The DENVER VOICE reports that "On any given night, neraly 200,000 U.S. veterans are homeless."  This is not some anti-war groups inflated figure as so often charged by the super-jingoist super-patriots.  Its the U.S. Department of Veterans affairs.  So take your smug little "Support the Troops" ribbons off of your SUV's until you take one of them into your spare bedroom and help him or her get it together!

International Law and Nuclear Weapons.  Remarks by Bob Kinsey at the 3^rd Anniversary of the weekly anti-war protest.

I am amazed by,  and so thankful for the commitment of so many folk here in North Jeffco who have stood firm through heat and cold and derision in Arvada for so long each week to give truth a voice-- the truth that this war and occupation is illegal and immoral.

From 1852 to 1860 a young "Third Party" began to grow out of the Ripon Conference. It was called the Republican Party and it faced the Democrat--Whig two party system. It was based upon the moral conviction that slavery was wrong and should not have Constitutional protection.

Guess what? In the aftermath of the Dred Scott decision and the revulsion toward the Fugitive Slave Laws, along with the agitation of the Brownists and Bloody Kansas, a Republican won the White House in 1860-- and the Whig party was cast on the dustbin of history. The downside of it all was the Civil War. This was instigated by those who wanted to opt out of a Union that might relieve them of their "corporate" property rights (their slaves).   The "corporate" Agriculture of the day--Plantation owners-- raised military rebellion in defense of what they called the "Southern Way of Life."  Similar to today,  these folks had found --blessed in fundamentalist Biblical interpretation (Sons of Ham) --an economic theory they would fight and kill others for. It was really about defending their property rights over human rights.  

Does anybocy see the parallel with today's Globalization and the invisible hand of Adam Smith for which our chicken-hawkish leaders are willing to commit massive military spending -- and other people's sons and daughters. Today the Military-Industrial-Imperial-Capital Market-Religion complex is similarly embedded in our economy--with ear-marked funds in all states providing jobs to those who willingly enslave themselves to technological domination and violence.

The Green Party platform and values, like the Republican party's moral opposition to slavery, has been challenging this phony "American Way of Life," that has driven us to despair and disaster. If Slavery is spiritual death, so too has been our rape of the environment and our willingess to dominate the world's markets and natural resources for the benefit of a few.

I quote the famous passage from George Kennan during the formation of the National Security Adminstration in 1947:

"We have about 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only about 6.3 percent of its population...In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of reltionships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives."

I heard Senator Warner plead that the folks who advocate our yielding up some civil liberties in order to be able to wiretap wihout legal oversight --and who want no restrictive language in our national policies about what is, or is not, torture, --"are good people, like you and me who hold American values". I argue those values have been poisoned by our "American Way of LIfe" and they now approach spiritual death as well as planetary destruction.

It is time to reclaim some spiritual roots as the Greens have been trying to do for a couple of decades. It is time to make the Green Party a viable political choice as well. Lots of folks need to be doing what Colorado Green Party member Tony D'Lallo is doing. Check out the Events Calender on the Home page--for February 27 --and give him your support. How about running for office yourself as a member of a party that says we have to tear out, root and branch, the weeds that are choking our spiritual values. Also try the Spiritual Progressive web site to see what I am talking about.

One point I have been making in my Green Party pitch is that the Democrats as well as the Republicans have sold us out and its time to Register Green. But I keep hoping the Democrats will get with it and Impeach Cheney and then Bush. Senator Salazar wrote back to me that he agrees with my concern for accountability and that "This Administration has taken our country in the wrong direction and failed to fulfill its responsibilities to the American people." to use his words.

But in the list of wrong things, he does not risk the concept that the Pre-emptive War in Iraq was illegal according to International Law, that the President and Vice President lied to Congress, the American people and the UN about the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Iraqi collusion in 9/11, had planned to invade Iraq long before 9/11, broke US law in "outing a CIA agent" when her husband tried to blow the whistle on all this and has engaged in so much collateral damage that even the devil himself would not have the chutzpah to argue the prosecution of the war has been just.

