This is an appeal to any Kosmonaut associated with the recording industry here at dKos. A Kosmonaut has penned a remarkable set of lyrics to a song stemming from the Katrina disaster. As the writer, long-time poster Ptolemy. has used his diary for today, I am posting the lyrics and his request as a diary on (his?) behalf. See below for lyrics and details. If you are in the music industry, please read.
I'm not at anger. Don't blame those who are for a second, but I'm just not there. I just keep thinking about the bayou people, and my feeling is one of sinking horror.
The new antiwar movement is no mirage. If there was any doubt after the vigils, the rally in Salt Lake City made that clear. However, the impact of Camp Casey may yet prove to be a blip if antiwar activists fail to develop strategic principles to guide our action. This seems to me to be doubly so among the netroots, where our diffusion around the country makes organization in the traditional sense moot. One big difference between issue activism and political campaign activism, is that in issue activism, no one from on high is going to hand down strategic principles to guide us. It's up to us, ourselves alone. I offer my strategic formulation as a starting place for such strategic discussion among antiwar netroots activists.
As some here at dKos know, for many months I have been advocating building a renewed antiwar movement based on local grassroots action, coordinated nationally through the internet. Last night's vigils are almost exactly what I've been talking about. Of course the leadership that Cindy Sheehan has provided was the indispensable catalyst for this action. Nonetheless, this is a model that I have felt for a long time offers the most promise for building an antiwar groundswell.
Best organizing practices teach that after action assessment and review is one of the most important parts of any action. I've put together some questions that could be useful in assessing the effectiveness of the national vigil action, and to begin a conversation on how we can build from this event toward a more sustained and effective antiwar movement. If you were a participant in last night's action your feedback is incredibly valuable, and I'd like to throw the floor open.
As I argued in this diary posted last night each of us has the power to help bring the war in Iraq to an end. Very few of us will be national leaders, national heroes, like Cindy Sheehan; but almost every single one of us can make a difference in our home town. Whether you live in Alabama or California, Utah or Minnesota, there is a local antiwar group within a few miles of you that needs your help. Below the fold, I provide links to listings of local peace groups in all 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico.
Every local peace group needs good, informed activists, the kind of people that Kosmonauts are. The best way to help Cindy is to take up her fight everywhere. Find your local peace group and join the fight today!
To make crystals, a single pure crystal is entered into a saturated solution. This is called the seed crystal. Other crystals then begin to form around the seed crystal, building themselves into the crystal lattice structure.
Cindy is the seed crystal of the renewed antiwar movement. We are crystallizing about her, it is our job to build the lattice, the enduring structure that facilitates continued growth and emerges from the solution.
I like some poetry in my justice, it serves as witness that what is being rendered is just. The concept of Indian casinos, for instance. There's something that strikes me as just right about the idea that Native Americans should have a special opportunity to sell alcohol and games of chance to whites.
I came to that conclusion perhaps 20 years ago, and I've often considered since how that principle could be formalized to be used to make reparation to African-Americans for the stolen wealth created by the labor of slaves. I've often thought that the solution would lie with the modern successor entities to the enterprises built upon the backs of slaves in industries like tobacco, cotton, sugar and rail.
It appears some in the NAACP are moving toward adopting this approach.
U.S. military officials said Wednesday they feared all 17 troops aboard a special operations helicopter were dead after hostile fire downed the craft and it slid or rolled into a rugged mountain ravine in eastern
Afghanistan...
Stormy weather hampered rescue efforts after the MH-47 helicopter crashed Tuesday while ferrying in reinforcements for troops already on the ground pursuing al-Qaida militants near the border with Pakistan.
We know that we are at the hour when there is no choice to engage fully in the battle. The recent set of attacks intended to demonize liberals and Democrats cannot be allowed to stand. Our strength is that on issue after issue, the public in general is inclined toward our side. The trouble that Dems and progressives get into when they try to steer people back to issues is that it turns into a laundry list, and people tune out. There needs to be a unifying theme and a clear target for the message to sink in.
There's a single unifying them that I suggested repeatedly back during 2004, that of course was never picked up, but it remains one that ties together the entire critique: The irresponsibility of Dubya Bush and his right-wing cronies...
Feminism is my family tradition, and I learned it at my Granny's knee. My strongest memory of her is a compound, of the many, many times when she'd talked about the battle for the right to vote, of the marches, of taking trains to New York and Washington, DC. Her head would slowly shake back and forth, and a faraway smile would leave her radiant. Seeing Granny happy of course made me happy, and thus I learned at a tender age that marching for women's rights was a good thing.
So today is May 1st. Some small handful of those who visit this site may recall a now quaint and almost forgotten political movement known as "socialism". No day in the calendar was more important to the "socialists" than May 1st. All around the world it came to be recognized as International Workers Day, the day to honor working people and their struggles for social and economic justice. One of the few countries where May 1st was not so celebrated was the United States. And therein lies an irony, for the reason for the choice of that day began right here.
More below the fold, but first, a moment of silence for the Haymarket Martyrs.
America has a secret history besides the one you learned in school. The origins of the New Deal can be traced to seven people on a porch in Lampasas County, Texas in 1877.
Much (perhaps most?) of the bandwidth here at dKos has of late been given over to discussing the looming deaths of iconic religious figures, Terry Schiavo and Karol Woytyla. In this unsettling environment, there are also Kosmonauts getting carried away, saying everything related to religion is dead, up to and including God (cf, Nietzsche). But they are only scratching the surface of this mystery, like the feeble hand of the prematurely entombed clawing hopelessly at the lid of their casket.
Over the past 10 years or so, this lifelong hoop junkie has become more and more a fan of the women's game--though I admit, that got its start only because Rebecca Lobo went to the same nowhere high school I did. However, like Johnny Wooden, I've come to believe that the best displays of good sound fundamental basketball today are among the top women's basketball programs.
For those who don't follow the women's game but may have a passing interest at tournament time, here's the totally unofficial Dancing Larry preview:
No, this isn't another Iraq diary, although there are strong resemblances between the two situations. The quote used as the diary title is from Chechen exile Akhmed Zakayev. As reported by AFP, Aslan Maskhadov is dead, killed by Russian forces in action near Tolstoi-Yurt.
On August 22, 1991, with the collapse of the hardline coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the post-World War II geopolitical era came to an end. The end of the Cold War, the end of Mutual Assured Destruction, the end of the bipolar world. With the fall of the Soviet Union, for the first time in human history, a single nation stood astride the world as a colossus, the United States of America as uncontested hegemon.
