By Lynn Bartels
The Denver Post
Posted: 02/08/2011 01:00:00 AM MST
Dick Wadhams on Monday unexpectedly dropped his bid for re-election as chair of the Colorado Republican Party, warning GOP leaders that their chances in 2012 could be "severely undermined" by a strategy aimed solely at uniting conservatives.
Wadhams said he had the votes to land a third term but in the past few days got to thinking, "What happens after I win?"
"I have loved being chairman, but I'm tired of the nuts who have no grasp of what the state party's role is," he said.
Wadhams last year was alternately accused of meddling in the governor's race and failing to get involved to ensure the right Republican would win.
Wadhams' decision stunned the Democrats he has targeted since taking over leadership of the state party in 2007.
"Speechless," tweeted former House Speaker Terrance Carroll, D-Denver.
Wadhams said he doesn't know what his next career move is.
His departure leaves state Sen. Ted Harvey of Highlands Ranch as the front-runner in the March 26 chairmanship race, although Republicans now expect other candidates to jump in. Harvey could not be reached for comment.
Wadhams referred to Harvey in his letter to the state Central Committee announcing he was dropping out of the race but did not mention the lawmaker by name.
"I have tired of those who are obsessed with seeing conspiracies around every corner and who have terribly misguided notions of what the role of the state party is while saying 'uniting conservatives' is all that is needed to win competitive races across the state," Wadhams wrote.
In Harvey's announcement last week, he said he intended "to unite our base and return authentic conservative leadership to the party structure."
Democratic political strategist Laura Chapin said Wad hams fell victim to deep splits within his party that make it tough for a moderate to win a primary. The conservative then has to win the general election in a state where one-third of the electorate is unaffiliated.
Wadhams said as much in his letter, questioning the wisdom of the "authentic conservative leadership" strategy.
"The ability of Colorado Republicans to win and retain the votes of hundreds of thousands of unaffiliated swing voters in 2012 will be severely undermined," he said.
Wadhams on Monday added that Harvey "sees everything through the lens of a safe Republican district in Douglas County, and Colorado is more diverse than that."
It was unaffiliated voters who gave U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet a razor-thin victory over Republican challenger Ken Buck last year in a race the GOP expected to win.
Republicans early expected to win the governor's race, but it turned into a free-for-all in which political neophyte Dan Maes won the primary but received only 11 percent of the vote in the general election.
Maes blamed former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo for his poor showing. Tancredo ran for governor on a third-party ticket to try to stop Democrat John Hickenlooper.
Republicans did knock off the Democratic secretary of state and treasurer and two Democratic members of Congress, as well as pick up the majority in the state House.
Wadhams built his reputation running successful U.S. Senate campaigns in Colorado, Montana and South Dakota. He returned to Colorado in 2007 after George Allen's 2006 Senate campaign in Virginia crashed in the wake of comments by Allen deemed racially insensitive.
In 2008, Wadhams served as campaign manager to Bob Schaffer's Senate campaign while also serving as state party chairman. Under his leadership, the party paid off a debt of more than $700,000.
http://www.denverpost.com/legislature/ci_17323833
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Frances Fox Piven: The Real Danger To Beck Isn't To Me, But To Democracy
February 08, 2011 10:30 am ET
- by Media Matters staff
For several weeks, Glenn Beck has relentlessly demonized CUNY Political Science professor Frances Fox Piven. His attacks have inspired death threats and been met with widespread condemnation. Below, Frances Fox Piven responds to Beck. His paranoid rants, she says, pose a greater danger to American democracy than to her personal safety.
From a February 8 column published on the website of The Guardian:
When the process of governing is incomprehensible, manipulation and propaganda thrives. The strange stories that Glenn Beck creates with his chalkboard gain traction with Americans, who are made anxious by the large changes that have overtaken the United States, including the election of a black president and the increasing racial diversity of the population, deindustrialisation and the decline of American power abroad, as well as cultural changes in sexual and family norms.
By telling simple fairy tales that trace these big and complex changes to the machinations of particular people, Beck makes the changes comprehensible in a way, and also makes the people who are presumably responsible the targets of his listeners' frustration and outrage. Partly because it is utterly irrational, and partly because it is an effort to bully and intimidate his political opponents, this is dangerous for democratic politics.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201102080013
Friday, February 4, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
FOXLEAKS: Fox Caught Scripting Socialism Attack
February 03, 2011 10:00 am ET by Oliver Willis
"Isn't that what they do in socialist countries?"
Steve Doocy's question sounded like a spontaneous reaction to what he apparently saw as the threat Barack Obama would pose to freedom of the press.
It wasn't.
The Fox News host's inflammatory question had, in fact, been scripted the night before in an email sent by a Fox producer.
The incident, which occurred on the October 27, 2008, edition of Fox & Friends, came during what appears to have been a network-wide campaign to tie Obama to socialism in the month leading up to the presidential election. Internal Fox documents obtained by Media Matters and a review of the network's pre-election coverage show that Fox hosts, producers, and other journalists were involved in the effort.
October 27 was also the day that Fox's then-deputy managing editor Bill Sammon sent an internal email referencing what he described in the subject line as "Obama's references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists in his autobiography, 'Dreams from My Father.' " Sammon appeared on multiple Fox shows to discuss his "research" and also wrote a FoxNews.com piece about Obama's "affinity to Marxists."
