Originally published in The Michigan Citizen

For the last 40 years, the city of Detroit, the state of Michigan and the United States as a whole have struggled to come to grips with the week of anger and violence that ravaged the city on those hot summer days and nights in July 1967. Was it riot or rebellion? Why did it happen? Who is to blame? What has changed and what hasn’t?

These questions and many others have been asked and answered for decades now, but somehow the questions remain. The answers begat more questions. The frustration and fury of that time linger for many, mostly lying dormant, but rearing their ugly heads from time to time.

(more…)

On Monday, July 23, activists in Detroit and Washington DC plan protests and demonstrations at Congressman John Conyers’ district and Capitol Hill offices, and citizens all over the country will converge on the district offices of other Congress members. Their demands? Impeach Bush and Cheney now.

But on the eve of this highly publicized action, David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org reports that Conyers may be ready to impeach against the wishes of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Or so he says…

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has said that if three more Congress Members get behind impeachment he will start the impeachment proceedings.
(more…)

What is it going to take for Congress, the media and the American people to wise up and impeach Dick Cheney?

Obviously it isn’t enough that he lied us into an illegal, unjust and immoral war. It doesn’t matter that he ignored a Congressional subpoena and still refuses to release details of his energy task force that may have outlined the administration’s imperial oil-grabbing tactics pre-911. It makes no difference that the vice president ordered the outing of the undercover CIA operative in charge of finding Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” because her husband publicly refuted the administration’s falsehoods about said wmds.

The fact that he lead the military in its use of interrogation tactics that amount to torture (until Congress allowed the administration to change the definition of torture), is apparently irrelevant. No one seems to care that Cheney was in charge of war games on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001 that may have slowed military and air traffic control response to plane hijackings. And shooting that guy in the face? Well, it could have happened to any experienced hunter shooting caged quails.

Now it is revealed the vice president hasn’t been complying with an executive order that requires executive branch employees to report on the nature of the classified documents they create. The VP justifies his noncompliance by claiming that his role as President of the Senate separates him from the executive branch. Who cares what the Constitution says, right?
(more…)

The Bush regime’s already flimsy case for holding 385 detainees at concentration camps in Guantanamo, Cuba fell apart this week when two military judges dismissed the cases of the only two detainees who face charges.

All charges were dropped against Canadian Omar Khadr and the case against Yemeni national Salim Ahmed Hamdan was thrown out because the Pentagon failed to establish proper jurisdiction for the tribunals at its island purgatory. But this partial victory only complicates and prolongs the incarceration of the men and boys who have been held in violation of the Geneva Conventions for five years.
(more…)

Cindy Sheehan has had it. The mother who began her crusade to end the Iraq War by camping outside George Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch after her son, Casey, was killed in Iraq, issued her resignation as “the face” of the anti-war movement in a post on the DailyKos website this Memorial Day.

The activist has endured a storm of criticism throughout her two-year campaign, and that storm grew stronger last week when she renounced ties with the Democratic Party over their refusal to cut off funding for the imperial occupation in Iraq.

I am deemed a radical because I believe that partisan politics should be left to the wayside when hundreds of thousands of people are dying for a war based on lies that is supported by Democrats and Republican alike. It amazes me that people who are sharp on the issues and can zero in like a laser beam on lies, misrepresentations, and political expediency when it comes to one party refuse to recognize it in their own party. Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on. People of the world look on us Americans as jokes because we allow our political leaders so much murderous latitude and if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland. I am demonized because I don’t see party affiliation or nationality when I look at a person, I see that person’s heart. If someone looks, dresses, acts, talks and votes like a Republican, then why do they deserve support just because he/she calls him/herself a Democrat?

(more…)

House Judiciary Chair Rep. John Conyers of Detroit has lost friends in the activist community since reversing his position and backing off his calls for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

It seems like a political lifetime ago since Conyers introduced House Resoultion 635 asking for an investigation of possible impeachable offenses by Bush and Cheney. During his congressional campaign in 2006, Conyers won the votes of Detroit impeachment activists by implying that he would continue his pursuit of impeachment proceedings.

But after his election, when the chair of the House Judiciary Committee was in his grasp, the Congressman bowed to pressure from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and parroted her decree that “impeachment is off the table.” He has failed to place H.R. 333, Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s introduction of articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney, on the House Judiciary Committee calendar.

Last week another Conyers from Detroit gained national attention by making a stand in favor of Bush/Cheney impeachment. Detroit City Council member Monica Conyers, John’s wife, introduced a resolution that would recommend that Detroit’s congressmembers introduce articles of impeachment against Bush and Cheney.
(more…)

A look at online media reports about the death of Rev. Jerry Falwell show that most are unsympathetic… Headlines read: “PRAISE GOD, JERRY FALWELL IS DEAD“, “God Angrily Awaiting Jerry Falwell’s Arrival” and “Jerry Falwell Finally Dead By God’s Hand.”

According to Wonkette.com, “Falwell has supported South African apartheid, called AIDS an invention of Jesus to punish gays, attacked Martin Luther King and U.S. civil rights, and blamed 9/11 on feminists and homosexuals.“

Jerry Falwell? Peace out.

Wonkette, Gawker

The US Senate just scored a major victory for America’s drug dealers.

I’m not talking about the “dope boys” pushing nickels and dimes on the corner. I’m talking about the nation’s REAL drug dealers. The big ballers - the major pharmaceutical companies who raked in over $600 billion in global prescription drug spending in 2006.

