The Congress

The political system of the United States is divided into several branches of power. The most powerful branch is the Congress. Congress can independently execute many powers and thus satisfy the people they represent. Alas, this is not always the case, and often Congress does not act in accordance to public opinion. There are two ways to analyze Congress: in theory and in practice. In theory, the Congress represents Americans and in practice they often represent their special interests.
Congress, as granted by Article I of the United States Constitution, has more power than any other branch in the American Government. The Constitution states that Congress shall “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States.” In theory, Congress appears to satisfy our representative democracy. Legislators are supposed to determine their votes on laws by how their constituents feel on the issues. Congresspersons are elected to represent the people and make decisions that the people allegedly cannot make themselves. Since, both major parties (Republicans and Democrats) our in Congress, Americans of various ideological views are supposed to be satisfied, to an extent. It is also key to note that, party leadership is fairly divided in Congress. Each party has a Majority Leader, Minority Leader, Majority Whip, Minority Whip, Chairman of the Conference, and various committees. Both public and private bills are introduced in Congress.
Unfortunately, Congress’ power and service to the American people is merely limited to theory in most instances. In practice, Congress do not represent Americans’ views and are actually subjected to the highest level of criticism amongst governmental bodies, with approval ratings often below ten percent. Well, there certainly is a reason for this. American citizens feel that Congress serve private and special interests rather than the majority of Americans’ interests. There are various examples that demonstrate why this statement is accurate. Mostly it is because members of Congress feel they have to vote the same as the other members or vote party line; there are few challenging personalities. For example, Congressman Ron Paul, a challenger, can testify to this when he voted against the War in Iraq and voted against the Patriot Act. Paul was one of the few Congresspersons to vote against these measures, and he suggests that other members of Congress may have voted for them to avoid being unpopular and therefore unelectable. In more recent examples, the gigantic $700 Billion (many say it is actually in the trillions) Wall Street bailout was an action the majority of the American public did not favor and yet Congress passed it anyway. Another example is President Barack Obama’s Stimulus Package, which once again most Americans do not want. The people feel this package does not satisfy their needs, but rather special interests and certain constituents. This all brings in the factor of party domination, which currently is the Democrats. So, the Democrats can use this package to spend money on their special, political interests, such as research for Global Warming. If you asked most Americans, even after viewing An Inconvenient Truth, they would not support spending millions on such an issue that does not stimulate the economy.
In closing, the Congress is the center of the United States Government because it is granted the most powers in the Constitution, but unfortunately it does not execute its powers as it should in theory to represent the people that elect them.

Schenck v. US (1919)

1)Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919) Decided by the White Court

2)Historical Background: Before we get into the specifics of the case, we must
understand the background history and culture of the time period in which it took place. At the time, the United States was involved in World War I and many American dissenters actively protested this involvement. In order to weaken or even abolish this anti-war movement, Congress passed various laws threatening free speech (often during wartime free speech rights are vulnerable to restraint). These laws included the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, which “prohibited saying or publishing anything disrespectful to the government of the United States.” Socialists, Communists, and Anarchists took the brunt of these laws. For example, Eugene V. Debs, leader of the Socialist Party, was sentenced to ten years in prison for saying ‘“master classes” caused the war, the “subject classes” would have to fight it.”

Facts: The defendant, Charles Schenck was the general secretary of the Socialist Party. He violated the Espionage Act of 1917 by mailing 15,000 leaflets insisting draftees and soldiers to resist the draft. He was arrested for this act of anti-war protest, being charged with “causing and attempting to cause insubordination in the military and naval forces of the United States” as well as disrupting the draft. Next, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison. So, he went to the last resort, the Supreme Court. The government would argue that Schenck is guilty for breaking the law, but Schenck’s argument was that his and his entire party’s First Amendment rights were stripped away and that the war was an immoral war being fought by the working class, but for the upper class.
3)Issue: Were Schenck’s statements in the leaflets protected by the First Amendment? According to the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech” if this is true then was the Espionage Act and similar laws unconstitutional? Should Schenck stay behind bars?

