Monday November 22, 2004
An accounting of the shooting in the mosque...
...in the words of the cameraman who filmed the event, Keven Sites.
Making sure you know the basis for my choices after the incident is as important to me as knowing how the incident went down. I did not in any way feel like I had captured some kind of "prize" video. In fact, I was heartsick. Immediately after the mosque incident, I told the unit's commanding officer what had happened. I shared the video with him, and its impact rippled all the way up the chain of command. Marine commanders immediately pledged their cooperation.
We all knew it was a complicated story, and if not handled responsibly, could have the potential to further inflame the volatile region.
Well, that's coming true in spades, with protests across the Middle East.
The brutal way the US conducted the assault, and the continual aerial bombardment of civilian neighborhoods in the weeks leading up to the attack, suggested to many observers that the operation was intended as a form of collective punishment against the people of Fallujah, and a warning to the residents of other Iraqi cities not to let the guerrillas operate freely in their urban areas. Collective punishment is forbidden by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 governing militarily occupied territories.
Many are calling Iraq a "Christian war against Muslims".
And the new violence in Fallujah is making Iraq look more and more like a cutthroat game of whack-a-mole. We hit them in Fallujah, they pop up in Baghdad, and Mosul, and Ramadi.
Sunday November 21, 2004
The pro-life agenda at work
Acute malnutrition in young Iraqi children has almost doubled since our invasion of their country.
After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program. The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from "wasting," a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.
Friday November 19, 2004
Must read story of possible voter fraud in Florida
Bev Harris confronts election officials who trashed "poll tapes" -- the records of optical scan voting machines.
Saturday November 13, 2004
A good (nay, great) rant
Blue staters, don't miss it.
Friday November 12, 2004
So this is how Bush's second term begins...
Thursday November 11, 2004
Sorry Everybody
Re: the day of reflection...
Just a quick note on the day of reflection, since Alex had asked...
Well, it was as successful as I hoped -- meaning that I didn't care about the outcome. I put a suggestion out there for people to make a choice, and that for it to work, at least everyone needed to be made aware of it. In that regard, I think it was successful. It got picked up by many student organizations, and they crafted their own rationales for dressing in black on Tuesday. It made it into the college paper, with great messages from these organizations and a truly weak response from the weak College Republicans, so it was a propaganda win, IMO.
Regarding the #s that turned out, I can't tell you -- I wasn't on campus much that day, but I saw a number of people in black. The campus houses upwards of 30,000 people, though, and the activist community here is relatively small, so it would never be the masses that one would like to see, but frankly, for me, seeing one would have been enough, because it moved them to make a simple statement of protest (or whatever their motivation) on their own behalf.
The day after, I met a woman dressed all in black who was undergoing a day of silence because of the election. That's what I'm talking about.
Wednesday November 10, 2004
Just a quick note, in cased you missed it...
...but this country is not "moving on". And we're not "healing".
At a musical event last night, an older guy (60s or 70s) saw my Kerry/Edwards pin and came up to me, and said, "I appreciate that pin. I'm a blue state man." And he pulled up his jacket sleeve and displayed what looked like one of those yellow Lance Armstrong bracelets that was painted blue.
Yeah, we should get down to work. We should get down to work tearing down to the frame the apparatus of the left that has failed the American people for 35 years. Bill Clinton was the anomaly. Election day 2004 was the reality. We have a left that has lost its ability to connect with the American people. The Right does it well, through fearmongering and lies. The left has to do it well, in a different way. But sitting around in a room watching films about how Bush is destroying the country and dismantling alliances and lying, lying, lying doesn't cut it, folks. Trying to resurrect communist theory as a viable solution doesn't cut it, either. It was astounding to me that the left could not play its economic card better. Why? Lord knows.
Saturday November 6, 2004
A day of "mourning" and "reflection"
Below is the text of an email (only slightly altered) that I sent out to the Penn State community. If you are interested, please forward this on to people in your own communities or universities.
There are only a few days to circulate this widely, so please do so as quickly as possible. If it stays a local event, that is fine with me. But if you would like your community to participate, feel free to use listserves and any other methods to disseminate the mail as quickly as you can.
I am writing this email to propose that Tuesday, November 9, 2004 be considered a day of mourning and reflection at Penn State.
