More national pablum in defense of an idiot who could do no right. Christopher Hitchens says it well.
Let's Toast to Ten Good Things About 2006
By Medea Benjamin
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor
Friday 29 December 2006
As we close this year on the low of a devastating conflict in Iraq and a president contemplating sending yet more troops to fight and die in an unwinnable war, let us not forget that it was a year of many positive gains for the progressive movement.
Here are just ten:
1. First, of course, is the November elections, when voters gave Republicans an "electoral thumpin'." From California's Jerry McNerney to Ohio's Sherrod Brown to Minnesota's Keith Ellison, Democrats all over the country won elections by slamming Bush's war. The collapse of one-party rule in Washington reflected a spectacular repudiation of George Bush and handed Congress a mandate to get out of Iraq.
2. Latino communities throughout the United States took center stage in the spring of 2006, putting May Day back on the map as a day of grassroots mobilizing. From high-school students to union members to community organizers, the spirit and energy of millions of immigrants demanding to be treated with dignity and respect took the nation by surprise. Immigrants not only carved out new political space, but in the age of e-activism, they breathed new life into the importance of "street heat."
3. After decades of dictating the rules of the global economy, World Trade Organization talks fell flat on their face in 2006. Activists the world over celebrated its collapse after years of work to sink this titanic tool of empire. The work to derail corporate-dominated trade policies is far from over, with bilateral free-trade agreements taking the place of the WTO. But the WTO and its model of globalization have been exposed as a dismal failure, and opposition continues to grow worldwide.
4. Bush opened 2006 with a State of the Union Address bemoaning our "addiction to oil"; 86 prominent evangelicals called global warming a moral issue; Al Gore educated millions with his film, "An Inconvenient Truth"; and Time magazine declared that earth is at a tipping point with melting ice, drought, wind, disease, and fires raging out of control. Historians may one day look back on 2006 as the "tipping-point" year when human societies - including the United States as the major superpower and the major polluter - woke up to the precarious state of our world and decided it was time to find solutions.
5. As a clear indicator of the shift from debating global warming to doing something about it, this year, California passed the nation's toughest legislation to curb greenhouse gases. The groundbreaking bill would require the state to cut back its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020: a reduction of approximately 25 percent. A smart politico, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, saw the green writing on the wall and joined the state's Democrats in setting a new environmental standard for the rest of the nation to follow.
6. In a year when Enron executives were found guilty of cooking the books, Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for proving that poor people can be more reliable money managers than rich ones. Yunus's "microcredit movement" started out giving small loans to poor Bangladeshis, mostly women, and mushroomed into a worldwide movement that has extended small loans to millions of the world's poor. By awarding Yunus the Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee not only recognized the credit-worthiness of the poor, but acknowledged that poverty is a threat to peace. As Yunus said in his acceptance speech, "I believe that putting resources into improving the lives of the poor people is a better strategy [for combating terrorism] than spending it on guns."
7. While the fighting between Israel and Lebanon left more than 1,000 dead, mostly Lebanese, a cease-fire was achieved after only 34 days. When the violence threatened to spiral out of control, the United Nations, the Arab League, and individual governments stepped forward to insist on negotiations, to hammer out a cease-fire agreement and to provide international peacekeeping forces to serve as monitors. What could have been a prolonged conflict with devastating consequences for the entire region was halted. The lessons that SHOULD have been learned when the powerful Israeli military was unable to "win" the conflict through force are that military aggression will not solve the deep-seated problems in the region, and that negotiations and peace processes can work.
8. Speaking of dialogue, Jimmy Carter, with his new book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," took on the greatest taboo in US politics: the gross violation of Palestinian rights and the unqualified US government support for the Israeli government. Likening Israel's policies in the Palestinian territories to the racist white rule in South Africa, Carter has raised a firestorm of controversy. But finally, FINALLY, someone with the credentials of a statesman, a peacemaker and a friend of Israel is crying out against Israel's hellish treatment of Palestinians. The public is embracing his views: his book quickly became a best seller, and he has been greeted by enthusiastic crowds at appearances around the country. Hopefully, our elected officials will start listening as well.
9. In 2006, we managed to stop the next war from starting! With the US bogged down in Iraq and the public sick of war, it has been impossible for the Bush administration to launch an attack against another country, such as Iran or North Korea. The army doesn't have enough recruits to fight a new war, and politicians know it would be political suicide to reinstate the draft. Two major warmongers - Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton - were forced out of power. And with Bush obligated to appoint a new ambassador to the United Nations, perhaps diplomacy will come back into fashion.
10. Across Latin America, elections have continued to bring a wave of progressive leadership to power. With the victories of Daniel Ortega and Rafael Correa, Nicaragua and Ecuador join Bolivia, Venezuela, Chile and Brazil as governments committed to improving the lives of the majority. As a sign of the radical changes in the region, Bolivia's Evo Morales marked May 1 by nationalizing the country's oil and gas resources. "After today," he declared, "the hydrocarbons will belong to all Bolivians. Never again will they be in the hands of transnational corporations. Today the country - la patria - stands up."
So here's a toast to nations standing up to greedy transnationals; to people standing up to leaders who abuse their power, to humanity standing up to save the planet we inhabit - and to bringing our troops home in 2007!
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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange.
The time has come. It is time for Bush to go. Nancy Pelosi must reconsider the impeachment procedures.
"...by 2009, whoever becomes the next President will face a likely conflagration in the Middle East, with the real possibility that Bush will have inflamed Islamic radicalism so much that the region's few pro-U.S. pillars -- such as the Saudi royal family or the Egyptian dictatorship -- will be tottering if not already fallen.