The events leading up to Doocy's "socialist" question began four days earlier, when WFTV (ABC's Orlando affiliate) anchor Barbara West interviewed Joe Biden. During the interview, West suggested Obama's infamous exchange with "Joe the Plumber" -- in which Obama had advocated, "spread[ing] the wealth around" -- was a "potentially crushing political blunder."
West then asked: "You may recognize this famous quote: 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.' That's from Karl Marx. How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?"
"Are you joking?" asked a stunned Biden. "Is this a joke?"
"No," said West. "That's a question."
In response to West's interview, the Obama campaign reportedly cancelled a planned appearance by Jill Biden on WFTV and told the station, "This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election."
On the evening of October 26, a Fox producer named Elizabeth Fanning emailed an outline of the next morning's Fox & Friends to numerous staffers at the network. The document, obtained by Media Matters, listed five separate segments about the WFTV interview that were scheduled for the October 27 show. For each segment, the document listed an identical series of questions, including: "Isn't this what happens in communist countries?"
And that's almost exactly what Doocy said on the air. Interviewing Fox contributor Michelle Malkin, Doocy asked, "Isn't that what they do in socialist countries?"
Here's how the document described the segment featuring Malkin [emphasis added]:
8:15 (B-BLOCK) - MICHELE MALKIN - CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST & FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR - OBAMA CAMPAIGN CUTS OFF TV STATION, AFTER BIDEN ANGERED BY QUESTIONS. IS THIS A PREVIEW OF THINGS TO COME? WILL THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS ROOM BE LIKE THIS? CAN YOU NOT ASK TOUGH QUESTIONS? WILL THEY SUPPRESS THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS? ISN'T THIS WHAT HAPPENS IN COMMUNIST COUNTRIES? ((DENVER, CO)) ((STEVE AND GRETCHEN))
And here's Doocy's actual exchange with Malkin:
DOOCY: And after that line of tough questioning the Biden camp called the TV station in Orlando and said, "You are not getting any more interviews for the balance of the election cycle." Michelle Malkin is joining us right now. Of course, she is a conservative columnist and a Fox News contributor. She's out there in Denver right now. All right,Michelle, they pulled the plug on any future interviews because of that tough line of questioning. Your observations, please.
MALKIN: There's a chill wind blowing, and I think that this does signal what the future of the White House press corps would be under an Obama-Biden administration. How dare Barbara West of WFTV confront Joe Biden with some basic, simple questions that anyone who wasn't totally in the tank for Obama would feel comfortable asking? And --yes, so she's been blacklisted, and apparently the station has been bombarded by Obama cultists who are offended that she was so quote-unquote rude and quote-unquote combative to the increasingly erratic and super-gaffe-tastic Joe Biden.
[...]
DOOCY: Well, you know, Michelle, the whole thing is -- a couple weeks ago, a tough question was asked about "spreading the wealth around" by Joe The Plumber. What happens to him? He gets investigated. Now, Barbara --
GRETCHEN CARLSON (co-host): West.
DOOCY: -- West out in Orlando, she asks some hard questions, and the station gets shut down. You know, your comment about a chill is perhaps accurate because people will think twice before they ask something like that. But isn't that what they do in socialist countries where, you know, "I don't like that, you're done"?
MALKIN: Yeah, like I said, this is a preview of things to come. And I think it's particularly interesting timing, this Barbara West interview with Biden at the same time that now we have this 2001 tape, as you guys mentioned this morning, where Obama is musing about how best to redistribute wealth. It's not about whether it's a good thing or not, whether it's American or not, it's whether he should do it through the courts or legislatively.
But Fox wasn't done with the West-Biden interview. That night, West appeared on the October 27 O'Reilly Factor, where Bill O'Reilly noted that West had "used some buzz words like 'Marxism' " but declared that her "questions were fine":
WEST: I went into the interview with the mindset that we had some serious questions and serious issues in this country that need to be answered. And we're running out of time to getting the answers to those issues.
O'REILLY: But you used some buzz words like "Marxism." I thought your questions were fine. I don't know whether I would have phrased them quite that way because you gave him a little wiggle room to do a couple of things. There's no doubt that income redistribution is controversial. And I brought it up with Barack Obama myself. But he wanted to paint you as a far right person just by the tone of your questions. Do you see what he wanted to do?
WEST: Yes, indeed. I -- I think that he would like to still do that. But, I am not. I am a reporter who works for a television station that asks probing, penetrating, straightforward, challenging questions. That is our job.
"You did your job," said O'Reilly. "I didn't have any problem with it."
The following morning, West was back on Fox News, this time appearing on the October 28, 2008, Fox & Friends. Co-host Gretchen Carlson declared it her "favorite story of the day."
"You're completely professional," Carlson told West at the conclusion of the segment. "I know that you were labeled as 'unprofessional' by the Obama campaign after that interview. Very professional."
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201102030006
I helped cause the financial crisis, and I'm sorry.
Ken Kupchik
JANUARY 31, 2011 4:15PM
I was twenty-two years old when I decided to go into mortgage sales. I was finishing an undergraduate degree in Criminal Justice and had decided that I didn't want to go to Law School as I had originally intended. I didn't have rich parents, and had never made any significant money, so I set out to find the highest paying job someone with my limited qualifications could find.
