Remarks of Senator Barack Obama: 'A More Perfect Union'

Philadelphia, PA | March 18, 2008
As Prepared for Delivery

"We the people, in order to form a more perfect union."

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future generations.

Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time.

And yet words on a parchment would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part - through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk - to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

This was one of the tasks we set forth at the beginning of this campaign - to continue the long march of those who came before us, a march for a more just, more equal, more free, more caring and more prosperous America. I chose to run for the presidency at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together - unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and we may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction - towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren.

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners - an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It's a story that hasn't made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts - that out of many, we are truly one.

Throughout the first year of this campaign, against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate Flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African Americans and white Americans.

This is not to say that race has not been an issue in the campaign. At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either "too black" or "not black enough." We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well.

And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn.

On one end of the spectrum, we've heard the implication that my candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it's based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap. On the other end, we've heard my former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, use incendiary language to express views that have the potential not only to widen the racial divide, but views that denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation; that rightly offend white and black alike.

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

As such, Reverend Wright's comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems - two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all.

Given my background, my politics, and my professed values and ideals, there will no doubt be those for whom my statements of condemnation are not enough. Why associate myself with Reverend Wright in the first place, they may ask? Why not join another church? And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and You Tube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way

But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

In my first book, Dreams From My Father, I described the experience of my first service at Trinity:

"People began to shout, to rise from their seats and clap and cry out, a forceful wind carrying the reverend's voice up into the rafters....And in that single note - hope! - I heard something else; at the foot of that cross, inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion's den, Ezekiel's field of dry bones. Those stories - of survival, and freedom, and hope - became our story, my story; the blood that had spilled was our blood, the tears our tears; until this black church, on this bright day, seemed once more a vessel carrying the story of a people into future generations and into a larger world. Our trials and triumphs became at once unique and universal, black and more than black; in chronicling our journey, the stories and songs gave us a means to reclaim memories that we didn't need to feel shame about...memories that all people might study and cherish - and with which we could start to rebuild."

That has been my experience at Trinity. Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety - the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity's services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

Some will see this as an attempt to justify or excuse comments that are simply inexcusable. I can assure you it is not. I suppose the politically safe thing would be to move on from this episode and just hope that it fades into the woodwork. We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated racial bias.

But race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now. We would be making the same mistake that Reverend Wright made in his offending sermons about America - to simplify and stereotype and amplify the negative to the point that it distorts reality.

The fact is that the comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked through - a part of our union that we have yet to perfect. And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education, or the need to find good jobs for every American.

Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." We do not need to recite here the history of racial injustice in this country. But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

Legalized discrimination - where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments - meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one's family, contributed to the erosion of black families - a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods - parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement - all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted. What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them.

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failings.

And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.

Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.

This is where we are right now. It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy - particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.

But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Ironically, this quintessentially American - and yes, conservative - notion of self-help found frequent expression in Reverend Wright's sermons. But what my former pastor too often failed to understand is that embarking on a program of self-help also requires a belief that society can change.

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen - is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope - the audacity to hope - for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed. Not just with words, but with deeds - by investing in our schools and our communities; by enforcing our civil rights laws and ensuring fairness in our criminal justice system; by providing this generation with ladders of opportunity that were unavailable for previous generations. It requires all Americans to realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

There is one story in particularly that I'd like to leave you with today - a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King's birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that's when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother's problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn't. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."

"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.

Mike Gravel and the Green Party

National Statesman and International Hero Senator Mike Gravel Supports Jesse Johnson's Bid for President

In what has to be the most unprecedented cross party statement of support Democratic Party Candidate for President Mike Gravel announced that he has decided to support the campaign of Green Party Candidate Jesse Johnson running for the nomination on the Green Party Ticket.

After a meeting between the two in Washington DC Friday, Gravel stated, "My political party long ago walked away from taking the necessary steps that will safe guard our nation's and our children's futures. I worked dedicatedly throughout my career as a U.S. Senator to protect the precious resources our country had within it's boundaries as well as to mitigate the negative impact our businesses and individuals were having on the planet. I have watched the ever important job of stewarding these gifts vanish from the political landscape and I hold the Democratic Party leadership responsible for giving up that fight."

