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Thursday, June 26, 2003 |
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"The imposition of the death penalty is both racially and economically biased. African American defendants are more likely to receive death sentences than others who committed similar crimes. Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is an acceptable moral alternative to capital punishment."
- - Dennis Kucinich (6/24/03 upon introducing legislation to abolish the federal death penalty)
JUNE 26th IN HISTORY:
1541 -- Pizarro, decimator of the Inca empire, assassinated in Peru.
1894 -- South Africa: Mohandas Gandhi founds movement for Indian rights. (dot Indians/not feather)
1918 -- Eugene Debs is arrested for giving an anti-war speech. Canton, Ohio.
1951 -- The Rhino exits his mother's womb around noontime in San Francisco.
1975 -- FBI agents & AIM activists shootout at Oglala, South Dakota leaving 2 FBI agents & Lakota activist Joe Stuntz dead. 2 American Indian Movement (AIM) leaders are prosecuted for the FBI deaths & found innocent by reason of self-defense; a third, AIM activist Leonard Peltier, is later framed when much of the same evidence is disallowed in his trial. Continuous protests & efforts to free Peltier over the past two decades have been blocked by the FBI. The FBI still holds over 6,000 pages on the Leonard Peltier case which they refuse to release for "National Security."
1994 -- In commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, over one million people march in New York City to celebrate & demand gay & lesbian rights.
RHINO HERE:
Dennis Kucinich is not letting any grass grow under his feet these days. Every week it seems he lets loose a new caper. On Tuesday 6/24, he introduced a bill that would abolish the federal death penalty, noting the 101 men & women who've been exonerated from Death Row. Joining Kucinich in co-sponsoring the "Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act" were 36 members of Congress, including progressive Caucus co-chair Barbara Lee & ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, as well as many fellow progressives and members of the Black and Hispanic Caucuses.
What percentage of Americans do you suppose are aware of the ridiculous juxtaposition between the way the media, prodded on by the "vast right wing conspiracy", treated Bill Clinton for lying about his lame sexual exploits, & the way the media & the democratic non-leadership has treated shrub. Can most citizens remember that far back? The following 2 articles can help to amplify the differences.
The Clinton Warmongers
By Richard Cohen, Washington Post, Tuesday, June 24, 2003
Sidney Blumenthal titles his account of his White House days "The Clinton Wars," but it could just as easily be called "The Blumenthal Wars." Reviewers have called him a Clinton "courtier," "Sid Vicious," a "lady-in-waiting" and, by the strongest of implications, a liar. Yet to actually read the book brings another term to mind: "mad." This is what Washington was during the Clinton years.
I do not mean all of Washington. After all, many Democrats fought valiantly for Bill Clinton -- or, if not for him, then against Ken Starr, the moralistic prig of a special prosecutor. Ditto some members of the press, who realized that no matter what Clinton did, what was being done to him -- and the presidency -- was far, far worse...
READ THE REST AT:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24685-2003Jun23.html
Denial and Deception
By PAUL KRUGMAN, NY Times,, June 24, 2003
Politics is full of ironies. On the White House Web site, George W. Bush's speech from Oct. 7, 2002 - in which he made the case for war with Iraq - bears the headline "Denial and Deception." Indeed.
There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials deceived us into war. The key question now is why so many influential people are in denial, unwilling to admit the obvious...
ITS ALL AT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/24/opinion/24KRUG.html
RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE today deals with the common assumption that dominators primarily rely on the use physical force, but in fact, psychological researchers have been focusing much more on verbal abuse as a major theme in marital problems. Meanwhile, little has been said about the key role abusive language has come to play in political speeches & discourse including "hot media" as talk radio and television. The writer is Renana Brooks, PhD, a clinical psychologist practicing in Washington, DC. She heads the Sommet Institute for the Study of Power and Persuasion and is completing a book on the virtue myth and the conservative culture of domination.
http://www.sommetinstitute.org
7:49:33 AM 
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A Nation of Victims
By Renana Brooks, The Nation, June 22, 2003
George W Bush is generally regarded as a mangler of the English language. What is overlooked is his mastery of emotional language - especially negatively charged emotional language - as a political tool. Take a closer look at his speeches and public utterances, and his political success turns out to be no surprise. It is the predictable result of the intentional use of language to dominate others.
President Bush, like many dominant personality types, uses dependency-creating language. He employs language of contempt and intimidation to shame others into submission and desperate admiration. While we tend to think of the dominator as using physical force, in fact most dominators use verbal abuse to control others. Abusive language has been a major theme of psychological researchers on marital problems, such as John Gottman, and of philosophers and theologians, such as Josef Pieper. But little has been said about the key role it has come to play in political discourse, and in such "hot media" as talk radio and television.
Bush uses several dominating linguistic techniques to induce surrender to his will. The first is empty language . This term refers to broad statements that are so abstract and mean so little that they are virtually impossible to oppose. Empty language is the emotional equivalent of empty calories. Just as we seldom question the content of potato chips while enjoying their pleasurable taste, recipients of empty language are usually distracted from examining the content of what they are hearing. Domina-tors use empty language to conceal faulty generalizations; to ridicule viable alternatives; to attribute negative motivations to others, thus making them appear contemptible; and to rename and "reframe" opposing viewpoints. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech contained thirty-nine examples of empty language. He used it to reduce complex problems to images that left the listener relieved that George W Bush was in charge. Rather than explaining the relationship between malpractice insurance and skyrocketing healthcare costs, Bush summed up: "No one has ever been healed by a frivolous lawsuit." The multiple fiscal and monetary policy tools that can be used to stimulate an economy were downsized to: "The best and fairest way to make sure Americans have that money is not to tax it away in the first place." The controversial plan to wage another war on Iraq was simplified to: "We will answer every danger and every enemy that threatens the American people." In an earlier study, I found that in the 2000 presidential debates Bush used at least four times as many phrases containing empty language as Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush Senior or Gore had used in their debates...
READ IT ALL AT:
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16220
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6:37:51 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Gary Rhine.
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