Public Comment

Jail to the Chief

It's about time a law-breaking president was held to account before a court of law. But I'm not thinking about D. Trump—the ocher ogre. I'm reaching back a little further in history to draw some attention to George W. Bush.

Remember W? The guy who gave us the War on Terror? The guy who told the world "You're either with us or you're against us!" The president whose "Big Lie"—aka "Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction"—was falsely conjured and knowingly deployed to entangle the US for nearly a decade's worth of spilled blood under the banner of Operation Iraq Freedom.

When it comes to invasions, Vlad Putin can't hold a candle—or a cannon—next to Dubya. The first year of the Russia's invasion of Ukraine claimed more than 8,000 civilian lives. But compare that human loss to Bush's "Shock and Awe" bushwhacking of Baghdad and Fallujah. By some estimates, more than half a million Iraqis were killed by US bombs and bullets during the decade-long horror of the unprovoked, unilateral US invasion.

The crime of lying to justify an illegal aggression—that leads to the wanton slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians—cries out for condemnation before the International Criminal Court. Trump should ssface a prison sentence for his crimes against the Constitution and George W. Bush should be tried and jailed for his crimes against humanity. 

Tweet Revenge Is Sweet Revenge 

In the aftermath of the announcement that DJT had been indicted for buying the silence of Stormy Daniels, a siren of the X-rated screen, one of the MAGAlord's Always-Trumpers turned to Twitter to tweak Trump's blond temptress by leaving a scurrilous public insult addressed to Daniels. He angrily tapped out the message: "President Trump wouldn't touch you with a 10ft pole." 

Stormy was not at a loss. "True," she tweeted back, "he used a 3-inch one." 

Dealin' with Dylan 

I learned something while watching the superb PBS documentary, "The Movement and the Madman"—a look-back at the massive mobilization that derailed Richard Nixon's plan to threaten a nuclear strike to end the US war on Vietnam. The revelation wasn't tied to Nixon's politics, however. It was tied to the lyrics of Bob Dylan's Vietnam-era anthem, "The Chimes of Freedom." 

The filmmakers not only included lots of historical film footage of the events, they also rounded up a roster of topical songs for the soundtrack (Country Joe and the Fish's "Fixin' to Die Rag" was prominently featured) but the documentary also had a transcription option. At one point, I listened to the first line of Dylan's familiar tune while the lyrics flashed on the screen: "Far between my finished sundown and midnight's broken toll…." 

Looking at the caption, I realized that I had been mishearing the lyrics. For the better part of the past half-century, I thought Dylan was lamenting "Midnight's broken toe." 

Dan Ellsberg Week 

A note from Hanieh Jodat at RootsAction notes that during the past few weeks "widespread heartfelt tributes" followed Kensington-resident Daniel Ellsberg’s public disclosure that he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, with a prognosis that he has only three to six months to live. In response, RootsAction has mass-mailed the following message: "To honor and celebrate Dan’s eternal legacy, and his brave contributions to the anti-war movement, we invite you to participate in Daniel Ellsberg Week, April 24 to 30." RootsAction and Defuse Nuclear War will be collaborating on a “week of education and action to honor peacemaking and whistleblowing.” Click here for details. 

Possibilities include: 

• Ask your city council, county commission, town council, or other elected body to issue a proclamation for Daniel Ellsberg Week. (Sample language is here.) 

• Share Dan Ellsberg’s articles, interviews, and videos on the Daniel Ellsberg Week webpage via email and social media. 

• Urge the appropriate local government body or agency to name a street, highway, plaza, square, park, library, or school after Daniel Ellsberg. 

• Organize a virtual or on-the-ground seminar to teach and learn about the vast work of Daniel Ellsberg, including his latest book The Doomsday Machine. 

• Organize a vigil, picket line, or other protests—in honor of Ellsberg and his enduring anti-war, anti-nuclear legacy. 

Councilmember Sophie Hahn reports that a discussion of how to honor Dan Ellsberg will be on the agenda of the upcoming April 13 City Council meeting. 

Wilderness and Race Riots 

The Sierra Club is celebrating President Biden's designation of three new national monuments—Camp Hale-Continental Divide in Colorado, Castner Range in Texas, and Avi Kwa Ame in Nevada. With this accomplished, the Sierra Club is pushing Biden to declare a fourth national monument. But the proposed site is not a natural wonderland: it is a man-made relic of American racism—the site of the 1908 Springfield Race Riot in Illinois. 

The Club argues: "Our monuments must reflect these critical moments in our country's history." Germany, perhaps, could be cited as a model, having preserved death-camps like Auschwitz as reminders of the country's Nazi past. But the Club's rationale for enshrining "a devastating race riot"—in which a white mob lynched Black residents and torched their homes—is a bit unsettling: "Public lands must represent the diverse American experience…. When we look at public lands," the Club argues, "we want all people to see themselves and their stories and feel safe and welcome." 

A Cruiseworthy Note from The Nation 

Senator Bernie Sanders’new book,It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, has shot to the top of Amazon’s bestsellers charts and now holds the #2 spot on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list. 

