History Is A Weapon (and a blog)

HAPPY 4th OF JULY! JESSE HELMS HAS DIED!

2008-07-04T08:58:00.000-07:00

Anti-integrationist
Opposed Martin Luther King day
Name is on the Helms-Burton act, the centerpiece of the embargo against Cuba
against ALL Affirmative Action programs
voted to bail out the savings and loan industry AND to slash school lunches for impoverished children, medical care for disabled veterans, prescription drugs for the elderly, and wages for working families
absolutely hated all gay people
supported apartheid in South Africa
From a Mother Jones article
a staunch ally of right-wing military rulers like Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Raoul Cedras in Haiti, and Roberto D'Aubuisson in El Salvador. Confronted with evidence that D'Aubuisson directed death squads to murder civilians, Helms made it clear that some things are more important than human life. "All I know," he replied, "is that D'Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious."
Routinely fought against AIDS research from the beginning, blaming people suffering from the disease for it.
In 1993, sang Dixie to the first african american senator, Carol Mosely-Braun, and promised to make her "cry."
Hell burns hotter tonight!

The 4th of july is coming up.

2008-06-29T19:56:00.000-07:00

Every year, the fourth of July comes up and the empire celebrates revolution. The contradiction annoys a lot of us, but something else happens: a lot of people come to History Is A Weapon and read The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro by Frederick Douglass. Read it, forward it to your friends, and enjoy your Fourth. We may be a small axe, but the big tree will know soon enough, we're sharp and ready and, soon enough, it'll fall.

George Carlin RIP

2008-06-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

From Carlin's Obituary in the always disappointing New York Times:

Although some criticized parts of his later work as too contentious, Mr. Carlin defended the material, insisting that his comedy had always been driven by an intolerance for the shortcomings of humanity and society. “Scratch any cynic,” he said, “and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.”

Still, when pushed to explain the pessimism and overt spleen that had crept into his act, he quickly reaffirmed the zeal that inspired his lists of complaints and grievances. “I don’t have pet peeves,” he said, correcting the interviewer. And with a mischievous glint in his eyes, he added, “I have major, psychotic hatreds.”

Carlin will be missed.

Utah Phillips RIP

2008-05-28T08:46:00.000-07:00

The great folksinger and storyteller, Utah Phillips, passed away a few days ago. With the passing of Rosalyn Zinn in the last week, this has been a crummy week. Our condolences with the family.

Roslyn Zinn

2008-05-21T06:52:00.000-07:00

It is with great sadness that we note the passing of painter/activist/teacher Roslyn Zinn. While we may only know her through the glimpses, her participating in the stories of Howard's life, the mentions in his talks, for those of us who didn't know her personally, her deepest impact is through his work. Her obituary in The Boston globe quotes Howard Zinn saying:

"I never showed my work to anyone except her, because she was such a fine editor," he said. "She had such a sensibility about what worked, what read well, what was necessary, what was redundant."

As someone who works in media production, I know that there is always more than the single author or director guiding the final vision. As one of the many people who has been profoundly impacted by this body of work, I mourn her passing. Our prayers are with her family and friends.

Aimé Césaire

2008-04-17T15:41:00.000-07:00

It is with great sadness that we learn of the passing of theorist and writer Aimé Césaire. Our condolences to his family. For those unfamiliar with Césaire, we recommend the excellent Discourse on Colonialism .

Winter Soldier

2008-03-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

Watching the film Winter Soldier today, there are so many first visceral reactions. The backdrop is that the New York governor is resigning for sleeping with prostitutes, which is pretty inexcusable, except the corporate press's tenor of "oh of course he has to resign," when Bush and Cheney just grin down from their pile of corpses is pretty aggravating. The film is one of those necessary ones that just wrenches all the lies out into the light. It's a documentary about the Winter Soldier investigations/hearings where veterans of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Vietnam tell about what they did and saw. I can't convey the power of it, you should just go watch it. I might go and schedule a screening in my neighborhood because it is that good.
There's going to be a New Winter Soldier that begins tomorrow and goes through this weekend. If you have a blog, tell people about it. If you're on a list-serv, spread the word. There's a lot that people can do to help. Spread the word. Let people know. We need to get it up on reddit and delicious. It needs to be talked about. The war needs to end.