At the time, my girlfriend's best friend was dating a guy who worked in mortgages. He drove a BMW, had nice clothes and carried himself well. Over drinks one night, I kept quizzing him on his success, and he told me all I needed to do was read a book or two and have some sort of people skills and I could be making six figures. Hearing those words was like a dog whistle to a middle-class immigrant who had only worked restaurant and construction jobs until that point. As it turned out, the bar for entry into the mortgage world was even lower than reading a book or two.
I applied for several mortgage jobs on the internet, sat back and waited. Within a few weeks, I got called back for an interview at what is now known as one of the biggest culprits in the sub-prime mortgage collapse. The manager interviewing me was down to earth, and promised me that I'd be making over 100k a year if I just followed the sales process. It was a no-brainer for me, and within a month I was on a flight to Illinois for corporate training. Before I left for the airport, I got my first check in the mail; $950, the most money I had ever been paid at one time, and that was only for two weeks of pre-training office work.
The training was boring and disillusioning. The computer system they taught us made no sense to me, and the calculations even less so. This didn't really matter though. All you needed to do was learn the script. Everything else was unimportant. JUST LEARN THE SCRIPT. I distinctly remember our trainer, an energetic middle-aged woman telling us: "This is the only job where you will be able to help people, and make more money than you've ever made before in your life." At least the second part was true.
Once we got back from training, the selling started. We would take inbound phone calls from current customers patched in from a corporate call center. Many of them weren't even interested in refinancing, they had just called in to ask a question and were transferred to us. It was our job to get these people to "lower their monthly payments," or "consolidate their high-interest credit cards into a low monthly payment," mostly through sub-prime refinancing. We also had "port" leads; endless lists of existing customers that we would constantly call and offer to lower their mortgage payment. This was late 2006, the peak of the sub-prime boom. Years of bank deregulation had allowed commercial banks to become mortgage companies, taking on ungodly risk and leveraging it over and over again. Mortgage companies bundled sub-prime loans and sold them as mortgage backed derivatives on the secondary market. This meant that wall street was making a killing reselling the bad loans that we were selling to consumers.
The perception among the general public is that mortgage salespeople were sleazy, greedy and immoral. This was partly true. I worked with some people who would have sold their own mother to make a buck. I literally knew of drug dealers who had gone into mortgages because it was less risky and more profitable than selling cocaine. But there were plenty of decent people in the industry as well. The problems mostly came down from the top. Regional managers had a no-holds barred mentality. You had to do anything to make the sale, no excuses. This meant working late, lying to people, and committing fraud. I once walked into the copy room and saw someone cutting out a signature and copying it onto another document. Stories circulated about other branches staying up late and manufacturing fake asset documents to qualify borrowers for loans. On one of my loans, a regional manager turned a 2/28 year adjustable loan into a 6 month adjustable because it made $500 more for the company. I had to explain to the borrower that it was the best we could do. She signed on the loan because the needed the 15k cash out in equity for accumulating bills.
And the money came flowing in. There were some months when I would make close to $10,000. It wasn't unheard of for a loan rep with no college education to be pulling in close to $20k a month. I had money for the first time in my life. I bought all the clothes I wanted, bought my dream car, an Infiniti G35 coupe, and started helping my parents out with their bills. Affording things was no longer a problem. I should have been happier than ever before. But I wasn't. I was miserable. I hated what I was doing, and I hated going into work. I dreaded the office, I dreaded the people and I dreaded what we did. I figured out early on that we weren't "helping people," we were taking advantage of them. Did some loans put people in better situations? Yes, but more put people in worse ones.
I spent a total of nine months working for a subprime morgage company before I quit. I walked out as a 23 year-old making six figures a year. I left because I knew that we weren't helping people, and I hated feeling the way I did knowing what were truly a part of. I remember sitting in my manager's office with tears in my eyes trying to explain to him how I felt, and hearing him trying to rationalize what were doing: "We're helping people", "Someone else will do it if we don't." I quit the next day. I went back into the industry for under a year after subprime dissapeared in 2007, but only long enough to finally put the nail in the coffin of my mortgage career.
There are few things that I regret in my life. Among those regrets are a handful of loans that I should never have agreed to make. I would have lost my job, but it wasn't worth the money I made from them. I never committed fraud, but that's only because most of it was legal at the time. I don't regret the experience. It taught me about what kind of a person I didn't want to be, and what money can make you do. I helped cause the financial collapse, and I'm sorry. No one has apologized to you, and we all should. We hurt people who were much more honest and hardworking than we ever will be, only for money. I am truly sorry, and I will never hurt people for money again.
http://open.salon.com/blog/ken_k/2011/01/31/i_helped_cause_the_financial_crisis_and_im_sorry
JANUARY 31, 2011 4:15PM
I was twenty-two years old when I decided to go into mortgage sales. I was finishing an undergraduate degree in Criminal Justice and had decided that I didn't want to go to Law School as I had originally intended. I didn't have rich parents, and had never made any significant money, so I set out to find the highest paying job someone with my limited qualifications could find.
