Jan Stary

Courtesy Richard Curtis

Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsKPVWTLRdA

OK, it's no fun... yet...it is. Check the whole video, a good compilation! Republicans will love this! Isn't an Election Day close by, anyway? It seems like THEIR Halloween Party may have an unwanted extension...

Her Name Was Rachel Corrie

She was from Olympia, WA, and she was 23. She lived in a loving and caring family, surrounded by the beautiful nature of the Puget Sound, and by all the amenities that life in America offers to a middle-class family.

She also lived a life of a young self-educated citizen. She was a passionate idealist and a peace activist. Not so much because it is a fashion these days –  unfortunately, it isn’t. She was genuinely passionate about peace and justice because she believed in them as the highest values of the civilized world.

Straight Talk, Or Genuine Disingenuousness

As most of you know, I am one of those who fear bad karma, and as such, I have genuine inhibitions to steal goods of any kind. The same applies to furnishing myself with new software.

Still, what I ran into at Microsoft’s official updates website today made me laugh. I connected to the site as I routinely do to download all the new patches and fixes and other necessary updates to keep my system healthy (which in case of Windows often means keeping it running at all).

The Ugly *F* Word

I hear from President Bush that they are Islamic fascists. The bombing plotters that is, who allegedly wanted to blow up innocent civilians on American flights from London.

Considering the history of our Leader’s abuse of the words he doesn’t understand, I think that what the President had in mind was that the plotters were simply very bad guys. Yes, they are very bad! But fascists? I am afraid that Mr. President once again used a word that his mentors neglected to explain to him.

A Poultice of Spanish Fly and Mustard, Anyone?

If you are one of those who consider the National Holidays a gift from the Government to the owners of chain boutiques, i.e. if you spend the day shopping in a mall, stop reading right here. I swear it’ll be a totally boring reading for you. And your shopping competition could jump the line anyway!

Twenty years ago, I used to sit in a class on Early American Literature at Charles University in Prague studying the Declaration of Independence. One of my most favorite classes. At that time, a majority of the Czechoslovak people were ostracized by the communist tyranny, and there were not many opportunities to freely discuss the democratic ideals beyond the safe historical documents readings and outside the classroom walls. So, I loved reading and analyzing the Jeffersonian document with my teacher cherishing the fact that he knew that we knew that he knew. And we all could dream for the whole hour and a half!

I’ve been living in Jefferson’s patria for almost 15 years now. It also includes the last six years under king George II. As we have the Independence Day approaching, and since I dislike the shopping malls most of all American inventions I’ve encountered so far, I decided instead to read the document again, cherishing its solemn courage, its visionary focus, and its enlightened attitudes.

Wow! What a reading! Read some passages with me if you will. Pay a special attention to the comments on the Government and the King (at that time, George III – uh, are we moving backwards, anyway?)), and think about the realities of our current Government and our current king. I promise it’s going to be a very refreshing albeit disturbing and provocative reading:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security…

…The history of the present King… is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

- He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

- He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

- He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.)

- He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

- He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

- He has obstructed the Administration of Justice…

- He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices…

- He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

- He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

- He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power…

- …(military) For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States

- For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury

- For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

- For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

- For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments

- For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever

- He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

- He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

- He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

- He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us …

… A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

…We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Crown… — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

As I said, I loved reading the Declaration of Independence in Prague at the time when the circumstances would for me elevate this historical document into a live and noble yet very practical manual of idealism. The sad news is that today’s circumstances make me read the document in Seattle with the same inquiring eyes in search of its inspiring idealism. The good news is, or at least my hope that many more in this country will skip the mall this year, and discover instead the freshness of the ideas 230 years old.

P.S. If you still believe I got insane with the name of this article, here is some additional reading, which hides the answer; also quite refreshing. A very brief biography of King George III, the King of England. After this, you’ll exonerate me of my insanity, I'd hope:

Born in London in 1738.

George was not very intelligent and could not read until he was eleven. However, his tutors praised him for the amount of effort he was willing to put into solving his academic problems.

In 1760, George succeeded his grandfather, George II, as king.

A year after becoming king, George III arranged for the Earl of Bute to become prime minister. This decision upset a large number of MPs who considered Bute to be incompetent. North's leading critic in the House of Commons was John Wilkes. In the newspaper that he established, The New Briton, Wilkes accused the king and his ministers of lying. Wilkes became a symbol of free speech and the king was blamed when he was imprisoned for 22 months for libel. Although Bute only stayed in office for a year, he remained an important influence on George's political opinions.

Over the next four years the king appointed four different prime ministers, In Lord North, the king had at last found a man whom he liked and trusted, and Lord North stayed in office for ten years.

