Archive Posts

The Democrats have a brilliant strategy for going up against Bush and all he represents:

Pretend
to be Bush, but a better, more competent version. So the Democrats now
choose anti-abortion politicians to run for high office, or even to be
their Senate majority leader. But don’t worry – that’s their strategy
for preserving abortion rights.

And the Democratic leadership
supports the war in Iraq, opposing any demands to pull out. But don’t
worry – that’s their strategy for actually getting the U.S. out of Iraq.

And
the Democratic senators vote (unanimously) to extend the Patriot Act,
and refuse to oppose wholesale violations of what were once considered
to be fundamental rights. But don’t worry – that’s their strategy for
defending those rights.

And Bush and Frist say we need
“intelligent design” taught in the schools to counter the theory of
evolution, and the Democrats say. . . well, what do the Democrats say,
anyway? Oh, we get it – if we just stay silent, then that will defend
science against religious suppression.

Face it – strategies like this take you to the death camps.

THE WORLD CAN’T WAIT!! DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME!!

MOBILIZE NOVEMBER 2!!

Where
is the major Democratic politician who demands a pullout from Iraq?
Kerry and Clinton both support the war, and not a single Democratic
office-holder spoke at the September 24 antiwar actions.

Where
is the major Democratic politician who opposes the Patriot Act? The
Senate Democrats unanimously voted to extend the Patriot Act this past
summer. And not one has spoken out against the dangerous
precedent-setting detention of Jose Padilla – an American citizen held
without charges for over three years, strictly on the say-so of Bush.

Where
is the Democratic politician who calls out the torture committed by the
U.S. for what it is? The only one who came close was Illinois Senator
Dick Durbin – and he had to make a humiliating, tearful, public
recantation and “apology” to the troops for doing so.

Where is
the major Democratic politician who dares to oppose the Nazi-style
Republican hate-mongering against gay marriage? Kerry refused to do so
in the 2004 campaign – in fact, he actually came out for a ban on gay
marriage in Massachusetts. Clinton the First signed the anti-gay
Defense of Marriage Act, and Clinton Number Two has been mum on this.

Where
is the major Democratic politician who speaks plainly against the
takeover of public discourse and public institutions by religious
extremists and, yes, fascists? There are none; to the contrary, Hillary
Clinton calls for “common ground” and “reconciliation.”

Where,
for that matter, is the major Democratic contender who will
unapologetically defend the right to abortion? Or who will dare to call
out Bush’s actions on Katrina what they are – murder, whether by
negligence or design or both?

The list goes on. If you truly
want to reverse the direction of this country, why would you depend on
people who don’t even promise you that they will do that? Who show,
quite frankly, not the slightest interest in taking on these fascists?
If you truly want to reverse the direction of this country B if you
truly allow yourself to come to grips with the threat posed by the Bush
Regime B you have no alternative but to make independent historical
action.

THE WORLD CAN’T WAIT! DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME! MOBILIZE NOVEMBER 2!!

Lately
we’ve heard people assure us that the Bush regime is coming apart, that
he and his regime are finished. Sometimes people say this as if to
downplay the need for mass action.

Wake up. Unless he is driven
out, Bush controls the most powerful state in the world for the next
three years. Even during this time when he has been “on the ropes”, he
has done tremendous damage – the outrages around Katrina (including
using the relief effort to further fund and build up his base of
fanatical Christian fascist clergy), the new threats of military action
against Syria, the nomination of Harriet Miers, etc.

Bush can
do what Daniel Ellsberg has warned against – allow another 911-type
incident and use it to institute a draft and bring in rules that would,
in Ellsberg’s words, “make the Patriot Act look like the Bill of
Rights.”

If there is no mass movement demanding Bush’s ouster
and determined to stay in the streets until he goes home and takes his
regime and his agenda with him, then Bush can do any or all of the
above.

Conversely: if we can launch a movement of millions
that will not settle for anything less than driving out this hated
regime, then we can stay on the offensive and seize the initiative when
things do go down, constantly waging the political counterattack,
exposing Bush’s hand and bringing people into the streets.

The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime! Mobilize November 2!

From the Human Rights Watch report issued on 9/25, 2005:

Residents
of Fallujah called them “the Murderous Maniacs” because of how they
treated Iraqis in detention. They were soldiers of the US Army’s 82nd
Airborne Division, 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment,
stationed at Forward Operating Base Mercury (FOB Mercury) in Iraq. The
soldiers considered this name a badge of honor.^[2]

One
officer and two noncommissioned officers (NCOs) of the 82nd Airborne
who witnessed abuse, speaking on condition of anonymity, described in
multiple interviews with Human Rights Watch how their battalion in
2003(2004 routinely used physical and mental torture as a means of
intelligence gathering and for stress relief. One soldier raised his
concerns within the Army chain of command for seventeen months before
the Army agreed to undertake an investigation, but only after he had
contacted members of Congress and considered going public with the
story.

According to their accounts, the torture and other
mistreatment of Iraqis in detention was systematic and was known at
varying levels of command. Military Intelligence personnel, they said,
directed and encouraged Army personnel to subject prisoners to forced,
repetitive exercise, sometimes to the point of unconsciousness, sleep
deprivation for days on end, and exposure to extremes of heat and cold
as part of the interrogation process. At least one interrogator beat
detainees in front of other soldiers. Soldiers also incorporated daily
beatings of detainees in preparation for interrogations. Civilians
believed to be from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted
interrogations out of sight, but not earshot, of soldiers, who heard
what they believed were abusive interrogations…

The soldiers
came forward because of what they described as deep frustration with
the military chain of command’s failure to view the abuses as
symptomatic of broader failures of leadership and respond accordingly.
All three are active-duty soldiers who wish to continue their military
careers. A fax letter, e-mail, and repeated phone calls to the 82nd
Airborne Division regarding the major allegations in the report
received no response.

