in 1988 when some air force personnel joined demonstrations. Troops are kept isolated in barracks; their families get free housing and medical care.

"Judging from the nature and habit of the Myanmar military, they will not allow the monks or activists to topple them," said Chaiyachoke Julsiriwong, a Myanmar scholar at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

"They will fight at all costs because these people have grown to believe they are only institution that can uphold the nation's security. They think of themselves as the center of the nation."

Denis Gray is The Associated Press bureau chief in Bangkok, Thailand, and has reported on Myanmar since the mid-1970s, including the 1988 uprising.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

There Is No Winning An Illegal War

Well, I can certainly speak for the entire I.U. community on this issue, as we have discussed this many, many times.

The GOP, in general, and the Bush administration, in particular, set themseleves up as the epitome of morality and swore to bring dignity and integrity back to the White House. George W. Bush is, without a doubt, the most obviously religious American president in modern times, if ever, or appears to be..

Yet, they do not seem to understand how the laws of the universe (God) work.

From the moment the White House began lying to the American people about Iraq, and actually deceiving many, the war was lost.

Before the first bomb fell on Baghdad, the chances of "victory in Iraq," whatever that meant, were zero.

Deception, especially in the form of fear-mongering, is one of humanity's great evils. No good ever comes from such behavior. When you scare a person or a people, with wild talk of mushroom clouds rising over American cities and drones spraying the Eastern seaboard with some horrible bioweapon, you can count on bringing out the very worst in that person or people

Scared people do crazy things, like giving Bush, Cheney and the NeoCons a blank check to wreak havoc in the world.

But not only did the administration's lies cause an already shocked and scared America to back this insane and criminal war, it convinced many Americans that Saddam had something to do with the events of 9/11. Some of those deceived Americans would invade Iraq, with vengeance on their minds, not liberation.

So, the mother of all war crimes, a war of aggression, led inevitably to crimes against humanity. That was predictable. What was shocking was the extent and depravity of the cruelty our soldiers and others would inflict, in our name, mostly on innocent people, not that it matters whether or not the people treated so horribly were innocent. No one should be treated with such cruel contempt. Stooping to the level of the enemy (supposedly Al Qaeda) makes "winning" impossible.

What does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?

Ask Dick Cheney and others who have become very wealthy off this war; off the misery of so many. But wait until they begin to reap that which they have sown, and they will. It is as sure as the sunrise.

What's coming will be a karmic gob-smack that will go down in history, hopefully as a lesson to all leaders who contemplate such actions. Unfortunately, those of us who saw through the illusions painted by the Bushites and tried to warn our neighbors and friends, our countrymen and women, cannot but be smacked as well.

That's life; that is the way of the universe. Actions bring about reactions.

And so it goes.....


Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_gina_mar_070503_you_can_t_win_an_ill.htm

May 4, 2007

You can't Win an Illegal War
By Gina-Marie Cheeseman


Republican Representative Devin Nunes of California, and my representative, declared this week that he saw progress in Iraq during a recent trip to the Green Zone in Baghdad. The only places he visited were U.S. military bases.

The conservative Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, and one other House Republican, traveled with Nunes. The Congressional members did not visit Iraqi markets or neighborhoods. During their trip at least 687 Iraqis were killed, and nine American service members.

The simple fact remains that you cannot win an illegal war. When President Bush took the Presidential Oath of Office during his inauguration, he pledged to “guard against presidential excess or wrongdoing.” He also pledged to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” If the president “intentionally” subverted or undermined the Constitution then he perverted the oath.

Furthermore, Bush also violated the UN Charter by invading and occupying Iraq. International law experts refer to the invasion and occupation of Iraq as a preventive war. Preventive war violates the UN Charter. The preamble states that “armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest.”

The second article of the Charter states that member nations must “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” The UN Charter prohibits wars which the UN Security Council did not authorize, save for self defense.

The UN Charter is part of US law. It was signed by then President Harry Truman, and subsequently ratified by the Senate. The Executive Director of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, Ann Fagan Ginger, describes the UN Charter as the “supreme law of the land.” When the Senate ratified the Charter, “the United States made certain commitments to all other member nations to obey the law set forth in the Charter.”

