welcome to mo rants.

this is a spot for things that are a little too long to squeeze onto a 3" button.

march 23, 2006

cook county election was a train wreck. what a shock.

read about it on bradblog

this is a highly reliable news source, imho. watch this story.

march 1, 2006

holy god, mike malloy endorses pinkobuttons!!

i don't know how many of you listen to air america radio. you certainly should. not that many of the broadcast affiliates even carry the mike malloy show, which is the late night program. i listen to him online when i manage to stay up past 9. when i hear his theme music, it means i will not be getting to bed early. i am hooked for at least an hour, usually 2. he worked at wls at one time, but refused to be told what to say. the programs slogan is- end you day screaming. he is a fella after my own heart, of course.

i hang out at a political message board where he has many fans, and in fact, face to face friends from around his home of atlanta, ga. a recent thread there asked for greetings to be presented at the upcoming atlanta get together. so i said, i love you, please plug my website. so, sure enough, he did. listen to what mike had to say i can die happy now.

check out the rest of the site while you are there, btw. the white rose society is an archive of progressive radio. you can get to know mike, thom hartman, randi rhodes, and more. end your day screaming, too.

june 6, 2005

please join rep john conyers in insisting on answers from george w bush about the downing street minutes. this document is the smoking gun proving that this is an illegal war. it proves what we have said all along, that george bush came into office intent on invading iraq. that thin intelligence was fixed around that goal.

along with 88 colleagues in the house, he is asking for the signatures of 10 million americans. so, go here, jc's blog and be counted.

may 24, 2005

the truth was told in the united states senate the other day. too bad it was a scottish member of the british parliment who told it. oh, well. it was something to see and hear!

Galloway v the US Senate: transcript of statement By Times Online

George Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, delivered this statement to US Senators today who have accused him of corruption George Galloway after arriving in the Senate committee room to give evidence (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader. and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf.

Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.

Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are - let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'many meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false. I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein. As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defence made of his. I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce.

You will see from the official parliamentary record, Hansard, from the 15th March 1990 onwards, voluminous evidence that I have a rather better record of opposition to Saddam Hussein than you do and than any other member of the British or American governments do. Now you say in this document, you quote a source, you have the gall to quote a source, without ever having asked me whether the allegation from the source is true, that I am 'the owner of a company which has made substantial profits from trading in Iraqi oil'. Senator, I do not own any companies, beyond a small company whose entire purpose, whose sole purpose, is to receive the income from my journalistic earnings from my employer, Associated Newspapers, in London. I do not own a company that's been trading in Iraqi oil. And you have no business to carry a quotation, utterly unsubstantiated and false, implying otherwise. Now you have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad. If you had any of the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the members of your committee today. You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realise played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq. There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster.

You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places. I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong. And if you had any evidence that I had ever engaged in any actual oil transaction, if you had any evidence that anybody ever gave me any money, it would be before the public and before this committee today because I agreed with your Mr Greenblatt [Mark Greenblatt, legal counsel on the committee].

Your Mr Greenblatt was absolutely correct. What counts is not the names on the paper, what counts is where's the money. Senator? Who paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars of money? The answer to that is nobody. And if you had anybody who ever paid me a penny, you would have produced them today.

Now you refer at length to a company names in these documents as Aredio Petroleum. I say to you under oath here today: I have never heard of this company, I have never met anyone from this company. This company has never paid a penny to me and I'll tell you something else: I can assure you that Aredio Petroleum has never paid a single penny to the Mariam Appeal Campaign. Not a thin dime. I don't know who Aredio Petroleum are, but I daresay if you were to ask them they would confirm that they have never met me or ever paid me a penny.

Whilst I'm on that subject, who is this senior former regime official that you spoke to yesterday? Don't you think I have a right to know? Don't you think the Committee and the public have a right to know who this senior former regime official you were quoting against me interviewed yesterday actually is?