Will you tolerate that?

Or will you resist?

THE WORLD CAN’T WAIT! DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME!

Mobilize November 2!

Julia
Tarver, lawyer for some of the prisoners at Guantanamo, has reported
that prisoners who were on hunger strike in Guantanamo were being
tortured with forcible insertion of feeding tubes. Prisoners are being
held down by six riot MP’s and having tubes ( some of which have
already been used on other prisoners, without sterilization ( forced
down them. Her clients have not been charged with any crime, but have
been held for four years. (For more on this, see an interview with
Julia Tarver on http://www.democracynow.org .)

Is this okay with you? Will you just turn your head? Or will you resist?

November 2, Mobilize: The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!

(photo from US occupation of Falluja, Iraq)

enough said

Bush
has always declared that he would nominate Supreme Court justices who
have the philosophy of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. But he has nominated people who have little or no public record. So what, let=s ask, is Scalia=s philosophy?

In a January 2002 speech at the University of Chicago Divinity School Scalia argued that the state B and specifically, the government of the United States B derives its legitimacy and power from God. And because God, according to Scalia, has the power of life and death over people, so too should the state. Scalia then approvingly quoted the evangelist Paul:

Let every soul be subject unto higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever
therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they
that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: for he is minister of God to thee for good. But
if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword
in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath
upon him that doeth evil. (Romans 13:1-4)

Scalia then went on to use this argument to justify the morality of capital punishment, approvingly noting that Athe more Christian a country is the less
likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral. . . I attribute
that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big
deal.@

Why is every nominee to the Supreme Court NOT asked to comment on Scalia=s astounding theocratic speech? Why is Bush not called to account for holding Scalia up as a paragon of judicial philosophy?

What does all that say about the direction of this society? And will you go along with that direction?

Or will you resist?

After
years of harassment and violence which has killed doctors, destroyed
clinics, erected legal barriers and restricted late-term abortions,
Supreme Court Justice Thomas Clarence has now blocked an imprisoned
woman’s scheduled transportation to her appointment to receive an
abortion. He says, the burden of providing the woman 80 miles of
transportation is too great for the state to have to incur.

Do
you want to live in a society where violent fanatics terrorize and shut
down women’s services and then the federal government uses these
outrages to further the same agenda of enforced motherhood?

Or will you resist?

The World Can’t Wait – Drive Out the Bush Regime!
Mobilize November 2nd!

Today’s
reason of the day comes from Harold Pinter, who recently won the Nobel
Prize for literature. During a poetry reading in 2003, Pinter said:
‘The U.S. is really beyond reason now. It is beyond our imagining to
know what they are going to do next and what they are prepared to do.
There is only one comparison: Nazi Germany.”

Will you go along with this?

Or will you resist?

THE WORLD CAN’T WAIT! DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME!

Mobilize November 2

Today’s
reason of the day comes from Catherine Crier, a Court-TV analyst and
former prosecutor and Republican judge from Texas. In her new book,
CONTEMPT, How the Right is Wronging American Justice, Courter warns
that the U.S. is in danger of a coup that will replace the Constitution
with biblical law, turning the country into one “Comparable to
countries like Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.” She says that “I want
this book to be a wake-up call, a warning flare, a political stun
grenade that provokes the silent majority of this country to stand up
and take notice.” Her first chapter ends with the following:

“For all of those Americans who believe that our democracy is safe, you
are wrong. Today, the radical Right is winning, and they know it.
Sooner rather than later, we may be living in a very different country,
a country that had been ours, a country that will be theirs.”

Will you go along with this?

Or will you resist?

THE WORLD CAN’T WAIT! DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME!

Mobilize November 2.

Today’s reason to drive out the Bush regime:

The
New York Times reports that the Bush Regime has opened up a new front
of the war in Iraq against Syria, and that U.S. troops are attacking
inside that country. Some months back Seymour Hersh reported that U.S.
commandos were operating inside Iran.

How many more wars will you accept?
Or will you resist?
Mobilize November 2
The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime1

Last
week, the Senate attached an amendment to a military appropriations
bill which would have forbade U.S. troops to use torture. But Bush has
threatened to veto this ( saying that it would bind the hands of the
U.S. government!

Are you willing to live in a society where the
armies carry out torture as a matter of routine, and the government
refuses to even outlaw it on paper?

Or will you resist it?

November 2, 2005 – Mobilize

In
Harrisburg, Pa., lawyers are in court today arguing whether intelligent
design should be taught in biology class alongside evolution.

“Intelligent
Design” has no basis in science, does not belong in a science class
room, and is widely recognized as a step towards bringing creationism
into official curriculum and undermining the fact of evolution. But
from the highest offices in the land, including from George Bush, and
from the unleashed activism of many local reactionary fundamentalists,
the teaching of evolution, science, and critical thought itself is
under attack.

At stake is whether a new generation will be
trained to understand the real world, science, and the process of
evolution and be intellectually equipped to understand and weigh in on
some of the most important matters affecting their futures and our
planet: global warming, the AIDS pandemic, the dangers of the flu, the
repercussions of chemical and biological weapons used in warfare,
pollution and damage to the environment, and agriculture.

Across
the country, thousands of high school biology teachers already skip the
teaching of evolution in order to avoid complaints and controversy.
Will we have a future where people are intellectually disarmed, forced
to put their heads down, and go along?