[Peace] [Sdas] Fwd: Kucinich - Stop governing by fear (fwd)

[parenti susan rose]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 05:52:13 GMT
From: manni at snafu.de
To: sdas at onthejob.net
Subject: [Sdas] Fwd: Kucinich - Stop governing by fear

Forwarded Message:
> To: ps <portside at yahoogroups.com>
> From: portsideMod <portsidemod at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Kucinich - Stop governing by fear
> Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 18:01:19 -0800 (PST)
> -----
> We are Governed by Fear:
> An Interview with Congressman Dennis Kucinich
>
> By Scott Galindez
>
> March 14, 2002| t r u t h o u t
>
> TO.SG | Congressman Kucinich welcome to t r u t h o ut.
   I recently attended Americans For Democratic
> Action's "Our Democracy After 9-11: Can We Save It?"
> function in Los Angeles, and listened to you deliver
> your "Prayer for America..."
>
> KUCINICH | You were there?
>
> TO.SG | Yes, we posted the transcript on t r u t h o ut
   and received an enthusiastic response. It was one of
> the most widely read and re-distributed pieces we have
> ever published.
>
> KUCINICH | Wow, that's interesting
>
> TO.SG | In that speech in Los Angeles, you described
> the bunker mentality in Washington after September
> 11th. Could you elaborate a little on that?
>
> KUCINICH | That was even before I knew there were
> bunkers. I found out a couple of weeks later that there
> actually were bunkers. Members of the Administration
> had retreated to bunkers outside Washington so that
> they could keep the government going. The bunker
> mentality I referred to in my speech represents the
> presence of security and police and national guards,
> the jersey barriers that are everywhere, where we have
> to literally negotiate a labyrinth of concrete barriers
> in order to go to vote. Aesthetically, it is
> unacceptable, but we're talking about politically, in
> terms of a democracy, that's definitely not the message
> that you get. This is architecture worthy of a
> different form of government, shall we say.
>
> TO.SG | And that still exists?
>
> KUCINICH | Oh yes. What it does is -- the level of
> security creates a mentality of caution, and an
> underlying sense of fear. And when that's there, it has
> a way of affecting consciousness, like a virus can
> adversely affect a healthy organism. So, when members
> vote, you know all of us make decisions that are
> affected by the conditions under which we live and work
> --and our political, the socio-political reality at
> Capital Hill has been reconstructed. It is a reality
> which is socially affirmed. We have circumstances that
> are not conducive to healthy decision-making in a
> democratic society. In addition to that, members are
> not told why. There is no discussion of these things.
> It just happens.
>
> TO.SG | Okay. Also, within the last week, the reports
> surfaced concerning the contingency plan for using
> nuclear weapons against seven countries. Is that a
> major policy shift? Some people say it's not a shift,
> some say it is.
>
> KUCINICH | Of course it is. It is a major policy shift
> because - there are a number of things in the nuclear
> posturing here which need reviewing. Number one is the
> equation of conventional to nuclear weapons, and loose
> talk of a prerogative for a first strike. There is
> incautiousness. The report is riddled with a
> fundamental incautiousness about the dangers of the use
> of nuclear weapons. And the release of the report -
> which I have no doubt came from the Administration
> itself - was still another attempt to heighten the
> level of fear in the country and make it impossible for
> people to be able to make rational decisions as to what
> their own interest might be.
>
> TO.SG | The report also talked about developing new
> battlefield nuclear weapons ...
>
> KUCINICH | That is what I'm saying: they're equating
> the nuclear weapons with conventional weapons, which
> flies in the face of all science, because any nuclear
> explosion underground will send out shock waves, and a
> nuclear explosion underground can affect the water
> table. All nuclear explosions release debris that goes
> out into the atmosphere and changes the ambient air
> quality. You know this is all grotesquery, masquerading
> as serious public policy, and it's not acceptable,
> period.
>
> You see, it is one thing to say, "Well, this has
> existed in the past," this nuclear posture review --
> but that it would be released in a climate of such
> turmoil in the world: of conflict in the Middle East,
> of the United States bombing Afghanistan and planning
> an invasion of Iraq, and of the U.S. sending troops to
> various countries all over the world -- to inject into
> that a miasma, a nuclear threat, a resumption of not
> just the Cold War mentality, but the resumption of the
> psychology of first strike ...
>
> TO.SG | You proposed legislation for a Department of
> Peace.
>
> KUCINICH | Oh yes.
>
> TO.SG | What would the Department of Peace do?
>
> KUCINICH | Well, the purpose of a Department of Peace
> and the motivating factors involve a desire to make
> nonviolence an organizing principle in our society for
> domestic as well as international policy, and on an
> international level to seek to make war archaic. On a
> domestic level, to deal with issues such as child
> abuse, spousal abuse, domestic violence in the home,
> community relations challenges, racial violence,
> anything that exemplifies a lack of ability to deal
> with human relations, would be dealt with by the
> Department of Peace. And it's a cabinet level position,
> which would raise the whole issue of non-violence and
> conflict resolution to serious level of discussion in
> society.
>
> TO.SG | Okay, you also proposed legislation to ban
> weapons in space. What's its status and why is it so
> important?
>
> KUCINICH | It is very important with an Administration
> that wants to use space as the next platform for its
> weapons, so that America can achieve hegemony in space.
> You know, it is almost some kind of a 21st century
> parody of the Spanish Armada, of yesteryear, seeking to
> rule the seas. Now it's the United States trying to
> seize the highest ground in the universe, space. It is
> not our business to do. There is no other nation that
> has the capacity to mount an attack against the United
> States from space. So, what's this about? Perhaps some
> crude attempt at -- using space as the next junkyard
> for military contractors.
>
> TO.SG | What can readers do to help take the country
> back?
>
> KUCINICH | That is exactly the right question. The
> response to my speech has been just electrifying. I
> have had over 15,000 emails in the last three weeks,
> and they are just pouring into my personal email. I
> mean, it's just like one of those personal emails like
> you get your friends to send things to, and all of
> sudden it starts to get flooded.
>
> So, we are organizing a whole new approach to create a
> new political movement in this country. If you want to
> keep your eyes at our site,-- which is
> www.thespiritoffreedom.com -- we are going to be
> putting stuff on the website that talks about
> organizing. So we are going to help people get
> organized all around the country in a nonviolent way,
> in a creative way, in a way which is empowering to
> people, and which can help people assert their own
> basic rights as citizens of this country and as
> citizens of the world, because this is not just about
> America.
>
> Peace is in our national interest. International
> cooperation is in our national interest. We need to
> have grand civic dialogue about what we might be able
> to do here to change the direction of the nation. It
> certainly needs change. We can spend an extra
> forty-five billion dollars this year for military when
> they can't even keep track of their own budget, and
> still we have forty-two million people without adequate
> health insurance, senior citizens splitting pills in
> order to try to meet their health requirements and
> still protect their budget. We have schools that are
> still falling apart with programs that don't work. We
> have so much to do. Yet, society is becoming
> militarized.
>
> People want change. The fifteen thousand emails in the
> last three weeks told me that people want a different
> direction. I think they are representative of millions
> of Americans who want to take a different approach.
> They don't want to be trapped into a condition that the
> level of support for war is equated with patriotism.
>
>
>
>
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