TRIBUTES TO SENATOR PAUL WELLSTONE
I didn’t know Senator Wellstone personally, but I certainly like what I have learned about him. Among other things, he represented the ‘common man’ (and woman). He was not in the ‘pocket of special interest groups’, he had great integrity and courage. He also had the courage of his convictions. I would have been proud to have had him as my Senator, but I would not have been able to vote for him because I don’t live in Minnesota. I think I would have helped campaign for such a person, though. I hope I have that chance when I return from our Poland assignment. I hope there are others like Senator Wellstone who are worth campaigning for in a time when most people are only interested in listening to and aiding those that can do something for them instead of what they can do for their constituents.
Senator Wellstone was a Statesman and is going to be a difficult act to follow. I just pray that someone of his rare talents, integrity, and compassion will emerge soon from somewhere in our great nation and will run for Congress. I will support them no matter from which state they ‘hail’.
Pundits are saying that if the Republicans gain control of both houses of Congress (House and Senate), this will be the first time since 1954 that both the Executive (President Eisenhower) and the Congress (Legislative) were in Republican control. I am not very familiar with that time (I was a wee child.), but I am pretty sure the Judicial was not in the pocket of the father of the then President, nor was the father of then President Eisenhower a past president and former head of the CIA. And the ‘special interest groups’ that have sprung up like vile weeds in the last few decades were not yet controlling and choking so many representatives of our great nation. I am not sure how many appointments the Executive and Legislative Branches of our government were able to make to the Supreme Court during Eisenhower’s presidency. Supreme Court vacancies have to occur before this can be accomplished. However, I’ve got news for all of my guests, there are going to be several vacancies occurring, presently. What we have here now, folks, is that the Republicans already have the Executive branch, (and judging by the 2000 Presidential Election, some would say the Judicial is even in their ‘pockets’). If the Republicans gain control of both houses (House and Senate) of Congress (Legislative), they will be able to appoint ultra, right-winged conservative religious fanatical, fascists, and prejudicial judges to the Supreme Court.
And should this occur, THERE WILL NO LONGER BE A “SEPARATION OF POWERS” OR A “CHECK AND BALANCE” between the three divisions of government (Executive, Legislative and Judicial), as our founding ‘Fathers’ intended.
And that horrific possibility will be the least of our problems. . .
Just a suggestion—you Democrats better get out and VOTE in this upcoming (November 2002) election!
Those who occupy our three branches of government need to have great character. They need to remember the words of Mr. M. Forbes when he said,
“You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who can do nothing for them or to them.”
I believe that speaks volumes! We need more representatives and leaders who represent all of the people and not just those that can do something for them or to them. Statesman and Senator Wellstone was one of those and he will be sorely missed!
Blessings,
Raven
October 31, 2002
UPDATE:
Due to the vituperations swirling around Senator Wellstone’s Memorial Service, I have decided to add an email that I sent to a couple of really good friends. One of them lives in Minnesota and completely agrees with me. She is also trying to get word out to the pundits.
The Memorial was for Senator Wellstone, his family and friends. If the news sources wished to telecast the entire program, that was their choice. I’ll say it again, the Wellstone family and their friends eulogized and celebrated the memory of those killed (murdered, actually) the way they wanted to and that is as it should be.
The day my Mother died, I surprised everyone when shaking with anger, frustration and unfathomable sorrow, I told the head ‘minister’ of her church to “stay the hell away” from the church the day of her funeral and to leave our house immediately. To this day I am not sure where that strength and moxie came from at such a time (probably my angels), but I think I felt the need to ‘step up to the bat’ and ‘run the gauntlet’ for my Mother who was not there to defend herself. The house was filled with a plethora of people (friends, relatives, and acquaintances) that day (and many days to come), who were sharing their memories and their sorrow with us. Someone who didn’t know him or what he had been saying about my Mom or how he had made her feel probably let him enter the back door of our kitchen, or maybe he just walked in. He was an arrogant s.o.b. totally lacking social graces.
He arrived on the pretense of making funeral arrangements.
I had very good reasons to tell him to ‘take a hike’. He had been very jealous and quite frankly, awful
to my Mom. He disparagingly and invidiously called her a Witch to other members in his little country
club church group. Isn't that ironic? Of course she wasn't, I should know. The
[expletive deleted] died shortly afterwards...“What’s fair is foul and foul is fair”. . .
It was my Mother who had
obtained the Charter for that Church (Morton United Methodist Church) in the
first place. She nurtured its birth and its growing years (decades, really), and had been its secretary and “good will ambassador” for over 30 years. If female clerics had been allowed in those days, no doubt Mom would have been a Methodist minister.
The first nine years of its existence, she worked very hard as the church’s secretary
for no pay. She even brought work home. I remember helping fold the bulletins for Sunday’s services by hand before they got the automatic folding machine.
I couldn't believe it when I returned in 1973 from living in the Washington, D.C. area and
found that she wasn't attending services at her church in Morton. It was
just so surreal, and definitely NOT like my Mom to stay home and not attend church services. She
just didn't want to go while Mr. Williams was the so-called ‘minister’ there. I guess
she thought she would just wait out the transfer. They
finally got rid of him soon after she died, but by then, of course, it was too late. She was dead.
I just
thought of something... I just now remember what he said to me when he came to our house after her death. He said, “Your Mother
forgave me in the hospital so why can’t you?” The nerve of that guy! Of COURSE, she would have. That’s the kind of person my Mom was. I’m not as nice or as good, or as tactful as my Mom was. I’m sure all the church related angst he caused her contributed to her heart attack. She was my age when she died. To
this day, I am still glad I told the [expletive deleted] to bugger off!
My Mother was beloved by all who knew her, except those handful of money grubbing,
adulterating hypocrites in the ‘minister’s’ little cabal.