Now, one of the most serious of the mistakes you have made in this set of documents is, to be frank, such a schoolboy howler as to make a fool of the efforts that you have made. You assert on page 19, not once but twice, that the documents that you are referring to cover a different period in time from the documents covered by The Daily Telegraph which were a subject of a libel action won by me in the High Court in England late last year. You state that The Daily Telegraph article cited documents from 1992 and 1993 whilst you are dealing with documents dating from 2001. Senator, The Daily Telegraph's documents date identically to the documents that you were dealing with in your report here. None of The Daily Telegraph's documents dealt with a period of 1992, 1993. I had never set foot in Iraq until late in 1993 - never in my life. There could possibly be no documents relating to Oil-for-Food matters in 1992, 1993, for the Oil-for-Food scheme did not exist at that time. And yet you've allocated a full section of this document to claiming that your documents are from a different era to the Daily Telegraph documents when the opposite is true. Your documents and the Daily Telegraph documents deal with exactly the same period. But perhaps you were confusing the Daily Telegraph action with the Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor did indeed publish on its front pages a set of allegations against me very similar to the ones that your committee have made. They did indeed rely on documents which started in 1992, 1993. These documents were unmasked by the Christian Science Monitor themselves as forgeries.

Now, the neo-con websites and newspapers in which you're such a hero, senator, were all absolutely cock-a-hoop at the publication of the Christian Science Monitor documents, they were all absolutely convinced of their authenticity. They were all absolutely convinced that these documents showed me receiving $10 million from the Saddam regime. And they were all lies. In the same week as the Daily Telegraph published their documents against me, the Christian Science Monitor published theirs which turned out to be forgeries and the British newspaper, Mail on Sunday, purchased a third set of documents which also upon forensic examination turned out to be forgeries. So there's nothing fanciful about this. Nothing at all fanciful about it. The existence of forged documents implicating me in commercial activities with the Iraqi regime is a proven fact. It's a proven fact that these forged documents existed and were being circulated amongst right-wing newspapers in Baghdad and around the world in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Iraqi regime.

Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies. If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth. Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it. Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."

feb 11, 2005

below is a statement from not in our name. they are a group that began in new york, after sept. 11. they saw through the sham from day one.

Not In Our Name

As George W. Bush is inaugurated for a second term, let it not be said that people in the United States silently acquiesced in the face of this shameful coronation of war, greed, and intolerance. He does not speak for us. He does not represent us. He does not act in our name.

No election, whether fair or fraudulent, can legitimize criminal wars on foreign countries, torture, the wholesale violation of human rights, and the end of science and reason.

In our name, the Bush government justifies the invasion and occupation of Iraq on false pretenses, raining down destruction, horror, and misery, bringing death to more than 100,000 Iraqis. It sends our youth to destroy entire cities for the sake of so-called democratic elections, while intimidating and disenfranchising thousands of African American and other voters at home.

In our name, the Bush government holds in contempt international law and world opinion. It carries out torture and detentions without trial around the world and proposes new assaults on our rights of privacy, speech and assembly at home. It strips the rights of Arabs, Muslims and South Asians in the U.S., denies them legal counsel, stigmatizes and holds them without cause. Thousands have been deported.

As new trial balloons are floated about invasions of Syria, or Iran, or North Korea, about leaving the United Nations, about new “lifetime detention” policies, we say not in our name will we allow further crimes to be committed against nations or individuals deemed to stand in the way of the goal of unquestioned world supremacy.

Could we have imagined a few years ago that core principles such as the separation of church and state, due process, presumption of innocence, freedom of speech, and habeas corpus would be discarded so easily? Now, anyone can be declared an “enemy combatant” without meaningful redress or independent review by a President who is concentrating power in the executive branch. His choice for Attorney General is the legal architect of the torture that has been carried out in Guantánamo, Afghanistan, and Abu Ghraib.

The Bush government seeks to impose a narrow, intolerant, and political form of Christian fundamentalism as government policy. No longer on the margins of power, this extremist movement aims to strip women of their reproductive rights, to stoke hatred of gays and lesbians, and to drive a wedge between spiritual experience and scientific truth. We will not surrender to extremists our right to think. AIDS is not a punishment from God. Global warming is a real danger. Evolution happened. All people must be free to find meaning and sustenance in whatever form of religious or spiritual belief they choose. But religion can never be compulsory. These extremists may claim to make their own reality, but we will not allow them to make ours.

