Updated: 9/5/04; 1:34:59 PM.
A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog
An attempt to use Radio to further my goal for world domination through the study of biology, computing and knowledge management.
        

Saturday, August 21, 2004


Sweet, Sweet Justice. Can't help smiling about Deal Hudson's resignation as Bush's Catholic advisor [The Gadflyer | All Feeds]

What a good Catholic! Try to get Communion witheld from politiicans while having such a skeleton in your closet. seems to me that someone who tried to rape a drunck woman should do more penance than trying to smear other Catholics. I expect there to be a specific ring in Hell for people like him.  comment []4:08:13 PM    



"Kerry's speech yesterday to the International Association of Fire Fighters" [Daypop Top 40]

EM>Nice speech.  comment []4:04:12 PM    



CNN.com - Wheat-allergic girl denied Communion - Aug 20, 2004 [Daypop Top 40]

Why would God give a child a disease that prevents her from receiving Communion? Seems to me that there should be some way around this, like find another faith, unfortunately.  comment []4:03:49 PM    



The evolving mediascape. When Dinosaurs Ruled the Airwaves is a prescient essay Frank Catalano wrote for Analog Science Fiction & Fact magazine in 1992 that forecast many of the major media trends of the past 12 years, including the "Democratization of Information" and... [seattlepi.com Buzzworthy]

Read the article. It is pretty close.  comment []3:49:01 PM    



More from the transcripts

There are somethings that are really eerie in the question and response parts. This response from Kerry, in response to a question by Senator Case about needing to fight in Indochina to preserve world peace, is just prescient. Coming from a man in his early 20s, it is remarkable. What was Bush doing in his 20s?
Therefore, I think it is ridiculous to assume we have to play this power game based on total warfare. I think there will be guerilla wars and I think we must have a capability to fight those. And we may have to fight them somewhere based on legitimate threats and that is what I would say to this question of world peace. I think it is bogus, totally artificial. There is no threat. The Communists are not about to take over our McDonald hamburger stands. (Laughter)

Senator, I will say this. I think that politically, historically, the one thing that people try to do, that society is structured on as a whole, is an attempt to satisfy their felt needs, and you can satisfy those needs with almost any kind of political structure, giving it one name or the other. In this name it is democratic; in other it is communism; in others it is benevolent dictatorship. As long as those needs are satisfied, that structure will exist.

But when you start to neglect those needs, people will start to demand a new structure, and that, to me, is the only threat that this country faces now, because we are not responding to the needs and we are not responding to them because we work on these old cold-war precepts and because we have not woken up to realizing what is happening in the United States of America.

People will put up with almost any political system as long as their 'felt' needs are meet. A government neglects those needs at its peril. That is why a democracy such as ours contiues to work, becasue it is, or should be, forced to respond to these needs. But, what if the government tricks the people into believing that their safety (which is one of those felt needs) requires giving up some of that democracy? I bet lots would do so. Because for many people, it is not the system of government that is important. All politics is local. Make sure they are safe, that their children can grow up, etc. If a government provides this, almost any system will work. But most will not be stable for long. Dictatorships, cult of personalities, can not survive the death of the leader. Alexander's vast empire died almost as soon as he did. Our Founding Fathers believed that a representative democracy would be stable, but it needed safeguards to prevent the people from turning all power over to the first dictator who took care of the felt needs. That is why it requires 3 strong branches of government. We are in peril now, 30 years after his testimony, because of the same aspects that threatened us then. We do not have 3 strong branches. The Executive branch has gotten stronger and the Congress has degenerated into partisan hackery. Sometimes I feel the same way that Kerry must have felt in 1971 - that we are perilously close to losing what makes America great. We seem to be fighting the same sort of battle. I figure it is still one we will be fighting 30 years from now. Some people are afraid of the unknown and must protect themselves from it. Others embrace the unknown and move forward. Some long for gated communities. Others for open arms. One is an Industrial Age view of the world. The other is an Information Age view of the world. Now chose.