At the time, my girlfriend's best friend was dating a guy who worked in mortgages. He drove a BMW, had nice clothes and carried himself well. Over drinks one night, I kept quizzing him on his success, and he told me all I needed to do was read a book or two and have some sort of people skills and I could be making six figures. Hearing those words was like a dog whistle to a middle-class immigrant who had only worked restaurant and construction jobs until that point. As it turned out, the bar for entry into the mortgage world was even lower than reading a book or two.
I applied for several mortgage jobs on the internet, sat back and waited. Within a few weeks, I got called back for an interview at what is now known as one of the biggest culprits in the sub-prime mortgage collapse. The manager interviewing me was down to earth, and promised me that I'd be making over 100k a year if I just followed the sales process. It was a no-brainer for me, and within a month I was on a flight to Illinois for corporate training. Before I left for the airport, I got my first check in the mail; $950, the most money I had ever been paid at one time, and that was only for two weeks of pre-training office work.
The training was boring and disillusioning. The computer system they taught us made no sense to me, and the calculations even less so. This didn't really matter though. All you needed to do was learn the script. Everything else was unimportant. JUST LEARN THE SCRIPT. I distinctly remember our trainer, an energetic middle-aged woman telling us: "This is the only job where you will be able to help people, and make more money than you've ever made before in your life." At least the second part was true.
Once we got back from training, the selling started. We would take inbound phone calls from current customers patched in from a corporate call center. Many of them weren't even interested in refinancing, they had just called in to ask a question and were transferred to us. It was our job to get these people to "lower their monthly payments," or "consolidate their high-interest credit cards into a low monthly payment," mostly through sub-prime refinancing. We also had "port" leads; endless lists of existing customers that we would constantly call and offer to lower their mortgage payment. This was late 2006, the peak of the sub-prime boom. Years of bank deregulation had allowed commercial banks to become mortgage companies, taking on ungodly risk and leveraging it over and over again. Mortgage companies bundled sub-prime loans and sold them as mortgage backed derivatives on the secondary market. This meant that wall street was making a killing reselling the bad loans that we were selling to consumers.
The perception among the general public is that mortgage salespeople were sleazy, greedy and immoral. This was partly true. I worked with some people who would have sold their own mother to make a buck. I literally knew of drug dealers who had gone into mortgages because it was less risky and more profitable than selling cocaine. But there were plenty of decent people in the industry as well. The problems mostly came down from the top. Regional managers had a no-holds barred mentality. You had to do anything to make the sale, no excuses. This meant working late, lying to people, and committing fraud. I once walked into the copy room and saw someone cutting out a signature and copying it onto another document. Stories circulated about other branches staying up late and manufacturing fake asset documents to qualify borrowers for loans. On one of my loans, a regional manager turned a 2/28 year adjustable loan into a 6 month adjustable because it made $500 more for the company. I had to explain to the borrower that it was the best we could do. She signed on the loan because the needed the 15k cash out in equity for accumulating bills.
And the money came flowing in. There were some months when I would make close to $10,000. It wasn't unheard of for a loan rep with no college education to be pulling in close to $20k a month. I had money for the first time in my life. I bought all the clothes I wanted, bought my dream car, an Infiniti G35 coupe, and started helping my parents out with their bills. Affording things was no longer a problem. I should have been happier than ever before. But I wasn't. I was miserable. I hated what I was doing, and I hated going into work. I dreaded the office, I dreaded the people and I dreaded what we did. I figured out early on that we weren't "helping people," we were taking advantage of them. Did some loans put people in better situations? Yes, but more put people in worse ones.
I spent a total of nine months working for a subprime morgage company before I quit. I walked out as a 23 year-old making six figures a year. I left because I knew that we weren't helping people, and I hated feeling the way I did knowing what were truly a part of. I remember sitting in my manager's office with tears in my eyes trying to explain to him how I felt, and hearing him trying to rationalize what were doing: "We're helping people", "Someone else will do it if we don't." I quit the next day. I went back into the industry for under a year after subprime dissapeared in 2007, but only long enough to finally put the nail in the coffin of my mortgage career.
There are few things that I regret in my life. Among those regrets are a handful of loans that I should never have agreed to make. I would have lost my job, but it wasn't worth the money I made from them. I never committed fraud, but that's only because most of it was legal at the time. I don't regret the experience. It taught me about what kind of a person I didn't want to be, and what money can make you do. I helped cause the financial collapse, and I'm sorry. No one has apologized to you, and we all should. We hurt people who were much more honest and hardworking than we ever will be, only for money. I am truly sorry, and I will never hurt people for money again.
http://open.salon.com/blog/ken_k/2011/01/31/i_helped_cause_the_financial_crisis_and_im_sorry
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Man arrested with explosives outside Mich. mosque
A 63-year-old is arrested on explosives charges in a mosque parking lot after reportedly making anti-Muslim remarks
By Justin Elliott
Roger Stockham, a 63-year-old California man, was arrested on explosives charges last week after police allegedly found him with M-80s in the trunk of his car in the parking lot of the Islamic Center of America, a Dearborn, Michigan, mosque.
Stockham was arraigned on Wednesday on one count of false report or threat of terrorism and one count of possession of explosives with unlawful intent, police said in a statement. Bail has been set at $500,000. The chief of police told the Detroit Free Press that Stockham has a history of anti-government feelings and he was attracted to Michigan because of its large Arab and Muslim population.
