Yes, so am I! Now do the rest of the world a favor and kick the Bush regime out! Then we can start talking again….

Getting out from under this, if it can be done at all, is a long term project, in which it would be most helpful I think to address the prosecutable criminal sideshows and work that program up the food chain. The difference, for example, between a conservative politician with no criminal ties, like Ron Paul, and a conservative like Tom Delay, whose misdeeds could keep a prosecutorial team employed for years, is striking. So too with the difference between Kucinich and Clinton. There has to be space in out politics for people who aren’t so badly compromised, morally and ethically. It would be helpful as well to stop rewarding careerist misanthropes with votes. The lesser eviling has eviled its way down to hairsplitting.

As I said, I don’t know if anything meangingful can be accomplished. I may just take up barking with Molly and hope for the best.

Mike, I thought hard before publishing Niek’s note. It was addressed to me, and therefore personal in context. But I decided to publish it because of the power and the truth in the gesture he’s making. I’m glad that a thoughtful and supportive conversation has come out of it.

I share Niek’s abhorrence of what the United States has become in law: a terrorist state; a rogue nation, and the gravest threat to peace and sound human values the world has known. I know the Dutch, with the Scandinavians, were at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid and I know that sanctions and boycotts worked. I didn’t take them personally; I supported them. They brought the National Party to its knees, democracy to South Africa, and PTSD into our homes. The world (if not its governments) was correct in setting South Africa where it should set Israel and the United States, i.e. beyond the pale.

Like Niek, I believe it’s time the world boycotted American products and services (you still have such things?); enacted sanctions against those doing business with U.S. companies, and lent support to those who have the power to break the stranglehold the American regime maintains – through war and its myriad paid proxies – on the global economy.

But shun my friends – the people with whom I’ve shared so much and with whom I identify so closely? I see no need to contemplate any decision to do so. More, sucking in news and opinions dished daily by U.S. journalists on the frontlines of the disinformation war, I’d feel a hollow hypocrite were I to fall into such a trap. Should I cut ties with Israeli or Jewish friends for fear they might harbor Zionist tendencies? C’mon…who am I? the Little Commissar?

Nope, I will continue to back my American friends, that outrageous fringe who, despite a fast-worsening global and domestic threat to their well-being, continue to speak out vociferously against a fascist state counting among its friends a country which boils its arbitrary enemies. And I’ll continue, without hesitation, to back my American friends because it is they, not we, who will turn this around. And I’ll continue, again, to back them because they are, when all is said and done, more than members of a geographical club.

They are my friends, and that is all there is to it. But like you, Frank, I will not disrespect Niek’s decision. He too, is a good friend and now, more than ever, friends are what we need.

I painfully understand Niek’s stand, but like others, I mourn the loss.

Thanks for including me in that list of people. And count on me any time you need to hide a body. No questions asked.

You were far more p[olite to Niek than I wuold have been as his comment about how he can’t take your blog seriusly because “Your country has turned fascist and you and your fellow Americans have allowed it to happen.” is about as ignorant a comment as I’ve read coming out of the left for a long time. It shows an astounding lack of understanding with regards to the American political system as well as the totally compromised MSM.

Yes individuals can sometimes have a tremedous effect on the system, as people MLK and Rosa Parks showed, but the system is rigged against that and all most people can do is raise their voices as loud as they can and hope that others take up the call as well and force a change through awareness.

In effect by boycotting all American sites he is helping those who push for fascism attain their goal.

/me pouting ’cause I was left off the list of Canadians dissing Bush and his neocons LOL

If I thought that it would make a difference, I’d stop reading you too. But I have this totally foolish idea that you… yes you… will turn this century around for us and our European buddies.

Keep at it.

A journey of a thousand miles… gathers no moss.

How ’bout those {A’s, Dodgers, Yankees, Twins, etc)

“So cut off our links if it helps you draw a clear bright line against the fascist evil that has replaced American democracy, but don’t cut yourself off from us.” I love that, and most importantly, put the economic screws to us, as hard and as fast as possible.