Mother's Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)
Arise then...women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: "We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, For caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, Will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe our dishonor, Nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil At the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home For a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace... Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, But of God - In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask That a general congress of women without limit of nationality, May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient And the earliest period consistent with its objects, To promote the alliance of the different nationalities, The amicable settlement of international questions, The great and general interests of peace.
Update 3: Replaced the link to the dead motionbox video with the youtube embed, and deleted the link to the rightwing site (to the motionbox vid) that was in update 1.
Update 2: New video, from a different angle.
Update: Added the best video I can find, to replace the one that is no longer available on this site. (which has now--update 3--been replaced by the YouTube video.)
It's kinda hard to tell exactly where this all went wrong, but the "in your face" style of the Swartout family as regards anti-war protests and protesters has led to several other incidents where they were the unfortunate victims, including one in which the 82 year old wife of a WWII veteran kicked Mr Swartout in the ass, and when he pressed charges, was fined $25.00 for her crime. As with serial peace victim Joshua Sparling, I wonder why these few are repeatedly attacked while counter-protesting against anti-Iraq war groups, while so many others escape such a fate. Is it pure dumb luck (or unluck?), or is there anything in the behavior of the victims that leads to such troubles?
To the extent that the peace folks were the agressors in this (or any) situation, they were wrong. But I also wonder whether putting a camera to one's face gives one care blanche to walk among those with whom one disagrees, mocking and insulting them until a verbal or physical confrontation ensues, and then claim victim status, as though there was no way they might've avoided such trouble. While one has the right to walk in any public place at anytime one wants, and to say whatever one feels, actually using those rights isn't the smartest thing to do in every situation... ...unless one wants a nifty little youtube video and the right to whine about poor treatment at the hands of hypocritical peace protesters, anyway...
Along with rights come the responsibility to use them intelligently and appropriately, and I suspect that some of the latter was lacking in this situation.
The gap between the views of the American people and those of the administration on Iraq continues to grow.
A newly released Gallup poll asked this question, the central question -- really the only relevant question -- regarding what we should do about Iraq:
If you had to choose, which do you think is better for the U.S. -- to keep a significant number of troops in Iraq until the situation gets better, even if that takes many years, or to set a timetable for removing troops from Iraq and to stick to that timetable regardless of what is going on in Iraq?
The reason why this is the central question is because it describes the two sides of the mainstream political debate. Keeping troops in Iraq until the situation is better, no matter how long it takes, is the Bush/McCain position. Setting a timetable for withdrawal and adhering to it regardless of what is happening there -- i.e., regardless of whether things are better or we're "winning" or "losing" -- is, roughly speaking, the view of the Democratic presidential candidates and, even more so, the defining premise of the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq sponsored by 42 Democratic Congressional candidates.
Americans overwhelmingly favor unconditional withdrawal and it's not even close. They favor that by a 25-point margin, and it's a 29-point margin among independents. Those are huge margins. Very few public policy questions of any significance produce margins that large.
Sure, some strident neocons toss out straw man arguments, such as the fact that most Americans don't support immediate withdrawal (neglecting to mention, of course, that no one ever suggested the American public did support immediate withdrawal, or the fact that neither Democratic candidate has advocated for any such thing, either.), but the rest of us in the more reality based community understand the political & social implications of these poll results, which are reliable, and in fact have grown over time.
It's not about the math anymore. Barack Obama's surge has stalled, and Hillary's perfectly situated to make the case on the grounds of electoral superiority."
Hillary Builds Her Case: "FORGET DELEGATES AND the popular vote for the Democratic presidential nomination. The most important thing Hillary Clinton gained by winning the Pennsylvania primary yesterday was a better argument--indeed, a much better argument."
When the Cons are rooting for Hillary, it should tell you something...
"What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents." - Robert F. Kennedy
"'Conservative' is a magic word that applies to those who are in other conservatives' good graces. Until they aren't. At which point they are liberals.'" - Digby
Books In James' Political Library
Random Quote...
“Bigfoot dressed as a circus clown would have a better chance of beating President Obama than Newt Gingrich, a similarly farcical character,” one anonymous Republican told Washington Post blogger Jonathan Bernstein. - Why smart conservatives suddenly hate Newt - 2012 Elections - Salon.com
...though it kinda reminds me of someone.
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While Democrats are constantly forced by manufactured controversies generated by the right-wing noise machine and their media allies to "repudiate" and "renounce" a never ending carousel of "extremists" ranging from the moderate to the irrelevant (Michael Moore, MoveOn, Louis Farrakhan, Ward Churchill, etc. etc.), the GOP establishment for years has tied itself at the hip to hate-mongering extremists along the lines of John Hagee, Rod Parsley, Pat Roberston, Ann Coulter, and all sorts of various Instapunks, with no repercussions or accountability whatsoever.- Glenn Greenwald - Tactics of the right-wing noise machine - Salon.com
The big mantra was ‘Yes, we can!’ Unless you’re a gay couple in California, then it’s, ‘No, you can’t.’” -Jay Leno
"I think Sean Hannity's, Bill O'Reilly's, and Lou Dobbs's heads would simultaneously explode if a man named Piyush Jindal was running for President of the United States against a man named Barack Hussein Obama." - Gambler | 02.24.09 - 11:46 pm | #
