U. S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton says that the U. S. must stop the arbitrary detention of prisoners not charged with crimes, and must stop torturing prisoners.
That's surprising and most welcome good news.
It would mean her boss, President Obama, would have to close his (yes, his) concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, and release all those detainees who have been incarcerated in cages there these last ten years--though none of them has been charged with a crime.
It would also mean that the U.S. would have to stop the daily, round-the-clock torture of Pvt. Bradley Manning at Quantico, and either bring charges against him or release him--and give him the honors and medals he deserved for his brave and heroic actions..
Ah, but damn it, she said that Syria had to stop arbitrary detention and torture. Not the U.S. The U.S. is above the law--because it has thousands of nuclear weapons. And it is above the law because it is so far in debt that if it collapses, the whole world is in a mess. Both the U.S. missiles and the U.S. debt are threats.
So the U.S. continues to be a rogue state, and hypocrisy continues to be its national pastime.
Bert Hornback
woensdag 20 april 2011
maandag 11 april 2011
What are we doing? What we are doing.
Three workers in Nebraska have experienced an "unplanned radiation exposure." I assume this means that sometimes workers experience "PLANNED radiation exposure."
No doubt members of the military cause "unplanned civilian casualties" with their guns and bombs. And "planned casualties"? I am sure our troops experience "unplanned casualties" of their own--and I wonder, given our generals' vulgar attitude toward suffering and death, if our troops don't experience "planned casualties" as well.
Every time we kill human beings in our wars--in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Libya--those human beings, once dead, as declared to be enemies. That, of course, makes sense: we are the good guys, and perversely, in our absurd moral system,good guys kill bad guys.
I know that many Americans--many of my friends and former friends--will object to what I have said: not because they deny it or disagree with it, but because they don't want it said.
No doubt members of the military cause "unplanned civilian casualties" with their guns and bombs. And "planned casualties"? I am sure our troops experience "unplanned casualties" of their own--and I wonder, given our generals' vulgar attitude toward suffering and death, if our troops don't experience "planned casualties" as well.
Every time we kill human beings in our wars--in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Libya--those human beings, once dead, as declared to be enemies. That, of course, makes sense: we are the good guys, and perversely, in our absurd moral system,good guys kill bad guys.
I know that many Americans--many of my friends and former friends--will object to what I have said: not because they deny it or disagree with it, but because they don't want it said.
zondag 13 maart 2011
DEAR MR. OBAMA
Here's a letter for the U.S. President, for whom I quite happily and enthusiastically voted three years ago. I was betrayed, of course. Mr. Obama is a liar. He ran dishonestly. I am disgusted. If you think I am unfair to him, tell me how I am such.
Bert Hornback
Mr. Obama,
You have betrayed all the Americans who voted for you.
You promised to close the U. S. concentration camp at Guantanamo. Instead--in violation of everything that this country has ever stood for, and what you promised us--you say that some of the men illegally incarcerated there for ten years will be kept there for the rest of their lives. Why? Because though we can't charge them with any crime, we have tortured them for so long that they no doubt hate us.
You promised to end the George Bush torture regeime. Instead, you allow it to continue--and you add to it the outrageous World War II style torture of Bradley Manning at Quantico. That young man is a hero, a noble human being: and you are evil in trying to drive him crazy so you can keep him locked up for the rest of his life. You know that you can't try him in court: his defense will be that he obeyed both U. S. law and U. S. Military law in exposing your administration's felony offenses.
If I could, I would change places with Bradley Manning. And I would shout every day until I was hoarse about you and your agents' crimes. I would demand to be brought to trial--and you would have to murder me, Mr. Obama, to shut me up.
Do you ever think what your daughters will think of their father when they grow up? He was a liar, a coward, a criminal, a torturer, a murderer. Is that what you want them to think of their father? Are you the man Michelle Obama married? Are you the man so many millions of people voted for?
