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Volume 7
Issue 44…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…November 5, 2004
The Battle-Field
By William Cullen Bryant
Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands,
Were trampled by a hurrying crowd,
And fiery hearts and armed hands
Encountered in the battle-cloud.
Ah! never shall the land forget
How gushed the life-blood of her brave--
Gushed, warm with hope and courage yet,
Upon the soil they fought to save.
Now all is calm, and fresh, and still;
Alone the chirp of flitting bird,
And talk of children on the hill,
And bell of wandering kine, are heard.
No solemn host goes trailing by
The black-mouthed gun and staggering wain;
Men start not at the battle-cry,--
O, be it never heard again!
Soon rested those who fought; but thou
Who minglest in the harder strife
For truths which men receive not now,
Thy warfare only ends with life.
A friendless warfare! lingering long
Through weary day and weary year;
A wild and many-weaponed throng
Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear.
Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof,
And blench not at thy chosen lot,
The timid good may stand aloof,
The sage may frown--yet faint thou not.
Nor heed the shaft too surely cast,
The foul and hissing bolt of scorn;
For with thy side shall dwell, at last,
The victory of endurance born.
Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers.
Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,
When they who helped thee flee in fear,
Die full of hope and manly trust,
Like those who fell in battle here.
Another hand thy sword shall wield,
Another hand the standard wave,
Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed
The blast of triumph o'er thy grave.
Black Box Voting
Democrat John F. Kerry has conceded the election, but the post
mortem continues. Black Box Voting at www.blackboxvoting.org plans to
conduct a formal audit. It has filed a
series of public records requests to obtain computer logs and other documents
from thousands of counties and voting precincts.
On September 15, 2004, Black Box Voting filed a similar request in
King County, Washington. It uncovered
an audit log containing a three-hour deletion on primary election night,
trouble slips revealing suspicious modem activity and security problems.
Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. You can view its public records requests at www.blackboxvoting.org/#foia. An internal audit can begin to answer some
of the many troubling questions voters are asking about Election 2004.
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
"The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the
press, by the pen, all political questions, and to examine and animadvert upon
all political institutions . . . is a right as clear and certain, so interwoven
with our other liberties, so necessary in fact, to their existence that without
it we must fall at once into despotism and anarchy."
Born in Cummington, Massachusetts on November 3, 1794, William
Cullen Bryant became the first US poet to win international acclaim. A child prodigy, his father, a physician,
carefully cultivated the young man's intellect. At an early age, he learned Greek and Latin, read the classics,
and studied science and mathematics.
He published his first poem at ten and his first book at thirteen. "The Embargo (1809)," a satire on
the foreign trade policies of President Thomas Jefferson and his political
party, was eagerly read, though skeptics assumed he was older than thirteen.
Steered into law by his father, Bryant entered Williams College at
sixteen and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1815. He married and practiced law in the village
of Great Barrington for ten years.
During this period, Bryant wrote little, and what poetry he published
was written before he turned twenty-one, including "Thanatopsis,"
which was published in the North American Review (1816).
In 1821, Bryant delivered his long poem, "The Ages," at
the Harvard College commencement. Shortly
thereafter, he published his first book of poetry and left the law profession
to pursue literature. In 1825, he moved
to New York, where he and a friend established "The New York Review and
Athenaeum Magazine." In 1826, he
became assistant editor at the New York Evening Post, a paper established by
the Federalist Party leader Alexander Hamilton. From 1829 to his death, Bryant was the paper's part owner and
editor-in-chief. A proponent of
"laissez-faire," hands-off, economic policy and advocate of human rights,
Bryant opposed all tariffs and supported the abolition of slavery.
In 1832, a collection of Bryant's poetry was published in New York
and reprinted in Boston and London. Bryant published "The Fountain and
Other Poems" (1842), "The White-Footed Deer and Other Poems"
(1844), and an edition of his complete Poetical Words (1846). In 1855, he published another edition of his
works, which contained his later poetry.
He published "The Letters of a Traveler" (1852), a series of
letters written to the Evening Post, which described his tours of South
America, Cuba, Europe and Mexico.