Cuba

2008-02-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

We hang with the anarchists, we've got a whole stack of Spanish Civil War books on the shelf and are quick to argue the possibility and beauty in an anarchist world. Occasionally, we drink with the liberals and we hang with every sect of lefty faction, including the world renowned communist factionalist league. But some of them anarchists grit their teeth when they hear us talk about Cuba. We love Cuba. A quick sail from the deepest south, a plantation society was overthrown.
And despite all the trashing from the U.S., rhetorically and physically, Cuba has held strong through coup attempts, biological warfare, losing its biggest subsidizer (don't scoff, capitalism is an entire system of subsidy), and the long silent endurance marathon of struggling to stay free so close to the empire's cold inner core. Look to Allende in Chile and the activists (students, organizers, teachers, doctors, workers, people all with dreams, stories, scars and strengths and families) taken to the stadium, look to Nicaragua and the rest of Central America and the families ripped apart and death squads, look to vietnam and the thousands of gallons of poison just pumped, carpet style, over the entire country. The masters have to make examples of the uppity slaves; one that has struck back must be put down.
Today, the New York Times reports that Fidel Castro is resigning as the president of Cuba. Lefties everywhere, of every stripe, need to touch base. The United States government has tried to destabilize and threaten Cuban sovereignty since the bay of pigs, including, but not limited to linking Cuba to the war on terror (president Carter, of all people, immediately got on a plane to Cuba and said that this was total nonsense and that Cuba shouldn't be linked to at all; we still hate Carter, but he did earn points for this one). If Cuba is attacked or messed with, lefties need to mobilize and stand up quick. We need to make clear that this is unacceptable. I wish the same thing was happening for Iraq and Afghanistan, but if the master's whip changes direction, we must be ready.
The world is a much better place because of Castro's work. We hope that he continues to live a long and healthy life.

A Question of Class

2008-02-03T14:11:00.000-08:00

In the last year, as History Is A Weapon has become more widely known, we've been getting a little more email sent in. We try to respond to everyone in a timely manner and be as helpful as we can. In the last few months, we've been getting some email that we appreciate, but it peeves us a little. College students, they've been only college students so far, say great things about the site and then insist that we expand. We'd love to add more stuff, about first nation stuff, queer issues, more on gender, latino and asian struggles, but there's only so much time and we're trying to get other things off the ground. Besides, we're picky. They always close their emails with a pledge to help, but most of them disappear into the ether (with some notable exceptions who we appreciate greatly). We always respond with a "why don't you type up 'A Question of Class' from Dorothy Allison's Skin?" We hear such good things about it. Well, now we need to suggest something new to be typed up, because A Question of Class is here and it is excellent.

I could try to do it some sort of justice, but can't. The entire time I first read it, I annoyed the other person in the room with "you just have to read this! It's amazing." Well, now it is amazing and online. You should read it right now.

New Addition Poster

2008-01-06T20:14:00.000-08:00

Oh, do we have a gift for some of you. Now don't go clicking all willy-nilly, but Anna over at Left Palate helped us put together a poster. So if you have access to something that can print 11 by 17 in color and want to help spread the word about History Is A Weapon, the idea and the website, go to our poster page and print up a copy. It's a bigger file, so don't hotlink it or anything, but we trust you.
Happy postering!
The History Is A Weapon poster page

Anna, who designed our wrapping paper, also made an early ~~inspiration to~~ ~~competitor~~ ~~parody~~ something that is perhaps best left described as little as possible. We think she thinks she is funny.

Two New Additions

2007-11-27T18:27:00.001-08:00

Search parties have been sent out due to the lack of new additions as of late. So, we're sending up a flare with both Maria Stewart's "Address Delivered at the African Masonic Hall, Boston" and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's "Declaration of Sentiments". We'll probably continue on the down low for a little while, so check out old Left Palate and hold your horses. People are busy.

p.s. We've been getting more than a few emails lately about what Histories are missing from HIAW. While we agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments, you can always type them up and send them to us. We will post them (check in advance, obviously; we do have strict guidelines.)

