Congratulations again to the Wichita Eagle staff. It´s EVEN better than the Brownback Girl video.

Jon Lottman

LOTTMAN: I did tape your remarks at AU, and I have brought some copies of that with me. I wanted to come in and do a little one-on-one to sort of supplement that. Now, you seem to be very active in this issue and this debate. The first thing I want to know is, how did that get started?

KUCINICH: Well, as a young person. I remember growing up in the 50s, and having to duck under my desk and put my hand around my head, like this, and then tuck my head in my lap, so as not to be hurt by the nuclear missiles that were coming in. I mean, they didn’t tell us that if there was a missile that hit, it wouldn’t matter what position we were in; we would not survive. We were told to keep our eyes closed tightly so we wouldn’t see the flash. Well, we know now that that was all part of a way to keep the people of the United States from getting too upset about the prospect of whole populations being incinerated in a nuclear exchange.

Since that time, when we’ve had more information about the impact of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on human beings, and we’ve learned that the use of nuclear weapons must never be an option in a civilized world, we’ve looked to have treaty regimes—formal relations between countries, saying, “we shouldn’t use nuclear weapons. We should get rid of nuclear weapons.” And my purpose as a member of the United States Congress, is to keep the faith on the issue of total nuclear disarmament. And that means on earth as well as in the heavens.

LOTTMAN: This goes back a ways with you.

KUCINICH: Sure.

LOTTMAN: I’ve been asking people who have been involved in this a long time, to just talk a little bit about people’s views of outer space. Why is it so important to keep outer space free of weapons?

KUCINICH: First of all, we still have a distance to go on this earth, of settling relations between nations. Of having peace, in the fullest sense. When you have a federal government that has a military budget of over $300 billion, and an arms industry which propagates the acquisition of arms around the world, obviously we live in a world where people have not learned how to handle conflict, and have not learned how to use nonviolence as an organizing principle in relations between nations. We don’t even have that in our own society. So that being the case, they haven’t solved their problems within this sphere they call the earth.

How in the world can we expect to ever have peace on earth, if we permit the heavens to be used as a staging area for nuclear exchanges. That doesn’t even get into the massive environmental problems that would be involved. The problems of damage to the whole eco-sphere. This is madness. And it’s time for us to speak out against this madness of hegemony in space.

There is a sense of arrogance about this. That somehow we have the power to dominate, not only the globe, but the entire universe. There is a sense of disconnection from matters spiritual in that, I think. It bespeaks a vacuousness of the human heart, to talk of weapons races that lead to engagement in outer space. It shows a lack of concern for the continuation of the human race.

We need to make a strong commitment, to affirm our belief that the life of the planet has to be the first concern that all of us, as human beings, must engage in. That we have to recognize our responsibility, as individuals, as nations, to each other. So that we can permit each other the opportunity to continue to survive.

Talk of domination of space by a military command, with the idea of somehow being in a position to manipulate the faith of the world, is just not consistent with an attitude that speaks to the necessity of the survival of the human race.

LOTTMAN: We addressed some of the political, environmental, and spiritual aspects of this. One thing I’m also interested in is the psychological. When people are stressed, when things are confusing, people look up to the sky—it makes them feel better. So what would the implications be of the skies potentially becoming a battleground?

KUCINICH: Well, you know, there’s a Christian prayer called the “our Father,” which has the words, ‘thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ We view the sky as the connection to that principle of eternity, to that idea of something transcendent in our lives. The violence to that belief in a heaven, in a transcendence, in some universal beneficence; to see the skies, the universe itself, threatened with the prospect of nuclear warfare, in the heavens, it is psychologically challenging, and spiritually punishing to invite the prospect of such an exchange of nuclear weapons between nations in outer space.

And the very fact that a nation would prepare for that while its people do not have decent health care, while its children remain not well educated in many places, while its environment has so many challenges to keep the air and the water clean, while people are still struggling to have meaningful employment… There are so many challenges we face here on earth to make our lives more livable, more meaningful. And it seems as though the projection of fear, of the instrumentalities of violence into outer space, is a threat to all of the aspirations which all of us have. Not only in this country, but on the planet.

We need to encourage people to be more than they are. We need to encourage people to unlock their own inner potential to the fullest. We need to engage with each other as brothers and sisters, to find peace and love, and to reciprocate their discoveries. The idea of a new arms race, of taking that image of a restless quest for discovery and to reach up to the sky as an expression of our limitless potential—to take that and to put it in the context of an arms race is to demean humanity. We must think more of ourselves. We must think more of each other. And we must demand of our nation that it do better.

LOTTMAN: The military powers that be, the Space Command, often express the concern that someone else is going to use outer space to harm the United States. What do you think of that concern? Is it justified, and if it is…

http://www.cdi.org/adm/1351/Kucinich.html

Vote Kucinich! Vote Kucinich!
http://www.dennis4president.com/go/issues/
http://www.vote-usa.org/Intro.aspx?Id=OHKucinichDennisJ

Draft Kucinich
http://www.draftkucinich2008.com/

How did they operate?

Well, they operated in lots of different ways. The most egregious ones basically set up what can really be characterized as shell corporations. They filed, you know, a paper set of articles of incorporation. They didn’t hire staff. They didn’t really have an office or a phone number or really even a purpose. Their sole purpose was to air issue ads.

And they would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars doing this.

And you would never know where the money came from, who was behind them, who was paying for them?

That’s right.

What is Triad Management?

Triad is a for-profit corporation that the committee investigation believes was created in 1995 and 1996 in order to influence federal elections. One of the things that Triad did was set up two shell corporations, essentially, tax-exempt organizations. One was called Citizens for Reform and the other was called Citizens for the Republic Education Fund, and the sole thing that those corporations did was to air attack advertising in various races across the country.

And what was strange about that?

Most of the time in the past, when we’ve seen organizations that air advertising in political races, they’re known organizations with a real membership, that stand for a key issue or a key purpose. Things that come to mind are abortion groups, the National Rifle Association, unions, groups with membership bases that stand for a certain known position.

Triad’s groups were essentially shells. They had no existence, they had no purpose, they had no staff, they had no office.

What did they do?

They aired advertising.

Here’s what your report says: “the evidence before the Committee suggests that Triad exists for the sole purpose of influencing federal elections. It is a corporate shell funded by a few, wealthy conservative Republican activists.”

That’s what the investigation showed.

So what’s wrong with it?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/scandal/interviews/stein.html

Eye for an eye … that’s in the bible isn’t it?

Posted by: Repuke | October 05, 2007 at 03:50 PM

That’s cool. I get it. As long as we all understand the rules, and the consequences. I believe that the Republicans are on the way out, but only my a smaller majority than most think. However, the tide always turns. And by rules, Payback is not only hell, but to be expected, and relished.
As for me, I think I will not take that path. But I am not interested in partisan politics. I am interest in solutions.

Eye for an eye … that’s in the bible isn’t it?

Great. Now that I know the morality of the left, which if you are the norm, is scream bloody murder about fairness and dignity and how aful the attackers are when attacked, but turn about and be the exact same when the shoe is on the other foot. CLinton Did it. Bush did it, my turn now. Eye for and Eye, tooth for a tooth.
Thanks for the enlightenment.

Saddam made fun of Bush’s daddy. But, as you said, “So if you were abused or made fun of or whatever, then it’s okay for you to do it if the tables get turned?”

Posted by: Repuke | October 05, 2007 at 12:53 PM

What does Bush or the war in Iraq have anything to do with the above?Pleae expain. You will notice I used the word please.

Ignore the troll.

Then explain Bush’s war! Or any kind of punishment.

Paybacks are hell!

Posted by: Repuke | October 05, 2007 at 11:16 AM

Thompson pillaried the CLinton’s for Bill’s affair? Thompson said something about the Clinton’s marriage?

Alas, the left as represented by the small minded, sophomoric “editorial” staff of this losing little paper, is, indeed that shallow and transparent. Surprised they even included Kucinich, but, hey he is a joke anyway. Guess they figured they better toss in a token lefty so they would appear “fair”.

Who takes these people seriously? Just the six or eight left wing wackos that continue to snipe and snivel on this site, I guess…

Paybacks are hell!