South Chicagoland Young Democrats: The Blog

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke today at Columbia University in New York City despite complaints from many influential people. On the list of opponents of this speaking engagement were several city council members for New York, several professors at Columbia, Henry Kissinger, and large crowds that gathered around in protest. The complaints stemmed from Ahmadinejad’s positions on the Holocaust, the state of Israel, and homosexuality. More or less, people did not want to let him speak because of Iran’s common association with terrorism and instability in the Middle East.

Despite all of these protests, the president of Columbia still invited Ahmadinejad to speak, an action for which I applaud him. I do not mean to say that I support the views of Ahmadinejad, who claims that there is insufficient evidence to support the existence of the Holocaust. I simply believe that it is important for Americans, especially young Americans, to learn a broad view of the world at large. It is important to hear unadulterated views about important global events, especially when it is ever more difficult to believe what our own leaders here in this country are telling us.

Most of what President Ahmadinejad said was complete garbage: fictitious ravings from an unbelievably biased source with obvious intent to sway public opinion. Nonetheless, it is important to hear what he has to say. The American public can learn from such view points. Imagine the reception that President Bush would receive if he were to go speak at an Iranian university. In order to be responsible citizens and to understand the world in which we live, we must listen to what leaders from around the world have to say, no matter how biased they may be.

Mike Kean, former Sergeant at Arms.

Mercenaries have been a part of war for millenia.  The Carthaginians used them to attempt to hold off the growing might of Rome.  The Italian city states, too weak individually to sustain a military, used them to defend from various European empires.  The British used Hessian Jaeger mercenaries to try to help subdue their rebellious colonies along the Atlantic coast.  But the idea of a mercenary seemed- for a while, at least- to be a method of war that had disappeared sometime before the First World War.  Hidden from most of the world, unknown to Congress, unreported by the media, was the “private military contractor,” Blackwater.  
Sounding more like Blackbriar from the Jason Bourne movies, Blackwater amounts to much the same thing.  It is a shadow organization, unencumbered by the limits of Geneva or national ethics.  As a corporation, it does not have to report to the government, yet it only acts when the government asks it to.  Up to now, when they slip up in Iraq, too few people knew what was really happening.  Blackwater had been asked by the Iraqi government (really by the State Department) to help defend key areas from insurgent attack.  Yet, it is questionable if that is what Blackwater was really doing.  The cold facts are as such:  Blackwater USA was active in Iraq and came under fire from possible insurgents.  The response was to fire randomly, killing at least eight Iraqi civilians, innocent people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Now Blackwater is in the wrong place.  This is the seventh time that Blackwater has innocent blood on its hands, and they are now being brought to an Iraqi court to decide if they will remain in the country.  I for one applaud this.  The Iraqi minister of national security affairs, Shirwan al-Waili, declared that there was no justification for what Blackwater had done.  The priliminary report of the situation found that “the murder of citizens in cold blood in the Nisour area by Blackwater is considered a terrorist action against civilians just like any other terrorist operations.”  These allegations are extremely harsh and will likely devastate what little trust the world has in the capability of the USA to stem the insurgency. 
Yet, that is not the only new development in the case against Blackwater.  Federal prosecutors are investigating that Blackwater illegally smuggled weapons into Iraq, selling the weapons on the black market.  If anything, Blackwater is actully helping the insurgency.  One way or another, the organization will benefit from death, so long as they profit in some way, earning the title Merchants of Death.  The organization itself has not said anything about either of these allegations.  The website’s most recent press release is from June 2007, and the last news report on Blackwater that the company admits is from April!  These are signs that CEO Erik Prince, a former Navy Seal, would much rather return to the shadows than hear his mercenary organization’s name every day on FOX News (fair and balanced, as usual).  In this modern world, every merchant of death would prefer to remain shadowed.  But now Blackwater is trapped.  Congress is clamping down, and Baghdad may shut off their link for several decades, if not forever.  In an ironic twist, the very same group that the State Department called in to secure Iraq may do so only in its departure, a departure which would be celebrated across the world as the merchants of death leave the largest battleground of the decade.

From the mind of Eamon Driscoll

Sources:
1: Blackwater USA
2: Wall Street Journal 18.Sep.2007
3: Associated Press 22.Sep.2007
4: New York Times 23.Sep.2007

While on the outside the Pledge of Allegiance appears to be an oath of loyalty, there are certainly parts which seem to contradict the fundamental values of America, most of which have been violated time and time again.  There is of course the religious controversy about adding “under God” to the Pledge, which occured in 1954.  “Indivisible” is clearly a reference to the Civil War, though secession is still held as a right in many states, even those in the north, such as New Hampshire (Article 10).  If America is founded on rebellion, why should this country be indivisible?  Even Thomas Jefferson believed that “a little revolution now and then is a good thing.”  I could go on for hours about “liberty and justice for all.”  But I will not make this a philosophical argument about the ethics of the Pledge.  Instead I have created a new, more realistic version of the Pledge of Allegiance, according to what I believe that those in power (ahem:  King George II) wants everyone to be really saying.  Enjoy.

I pledge obediance to the Flag
of the Corporate Feudalism of America
and to the Empire for which it stands
One Conglomerate, under the Christian God,
Superficial, with Serfdom and Conformity for all.
Amen.