Why did Gravel choose Johnson from among the other candidates vying for the nomination in all the campaigns of all available political parties? Gravel explains, "I'm supporting Jesse because he began his political career with the determination that the environmental plundering must stop. He placed every other interest on hold to run for office, in his home state and now nationally, to challenge the corporations that destroy our national resources and then harvest from this practice a toxic energy source; coal. The mountain top mining practices devastate the landscape by blowing apart mountains and then carbon belching plants burn the coal creating a form of energy that serves as one of the major contributors for global climate change."

Gravel continues, "We must have a voice in the political realm speaking earnestly and intelligently about all of our environmental needs. Johnson and the Green Party have that environmental credibility that we Democrats have lost."

Senator Gravel intends to travel and campaign with Jesse Johnson as their schedule allows.

Jesse Johnson, former chair of the West Virginia Mountain Party and two time candidate for statewide office, said that this sort of cross party support "was just the kind of non-traditional, selfless act that we have come to know Senator Mike Gravel to make. When he read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional record, or filibustered to end the draft he had his eye - at all times - on the big picture and the needs of others. I am not surprised that a true patriot and advocate of the citizen as leader of our country would take such an unprecedented and bold stand. And I am honored and humbled that he has selected my campaign and the Green Party as his allies in this very important race to save our environment from the actions of humans."

Gravel closed by saying, "We've seen the havoc the two parties can wreak, on a global scale, by locking out the voices of reason - by eliminating the third party voices. I want to amplify those voices to save our country from our own shortsighted and greedy actions. If we want to end the war in Iraq, provide health care to all citizens, educate our young people, we're going to have to start not only working together with these alternate parties: but literally working to support them. That's why I'm supporting Jesse Johnson's campaign for President."

Merry Christmas in Kaliti Jail-Ethiopia

by Muhammed Shamsaddin Megalommatis

Merry Christmas in Kaliti Jail-Ethiopia

December 23, 2006 12:00 PM EST

Having the nerve to spend a few festive days, exchanging gifts and sharing moments of gullible if not guilty happiness is an outrage, when on this very planet, dozens of millions in a single country are stripped of their national homeland, hundreds of thousands are tyrannized under the boot of a shameful, totalitarian regime, and dozens of thousands are tortured in jails because of their political aspirations for Democracy and their national expectations for a Free Oromo Ethiopia.

End the Hell of Hells Abyssinia, the country that usurped the fair name of Ethiopia!

The world should listen to both parts, the oppressors and the oppressed, to get a final idea, before action is taken. This article, first of a series of authentic papers and texts written by both sides, brings to your wonderfully decorated house the testimony of a tortured young Oromo scholar, who after spending two years in the Gulag of Abyssinia, found peace in Djibouti as refugee. Throughout the text Finfinne, the real capital name of Ethiopia, stands for ‘Addis Ababa’. And never forget; as long as Amharas and Tigrays tyrannize the Christian, Muslim and Animist Oromos, Sidamas, Ogadenis, and Afars, the country should not be called ‘Ethiopia’, but Abyssinia.

Listen to the voice of Mr. Madda Walabu, Oromo Biologist, and try to find out what went wrong with our Humanity. Read his own text, and evaluate for yourselves to what extent you believe in a God of Love and Justice, either you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish or believer of any other religion.

All ye that pass by, behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow.

My memories from the Kaliti Jail

By Walabu Madda – Oromo biologist, former Kaliti jail detainee, currently refugee in Djibouti

The Kaliti Jail resembles more to a concentration camp than to regular African prison. It is located in the south-eastern outskirts of Finfinne. Kaliti jail is actually one of the two most notorious prisons of conscience in Abyssinia. The other one is known as the Central Federal Jail.

Prisoners are usually transferred from other jails throughout Abyssinia to Kaliti jail as this jail is the ‘correct’ place for more intense torture and severe, inhuman punishment. The buildings are made of grey stone. Numerous rooms have been arranged for accommodating thousands of prisoners.

Welcome to a Kaliti jail room!

The room I was in was approximately 16x16m, and although it sounds improbable in its 256m2 were accommodated around 100 prisoners, literally squeezed as in a sardine conserve. The only space everyone gets is the space needed for one’s body. If at a moment you happen to turn around, you automatically touch the person next to you - or under you - or above you!

All prisoners sleep on concrete floor, and they are given small, thin mats. While sleeping or at the moment of awaking, the person who sleeps on the edge of your head extends his feet, subsequently hitting you as you are equally positioned to do the same to others. The hit is not deliberate but due to dramatic lack of space.