4) Decision: The Supreme Court, in a 9-0 decision, upheld Schenck’s conviction. Were Schenck’s statements protected as political speech? No. Was the Espionage Act and similar laws unconstitutional? No. Should Schenck stay behind bars? Yes. All in the eyes of the Supreme Court!

5) Reason: According to the Supreme Court, Schenck’s statements put people in danger. This case created the famous, “clear and present danger” rule. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing panic. The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.” So, was the Espionage Act constitutional? The Supreme Court argued that the law was reasonable in wartime and that such “political speech” was not protected, especially if it caused harm to others.

My opinion: I wholeheartedly disagree with every decision the Supreme Court made in this case and I feel we have come incredibly far (in terms of free speech rights), even in our modern, Patriot Act driven times. If the Supreme Court were faced with this case today they would absolutely overrule Schenck’s conviction. At least I hope so! Following this case, various Supreme Court decisions ruled in favor of similar incendiary speech, contradicting this decision. Firstly, the leaflets did not contain any statements making threats to draftees or soldiers if they did not conform to Schenck’s pleas. He merely urged men to resist the draft. Secondly, I think the Espionage Act was a “clear and present danger” in itself! The law was unconstitutional because it severed Americans’ right to free speech and specifically persecuted dissident voices, like the Socialist Party. Finally, I think all charges against Schenck and any other First Wave of the Red Scare victims should have been dropped, if they were clearly unconstitutional, as in this case. This event in our history is highly significant because it demonstrates how easily our civil liberties can be removed; a theme unfortunately not foreign to us in modern times.

I used http://www.oyez.org/cases and http:/www.infoplease.com/us/supreme-court/cases and my conscience.

Ralph Nader: An American Hero

We all know him. Love him or hate him, Ralph Nader has shined for over five decades as one of America’s greatest leaders. Instead of holding public office or becoming CEO of a major corporation, Nader has led his people through mostly the democratic means he strives for on a daily basis.
Ralph Nader was born on February 27, 1934 to Nathra and Rose Nader. Nader proved to be a determined and excelling student, and went on to attend two Ivy League colleges, Princeton University and Harvard Law School. He became a successful attorney, displaying the clear leadership qualities of being able to stand up for what one believes is just as well as defending one’s clients.
Our hero rose to immediate fame and national prominence in 1965 through the highly eye opening, automobile expose, Unsafe at Any Speed. The noteworthy work of muckraking journalism became an instant classic, enlightening ordinary American citizens to politicians in Washington on how the automobile industry, particularly General Motors, were producing unsafe vehicles for the American public.
The fame paved the way for further legislation regarding automobile safety as well as Nader’s own career as a “Consumer Advocate.” This self-proclaimed title has made him the prominent American leader, people recognize him as. He began to form various non-profit organizations supporting consumer protection and other interests of the people. With such prestige, Nader became a major leader in social activism. It is safe to say much of his leadership style has been democratic. However, this is certainly not true of all his organizations. With close inspection of their structures, one can see that Nader exhibits other forms of leadership as well.
By the early 1970s, Ralph Nader had inspired hundreds of young men and women to become activists and increase their participation in the political process. These devout followers of the consumer advocate came to be known as “Nader’s Raiders.” These apprentices fronted dozens of Nader’s non-profit organizations and interest research groups, researching anything to do with governmental, corporate, or congressional corruption, amongst new ways to protect the American consumer at all times.
As a leader, Nader sets himself as a great role model for his employees or co workers, depending on the organization. He is efficient, determined, and respectable; qualities necessary for a strong leader. In terms of specific styles, Nader displays democratic leadership because he makes his best attempts to listen to all of his workers’ opinions. In many ways his organizations are free rein. Nader creates an organization and then leaves the decisions up to the members themselves, where they run mostly everything, while he just oversees their conduct and behavior. His organizations could be seen as self-managed teams in this sense as well; small groups focus on specific issues, with one issue for a specific group. One group will take an environmental issue, while another may focus on health concerns, and yet another on economic policies, and so on. Finally, another leadership style the man demonstrates is one that is quite ironic and even shocking, considering his constant strive for democracy, rather than autocracy or rule of the many, rather than rule of the few. But, there is a reason why the documentary film capturing his life and career is humorously titled, An Unreasonable Man. Nader is a hardliner and must stick with his first and foremost objective: making sure the United States is a safe place for its inhabitants. Therefore, Nader is strict in making sure his workers are creating nothing less than perfect protection for American citizens and consumers. Alas, disagreements on how to deal with certain issues have led to the firing of employees. But, after all he wants to make sure he gets the job done.
Clearly, Ralph Nader’s diverse, but mostly democratic leadership style has been effective and has created a precedent for more and more leaders, businesses, and organizations. Before Nader, there was no such thing as consumer advocacy. Now, there are hundreds of thousands of such workers, most working for Nader himself. Without a doubt, he created this environment and now it is everywhere. Government agencies and businesses are far more careful than they were four or five decades ago. This is a direct result of Nader’s involvement. On a final note, in 1974 Ralph Nader was ranked the 4th most influential person in the country by the U.S. News and World Report; most likely the only person on the list that contributes millions each year to the over four dozen non-profit organizations that he founded.

