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archived: 21 - 27 Aug, 2005 Back Next UPDATED: AUGUST 23, 2005 DOPPLER SHIFT The Austrian physicist, Christian Doppler, observed that waves of light and sound always change radically at the point they pass the observer. We have all experienced the wailing of the siren of an emergency vehicle when it is transformed from a high-pitched whine into a lower-register moan at the moment it passes us by. In astronomy, there is a blue shift of light from objects racing toward our planet, and a red shift in objects hurtling away from us. Today, we see a Doppler shift taking place in the American political spectrum. Public opinion of the war in Iraq has moved away from the gung ho position proposed by the President and the neoconservatives. Opinion is now moving decisively toward the progressives. In physical terms, we can see the map of America turning from red and blue into one blue mass of public opinion, and this psychological process is taking place at a relatively high rate of political knots. Even the relatively conservative Gallup Survey has recorded the rapid decline in the President’s support over the past six months. The support for his war in Iraq has dropped below the crucial tipping point of 50% and it is moving swiftly to lower levels driven now by the sound and image of one lone American patriot who stood up alone in her protest, and something magical happened. Cindy Sheehan had her finger on the trigger of change when she decided to go to Crawford, Texas to challenge Bush during his, “long vacation.” Armed with a mobile phone and an iron magnitude of the will to power, Cindy Sheehan launched a zillion emails, news reports and vicarious shots heard round the world. She has become a major media star in the process of portraying Bush’s worst nightmare, one lone mother of one dead soldier who will not be fobbed off by a callous president. At Cam Casey, Cindy Sheehan’s makeshift headquarters at the pig farm on the road to Bush’s sickeningly named, Prairie Chapel Ranch, there is now a growing army of antiwar activists. Joan Baez performed for them this weekend. At the weekend, she flew to the bedside of her mother stricken by a stroke. The latest online reports from Cindy say that she will return promptly to her peaceful vigil. In Cindy’s absence, right-wing extremists are flocking to Crawford to establish their own pro-war encampment to drown out the voices of the antiwar protestors. There is a growing US military presence at Camp Casey. The Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) headed by Tim Goodrich and Hart Viges are there in force. I have seen videos of both former US soldiers describing what can only be defined as, “US war crimes.” Goodrich is living proof that Bush ordered the war against Iraq prior to March 19, 2003 in spite of all his equivocation, prevarication, misinformation and general disingenuous obfuscation to the contrary. Recently returned from the combat zone, Hart Viges confessed to the fact that mortars that he launched had killed innocent Iraqi children. Both men are the living proof that this war has followed the same trajectory as the Vietnam War. Either or both of them can and may become political figures on the basis of their honest accounts of the crimes of this war. They would get my vote. When I watched the spokesmen for IVAW on the Truthout website (linked below) I was reminded of a much younger John Kerry testifying to congress about the horrors of Vietnam. But that image swiftly broke down and shattered into a thousand shards. Sadly, John Kerry has just issued a letter to his supporters demanding an increase in the size of the US military and failing to support a US withdrawal or any timetable for ending the war in Iraq. (see below) This latter position of Senator Kerry stands in marked contrast to those of his fellow Democrats, Senator Russ Feingold and Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who are demanding a withdrawal of US forces by the end of next year. Even the Republicans, Senator Chuck Hagel and Congressman Walter Jones, Jr., support a US withdrawal by the end of next year. Senator Kerry is sadly and badly out of step with the American people, and so, too, are many leading Democrats. Democratic Senators Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman still support Bush’s ill-fated war against the people of Iraq. Lieberman and Clinton have even made complimentary and supportive statements about Bush’s atrocious nominee for the Supreme Court, John Glover Roberts, the most deeply partisan candidate for the nation’s highest bench since 1789. Their actions are rash and totally out of order since the evidence on this nominee has not yet been submitted to the scrutiny of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Even though the progressives of America are literally leaderless, they now wield immense political influence. In Iraq, the Interim Government is struggling to come to terms with their task of drafting a constitution. It is now clear that the constitution of US-Occupied Iraq will follow the example of US-Occupied Afghanistan in that it will describe the nascent nation