30 Comments

1. eoin howe:

   Well said, as usual.
   Bush and Co might be a bunch of dunderheaded assholes with less morals than it takes to fill a teaspoon, but they arent INSANE. Nuking anyone (is it unecessary to include the phrase “especially pre-emptively”?) would be about the most immoral thing any government anywhere in the world could possibly do. I mean, there is just no way they could think they could get away with that, not in a million years. Pre-emptively nuking someone might be on the cards if the US was a theocratic dictatorship run by Pat Robertson, because he IS insane, but the current pack of weasels in DC are not.

   29 April 2006, 1:32 am

2. J. Sprague:

   On April 18, 2006 “U.S. intelligence sources” forwarded a story in the anti-Chavez Caracas media outlet “2001″, stating that “Iran will be sending nuclear weapons to Venezuela and Cuba”. The day after the article was up, it was deleted from the Newspapers website (but not before similar stories were on 80 news websites around the globe).

   It would seem that some anti-Chavez folks are trying to latch onto this Iran hysteria.

   Do you think tbe increasing tension could be somewhat due to both Iran and the U.S. positioning to influence the formation of the new Iraqi government? Or is this just the Bush Administration looking for a bombing campaign to boost Republican poll numbers prior to the upcoming election? It seems like a number of factors are coming into play here that are beneath the surface.

   29 April 2006, 4:49 am

3. Stan:

   Bolivarianismo has become the vanguard movement against American monetary imperialism. Iraq has, by default, become the vanguard breaking the myth of American military invincibility. These are the tangible realities of this period. We are even beginning to see the tip of a Bolivarian movement here in the US, with the Latin@ uprising, which means this movement has infiltrated into the very body of the late imperialist hyper-power.

   When a bully is feeling weak, he will talk shit to re-secure his psychological power over others. This administration has consistently attempted to substitute the narratives of power for their essential weaknesses and over-reach.

   But I am not in any way counselling that we ignore them or underestimate them. I am arguing that we understand them, that we continue to bore in on the real weaknesses where we have mass and momentum, and that we gain some clarity about the period we are in.

   A cornered bully is a dangerous thing. These are indeed dangerous times, but not in the ways to which we are accustomed to think. Everyone who has grown up comfortable and insulated from the harshest aspects of history will want to convince themselves that these aspects are something that happens to someone else. They are not. They are happening to us. The time is coming when Americans will have to put away childish things.

   Lest anyone thing I am calling for the apocalypse, let me set the record straight right now. I am not. The immigrants are showing us the way.

   General Strike. Turn off the switch. Break the energy currents. Turn out the lights.

   That takes us back to the basics of organizing a resistance movement. Build consciousness. Build unity. But I am reiterating… if (and I don’t think they will) these guys drop a nuke, anyone that stays home and averts the eyes establishes his or her moral vacuity.

   29 April 2006, 8:03 am

4. Timothy R. Anderson:

   As a frequent reader and occasional comments-contributor, I say ” Yes. Resist. ”
   I was cruising the Info Highway today and saw some
   worthwhile reporting at http://www.traprockpeace.org
   It is something that I recommend to everyone.
   Chemicals don’t know if you are female, Iraqi,
   Shiite, Californian, male, Christian, left-handed,
   lesbian, financially-challenged, more-than-a-little-infatuated with Gretchen Mol , Jewish, right-handed,
   H.I.V. positive, Hurricane wounded, bleeding and
   half-dead already, achy, or just plain worn-out.
   Chemicals, noise, sickness, foul water, foul governments and foul leadership know NO creed,
   race, class, or sexual orientation …… chemicals,
   noise, sickness, etc. are in Iraq and they
   are in the ( not very United ) United States of America.
   One song lyrics-related question for Mr. Goff
   Have you heard and / or read the lyrics
   of Andy Partridge, leader of English band X.T.C.
   ? ?
   One song in particular I recommend is ” Scarecrow
   People .” Being the kind soul I am, here’s a link
   to where all X.T.C.’s song-lyrics can be found:
   http://www.sing365.com

   Well, Thank YOU all, particularly Mr. Goff,
   Timothy R. Anderson

   29 April 2006, 2:22 pm

5. Neilcaff:

   Stan, can you clarify are you ruling out just a nuclear strike or any sort of millitary attack on Iran?While I think nuking Iran would be the equivilant of hitting the self destruct button for the US ruling class I don’t think its beyond the bounds of possibility that some sort of attack could occur, probably a bombing campaign.
   The situation is pretty fluid in the Middle East but its quiet clear the US is losing ground from the quagmire in Iraq to the quiet reproachmentgoing on between Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia. You might have seen this story in Asia Times Online http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HD27Ak01.html
   regarding some of Iran’s clever monouvering among traditional US allies in the Gulf. My point is the situation in Iraq could go two ways. Either the US faces defeat in Iraq and a new Iran friendly Iraq regime emerges or it gets slowly suffocated in a Lebanon style civil where Iran has significant influence in the south of Iraq. If either of these two scenarios begins to look inevitable maybe the US calculation would be better to weaken the new regional power Iran now before the massive loss of power a total defeat in Iraq would bring really bites.
   Also the domestic situation in the US really seems to be hotting up. What if the immigrant struggle starts to make real headway and wakes the sleeping giant of black political power? A short victorious war to stir up the white base could not be ruled out. 1905 anyone?
   The above is not the most likely course of events but they are possibilities. I think whats vital is that the growing immigrant protest movement can a) act as a catylist for a wider working class struggle against capital and b) put itself at the head of the anti war movement. A united working class movement armed with an anti-imperialist consciousness could completely cut across any more warmongering from Democrats and Republicans. Naturally it would have to be completely indendent from these two parties.
   I don’t mind admitting it comrades, I’m excited. Uprisings in Nepal, total victory for the French workers, new struggles erupting in Germany, 1 million people on strike in UK, Venezuala attempting to build socialism in the 21st century, US imperialism staring defeat in the face in Iraq and now one of the most exploited layers of the US working class on the march.
   Fasten your seatbelts!

   2 May 2006, 5:28 am

6. Stan:

   I sent this commentary over to Huffingtonpost just to provoke people… and it worked like a charm. I should do that more often, because — like jumping into debates with anarchists, conservatives, and libertarians — debating with liberals is a good way to determine the causative agents of their confusion (and sometimes, surprisingly, plain foolishness).

