Ever since the Chinese government  invaded and occupied Tibet in 1959, the top leaders in Beijing have fostered the fiction that Tibet is part of China. The repression used to deny the independence of the Tibetan people, meanwhile, has amounted to cultural genocide. The recent uprising of monks and common people in Tibet and the neighboring region has exposed the brutal truth of Chinese policy.

No matter how much the Chinese government pretends the peace-loving Dalai Lama is a monster inciting bloody rebellion, no informed person anywhere on earth believes such wild propaganda. If fact, the Dalai Lama threatened to resign if Tibetan protestors continued being violent.

By the very same moral reasoning that caused the United States to boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the United States should boycott the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Sadly, that won’t happen. Read the rest of this entry »

Today are the pivotal presidential primary elections in Ohio and Texas. By late tonight, we may know whether Barak Obama can seal the deal or whether Hillary Clinton will continue her bid for the Democratic Party nomination at the convention in Denver this August.

Whatever the outcome today, Hillary’s campaign has become so shrill that she had to concede her shrillness during the silliness this past weekend on Saturday Night Live.

Clinton’s shrill attacks on Obama in recent weeks, like refusing on 60 Minutes to overtly declare she knows Obama is not a Muslim, convey much more than a desperate fear of losing the race for the presidency. Her snide behavior bespeaks a trait of vindictiveness and ruthlessness that many find distasteful.

If Hillary Clinton were to win the nomination, can her shrill voice compete with the sedate tones of John McCain? Unless she can lower her pitch an octave and practice daily mediation enough to project calmness instead of fear, my concern is that the visceral backlash could hand the election to the Republicans. Read the rest of this entry »

When the camera pans across the stage at the Democratic and Republican presidential debates, I’m hard pressed to find a candidate that feels authentic.

Look at the top tier candidates on the Republican side. Mitt Romney oozes insincere charm. Mike Huckabee feels like an “aw shucks” huckster. John McCain has earned a reputation for being the real deal, but even he’s apparently gone faux to appease the right wing of his party.

Now look at the top tier candidates on the Democratic side. Hillary Rodham Clinton initially tried to suppress her one moment of authentic emotion in New Hampshire, and now she’s smugly milking that moment for voter sympathy without taking off her practiced smile again. Barack Obama began with full presence, but the more he advances in the polls, the more he seems to be speaking by rote and saying what his handlers tell him to say, much like Robert Redford in the classic film, “The Candidate.” John Edwards lets his passion show when he talks about the widening gap between the rich and poor, but is he donating his millions to fund anything more socially significant than his own campaign?

The only two candidates who feel real to me are Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. They can afford to be themselves on stage because they both know the mainstream press has brainwashed the vast unthinking majority of Americans into believing these two outspoken candidates are not “viable.” While the two men agree strongly on defending our evaporating rights and liberties, they disagree just as strongly on monetary and fiscal policies. I wish we could bundle the two together into one progressive/libertarian super candidate that the corporate media could not ignore.

Meanwhile, the presidential campaigns continue with the press focusing on the horse race and largely ignoring the candidates’ positions on major issues beyond mentioning in passing which constituency prefers this or that position.

Between mostly fake candidates and mostly fake news coverage, what chance does democracy have? We might as well populate the stage at the presidential debates with inflatable dolls hooked up to iPod recordings.

Pop singer Britney Spears is the latest casualty of media madness. The press frenzy over her apparently impulsive decision to shave her head is totally out of proportion to the significance of her act. If she’s having emotional problems right now, the paparazzi probably is contributing to her distress by following her around like a pack of wild dogs.

The insane furor over her recent visit to a tattoo parlor proves my point. If you see any of the ABC News video footage from the scene, note the look of panic on her face as she cowers behind her bodyguard pushing through the press mob outside the place.

In my view, the press needs to leave the woman alone! If she has life issues to face, give her the respect you would give your own sister and let her deal with them. The fact she chose to be a performer does not give the media a right to violate her privacy.

The press fixation on her estranged husband, Kevin Federline, is equally absurd. What difference does it make to the fate of the world whether the couple stays together or not? Will it end the genocide in Darfur? Will it create peace between Isrealis and Palestinians? Will it get President Bush to stop thwarting the acts of Congress with his Signing Statements?

No, in the big scheme of things, whether their marriage endures really matters to no one but them. The press should butt out and stop exploiting them for the sake of selling ads that target the fans of these pop stars. The same thing applies to all the other entertainers who become the objects of media feeding frenzies.

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AMID all the celebrating over the Democrats taking control of the U.S. House and Senate in the 2006 elections, I hear a faint hollowness in the exuberant self-congratulations among local to national Democrats.

When historians sit down to analyze the major forces that contributed to the Democratic victory at the polls on November 7, the reasons will not be that Democrats had the best political strategy nor that Democrats had the clearest vision for the future of the nation.

I’m convinced the chief reason for the Democratic victory will be identified as blatant Republican corruption and gross incompetence. Primary factors include the mistaken and mismanaged war in Iraq, the failure to respond effectively to Hurricane Katrina, indictments of Republican lawmakers and lobbyists, and the cover-up of a Republican lawmaker’s sexual misconduct with minors. For these and related errors and hypocrisies, a majority of Americans simply withdrew their support from the Republican Party.

Republicans lost the right to govern the country because they’ve governed the country so badly.

Democrats did field a lot of excellent candidates, to be sure, and not all were successful. For example, Colorado candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, Democrats Nancy Paccione and Bill Winter, lost their respective races against ultra-conservative Republican incumbents Marilyn Musgrave and Tom Tancredo. In other races, Democrats barely squeaked by, such as Virginia Democrat Jim Webb replacing incumbent Republican Senator George Allen by only 0.39 percent of the votes.

A progressive Democratic agenda cannot be credited for a victory. While many progressive Democrats did retain their seats in Congress, to the best of my knowledge, all the new Democrats elected to the House and Senate are moderates or conservatives. The political views of the nation remain right of center. By no means can we say the country has swung to the left.

The sad truth is that the Democratic party still lacks a cohesive, inspiring vision of how they want to govern the United States. Democrats are great at identifying campaign issues, such as jobs, education, health care, social security, and national security. Knowing the bridge and wedge issues in a race, however, is not the same thing as having a practical plan for how to resolve those issues. Knowing what voters care about in the world is not the same thing as having a vivid picture of the world you want to create, a vision that moves people’s hearts and minds and souls, a vision that stirs people into taking action.

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PROGRESSIVES and libertarians need to unite to get out the vote on Election day. Together they can help to preserve our civil liberties in the face of renewed assaults on our natural rights by the Bush administration.The latest example of the growing threat is the Military Commissions Act of 2006, popularly called the detainees interrogation bill, signed last week by President Bush.

The new law legalizes the president’s ongoing practice of declaring any foreign national anywhere on earth as an “enemy combatant” and then detaining that person indefinitely without any trial and without any evidence the detention is warranted.

Far worse, the law now lets the government detain U.S citizens as enemy combatants. The language about lending “material support” to terrorism is so vague that it may apply to anyone who dares to peacefully protest administration policies.

Essentially, the new law voids all habeas corpus rights for detainees, who will not be able to challenge the legality of their arrests in open court. By merely declaring that someone is a terrorist or else a supporter, the Bush administration could toss that person into prison and throw away the key.

Further, the law allows all but the most extreme forms of torture when interrogating detainees, such as simulated drowning (called “waterboarding”), and it permits the use of their coerced testimony and hearsay evidence in military tribunals. The new law also attempts to immunize the president and others in his administration from prosecution for human rights abuses that under the Geneva Conventions are considered to be war crimes.

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