"Capture the Flag"

‘Capture the Flag: A Political History of American Patriotism’

The flag is not powerful in spite of its ambiguity; it is powerful because of its ambiguity. It has stood, at different times, for radical democracy, opposition to immigration, the abolition of slavery, unregulated capitalism, segregation, integration, and a hawkish war policy, among many other things.

Read a selection from the introduction of "Capture the Flag: A Political History of American Patriotism" by Woden Teachout

A winter wind swept across New York Harbor on a late after noon the day after Christmas in 1971. Tourists riding the last two ferries from Manhattan to the Statue of Liberty huddled against the bulkheads, sheltering themselves from the gusts. Among the passengers were clusters of long-haired adults in well used army-surplus clothing, looking for all the world like hippies taking in the world-famous landmark. The mission of these fifteen men, however, went far beyond tourism.

Immediately upon docking at the island, the men performed a quick reconnaissance. They wedged open a few doors and then took refuge from sight; some crouched behind the massive supporting columns in the base of the statue. Some found storage closets and tucked themselves away......................Read Rest Here

Description

Americans honor the flag with a fervor seen in few other countries: The Stars and Stripes decorate American homes and businesses; wave over sports events and funerals; and embellish everything from politicians’ lapels to the surface of the moon.

But what does the flag mean? In Capture the Flag, historian Woden Teachout reveals that it has held vastly different meanings over time. It has been claimed by both the right and left; by racists and revolutionaries; by immigrants and nativists. In tracing the political history of the flag from its origins in the American Revolution through the present day, Teachout demonstrates that the shifting symbolism of the flag reveals a broader shift in the definition of American patriotism.

A story of a nation in search of itself, Capture the Flag offers a probing account of the flag that has become America’s icon.

James Patterson, author of "Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy"
“Displaying a fine eye and narrative skill in recounting key episodes—among them the Revolution, nativist riots, the bombardment of Fort Sumter, civil rights activism, and the New York City hard hat riot of 1970—Woden Teachout reminds us of how important the American flag has been as a symbol for a wide variety of patriotic causes.”

Back in December 2006 I posted about this and than again in December 2008 a repost with some added material Distress: December 26th 1971 and December 26th 2008

In that one I started it out with some words and this repost part:

December 26, 1971
Two dozen members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War "liberated" the Statue of Liberty with a sit-in to protest resumed U.S. aerial bombings in Vietnam. They flew an inverted U.S. flag from the crown as a signal of distress.


We've now had many years of not one but two Invasions and Occupations better known as Wars of Choice, though soldiers and those occupied are still dying in one it has become a stagnant theater on a hair trigger, the other rapidly ramping up in deaths and destruction, both are and have been recruiting actions for what we now call 'International Terrorism', Criminal Terrorism that will rear it's head, with no boundries, over and over for decades, as the number of those who will carry out these acts have greatly increased due to own terror forced on others!


Below is the '06 post with little change, to remember that shoutout of Distress on it's Anniversary, and as a call for Thought of what we now are facing. Still two occupations of others, this time those serving are doing so over and over and over.............., and to eight years of extremely failed policies and total incompetence as well as multiple corruptions and crimes, in and out of government, but also to the crimes against humanity this country has allowed and seems unwilling to face nor call accountability for!

If you visit this you will find the rest of the 2006 post as well as a few more clips with links and a bigger photo, of the one directly above, of the Distress Flag flying from the crown of the Statue.

While wrapping ourselves in 'Old Glory' we as a Nation are moving further apart under the manipulation of changing political ideologies or the twisting of their meanings, in fear by the voices of the few.

Global Press.......

Global Press Freedom Declines-Freedom House

Journalists are facing an increasingly dismal working environment, with a decline in global press freedom in every region of the world. Those are among the findings of a report released Friday by Freedom House, a Washington-based organization that supports freedom around the world.

In the nearly 30 years Freedom House has been rating global press freedom, 2008 is the first year it has reported declines in every region across the world.

The executive director of Freedom House, Jennifer Windsor, says the journalism profession is fighting to stay alive, which she warns has enormous implications for democracy. "Declines have been registered in established democracies, as well as partly free countries, and the most repressive regimes have continued to tighten their grip in order to control the information flows that have become increasingly globalized and out of their control," she said. >>>>>Rest Here-VOA News

Freedom of the Press 2009 Survey Release

Israel Loses Prized 'Free' Press Status; Kuwait Tops Arab World

Israel's media freedom ranking has been downgraded from "free" to "partly free," the first time the Jewish State has lost its status as the only Middle Eastern nation with a "free" ...

Iraq's Workers Unite as U.S. workers welllllllll........

Look around you, what can one say, except possibly going further into lower wages, at least they wouldn't be stagnant as they have been for most for these past years.

And workers having a Voice, C'mon!!!

Iraqi unions announce new confederation

And where did this take place, wellll.... in Iraq, of all places:

People's Weekly World Newspaper, 03/17/09

At the first International Labor Conference ever held in Iraq, three of the country’s major labor organizations announced the formation of a new labor confederation.

At the close of the two day meeting of Iraqi unions with their international allies, Iraq’s powerful Federation of Oil Unions, the nationwide Electricity Association and the General Federation of Workers Councils and Unions signed an agreement to create a new labor confederation, a step toward unifying the Iraqi labor movement as an advocate for the interests of Iraqi workers.
The conference, held on March 13-14 in Erbil in the Kurdish Region of Iraq, drew more than 200 delegates from unions and federations across Iraq and solidarity delegations from the U.S., the United Kingdom, South Africa, Japan, Australia, and Iran.

More than a year in the making, the conference drew representatives from Iraq’s oil and gas industry, its port union, the electrical generation and distribution industry, construction, public sector, transportation, communications, education, rail roads, service and health care industries, machinists and metal working sector, the petro-chemical industry, civil engineers, writers and journalists, food oil workers, tailors and students. Workers attended from fifteen of Iraq’s eighteen provinces.

U.S. Labor Against The War did post up an announcement to this gathering of Iraqi workers:

It's in PDF form and you can read it in full here.

As it starts out with this:

To: The First International Labour Conference in Erbil, Iraq, March 13-14, 2009

From: The 186 organizations affiliated with U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW)

Dear Sisters and Brothers:

We send you our greetings and solidarity on the momentous occasion of the First International Labour Conference in Iraq.
This historic gathering of Iraqi unions and labour federations with your international allies marks an important step toward full
restoration of the inalienable rights of Iraq’s workers to organize and bargain collectively in defense of the their interests in
unions of their own choosing, free of government interference, influence or control.

These rights are enshrined in the internationally recognized core conventions on the rights of workers adopted by the
International Labour Organization of the United Nations. These rights apply to all workers, in both public and private
sectors.

These rights are promised by the new Iraqi Constitution.

Oh and in case you were wondering, there were U.S. Labor representatives at the conference:

The U.S. delegation of six was organized by U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW), a network of 186 local, regional, state and national labor organizations that together represent more than five million union members. It included USLAW National Organizer Michael Eisenscher; USLAW Steering Committee Member Michael Zweig (a leader of United University Professions/AFT Local 2190); Bill Shortell, President of the Central Connecticut Labor Council; Jim Norris, President of United Steel Workers Local 675, representing oil industry workers in Southern California; and two members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, T.J. Buonomo from Philadelphia, and Aaron Hughes of Chicago.

This country, the U.S., has to rebuild the Labor Movement with stronger unions, not repeating the mistakes of the past, the workers of this country is what built it, and as we've been watching the money changers are the ones who have destroyed it.

Who's more equipped to rebuild the Labor Unions and Labor Rights, those who've are already known to be dedicated servers of the country and have now, many of them, served multiple tours in not one but two major long running conflicts and occupations. These Veterans have faced the adversity that the greater majority will never face, as that majority wasn't even asked to sacrifice. They've been tested beyond what most would be, they understand what working together can bring in results. They need now become our new leaders to rebuild this country, we have a long way to go to even get back to where we were.

This countries majority are mind and hand workers, not paper pushers, always have been. Some of these disciplined Veterans will, and should, get the knowledge needed to start and run new companies, others will get their knowledge, or use the already known and enhancing that, helping to build these new companies, but all must work together and share the success of these companies, for them, for their families, and for the country!

We must have new companies under the banner of defense contractors, the old are to well embedded and do what they please with little condemnation. We must get some of our manufacturing back, we've already lost way to many trades and a whole hell of a lot of experience, we can't have a Strong National Defense when we depend on others to manufacture our needs, especially in a National Disaster should one prevail. Just look around, where do those who've been laid off go, into the commercial or service sectors, if no ones buying there's no need for more workers at low wages, the stores and services are laying off as well.