Over two thousand people came to her funeral. It was a small town so that was pretty impressive. One of those red, perpetually
burning lamps is hanging from the cathedral ceiling over the choir area in the Sanctuary in her memory.
People donated that ‘eternal’ lamp, furniture, a perpetual fund in her name for underprivileged children to attend church camp in the summer, plus thousands of dollars in her memory. She is one of only a
handful of truly Christian people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing up to and including present time in my
life. I am quite proud of her and of having had the presence of mind to tell that
[expletive deleted] ‘minister’ to bugger off when he came to the house with the pretense of making funeral arrangements. He was probably just using that as an excuse because he knew that we had already contacted two previous ministers to do the service jointly. He knew he wasn’t welcome and didn’t need to be involved. The GALL
of that man just sets me off all over again! Look at this---It still pisses me off after
nearly thirty years! No doubt his cold and rotting corpse and soul are in the seventh level of Hell. I hadn’t thought about him in a very long time, but the pain he caused is still there in the deep, dark, shadowy recesses of my heart. And, yes, I still do blame him for contributing to my Mother’s young demise. Sometimes I wish she would have fought back, even maybe yelled a little, but that wasn’t her way and I respect that. I think she just never wanted to dignify him with any replies. Most people knew he was just a lying [expletive deleted]. I believe that most of her friends and acquaintances did not understood how painful it was for my Mother. She never complained. Perhaps if they had, they would have helped more. Maybe someday I will forgive him, but I doubt it. If my ‘angels’ tell me to, I will, but that hasn’t happened yet, and I think that speaks volumes itself. Maybe there are just too many ‘black marks’ on his soul. By the way, he never apologized to me for the way he treated my Mother. He had to know she would have confided in me. We were best friends.
This is one of the reasons I totally understand why the boys asked Cheney to stay away. Heck, Cheney was probably behind the 'hit' on Wellstone, his wife, et al, anyway. We all know that if Senator Wellstone’s wife had survived, i.e., been somewhere else, Governor Ventura would no doubt have appointed her to the Senate until after the swearing in of the new senator. This would have aided the Democrats. Grow up people. That was not going to be tolerated by those creatures who machinate these things. I am only one of millions who believe this to be so.
Maybe somewhere in the deep, dark shadows of their sadness, they thought so, too. I know I felt that way about that awful, horrible, nasty, evil incarnate, diabolical creature from the depths of Hell, Mr. Williams…
As we say in my neck of the woods, "Good on
them" for telling him to ‘bugger off’!
In response to a certain news program…
Well, here's your one email for the Democrats celebrating the memory of Statesman and Senator Paul Wellstone in Minnesota last night.
I didn't get to see the whole four hours because we are currently on assignment in Krakow, Poland. I was enjoying Tom Harkin's impassioned eulogy on the only station I can get American news--Fox News. However, as much as I like Greta Van Susteren, it was really annoying when she and those pundits kept interrupting Senator Harkin, who was BRILLIANT, by the way.
The Republicans are peeved because they 'supposedly' came to honor a man who was a member of the Senate, but he was also a voice of the people. When the memorial became a voice, not only for eulogizing Sen. Wellstone, et al, but also a voice for the people, they got ticked off. I think Senator Wellstone, a man for the people, would have loved the memorial as would his wife, daughter, and friends who died with him.
I also thought it was GRAND that his sons told VP Cheney to 'bugger off'. (You'd have to read my website to see why.) It was brilliantly brave, courageous and quite appropriate for them to request it, especially under the circumstances. Maybe somewhere in the deep shadows of their sadness, they held him responsible in a certain way. I don't blame them. They were quite correct in doing it their way. Considering the scope of the tragedy, I'm glad they had the presence of mind to tell him to stay away.
I hope the whole four hours is repeated on C-Span so a Minnesota friend of mine, who was a Wellstone supporter, can tape the whole wonderful event for me to view when I get back to the States.
Instead of saying that the people at the event were booing Trent Lott and how awful that was, you might try to understand why this would happen. Frankly, Mr. Lott should have RSVP'd his regrets. They were not good friends. A memorial is generally a place where FRIENDS come to honor their dead comrade. Senator Wellstone was a liberal who fought for and died, I might add, for the 'common man'. Lott is in the hands of special interests groups and huge corporations. PULEEZZZ!!!! For this reason alone, as well as for various other reasons, he was way out of place at this event. And for this reason alone, I don't think it matters who or what he is, he just should not have gone. Some of the Republicans are just miffed because they thought they could get some 'exposure'. They wanted to come off looking all sympathetic so they could garner some votes. This is obviously the case OR they would not now be yammering for "equal air time".
Governor Jesse Ventura is acting like a spoiled child. Apparently the flummoxed Governor Ventura, an Independent, feels jilted and angry (as did all those Republicans). He/They should be more gracious to the Wellstone family. Shame on him for saying, "Shame on them." It was, afterall, the supporters’ of Wellstone and the mourners’ night, not his or the Republicans!
Cheers,
Raven
Krakow, Poland
This information was sent to me by a friend. Personally, I believe Senator Wellstone and the other occupants on that plane were murdered. In fact, I know I am correct in this belief because I am blessed (or cursed) with knowing these things psychically. A witness said they saw the plane “crabbing to the right”. Sounds like a problem with the hydraulics system. Perhaps that happened after the landing gear was engaged and perhaps there had been some ‘tampering’ so this would occur. It wouldn’t be the first time…
All I have done is added the html that enables the viewing of the information. I have added a few comments, but they are designated by [“Raven pipes in…”] My comments are in brackets. All sources are given credit. If I missed anyone, I apologize. Please let me know and I will fix it.