Why? Perhaps because the Democrats fear not being faithful to the personal "sacrifice" of American blood on the field of conflict. This "bloody shirt" has always been waved by militarists to urge on more war, more domination policies and more military contracts for that portion of the "military industrial congressional district jobs religious crusade" complex. Take the "Philippine Insurrection" or "our engagement in World War I" and you can find the same false piety.

Senator Salazar argues that the Democrats have been able to hold the Administration "accountable " in many more utilitarian ways such as the firing of Gonzales-which he takes credit for instigating. And revealing mis-management. Well, has the new AG really been an improvement--he just stonewalled on water boarding. And pointing out malfesiance doesn't stop it or impose penalties on those who are the law breakers.

I still say the Democrats sold out the electorate in 2006 by taking impeachment off the table and they have lost their "Mandate of Heaven" as much as the Republicans. They are both beholden to the corporate system and its time for you to Register Green. Let's make this the party of the People. Check out the ten Green Values and you will see we not only address the root problems we face but present the possibility for a sustainable future.

Delivered at the Denver Peace Pole at Colfax and Bannock

By Bob Kinsey, the Green Candidate for United States Senate

Today (February 7, 2008) I announce my candidacy for United States Senator from the State of Colorado as a member of the Green Party. I do this hearing the blood of our brothers and sisters in Iraq – and of our troops—crying up from the ground as a result of this criminal war. (Just as the God of Abraham, Ishmael and Jesus heard Abel’s blood crying out as judgment against Cain). I am running for the Senate because billions of people don’t get enough to eat --don’t have access to clean water, don’t have adequate housing, or health care and can’t find the work to provide it. I am running because we squander the planet’s wealth dealing in arms trade, and shock and awe. Yet all the two major parties can do is squabble about the bad manners of anyone to criticize Bush or his Generals. I am running for the Senate because even the Democrats won’t take a mini step like immediately raising CAFÉ standards including SUV’s to 35 MPG  (by 2020?) when our Environment faces catastrophe. We face a catastrophe driven by marketplace mania for growth operationally defined as creating and funneling wealth to the top 1 % of the population and ignoring its impact on the lives of most of the 6.5 Billion people on the planet. I am running for all of children, our grandchildren and us to the 7th Generation--and to represent all living beings.

The Republican Party betrayed voters by enthusiastically creating and supporting an illegal and unjust invasion of Iraq based on lies and justified by changing reasons in midstream. However bad the Saddam Hussein regime, this embargo, invasion and occupation has decimated the Iraqi population and left-- intentionally bombed infrastructure-- water treatment plants, sewage treatment plants and power plants, including a once first world working health care system and educational system-- in ruins. Hundreds of thousands have died. Millions have been displaced. The Republican President lied about and changed the reasons for this war crime. They have supported the Bush Administration attempt to privatize and thus appropriate the Iraqi’s oil. They have allowed at least $21 Billion in unaccounted for expenses. They have required our military to perform onerous and unconscionable tasks --to die as soldiers and to lie as generals in the process. They and lap dog media screamers have framed all this as an article of Patriotism, National Defense and yes, even religious purity. Their name is demagogue! The Republican in this Colorado race, Bob Schaffer, supported all of this before he left Congress in 2002 and has not led any attempt to get the Colorado Republicans to repudiate this. And the leading Republican Presidential Candidates (till yesterday), McCain and Romney talk as if to get out of the mess is an act of cowardice and a failure to do our duty. They accuse the Democrats of waving the white flag. And of not supporting the troops which—by the way-- they don’t even trust to protect them when they take their little trips to the so-called front—They have to hire mercenaries to protect them: our very own Hessians.