Disruptions of Middle East oil supplies could wreak havoc on the U.S. and world economies. Plus, Bush might end up precipitating just the grim vision that he has long articulated -- an interminable world war pitting the West against large segments of the planet's one billion Muslims.
Faced with this looming catastrophe, the congressional Democrats may have no choice but to reconsider what incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others have ruled "off the table," the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Indeed, Bush's cavalier dismissal of the key Baker-Hamilton recommendations creates a possible framework for a bipartisan impeachment effort.
A less confrontational approach could be Republican and Democratic pressure on Bush and Cheney to agree to sequential resignations, replacing Cheney first with a new Vice President who would then assume the presidency upon Bush's resignation.
As unlikely -- and extreme -- as these scenarios may sound, the future of the American Republic may demand nothing less.
If Bush cannot come to grips with reality -- and adopt a less ideological approach toward the Middle East -- there may be no realistic choice but for the American people and their elected representatives to make clear that it's time for him to go." [more]
American arrogance knows no limits. It turns out Baker and Hamilton have been a few hours in Iraq and have not even asked the Iraqis, not even our allied government. Of course, the Iraqi president Jalal Talabani said Sunday "the bipartisan U.S. report calling for a new approach to the war offered dangerous recommendations that would undermine his country's sovereignty and were 'an insult to the people of Iraq.''' [more]
At a reception following the midterm election, President Bush approached Senator-elect James Webb.
“How’s your boy?” asked Mr. Bush.
“I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President,” replied Mr. Webb, whose son, a Marine lance corporal, is risking his life in Mr. Bush’s war of choice.
“That’s not what I asked you,” the president snapped. “How’s your boy?”
“That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President,” said Mr. Webb.
Good for him. We need people in Washington who are willing to stand up to the bully in chief. Unfortunately, and somewhat mysteriously, they’re still in short supply.
Paul Krugman has it right [more]
"The American people are entitled to answers about the behavior of the most reactionary and incompetent administration in modern American history" says new Vermont Senator, the Socialist Bernie Sanders. It is time the Bush administration answers for its deeds. [more]
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Spain, Italy and France will launch a new Middle East peace plan, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said on Thursday, the BBC reported. . "Peace between Israel and the Palestinians means to a large extent peace on the international scene," Zapatero said after talks with visiting French President Jacques Chirac. He said the plan would be presented at an EU summit in December. "We want to launch a joint initiative on the Middle East situation and push it through at European Union level, preferably with Germany and Britain,” the Spanish Prime Minister said. "We cannot remain impassive in the face of the horror that continues to unfold before our eyes… Violence has reached a level of deterioration that requires determined, urgent action by the international community.” The proposal would include an immediate ceasefire in the occupied Palestinian territories, an exchange of prisoners, an international peace conference on Middle East peace, and the resumption of peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. The three countries are also calling for the formation of a national unity Palestinian government, and the dispatch of a fact-finding mission to the region, Zapatero said.
For his part, Chirac said the European Union must act in the face of "the increasingly dramatic situation in the Middle East and in Palestine in particular." "We are going to act jointly with the Spanish and Italian governments, with the co-operation of the EU... to try to initiate the indispensable moral and political reforms in the Middle East," he added. There was no immediate comment from Israel, the Palestinians or the United States. The two European leaders spoke amid fresh violence in the region. Israel’s air force pounded Gaza overnight hours after the Israeli government vowed to expand its military operations in the coastal strip following a wave of Palestinian rocket attacks that killed an Israeli woman in the southern Israeli town of Sderot. Israel often claims that the threat from Palestinian rocket attacks is the main reason for its bloody attacks in Gaza, where more than 400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed since an Israeli soldier was captured by Palestinian fighters in June. More than 60% of Palestinians killed in Gaza were civilians and at least 20% minors, according to a recent report by the Physicians for Human Rights group. The violence comes amid Palestinian political wrangling over the formation of a national unity government. President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction and the ruling Hamas party have been deadlocked for months over the creation of a unity administration. The U.S. and EU imposed crippling sanctions on the Palestinian government after Hamas took office in March in an effort to pressure the governing party to recognize Israel, give up anti-Israel attacks and accept past peace deals with the Jewish state. The Western aid embargo causes widespread hardship in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip. | ||||
Here is a loud and clear voice: We demand the Democrats listen to us and get out of Iraq now.!!
The responsibility to end this war now falls upon the Democrats. Congress controls the purse strings and the Constitution says only Congress can declare war. Mr. Reid and Ms. Pelosi now hold the power to put an end to this madness. Failure to do so will bring the wrath of the voters. We aren't kidding around, Democrats, and if you don't believe us, just go ahead and continue this war another month. We will fight you harder than we did the Republicans. The opening page of my website has a photo of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, each made up by a collage of photos of the American soldiers who have died in Bush's War. But it is now about to become the Bush/Democratic Party War unless swift action is taken.
This is what we demand:
1. Bring the troops home now. Not six months from now. NOW. Quit looking for a way to win. We can't win. We've lost. Sometimes you lose. This is one of those times. Be brave and admit it. [more]
“Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization.” Dr. Steven Weinberg
Finally, a convention of scientists to discuss the malefic influence of religion on the world: “I don’t know how many more engineers and architects need to fly planes into our buildings before we realize that this is not merely a matter of lack of education or economic despair,” said Sam Harris. [more]
Watch the proceedings of this conference in a series of videos. They are big and slow to download. I recommend you download them to your computer rather than play them directly. Slow process but immensely worth the effort. Get them here.