Subject: Fw: [nhnenews] The Life & Passing of Paul Wellstone
EDITOR'S COMMENT:
Probably everyone on this list has heard of the unfortunate death of Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone. Who was Wellstone? How did he (and his wife, daughter, and five others) die? What are the ramifications of his passing?
The following articles and resources provide some answer to these questions.
-- David Sunfellow
A VOICE FOR THE 'LITTLE FELLERS'
By Dane Smith and Patricia Lopez
Minneapolis Star Tribune
October 26, 2002
Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Over and over in his improbable first campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1990, the 5-foot, 5-inch liberal professor Paul Wellstone would bounce up and down on the balls of his feet, jab the air repeatedly with his finger and shout that he would be a senator for the "little fellers, not the Rockefellers."
His politics, he repeatedly said, were about "improving people's lives" and "the fact that too few people have too much power and say and too many people don't have enough."
Wellstone often was derided as an anachronistic 1960s-style radical and a polarizer.
But his friends and foes on Friday invariably agreed that his affinity and passion for the poor and every manner of downtrodden people were his defining legacy. And he improved thousands of lives in countless ways, they said, through personal connections and help he offered, and through his political achievements.
"There have been few people in our history who so naturally represented the concerns of people who have no voice in American life," said Pat Forciea, his 1990 campaign manager. "He had no political peers. He didn't view any issue as risky or insurmountable."
Wellstone enjoyed the company of people who were not so successful. They were not props for his politics. He was famous for talking not just to the customers of the cafes he loved to frequent, but for going into the kitchen, talking up the dishwashers and fry cooks, urging them not only to vote for him but also to demand more for themselves.
He befriended U.S. Capitol security guards and brought them home to dinner. But he remembered names and family members of Minnesotans at all levels, as people who waited to shake his hand every year at the State Fair found out.
Radical roots
Wellstone was the son of immigrant Russian Jews and grew up in a modest red brick house on a cul-de-sac in Arlington, VA.
His father was Leon Wexelstein, a frustrated playwright who ended up working for the U.S. Information Agency under Edward R. Murrow. His mother, Minnie Danishevsky, grew up in New York City and was the daughter of a garment factory worker and union activist. The family name was later Anglicized because of anti-Semitic bias, Wellstone said.
Late-night discussions over sponge cake and tea at the kitchen table with his father, who was sympathetic to Socialist economics but a foe of Bolshevism, informed his world view.
His upbringing was middle-class and comfortable enough but was deeply affected by a great trauma, his older brother Stephen's descent into mental illness, a form of severe depression that put him into an institution and plunged the family into debt.
The bills for treatment forced his mother to take a job as a school cafeteria worker, and Wellstone later said he was ridiculed by classmates who considered him "white trash."
Wellstone's passion for underdogs and life's most helpless people was shaped by visits to his brother in a mental hospital that he once described as a "snakepit." He became one of the Senate's leading advocates for expanding federal health-care benefits for mental problems and chemical dependency.
He was a full-fledged juvenile delinquent during a rough period in the late 1950s, a time he described as his "rebel without a cause" phase. He confessed to vandalism and stealing cars for joyrides. But he turned his life around and discovered discipline in high-school wrestling, and his passion for the sport earned him a scholarship to the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
While still in high school, he began dating Sheila Ison, a Southern Baptist with Kentucky roots. They went to different colleges at first, could not bear the separation and were married in 1963, when both were 19. Their first child, Paul David, was born in 1965. Sheila worked in the university library as Wellstone went on to graduate school in political science.
He plunged into his studies and wrestling, winning a regional championship and earning his undergrad degree in three years.
Wellstone was hired to teach political science at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., in 1969, and his new responsibilities did not end his confrontative protest politics. He was arrested at a Vietnam War protest at the federal building in Minneapolis in 1970. He organized Rice County welfare recipients. He was arrested again at a Paynesville bank at a protest related to farm bankruptcies.
Wellstone was so controversial that Carleton officials tried to fire him in 1974. But with the vocal and organized support of students he had taught, he fought back and eventually won tenure.
Steve Schier, a Carleton professor, said Wellstone was "less of an academic, more of a grass-roots political activist. He viewed it as part of his mission to get students active in politics."
As Wellstone himself got involved in politics, his high-volume speeches, delivered in cadences that he copied from black gospel preachers, made him a favorite speaker at DFL functions. In 1982, as something of a sacrificial lamb against a popular moderate, Republican Arne Carlson, Wellstone ran for state auditor.
During the campaign Wellstone admitted that he had a learning disability that gave him trouble with numbers and statistics, an odd handicap for a state auditor.
He was soundly defeated, but Carlson said Friday that he had become good friends with Wellstone in the last couple of years, partly because Wellstone sought his advice about what people would think of the senator's revelation that he had multiple sclerosis.
"He grew in the job, and to me that's always the test of an individual's worth," Carlson said Friday. "He always used his public service as an opportunity to express his principles, his fight for the underdog."
Senate campaign
Wellstone's next campaign was for the U.S. Senate. He declared his candidacy in April of 1989 at a community center in a low-income Minneapolis neighborhood. The DFL establishment gave him little chance of defeating a popular and entrenched incumbent Republican, Rudy Boschwitz.
But Wellstone worked tirelessly to persuade DFL activists, concentrating on the urban core, distressed agricultural regions, and above all the blue-collar enclaves of the Iron Range.
His debate coach that year, whom Wellstone later nominated as a U.S. attorney, David Lillehaug, recalled that "he was about the only person who really believed he'd win. . . . The DFL establishment thought I was crazy to want to help him but I loved his heart. He always said he wouldn't be the senator for big oil, for the drug companies. It was straight populism, 180 proof."
