A few musings

"Senate OKs un-American piece of legislation

A few days ago, the U.S. Senate voted to keep a provision in the national defense authorization bill. The provision allows for the U.S. military to detain indefinitely and without due process any American in America or in another country or any other person in America or in another country that they suspect to be a terrorist.

Both Sen. Olympia Snowe and Sen. Susan Collins voted to keep this provision. How could they have done this? I believe that this provision is the most un-American, most un-democratic, most Sen. McCarthy-like fear-mongering provision that the U.S. Senate has voted on in my life.

Who would determine who is a suspected terrorist, what criteria would be used, and would peaceful demonstrators such as the brave souls in the Occupy movement be detained?

I believe that America's long-time commitment to due progress, legal representation, trial in a U.S. court, presuming someone is innocent until proven guilty, and telling someone what they are being charged with would end.

I think President Barack Obama should veto this bill.

I think that our beloved Sen. Margaret Chase Smith would have thought that there are few, if any, terrorists in America, would have stood up against this provision, and would have understood what I think is the reason behind it.

I think the senators are afraid of the Occupy movement, want to quash non-violent dissent, and are afraid of losing their perches of power and money. I think it's time to recall Snowe and Collins and replace them with bright, honest people who have a conscience and who will not take money from corporations.

It is said that dissent is the highest form of patriotism."
from Brian Noyes Pulling, Minister and social worker


Rev. Noyes, you patriotism is noted. President Obama has promised to veto this when it reaches his desk. I sincerely hope he does. Time will tell.

From President Obama's Kansas speech: "For most Americans, the basic bargain that made this country great has eroded. Long before the recession hit, hard work stopped paying off for too many people. Fewer and fewer of the folks who contributed to the success of our economy actually benefitted from that success. Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and investments than ever before. But everyone else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren't -- and too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt just to keep up."

To paraphrase that great enemy of Capitalism, Karl Marx, When labor can no longer afford what they produce, Capitalism will die. And to think, when this happens it will be those windy Republicans, those great defenders of Capitalism, who will be primarily to blame. How very ironic.

“They don't know it, but they are doing it.” 
― Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production

The lady tells it to the world---Secretary of State Clinton in a speech at the UN:

“It is violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave. It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished. It is a violation of human rights when lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape, or forcibly subjected to hormone treatments, or when people are murdered after public calls for violence toward gays, or when they are forced to flee their nations and seek asylum in other lands to save their lives. And it is a violation of human rights when life-saving care is withheld from people because they are gay, or equal access to justice is denied to people because they are gay, or public spaces are out of bounds to people because they are gay. No matter what we look like, where we come from, or who we are, we are all equally entitled to our human rights and dignity.”

“Occupy the Winter! An #OWS Winter will certainly lead to a very hopeful American Spring”,  says Michael Moore.

In an effort to check our hubris concerning  the all-too-flattering common assumption that America deserves the credit for having invented the modern republican State, Bernard-Henri Lévy, French philosopher and writer, in a review of Blandine Barret-Kriegel's book, La République et le prince modern states:“Bullshit, says the author, it's merely the nth and regrettable manifestation of what we must call our hopelessly dense chauvinism. The actual primitive stage of the republican idea is not France of the Enlightenment. It's not even America or England and their respective revolutions. It's a much more modest country, one of much less import. It is a country that doesn't make such a huge deal of its own History. It is Holland and its popular uprising against the Spain of Philip II, at the end of the 16th century. A complete reversal of perspectives. A decentering of quasi-Copernican proportions. A book that sets the story straight and puts the legend in its place -- a rarity, indeed.”