George III supported Lord North's policies that resulted in the American War of Independence (1776-1783). Some MPs, led by Charles Fox and William Pitt criticized the conflict as an "unjust war" and urged Lord North's government to bring it to an end. Fox and Pitt were also critical of the way that George III tried to influence and manipulate those in Parliament. They argued that parliamentary reform was necessary for the preservation of liberty.

Lord Frederick North's government fell in March 1782. When the House of Commons passed the India Bill, the king warned members of the House of Lords that he would regard any one who voted for the bill as his enemy. Unwilling to upset the king, the Lords rejected the bill by 95 votes to 76.

The Duke of Portland's administration resigned and on 19th December, 1783, the king invited his former critic, William Pitt, to form a new government. George now used all the powers at his disposal to help Pitt maintain control of Parliament. This made the king unpopular with the Whigs, a group who favored a reduction in the powers of the monarchy.

George III was also having trouble with his high-spirited eldest son, George, Prince of Wales. On 5th November, 1788, the king attacked the Prince and smashed his head against the wall. One observer claimed that foam was coming from the king's mouth and his eyes were so bloodshot that they looked like currant jelly. George was placed in a strait-jacket and eventually his doctors had a special iron chair made to restrain their patient. Other treatment included putting poultices of Spanish Fly and mustard all over the King's body; the idea was that the painful blisters which resulted would draw out the "evil humors". By April 1789, George's doctors came to the conclusion that he had recovered from his madness and he was allowed to carry on with his royal duties.

In 1793 war broke out with France.

To pay for the war, Pitt was forced to increase taxation and had to raise a loan of £18 million. This problem was made worse by a series of bad harvests. When going to open parliament in October 1795, George III was greeted with cries of 'Bread', 'Peace' and 'no Pitt'. Missiles were also thrown and so Pitt immediately decided to pass a new Sedition Bill that redefined the law of treason.

George III was now a deeply unpopular king.

In his reign, George III suffered from recurrent and eventually permanent mental illness. George suffered complete mental breakdowns in 1801 and 1804. In 1810, George III's insanity became permanent. George, Prince of Wales, was appointed regent, and carried out his father's official royal duties. George III died on 29th January 1820.

Anyway, a poultice of Spanish Fly and mustard, anyone?

Shrub, Originalists, and the Underwear

This blog is unusual A) in its form – it is a raw, real, authentic transcript of an unexpected chat between me and an unknown self-proclaimed conservative Republican on IRC (a chat forum), and B) in its strong language. Please, if expressive language insults you, do not go there and read it. However, if you can withstand a couple of 4-letter words and authentic southern-baptist sexual innuendo, I encourage you to click on Continue Reading below and read this conversation. It is a very bizarre, quite outrageous, and at times disturbing real-time evidence of hypocrisy and pharisaism that is flourishing within the ultra-conservative religious groups in the contemporary U.S.

I left my name unchanged, but I did change the handle of the person who contacted me for this chat (CRB stands for “Conservative Republican Baptist”). I also zeroed out his IP address out of respect for his privacy. (All the info is on the record with me, however, so I can prove the authenticity of this conversation.) I should also let you know that this CRB is a total stranger to me: I had never met this person, I had never talked to him before, and I don’t know his real name, age, or whereabouts. None of the personal info in this chat had been solicited by me.

Of the People, by the People, for the People

In the context of Katrina disaster, I thought several quotes might help understand in what kind of reality these folks live while leading the "one nation under Intelligent Designer". I hope we can agree that their competence and compassion stick out most of all their virtues.

On competence

George W.: "I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." (That’s alright, Dubya. We know you don’t think. If God speaks to you, who is anyone, anyway?)

Sing to the tune of Michael Chertoff’s: "The federal response is really exceptional. I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don’t have food or water."
Or to Condi’s: "I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it to the World Trade Center."
Or to Rummy’s laconic: "Stuff happens."

On compassionate conservatism

George W. about FEMA director: "Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job." (Right on! Anything is possible in the heckuva fantasyland of the faith-based propaganda, isn’t it?!)

George W. to the decimated homeless in New Orleans: "Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house, one of his houses -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." (I am sure Habitat for Humanity has alLotted the appropriate fund already. Don’t forget to bring your guitar and a bottle of Freedom Champagne to the house-warming party!)

Brownie on his resignation: "I'm going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife, and maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night's sleep..." (Free, free at last! All-you-can-drink margaritas for everyone! Have a heckuva farewell party, Brownie!)

Mom Barbara about the evacuees at a relief center in Houston, TX: "This is working very well for them. What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this -- this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them." (What a welcome-to-your-new-home speech! And sort-of-scary as they may be, what a great taste and an admirable sense of empathy on her part! Nothing can comfort the battered underprivileged better than a condescending conservative compassion flowing right from the heart of the overprivileged Queen Mother of the Bush Dynasty! This Hurricane Katrina is in fact working very well for you, you poor jobless homeless dummies! Got it?)