A spokesman for the Dearborn police told Salon today that no more information is being released and the investigation is ongonig.
But Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told Salon some more details of what allegedly happened, according to his conversations with police and mosque officials: He says Stockham had been heard by an employee of a Detroit bar making anti-Muslim remarks, including "describing Muslims as the enemy." The employee took down Stockham's license plate and alerted police. When they found him in the mosque parking lot, police found a concealed knife on Stockham and a large amount of fireworks, including M-80 exlposives, in the trunk of his car, Walid says.
He adds that he heard Stockham had praised Timothy McVeigh as a hero; but that and the other details could not be independently confirmed.
Walid says there were roughly 500 people inside the mosque on Monday for a funeral when Stockham was arrested in the parking lot. Asked how the community is reacting, he said:
"I've heard a couple of different reactions: What they were saying is that this guy, whether he has some mental instability or not, he could have caused a lot of damage." And, he added, "if his name was Ali or Muhammed and he did a similar thing at a synogogue, he would have been immediately labeled a domestic terrorist."
This Web profile of Stockham suggests he is a Vietnam veteran with two children and a granddaughter. And Talking Points Memo reports on his apparent MySpace page:
[H]e writes that he's happy with how much he's lived. "Ready for it to be over, but have a policy I contend with often: So long as I am alive, I can't play dead," Stockham apparently writes.
He writes that he has "four ex-wives" is "on meds and doing better than my history would predict." He lists his heroes as Thomas Jefferson and "Tom Payne" [sic].
* Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More: Justin Elliott
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/30/michigan_mosque_charges_roger_stockham/index.html
By Justin Elliott
Roger Stockham, a 63-year-old California man, was arrested on explosives charges last week after police allegedly found him with M-80s in the trunk of his car in the parking lot of the Islamic Center of America, a Dearborn, Michigan, mosque.
Stockham was arraigned on Wednesday on one count of false report or threat of terrorism and one count of possession of explosives with unlawful intent, police said in a statement. Bail has been set at $500,000. The chief of police told the Detroit Free Press that Stockham has a history of anti-government feelings and he was attracted to Michigan because of its large Arab and Muslim population.
A spokesman for the Dearborn police told Salon today that no more information is being released and the investigation is ongonig.
But Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told Salon some more details of what allegedly happened, according to his conversations with police and mosque officials: He says Stockham had been heard by an employee of a Detroit bar making anti-Muslim remarks, including "describing Muslims as the enemy." The employee took down Stockham's license plate and alerted police. When they found him in the mosque parking lot, police found a concealed knife on Stockham and a large amount of fireworks, including M-80 exlposives, in the trunk of his car, Walid says.
He adds that he heard Stockham had praised Timothy McVeigh as a hero; but that and the other details could not be independently confirmed.
Walid says there were roughly 500 people inside the mosque on Monday for a funeral when Stockham was arrested in the parking lot. Asked how the community is reacting, he said:
"I've heard a couple of different reactions: What they were saying is that this guy, whether he has some mental instability or not, he could have caused a lot of damage." And, he added, "if his name was Ali or Muhammed and he did a similar thing at a synogogue, he would have been immediately labeled a domestic terrorist."
This Web profile of Stockham suggests he is a Vietnam veteran with two children and a granddaughter. And Talking Points Memo reports on his apparent MySpace page:
[H]e writes that he's happy with how much he's lived. "Ready for it to be over, but have a policy I contend with often: So long as I am alive, I can't play dead," Stockham apparently writes.
He writes that he has "four ex-wives" is "on meds and doing better than my history would predict." He lists his heroes as Thomas Jefferson and "Tom Payne" [sic].
* Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More: Justin Elliott
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/30/michigan_mosque_charges_roger_stockham/index.html
Egypt shuts down al-Jazeera; 100 dead in protests
By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, January 30th, 2011 -- 11:00 am
CAIRO — Egypt moved on Sunday to shut down Al Jazeera's coverage of mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak's regime, but the pan-Arab broadcaster vowed that it would not be silenced.
Outgoing information minister Anas al-Fikki has "ordered the closure of all activities by Al Jazeera in the Arab republic of Egypt and the annulment of its licenses," Egypt's official MENA news agency reported.
The press cards of all Al Jazeera staff in Egypt were also being withdrawn, it added.
Egyptian satellite operator Nilesat meanwhile halted its relays of Al Jazeera programming, although the Qatar-based television channel could still be viewed in Cairo via Arabsat.
On Twitter, an Al Jazeera correspondent, Dan Nolan, wrote: "Aljazeera Cairo bureau has been shut down. Just visited by plain clothes govt security, TV uplink is now closed."
In a statement, Al Jazeera said the shutdown -- on day six of unprecedented and often violent street protests -- was aimed at "censoring and silencing the voices of the Egyptian people."
"Al Jazeera sees this as an act designed to stifle and repress the freedom of reporting by the network and its journalists," it said.
"Al Jazeera assures its audiences in Egypt and across the world that it will continue its in-depth and comprehensive reporting on the events unfolding in Egypt," it said.
It added: "In this time of deep turmoil and unrest in Egyptian society, it is imperative that voices from all sides be heard.
