zaterdag 27 augustus 2011
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR
Martin Luther King, Jr. was indeed a hero, a great, courageous, noble man. And he more than deserves to be honored.
But the journalists keep praising America, not Dr. King. They write about "Jefferson's Temple" and the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument--and even about the FDR memorial. And they write about how wonderful it is to have Dr. King's memorial among those great men--as though he ought to feel honored to be among them.
Jefferson, they say, was the great "philosopher," the noble mind who founded our country. They don't mention his slaves, or his slave children--his own children--whom he sold on the open slave market to buy books. Or his determination that a black person could not be a poet. Washington did free his slaves--but only at his own death.
I like the idea of Dr. King being with Lincoln and FDR. They are good company. Those three were great men--like Dr. King. But why not add a memorial for Eleanor Roosevelt? She was as great an American as her husband. And she was our first black first lady.
The journalists write about looking out from Dr. King's memorial across the basin to Jefferson, and put Dr. King in a line from Jefferson to Lincoln or maybe Washington. I prefer to see it as Dr. King alongside FDR and Lincoln--and Jefferson off on the "other side." Segregated, as it were. Isolated. We have come a long way since Jefferson, and he is best left behind.
Let's celebrate Dr. King for himself and what he did for all of us.
donderdag 25 augustus 2011
Criminal Behavior Should Be Punished
In a nation of laws, criminal behavior must in some way be punished. Three former employees in the Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, school system, have been charged with embezzling funds from the school system, and have pleaded guilty to felony fraud. A fourth former employee, who knew of the crime but did not report it, has pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony, which is itself a felony crime. In some jurisdictions this crime is called being an accessory after the fact.
The United States government and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office cooperated in this case, prosecuted by the United States Attorney's Office.
Good for us--and good for our government.
But elsewhere, in the world beyond Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, our government has been holding a man who refused to be an accessory after the fact to torture and other felony crimes. His name is Bradley Manning. He has been imprisoned--illegally--for more than a year. Most of that time he has been kept in solitary confinement, and tortured. He has not been charged with a crime, because if the United States government charges Bradley Manning with releasing documents about its own felony crimes, he will claim in his defense that he was doing what United States law requires him to do when he knows that felony crimes have been committed.
How can we do this? We aren't doing it; the officer in charge of this country, who has sworn to uphold this country's laws, is doing it: and we are letting him do it.
Had Bradley Manning not released the documents which he discovered, related to secret felony offenses, he would have become himself a felon.
Barack Obama knows this. He is a Harvard lawyer--and Harvard lawyers know that misprision of a felony is a serious crime. But as officer in charge of the United States government, Obama wants to hide those felony crimes our nation has committed: to cover them up. And that makes Obama a felon, too.
We have lost our constitutionally guaranteed Right of Habeas Corpus; both Obama and his predecessor claim to have "suspended" it. No president, of course, can "suspend" the constitution. Only a dictator can do that.
And for more than a year, now, Obama has held Bradley Manning in prison, illegally. Punitively: though Bradley Manning has not been charged with a crime, Obama has proclaimed publicly that he is guilty: "He broke the law."
Obama has refused to let the United Nations Human Rights lawyers interview Bradley Manning in private.
Misprision of a felony is itself a felony crime under United States civil law, and under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
But Obama doesn't care. He is a rogue president. The prima facia evidence of his public conduct indicts him as a criminal for violating the oath he took upon assuming his office. Obama swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States. He has violated that oath, and continues in his arrogance to violate it every day.
Remarkably, so many of my supposed friends agree with him: friends whom I never would have expected to say "My country, right or wrong: but my country." I am ashamed: but not just of them. I am ashamed of me, too. But I am proud of Bradley Manning, and proud of those who support him.
Maybe I will manage to get brave enough to support him more actively myself.
If I don't, I will be morally guilty in the same way that Obama is guilty: of imprisoning, torturing, persecuting a national hero. And I don't want to be what Obama is.