Unless you change. Mr. President--unless you recover what was once, I believe, your decency--when you die, your epitaph will read,
Here lies Barack Obama,
Who betrayed Millions of Decent People
All over the World
With Lies and Bombs and Torture
And brought Horrendous Disgrace upon his Nation.
The Civilised World
despises him.
Both Lyndon Johnson--who lied about the Gulf of Tonkin--and Richard Nixon--who was a criminal, who was responsible for Kent State and the bombing of Cambodia--will be remembered as better presidents and as better human beings than you.
How can yopu pretend to be decent? How can a man responsible for torture sit down to watch a basketball game with "friends? How can a man who kills as many people as you do, every day, spend a recreational evening?
I live in Germany at the present time. When you were elected president, Germans were elated. Everywhere. People I didn't know stopped me, shook my hand, hugged me.
Now, however, my friends say, "What happened?" "America is an awful place." "I am sorry for you--and sorry for all of us."
And when, these last few days, your bombers rumble overhead at night here, people who honored the United States for its role in ending World War II spit on the idea of the United States today.
The restoration of the trial chambers at Nuremberg has recently been completed. They are ready and available for war crimes trials. Soon George Bush, his cronies, and Barak Obama may well stand in the dock there together.
Is that what you planned for yourself?
Are you a coward, or simply a dishonest man? Or are you the aggressive criminal--violating our country's laws and traditions, violating our United Nations obligations, insulting humanity--that your actions make you out to be?
Sincerely yours,
Bert Hornback
P.S. I post this as "It Says Here" because the Obama Administration--in the best Fascist fashion--wants to "communicate" with us, but will not allow us to answer, to talk back.
Bert Hornback
Mr. Obama,
You have betrayed all the Americans who voted for you.
You promised to close the U. S. concentration camp at Guantanamo. Instead--in violation of everything that this country has ever stood for, and what you promised us--you say that some of the men illegally incarcerated there for ten years will be kept there for the rest of their lives. Why? Because though we can't charge them with any crime, we have tortured them for so long that they no doubt hate us.
You promised to end the George Bush torture regeime. Instead, you allow it to continue--and you add to it the outrageous World War II style torture of Bradley Manning at Quantico. That young man is a hero, a noble human being: and you are evil in trying to drive him crazy so you can keep him locked up for the rest of his life. You know that you can't try him in court: his defense will be that he obeyed both U. S. law and U. S. Military law in exposing your administration's felony offenses.
If I could, I would change places with Bradley Manning. And I would shout every day until I was hoarse about you and your agents' crimes. I would demand to be brought to trial--and you would have to murder me, Mr. Obama, to shut me up.
Do you ever think what your daughters will think of their father when they grow up? He was a liar, a coward, a criminal, a torturer, a murderer. Is that what you want them to think of their father? Are you the man Michelle Obama married? Are you the man so many millions of people voted for?
Unless you change. Mr. President--unless you recover what was once, I believe, your decency--when you die, your epitaph will read,
Here lies Barack Obama,
Who betrayed Millions of Decent People
All over the World
With Lies and Bombs and Torture
And brought Horrendous Disgrace upon his Nation.
The Civilised World
despises him.
Both Lyndon Johnson--who lied about the Gulf of Tonkin--and Richard Nixon--who was a criminal, who was responsible for Kent State and the bombing of Cambodia--will be remembered as better presidents and as better human beings than you.
How can yopu pretend to be decent? How can a man responsible for torture sit down to watch a basketball game with "friends? How can a man who kills as many people as you do, every day, spend a recreational evening?
I live in Germany at the present time. When you were elected president, Germans were elated. Everywhere. People I didn't know stopped me, shook my hand, hugged me.
Now, however, my friends say, "What happened?" "America is an awful place." "I am sorry for you--and sorry for all of us."
And when, these last few days, your bombers rumble overhead at night here, people who honored the United States for its role in ending World War II spit on the idea of the United States today.