Millions of us worked, talked, marched, poll watched, contributed, voted, and did everything we could to defeat the Bush regime in the last election. This unprecedented effort brought forth new energy, organization, and commitment to struggle for justice. It would be a terrible mistake to let our failure to stop Bush in these ways lead to despair and inaction. On the contrary, this broad mobilization of people committed to a fairer, freer, more peaceful world must move forward. We cannot, we will not, wait until 2008. The fight against the second Bush regime has to start now.

The movement against the war in Vietnam never won a presidential election. But it blocked troop trains, closed induction centers, marched, spoke to people door to door -- and it helped to stop a war. The Civil Rights Movement never tied its star to a presidential candidate; it sat in, freedom rode, fought legal battles, filled jailhouses -- and changed the face of a nation.

We must change the political reality of this country by mobilizing the tens of millions who know in their heads and hearts that the Bush regime’s “reality” is nothing but a nightmare for humanity. This will require creativity, mass actions and individual moments of courage. We must come together whenever we can, and we must act alone whenever we have to.

We draw inspiration from the soldiers who have refused to fight in this immoral war. We applaud the librarians who have refused to turn over lists of our reading, the high school students who have demanded to be taught evolution, those who brought to light torture by the U.S. military, and the massive protests that voiced international opposition to the war on Iraq. We affirm ordinary people undertaking extraordinary acts. We pledge to create community to back courageous acts of resistance. We stand with the people throughout the world who fight every day for the right to create their own future.

It is our responsibility to stop the Bush regime from carrying out this disastrous course. We believe history will judge us sharply should we fail to act decisively.

add your signature to this statement at their website. donate to publish this statement if you can.

jan 30, 2005

well, i guess we are stuck with these fascists for the next 4 years, or until a miracle happens. i am, obviously, distraught for my country. there is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that this election was rigged. the actions of officials in ohio whose job it was to safeguard the security of the ballot have instead done everything in their power, and many things outside their power, to make sure that the totals came out the way they wanted. unfortunately there is no way to recount the voters that were intimidated and manipulated into leaving the polls without voting. the voters that were lied to, the voters who did not have enough machines in their polling places, the voters whose registrations were destroyed because the color of their skin made it obvious that they were probably democrats.

jesse jackson sr. commented that "they have taken off the robes, and put on suits. that is the only difference." i especially thank him for being the person to finally start to shine a light on all the hinky business that went on. i am embarassed that john kerry ran from the fight. i just can't believe that howard dean would have done any such thing. hopefully, he will continue doing spine transplants as dnc chairman.

on a personal note, the beat bush mobile has pretty much breathed her last. unfortunately, she was not able to make it to washington dc for the coronation. and, since i couldn't bear to go without her, neither did i. friends who did go tell me that no matter what they told you on the tv, there were as many protesters as admirers. i kept expecting old joe stalin to pop up. what a banana republic we have become.

dec 30, 2004

finally, a public figure of adequate weight has stepped forward to challenge this sham election. today rep. john conyers of michigan sent a letter to every senator, informing them that he intends to step forward on jan 6 to challenge the ohio electors. read more at truthout, a great website

i strongly urge everyone to write or e-mail your own senators, even if they are incouragable republicans. even they need to know that this is not about john kerry, or party loyalty, but about free, fair, transparent elections that are an example to the world. you know, the kind we are killing people in iraq over.

so, here is my letter to my fabulous senator, dick durbin. write yours, NOW! (please)

dear senator durbin,

first let me say that you have made me proud to have you as a senator many times. i hope that you will again, in response to john conyer's request that a senator stand with him to challenge the illegal ohio slate of electors. my only regret about his brave call to action is that he has focused only on ohio, when irregulatites of similar nature likely affected the outcome in new mexico, nevada, iowa, colorado, and yes, florida.

if george bush is allowed to steal the white house again, our democracy is permanently stained. when the full magnitude of tampering with the election 2004 becomes known, as it eventually will, people's faith in the vote as a means of change will be lost for a generation or more.

