Will the Greens Seize the Moment?

From Counterpunch:

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July 9, 2007
Will the Greens Seize the Moment?
The Democrats Have Failed

By JOHN WALSH

"Americans' View of 'Most Important Problem Continues to be Iraq." "Americans' Confidence in Congress at All-Time Low." "Congressional Job Approval Dips Again This Month." Thus read three major headings in the Gallup Poll Weekly Briefing of June 22. And the crisis has started to consume our liberties, with the police state growing in power to the point where even that most ancient of protections, habeas corpus, has been suspended in some cases.

The core of the crisis is that the political system is unable to respond to the demands of the people for peace. And everyone knows it. Cindy Sheehan said it as well as anyone last May 26 in a letter addressed to the Democrats in Congress: I will now "try and figure a way out of this 'two' party system that is bought and paid for by the war machine which has a stranglehold on every aspect of our lives. As for myself, I am leaving the Democratic Party. You have completely failed those who put you in power to change the direction our country is heading. We do not condone our government's violent meddling in sovereign countries and we condemn the continued murderous occupation of Iraq. We gave you a chance; you betrayed us."

The present crisis appears comparable to the state of affairs in the 1850s when the question of slavery dominated the national consciousness and could not be resolved with the compromises of 1820 and 1850. But there was no anti-slavery party. Then in 1854 under pressure from both abolitionists and northern capitalists, the Republican Party was formed. In 1856 it ran its first presidential candidate who lost, and in 1860 it ran Lincoln who won. Six years was all it took--even without the internet. The point is that in times of crisis things can move faster than anyone might imagine.

What greater opportunity could there be for the Green Party? The vast majority of the public knows by now that neither mainstream party wants to end the occupation of Iraq. And they are making noises, both of them, about going after Iran, Sudan and others. After the 2006 elections and Democratic votes to continue the war funding, few can deny that the Democrats are a party of war and empire. This fact is abundantly evident to one and all for the first time since the end of the Cold War, which masked the reality of the U.S. empire. But we have no large antiwar party. The crisis seems to be as close to that of 1854 as historical analogy permits.

In this moment, how have the Greens done? It is true that the Greens alone among the non-Socialist parties have stuck to principle in opposing the war--and that puts us light years ahead of others. But in practice the Greens appear distracted, disorganized and downright dysfunctional, this last word all too often applied to our Party. We are not widely known as an antiwar party, and too often we have kept the antiwar movement at arms length. In certain states in the 2004 and 2006 elections we caved to the Dems. Some of us have seen ourselves as no more than "better" Dems, a complete missing of the mark. As a consequence we have failed to draw pointed distinctions between them and us, and to be sharply critical of them, thus hiding the truth from the people. Ralph Nader in contrast has been very combative with the Dems, and his approach should be a lesson to the rest of us. As another example, look at the announcement for the coming Green National Meeting in Reading PA. In it, there is no mention of the war!! In fact the most space went to a campaign to prevent the privatization of water resources, a laudable goal, but hardly the one most on the minds of the people. What happened to the idea of bringing our principles to the people using the issues that concern them most? Are we ready to move aggressively on the issues of war and empire? Or are we going to spare the Dems the kind of criticism coming from Nader and Sheehan?

So here we stand on the eve of the Green Party National Meeting on July 12-15 in Reading, PA. What will happen there? Will it be business as usual? The time is ripe, and the people are with us. We have a responsibility to get organized and get going. Failure to do so will mean millions more will perish in present and future conflagrations, which the empire holds in store for us. Will we take matters in hand or let the moment pass?

John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com. He is a member of the Green/Rainbow Party of MA, the merger of the MA Greens and Mel King's Rainbow Coalition.

http://www.counterpunch.com/walsh07092007.html

Shake Up the System!

Hagel Not Happy With Republican Party
By BLOOMBERG NEWS

WASHINGTON, May 13 (Bloomberg News) Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, said Sunday that his party had been "hijacked by a group of single-minded, almost isolationist insulationists, power-projectors."

"I am not happy with the Republican Party today," Mr. Hagel said on Face the Nation on CBS. “It has drifted from the party of Eisenhower, of Goldwater, of Reagan, the party that I joined. It isn’t the same party.”

Senator Hagel, who said “a credible third-party candidate” for president would enefit the United States, said he planned to decide by late summer whether to run for president.

“I think it shakes the system up,” he said of a third-party or independent candidacy. “The system needs to be shaken up.”

“I think we_re living today at the most unpredictable political time in modern history,” Mr. Hagel said, adding that Americans needed “some new, fresh, independent ideas to lead this country forward.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/us/politics/14hagel.html

To protect and secure the Rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, governments are instituted among men; Jefferson and Madison should have added “and women”, deriving there just power from the consent of the Governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these Ends, it is the right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government.

Clearly the two corporate parties have a stranglehold on American Politics legally and through chicanery are silencing any political party that threatens their franchise.

Now is the time to embrace new world views and move away from the stagnation, corruption of the duopoly that no longer represents the governed in any substantial or healthy way.

The Democratic Republican Party (Jefferson) evolves out of the Federalist Party (Hamilton) which did not even outlive one generation of political elitists. The Republican Party of today morphed out of the DRP in 1854 by joining Democrats, the Free Soil Party, and factions of the Whig party.

The real crisis in the world at large is a crisis of perception but the paradigm shift is happening no matter how much we cling to old world views. Just look how fast the carbon footprint frame took off once it reached its threshold of collective understanding.

The next major shift will happen when we no longer cling to decaying political parties who no longer serve their purpose. A new crop of ideas and perceptions are waiting to be sown into our collective body.

A passage in the Chuang-Tsu shows clearly how the fundamental importance of change was discerned by observing the organic world:

In the transformation and growth of all things, every bud and feature has its proper form. In this we have their gradual maturing and decay, the constant flow of transformation and change.

I am sharing this with you to let you know I am still a voice for refreshing change in a sea of political hypocrisy.

The Threat of Fundementalist Zealots

Dear Friends,

Regent University, founded by Pat Robertson to provide “Christian leadership to change the world,” boasts that it has 150 graduates working in the Bush administration. Like Monica Goodling former top aide to Alberto Gonzales who appears central to the scandal of the fired U.S. attorneys.

The infiltration of the federal government by Christian fundamentalists seeking to impose a religious agenda is of dire consequence. The official platform of the Texas Republican Party pledges to “dispel the myth of the separation of church and state.”

Overwhelmingly Republican; it is openly hostile to democratic pluralism, and it champions totalitarian policies, such as amending the constitution to make America a Christian Nation. The power brokers this Radical Christian Right have overwhelmingly moved to the Executive Branch, the House of Representatives, the Senate and Courts. This movement has seized control of the Republican Party and shown utter contempt for our constitution and democracy.

Al Qeuda must be brimming.

Kucinich Moves to Impeach Cheney

Dear Friends,

Dennis Kucinich makes a smart maneuver to Impeach Cheney first.

Speaking at the news conference, Kucinich said he was pursuing impeachment of Cheney, and not Bush, for practical reasons. "It's significant and responsible to start in his way, because if the same charges would relate to the president as relate to the vice president, you would then have to go through the constitutional agony of mpeaching two presidents consecutively," he said.

Kucinich posted his proposed articles of impeachment on his congressional Web site.

9,000,000 have signed to impeach at votetoimpeach.org to date. Lets turn that into millions since 53% poled said the President and executive officers should be impeached if they lied about the lead up to war. Not to mention constructing world wide torture centers controlled by the CIA, spying on law abiding citizens, and the worst bill ever past in 226 years of a democratic republic…the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which ends the right to challenge one’s detention giving the government the power to jail you without charges, without trial and without a lawyer “indefinitely”.

Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) has enabled the neo-conservatives by voting in Support of all these wicked policies including torture and suspending habeas corpus. She is a phony democratic saboteur and traitor. She frightens me more than the guys who say they are going to take away your freedoms because she violates are trust as a voice of opposition. But I think we can all see by now that the two corporate parties are neither sane nor rational, just greedy for corporate political money handouts by the ones who most profit from war. War is a feeding frenzy for congressional representatives and the Senate.

Aaron

Sack Paul Wolfowitz

Dear friend,

I just joined in signing a petition calling for Paul Wolfowitz to be fired. Please join me in signing:

Petition to Sack Paul Solfowitz

The petition will be sent to the global media and the World Bank board as soon as we reach 50,000 signatures--and sent it again every time we add another 50,000.

The initiative was organized by Avaaz.

Paul Wolfowitz -- President Bush's key architect of the Iraq war, now president of the World Bank and self-styled fighter of corruption -- was just caught red-handed in a corruption scandal of his own. He pushed a huge pay raise for his girlfriend, and hid the facts from his organization and the world.

This is the last straw. He's got to go.

UPDATE: Paul Wolfowitz resigned from his position due to the public outcry over his unethical practices. Thank you to all who helped bring this subject to its rightful conclusion.

Domestic Abuse

As if the opposition Party was ever working to end the domestic and international abuse of the Republican party.

What has become blatantly clear since they took over majority in the House and Senate is an outright gross timidity or complicity. I have always thought the later. Take a look at the record, take look at the evidence:

• They help pass war powers to the President in November 2002
• Voted for preemptive war -- the highest crime against humanity a country can undertake
• The PATRIOT Act of which many provisions are in violation of the bill of rights to due process
• and now they take impeachment off the table of a President who has violated more laws national and international than any President in US history.

If the opposition party and the press were going to try to impeach former President Clinton not so much for having an extramarital affair but for lying about it, then George W Bush should have been impeached thousands of times over. It is time for Americans to end their abusive hate affair with the corporate owned parties and, like strong women who have lived a life of beating and insult, stop rewarding them for abandoning us. Believe it or not the Republicans and Democrats are not the only parties out there. Why do you “not” pick one that is not owned by Corporate America, what have you got to lose? The jobs are gone, our freedom and liberty are gone under the guise of fighting the war on terror and the wealth and environmental health of this country have been squandered by relaxed pollution and extractive laws and the endless supplement appropriations for funding illegal and immoral wars. I pledge never to vote Democrat again, how about you?

Vote for a healthy society and green environment…vote GREEN PARTY.

FROM CORPORATE OWNED TO PUBLIC OWNED, a choice of Republic or Empire

Why we are in Iraq:

The Persian Gulf region, home to two-thirds of the world's known oil reserves. For more than 40 years, U.S. foreign policy has been guided by America's growing dependence on oil supplies from the Middle East. Embraced by both Republicans and Democrats, this policy is known as the Carter doctrine because it was articulated most clearly by President Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Presidents Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton have all acted under the banner of the Carter Doctrine: supporting Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), opposing Iraq by liberating Kuwait in 1991, imposing sanctions and no-fly zones between 1991 and 2003. As I described in the December issue of The Progressive, Bush and the neocons used the banner of the war on terror after 9/11 to massively expand American capacity to employ force in the pursuit of global oil reserves.

From Howard Zinn:

Dear Friend of Liberty,
Meaningful social change comes when we — you and I — take charge of our own lives, our own destinies.
If history teaches us anything, it is that those in power — and I charge that the Republican and Democratic establishments are beholden to the same masters — will not open the doors of justice, equality and liberty wide enough for us to walk in free of charge.
I’m not prepared — especially at my age — to sit by and watch our country shift from republic to empire. I am unwilling to accept the destruction of two and a half centuries of social progress. Does anyone honestly believe that this past election greatly improved prospects for the tens of millions of Americans without health insurance, without a voice, without a decent education?
Will politicians in Washington give back the freedoms they ripped from the pages of the Constitution?
Will all those politicians who voted for killing hundreds of thousands create a foreign policy of peace and reconciliation?
I don’t think so. Not for a moment.
And neither does US Representative Dennis Kucinich, who recently warned that:
… a lot of people are going to be very surprised to learn that less than one months since this great realignment, that Democratic leaders, who came to power because of widespread opposition to the war in Iraq, are now saying that they will vote to continue funding the war.
That’s why I believe we need to build a new democracy movement — a movement that dares to demand power for regular people. Just as the revolutionaries of ’76 replaced a monarchy with a republic, we now must replace corporate rule with democracy.
We need a groundswell of people –
• students forming student unions to determine the course of their education;
• workers demanding respect and a voice on the job, not cowering in fear;
• residents organizing to make city hall serve all the people;
• citizens deciding that Congress is not up to the task, and putting the war and impeachment on local ballots; and
• voters rejecting the corporate takeover of elections.
I envision people of all nationalities coming together to realize the historic, as yet unfulfilled, promise of American democracy.
I’ve lived and worked for many important causes — so I’m asking you to join me in supporting a fresh, potent and authentic organization working to win democracy. Liberty Tree stands in the tradition of American heroes — working to change America from the bottom up. Don’t expect to see them rubbing elbows with lobbyists and politicians in Washington.
Just last month, I witnessed their conference on Local Democracy that brought together groups from across the country working on social change.
With a small budget and many volunteers, this group of activists does far more than many groups ten times, thirty times larger. Here’s a sample of what Liberty Tree does and why I urge you to join and support their efforts today.
Liberty Tree –
• Publishes Liberty Tree, the Journal of the Democratic Revolution.
• Provides legal counsel to organizers on the ground.
• Convenes meetings and conferences of voting rights, campus and community organizers. Provides activists with the tools and resources to be successful.
• Crisscrosses the country and the world generating and sharing ideas and opportunities for the new democracy movement in the US.
• Informs our progressive community about victories, setbacks and actions in the emerging US democracy movement.
This is a group worth joining and supporting. Their staff and volunteers produce way beyond what you would expect from organizations much larger — and Liberty Tree has only just begun. You can learn more at their website www.LibertyTreeFDR.org.
Only two years in the making, Liberty Tree needs your help to grow, to be the catalyst for change in the United States that we both know is needed sooner rather than later.
I’m convinced that change can no longer be incremental. American revolutionaries — for example — do not accept window-dressing health care reforms or minor campaign finance reforms.
Together we can we can bring democracy alive, stop the war machine, end the corporate stranglehold on our schools, elections, communities, governments — our very lives. Together we can move the American Revolution to another stage, building on the victories we’ve achieved in our lifetimes.

Howard Zinn, Author of A POWER GOVERNMENT CANNOT SUPPRESS
And the Magazine article in the progressive: Impeachment by the People.


Published on Monday, February 26, 2007 by truthdig
Pariah or Prophet?
by Chris Hedges

I can't imagine why Ralph Nader would run again. He has been branded as an egomaniac, blacklisted by the media, plunged into debt by a Democratic Party machine that challenged his ballot access petitions and locked him out of the presidential debates. Most of his friends and supporters have abandoned him, and he is almost universally reviled for throwing the 2000 election to George W. Bush.

I can't imagine why he would want to go through this one more time. But when Nader hinted in San Francisco that he might run if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton became the Democratic Party nominee, I knew I would be working for his campaign if he indeed entered the race. He understands that American democracy has become a consumer fraud and that if we do not do battle with the corporations that, in the name of globalization, are cannibalizing the country for profit, our democratic state is doomed.

Nader, perhaps better than anyone else, has grasped the long, disastrous rise of the corporate state.

For the whole story CLICK HERE

Chris Hedges' latest book is "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America."

I am Running AGAIN!

Because of unfair Michigan ballot access laws and corporate media blackout and the corporate owned parties ability to raise obscene amounts of money. The Green Party of Michigan decided to run candidates early if we are ever to make any significant differences in the Political Party landscape of Michigan, America and the World at large. Therefore the Committee to Elect Stuttman for Congress has made it official March 1, 2007 to run Aaron Stuttman of Lansing, Michigan for US Congress 8th District for the 2008 congressional elections.