   Replies included that I am a known Marxist (gasp!), that I defended Slobodan Milosevic (gasp!), that there certainly ARE insane leaders… “what about Hitler and Stalin” (gasp!), and then there were the real checkmate, slam-dunk, I’ll-show-you questions: What is a ruling circle if it is NOT a clique? Doesn’t the ruling class (they didn’t use the term “class,” as I shall explain) include “oil barons” who will make a killing by further choking oil supplies and driving the price up? Are our soldiers in Iraq (low paid) mercenaries in George Bush’s personal army or are they in fact fighting to defend (all) American’s interests? (Where this particular false dichotomy came from, I haven’t a clue.) So exactly what oligarchy do you see pulling the plug on Bush? One even suggested that Iran DOES TOO have nuclear weapons, suggesting they have insider insight into this. Here’s my favorite: Goff, when did you decide you weren’t good enough for your uniform anymore?

   Quite a collection of drivel, I’ll say.

   The only thing American culture has created more powerful than our near-total ignorance of anything resembling either history or the rudiments of logic, is our sense of entitlement to display that ignorance in public fora. As the Haitians say, the higher the monkey climbs, the more all you see is his ass. The higher the mountebank climbs…

   Let me begin by setting the record straight on my my points of view. I am offended that someone would try and reduce me to a mere Marxist as part of an ad hominem attack. That particular McCarthyite is a piker. A five-minute search beyond Sourcewatch — so riddled with errors on my bio as to be laughable (for the real and more accurate dirt, go to Wiki) — would show that I am also in league with Haitian commies (black communists are far worse than white ones, you know); that I am in league with the monkeywrenching lunatics who claim we are witnessing ecocide; that I am in league with revolutionary Black nationalists; and — here’s the one that really seems to piss people off better than any other — I promote the “radical” tendency within feminism. Cripes, if you wanted to conduct a character assassination based on conformist paranoia and white-male-capitalist-class caricatures, you should have pulled out all this artillery.

   It’s the Boo! thing again. He is a Marxist. Boo! They have to use the old scare tactics to stop someone telling people to quit being so frigging high-strung and panicky.

   My friend Al McSurly — a former colleague of Dr. King — told an impeachment group the other night, “Movements that follow those who counsel fear don’t do very well. Ghandi told people not to be afraid. Dr. King told people not to be afraid.” I’m just saying the same thing. People who wield influence in the various social movements need to stop that. And the rest of us need to quit listening as soon as they all start to hit the panic button.

   Marxist! Boo! Milosevic! Boo! Stalin! Boo! Hitler! Boo! Nuke-you-ler weapons! Boo!

   My question is, do any of the people who are using these Boo! tactics have any idea how utterly misinformed they are about history? No. But if not, why do they get away with it? I believe it is because the rest of us are often too lazy to find out anything ourselves and confront this crap. This shit has been repeated so many times that it becomes an article of faith. If I say that (1) Stalin and Hitler were anything but alike (in fact, Stalin was the leader that made far and away the greatest contribution to Hitler’s defeat — an inconvenient fact), (2) that neither of them were crazy, (3) that Milosevic was the victim of the most succesful demonization campaign since Stalin… then any one of these claims results in my being considered the equivalent of a holocaust denier, little better than a child molester.

   This is how ideology works… it fences off inconvenient complexity in history to transform it into a kind of simplistic docu-drama, complete wth heroes and villains.

   I have a news flash for people about Hitler. He was not nuts. And nuttiness does not account for German fascism. This was a social movement, rooted in the destabilized German middle-classes, in which Hitler was wildly popular as a national leader, and it was — notwithstanding the demagogic and ridiculous name of his party — utterly capitalist. Ask Herr Krupp and others if it’s not so. When we focus on this one leader instead of the social movement upon whose wave he rode, we can ignore the fact that destabilized middle-classes can be the most dangerous group in a society in crisis. THERE is a lesson for us, now, in the United States. Not the myth that the whole thing was concocted by one little Austrian watercolor artist.

   Watch the white “middle class.” Engage with them politically, because when they are scared and confused, they become extremely dangerous. The backlash against the imigrant uprising is telling us plenty. Watch that slimmy Lou Dobbs spew racism and hatred on CNN if you want a taste of mainstreamed proto-fascism. It’s far more ominous, to my mind, than saber-rattling over Iran.

   I’ll past in a section of the Katrina-Exterminism piece that covers the phenom of Stalin as well… comparing old Koba to Hitler is not only slanderous, it is part of that whole ideological gambit to reduce history to a few leaders and make the masses believe they have no agency. Here is an excerpt:

   “The crisis of capitalism brought with it a crisis of socialism and national liberation, because these projects were always fully contained inside the capitalist world system. The continual assaults on the economies and states of these projects militarized them – resistance became barracks socialism.

   “Stalin was not a phenomenon of socialism, but of capitalism… the terrible combination of domestic underdevelopment and hostile capitalist encirclement. An entire society was transformed into a military organization to prevent not capitalism – which was not what the West held in store for Russia – but Africanization. Exterminism was met with exterminism.

   “(Mostly in the conduct of WWII, however – more than 25 million killed in the war. The numbers of those executed by Stalin’s regime are grotesquely inflated as a form of popular wisdom in the west, with numbers reaching into the tens of millions. The best estimates of those actually executed, which included both purges and ordinary criminal executions – with most killed during the 1937-38 bloodbath [680,692] – are that there were a total of 727,271 executions from 1929 until the start of the war. The grossly inflated and discredited figures generated by Robert Conquest were commissioned by arch-anticommunist William Randolph Hearst to “prove” that communism was worse than Nazism).”

   For anyone remotely interesting in finding out the more complex story about the break-up of Yugoslavia, instead of the Democratic Party’s manufactured myth — courtesy of Rendon Group — there are a number of fine articles (beware, these require an attention span longer than that of a goldfish) from Michael Parenti, Diane Johnstone, and others.

   The work I encountered more than once to describe our system is “oligarchy.” Wiki sez oligarchy is — a form of government where most political power effectively rests with a small segment of society (typically the most powerful, whether by wealth, military strength, ruthlessness, or political influence). The word oligarchy is from the Greek for “few” and “rule”. Some political theorists have argued that all societies are inevitably oligarchies no matter the supposed political system.

   What does this bit of semantic legerdemain accomplish, I have to ask? Well, it drains the analysis of those uncomfortable — albeit more specific — categories: class… white supremacy… patriarchy. It is rude of me, I know, to point out that people who are fond of this category — oligarchy — are either white or men, commonly both, and that they themselves are generally part of that ambiguous middle class that is beginning to get the itch of insecurity as the system begins to unravel under them.

   The real system, however, and the one we can quantify and describe using time-space-matter-energy-options (for those of a scientific bent), is capitalist; it is white; it is male. How many episodes of C-Span do we need to watch, where rich white men are the chief pontificators and legislators, how many residents must we be forced to choose from a menu of two rich white men, how many statistics do we need to deploy that clearly demonstrate white male bourgeois power, before we abandon meaningless terms like oligarchy and get down to brass tacks?

   As to the Bush government and the US state and the relatioship of the state to a ruling class… I again refer to the Exterminism piece:

   [begin excerpt] In stable, productive capitalist economies, the state has one overarching objective. It is the ruling class’s umpire, pretending to be society’s umpire.

   The capitalist state is owned and operated by the capitalist class. Under conditions of stability and productivity, it represents capital-in-general. This often means that it has to suppress or even eliminate certain fractions of capital – whose range of view is limited by its own business cycle – in order to ensure continued power by the class as a whole.

   In the classic Brando film “Burn,” based loosely on the history of Haiti, the colonial military commander orders an entire island colony set ablaze, including its lucrative sugar plantations, in order to crush a Black proletarian rebellion. One of the island’s capitalists pleadingly objects that the commander has wiped out the island’s profits. The commander then explains that the destruction of the island is necessary to send the message to other workers on the rest of the colonized islands, and that this “pacification” is required to ensure profits for all, not just over the next business cycle, but for the next decade.

   A short story of capital and the state: The New Deal involved quite a lot of suppression of capital, and even semi-socialist programs, to ensure social order for capital in the long term. This so angered some capitalists that they attempted to organize a coup d’etat against Franklin Roosevelt’s administration in 1934, which was uncloaked by former Marine Commandant Smedley Butler – the most decorated Marine in the United States. Butler was transformed into an anti-imperialist, a process that began when he saw poverty-stricken WWI veterans descend on Washington DC in the legendary “Bonus March.” President Hoover broke up the “Hooverville” camp of the “Bonus Army” on the DC mall by sending tanks under the command of Eisenhower, Patton, and Macarthur against the vets, killing three people, including an infant. Butler then published his famous War is a Racket, a powerful anti-imperialist tract to this very day.

   To further describe the capitalist state, we have to put it in the context of a world system – now thoroughly integrated under so-called globalization – in which core-capitalist economies require the peripheral nation inputs – acquired not through the valorization of capital as described by Ricardo and Marx, but through chicanery and plunder, through debt leverage, and through unequal wages paid in countries where the reproduction of the labor force is cheaper due to underdevelopment. It is in this core-periphery dynamic that we can unravel more of the threads connecting ecocide, the racially-polarized and highly militarized response to Katrina, and the military disaster in Iraq.

   All states in this system are not equal. There is little doubt at this particular conjuncture that the United States has become a kind of metastasized hyper-state, but aside from sheer military power and the levers of a vast global monetary extortion and loan-sharking scheme, what are some of the characteristics of the US state that differentiate it from other core-capitalist countries and from the various peripheral states?

   The answer to this question revolves around legitimacy. It should be glaringly obvious to everyone that the entire police and armed forces of the United States are not even close to capable of controlling the population of the United States if that population were to become – hypothetically – disobedient. Sheer numbers alone would overwhelm these armed bodies, without even taking into consideration that ours is a heavily armed society.

   What holds the state together is legitimacy. The state – any state – has to enroll a substantial portion of its population as full citizens, objectively enjoying the privileges of citizenship and subjectively identifying with the nation – giving them some stake in the continuation of the system as it is. Even if whole sections of the polity are not full citizens, there must be a critical section of the population that sees its interests – and privileges – tied up with that state. Privilege is a crucial concept here.

   With privilege goes protection from non-citizens, from feared Others, from outsiders. Even when the state itself promotes the notion of a dangerous Other, and masks plunder of the Other as “self defense,” there is always the possibility that this Other will become a real threat. A humiliated people will seek both self-defense and revenge. A hopeless ghetto is a great place to get mugged. The state creates enemies – real and imagined – to consolidate the dependency and loyalty of its full citizens; but then the state has to ensure protection from these created enemies to retain its legitimacy with those citizens.

   Protect us from the Ay-rab [now Persian?] terrorists. Protect us from the 16-year-old Black kid we call “superpredator.”

   So the effective state must retain two characteristics: autonomy and legitimacy. [end excerpt]

   So now, after going all that way around the bend, I want to respond to Neil’s post — which I very much appreciate and I share his excitemernt about many developments). The US intent in Iraq is bases. Has been from the get. They are hanging on to this possibility with their fingernails right now, and can ill afford a generalized uprising of the southern Shias, which is a near certainty if Iran is attacked. Could I be wrong? Could they really commit such an error? If I could answer that, I would change my name to the Amazing Kreskin. I just wanted to get a little quiet in the room on this Iran thing. There is plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but the reasons given for the belief that this attack is almost in the air are either all over the map (oligarchy, insanity, et al) or based on plain tea-leaf speculation (Why are they developing plans? Well, I saw plans for an invasion of Cuba twelve years ago, but they never did it. The Pentagon has hundreds and hundreds of contingency plans. They make them to keep Generals busy and out of trouble.)

   On whether the Latin@ uprising could become the new vanguard of the working class, I am extremely sceptical. It is, however, very important. The best analysis of its importance and (national!) character, from what I’ve seen, is Joaquin Bustelo’s.

   2 May 2006, 8:55 am

7. m.c.:

   Not to quibble, Stan, but Albert Speer & Rudolf Hess both thought he was crazy and they knew him pretty well. Ironically, early(~1933-34) on when Leon Trotsky was warning about the fraught dangers of fascism, Churchill was saying some nice things about how Hitler and Mussolini had lowered unemployment, gotten inflation under control, and they were both strong anti-communists. As late as 1938, Churchill was still proclaiming the greatness of Il Duce: “It would be a dangerous folly for the British people to underrate the enduring position in world history which Mussolini will hold; or the amazing qualities of courage, comprehension, self-control, and perseverance which he exemplifies.”

   I’d like comments from anyone who has more/greater knowlege about Churchill’s early acceptability of these two fascist regimes.

   2 May 2006, 11:56 am

8. Michael Anderson:

   Thank you, Stan. Am sending the link to this post to friends, and hope it goes farther. For all of us out there “just making a living”, and probably seeing planted stories from the Orcs in the new version of the TIA office, it is, at times, very easy to forget the actual, real limitations of the projection of physical power, and you have given me (and hopefully others) a needed jump start this A.M. There are any number of things that can go haywire at this point, at any time, with “the system”, but most all of them are OUR doing. And talk is certainly cheaper than war itself. “Boobus Americanus Wal-Martis” (to paraphrase Mencken) will believe…

   2 May 2006, 12:26 pm

9. Stan:

   Insanity is often in the eye of the beholder. Again, it is a category that is as loose and therefore inoperationizable as “oligarchy” or “totalitarianism.” Once you try to define it, it falls apart. Terminology like this con-ceals more that it re-veals. The trick is to see what it is concealing. Hitler in his bunker at the end of the war may have been crazy as a shithouse mouse. But that does not describe fascism, without which he could have ended up killing himself off with botulism in a soup line somewhere.

   I’m glad someone brought up Bro Churchill, who continues to be lionized by everyone and their mother.

   He was a viscious imperialist and open racist. He stumbled into WWII with his cynical machinations — a result both he and Hitler wanted to avoid.

   Mark Jones’ piece on the history behind the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is most revelaing (as opposed to concealing).

   2 May 2006, 12:42 pm

10. Neilcaff:

    Thanks for the post Stan, I’d actually forgotten about the bases. How embaressing is that!
    I think the question of legitimacy and white privilage is key to any upheaval in the US. My own thinking is that while I accept Joaquin Bustelo’s excellent article emphasising the national character of the immigrant struggle surely the different class characters of the factions in the movement must come into conflict. Either the government digs its heels in and further radical action is called for which I notice the more bourgeois elements like the Catholic Church and Spanish media magnates opposed yesterday or they win a victory and the movement emboldened continues the struggle on issues like racism, poor working conditions, wages etc. Its vital the more leftist elements point the way for a united struggle of workers starting with other oppressed nationalities but ultimately it needs to win a significant portion of white workers as well. If the immigrant movement retains an overtly nationalist character in the future it will be used by the the white ruling class to bolster their own legitimacy among whites which will then be used as a battering ram to destroy the organisations of oppressed nationalities when the social struggle sharpens. Although white privilage is real at the end of the day you can’t eat it when your back is to the wall. If white workers see a united struggle armed with the correct strategy can win victories I think they will join forces with other oppressed nationalities. (If you think thats naive sue me)
    I know i tend to bang on about the conflict in Northern Ireland whenever I post here but hey you got to go with what you know and I feel there are some real lessons to be learned from the development of the Catholic civil rights movement into the armed struggle of the IRA. The Civil Rights movement inspired by the Black equivilant in the US was a cross class movement of Catholics around basic political demands on voting rights and housing conditions etc in the context of a Protestant dominated state underwritten by Brtitish imperialism. It was an alliance of leftist forces in Catholic areas (and some Protestants) and middle class elements including the Catholic Church. Initially it took the form of protests like demonstrations but as the struggle sharpened it took the form of strikes. This could have been an oppertunity to reach out to the Protestant workers who although slightly more privilaged shared basicly the same living conditions. However this was blocked by the more middle class leaders and the Church because it hurt their profits. Also their demands were phrased in a nationalist way which alienated Protestant workers. So in the demand for housing and jobs rather than putting forward the demand for public ownership and massive house building programme they instead asked for more of the ‘existing’ jobs and houses go to Catholics at the expence of Protestants. So without winning a portion of Protestant workers through common demands they a) fundamentally failed to challange the foundations of a capitalist statelet based on Protestant privilage but b) scared the Protestant ruling class enough that they used paramillitaries from the more backward elements of the Protestant workers, along with the security forces (Protestant dominated of course, seeing any parallels yet) to try to destroy what had up to then been a largely peaceful movement. (BTW if anyone thinks Stan is exaggerating the brutal methods a privilaged section will use when they feel under threat think again) Pograms followed, leading in short order to the rise of the IRA, a sectarian nationalist formation that saw nothing contadictory in viewing temselves as a national liberation movement while at the same time setting off bombs in protestant areas thus making the prospect of a united Ireland even more remote.
    To cut a long and sorry story short what happened in Northern Ireland can be filed under ‘Bad things that happen when the left fails to build a united movement in a divided society’ Of course you can’t make an exact comparison between the two countries but some similarites are there. National minorities oppressed by an entrenched elite, a week left, a semi millitarised society, etc.
    P.S. I hear what your saying about gender being a way to circumvent power structures and legitimacy. Will a young white man join a reactionary rightist group if his mom or sister is a rad fem? Don’t think so.
    This is all probably way off post anyway so I’ll leave it there.

    2 May 2006, 12:57 pm

11. Stan:

    Not at all. These are exceedingly important issues. Our problem — and the reason some of us keep banging the drum for a concerted effort to “re-found” the left here is that our left is in such a parlous state.

    The best example of that is how little has been done on the issue of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. This was the equivalent of the Balck Nation’s 9-11, as Saladin Mohammed called it, and there has been minimal national agitation on accumulation through dispossession, disfranchisement, racist insurance companies, ad infinitum.

    In fact, the left was caught mostly flat-footed by the reaction th Sensenbrenner’s updated Fugitive Slave Law.

    2 May 2006, 2:42 pm

12. Josh Narins:

    1. I actually _read_ the IAEA reports on Iran. They have a special page for it.

    2. Since Henry Hyde is retiring, and Tom Lantos would assume the Chair of House Int’l Relations if the Dems gain control of the House, there is good reason to vote Republican in House races in 2006. Jim Leach, the most liberal, if not one of the most liberal House Republicans, voted against the Iraq War (1 of 6 House Republicans) and voted against the rule on the (totally bullshit, designed to embarass Murtha) Hunter Amendment (1 of 6 House Republicans again).

    3. http://www.ArmsControlWonk.com has lots and lots of really, really detailed information on Iran. Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is now the manager of the “Managing the Atom” project at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He’s still (almost entirely, as far as I can tell) sane.

    2 May 2006, 8:09 pm

13. m.c.:

    Lest I forget, Thomas Paine did incorporate race/religious baiting into his “Common Sense.” He mentions Papists & Jews as well as Monarchs if me ‘ald memory serves. This was most certainly opportunism(playing to the colonialist woodsman).

    He was the first? person to publically call for maternal leave/maternity assistance from the government as well as social security( the U.S. SSA claims Paine’s ‘Agrarian Justice’ for being the first person to suggest government assistance. He was friends with Mary Wollstonecraft(she wrote Frankenstein) & her husband, William Godwin, as well as William Blake, their mutual friend. His books & pamphlets sold like wildfire in Great Britain though they were outlawed and his poor a– was on the run from the crown.

    Napoleon supposedly eventually called Paine an English rascal after being criticized by the latter but he did claim to sleep every night night with his copy of ‘The Rights of Man’ under his pillow. The corsican was a closet anglophile. He was a big fan of Bass beer(like myself) and tried to have it reproduced in France. Problems with the water/hops/brewing process prevented a true copy of the real thing. Goes to show you can over run most of western europe but still not get your suds just right!

    2 May 2006, 9:20 pm

14. Pierre Monplaisir:

    Stan,
    is it impossible the sudden sharp increase in light oil prices and the accelerating decline of dollar are planned to convince american people to wage war ?
    A stupid man is a real thing .
    Pierre
    FTW subscriber from France

    3 May 2006, 4:16 am

15. Stan:

    I think it’s more likely that the hike in oil prices area combination of dimishing supplies and accelerated competition for them, combined with some windfall profiteering by oil companies. The decline of the dolloar is more complex, but it should not be seen as a “decline.” Devaluation can be strategic. It wipes out the PPP of owed debts. People seem to insist on seeing only the conspiracies and neither the system or the complexity. America is already at war; and it is losing dramatically. Not only has it become a political and diplomatic debacle that is causing inconceivably uncontrollable changes — Sunni-Kurd alliances against Iran-Turkey allainces, eg — but it is costing $10 billion a month now… exacerbting the REAL underlying long-term weakness of the dollar that is concealed within the T-Bill Dollar-Wall Street regime.

    3 May 2006, 8:54 am

16. Stan:

    This piece by Kaveh Afrasiabi is an example of what journalistic analysis is supposed to look like. Reading something with this kind of nuance and complexity is such a breath of oxygen when one is cooped up in the stultifying world of the shit that people in the US have come to expect as “news”!

    Iran, US in tug of war over Middle East
    By Kaveh L. Afrasiabi

    Recently, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stated that the US missions in Iraq and Afghanistan were necessary to contain the threat “emanating from Iran”. Whatever else, this pretty much seals the fate of the so-called “exit strategy” and the occasional public relations statements by the White House that US forces will leave the region in the near future.

    In turn, this raises an important question: Is the US strategy of containing Iran a convenient facade for superpower hegemony bent on dominating the oil-rich region? In probing for an answer, history is rather instructive, reminding one of the Kuwait crisis

    and then-president George H W Bush’s promise that “our purpose is purely temporary” and that US forces would depart.

    Well, that was in 1990, and 16 years later there is absolutely no sign that the United States has any intention of vacating its formidable military presence, which includes “over the horizon” forces on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Instead, in addition to building several large military bases in Iraq, the US military has beefed up its presence in various southern Persian Gulf states that are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). In her recent trip to the GCC countries, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice once again warned the oil sheikhdoms about Iran’s “threat”.

    The GCC is a regional organization involving the six Persian Gulf Arab states. Created on May 25, 1981, the council comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These countries are in turn all members of the 22-member Arab League, of which Iran is not a member.

    Responding to the US moves, the Iranian leadership has been busy, dispatching such high-level officials as former president Hashemi Rafsanjani and the speaker of the majlis (parliament) to the GCC region, assuring them of Iran’s good-neighborly intentions. Thus, during his trip to Kuwait, Rafsanjani sold the idea of a nuclear Iran as a common good for all Muslim states.

    This author recalls that at a 1991 conference on Persian Gulf security held at the Institute for Political and International Studies, a Tehran think tank, then-president Rafsanjani unveiled for the first time Iran’s idea of “collective security” in the Persian Gulf.

    Since then, pursuant to this rather lofty objective, which flies in the face of the United States’ military bilateralism in the Gulf region, Iran has signed low-security agreements with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, and is about to sign a similar one with Bahrain.

    These agreements call for cooperation against smuggling, and implicitly envisage some future cooperation on broader security issues. Recently, Iran’s military leaders announced Iran’s readiness to cooperate with the GCC states on the issue of regional security. So far, pressured by the United States, the GCC states have not taken up Iran’s offer, and the prospect for full-scale Iran-GCC security cooperation looks dim as long as GCC politics are dominated by the US.

    In a sense, the GCC states are caught between the rock of US hegemony and the hard place of Iranian power, and that means a constant juggling act that simultaneously has to satisfy the antagonistic powers of the US and Iran, in light of the fact that with the vacuum of Iraqi power, the pendulum in terms of regional balance of power has shifted in Iran’s favor.
    Full article

    3 May 2006, 11:39 am

17. m.c.:

    I recommend the West Virginia coal mining/environment story in the May Vanity Fair(the green issue). I know its owned by Conde Neste{that corporate leviathian}. I was at a laundromat this morning washing my clothes and read the article for the first time. As someone who lived in the eastern panhandle of WV from kindergarden-10th grade, I thought I knew coal mining politics pretty well & considered myself fairly cynical. I almost cried. For people say living in North Carolina and are dismayed the power the tobacco industry or the hog(pig/pork) industry has in the eastern part of the state; that’s small potatoes to the power & influence the coal companies have in WV, & eastern Kentucky.

    3 May 2006, 10:25 pm

18. eric:

    I wanted to address this idea of oligarchy/clique versus social class/race being the agent of domination.

    I think it’s important not two confuse two disparate categories of thing. Certainly if one wishes to explain all of history, one must point to the rule of a class. But if one wishes to understand smaller chunks, one must try to seek who is actually involved in them. What is being done to the people of New Orleans, for example, is not being done to them by “the ruling class” or by “the capitalists” or by the white man. It is a being done by a relatively small group of people acting in collusion. They may be capitalists and they are probably white, but the utter abstraction of grand-historical categories makes it impossible ot figure out what is going on in a given, defined instance.

    It is an important distinction, lost on many left wingers (Chomsky comes to mind) who make the claim that a given criminal conspiracy simply doesn’t exist, simply because social classes are real and conspiracies are imaginary.

    I am getting increasingly frustrated over the refusal of left-wingers to engage in basic criminal investigation (as well as over their crippling belief in “right-wing vs. left wing). First 911, then New Orleans … the attitude that it doen’t matter what really happened or who really did it means that lefties pass up the chance to draw attention to something that the great majority of Americans would agree with them on, and fight with them against.

    3 May 2006, 10:32 pm

19. eric:

    One more thing … how can any of us fall for this America vs Iran nonsense? The guys running our government staffed (in part) Khomeini’s organization while he was in exile in Paris in the 70s, they pulled the plug on the Shah, they armed the current Iranian government throughout the 1980s, they provided the technology, equipment and know-how for Iran’s nuclear program (Who do AQ Khan and the SIS work for, China? Come on!), and they have installed Iranian agents in their fabricated Iraq government.

    The America vs. Iran stuff is, at most an attempt to improve a bargaining position. America and Iran are allies and have been cutting deals since day 1.

    3 May 2006, 10:40 pm

20. Michael Anderson:

    This may be a little off target, but I read the General Sherman peice, and then today I read the Times Online piece about the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the air bases under construction in Iraq, and something clicked. If we’re getting our ass kicked, or at least spanked roundly, in Iraq, why are these projects on budget and on time? Is this a General Sherman AKA Nazi “Blitzkrieg” kind of thing? Sacrifice G.I’s and civilians to keep the action away from the big ticket items—the bases of power? We would certainly then have our staging area for more local (read Iran) type operations. What’s up with that?

    4 May 2006, 12:06 am

21. m.c.:

    I think Jimmy Carter pulled the plug on the Shah. Cyrus Vance maybe talked him into it & Brzezinski was probably against it. Read William Greider’s book, Secrets of the Temple. Paul Volker could have eased interest rates and helped the economy before the ’80 election but Iran was Carter’s one big faux pax. He was a centrist/pro military spending dem(think Bill Clinton but a little more honest politically) but the maasters of the universe were not happy just like they weren’t happy with Nixon o.k.ing Kissinger with the green light for detente(sounds like two fags dancing)with China.

    [m.c., this is from management. This hateful homophobic remark is left just so people will know why you will now post your bizarre ideations at someone else's blog. The rules for this blog are quite clear. Zero tolerance. Bye. -Stan]

    4 May 2006, 12:15 am

22. James M:

    I want to ask a simple question, not to stir shit and not to score rhetorical points, but out of neutral curiosity:

    Is Stalin’s execution of 727,271 people, in your mind, defensible as part of the “iron logic of war”, a necessary resort to exterminism under conditions of “barracks socialism”?

    No moral presuppositions behind the question. I’m just one of those people who’s trying to educate myself on the real history of communism, to see behind the skewed caricature drawn by McCarthyite propaganda. Some of us *are* trying to get a better grasp of history, beyond what the History Channel would impart, and in the process acquire a better bullshit detector for judging events in the present. Please be patient with us.

    4 May 2006, 4:23 am

23. Neilcaff:

    I’m confused Eric where exactly do left wingers deny individual agency of given members of a capitalist class in favour of an abstract class analysis? I’ll admit I haven’t read all of Chomsky’s books but I don’t think he makes those arguments. In general he tries to link individual acts of injustice by powerful people into a power system that gives them both the means and motive to do so. So while Iran-Contra was undoubtedly a criminal conspiracy by real people in the US government you have to see it in the context of super power rivalry, an imperial fear of an insurgent people etc. These things were bigger than Reagan, Ollie North and all the rest. They were able to get away with it (hell half of them are running the US govt again) because they were acting in the interests of the imperial ruling class by suppressing the Sandinista’s leftist nationalism and allowing the continuation of gobal capitalist dominance in Central America. Don’t forget what the out come of defeating the Sandanista’s was. A pro-US ‘democratic’ regime that accepted IMF structural adjustment programme allowing foreign capitalists to make a killing in Nicuragua. These profits could only have been guarenteed by US intervention. The individual capitalists themselves may have had very little to do with the slaughter in Nicuragua, they might even have deplored US methods but at the end of the day, they benifited. This is what leftists mean when we say such and such is acting in the interests of the ruling class. A ruling class operates through individuals and institutions that maintain their rights and privilages. While these people may have differing views on how to maintain their rule they do all agree that they must rule. It is this overarching goal which cohears disparate individuals into a class.

    4 May 2006, 5:40 am

24. Stan:

    On the Stalin, etc., question: I bow to no one in my refusal to be Stalin’s hagiographer. A signficant number of those Stalin had put to death were veterans of the Communist Party — and no, I don’t find that defensible. But it is also not insane, and it didn’t happen simply because Stalin was mean. There were, in fact, plenty of acts of subversion and sabotage — incited and supported from the outside — and the lethal combination of Russian backwardness and hostile encirclement, as well as the need for a forced march to industrialization to defend the USSR, created the conditions for the harshness of Stalin’s rule. This is why I object to making Stalin — one man whose mountain of crimes will sit alongside his mountain of accomplishments in history — the sole morally-failed source of the Soviet state’s militarization of an entire society. This withdrawal of historical context (read Mark Jones piece to get the feel of it) and consequent reduction of this epoch to the decisions of individual leaders forces history back into the bourgeois frame… it actually removes the masses from history.

    It is easy for us to sit atop the present and gaze reflectively back into the valleys of the past, but they are shrouded with fog, and with each passing day the details that gave these events their truest character grow more dim. People nowadays have no real conception for what was afoot by 1936. Stalin told his party congress that there was a war at their doorstep that would end up costing 80 million lives and stretch through Eurasia. This was the context — the real context, no matter what we judge from here — for Stalin’s ruthless cruelty over the next two years.

    At the end of that war, the cost to the Soviets to defeat Hitler was upwards of 25 million souls. Did the barracks-socialism of industrialization and collectivization end up being the pre-condition for delivering that defeat? The answer to that, at least, is clear. Yes. Hitler had already stated his intent to subject the Slavs to one choice: slavery or extermination. This is the context for the NKVD machine-gunners who shot their own people if they attempted to abandon the line in Stalingrad — which was where Hitler was actually and decisively defeated.

    Deutscher has written as definitive a biography of Stalin as anyone might find — and he is no partisan of the dictator… in fact Isaac Deutscher counts himself a partisan of Stalin’s political nemesis, Leon Trotsky.

    The history of the communist movement is still being written. It is being written here, today, by all of us who are still willing to pick up that bloody flag and move it forward again. It is being written in the continued scholarship about the whole of the last century. It is being written in Nepal and Cuba and – now – throughout Latin America; in the decay of the party in China, in the accounts of people here, like W. E. B. DuBois (who joined the Party at the end of his life), Harry Haywood, in Robin Kelley’s “Hammer and Hoe,” in the 1991 split of the CPUSA, or the split of my own tendency, in the struggle some of us have taken up to forge an alliance between this movement and feminism, in world systems theory, in the sectarian battles between left grouplets, in the anti-war movement, etc etc etc.

    My main point re demonizaton was that the reduction of history to leaders hides the social forces; it simplifies reality into a Manichean struggle between abstracted good and evil; and the use of terms like oligarchy and totalitarianism — which become free-standing memes — serve to conceal class, gender, and national oppression, as self-reproducing SYSTEMS, as well as homogenize history to the point where we have no frame of reference except the most abstract (and ethnocentric, dehistoricized) morality as our frame of reference… where we can say Stalin and Hitler in the same breath as a way of making the imperfect struggle for socialism the same thing as Hitler fascism. That just shuts US up, doesn’t it? (No.)

    These tactics — very effective — are designed to leave key stories in place as articles of religious faith that can be dragged out any time we begin to ask the really dangerous questions, and reduce us to the equivalent of holocaust deniers. That’s why every time they want to bring the heavy lumber out in my case, they go for my defense of Milosevic. They know damn well that no one is going to take the trouble to question the Milosevic-as-Hitler narrative (it is now an article of faith), and very few are going to take the trouble to actually research his demonization, his kidnapping, or the kangaroo court in the Hague that now breathes a sigh of relief that he has died.

    I must, finally, point out — as is my wont these days — that a similar demonization campaign has been waged here at home, and the participation of people on the left in this campaign of misrepresentation is a shameful mark on us all: that is the demonization of Andrea Dworkin, the radical feminist, which included counter-accusations that Dworkin herself “demonized” men, penises, etc.

    I very much appreciate your question, James. I hope I have done it just a whiff of justice.

    4 May 2006, 8:40 am

25. Neilcaff:

    I think the starting point for what happened in the USSR has to be its poverty and isolation. When Lenin and the rest of the Bolsheviks initiated the revolution it was always on the perspective that it would be the spark for the uprisings in Western Europe. So for the Bolesheviks the idea was to hold the line in the old Tsarist empire to buy time until the European working class could overthrow capitalism and use the resources and technique of advanced capitalistism in the west to build socialism in the east. This did not happen for a number of reasons (although the working class in Germany came within a whisker of taking power) The upshot was that the Bolsheviks inheirited a country that had been destroyed by years of war and internal strife. Add to this Russia was invaded by 21 foreign armies and was ravaged by anti left Russian armies. A civil war of extreme cruelty on both sides was was fought. (In fairness to the Bolsheviks they tended to be lenient to people caught in anti revolutionary activity at the start of the war, releasing Tsarist officers if they swore never to take up arms against the revolutionary government, fat chance. It was only in responce to increased provocations in particular the burning alive of Red Army POW in the Caucuses that more harsh measures were taken against the opposition. It’s important to remember that democracy even under capitalist regimes, is difficult to maintain when a country is under attack. Very few people remark that there were no elections in the UK for eight years while the conflict with Hitler was fought out. So while the Red Army was victorious in the civil war the fact that it was poor and surrounded by hostile states ment the two basic ingredients for building genuine socialism were missing. a) the physiscal ability to raise the general standard of living for everyone, b) direct participatry democracy.
    a) Here in the west we just love slapping our backs about the fact we can wear leather jackets, take hot showers and go to the cinema. This is proof of our superiority over the rest of the world. Most of us dont see that the skill and technique, the factories, methods of production, skilled workers is something that has been slowly developed over hundreds of years. The position the USSR found itself in by the late 20′s was one where the few skilled workers they had were either dead or on the verge of starvation, most of the factories had been damaged or were decaying from lack of spare parts and the general level of technical knowledge in the country needed to produce these skilled workers and factories was not present. What had taken the West at least over three hundred years to develop would have to be developed by the USSR BEFORE THE WESTERN POWERS COULD REARM AND RECOVER FROM WW1. Just think about how difficult that would be to do. Industrialise the largest country in the world where the wooden plough was still common to the level that it would be able to withstand a millitary attack from the most advanced countries in the world. in these conditions the ability to raise the general standard of living became almost impossible. However nationalising the economy did allow significant growth to take place but this was uneven. In these circumstances of poverty a new priviaged layer from the ranks of the ruling party was able to cream off the benifits of the nationalised economy.
    This is why b) is so important. In order to ensure that any corruption in the planned economy is keept in check direct democratic control by the workers at all levels of the economy and government is vital for a socialist society. But remember the USSR suffered under constant internal sabotage as well as the permanent threat of invasion. If people say this was just evil commies showing their tru colours don’t forget the current regime in Washington have pretty much torn up the Constitution in responce to one terrorist attack whose casualties were the equivilant of one months fighting in the Russian civil War. So without democracy the growth of this bureaucratic elite accelerated although not without a ferocious struggle with those who remained loyal to the ideas of the Russian revolution. People should always remember Stalins oppression was mainly against the left in the USSR.
    Finally establishment historians love to harp on about the brutality of Soviet industrialisation. While this is undoubtedly true these statements are crocodile tears. Check the books written by these historians. Do any of them write books detailing the destruction of countless civilisations by the Spanish, French, British et al in America, North & South America. Do they bemoan the fate of indigenous people forced to work in gold mines? Do they mention the slave trade? Do they show how these monstrosities were tjhe essential precondition for our privilaged capitalist civilisation in the West as much as collectivisation was in the USSR?
    No chance.

    4 May 2006, 11:08 am

26. Jim W:

    Appropos Nazi Germany a good question to ask is “Whatever became of the German bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie”? How many of these groups perished in the Dresden fire? What percentage of these groups (particularly the petits) ended up in the soldier ranks? The factories? How long after the war were they disposessed and to what degree?
    People who find an interest in poker for good or ill know about “pot odds”; the weighing of risk against reward. This can be a class thing and it can also pertain to individuals. So an enterprising lad or lass could clue us in on how well these groups calculated their pot odds.
    My general approach to politics is that it’s more important not to be poor than to be rich. I think if enough people had that perception, there could be greater aggregate abundance AND environmental health.
    Let’s not ignore pop culture’s impact in this regard. Promotion of the “all or nothing” mentality tends to work well for those who have alot, not so well for everybody else.
    Let’s be clear to the more inexperienced and innocent among us what the world is all about. The basics aren’t that hard to figure out but should be implanted by the good bass players in our world. The fight is mostly over money and that in turn is a major influence on the relationships, sexual and otherwise that one has. As George Thorogood said originally or otherwise: “Tell me whose to blame, the whole world’s fightin’ about that same thing.”
    Someone who develops their imagination either with assistance or by themselves can get along pretty well in this world if they’re not poor and have good working conditions. There are many ways to enjoy yourself and others.

