Send your tax rebate checks to these people with "FOR IMPEACHMENT" on them, and send photocopies of the checks to these people.
Resist Election Madness.
Tell Congress this.
Sing our theme song.
The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis
Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law
United States v. George W. Bush et al.
The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism
Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush
The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens
The Case for Impeachment
Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney
George W. Bush versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Cover-ups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying
Verdict and Findings of Fact
Impeach Bush: A Funny Li'l Graphical Novel About the Worstest Pres'dent in the History of Forevar
Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Admin- istration
The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America
Put away the flags
Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2006-07-03 21:26.
By Howard Zinn
On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.
Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours -- huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction -- what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.
Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.
That self-deception started early.
When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession."
When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day."
On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence." After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: "We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country."
It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.
We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, "to civilize and Christianize" the Filipino people.
As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: "The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness."
We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.
Yet they are victims, too, of our government's lies.
How many times have we heard President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for "liberty," for "democracy"?
One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.
And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail last year that God speaks through him.
We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.
We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.
Howard Zinn, a World War II bombardier, is the author of the best-selling "A People's History of the United States" (Perennial Classics, 2003, latest edition). He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org
www.VelvetRevolution.us
Ed Gillespie says thanks.
These damn neocons have subverted the flag and misrepresented everything it stands for, and we have not only let them, we have played right into their hands! the men we call patriots are the ones who fought for freedom. they said things like "give me liberty or give me DEATH." the neocons claim that patriotism means surrendering freedom and liberty. The true modern patriots are the ones who are fighting for freedom and the rule of law- the ones who argue for a tricameral government with checks and balances to prevent the potential tyranny that comes with "unitary executive" or however else you want to spell KING. the flag belongs to us, not them. we are the ones who are fighting for truth, freedom, and the american way. they are the ones actively attacking it on every level. Karl rove, Ken Mehlman and Ed Gillespie set out to wrap themselves in the flag and portray their opposition as attacking the flag, anti-american,etc. and what do we do? we have people advocating burning the flag, flying it upside down, etc. I can hear those twits laughing now! we CANNOT continue to allow them to control the frame. This is what has allowed them to get away with as much as they have. WE are not the ones attacking the constitution and the american way. THEY are. why do we allow them to claim the opposite? as long as we are viewed as anti-american, we will always lose. it's that simple.
M7
Howard Zinn
As usual, Professor Zinn's is right on the money. There aren't any points of critical mass coming up on the horizon, like a deep, protracted recession/depression looming large. The US government seems to be able to plod along through a series of mind-boggling stunts, not any coherent policy, in the name of whatever goal, which now seems to be to keep the Democrats from taking over the House and the Senate.
However, there are some economic pitfalls out there! Our new friend at the Fed, Ben Brenake (sp?) has announced 'no interest rate hikes on the short-term horizon'. Fed Chairmen do things like that, because they know the next major election is about as far away as the time it will take for this little expansion of the money supply to yield some nice results for the 'ruling party'. Greenspan was famous/infamous for doing that for Republicans, less so or not-at-all for Bill Clinton.
Greenspan would give the economy a little boost 6 - 8 months in advance of national elections, for Reagan, Bush I, and especially for Bush II...
However, with the deficits at these staggering levels, some squeeze on capital is about to hit. The Chinese are funding our daily/short-term debt; this little fact may have some negatives for us in the near future. Rolling this kind of debt in an inflationary environment can become very expensive; no margin for error here.
The Bushies have influenced this US economy in ways that have increased/made more volatile the downside risks associated with capital investment; there has been a real estate boomlet, but that is starting to bite people in the monthly expense vs. disposable income equation. Those fixed rate mortgages are just harder to find, read: more expensive, no teaser rates.
The point is, though no one of any gravitas is suggesting anything 'doomsday' looming on the economic horizon, that is of 'little to zero-value' as a bellweather. There are too many macro-risk factors approaching critical mass to pretend all is well, let's just keep doing this stuff over and over again.
Maybe that's why the Bushies have brought in Goldman Sach's Paulson... to navigate through some of the unthinkable.
mine was hung upside down on the 4th., a distress signal
a couple neighbors actually took the time to ring my doorbell and demand that I hang it upright. I told them; "it's my goddamned flag, it's my 'distress signal' (compelled them to look it up, by the way!) and therefore, it's staying that way. One called me a communist left wing bastard. I told him; "fascists like you destroyed the nation that I once wore a uniform to protect..."
One neighbor came by as I removed it this morning, and said; "God, I wish I had the nerve you do or I'd hung mine upside down too.."
nerve, eh? I think it takes more patriotism to protest this cabal with an upside down flag than it took for two neighbors to come over and give me hell over it. fuck them. they've destroyed america.
not me.