"The closing of our bureau by the Egyptian government is aimed at censoring and silencing the voices of the Egyptian people.
"The Al Jazeera Network is appalled at this latest attack by the Egyptian regime to strike at its freedom to report independently on the unprecedented events in Egypt," it added.
More than 100 people have been killed since mass protests against Mubarak's regime -- ignited by popular unrest in Tunisia -- erupted last Tuesday. While moving to change his government, the president is defying calls to stand down.
Al Jazeera has revolutionized the Arabic-language media and reporting on the Middle East since its foundation in 1996.
Media analysts have credited its blanket coverage of this month's unrest in Tunisia with contributing to the ouster of the North African state's longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Last week Al Jazeera angered the Palestinian Authority when it began releasing the first of 1,600 files detailing more than a decade of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
The files alleged that Palestinian negotiators offered unprecedented concessions on such sensitive subjects as Jerusalem and refugees.
They also claim that of members of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority cooperated closely with Israel in confronting Hamas, Fatah's more militant rival, which controls the Gaza strip.
In December, Kuwait shut down Al Jazeera's bureau in Kuwait City over its coverage of the use of police force at a public gathering. Al Jazeera denied meddling in Kuwaiti affairs, saying it was just doing its job.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/egypt-shuts-aljazeera/
Sunday, January 30th, 2011 -- 11:00 am
CAIRO — Egypt moved on Sunday to shut down Al Jazeera's coverage of mass protests against President Hosni Mubarak's regime, but the pan-Arab broadcaster vowed that it would not be silenced.
Outgoing information minister Anas al-Fikki has "ordered the closure of all activities by Al Jazeera in the Arab republic of Egypt and the annulment of its licenses," Egypt's official MENA news agency reported.
The press cards of all Al Jazeera staff in Egypt were also being withdrawn, it added.
Egyptian satellite operator Nilesat meanwhile halted its relays of Al Jazeera programming, although the Qatar-based television channel could still be viewed in Cairo via Arabsat.
On Twitter, an Al Jazeera correspondent, Dan Nolan, wrote: "Aljazeera Cairo bureau has been shut down. Just visited by plain clothes govt security, TV uplink is now closed."
In a statement, Al Jazeera said the shutdown -- on day six of unprecedented and often violent street protests -- was aimed at "censoring and silencing the voices of the Egyptian people."
"Al Jazeera sees this as an act designed to stifle and repress the freedom of reporting by the network and its journalists," it said.
"Al Jazeera assures its audiences in Egypt and across the world that it will continue its in-depth and comprehensive reporting on the events unfolding in Egypt," it said.
It added: "In this time of deep turmoil and unrest in Egyptian society, it is imperative that voices from all sides be heard.
"The closing of our bureau by the Egyptian government is aimed at censoring and silencing the voices of the Egyptian people.
"The Al Jazeera Network is appalled at this latest attack by the Egyptian regime to strike at its freedom to report independently on the unprecedented events in Egypt," it added.
More than 100 people have been killed since mass protests against Mubarak's regime -- ignited by popular unrest in Tunisia -- erupted last Tuesday. While moving to change his government, the president is defying calls to stand down.
Al Jazeera has revolutionized the Arabic-language media and reporting on the Middle East since its foundation in 1996.
Media analysts have credited its blanket coverage of this month's unrest in Tunisia with contributing to the ouster of the North African state's longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
Last week Al Jazeera angered the Palestinian Authority when it began releasing the first of 1,600 files detailing more than a decade of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
The files alleged that Palestinian negotiators offered unprecedented concessions on such sensitive subjects as Jerusalem and refugees.
They also claim that of members of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority cooperated closely with Israel in confronting Hamas, Fatah's more militant rival, which controls the Gaza strip.
In December, Kuwait shut down Al Jazeera's bureau in Kuwait City over its coverage of the use of police force at a public gathering. Al Jazeera denied meddling in Kuwaiti affairs, saying it was just doing its job.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/egypt-shuts-aljazeera/
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Egypt's day of fury: Cairo in flames as cities become battlegrounds
• Hosni Mubarak regime left reeling as thousands defy curfew
• Police fire baton round volleys into crowds unwilling to retreat
Peter Beaumont and Jack Shenker in Cairo
guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 January 2011 20.31 GMT
Egyptian protesters ignore Mubarak's curfew Link to this video
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/28/egypt-cairo-protesters-defy-curfew-elbaradei-mubarak?intcmp=239
• Police fire baton round volleys into crowds unwilling to retreat
Peter Beaumont and Jack Shenker in Cairo
guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 January 2011 20.31 GMT
Egyptian protesters ignore Mubarak's curfew Link to this video
When Mohamed ElBaradei arrived in Midan Giza, a traffic-snarled interchange on the west bank of the Nile, for Friday prayers, he saw a graphic illustration of Egypt under President Hosni Mubarak: neat rows of police and plainclothes security officers lining the streets to maintain calm.
By the time he left the central Cairo square an hour or so later it was in flames, doused with teargas and water cannon and with rocks flying through the air – a glimpse of what an Egypt sick of Mubarak had become.
By the evening the first military vehicles of the Egyptian army would be out on the capital's streets, swathed in clouds of gas and smoke from burning tyres and buildings, and ElBaradei, according to reports, would be under house arrest.