The flase dicotomy I just used is for my conservative friends who see eveything as made up of only 2 choices; black or white; night or day; patriot or terrorist. The real world is gray but every so often, our culture does collapse into back and white choices. Slavery is an obvious one. You can be on the wrong side or the right side of history with that choice. I think Vietnam collpased into just such a two-fold choice. So is our world today. That is why what happened 30 years ago is still important.  comment []3:25:44 PM    



More from Kerry's 1971 Transcripts (see link below). Senator Pell said this:
It is interesting, speaking of veterans and speaking of statistics, that the press has never picked up and concentrated on quite interesting votes in the past. In those votes you find the majority of hawks were usually nonveterans and the majority of doves were usually veterans. Specifically, of those who voted in favor of the Hatfield-McGovern end-the-war amendment in the last session of the Congress 79 were veterans with actual military service. Of those voting against the amendment, only 36 percent were veterans.

"Le plus ça change, le plus le meme chose". Apprpriately, it is French.  comment []3:02:59 PM    



Kerry's Full 1971 Transcript with Questions

Here is the full testimony of Kerry, with his reponses to questions from the Senators. It is tough to think about how many more years Americans were killed before a stop was put to it. One aspect that should have been a ringing call to anyone, even the Kerry of today. One of the exchanges discusses the facts that once a President takes on the Commander in Chief uniform, once Congress allows him to do this, Congress has little power to stop him from doing whatever he wants. They can not tell him to stop, omnly to start. Our Legislative Branch has forgotten this, allowing a President to take on the mantle without a Declaration of War in a conflict that the President says can last decades. The mantle can never be removed unless we remove the current C-in-C but even this will not guarantee that it is permanently gone. truthfully, I believe a weak Legislature, controlled by people who can best be described as misguided, has allowed this Administration to take us down the same road that was taken with Vietnam. That is why the discussions regarding decision made back then are relevant.

Bush found a way to get out of fighting, and, as far as we know, never found himself shot at ot being required to make split second, life altering decisions in the heat of battle. Kerry did not want to go but went anyway. He did not want to be in combat but commanded extremely well. He came back, working to make sure his crew was removed from harm's way, and did what he could to stop more Americans from being killed. Which one should we trust today. One who responded by reading a children;s book with elemnentary school children for 7 crucial minutes or one who turned his boats into enemy fire, routing them. (Or who, as he stepped off of an elevator near the Senate Dining Hall, saw a Senator collapsed on the ground an immediately used the Heimlich technique to clear his airways, a move that if performed even a minute later could have resulted in brain damage!)

The ability to make decisive, and correct, decisions. Seven minutes in a schoolroom vs. seconds in the Senate dining room. How can there be any rational comparison of these two men's ability to quickly decide what to do? It seems we only have irrational comparisons. I must be an elitist, because I want someone who has demonstrated the ability to make good, quick decisions. Kerry may not always be right (I disagree with his vote authorizing Bush's war) but he is more likely to make the right call when lives are on the line than Bush. And correct a mistake when he recognizes it, as opposed to an Adminstration and a President who can not recall ANY mistakes they have made.  comment []2:55:53 PM    



Nicholas R. Cozzarelli, Kenneth R. Fulton, and Diane M. Sullenberger

Liberalization of PNAS copyright policy: Noncommercial use freely allowed
PNAS published August 16, 2004,

10.1073/pnas.0405514101 ( Editorial )

[Abstract] [PDF]   [PNAS Early Edition]

This is why Open Access will eventually be the standard for scientific discourse. Not only are articles available immediately but a liberal copyright program allows non-commercial use of the information.  comment []2:03:33 PM    



Kerry's Senate Testimony 1971

While people smear what he did, you can read for yourself what he said. He did not call American soldiers 'baby-killers." He was reporting to the Committee what had been said in testimony by other soldiers. Many of these things DID, in fact, happen. A Pulitzer was awarded last year for a series on just these sorts of atrocities that occurred in free-fire zones. His testimony was not directed at the soldiers but the officers and Administration that put those men in such horrendous circumstances. You may not agree with him but he puts up a very strong argument that requires more than name-calling to disparage or refute. You do not repond to a "Firends, Romans, Countryman", sort of oratory by shouting "Blow it out your ass." But that seems to be the level of discourse fostered by this Administration and its hired surrogates such as the Swifties.

Thank you very much, Senator Fulbright, Senator Javits, Senator Symington and Senator Pell.

