What I've Been Up To

Sorry to any readers of this that I've neglected. It's just there's been a big change in the life of Zaid -- I've gone to college (UGA). Between dodging cars being driven by crazy people and wondering how so many rednecks exist in life, I actually started to write for an Athens-based blog, A La Gauche.

You can read my first two entries here:

http://farleft.blogspot.com/2006/08/wonderful-junior-frist.html

http://farleft.blogspot.com/2006/08/adios-blair.html

That certainly doesn't mean I'm going to neglect this journal; I will definitely post more when I get the time.

In the meantime, check out some Luckovich:

Rumsfeld is terribly incompetent, but the point rarely made by the media establishment is that he is also a war criminal that could easily be put away for life.

Um, ok.

It's OK, thousands others have been kidnapped ("detained") who had nothing to do with 9-11.

My school made the Luckovich! Not for the best of things, but...

Katie Couric: making sure our media will never stand up for our democracy.

Always,

Zaid

Cynthia

Did anyone see her concession speech?

It was beautiful.

I know McKinney has been under fire a lot from the conservative and moderate Democrats, and especially from the Republicans -- but seeing this speech brought me back to why I vehemently supported her in the primary campaigns and really since 2004: she speaks truth boldly.

She is at the side of anyone being beaten down or destroyed, anyone been oppressed. She spoke of peace and justice in a way I've seen no Democrats do that, save for maybe Kucinich.

There was no negativity in her concession speech; she spoke of hope for an America that embraces the world, that stands by working people and the unemployed across the planet and not for "Halliburton and the Carlyle Group." She spoke up for the Lebanese, and the "hundreds of thousands of Iraqis hurt or dead" because of what we did. She thanked the friends, family, the activists from across the 4th District who helped her so much (I've never seen Hank Johnson at any antiwar rally, or seen him travel to foreign countries to assist people being hurt by our policies as McKinney has).

And lastly she said she "wishes well" to Hank Johnson. She gave an overt hope to the massive crowd around her that Johnson would follow in her footsteps -- to become the quintessential "peace and justice Democrat" she declared herself to be. With his hawkish indifference to the dying poor in Lebanon, I doubt he can do that. But maybe the 4th District can compel him to.

After meeting Congresswoman McKinney in June and seeing the Sundance award-winning film in which she is a central character, American Blackout, I can heartily say she is a hero. She is a relentless fighter truly in the vein of Martin and Malcom, and I say that without a hint of hesitation.

I don't know what she will do now. In 2002 she lost to a coalition of GOP voters (at least 30,000 Republicans crossover voted in the Primary to beat her) and pro-Israeli groups (complete with people saying she took money from "Islamic terrorist groups"). She regained her seat easily in 2004. Maybe she'll regain in 2006 after the non-incident with the police officer is forgotten. Maybe she'll go on to be a powerful activist, which she had been in her 14 years in Congress and before that in the state legislature where she made her mark by lambasting the bombing of Iraq during the first Gulf War.

Wherever she goes, she will be missed by those who knew her -- who stood with her as she denounced the war against poor people here and abroad, who attended her events and festivals. She will be missed by the poor and disenfranchised who didn't enter politics because they deemed it the realm of only the "rich white man."

I wish her well and I know that she will act positively for the world wherever she goes.

thanks to Blackcommentator.com

Zaid

Dear Brother and Sisters in Tingly Apocalyptic Anticipation:

Well, goodness me, it looks as if Israel came up with a cagey trick that eluded even the imminently tricky, soon to be caged, Halliburton.  It seems that the quickest way to spend billions of dollars to make sure that Iraq's infrastructure is no longer the worst in the region is to bomb all the airports, roads and bridges in Lebanon.

Yes, if you heard the bombs falling, you'll know that democracy is on the march in the Middle East!  And, from the looks of things, it is apparently wearing rather clumsy boots and not sticking to any designated crosswalks.  If you ask me, it's more like democrazy!  But no matter what you call what we've sold to the world, America is clearly undergoing some acute seller's remorse now that both Iraq and Lebanon have used this whole "voting" thing to willfully elect crazy Islamic fundamentalists who hate America and Israel. 

Yes, the unwanted gift (secular democracy) from an uninvited guest (U.S. Marines) is perversely being used to bring about a surprisingly un-American result (majority rule). With mischievous ingratitude, Arabs are capitalizing on the purported mechanisms of "one person one vote" democracy to fill the seats of their local parliaments and condominium associates with more crazed, intolerant religious zealots than are ordinarily seen outside of the United States House of Representatives.