It was billed on the internet by those organising the protests as a day of "fury and freedom" – a historic moment for an Egypt that has seen anger and fury aplenty. Whether it delivered freedom remains an open question. The presidential hopeful had come to the Al Istiqama mosque to pray; before he left his home he told the Guardian it would be a day of confrontation with a regime on its last legs. He had barely finished worship when the regime struck back, firing bombs and gas into the crowd and sending riot police charging with batons. ElBaradei was whisked away by supporters; thousands of others were forced to scatter into back alleys, choking and chanting amid the smoke. Egypt's day of fury had begun.
In the narrow side streets protesters regrouped, wellwishers on their balconies threw down water for those with streaming eyes from the tear gas. "Wake up Egypt, your silence is killing us," came the yells from below. Others shouted: "Egyptians, come down to join us."
Their appeals were answered with people streaming down from the apartment blocks: "We are change" and "Gamal [Mubarak] tell your father Egyptians hate him," were the cries.
They aimed for Haram Street, Cairo's famous boulevard that stretches all the way to the pyramids. Tens of thousands more were waiting, clashing with thinly-strung lines of central security force officers who buckled and bowed under the force of the crowd.
"Do you see what Mubarak has been reduced to?" said a young man, coughing into the scarf his face was wrapped in. "Today's the beginning of a new Egypt, a free Egypt."
It was a day of high and violent drama when Egypt's main cities, the vast capital foremost among them, were turned into battlegrounds. Cairo's bridges, enveloped in streamers of smoke, became the focus of that struggle, jammed with pushing demonstrators and ranks of police, locked in confrontation. With most Egyptians cut off from the world and each other, with internet and mobile phones brought down by the regime, it was a conflict played out with live television, and only live television, the source of updates.
Many mosques were closed under dubious pretexts, including the central Omar Makram mosque in the city centre, mysteriously shut for "building work", but surrounded by plainclothes police. Cairo had been flooded by so many police that it seemed impossible the columns of protesters could break through to reach the city centre. Yet they did. Doused in teargas, peppered with rubbber bullets, hosed down by water cannon and beaten, they held their ground through the long day as what had been called as a peaceful demonstration quickly turned violent, with volleys of baton rounds met with petrol bombs and bricks. Late tonight , dozens of cars were burning outside the Nileside tourist hotels and the armoured police vehicles that had once chased the protesters were being hunted down themselves and torched.
Amid all the confusion, the first cracks in the 30-year-old dictatorship began to appear. A young policeman who moments earlier had been smashing protesters with a baton was forced to fall back, dropping his shield and helmet as he fled. Two protesters of the same age picked them up, ran towards him and handed them back. "We are not your enemy," they told the terrified conscript. "We are like you. Join us." Further down the road, platoons of security forces surged towards Tahrir Square. One officer took a teargas canister from his belt, held it up to the crowd and threw it harmlessly behind him. At one bridge, the Qasri Nile, the key battle of the day had earlier taken place, a vicious game of push and pull, that saw it change hands several times as the regime tried to seal the city centre from the huge crowds converging on it. "I missed my chance to revolt when I was a young man," said Dr Gihad El Nahary, a 52-year-old professor at Cairo University. "I am not going to make the same mistake now."
By 3pm local time protesters from Giza had fought their way through to Midan Dokki, less than a mile from central Tahir Square. There the riot police had also been forced to withdraw, leaving two security trucks and a handful of isolated conscripts behind. The young policemen were surrounded by a 100-strong crowd. A minority of the crowd made to attack the stranded policemen, but the majority held them back.
One policeman gestured desperately at the throng around him. "I am not afraid of you … I am afraid of losing my job and ruining my family," he shouted. "Mubarak is in his castle and has abandoned you to your death. Give him up and join us!" a woman screamed in reply, before the police were given safe passage back to their station by the crowd.
This is a revolution that has been observed from the five-star hotels by tourists both curious and terrified. Some crowded on the balcony of the Semiramis hotel, to watch the battle on the nearby bridge. Others inside the Hilton briefly barricaded the doors with a heavy desk .
By 5pm, as the sun began to set, the army of police that had once occupied the city centre in their battalions and stood on the Nile bridges, had been diminished. On the 6th October bridge, as darkness fell, a couple of dozen police were attempting to hold their positions confronted by a crowd of several thousands. "Do you see what they are doing?" asked Samir Raafa, as police fired volley after volley of baton rounds into a crowd no longer willing to retreat. "Everywhere is now like this. We came from Shubra. There were 100,000 of us, we got split up from our friends. We have been told ElBaradei is on the Qasri Nile bridge, that's where people are trying to get to. It's not that we support him, but we want to be with everyone."
It was under this bridge that the Guardian saw the first army vehicles, two armoured infantry carriers, motoring down the Nile Corniche, news of their arrival cheered by demonstrators. By 7.45pm a column of Egyptian army tanks was visible, rumbling across the Abd El Moniem Riyad overpass, flying Egyptian flags. Some of them had protesters dancing on them as they drove along.
Adel, an engineer conscripted into the Egyptian army, had shed his military uniform and joined the protesters, watching as the tanks rolled across the street. He warned that deaths were inevitable. "Some soldiers won't fire on the Egyptian people, but others are too scared to disobey orders. You have no idea what rebelling in the army can mean for you."