i hope that every democratic senator will stand to support rep. conyers challenge. it will likely be the last question you all will be allowed for the next 4 years, anyway.

those that are brave enough to stand now can rest assured of the loyalty of the voters whose ballots they will be protecting.

yours,

mo cahill

nov 13, 2004

drip, drip, drip

nov 10, 2004

recount

imho, this election was stolen. evidence is emerging every day that votes were stolen nation wide. i said for months that they could not win it, they could only steal it. i believe that is what happened.

whether the best available count would reverse the outcome or not, we absolutely must have all the irregularities investigated thoroughly. you can support the recount effort here-

nov 4, 2004

i had SO hoped to be out of business now.

really, i wanted, like so many people, to feel that my country and my planet were safe and i could return to my own petty concerns. alas, it may be 4 more years of fear.

but, i do not accepted it. i have heard very little from the vote watchers, all of it bad. greg palast is a journalist who is an expert on florida 2000. this is what he thinks. i will not accept it until jimmy carter tells me that we had a free and fair election, and the people of the united states actually demanded to become a banana republic. john kerry, you promised you would make sure that every vote would be counted. it freaking better be.

so, of all the things that i was looking forward to in the kerry administration, the most personal one was- i could retire this car. now, i do love her. i will miss her horribly. but, she is rusty, blowing oil, crumbling. it would take an engine, plus at least $500 to really keep her going. i was looking forward to her work being done, so that i may move along to a reliable, efficient, new car (which the hubby will NOT let me "decorate"). i have been joking about taking her to burning man. some sort of appropriate send-off. sell her on e-bay to some rich dem art collector. mothball her for 4 years, and bring her out for the next election. i could drive out to protest the coronation, then have it sunk in the atlantic for fish habitat.

but i don’t feel like her work is done. guess i will have to keep her plugging til the electoral college votes, anyway

oct.28, 2004

my new heroes- dupage democrats.

spent wed volunteering for christine cegalis. she will be defeating that embodiment of evil, henry hyde. i planted signs, drove around the district, then circled the college of dupage parking lot before the rally. the hall was packed, the candidates were great. barack obama was barack obama.

it was a rocking rally, and i can’t believe the spirit of the dupage dems. they are in the belly of the beast out there. the most b/c signs i have seen anywhere, and keyes signs, even. they have one state senator, the only elected dem in dupage. but they have a great slate, and are fighting the good fight, right down to the kids for kerry chapter that was onstage to thank obama for supporting stem cell research. i was proud to go out and show my support. henry hyde needs to ride the democratic new broom that is about to sweep out the people’s house.

the car is running great. she got her tune-up. although she is blowing a little oil, she drove the left lane of the expressways all day. we are having a glorious fall here, with perfect colors, and perfect weather. perfect driving. i really love this old car, and am really happy to have this adventure with her.

lots of new pics

oct.26, 2004

was i harrassed?

last night i was driving the beat bush mobile in downtown chicago. my 13 year old son was in the front seat, video taping reactions. we were driving around in the art gallery district, and a cop pulls over to let me pass him. they pulled aside so that they could follow me and hope i would do something. 2 blocks later, he pulls me over. this was the full show of power, attitude a foot thick. tells me my brake lights are out. asks me if i have insurance. i pull out the most recent id card that i have, which is, of course, 6 mos. old. so i get a ticket for driving an unsafe vehicle, driving an uninsured vehicle, and a ticket for my son not using his seatbelt. he did have it on, but he had the shoulder strap behind his head. turns out only one brake light was out. people, in chicago, you do not get a ticket for a single brake light out. (or for an expired insurance id, either. i have been in accidents where that is all i had, and i haven't even been yelled at, let alone ticketed.) there is only one reason for that, and that is to have a reason.

so, i have been delivering yard signs for the evanston dems. i was in winnetka, and the signs are at least 5 to 1 kerry. all the old rethugs have jumped ship. about 50-50 kirk v obama, mostly solo kirk signs. a handful of b/c, and zero, repeat zero keyes. also, there are many dem homes where they had the whole ticket, most repubs were solos.