In his Lectures on Poetry (1825) and other critical essays, Bryant
stressed the values of simplicity, original imagination and morality. During his later career, he traveled
extensively, made numerous public speeches, and continued to write poetry,
including "The Death of the Flowers," "To the Fringed
Gentian" and "The Battle-Field." He also published translations of the Iliad (1870) and the
Odyssey (1872). In 1876, Bryant
published a final collected edition. He
died June 12, 1878 in New York City after attending the dedication of a bust of
himself. (Sources: www.bartleby.com,
www.vcu.edu and www.nagasaki‑gaigo.ac.jp)
Disgruntled wants to know: While Democrats cry in their beer, there are reasons to cheer a second
term for the Bush administration. There
are so many unresolved issues. For
instance, there are the anthrax murders, a real mystery with definite
connections to a US laboratory. Of course,
while US mainstream media ignore this little fact, Bush and members of his
cabinet lied about the reasons for invading Iraq. There is the little matter of how Enron fashioned Dick Cheney's
energy policy. More troubling still,
someone in the White House outed CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame to
punish Joseph Wilson, her husband, for publicly exposing the lie that Saddam
Hussein attempted to acquire enriched uranium from Niger. With so many troubling
issues unresolved, could a Bush second term mimic Richard Milhous Nixon's downfall?
Disgruntled says: Once
again, George W. Bush has assumed the mantle of the uniter for public consumption. His policies over the last four years have
been incredibly divisive, both at home and abroad. An analysis of his domestic and foreign policies suggests more
rather than less division to come. In
fact, unless he mends fences fast and jettison his policy of unilateral preemption,
the nation could face wars in other arenas.
If that should happen with a military stretched thin, a draft is a real
possibility, even though he said there would be none. But, then, it would not be the first time that the
commander-in-chief lied to achieve an end.
Disgruntled feels:
Disenfranchised! In pursuing its flawed
"battleground" strategy, the Democratic Party ignored its southern
base. Across the dirty South, blacks
were left to the tender mercies of white Democrats and Republicans that
supported George W. Bush. Discounting
party affiliations, whites flocked to Bush who basically promised to honor the
values symbolized by the Confederate battle flag. So, just life the debacle of Election 2000, blacks that voted overwhelmingly
for the Democratic presidential candidate were disenfranchised on November 2,
2004.
The Dark Knight-Batman/White Ninja/Zorro eagerly awaited the
outcome of the vote. Shortly after the
polls closed in Georgia, the news networks announced that George W. Bush had
won Georgia, even though their graphics showed zero percent of the polling
precincts reporting. Confused the Dark
One/Ninja/Zorro wondered, "Is this a joke?"
Empire of Oil -- Forever?
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
"He who owns oil will own the world... who has oil has empire." -- Henry Berenger, Commissioner
General for Oil Products, France (WWI)
No matter which way this god-forsaken 'election' goes, America's
imperial hunger for oil will continue.
While the Republicans present a more bellicose face, the Democrats will
certainly do the same thing, but perhaps with a smile. That's what makes this advertising war,
about who's tough, and who's not, so utterly ridiculous. Both candidates will push imperial wars for American
"natural resources" (in other words, oil), because that's what their
financial backers demand.
The American economic machine began its industrial age with oil
running those machines. Oil gave birth to the vast automotive industry, the
resultant highway construction industry, the huge petrochemical industry, the
explosion in plastics, and the fueling of America's menacing military machine,
which is being used to spark wars abroad, to protect U.S. control of oil. One need not have been a history or
political science major to see through the transparent justifications for the 2nd
War on Iraq. It had nothing to do with 'weapons of mass destruction', nor to
bring democracy -- it was, and is, to control Iraq's vast oilfields. And Iraqis, as well as millions of others in
the region, know this with a certainty that can only be matched by their
assurance that the sun rises tomorrow.
In essence, the two corporate parties present a difference in
degree; not in kind. But, thanks to the corporate media, this campaign will
probably turn on the illusions of personality; on who smiles, who smirks, and
who has a nice hairdo. If Rome taught
us anything, it's that empire wears many faces.
Many Democrats look back to the Clinton administration with
longing; but it, too, is the longing for illusions. During the Clinton years, the Defense Dept. touched base with the
armed forces of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan,
and provided them US arms and training. The temporary U.S. military bases,
payoff for the arms and training, became semi-permanent after 9-11, because
these states ring the vast oil deposits near the Caspian Sea. In the words of a
2002 U.S. State Dept. report, U.S. aid is intended to "improve U.S.-Kazakh
military cooperation while establishing a U.S.-interoperable base along the
oil-rich Caspian."* That's the
backdoor reason for the invasion of Iraq.
Until America gets off the oil-pipe, it doesn't matter who is
elected. If part of either corporate
party, they will swear fealty, not to the Constitution, but to the bottom lines
of the oil companies.
That's what makes this nonsense about the 'war on terror', or the
'Iraqi liberation' so tragic. These are
public relations sideshows, mounted by the political elite and projected by the
media elite on behalf of their economic elite at the costs of billions of
public dollars and thousands of lives -- so that oil can rule. How can one 'spread democracy' by ignoring
democracy? The largest anti-war
demonstrations in US and world history did not deter this mad rush for black
gold in Iraq. It did not stop this invasion erected on a bridge of lies.