Abominable hygiene conditions

Perhaps worse than the torture, the low hygiene. Kaliti is worse than what I had imagined as hell, when I was a child. When the room is congested with hundreds of prisoners, it is so unbearably filthy that every minute looks as long as a century of misery. Under these circumstances, it is only normal that, if one has got flu, the next day everyone in the room has flu too. This is however the least, as prisoners are constantly exposed to a great number of contagious diseases, grave contaminations, and lethal sicknesses.

Amhara – Tigray anti-Oromo racism best expressed in Health

Sick Oromo prisoners are never taken to clinics. Actually, no one cares about a prisoner's health. When a prisoner is stricken by a disease, this is rather viewed by the inhuman jail authorities as a most welcome form of torture, something to be added to the conventional torture that is constantly perpetrated by prison officials.

No toiletry for Oromos!

The time prisoners are allowed to spend in the toilet is restricted to a few minutes twice a day, in the morning and the evening. The time in-between prisoners are constrained to stay in their congested rooms; horribly enough, some prisoners who have runny stomach can't wait until the time officially fixed for toilet visit. They are therefore inhumanly forced to discharge their excrements in the very limited space reserved for themselves, next to so many others, making therefore the whole room stink unbearably and appallingly.

All sorts of insects, rats, etc.

As second type of severe hygiene problem is caused by a great number of most disturbing and extremely perilous parasites that also dwell in the congested prisoner rooms. These rooms are the abode of lice, fleas, and their likes. At times, rats sneak into the rooms as they smell remnants of food cooked and brought by the prisoners’ relatives and friends.

Oromo prisoners constrained to starvation

A third category of hygiene problem is provoked by the food cooked in the jail’s disreputably soiled kitchens. The only food prisoners can expect to have in the horrible Kaliti jail is just a small roll of bread and stew called "Dokkee". Dokkee is prepared, believe it or not, in just 10 minutes, and thus undercooked, it is miserably served in a massive bowl for all prisoners.

I am sure if Lord Byron had had an idea of the Kaliti jail before composing his famous 'Devil's Drive', he would have said that "The Devil dined on an Abyssinian stew”....

Truly speaking, people are literarily starving in the Kaliti jail. It is the Amhara / Tigray policy to make Oromos, Sidamas, Ogadenis, Afars and other political prisoners starve to death.

Only in the weekends, on Saturdays and Sundays, parents, relatives and friends of the prisoners are allowed to visit, and doing so they deliver decent homemade food, as they know that the Kaliti jail food is closer to poisoning than to nutrition. However, few are the lucky ones!

Biyya Oromo (land) is a huge country, totaling more than half the Abyssinia’s surface, and taking into consideration the primitive transportation infrastructure and the local temperatures, no food has chance to be properly delivered, if the prisoner’s family or friends live at a distance of more than 30 km from the jail. With the country population being mostly rural and decentralized, less than 10% of the prisoners have the privilege of homemade food delivered by the loved ones. Those having relatives located faraway limit themselves to some cans and conserves, when their relatives come from faraway provinces, after spending two or three days for travel.

Jail: the typical Amhara / Tigray tyranny’s reward for Oromo students

The Oromo political prisoners are highly educated, as the percentage of Oromo literate population is far higher than that of the Amharas and the Tigrays.

The Oromo prisoners are arrested either at their workplaces or in universities, vocational centers, and high schools. They are jailed because suspected as members of the Oromo Liberation Front and other resistance organizations. I spent two years of my life (2004-2005) in jail.

Torture Oromo students to maintain underdevelopment, illiteracy and obscurantism!

For the first two months of my stay in Kaliti jail, I was being beaten twice a week, more specifically on Tuesdays and Fridays. I was asked whether I was member of the Oromo Liberation Front, and irrespective of the answer, yes or no, I knew that I would be beaten, and I was mercilessly beaten every time.

We are more than 40 million people, Oromos, Sidamas and other southern peoples of Abyssinia, and we know very well that every one of us, who has got higher education and a (normal for every body in this world) feeling of patriotism, is viewed by the murderous Amhara – Tigray tyranny as a serious danger that must be eliminated. They know that if free, within a few years we will make of our Oromo Ethiopia Africa’s first nation in Development, Arts and Sciences. Some of the reasons they hate us are their illiteracy and obscurantism that they know but are unable to get rid of them.

Kangaroo court in 21st century African Gulag - ‘Ethiopia’

I was regularly taken to a kangaroo court*1 every two three months. As I as not charged with any crime, I was taken to Kaliti jail, where verything is done arbitrarily. People are imprisoned without court warrant and then they stay in prison for many years without trial. Among my friends, many have long been kept in isolated and underground darkrooms. They were forced sit on electric chair.

