Time has come to end neoconservatism

I saw this article from today's Scotsman on Liberty Post and referred to on Antiwar.com. Although they were pooh-poohing it there, I think anyone who comes to his senses should be welcomed not scorned. After all, isn't that what the story Prodigal Son is all about? There should be a right to change one's mind otherwise no one could ever change to see what's right. Let's celebrate it in this case.

-- Sean Scallon

By ALEX MASSIE IN WASHINGTON - The SCOTSMAN

NEOCONSERVATISM has failed the United States and needs to be replaced by a more realistic foreign policy agenda, according to one of its prime architects.

Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the best-selling book The End of History and was a member of the neoconservative project, now says that, both as a political symbol and a body of thought, it has "evolved into something I can no longer support". He says it should be discarded on to history's pile of discredited ideologies.

In an extract from his forthcoming book, America at the Crossroads, Mr Fukuyama declares that the doctrine "is now in shambles" and that its failure has demonstrated "the danger of good intentions carried to extremes".

In its narrowest form, neoconservatism advocates the use of military force, unilaterally if necessary, to replace autocratic regimes with democratic ones.

Mr Fukuyama once supported regime change in Iraq and was a signatory to a 1998 letter sent by the Project for a New American Century to the then president, Bill Clinton, urging the US to step up its efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power. It was also signed by neoconservative intellectuals, such as Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, and political figures Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the current defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

However, Mr Fukuyama now thinks the war in Iraq is the wrong sort of war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

"The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism," he argues.

"Although the new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction did indeed present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally."

Mr Fukuyama, one of the US's most influential public intellectuals, concludes that "it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention [in Iraq] itself or the ideas animating it kindly".

Going further, he says the movements' advocates are Leninists who "believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practised by the United States".

Although Mr Fukuyama still supports the idea of democratic reform - complete with establishing the institutions of liberal modernity - in the Middle East, he warns that this process alone will not immediately reduce the threats and dangers the US faces. "Radical Islamism is a by-product of modernisation itself, arising from the loss of identity that accompanies the transition to a modern, pluralist society. More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalisation and - yes, unfortunately - terrorism," he says.

"By definition, outsiders can't 'impose' democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective."

My day with the independent film documentarian, By Sean Scallon

I spent most of the morning in an interview in River Falls with a Twin Cities independent film documentarian. They are doing a documentary on Chai Vang, the killer of six Wisconsin hunters in November of 2004. I know I fascinated her and her camerman with my views, or at least she seemed impressed that I had good viewpoints to share for her film. The only question is, how will they be edited and smartly I refused to sign any release form of the interview until I see such editation. Hopefully she's straight forward in her assurances it weill be done well and use me to make her point. We'll see. Anyway, I'm submitting the article from the February 2005 issue of Chronicles she saw on the internet that led her to contact me for the interview.

--Sean Scallon

After September 11, the word blowback was frequently heard. It is a CIA term describing operations that come back to haunt the agency (e.g., Afghanistan). Unlimited immigration has its own form of blowback: people like Chai Vang, who, on the afternoon of November 21, 2004, shot eight deer hunters in the northwoods of the Indianhead region of Wisconsin just outside the town of Birchwood, killing six of them, including a female hunter.

Interestingly, one of the worst incidents of mass murder in Wisconsin history has its origins with the CIA itself. During the Vietnam War, CIA agents recruited and organized Hmong tribesmen like Mr. Vang (although he himself immigrated to the United States in 1980 at a young age) to fight both the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which snaked through the mountainous highlands of Laos where the Hmong live. They also fought the Pathet Lao, a communist rebel group. In 1975, the Pathet Lao triumphed against the Royal Laotian government forces and turned against the Hmong with genocidal fury, reportedly dropping chemical bombs on Hmong villages. The Hmong fled in terror to refugee camps in Thailand. Having no desire to integrate the Hmong, who are despised by the lowland Southeast Asian ethnic groups, and also having no desire to become another Burma, with ethnic armies on her jungle borders dealing opium, the Thais decided (with some justification) that the Hmong were an American problem and demanded that the United States allow them in.

Many Lutheran and Catholic organizations in the Upper Midwest agreed with the Thais. The plight of the Hmong became their cause in the late 1970’s and early 80’s, and they helped thousands of Hmong to emigrate to America. These refugees soon began to sponsor family members who, in turn, sponsored other relatives. Today, there are more Hmong in the United States than in Southeast Asia. Although most Hmong live in California, many decided to immigrate to the Upper Midwest, refusing to let the harsher climate stop them from taking advantage of better welfare services and numerous job opportunities. They also served as a diversifying factor for those multiculturalists who think that having the descendants of Germans and Scandinavians living side by side is not enough.