~From the mind of Eamon Driscoll

In honour of Fred Thompson throwing his name into the political maelstrom of the 2008 presidential election, I first will salute him for his bravery.  This is a turbulent time, what with the War on Terror and the subsequent rape of Islamic culture.  If the United States continues on the path that George W. Bush has set forth, if the USA remains in Iraq beyond the point of no return (which may very well have already passed) and if we continue to consume non-renewable resources at ever-increasing rates, then the world in twenty-five years will be a pitiful war-torn excuse for civilization.  On that positive note, I would like to announce that I am running for President of the United States in 2032.  I will be forty-two years old, one of the youngest to ever run.  Now, if you will humour me, the situation all candidates will be facing in 2032 unless something is done right now:

• Rising sea levels worldwide cause flooding of countless millions of people worldwide, but especially threatening to under-developed nations with large populations such as Bangladesh.  In the United States, Floridians have evacuated to Georgia and Alabama, while those from New York, Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and countless other cities move inland.  Chicago becomes the capital of the United States.
• Peak Oil is old news, as stockpiles in the thawed Arctic Ocean are used up by 2015.  Millions of Chinese return to their bicycles, but most Americans can’t seem to leave their cars.  The non-renewable resources are extremely scarce, and so expensive as to be absurd.
• “Alternative” energy no longer exists.  There is no alternative to alternative energy, and solar farms become increasingly prevalent.  Entire cities place solar panels on top of their buildings, while nuclear reactors make up for what wind and solar cannot.
• NASA has fallen apart in favour of private companies for the American space program, but the Europeans, Russians, Chinese, and Japanese are surpassing the US in nearly every category.  The International Space Station is obsolete, while the Russians and Chinese jointly share a colony on the moon.  Asteroids are mined in a futile attempt to secure more resources for power. 
• International borders have collapsed due to increasing advances for the internet, making any sort of local government nearly ineffective.  In the US, elections are fraut with corruption and bribery, making present-day (2007) elections in countries like Iran, Russia, and Venezuela look as pure as the new-driven snow (by the way, snow is a distant memory, still present only in Antarctica, Siberia, and Greenland).
• The collapse of borders means people are flooding into the US and Europe, leaving Latin America, Turkey, Africa, and various other locales struggling to retain any sense of stability. 
• Wars come into being daily, as less people in the under-developed areas means an easier path to creating an empire, for those political leaders too inept or too apathetic to care about the rest of the world in favour of their own personal power.  In the developed “superpowers,” chaos reigns in Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, England, and the US as the hordes of newcomers topple established methods and bring an abrupt end to what was once a stable society. 
• In the midst of the chaos and anarchy, highly intelligent thieves are able to sneak into the nuclear stockpiles of the US and Russia.  Several thermonuclear bombs explode over major cities, including Jerusalem.  No one really pays much attention, as each nation has much more important matters to attend to.
• The idea of a nation as a separate entity falls apart, as local governments are able to establish much better control in a chaotic world than the federal government.  This results in the fragmenting of much of the world, and a renaissance of the Dark Ages.

Isn’t that a wonderful picture?  It is the most extreme possibility I could imagine, though it would not be too difficult to imagine given how easily the internal societies can change when given drastic external changes, such as rising sea levels and the continued occupation of Iraq.  We cannot hold off the future, and we must do something right now to change this.  It certainly changes my campaign slogan (Driscoll is good for your Fiscal)- there would be no need for a solid fiscal year in such a situation as described above.  It remains to be seen how humanity will respond to these crises, but one thing is certain:  the only way to respond fully is to respond before the stimulus occurs.  Yet, on our present path, we may never respond.  (But it isn’t the first time a strong government denies the truth until it is no longer an issue.)

I feel sort of sorry for Fred Thompson.  He doesn’t realize what he’s getting himself into. 

~From the mind of Eamon Driscoll

Everyone knows the leading contenders in the Democratic Presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, and John Edwards. Few people, however, know much more than their names. As a result, and given that I have to do this as part of an assignment for my political science class, I am going to begin posting news about the presidential race on a weekly basis. I am also going to add the results of weekly national polls on who the leaders are.

With President Bush’s announcement that he will follow General Petraeus’s advice and begin withdrawing troops from Iraq, 30,000 by July of next year, many of the Democratic presidential hopefuls spoke out against his plan. Hillary Clinton called this plan “too little, to late,” and added that she believes the president should be doing more as the Commander in Chief to expedite the process of troop withdrawal. Barack Obama shared Clinton’s negative view of Bush’s new plan calling it a return to the original failed military policy in Iraq. He in turn proposed his own plan for a drawdown of troops that would involve the withdrawal of one to two brigades a month every month, which would mean to complete withdrawal of American forces by the end of next year. John Edwards called for the immediate withdrawal of 40-50,000 troops, while also calling Obama’s plan a copy of the president’s. Chris Dodd also criticized Bush’s plan but did not offer any ideas of his own.

In other news, Hillary Clinton rejected criticism over her acceptance of campaign contributions from lobbyists. Both Obama and Edwards used her acceptance of this money as proof that she is too firmly involved in the Washington institution. Both men, however, have accepted contributions from the employers and family members of lobbyists, a fact that greatly weakens their criticism of Clinton.

This weeks polls (excluding Al Gore):
Clinton 39%
Obama 20%
Edwards 13%
Richardson 1%
Kucinich 2%
Biden 1%
Dodd 1%
Unsure 11%

From the brilliant mind of Mike Kean, your friendly soon to be ex-Sargeant at Arms.