Torture practices

Constant practices involve the lacing of heavy objects, like a bar of metal or a stone, with the male prisoners’ genitals. A great variety of similar torture objects are available at the Kaliti jail.

Despicable insults in unknown language

Among the prison officials, they worse are Tigrigna speakers, who scoffed at me, insulting me in tyrant Meles Zenawi’s tongue that I did not know until I came to learn its worst part of vocabulary.

If jailed, better to be unmarried!

In the Kaliti jail there are many who happen to be husbands to wives and fathers to numerous children. On Sundays, their wives do their best to travel and visit them, bringing their beloved children with. A visit to the unjustly and inhumanly jailed father is for these children the most passionately expected moment.

One attests some of the most emotional expressions of distress, grief and agony. As they don’t know whether they are going to see their father alive next time, these children live many subsequent deaths of father, experiencing what is worse in one’s dwelling in the Hell of Hells.

There is a 1m wide bar separating the prisoner from the visitor, therefore prohibiting the direct contact. To contravene this inhuman arrangement of places, visitors have the children lifted up and passed on to their fathers over the bar. At the end of a brief visit, the most hated bell rings, and every prisoner is rushed back to the common room for the detainees.

The worst scene I saw in my life

At that moment, you see fathers and mothers crying, children refusing to depart from their fathers’ hands, babies horridly panicked and screaming, a most tumultuous and heart breaking scene of people who do not know whether that is their last moment in their lives they see their beloved father or husband or son. I thank God for having not been a father so far, otherwise my condition would have been far more painful.

Prison buildings turned to mortuaries

As more and more prisoners are brought in every day, the new cells are constructed to have only corrugated roof tins. Upon learning about manifestations taking place in Finfinne, the prisoners enthused overwhelmingly, and feeling that the ultimate collapse of the murderous Abyssinian tyranny is close, they started shouting in Oromo, welcoming the end of Meles Zenawi’s dictatorship. The Tigray prison guards immediately fired at, and killed, many among the shouting prisoners in their rooms. Inhumanly but commonly enough in the Cenotaph – Ethiopia, the injured prisoners were not taken to hospitals. They were rather left to bleed to death.

Liberate immediately the Oromo students of the Kaliti jail!

I was left to go, and currently live as refugee in Djibouti, but my mind is back there, the Kaliti Hell. I still remember that there were, along with me, about 40 third year students of the university at Finfinne. They must still be there, probably joined by freshly captured Oromo patriots. They have been jailed because of allegedly protesting against the dictatorial decision to remove Oromia province’s capital from Finfinne in 2004.

Let the Christian World celebrating Christmas and the Islamic World commemorating Eid el Adha at the end of the month, let all the Humans rejoicing for a happy New Year 2007 remember the Kaliti Hell of the Cenotaph Ethiopia and call for, demand, and ultimately impose the obliteration of both, the Kaliti Jail and Meles Zenawi’s fake-‘Ethiopia’.

Note:*1 For those who live far from the African Gulag – ‘Ethiopia’, from wikipedia: A kangaroo court is a 'judicial' proceeding that denies proper procedure in the name of expediency; a fraudulent or unjust trial where the decision has essentially been made in advance, usually for the purpose of providing a conviction, either going through the motions of manipulated procedure or allowing no defense at all.

source: http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/21341.html

The Cure for Terrorism by Ed Felien

There is no cure for terrorism, just like there’s no cure for cancer.

By the time cancer has started, those cells are gone. They won’t come back. You can cut them out, blast them out with chemotherapy, burn them out with radiation, but cells that have become cancerous cannot once again become healthy cells.

There is no cure for terrorism, just like there’s no cure for cancer.

By the time cancer has started, those cells are gone. They won’t come back. You can cut them out, blast them out with chemotherapy, burn them out with radiation, but cells that have become cancerous cannot once again become healthy cells.

The only real cure for cancer is to treat the causes of cancer. Cancer is caused by the body’s reaction to something in the air, something in the food, something in the water. The body takes in a substance that is harmful. It damages the DNA and reproduces and attacks a vital organ. In the case of cigarette smoke it’s the lungs. With drinking water it’s generally the kidneys or liver. With pesticides in food it could start with the stomach. The body takes in air, water and food every day and makes new cells out of the raw material it is fed. If the raw materials are contaminated, then the body may develop cancer as a reaction to that contamination.

