Category: Political

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People Political

Is this what we’ve become?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Imagine my delight when I woke up this morning and found the following comment attached to one of my old postings, Blast them all and let God sort them out.:

I don’t expect Arabs to be humiliated. . .I expect them to be dead, deader than dead. God doesn’t need to sort them out, he already has. He had the evils all in one place at one point. Now he’s got them spread out all over the world. But I’m not going to sit around and wait for them to do something. . .if I see evils happening in my own backyard, the perps are going to die. If I’m marching into Hebron, and see a sand nigger with a gun, I’m going to kill them. Plain and simple, I’m not going to “bomb them and let God sort them out.” I’m going to shoot them and give God something to do.

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust. The order has been given. Arabs are the 21st century’s Nazi’s. And they are going to die a painful death.

Staff Sgt Thomas Nichols
USMC

(Note that the IP address attached to comment belongs to the Marriott hotel chain, and the comment was most likely written by someone staying at a Marriott — not necessarily by a person with this name. The writer found my weblog posting by doing a Yahoo search with the words “ARABS MUST DIE”.)

Is this what we’ve become? Three thousand people were killed September 11th, so let’s kill millions of Arabs. Can someone please explain the humanity, the justice, and the morality of this?

The last time this world saw a determination to eliminate all people of a specific religion was in the middle of the last century, and was conducted by a man named Adolph Hitler. I found it somewhat ironic then that the use of ‘nazi’ is given the victims in this instance.

I will say this, though: at least this person was honest in their belief and in their expression of that belief. Too many people in my country, and in other countries, hide this same belief behind polite phrases such as “liberation of the native people” and “war on terror”.

And, at the least, this person wanted to kill all Arabs because he’s afraid, and because he’s pissed that someone would actually dare hurt Americans. Too many people in my country, and in other countries, want to kill Arabs because of oil. However, one difference between them and the writer, Staff Sargeant Nichols, is that these people don’t want to kill all the Arabs.

After all, we have to leave enough Arabs to run the pumps, staff the hotels, and clean the streets.

That I would live long enough to see this become the new “moral way”, the latest Christian Crusade, saddens me, and sickens me.

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Political

I’d run away from home, but I’m not allowed to cross the street

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Contrary to rumor, I did not flee beyond the borders of my country following last week’s abysmal election, even after hearing the details of the new Republican agenda. It wouldn’t matter if I did — no matter where I went, my country would be sure to follow. Especially if the country I fled to has oil.

As with other webloggers in the virtual neighborhood, I’m taking a break. Sorry for abrupt end of usual noise. Back soon.

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Political

To Do list items: Voting and…

Today’s most critical to-do item is voting. I have my prepared card of how I want to vote on each issue and for each person, as well as my voter registration card and my polling place card.

Missouri had a lot of problems with the last elections, so there will be several monitors about making sure people have the chance to vote. And since the Talent/Carnahan race is so critical, we’re all expecting a big turn out.

If you’re a resident of the States, remember to vote today!

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Voting

On Voting

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Some of the political pundits are weblogging the local results of the election during the day. I won’t check for results until after the polls closed and the true results start coming in. I’m not a newspaper or a television station — people should check those for up to the minute results.

It’s interesting but I’ve made no secret of my vote this year — I’m voting Democrat in all national elections. Why? Because I want to stop Republicans from gaining control of the House, the Senate, and the Executive Branch. Many people don’t agree with me, and perhaps our votes will cancel each other out, but I do what I can. So does b!x, who has a MT category called Vote or Die.

Halley from Halley’s Comments mentions that she won’t disclose how she votes. She talks about how her mother would never tell her father how she voted, and she follows this custom. And I can respect this.

However, the times are a changing, and I not only want to vote, I would like to influence how you vote, especially with this election. So I’ll tell you that I’m voting Democrat for the national elections, but I’m voting Green Party for all local elections. Not only do I want to stop a Republican take over of the national government, I also want to send a message to the Democrats that the only reason I’m voting for Jean Carnahan and Dick Gephardt is to prevent this take over — next time, if they don’t stop being Republican wannabes, I may decide it isn’t worth it and vote Green or Independent all the way.

Another person who isn’t reticent about his political views is Mike Golby, a friend of mine from South Africa. Mike isn’t a man who has much patience for President Bush, and isn’t very shy about expressing his dislike. I agree with much of what Mike says, though I don’t necessarily agree with his use of the terms “Shrub” and “King George” for President Bush, though sometimes the terms slip through.

(I disagree with the terms primarily because I think they shadow the message we’re trying to make — that the President is a man who has a lot of power, and who has not held himself accountable to the basic freedoms on which this country is based. That the President is a man who still hasn’t answered the questions that have been asked about a war in Iraq, and who seems to be in far too much of a hurry to commit us to an action that will leave us bloody, very bloody.)