Bert G. Hornback
The United States government and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office cooperated in this case, prosecuted by the United States Attorney's Office.
Good for us--and good for our government.
But elsewhere, in the world beyond Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, our government has been holding a man who refused to be an accessory after the fact to torture and other felony crimes. His name is Bradley Manning. He has been imprisoned--illegally--for more than a year. Most of that time he has been kept in solitary confinement, and tortured. He has not been charged with a crime, because if the United States government charges Bradley Manning with releasing documents about its own felony crimes, he will claim in his defense that he was doing what United States law requires him to do when he knows that felony crimes have been committed.
How can we do this? We aren't doing it; the officer in charge of this country, who has sworn to uphold this country's laws, is doing it: and we are letting him do it.
Had Bradley Manning not released the documents which he discovered, related to secret felony offenses, he would have become himself a felon.
Barack Obama knows this. He is a Harvard lawyer--and Harvard lawyers know that misprision of a felony is a serious crime. But as officer in charge of the United States government, Obama wants to hide those felony crimes our nation has committed: to cover them up. And that makes Obama a felon, too.
We have lost our constitutionally guaranteed Right of Habeas Corpus; both Obama and his predecessor claim to have "suspended" it. No president, of course, can "suspend" the constitution. Only a dictator can do that.
And for more than a year, now, Obama has held Bradley Manning in prison, illegally. Punitively: though Bradley Manning has not been charged with a crime, Obama has proclaimed publicly that he is guilty: "He broke the law."
Obama has refused to let the United Nations Human Rights lawyers interview Bradley Manning in private.
Misprision of a felony is itself a felony crime under United States civil law, and under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
But Obama doesn't care. He is a rogue president. The prima facia evidence of his public conduct indicts him as a criminal for violating the oath he took upon assuming his office. Obama swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States. He has violated that oath, and continues in his arrogance to violate it every day.
Remarkably, so many of my supposed friends agree with him: friends whom I never would have expected to say "My country, right or wrong: but my country." I am ashamed: but not just of them. I am ashamed of me, too. But I am proud of Bradley Manning, and proud of those who support him.
Maybe I will manage to get brave enough to support him more actively myself.
If I don't, I will be morally guilty in the same way that Obama is guilty: of imprisoning, torturing, persecuting a national hero. And I don't want to be what Obama is.
Bert G. Hornback
donderdag 11 augustus 2011
hyper
I'm seventy-five. I was around during World War II--when the USA pretended that the Nazis were good guys and the Japanese were sub-human evil beings, when black people in the USA were in effect still slaves, and when the USA used its two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
My head hurts tonight in a strange way. Maybe I'm old enough to die and get out of here. Not that I don't love humanity, and life itself. But I'm worn out with the USA, and tired from having spent most of my time and energy arguing against what I see as evil.\
But if I am going to die soon, I want to get this said before I go.
For the last few years I have lived in Germany. I teach there: a civilised place, an intelligent and thoughtful and moral people. Maybe the scourge in their past helps them--us, I should like to say--to be moral.
The USA has never accepted any of its shames: its many vicious, murderous shames. Native American genocide. African and African-American slavery (both: the children of African slaves--often, like Thomas Jefferson's children--were African-American, or Afro-European slaves). Nuclear bombs in Japan. And all the USA's manufactured wars of aggression, in Korea, in the 1958 invasion of Lebanon, against Cuba, in Vietnam with lots of napalm, in Grenada, in Iraq with Colin Powell burying live Iraqi kids in the sand with bulldozer-tanks, in Iraq again, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan with murderous drones, in Syria.
And now: sometimes I am outraged by us, or disgusted; sometimes I am just angry, or embarrassed, or perversely amused. But this time I am outrageously pleased.
The good-old-broke USA has spent billions--maybe trillions--of junk dollars designing and testing a 'hypersonic' plane. Not 'supersonic'--beyond the speed of sound--but hyperbolicly 'hypersonic.'