The Hmong did not have a written form of their language until a few decades ago. They were no more suited to assimilate into modern American life, with all of its complexities, than any headhunter tribe in the jungles of Borneo would be. Pat Buchanan was attacked back in 1992 when he honestly answered the question: Who would assimilate better into Virginia, a million Zulus or a million Britons? Had someone bothered to ask this when the immigration of the Hmong was proposed, perhaps the struggles that many Hmong adults go through—the conflicts between the primitive tribal and honor-bound world of the past and the postmodern world of today—would not be as soul-wrenching or, in some cases, as deadly.

Mr. Vang, like many Hmong, lived on the east side of St. Paul, Minnesota, with his family of six. Apparently, he had some run-ins with the Twin Cities police for domestic violence. Domestic disputes in which Hmong men kill their family members are not uncommon. And, as in many immigrant communities past and present, crime is also not uncommon among the Hmong. As Samuel Francis pointed out in a recent syndicated column,

Ten years ago, immigration expert Roy Beck wrote a path-breaking article in the Atlantic Monthly about the Hmong immigrants in Wausau, Wisc.—a discussion he repeated in his later book, The Case Against Immigration.

[Beck said that] “The number of Southeast Asians burgeoned, and the city’s ability to welcome, nurture, accommodate and assimilate the larger numbers shrank. Most immigrants were unable to enter the mainstream of the economy. Residents resented the social costs of caring for many more newcomers than anybody had been led to believe would arrive. . . . Inter-ethnic violence and other tensions proliferated in the schools and in the parks and streets of a town that formerly had been virtually free of social tensions and violence.”

Prearranged marriages, adolescent prostitution, honor killings, and ritual slaughter of animals in the backyard are just some of the points of conflict between the world the Hmong once knew and the world they now inhabit. Of course, not all Hmong are like Mr. Vang. Among the young, assimilation is slowly taking place, causing conflict between generations in the Hmong community. And most Upper Midwesterners were coming to terms with the Hmong presence in their communities before this incident.

In fact, hunting and fishing are shared values between whites and the Hmong. The wooded landscape, with thousands of lakes and streams and forested hills, reminds the Hmong of home. The Hmong, however, are not used to such concepts as private property, bag limits, and “No Trespassing” signs, because they could hunt and fish wherever they wanted to, and as much as they wanted to, back in the old country. So clashes take place between white hunters who follow the rules and Hmong who do not understand them. Such was the case with Mr. Vang and the unfortunate deer-hunting victims.

People cannot believe that a man could snap like that and kill so many. Yet snap is exactly what he did. Confronted when he was found in a tree stand on private property and asked to leave, Mr. Vang, according to Sawyer County sheriff’s reports taken from the surviving victims, climbed down from the stand, took the scope off of his ASK Chinese-made semiautomatic rifle, walked about 40 yards back, turned around, and opened fire. One of the injured men radioed back to his buddies at a deer camp, asking them to come to his assistance. When they did, Mr. Vang (who claimed that the hunters taunted him with racial slurs and that one of their party fired at him first) picked them off at distances of 40 to 70 yards away, betraying the fact that he had some military training. (He was in the U.S. Army.) People who argue that this incident shows that the Hmong have no respect for human life do not realize that Mr. Vang comes from a place where revenge killing and genocide against the Hmong people by the communist Pathet Lao were almost everyday occurrences. Regard for the lives of strangers is probably not on the top of the list of Hmong values, but ensuring the survival of oneself and one’s family is.

St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly has spent taxpayer dollars to travel to Hmong camps in Thailand to ask more Hmong to come to his city. Now, it is clear that more Hmong immigration will have costs that are not merely fiscal (more spending on social services and schools during tight times). Of course, the human cost was ignored when it involved Hmong killing one another in gang and domestic violence. Now that the violence has spilled over, people are finally asking why they should tolerate it. They should go to their church leaders who celebrate “diversity,” their business leaders looking for cheap labor and docile employees, and their politicians seeking more tax revenue. They are the ones who have conducted social-engineering experiments on the Hmong as though they were lab rats. Get the answers from them.

Sean Scallon is a reporter who lives in Arkansaw, Wisconsin.

My Day with Russ - Is the Wisconsin senator a future President? Maybe, maybe not

(Before I begin I offer my congratulations to the Ellsworth High School wrestling team I cover for the Pierce County Herald for winning the tournament mentioned in the story and moving on to the sectional meet.)


