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Showing posts with label patriotism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label patriotism. Show all posts

Jan 27, 2008

Last SOTU: Send Bush to Brattleboro

Alert from LegitGov.org:

"If Hitler were still alive and walked through Brattleboro, I think the local police would arrest him for war crimes."

Brattleboro to vote on arresting Bush, Cheney 26 Jan 2008:

Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President [sic] George Bush and Vice President [sic] Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont.

The Brattleboro Select Board voted 3-2 Friday to put the controversial item on the Town Meeting Day warning. According to Town Clerk Annette Cappy said residents will get to vote on the matter by paper balloting March 4. [Good! Hopefully, their treason trials will get started shortly thereafter, with all possible penalties for treason on the plate.]#

SO'W:

One more SOTU from Bush the war president...Monday night will be the last chance Bush gets to have such a large audience with an albeit spotty attention span--unless he has a little sumpin sumpin planned for later in the year to pull a Putin...

I will be posting on the SOTU address and updating in real time Monday evening so stay, as they say, tuned!

The animated real clock feature of my astrology software, Solar Fire, is extremely applicable during speeches for observing what planets are crossing which angles at the moment of which lie (or momentous issue mentioned.)

Will Bush whack some moles of Iraq war dissent? Will his natal Ascendant's Sabian Symbol ("8Leo": "A bolshevik propagandist") shout from the bully pulpit even more shrilly than before? Even if he endorsed a successor would anyone care?

McCain is spouting on Meet the Press at this moment and he said again that the Rs lost in 2006 because they didn't restrain spending. He's tone deaf on the Iraq occupation as is Bush--what else can he say?

In 2004, McCain was against making the rich class tax cut permanent--now the economy is different so he's FOR making them permanent, seeing no connection between the current state of the economy and the Bush-Cheney tax cuts! Did corporations invest the billions Congress handed them on a golden platter--in American jobs or American infrastructure?

No, and they won't be doing so. The 'action' is somewhere else and the average US worker is out of the loop. John Edwards tells it but the media ignores his inconvenient message...inconvenient for corporate media's neocon brethren and the agenda.

Will duh moments never cease? Not if America is herded (or hacked) into voting for a Republican warhawk again. A vote for McCain is like a vote for his pal Trent Lott.

War Enabled by Politics--the "S" word:

Surrender doesn't have to be the argument's "frame" anyway. There is nothing dishonorable about regrouping forces to plan (and fight) anew.

If the I Ching has known this for centuries, why can't Washington accept and benefit by the concept? Because war profiteers find it a successful tactic to use as a political wedge against the American people whose children are needed as cannon fodder for decades to come.

Yes, "patriotism" is a useful political ploy to persuade and manipulate your tools who serve your own best interests while sacrificing their own interests and the very lives of their children and grandchilren. (Over the top war costs prevent social improvements...duh.)

So while young, not-so-young, and yet-to-be parents of America consider self-promoting Bush's SOTU conclusions Monday night (and the rest of the week if Bush can stay in the news long enough for busy parents to notice and with this raging campaign heating up...btw: congrats to Senator Obama!)...they'll eventually get a chance in Nov 2008 to voice their disfavor with makin' neocon cannon fodder babies for generations to come.

The subject of Bush's last SOTU to be cont'd...

Dec 15, 2007

Eugene Debs still speaks convincingly

Information Clearing House Newsletter

News You Won't Find On CNN

12/14/07
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"It is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe in the world...

These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United States. No wonder Sam Johnson declared that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people...

Every solitary one of these aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These autocrats, these tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the "patriots," while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims-they are the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight."

Eugene V. Debs [The Canton, Ohio, Anti-War Speech; June 16, 1918]

Thanks for the above quote go to the excellent Information Clearing House#


An orator whose communication skills rivaled those of the great William Jennings Bryan, Debs' anti-war speech given in Canton, Ohio on June 16, 1918 is perhaps his most famous speech, while his appeal to the jury and statement to the court at his trial for treason (arrested and imprisoned for giving this speech against America's entry into WWI) are considered two of the great classic statements ever made in a court of law.