Does this analogy hold true for terrorism?

From the point of view of U.S. foreign policy there are just a few terrorist cells operating independently, and the Bush administration believes these terrorist cells can be cut out, or blasted out, or burned out. They are treating terrorists the same way doctors have traditionally treated cancer. But these operations are clearly not working. We’re creating more terrorists with each new military action.

It might be useful to think for a moment how we are seen by the Arab world. The Iraqis do not want us in Iraq. The Afghanis prefer the Taliban to the U.S. sponsored regime of Hamid Karzai. The Palestinians believe we do not treat them fairly. They believe we always support the Israelis. In Lebanon we have been able to do what we could not do in Iraq: we have united the Sunni and Shiite factions, but they are united in opposition to the U.S.-supported Christian Falangist (fascist) government. Syria and Jordan have large anti-American constituencies. We’ve been able to buy the silent acquiescence of Egypt ever since the Camp David agreement when Sadat sold out his allegiance to the Arab cause. The treaty was poorly understood by the American public, but everyone in the Middle East knew what had happened. That’s why no one over there was surprised when Sadat was assassinated by religious fanatics or, when Mubarak continued taking (what many Egyptians consider) bribe money or, when Mubarak had to engineer crooked elections to stay in power. Most Egyptians know it is the U.S. that is pulling the strings of their puppet government. The people of Iran are still angry with the U.S. for overthrowing the democratically elected government of Mossedegh after World War II and installing the Shah’s brutal dictatorship. The Saudis are our best friends in the area because we have made them rich by buying their oil, and we protect their feudal monarchy with the largest military base in the region. But there have been some protests in even this tightly controlled society, and religious militants have assassinated some American personnel. Some of the bases have had to be moved to neighboring Kuwait, which has always been unashamed of being a U.S. puppet.

So, what is the picture that emerges from this mosaic?

It would be reasonable to conclude that most people in the Middle East consider the U.S. a military terrorist state that supports dictatorships, steals natural resources and abuses their cultural and religious traditions.

The shelling of Fallujah will no doubt be remembered by Middle Eastern scholars in the same way we remember the bombing of civilian populations in Lidice and Guernica by the Nazis or the firebombing of Dresden or the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were horrible crimes against unarmed civilians. The Iraqis must certainly see the occupation of their country as a terrorist campaign. The midnight raids, the roadblocks, the cruel acts of murder, rape and torture must seem the actions of a terrorist state.

They must see us as the cancer that is trying to destroy them.

What do the Arab terrorists want? They want the same things that most people in the Middle East want. They want the U.S. to withdraw its bases from Saudi Arabia. To have military bases around the holy sites of Mecca and Medina is like having Muslim warriors standing guard around the Vatican and Lourdes. That military presence would, no doubt, be offensive to Catholics. In the same way, our actions are offensive to Muslims.
They want an end to the U.S. corruption of governments in the Middle East. Almost every country in the region has been overthrown by the CIA (Lebanon, Iran and Iraq—Saddam Hussein was encouraged by the CIA to murder the President and take power), or bribed or intimidated by the U.S.

And they want a just settlement of the Israel/Palestine problem. Israel must return to the 1967 borders and recognize the nation of Palestine. As long as Israel occupies Arab land, violates their territorial integrity and entombs them in a walled ghetto, then the Palestinians will continue suicide bombings inside Israel, and the rest of the Arab states will support the Palestinian resistance.

Historical comparisons of the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis are not flattering and probably not useful. But certainly the taking of the land and racial hatred of the Palestinians by the Ashkenazi Jews reminds one of the settling of the West in America, and the high wall and checkpoints around Gaza cannot help but remind one of the Warsaw Ghetto.

The situation is much more complex than that, however. Sephardic Jews lived in Palestine for over 1,200 years without much trouble. These were the Jews that had lived in the Middle East and North Africa for thousands of years. When the European, or Ashkenazi, Jews moved to Israel in the 20th century, they brought with them Western notions of property and Western cultural prejudices. They bought land from Arabs who had no idea they were giving up the land forever. They created a European-style nation state with strong links to Europe and the U.S.