as an Islamic state. As Governor Howard Dean cautioned over one week ago, it now appears likely that the rights of Iraqi women will be taking a backward step under the new constitution. Groups representing Iraqi women are now desperately beseeching UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to intervene on their behalf against those who would deprive them of their hard won rights which flourished remarkably under Saddam Hussein. Not only are Iraqi women losing rights they enjoyed under Saddam, but the living conditions in US-Occupied Iraq are appalling. No security, virtually no power, medicine or utilities, the decline in the standard of living for Iraqis has been nothing short of catastrophic. Secure behind his phalanx of Secret Service agents, Bush sunbathes while Iraqis burn in the maelstrom of violence engulfing their nation. In Gaza, the last Israelis are being lifted into secure vans to be removed to their new homes on the West Bank, but many will stop off in Tel Aviv to cash their checks for $140,000 courtesy of the US taxpayers. Evacuating the Israelis from Gaza has done nothing to eliminate the high-barbed wire fences encircling what has been aptly described as the largest concentration camp in world history. The Israelis are gone from Gaza, but the Palestinians do not have civil rights, national security or freedom. What they do have is despair, the essential ingredient for the manufacture of terrorism and its defining product, the suicide bomber. In the quiet confines of Prairie Chapel, Bush prays for the Rapture. In Europe, Pope Benedict XVI attended his first highly orchestrated mass rally. The neoconservative Pope is known as, ‘God’s Rottweiler,’ and a programme with that very name will air on the BBC this evening. Last year, Cardinal Ratzinger signed the letter to US Catholics urging them to avoid voting for Senator John Kerry and threatening them with excommunication if they dared to vote against George Bush. Speaking to a massive crowd in Germany, the Pope uttered oracular pronouncements. While there were hundreds of thousands in attendance, few of them were Germans. In recent years, Germans have been abandoning the Roman Catholic Church in droves. The Papal audience was populated by flocks of the faithful from Poland, Spain and, of course, America. In an odd statement, the Pope spelt out his theory that consumerism had caused the masses to suffer, “a strange forgetfulness of God.” Following that monstrous idea, the Pope strenuously urged the faithful to reject their own highly suspicious tendencies to the freedom of thought. Imploring the youth assembled before him to repudiate what he described as, “do-it-yourself religion,” the Pope touted himself as the ultimate, infallible authority for religious doctrine. In what may well be recorded as one of the most hubristic quotations in world history, ‘God’s Rottweiler’ equated himself with the Messiah when he uttered the plea, “Help people to discover the true star which points to us: Jesus Christ.” In Crawford, Texas, George Bush prays fervently at his Prairie Chapel Ranch that Cindy Sheehan will never return to Camp Casey; that Chuck Hagel will change his mind about Iraq; that the youth of America will follow God’s infallible Rottweiler; that the women of Iraq will mind their masculine overlords; that Iraqi veterans will disband; that his rump of pro-war supporters will overpower Camp Casey and that he will soon awaken from his darkening nightmare. SOURCES
Gary Younge,
Leaderless on the left The mood in America is shifting against the Iraq
war, but it has found inadequate expression in Congress
A split over war, the wimp
thing, and how to win By Dick Polman Philadelphia Inquirer Political
Analyst
Although the Pope's visit
received blanket coverage in the German media, Germans were vastly
outnumbered by Catholics from Spain, France, Italy, Poland and the
Americas
"What I think the White
House does not yet understand, and some of my colleagues, is the dam has
broken on this [Iraq] policy," Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska senator, a senior
member of the foreign relations committee and a possible presidential
candidate in 2008
The Swift Boating of Cindy
Sheehan
Cindy Sheehan, One
Mother's Stand
Hypocrites and Liars By
Cindy Sheehan LETTER FROM SENATOR JOHN KERRY Dear Michael, President Bush has a major opportunity today. He's leaving Crawford to speak to the Veterans of Foreign Wars' convention in Utah. When he does, he needs to leave behind the pep talks, the open-ended "things are looking better" claims and the empty rhetoric. It's time for the President to stand and deliver. That's why I am asking you to support an "America Demands Answers" petition to President Bush. Starting with today's VFW speech, we're going to keep the pressure on George W. Bush until he finally addresses questions that have gone unanswered for far too long. http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/answers.php Every American deserves straight answers from the President -- and no one deserves them more than America's veterans and our military families. When will the President get it right in Iraq? When will he deliver