Co-written and edited by The Nation’s John Nichols, the book "takes on the billionaire class and speaks blunt truths about our country’s failure to address uncontrolled greed and runaway economic inequality." 

Nichols and Sanders will be on a national speaking tour to spell out the need for radical change. In August, Nichols will join members of the public on a Nation Cruise to Alaskato further expand on the path to securing egalitarian change in America. 

The cruise ship leaves Seattle on August 13 for seven nights at sea. But there's one line in the promo that gives some cause for concern. It reads: "Along the way, the ship will cruise through Puget Sound and the unforgettable Hubbard Glacier.…" 

The Nation's publicists might want to reconsider that final note on the itinerary. As the survivors of the Titanic discovered, you can't "cruise through" a glacier. 

Who Bombed the Pipeline? 

Is the UN Security Council covering up an investigation to identify the parties responsible for blowing up Russia's Nord Stream undersea has pipelines? 

Moscow recently mounted a failed attempt to get the Security Council to approve a formal independent investigation into who was behind last September's sabotage attacks. The Russian-drafted text only won the approval of Russia, China, and Brazil. The remaining 12 council members abstained. It takes nine 'yes' votes for a Security Council motion to pass. 

Biding His Time, Breaking His Vows 

RootsAction, a progressive political action org, is coming down hard on Joe Biden, calling him a failed leader and urging Democrats to look for another candidate to contest the 2024 election. 

Biden's latest outrage involved breaking a solemn promise to address climate chaos by banning future rights to drill for oil and gas on federal land. Biden's decision to renege on his pledge involves opening drilling bids for 73 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico and approving construction of the massive Willow Oil Project on native lands in Alaska. Authorizing these two projects has been called "signing a death warrant for the planet." 

https://youtu.be/eJzwPRpR840 

In response, RootsAction as started a campaign dubbed "Don't Run Joe" (DontRunJoe.org) begging the Dems to say bye-bye to Biden and find the kind of candidate the planet and its people need—someone who is a true Green New Deal progressive. 

The DontRunJoe campaign has drawn up a list of all the swell "if-elected" promises candidate Biden made in 2020—and has failed to keep. Here's a short-list of promises that were not kept: 

• Reduce military spending (dramatically increased instead),• End drilling on federal lands (expanded instead), • Stop separating immigrant families and instead compensate them (not done),• Remove the cap on Social Security taxes exempting incomes over $160,000 (not done), • Make community college free for two years (not done), • Create the healthcare “public option” and lower the age for Medicare (instead Medicare keeps being privatized), • Provide paid sick and family leave (not done, even for railway workers whose threatened strike was outlawed), • Provide high-quality, universal pre-kindergarten for all three- and four-year-olds (not done), • Provide Section 8 housing vouchers to every eligible family so that no one has to pay more than 30% of their income for rental housing (not done),
• Make a $2 trillion investment in clean energy (way beyond what’s included in the “Inflation Reduction Act”), • Provide every city with 100,000 or more residents with high-quality, zero-emissions public transportation (not even mentioned), • Introduce a constitutional amendment to entirely eliminate private dollars from our federal elections. . . .
• Enact legislation to provide voluntary matching public funds for federal candidates receiving small dollar donations. . . .
• Restrict SuperPACs. . . .
• End dark money groups. . . .
• Ban corporate PAC contributions to candidates, and prohibit lobbyist contributions to those who they lobby,• Create automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration, early voting, universal vote-from-home and vote-by-mail options, and an election day holiday (only feebly attempted),• Heavily tax billionaires and corporations (attempted in minor ways, but the pretense that it's been done hurts efforts to do it going forward). • End US participation in the brutal Saudi war on Yemen (not done), 

• Treat Saudi Arabia as a pariah state (instead, the president famously fist-bumped the Crown Prince). 

Lend a Hand to Laura X 

Laura X is a Berkeley treasure—a member of the Free Speech Movement, founder of the World Institute, and a feminist pioneer who founded the Women's Herstory Project (Not a typo: That's her-story, not his-story). 

Recently, the following note went out to Laura's many friends and fans. If you didn't get this in your email, I'd like to share it: 

Laura X is in dire financial condition. She has donated/used her entire trust fund. She has refused to be constrained by financial advisors. It's shocking to me that someone who has been so generous all her life, someone who comes from such staggering wealth, someone as devoted to Womens' issues as Laura, should end up almost penniless. 

What caused the catastrophic financial crunch? A tooth! During a dental office visit to have two teeth extracted, one of the removed teeth vanished. An X-ray subsequently located the errant tooth lodged in one of Laura's lungs, posing an imminent risk to her health. Extensive and expensive surgery was needed, involving costs that continued to mount and were not covered by Medicare. 

A mutual friend adds: "Laura is very open about her situation so if you want further information please contact her directly: laurax@4lx.org. In the meantime, there's a GoFundMe account." 

The Indefatigable Jamie Raskin 

Interviewed by Brian Tyler Cohhen