Nader on Obama and Israel

This is just sad.

Letter to Obama

I just found this while searching for Anti-Obama voices, as I often do. I found this fascinating, educating, inspiring, and funny as well. This is just a letter Jello Biafra sent to Obama, and here is just something he wrote for his fans before the letter:

My Friends (couldn't resist, I had to say it),

Here, by semi-popular demand, are the suggestions I sent to Obama's Change.gov site for citizen input. It veers from writing to Obama himself to writing for the people who may actually read this. A lot of these ideas may be familiar from my albums and spoken word shows. For the most part I stayed away from the big no-brainers covered by others, and from ideas he would never agree to in a million years.

I did not vote for him because of his record in Congress voting for the PATRIOT Act, the anti-immigrant wall, numerous corporate breaks and subsidies, the FISA bill legalizing all the NSA's illegal wiretapping, etc. Nevertheless I, too, felt moved by his speech in the park that night in Chicago, seeing Jesse Jackson cry and wondering how Martin Luther King, Jr would have felt. I can only imagine how much this would have meant to Wesley Willis.

And, yes, I am glad that the adult version of the Eraserhead baby and his pitbull pal were not handed the keys to the White House.

I guess that's why it hurts so much more when the guy we all wish we could hang out with when we see him on TV turns around and backs the wrong position on something important. We expect this from the Clintons and Bidens of the world, but it hurts more with Obama because he knows better. He even said so on the FISA/NSA spying bill that he so eloquently opposed before he changed his vote. His economic and national security teams so far lack anyone from the "change" side of the Democratic Party. Not a good sign.

If you have ideas or comments, don't just send them to me, send them to Change.gov! Even I have the audacity to hope that if one of these ideas penetrates up top, it is a chance worth taking. Tom Hayden is one of many who have pointed out that it is up to this movement to drive Obama, not the other way around.

Jello Biafra

Here's the link for the letter:
http://www.alternativetentacles.com/page.php?page=jello_openletter

Enjoy!

Chomsky on Anarchism

This is more intelligent than simply "no government" or "violence." Haha, because that seems to be the typical responses I hear when students are asked what anarchists believe in. I recommend his book Chomsky on Anarchism. Btw, I apologize for the poor audio. Enjoy!

Inspiring Malcolm X Quotes

"A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything."

"Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery."

"Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today."

"I believe in a religion that believes in freedom. Any time I have to accept a religion that won't let me fight a battle for my people, I say to hell with that religion."

"I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color."

"I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence."

"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."

"If you're not ready to die for it, put the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary."

"Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it."

"Nonviolence is fine as long as it works."

"Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression."

"Stumbling is not falling."

"The Negro revolution is controlled by foxy white liberals, by the Government itself. But the Black Revolution is controlled only by God."

"There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time."

"Without education, you are not going anywhere in this world."

"You can't legislate good will - that comes through education."

"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."

"You don't have to be a man to fight for freedom. All you have to do is to be an intelligent human being."