Victory
Wellstone caught the beginning of a populist reaction against 1980s Republicanism under President Ronald Reagan. He presented himself as the enemy of corporate privilege and wealth. He called for a single-payer national health-care system and sweeping campaign finance reforms, and managed to put together what has been called a "blue-green" coalition, composed of union members in hard hats and liberal and environmental activists in pony tails.
Luck played a big part in his 1990 upset. Three weeks before Election Day, the Republican ticket was swept up in allegations of sexual improprieties by gubernatorial candidate Jon Grunseth.
And Boschwitz, also Jewish, stumbled badly with a late campaign letter in which he accused Wellstone of raising his children as Christians. It infuriated many Jews and earned broad public disapproval.
Wellstone, who often talked about politics being affected by the "winds and tides," eked out a narrow victory, 50.5 percent to 47.9 percent. The day after his election, he surprisingly announced that he would serve no more than two terms, a promise he broke in 2001 when he announced that he would seek a third term after all.
After riding his well-known green bus all the way to Washington for his swearing-in in 1991, Wellstone started stomping on toes immediately and got off to a bad start in the Senate. He held a showy press conference at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, greatly offending veterans and many of his new constituents.
In his first trip to the White House, he buttonholed President George Bush for a harangue on the inadvisability of war, and Bush reportedly said afterward, "Who is this chickenshit?"
He was one of a few senators who voted against authorizing war in Iraq, and by midsummer of 1991, his approval ratings had fallen to an all-time low for a Minnesota U.S. senator.
In the late 1990s, with Vice President Al Gore the obvious favorite to succeed President Bill Clinton as the Democratic nominee, Wellstone began angling for a run himself.
He eventually dropped out of the race, citing health problems, specifically chronic back problems. Two years later, as he was opening up his third Senate campaign, Wellstone revealed that he had a form of multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the nervous system.
Along the way and especially during his early days in the Senate, Wellstone managed to irritate and anger many who came in contact with him. Aides and Capitol observers discovered that he could be thin-skinned and harsh. His flaws were functions of his virtues, some said. His passion and drive came off as self-righteousness to some.
But among those praising him Friday was former U.S. Sen. Rod Grams, a Republican who served with him for six years and often was described as his polar opposite.
"We got to know each other a little better in recent years," said Grams, who worked with Wellstone on establishing a center in Minnesota for international torture victims.
"The fellow had a set of beliefs and fought for those very hard. He did what he believed, you always knew where he stood. He had deep convictions."
From the moment he arrived in the Senate, Wellstone was a crusader for the poor, the disadvantaged, workers, struggling family farmers, the environment and human rights causes. Wellstone's was the voice of the true left.
He began what would become a yearslong effort to derail efforts to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
In 1995, after Republicans seized control of the House and Senate, he became more vocal. Using parliamentary maneuvers, he obstructed GOP efforts to loosen environmental regulations.
He voted against the Republican-backed welfare plan that President Clinton signed into law, landing him the nickname, "Senator Welfare."
But despite taking positions on the fringes, Wellstone made friends and forged bipartisan alliances. In what may be his proudest legacy, he and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., joined ranks to author legislation to require health insurance plans to provide "parity" coverage for mental illnesses. While their bill was scaled back, President Bush recently endorsed the concept, and it is seen as a pioneering step toward helping a huge segment of sick, but often ignored, Americans.
Weeks before he died, he made another defining vote. Despite facing a tough reelection and a tide of support for Bush's push to rein in Saddam Hussein, he voted against authorizing the president to take military action against Iraq.
Poll results suggest that Wellstone's vote on principle didn't set him back in the least. He was leading Republican Norm Coleman in the polls when his plane crashed.
Wellstone is survived by his sons, Paul David and Mark, and his grandchildren, Cari, Keith, Joshua, Matt, Acacia and Sidney.
-- Washington Bureau Correspondent Greg Gordon contributed to this report.
PAUL WELLSTONE: SPEAK YOUR TRUTH
By Bob Stilger
http://www.newstories.org
I remember the first time I met Paul.
There he was, a brand-spanking new professor. Fuzzy hair and shining bald spot sitting atop a smiling face and a checkered flannel shirt.
It was 1969. I was a junior at Carleton College and one of the chief rabble-rousers on campus. Paul was more experienced in this art form than I was, and quickly became a dear companion and one of the handful of people I would seek out on my occasional return visits over the years.
For the last 16 years, my connection with Paul has mostly been through another friend who graduated from Carleton ten years after me. A grassroots organizer with much the same spirit as Paul, Joe spent his college years baby-sitting Paul and Shelia's young daughter, Marcia.
Over the years I've heard many stories of Paul's comings and goings in the world from Joe and his family. Paul and I lost contact, but just last week I was thinking about how some time in the future we might sit together -- grey haired in checkered flannel shirts -- looking back on our lives and the affairs of the world.
He spoke his truth. He spoke his truth. He did it with fire and passion and humility and intensity. He did it with a deep love for people. He knew we're all in this together. He did it with a deep commitment to justice and equity. He did it because he cared.
His life, and his death, are an invitation to me and to each of us to find and fearlessly speak our truths. To come out into the light of day and move forward in this world.
It's not about changing each other's minds. It's about finding our own minds and hearts and the courage to speak. It's about the capacity to keep changing our own minds as we dialogue and act and learn with each other.
It's not about agreeing with each other -- agreements are vastly over-rated, anyway. What's important is that we collectively find our way ahead now, today, and tomorrow.
We do that by being as truthful and respectful and loving with each other as we possibly can. Recognizing that we each have a flawed and imperfect view of things -- but it's the perspective we must throw into the ring so we can work collectively to find new possibilities and new ways for deeper balance, justice and joy in these precious lives we have been given.
I feel deep grief at Paul's passing.