oct.24, 2004

update from madison.

well, it was nice to be in a swing state, where the bumperstickers flow. came back with some swag- an acceptable number of k-e stickers, plus a couple of feingolds, and obama’s!

i tried for several days before i left to get the itinerary for the pants on fire moblie. i was told it did not have a driver, and was idle. then, i bumped into it near the university campus, and we drove around together for several hours. it was great to have a native guide, taking me through neighborhoods that i would not have found on my own.

also saw michael moore. the town was plastered with disinformation flyers, and there was a hardy band of freepers at the speech. it's gonna be a landslide. can't miss.

here’s my impression of the score in the sign wars in swing wis. - every city of any sizes has 20 to 1 kerry signs, and even in the country side- alleged bush country, it is still only 50/50. when you factor in the bitterness of this campaign, and the guts it takes to put up a kerry sign, it has gotta be counted as pro kerry.

i guess i qualify as a freeway blogger. the car broke down just past the toll plaza on I90, right on the wi-il border. so she sat with her hood up for half an hour. it was the middle of bush country. now, here in the big city, it is hard to find a mechanic who is willing to work on this car. my mechanic of 15 years barely speaks to me because of this car. there is no one in south beloit illinois that wants anything to do with this car. but there i was, stuck on the side of the road. the young man driving the tow truck had to beg his father to take a look at her. against his better judgement, he did. it turned out to be a simple problem, and i was soon back on the road. when i brought up the obvious, i was meekly told,- i just don’t want to fight these people. i don’t mind fighting them over there, i just don’t want them here. but i know we shouldn’t be over there. - i felt his fear. i’m sure the folks of south beloit are still talking about it.

we limped home from madison. we were on the road, but coughing. i took her into my mechanic to look at the tune up parts. the stupid mechanic deduced that she was an old car, and beyond hope. the fact that she had been running fine a few days ago didn’t matter. she was running, but soon broke down again. a second mechanic (and every other mechanic in the place. they all came over to stare and take pictures.) came to the same conclusion, based on staring at the motor as it ran and bleched smoke.

i couldn’t stand it. i had to see for myself. i was not the least bit surprised to find that the entire electode on the rotor was eaten away. i’ll leave out the rest, except to say that she is running pretty well again. whew. she will get a tune up and oil change monday morning. hopefully, we will head to racine to see john edwards in the afternoon.
see the pics

oct.12, 2004

meet the beat bush mobile.

i got the word from my mechanic that my beloved '78 benz is on her last legs. i had wanted to make an art car out of her, but she was never that stable, mechanically. i didn't want to invest a lot in her, not knowing what was gonna happen. but, i figured if she is not going to be around much longer, and i have the means to make a kind of instant art car, she can go out a warrior. i had a pack of vinyl bumpersticker material that i could afford to burn. so, we were off. i started making letter size versions of a lot my stickers. i added flyers that i downloaded from the web, and some kerry/edwards stuff. i put a "stop me for a free button" sticker on there, and i give out the pinko promo buttons that i often pass out at events, and send out with every order. a few people have added some small stickers to it. my son insists that it must be completely covered.
i am having quite the good time driving her around. watching people check her out, and form an opinion is really something to see. i get an occasional frown and dirty look. but mostly i get smiles, nods and thumbs up. i am hoping to do some video taping.
it is still a work in progress. so stop back and check her out. i'll try to post some notes form the road. (hoping to make it to madison this weekend. michael moore will be there, as will the pants on fire mobile)

sept. 25, 2004

two faced

that is all

sept. 17, 2004

yesterday, i visited eyes wide open, an exhibition of the iraq war. this moving exhibit of the human cost of the war features a pair of boots for each american soldier killed in iraq. a tag is attached with the name, rank and home town. there are also many pairs of ordinary shoes, of all types, to symbolize the civilians killed. large posters list the names of all known killed. names of dead are read, alternating americans and iraqis. it was heartstopping. i was there with the buttonmoblie. i am so used to peace rallies and marches, where good natured comraderie and righteous indignation are the order of the day. it was all i could do to fight back the tears, especially between customers. i didn't always succeed. i was not alone.

