Eye On Essence

The Death of Poland

2010-04-11T10:55:00.000-07:00

On April 10, 2010, the government of Poland suffered an enormous blow when the President and several key leaders died in an airplane crash just outside Smolensk, Russia.
President Lech Kaczynski and the majority of the 96 people who were on board the plane were headed to an official ceremony commemorating the thousands of Polish prisoners-of-war murdered in Katyn forest by the Soviet state security forces in April of 1940. This would have been the Seventieth anniversary of the mass killings.

As with so many other questionable plane crashes that happened to take out a number of political figures, this one is a 'doozy' that should immediately elicit further investigation.
In America alone in the past couple decades, several key officials have succumbed to 'violence in the skies'. Perhaps most infamous among these is the crash that killed Bill Clinton's Secretary of Commerce (and former chairman of the Democratic Party) Ron Brown & entourage, while they flew over Croatia in 1996. Left-liberal Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone & family went down in 2002 after their plane mysteriously stalled over a northern Minnesota forest. And then of course there's 'John-John'. JFK, Jr. & his wife & sister-in-law died when their Cessna plunged into the icy waters of the Atlantic north of Long Island under exceptionally curious conditions.

Internationally, there are many other such examples. Several eventful crashes in Nigeria alone have claimed the lives of senior members of government, the most recent in October of 2005. Also in 2005, the president of Honduras miraculously survived a similar crash to JFK, jr.'s. In 2004, Boris Trajkovski, the President of Macedonia, another breakaway Yugoslav republic, died along with several cabinet advisors when their plane, like Brown's, slammed into a Bosnian hillside. In 2003, a senior member of the Kenyan government died and several others critically injured when their Gulfstream aircraft crashed. [Interestingly, several other members of this same government had hastily disembarked the plane just prior to takeoff]. And then of course the Presidents of Rwanda & Burundi who were both killed when their plane was shot down sixteen years ago almost to the day. This last event ignited the massive Rwandan ethnic massacres.

And so early Saturday, a plane carrying the nationalist 'wing' of Poland's government goes down just outside of the airfield in Smolensk. The Tupulov Tu-154 was an older aircraft, but only a few months prior had undergone a complete overhaul. The nature of the crash itself is being hotly contested. Some claim that the plane appeared to 'clip' the treetops. Others insist that there was no apparent contact, the plane simply seeming to 'disintegrate'. "The pilot made three unsuccessful attempts to land before the crash. On the fourth try the plane fell apart, Interfax said, citing officials at Smolensk's interior ministry."

In addition to President Kaczynski, the plane carried the president of the National Bank of Poland, the heads of the Army and Navy, the Civil Rights Commissioner, the head of National Security, the Olympic Committee chief and several key lawmakers. Also on board was free trade union activist Anna Walentynowicz, whose 'firing' in 1980 led to the strike which thunderously began the Solidarnosc movement and changed the face of Polish politics forever.

So who was auspiciously not on board ? The Prime Minister of Poland.

Donald Tusk has been PM since 2008. He is the 'active' leader of the government of Poland. The President on the other hand (until recently, Lech Kaczynski) is largely a ceremonial figure who primarily holds the power of the veto. Mr. Tusk has been trying to eliminate even that power from the presidency, calling it a relentlessly needless obstacle.
Tusk & Kaczynski did not got along at all. Their duel has increasingly been viewed as venomous ever since Tusk squeaked out an election win over Kaczynski's twin brother Jaroslaw in 2007 to become Prime Minister. Tusk wants to swiftly bring Poland fully into the EU and to adopt the Euro in the next two years. Kaczynski on the other hand had repeatedly blocked such efforts, trying instead to maintain a strong Poland that is not simply a support act for whatever empire is barking at their border.

Donald Tusk arrived last Wednesday in Smolensk, several days before Kaczynski was scheduled to show up. Together with Vladimir Putin, Tusk attended a separate ceremony commemorating the victims of Katyn.

An Open Letter to the Guardian (UK), Concerning the 'Divorce' with Obama

2010-03-13T22:00:00.000-08:00

Call me ever the silly wishful optimist, but until rather recently, i had long felt compelled to latch onto the sensible progressive spirit offered up by the Great-American-Left flank of the Democratic Party. But after seeing Gary Hart forced out of the running back in early 1988, the big $ players never giving Jesse Jackson a real chance ('too controversial'), & then watching the hopelessly underclassed Dukakis go down in flames later the same year, i sincerely began to wonder if this was not simply a wasted gesture.