For the loss of his life and those dear people who traveled with him on that plane Friday morning.
I feel a commanding sense of loss.
And I feel his deepest message: speak your truth.
I feel Paul's invitation to step as fearlessly as we can into the work of the world, and to do it with kindness and respect for each other.
Many blessings,
Bob
Bob Stilger
New Stories
350 East 10th Avenue
Spokane, WA 99202
U.S.A.
bob@newstories.org
MOUNTAINS OF ICE AND VARIOUS FORMS OF FIRE
THE PASSING OF PAUL WELLSTONE
By David La Chapelle
dlachape@aptalaska.net
http://www.tidesofchange.org
"Paul likes to tell a story about Wendell Phillips who lived in the time of slavery. Wendell always spoke out against slavery. Once a friend asked him, 'Wendell, why are you so on fire?' Wendell turned to his friend and said, 'Brother May, I'm on fire because I have mountains of ice before me to melt.'"
There are many kinds of fire in our world.
There is the slow burning of a terminal illness, the hard and concussive explosion of a suicide bomber and the brutal efficiency of a high tech modern cruise missile attack.
There were the forest fires of the summer that leapt past one containment line after another sending smoke into the many eyes of our witnessing selves.
There is the slow burning rage of an injustice that is not correctly balanced. There is the aggressive posturing of those who face a world in change and can reach no further than blind certainty and inflexible adherence to violence.
And there is the fire that consumed Paul Wellstone, his family, aides and pilots.
The wreckage of the plane that was, according to news accounts, quite badly burned.
From out of the chilled Minnesota skies the plane descended and exploded into pure flames.
With the possible fate of the Unites States Senate (and the correct alignment of checks and balances to maintain freedom in our government) at stake there is no small amount of fire swirling around this unfortunate event.
The fire was burning even before the plane took off. Paul Wellstone was afraid of flying in small planes. A fear he overcame every time he flew. And he flew a lot, for he was a man who was committed to the people he served.
There is a kind of burning that we undergo whenever we face our fears. And in this case Paul's fears proved to be accurate. Courage in the face of fears that are real is another order of strength.
Was it a form of precognition that informed his fear? We shall never know. But such pre-knowing is not impossible. A woman in the mid eighteen hundreds had nightmares of being burned in a church her whole life. She was terrified of entering any kind of place of worship. She was burned alive when the Sepoy rebellion swept over the Indian subcontinent, along with many other English, in a barricaded church.
There was another form of fire burning in Paul's life. He had recently been diagnosed with a mild, but progressive (he joked that it was only fitting he should have such a label for a disease) form of Multiple Sclerosis. MS occurs when the body's immune system turns on its own nervous system. A kind of fire in the central column of life. His leg had been burning for over ten years, and he had undergone a back surgery to help alleviate the pain.
Certainly standing up against the drumbeats of war is a form of standing in the fire. With his political future in question, Paul Wellstone voted against the use of force in Iraq. Such courage is a form of fire in action.
It is not a comfortable legacy he has left us with. His commitment to standing in the fire asks of us about the fire in our own lives.
These are not easy times. Certainly the tragedy of his death only underscores the intensity of these difficulties.
How hot are we willing to burn?
This is both a political question, a personal question and ultimately one that asks of us an examination of our relationship to all aspects of our lives.
May his funeral pyre ignite a flame in each of us. A flame that helps each stand clearly for what is true, correct and good, even in the face of manipulation, cynical exploitation and greed.
It is not easy to burn. But it may be worse to freeze.
TOM ATLEE WRITES:
cii@igc.org
The Co-Intelligence Institute
PO Box 493
Eugene, OR 97440
http://www.co-intelligence.org
http://www.democracyinnovations.org
Dear friends,
I was quite shaken by the death of Paul Wellstone, as I suspect were many of you. I was not going to send much out at this early date, feeling more would become clear soon. But it now seems that more may not become clear soon and that you may want to have some alternative sources of information to check against whatever unfolds in the mainstream media.
Even I have trouble resisting the temptation to suspect foul play here. The logic of it is compelling. But the fact is that we just don't know exactly what happened or why. This is true a lot of the time.
A seldom-asked question is: How will our lack of knowledge be used, by us and by those who shape the media's messages?
Uncertainty is a resource in the information age. In technological development, our uncertainty about the potential damage that could be caused by a new technology (such as bioengineering) is used differently by those who oppose or advocate that technology. For example, The Precautionary Principle that we should be cautious regarding any technology that has a real possibility of causing vast, longterm or irreversable damage, is a USE of uncertainty by those who do not profit from technological developments. On the other hand, those who DO profit from technological developments tend to promote the idea that human progress depends on us NOT stopping developments or applications simply because they MIGHT cause bad effects; suggesting, instead, that it is better to wait until we KNOW they cause problems before regulating them. We see similar arguments around global warming.
Uncertainty exists, more and more in our world. What do we DO with it?
So here we are with the death of a leading politician whose absence could profoundly affect the governance of the U.S. and the world for the next two years at least. The stakes are tremendously high, and the scenarios tantalizing. What do we do?
I'd suggest keeping an open mind, noting information from all sides, and putting at least as much energy into the questions as into the possible answers. And I'd also recommend noticing how hard it is to sort out the competing information, knowing that virtually all of it (including the narratives we each weave in our own heads to make sense of it all) are biased, grounded in certain values and assumptions that aren't shared by others. Finally, I'd suggest talking with others like yourself and unlike yourself, and keeping information flowing and evolving. Even random collective intelligence like this is better than none, better than all of us just sitting in front of "the tube."