"You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it."

My Influences

Here's a wide, diverse, list of folks and organizations that have influenced me in one way or another over the years. Many of these individuals or institutions only foster certain ideas that have shaped my philosophy, and not everything they said or did I agree with, and in fact many instances I condemn some of their views and actions. Ok, here we go, in no particular order:

1) Family, Friends, Teachers, and others in my life
2) Bill Hicks
3) John Lennon
4) Noam Chomsky
5) Howard Zinn
6) Abbie Hoffman/ Yippies
7) David Dellinger
8) Jerry Rubin
9) Emma Goldman
10) Jello Biafra
11)Quentin Tarantino
12) John Waters
13) Andy Warhol
14) RATM
15) Tom Hayden
16) Ralph Nader
17) Ron Paul/ YAL
18) Alex Jones/Info War/ Prison Planet
19) Allen Ginsburg
20) J.D. Salinger
21) Hunter S. Thompson
22) Ayn Rand
23) Jack Kerouac
24) Kurt Cobain
25) Z Magazine
26) Democracy Now
27) Republic Magazine
28)Friedrich Nietzsche
29) Ralph Waldo Emerson
30) Mahatma Gandhi
31) Martin Luther King
32) Malcolm X
33) Woody Allen
34) Leonard Peltier
35) Mumia Abu Jammal
36) Bob Marley
37) Che Guevara
39) Adam Smith
40) Karl Marx
41) Cynthia McKinney
42) Mike Gravel
43) George Orwell
44) Anton Lavey/Satanic Mass
45) Shamanism
46) Budda
47) Axis of Justice
48) Michael Moore
49) Stephen King
50) Black Panthers
51) White Panthers
52) AK Press
53) Alexander Berkman
54) Judge James P. Gray
55) Gary Webb
56) Kevin Booth
57) Libertarian Alternative
58) Bitch
59) Stanley Kubrick
60) George Carlin
61) Johnny Cash
62) Gore Vidal
63) Gary Johnson
64) Naomi Klein
65) Napoleon Hill
66) Cameron Crowe
67) Jesse Ventura
68) PJ O'Rourke
69) Thomas Jefferson
70) All Enlightenment thinkers, especially Voltaire
71) Jesus/Bible
72) Steve Albini
73) Henry Rollins
74) Ian Mackaye
75) Calvin Johnson
76) Daniel Johnston
77) Daniel and Phillip Berrigan
78) Richard Wright
79) Anti-Flag
80) Against Me!
81) Patrick Henry
82) Daniel Shays
83) Eugene V. Debbs
84) Woody Guthrie
85) Bob Dylan
86) Phil Ochs
87) John Sinclair
88) NORML
89) Cindy Sheehan
90) Lou Reed
91) Iggy Pop
92) Ramones
93) ADL
94) Rachel Scott/ Rachel's Challenge
95) Frank Zappa
96) Maynard James Keenan/Tool
97) Sigmund Freud
98) Carl Jung
99) Lenny Bruce
100) Richard Pryor
..... and too many others to mention. Maybe I'll do a part 2 sometime.

Seasons Greetings

I felt this was perfect for Christmas time! I strongly disagree with many of her points, but at the same time I can see her point and I find it extremely fascinating and, as history as demonstrated, very influential. I particularly detest how she only refers to humans as men, what about the other 50 %? haha. Enjoy!

Chomsky on Adam Smith

"I didn't do any research at all on Smith. I just read him. There's no research. Just read it. He's pre-capitalist, a figure of the Enlightenment. What we would call capitalism he despised. People read snippets of Adam Smith, the few phrases they teach in school. Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be. And therefore in any civilized society the government is going to have to take some measures to prevent division of labor from proceeding to its limits.

He did give an argument for markets, but the argument was that under conditions of perfect liberty, markets will lead to perfect equality. That's the argument for them, because he thought that equality of condition (not just opportunity) is what you should be aiming at. It goes on and on. He gave a devastating critique of what we would call North-South policies. He was talking about England and India. He bitterly condemned the British experiments they were carrying out which were devastating India.