Four years later the nascent urge toward cynicism in this elaborate American process was compounded when first Paul Tsongas & then Jerry Brown were 'headed off at the pass' by a blitz of big money campaign adverts (both positive & negative). Yes, Bill Clinton 'won', but largely on the basis of a 'moderate' set of policies, which in Democratese truthfully meant 'pandering to the conservatives' who actually Run/Own the place. (For a rough hint as to the 'liberal-eligibility' of Clinton, all you had to do was look to the conservative Republican visage of his wife, a former Nixon apologist & 'Goldwater girl' fer pete's sake).

Ditto with Gore in 2000. The 'Establishment' decided he was going to run unopposed in the primaries, & aside from that pesky Bill Bradley putting up all of the fuss of a bored child, there was never even a show from the left (not that i'm implying Bradley was in any way a 'leftist').

And everyone knows what happened in 2004.
But in case some don't care to recall, that year it briefly looked like, against all odds, a verifiable honest-to-goodness liberal would actually HAVE the audacity to go out & win the nomination. Ah, but as it turns out, all Howard Dean ended up accomplishing from this cute little 'dare' was to put in place a blueprint, a mould so to speak, for Obama's 'miracle run' four years later. [It could be argued too that Dean's down-home, grass-roots revival style helped supply the lattice for manifesting what came to be the 'tea-party' movement, albeit eventually in a much more conservative rendering.] In the meantime however, a 'former' liberal turned Big $ Brother-in-law, John Kerry, was sent up to challenge the 'monarchy' & very nearly did cause a ruckus himself. But his so-called 'unexpected' performance was in the end primarily little more than a fervent repudiation of the hated Bush/Cheney autocracy than anything else, and the machinations against Kerry had already been put into place. From campaign lies to extreme vote fraud, the debacle & befoulment of the electoral process that began in 2000 was effectively & celabratorily cemented in 2004.

It was at that very moment that i chose definitively to refuse to abide by the two-party system ever more. Sure i'd voted 'Independent' on occasion before, starting with John Anderson in 1980, but up until November 2004 i had remained a card-carrying Democrat.

And that, is how i can say begrudgingly that politically speaking, 'we' have indeed witnessed the beginning of the end of 'America'. The great wondrous democracy of the world that was. The final despoilation of this 'experiment' so fully, obviously, & ultra-cynically laid into place in early November, 2000.

And certainly, i was not alone in that observation. Anyone with even a semi perseverent political intellect or a modicum of rhetorical discernment would have evaluated the situation similarly.

That then, against this backdrop, was how the candidacy of one Barack Obama was therefore necessitated into place.
Yes, of course it was the selling of hope. For no reason other than it had to be.
Hope was sold. Hope was bought, too. And not solely by the voter either.

I certainly do not mean to be overly self-congratulatory here, but not for one single minute, in the runup to the election, did i ever consider Obama to be the sort of unabashed liberal & progressive champion that many touted him to be. Not in the old meaning of those terms anyway. And besides how could they? We did not know him. No one did. Perhaps he didn't either. Politics is an old game, and when someone has been playing it on the national level for but a measly couple years it is nearly impossible to 'know' anything about them politically-speaking. The number of nationally prominent politicians who have not only switched initial allegiances of support within their respective parties, is profound & continuous, but that does not even begin to address all those did so later in their careers as well or those who jumped ship & to the other side completely. Pledges are broken, that is not to be unexpected. But it takes longer than a motley few months strung together to begin to see a particular politician's behavioral patterns.

One thing that can in fact be said on Obama's behalf though is that he has indeed largely represented his constituents, up to & perhaps to some extent including his presidency. From urban concerns while in Illinois to garnering more labor support for the state as a senator, Obama had been quite dutiful on behalf of the people who put him there. But that is also where some of the bigger issues start to arise, and/or fall apart. When hundreds of lobbyists & wealthy donors start lending you their 'support', your constituency suddenly develops an entirely new face, a new set of core values & morals that happen to govern them, & a whole new bunch of needs & expectations.