Use of terms aside, Mike is very good at reminding us in the States what we have to lose if we don’t start paying attention and voting with our heads instead of our fears:

In their apathy, Americans have let government slip increasingly quickly into the hands of the moneyed elite at a time when the gap between rich and poor has never been wider. They have handed government over to big business. Businesses, as we are reminded throughout our eight-to-five lives, are not democracies. They are tyrannies. Their systems, rituals, aims, objectives, and means of achieving them are very different to those of governments. Business is, or should be, the antithesis of government. That is why, for hundreds of years, we have had the private and public sectors. Business has set up office on the Capitol and is governing the United States and the world through authoritarian dictats, dictatorial takeovers, and a blatant disregard for anything not counting as self-interest. It seems Americans couldn’t be bothered to get out there and do anything about what amounts to a very real threat to the fundamental laws and values governing their lives.

Democracy is the enactment of the American constitution. It’s not getting much exercise these days and it shows.

Whether you shout it from the rooftops, or whisper it silently to yourself in the voting booth, exercise your right and responsibility to vote.

Categories
Political

Vote as if your life is dependent on it

In some ways, I don’t think there’s ever been a US election in this country that has more far reaching implications than the one next week.

If the Republicans gain control of the Senate next week, and maintain control of the House, they’ll have full control of the Senate, the House, and the Executive Branch of government. More importantly, if the Democrats lose control of the Senate, the Executive Branch will most likely read a message into the results: The American people support the bombing of Iraq, even if it means doing so unilaterally.

We’re in a recession, the unemployment numbers are high, and there are record numbers of people without adequate health insurance. This is in addition to depleted pension funds, fears for economic security, and a growing distrust of corporations. All of these are factors that favor a Democratic election. If the Democrats lose control of the Senate in spite of this, an interpretation can very easily be made that the issue of security is more important than issues of economics and social services.

In the last several months, our security and the invasion of Iraq have become quite heavily bound together. By voting security, or by saying to the President, “You have our full support, here’s a Senate and a House that will back you”, I’m fairly sure that there can be no chance of stopping an invasion of Iraq, even if the US can’t get support from allies and the attack becomes a unilateral invasion. I don’t want to say that President Bush is obsessed with invading Iraq, but I could comfortably say that this item is most likely the top of his agenda.

I am unhappy with the Democrats now. I am especially unhappy with the Democrats who voted to give President Bush what are essentially war powers in regards to Iraq. Among these are Jean Carnahan who is, in many ways, more semantically aligned with the Republicans than the Democrats. However, if she doesn’t win the election, Jim Talent will win and that’s one more nail in the coffin of Democratic control of the Senate.

Now is not the time to send messages to the Democratic Party that we’re unhappy with them by voting Green Party, or another party, or not voting at all. Regardless of whatever your views are in regards to so many differing issues, it’s vital now that we work to send one message, and one message only with this election: We the American people do not support an invasion of Iraq.

If nothing else, we need to send a message that we must be given time to understand the consequences of this action, and the alternatives.

Last week we watched Chechen rebels take over a theater in Russia. The end result is over 150 people dead. This in spite of Russian soldiers controlling Chechnya. Again and again we see that military action on the part of a government does not control or stop terrorism — terrorism transcends borders. If anything, military action encourages terrorism because it demonstrates to the non-extremists, those who are borderline, those who want peace but despair of ever getting it, that the only actions open to them is terrorism.

I wrote the following to Daniel Romano from the Green Party today:

Control of the Senate is up for grabs, and the race between Carnahan and Talent is incredibly close. Votes for the Green Party are pulled, as you know, from voters who would normally vote Democratic. And in a close race, this could be enough to give the election to Talent.

I know you have stated that you feel there is no difference between the two candidates, and I don’t like Carnahan either. I am extremely unhappy at her and other Democrats giving Bush what amounts to war powers. But the Democrats losing the Senate now would send a signal to the White House and Congress that issues of economics (normally the province of Dems) were not the key elements of the vote this year — that people are voting security. And this could, and in fact I believe it will, encourage our unilateral invasion of Iraq. This invasion would be disastrous, not only for the Iraqi people, but for ourselves, as well.

I know you know you don’t have a chance to win, but that you’re hoping to get enough of the vote to continue the Green Party on ballots. And normally if the threat of an invasion of Iraq wasn’t hanging over all our heads I would help — and send that clear message to the Democratic party. But now is not the time to focus on these issues. We have to do everything we can to send a message to Congress that we do not want this ‘war’.

Regardless of your political beliefs, whether you’re Republican or Democrat, Green Party, Libertarian or Independent, if you believe that a unilateral invasion of Iraq would be a mistake, and that we need to take time to think this issue through, then consider your vote next week. If you live in an area that has a hotly contested election, especially for the Senate (such as in Missouri), think about what your vote can do and say before you cast it. Then vote and send a message to the parties in your area why you voted as you did.

Vote as if your life is dependent on it, because it may very well be.