If the Fat Cats don't want to give up their obscene compensations and perks, than the workers have to become as one and fight for what's right.

Telling auto workers they have to give back wages and benefits, again, to save their jobs, which is questionable to say the least, while executives receive 'multi- million dollar bonuses' on top of multi-million dollar wages and perks, is beyond obscene.

Blaming worker wages for being excess and causing the problems in cost and returns on investments is a fantasy fairytale that must end, if there's so much wealth to distribute to the top tier's than that's where the problem is. It isn't only in compensation it's also in what these companies spend to keep those they call the cream of the crop to stay, success or failure, and write off or hide from the tax payers.

And one way to do what is responsible, our responsibility, is to work with these Iraqi's, after the destruction we wrought on their country for no reason!!!!

UpDate: Passed on from those that were there

"A dramatic moment in the conference occurred when T.J. Buonomo, a former U.S. Military intelligence officer, and Aaron Hughes, a former U.S. Army sergeant, both of Iraq Veterans Against the War, took the stage to deliver their remarks. It was the first time that veterans of the U.S. military had returned to publicly acknowledge crimes committed against the Iraqi people and to apologize for their role in the economic and military occupation of Iraq. They said they were not there to ask forgiveness, but rather to take responsibility and to demonstrate their solidarity with the Iraqi people. They denounced the manipulation of intelligence, bribing of Iraqi journalists, the torture of Iraqi prisoners, the suppression of worker rights, and attempts by the U.S. government and multinational corporations to control Iraqi oil. The response was immediate, powerful, and heartfelt. One Iraqi union leader who had been considered a staunch nationalist rushed the stage to embrace the veterans. "

Distress: December 26th 1971 and December 26th 2008

Back on December 26th 2006 I put together a post, for my site and a few others, in remembrance of an anniversary of a day my fellow Vietnam Veterans made a statement to our country, a statement of a Country in Distress, Our Country!


A shoutout about not only our War of Choice but what our society was going through, Civil Rights Movement, care of the returning Vets, civil disobedience for the many failed policies, and more, the statement wasn't really taken seriously except by the minority, as is usually the case, the country itself just dug deeper into it's apathy and never came to terms with our War and Occupation and still hasn't!


December 26, 1971
Two dozen members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War "liberated" the Statue of Liberty with a sit-in to protest resumed U.S. aerial bombings in Vietnam. They flew an inverted U.S. flag from the crown as a signal of distress.


We've now had many years of not one but two Invasions and Occupations better known as Wars of Choice, though soldiers and those occupied are still dying in one it has become a stagnant theater on a hair trigger, the other rapidly ramping up in deaths and destruction, both are and have been recruiting actions for what we now call 'International Terrorism', Criminal Terrorism that will rear it's head, with no boundries, over and over for decades, as the number of those who will carry out these acts have greatly increased due to own terror forced on others!


Below is the '06 post with little change, to remember that shoutout of Distress on it's Anniversary, and as a call for Thought of what we now are facing. Still two occupations of others, this time those serving are doing so over and over and over.............., and to eight years of extremely failed policies and total incompetence as well as multiple corruptions and crimes, in and out of government, but also to the crimes against humanity this country has allowed and seems unwilling to face nor call accountability for!


We have the ability to change some of what is happening, even as the economy is collapsing and bringing down other economies, but we can't take back nor be forgivin for bthe deaths and destruction we've wrought on others, we can minimize the blowback, but blowback there will be, destructive and economic, for years to come!


VVAW Anniversary-Dec 26th 1971-Statue of Liberty, Liberation


Six Vietnam veterans founded the VVAW in New York City in 1967 when they marched in a peace demonstration. Organized for returning troops to voice their opposition to the war that was still taking place in Indochina, the VVAW continues to grow, with over 30,000 members, according to the VVAW web Site.


The VVAW {Vietnam Veterans Against the War} focuses mainly on achieving better benefits for all veterans.



Vietnam Veterans take the Statue of Liberty, December 26th 1971. Two dozen members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War "liberated" the Statue of Liberty with a sit-in to protest resumed U.S. aerial bombings in Vietnam.They flew an inverted U.S. flag from the crown as a signal of distress.
Peace History December 25-31 by Carl Bunin


THE STATUE OF LIBERTY: MONUMENT TO AN EXPANDING SET OF IDEALS

Tim MacCormick of New Jersey and fourteen other members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, on the afternoon of December 26, 1971, arrived on Liberty Island by the Circle Line boat along with other tourists. But, when the last return ship to Manhattan sailed that evening, the veterans were not aboard. Instead, just before closing time, they hid among the exhibit partitions, building materials, and storage closets which were lying about the monument's base while work was being finished on the American Museum of Immigration. When NPS personnel made their 7:30 evening check-up of the statue, they found that the veterans had seized control of the landmark and barricaded the three ground floor entrances. The men inside refused to speak to or admit any Park Service people, but on the door they posted a typewritten statement addressed to President Richard M. Nixon:

Each Vietnam veteran who has barricaded himself within this international symbol of liberty has for many years rationalized his attitude to war. . . .We can no longer tolerate the war in Southeast Asia. . . .Mr. Nixon, you set the date [for leaving Vietnam], we'll evacuate. {13}

On December 27, twenty-one National Park police flew to Liberty Island from Washington where they were joined by New York City police and Coast Guardsmen. These security forces stood by while the government attempted to reach a peaceful compromise with the occupiers. They were told that they would be permitted to picket and protest on the island if they would simply vacate the statue, allowing it to reopen to visitors. The veterans rejected the offer, flew the United States flag upside down from the statue's crown, and waited. Law enforcement officers also waited. During that day thousands of disappointed tourists were told at the Battery that they could not go out to the statue. Congresswoman Bella Abzug (Democrat-New York) sent a telephone message of support to the demonstrators.



Members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War leaving the Statue of Liberty, which they had occupied for two days. The demonstrators emerged in response to a court order, December 28, 1971.
(Source: Photograph Collection of the American Museum of Immigration, Liberty Island, U.S. Department of the Interior, NPS)


Meanwhile, United States Attorney Whitney North Seymour, Jr., went before District Court Judge Lawrence Pierce to request an injunction directing the veterans to open the doors, leave the statue except during regular visiting hours, and permit Park Service personnel and tourists to enter. On the morning of December 28 Judge Pierce issued a temporary restraining order, instructing the protestors to leave the statue "forthwith." Two hours later, after conferring with their lawyers, the veterans removed the barricades from the entrances and emerged with "clenched fists raised." They had cleaned up their debris and caused no significant damage to the property. The monument was reopened to the public, with the first ferry-load of visitors arriving at 2:15 that afternoon.
Tim MacCormick issued a statement to the press explaining why they had picked this particular target:

The reason we chose the Statue of Liberty is that since we were children, the statue has been analogous in our minds with freedom and an America we love.
Then we went to fight a war in the name of freedom. We saw that freedom is a selective expression allowed only to those who are white and maintain the status quo.
Until this symbol again takes on the meaning it was intended to have, we must continue our demonstrations. . . . {14}

The Story of a Vietnam Vet

In the 1970s, when the Department of Veterans’ Affairs cut off about 7.9 million troops’ benefits, the VVAW took over the Statue of Liberty, covering her eyes with protest banners.


“This was the second time that the VVAW had taken over the Statue of Liberty. This would be an 18-hour takeover before the park police finally came and removed us,” Davis recalls. “I was one of those people inside that statue. I was the national coordinator for the (VVAW) at the time.”


There’s a glimmer in Davis’ gray-blue eyes as he tells this story.


“The New York Post carrying a front-page story about how we ruined these poor tourists’ opportunities to see the Statue of Liberty, and we weren’t very sympathetic,” he says.


Davis says that one of the things he hears the most about the VVAW is that it is simply a negative, anti-war organization, but he says that its main goals have been to provide benefits and counseling in order to help veterans.


As Davis trudges through his memories, he recalls that upon coming back, what was harder than seeing his society altered was dealing with how much he had changed.


It’s impossible for anyone who has never been in combat to understand the emotional baggage that soldiers come back with. For those who remain at home, it seems that soldiers are simply away for a while; meanwhile, the soldiers themselves are going through some of the most horrifying and gruesome experiences of their lives, and they are never the same, even when they do come back.


But men like Davis and organizations like the VVAW continue to try making life more livable for returning soldiers.


“We’ve had to do it for ourselves, and once you learn to do it for yourself, you learn to do it for other people,” Davis says. “Modern war brings a lot of horrific images. You don’t ever get over that, you just learn to deal with it.”