Indeed, the American presidency was built upon the judicial theft
of the election, and use of state power to intimidate, disenfranchise, and
betray the votes of tens of thousands in Florida alone. Yeah...the Bush Regime really wants to
'spread democracy!'
In oil's name, the United States is immersed in a new kind of
colonialism, for the resources that lie under foreign feet. They could care less about the people. Therein lies an even greater tragedy. [Source: *U.S. Dept. of State, Congressional
Budget Justifications: Foreign Operations, Fiscal Year 2003, pg. 309]
By John Burl Smith
Postmortems are not easy, particularly following painful and
highly emotional events. Such examinations are absolutely necessary in order to
cope with as well as adjust to the disaster's aftermath. Survivors must understand antecedent causes
while simultaneously developing a realistic approach to the future.
Depending upon ones relationship to the Democratic Party, the
outcome of Election 2004 is a devastating loss. For party officials, it should mark the beginning of deep soul
searching, strategic assessment and leadership evaluation. Conversely, its base or rank and file should
be witnessing the end of a party meltdown that began with the Democratic
Leadership Council (DLC) takeover prior to Election 2000.
Under DLC leadership, except for Bill Clinton's embrace of black
voters in 1992 and 1996, Democrats have lost every major election since
1994. The DLC refuses to recognize that
blacks, women, Hispanics and other minorities make up the Democratic Party's
base. Clearly, the DLC's strategy of campaigning to white voters, while giving
only lip service to issues important to blacks and other minorities has not
brought white voters back to the Democratic Party. Election 2004 showed that white people vote for Republicans
because their message is tailored to white concerns.
Election 2004 revealed exactly who votes for Democrats across the
country. We learned blacks turn out in
huge numbers based on their socioeconomic and political interests, even when
the party's candidate refuses to embrace them.
This dynamic is not likely to change anytime soon and with performances
like Barack Obama and Denise Majette's, blacks must decide the proper use of their
growing political power. The choice for
Democrats is whether or not to organize the party in order to take advantage of
this reality.
Democrats must open up the party to the new leadership revealed by
Election 2004. They must reach beyond
the "good old boy network" and the top down structure that direct
party decision-making. The party must
begin a massive rebuilding effort at the precinct level. Bringing in national "hired guns"
or "political consultants" to run campaigns does not sustain
grassroots organization in off years. The current white male dominated party
structure led by the DLC ignores socioeconomic changes that have occurred among
blacks, women and Hispanics that make them capable of running the party.
This fact was clearly illustrated by Obama's campaign in
Illinois. He built a grassroots organization
that defeated several millionaires in route to victory. The Democratic Party only embraced Obama when
it became clear he could not be beaten.
However, Majette in Georgia and Inez Tenenbaum in South Carolina were
seriously hamstrung by the Democratic Party and John Kerry's refusal to campaign
in the South. Their candidacies were
completely ignored, even though both women did remarkable jobs, which helped
Democrats running for Congress and the legislature with their statewide
campaigns.
Blacks across the South learned from Election 2004 that Kerry's
DLC "battleground states" strategy abandoned whole regions of the
country, an indication he believed black votes were not worth fighting
over. If the Democrats are going to
betray black voters and concede their votes before they are counted, what
benefit is the Democratic Party?
Consequently, what happened to Majette and Tenenbaum is not the end of
the Democratic melt down but the entrenchment of white male dominance over the
party, which begs the question, who learned their lesson?
Mailbox:
E-mail, Faxes and Telephone Calls
Email Wdestiny44@aol.com
Times will certainly continue to be interesting, with both the House and Senate
majorities now held by the Republican party. Environmental and social issues
will continue to spiral down the toilet. As the saying goes, we deserve the
government/world we allow. And,
evidently the collective consciousness of the United States has chosen based on
the illusion of morality, as well as their fears and nightmares instead of
their hopes and dreams. There will
certainly be a bush-el full of lessons as we continue to raise our awareness
and receive our "master's degree" in this "University of
Life."
Email www.globalresearch.ca
The real reason for the upcoming US
attack on Iran is its plans to create a euro-denominated market for oil. The
Iranians saw what happened to Saddam, who was whipsawed by being forced to
disarm and then attacked on the pretense that he had not disarmed. Iran's continued effort to produce nuclear
arms is an indication that it does not intend to make the same mistake. Who can blame the Iranians for wanting
nuclear arms for self-defense?
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