The masses of Americans did not want to enter World War II. Franklin D. Roosevelt pressured the Japanese through embargos of raw materials to enter the war, and I believe the evidence that shows that FDR had access to top-secret military intelligence that read all military communications of the Japanese, and thus FDR was completely aware of the planned Pearl Harbor attack in all its details, and he allowed it to happen because he wanted to put American in that war.

I don’t recall the specifics of American history, but my guess is that the masses of Americans were not clamoring for an end to slavery when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It was an act of leadership on his part that ultimately cost him his life.

The majority of Americans for several years have wanted the Iraq War ended, and the president has ignored them. Even worse in Europe, where higher percentages opposed the invasion of Iraq from Day One and the American president urged foreign “democratic” governments to ignore the will of up to 90% of their people and prosecute the war.

I don’t think that most Obama supporters elected him with the expectation that they would have to pressure him into looking out for their interests, though it is certainly highly possible that Obama in effect told them exactly that.

One of the fascinating aspects of this situation in my mind relates to the words of Martin Luther King Jr. when he yearned for the day when people would be judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
It seems to me that Obama has been judged favorably by the masses based on the color of his skin and by the tone of his rhetoric without his even being inaugurated. This seems to me to be an outright contradiction of the standard proposed by MLK. I am learning more about Obama’s rhetoric and the understanding of his character can only be revealed with time and with his record of achievement, non-achievement, and attempted achievement. MLK himself said he did not expect to get to the “promised land” but he fought for it and died for it. What will Obama do? He has awesome power as president, including the power of the Bully Pulpit. When Obama stands at the bully pulpit and discusses matters of empire, such as the view of Iran, will he be more like Martin Luther King or Dick Cheney? I await the answer to this question and others like it.

Stan Moore
Petaluma, CA

We need not imagine that the hijackings of 9/11/01 were an “inside job” to accuse the Bush administration of willful negligence in the events of that day. And we need not imagine that history is the product of “conspiracy theory” in order to see how the events of that day propped up an Administration whose claim to power rested upon a Supreme Court decision and whose justification for various security decisions (e.g. letting the bin Ladens leave the country on a day when every plane in the US was grounded without so much as an FBI question, not to mention Dick Cheney’s war on the world) rests upon its “being in charge” on 9/11/01.

As Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed pointed out in his books, the idea that the 90-minute collapse of NORAD was a “routine fuck-up” does not hold water in light of its past record of efficiency, and the refusal of the official commission to investigate this matter (or, for that matter, the Armed Forces’ war games schedule on that day) only compounds the problem. And, yes, the Air Force was supposed to shoot down the planes before they collided with the towers, before thousands were to die. The engineering problem with the actual collapse of the WTC towers, the Administration’s interference with FBI investigations pre-9/11/0, and the “war” against Osama bin Laden (a man hooked to a dialysis machine who was visited in the hospital by US intelligence in the summer of 2001) were other matters entirely.

For the record, I have no idea what actually happened, nor do I care to speculate. One can see, however, that on some level Bush wanted (and allowed) the events of 9/11/01 to happen, because they rescued his Administration and his agenda from pariah status and granted him re-election chances. The Bush years, as Peter McLaren and Nathalia Jaramillo pointed out in Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire, were a bit of nostalgia for the McKinley Presidency, one last fling with the age of the robber barons before the whole virtual economy was to collapse this year. One can see that the elites desperately wanted this fling, given the immense amount of trouble they underwent in order to put Bush in power and to keep him there. As Oliver Stone doubtless observed (I haven’t seen his movie but I have read the reviews), W. is not naturally Presidential material.

Now, as for the Obama campaign, one must start by reflecting upon the fact that one must at least have the potential to attract hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign monies, observable beforehand, in order to be considered (by the elites, of course) as a viable Presidential candidate. Obama’s rise through the money machines is, of course, a meaningful event, in light of his ancestry and skin color. Nevertheless, Obama is clearly encased in a “team,” many of whose members are responsible for the ongoing disaster which is neoliberal governance. Watch to see if Robert Rubin gets a position with the new Administration.

As for the Obama realignment, DailyKos.com put on a map showing how the only part of the country that was becoming more Republican was Appalachia. Minor shifts can account for his 2008 improvement over Kerry’s 2004 performance. This isn’t a revolution, though it is a significant change.

And as for localization, well, okay, but it’s important to recognize that with the “globalization” that accompanied the expansion of the capitalist system in the current era also came a “globalization” of humanistic values which we would do best to keep. On-the-ground facts are a matter of historical accretion before they become objects of systems analysis.

^^^^

Obama emphatically , repeatedly and correctly said during the campaign that change comes from the bottom up , not from the top down, and change come to Washington , not from Washington. He doesn’t have a big man theory of history. Change can only be made by masses. As President he can prevent the thwarting of the People’s will.

