Representative Betty Hall’s bill (HR24) to put New Hampshire on record as calling for impeachement of the President will move to the House floor on April 16. Betty Hall has posted a video on YouTube, in which she speaks powerfully of why she is doing this. If you could drop by her YouTube site watch the video, leave a comment and pass the link on to friends, the momentum generated might convince undecided NH representatives to vote for the bill. On April 14, there will be a rally featuring Daniel Ellsberg (of Pentagon Papers fame), former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and Star-Wars critic Robert Bowman at the Capital Center for the Arts, 44 S, Main Street, Concord, NH, from 3-10 p.m. See hall4impeachment.com for more information.
Lat week Iraq veterans against the war testified at a series of hearings, modeled on the original Winter Soldier hearings during the Vietnam era, in which they spoke of the lies and crimes they had seen. If you missed these (and most Americans did miss them because the mainstream media completely ignored them), you can hear them at http://warcomeshome.org/ .
You can watch video of about half an hour worth of the testimony on last Friday’s Democracy Now
I was particularly impressed with a statement by a young man who grew up in Kentucky, in a gun culture, who said that after what he had seen and done in Iraq, he hates guns and thinks they all ought to be melted dowin into jevelery or something.
That giant financial conglomerate bearing the names of multiple 19th-century robber-barons “J.P. Morgan Chase” just gobbled up another similar firm bearing the names of two less-well-known financial pirates, “Bear-Stearns”, on orders from the U.S. Government. It was all supposed to be a commonsense action by the feds to prevent chaos in the financial markets, something we mortals should not worry our pretty little heads over.
These pirate corporations tower so far above us that most of us pay them no more attention than an ant pays a sequoia tree, but there are bound to be effects in our daily lives.
The government does not come to the aid of families struggling to survive; it comes to the aid of giant multinational corporations whose ability to exploit is temporarily impaired. Such a government is not working for the people, but for the corporations. Everybody should see the film The Corporation.
The recent problems with my debit card, noted in an earlier posting, immediately drew a connection in my mind (perhaps a paranoid one, but valid nonetheless) between the looming economic collapse and my personal life. Most of us have given up our checkbooks for debit cards; paychecks nowadays are almost always direct-deposited; monthly bills are likely as not to be paid via direct debits to our checking accounts; I hardly ever carry a week’s worth of cash in my wallet. I thought about Franklin Roosevelt’s Bank Holiday , in which all the banks in the country were shut down for a period of several days and some were permanently shut down. Rich folks could pay their grocers and utilities with IOU’s, but I suspect that poor folks checks were no good and some families experienced actual starvation.
Nowadays, checks are old-fashioned and our lives are defined in terms of bits and bytes on servers belonging to giant financial institutions somewhere around the globe. The equivalent of the Bank Holiday would be a cmplete (temporary or permanent) shutdown of the electronic banking system. What if those bits and bytes that represent our wealth (small as it is) were just deleted one day. How long would it be before most of us figured out how to get food, heat, and shelter?
The debit card problem turned out to be unrelated to the high-level financial meltdown (or at least only very indirectly so). The credit union tells me that some unnamed local merchant “may have compromised” some debit cards. In the process of taking measures to stop the thief, all debit cards from the credit union were shut down for a period of time over the weekend due to an “error”. In other words, my problem was caused by a small-time pirate rather than a big-time pirate. I am reminded of a wobbly poem that Utah Phillips recites:
The bum on the rods is a social flea Who gets an occasional bite; The bum on the plush is a social leech, Blood-sucking day and night.
But as that same poem points out, “get rid of the bum on the plush and the other will disappear.”
The solution to the threat posed by our total dependence on global financial networks designed to extract profit from all transactions is for people to get together and take control of them. Simply withdrawing from the system, putting all our money in matressses and communicating only via handwritten letters is not, in my opinion, the way to go. The electronically interconnected world needs engaged citizens. Where mass action and civil disobedience are called for, they should empower the majority and threaten only the entrenched power centers. Intelligence, not simple disengagement, is called for. To have all working people and families cowering in their separate corners and crannies while elites remodel the world to their greater liking is no solution at all.
One of my favorite radical folk musicians is the Welsh singer-songwriter Tracey Curtis. It was my birthday last week, and today I got a gift in the mail from somebody who probably didn’t even know it was my birthday. The present was a NEW TRACEY CURTIS CD! Actually it won’t be released until July, and this is just a promotional preview. but you’ll never guess who else was involved in it: Chumbawamba (another of my favorite political folk groups). They added just a few smooth touches to what I have always thought of as her pure voice and guitar, and they actually improved the sound. Tracey and Chumbawamba both have MySpace acounts where you can hear some of their stuff, but as an added bonus, all of Tracey’s released tracks are now available to listen to three times free at last.fm. Why not listen to “Shell Shock”, about a young soldier with the courage to refuse to kill, or the satirical “If the Death Penalty Were an Olympic Sport”, or the cosmic but playful “I Should Have Kept it Simple”. Of course these are the old, simple arrangements, but these are songs more people ought to hear as we prepare to elect a new president and congress
I went to buy a few things at the local health food store after the peace vigil today. When I got to the checkout, I handed the clerk my debit card. A slip came out of the machine saying tersely “Do Not Honour“. This was alarming because the debit card has become my primary way of paying for everything I buy in stores and a whole lot of routine online transactions. I went to a nearby ATM and tried to get my checking account balance . The ATM told me that I had no access to the account and to “Apply for Access“, whatever that means. I went to a pay phone and called my bank’s toll-free number. It being after noon on Saturday, the voicemail would not put me through to a live person. It gave a number to call in case of a stolen debit card. Although this was not my situation, it seemed to be my only oprion. I stood at the pay phone for a good 20 minutes listening to a minimalist repeated message that they were “sorry for the delay”. Finally a woman with an asian accent answered. She told me that there was some problem with debit cards from Workers’ Credit Union and that they were “working on it”. I asked if it would be a matter of days, weeks or hours, and she answered that she didn’t know. She said her agency worked for Workers’ and a number of other banks, but she would not tell me how widespread the problem was.