The restoration of the trial chambers at Nuremberg has recently been completed. They are ready and available for war crimes trials. Soon George Bush, his cronies, and Barak Obama may well stand in the dock there together.
Is that what you planned for yourself?
Are you a coward, or simply a dishonest man? Or are you the aggressive criminal--violating our country's laws and traditions, violating our United Nations obligations, insulting humanity--that your actions make you out to be?
Sincerely yours,
Bert Hornback
P.S. I post this as "It Says Here" because the Obama Administration--in the best Fascist fashion--wants to "communicate" with us, but will not allow us to answer, to talk back.
vrijdag 18 februari 2011
BANKRUPTCY
The biggest bankrupt in the world's long history is, naturally, the United States of America. But because the United States has thousands of nuclear weapons and a proven readiness to use them, it is allowed to continue borrowing money from the rest of the world.
The United States uses its nuclear weapons to blackmail the rest of the world into continuing to lend it money.
Mr. Obama pretends to want to curb spending to avoid an American implosion. A dollar saved here, two dollars there. If he would (1) END HIS WARS, and (2) disband his military forces and (3)cancel all military spending programs and (4) dissolve the so-called Defense Department, he could not only balance his budget, but even wipe out most of America's debt within ten years.
He could do that, and at the same time provide real jobs for all those in the military, all those civilians who run the military, and all those who would become unemployed by our shutting down the defense industry.
The new jobs those million-plus people would have would be honest, productive jobs: jobs that build homes and schools, grow food and restore land, and learn useful skills and trades. Their labor, in time, would give us clean water and clean air again--as well as clean consciences. Many of those men and women would become teachers, and our disastrous public schools would start educating our children.
We could begin to remake our failed society--and as we did so we would re-learn the civilised, social virtue called freedom, and abandon our stupid, selfish insistence on liberty.
"Liberty" is a word which looks out for self. It has never pretended to be wise. It is a do-your-own-thing word, a word for pursuing individual desires. It's the same word as "libido."
"Freedom" is a very different word. Its close relatives, linguistically, are "free" and "friend." If we are free, we are free together.
If we are truly free, we won't have homeless people, or hungry people. We won't have a dysfunctional school system. If we are free, we will have universal health care.
Pursuing liberty, we pursue profit, and individual wealth. Pursuing freedom, we pursue that other, social ideal called "commonwealth."
"Wealth" is a good word: literally. Its root is in the word "well." It has been in use for more than a thousand years in Germanic and English languages. It means both happy and good--and both "happy" and "good" are social words, too: their roots are in words for gathering.
Maybe Mr. Obama should get a good dictionary. Maybe we should all get good dictionaries, and find out what our founding fathers--humanly and nationally--once proposed to us as a way of life.
And while we are rediscovering what is good, we may also discover something else that we all should know: something that every history lesson teaches us, as soon as our todays turn to yesterdays. Good is good. But war? It isn't only bad; it is worse. War is an early form of the word "worse."
Let's change our world. Let's ask Mr. Obama to start changing it right now, by ending his wars--and making things worse. Then we can start being good instead of greedy, social instead of selfish, and free.
And then--maybe even soon--we won't be bankrupt any more, wither monetarily or morally.
The United States uses its nuclear weapons to blackmail the rest of the world into continuing to lend it money.
Mr. Obama pretends to want to curb spending to avoid an American implosion. A dollar saved here, two dollars there. If he would (1) END HIS WARS, and (2) disband his military forces and (3)cancel all military spending programs and (4) dissolve the so-called Defense Department, he could not only balance his budget, but even wipe out most of America's debt within ten years.
He could do that, and at the same time provide real jobs for all those in the military, all those civilians who run the military, and all those who would become unemployed by our shutting down the defense industry.