Dear Samuel –

I think you have raised a very important point. But it is very complicated. I have seen photos of Amazonian forest dwellers who received high tech “gifts” such as computers and gps instruments and who readily saw the benefit and value of the technology without knowing that the cumulative effect of technology probably would result in the destruction of their forest homes rather than the preservation of them.

When trappers and traders encountered American Indians, the Indians immediately saw the benefit of steel knives and pots for boiling water, the decorative beauty of glass beads, the novelty of brass falconers bells, etc. The Indians instituted trade, invited more and more white people into their living domain, and eventually got pushed completely off their own land and in some cases became victims of genocide.

In short, there seems to be something intrinsic to humans at the species level that leads us to danger from curiosity and greed, no matter what the cultural setting. If one culture does not thrive on greed and technology, but is rooted on ecological relationships and sustainability, it eventually is dominated and expelled from its setting by other cultures that attain power and influence from Aristotlian thinking.

Yet, now we have attempts to reverse the Aristotlian mindset in recognition of its reckless destructiveness. Some cultures are taught to think muligenerationally over long periods of time because they have long histories and institutional memory that sees value in such.

Derrick Jensen in an American author who is currently calling for deliberate deconstruction of our culture in order to save human and non-human life on the planet.

Daniel Quinn wrote a neat book called “Ishmael” which distinguished between the “takers” and the “leavers” within humanity and compared the civilization of the past ten thousand years to an airplane that barely got off the ground and which must crash because it is not airworthy; but the biggest tragedy is that the passengers have not figured out that their vehicle cannot fly much longer and think they are safe.

Jared Diamond, a geographer from UCLA was asked by a native of Papua New Guinea why his culture had so much “cargo” (possessions) while the indigenous had so few. Jared Diamond went on to write “Guns, Germs and Steel” and “Collapse” describing how civilizations attain power and how they then collapse and fall into the dustbins of history.

The issue of greatest importance in this regard today, in my view, is that the colonization of Planet Earth by the human species is essentially complete now. We are depauperizing the planet in almost incomprehensible ways, making life as humans experienced even a hundred years ago a non-reality for the foreseeable future. Americans see a herd of ten deer and think they are seeing the grandeur of nature, but what exists here now in terms of birdlife, fish, game, etc is a pitifully small remnant of what existed before. Our topsoil has been wasted, our waters polluted, the climate heated up, the petroleum pumped out and the issue now is can our civilization survive at all.

Sam, yes, the thinking that led us to this point was flawed and harmful. It continues to be such. And yet Barack Obama stressed in his first press conference his primary goal of yet more economic growth. That is his priority, even though it is the worst objective he could shoot for.
McCain had it completely wrong about wealth distribution, and if Barack Obama wanted to save the country and heal the planet he would be working hard on collaborative solutions using sharing and downsizing American lifestyles and comsumption.

In short, we see the problem, but it is very questionable if we will fix it. I tend to think that the human population of Planet Earth will crash with huge amounts of suffering till an equilibrium is reached with planetary sustainability.

Then, a new start will take place, with the likelihood that our flawed genetics will restart the same destructive process all over again. I don’t expect to be here by that time.

Meanwhile, I believe that individuals should seek to do right and good, even if it does not change the world adequately. Sometimes the best and only thing we can do is to try, knowing we will fail…

Stan Moore
Petaluma, CA

I have been following your thread/thoughts for a while and they are stimulating. Having observed the way people live in America, and how the rest of the world want to emulate lifestyles here, it seems to me what we may need is some “epistemic” shift. I will give you an example, much of what is assumed to be known is based on Aristotelian logic. So, European and American civilization is based on the assumption that the way we use science, the way we relate to each other, in fact how we “discover” and “use” knowledge is correct and ideal. We can only trace the basis for this knowledge to about 10.000 years ago. Just because that is the only way of knowing we know does not mean it is the only one. It seems to me that we have overvalued the usefulness of the knowledge and not looked harder at possible “other” ways of knowing that might help us figure out issues such as population control, environmental conservation, our relationship with extractive resources and other life forms, energy and how to use it and religion among others.

What do you think?

http://patriotsquestion911.com/Article%20Military%20Officers%20Challenge%20911.pdf

Regarding the possibility of 9/11 as an inside job, I can absolutely understand why Americans would not want to contemplate such a matter. But the evidence and the seriousness of the matter scream for resolution, which was not provided by the “official investigation” which was performed by government hacks like Phillip Zelikow and Thomas Keane, Lee Hamilton, and others.

Here is a link to a compilation of testimonies of 25 professional military personnel, most of long-time service and impeccable credentials for intellect, integrity, and honesty. These persons have investigated 9/11 and have questions about what happened, but no doubt at all that the official story is false and even impossible in important ways.

Most of all notice the concerns of these patriotic American military men over the meaning of this event and the coverup on American democracy. Notice the concerns of Shelton Lankford, for instance on the serious threat to what he called “the American experiment”.