If this kind of problem is going to happen again in the future, it makes me question my faith in the banking system. When I got home, I checked online and determined that my bank account had not been drained. I guess I just have to pray that no automatic debits come in whie the card is out of commission.
If hundreds or thousands of people are in the same situation, why is there no mention of it in Google news or Google blogs? I’m putting this entry here in hopes that someone else in the same situation will see it and we can share information. If Workers’ CU doesn’t have anyone on duty between now and Monday, they’d better have a mighty good explanation by then. In the meantime, I’ll have to use credit cards or try to get businesses to take checks.
The words “bank holiday” and “bank failure” come unbidden to my mind. Is this the start of the new Great Depression?
Here are some resources to help support your efforts in the coming week. You will find talking points and a sample letter on the cost of war and a link to our short video. A section on local actions and events will lead you to on-line resources, including the goal of UFPJ to have actions in every congressional office, IVAW with details on how to plug into the Winter Soldier broadcast, and a listing of events around the country acknowledging all of the lives lost following the death of the 4,000thUS soldier.
We also have updated resources on healing the wounds of war. You will find materials that detail alternatives to war funding, a way to learn more about agencies that are helping to resettle Iraqi refugees in the United States, and the text of our letter/petition to Congress. I hope you consider supporting the document, and sharing these important resources.
Let us know when your letters to the editor are published.
Before you get started, take a look at this article generated from a speaking tour that visited Lansing, Grand Rapids, Detroit, Kalamazoo, and Flint, Michigan.
One of the fifth anniversary anti-war actions will be happening in Peterborough, NH on Wednesday evening:
For Immediate Release: March 14, 2008 Contact: John Friede (603) 924-9750
PETERBOROUGH --- A "Five Years Too Many" vigil will be held on Wednesday, March 19th from 6:00 to 7:00 pm in front of the Peterborough Town House to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The event will be one of nearly 600 "Five Years Too Many" events taking place nationwide to end the war in Iraq and bring all the troops home quickly and safely.
As we mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, the costs in terms of lives and dollars spent continue to mount. Escalating numbers provide context to the ongoing conflict. These costs include nearly 4000 U.S. soldiers killed and more than 60,000 wounded, as well as 700,000 Iraqis killed and 4 million refugees. During pressing economic times, the price tag for U.S. taxpayers is $275 million per day, with over $2 billion spent thus far by NH taxpayers. In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the rate of its earliest years,
A new book by Nobel prize-w
inning economist Joseph Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes estimates that tallying all economic and social costs might push the U.S. war bill up toward $5 trillion by 2017, far exceeding any previous projections.
Despite the staggering costs laid out their book, the authors said they had erred on the side of caution. The "conservative" estimates employed did not include the costs of the conflict to either Iraq or other countries other than the U.S.
The vigil is sponsored by NH Peace Action. The event is free and open to the general public. For more info: 924-9750.
But Peterborough is certainly not your only choice
CODE PINK is providing a sophisticated listing of end-the-war gatherings around the country.
PEACE ACTION NEW HAMPSHIRE want us all to show up in Concord on Saturday (sorry, I can’t be in three or five places at once. I’ll be at our weekly Peterborough Peace Vigil at noon on Saturday):
Join us on Saturday, March 15, for a statewide peace march and rally in Concord on the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
It’s been 5 years too many.
Concord 1:30pm: March and Rally 1:30: March departs from 6 Loudon Road (parking lot) 2:30: Rally at the Concord State House.
Join us in calling for the US to get out of Iraq now, no military strikes on Iran or Pakistan, and funding for human needs at home and abroad. Speakers will include Iraq war veteran, Will Hopkins as well as musicians, activists, and poets.
**Volunteers needed! - Please contact Erin Placey at eplacey@afsc.org if you can help. We need a parking director, three parking attendants, three crossing guards, five donation "bucket holders," a tabling coordinator, three set up people for the "walk in their shoes" display, and a videographer.
Home Needed Lively, playful Gingersnap a young female cat with orange fur and striped tail, needs a home. She arrived at our doorstep in the snow, meowing and purring, and we just had to take her in. She loves to play and is very affectionate, but we we are a quiet middle-aged couple with a quiet middle-aged gray cat who doesn’t want to share his space. Our house is no longer peaceful. Gingersnap is growing up, and unless she goes to the vet soon, she will likely become a “teenage mother”. We frankly can’t afford to spay and keep her. All the shelters are full. Can you help her find a happy home?
Jim + Denise Greenville NH USA 603-878-3702 jim@halfredhouse.biz
Last.fm now allows you to listen to many full tracks three times before being asked to buy them, and I assumed Hollows Cove was one of those tacks, but alas! it was not. The article includes a link to the lyrics, and I hope it whets your curiosity enough to get you to listen to the song the next chance you get.
On another subject, a neighbor made a video of himself shoveling out his walk-in house inthe woods in theaftermath of the latest snowstorm. See it at my livejournal blog