But Obama you see, right from the outset, gave us every indication of being nothing but an opportunist as well. He has always responded both to his constituents (who all that might represent) as well as to the bright, shiny future. His future. For one to spend a mere two years in politics on the national level & then decide, 'Hey, I look good as a Senator, but I think I'd look Great as a President !', is well, extremely opportunistic. And opportunists have this wonderful knack for letting doors open to them by opening themselves up to & for whoever & whatever's on the other side of that door. It's the Art of Politics at its most debauched & self-aggrandizing moment.

As with all pure opportunists though, Obama was approached (or co-opted if you prefer) by other opportunists, and of course, they him. Ultimately, in just such an agreement the various parties involved carefully craft 'the final package', so to speak, & bind it together replete with their respective terms & conditions. In this particular case, the end result of all the political lobby groups (both good & bad), high-roller donors, & opportunist operatives was not new legislation, but of course Candidate Obama.

And Candidate Obama surely did not come from anything that can be remotely called a long-standing tradition of liberal, 'bleeding-heart' humanitarianism. He did not have the impeccable credentials as such of a Jesse Jackson or a Ted Kennedy or a Eugene McCarthy. Nor even of a Edmund Muskie, Wayne Morse, Paul Wellstone or a Maxine Waters for that matter. As a US Senator, his votes were certainly liberal indeed, but only for the measly 3-plus years he was in office. (And as Hillary Clinton so nastily noticed in the '08 primaries, there were an extremely large number of abstentations or 'present' votes by this so-called 'highly principled' orator.)
Many too seemed ready to overlook his origins (not talking about any 'faked id' here). Consider; he started out as a dutiful wide-eyed polycrat in the great Chicago political machine, only to benefit greatly from an almost bewildering series of convictions, accidents, and unexplained withdrawals that occurred successively to his opponents over the course of his 10 years spent in Windy City politics. A well-groomed (not talking about his dress here) & well-spoken example certainly, but a South-side Sentry for what used to be called the 'Dailey Express' nonetheless. And suddenly, there He was. OUR candidate. The World's Candidate.

Fast forward a barely more than a year & suddenly everyone seems so surprised when most of the significant campaign pledges have come to either little fruition or an actual reverse sponsorship has been activated in their place? Yeah big surprise.

So in 2008, in those far away & impatient times, i chose instead to 'throw away' my vote. I did so by putting a little check next to Ralph Nader's name. You remember Ralph, the Green Party candidate ? Who every media outlet in the country laughed at, & who was barred (yet again) from every one of the 'debates' ? Who bravely stood there nevertheless, like a somewhat more stoic, intellectuallized & similarly impassioned Peter Finch out in the rain ? (& if you're already thinking Peter Falk instead, you're forgiven, that image would work as well). Who shouted at us to never trust in the two-party system, and by extension, never to trust whatever conscripted & scripted, pampered & packaged, pruned & primed candidates they threw at us, no matter how intoxicating their charisma or their rhetoric ? Yes, that guy.

I sincerely urge others to vote for whatever reasonable & real humans are on the 3rd or 4th or 5th party ticket next time, & indeed EVERY time. In a two-party system the individual is doomed to a ridiculously limited number of alternatives from the very start. One could easily make a very rational claim that the two-party system cannot possibly even be truly representative, for the number of differing opinions are limited only by the number of individuals present who are asked to come to a decision. Sure one might occasionally be addled by the inconvenience of having to form a 'coalition' government, but that is but a minor annoyance to be naturally anticipated within the framework of a representative government.
A third party vote is not just a plausible response, it is in fact the ONLY sensible answer.

Here's the Wonderful Writer John Pilger, with his Take on Obama :

An Open Letter to Amnesty International

2010-02-09T17:40:00.000-08:00

For those who are unfamiliar, Gita Sahgal, the head of the Amnesty International 'gender unit', this last weekend blasted Amnesty for allowing purported 'Taliban sympathisers' & 'radical Islamic fundamentalists' like Moazzam Begg to take part in round-table discussions & public forums sponsored by Amnesty International. Mr. Begg, himself a former Guantanamo detainee, however has steadfastly disassociated himself from the Taliban & al-Qaeda, & has instead focused his energies on promoting human rights. In 2006 he founded a group called Cage Prisoners to better make people aware of the plight of those who are wrongly imprisoned around the world. Although until now, part of the group's focus has been on fellow Guantanamo detainees still held in the U.S.-run prison, the group has also sought to shed significant light on cases around the world. Shortly after his own release from Guantanamo, Mr. Begg himself personally intervened in 2005 on behalf of 4 Christian peace workers taken hostage in Iraq. Due to the often overlapping work of both Cage Prisoners & Amnesty International it is only natural that the two groups would occasionally share venues, if not actual resources. Amnesty International has since suspended Ms. Sahgal from her duties, pending an investigation.