He also made remarks which ought to be truisms about the way states work. He pointed out that its totally senseless to talk about a nation and what we would nowadays call "national interests." He simply observed in passing, because it's so obvious, that in England, which is what he's discussing -- and it was the most democratic society of the day -- the principal architects of policy are the "merchants and manufacturers," and they make certain that their own interests are, in his words, "most peculiarly attended to," no matter what the effect on others, including the people of England who, he argued, suffered from their policies. He didn't have the data to prove it at the time, but he was probably right.

This truism was, a century later, called class analysis, but you don't have to go to Marx to find it. It's very explicit in Adam Smith. It's so obvious that any ten-year-old can see it. So he didn't make a big point of it. He just mentioned it. But that's correct. If you read through his work, he's intelligent. He's a person who was from the Enlightenment. His driving motives were the assumption that people were guided by sympathy and feelings of solidarity and the need for control of their own work, much like other Enlightenment and early Romantic thinkers. He's part of that period, the Scottish Enlightenment.

The version of him that's given today is just ridiculous. But I didn't have to any research to find this out. All you have to do is read. If you're literate, you'll find it out. I did do a little research in the way it's treated, and that's interesting. For example, the University of Chicago, the great bastion of free market economics, etc., etc., published a bicentennial edition of the hero, a scholarly edition with all the footnotes and the introduction by a Nobel Prize winner, George Stigler, a huge index, a real scholarly edition. That's the one I used. It's the best edition. The scholarly framework was very interesting, including Stigler's introduction. It's likely he never opened The Wealth of Nations. Just about everything he said about the book was completely false. I went through a bunch of examples in writing about it, in Year 501 and elsewhere.

But even more interesting in some ways was the index. Adam Smith is very well known for his advocacy of division of labor. Take a look at "division of labor" in the index and there are lots and lots of things listed. But there's one missing, namely his denunciation of division of labor, the one I just cited. That's somehow missing from the index. It goes on like this. I wouldn't call this research because it's ten minutes' work, but if you look at the scholarship, then it's interesting.

I want to be clear about this. There is good Smith scholarship. If you look at the serious Smith scholarship, nothing I'm saying is any surprise to anyone. How could it be? You open the book and you read it and it's staring you right in the face. On the other hand if you look at the myth of Adam Smith, which is the only one we get, the discrepancy between that and the reality is enormous," Noam Chomsky, Class Warfare.

I'll have to read some Smith to find out on my own, but this is definitely intriguing.

Nobama!

Here's a list of great Obama critics, besides me:

1) Ralph Nader
2) Alex Jones
3) Noam Chomsky
4) Ron Paul
5) Mike Gravel
6)Mr. B
7)David Icke
8) Jello Biafra
9) Iraq Vets Against the War ( Kelly Dougherty, the executive director made this great point: “Obama ran his campaign around the idea the war was not legitimate, but it sends a very different message when you bring in people who supported the war from the beginning.”)
10) Zack De La Rocha
And countless others

WWII in Claymation

Chomsky on Obama's Cabinet Selections

He strikes again!

Recommended Reading

1) 1984 by George Orwell

2) Black Boy by Richard Wright

3) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

4) Manufacturing Consent by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky

5) A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

6) Black Panthers Speak

7) Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman

8) Yippie Manifesto by Jerry Rubin

9) Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It by Judge Jim Gray

10) The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

There will be more subversive book in the future!

Classic Yippie Moment

Jerry doesn't let Phil get away here. It's too bad he sold out later on.

Chomsky on War Crimes

If you're a Noam Chomsky fan, then you've probably heard this provocative statement plenty of times: "if the standards of the Nuremberg Trials were applied, then every post World War II American president would have been hanged as a war criminal." Here are some of each president's war crimes, according to Chomsky, from Truman to Clinton (this is taken from a 1996 interview with Tom Morello) :

Well, with Truman you could start with, shortly after he entered office there was the bombing of Hiroshima, which maybe one could give an argument for -- well, I don't think so -- but it is almost impossible to give an argument for the bombing of Nagasaki. That was mostly just trying out a new weapon to see if it would work. Then there was an utterly gratuitous bombing, a one thousand plane raid at the end of the war -- right in fact after Japan surrendered -- called the "finale," the grand finale. Then comes, for example, the support for the brutal counter-insurgency campaign in Greece, which killed about 150,000 people to basically restore Nazi collaborators and demolish the resistance. And then we could go on from there.