And yet, once again, I long to have a political system -- and a media system -- that's grounded in having randomly selected ordinary people being given access to the full spectrum of opinion and information about public topics like this, and having them engage in high-quality dialogue in an effort to make sense of the diversity they find in the data and among themselves... and then reporting back to the rest of us what they discover. Jury trials are the closest we get to that -- but they are not only adversarial (rather than dialogic), they don't cover things like the Wellstone tragedy until there is officially acknowledged evidence of a crime -- which, in our worst fears, may be covered up.
It would be much better if there were a website where, if a million people voted to have a citizen deliberative council held on a topic, it was held. Better yet, hold three of them and compare the results. There are so many creative things we will be able to do with this, once we climb out of our positions and create institutions to help us all search for greater truths and possibilities together.
In the meantime, we have the sources of information we have, and are left to our own devices. Hopefully the information here will help you deepen your inquiry into the fate of Senator Wellstone and the U.S. It probably matters tremendously...
Coheartedly,
Tom
ALTERNATIVE NEWS AND PERSPECTIVES
Some sources of alternative news and perspectives to check out as you explore the Wellstone tragedy over the coming weeks:
Minneapolis Star Tribune, with links to other sites:
http://www.startribune.com/
> http://www.startribune.com/stories/1752/
Truthout
http://www.truthout.org
Z Magazine Web site:
http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm
The Nation magazine:
http://www.thenation.com/
Indy Media Centers
http://www.indymedia.org/
MOVEON
From a message sent to subscribers to http://www.moveon.org/ (creators of the "Regime Change Begins At Home. -- Vote" poster):
In his first race for the Senate in 1990, Wellstone was up against a candidate who spent seven times Wellstone's budget. Wellstone took a battered school bus across Minnesota, talking to voters one on one. He also ran a bunch of witty low-budget TV ads. In one, the video and audio were speeded up. Wellstone said that he had to talk fast because he didn't have $6 million to spend. Against tremendous odds, Wellstone won, becoming the only challenger in 1990 to beat an incumbent Senator. Russ Feingold, now a Senator from Wisconsin, credits Wellstone with having inspired his campaign.
Wellstone's campaign is still running one ad, which the Senator helped to write. In it, Wellstone says that he doesn't represent oil companies, drug companies, or "the Enrons of the world."
"But you know what?" he says, "They already have great representation in Washington. It's the rest of the people that need it."
STICKING TO HIS 'BEST JUDGMENT'
ABC News
Thursday, 25 October, 2002
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/wellstone_interview021025.html
On Thursday afternoon in Elk River, Minn., ABCNEWS' John Cochran spoke with Sen. Paul Wellstone about his controversial vote against legislation to authorize the use of force in Iraq. He was the only Democrat running in a competitive re-election race to vote against President Bush on this issue. The next day the senator died in a plane crash at age 58, along with his wife, daughter and five others.
ABCNEWS' John Cochran: Let me ask you about the Iraq issue. Did you really agonize about that before casting your vote?
SEN. PAUL WELLSTONE: I agonized because of [whether it] is the right thing to do, and I spent a lot of time calling people around the country and listening S But as far as politically, really to me, I thought, I felt that my best judgment, my honest best judgment was to not support this open-ended resolution. And, I did say to Sheila, my wife, and I called our kids, and I did say I thought it could be the end of the race. But I don't think feel that way now at all.
COCHRAN: You thought at the time you cast the vote, it would hurt?
WELLSTONE:Yeah, I did. I told Sheila this could be the end, but I don't feel that way now.
COCHRAN: Why?
WELLSTONE: I don't know that I can ever remember a time in 12 years where people have been so respectful. Even people who haven't agreed. They just come up and they say you, you know, we have no doubt that you really rendered your best judgment and that's the way you did this S and even if we don't agree, we respect you. That has been the nicest feeling in the world. I just don't feel it in the state, I don't feel that this is going to, I feel like we are going to win the race. We have a lot of work to do, but I think we can win this.
COCHRAN:It's odd, because the polling shows that Iraq is one of the three issues out there, including the economy and including terrorism.
WELLSTONE: Right. Those are the three, definitely.
COCHRAN: Given that Iraq is such a big issue, why don't you think it's going to be the deciding factor in the race?
WELLSTONE: The wisdom in Washington was "you cast this vote if you're in a tough election, then you lose," and I don't feel that back here. And I think people in Minnesota and people in the country, first of all, are quite undecided about what the right thing is to do. I think they are. And I think people are especially worried about going at it alone. You know, a kind of pre-emptive strike where we go at it alone. That's number one. And then, second of all, since I think people are quite undecided, I almost think it more important to people that they believe that you rendered what you thought was the right decision regardless of the politics of it. I almost think that's as important to people in Minnesota as anything else.
Presidential Impact
COCHRAN: Do you think if you had voted for the president, a lot of voters in this state would have said Paul Wellstone was pandering, and it actually might have hurt you more to vote with the president?
WELLSTONE: I don't know. It's hard to know. It's just impossible to know one way or the other. It really is. You know, I think it's sort of hypothetical. I think what people want to make sure is that it was authentic and if it was your best judgment. So I think, you vote one way or the other, if you then talk about why, some people say "you know what, I believe him," and you're fine. I think that's really what it was about.
COCHRAN: You voted against the president. There are about half a dozen really close races and the White House is interested in all of those because of control of the Senate. Given the fact that you voted against the president, do you think this race is particularly meaningful to the White House?
WELLSTONE: I think the race is definitely particularly meaningful to the White House. I think the president has been here four times, the vice president has been here once and Karl Rove is coming out this weekend and they're saying the president might come back again. But look, maybe the president will come campaign for me. That could happen -- you never know. But, if he doesn't, it's still the chemistry that you have with people in your state. People are going to make their judgment on the basis of "Hey, we're going to decide in Minnesota." I believe that.
COCHRAN: You think, given that Minnesota is Minnesota, a vote against Bush wouldn't hurt you as much as in some other states?
