[Mb-civic] FW: Chords for Change By Bruce Springsteen

[Michael Butler]

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From: ean at sbcglobal.net
Reply-To: ean at sbcglobal.net
Date: Sun, 08 Aug 2004 13:49:11 -0700
To: ean at sbcglobal.net
Subject: Chords for Change  By Bruce Springsteen

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/080604Z.shtml

   Chords for Change
    By Bruce Springsteen
    The New York Times

    Thursday 05 August 2004

    A nation's artists and musicians have a particular place in its social
and
political life. Over the years I've tried to think long and hard about what
it
means to be American: about the distinctive identity and position we have in
the world, and how that position is best carried. I've tried to write songs
that
speak to our pride and criticize our failures.

    These questions are at the heart of this election: who we are, what we
stand for, why we fight. Personally, for the last 25 years I have always
stayed
one step away from partisan politics. Instead, I have been partisan about a
set of ideals: economic justice, civil rights, a humane foreign policy,
freedom
and a decent life for all of our citizens. This year, however, for many of
us the
stakes have risen too high to sit this election out.

    Through my work, I've always tried to ask hard questions. Why is it that
the
wealthiest nation in the world finds it so hard to keep its promise and
faith
with its weakest citizens? Why do we continue to find it so difficult to see
beyond the veil of race? How do we conduct ourselves during difficult times
without killing the things we hold dear? Why does the fulfillment of our
promise as a people always seem to be just within grasp yet forever out of
reach?

    I don't think John Kerry and John Edwards have all the answers. I do
believe they are sincerely interested in asking the right questions and
working
their way toward honest solutions. They understand that we need an
administration that places a priority on fairness, curiosity, openness,
humility,
concern for all America's citizens, courage and faith.

    People have different notions of these values, and they live them out in
different ways. I've tried to sing about some of them in my songs. But I
have
my own ideas about what they mean, too. That is why I plan to join with many
fellow artists, including the Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., the
Dixie Chicks, Jurassic 5, James Taylor and Jackson Browne, in touring the
country this October. We will be performing under the umbrella of a new
group called Vote for Change. Our goal is to change the direction of the
government and change the current administration come November.

    Like many others, in the aftermath of 9/11, I felt the country's unity.
I don't
remember anything quite like it. I supported the decision to enter
Afghanistan
and I hoped that the seriousness of the times would bring forth strength,
humility and wisdom in our leaders. Instead, we dived headlong into an
unnecessary war in Iraq, offering up the lives of our young men and women
under circumstances that are now discredited. We ran record deficits, while
simultaneously cutting and squeezing services like afterschool programs. We
granted tax cuts to the richest 1 percent (corporate bigwigs, well-to-do
guitar
players), increasing the division of wealth that threatens to destroy our
social
contract with one another and render mute the promise of  "one nation
indivisible."

    It is through the truthful exercising of the best of human qualities -
respect
for others, honesty about ourselves, faith in our ideals - that we come to
life
in God's eyes. It is how our soul, as a nation and as individuals, is
revealed.
Our American government has strayed too far from American values. It is
time to move forward. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.



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    Bruce Springsteen is a writer and performer.

----

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1266305,00.html

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Kerry's war didn't end in the Mekong

Tarred as a flip-flopper by Bush, he hasn't wavered since Vietnam

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday July 22, 2004
The Guardian

John Kerry's political education is far deeper than that of senators who
have
merely legislated. He has journeyed to the heart of darkness many times and
emerged to tell the tale. It was not simply that Kerry's commander in
Vietnam
was the model of the blood-thirsty bombastic colonel in Apocalypse Now.
Kerry's combat experience didn't end in the Mekong, but moved into the
dangerous realm of high politics. From his first appearance on the public
stage, giving voice as a decorated officer to the anti-war disillusionment
of
Vietnam veterans, when Richard Nixon and his dirty-tricks crew targeted him,
he has uncovered cancers on the presidency. This is why the Bush
administration fears him. He has explored the dark recesses of contemporary
history, often without political reward. Tarred as a "flip flopper" by
Bush's
$85m TV ad campaign, Kerry in fact is one of the most consistent politicians
of his generation.
In his first month as a senator, in January 1985, he discovered the thread
that would unravel the Iran-contra scandal - the creation of an illegal
foreign
policy apparatus run out of the national security council by Reagan's
military
aide, Oliver North, and the CIA director, William Casey. Kerry had the
training
and instincts of a prosecutor. As a district attorney in Massachusetts, he
smashed the local mafia. Now, as senator, he has surrounded himself with
tough investigators. In south Florida, they found men accused of drug-
running who were shipping guns to the Nicaraguan contras and claiming to
be instructed by the NSC. They tracked down a contra adviser in Costa Rica
known as "Colonel Flaco", who had evidence that North was involved in
financing the contras with Colombian drug money. The path led further, to
Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and to Saudi funding sources. Kerry
won support from Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee to
launch an official investigation, in large part because of the drug aspect.
(Concerned about heroin addiction among Vietnam veterans, Kerry had
followed the geopolitics of drugs.)

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 North learned of Kerry's work and told the Secret Service and the FBI that
Kerry was protecting a possible presidential assassin. The FBI harassed
"Flaco" and determined he was no threat, but he was intimidated into
silence.
Republican staffers leaked information about Kerry's investigation to the
Reagan White House and justice department. An assistant US attorney in
Florida, prosecuting a case based on Kerry's leads, was ordered by the
justice department to drop the matter. Virtually the entire Washington press
corps dismissed Kerry's effort as a fantastic delusion and ignored it.

In October 1986, Kerry questioned the neoconservative assistant secretary of
state for Latin America, Elliot Abrams, who brazenly lied about foreign
funding for the contras. This testimony led, in time, to Abrams pleading
guilty
to a felony. (He was pardoned by Bush Snr and is now NSC chief for Middle
East policy.)

A month later, the Iran-contra story broke in a Lebanese newspaper.
However, Kerry was excluded from the congressional investigating
committee for the sin of having been prematurely right. As consolation, he
was given chairmanship of the subcommittee on terrorism, narcotics and
international operations. After three years, he reported that "individuals
who
provided support for the contras were involved in drug trafficking; the
supply
network of the contras was used by drug trafficking organisations; and
elements of the contras received financial and material assistance from drug
traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the US government had
information regarding the involvement, either while it was occurring, or
immediately thereafter."

Kerry's work on the contra-drugs connection led him to discover a link to
BCCI, an international banking operation that was a front for drug running,
money laundering and terrorism. He launched an investigation that exposed
its criminal "corporate spider web" in 1992. His report pointed to new areas
that should be investigated, including "the extent to which BCCI and
Pakistan
were able to evade US and international nuclear non-proliferation regimes to
acquire nuclear technologies".

>From Vietnam onwards, Kerry has probed the inner recesses of government,
pursuing a persistent and cumulative investigation into the underside of
national security and terrorism. If the Democrats had held the Senate for a
sustained period of time, his proposal to regulate the netherworld of money
laundering, which was not enacted, might even have helped stymie al-Qaida.
He has experienced the abuse of justice; had his patriotism impugned;
battled enemies foreign and domestic; tried to restore accountability; and
fought on, down to today - which is why he is running for president.

· Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and
Washington bureau chief of salon.com

sidney_blumenthal at yahoo.com



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