Left Palate

2007-11-06T09:42:00.000-08:00

The Left Palate Beta is going live. Some of us are going to be contributing to it. We love History Is A Weapon's blog, but we don't swear here, to keep the site as clean as possible for the various net nannies. We want HIAW to be accessible in libraries and schools. Left Palate isn't going to be our "place to swear," but it'll allow us to write more about what we're thinking about and looking at, what we're doing, and what we're considering. We invite you to check it out, tell your friends, and participate. Check it out at www.LeftPalate.com

Gore joins Kissinger, wins Nobel.

2007-10-12T06:33:00.000-07:00

Three pieces, sans commentary.

"This is a war against the children of Iraq on two fronts: bombing, which in the last year cost the British taxpayer £60 million. And the most ruthless embargo in modern history. According to Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund, the death rate of children under five is more than 4,000 a month - that is 4,000 more than would have died before sanctions. That is half a million children dead in eight years. If this statistic is difficult to grasp, consider, on the day you read this, up to 200 Iraqi children may die needlessly."
- from Squeezed to death (The Guardian, Saturday March 4, 2000)

Transcript from 60 Minutes (5/12/96):
U.S. Journalist Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State, under Clinton and Gore, Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

August 1, 1999

Dear Vice President Gore,

We are writing to express opposition to trade pressures you are bringing against the people of South Africa over their struggle to obtain access to essential medicines.

The White House dispute with South Africa concerns three basic points.

1. The South Africa government has indicated it wants to use compulsory licensing of medical patents to produce cheaper copies of HIV drugs and other essential medicines. This is of course legal under the WTO/TRIPS agreement, subject to Article 31 safeguards.
2. The South Africa government wants to authorize "parallel imports" of pharmaceuticals, so that it can buy drugs in the United States, Europe or elsewhere, in order to get the best world price. As you know, parallel importing of pharmaceuticals is legal under Article 6 of the WTO/TRIPS agreement, and is a common practice in Europe.
3. The South African government has approved generic versions of Taxol, a US government invention for treating cancer.

As co-chairman of the US/South Africa Binational Commission (BNC) you have authorized a wide range of trade pressures against South Africa, much of which is documented in a February 5, 1999 report to the Congress by the US Department of State. Despite increasing criticism of the US bilateral pressures on South Africa, here and internationally, your office has authorized new trade pressures against South Africa on April 30, 1999. http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/sa/sa301-ap99.html"

The USTR April 30, 1999 announcement of a Special 301 out-of-cycle review of trade pressures against South Africa ignored every shred of information that has been provided to your office by public health groups. Indeed, this most recent announcement is basically a recycled version of the February 16, 1999 submissions by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactures Association (PhRMA), the trade association that represents giant drug companies like Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo, Pfizer, and Johnson and Johnson that are trying to stop South Africa from implementing policies to cut costs for pharmaceuticals in South Africa.

It is shocking that the US government is adopting such an aggressive trade policy on behalf of US pharmaceutical companies, when all of sub-Saharan Africa is confronted with a public health crisis of historical dimensions. The US Surgeon General, Dr. David Satcher, recently wrote in the Journal of the America Medical Association that "HIV/AIDS can be likened to the plague that decimated the population of Europe in the 14th century." Dr. Satcher says that "in many southern African countries, HIV/AIDS has become an unprecedented emergency, with 20% to 26% of people between the ages of 15 and 49 infected." This is a here-and-now emergency. It is not a hypothetical or potential emergency. These people will die without access to pharmaceutical drugs.

Your response to this emergency should be to find ways to save lives. But look what you are doing.

-You are aggressively seeking the repeal of legislation in South Africa that would permit that country to do what nations in Europe do, use parallel imports to buy drugs at the best world price. South Africa wants to use market forces to cut drug costs. You are pushing to protect pharmaceutical companies from global competition, thereby forcing the South Africa people to pay premiums to buy drugs.

-You are punishing South Africa for even speaking out in favor of compulsory licensing of HIV/AIDS and other essential medicines. The April 30, 1999 report on South Africa complains that:

During the past year, South African representatives have led a faction of nations in the World Health Organization (WHO) in calling for a reduction in the level of protection provided for pharmaceuticals in TRIPS.

