by Don Hynes
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| Vantage Point | Culture and Politics by Don Hynes |
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"No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing, knowing it to be wrong.
He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and when he sees it is not so,
the prejudice will be gone." - Tom Paine
June 02, 2003 Made in America Melvin, a native friend of mine who camps down in Sullivan’s Gulch but says he isn’t homeless because the earth is his home, says every misuse of the Creator’s energy brings its own return. Melvin says the earth will answer for all the coffins our wars create. Melvin’s words don’t bend around every issue. He speaks in the way his integrity demands, and says we’ve got to regain our sense of priority, then shakes hands and pushes off with his shopping cart. Watching him as he sorts through the recycling bins further down the street, I wonder how long we’ll tolerate the gap in this country between what we believe and how we act. How long will we allow the resources we’ve been blessed with to go into the production of death rather than the furtherance of life? We have a foundation for democracy and respect that took generations of sacrifice to create but we’ve got to cut past the thin photographic illusions and confront behavior if the promise of freedom is to survive the violence of our addiction to image. What kind of legacy are we bestowing upon Iraq where unexploded cluster bombs litter the Iraqi countryside. The extent of unexploded munitions was initially denied but have now been mapped because of the growing crisis to provide security for international construction and aid workers. Our military budget is larger than most of the developed world combined with “Lockheed Martin the world's largest weapons contractor. The company received $17 billion in contracts from the Pentagon in fiscal year 2002, plus almost $2 billion for nuclear weapons design work from the Department of Energy. In the lead up to the war in Iraq, the company boasted a 36% jump in profits.” We went to war against totalitarian forces in Afghanistan, but according to a report in the Courier Mail, US Major General Geoffrey Miller “in charge of 680 suspects from 43 countries (including two from Australia) in Camp Delta on Cuba, said building a death row was one plan. Another was to have a permanent jail, with possibly an execution chamber." Challenging what does and doesn’t matter Joan Chittister, OSB writes passionately: “What is the depth of the American soul if we can allow destruction to be done in our name and the name of "liberation" and never even demand an accounting of its costs, both personal and public, when it is over?” Operation Iraqi Freedom, Month Three Iraqi civilians chased US troops from Hit during a house-to-house search for weapons that fomented a riot. Later in the week three Iraqi teens were killed and seven wounded by US troops in an Iraqi wedding parade in Samarra. A firefight in Falluja left two US soldiers dead and seven wounded, while the UK Oberserver reported gun gangs ruling the streets of Baghdad. The US increased troop strength to 163,000 in an attempt to restore order, a garrison size Secretary Rumsfeld hotly denied prior to the invasion. Looting of archaelogical sites continues despite Iraqi protests and requests for US military assistance. For months Sadaam Hussein was supposed to worry every American’s mind but where’s the bad guy now? Wasn’t he going to be brought to justice Texas style, or was that Osama bin Laden? The latest reports received by CIA intelligence say Sadaam may be in hiding in Iraq planning a July intifida. Untangling the Web SpinSanity are anti-spin doctors who take on “myths, misconceptions and unanswered questions about the war in Iraq" while Tom Paine writes “let the record speak” in regard to weapons of mass destruction. The British government is calling for accountability on WMDs while the US Congress focuses on the intelligence community as the problem rather than the Administration who cooked the information to their recipe. Wilbur’s got the lowdown on charges that US troops used blanks in the “attack” on the hospital that treated Private Jessica Lynch. Though the BBC story was flawed and the real incident shy on useable TV drama the non-event spoke to our cultural search for national image versus identity. Paul Krugman shreds the Tax Bill as a purposeful destruction of the safety net built over the last seventy years, and though the passage of President Bush’s AIDS assistance package was lauded, the Washington Post questioned the programs’ budget flaws, cynical shifting of dollars from other crucial programs, and the program’s christian conservative requirement that a “substantial part of the prevention subsidies be used to encourage sexual abstinence outside marriage -- an approach favored by conservatives but viewed as largely ineffective by public health specialists.” Ways to Help The NY Times reported environmental efforts by a coalition of groups including the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth: “Spurred on by a coalition of environmental and religious groups, shareholders have filed 31 global warming resolutions with 23 companies in the United States this year and 5 in Canada.” If you don’t have a corporation to enlist, try the NRDC’s Bio Gems site. Working for Change invites you to stop the Florida-tion of the 2004 election. This is a major issue that you can learn more about here. The Republican push for a right wing judges is still being fought in the US Senate. Here’s a petition for a fair judiciary. And thanks to Eric Alterman at Altercation, here’s a link to the inimitable Doonesbury. Laughter always helps. Hunger Out over the tarred rooftops, past the busted facade of the corner tavern, the cobbled chimneys and worn out billboards, a hawk glides graceful, arcing in the high winds, reminding me to reach, reach, and let the hunger guide. Peace. *** |
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