Before any high school wrestling tournament there is always a seeding meeting. They usually take a half-hour to an hour at most, depending how feisty the coaches are to getting their kids the best possible seeds in the tournament (some can go even longer if they are too feisty.)
So while seeding meeting at the wrestling tournament I was covering that Saturday became a miniature U.S. Senate chamber, debating whether a 9-20 record at one weigh class really meant such a wrestler could do well in a lower class, I shunted off to another end of a big home-ec, multipurpose room at Neillsville High School in Neillsville, Wisconsin with the local paper in hand to have a breakfast of orange juice and whatever doughnuts were leftover after the coaches had gone through them. After a few minutes of reading, I found that a real U.S. Senator was in town.
"U.S. Senator Russ Feingold will be in Neillsville for his annual Clark County listening session at 2:30 p.m. at the county courthouse."
How perfect! Just as the wrestling tournament is winding down, I can slip over to the courthouse and judge for myself whether Russ Feingold is Presidential material for myself.
Like a lot of Wisconsin counties, Clark's courthouse is a newer, 1960's style building right next to the castle-like old courthouse (which is on the national historic register). Aside from aesthetics and the maze-like corridors one had to go through to find the county board meeting room, this would be the perfect place to judge a potential Feingold presidential campaign, no pun intended. After all, Clark is usually considered a Republican County (although not as solidly as once was because there are several Democrats holding county offices and Bush II only won here by a 1,000 votes) but Feingold carried it in his re-election bid and if he could win here in this rural, primarily dairy farming county being, in a sense, a Dane County (Madison) liberal, could he not do at least as well nationwide?
The meeting lasted about an hour and I left disappointed because I wasn't sure. It was crowed inside the county boardroom, but not packed and I wondered if the make-up of the crowd wasn't mostly local Democrats anyway. There were only a couple of hostile questioners ("You make me sick!" one old man said to him after he explained his position on gay-marriage.) and most questions were pointed barbs in the direction of the Bush II Administration. The recent wire-tapping issue, health care, education and the war in Iraq and some questions of dairy policy were the main topics of concern for the audience and no one there spoke in favor on anything the Administration was doing on these questions.
These county meetings, or listening session as the Feingold's people call them, are why he gets re-elected (he ran six points ahead of Kerry in Wisconsin against a very conservative opponent). It's because, as one lady said "You're so accessible as a senator." Wisconsinites like that in their politicians and Feingold, in his plain, blue casual dress shirt, didn't look like a high and mighty U.S. Senator. But did he look like a President? That's where the rub comes in.
For you see, we have so puffed up the office of the President, given him titles like "Leader of the Free World." made occasions like the State of the Union address such rituals that it limits the potential occupants to the job in this day and age. Voters want someone who they can envision being a President because in many ways he's going to be an influence in their lives whether they like it or not, even if it's only on the TV screen. Those who don't measure up to that image are the first ones cut. And those Presidents who try to play down the image and the ruffles and flourishes of the office get hammered by the Washington establishment, who's own importance is based on the Imperial Presidency. Thus, when Jimmy Carter appeared on TV in a cardigan sweater looking like Mr. Rogers to talk about the energy crisis, he was ridiculed to no end. Likewise, Bill Clinton's bid to create a populist presidency complete with trips to McDonald's, ended when Time magazine put small image of Clinton on its front cover underneath the large-point title "The Incredible Shrinking Presidency." Even Washington liberals don't like a president who doesn't act like a president, although the Constitution and the Founding Fathers never meant to invest so much power and stature to the office. It just sort evolved that way. And once you become a President, you lose that accessibility thanks to that Praetorian Guard known as the Secret Service. Feingold would lose a lot of what makes him an effective politician and Senator just by being President.
And that's where Feingold gets hurt. He's great in these small group sessions (even the hostile questioner thanked him for showing up in Clark County) and people respect him because he's willing to say he disagrees with them and call it even rather than trying to talk down, equivocate or try to get them on his side. It's perfect for the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, which is all about convincing small groups to support you. But a national campaign requires a lot more, like money, charisma, powerful organization and that sense of inevitability about your chances of winning. That's what Hilary Clinton has in spades and would make Feingold still a long shot for even for his own party's nomination. Feingold would have to win big early to damage all those assets Clinton has and even then he still would be a long shot. For you see, the very campaign finance reforms he's championed hurts insurgent candidacies like his (although internet funding mitigates this somewhat). Eugene McCarthy's insurgent campaign in 1968 was basically funded by about five wealthy people in New York. That's against the law today. How does he keep going when the initial money runs out?
There's also a lack of a narrative to him, or least so far I can tell. All good presidential campaigns are really good stories or movies that people either buy into or not. If you can’t tell your story or have none, you don't win, period. Recently there's been good pieces written by paleoconservative on liberal insurgents like Bill Kauffman's about George McGovern in the American Conservative and Joe Sobran about Eugene McCarthy in Chronicles. These were liberals with conservative sheens to them. McGovern was a bomber pilot in World War II, a small businessman and raised five children in South Dakota. McCarthy studied philosophy from German Benedictine monks at St. John's College in Minnesota and taught there as well. In own words to Teddy White in Making of the President 1968 he was "born in a small town of 500 population in the Midwest (Watkins, Minnesota). My mother's family were farmers, my father was a small businessman. I know small-town life and I know big city life. I represented St. Paul in Congress. I'm at home with farmers on Main Street, labor and Wall Street."
While Feingold grew-up in the blue-collar town on Janesville, Wisconsin, he's basically been a lawyer and a politician his whole life. Rhodes Scholar, UW-Madison grad and Harvard Law Phi Beta Kappa, his resume reads like any other liberal politician. He represented a suburb of Madison (Middleton) in the state senate. I don't sense a dynamism about him that would attract people of different background nor a compelling life story to attract others.
And yet he should run, if only because Democrat Party needs a robust primary campaign on the issues to define what it to people who aren't sure any more. Besides the "we need to be more liberal mantra" you can see a theme developing in a Feingold candidacy on several issue. The war, and Feingold's consistent opposition to the Patriot Act is on facet of that. But when asked about the gay marriage issue, Feingold's basic response was "It doesn't bother me. It doesn't hurt me." That's a basic libertarian position. You could see on many issues a coalition of say, pro-green, liberal and libertarian stances from gay marriage, to medical marijuana, to the Patriot Act that could very well make Feingold the anti-government candidate in 2008 and his Republican opponent the pro-big government candidate. It's something, if realized, could alter American politics fundamentally.
But again, it's hard to say just from that one meeting what to make of a potential Feingold candidacy. I came expecting to see a defining moment, something that could catch my eye, my ear and my mind to say "Yep, he can do it," and didn't find it. Perhaps I was expecting too much, but it's those little moments that can lead to so much more in politics. Maybe it will come in another listening session, in even-more Republican Calumet County or Dodge County. Hopefully someone from Feingold campaign will be smart enough to film it so others can see what Wisconsinites already see in him that will at least give him a chance with the rest of the nation.