In fact, everything South Africa is seeking to do is legal under the WTO/TRIPS agreement, so this and countless other statements by US government officials are bald lies. But regardless, the exercise of free speech in international forums is an astonishing basis for trade sanctions. As an elected official, indeed, as a human, how would you act if 20 percent of all sexually active young people in the United States were infected with a fatal disease, and a foreign country was trying to prevent you from purchasing drugs on the global market to save money, and was preventing you from licensing firms to manufacture life saving medicines? Would you simply show up at the World Health Assembly and docilely applaud the actions of that country? Even if that foreign country was engaged in a relentless public relations campaign to label every legal action as a form of piracy or lawlessness? At what point would you have the guts to tell the world the truth, and to speak out on behalf of millions of infected young men and women?

-You are punishing South Africa for giving approval to generic versions of Taxol, a cancer drug that was invented by the US government. There are aspects of the US government complaint about Taxol that are absurd, on technical grounds, such as the insistence that South Africa extend longer periods of data exclusivity than are required in the United States. But the larger issue is more basic. Why on earth should Vice President Al Gore or any other US government employee seek to prevent global competition for Taxol, a life saving cancer drug that was invented and developed by the US National Institutes of Health? Taxol was in NIH sponsored Phase III trials before the Bush Administration gave BMS exclusive rights to use NIH research for drug approvals. What is the moral basis for extending the BMS monopoly on Taxol in a country that is so poor?

As the Vice President of the United States you are in a position to do much good or much harm in the world. US voters will soon be asked to determine if you should be the next President of the United States. Please explain why they should choose you.

Sincerely,

James Love
Director
Consumer Project on Technology
Washington, DC

Dr. Bernard Pécoul
Project Director
Access to Essential Drugs
Médecins Sans Frontières
Geneva, Switerland

Joelle Tanguy
Executive Director
Doctors Without
Borders/Medecins Sans
Frontieres USA

Eric Sawyer
Executive Director
HIV/AIDS Human Rights Project
NY, NY

Kim Nichols
Development Director
African Services Committee,
Inc.

Bas van der Heide
Director
Health Action International
Europe

Beryl Leach
Africa Program Coordinator
Health Action International

Lori Wallach
Director
Global Trade Watch
Washington, DC

Professor Richard Laing
Associate Professor,
Department of International
Health, Boston University

Robert Weissman
Co-Director, Essential Action
Washington, DC

Bob Lederer
Senior Editor
POZ Magazine

Steve Suppan, PhD
Director of Research
Institute for Agriculture and
Trade

Axel Delmotte
Act Up - Paris

Professor Patrick Bond
University of the
Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and
Development Management
Johannesburg, South Africa

Clarence Mini, MD
Treatment Action Campaign
Johannesburg, Gauteng
Province, South Africa

Ellen 't Hoen
International Drug Policy
Consultant
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Mike Scherer
Aetna Professor of Public
Policy
John F. Kennedy School of
Government
Harvard University
Cambridge, Mass

John S. James
Editor and publisher
AIDS Treatment News
San Francisco, CA

David Scondras
President, Search for a Cure

Dr.Mira Shiva
Coordinator
All India Drug Action Network
New Delhi, India

Dr. Amir Attaran, LL.B.
Director
The Malaria Project, CSRL
Washington, DC USA

Andrew Herxheimer
Emeritus Fellow
UK Cochrane Centre
London, UK

Anna Ponte
AVVA Frontera Gran Sabana
Caracas, Venezuela

Alejandro Argumedo
Coordinator
Indigenous Peoples'
Biodiversity Network
Cusco, PERU

Ian Stevens
Falmouth
Cornwall, UK

Alex LoCascio
United Food and Commercial
Workers
Lynchburg, VA, USA

David C. Korten
President
The People-Centered
Development Forum
U.S.A.

Parshu Ram Tamang
Tribhuvan University
Kathmandu, Nepal

Dr. Dale A. Hathaway
Professor of Political Science
Butler University
Indianapolis, IN U.S.A.