The new jobs those million-plus people would have would be honest, productive jobs: jobs that build homes and schools, grow food and restore land, and learn useful skills and trades. Their labor, in time, would give us clean water and clean air again--as well as clean consciences. Many of those men and women would become teachers, and our disastrous public schools would start educating our children.
We could begin to remake our failed society--and as we did so we would re-learn the civilised, social virtue called freedom, and abandon our stupid, selfish insistence on liberty.
"Liberty" is a word which looks out for self. It has never pretended to be wise. It is a do-your-own-thing word, a word for pursuing individual desires. It's the same word as "libido."
"Freedom" is a very different word. Its close relatives, linguistically, are "free" and "friend." If we are free, we are free together.
If we are truly free, we won't have homeless people, or hungry people. We won't have a dysfunctional school system. If we are free, we will have universal health care.
Pursuing liberty, we pursue profit, and individual wealth. Pursuing freedom, we pursue that other, social ideal called "commonwealth."
"Wealth" is a good word: literally. Its root is in the word "well." It has been in use for more than a thousand years in Germanic and English languages. It means both happy and good--and both "happy" and "good" are social words, too: their roots are in words for gathering.
Maybe Mr. Obama should get a good dictionary. Maybe we should all get good dictionaries, and find out what our founding fathers--humanly and nationally--once proposed to us as a way of life.
And while we are rediscovering what is good, we may also discover something else that we all should know: something that every history lesson teaches us, as soon as our todays turn to yesterdays. Good is good. But war? It isn't only bad; it is worse. War is an early form of the word "worse."
Let's change our world. Let's ask Mr. Obama to start changing it right now, by ending his wars--and making things worse. Then we can start being good instead of greedy, social instead of selfish, and free.
And then--maybe even soon--we won't be bankrupt any more, wither monetarily or morally.
zaterdag 12 februari 2011
MULTI-CULTURALISM
Mr. Sarkozy says multi-culturalism is a failure. French Muslims praying in the street is proof. Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu est MON dieu! So the Christian dictator of France has spoken.
There is no room in Mr. Sarkozy's world, I suppose, for a united Ireland. Or a united Cyprus. Or civilised existence within and among the Balkan states. Can black people and white people live together? What if Jews took to praying on Mr. Sarkozy's streets? Should China and India throw out their Christians?
Mr. Sarkozy probably wants Germany and France to go back to fighting. Maybe he wants to have another Thursday afternoon war on the hillside at Spicheren, and kill 10,000 German boys and 12,000 French kids in six bloody hours.
At Spicheren, overlooking the river Saar, there are two late nineteenth-century monuments: one to the 10,000 Germans who died that day in that place, the other--forty meters away--to the 12,000 French soldiers killed there. In between these two is a third monument: a modern one, erected by the European Union. Its plaque says, simply, "Never Again."
Europe should budget generously for the building of a wall around Mr. Sarkozy's version of France. All of Europe's unemployed--including those in Mr. Sarkozy's France--can be put to work on the job. That will solve two problems: our European unemployment problem--which is economic--and our problem with Mr. Sarkozy's France--which is moral.
There is no room in Mr. Sarkozy's world, I suppose, for a united Ireland. Or a united Cyprus. Or civilised existence within and among the Balkan states. Can black people and white people live together? What if Jews took to praying on Mr. Sarkozy's streets? Should China and India throw out their Christians?
Mr. Sarkozy probably wants Germany and France to go back to fighting. Maybe he wants to have another Thursday afternoon war on the hillside at Spicheren, and kill 10,000 German boys and 12,000 French kids in six bloody hours.
At Spicheren, overlooking the river Saar, there are two late nineteenth-century monuments: one to the 10,000 Germans who died that day in that place, the other--forty meters away--to the 12,000 French soldiers killed there. In between these two is a third monument: a modern one, erected by the European Union. Its plaque says, simply, "Never Again."