WELLSTONE: I don't know, I just don't know. I don't know about the other states. I don't think for people in Minnesota it's for or against Bush. It's for or against whether people believe you rendered your best judgment and they respect you for that. I don't think it's really an issue of whether or not you are for or against the president. Did you make the right judgment, that you thought was best for our families, for our sons and daughters who could be in harm's way, for what might happen in the world? That's what people want to know.
SENATOR PAUL WELLSTONE KILLED IN PLANE CRASH
By Marc Ash
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/10.26Ab.Paul.Wellstone.htm
...no one can help but recall the death of Democratic Senatorial candidate Mel Carahan in 2000. Locked in a tight senate race against now Attorney General John Ashcroft, Carnahan too was killed in a similar plane crash. That crash coming, as this one, just days prior to the election. Carnahan's wife Jean stood in for him as allowed under Missouri state law and defeated Ashcroft to become senator.
PAUL WELLSTONE, FIGHTER
By John Nichols
The Nation
5/27/02 [note the date - five months ago]
http://thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020527&s=nichols
EXCERPTS:
Paul Wellstone is a hunted man. Minnesota's senior senator is not just another Democrat on White House political czar Karl Rove's target list, in an election year when the Senate balance of power could be decided by the voters of a single state. Rather, getting rid of Wellstone is a passion for Rove, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the special-interest lobbies that fund the most sophisticated political operation ever assembled by a presidential administration. "There are people in the White House who wake up in the morning thinking about how they will defeat Paul Wellstone," a senior Republican aide confides. "This one is political and personal for them."
Still, Wellstone has few rivals on the left side of the Senate aisle. Congressional Quarterly says no senator had a more consistent record of voting against Bush Administration proposals during the new President's first year...
WEATHER, LANDING SYSTEM ARE POTENTIAL CAUSES OF CRASH
Associated Press / Minneapolis Star Tribune
October 26, 2002
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1752/3390786.html
It will take investigators months to rule on why Sen. Paul Wellstone's plane crashed, but aviation experts say poor weather and the limited instrument landing system at the Eveleth airport were potential factors.
The Beech King Air A-100 took off Friday morning from St. Paul and was approaching the Eveleth airport shortly after 10 a.m. when it crashed two miles east of the runway, killing Wellstone, his wife and daughter, and five others.
A 16-member team from the National Transportation Safety Board returned to the scene Saturday morning. Carol Carmody, acting NTSB chairwoman, said they would be at the site for four to six days, but it could take months to draw firm conclusions.
Capt. Richard Conry, 55, and co-pilot Michael Guess, 30, were among those killed in the crash. Co-workers said the two were experienced pilots who often flew with the senator.
Conry had logged more than 5,000 hours of flying time since he started at Executive Aviation in April 2001, the company said. Conry had an airline transport pilot certification, the highest certification a pilot can receive. Guess started in June 2001 and had about 650 flight hours with the company. Guess was a certified commercial pilot and a graduate of the University of North Dakota's aeronautics program.
At the time of the crash, the cloud ceiling at the Eveleth airport was 700 feet. A light fog blanketed the area and a few snowflakes drifted to the ground. The National Weather Service had issued an advisory to pilots that occasional moderate icing conditions were possible in the area. Winds were light.
The pilots were flying through the clouds, relying on their instruments for guidance. The visibility was reported at 21/2 miles, well above the one-mile minimum for a standard instrument landing.
The airport does not have a control tower. Pilots announce their approach on a special radio frequency to alert other pilots who might be flying in the area.
Traci Chacich, the airport's office manager, said Wellstone's pilot radioed his approach from the east and indicated he was going to land on westbound Runway 27. He then clicked his microphone button to turn on the airport's landing lights ``and then there was nothing; no distress at all,'' she said.
Chacich said two smaller Beech Queen Airs landed at the airport two hours earlier without incident. ``It was a little bit foggy, but nothing to speak of,'' she said.
Larger airports have precision instrument landing systems that keep pilots from drifting to the left or right or up and down as they approach the runway.
The Eveleth airport has a nonprecision system. It helps prevent pilots from drifting to the left or right, but it doesn't tell them whether they are too high or too low.
``The precision approach is quite a bit more accurate on keeping you on the path of descent,'' explained Brian Addis, owner of Wings, Inc., a St. Paul-based flight school.
To stay on course, pilots flying a nonprecision approach must pay particular attention to their altitude and distance from the end of the runway. The closer they get to the runway, the lower they can fly. If they misread their altimeter or misjudge their position, they can fly a perfectly functioning airplane into the ground.
The King Air A-100 is considered one of the most reliable planes in its class, according to aviation experts. The series comes equipped with anti-icing and de-icing equipment and two powerful Pratt & Whitney turboprop engines.
``King Air has a very solid record. It sounds like it's very much weather-related,'' said Eric Doten, a former FAA senior official and director of the Center for Aerospace Safety Education at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.
Jeff Johnson, an associate professor in the aviation program at St. Cloud State University, said freezing rain and severe icing conditions can cause problems for most planes. But the King Air A-100 has inflatable ``boots'' on the leading edges of the wings that the pilot can make ``expand like a balloon to break ice off,'' he said.
With so little information about the crash, it's hard to say what might have happened, said Al Palmer, director of flight operations for the University of North Dakota's School of Aerospace Sciences.
``There's weather out there, but it doesn't seem like it's really bad weather,'' he said.
``The first thing that popped into mind was OK, you're flying the airplane into bad weather. Maybe something went wrong with the airplane, but the airplane was still flyable. And your attention gets diverted, and it's a Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) accident,'' Palmer said.
