I just want to say that listening to the announcement of the vote electing Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House brought me to tears–big, sobbing, crocodile tears. Seeing her take the gavel didn’t do it for me–it was listening to the announcement of the vote and the voice of the clerk announcing the vote.  Don’t just listen, watch the announement of the vote 1:30 minutes into the Democracy Now Headlines.  I didn’t think it would be that moving to me, but here she is, in my lifetime, a woman so powerful in the U.S. government.

I was young enough when Sandra Day O’Connor joined the Supreme Court that I didn’t pay a lot of attention or feel the weight of the occasional, but I imagine it might have been a similar moment.

As a child, I wasn’t aware of the lack. It wasn’t until my mother and her friends, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, talked about what they had to deal with in their professional lives from men who didn’t want to see women in power. I sat quietly listening to their whispered conversations, and I absorbed their truths.

I may not be a second-wave feminist, but I thank them from the bottom of my heart for what they’ve done to bring choices to women’s lives that seemed out of reach in previous generations. I believe I will continue to see big changes in my life and my daughter will see bigger changes in hers. She will live in interesting times.

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I thought the era of fascist crimes against the American people might have ended with the Democratic majority in the Congress and Senate.

We still need to PAY ATTENTION because the executive has not stopped the self-excused crimes they call Signing Statements. While we were preoccupied with midwinter celebrations, George W. Bush signed a postal reform bill December 20, along with a signing statement letting us know that Bush declares the right to OPEN OUR MAIL under emergency conditions.

“That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.”

Again I’m baffled. Why do these people think it is OK, ethical, legal, even possible to act in direct contradiction to U.S. law? Why? Because they get away with it.

I don’t buy their longstanding fascist emergency or their excuses for illegal spying.

Hello, new Democratic Congress? This is exactly what I want you to deal with. Please investigate the crimes these people continue to commit against the American people. Hold them accountable. I don’t want you to take revenge. I just want to see justice. I want to see them accused and convicted of their crimes. Please show no mercy until it is time to sentance the criminals–if then.

UPDATE:

• Another Daily Mail Story: “The Republican sponsor of a postal reform bill called on President Bush yesterday to explain why he used it to claim he can open domestic mail without a search warrant.“
• Media Matters found that many television news stations either ignored the story or didn’t make it clear where the mysterious new power to open mail came from.

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Can they see our hand in this? That’s what Richard Nixon asked Henry Kissinger immediately following the September 11, 1973, coup in which Augusto Pinochet lead a military overthrown of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile.

Which question was Nixon really asking Kissinger?

• Can THEY see our hand in this?
• Can they SEE our hand in this?
• Can they see OUR hand in this?
• Can they see our HAND in this?
• Can they see our hand in THIS?

I want to answer all of the above. Despite their decades of protestations, it has certainly been clear for a long time that WE SEE THEIR HAND IN THIS.

Like many young Americans and others, I first learned a few details about the Chilean junta nearly 10 years later when Costa-Gavras’ film Missing was released. In the film, an American journalist, Charles Horman, finds out more than he is meant to about U.S. involvement, then he comes up missing. Most of the film follows his wife and skeptical father as they work their way through the Chilean and U.S. bureaucracies to find out what happened to him. The film implied that the hand of the U.S. was at work, and subsequently declassified documents have confirmed this.

There was plenty more to learn than even an Oscar-winning film can tell. I have learned some of that history and politics since. I have sent students into libraries to find their own answers. I live with the illusion that I know something about the hand of the U.S. in Chile.

Even now, though, after Pinochet’s death yesterday on International Human Rights Day, I think of the people with whom I first saw Missing. I was a student at la Universidad de Puerto Rico at the time, and I saw the film with members of the Puerto Rican Independence Party. (If you don’t know who they are, think of them as one of the three big targets of the FBI’s CoIntelPro program, along with the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement.) My companeros took it upon themselves to give me the education in U.S. foreign policy that my high school hadn’t managed to. I was skeptical of their claims, but I was also more skeptical of the U.S. government from that point on. I count this as an important moment in my seeing their hand in so much of the world.

So, if you consider Augusto Pinochet this week of his death, maybe you could consider the ways in which YOU SEE THEIR HAND IN THIS. This what? The possibilities are broad. Fill in the blank with any foreign relations incident of the 20th or 21st century and see what hands you can see.

Where to start? Some of the most interesting documents on the hand of the U.S. in Chile and elsewhere can be found at the National Security Archives, housed at my alma mater George Washington University. Nixon’s comment from a telephone conversation with Kissinger was part of an interview today with Peter Kornbluh on Democracy Now. Kornbluh is the author of “The Pinochet File.” You can read that at the NSA, too.

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News is just pouring in and overwhelming today. I think an important story is getting lost. I’m not saying it is more important than civil war in Iraq or deterioration in Darfur. No. Those stories rip my heart out every day. The days of Colin Powell’s acceptance of Pottery Barn foreign policy are over. (He says it’s a civil war.) I think more time is being spent on the vocabulary of uncontrolled violence than on the violence itself. Death and suffering are difficult to face, but they are there. We need to SEE it without allowing ourselves to turn away.

But what are we missing while the world suffers? While we look away, the nasty authoritarians still play.

When Newt Gingrich spoke at a First Amendment Award Dinner about how and why first the first amendment should be reexamined. What? Keith Olbermann interviewed a George Washington University law professor about the implications.

Newt Gingrich called for a reexamination of free speech at the Loeb First Amendment Award Dinner in New Hampshire this week, saying a “different set of rules to prevent terrorism” are necessary.

Gingrich’s call to restrict free speech is mainly focused on the Internet.

Keep your eyes on these people. Call your Representatives and Senators to ask them whether they think the first amendment needs to be reexamined.

Update 12/2: Love it when Keith Olbermann goes after a subject like Newt Gingrich’s desire to suppress free speech on the internet.

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Listening to Seymour Hersch this morning on Democracy Now made so much news I read and listen to seem like the playful circus it is. This goes far beyond Hersch’s article this week on the likelihood of the U.S. going to war with Iran. In talking to Amy Goodman, Hersch connects dots and brings a knowledge of the past political generation that many may not be familiar with. This is no sound byte with a smile. Hersch takes the time to weave together threads of conduct of the Reagan administration during the Iran-Contra era with the two Bush administrations in their Middle East wars.

I would gladly trade 24-hour fake news for a few hours weekly with my copy of The New Yorker.

If you read only two stories this week, make them Seymour Hersch’s New Yorker article “The Next Act” and a little AP story on a review of 866 studies relating to climate change. What else matters?

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