On May 9, the Senate passed a bill that, according to The New York Times,

…gives the Food and Drug Administration sweeping new power to police drug safety, order changes in drug labels, regulate advertising and restrict the use and distribution of medicines found to pose serious risks to consumers.

While the measure takes small steps in an effort to ease consumer fears about the FDA’s questionable drug approval methods, the bill renewed the government’s deal with the devil that allows drug companies to pay fees that speed up new drug testing, review and approval. The Times quotes Public Citizen’s Health Research Group director Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe as saying, “The bill’s improvements in F.D.A. authority are important but inadequate. The bill would increase collaboration between the agency and the drug industry, by increasing the agency’s reliance on user fees to finance drug reviews.”

The bill also fails to legalize the importation of lower cost drugs from Canada or to cap the rising cost of medicine. In a society that dopes up on legal and illegal substances of many stripes, drug dealers will have a stronger grip on American bodies and wallets thanks to our politicians.
(more…)

The Barack Obama bandwagon is picking up steam. In many circles, the junior senator from Illinois is being compared to John Kennedy. He is young, good looking, charismatic and yes, articulate, providing a resounding echo of the JFK experience.

However, when NeoConservatives start issuing accolades for a Democratic candidate, it’s time to take a closer look.

From London, England’s TimesOnline:

But last week a surprising new name joined the chorus of praise for the antiwar Obama – that of Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century in the late 1990s, which called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Kagan is an informal foreign policy adviser to the Republican senator John McCain, who remains the favoured neoconservative choice for the White House because of his backing for the troops in Iraq.

But in an article in the Washington Post, Kagan wrote approvingly that a keynote speech by Obama at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was “pure John Kennedy”, a neocon hero of the cold war.

So warmongering neocons dig Obama? The presidential candidate has expressed his opposition to the Iraq War, and says he was against it from the beginning, but his own words show that he is not an advocate of peace.

Blues Talkin

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, MR. PRESIDENT!

It’s May 1, the fourth anniversary of President George W. Bush’s triumphant “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, where he announced that major combat operations in Iraq were over. The US military had successfully overthrown a sovereign government and taken the Iraqi nation hostage. Champange for everyone!

Because of the deteriorating security situation there, the widespread corruption, billions of dollars in cash missing and the fact that many of the projects Bush bragged about are now falling apart, the public believes things are going poorly in Iraq. Despite the grumbling and moaning that we hear, keen observers will clearly perceive, through the 20/20 vision that four years of hindsight allow, that the invasion and occupation of Iraq have been highly profitable ventures for Bush, Cheney, their families and the neoconservatives who led us to war.

The mission has been accomplished indeed.
(more…)

Billed as the biggest sit down dinner in the world, the 52nd Annual NAACP Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner attracted 10,000 to Detroit’s Cobo Hall on April 29. Dinner itself was unremarkable. (Reports confirm that each entree - cajun beef, some unidentified fish or a mushroom pasta - was equally mediocre.)

What was most important about this dinner though was the guest list. The governor, both of Michigan’s US senators, several congress members, the mayor and other public officials, business and union leaders, entrepreneurs and preachers all joined grassroots activists to honor and support the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.

During the three and a half hour event Lifetime Achievement awards were given to Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, attorney and politician Joel Ferguson and former NAACP head Ernest Lofton. But the main attraction was the keynote address from the man described by several of the night’s speakers as “our president”, William Jefferson Clinton.
(more…)

Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refuses to step down over the politically motivated firing of eight US attorneys. His boss, President George W. Bush, continues to support Gonzo despite bipartisan calls for his ouster. However, new information about the attorney firings may take on greater relevance in a post-Don Imus world.

Reports have surfaced that at least two attorneys in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division were fired because they failed to file charges that would have helped disenfranchise Black voters.
(more…)

The American National Socialist Workers Party, (not to be confused with the Westland, Michigan based American Nazi Party) are trying to stir up racial hatred in Cincinnati.

The group wants to celebrate Hitler’s birthday by marching through the Queen City’s Over-The-Rhine community - ground zero for Cincinnati’s 2001 rebellion which was sparked after Cincy police killed over a dozen Black men in five years.

Recognizing the provocative and potentially violent nature of the Nazi request, the city wants to find a legal way to move the march.
(more…)

We’ve got another item to add to the list of Bush administration crimes. (As if we needed more, right?)

John Bolton admitted in a BBC interview that the US blocked truce negotiations during the 2006 Israeli attacks on Lebanon. The goal was to eliminate Hezbollah’s military capabilities first.

Over 1000 Lebanese and nearly 200 Israelis are reported to have died during the conflict. Mr. Bolton told the interviewer he was “damned proud of what we did.”

As a US citizen, I’m damned ashamed.

BBC News

Sisters are doin’ it, y’all!

Canada’s Governor General Michaelle Jean, the commander-in-chief of our northern neighbor’s military, visits war-ravaged Afghanistan, discusses policy with President Hamid Karzai and meets with Afghan women on International Women’s Day.

The question of whether women could be effective world leaders was answered long ago. But despite Jean’s powerful position, it seems there are still political (chauvanist? racial?) barriers for the African-Canadian leader to overcome.

Last year sources told The Canadian Press that Jean, who is commander-in-chief of Canada’s armed forces, had asked and was twice denied permission to visit Afghanistan because of security concerns.

That was despite visits by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor.

Former governor general Adrienne Clarkson visited Canadian troops in Kabul on New Year’s Day 2005.

Canada.com