George W. is a President who keeps coming back to Abraham Lincoln over and over again in his speeches. Not so much for an inspiration how to govern. For most part it is just a verbal posturing that should presumably link him with the more glorious presidencies of the past. Understandable. Well, I though I should finish with the Dubya’s version of understanding the Gettysburg Address. Let Dubya’s buddy Brownie speak again:

"I am resigning because I believe it’s in the best interest of the President." (Wow! Forget the interest of the people when the President's are at stake! Hard to beat this Republican compassionate conservatism, isn’t it?!)

Sing to Lincoln’s November 19, 1863 tune: "The government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth".

Bill Maher in his open letter to the President couldn’t tune up to Lincoln's message more dryly:

"You are a catastrophe that walks like a man. Yes, God does speak to you. What he is saying is: ‘Take a hint!’"

Amen.

Opportunism As a Principle

From the right-wing folks who oppose the right to abortion (which to me translates into the much broader right of privacy) and gay marriage, I hear over and over again a passionate complaint. It’s no longer the legislature who sets the rules, it’s the activist judges, they cry. This is echoed by the supposedly impartial President who not once, but twice swore on the Constitution that grants equal rights and equal opportunities for all the citizens.

For a second, forget the Jeffersonian “wall of separation” between the State and Church as a principle. Obviously, this issue would not appear on the plates of the legislators as a bitter dessert, should we strictly believe that the churches and their reps have no say in what is "right" or "wrong" for all of us before the law, and should we, i.e. Congress and the President act upon that belief.

If gay marriage was strictly an objective legal issue, there would be no argument against it and lots of arguments to support it as a basic civil right of equality. As “sacred” as marriage may be for many different faiths, the fact is that the Government would simply have no right to impose those religious beliefs on its citizens because those beliefs are not universal and because the Constitution itself defends the citizens against making those beliefs universal.

So, here we go. The extreme right imposes their religious doctrine but since they know the vulnerabilities of waving the Bible directly, they use the “activist judges” scare. Let the legislators speak! Should legislators be in charge, the religious conscience would do the job, they hope. A little lobbying here and there from the religious right, and the job is done. Wouldn’t the representatives vote at the end of the day as their conscience (read: his/her pastor) would tell them?

Sounds reasonable. Let the legislature decide. Representatives voice the will of the people, don’t they? Well, here comes my problem. Listen to these two stories.

Story one: When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in the fall of 2003 that marriage cannot be denied to gay and lesbian couples (“identifying no constitutionally adequate reason to deny them the right”), the Christian zealots through the Republican Party and the President cried foul because it was apparently up to the legislature of the state, not the Supreme Court to make that decision.

The reasoning behind it was obvious: It seems logical that the legislature as the law-making body, directly elected by and responsible to the voters, should make the law, not the Court. (Forget for a minute that the Court did not make a law in Massachusetts; it only defended the constitutional right of equality, which is its job.) At the same time, they obviously assumed that a majority of legislators would never gather behind the court’s decision. The religious right made it clear that they ostentatiously stood for the principle of the division of powers between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the Government. Gay marriage was in their books a matter that should only be resolved by the state legislature.

Story two: In September 2005, California’s legislative body passes a bill which through their directly elected representatives expresses the will of the people. Exactly the way the principled Republican defenders of the division of powers suggested it should have happened in Massachusetts. Clapping your hands yet? Wait a second! The Republican Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger says he will veto the bill legalizing same-sex marriage “out of respect for the will of the people”. In other words, he is inevitably sending the bill to the court for the activists in robes to decide. Republicans and California’s extreme right applaud their Governor.

Great! Consistency, or sticking to a principle is what makes principled people principled. Right? The opposite to consistency is called hypocrisy. Or opportunism.

Are you still following me? Am I missing something here? The godly Aahnold and his Republican cohort are bashing the legislative body in California for doing exactly what they so vehemently promoted for Massachusetts! He is effectively banning the legislative body to have an overriding say in the decision whether gays in California can marry or not, and he is sending the bill right into the hands of the ugly “activist judges” to decide! What happened? Death, where is thy sting? Dear fellow Republicans, where are your principles?

Something stinks here. Royally stinks! I think I can smell opportunism and hypocrisy at a mile’s distance. The same applies to bigotry. But let me tell you: This country can be saved and it doesn’t need Ahnolds-the-Saviors to do the job. All we have to do is to convince some of the other fifty percent that opportunism is short-lived. Definitely, its term should not be longer than four years.