My Republican opponent at least personally had the integrity to keep his word and leave office after three terms (Unlike his counterpart Tom Tancredo) but his party has supported the denigration of both the scientific community and our Constitution in the name of National Security and family Values. They have failed to address the most dangerous of threats, Climate Change. This threat, by the way was identified back in 2002 as the greatest long term threat to our security by who?? The Pentagon. And what do Republicans do to protect and defend our Constitution and our troops. Invade a country that had not a whit to do with 9/11. It is Republicans that are the cowards and treasonous because they cannot face the failure of the policy structure they built upon the sand of revenge and greed…. and they continue to support its callous disregard for human rights and international law symbolized by Guantanamo and Abu Graib..

The Democratic Party betrayed the voters who gave them a majority since 2006 by taking the Impeachment of President Bush and Cheney off the table. This has continued a false air of legitimacy for this war. They talk of changing the mission rather than facing the horror of how we engaged in this rotten mission at all. And, it is a mission foreshadowed by Clinton Iraqi Policy as well. So neither the Democrats nor Republicans have kept their oath to protect the Constitution. Democrats have not brought the troops home. They talk of leaving some there till 2012 and of redeploying others to othe Middle East countries.. While originally many Democratic candidates – including Representative Udall-- voted against this so-called war the Democratic Party and Mr. Udall have voted outrageous amounts of money to continue it-- in addition to the general $600 billion dollar defense budget, fearing political backlash if they don’t “Support the Troops.” This twisted logic lacks spine as well as wisdom. It does nothing to help the American people who have begun to realize what we have done, who want to get out of the mire and turn in a direction more in tune with American values. They took impeachment off the table because they don’t have the votes in the Senate to convict. Well I just wonder if some Republican Senators with a sense of patriotism or at least political survival might have voted for impeachment once the high crimes and misdemeanors of the Administration were clarified and indictment brought to reality.

The Green Party has consistently opposed our unwise and destructive policies in the Middle East-- Carried forth by both Democrats and Republicans. I remind the press and Coloradoans that it was a Democratic Secretary of State who publicly said that if 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of the US embargo/military bombings throughout the 1990’s that was worth it. I ask you, Do Americans accept the kind of “collateral damage” to other peoples that either Democrats or Republicans are willing to accept?

The Green Party on the other hand has advocated a different direction long before 9/11. We said these policies were shedding innocent blood and making things worse instead of better. And we said military means and US dominance had no future. We did this back during the Clinton Administrations. And long before.

It goes without saying but must be said that the Green Party has been warning for decades that our economic system, with its constant urge to unlimited and unregulated growth had begun to threaten the planet. We have paid attention to the scientists who are independent of that system of corporate greed and consumer gratification for a long time. I am pleased to represent the Green vision of a possible future and to give the voters of Colorado an opportunity to choose it. That is what Democracy is supposed to look like and so today is what Democracy looks like.

I appeal to those Coloradoans who have given up on the two party system to advocate for their concerns-- to get on board the Green Party and make this campaign a success. You can vote tomorrow by visiting the County Clerk and changing your registration from Independent or whatever to Green Party. And if you are not registered to vote go do so as a Green Party member. And if you are already Green then get five more to turn Green. Its not about me, its not about business as usual. Its about the survival of The United States of America as a decent society that will live realistically in harmony with the whole rest of reality. That is the authentic American ideal, expressed in 18th Century before we developed the technological power to dominate and destroy ourselves. Patriots want their country back so we can travel successfully into the future.

Uncontrolled Growth is the Ideology of a Cancer cell. Any stimulus package must be focused on stimulating an environmentally responsible economy.

I do not promise to vote that there will be two chickens in every pot but I do promise to work for food production that will be safe for human consumption and affordable to all. I will not accept a Fox as the head of the EPA chicken coop--or any other regulatory agency.

I do not promise to vote so that everyone can have extraordinary health care the last 90 days of their lives-- but I do promise I will vote to provide everyone with a single payer system that provides basic care and preventive care according to precautionary principles.