Stop Crying: We won our War


Disillusioned with war and plagued by nightmares back in the U.S., Romo and Davis looked to the government for psychological counseling and found nothing.


Next, they turned to the only people they knew they could trust: other war veterans.


“One of the first things we discovered pretty quickly,” said Davis,“was that if we were going to survive, we needed each other to do it.”


But interactions between the Vietnam veterans and veterans’ groups such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion were strained, if not belligerent, Davis and Romo recalled.


“There was tremendous hostility from older veterans,” Davis said. “Many of those American Legion types and VFWs said that we were just a bunch of crybabies.”


The VVAW is Formed


But while Davis and Romo were in basic training, six Vietnam vets marched together in a 1967 New York City peace demonstration and founded Vietnam Veterans Against War (VVAW). The VVAW stood in stark contrast to the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.


According to Davis, the America Legion represented only a small, selective group of veterans.


Davis describes the Veterans of Foreign Wars as a more egalitarian veterans’ group with the same patriotic function as the American Legion; however, neither focused on benefits. When soldiers from Vietnam began arriving home physically and psychologically damaged, Davis and Romo felt that both groups looked the other way.


From Malaise to Action


On December 26, 1971, sixteen VVAW demonstrators seized the Statue of Liberty in New York City to call attention to what Vietnam vets termed “post-Vietnam stress disorder” as well as the lack of promised programs and benefits.


“In the 1970s, because we were getting nowhere on the issue of stress disorders associated with Vietnam, we declared war on the Veterans Affairs Administration,” Davis said. “Some of us adopted the slogan that we were like ‘no deposit, no return’ bottles … Once the government had emptied us out, they chucked us.”


To assist veterans with post-Vietnam stress, the VVAW gained national recognition in the 1970s for setting up public “rap” therapy groups to help vets deal with painful memories.


We Will not be Ignored


The VVAW took over the Statue of Liberty a second time in 1976, raising even more awareness of veterans’ issues. Since that time, post-Vietnam stress disorder has been formally diagnosed and renamed by the medical community as post-traumatic stress disorder.


Now a group of over 30,000 members, the VVAW works to expose poor and under-funded care in VA hospitals, draft legislation to improve educational job programs and argue for the amnesty of war resisters and vets with questionable dishonorable discharges. During the 1980s, the VVAW publicized the Veterans’ Administration’s attempt to conceal the harmful effects of chemical defoliants like Agent Orange used during Vietnam and the Gulf War.


Passing the Torch


Davis and Romo consider themselves very lucky compared with many of their fellow veterans. Both have held steady jobs for the last 20 years and lead what they describe as normal lives with loving families.
As national coordinators for the VVAW, Davis and Romo both speak regularly at veterans’ events and meeting as well as high schools to instill the wisdom they once so desperately lacked to veterans returning today from Iraq and Afghanistan.


“We’re trying to be like mentors to the new vets,” Romo said. “Basically, we’re doing what other vets didn’t do for us.”

One Vet's Vigil


Christmas reminds Paul Fichter of Miss Liberty takeover 35 years ago

By Tim Blangger Of The Morning Call
December 24, 2006

Referance: Vietnam Veterans Against the War

The Statue of Liberty is among the best known monuments in the world. ... to take-overs by Vietnam veterans and other activists in the 1970s and 1980s. ...PDF


Vietnam Veterans Against the War

Veterans For Peace

Iraq Veterans Against the War

Iraq and Afganistan Veterans of America

Veterans for America



Military Families Speak Out

Veterans For Peace

Bring Them Home NOW


Once a soldier takes the Oath that Oath stays with him or her for life, it's engrained as are the experiances

Oath of Enlistment
I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (So help me God.)

Oath of Office is a solemn oath taken by officers of the United States Uniformed Services on commissioning
I, [name], do solemnly swear, (or affirm,) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. (So help me God.)

The 'chubby' little Voter Felon!!

was arrested on voter fraud charges.

And I would say this little chubby 25yr old is a true blue 'chickenhawk' along with being of criminal mind, or why isn't he in the military defending the 'homeland'!!

Ontario police arrest man in voter fraud case

Signature-Gatherer Arrested In Voter Fraud
Calif. GOP Contractor Accused In Registration Scam Charged With Falsely Registering Own Address

Video link for LA Times Story above


As I'm sure he uses his computer to keep tabs on, and receive his talking points, I offer his Medal, a military one seems not what he would look for while trying to create havoc in our Democratic Voting process and Right!


And as there will be no Military Patches for our brave little Voter Registration and his own possible Voter Fraud I feel it's my duty to embellish this tool of Democracy destruction the following patch, to wear Proudly!!


From all of us older Veterans but Especially from the Soldiers of todays Multiple Tours Extremely Dangerous Occupations and Veterans of same who served their Multiple Tours and Survived, we hope you wear this with pride!!

And because you've chosen a different route, not to defend country, but to destroy the citizens rights to participate the way they choose by Registering to Vote and Registering to a Party of their choice, plus make this post really worthwhile let me bring the Reality!

Afghanistan:

Fighting In A "Hornet's Nest"

There is a reason the base 60 Minutes and correspondent Lara Logan traveled to is called "Wilderness." It's in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but desolate mountains stretching endlessly into the distance, until you drop onto a tiny patch of ground not much bigger than a football field in the heart of enemy territory.

"I thought it was gonna be a little bit quieter here. But we landed in a hornet's nest when we got here," explains Staff Sgt. Jake Schlereth.

When Schlereth, 27, and 33-year-old Sgt. First Class Anthony Barnes were sent to Afghanistan, they thought the fight was mostly over.

When he arrived in Afghanistan, Sgt. Schlereth didn't think he'd be landing in a hornet's nest. "I guess I really didn't know what to expect when I got here. I'd never been here before, I'd only been to Iraq. And you didn't hear too much about Afghanistan on the news. It was all about Iraq."

"Iraq, yeah. … Roles are reversed," Sgt. Barnes comments.

"Yeah. Reversed. And now it's all about here," Schlereth agrees.

It's all about "here" because the fight in Afghanistan is worse than ever. The tiny base has been hit by rockets and mortars at least 30 times since these soldiers arrived in March.

And that's only part of it: Barnes, Schlereth and their fellow soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division have survived 20 ambushes on their patrols.

Combat In Afghanistan

Oct. 19, 2008 Enemy combatants for U.S. troops are on the rise in Afghanistan. Lara Logan reports from a forward operating base near Pakistan.

Frontlines Of Al Qaeda

02/11/2004: Lara Logan reported from the frontline of the War on Terror in Afghanistan

Ambush In Afghanistan

U.S. Army Special Forces say they were shocked by military tactics used by Taliban fighters who ambushed them near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in their first account of the unreported battle. Lara Logan reports.

And NPR Diane Rehm Show this morning - ACORN

The Allegations against ACORN

John McCain and other Republicans accuse the grass roots community organization ACORN of attempting to steal next month’s presidential election. The organization says it has helped register one-point-three million low-income, minority and young voters. A look at ACORN and the allegations against it
Guests

Bertha Lewis, Interim Chief Organizer of ACORN.

Greg Gordon, National Correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers Washington Bureau.

Ken Klukowski, Legal Analyst for the American Civil Rights Union.

Steve Ansolabehere, Professor of Government at Harvard University.

Listen with Real Player

Listen with Wondows Media Player

Overseas American Voters: Military, Civilian, and Kids Old Enough

New online tool to aid with overseas voting is launched

An online tool was launched this week that proponents say will make it easier for overseas Americans to vote if they have requested but not received their absentee ballot.

Users who log on to Overseas Vote Foundation can click on the FWAB link and be prompted for information according to the ZIP code where they are registered to vote.

The system presents the federal candidate lists for a voter’s district. Voters can mark their ballot on the computer or print it out and mark it by hand. Users are then provided the address of their home county election official where they mail their write-in ballot.

OVF and Defense Department officials recommend that overseas voters who don’t receive their ballot by Sept. 30 use the FWAB.

If you want abit more click link above.

Waiting for a ballot?

Did you register to vote and request an absentee ballot for this election? Are you still waiting for it to arrive? If so, you can use the federal write-in absentee ballot, which will let you vote in your district’s federal races. Voting officials recommend using the FWAB option if you don’t receive your ballot by Sept. 30.

To use a new automated system that will help you fill out a write-in ballot for your home county, log on to Overseas Vote Foundation.

The Dilemma of Black Patriotism

route66 has a diary up about today, Flag Day here in these United States.

I was going to post up something I found recently that attempts to explain some recent occurances on the meaning of 'Patriotism', and a tie in with 'route66' diary is appropriate on this day.