Mr. Wiert P. Wiertsema
Policy Coordinator
Both ENDS
Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Oystein Tveter
Human Rights Lawyer
Vinderen, Oslo, Norway

John Y. Jones
Director
DiS - Diakonhjemmet
internasjonale Senter
OSLO, NORWAY

LOT S. MIRANDA
Country Director
Swiss Interchurch Aid Cambodia
Program
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Christopher T. Arata
CEO
Cayucos, California, USA

Vlady Rivera
Information Officer
Farmer-Scientist
Partnership for Development
Philippines

Robert Anderson
MPSRAST
New Zealand

Debal Deb
Centre for Interdisciplinary
Studies
Barrackpore, West Bengal,
India

May Waddington
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Tim Luckett
University of Hertfordshire
Hertfordshire, England.

Dr. David Fig
University of the
Witwatersrand
Johannesburg, South Africa

Peter McLaverty
Senior Lecturer
University of Luton
Luton, England

Toine Pieters
Medical Historian, School of
Medicine
Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Daniel Querol
Managua, Nicaragua

Dr. Ernst von Weizsaecker
Member of the Federal
Parliament (Bundestag), for
the ruling SPD

Daniel J. Koenig, Ph.D.
Professor
University of Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia,
Canada

Ms. Diana Smith
Paris, France

Dashiell Love
Olympia WA, USA

Joe Goozeff
Randwick, N.S.W. Australia

Cherrel Africa
Cape Town Democracy Centre
Institute for Democracy in SA
South Africa

Arnold Ward
GeneEthics Network and South
Australian Genetic Food
Information Network
Adelaide, South Australia,
Australia

Pierre Chirac
MSF

Michael R. Pitula
Ames, Iowa, U.S.A.

Etienne Vernet
Campaign Coordinator on
genetic engineering
Paris, France

Richard Levins
Harvard School of Public
Health

Val Dusek
Associate Prof. of Philosophy
University of NH
Durham, NH

Rev. Douglas B. Hunt
Washington & UN Representative
United Church of Christ
Network for Environmental and
Economic Responsibility
Wheaton, MD USA

George Salzman
Physics Dept
Univ of Massachusetts
Boston, MA USA

Phoebe Barnard (PhD)
National Coordinator
Namibian Biodiversity Program
Windhoek, Namibia

Mara Bird
Center for International
Studies, University of
Southern California
Los Angeles, CA United States
of America

Sid Shniad
Research Director
Telecommunications Workers
Union
Vancouver, British Columbia,
Canada

Uri Strauss
Neil Young Institute
Vancouver, British Columbia,
Canada

Jesse Vorst
Professor of Economics
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Canada

Michael Ash
PhD Candidate
Dept. of Economics, UC
Berkeley
Berkeley, California, USA

Gladys Schmitz
SSND (School Sister of Notre
Dame)
Mankato, MN, USA

Yash Tandon
Professor
International South Group
Network
Harare, Zimbabwe

Angus Kerr
Engineer
Durban, Kwazulu-Natal, South
Africa
Jaroen Compeerapap
Resident fellow
International Economic Law and
Dispute Settlement, Erasmus
University
Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Elaine Bernard
Executive Director
Harvard Trade Union Program
Cambridge, MA, USA

Daniel Querol
Managua NICARAGUA

Ann C. Davidson
Principal
Davidson Library Services
Philadelphia, PA, USA

Stephen Morey
Monash University
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Roy J. Kaye
Lynnwood, WA U.S.A.

Ken Orzel
Pompano Beach, Fl USA

David Hoos, M.D. M.P.H.
Consultant
AIDS Institute, NY State
Department of Health
New York, NY

Mark Raijmakers
Programme coordinator
Wemos Foundation
Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Kate O'Connell

Patrice Newell
Director
The Elmswood Press
Australia

Jef Keighley,
National Representative
Canadian Auto Workers
New Westminster, B.C., Canada

John Lamperti
Professor
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH, USA

David Banta
Senior Researcher
Netherlands Organization for
Applied Scientific Research
Leiden, The Netherlands

Sarah Sexton/Larry
Lohmann/Nicholas
Hildyard/Tracey Clunies Ross
THE CORNER HOUSE
Sturminster Newton, Dorset
BRITAIN

P Marc Schwartz
Waumandee, Wisc, USA

Francisco Arroyo G.D.
Coordinador de Programas
Centro de Investigación y
Capacitación Rural A.C.
Cd. de México, México

Gabriela C. Flora
Program Associate in
Agricultural Biotechnologies
Institute for Agriculture and
Trade Policy
Minneapolis, MN, USA

Rev. Des McGillicuddy
Justice & Peace Officer
Mill Hill Missionaries
London, England

Margarita Florez
Laywer
Executive Director
Centro Debate y Acción
Ambiental

Laura Maxwell Stuart
Programme Officer
South African NGO Coalition
Johannesburg, South Africa

Kerry Irish
South African National NGO
Coalition
Johannesburg, Gauteng, South
Africa

Martin Rall
ANC and SACP
Johannesburg, South Africa

Ryan Hunter
Center for Environmental
Public Advocacy
Ponicka Huta, Slovakia

Juraj Zamkovsky
Director
Friends of the Earth Slovakia
Ponicka Huta, Slovakia

Michael Niemann
Associate Professor of
International Studies
Trinity College
Hartford, CT

Norberto A. Stuart
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Geoffrey Schniewind
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Victoria S. Cashman
Middletown, Ohio, USA

Clive Swan
Kagiso GIS & IT Solutions
Johannesburg, South Africa

Damian McKeon
Greystones
Co. Wicklow, Republic of
Ireland

Paul McCartin
Father
Society of St Columban
(Columban Fathers)
Kanagawa, Japan

Al Stern
Senior Art Director
Common Health/Adient
(Pharmaceutical Advertising
Agency)
Nutley, NJ, USA

C. A. Hilgartner, MD
Director
Hilgartner & Associates
Kirksville, MO, United
States of America

Annamarie Gervais
SA citizen living in Texas
San Marcos, TX

Anton Prenneis
Highland, N.Y.

Amy Ferber
Highland, N.Y.

Alexander Rau
Student
Cornell University, University
of Oxford (England)
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA

Dr. Ayesha Imam
Baobab for Women's Human
Rights
Lagos, Lagos State, Nigeria

Stephen Ball
Seattle, Washington, USA

Brian Cowan
Alameda, CA, USA

Michael Pease
Seattle, Washington, USA

Susan Rodriguez & Petra
Berrios
Co-Coordinators
S.M.A.R.T. University
(Sisterhood Mobilized for
AIDS/HIV Resources &
Treatment)
New York, NY, USA

Ed Schehl
Director/Producer
Raindancer Film & Video
Santa Cruz, CA

Katherine Knight
Editor, "Epicenter"
Santa Cruz, CA

Brian Ashley
The Alternative
Information & Development
Centre (AIDC)
Woodstock, Cape Town, South
Africa

Brian P. Flaherty
The Pennsylvania State
University
State College, PA, USA

Brian Schroeder
Okemos, MI USA

Robert Riedel
Dansville, NY, USA

Stephan Eric Schoenfield
Director of Software
Development
Keyspan Inc
Berkeley, CA

Carl Shoolman
Rochester, NY USA

Mary Moretti & Family
Pawtucket, RI U.S.A.

Christopher Daniel Foust
Beaumont, Texas, USA

Clionadh O' Keeffe
Student
Cork, Ireland

Corynne McSherry
Doctoral Candidate
Department of Communication,
UC San Diego
San Francisco, CA USA

Dale T. McKinley
South African Communist Party
Head Office
Braamfontein, Republic of
South Africa

David Longjohn Stanton
Boalt-Harvard Law School
Exchange, '99

David Morris
Vice President
Institute for Local Self-
Reliance,
Minneapolis, MN

David Young
Mahomet, Illinois, USA

David E. Long
King of Prussia, Pennsylvania

David Gofstein
Phoenix, AZ USA

Dina Lozofsky
Los Angeles, CA USA

Byron Dolan
Hoboken, NJ, USA

Alan Berkman, MD
Medical Specialist
HIV Center for Clinical and
Behavioral Studies, Columbia
University
New York, NY

Elina Hemminki
Prof.
Helsinki, Finland

Eric F. Miller
San Jose, CA, USA

Ernst Mayer
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Mechanical &
Aerospace Engineering
Case Western Reserve
University
Cleveland, OH

Everett L. Williams, II
Democrat
Canyon Lake, TX USA

Faye Powell
Professor, Social Sciences
Librarian
Portland State University
Portland, Oregon U.S.A.

