"Thou Shalt not Kill" Applies to All?

Yesterday I received an email asking me to sign a petition to save Sakineh Ashtiani, an Iranian woman accused of adultery, rescued from stoning by an international outcry and now threatened to be executed. Of course, I signed immediately. Anything I can do to save a life, I will do, gladly.

But this noble effort made me think of the non-effort in this country to stop the killing in the wars we keep going. Who raises awareness about the women (and children) who are not accused of anything, whose only "crime" is to live in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan and who get killed either by our over-zealous soldiers or by indiscriminant missiles fired from drones or other aircraft? Are we as a nation already totally numb to this constant wiping out of innocent lives?

When somebody else does the killing - in this case the Iranian government - our government's elected boogieman of the hour - we are being pushed to react, to rally and show our concern -- is it mainly because we want to magnify the bad image of the "enemy" rather than over the concern about the poor woman's life?

Wherever I look these days, double standard rules, applied without much thought but with great enthusiasm. I find it disheartening, disillusioning and actually quite disgusting. If I do it, it's ok. If you do it, it is a crime. We are not moving along the path of enlightenment that way. Peace!

Democracy? Where?

Did you hear Mitch McConnell's speech before the American Enterprise Institute? It's not the only Republican post-election rhetoric that lacks the common sense that I am defending here. He said very clearly, with a straight face and full of blistering conviction (if his sad face can convey that at all), that the priority of his House majority is to roll back every legislative progress that has been passed during the last two years. He also said that if Pres. Obama does not do what they want, they will have somebody in the White House in 2012 who will not yield the Veto pen.

Is that the essence of Democracy? Or just hateful, spiteful, narrow-minded semblance of governing? Old Russia anyone? Isn't that something the Republicans accuse President Obama of - ramrodding change down the poor populace's throat? I am confused, but also angry and deflated. What has this country come to? Can there be no reasonable discourse? Civility? Winning a landslide of House Seats is not a mandate to disassemble the whole works. Especially by the Party that has ZERO plans on the table to do anything positive. Hear, hear!

Does this Nation not have important problems to solve? Like Economy, Jobs, Environment, real reform of the Financial Industry, maybe even Election Reform? Could they be at least mentioned or addressed? No, that would definitely be too much common sense. Good luck to all of us.

The Jesters Give us the Truth

Just listened to the parting remarks made by Jon Stewart (http://www.youtube.com/watchv=jXmbzLI3pnk&feature=player_embedded will get you there) at the Washington DC Rally for Sanity and was reminded of my history lessons. Were not the court jesters the ones who could tell the absolute truth -or maybe just the inconvenient truths - to the King or the Queen without being punished? The Courtiers had to make things look good and flatter the ruler in order to be kept on and maintain their influence.

The sadness over this state of affairs- that comedians have to step up for SANITY and the truth, while all the supposedly free carriers of the news and the truth are feeding us IN-sanity, comprised mostly of spin and lies, is only outweighed by the comments posted following the youtube clip. How so many people -who apparently read and write well- can miss the point of the rally altogether by such a wide margin is rather incomprehensible to me. Read them and see for yourself.

Case in point on the media's reliability over the last few days, the parcels supposedly filled with explosives sent by freight plane from Yemen (who knows?) and promptly intercepted by our vigilant homeland security department long before they arrived here. If you poke around a bit in the independent news sites you will see that this is an entirely ridiculous story that can be proven wrong and inconsistent very easily. Purpose? To install fear in our not so informed populace - exactly the fear-mongering Stewart's rally was pointing out.

Please inform yourself and THINK. And if you have not voted yet, please do so on the correct side of the ballot. (I know that's hard, but maybe reading Michael Moore's latest essay can help you out.

PBS Really Not "Public" Any More

For some time now I have been very disappointed and displeased with PBS’s news coverage. Very mellow, non-controversial, no-balance reporting – as opposed to the recentlly discontinued Bill Moyers Journal hard-hitting pieces. The only difference to the commercial stations is the lack of reports on local fires and babies falling out of windows.

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
“A multi-part FAIR exposé of PBS's most prominent news and public affairs programs demonstrates that public television is failing to live up to its mission to provide an alternative to commercial television, to give voice to those "who would otherwise go unheard" and help viewers to "see America whole, in all its diversity," in the words of public TV's founding document.”