Born in Terre Haute, IN on Nov 5, 1855, Debs has a Sun Sco/Moon Virgo personality blend and Mercury in intense Scorpio (8Sco03 Rx, and opposite Pluto...Mercury/Pluto = the orator; a sharp critic; the propagandist.)

The Sun Sco/Moon Virgo combo is intensely passionate, a relentless perfectionist, witty, conscientious, loyal, and a dedicated worker. (Dedicated to workers' issues as well, in Debs' case. And he was devoted to his wife all his life--they had no children.)

His straight-from-the-shoulder honesty and excellent mind are still on display in his speeches and can stir the heart as well as the mind of anyone who appreciates honesty and forthrightness...anyone who believes America should change course and return to higher ideals than those of the lower road brought upon us by the Bush-Cheney regime (and others--it's been a drawn-out process since Carter or even since Eisenhower, some say. Guess that would have to be Ike's warning against the "military industrial complex" notwithstanding.)

An interesting feature of Deb's natal chart (Nov 5, 1855; Terre Haute, IN; using sunrise: 6:36:55 an lmt) is his Pluto/NN conjunction at 3Tau+--the Discovery degree of Chiron (Nov 1, 1977.)

This adds an oppressive Pluto-Chiron plutocratic flavor--the very people he spoke against all his life--to his North Nodal path (connections with the public; encountering the powerful.)

Pluto conj NN gives a special knack for seeing through prevailing social trends and the necessary drive and determination to take advantage of the ability. Negatively, this conj indicates a dangerous tendency toward attempting to manipulate social forces too large to be handled with safety--it's the tiger-by-the-tail aspect. Affairs get our of hand and there is danger of collapse (The Astrologer's Handbook., Sakoian)

Prison terms which ruin one's health would definitely qualify here.


Images for Integration for Debs' Sun/Moon blend:

An artist combines simplicity with intensity in a study of still life...A scientist probes into the mysteries of the cosmos...Britten's opera Billy Budd. (Sun Sign-Moon Sign, Chas & Suzi Harvery.)

You may wish to visit the Eugene V. Debs official website where you'll find, among other things, a list of recipients of the Debs Awards Program given for contributions to the advancement of the causes of industrial unionism, social justice, or world peace. Some recipients include Molly Ivins in 2003; Howard Zinn 1998; Edward Asner 1987; and Studs Turkel in 1983.

Eugene Debs ran for US president as the Socialist Party candidate in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920 (in 1920 from fed prison in Atlanta, Ga) and he must have been quite a thorn in the imperialist-robber barons' sides. Pres. Wilson "vigorously denied" a request for pardon in 1921, but Pres Warren G. Harding released him under a general amnesty on Christmas Day, 1921.

Harding then invited Debs to stop by the White House and told him, "I have heard so damned much about you Mr. Debs, that I am very glad to meet you personally."

Well, I'm glad someone in the White House (ever) showed some shame and humility. Debs' humility and friendliness in prison had won him the respect of fellow prisoners, and personally I would have been honored to have met him myself.

Needless to say, Debs' health was broken by his years in confinement and he died in a sanitarium on Oct 20, 1926.

Now perhaps you read "Socialist Party" and cringe a bit, yet no one can deny that Eugene V. Debs gave his all for America and for social justice--losing his health and his citizenship in the process.

Whenever I read the words of Eugene Debs I feel proud of America and feel her spirit of decency--whenever I read the words of recent US administrations I feel anxious, depressed, and above all--threatened. Our liberties are their toys, and our freedoms are to be dispensed with asap. The attacks of 9/11 were about just that for we've been couped from without and, even more debilitatingly, from within.


But just what have I done for America lately? Grouse, complain, and dissent against Washington DC imperialists and warmongerers...while it's still permissable. Is this "extremely dangerous"? Probably so, for somewhere in Bush's back pocket there must be an imperialist's signing statement covering the abolishment of sassy blogs such as this! If not, perhaps I may up the sass (no, I don't have a Pluto-NN conj!)


Hear an excerpt of Debs' presidential campaign speech of 1904.


And now some final bon mots from Mr. Debs:

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority is wrong."

"Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization."



update: here are my comments about this post at Jude's Threshold.