    4 May 2006, 8:58 pm

27. Jim Withey:

    Addendum to my last submission on not being poor. I don’t want to overestimate the sexual aspect of the competition for money. But hierarchical systems, whether they be capitalist or socialist or communist or whatever restrict development because they’re concerned with control and domination.
    Arundhati Roy has written to the effect that U.S. civil society is the most powerful force in the world. Another somewhat dated but relevant quote I’ve heard is “The American people can have anything they want, but they don’t want anything.” It’s not just Mexico and Latin America that have people desperate, or otherwise, that want to come to these not so United States. (The question of unity and homogenaity is a complex and difficult problem. Unity can contribute to a more direct and forceful advance of the principles of the unified body, but may be less adaptive to the “attacks of the the unknown exterior”. So the problem of promoting a benign, mostly happy existence for as much as life as possible into as far as the future will reach is about trying to to absorb the forces of the exterior into the (hopefully) relatively benign core without causing undue hardship.
    As far as my last submission is concerned, I meant what I said. The world is in my opinion manipulated by the reigning powers who will acheive hierarchy any way they can. As far as my love of music for good (hopefully) or ill is concerned, I must expound on the George Thorogood song lyrics that I mentioned in my last submission. Unfortunately, a large segment of society seems to be caught up in the battle for sexual pleasure at the expense of a general and sustained contentment. I don’t think this is anything new or unique to our time, but is an ongoing element in the desire for what I call progress.
    The pertinent element in Thorogood’s lyric which I think we must deal with is what we must be mature enough to admit. The song “That Same Thing” is by my estimation a quite evocative song. It deals with the potential of sexuality as good or bad (or however one wishes to interpret it). It’s mostly a powerful and by my estimation reasonably accurate representation of the sexual component of human interaction. (Both women and men have sexual desires which influence the society.) So for our immediate situation, I must state the lyrics that I believe are understated in our media and consciousness, that being ” Why do all of these men want to chase a big-legged woman down–must be the same old thing that makes a preacher lay his bible down. Oh that same thing–tell me who’s to blame, the whole world’s fightin’ about that same thing.”
    So we must aknowledge that this is the reality we live in while we defend against its pernicious encroachment and build toward a future and to whatever extent possible a present life of benign progress.
    I have something of an “Oswald” profile that I would like to say a couple of things about. Some of the best times I ever had were when I was homeless. I had a disability income which provided me enough sustenance to appreciate the positive side of life even though I slept on the ground. I had a strong sense of chivalry and an appreciation for life in general. There’s more to it than I can or should say at this time.
    I’m going to conclude with a couple of remarks that may be of some use. I hope that the authorities or “Big Pharma” don’t end to soon my “pale parabola of joy”. When the ants biting me got to unnerving me when I was homeless in Chicago during the summer of 2001 I would stop by Pete’s Bar adjacent to the Sunshine Cafe on Elston and listen to what I’m listening to now. “I’m free to decide, and I’m not so suicidal at all, at all, at all.”
    Best to all from the Evergreen State, my name ends with two e’s so I can enhance my chances of employment. (Employers google your name)

    5 May 2006, 8:39 am

28. eoin howe:

    MC- Just a random aside for the sake of accuracy: it was not Mary Wollstonecraft who wrote Frankenstein, but her daughter, Mary Godwin Shelley, wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the poet and pal of Lord Byron, who wrote “Ozymandias”- ‘hic semper tyrannis’.

    Stan- I had a quick glance through the book “Inside Delta Force” the other day, and saw the photo of you and your team after Grenada. You are the only one not looking at the camera. You look exhausted and pissed off. Having read your take on Grenada I can see why.

    5 May 2006, 9:51 am

29. James M:

    Thanks, Stan, you did my question justice and then some. The links to Deutscher, et al., are greatly appreciated, as the better part of scholarship is sometimes just knowing who to read.

    5 May 2006, 4:52 pm

30. Jim Withey:

    This is a hell of an impaww for the ruling slass”; that’s good to hear. I think that any society has to question and generally oppose its rulers, unless we reach a more benign state of affairs. Hwwever, opposing tyranny is a difficult problem to confront.
    Confronting power that is bad or evil must be done with the understanding that such power will try to “keep tabs” on those who are working against their domination. It’s almost as if they are “reading your mind” to find out how the can stop yow and become more powerful and tyrannous. This goes for all governments heretofore known. The people must find ways to stop this and form more progressive societies.
    I would think it clear to people who are paying close attention to events, that the U.S. power is quite ambitious and interested in achieving domination over the world, which includes its own population.
    The important question involves how to go about first opposing this evil and then constructing something progressive in its place.
    The Nationl Security state is expanding its powers to mine information on its population in order to undoubtedtly repress those forces of progress. It’s important for those people who consider the long term as well as their own self to be careful about the choices you make. Since the tendency is for evil to always accrue more power (and money, because power is used to acquire money and vice versa), one must consider the complexities of the situation.
    Not everyone should be so careless with what they do, and their vocational choices matter as well. Many people who call themselves “left” or “progressive” aren’t really that way. They might be intelligence agents, or phoneys, or out for career advancement and so forth. It’s important to realize that not all rich people are bad and that many poor people are bad. Each person must use his judgment as to who they think is working for the greatest good and who isn’t.
    As far as myself, I’ve gone down the path of open resistance to the tyranny of power, which may not be right in whole or part for others to do.
    At this point, it’s probably a good idea for me to continue, albeit thoughtfully and carefully with my path of resistance and participation.
    I’ve received notice from the library that a book I requested has arrived. It’s a book about the DuPont family by Gerard Colby called “DuPont Dynasty” (don’t “die nasty” by incautiously exposing yourself to political dangers.) As we should be aware, part of the Patriot Act concerns keeping tabs on library material that people check out. Anyone who believes that this is only done to “fight terrorists” is undoubtedly naive and/or stupid. Collecting information on people will be used to get them in trouble for all sorts of reasons, if the “collectors” have their way.
    So, my record puts me aquarely against the right-wing power, as well as any authority which would do evil (left repression as well.) The book contains relevant information about the “MacGuire Affair” of 1934. This involved the plot to push Roosevelt aside and institute a right-wing fascist-type government. Noteworthy was that even though many were implicated in this skullduggery, Congress didn’t prosecute anyone.
    If you Google this information, it will be recorded by ATT or Google or whomever. If you use a library or perhaps better ways of doing computer work, that seems like a good idea to me.
    I see a steady drift or pull towards the right, and good people must carefully consider their situation, and how to contribute to the future, both short and long term. My computer that I use is being fixed by a guy named Matt, so I hope THAT goes ok. It’s not going to do ME much good to change my approach at this point, so I am going to use my home computer, and call talk shows from home (others considering this route should think about using phones that can’t be traced.) By the way, I’ve been arrested for falling asleep in a library. What was that that William Burroughs said about paranoia being just knowing all the facts? Know the facts, but just don’t ler it make you lose your cool.
    Good luck from the Evergreen State. My name really ends with two e’s; spelling it this way will keep employers from rejecting me by google searches.

    14 May 2006, 2:39 pm

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