Eisenhower. The Eisenhower administration, the Truman and Eisenhower administration, the bombings -- whatever you think about the Korean War, and there is a pretty complicated story when you really look at it, but nevertheless the bombings in North Korea in 1951 and 1952 was just an outright war crime. You can read in the Air Force history about how in the Eisenhower years they had nothing left to bomb, everything was flat, so they just bomb dams, which they exalt how wonderful it was to see the water flooding down and killing people and wiping out the crops and so on. Well people were hanged for that, for less than that. They were hanged for opening dikes in Nuremberg. And then again we can proceed with what happened in Guatemala and elsewhere where it was a terrible crime in the Eisenhower years.

Kennedy is not even worth discussing. The invasion in South Vietnam -- Kennedy attacked South Vietnam, outright. In 1961-1962 he sent Air Force to start bombing villages, authorized napalm. Also laid the basis for the huge wave of repression that spread over Latin America with the installation of Neo-Nazi gangsters that were always supported directly by the United States. That went on and in fact picked up under Johnson.

In the Nixon years, for example, the bombing of inner Cambodia in 1973 was a monstrous crime. It was just massacring peasants in inner Cambodia. It isn't much reported here because nobody paid attention, but it was quite a part in helping create the basis for the Khmer Rouge. Well, the CIA estimate is that 600,000 people were killed in the course of those US actions, either directed or actually carried out by the United States.

In the Carter years there were major crimes, for example the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, which happened to start under Ford and led to the nearest thing to genocide since the holocaust, maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of the population has been slaughtered. That was using 90% US arms. In the Carter years, when the Indonesians were actually running out of arms in their attack on this country, Carter actually increased the flow of arms in 1978, which was the worst peak of the slaughter. Carter was backing Somoza and his national guard, openly and with direct military and diplomatic support at a time when they had killed about 40,000 people in the terror of the last days of their regime. Again, that's a sample.

Going on to the Reagan years, its not even a question. In fact the US was condemned by the World Court during the Reagan years for its "unlawful use of force," meaning aggression in Nicaragua. In Central America alone, maybe 200,000 people or so were slaughtered in a very brutal fashion by US run programs. In southern Africa about 1.5 million people were killed and over $60 billion of damage were done according to the UN commission which reviewed it later from 1980 to 1988. That's from South African atrocities that the US was directly supporting. Then, again we could go on. Well Bush, we've already talked about him, but the invasion of Panama for example was simply outright aggression. It was condemned internationally -- the US was able to veto the security counsel condemnations, that doesn't change the fact that they were there.

When we move on to the Clinton years, one of his first acts within a few months was to send missiles to bomb Baghdad. Well, he didn't kill a huge amount of people, only I think 8 or so. But there was absolutely no pretext, there wasn't even a pretext. I mean it was to show what a tough guy he is. In fact the pretext was so ludicrous, it's embarrassing to repeat it. The pretext was that this was self defense against armed attack, because two months earlier there had been a failed attempt by someone who might or might not have been Iraqi, no one knew at the time, to kill Bush or something like that. I mean, it's just ridiculous. About half of military aid and training to Latin America under Clinton was going to Columbia, which has absolutely the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, killing thousands of people in a horrifying fashion. These are all crimes. I don't think it's hard to set up a bill of indictment if somebody wants to.

Now, for post-1996 foreign policy, here are just some war crimes:

Clinton armed and funded vicious dictators in Israel and Turkey. Turkish citizens, particularly suffered through some of the worst tortures known to man.

Well, Bush pretty much goes without saying. I'll just make this simple: the entire War on Terrorism.

So, do I think these rich, white guys should be hanged? No, I don't believe in the death penalty. But, I do believe in social justice, so they should be brought to trial for their crimes, as any other citizen would.