- Sean Scallon

Feingold for President

Being from Wisconsin, I think a presidential campaign by our U.S. Senator would be a great thing because it would be the kind of earth-shaking contemporay politics needs. My parents support a Feingold bid and at first I poo-poohed his candidacy but now I'm thinking they may be on to something. He does fit the mode of the classic insurgent candidate ala Eugene McCarthy/GeorgeMcGovern/Pat Buchanan without, I think, their flaws. Having met him once, I can tell you he's very personable, articulate and approachable, although he lack the passion that would fire people up the way a Paul Wellstone would. Maybe in a sense that's a good thing but I think more leftists would be drawn to him if he had that. Still, a little Wisconsin, Midwestern personality I think would go a long way for him. After all, the first state on the campign calendar, Iowa. If the war is still a big issue in two years, I think he can do quite well there.

In fact, if I were to give him some advice, if his campaign wanted to run a campaign video or movie, just go to one of his townhall meetings in Wisconsin (he holds them in all 72 counties in the state, every year) in one of the most Republican, rural parts of the state (maybe, say Marquette County or Calumet County or even Outagamie County where Joe McCarthy was from) and show how he interacts with people diametrically oppesed to him both in background and in ideology. I think you'll see why there's always a good chunk of Republicans who will vote for him, because they like and respect him. Maybe they don't agree with him on everything (I certainly don't) and maybe they don't think a U.S. Senator can do much harm unlike a President, but there is a think, a conservative sheen to Feingold much like there was to McCarthy that can make him attractive to a lot voters. Given the fact he meets people even in the counties he didn't carries shows this.

If politicans tried earned people's respect more their love, I think our politics would be a lot better off.

---Sean Scallon

Trust Busted

Congress must rein in a lawless executive

by Sen. Russ Feingold

Last week, the president of the United States gave his State of the Union address, where he spoke of America's leadership in the world and called on all of us to "lead this world toward freedom." Again and again, he invoked the principle of freedom, and how it can transform nations and empower people around the world.

But, almost in the same breath, the president openly acknowledged that he has ordered the government to spy on Americans, on American soil, without the warrants required by law.