'Superfast' means something like 'most fast,' or 'fastest.' But 'hyperfast' means ' 'over-fast,' or 'too fast.' And wow! This thing was 'hypersonic.'
It was. And on Thursday it ran away from its trackers.
The plane that could travel at 13,000 miles per hour--21,000 kilometers per hour--would have let the USA military drop bombs on its enemies, anywhere in the world, in less than an hour.
On Thursday morning the Pentagon's best team of idiots launched one of these things, testing it.
They only had two of them. The first aborted itself after nine minutes, and disappeared into the Pacific Ocean. Two hundred thousand homes for poor people sank with it.
The second launch--this Thursday's--lasted thirty-six minutes. And then the thing escaped from the tracking radar: ran away. Where to? Did it go too fast for the radar to follow it? Did it burn up--at more than 2,000 degrees centigrade--in the outer atmosphere? Did it just run off somewhere on its own, maybe to a more civilised planet? Or did it land somewhere'' in Siberia? Antarctica? In an ocean?
It could have landed, of course, in someplace like Washington. An appropriate landing place. As the little girl used to say in the "Katzenjammer Kids" comic strip, "they brought it on themselves."
So: goodnight. If I am here tomorrow, I'll look to see if the USA's 'hypersonic' extravagance cause a sunami somewhere, or just blew up, or maybe found its way home to Washington, or maybe found its way off into outer space. And if I'm not here tomorrow, maybe I'll meet it out there somewhere.
Bert Hornback
My head hurts tonight in a strange way. Maybe I'm old enough to die and get out of here. Not that I don't love humanity, and life itself. But I'm worn out with the USA, and tired from having spent most of my time and energy arguing against what I see as evil.\
But if I am going to die soon, I want to get this said before I go.
For the last few years I have lived in Germany. I teach there: a civilised place, an intelligent and thoughtful and moral people. Maybe the scourge in their past helps them--us, I should like to say--to be moral.
The USA has never accepted any of its shames: its many vicious, murderous shames. Native American genocide. African and African-American slavery (both: the children of African slaves--often, like Thomas Jefferson's children--were African-American, or Afro-European slaves). Nuclear bombs in Japan. And all the USA's manufactured wars of aggression, in Korea, in the 1958 invasion of Lebanon, against Cuba, in Vietnam with lots of napalm, in Grenada, in Iraq with Colin Powell burying live Iraqi kids in the sand with bulldozer-tanks, in Iraq again, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan with murderous drones, in Syria.
And now: sometimes I am outraged by us, or disgusted; sometimes I am just angry, or embarrassed, or perversely amused. But this time I am outrageously pleased.
The good-old-broke USA has spent billions--maybe trillions--of junk dollars designing and testing a 'hypersonic' plane. Not 'supersonic'--beyond the speed of sound--but hyperbolicly 'hypersonic.'
'Superfast' means something like 'most fast,' or 'fastest.' But 'hyperfast' means ' 'over-fast,' or 'too fast.' And wow! This thing was 'hypersonic.'
It was. And on Thursday it ran away from its trackers.
The plane that could travel at 13,000 miles per hour--21,000 kilometers per hour--would have let the USA military drop bombs on its enemies, anywhere in the world, in less than an hour.
On Thursday morning the Pentagon's best team of idiots launched one of these things, testing it.
They only had two of them. The first aborted itself after nine minutes, and disappeared into the Pacific Ocean. Two hundred thousand homes for poor people sank with it.
The second launch--this Thursday's--lasted thirty-six minutes. And then the thing escaped from the tracking radar: ran away. Where to? Did it go too fast for the radar to follow it? Did it burn up--at more than 2,000 degrees centigrade--in the outer atmosphere? Did it just run off somewhere on its own, maybe to a more civilised planet? Or did it land somewhere'' in Siberia? Antarctica? In an ocean?
It could have landed, of course, in someplace like Washington. An appropriate landing place. As the little girl used to say in the "Katzenjammer Kids" comic strip, "they brought it on themselves."