Among other rather troubling findings, this one irks me the most.

“-- On segments focusing on the Afghan War, though polls show consistent majorities of Americans have opposed the war for more than a year, not a single NewsHour guest represented an antiwar group or expressed antiwar views. (Emphasis mine) Similarly, no representative of a human rights or humanitarian organization appeared on the NewsHour during the study period.”

Published on Tuesday, October 19, 2010 by FAIR

$80,000 to Kill or Miss- Poof ... Gone

Here is a thought: How much common sense does it make to use a high-tech, high-priced piece of U.S. weaponry, a huge shoulder-fired rocket called Javelin, in Afghanistan? “Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it's fired by a guy who doesn’t make that in a year at a guy who doesn’t make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.” (from Sebastian Junger’s book WAR, see below))

In the article Publish or Perish: Getting a Read on American War Nick Turse reviews writings on the current wars and compares them with the literature on the Vietnam war. He writes “… there is much to be learned from Junger’s in-print version of Americans-at-war. His blow-by-blow accounts of small unit combat actions, for instance, drive home the tremendous firepower American troops unleash on enemies often armed with little more than rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Page after page tallies up American technology and firepower: M-4 assault rifles (some with M-203 grenade launchers), Squad Automatic Weapons or SAWs, .50 caliber machine guns, M-240 machine guns, Mark-19 automatic grenade launchers, mortars, 155 mm artillery, surveillance drones, Apache attack helicopters, AC-130 Spectre gunships, A-10 Warthogs, F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers, B-52 and B-1 bombers, all often brought to bear against boys who may be wielding nothing more than Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifles -- a state of the art weapon when introduced. That, however, was in the 1890s.”

Check out the whole article at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/14-7 published by www.CommonDreams.org

With a fraction of the moneys spent on these deadly toys, how many jobs could we “grow”, how many hungry children could we feed, here and the world over, how many homeless people could we help? Too much horse sense, probably! And not really profitable.

There are Alternatives to War

Common Sense: Wars do not solve problems, they create more problems and more severe ones!

Michael Nagler, president of the Metta Center for Nonviolence in Berkeley, California, writes in today's Common Dreams News (go to http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/27-2). I want to draw your attention to the three points listed below.

"I encourage anyone who hasn’t already done so to familiarize him- or herself with the alternatives to war that fall into three broad categories: 1) living more lightly on the earth, since most wars today are fought over its diminishing resources; 2) diplomacy, mediation, and international institutions that can keep disputes from turning into wars, and 3) nonviolent mechanisms to deal with the wars that nonetheless break out, like the unarmed interventions just mentioned that are helping to reduce violence in trouble spots all over the world now. I recommend that we all learn about these things and talk about them with family, friends, and our congressmen or women. You may not get anything but raised eyebrows at first, but remember what Gandhi said about a real innovation: “First they ignore you; then they laugh at you; then they fight you – and then you win.” Provided you have learned to fight nonviolently. That must be the subject of another article."

Where are the Solutions?

Again we are in Pledge-Campaign-Promise-Politicking-Mode and Common Sense seems to have vanished from the scene. Every party and every candidate is promising what they have been promising for eons, just with a few variations and with a lot less options. Less taxes, more taxes, balancing the budget, and so forth. My favorite is "Listening to the Voters" -- when did that happen the last time? Most of the campaign time and money is spent on besmearing the OTHER, never mind on 'solutions.'

That is what I am really missing, Common Sense Solutions. Vague phrases are not solutions. Headlines are not solutions. Touting numbers that no one can verify or even understand is not a solution. Does that mean - worst scenario - that nobody has any solutions? That is what I believe. I am sure there are people who have answers but if they state them out loud they will be disappeared, one way or another. Nobody wants to say or hear the truth. Why are we fighting wars costing trillions? Why can we not tax people making obscene, unspendable amounts of money? Why can we not mandate greener living? Why can we not feed everybody?

The SYSTEM is so screwed up, my solution would be to drop it and start anew. Like untying a knot, you have to start with one loose end. We can do that with proper leadership. Who is out there to lead us?