to the nation and those sacrificing so much in Iraq a concrete plan for peace and victory? Why, at this late date, is the Pentagon still struggling to get the right supplies and body armor to America's troops? When will the President support a military large enough to face the challenges of today's world? And when will the President stop short-changing America's veterans? When will he stop closing hospitals, cutting benefits, and making veterans wait weeks for a doctor's appointment? Tell the President, it's time for answers. I am a veteran who is deeply concerned about the administration's lack of clarity on Iraq and lack of compassion on veterans' benefits. Join me in signing the "America Demands Answers" petition. http://www.johnkerry.com/petition/answers.php Our goal is to announce that thousands of people from all 50 states have signed the petition before the President delivers his VFW address later today. You can help us get there. For what the President and his Republican allies are wasting on pork barrel spending and tax giveaways, we can honor America's promise to our veterans. But, earlier this year, the Department of Veterans Affairs admitted that they were more than $1 billion short of meeting veterans' health care needs this year. Time after time, the President has opposed adequate funding for VA health care. A President who leads a nation into war shouldn't have to be pulled kicking and screaming into keeping America's promise to our veterans and to their families. With critical votes on the President's budget and the Defense Authorization bill scheduled for September -- and critical deadlines fast approaching in Iraq -- it's time for President Bush to speak to the American people with clarity and conviction. It's time for a plan. There's no better time to deliver it than now. And no better place to deliver it than before an audience of those who have served and sacrificed for this great nation. So, please, sign our "America Demands Answers" petition now. And forward this message immediately to others you know who care deeply about the need for President Bush to act. Sincerely, John Kerry (Michael Carmichael’s reply to the webmaster of JohnKerry.com) While I admire the Senator and believe that he could have made a good president, his letter today was a deep disappointment. His litany of questions imply that he is out of step with the mainstream of American voters - who have consistently disapproved of the president's handling of the war in Iraq for many months. The fourth question he raises - about increasing the size of the military - suggests that the Senator is in favor of a new arms race. There is no reference to a withdrawal timetable or a date for the withdrawal of troops as now being proposed and supported by Senator Russ Feingold and Congressman Dennis Kucinich as well as some members of the Republican Party, i.e. Congressman Walter Jones, Jr. of North Carolina or Senator Chuck Hagel of South Dakota. The essence of the Senator's letter seems to be that he is captive to the wrong-headed policies that have been spewing out of the Democratic Leadership Council for years which have led to thousands of defeated Democratic candidates, including the Senator himself in last year's presidential election. If the Senator truly wishes to retain his stature as a leading Democratic voice, he must finally renounce the counsel of the DLC, Jamie Rubin, Rand Beers, Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Tom Vilsack and go with the flow of public opinion which is transforming the mind of America today just as certainly as it was transformed during the Vietnam Era. The Senator should contact the Iraq Veterans Against the War led by Tim Goodrich, and he should honor and respect their testimonies about the depth of depravity that is driving America's war against the people of Iraq. Tim Goodrich is a living testament to the fact of pre-war aggression, and Hart Viges is a living testament to US war crimes. The Senator should look these men in the eye and hear their stories, then he should rewrite his letter to demand the immediate withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq and a downsizing and re-organization of the US military along lines proposed by Senator Gary Hart for the past twenty years. Yours sincerely, Michael Carmichael __________________ Since 1968, Michael Carmichael has been a professional political consultant. Beginning as a Student Coordinator for Robert F. Kennedy, he has worked in five US presidential campaigns as well as over 100 major American political campaigns for federal and state offices. In 1985, he founded The Oxford Centre for Public Affairs in the United Kingdom. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement Limited, a global public affairs organization based in the United Kingdom. He has appeared as a public affairs expert on the BBC, European Business News, NPR and many European television broadcasts examining American politics and culture. In addition to his column for The Political Junkies, he is a regular contributor to the Moving Planet weblog. See: www.planetarymovement.org and http://planetmove.blogspot.com/
Last Update: 03/23/2006 |