He continued: "I am supposed to be on the 7am train to my barracks, but we are witnessing the final hours of Mubarak and his regime."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/28/egypt-cairo-protesters-defy-curfew-elbaradei-mubarak?intcmp=239
Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
Published on Thursday, January 15, 2004 by CommonDreams.
Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
April 1967
At Manhattan's Riverside Church
OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.
In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorage, leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.
I come to this platform to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.
Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.
Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.
Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor - both black and white - through the Poverty Program. Then came the build-up in Vietnam, and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political play thing of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the young black men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
My third reason grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years - especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. But, they asked, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.
For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a Civil Rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed from the shackles they still wear.
Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read "Vietnam." It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.
As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the "brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant or all men, for communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that He died for hem? What then can I say to the Viet Cong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with hem my life?
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and their broken cries.
They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its re-conquest of her former colony.
Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision, we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants, this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.
For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to re-colonize Vietnam.
Before the end of the war we were meeting 80 per cent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will to do so.
After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.
The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while, the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy, and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go.
They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers destroy their precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least 20 casualties from American firepower for each Viet Cong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children.
What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building?
Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts'? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.
Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the NLF, that strangely anonymous group we call VC or communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem, and charge them with violence while we pour new weapons of death into their land?
How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than 25 per cent communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant.
Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-violence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know of his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded at Geneva to give up, as a temporary measure, the land they controlled between the 13th and 17th parallels. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.
When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.
Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the President claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. Perhaps only his sense of humor and irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8000 miles from its shores.
At this point, I should make it clear that while I have tried here to give a voice to the voiceless of Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for our troops must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam and the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop must be ours.
This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently, one of them wrote these words: "Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It' will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony, and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations.
The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of her people.
In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing the war to a halt. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmare:
1. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
2. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
3. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military build-up in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
4. Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.
5. Set a date on which we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.
Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the NLF. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, in this country if necessary.
Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.
As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than 70 students at my own Alma Mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy, and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. We will be marching and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.
In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. The need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. With such activity in mind, the words of John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: " This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are the days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take: offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.
We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-13.htm
Delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
April 1967
At Manhattan's Riverside Church
OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix, they say. Aren't you hurting the cause of your people, they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.
In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorage, leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.
I come to this platform to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia.
Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they can play in a successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.
Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the NLF, but rather to my fellow Americans who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.
Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor - both black and white - through the Poverty Program. Then came the build-up in Vietnam, and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political play thing of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the young black men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
My third reason grows out of my experience in the ghettos of the North over the last three years - especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through non-violent action. But, they asked, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.
For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a Civil Rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself unless the descendants of its slaves were loosed from the shackles they still wear.
Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read "Vietnam." It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.
As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1964; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission, a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for the "brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant or all men, for communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved His enemies so fully that He died for hem? What then can I say to the Viet Cong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death, or must I not share with hem my life?
And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and their broken cries.
They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its re-conquest of her former colony.
Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not "ready" for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision, we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination, and a government that had been established not by China (for whom the Vietnamese have no great love) but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants, this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.
For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to re-colonize Vietnam.
Before the end of the war we were meeting 80 per cent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will to do so.
After the French were defeated it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva agreements. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly routed out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by U.S. influence and then by increasing numbers of U.S. troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictatorships seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.
The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while, the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy, and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move or be destroyed by our bombs. So they go.
They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers destroy their precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least 20 casualties from American firepower for each Viet Cong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children.
What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building?
Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts'? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These too are our brothers.
Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the NLF, that strangely anonymous group we call VC or communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem, and charge them with violence while we pour new weapons of death into their land?
How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than 25 per cent communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant.
Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and non-violence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know of his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.
So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded at Geneva to give up, as a temporary measure, the land they controlled between the 13th and 17th parallels. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.
When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.
Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the President claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. Perhaps only his sense of humor and irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than 8000 miles from its shores.
At this point, I should make it clear that while I have tried here to give a voice to the voiceless of Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for our troops must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create a hell for the poor.
Somehow this madness must cease. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam and the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop must be ours.
This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently, one of them wrote these words: "Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the hearts of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."
If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It' will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony, and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations.
The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of her people.
In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing the war to a halt. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmare:
1. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
2. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
3. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military build-up in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
4. Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.
5. Set a date on which we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.
Part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the NLF. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, in this country if necessary.
Meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative means of protest possible.
As we counsel young men concerning military service we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is the path now being chosen by more than 70 students at my own Alma Mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy, and laymen-concerned committees for the next generation. We will be marching and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.
In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which now has justified the presence of U.S. military "advisors" in Venezuela. The need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Colombia and why American napalm and green beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru. With such activity in mind, the words of John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. When machines and computers, profit and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look easily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: " This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from re-ordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and through their misguided passions urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are the days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not call everyone a communist or an appeaser who advocates the seating of Red China in the United Nations and who recognizes that hate and hysteria are not the final answers to the problem of these turbulent days. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take: offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity and injustice which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.
These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wombs of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to ad just to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism.
We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.
Now let us begin. Now let us re-dedicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0115-13.htm
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
