NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

I thought I would post this article by by Spencer Ackerman from The American Prospect , primarily because of the excerpt below, which is a concise, insightful and ( na'triste) explanation of why John McCain's and Bush's resistance to timetables and acceding of the control over the war to "the generals on the ground" doesn't make any sense. Here's the section: Imagine you walk into an auto body shop where you left your car for a tune-up. You ask the man at the counter: When can I pick up my car? "Well," he replies, "I think that's a question best left to the discretion of the mechanics in the shop, don't you? After all, they're the ones hard at work fixing your car." Wait, you say. Are you telling me you don't know when my car will be ready? I need to drive to -- "What I've always said," he interrupts, "is that setting an arbitrary deadline from the counter of this auto-body shop is the surest guarantee

Is the Surge Working? No, but the propaganda touting it sure is. By Justin Raimondo From Antiwar.com July 30, 2008 Barack Obama is getting plenty of flak for not acknowledging that he was wrong about the " surge ," i.e. the wisdom of escalating a war we should never have started in the first place – and this is being compared to John McCain's stubborn refusal to admit that we need to get out (although it appears McCain isn't against timetables anymore …). In any case, the whole question of the "surge" is really just another one of those exercises in irrelevance that the American media use to fill the vast void of the cable news universe. As Obama points out , anyone could have predicted that the sudden infusion of large numbers of American troops would reduce violence, albeit temporarily. So where does that leave us? Well, as Antiwar.com reported yesterday (Monday): " 87 Iraqis Killed, 288 Wounded ." Okay, so that was an unusual day, in whic

As I've written regularly about over the past few weeks, in March of next year at UCSD, my department of Ethnic Studies we'll be hosting a conference titled " Postcolonial Futures in a Not Yet Postcolonial World: Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies ." To say a little bit about the goals behind the conference, we are hoping to take each of the three previously mentioned academic disciplines as well as the political realities they mean to study, and bring them not just into conversation with each other, but also bring them in conversation with the idea and the force that is the global. For those who don't know what I mean by global, since it is kind of an utguyosu na academic term, its not anything too abstract, but is simply anything which can appear or is asserted to stand in for, represent or touch the entire world. Indigenous, ethnic and postcolonial studies, are all academic domains which are directed towards particular pe

Published on Sunday, November 4, 2007 by The New York Times Noun + Verb + 9/11 + Iran = Democrats’ Defeat? by Frank Rich When President Bush started making noises about World War III, he only confirmed what has been a Democratic article of faith all year: Between now and Election Day he and Dick Cheney, cheered on by the mob of neocon dead-enders, are going to bomb Iran. But what happens if President Bush does not bomb Iran? That is good news for the world, but potentially terrible news for the Democrats. If we do go to war in Iran, the election will indeed be a referendum on the results, which the Republican Party will own no matter whom it nominates for president. But if we don’t, the Democratic standard-bearer will have to take a clear stand on the defining issue of the race. As we saw once again at Tuesday night’s debate , the front-runner, Hillary Clinton, does not have one. The reason so many Democrats believe war with Iran is inevitable, of course, is that the administration is

Published on Tuesday, January 9, 2007 by CommonDreams.org Presidential Campaign Launched in America with Ethnic Cleansing in Iraq As Debate Begins, Sunnis Decry Massacres by Tom Hayden Politically, the coming escalation by 20,000 US troops in Iraq is best understood as the comeback strategy of the neo-conservative Republicans rallying around Sen. John McCain’s presidential banner. The political spin-doctors are calling it a “surge”, an aggressive term implying a kind of post-election erection for Bush and the neo-conservatives. In fact, or course, it is an escalation, a term apparently carrying too much baggage from Vietnam. The hardcore neo-conservatives, their ranks thinned by defections publicized in Vanity Fair, leaped immediately to salvage the war from November’s voter disapproval. Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute and William Kristol of The Weekly Standard began promoting an increase of 50,000 troops, mainly to Baghdad. Bush, who all along said he was listenin

Published on Tuesday, December 19, 2006 by the Huffington Post On Receiving the 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award by Sean Penn Sean Penn received The 2006 Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award from The Creative Coalition on December 18, 2006, in New York City, where he delivered the following speech. The Christopher Reeve First Amendment Award. For the purposes of tonight and my own personal enjoyment, I'm going to yield to the notion that I deserve this. And in the spirit of that, tell you that I am very honored to receive it. And for this I thank the Creative Coalition and my friend Charlie Rose. It does seem appropriate to take this opportunity to exercise the right that honors us all - freedom of speech. Note for later: The original title for the Louis XVI comedy called "Start The Revolution Without Me" was one of my favorites. That original title was "Louis, There's a Crowd Downstairs." But I'll come back to that... Words may be our mo

On behalf of Guam, and all of us semi-, pseudo- or reluctant- Americans that call it home, I want to say too, Si Yu'us Ma'ase Amerika! Mungga mabomba pat mana'mabomba ham ta'lo put fabot! Published on Thursday, November 9, 2006 by the Guardian / UK Thank You, America For six years, latterly with the backing of both houses of a markedly conservative Republican Congress, George Bush has led an American administration that has played an unprecedentedly negative and polarising role in the world's affairs. On Tuesday, in the midterm US congressional elections, American voters rebuffed Mr Bush in spectacular style and with both instant and lasting political consequences. By large numbers and across almost every state of the union, the voters defeated Republican candidates and put the opposition Democrats back in charge of the House of Representatives for the first time in a dozen years. When the remaining recounts and legal challenges are over, the Democrats may even hav

Published on Sunday, July 30, 2006 by the New York Times A Senate Race in Connecticut Editorial Earlier this year, Senator Joseph Lieberman’s seat seemed so secure that — legend has it — some people at the Republican nominating convention in Connecticut started making bleating noises when the party picked a presumed sacrificial lamb to run against the three-term senator, who has been a fixture in Connecticut politics for more than 35 years. But Mr. Lieberman is now in a tough Democratic primary against a little-known challenger, Ned Lamont. The race has taken on a national character. Mr. Lieberman’s friends see it as an attempt by hysterical antiwar bloggers to oust a giant of the Senate for the crime of bipartisanship. Lamont backers — most of whom seem more passionate about being Lieberman opponents — say that as one of the staunchest supporters of the Iraq war, Mr. Lieberman has betrayed his party by cozying up to President Bush. This primary would never have happened absent Iraq. I