This is truly scary stuff! And with regard to subsequent American and world history, it means everything, in my opinion.

the website at http://patriotsquestion911.com contains more testimonies from military people, engineers, architects, intelligence agents, law enforcement people, and others.

Stan Moore
Petaluma, CA

Hillary Clinton ran for President as a warmonger deluxe, offering to blow Iran to smithereens if they looked at us crosseyed. Clearly the “change” anticipated years ago from having women in power has not been attained as predicted.

Dianne Feinstein, Jewish wife of a billionaire businessman with close trade ties to China, favors most favored trade status to human rights sanctions and has no problem with Israeli crimes against humanity in Palestine. Yet, a man named Kucinich proved that you can have a set of testacles and some testosterone and still be a fighter for peace and for justice.

Alice Walker was interviewed on the radio yesterday and already backtracked on Obama expectations for change, saying he was a symbol of change, but the real change needed to be brought about by the people.

But as I see it, Obama was the beneficiary of an already-changed nation. His election was not proof that he had changed the nation, but that the nation had changed and was ready to put the first black politician into the presidency. But the nation was not ready to put Cynthia Mc Kinney in office, and the real question now is how much change will Obama be willing to fight for once he is inaugurated.

Obama was a master at getting elected. I think his enthusiastic supporters were counting on systemic change FROM him, and not change FOR him. Obama said “Yes, we can!”. The people did their part of the “we” equation. Now it is Obama’s turn to do his part of effecting change as president and not as candidate.

They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.

Triumphalism in humiliation of an “enemy,” and following orders are not being the change we believe in. It’s revenge and the self-same discipline as the all-volunteer army.

Surely among these networks of Obama supporters, there will be some who are willing to hold Obama accountable. So far, he has reneged on his opposition to the war, supported the bailout of the rich, rattled military sabers at Afghanistan and Pakistan, declared for “free trade” agreements, declared against equal rights for gay and lesbian folk, and ridiculed single-payer health care. And he’s not even taken office yet. Will the CP now tail these positions, or continue to to be the quietist self-proclaimed left in the “center-left coalition”? If it’s changing the world that’s needed, well… what the masses (all of them, not just Americans) need — if that is still relevent — is not support for Obama now. The election is over. The world needs these networks to tell him what he ought to do… not follow him around like the messiah.

Ya think he’ll reverse the Bush coup against Haiti? “Allow” Aristide to go home?

Here is Joaquin’s less breathless account of the election (which may hurt my own election-hypothesis about organizational agility at the local level, though it supports my pre-election contention that white-block voting would happen in response to Obama’s being Black).

Who was it who directed us to the concept of “an armed organization of the population” as he worked in his “garden” ?

I think a key freshness and promise of the Obama campaign was the much talked about heavy role of younger people. Just as the youth of my youth had better politics than our parents, a fresh generation with better politics has arrived ! Hurray ! Yes we can change the world.

I was in an Obama “squad” on the near eastside of Detroit. I would say that the campaign was organized with centers, and hierarchy. Our Field Organizer was a 22 year old recent grad of Univ of Mich. in political science, getting a little practice. Our cells were not autonomous, but we were volunteers, which carries inherent independence. We volunteered to follow orders.

We will be trying to carry on some of the networking we did with each other for future political work. The Republicans were laughing at O being a Community Organizer. hahaha. We who laugh last , laugh last.

I just discovered the existence of this organization, whose website is at http://www.warisaracket.org

There is a ton of useful and historic information on that website, including stuff on the imperial nature of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, how profit is generated from such wars, and how to put a stop to it.

One page of note is: http://www.warisaracket.org/helmet.html

Notice the peace sign on the helmet of the American soldier in Iraq and below is the highly satirical “War Prayer” by Mark Twain, who was quite a remarkable anti-imperialism crusader in his time, which overlapped substantially with Smedley Butler’s heyday. Read that soldier’s satirical prayer and contrast with reformed soldier Stan Goff’s advice to U.S. military stationed in Middle East war zones.

On a personal note: the last couple of years I have made a number of trips to Southern California to do field work on raptors. As a small part of this work, I have been on Camp Pendleton during wartime and it is sobering to just be in that area where military training takes place Big Time. Looking for raptor nests my partner and I came across hidden armed National Guard troops amongst the bushes, hidden from view. Overhead one could see flights of multiple helicopters doing military training. Many areas of the base are excluded due to safety reasons, and biologists working in the open land areas must coordinate all movements and report their physical locations to camp headquarters continually or be excluded from the base. Seeing this all firsthand as a civilian was sobering as hell. I had ideas of trapping and banding a lot of raptors on Camp Pendleton and they are abundant there in the wild areas. But wartime restrictions on movements make it almost impossible to do so now, though it is possible for permittee biologists to monitor nests and band young raptors with some administrative and logistical difficulty. The historic photos of Smedley Butler in San Diego County reminded me of this…

Stan Moore
Petaluma, CA