They also quickly adopted U.S. military tactics and weaponry. Today, they have probably the strongest military in the Middle East—the most disciplined and the best equipped. Their recent incursions into Lebanon and Gaza, though, show the limitations of advanced weaponry. Ostensibly, the reason for the invasions was to rescue captured Israeli soldiers. Hundreds of deaths later a spent invasion force had to retreat on both fronts. The Israelis were forced to terminate the invasions without achieving their primary objectives. Before ending the hostilities, however, they dropped anti-personnel bombs on civilian populations in Lebanon. This action shocked a world that thought it could no longer be shocked by the brutalities and horrors of violence in the Middle East. Certainly, state-sponsored terrorism, dropping bombs from 10,000 feet or firing artillery shells from 20 miles away that are designed to maim and kill unarmed men, women and children is as terrifying and as cruel as a misguided religious zealot blowing himself up in the middle of a crowd. But, once a state institutes terrorism as an instrument of policy, it indicts the entire nation as accomplices, whereas, the actions of individual terrorists, though they might be the policy of a group or religious sect, cannot be used to indict a people or a nation.

One head of an Israeli Defense Force rocket unit admitted his group fired over 1.2 million anti-personnel bombs and white phosphorous shells into Lebanon: “What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs.” (Information Clearing House) The U.N. estimates Israel fired over 4 million cluster bombs into Lebanon. Many of them did not explode. These duds now act as landmines. They will explode randomly or when some small child picks them up. In a feeble attempt to match the Israeli terror campaign, Hezbollah fired 131 cluster bombs into Israel.

Most retaliation by the Palestinians or Hezbollah is done by suicide bombers who strap explosives to their body, walk into a group of Israelis and blow themselves up. We don’t get a clear picture of what these suicide bombers think. They generally make a statement or give a video interview before they undertake their mission, but the Western press does not present this side of the story. An exception to this rule happened last week when a 64-year-old grandmother blew herself up and wounded two Israeli soldiers. According to Sarah El Deeb’s account in the Associated Press: “At the compound where her extended family lives near the Jebaliya refugee camp, her oldest daughter, Fatheya, explained the bomber’s motives: ‘They [Israelis] destroyed her house, they killed her grandson—my son. Another grandson is in a wheelchair with an amputated leg,’ she said.”

So, why did this 64-year-old grandmother become a terrorist suicide bomber? Was she talked into it by religious fanatics? Or, was she sick to death from a cancerous diet of Israeli state terrorism, depressed at the loss of her grandchildren and frustrated to the point of desperate action? Once Israel destroyed her home, killed her one grandson and maimed the other, they had created a terrorist.

But, she was not a very good terrorist. The picture of her shows her holding the rifle with the fragile care you would hold a flower. There is a sad look of vulnerability in her eyes. When she went out on her mission she telegraphed her intent to an Israeli patrol and they threw a stun grenade at her. She detonated way too early and only wounded two soldiers. In the end, she didn’t have the determination to grab the rifle like she was going to use it. She didn’t look into the camera with fanatical ferocity. She was probably more motivated by love than by hatred, and, in her last moments, she probably saw the young Israelis as not that different from her own grandchildren.

Israel depends on the U.S. for its existence. It receives $4 billion a year in military and economic assistance from the U.S. In return it is a loyal client state and a safe instrument of U.S. policy in the region. But this is a doomed relationship. There is ultimately no hope for the future of Israel as a minor partner in U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. The only hope for Israel is to make peace with her neighbors and recognize that her interests lie in a strong Middle East independent of U.S. influence.
Of course, the continuation of the current policies for the U.S. in the Middle East are doomed as well. Most people in the world are not fooled by U.S. propaganda. They know the wars, the violence, the bribes, the CIA plots, all of that is for one reason: to get control of the oil. It’s only a matter of time before the U.S. public figures it out as well.

George W. Bush is a perfect President for that moment of discovery by an awakened public. His great grandfather was chair of the War Industries Board during World War I. He made valuable contacts with other war profiteers like Dupont and Remington. His grandfather made huge profits re-arming Germany before World War II and managing Silesian mines using concentration camp labor. He purchased Dresser Company and managed it. His father, George H. W. Bush, helped engineer the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, headed up the CIA, made great friends with the Saudi royal family, became Vice President, helped organize the Contra war against the government of Nicaragua, became President, and merged Dresser with Halliburton when his old pal Dick Cheney was CEO.

George W. Bush is not only President of the United States and Commander In Chief of the Armed Services, but, more importantly, as head of the Bush family, he is responsible for insuring the profitability of Halliburton, the family business. He’s had the good fortune during the Iraq war to be able to award multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts to Halliburton to provide support staff to the military and to give Halliburton exclusive rights to oil exploration and development.