The president issued a call to spread freedom throughout the world, and then he admitted that he has deprived Americans of one of their most basic freedoms under the Fourth Amendment – to be free from unjustified government intrusion.

The president was blunt. He said that he had authorized the NSA's domestic spying program, and he made a number of misleading arguments to defend himself. His words got rousing applause from Republicans, and even some Democrats.

The president was blunt, so I will be blunt: This program is breaking the law, and this president is breaking the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in his efforts to justify this program.

How is that worthy of applause? Since when do we celebrate our commander in chief for violating our most basic freedoms and misleading the American people in the process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for breaking the law? In that moment at the State of the Union, I felt ashamed.

Congress has lost its way if we don't hold this president accountable for his actions.

The president suggests that anyone who criticizes his illegal wiretapping program doesn't understand the threat we face. But we do. Every single one of us is committed to stopping the terrorists who threaten us and our families.

Defeating the terrorists should be our top national priority, and we all agree that we need to wiretap them to do it. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to wiretap terrorists. But we have yet to see any reason why we have to trample the laws of the United States to do it. The president's decision that he can break the law says far more about his attitude toward the rule of law than it does about the laws themselves.

This goes way beyond party, and way beyond politics. What the president has done here is to break faith with the American people. In the State of the Union, he also said that "we must always be clear in our principles" to get support from friends and allies that we need to fight terrorism. So let's be clear about a basic American principle: When someone breaks the law, when someone misleads the public in an attempt to justify his actions, he needs to be held accountable. The president of the United States has broken the law. The president of the United States is trying to mislead the American people. And he needs to be held accountable.

Unfortunately, the president refuses to provide any details about this domestic spying program. Not even the full intelligence committees know the details, and they were specifically set up to review classified information and oversee the intelligence activities of our government. Instead, the president says, "Trust me."

This is not the first time we've heard that. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, the administration went on an offensive to get the American public, the Congress, and the international community to believe its theory that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, and even that he had ties to al-Qaeda. The president painted a dire – and inaccurate – picture of Saddam Hussein's capability and intent, and we invaded Iraq on that basis. To make matters worse, the administration misled the country about what it would take to stabilize and reconstruct Iraq after the conflict. We were led to believe that this was going to be a short endeavor, and that our troops would be home soon.

We all recall the president's "Mission Accomplished" banner on the aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003. In fact, the mission was not even close to being complete. More than 2,100 total deaths have occurred after the president declared an end to major combat operations in May of 2003, and over 16,600 American troops have been wounded in Iraq. The president misled the American people and grossly miscalculated the true challenge of stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq.

In December, we found out that the president has authorized wiretaps of Americans without the court orders required by law. He says he is only wiretapping people with links to terrorists, but how do we know? We don't. The president is unwilling to let a neutral judge make sure that is the case. He will not submit this program to an independent branch of government to make sure he's not violating the rights of law-abiding Americans.

So I don't want to hear again that this administration has shown it can be trusted. It hasn't. And that is exactly why the law requires a judge to review these wiretaps.

It is up to Congress to hold the president to account. We held a hearing on the domestic spying program in the Judiciary Committee yesterday, where Attorney General Gonzales was a witness. We expect there will be other hearings. That is a start, but it will take more than just hearings to get the job done.

We know that in part because the president's attorney general has already shown a willingness to mislead the Congress.

Military resister to highlight Vermont anti-war rally

I'm posting this article from antiwar.com because it dovetails nicely activities to place anti-war referendums on spring elections ballots and the Vermont secession movement. Such antiwar referedums are going to be on several Wisconsin ballots as well. I think it is a better way to gauge public opinion than just asking the local town or village board or city council to weigh-in on their opinion of the war, which they would feel most unqualified to do. But a public referendum is a different story and there is historical precedent that such soundings of public opinion do have an effect. Take the American Revolution for example. In Great Britain at that time, most people could not vote and the parlimentary boroughs were basically bought and paid for by aristocrats and other powerful interests (that's where the term "rotten borough" comes from). Yet the British people made their voices heard through petitions to the King and Parliment and through voting on resolutions opposing the war, which ultimately brought the war to an end when the popular backing for it collapsed which trickled upward into Parliment and caused the fall of the North government after Yorktown. The same can happen here and credit the Green Party for truly effective acitvism on their part. Just another example of beating the powers that be at their own game.

- Sean Scallon

Military resister to highlight Vermont anti-war rally
By Shay Totten Vermont Guardian
posted February 8, 2006

MONTPELIER — Hundreds of Vermonters are expected at a demonstration Saturday in front of the Statehouse to demand that Vermont’s elected representatives call on Pres. Bush to immediately remove all troops from Iraq.