I will not vote for measures that support unmanaged growth in human population in the name of the Right to Life. I will vote to respect the civil rights of all living humans. I will vote for policies that will reduce the damaging impact of our already too great numbers on our earth-system upon which we travel . Ask not what this planet can do for you but what you can do for that beautiful God-gift of this planet.

I will not vote to ratify trade treaties that fail to protect the rights of workers elsewhere, but I will vote to overturn the Taft Hartley Act so that workers here will be able to organize to gain a more equal voice in the marketplace. As the famous American Banker J.P. Morgan once said—“I will not invest in any business where the managers are paid more than ten times their average worker.” Now CEO’s are paid 500 (411 times? -- the estimates vary) times more. And Morgan was called a Robber baron?

I will not vote for declarations of war or their funding. Nor will I vote to maintain a military budget that is greater than all the rest of the world put together. I will vote for funds to make our cooperation with all the human family effective in preserving our mutual future. This will include support for the International Criminal Court, for International control and elimination of all nuclear weapons activity and the creation of a system of enforcement of international law and agreements that will create and sustain human rights—including the laws against pre-emptive war on the part of any nation. I will vote to keep us all accountable to our responsibilities to one another and the planet. Examples include the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Convention on the Peaceful uses of Space, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the conventions on Chemical and Biological warfare, and international stewardship of the Sea. I will not vote for American Empire. I do not believe in any manifest destiny that we should be in control of anything beyond fulfilling our responsibilities to work with others and act responsibly in the world.

This is my commitment as a candidate so that this election can focus on real issues and not on fear based or narcissistic definitions of them. This campaign will have a low carbon footprint and a low media imprint. The Media by the way will characterize us as the Denver Post did on Tuesday as “a narrow group of progressive voters.” I do not think the majority of Americans who favor the impeachment of Dick Cheney to be a narrow group. But it is our job to prove so-- by growing Green Party Registration to approach majority status. 34% would do in my opinion.

I urge you -- if you catch its vision-- to get on line go to KinseyforSenate.org and get involved—you can add your wisdom, your willingness to talk it up with neighbors on line in virtual reality or next door. Yes we might have some expenses and anything you can free up will help. But lets avoid the fluff and get people together to make the Green Party successful. Its values are real American. I urge some of you to run for each of the Congressional seats. I urge you to run for school boards and county commissioners, mayors and city councils. I believe people are hungry for pragmatic leadership that faces our interconnected problems and works for systemic change using our best scientific knowledge and the noblest urgings of our humanity.
Remember that your first real vote in 2008 is to REGISTER GREEN!

The problem we face is that constant question of the spoiler role. Of course, when I ran in 2004 for the House, I was the only challenger until the Democrats blocked a motion on their County and State Convention floors to hear about the possiblity of endorsing me and wouldn't even consider that possiblity. So they made it a three way race. Then they whined that somehow, even though the combined votes of Matsunaka and I were less than what Musgrave bought. Lots of voters who originally supported my campaign fled back to the Democrats under the "Remember how Nader caused Bush to be Elected" mythology (This charge is weak not only because it deifies the so-called "two party system" but also because if fails to note that Gore did win Florida, that Buchanan took votes from Bush that mostly balanced Naders votes from Gore, that people who voted for either were not likely to have voted without those choices, that the Republicans were traitors to our democratic process by disenfranchising voters, and fiddling with the recount process until the Supreme Court, now known as a full fleged member of the Republican Party, overrode the Constitution, State's Rights and Justice.)

But there is a positive way to overcome this problem. Green Registration. The Secretary of State (unfortunately a Republican but hopefully with a greater sense of community responsibility, honor and constitutional faith) is required to report to the public the number of registrants of each party at any time.

If we can get Independents and non-Registered voters to register Green to amount to say 30% of those registered then the spoiler argument vanishes.

Abra Ka Dabra SHazam!! It is a real three way race. It is up to all of you out there to make this happen. Get into the 5 X 5 process on this web site. Register Green and get Five others to Register Green. Get them to understand and do the same.  Let's see if by September 30th we can't work the magic of destroying the spoiler charge.

Make your first vote count .  That's the one where you Register Green!   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnq6cD5jk1Q
Check this site out and watch the show plus the others with it from the AFSC. You will have to copy and paste. I can't make the hyperlink work yet.

The 2008 omnibus appropriations law was finally passed and it eliminated funds for the Reliable Replacement Warhead, a new nuclear weapon. Unfortunately it increased funding for the modifications to the W76 and the B-61 nuclear warheads. And then there is the so-called Complex Transformation (was called Complex 2030 till DOE found that handle had a bad name). All of this money flowing in the direction of keeping nuclear weapons as a lynchpin of US military policy and Imperial reach is a direct violation of our treaty commitments in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Article VI to eliminate our nuclear weapons. Does anybody remember Article VI of our own constitution? In part it says "This Constitution and the Laws of the United States ... and all Treaties made or which shall be made, under Authority of the United States shall be the Supreme Law of the Land...and judges in every State shall be bound thereby " It should not take a legal scholar or indeed the Supreme Court to notice that the administration --by extending work on nuclear weapons and the means to produce them --is breaking the lawof this land and thus is commiting "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" Impeachment is a word that comes to mind.

Yet the President is running around the globe and in Bagdad to get commitments to keep US troops in Iraq past his term of office. And peace groups are cutting back on their call for a timetable for troop withdrawal from the immoral and really stupid war and occupation of Iraq. Their rational is, you guessed it, timetables are unrealistic cause we don't have the votes to override the veto. Well I suggest to you that they should then call for impeachment for the President having lied to the Congress to get us into the war and then prosecuting a "preemptive war" which is against the United Nations Charter thus making it an illegal war as well. By so acting the President and Vice President broke the Constitution and the Treaty commitment we have and therefore broke the supreme law of the land again. Sounds like "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" to me.

Tell you what. Elect me your Senator and Congress will at least have one more vote to impeach any administration that acts against the law. Both corporate parties will glide over these issues when it comes to "Defense Spending" and funding of our "Standing Army and Navy" because they get their campaign money from Lockheed Martin, Ratheon, Halliburton, Bechtel, etc who make money on war and because the have so much interest in the earmarks for that "Defense" money spent in their state.

This means we will never get to a Department of Peace or a non-Imperial foreign policy not needing a huge deployed military with Dems or Republicans in office. I will vote to make International Law and International Treaty commitments work. I will work to make the US Senate the Department of Peace by holding the executive accountable to the Supreme Law of the land including our treaties,  and not to corporate military profits.

On vacation in Mexico for the first time in my life, a friend picked up a small jar of peanut butter labelled JIF that was improrted from the northern US. It helped clarify why so many Mexicans since NAFTA have found it necessary to sneak into the US for jobs. I also read Barbara Kingsolver's family's new book entitled, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" which describes their experience attempting to live for a year on only the food created within a 100 mile radius of their small Western Virignia homestead. It is full of information about our current food distribution system and its high carbon footprint --as well as other shortcomings. It is not a grumpy book. It is a happy, hopeful book.

I hope you and your family read this book and begin to plot how you can support a general move in this direction. Of course one way would be to elect Green, non-corporate members to the US Congress to change our trade and agricultural systems. The book contains numerous references to web sites for recipies, and information to help you and your fellow humans eat well again.

Here are quotes from sections her husband, Stephen Hopp, contributed:

"Industrial farming methods, wherever they are practiced, promote soil erosion, salinization, desertification, and loss of soil fertility... (It) estimates that over 25 percent of arable land in the world is already compromised by one or more of these problems...Numerous field trials in both the United States and the UK have shown that organic practices can produce commodity crop yields comparable to those of industrial farms."

"Small farms less than four acres in size had an average net income of $1400 per acre. The per-acre profit declines steadily as farm size grows, to less than $40 an acre for farms above a thousand acres. ...If smaller is economically better, why are the little guys going out of business? ..Supermarkets prefer not to bother with boxes of vegetables if they can buy truckloads. Small operators have to be both grower and marketer... They're doing everything right, they just need customers...If efficiency is the issue, resources go furthest when people produce their own food near to where it is consumed...for more information, visit www.wn.org, www.journeytoforever.org or www.heifer.org"

When you are done reading this book you will get an idea of what the Green Party means about the importance of "Ecological Wisdom" and "Decentralization." Register Green, Vote Green. Save the Planet for your kids!

This press release is an example of the concerns of the Green Party with regard to "Respect for Diversity" and Social Justice. I stand behind this work.

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.org

For Immediate Release:
Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Contacts:
Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator, 202-518-5624,
cell 202-904-7614, mclarty@greens.org
Starlene Rankin, Media Coordinator, 916-995-3805,
starlene@gp.org

Greens back Indian Trust lawsuit against Interior
Department over billions in broken obligations,
mismanaged funds, and appropriated natural
resources

WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party leaders and
candidates expressed support for an ongoing
class-action lawsuit to force the US Interior
Department to account for billions of dollars
owed to Native Americans since the late 19th
century.

"Since the 1880s, the US government has failed to
make good on its promise to provide Native
Americans payment for mining, oil and gas
extraction, timber, and grazing on their
homelands. It's time for the US to reverse
hundreds of years of broken treaties and stolen
resources, account for the breach of Indian Trust
obligations, and restore honesty," said Rodger
Jennings, Green candidate for Congress in
Illinois (12th District)
<http://www.rodgerjennings.org>.

Filed in 1996, Cobell v. Norton (later renamed
Cobell v. Kempthorne) addresses funds belonging
to about a half million Native Americans and
their heirs. In 1999, Judge Royce Lamberth held
Clinton Administration officials (especially
Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and
Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin) in contempt of
court for stonewalling, destruction of documents,
and misrepresentations before the court.

More recently, the US Court of Appeals sided with
the federal government and removed Judge Lamberth
from the case, rejecting the judge's findings of
evasion and malfeasance and his charges of
racism.

The Bush Administration is now taking steps to
limit the government's liability and to ensure
that only 1.3% of the trust accounts are
reconciled, which means only a tiny fraction of
those covered under the trust plan might see some
form of restitution.

Greens, calling on the Bush Administration to
honor the financial debt of the US government to
Native Americans, also expressed frustration with
the White House's recent violations of treaties
and agreements.

"Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is taking
action to limit drastically the scope of payments
owed to Native Americans. He's trying to get his
department off the hook on its obligation to
account for the historical theft of billions of
dollars when white-owned firms were allowed to
profit from natural resources on Indian land.
His actions are consistent with the Bush
Administration's refusal to honor numerous
treaties signed by the US, from the Kyoto Accords
to the Geneva prohibitions against torture," said
Rebecca Rotzler, an Alaskan Native, a former
co-chair of the Green Party of the United States,
and an elected Green.

For further details, background information, and
recent news on Cobell v. Kempthorne, see:

. Indian Trust: Cobell v. Kempthorne
http://www.indiantrust.com/

. "Interior again shifts duty to account for
Indian trust," Indianz.com, December 5, 2007
http://www.indianz.com/News/2007/006198.asp

. Justice Department documents
http://www.usdoj.gov/civil/cases/cobell/

. Findlaw page
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=DC&navby=case&no=025374A

MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States
http://www.gp.org
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193
. Green Party News Center
http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml
. Green Party Speakers Bureau
http://www.gp.org/speakers
. Green candidate database for 2007 and other
campaign information:
http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml
. Media credentialing
http://www.gp.org/committees/media/kit.shtml