[PAA-Discuss] [Fwd: The LA Free Press Interviews Dennis Kucinich]

[Lee Loe]

We need to put this in a brochure about Kucinich. It is profound, I think.
what about You? Lee L

  _____  

From: discuss-bounces at paa-tx.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at paa-tx.org] On
Behalf Of Wendy Schroell
Sent: Thursday, November 22, 2007 1:29 PM
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Subject: [PAA-Discuss] [Fwd: The LA Free Press Interviews Dennis Kucinich]




-------- Original Message -------- 
Subject: 	The LA Free Press Interviews Dennis Kucinich	
Date: 	Thu, 22 Nov 2007 08:37:07 -0800	
From: 	Ed Pearl  <mailto:epearlag at earthlink.net> <epearlag at earthlink.net>

Reply-To: 	Ed Pearl  <mailto:epearlag at earthlink.net>
<epearlag at earthlink.net>	
To: 	Ed Pearl  <mailto:epearlag at earthlink.net> <epearlag at earthlink.net>



Hi, and a very happy thanksgiving to you.  A week ago I sent you a

fantasy by Paul Street which outlined daily steps he'd make as

President; peace, equality, a better life for all, with a not so happy

ending.  But here we have a real candidate presenting by far the most

comprehensive progressive platform to a national audience since the

Henry Wallace campaign of 1948.  Except Dennis Kucinich is running

as a Democrat, is now #4 in national polling, and steadily rising.  He

has almost zero chance of winning, but is bringing what he expresses

below to millions of people, during the entire primary campaign. Many

who voted Democrat last year wanted a congress acting with those

values. Kucinich is doing just that in Washington.  No other individual

will perform the essential task of keeping that hope alive.  He merits

serious attention, and from many of us, support.  (pass this one on.)

Ed



http://www.dareland.com/freep/issue208.htm



The Los Angeles Free Press



Interview with Dennis Kucinich by Michael O'McCarthy and Jennifer Lynne

Ziemann



    The concert audience of over 1,800 fans in the Thomas Wolfe auditorium

Asheville, North Carolina, was stoked. They'd come to see Ani DiFranco, but

when Democratic Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich came on stage just

before her set, the audience stood and roared.



   As Kucinich talked about a "Department of Peace" for foreign and

domestic policy, the crowd went crazy as if he were a rock star, cheering

even louder when he called for an end to unfair economic exploitation of

third world people and resources. He was clearly one of the most humane and

deeply spiritual presidential candidates this country has ever seen. We

spoke to him after the concert.





LA FREE PRESS: Tonight's audience loved you. How do you convert that fervor

and that movement into a voting block for you?



KUCINICH: From a practical standpoint, we signed up several hundred

volunteers tonight, and many more who did not sign up will go to our website

and join the effort. The people will help us work the internet and do

research for us and set up rallies and become not just a part of this

campaign but a movement to take this country in another direction. Ani

attracts that kind of energy.



LA FREE PRESS: Your impeachment of Cheney has expanded to impeachment of

Bush and Cheney. How do you see that playing out? Do you think there will be

hearings or actual charges?



KUCINICH: I think there will be hearings because the American people are

demanding them. The idea of Democratic leaders saying that impeachment is

off the table is not where the American people are. The House of

Representatives is the people's house, it does not belong to the Congress.

Congress must assert itself as a political branch of government. To say that

impeachment is off the table when there are manifest crimes that have been

committed is to nullify a section of the Constitution and to obliterate the

one mechanism which exists in the Constitution to correct abuses of power by

the Executive.



    This is a very serious matter and a profound principle of constitutional

government checks and balances. The minute that Congress says under no

circumstances will there be an impeachment, you not only forgo

accountability in the part of the Executive but you license further abuses.

It is a very dangerous thing for our leadership to have said that.



    You know I am a Democrat, but my love for my country is above my love

for my party, so my country is in trouble right now and I brought those

articles forward in response to a deep and heartfelt concern about the

direction America is going, particularly in respect to an impending attack

against Iran.



LA FREE PRESS: Do you believe there will be a war crimes trial?



KUCINICH: Let's take it a step at a time in terms of the various remedies.

One is impeachment. There can be no greater punishment if you happen to be a

high elected official, president or vice-president. You're removed from

office. That may settle it. On the other hand if the president or

vice-president, for whatever reason, will not be removed from office, I

believe they should be subject to criminal prosecution. If we can't get

criminal prosecution in this country, there are international laws that they

violated. But there is a basis for prosecution under the laws of the United

States. The only problem is I don't want to go there until I can see how the

impeachment process is going to play itself out. We have to use the remedies

that are available until we exhaust them.



LA FREE PRESS: How do you feel about the statement "The U.S. does not

torture?"



KUCINICH: Well, its an obvious lie - like the U.S. does not wage aggressive

war, and the U.S. does not exploit the natural resources of other countries,

and the history of the U.S. is a story of a righteous nation that wars with

the forces of evil. There are a lot of mythologies that percolate kind of

like methane bubbles up from certain landfills. Any critical thinking

applied to the issue of torture easily discards the notion that our

government has not been involved in torture. Of course it has. I don't know

if the President saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib, I don't know if the

President saw the pictures out of Guantanamo, but government people acting

upon the orders of government officials have in fact tortured, period.



LA FREE PRESS: You're the only candidate that believes in a true non-profit

health care system. If the Senate, Congress, and the White House have

exactly that, why don't the people have it too?



KUCINICH: One of the grand deceptions of the 2008 campaign involves

candidates speaking about universal health care, as though universal health

care was a goal that once achieved will provide affordable accessible health

care to all Americans. While the other candidates advocate continuation of

the for-profit system, they want government to provide more subsidy to the

insurance companies. Under those circumstances,people would still be stuck

with high premiums, co-pays, and deductibles, which are sinking the budgets

of many American families.



    Half the bankruptcies in America are tied directly to people not being

able to pay their hospital bills. The bill I co-authored, Hr676, is a single

payer, not for profit system. Medicare for all. This bill provides that all

of the assets in this country that are currently for profit will be

converted into not for profit and the government will pay the bills.



    The current system provides that $1 out of every $3 is spent for

corporate profit, stock options, salaries, advertising, marketing, and the

cost of paperwork. According to a Harvard University study, over $700

billion a year goes just for the for-profit system. I want to take that

money and put it back into health spending and direct care and suddenly we

will have enough. Not only will we have enough money for basic care, we will

have enough money for vision care, dental care, mental health care,

prescription drugs and preventative care. That is how much money is in this

system and there will be no more co-pays, premiums and deductibles. To the

extent that the government needs more money to run such a system is the

extent that you would have a moderate increase to the amount of taxes that

are paid and still people will spend only a fraction of the amount they are

paying now.



    Some families pay $1000 or more a month. Imagine if you made $50

thousand a year and you paid 1% more in taxes. That would be $500 out of

your gross pay. Let's do the math. Would you rather pay $500 extra in taxes

per year or $12 thousand plus co-pays and deductibles?



    This is one of the great corruptions of our campaigns because the

insurance companies have spent tremendous amounts of money in trying to

influence the Democratic primaries. Hillary Clinton is the second highest

recipient of insurance money and John Edwards worked for a hedge fund that

is heavily invested in insurance companies, particularly Humana. Humana is

the fastest growing company supporting the privatization of Medicare. So

they are all out there talking about continuing the for-profit system. It's

just not fair for the American people.



LA FREE PRESS: Why do you think more of the progressive community is not out

there on your bandwagon?



KUCINICH: I think that is changing, I think we saw a glimmer of the change

that is coming a few days ago when Democracy For America announced the

results for their grass roots internet poll of Democratic activists. It was

the largest poll taken this year on the internet and I came up first, ahead

of Al Gore, Barack Obama, John Edwards, and Hillary Clinton. And I think

that symbolizes the potential of this campaign to be able to tap the

Democratic activist.



    And people have had a chance to see all of the candidates now, and they

understand that I am the only one running that voted against the war and

voted against funding the war. People get a chance to study this and as the

elections draw near the awareness is becoming more and more clear.



    There is a moral equation here which history, morality and human decency

requires that we look at. What gives the United States of America or our

leaders the right to wage war against innocent people? By what law do we

assume the right to attack Iraq, a nation that did not attack us and had

nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda's role in 9/11 and neither the intention

or the capability of attacking us? In what right do we assume the ability to

launch a grandiose attack against Iran, using 30,000 lb. bunker busters,

dropping them down on nuclear research labs, which will create Chernobyl in

effect? What right do we have to do this? What right do we have to even

think about it?



    There is a moral dimension to this that needs to be looked at because it

characterizes our times. We've got leaders that feel they are not bound by

the law, that proceed in a way that is unconscionable, licensed by the media

that becomes complicit in their lack of straightforward analysis and

criticism. Our nation is being stained by this. They don't get that the

Patriot Acts took away our rights, they all voted for it. Edwards was a

co-author. They don't get that eavesdropping and wiretapping is against the

very fiber of this country.



LA FREE PRESS: How does being vegan effect your view of the ecology of

humans and other natural life forms?



KUCINICH: Well, it's a compassionate approach because you realize the

choices that you make and what you eat affect other beings, other species,

which do not exist for our utility but have an inherent right to exist apart

from us. Now people can make the choice about whatever they want to eat. I'm

not running for president to tell people they have to eat their veggies,

okay, but I will share my story. When I changed my diet my health changed

dramatically.



    I was a meat and potatoes kind of guy and I was also someone who had

Crohn's disease. I write about this in the book, that's out on the stands

right now The Courage to Survive. I had this when I was a child and didn't

even know it. And every time I ate it was painful and after awhile you think

oh, that's just part of life. Really, if you have pain every day it becomes

your friend, your companion, you don't think about not having pain, its just

there. So it wasn't until I went through some pretty rough times with this,

including some major surgery when I was twenty-one, that I began slowly to

think about what I could change in my life. Well, it took a long time to get

there and finally I met someone who was a vegan, and for the sake of love I

changed my diet just like that. It was a very unusual experience because I

would go into a supermarket and it was like learning a new language.



    However, when I did that, when I got away from all processed foods, I

got away from sugar, I stopped eating meat, chicken, fish, dairy products. I

stopped having a lot of the symptoms that went with the Crohn's and when I

was able to get rid of almost everything, the medication I was taking, like

the box, just throw it away literally. Then a couple of years late, I

discovered Chinese medicine and when that happened the symptoms were gone.

Ten years and I have not had a symptom.



    And of course, you know, in addition to that I don't drink, I don't

smoke and I have never done drugs. So I can look at my life, my body as a

vessel to keep clean and sacred. What I find is my own consciousness is in

such a fine tune place and if I take anything into myself that moves or

shifts one way or another, its just too uncomfortable. I don't like anything

that interferes with my senses. I like to just be very aware of what's going

on.



LA FREE PRESS: What's your position on the plague of domestic violence and

gender apartheid that's running rampant in the US?



KUCINICH: It starts with men's attitudes about women, which begin at a very

early age. The notion of patriarch helps lend itself to violence. Violence

is learned, and healthy peaceful responses can also be learned.



    The idea behind the "Department of Peace and Non-Violence" is to look at

the range of incidences of violence, violence in America as exemplified by

domestic violence. Any kind of violence at all - spousal abuse, child abuse,

elderly violence - and to look at it passionately but with an eye towards

dealing with it as a social, economical, and political phenomenon through

application of principles of education. It can be changed.



    There was plenty of violence in my home, when I grew up, of all kinds.

And yet as you go through life you find there are all kinds of forces that

can tear people apart. So if you take a compassionate approach and you have

available counseling, then you can do something. The thing is to get people

to understanding that they can go somewhere for help. Violence in schools is

prevalent in so many places, but they're nothing but a reflection of the

outside society. It really is a macrocosm of war perpetuating violence in

any level of society, it just accelerates, it's an accelerant on all

violence everywhere, every level.



    Those forces unleash themselves in ways that cause destruction

everywhere. You know Margaret Mead studied the islands in the South Seas;

she found cultures that were non-violent. We learn violence; we can learn

non-violent responses.



    How can you tell people not to be violent when the nation in which they

are a part wages war against innocent people?



LA FREE PRESS: How would you describe your view on class discrimination and

separation?



KUCINICH: It's inherent in the capitalist system.



LA FREE PRESS: How do you hope to make a change when basically you have the

entire corporate state against you?



KUCINICH: I don't take that personal. You have to show people that

acceleration of wealth upwards is not in their interest. Various Americans

have lost their homes because of the corruption on Wall Street and the

indifference of the Federal Reserve. They lost it through sub prime loans

that shouldn't have been written in the first place. They lost it because

the government was a cop that went off the beat while the Security Exchange

Commission and hedge funds were booking huge values from people writing

these mortgages without documentation and every one is making money off the

increased value for the investors, more loans booked, more investors you

have, the more the portfolio value grows. People make a lot of money and

nobody can pay these things off and everything unravels. Oil companies are

ripping off the American people; the government is pocketing profits. We're

at war for oil.



    My responsibility is to help people make the connections to the reality

of how this affects their own life. I have the ability to do that because of

my life experience, because of the way I grew up, because I understand what

people go through, because I know that for most people having a roof over

their head is what's important.



LA FREE PRESS: This country was founded on genocide and lack of respect for

people of color. Do you see that endemic to the foreign policy of the United

States? Can you ever see a truly bicultural and binational policy that

treats all people on the planet with respect?



KUCINICH: Well the Euro-centric world, which our founders have broke away

from, became the Ameri-centric world which has been a challenge for

observers of America to be able to stomach. It's inherent arrogance that has

separated us from the world. That's why I speak of the imperative of unity.



    Never before have we had such a technical infrastructure in our society

where it is demonstrably true that the world is interconnected. Once we come

to a place where we acknowledge that we are all in this together, that we

have brothers and sisters in every part of the world, that we are

responsible for each other, then we have an opportunity to begin.



    What's happened is that there is a split in our awareness. By

disassociating ourselves from others we split our own consciousness, we

separate ourselves from ourselves, from our inner sense of knowingness and

humanity, and we lose our moorings, we are adrift. But when we come to

understanding unity, there is forgiveness, love, real deep love that we have

never experienced before. When we touch that, a powerful transformation

takes place, and we will achieve a level of connection with people; the

whole world will fall in love with America all over again.



    Until we understand the current of human unity, we will never be able to

reconcile with the Muslim world; we will always be separate. That a million

innocent Iraqis could have perished in this war without a cry of a heart,

without an outrage on a level that would cry to the heavens is really

destructive because what it tells is that the same kind of racism that

permitted the theft of lands from Native Americans, that destroyed their

culture, that led to black people being put in slave galleys destroying

their families and their culture, that led to systematic discrimination in

this country, that still exists today. It led to the bombing of Iraq and

could lead to the bombing of Iran. It could all change if we understand that

regardless of what anyone would tell us, we are all essentially made of the

same stuff. Race, color, creed are just fractions of light through a prism

of humanity.




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