one of the really haunting things about the exhibit was thinking about the families who stood next to those boots, sometimes literally, and certainly figuratively. many pairs of boots had flowers, flags, or peace buttons. a few had candles, lit by crying relatives. several parents spoke at the rally, and carried signs with pictures of their loved ones, asking why they were gone. those thousand pairs of boots represented a thousand exploded families, and a wave of grief that will wear at this country, for a generation, and more.

but i had another lesson in the size of that wave. a reminder that no soldier comes home the same person, and few are better for their experience. a young woman started talking to me as she looked over the buttons. "my brother is in bahgdad." she said. "i am so mad at him. i don't know why he joined. i blame my uncle. he told him he was a loser, and would never amount to anything. the next day, he joined the army." she went on to tell me that he was in military intellegence, and had probably been involved in the torture at abu gharaib. she had seen him standing behind rummy in a speech from the prison. he had been sent home on an unexpected leave, a month after deployment, and a week later the scandal broke. she assumes he was being kept out of the trouble. we ended our conversation with a hug. she spent the next 2 hours crying on a bench at the edge of the exhibit, and sitting among the boots. i watched her tell her story to other sympathetic strangers. she feels her brother is as lost to her as the dead. certainly, the brother that she had, is. i hope they will find a peace of some kind. but the wave of grief unleashed by this foolish war will swallow up so many families.

so, if we want to talk about viet nam, instead of talking about friggin typewriters, let's talk about the walking wounded that we all know from that war. does anyone in this country not have a family diminished by the physical and emotional scars of that quagmire? oh, yeah, i forgot. the bush family.

aug. 20, 2004

friends, tomorrow i leave for a family trip that will include a visit to new york for the republican convention. i will be taking part in the aug. 29 united for peace and justice rally. i hope that the mayor of new york, and the other powers that be wake up and remember that it's the bill of rights, and not the list of suggestions. i hope i come back to chicago with my skull intact, and my buttons suitcase empty. i have made some provision for filling orders while i am gone. but, i cannot promise that orders will be filled in my usual less than one week time frame. bumper stickers, in particular, may be delayed. i will be back after labor day. so, i will catch up as quickly as possible.

aug. 7, 2004

over and over, people ask the question-"what will we do if they steal it again?" a few of the usual answers- take to the streets, bring out the guns. these are understandable reactions. but, millions took to the streets to try to stop the war. it did nothing. sociopaths like w could care less. it makes them feel that much more brave and righteous to stand up to "the little people" and there is nothing they would like more than an excuse to impose martial law.

one thing that would work, i think, is a general strike. after all, it is really the almighty dollar that runs this country. it is the real lever of power. hopefully, many business owners who see that they are getting screwed now will understand, and perhaps even shut their doors. people who cannot participate as workers could still participate as consumers. people who cannot risk taking to the streets can stay safely behind closed doors.

the strike is a non-violent weapon that has brought most of what workers have achieved in our time. there is always short term hardship involved. especially for those at the lower end of the economic spectrum. but, then, who has more to loose?

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aug. 4, 2004

i just couldn't quite contain myself to a few words at a time, so we opened up a little cyberspot here for me to rant a little.

although i loved the democratic convention, especially our favorite son of illinois, barack obama, i look forward to the day when someone can get elected on a peace platform. all the warrior worship is a necessary evil today. but, i look forward to the day that it is not.

so, i post here a piece of a speech from a warrior who was not afraid to point this out.

Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hope of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than thirty cities. It is two electric plants, each serving a town of sixty thousand population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than eight thousand people. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging upon a cross of iron.... [We] aspire to this: the lifting, from the backs and from the hearts of men, of their burden of arms and fears - so that they may find before them a golden age of freedom and of peace. Dwight D. Eisenhower, "The Chance for Peace," April 1953 Speech writers Emmet John Hughes and C. D. Jackson

50 years later, we are still hanging on that cross. do your part to lift that burden.

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