Upcoming Town Hall Meetings in Campbell

Please join me on Thursday, May 8th and Thursday, May 15th at the Campbell Library for two town hall meetings. Both meetings will begin at 6 p.m.

The Campbell Library is located at 77 Harrison Ave.

Myself and other Greens at San Jose State

Here's the article from the San Jose State Spartan Daily, describing a forum that I participated in last week. Here's perhaps the most interesting part:

The event was supposed to include representatives from the Green Party, the Socialist and Liberation Party, the American Independent Party, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

Jerry Denim, the American Independent Party representative, didn't show up, and as the event was set up, the Democratic and Republican representatives were nowhere to be found either.

At an event for students and other locals about the importance of politics in life, officials from the Democratic and Republican parties didn't even bother showing up, leaving their party views to be represented by students. Jim Doyle, Drew Johnson and I were more than happy to talk to over 40 people about Green Party views. If the two major parties continue to ignore the American people, the American people will ignore them.

Pentagon fed talking points to TV stations' military analysts

Under the Bush administration, the Pentagon has recruited a group of former military men to repeat the administration's talking points on news networks, according to an article in today's New York Times:

Many [analysts] also shared with Mr. Bush’s national security team a belief that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation’s will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war.

This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from “enemy” propaganda during Vietnam.

“We lost the war — not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars — taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach “MindWar” — using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.”

The Bush administration is not the first to use the media in order to affect Americans' perception of war, nor will it be the last. American citizens do not naturally desire war; the assumption that a military solution is the best option is a message that the Pentagon systematically sends out through as many media as possible.

The American people deserve a voice in Congress that stands up against the military propaganda, and the 15th District has a chance to elect that voice in November.

Bush approved torture, and Congress still does nothing

ABC and other news sources confirmed earlier this month that President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice and others approved specific instances of torture in the years since September 11, 2001. Congress has yet to punish the executive branch. Reactions on Keith Olberman's show from Jonathan Turley of George Washington University:



Money quote: "Congress is like a convention of Claude Rains actors.... No one is doing anything about it. And so what we have is the need for someone to get off the theater and move to the actual in going and trying to investigate these crimes."

The Democrats and Republicans both protect the military-industrial complex, and refuse to rein in the misuse of our military forces. The United States cannot afford to be a country that tortures, and neither of the two major parties seems to understand that. Ending torture is a principal part of what we need to do to redeem our reputation abroad, and when elected, I'll do more than just talk about it.