Mussolini, the founder of fascism, defined fascism as the perfect union of corporate power and government. Three other elements are also generally present in a perfect fascist regime: permanent war, the use of terror as an instrument of state policy and the suppression of civil liberties. George W. Bush has managed to score 100 percent on all counts and has exceeded Mussolini’s wildest aspirations.

The Iraq Study Group has just made 79 recommendations to President Bush. They acknowledge that the war is a failure and that “staying the course” is not an option. So, what do they recommend? They recommend staying the course for another year or so, until the Iraqis are ready to take over. The presentation by the group just after the midterm elections has to be seen for what it is: a cheap public relations stunt to make it seem Bush is listening to the American people’s cry for peace. He will no doubt say this is a good report. We’re going to study it carefully. And we’re going to do those things we can.

One recommendation that Bush would certainly like to follow would be the privatization of Iraqi oil, opening the ownership up to foreign investors. It is no accident that James Baker, the head of the group, is a lawyer from a firm that represents Halliburton.

So, a new comic opera will begin in a few weeks. Congress and the American people will be demanding that George W. Bush adopt the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. Bush will stall and finally agree to work on achieving some of those objectives, and he will push for Halliburton to take over the Iraqi oil fields, and he will justify this naked theft by saying he is following the wishes of the American people.

And, will any of the corporate conglomerate press call him on this deception?

Last week, in a fit of anger, upset that the American press had ignored the murder of dozens of strikers in Oaxaca, I called the local corporate monopoly press “lapdogs of fascism.” I apologize. I was wrong. I was too mild. With their obsession with trivia and sensationalism, and with their refusal to talk about the connection between Halliburton and Bush, they are not just lapdogs of fascism, they are scum-sucking lapdogs of fascism. ||

Dennis Kucinich -- a can’t lose campaign

Progressives now have a candidate for president in 2008 in Dennis Kucinich.

The corporate media made him their enemy during his 2004 run, when they either ignored him or attacked him. But despite opposition by the powers that be, progressives can only win by his running.

The corporate media have made their choice clear, as in this Associated Press statement on the day Kucinich announced, “New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is considered the party's front-runner, closely followed by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.” Considered by whom?

Ahh, there’s the rub. Considered by the transnational corporations and their Democratic Leadership Council filter on behalf of transnational investors who don’t give a damn about this country or its people, other than what they can steal from both. Hillary and Obama are going to be buried in cash and favorable media coverage as the backup plan, in case the transnational investors can’t cram another Republican down the throats of the electorate.

The corporate media have convinced the American public that candidates such as Kucinich are “out of the mainstream,” which is an outright lie. Their own polling shows the views of Kucinich are indeed mainstream. He wants universal health care, as do the majority of citizens. He wants to cut defense spending, as do the majority. He wants to clean up the environment, as do the overwhelming majority. He wants to bring the troops home from Iraq, as do the majority. You couldn’t be much more mainstream than Dennis Kucinich.

But the mass media have little to do with the mainstream. They represent their owners, board members and advertisers. These are connected to those making billions from war, billions from pollution, and billions from the cruel “health care” system whose primary function is to produce profit, not care.

The corporate media see Kucinich as their enemy and will savage him if he should get decent polling numbers, otherwise they can be expected to try to destroy him with silence, not covering anything he does from fear that he might become a blip on the electoral radar if a profile is raised.

Howard Dean showed that in the Internet age, it is possible to get financing without kneeling before the Big Boys and kissing Big Boy butt. It scared the establishment so much they echoed “the Dean scream” for days throughout corporate media in belittling him in an attempt to destroy his credibility. They won as Dean sizzled to toast from their flames.

It wasn’t that they disagreed with Dean on much outside of the war. It was more the fact that he hadn’t taken their money and they weren’t sure they completely owned his soul. How could such a man be trusted to hold the White House for them?

Now we have a wonderful choice with Kucinich. Old leftists like me, knocked down and knocked out so many times I’m sure there are those who think we must be punch drunk to keep trying for an outbreak of democracy, are urging people to get behind Kucinich in a Can’t Lose Campaign.

Already liberal friends are braying at me that Kucinich doesn’t have a chance. Corporate media echo this suggestion every four years in keeping the sheep in the fold. Stray from the corporate-backed candidates and the world may come to an end. The lesser of evils is the way to go, my man, vote evil -- let me assure you that evil is the way to go.