After all I'm one of the millions, in this country, who have been called 'UnPatriotic' for having not walked in lockstep with the criminal cabal, and their followers, who have led this country into it's extreme failed policies of an Occupation built on Lies and Fixed Intelligence and done in All Our Names!

I'm not a Black American, I'm one of us many Lilly White Folks.

I happend upon this article Defining patriotism the other day, with a Video at the top.

The article leads off with this:

Presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama’s patriotism came under suspicion when he decided not to wear the flag lapel pin.

Than a comment about what his wife said as well as the once Rev. of the church he attends had said, which we all know to well.

In the video we hear from Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Roger Wilkins, who says:

blacks have just as long a history of patriotism as other Americans, but “our patriotism is rooted in a country that abused us, our ancestors, in a terrible way.”
Wilkins wrote a book, Jefferson's Pillow: The Founding Fathers and the Dilemma of Black Patriotism, to answer the question of black patriotism: “How can you be patriotic when the historic moment that we revere the most, The Revolution, was run by a bunch of guys, many of whom owned slaves.”

Watch the video:

http://www.livevideo.com

Do I understand what Barack says about the lapel flag pin,Yes!

Do I understand his wifes statement, Yes!

Do I understand where Rev. Wright is coming from, Yes!

Do I understand Roger Wilkins, Yes!

I grew up when Segregation was still very rampent in this Country, also learning the history of same through the books and movies on how we tried to totally eleminate the Natives of this Land and almost succeeded as some of our Lily White ancesters placed those that survived under our control!

When I finished the Navy Bootcamp, '67 to '71 was my tour of duty to country, my first duty station was the Meridian Naval Air Station, Meridian Miss., which is now also called McCain Field.

When I arrived there the trial of the killings of the young civil rights workers was just gearing up, made more infamous in the movie 'Mississippi Burning' and was to take place in Meridian some 15 miles from the base.

I was still there when Martin Luther King was Assasinated.

Back than Meridian was still a Heavily Segregated town, as was still most of the south. Black Americans who were serving this country stationed there were denied the freedoms and human rights they were serving under the constitution and flag for. When going into town they had seperate, and labeled, drinking fountains, movie theaters, eating establishments............................................................., everything!

After leaving there, a years tour, I went to Panama for the next year and a half. Panama is a country of many Black Latin Americans, yet right from the get go the Racist Attitude from the States hit.

On arriving and checking in, though being a seaman gunnersmate, I was to work at the Waterfront for the first couple of months, taking over the Base Armory later as the Gunnersmate running it was preparing to leave. One of the first questions asked, by the Navy LT, I was to work under, when checking in with him was "If I minded working under Black Navy Chiefs?", you had to see the way he looked to get the point, I sat there and just looked at him for a few than simply asked "Why?", his response was that there were two Black Chiefs in charge of the Waterfront. My response back was a simple "Nope" and again "Why?", no answer came.

Leaving there, and heading into my last year, I was sent to CounterInsurgency training in Coronado Calif, than In-Country Vietnam. Let me just say here, there are a huge number of Black and Brown and other skin color Americans, who served in Vietnam, whose names now are Honored on "The Wall", and if you pay any attention an awful lot who are dying and being maimed in todays Occupations!

Who are those accusing others, especially today, of not being Patriotic, why the Lily White Crowd!

Who are the ones condemning others for not wearing a tiny lapel flag pin, why the Lily White Crowd!

Who are the ones condemning Mrs. Obama and not understanding her statement of the History we now are living, why the Lily White Crowd!

Who are mostly the ones slapping cheap magnetic ribbons, now disappearing, on their vehicles to show their patriotism? and support?, why the Lily White Crowd!

Who are the ones Condemning Others for not walking in lockstep to their definition of patriotism, why the Lily White Crowd!

I could go on but I Hope you get the Picture I'm trying to paint here, We're Still A Racists Nation, and not only as to color of ones skin, Racism covers Hate of Others under any Reason, being Intolerant towards those who Share not only this Country but this Planet!

Happy Flag Day Everyone!!

And for you Fathers, Happy Fathers Day tomorrow!

Why is Peace Not Patriotic?

That's the question asked by The Real News Network

Back on Thursday, May 15, 2008 I asked a question as well: PEACE Is A Political Statement?.

Both of these are asked as to the Why? a Veterans Organization was banned from marching in Memorial Day Parades. Mine covered two chapters of Veterans For Peace

Chapter 139 (North Olympic Peninsula) and Chapter 016 (Washington D.C.) have both been banned from parades! In both cases, being too political was the reason cited for the ban.

The Real News Network covers the Parade in Washington D.C., the Capital of this Country, The Country And Citizens We Veterans Served For!

The Washington, DC chapter of Veterans for Peace is barred from DC's Memorial Day Parade

Thousands of people gathered in downtown DC for the annual Memorial Day parade. American flags lined the street and viewers showed their support of US troops and their patriotism. Instead of a flag, Michael Marceau held a banner, which called for peace and stated that his veterans' organization had been "kicked out of the parade." The Real News Network spoke with Michael and parade attendees to understand where Americans believe peace belongs in this day of patriotism.

There is a transcript at the Real News Network link above { their video can be found there as well }, but here are a few statements from that transcript:

Transcript
National Memorial Day Parade
Washington, DC
May 26, 2008

TEXT ON SCREEN: The Washington chapter of Veterans For Peace tried to take part in this year's National Memorial Day parade. The coordinators of the parade refused their application.
PALEVSKY: There was a veterans’ organization called Veterans for Peace, which states that it is for bringing the troops home from Iraq, that was kept out of this parade.

JEROME, PARADE ATTENDEE: Well, I guess whoever organized the parade has some kind of a right to keep people out that they don't want in, but I also think that those people have a right to march, I think. I mean, a war is supposed to bring a country together, not divide it.

PALEVSKY: What was your intention of joining the parade?

MARCEAU: Well, we just wanted to give—we have two World War II veterans who are still active in chapter activities whenever they can be, plus the widow of the man, Delwyn Anderson, for whom our chapter was named. We had planned to put them in convertibles and just go down the street carrying our Veterans for Peace flag here and several American flags, and that was about the extent of it. All we wanted to do was be visible and be acknowledged as someone who has stepped up to serve their country when their country asked them to.

Now when did this Nation, who puts out Human Rights Violations Lists Yearly, calls for Peace amoung Nations, Condemns those that Wage Wars or Criminal Terrorism, Believes itself a Christian Nation of Peace, Excepts those who are Persecuted in their own Countries for Speaking Out about their own governments Unpeaceful Actions and Human Rights Violations..................................................,you could write a book on what we say we are and what we think we are, Start Believing That PEACE Is Not Only Political But Unpatriotic???

And why are We, the citizens of this country, excepting this Double Speak of the few who use their Political Ideologies to push their Fear and thirst for Wealth and Power!

Many of us who belong to Veterans For Peace served in a theater of War and Occupation, Vietnam, that was Sold to the Nation, and us, as to Stop The Expansion of a Political Ideology, Communism, that this Country Condemns as being one that wants to wage War to Control others and spread their Ideology, 58,000 of our Brothers and Sisters names are etched into the marble of a monument, in that Capital city, it's called "The Wall"!

There's a new monument, in that same National Capital city, finally after all these years, dedicated to those who fought and died in the Righteous War against another Ideology, Nazism, in Europe, and the Waring threat waged by the Japanesse, in the Pacific!

There's also another monument dedicated to those who died and served in the War of agression by the North Koreans and their supporters the Communist Chinesse!

There are Veterans of those Conflicts as well as our other adventures in War, and in 'Peace' time who are members of Veterans For Peace with chapters spread around the country!

Peace is Democracy, Peace is Patriotism, Peace is Freedom, Peace is Leadership, Peace is Religion, Peace is Tolerance, Peace is Righteous, Peace is Personal, Peace is that which we should be leaving to the generations coming, World Peace Was this Nations Main Goal, NO MORE!

Moyers: 'Democracy in America Is a Series of Narrow Escapes,

and We May Be Running Out of Luck'

For all of America's shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, "The system works." Now all bets are off.

The following is an excerpt from Bill Moyers' new book, "Moyers on Democracy" (Doubleday, 2008).

Democracy in America is a series of narrow escapes, and we may be running out of luck. The reigning presumption about the American experience, as the historian Lawrence Goodwyn has written, is grounded in the idea of progress, the conviction that the present is "better" than the past and the future will bring even more improvement. For all of its shortcomings, we keep telling ourselves, "The system works."

Now all bets are off. We have fallen under the spell of money, faction, and fear, and the great American experience in creating a different future together has been subjugated to individual cunning in the pursuit of wealth and power -and to the claims of empire, with its ravenous demands and stuporous distractions. A sense of political impotence pervades the country -- a mass resignation defined by Goodwyn as "believing the dogma of 'democracy' on a superficial public level but not believing it privately." We hold elections, knowing they are unlikely to bring the corporate state under popular control. There is considerable vigor at local levels, but it has not been translated into new vistas of social possibility or the political will to address our most intractable challenges. Hope no longer seems the operative dynamic of America, and without hope we lose the talent and drive to cooperate in the shaping of our destiny.

You can read the rest of the excerpt Here

"Yes, We Can! - Si, Se Puede!"

It Cannot Be Only Left To An Obama or A Clinton or Anyone Single Person, It's The "WE" That Can!!

The Two Giants of Truthtelling, One on One

Bill Moyers talks with MSNBC host Keith Olbermann

December 14, 2007


Click on pic or Click Here

BILL MOYERS: One of my closest friends always watched your nightly sportscast. And he remembers to this day, just got a word from him this morning, he remembers your saying about hockey is the most boring sport he's ever seen. And you went on to say, "Nevertheless, here without further comment are the game results for whatever they're worth." But you don't do that with politics. You don't-- you don't just give the scores. You have some strong things to say about politics.

KEITH OLBERMANN: It became necessary.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

KEITH OLBERMANN: I was sitting on a plane in Los Angeles reading in August of 2006 about Don Rumsfeld talking to the veterans and talking about how every-- everyone who was in opposition to the Iraq War policy, the so-called war on terror, even to some degree the Bush administration, was the equivalent in his mind to the Nazi appeasers of the 1930s. And he went on at length about how, you know, here's the-- we're doing the Churchillian role. And I thought, you know, sir, I took history classes. Your group is not Churchill. Your group is Neville Chamberlain because Neville Chamberlain minimized and marginalized anybody who disagreed with him. Reading this ridiculous remark and waiting to see somebody respond to it. And no one did. I'm thinking, well, you know, somebody with a platform ought to be talking about this. Somebody with a-- with an avenue to respond should be-- oh, yeah, I have a platform.

Snip

Keiths book: Truth and Consequences: Special Comments on the Bush Administration's War on American Values

Get rid of the Barbies and Kens, plastic faces and bodies with empty heads, get Back to Real Journalists, like the Two above, and Real Investigative Journalism!

All Their Worried About Is Individual Legacies??

We have Tens of Thousands Dead and Maimed!

A small country, loaded with historic value of the origins on Man, Destroyed and in Destructive Turmoil, threatening the whole region, while we threaten others in the region ourselves!

We have awakened long surpressed hostilities, started long ago by others, who tried to control the peoples of the region, dictating to them how they should exist, forcing through destructive violence the ideologies of those others who tried to control!

And all those who were at the helm of this destruction, preaching fear and lies, can think of is Their Legacy?????

This Washington Post article tells us all most of us already know An Exit Toward Soul-Searching
As Bush Staffers Leave, Questions About Legacy Abound

and need to know about this incompetent administration, filled with lyers and frankly thieves!

It starts out with this:

It had been four days since Meghan O'Sullivan left her job at the White House. Just four days since she gave up her Secret Service pass, her classified hard drive and her entree to the president. Four days since she gave up any day-to-day responsibility for Iraq.

Too soon, evidently, for the dreams to end. "In fact, I was dreaming about Iraq last night," she said. "And I woke up and thought, 'When do you think this will stop?' "

Hey Meghan, "It Should Never Have Started!"!

And than a short distance down gives us this quote by one of the most destructive, criminal, political hacks, to inhabit the Peoples House, bringing shame and the downward spiral of this countries political process and stature in the world:

Karl Rove feels guilty for leaving in a time of war, yet he wants to reinvent himself as more than simply "the Bush guy."

So that's what the karl thinks about, reinvention!

While he's not the only one who has disgraced this Nation, and it's citizens, this administration and congresses are loaded with the Guilty, the karl's legacy will have two writes, one of fact the other of propaganda and double speak, as will all the others!

We have an opposition political party, and a large section of it's base, who don't see the real damage done to this countries ideology and fragility, the experiment of this type of Democracy is wavering towards destruction, if no one is held accountable for all that has taken place!

If there ever were a Real Reason for not only a real Impeachment, not only of a President but the removal of a whole administration, a coup if you will by the citizens, than Indictments and Trials, this is the time!

Yet all many think about, and are really worried about, is that if going after the Guilty, proof is already out there on a number of charges, they will severly damage their own chances of Control in Washington, their own legacies!

We, as responsible adults, have now left, for the coming generations, not a better world, but one of further destruction and turmoil. They will be cleaning up the mess we have left for decades, that is if they recognize that which we have done, and are not doing. Or they will take the same destructive ideologies as their own leaving those that follow them into an abyss of never ending hostilities of man and destruction of this planet, not by some spiritual being but by us so called intelligent beings!

Legacies-Arrogance,Apathy,Corruption,Incompetence,Self Centered,Inhumanity....................................!!!!!!!

A Vet - "I Will Salute No More Forever"

The following is an original recent post at fellow Veteran Mike Ferner's site. You can find out more about Mike at his site.

He wouldn't mind this being passed on as the poem within speaks volumes of how many of us Veterans started our growing feelings about the coming War and they've grown more intense these last 5yrs. as the Body Counts, Military and Civilian, have grown! As well as the numbers Maimed and the , once again, reports of the treatment given to those returning wounded, maimed, physically and mentally!

Those feelings started growing even before the 'Shock and Awe' campaign started dropping the bombs and sending in the destructive missiles, for many of us knew what was to come. The weekend of 'Shock and Awe' some 400 of us were at, the already planned, Operation Dire Distress {pdf report} at American University in Washington D.C. as Iraq was getting pummeled with Death and Destruction and sent into the start of the abyss of the Hell on Earth that continues today and for the forseeable future, and has brought the threat to our National Security, as well as our allies, as seen in recent reports, from the hatreds it has instilled!

Mikes Post

September 5, 2007

by Mike Ferner

St. Louis – His government broke his heart but it could not break Air Force veteran Charles Powell’s spirit. Fighting back tears, the 64 year-old vet stood tall and resolute in front of 400 of his comrades, describing in verse the final steps of a painful disillusionment.

Each summer during the national convention of Veterans For Peace, time is reserved for a Veterans’ Speakout, where any member can rise to say whatever is on their mind.

When the veterans gathered in 2002, prior to the invasion of Iraq, George Bush and the hawks of Washington were pounding away on the war drums. That year, Powell, who had served on a Titan ICBM launch crew during the Cuban missile crisis, read his poem titled, “I Won’t Let Them Take My Flag.” He noted the warmongers were “again waving my flagas a buildup to invasion, and he countered what he felt was a manipulation of the national symbol with the following lines reminiscent of the great Langston Hughes.

“But to me ‘Old Glory’ still stands for the liberty, justice and solidarity yet to come. So I still wave it too. I wave it for health care, education, housing and food for all. I wave it for peace and love and I wave it for hope. Most of all, I wave it for the America yet to be.”

After four and a half years of war in Iraq, Veterans For Peace convened again this summer and Charles Powell was there as always. As his turn came at the Speakout microphone he struggled a few seconds to compose himself. Then, in a clear voice growing more determined as he spoke, Powell mirrored the pain, regret and anger in the hearts of so many who listened.

I WILL SALUTE NO MORE FOREVER

As a child I learned to Worship that piece of colored cloth.

My family, my school, the movies, TV taught me to believe that fragment of fabric stood for good things.

I watched my father, a World War II Army veteran, give homage to that wad of material.

As an airman I saluted that banner for the four years I served in the Air Force where I stood ready to help launch Titan Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles on command.

Then I became aware that the wonderful things for which that clump of colors is suppose to represent, have not been achieved.

I came to know that awful, unlawful, unwise and immoral acts have occurred under the stars and stripes.

But I still clung onto the belief and hope that someday, somehow conditions would change and the good things for which that rag is still supposed to stand would yet be realized.

However, I’ve been forced to come to my senses.

Now we have: preemptive war, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, stop loss, neglect of returning veterans, ignored infrastructure, billions of dollars squandered on war and occupation, extraordinary rendition, secret imprisonment, warrantless domestic spying, disenfranchisement of voters, stolen elections, torture, suspension of habeas corpus and denial of due process.

So, even though hearing “America The Beautiful” still increases my heartbeat.

Although seeing those stripes still brings a lump to my throat.

Even though the sight of those stars continues to bring tears to my eyes.

I won’t pledge to it anymore.

I won’t remove my cap.

I won’t stand in respect.

I won’t wave it.

I will salute no more forever.

Mike, who can be reached at his site Mike Ferner, is a member of Veterans For Peace and a freelance writer from Ohio.

His book Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran For Peace Reports from Iraq is about his trip to Iraq.

I'll close out this post with a video I put together back in November '06, written and sung by another fellow Veteran:

"We'll Buy A Flag......."

Moyers on Sacrifice

Bill Moyers reflects upon sacrifice, democracy and war.


respond to the essay on the blog

'Democracy'

Discovering What Democracy Means
By Bill Moyers

Monday 12 February 2007

We are often asked whether our kind of journalism matters. People are curious about why we give so much time to novelists, playwrights, artists, historians, philosophers, composers, scholars, teachers-all of whom we consider public thinkers. The answer is simple: They are worth listening to.

Some years ago I was invited to testify before a House of Representatives committee on funding of the arts and humanities. Opponents were making their skepticism felt toward PBS, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I had been present at the creation of all three during my time in the White House with Lyndon Johnson, and now all three were once again in the crosshairs of conservatives like Ronald Reagan who were asking: "Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?" Reading Shakespeare, it was said, does not erase the budget deficit. Plunging into the history of the 15th century does not ease traffic jams. Listening to Mozart or reading the ancient Greeks does not repair the ozone layer.

We had recently produced two series on poetry called "The Language of Life" and "The Power of the Word." Our series on "Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth" was resonating far and wide, much to the displeasure of sectarian dogmatists. We had created a documentary special called "The Power of the Past," about how Florence valued art for public, and not merely private, consumption. Our series "A World of Ideas" offered conversations from a wide spectrum of voices: Chinua Achebe, Carlos Fuentes, Northrop Frye, Joseph Heller, Thomas Wolfe, Richard Rodriguez, Bharati Mukherjee, Jonas Salk, William L. Shirer, Tu Wei-ming, Toni Morrison, Joanne Ciulla, Ernesto Cortes, M.F.K. Fisher, Mary Ann Glendon, Leon Kass, and so many others who opened viewers to what my old friend and colleague Eric Sevareid once called "news of the mind."

Critics said these programs taught no one how to bake bread or build bridges. And they were right. Despite public television - not to mention symphony orchestras, municipal libraries, art museums, and public theaters - crime was still rampant, the divorce rate was soaring, corruption flourished, legislatures remained stubbornly profligate, corporations cooked their books, liberals were loose in the world doing the work of the devil, and you still couldn't get a good meal on the Metro to Washington. Why persist, some members of Congress wanted to know, when there are so many more urgent needs to be met and so many practical problems to be solved?

I did not have a tried-and-true answer for members of the committee. I could not hand them a ledger showing that ideas have consequences. I chose instead to tell them what they could have learned if they had been listening to the people who appeared in our broadcasts.

They would have heard the novelist Maxine Hong Kingston say: "All human beings have this burden in life to constantly figure out what's true, what's authentic, what's meaningful, what's dross, what's a hallucination, what's a figment, what's madness. We all need to figure out what is valuable, constantly. As a writer, all I am doing is posing the question in a way that people can see very clearly."

They would have heard Peter Sellars, the iconoclastic director of Shakespeare in a swimming pool and Mozart in the Bronx, explain that he wants "to put our society up next to these great masterpieces. Are we thinking big enough? Are we generous of spirit? What does our society look like, next to the greatest things a human being ever uttered?"

They would have heard Vartan Gregorian, then head of the New York Public Library, talk about how "in a big library, suddenly you feel humble. The whole of humanity is in front of you. It gives you a sense of cosmic relation, but at the same time a sense of isolation. You feel both pride and insignificance. Here it is, the human endeavor, human aspiration, human agony, human ecstasy, human bravura, human failures - all before you. And you look around and say, 'Oh, my God! I am not going to be able to know it all.'"

They would have heard the philosopher Martha Nussbaum confess that in one sense there is no message or moral in the ancient Greek dramatists - "simply the revelation of life as seen through the sufferer." But there is a value, she went on, in seeing "the complexity that's there, and seeing it honestly, without flinching, and without reducing it to some excessively simple theory." You begin then, she said, to realize that trying to wrest a good life from the world may lead to tragedy, but you still must try.

They would have heard the filmmaker David Puttnam tell how as a boy he sat through dozens of screenings of A Man for All Seasons, the story of Sir Thomas More's fatal defiance of Henry VIII: "It allowed me the enormous conceit of walking out of the cinema thinking, 'Yeah, I think I might have had my head cut off for the sake of a principle.' I know absolutely I wouldn't, and I probably never met anyone who would, but the cinema allowed me that conceit. It allowed me for one moment to feel that everything decent in me had come together."

And they would have heard Mike Rose talk about what it's like teaching disadvantaged older college students in California. He had recounted to me his battle with a street-wise grownup who was flogging her way through Macbeth. "What does Shakespeare have to do with me?" she would ask. But when she finally got through the play she said to Mike Rose: "You know, people always hold this stuff over you. They make you feel stupid. But now, I've read it. I can say, 'I, Olga, have read Shakespeare.' I won't tell you I like it, because I don't know if I do, or I don't. But I like knowing what it's about." And Mike Rose said: "The point is not that reading Shakespeare gave her overnight some new discriminating vision of good and evil. What she got was something more precious: a sense that she was not powerless and she was not dumb."

Some members of Congress got it. They realized that we were talking not only about how to improve our lives as individuals but how to nurture a flourishing democracy. Wouldn't we have been likely to deal more effectively and quickly with pollution if we had thought about where we fit in the long sweep of the Earth's story? Could we better tackle our spending priorities as a society if we were prepared to acknowledge and confront the pain of conflicting choices, which the ancient poets knew to be the incubus of agony and the crucible of wisdom? Might we better decide how to use our wealth and power if we have measured and tested ourselves against the greatest things a human being ever uttered? Are we not likely to be more wisely led by officials who have learned from history and literature that great nations die of too many lies?

Furthermore, if we nurtured the higher affections of our intuition - what has been called our "inner tutor" - might we be more resolute in sparing our children from the appalling accretion of violent entertainment that permeates American life - what Newsweek described as "the flood of mass-produced and mass-consumed violence that pours upon us, masquerading as amusement and threatening to erode the psychological and moral boundary between real life and make-believe?"

We know who the enemies of democracy are. In his Jefferson Lecture the late Cleanth Brooks of Yale identified them as the "bastard muses" propaganda, which pleads, sometimes unscrupulously, for a special cause or issue at the expense of the total truth; sentimentality, which works up emotional responses unwarranted by, and in excess of, the occasion; and pornography, which focuses upon one powerful human drive at the expense of the total human personality. To counter the "bastard muses," Brooks proposed cultivating the "true muses" of the moral imagination. Not only do these arm us to resist the little lies and fantasies of advertising, the official lies of power, and the ghoulish products of nightmarish minds, they open us to the lived experience of others - to the affirmations of a heightened consciousness - to empathy. So it is that when Lear cried out to Gloucester on the heath: "You see how this world goes...." Gloucester, who was blind, answered: "I see it feelingly."

Many years ago we produced a series called "Six Great Ideas" with the didactic, irascible but compelling philosopher and educator, Mortimer Adler-one hour each on liberty, equality and justice, truth, beauty, and goodness. From the deluge of mail I kept two letters that summed up the response. One came from Utah.

Dear Dr. Adler, I am writing in behalf of a group of construction workers (mostly, believe it or not, plumbers!) who have finally found a teacher worth listening to. While we cannot all agree whether or not we would hire you as an apprentice, we can all agree that we would love to listen to you during our lunch breaks. I am sure that it is just due to our well-known ignorance as tradesmen that not a single one of us had ever heard of you until one Sunday afternoon we were watching public television and Bill Moyers came on with Six Great Ideas. We listened intensely and soon became addicted and have been ever since. We never knew a world of ideas existed. The study of ideas has completely turned around our impression of education ... We have grown to love the ideas behind our country's composition, and since reading and discussing numerous of your books we have all become devout Constitutionalists. We thank you and we applaud you. We are certain that the praise of a few plumbers could hardly compare with the notoriety that you deserve from distinguished colleagues, but we salute you just the same. We may be plumbers during the day, but at lunch time and at night and on weekend, we are Philosophers at Large. God bless you."
The second letter came from Marion, Ohio - from the federal prison there. The writer said he had been a faithful viewer of the series, and he described it as "a truly joyous opportunity ... for an institutionalized intellectual. After several months in a cell, with nothing but a TV, it was salvation."

Salvation. Deliverance. Redemption.

I had to think about this a while before I realized what he meant. He was, after all, a lifer. How is it a man condemned to an institution for the remainder of his years finds salvation in a television program? And then one day I came across something Leo Strauss had written. The Greek word for vulgarity, Strauss said, is apeirokalia, the lack of experience in things beautiful. Wherever you are and however it arrives, a liberal education can liberate you from the coarseness and crudity of circumstances beyond your control.

As I watch and listen to our public discourse today, it seems to me we are all "institutionalized" in one form or another, locked away in our separate realities, our parochial loyalties, our fixed ways of seeing ourselves and others. For democracy to prosper it requires us to escape those bonds and join what John Dewey called "a life of free and enriching communion" - to become "We, the People." The late James W. Carey, one of our noted scholars of communication, wrote that the very concept of "public" could once be defined as "a group of strangers who gather to discuss the news." In early America the printing press generated a body of popular knowledge. Towns were small, and taverns, inns, coffeehouses, street corners, and the public greens - the commons - were places where people gathered to discuss what they were reading. These places of public communication "provided the underlying social fabric of the town and, when the Revolution began, made it possible to quickly gather militia companies, to form effective committees of correspondence and of inspection, and to organize and to manage mass town meetings."

The public was no fiction, Carey said. The public had no life, no social relationships, without news. The news was what activated conversation between strangers, and strangers were assumed to be capable of conversing about the news. In fact, the whole point of the press was not so much to disseminate fact as to assemble people. The press furnished materials for argument - "information," in the narrow sense - "but the value of the press was predicated on the existence of the public, not the reverse." The media's role was humble but serious, and that role was to take the public seriously.

It would be hard to argue that we do so today, except in isolated examples. Our public conversation is mediated by politicians who have mastered "sound bites" sculpted from polling data, by "pundits" whose credibility increases with the frequency of exposure despite being consistently wrong, and "experts" whose authority depends not on reason, evidence or logic but on ideology and affiliation. The public, J.R. Priestly observed, "has been transformed into a vast crowd, a permanent audience, waiting to be amused."

What kind of "public intellectual" survives in such an environment? Turn on the television and you're likely to see them talking about the war in Iraq, for which they were cheerleaders, or the upcoming presidential race - still a year away. Notice where they sit - in a Times Square studio or a media stage in Washington, their messages beamed across the public airwaves courtesy of huge media conglomerates whose intent is not the informing of citizens but the maximizing of profit through the delivery to advertisers of mass audiences addicted to consumerism.

How forlorn a figure Socrates of Athens would be in this environment. Arguably the first public intellectual, proclaimed by the oracle of Delphi as the wisest of men, Socrates went about Athens on a divine mandate of self-reflection, some celestial spark glowing in his breast, some voice whispering in his head that only he could hear. Led by this voice he went to the wise men and great poets and master technicians of the city to cross-examine them, casting doubt on their knowledge by exposing their received opinions and unexamined assumptions, the deep-seated corruption of thought which leads to grave moral danger; or sometimes simply pointing to the common failing of so many experts: that of mistaking their expertise in one subject or practice for universal wisdom about the human condition.

Exposing the ignorance of the leaders was Socrates' way of helping the "cause of God," as he explained when he was put on trial. He reasoned thus from his interviews with them that the wisest of men - as the oracle, remember, described Socrates to be - is the one who is most conscious of his own ignorance, most aware of the limits of knowledge which are introduced by our limited methods of obtaining knowledge. Meletus, the main accuser featured in Socrates' Apology (as told by Plato), was a young religious fanatic who charged Socrates with believing in deities of his own invention rather than the gods recognized by the state. Scholars now believe that Meletus was simply a "front man" for political interests, put forward to stir the public against the philosopher-a forerunner of modern punditry, or maybe something quite like today's political fundamentalism.

I sadly think of [former Secretary of State] Colin Powell addressing the United Nations in February 2003, with his artist's renderings of those trailers that were supposed to be mobile biological warfare factories; and I think of all the rest of the cooked intelligence that sold so many of our public intellectuals on invading Iraq. It was too crude to even qualify as false wisdom on the Socratic model, really, but the resulting disaster - as great a blunder as Vietnam to which many of the same mistakes could be assigned-would result from relying on the knowledge of self-interested experts and deluded leaders. When they sentenced Socrates to death, he reminded them that they were proving how groundless knowledge made it impossible to escape from doing wrong. Succumbing to wishful thinking that leads to disastrous self-delusion, he pointed out, is the only real death. "When I leave this court," he said of his jurors, "I will go away condemned by you to death." But his accusers, he told them, "will go away convicted by truth herself...."

The Hebrew prophet was another kind of public intellectual, one who was also condemned and persecuted by the political elites he addressed. A century before Socrates, one of those prophets-Jeremiah-came from a small village into Jerusalem to preach repentance to a faithless Israel, with its houses full of treachery, and its rich kings and princes who gave no justice to the poor widow and the fatherless child.

And of course, near the end of his life, Jesus of Nazareth also went to Jerusalem, to preach the same message in an even more dangerous public way, confronting the ruling elites before great crowds on the Temple grounds. When he predicted their imminent destruction in his parable about the wicked tenants who hoarded the fruits of creation, his fate was sealed.

Jesus would not be crucified today. The prophets would not be stoned. Socrates would not drink the hemlock. They would instead be banned from the Sunday talk shows and op-ed pages by the sentries of establishment thinking who guard against dissent with the one weapon of mass destruction most cleverly designed to obliterate democracy - the rubber stamp.

A stock broker who makes bad picks doesn't last too long. A baseball player in an extended slump gets traded. A worker made redundant by cheaper labor abroad or by a new machine - well, she's done for, too. But four years after the invasion of Iraq - the greatest blunder in foreign policy since Vietnam - the public apologists and advocates of the war flourish in the media, while the costs of their delusions accrue in body counts and lost treasure. A public that detests the war is relegated to the bleachers, fated to watch from afar the playing out by political and media elites of a game that has been rigged.

Yet the salvation of democracy requires a public aroused by the knowledge of what is being done to them in their name. Here is the crisis of the times as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don't talk about what democracy means - what it bestows on us - the revolutionary idea that it isn't just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency. "I believe in Democracy because it releases the energies of every human being." So spoke Woodrow Wilson, the namesake of your foundation and, I would suggest, still your guiding spirit.

The only PhD ever to reach the White House was a public intellectual and genuine reformer who understood what a major battleground higher education was. He learned what the political struggle was about while a professor and later the president of Princeton, where he lost his share of institutional battles with wealthy alumni who largely controlled the university's development, and the nation beyond.

In his forgotten political testament The New Freedom (1913), Wilson took up something of the ancient, critical task of the public intellectual, a fact all the more remarkable in that he was president at the time. Louis Brandeis, the people's lawyer, was his inspiration and the source of this vision, but Wilson stood for it, right there at the center of power. "Don't deceive yourselves for a moment as to the power of the great interests which now dominate our development." "No matter that there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States. They are going to own it if they can." But "there is no salvation," he said, "in the pitiful condescensions of industrial masters. Guardians have no place in a land of freemen. Prosperity guaranteed by trustees has no prospect of endurance." From his stand came progressive income taxation, the federal estate tax, tariff reform, and a resolute spirit "to deal with the new and subtle tyrannies according to their deserts."

Wilson described his reformism in plain English no one could fail to understand: "The laws of this country do not prevent the strong from crushing the weak." That was true in 1800, it was true in 1860, in 1892, in 1912, and 1932; it was true in 1964, and it is true today. We have often been pressed to the limit, the promise of the Declaration and the ideals of the Gettysburg Address ignored or trampled upon and our common interests brought low. But every time there came a great wave of reform, and I believe one is coming again, helped along by the bright young people this foundation is nurturing.

We cannot build a political consensus or a nation across the vast social divides that mark our country today. Consensus arises from bridging that divide and making society whole again, the fruits of freedom and prosperity made available to the least among us. What we have to determine now, as Wilson said in his day, "is whether we are big enough ... whether we are free enough, to take possession again of the government which is our own. We haven't had free access to it, our minds have not touched it by way of guidance, in half a generation, and now we are engaged in nothing less than the recovery of what was made with our own hands, and acts only by our delegated authority."

As we face that challenge even today, a story about Helen Keller is worth remembering. Toward the end of her career, as she was speaking at a Midwestern college, a student asked: "Miss Keller, is there anything that could have been worse than losing your sight?" Helen Keller replied: "Yes, I could have lost my vision."

