Remembering Hope

"We gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp,
We gonna mosh through the marsh, take us right through the doors...."

Monday the 25th marked the second anniversary of the Wellstone crash. I recall watching the news break on CNN, and my dawning sense of dread that omigod, it's happened again. But then, two years ago, I was still prepared to concede the benefit of the doubt, that it probably was nothing but a terrible accident. I was, however, disgusted by many early responses to the news I read online, which amounted to the bullying dare, Nobody better suggest that it wasn't!

In the years since I've learned enough about the crash, and about Bush's America, to no longer make that concession. I now believe it much more likely that Senator Wellstone, his wife and daughter were political murder victims. And I'm pleased that Monday also marked the launch of American Assassination: The Strange Death of Senator Paul Wellstone, by professors James Fetzer and Four Arrows.

One of the ancillary offenses of political assassination is that the deaths of good people can come to eclipse their lives. Getting Wellstoned has entered our language, bitterly, to describe political murder disguised as accident. Undoubtedly Russians and Germans of wisdom and good conscience whispered similar neologisms to themselves in the 1930s and '40s.

It's all but certain that Paul Wellstone's killers will evade justice as surely as the Kennedys' and Dr King's. But with every terrible loss comes the small victory of added clarity: we know a little more of what the criminalized state is capable.

Fetzer and Four Arrows are right to call for an inquiry, but always we should remember that Wellstone's life is greater than his death. Wellstone is not encompassed by his Wellstoning. The legacy of his life is hope, and we ought to lift the shroud with which his killers draped it.

So then, on with hope.

Have you seen the "911 Truth Statement"? Take a look. Released Tuesday, and signed by 100 prominent Americans and 40 relatives of 9/11 victims, it demands immediate answers to 12 basic questions, including:

• Why were the extensive missile batteries and air defenses reportedly deployed around the Pentagon not activated during the attack?
• Why haven't authorities in the U.S. and abroad published the results of multiple investigations into trading that strongly suggested foreknowledge of specific details of the 9/11 attacks, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of traceable gains?
• Why did the Bush administration cover up the fact that the head of the Pakistani intelligence agency was in Washington the week of 9/11 and reportedly had $100,000 wired to Mohamed Atta, considered the ringleader of the hijackers?

Most impressive is the list of signatories. It includes expected names such as Ed Asner, Catherine Austin Fitts, Daniel Ellsberg and Cynthia McKinney, but also prominent figures who have not had as high a profile on 9/11; some of whom, perhaps, are identifying with the "9/11 truth movement" for the first time. Included are Ralph Nader, Janeane Garofalo, Mark Crispin Miller, Michael Parenti, Michelle Shocked and Howard Zinn.

With such names attached, 9/11 skepticism is well out of the shadows, albeit still on the margins. And a story such as the one below - a new report that at least three of the WTC planes' four black boxes were recovered, official denials notwithstanding - is almost enough to make me expect justice, or something like it, someday.

But then along comes eminem, and makes me think today is that day.

If you haven't seen "Mosh," please do. Here's a page of links to the video (I found iFILM the most stable host), and here's a link to a direct download. This weekend, eminem is Saturday Night Live's musical guest.

This is the anthem for the last days. Whether of Bush's presidency or of America itself is yet to be determined. But the clock is ticking. And with the video's montage of "Bush Knew" headlines, and the cardboard bin Laden collapsing to reveal a chuckling Cheney and Rumsfeld on a soundstage, it appears eminem hears the ticking very well.

"Mosh" makes me think, for the first time in a long time - maybe since the Wellstone crash - that maybe, just maybe, they won't be able to steal this one.

And if they try....

"Mosh now - or die"