THE CURRENT THEME
Entries from July 1, 2007 - August 1, 2007
Campaign 2008
Third Party Irony
The marginalized third party would become the Democratic Party.
By Hank Edson
Pulling a Lieberman
Ralph Nader was right, sort of. He did say, after all, that Democratic Party politicians had no reason to listen to the voters on the left whose vote they regarded as “in the bank.” Well, they are not listening.
Roughly 70% of democrat voters now favor impeachment, but the democrats in the House of Representatives aren’t budging. We want our troops home, but the “surge” continues. As a result of the Democrat’s betrayal of their mid-term victory, the woman in charge, Nancy Pelosi, is being challenged for her seat by Cindy Sheehan as an independent.
It may be different to run a third party campaign for president than to run one against the Speaker of the House of Representatives, but this distinction should not drown out the obvious truth: we cannot rely on the lesser evil as a solution for the greater one.
Somewhere Ralph Nader is buying a Sheehan for Congress t-shirt with, “I told you so,” written on the back...READ MORE!
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Hank Edson
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Four Awful, Horrendous Truths
Why We Must Leave Iraq ASAP:
It’s the Only Way to Fight Our Real Enemy
By Hank Edson
(This Post was published by CommonDreams.org on July 23, 2007: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/23/2697/)
The first awful, horrendous truth is we don’t know our own real enemy. It’s not Al Qaeda, it’s not Saddam Hussein, and it’s not terror. None of these pose a threat to the existence of our democracy. Properly managed, Al Qaeda has far less ability to inflict physical injury on Americans than do Americans who misuse hand guns and automatic weapons. In 2005, handguns killed over 30,000 people in America. Even with these deaths, we do not feel our democracy is in danger.
The second awful, horrendous truth is that almost all our elected Democratic and Republican leaders incorrectly believe there is no enemy. They do correctly understand that we are not fighting the war in Iraq against an enemy, but rather for a reason—a strategic objective: the control of Middle Eastern oil. But our elected leaders are wrong in thinking there is no enemy.
The third awful, horrendous truth is that almost all our elected Democratic and Republican leaders secretly agree that the control of Middle Eastern oil is a valid reason for going to war. In 1999, Bill Clinton’s defense department secretly identified oil as a valid rationale for war. In 2003, George Bush told the nation he was taking our country into war to protect us against weapons of mass destruction and to fight Al Qaeda, but we now know that the administration knew that neither rationale was supported by fact. The real rationale, the secret the Bush administration engineered false intelligence to cover up, was oil.
Everyone knows we went to war for oil, but no one acknowledges this fact because our elected leaders on both sides of the aisle agree that taking control of Iraqi oil is good for America.
That’s why presently the Iraqi parliament is contemplating legislation that will open 80% of Iraqi oil reserves to the market under terms that almost guarantee the largest American-based oil companies will control them for decades to come. That’s why the U.S. congress makes no comment on this oil-theft arrangement, stays stone silent on the obvious need ... READ MORE!
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Questioning Authority; Promoting Process
By Hank Edson
The old bumper sticker, “Question Authority!” was good advice we seem to have abandoned about 
the time George Orwellian Bush took his oath of office. Or perhaps, we let go of it before that, say, when we accepted the Supreme Court’s authority to dispense with the need to count votes in Florida in 2000.
In truth, this bumper sticker was worn away bit by bit over the last three decades by a Republican Party hard at work furthering goals that were ultimately authoritarian: Big Business’s economic monopolism, the Religious Right’s infallible religious orthodoxy, and the Neo-Conservative’s military unilateralism.
Little by little, our reminder to question these things got stripped from the car we were following, and for some reason it’s message didn’t stick where it mattered most: our consciousness.
It didn’t stick because, as good as its advice is, “Question Authority” is only halfway down the road to wisdom.
What after all is the result of questioning authority? When we have questioned and exposed authority as the fraud it is, what happens then? Does a new authority rise up to take its place? Do we renounce the very idea of authority? Do we embrace anarchy?
The question authority slogan unburdened us of negative oppression, but it did not provide the real liberty that comes from positive wisdom. It told us how not to follow, but did not tell us how to proceed....READ MORE!These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
The Dynamics of Political Corruption
The Conspiracy Theorist Patsy
By Hank Edson
We live in a paranoid society. Conspiracy theories abound and their appeal to the public remains 
irresistible even when refuted up and down, back and forth, in and out, through and through.
But the scorn leveled at these theories and their proponents is completely misdirected. It distracts us from asking: why is our society so paranoid?
Every time we laugh at a conspiracy theorist or dismiss claims of a vast network of malign political operatives, we make a patsy of an innocent and ill human being. Worse, we don’t get that we are all suffering the same illness.
The conspiracy theorist is just the canary in the coalmine, an individual exhibiting symptoms arising from conditions harmful to us all. Because we turn on those who are symptomatic, rather than listen to their symptoms, we are today far too ignorant about the root causes of the poor health of our entire society.
Our abuse of the conspiracy theorist patsy, thus, assists the illness slowly consuming us. And just because these theories lack credibility does not mean they have nothing to teach. If we paid more respectful attention to what conspiracy theorists are telling us, we would discover that their symptoms do not even reveal mental instability or a flawed logic, but an alternative disturbance that should serve as a warning of toxic conditions.
The real message conspiracy theories are trying to communicate is that criminal conduct in our world has evolved beyond the archaic structure of our criminal law. It is this message a complicit media sets itself upon, vigorously employing the very same strategy used by...READ MORE!The Neo-Con's Lapdog and the Ex-Con Heiress
What's Libby Got That Paris Does Not?
By Hank Edson
Just as Paris Hilton was making the talk show rounds after being forced to do her time in prison, yesterday, President Bush commuted the sentence of Lewis I. Libby so that he would not have to go to jail even though he has been convicted of crimes far more serious than the those committed by the young heiress. Libby was convicted of perjury, giving false statements to the F.B.I., and obstruction of justice in the investigation into the leaking to the press by the White House the identity of an active undercover CIA agent. I thought a short summary of the leak scandal would be helpful to those who have been catching disconnected bits and pieces in headlines and the nightly news. It might help us to understand what Libby’s got that keeps him out of jail that Paris does not. As with so much in the Bush administration, the story begins with Vice President Cheney.
[i] Sydney Schanberg, “Libby Trial Exposes Neocon Shadow Government,” The New York Observer, 05 March 2007 Issue, http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030207S.shtml.