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Bill Moyers is chairman of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy andan independent journalist with his own production company. On February 7, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation presented Judith and Bill Moyers the first Frank E. Taplin, Jr. Public Intellectual Award for "extraordinary contributions to public cultural, civic and intellectual life." This is an excerpt of his remarks.

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VVAW Anniversary-Dec 26th 1971-Statue of Liberty, Liberation

Six Vietnam veterans founded the VVAW in New York City in 1967 when they marched in a peace demonstration. Organized for returning troops to voice their opposition to the war that was still taking place in Indochina, the VVAW continues to grow, with over 30,000 members, according to the VVAW web Site.

The VVAW {Vietnam Veterans Against the War} focuses mainly on achieving better benefits for all veterans.


Vietnam Veterans take the Statue of Liberty, December 26th 1971. Two dozen members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War "liberated" the Statue of Liberty with a sit-in to protest resumed U.S. aerial bombings in Vietnam.They flew an inverted U.S. flag from the crown as a signal of distress.
Peace History December 25-31 by Carl Bunin

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY: MONUMENT TO AN EXPANDING SET OF IDEALS

Tim MacCormick of New Jersey and fourteen other members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, on the afternoon of December 26, 1971, arrived on Liberty Island by the Circle Line boat along with other tourists. But, when the last return ship to Manhattan sailed that evening, the veterans were not aboard. Instead, just before closing time, they hid among the exhibit partitions, building materials, and storage closets which were lying about the monument's base while work was being finished on the American Museum of Immigration. When NPS personnel made their 7:30 evening check-up of the statue, they found that the veterans had seized control of the landmark and barricaded the three ground floor entrances. The men inside refused to speak to or admit any Park Service people, but on the door they posted a typewritten statement addressed to President Richard M. Nixon:

Each Vietnam veteran who has barricaded himself within this international symbol of liberty has for many years rationalized his attitude to war. . . .We can no longer tolerate the war in Southeast Asia. . . .Mr. Nixon, you set the date [for leaving Vietnam], we'll evacuate. {13}

On December 27, twenty-one National Park police flew to Liberty Island from Washington where they were joined by New York City police and Coast Guardsmen. These security forces stood by while the government attempted to reach a peaceful compromise with the occupiers. They were told that they would be permitted to picket and protest on the island if they would simply vacate the statue, allowing it to reopen to visitors. The veterans rejected the offer, flew the United States flag upside down from the statue's crown, and waited. Law enforcement officers also waited. During that day thousands of disappointed tourists were told at the Battery that they could not go out to the statue. Congresswoman Bella Abzug (Democrat-New York) sent a telephone message of support to the demonstrators.




Members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War leaving the Statue of Liberty, which they had occupied for two days. The demonstrators emerged in response to a court order, December 28, 1971.
(Source: Photograph Collection of the American Museum of Immigration, Liberty Island, U.S. Department of the Interior, NPS)


Meanwhile, United States Attorney Whitney North Seymour, Jr., went before District Court Judge Lawrence Pierce to request an injunction directing the veterans to open the doors, leave the statue except during regular visiting hours, and permit Park Service personnel and tourists to enter. On the morning of December 28 Judge Pierce issued a temporary restraining order, instructing the protestors to leave the statue "forthwith." Two hours later, after conferring with their lawyers, the veterans removed the barricades from the entrances and emerged with "clenched fists raised." They had cleaned up their debris and caused no significant damage to the property. The monument was reopened to the public, with the first ferry-load of visitors arriving at 2:15 that afternoon.
Tim MacCormick issued a statement to the press explaining why they had picked this particular target:

The reason we chose the Statue of Liberty is that since we were children, the statue has been analogous in our minds with freedom and an America we love.
Then we went to fight a war in the name of freedom. We saw that freedom is a selective expression allowed only to those who are white and maintain the status quo.
Until this symbol again takes on the meaning it was intended to have, we must continue our demonstrations. . . . {14}

The Story of a Vietnam Vet

In the 1970s, when the Department of Veterans’ Affairs cut off about 7.9 million troops’ benefits, the VVAW took over the Statue of Liberty, covering her eyes with protest banners.

“This was the second time that the VVAW had taken over the Statue of Liberty. This would be an 18-hour takeover before the park police finally came and removed us,” Davis recalls. “I was one of those people inside that statue. I was the national coordinator for the (VVAW) at the time.”

There’s a glimmer in Davis’ gray-blue eyes as he tells this story.

“The New York Post carrying a front-page story about how we ruined these poor tourists’ opportunities to see the Statue of Liberty, and we weren’t very sympathetic,” he says.

Davis says that one of the things he hears the most about the VVAW is that it is simply a negative, anti-war organization, but he says that its main goals have been to provide benefits and counseling in order to help veterans.

As Davis trudges through his memories, he recalls that upon coming back, what was harder than seeing his society altered was dealing with how much he had changed.

It’s impossible for anyone who has never been in combat to understand the emotional baggage that soldiers come back with. For those who remain at home, it seems that soldiers are simply away for a while; meanwhile, the soldiers themselves are going through some of the most horrifying and gruesome experiences of their lives, and they are never the same, even when they do come back.

But men like Davis and organizations like the VVAW continue to try making life more livable for returning soldiers.

“We’ve had to do it for ourselves, and once you learn to do it for yourself, you learn to do it for other people,” Davis says. “Modern war brings a lot of horrific images. You don’t ever get over that, you just learn to deal with it.”

Stop Crying: We won our War

Disillusioned with war and plagued by nightmares back in the U.S., Romo and Davis looked to the government for psychological counseling and found nothing.

Next, they turned to the only people they knew they could trust: other war veterans.

“One of the first things we discovered pretty quickly,” said Davis,“was that if we were going to survive, we needed each other to do it.”

But interactions between the Vietnam veterans and veterans’ groups such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion were strained, if not belligerent, Davis and Romo recalled.

“There was tremendous hostility from older veterans,” Davis said. “Many of those American Legion types and VFWs said that we were just a bunch of crybabies.”

The VVAW is Formed

But while Davis and Romo were in basic training, six Vietnam vets marched together in a 1967 New York City peace demonstration and founded Vietnam Veterans Against War (VVAW). The VVAW stood in stark contrast to the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

According to Davis, the America Legion represented only a small, selective group of veterans.

Davis describes the Veterans of Foreign Wars as a more egalitarian veterans’ group with the same patriotic function as the American Legion; however, neither focused on benefits. When soldiers from Vietnam began arriving home physically and psychologically damaged, Davis and Romo felt that both groups looked the other way.

From Malaise to Action

On December 26, 1971, sixteen VVAW demonstrators seized the Statue of Liberty in New York City to call attention to what Vietnam vets termed “post-Vietnam stress disorder” as well as the lack of promised programs and benefits.

“In the 1970s, because we were getting nowhere on the issue of stress disorders associated with Vietnam, we declared war on the Veterans Affairs Administration,” Davis said. “Some of us adopted the slogan that we were like ‘no deposit, no return’ bottles … Once the government had emptied us out, they chucked us.”

To assist veterans with post-Vietnam stress, the VVAW gained national recognition in the 1970s for setting up public “rap” therapy groups to help vets deal with painful memories.

We Will not be Ignored

The VVAW took over the Statue of Liberty a second time in 1976, raising even more awareness of veterans’ issues. Since that time, post-Vietnam stress disorder has been formally diagnosed and renamed by the medical community as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Now a group of over 30,000 members, the VVAW works to expose poor and under-funded care in VA hospitals, draft legislation to improve educational job programs and argue for the amnesty of war resisters and vets with questionable dishonorable discharges. During the 1980s, the VVAW publicized the Veterans’ Administration’s attempt to conceal the harmful effects of chemical defoliants like Agent Orange used during Vietnam and the Gulf War.

Passing the Torch

Davis and Romo consider themselves very lucky compared with many of their fellow veterans. Both have held steady jobs for the last 20 years and lead what they describe as normal lives with loving families.
As national coordinators for the VVAW, Davis and Romo both speak regularly at veterans’ events and meeting as well as high schools to instill the wisdom they once so desperately lacked to veterans returning today from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We’re trying to be like mentors to the new vets,” Romo said. “Basically, we’re doing what other vets didn’t do for us.”

One Vet's Vigil
Christmas reminds Paul Fichter of Miss Liberty takeover 35 years ago
By Tim Blangger Of The Morning Call
December 24, 2006

Referance: Vietnam Veterans Against the War

The Statue of Liberty is among the best known monuments in the world. ... to take-overs by Vietnam veterans and other activists in the 1970s and 1980s. ...PDF


Vietnam Veterans Against the War

Veterans For Peace

Iraq Veterans Against the War

Iraq and Afganistan Veterans of America

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