``The majority of the aircraft accidents are in the broad category of CFIT,'' he explained. ``What that means is we pilots, we take an airplane that's capable of flying, but for whatever reason our attention gets focused or channelized, and we fly that airplane into the ground.''
NTSB records show just two fatal accidents involving the planes in the past six years, and those crashes occurred 11 days apart in December 1997.
But both accidents bore some similarities to Friday's accident. Both involved experienced pilots who crashed while trying to make instrument landing approaches in heavy fog. One accident, in Colorado, killed two Minnesota men and injured a third. The pilot gave no indication of problems before the crash. The NTSB ruled the probable cause was the pilot's failure to follow instrument flight rules and maintain the minimum descent altitude. Fog was listed as a related factor.
Eleven days before that accident, a King Air A-100 with two people aboard crashed while making an instrument approach to Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in North Carolina. The crash killed the pilot, but a passenger survived. In that accident, the NTSB ruled that the probable cause was the pilot flying too low.
FLYING AN OFTEN-FATAL RISK FOR POLITICIANS
Minneapolis Star Tribune
October 26, 2002
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1752/3389763.html
Flying is an occupational hazard for politicians.
Since 1929, more than two dozen high-profile officials or candidates have died in air crashes, often in small private planes, typically in bad weather.
Two years ago, a small plane carrying Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan went down, killing him, his son and a campaign adviser. In an extraordinary turn of events, Carnahan became the only dead person ever elected to the U.S. Senate.
On Oct. 16, 2000, he boarded a twin-engine Cessna 335 in St. Louis for a hopscotching tour of Missouri, locked in a tight race with incumbent Sen. John Ashcroft. He was on his way to a fundraiser in New Madrid when the plane went down in a driving rain.
[Raven pipes in: Figures…It had to be someone running against Ashcroft. What are these killings-- some kind of cabal?!?]
Federal aviation officials ruled last summer that the pilot -- Carnahan's son, Randy -- became disoriented while struggling with a cockpit control.
[Raven pipes in again---Of course they would!—That is almost word for word what they said about JFK, Jr. who was also murdered!]
It was too late to legally replace Carnahan on the Nov. 7 ballot, so Carnahan's successor as governor, Roger Wilson, said he would appoint Carnahan's widow, Jean, if Mel Carnahan received more votes than Ashcroft.
[Raven pipes in yet again--- Ashcroft was beaten by a DEAD MAN! Now THAT should speak volumes!!!]
The Democratic Party aggressively swung into her campaign, and she squeaked out a win -- at least in part because of voter sympathy, said Michael Smith, a political science professor at Kansas State University who has studied fatal plane crashes and their effects on campaigns.
"After Carnahan's death, there was a huge surge of positive media coverage -- a eulogy effect -- that started to fade just before the election," Smith said. "You can't be certain how much it helped, but at the same time, there was almost no coverage of Ashcroft."
Other cases of the eulogy effect were apparent when the widows of U.S. Reps. Hale Boggs of Louisiana and Sonny Bono of California were elected after being appointed to their husband's seats. Boggs is among those officials who died in a plane crash, when his plane disappeared over Alaska, also killing U.S. Rep. Nick Begich.
Jean Carnahan has served for the past two years. She's locked in a tight reelection race with Republican Jim Talent.
Intense Pressure
Politicians, especially those who have to cover an entire state, are under intense pressure to make as many personal appearances as possible during their campaigns. Chartering planes often represents one of the biggest expenses of campaigns.
Wellstone had a well-known fear of flying, but the realities of campaigning leave politicians little choice.
"In the midst of a campaign, you have to go here, here, here, here," said Sue Wagner, a former lieutenant governor of Nevada. "You can't not do it, because your opponent is going to do it. The pressure is huge."
Having lost her husband in a small-plane crash a decade prior, Wagner was well aware of the risks when, on the eve of the 1990 primary, she boarded a twin-engine Cessna 411 in Fallon, Nev., bound for Carson City. At the controls was a candidate for state treasurer. When the plane crashed shortly after takeoff, the pilot's wife was killed. Wagner suffered a broken back and a broken neck.
Few small planes have the redundant safety systems and on-board weather radars of commercial airliners. They frequently cannot fly high enough or fast enough to dodge a storm, leaving candidates and pilots to weigh the risk of flying against the political and monetary costs of missing an event.
"They don't have any choice because of the amount of territory they have to cover," Smith said. "You just can't synchronize the campaign stops so a candidate can drive from place to place."
Another case that affected Missouri politics occurred in August 1976, when Rep. Jerry Litton was killed in a plane crash while en route to Kansas City, where he was to attend a victory party to celebrate his winning the Democratic nomination to the U.S. Senate.
The string of political plane crash victims began in 1929, when U.S. Rep. William Kaynor of Massachusetts was killed near Washington, D.C., on his first trip aboard a plane. Closer to home, Minnesota Sen. Ernest Lundeen and 24 others died when lightning hit the plane and caused it to crash.
Governors of Montana and Oregon have died in crashes, as did South Dakota Gov. George Mickelson, who died in 1993 with seven others when a propeller hub malfunctioned, causing a plane to crash near Zwingle, Iowa.
Virtually every veteran politician has had a scare. And more than a few have survived crashes that others didn't, including Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. In 1964, Kennedy's back was broken in more than 20 places in a crash that killed the pilot and Kennedy's assistant.
.......... How Aircraft Can Be Caused to Crash In Conditions Of Low Ceiling/Visibility
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=212625
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I don’t know who penned the next two sayings, but I like them and wanted to share them with you.
Someone to love,
Some work to do,
A bit of o’ sun
A bit o’ cheer
And a Guardian Angel
Always near.
Contentment latch your door,
And happiness be with you now
And bless you evermore.
Raven
Home:http://www.ravensgatekeep.com || Email Raven :magickone@comcast.net
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