But Kucinich is not endangering the sacred “two-party system,” staying within the lesser-of-evil shuffle, so at least we don’t have to listen to the whimpering, “If you vote for a Green, the Republicans will win” (so vote for an evil Democrat, who will then stick bamboo shoots under your fingernails, but only nine fingers, unlike his greater evil opponent, who will go for all 10).

I believe Kucinich can actually win the primary if only two things happen. First, he has to raise big bucks on the Internet as Dean did. And second, a massive campaign of education must take place, much like what I do daily at Liberty Underground, informing liberals and leftists of the news beyond the corporate crap which passes for news in the Land of the Free, often framing it within the historical context ignored by the corporate media.

An informed voter must learn early about what will come from the corporate media to savage Kucinich: that he will be accused of being out of the mainstream, a lunatic, a man who will bring down the republic, cause economic doom and despair.

And they will have to learn about the lies told by the corporate media about his opponents. That, for example, Barack Obama is a “peace candidate” who wants out of the war in Iraq. The magnificent black writer Glen Ford pretty much popped that balloon with his recent article.

Obama is for leaving when the Iraqis are trained to be more obedient, like the Bush plan, but we don’t call Bush a man of peace for some reason (could be those hundreds of thousands of innocent dead who kind of stink up that kind of propaganda, or corporate media would go for it). The Bush/Obama plan ends when we have a replacement for Saddam in power, responding to “fetch boy, now roll over, now turn on the oil spigot -- good boy, here’s a biscuit.”

The Kucinich plan is to cut off funding for the war, except for enough to finance bringing our troops home. Now, as a combat vet, that’s what I call supporting the troops!

“Peace candidate” Obama has stated he would bomb Iran or even Pakistan under the right conditions. "Indeed,” he said, “given the depletion of our forces after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we will probably need a somewhat higher budget in the intermediate future just to restore readiness and replace equipment." Citizens are not getting defense cuts from Obama.

Senator Hillary Clinton of the leadership of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, the DLC, we are told by corporate media columnists, wants socialized medicine! Wouldn’t that be wonderful, except again, the corporate media are lying. The then First Lady’s program was to roll up managed care insurance companies into giant Wal-Marts of medical care for efficiency. The efficiency might not have resulted in any additional medical care, but it certainly would have created increased profit for the big insurance companies. Which is why, when she announced it in New York, representatives of the big medical insurance companies gave her a standing ovation.

Dennis Kucinich is pushing for an actual single-payer system like Canada’s, in which even the poorest workers have a shot at getting their broken arm set without having to wonder if they’ll lose their lodging in the deal.

The corporate media are hyping Obama insanely because he drew crowds of hundreds in New Hampshire. Shouldn’t a Democrat draw hundreds of Democrats in local city meetings, let alone meetings hyped nationally by all the major TV networks? You would think he had accomplished another Woodstock phenomenon from the coverage he got for this.

Although Obama is not a member of the Democratic Leadership Council like Hillary, Lee Sustar recently wrote, “In fact, Obama's book explicitly endorses Bill Clinton's "Third Way" - -the attempt to shed the Democrats' supposed leftist excesses and borrow pro-business policies from the Republicans.”

The corporate media know Obama, like Hillary, will sell out the American people on behalf of the owners, who keep these two as their backup plan. Sure, they want a Republican if they can get one. Republicans have shown themselves to be better lackeys, more savage and cruel. But Hillary and Obama heel well on command, and have proven their service by backing the transnational investors who run the planet and finance the political campaigns, often through their “American” corporations.

Dennis Kucinich cannot lose, and every progressive should put their weight behind him now. At the very least, a message will get out that Obama, Hillary and the Republicans will most of the time be on the opposite side of, a message citizens should be allowed to hear. The only way progressives lose is by not backing this dark horse, thusly allowing a field of butt-kissing sycophants to run unchallenged.

Jack Balkwill does Liberty Underground of Virginia (LUV) and authored "An Attack on the National Security State" about Plowshares activists. He can be reached at libertyuv@hotmail.com.

Barack Hussein Obama's speech against the Iraq War - October 2002

"I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil.

I Don't Oppose All Wars

I don't oppose all wars. My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil.

I don't oppose all wars.

After September 11, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again.

Opposed to Dumb, Rash Wars

I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

On Saddam Hussein

Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.... The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors...and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars. So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president.

You Want a Fight, President Bush?

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure that...we vigorously enforce a nonproliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair."