Independence Day Post Mortem

Bill Van Auken, celebrating July 4th, in his article "A government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich."

The Democratic House and Senate leadership have blamed Republican obstinacy for the defeat of these meager relief measures. The reality, however, is that both big business parties accept the doctrine of deficit reduction and agree that social spending—including the pittance offered to the unemployed—must be curtailed to that end. As for the Obama White House, it declined to make an issue of millions of workers being left destitute.

No such obstacle stood in the way of paying for imperialist war, however, with the Congressional Democratic leadership determined to approve the $33 billion supplemental package—roughly the same amount that was withheld from the unemployed and the state governments—before July 4.

nutjobs and mother-of-all-nutjobs

"Rand Paul has been widely cast as a libertarian but there’s considerable evidence tying him to another tendency – theocratic Christian nationalism, and specifically Christian Reconstructionism." B.E. Wilson

If you have friends in Kentucky who are undecided on this, or are voting for Rand Paul because he's a "conservative like them" they at least deserve to know what they're voting for.  Several weeks ago I suggested that Alex Jones' love of Rand Paul speaks volumes about both gentlemen. It's hard to read the following interview fragment and not break out laughing, and perhaps you can even keep up the laughter as you contemplate that Paul is in a dead heat against his Democratic opponent Jack Conway, that this guy could end up making federal policy as part of an emerging Republican majority.

Alex Jones: Rand, I want to ask you about John P. Holdern, the science czar. Generally the social planners admit they want socialized medicine; they want carbon taxes, he says, to carry out eugenics. And even the forced drugging of the water to sterilize us. That sounds like Nazi Germany. What would you do in the Senate about this?

Rand Paul: Well if I were there we would get to expose it before he's gotten a hearing—during his hearing; that's what these hearings are for, to expose this before he gets approved.

Another Paul appearance on Jones' show found the candidate giving tacit support to all manner of nutbaggery, including this gem:

During a rant about the Fed, Jones claimed "we know that the Federal Reserve was clearly implicated in the kidnapping of a congressman's baby" and commended Paul for his "courage" in taking on the Fed. Paul replied, "I appreciate that," and he told Jones that he could not mount his Senate run "without you." 

Rather than being an aberration of conservatism, it's important to understand that the fantasy-world and intrigue of conspiracy theorists serves to supercharge a conservative worldview that would otherwise have been weakened by history, economic realities and political evolution. Rand, along with Sharron Angle, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and others are part of a new GOP power-base of theological-paranoid-fantasy-mongering conservative metaphysicians. Alex Jones, while paying lip service to "libertarianism" (a philosophy that finally emerges as whatever its practitioners want it to mean) is the movement's willing extremist lunatic--more of a Streicher than a Goebbels--expanding the space of extremism in order to make the far right GOP seem reasonable by comparison.

Whether you're working to defeat Rand Paul electorally, or working as part of a larger movement to defeat the conditions responsible for the present reemergence of the far right loon brigade, you're doing good work. Keep it up.

Dogwood

(Terry Allen)





This is from Juarez, an album which has garnered incredible critical praise.

I feel just like a dogwood tree
Yeah somebody come carved a cross outta me
Carried me down to Jerusalem
People they gave me to the carpenter’s son

Yeah they carried my weight up on the old gotham plain
Sky turned black and it started to rain
Police with this a hammer drove his white hands into me
Made him a part of the dogwood tree

Yeah he may be gone far away from here
Sun may shine bright, the sky might be clear.
But the eye that they used to nail him to me
Remains dark in the bog of the dogwood tree

One Year Since Honduran Coup

Keeping Honduras at the Forefront of Our Thinking

From Bill Van Auken, some clarity on Honduras one year out:

In justifying the coup, its backers within the Honduran oligarchy accused Zelaya of launching an extra-constitutional power grab for a third presidential term. This accusation, dutifully repeated by the media in the US, was nonsensical on its face, given that no vote to convene a constituent assembly could be organized before the ballot to choose Zelaya’s successor.
Both Honduras’s ruling “10 families” and the Obama administration in Washington had other reasons to seek Zelaya's overthrow.
The native oligarchy had begun to view Zelaya, himself a wealthy landowner and timber baron, as a traitor because of minimal reforms, such as an increase in the minimum wage, which threatened a slight infringement on fortunes built through its collaboration with the transnational corporations in the super-exploitation of low-wage Honduran labor.

bad company

This is a worthy flashback to 2007: In "US Economy Leaving Record Numbers in Severe Poverty," Tony Pugh puts some perspective on how little the U.S. allocates toward poverty reduction:

With the exception of Mexico and Russia, the U.S. devotes the smallest portion of its gross domestic product to federal anti-poverty programs, and those programs are among the least effective at reducing poverty, the study found. Again, only Russia and Mexico do worse jobs. One in three Americans will experience a full year of extreme poverty at some point in his or her adult life, according to long-term research by Mark Rank, a professor of social welfare at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

there's nothing more American than the original Socialist movement

I've been chatting with socialists over the last several days.  Tonight, we'll be podcasting my interview with Dan LaBotz, SPUSA candidate for Senate from Ohio. 

Last week I talked to Billy Wharton, co-chair of SPUSA. 

Both Wharton and LaBotz emphasized left unity and solidarity with workers as the basis of political vision and strategy.  Socialists are joining forces with Greens; many small socialist organizations are suppporting LaBotz's candidacy, and in general, there's hope for convergence rather than fragmentation on the left.  Refreshing.

quote of the week

From David Grossman's editorial on new evidence demonstrating IDF soldiers executed Mavi Marmara Victims. Grossman is expressing his disappointment in Obama's weak response to the incident:

"There are times when ineffectual leaders with good intentions can do even more damage than those like Bush who never had any good intentions to begin with."

Good, they deserve it

More later maybe, but small justice is better than no justice.

Mormon Church Fined for Prop 8 Spending :: EDGE Boston

Glenn Beck loved that Nazi's book so much before he forgot

The Book Glenn Beck Loved So Much - Norwonk - Open Salon:

I'm talking, of course, about the 1934 classic The Red Network: a 'Who's Who' and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots by Elizabeth Dilling. Glenn Beck was very enthusiastic after reading it, although he can now, a couple of days later, barely remember mentioning it. I know how he feels; I have ADHD, too. But one should not judge a book by its Nazi author.

And I contend Beck truly believes this passage from Dilling's book. I'm not kidding:

The colored people are a sincerely religious race. As long as they stayed in Africa un-Christianized, they remained, as did pagan white men, savages. Their pagan brothers in Africa today are savages, while in a comparatively few years, under the opportunities of the American government and the inspiration of Christianity, the American Negroes have acquired professions, property, banks, homes, and produced a rising class of refined, home loving people. This is far more remarkable than that many Negroes are still backward. The Reds play upon the Negroes' love of their own people and represent them as persecuted in order to inflame them against the very white people who have in reality given the colored race far greater opportunities than their fellow negroes would give them in Africa today. Only recently the U. S. government was protesting slave holding by colored officials in Liberia. The Reds look upon the Negroes as their greatest hope. They want them to do their dirty work in stirring up bloody revolution and to bear its brunt. Then whether the Reds win or lose the Negroes will be the losers, for Sovietization is slavery.

That's just a start...read the article!

A Higher Vision

Jewish activist Michael Sussman explains why he is leading flotilla protest: "since we commenced organizing this protest, some have called me and warned me that my political career is over for co-sponsoring this rally and forum and that I am associating with anti-semites, etc. i wanted to address those issues briefly. from an early age, my vision of Judaism was a vision replete with social commitment and activism. the rabbis who influenced me were active in the civil rights movement and deeply involved every day in promoting social justice. my own inspiration comes not merely from my own family, but from these individuals. as a jew, I cannot accept the notion that 'my people' have superior rights to others and 'my state,' Israel, can act in any manner it wishes, contrary to international law."

Columbia Elections Update

News is trickling out concerning the runoff in Columbia between status quo candidate Juan Manuel Santos and Green Party candidate, former Bogota Mayor and unapologetic progressive Antanas Mockus. Mockus is behind in questionable polls (they're all questionable) and some say he has trouble expressing himself, touts "unpopular" policies like taxes, and stumbled on security issues.


Even if he loses (and mainstream media says he probably will), Mockus has already done something very special for Latin American politics:

even if Mockus does not embody all the hopes and aspirations of environmentalists or indigenous peoples, this political maverick has inspired nascent green parties across South America. Even if he does not win the second round and goes down in defeat to Santos, Mockus will have demonstrated that parties like his may have a political future in a region hardly known for its adherence to green principles.

Both the Greens and their opponents, Partido de la U, have approached third-place finisher Gustavo Petro in hopes of forming an alliance with Petro's Polo Democratico party, and he has rejected them both.

The Polo Democratico leader reiterated that his team will not support either Mockus or Santos in Colombia's second round presidential election, which means his party will advise followers to either abstain from voting, or turn in a blank vote.

"Really, Arizona" Update! Rationality Prevails!

The dumbass talk show host/council member in Prescott has been canned.  And the mural will not be "whitened" after all.

To everyone hatin' on Israel right now

First, as Cindy Sheehan saw fit to publicly say the other day, anger at the state of Israel (I would even go further and say the ruling class of Israel) should never transpose itself as bigotry against Jews.  Never. 

Second, I agree that the Israeli ruling class is arrogant and that Israel functions as a colonial settler state. But Iran's ruling class is also arrogant, and Ahmadinejad is a hateful, opportunistic, steaming pile of s**t and both the Israeli and Iranian ruling classes don't care about their people, and even less about other peoples. I'd just appreciate it if you'd acknowledge that the Netanyahus and Ahmadinejads (and the Bushes) grow from the same patch of fungi.

If you want a world where nations and ethnicities and religions are no longer threatening each other, the only way to get there is by forging common interests and solidarity between the workers, parents, children, teachers, clergy, bureaucrats, athletes, artists, scientists, and soldiers inhabiting those nations.  There's no other way.  Taking sides ain't gonna do it.

Really Arizona?

A few blogs are starting to pick up on this story. Mural painted for a Prescott, Arizona school results in mountain of racial slurs and campaign of derision by conservative radio guy (who is also on the Prescott City Council). Then, this shocking combination of spin and something far more nefarious than spin.

After facing weeks of racial slurs hurled from passersby, the artists painting the mural have been asked to lighten the children's faces, although the principal insists that it has nothing to do with race. [emphasis added]

If true and accurate, Prescott is at least guilty of profoundly bad decisionmaking and aesthetic taste, but is likely guilty (and completely unaware) of caving in to racism in a racist way. Thus, if true and accurate, this could well be the third-times-a-charm turning point in Arizona's long white night: not the end, but possibly the beginning of the end.

I'll update this story faithfully. I am also trying to find a public domain or otherwise accessible picture of the mural if anyone can help with that.