There are many reasons that one might feel unhappy about the re-election of George W. Bush. But whatever personal reason you might hold, whatever it is that causes you to sigh a heavy sigh, or turn your head down, or weep inconsolably, I believe that it would be beneficial to all of us to have a simple, communal expression of our dissatisfaction.
This will not be a day of sadness. We have had our day(s) of that. Nor will this be a day of resignation.
Instead, it will be a day of recognition. A day to recognize that we lost an attempt to affirm to the world the great qualities that this country can embody. A day to recognize the work that lies ahead. And it will be a day to recognize our fellow concerned citizens (and noncitizens), and to see that we aren't alone in our unhappiness with how the election unfolded.
To this end, on November 9, 2004, all black attire or a simple black armband should be worn as an expression of our dissatisfaction with the re-election of George W. Bush.
For this day to be successful, it is imperative that everyone be aware of it. So please forward this email to friends and colleagues, and ask them to do the same. For those with friends in the undergraduate community, please be sure to let them know as well. Penn State is a large campus, and it will be difficult for this to work if only a small percentage of the student population is aware of it.
Thanks for your consideration, and I hope we will see a field of black on campus this coming Tuesday.
Chris Nelson
Integrative Arts, Penn State University
November 4, 2004
Wednesday November 3, 2004
So, the question everyone should be asking is...
"How did a President, who could never rise above 49% in any poll, get 52% of the popular vote?"
Maybe these guys have an idea.
Tuesday November 2, 2004
I'm going to bed.
So, was I wrong?
The world's gonna be a much scarier place, isn't it?
Monday November 1, 2004
Endorsement. Or, "How I learned to stop worrying and love the Bush"
I'm voting for Kerry. Big surprise.
The surprise is that I secretly don't want him to win, and I don't think he will win.
First, Kerry. He is clearly tainted goods. His anti-war behavior after Vietnam have given the Right enough reason to heap even more scorn on Kerry than they did Clinton. And they will. It won't be pretty, especially given that Kerry is bound to face a Republican House, Senate and a right-leaning judiciary. Expect impeachment proceedings before the end of the first year. I think Kerry will be blocked at every path, and every misstep will lead to months of investigation.
I also think that Iraq is a quagmire that can only end in our defeat and disgrace. And I don't want a lefty in office to take the blame for Bush's failure.
Now, to Bush. An overriding sense of justice in me demands that someone be held accountable for the horrific economic situation, for the shift towards authoritarianism, for the bungled Iraq war. I fear that if Kerry is elected, Bush and his cronies will never be held to account. After four years will the country and the world be a worse place? Most assuredly. So much so that I believe the administration will end in ruin. Either that or the country will be a full-blown fascist state, or a failed state. In any case, the election of George Bush will prove a number of things:
- That the American education system is seriously lacking, and that a significant percentage of the country are willing to vote against their best interests.
- That the American people would rather appear to the world as the asshole fratboy sitting on the front porch slinging slurs at the neighbors and drinking straight from the tap and shooting out the porchlight across the street with a BB gun than as the hardworking middle-American couple with kid playing in the front lawn trying to make nice with the people next door.
- That his first four years weren't an aberration. (Which they weren't).
In addition, I think Bush would bring the country to crisis. Do we really want Social Security, a public education system, an interstate system, etc., or would we prefer that we all have tax cuts?
Would we prefer that our sons (mainly sons) are sent off to Iraq to be just another duck lined up waiting to be picked off in that carnival of horrors?
We need to be freed from our delusions about ourselves, this nonsensical idea that we will perpetually be "the greatest democracy that ever was". And if that means we have to do it by confronting the specter of an authoritarian state, or a failed state, then so be it.
I want Bush to be repudiated like the Fascists in Italy were repudiated. After four more years, I think it's quite possible that no one would ever vote for a Republican again. (Of course, there might not be a vote!)
Finally, I don't think it's possible that Kerry can be elected, because the Right has too much riding on the outcome. I expect that the final poll results in Florida (and perhaps Ohio) will deviate from the exit poll results by 5-10%. There's no way that Jeb will allow Florida to go for Kerry. No way in Hell. It's not going to happen. Whatever he has to do (and we know that he's willing to do anything) he will do.
So, vote Kerry. Vote Democrat. Maybe the Senate can turn, as well, giving Kerry the leeway to get something done. We can hope.
But a reelected Bush might be the best possible outcome for the Left in this country.