As anyone who has suffered my icy regard after watching me unwrap an ill-conceived hostess gift can attest, present giving can be a rather dicey undertaking.  As such, America really should have devoted slightly more attention to the type of democracy she was unloading on those fanatical, yelping heathens before showing up on their dusty doorstep, unannounced, with it. 

It is clear to me the cause of this disastrous mix-up.  Without thinking, as is his leitmotif, President Bush bundled up and exported Democracy 1776, a version of government made obsolete when the Supreme Court unveiled a beta version of Democracy 2000 on December 12, 2000. 

As some of you with fetishes for picturesque, historical chestnuts may recall, Democracy Version 1776 included something known by nostalgia addicts as a "Constitution," but more presciently referred to by George W. Bush as "just a goddamned piece of paper." Gotta match?

More to the point, Democracy Version 1776 was also a rather quaint type of government wherein citizens underwent the tedious, charmless task of actually tallying the votes cast.  Such laborious counting can, of course, lead to inconvenient results. This is precisely why America wisely dispensed with being subjected to the unpredictable vicissitudes of voters' actual preferences by making so many polling stations Democracy 2000 compliant after installing Diebold Vote Correcting Machines™.

You see, American Democracy Version 2000 is all about pushing placebo screens, rather than the anal, wholly superfluous preoccupation with memorializing those quixotic stabs at LCD pixels.  If we had only thought to bundle up a few container ships with Diebold Vote Correcting Machines™ and sent them to Lebanon, the same software that allowed our handsome President to win Ohio, would have ensured that Hezbollah was trounced by a number of votes roughly equivalent to 400 times the population of Beirut.  Instead, Islamic extremists are gaining power, making a trigger-happy Israel mail-order a few thousand more triggers. Oh, snap!

Whereas Truman adopted the Marshall Plan as the centerpiece of American foreign policy, our current president has adopted a more universal concept.  It is called the Law of Unintended Consequences.  To wit, President Bush made Iran powerful by destroying Afghanistan and Iraq.  And since Iran has had the temerity to fill the vacuum we created, they must be punished.  Of course, we have no troops to even keep New Orleans safe, much less make Tehran unsafe.  So America's new war with Iran has been outsourced to Israel and Hezbollah, who are respectively, if not respectfully, pushing the buttons on our bombs.  And Condoleezza Rice is left to turn shuttle diplomacy into scuttle diplomacy.  In a stroke of inspiration, Condi has appropriated her method of brokering peace from Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie by regarding America's two biggest threats (Iran and North Korea) with a snarling, "I'm not talking to her!  She knows what she did."   

And since our President is ignoring all inconvenient facts and foes, he's freed up more time for international freshman-mixer high jinx by becoming the Kevin Costner of global diplomacy, alarming German Chancellor Angela Merkel with a "no happy ending" massage at the G8 conference (left).  And perhaps to reassure dignitaries that he, unlike his father, is able to keep food in his mouth while meeting foreigners, W showed Tony Blair how he could talk with a buttered roll turning into slick paste between his teeth without any of it coating Tony's lap.  Although our President did manage to let slip out of that same mouth language that would have gotten a hefty fine from his own gloriously puritanical FCC.

Calling upon the President to appeal to all sides in the current crisis in the Middle East for an immediate cessation of violence and to commit United States diplomats to multi-party negotiations with no preconditions.

July 19, 2006

Mr. KUCINICH (for himself, Mr. RANGEL, Mr. ABERCROMBIE, Ms. SLAUGHTER, Ms. KAPTUR, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. CLEAVER, Ms. LEE, Ms. WOOLSEY, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. FILNER, Mr. STARK, Mr. MCDERMOTT, Mr. HINCHEY, Mr. HONDA, Mr. DAVIS of Illinois, Ms. WATERS, Mr. MORAN of Virginia, Mr. RUSH, Ms. BALDWIN, Ms. KILPATRICK of Michigan, Ms. MCCOLLUM of Minnesota, Ms. SOLIS, and Mr. MEEKS of New York) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred to the Committee on International Relations

Calling upon the President to appeal to all sides in the current crisis in the Middle East for an immediate cessation of violence and to commit United States diplomats to multi-party negotiations with no preconditions.

Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That Congress--

(1) calls upon the President to--

(A) appeal to all sides in the current crisis in the Middle East for an immediate cessation of violence;

(B) commit United States diplomats to multi-party negotiations with no preconditions; and

(C) send a high-level diplomatic mission to the region to facilitate such multi-party negotiations;

(2) urges such multi-party negotiations to begin as soon as possible, including delegations from the governments of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt; and

(3) supports an international peacekeeping mission to southern Lebanon to prevent cross-border skirmishes during such multi-party negotiations.