Europe should budget generously for the building of a wall around Mr. Sarkozy's version of France. All of Europe's unemployed--including those in Mr. Sarkozy's France--can be put to work on the job. That will solve two problems: our European unemployment problem--which is economic--and our problem with Mr. Sarkozy's France--which is moral.
EGYPT
Our dear ally in the struggle to prevent democracy in the Middle East has fallen. Repression, U.S. style detention, torture: these have been the trademarks of Hosni Mubarak's long dictatorship. But he has been America's ally: as in earlier days were Generalissimo Franco in Spain, President Salazar in Portugal, President Batista in Cuba, the Shah of Iran, President Marcos in the Philippines. With Mubarak gone, maybe the only American-supported dictatorship left is that in Saudi Arabia: which has never even pretended to be "democratic."
The Obama government's response to the crisis in Egypt proves once again the absolute bankruptcy of United States foreign policy. Through its constant abuse of the word "democracy" the United States has made of it an obscene joke: even at home. Disregard for "democracy" at home gave the United States the presidency of George W. Bush. Mr. Obama was actually elected, democratically. But his use of the word is so badly tainted, so corrupt, that in terms of foreign policy we really are no better off: the United States is still trying to impose its will on other countries--by force.
Mr. Obama's outgoing press secretary, Robert Gibbs, says "Iran's government fears the will of the people." Mr. Gibbs never said that about Hosni Babarak's government.
And no American president or press secretary has ever said such about any of the dictatorships that the United States has supported. Democracy? The United States is no friend to democracy anywhere: even at home. The United States is run for and by the rich.
The Obama government's response to the crisis in Egypt proves once again the absolute bankruptcy of United States foreign policy. Through its constant abuse of the word "democracy" the United States has made of it an obscene joke: even at home. Disregard for "democracy" at home gave the United States the presidency of George W. Bush. Mr. Obama was actually elected, democratically. But his use of the word is so badly tainted, so corrupt, that in terms of foreign policy we really are no better off: the United States is still trying to impose its will on other countries--by force.
Mr. Obama's outgoing press secretary, Robert Gibbs, says "Iran's government fears the will of the people." Mr. Gibbs never said that about Hosni Babarak's government.
And no American president or press secretary has ever said such about any of the dictatorships that the United States has supported. Democracy? The United States is no friend to democracy anywhere: even at home. The United States is run for and by the rich.
donderdag 3 februari 2011
BLESSED ARE THE. . . .
President Obama has attended the Christian prayer breakfast. And he says that his faith is part of his strength, or something like that.
No doubt he prays "Blessed are the Peacemakers" every morning as he spends another billion dollars bombing people in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Is there a special prayer for people who run concentration camps? Is there a special prayer he says to absolve himself of guilt for the imprisonment and torture of Bradley Manning?
Does he have a biblical reference to justify his acceptance of American greed as a way of life?
There is so much about our way of life that is absolutely opposed to what Jesus taught. And Jesus condemned hypocrites twenty times for every time he mentioned any other sin. But Christianity in the United States is utterly hypocritical.
I wonder if any of the Christians at the prayer breakfast thought about giving the food that was served to the hungry and the poor? Or as the left, maybe giving their coats to some poor people who don't have coats? Or . . . .
Bert Hornback
No doubt he prays "Blessed are the Peacemakers" every morning as he spends another billion dollars bombing people in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Is there a special prayer for people who run concentration camps? Is there a special prayer he says to absolve himself of guilt for the imprisonment and torture of Bradley Manning?
Does he have a biblical reference to justify his acceptance of American greed as a way of life?
There is so much about our way of life that is absolutely opposed to what Jesus taught. And Jesus condemned hypocrites twenty times for every time he mentioned any other sin. But Christianity in the United States is utterly hypocritical.
I wonder if any of the Christians at the prayer breakfast thought about giving the food that was served to the hungry and the poor? Or as the left, maybe giving their coats to some poor people who don't have coats? Or . . . .
Bert Hornback
Abonneren op:
Posts (Atom)