QUOTE OF THE MONTH:
Has anybody here, seen my old friend John -
Can you tell me where he’s gone?
He freed a lot of people, but it seems the good die young.
But I just looked around and he’s gone.
1968 Song by Dion
SENSE AND NONSENSE -- “ABRAHAM, MARTIN AND JOHN”
From the editor: When I worked in the Southwest Georgia Project -- a voter registration effort to register black voters in several counties in southwest Georgia -- almost every black family I visited had a framed picture of President John F. Kennedy hanging in a prominent location. I never asked “Why?” because I thought I knew the reason for such respect and devotion. To black citizens living in southwest Georgia, President John Kennedy personified the Biblical Triad of “Faith, Hope, and Love.” Often his picture appeared on the same wall as a framed picture of Jesus.
The Apostle Paul identified “Love” as the greatest “gift,” because he felt Faith and Hope were human responses to God’s gift of Love. Since my experiences in the 1960s, I have felt that “Hope” was the strongest force in human nature. And I am certain that President Kennedy was -- and still is -- a symbol of hope to black voters in the South and elsewhere.
In my lifetime, the lives of three especially strong symbols of hope have been ended tragically with a bullet -- Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., President John Kennedy, and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. A century earlier, President Abraham Lincoln was tragically assassinated. But the legacies of all four men do live and remain a strong force in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness in this country.
The lives and the sudden deaths of Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat in 1981 and Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 certainly deserve to be remembered with the same respect and devotion. President Sadat was the first Arab leader to recognize the State of Israel since it was created in 1948. Prime Minister Rabin was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
The lives of these brave and courageous leaders were dedicated to peace and unity. Their deaths were tragic, but their legacy of hope did not end with the hard metal bullets that pierced their bodies. In spite of the lack of leadership our country and the world has suffered for the last eight years, the gift of Hope remains as strong as ever. But that is not the complete story of “Abraham, Martin and John.”
The forces of greed, war, and fear are also strong. Ex-press secretary Scott McClellan has, as have many other authors, documented the “politics of war” and the “atmosphere of permanent campaigning” in the Bush White House.
Senator Hillary Clinton’s inexplicable and very careless use of the word “assassination” in reference to the murder of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on at least two documented occasions (May 23, 2008 interview with the editorial board of the Sioux Argus Leader and a March, 2008, interview with Time magazine) in the context of political primary seasons that stretch into the month of June was unnecessary and inexcusable.
Political assassinations have cheated the world of men and women who were living, breathing symbols of Hope. Fortunately for all of us, the symbols live forever.
By Maynard Chapman
Editor, The Compass Newsletter
THEATER OF THE ABSURD -- DEMOCRATIC “UNITY”
From the editor: Senator Barack Obama won the Democratic Nomination for President of the United States last night (June 3, 2008) when he surpassed 2,118 in pledged and superdelegate commitments. Thirty minutes after Obama surpassed that benchmark, Sen. Hillary Clinton was introduced at Baruch College in New York City by campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe as “the next president of the United States.” In her non-concession, concession speech, Sen. Clinton referred to herself as “the strongest candidate for President of the United States.” Her speech rarely referred to unity and never recognized Sen. Obama as the Democratic nominee for President.
Maureen Dowd’s June 4, column in the New York Times illustrates the extent of the absurdity of Clinton’s version of Democratic unity.
Dowd writes, “For months, Hillary has been trying to emasculate Obama with the sort of words and themes she has chosen, stirring up feminist angers by promoting the idea that the men were unfairly taking it away from the women, and covering up her own campaign mistakes with cries of sexism. Even his ability to finally clinch the historic nomination did not stop her in that pursuit.”
“She just urged her supporters to keep the dream alive, and talked privately about what she would settle for. She has told some Democrats recently that she wanted Obama to agree to allow a roll call vote, like days of yore, so that the delegates of states she won would cast the first ballot for her at the convention. She said she wanted that for her daughter.”
“Clintonologists know that Hillary is up to something, but they aren’t sure what. Theory No. 1 is that it’s the Cassandra ‘I told you so’ gambit: She believes intensely that he’s too black, too weak and too elitist….to beat her pal John McCain. But she has to pretend she’ll do ‘whatever it takes,’ even accept the vice presidency, a job she’s already had (as first lady to President Clinton) and doesn’t want again, so that nobody will blame her when he loses on Nov. 4. Then she can power on to 2012.”
“Theory No. 2 is that it’s a ‘Bad stuff happens’ maneuver, exemplified in her gaffe about the R.F.K. assassination, that she figures that at least if she moves a few blocks from Embassy Row to the Naval Observatory (the V.P. residency), she’ll be a heartbeat away from the job she’s always wanted.”
“Bad stuff,” indeed, does happen, and Clinton is dangerously close to manufacturing a self-fulfilling prophecy in which she gets what she wants, and the country is, once again, robbed of our potential and opportunity to escape the ravages of machine politics. The hypocrisy of the Clinton/Dick Morris strategy of “Triangulation” -- a euphemism for being more Republican than Republicans -- runs very strong and deep within the Clinton camp and its supporters. Triangulation is a subterfuge for “my ends justify any means.” Clinton’s latest antics indicate that her pursuit of power has poisoned her soul and threatens to cripple the country in the process.
The President of the United States is elected through an electoral process. That means, by definition, the race for the White House will be very close between Obama and McCain. The game that Hillary continues to play has just made that race EVEN closer. Just five months remain between today and Nov. 4. A united Democratic Party can win. However, a Democratic Party that “fritters” away three months of that time in an effort to take a Democratic nomination process all the way to Denver in late August would guarantee a win for McCain. Power politics is scary stuff and it doesn’t give a damn about this country or future generations.
A BURIED STORY -- PENTAGON PROPAGANDA
From The New York Times: Following are excerpts from an article by David Barstow that appeared in the April 20, 2008 issues of the paper.
“In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantanamo Bay. The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantanamo.”
“To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as ‘military analysts’ whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.”
“Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.”
“The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.”
“Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror.”
“Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon’s campaign have never been disclosed. But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantanamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation.”
“These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing line between government and journalism have been obliterated.”
“Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to military analysts as ‘message force multipliers’ or ‘surrogates’ who could be counted on to deliver administration ‘themes and messages’ to millions of Americans ‘in the form of their own opinions.’”
“Over time, the Pentagon recruited more than 75 retired officers. The largest contingent was affiliated with Fox News, followed by NBC and CNN. At least nine of them have written op-ed articles for The Times.”
The Compass Society Newsletter
Maynard Chapman, Editor
Copyright © 2008, The Compass Society