The 2 p.m. rally will feature Pablo Paredes, a Navy Petty officer who, in 2004, refused to board an Iraq-bound ship because he did not believe the invasion of Iraq was justified. Eventually, his case went to court, a judge ruled in Paredes’ favor, and he was given an honorable discharge from the Navy. He is now trying to register as a conscientious objector.

Paredes, who grew up in the Bronx, NY, and currently lives in California, told the Guardian that is looking forward to being in Vermont, and has been watching the progress of last year’s Town Meeting Day resolutions.

Last year, 48 towns voted in favor of some form of the measure calling on the state to examine the impact that the large call-up of Vermont National Guard troops has on Vermont, its resources and its families. Legislation was subsequently introduced in the House and made its way to the House floor before a fractured vote channeled it back to committee, where it remains.

“I, as many others who work for peace, have noticed the absence of true democracy in our country best represented in the outcome of the recent town meetings, here in Vermont,” said Paredes in an e-mail interview. (The full interview appears at the bottom of this article.)

“I followed this story and the overwhelming response of the apologetics for war was, ‘Well, it doesn't mean anything; these resolutions are nonbinding to the state.’ [T]here can be no excuse for the state of Vermont going against a near unanimous call of these town meetings. But this is the reality of representative democracy. It very rarely represents people who don't have economic influence over it.”

In early January, Vermont Says Not to War, a coalition of veterans, soldiers’ families, labor activists, civil libertarians, faith-based organizations and anti-war activists, kicked off a campaign in favor of strong legislation the states, “Vermont and its citizens call on the president to bring all the troops home now and take care of them when they get home.”

Protest organizers are also calling on Vermonters to pledge to undertake acts of nonviolent civil disobedience as a way to pressure lawmakers into taking up the resolution.

VG: What general message do you have for Vermonters, and how can they make a difference?

PP: I think I would be presuming a great deal to tell Vermonters about how they can make a difference. The fact is, America could learn much from Vermonters. The reality is that in states as big as New York and California, which are the two that I can speak of with some personal experience, the effect of the war is so diluted in the massive populations that there's a great deal of apathy. In a more perfect system it would be those who are most affected by war who had the greatest say in waging it, but in our reality the "representatives" on Capitol Hill, none of whom have what Gold Star Families and Military Families Speak Out call “Skin in the Game,” they make the big decisions or more frankly their sponsors make the big decisions. Our brand of democracy is a farce, and so when I hear our president, elected by the Supreme Court, talk about spreading democracy I am less than enthused.
But to return to your question: I don't think I'm here to give advice. I'm here to learn and to highlight the Vermont experience for the rest of the country. If the masses see what war does to communities and families, then the apathy will begin to wear off. Since my public refusal to board the war vessel in 2004 ,I have made it my mission to bring the reality to mainstream America. I aimed, maybe ambitiously, to show the country there was dissent in the ranks in my protest, and I aim here to take part in the Vermont process, which sheds light on the effects of this war on everyday communities. I will also be trying to shock and awe everyday people with some actions surrounding the third anniversary of the invasion, soon.

VG: The rally organizers are calling for an immediate withdrawal of troops. Do you think this is logistically possible, and how would you propose it happen? In other words, does "immediate" mean all at once or a phased pullout over a period of months?

PP: Immediate is a very lucid word. There is no misinterpreting it. The fact is corporate big bucks don't only own influential shares in our government and in the companies who most profit from this war, but they have mass media monopolized as well. So they've framed the argument and we have to stick to the proposed framework and not question it.
Well, I refuse. I say the framework is racist. The argument most commonly made is the famous “power vacuum” theory. "No, lord no, we can't pull out now in one shot because we will leave a massive power vacuum and fundamentalist would be sucked into power.” Nonsense. To say that the oldest civilization in existence with the largest oil reserves in existence cannot settle their own differences without our imposing martial law is simply and unavoidably racist. The history of Catholics and Protestants is by far bloodier than Sunnis and Shiites, and yet it is our nation telling this country that they are incapable of settling their differences without our mitigating capabilities a la F-18.

The reality is, we refuse to walk away from having the largest possible influence on the petroleum-richest territory on the planet, and that is the reason we invaded; it is the reason, no matter how faulty our rationale was for invading, we are still there; the reason, no matter how bloody it gets, the corporate-owned government of the USA will never leave Iraq. With no reservations I advocate for immediate withdrawal, meaning troops out yesterday. If a humble U.N. peacekeeping force is necessary in the direct aftermath to quell the chaos that our presence has caused, that's one thing, but our presence has never and will never be a peacekeeping or attenuating force.

VG: What has been the impact of your decision to not board the ship — have others followed suit in other ports? Have you heard from other servicemen and women who support your move?

PP: I have received considerable support. To give a sense of the atmosphere: The friend who drove me to base the day of my protest and completely supported it was a Navy Seal. My letters of recommendation for conscientious objector boasted an Annapolis selectee and a communications officer, even the chief testifying against me at the court martial said it was a brave act.

The judge, incidentally, said that the prosecution had proven in cross examination of an international law expert that soldiers had reasonable cause to believe the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal to fight in. He then gave me the lightest sentence he was capable of handing me. It was short of judicial activism. Of course, our obedient media did not feel such comments from a military judge worth reporting. But, in short, I'd say that the spectrum of opinion is wide as it is in civil society, and so I had much support up and down the ranks but there was also much opposition.
As far as other actions, there have not been massive numbers of public protest but the number of desertions got so big the Pentagon now refuses to keep records, much like they banned hospitals in Iraq of keeping count of the civilian casualties. These types of statistics are unfavorable and so they are suppressed.

VG: Why did you enlist in the service originally? What sold you on the service, and what advice do you have for teens/parents who are weighing such an option today?

PP: Since leaving the service I've researched the methods, monies and strategies employed by recruiters. Knowing the budgets, the tactics and the ruthlessness, I'm surprised the military is struggling to meet quotas. The fact is, the budgets are unreal; the tactics are abusive, and the objects of such attacks are impressionable teenagers.

It starts with militarizing the school environment. The recruitment handbooks say things like: Become the coach of a school team; this way the kids look up to you.
Classrooms are occupied, cafeterias are the trenches, and now there are humvees and tanks in the yards. Twelve years of such a steady dose of indoctrination, coupled with war spending that cripples a national budget’s ability to provide affordable education, and topped off with sign-on bonuses that begin to muddy the line between soldier and mercenary, and you have me signing on the dotted line.
Of course, even with all that you still don't sign over your soul to fight in wars of aggression. You pledge to support and defend the Constitution, and wherever challenged. I welcome the opportunity to argue that refusing to fight against the sovereign state of Iraq is exactly that.

My advice is: always, in all things, to consider the source of your information. Too many of us take the recruiters at their word. These are people who put a premium on getting you to sign on the dotted line. If they miss their quotas it's back to the trenches for them. So seek better sources of info or balance it out.
There are anti-war groups and Veterans for Peace that make information available that your recruiter would keep from you. Seek these groups out and take up the issues they raise with the recruiter; see what sorts of arguments the recruiter has. My guess is they wont be very convincing. The most common complaint at boot camp is, "My recruiter told me ... .”

Multi-culturalism gone awry

I found this article in the Missourian newspaper of Columbia off the VDARE.com Blog (www.vdare.com) It appeared in the Feb. 5 edition (www.columbianmissourian.com).

It just goes to show that high school administrators better be careful the next time they have multi-cultural assemblies or fairs. You never know who might decide to celebrate their culutre too.
- Sean Scallon

Student: No racism in flag incident
A Confederate battle flag was unfurled at a Hickman assembly.
By RACHEL KELLY

A teenage boy who, with another student, unfurled a Confederate battle flag during a multicultural assembly at Hickman High School on Thursday said his actions were not racially motivated.

“I am not racist in any manner,” said Ryan Lanman. “There is nothing about me that is racist.”

Ryan, a 17-year-old senior at Hickman, and his friend, Kevin Meyers, were removed from the assembly after raising the flag during a presentation of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.”

Ryan said he unfurled the flag at the assembly to represent the South, which he considers a multicultural group that is under-represented and ignored.

He said that he became fascinated with the South, where his father was raised, after working on a Civil War project in elementary school. He said he was trying to give the region equal representation, like other cultures featured in the assembly.

“We may have gone about it the wrong way, but we did it the best way we saw to get our point across,” Ryan said.

Other students said they think Ryan had a different motive.

“It really hurt me, seriously hurt me,” said junior Taneka Jackson.

Jackson, who is black, said she thinks it was a racist action that hurt more than just black students. She said it was inappropriate at a multicultural assembly, which was meant to celebrate different cultures.

“It was a disrespect to everyone in there,” Taneka said.

Ryan’s father, Tom, is convinced that his son’s actions were not racially motivated and said the flag was not meant to symbolize white supremacy.

Tom Lanman said he grew up in the South and attended school in Tennessee, where he saw racial segregation firsthand. He said he was a member of the minority of white citizens who did not consider themselves superior to the town’s black residents. This is a quality he has worked to instill in his son, he said.