So: goodnight. If I am here tomorrow, I'll look to see if the USA's 'hypersonic' extravagance cause a sunami somewhere, or just blew up, or maybe found its way home to Washington, or maybe found its way off into outer space. And if I'm not here tomorrow, maybe I'll meet it out there somewhere.
Bert Hornback
donderdag 4 augustus 2011
Cynthia Tucker on Obama
Three things.
First, Cynthia Tucker's recent syndicated response to disaster--to "the sky is falling"--is absurd. If the sky is falling--and it is--its doing so doesn't "depend on where you're standing." Six years ago New Orleans was flooded--and no matter where you were standing, yes, New Orleans was flooded. Even people on St. Charles Avenue knew that. Even Ray Nagin hiding in his penthouse knew that. We have lots more examples--but I read Tucker's nonsense in the New Orleans Timers Picayune.
Second, "Obama's first campaign centered around hope." That's nonsense, too. How is it possible for a campaign to "center around" hope? A center is a center, even in these impossible times in this desperately possible place. Tucker is talking nonsense.
Third, Tucker wants Obama to "reignite that spark" of what was, very briefly, hope. But Obama himself snuffed out any "spark" of hope he had given us with the first three of his broken promises: (1) he didn't end our wars of aggression, but multiplied them; (2) he failed to close the torture camp at Guantanamo Bay; and (3) he failed to restore our constitutional right of habeas corpus--and thus has been able to torture Private Bradley Manning in naked solitary confinement at Quantico for twelve months. (Manning's continuing imprisonment--without being charged with a crime, let alone brought to trial--was justified by Obama, of course, by his dictatorial proclamation, "Manning broke the law.")
The only hope I can see that Obama might be expected to ignite would come from his apologising for having been such a terrible, irresponsible, and untrustworthy president thus far, and resigning.
Obama has taught us how utterly hollow hope can be. As a former law professor he is intelligent enough to understand what a terrible lesson he has taught us.
"Can Obama inspire new hope in voters?" Of course he can't. Cynthia Tucker's essay is nonsense. But it does invite us to say the obvious: Obama should resign.
Bert G. Hornback
First, Cynthia Tucker's recent syndicated response to disaster--to "the sky is falling"--is absurd. If the sky is falling--and it is--its doing so doesn't "depend on where you're standing." Six years ago New Orleans was flooded--and no matter where you were standing, yes, New Orleans was flooded. Even people on St. Charles Avenue knew that. Even Ray Nagin hiding in his penthouse knew that. We have lots more examples--but I read Tucker's nonsense in the New Orleans Timers Picayune.
Second, "Obama's first campaign centered around hope." That's nonsense, too. How is it possible for a campaign to "center around" hope? A center is a center, even in these impossible times in this desperately possible place. Tucker is talking nonsense.
Third, Tucker wants Obama to "reignite that spark" of what was, very briefly, hope. But Obama himself snuffed out any "spark" of hope he had given us with the first three of his broken promises: (1) he didn't end our wars of aggression, but multiplied them; (2) he failed to close the torture camp at Guantanamo Bay; and (3) he failed to restore our constitutional right of habeas corpus--and thus has been able to torture Private Bradley Manning in naked solitary confinement at Quantico for twelve months. (Manning's continuing imprisonment--without being charged with a crime, let alone brought to trial--was justified by Obama, of course, by his dictatorial proclamation, "Manning broke the law.")
The only hope I can see that Obama might be expected to ignite would come from his apologising for having been such a terrible, irresponsible, and untrustworthy president thus far, and resigning.
Obama has taught us how utterly hollow hope can be. As a former law professor he is intelligent enough to understand what a terrible lesson he has taught us.
"Can Obama inspire new hope in voters?" Of course he can't. Cynthia Tucker's essay is nonsense. But it does invite us to say the obvious: Obama should resign.
Bert G. Hornback
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