[statecom-discuss] In praise of Chuck Turner - from today's CounterPunch

[Mike Heichman]

> Hi State Comm Members:
>
> Below is an excellent article about our Chuck Turner written by John 
> Walsh.
>
> Mike Heichman
>
>
> John Walsh wrote:
>
>> http://www.counterpunch.com/walsh02192007.html
>> ****
>> February 19, 2007
>>
>> Green City Councilor Wins Passage of Resolution Against Wars on Iraq
>> and Afghanistan
>>
>> Some Good News from Beantown
>>
>> By JOHN V. WALSH
>>
>> In our fair city of Boston we have recently witnessed collapsing,
>> water-logged Big-Dig tunnels; $500,000 worth of public fright fanned
>> by our diction challenged mayor, "Mumbles" Menino, over some
>> electronic bling bling; the wild-eyed Alan Dershowitz attacking almost
>> everyone in sight as an anti-semite; a peace movement that by and
>> large did not come to Jimmy Carter's defense when he appeared here to
>> speak on "Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid"; an ex-governor, "Mitt"
>> Romney, who seemed to devote most of his time to tending his hair with
>> a coat of something very like black shoe polish; and a new, "liberal"
>> governor who "stood with Israel" during its terror-bombing of Lebanon.
>>
>> So we yearn mightily for some good political news, and this past week
>> we had a bit of it in the form of a resolution passed by the Boston
>> City Council calling for an end to the war on Iraq and Afghanistan.
>> This principled statement is the handiwork of City Councilor, Chuck
>> Turner, an African American and the most prominent elected official of
>> the Green Rainbow Party (GRP) in Massachusetts. (The GRP is the name
>> taken by the Greens here, as the result of its union with the Mel
>> King's Rainbow Coalition.)
>>
>> The neocon tabloid, the Boston Herald was livid at the audacity of
>> Councilor Turner, who represents the poorest parts of the Athens of
>> America and those with the highest minority population. The Herald ran
>> an enormous headline and a full page picture of Turner on its front
>> page, denouncing him for the resolution. The Herald's accompanying
>> editorial, "A quest for irrelevancy," continued the attack: "The
>> resolution  the work of Councilor Chuck Turner, rather cleverly albeit
>> disingenuously, links the federal expenditure of funds for the two
>> wars to an inadequacy of federal funds for police, education and
>> subsidized housing here. The local funding fig leaf provided
>> sufficient cover to allow the otherwise irrelevant resolution to be
>> brought up  and to pass by an 8-3 vote. It even got the support of
>> (Democrat) Mayor Tom Menino who, according to a spokeswoman,
>> understood it as a 'statement' about federal spending priorities."
>> Take away the terms "disingenuously" and "fig leaf," and the Herald
>> actually got the message. As Turner himself put it, "We can't meet the
>> needs of the people of Boston with only tax revenues. We need federal
>> resources."
>>
>> Where the Herald was hostile on the front page, the Boston Globe was
>> snide in its reportage, liberally doped with opinion, and buried deep
>> inside. But like the Herald, the "liberal" Globe sought to minimize
>> and ridicule the vote. The Globe's message was not to take it all too
>> seriously since just about every other deliberative body had discussed
>> the war. In fact our own Democrat-dominated Mass. state legislature,
>> in contrast to a number of other state legislatures, has not voted a
>> resolution against the war on Iraq or Afghanistan or even debated it.
>> This seems to have escaped the notice of the Globe's ace reporter.
>> Perhaps Turner's resolution will move the Democratic solons of Beacon
>> Hill to take some action. But the Globe conceded that the Councilors
>> had to be sure they were on the "right" side of the issue to satisfy
>> their base hence an 8 to 3 vote, that is, only 27% against the
>> resolution. As someone observed on looking at results like this and
>> Bush's poll numbers, "You can' t fool all of the people all of the
>> time. But you can fool all of the people some of the time. And you can
>> fool about 30% of the people all of the time."
>>
>> What makes Turner's resolution most interesting is that it takes a
>> stand against both the war in Iraq and the one in Afghanistan. Too
>> many political figures, for example the bellicose Hillary Rodham
>> Clinton, are calling on us to get out of Iraq and turn our military
>> efforts to Afghanistan. That is just plain crazy. The Russians sent
>> 500,000 troops into that quagmire and failed. I remember seeing the
>> veterans of Afghanistan, ruined in mind and body, on the streets of
>> Moscow during the commemoration of WW II, Victory Day, some years
>> after Gorbachev ended the Afghan conflict. What a contrast to the
>> veterans of the Great Patriotic War who were mentally well and very
>> proud despite all the suffering they had endured. It is beyond
>> imagination what the Afghans must have endured in that war and what
>> they are enduring now. But they win.
>>
>> Turner's stance against these wars is all the more striking here in
>> Massachusetts where "our" Senator, John "Live Shot" Kerry, voted for
>> the war on Iraq and ran as a pro-war candidate in '04. (Kerry is known
>> as Live Shot, because he was always first before the cameras when he
>> and Ted Kennedy had wangled something of benefit for Mass.) Kerry
>> decided to satisfy his ambitions by climbing to the presidency atop a
>> mountain of Iraqi and American corpses; and that he did even though he
>> did not make it to the "summit." For that ultimate and criminal act of
>> narcissism, he can never be forgiven. And Live Shot continues to
>> connive, still taking no clear stance on defunding the war. No wonder
>> some here are beginning to whisper about Senator Chuck Turner in 2008.
>>
>> John V. Walsh can be reached at john.endwar at gmail.com.
>>
>
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