What follows is the letter I just wrote to Amnesty International encouraging them to disregard the obviously politically-inspired maneuvering by Ms. Sahgal. :

Gita Sahgal is an extremely good example of someone who exists more in a shallow & self-limiting world of reactionary histrionics than in a embroadened, emancipated one full of informed awareness and observation. She has short-sightedly targeted, & seriously impugned, the reputation of Amnesty International, with her obsessively spurious (& not to mention nonsensical) tirades on the efforts & sensibilities of the likes of Moazzam Begg & Tariq Ramadan. Aside from the fact that she does this in public forums that cleverly highlight her propagandistic attacks rather than through the proper organisational channels available within, she has also chosen these occasions to belittle any actual progress that these individuals may have made within the area of human rights.

She has conveniently & consistently chosen to ignore whatever valuable contributions these individuals or their organisations are accomplishing, both by their sheer presence as well as by their works, and replacing them with highly partisan admonishments full of imaginary transgressions, but that have little to no basis in reality. Judging from the sheer childish nature and depth of her attacks, it is equally obvious she knows nothing of these men, nor has she at all bothered to acquaint herself with their body of work, whether it be in the form of speaking engagements, their actions on the part of individuals or within their own writings. And simply calling for the barring of their involvement or future inclusion within any Amnesty International sponsored forums, itself bespeaks of censorship of a most insipid kind.

In very short time, she has quickly jettisoned herself into the British equivalency of a Michelle Bachman or an Ann Coulter; or if you go farther back, of a Jeanne Kilpatrick or Anita Bryant. She claims to be for human rights, yet only insofar as those rights are specially reserved for those who happen to see as she does. If an individual, tribe or people happens to at all aspire or believe differently, whether the terms are cultural, political or spiritual, and even if the perceived differences are but moderate in scope, they nevertheless are then to be ostracised and ridiculed. Obviously there is no middle ground with Ms. Sahgal.

It is very unfortunate, in retrospect, that [Amnesty] has even made the choice of hiring her in the first place. An energetic penchant for activism is one thing, but a grotesquely polemical and highly dualistic modus operandi is another. There is simply no excuse for such ill-conceived antagonism within the utter seriousness of the situation of human rights. {Human rights for ALL, I might add.}

I sincerely hope you reconsider any future relationship with Ms. Sahgal. Such a partnering would only continue to subject Amnesty International to her future hostile attacks, and render your extraordinary institution vulnerable to a heightened public scrutiny of a most odious nature. The advisable path would be to admit a mistake was made with her employment, let the public know of the highly transparent inequities that Ms. Sahgal has brought forth upon herself, and allow it to end right there. In a matter of weeks, most likely few will remember her name.Thank you.

Candlelight

2010-02-08T21:47:00.000-08:00

This IS a very emotionally intense 'video', so please view only when you are ready to do so ...

& even though i made it 'for the kids', and to a large extent it's about kids, it also probably shouldn't be viewed by them due to the graphic nature of some of the images ...

that being said, i hope this allows for a better understanding of the world & one of our more serious 'predicaments' as a HUMAN race ...

this 'video' should in no way be considered, or promote, an attack on a particular people or culture ... if there is a 'villain' involved here it is the 'actions' of a particular nation/state, & by relationship, the 'actions' of one or two other nation/states ...

nevertheless, this is meant to be strictly educational, to highlight certain realities that have gone especially unnoticed by the regular viewing american public & ideally to motivate EVERYONE to become better, more compassionate, more aware, more conscientious & more sentient beings ...

thanks to Imogen Heap for the outstanding title track,
thanks to the journalists Ari Shavit, Gideon Levy, Kawther Salaam & Uri Avnery for their exceptional reporting (& insight) & their extraordinary fortitude in not deviating from the necessity to communicate the truth & expose injustice ...
& thank YOU for watching

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