Death Is Easy to Pronounce

Let me be clear about the title: I am not referring to the doctor-at-the-crime-scene testimony over a comatose body. The headline is a quote from a poem by Sampurna Chattarji, an Africa-born poetess living in India. She is one of many contributors to the fascinating newly released documentary called Voices in Wartime by the Seattle writer and director Rick King.

I went to its premiere at the Guild 45th Theater with a suspicion I’d see another political activist’s cry over spilled milk. That is, over the spill of wars (from terrorism to Iraq, and beyond) that this administration seems to enjoy spilling in gallons. Not that there is anything wrong with antiwar activism: It at least challenges the intellect of those who possess it and are willing to use it. That always creates the basis for a hope that the next unnecessary war will be stopped before it started.

However, this documentary is anything but an activist flick. Or, if you will, it presents a very different kind of activism. Activism of conscience, activism through metaphors and rhymes. It lets poets of all kinds and nationalities, of all different social, political, religious, and ethnic backgrounds speak about their authentic experience with war. From soldiers to war correspondents to war survivors, and anyone in between, you hear a clear voice that doesn’t speak the language of media propaganda. You don’t hear much about heroism, patriotism, sacrifices for the nation, or the victory of Democracy, Truth, and Justice. Instead, you hear about suffering, pain, resignation, gloom, hopelessness, and injustice.

The truth is that wars produce mass death. They do not produce justice, heroism, not even victories in the sanitized and polished sense politicians or generals love to use them to promote their political agendas or to speed up promotions in the ranks. That may be true about the wars told by politicians and generals. It is definitely not true about the wars told by those who survive them on both sides of the barricade. A victory in a war is a great illusion on the part of individuals who never fought one yet who have the unfortunate power to start them.

Politicians and mass media these days use double-speak. Poets use conscience. Through metaphors and imagination, they evoke a real picture of the war and a real sense of its cost to a human soul.  It is not too little too late at the time when the words of politicians lose their meaning and value, when patriotism has become a convenient cover-up for a nasty agenda, a weapon against legitimate doubts, and a dishonest answer to legitimate questions.

War never affirms life. It brings death. Of course, politicians have it easier. They call death in a war collateral damage, and then it is easy to pronounce. For poets, death has a face and annihilates the soul that makes us human. Such death for them is hard to live with. Rick King's courageous movie brings a fresh voice short of partisan demagoguery, a poetic voice of reason that anyone with conscience can relate to and appreciate.

Politics and Conscience

In 1984, Vaclav Havel, former Czech President wrote from his house arrest in Prague a speech that he would have presented at the University of Toulouse, had he been allowed into the country by the then Czechoslovak communist regime. The speech was about the abuse of power by politicians. It talks about the “power operating outside all conscience, a power grounded in an omnipresent ideological fiction which can rationalize anything without ever having to brush against the truth…power which makes thought, morality and privacy a state monopoly and so dehumanizes them.”

I recalled Havel’s observation last week as I was reading through the news in different independent sources and confronted their perspective with the reality of the American real-politik. The major players on Capitol Hill and in the White House certainly seem to believe they have secured for themselves a power that doesn’t have to “brush against the truth” any longer.

Just take the tribal dance around the brain-dead Ms. Schiavo. It was obviously not about her. It was not about her disunited family either. As we heard from many Republican vigilantes, it was about the “right to life”. Mr. President made yet another dramatic landing of his presidential career, this time on the lawn of the White House to patronize the hesitant disbelievers and slap the hands of the Florida judges involved in the case for the last 10+ years. “Our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life”, he said in a preacher’s voice. Amen, one should exclaim. But then one’s conscience brushes the former Governor Bush’s conscience against his own Texas Futile Care Bill from 1999 that has allowed hospitals to stop feeding Terry Schiavos of Texas on condition that the patient’s prognosis is not good, the further care would be futile, and the family has no means to pay for the medical bills. In the light of this truth, the President’s early morning White House homily made a bitter twist towards a farce.

As if the sanctity of life started and ended with a brain-dead woman in Florida. An absurd diagnosis by Senator Bill Frist via an edited video tape apart, Tom the “Ethics Incarnate” DeLay took over where President Bush left off and tried to translate religious dogma into a law in the Congress. The power of his thoughtful and heartfelt speech about the “huge nationwide concerted effort to destroy everything we believe in” has waned face to face his own acts. Of course, his imperial “we” may be in conflict with the rest of “us” who believe in morality and ethics in the first place.

Both Bush and DeLay have turned themselves into a live evidence that monopolizing thought, morality, and privacy dehumanizes them all: an independent thought turns into a faceless demagoguery, morality turns itself into its own faceless caricature, and privacy gets publicly executed in the name of the dubious political goal.

Havel talked about an authoritative communist regime without a face. Sad enough, Bush and DeLay speak for the superpower perceived by many in the world as the bastion of democracy and humanity.