According to Richard Falk, retired international law professor, the UN Charter “carries forward the idea that all wars that are not fought in self defense or with the approval of the UN Security Council are illegal wars…a crime against peace.” Falk believes the US has violated the UN Charter by invading and occupying Iraq, and violates the “spirit and letter of the U.S. Constitution.”

Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan answered yes when he was asked if the invasion and occupation of Iraq were illegal. ““I have indicated it is not in conformity with the UN Charter, from our point of view, and from the Charter point of view it was illegal,” he went on to say. A spokesman for Annan, Fred Eckhard said during a September 2004 press conference in New York, “He has over the past more than a year used the words 'not in conformity with the Charter' to describe his view of the Iraq war… His purposes in establishing the UN panel on change was to look at the question of preventive war and try to bring that in conformity with the Charter principles, which do not promote preventive war.”

In an article for the journal Foreign Affairs, professor of international law at Tufts University, Michael Glennon stated that UN Resolution 1441 which found Iraq in “material breach” of past resolutions did not “explicitly authorize force, however, and Washington pledged to return to the council for another discussion before resorting to arms.” Glennon also noted that the UN Charter’s Article 51 “permits the use of force only in self defense…if an armed attack occurs against a member of the UN.”

A treatise by Duncan E.J. Currie who practiced international law for over 20 years referred to the Bush administration’s preventive war doctrine as “departure from the prohibition of the use of force under international law” which is a part of the UN Charter. Currie described the Bush administration document the “National Security Strategy of the United States,” published in 2002, as implying “that the U.S…is willing to act beyond the constraints of international law and even beyond limits it has observed in the past.”

The British law practice Matrix Chambers published four opinions about military force against Iraq. One of the opinions declared that the “use of force against Iraq would not be justified under international law” unless Baghdad directly attacked the U.S. or U.K., or the UN Security Council “authorized the use of force in clear terms.” They wrote concerning UN Resolution 1441, “Russia, China, and France made clear: they did not want the resolution to authorize force.”


Scott Ritter and other experts on Iraq’s WMD capabilities

Bush also violated the Presidential Oath of Office by making misleading claims about Iraq. The Congress authorized the Bush administration to use force against Iraq based on faulty intelligence. Scott Ritter was the UN’s top weapons inspector until he resigned in 1998. Ritter debunked the administration’s claims in a series of editorials in various American and British newspapers. He insisted that there was a “90-95 percent level of verified disarmament.”

All chemical weapons Iraq produced pre-1990 “would have degraded within five years” except for mustard gas, according to Ritter. He assured that biological weapons “would have neutralized through natural processes within three years of manufacture.” Furthermore, Ritter declared that the monitoring of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (chemical and biological weapons) from 1994-1998 did not produce “any evidence of retained proscribed activity” by Iraq to reproduce chemical and biological weapons.

Ritter had strong words concerning the Bush administration’s statements about Iraq’s WMD capability, namely that the administration “provides only speculation,” and failed to provide factual details of their claims. “To date no one has held the Bush administration accountable for its unwillingness - or inability - to provide such evidence.”

The man the Bush administration chose to finish Iraq’s weapons inspections stated in a report released in 2004 that the ability of Iraq to produce nuclear weapons “progressively decayed” since 1991, and Iraq had not made efforts to restart the program. Duelfer told a Senate panel in October 2004, “We were almost all wrong [on Iraq].”

The top intelligence official at the U.S. State Department until resigning prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Greg Thielmann, told Frontline the Bush administration diverged from “the kind of qualified and fairly carefully structured intelligence that they were being provided.”

Thielmann believed the stories about Iraq’s attempts to purchase uranium from Niger “bad intelligence…it was something that made no sense, in terms of the structure of the country that was allegedly planning to provide the uranium.”

Authors Website: www.truthtellingforum.com
Authors Bio: Gina-Marie Cheeseman is a freelance writer with a passion for social justice. She grew up on a vineyard ranch in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Her brain has not been fried from too much Fresno sunshine.

Sent in by Hawkeye

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.