“He doesn’t see black and white,” Tom Lanman said. “He’s not prejudiced, and he’s certainly not a white supremacist.”

Ryan is scheduled to graduate in the spring and plans to enter the Marines in June, where he hopes to work as a welder.

Ryan said he and Kevin were not allowed to attend school on Friday. The two students and their parents are scheduled to meet with school officials Monday to determine when the young men can return, he said.

Lynn Barnett, a Columbia Public Schools assistant superintendent, said the situation would be addressed in meetings with the students and parents. Students can face suspension for disrupting school activities, she said.

“It’s been handled according to board policy and the law,” she said.

Who's side is the U.S. government on?

The federal government of the United States, in theory, is supposed to represent the people of the U.S. Yet, recent items in the news make me wonder if that's true in practice.

For example, how can the President, the head of the government claim to represent the people of the United States when he openly calls for the Congress to expanded the H-1B program to allow more foreign workers into to our country into the field of computer engineering and software development while their U.S. counterparts remain underemployed?

And along those same lines, how can the executive branch of the federal government claim the enforcement power of our nation's laws when the head of that branch of government wishes to reward lawbreakers who cross our borders illegally with employment and other benefits?

And speaking of borders, why does the government feel the borders of another country thousands of miles away from the U.S. are more important to defend than those right here at home? Would Mexican drug gangs and their military puppets make incursions into the U.S. and violate those borders if the military that's currently in Iraq was suddenly stationed at the border it swore an oath to defend?

Those troops, of course, are trying to help with the reconstruction of societies damaged by the so-called War on Terror. And yet, some whole neighborhoods in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast remain in ruins from recent hurricanes. Why does the government feel it more important to rebuild foreigner's lives but not their own people's?

And why does government that has billions of dollars taken from the people of the U.S in the name of that representation get to spend such monies each year in aid and assistance to nations and peoples not our own. Don't they have governments in such places?
How the can the government say we’re at war and yet refuse to make it official with a Constitutionally mandated Declaration of War and then not ask much in the way of sacrifice for that war? What a strange way to fight.

Then you have a government that deems it necessary to intervene in a private medical case to keep one person alive. But then why won't it do anything to protect the millions of lives of the unborn?

And why does a government that claims free speech and democracy as a universal rights suddenly ask foreign newspapers to censor a cartoon that offended many Muslims? Is that being hypocritical (or being a suck-up more likely)?

Here's another brain teaser: Why does government write laws to regulate the safety of the nation's minds and doesn't even bother enforce such laws? What does the regulating body, MHSA, do with itself all day, play paper football in the office? What does it do with the money it receives to do they job they apparently are not willing to do? Spend it on take-out?

Here's the biggest stumper of all: Why does the government insist that Iran given up any aspirations of having nuclear weapons but does not require the same action from Israel, nor ask for similar inspections at Israel's nuclear weapons complex at Dimona?

Actually, that last question is pretty easy to answer once you get to know the neocons. The rest of the questions leave a lot to ponder.

- Sean Scallon

Welcome all to Beatings the Powers that Be

Beating the Powers that Be is name of my new blog. It's also the name of my first book. Yeah I'm plugging it here, so what? A man's got to do what he can to make money and I didn't spend two years writing, editing and trying to publish the darn thing just to make enough change to buy a cup of coffee. And blogspot.com is nice enough to offer me the space to do so I will with much thanks to them.

But after plugging part is over, what will this blog be about? Those out there trying to make a difference in the system we live with rather than waste their times on utopias. That's what the book is about, finding new ways to beat the powers that be, something through old lessons. That's my niche in this crowded field.

Since I'm new at this I'll have to learn as I go along. I'm a good writer but behind on the technical revolution that makes these blogs possible. I grew up in the Apple IIe era. What I would like to do, is post my new articles here (the one's that also go into Etherzone.com, and OldRight.com and Chroniclesmagazine.com) along with provide links to old ones from the aforementioned sites to provide a background and context to my work for those interested or just bored on a rainy day. I'll also post info on the book and links to stories and articles I think fit in with what I'm trying to do and of course communicate with those who write in as well. I'm not much at proofreading but I do get back to people who leave a message very quickly.

So you will all enjoy even as try to get through the get-the-hang-of-it part.

Oh by the way, before I forget, You can pick up Beating the Powers that Be at Publish America's website at www.publishamerica.com and just type my name in the search engine and you'll be sent right to a page with my book on it and you can order from there. Thank you.

- Sean Scallon