I would like to say for the record, and also for the men sitting behind me who are also wearing the uniforms and their medals, that my sitting here is really symbolic. I am not here as John Kerry. I am here as one member of a group of 1,000, which is a small representation of a very much larger group of veterans in this country, and were it possible for all of them to sit at this table, they would be here and have the same kind of testimony. I would simply like to speak in general terms. I apologize if my statement is general because I received notification [only] yesterday that you would hear me, and, I am afraid, because of the injunction I was up most of the night and haven't had a great deal of chance to prepare.

I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago, in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents, but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis, with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit--the emotions in the room, and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.

They told stories that, at times, they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam,in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. The term "winter soldier" is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776, when he spoke of the "sunshine patriots," and "summertime soldiers" who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.

We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel, because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.

I would like to talk to you a little bit about what the result is of the feelings these men carry with them after coming back from Vietnam. The country doesn't know it yet, but it has created a monster, a monster in the form of millions of men who have been taught to deal and to trade in violence, and who are given the chance to die for the biggest nothing in history; men who have returned with a sense of anger and a sense of betrayal which no one has yet grasped.

As a veteran and one who felt this anger, I would like to talk about it. We are angry because we feel we have been used it the worst fashion by the administration of this country.

In 1970, at West Point, Vice President Agnew said, "some glamorize the criminal misfits of society while our best men die in Asian rice paddies to preserve the freedom which most of those misfits abuse," and this was used as a rallying point for our effort in Vietnam.

But for us, as boys in Asia whom the country was supposed to support, his statement is a terrible distortion from which we can only draw a very deep sense of revulsion. Hence the anger of some of the men who are here in Washington today. It is a distortion because we in no way consider ourselves the best men of this country, because those he calls misfits were standing up for us in a way that nobody else in this country dared to, because so many who have died would have returned to this country to join the misfits in their efforts to ask for an immediate withdrawal from South Vietnam, because so many of those best men have returned as quadriplegics and amputees, and they lie forgotten in Veterans' Administration hospitals in this country which fly the flag which so many have chosen as their own personal symbol. And we cannot consider ourselves America's best men when we are ashamed of and hated what we were called on to do in Southeast Asia.

In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.

We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but, also, we found that the Vietnamese, whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image, were hard-put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.

We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.

We found also that, all too often, American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search-and-destroy missions as well as by Viet Cong terrorism, - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.

We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai, and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.

We learned the meaning of free-fire zones--shooting anything that moves--and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.

We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while, month after month, we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings" with quotation marks around that. We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using, were we fighting in the European theater. We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and, after losing one platoon, or two platoons, they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others.

Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of "Vietnamizing" the Vietnamese.

Each day, to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam, someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

We are asking Americans to think about that, because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying, as human beings, to communicate to people in this country--the question of racism, which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions, such as the use of weapons: the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war, when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free-fire zones; harassment-interdiction fire, search-and-destroy missions; the bombings; the torture of prisoners; all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.

An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian Nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly: He told me how, as a boy on an Indian reservation, he had watched television, and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said, "my God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people," and he stopped. And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this thing has to end.

We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The Marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country....

We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done, and all that they can do by this denial, is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission: To search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war; to pacify our own hearts; to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so, when, thirty years from now, our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned, and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.

  comment []12:50:23 PM    


Republic or Empire.
  • Gary Hart: The New Caesars. The United States cannot be simultaneously republic and empire. For evidence, see Rome (circa 65 B.C.). We salute the flag of the United States of America "and the Republic for which it stands." Since the time of the Greek city-states, republics have shared certain immutable qualities: civic virtue or citizen participation, popular sovereignty, resistance to corruption (by special interests) and a sense of the common good. Empires consolidate power in the hands of the few; seek expanded influence, by force if necessary; export centralized administrations to foreign lands; dictate terms to lesser powers, and manage foreign occupied peoples for their own political and commercial advantage.
  • [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

    This is the hope for many in power now. A US empire whose hegemony dominates the world. Unfortunately, an empire is an anathema to a democratic republic. So, exect that to be next, if the neocons have their way.  comment []11:46:08 AM    



     
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