Edgar F. Starr
Tampa, Florida, USA

Fred Turner
Ph.D. Candidate
University of California, San
Diego
La Jolla, CA

Liz Hosken
Director
Gaia Foundation
London, UK

Mr. Jody Gatwood
Associate Professor
The Catholic University of
America
Washington, DC USA

Geraldine Gomez
Goleta, CA, U.S.A.

Gordon Irlam
San Francisco, CA, USA
Madras, Tamil Nadu, India

Harriet Harmon
Teacher
Los Angeles, CA U.S.A.

Ismael Galve-Roperh
Dept. of Biochemistry and
Molecular Biology I
School of Biology, Complutense
University
Madrid, SPAIN

James M Wright, MD, PhD,
FRCP(C)
Associate Professor
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, BC, CANADA

Jean Grossholtz
South Hadley, MA

James W. Sanders
Chief Technical Officer
Steppingstones Designs
Tucson, AZ US

Jim Strichartz
Law Offices of James L.
Strichartz
Seattle, WA

Prof. Joan P. Mencher
Lehman College of CUNY.

Joel Lexchin MD
Emergency Physician
Toronto General Hospital
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Joey Sum
Lexington, KY, USA

John Andrew
Professor and chair of History
Franklin & Marshall College
Lancaster, PA USA

Johndan Johnson-Eilola, PhD
Director of Professional
Writing
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN, USA

Jonathan A. Zylstra
Student
Arlington, WA USA

Jonathan Silverstone
Washington, DC

Kamal Suffoletta
San Francisco, CA. 94115

Katherine Sarah Lysons
GIS Technical Specialist
CADCORP
Stevenage, Hertfordshire
ENGLAND

Kim Nichols
Development Director
African Services Committee,
Inc.
New York, NY

Kuzuha Mutsumi
Nakahashi kanazawa, JAPAN

C.C. Latshaw
Lakewood, WA, USA

Avram Rips
Maplewood, NJ

Tina Teong
Subang Jaya, Selangor,
Malaysia

Luis Kemnitzer
Professor Emeritus
San Francisco State University
San Francisco CA, USA

Cheri Stafford
BBA, M.S.Th., MSEd
Mt. Kisco, NY UNITED STATES

Marie Smoes
Silver Spring, MD USA

Marjorie Power
Newsletter editor
Older Women's League- Green
Mountain Chapter
Montpelier, VT, USA

Mark Williams
Portland, OR USA

Dr. Mary C. Carras
Professor Emerita,Rutgers
University
Camden, NJ - USA

Matthew Fitt
Student of Law
U.C.Hastings
San Francisco, CA, USA

Melvin J. Roseman
Encino, CA, USA

Melinda Johnston
Vancouver, BC Canada

A. Michael Froomkin
Professor of Law
U. Miami School of Law
Coral Gables, FL USA

Michael McGuire
Information/Technology
Coordinator
Maryland Cooperative Extension
Service
Washington DC

Michail Rassool,
Editor
Idasa Publishing,
Cape Town, South Africa

Michael Seifert
Roman Catholic priest
Washington Province of the
Society of Mary
Brownsville, Texas, USA

Tewolde & Sue
Institute for Sustainable
Development
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Eric George
New Orleans, LA

Nathan Ford
Medecins Sans Frontieres
United Kingdon

Nicholas Sammond
University of California, San
Diego
San Francisco, CA, USA

Pam Raby
Albany, OR, US

Perry Papka
Institute of Social and
Economic Research, University
of Alaska-Anchorage
Anchorage, AK

Peter Schachte
Lecturer
The University of Melbourne
Parkville, Victoria, Australia

Philip Heede
Alleroed, Denmark

J. G. Krishnayya
Executive Director
Systems Research Institute
PUNE, INDIA

Richard Crawford
Lecturer in Information Age
Ethics
Univ. of Calif, Davis
Davis, CA, USA

Richard Gerace
Falmouth, Massachusetts

Robert M. Akscyn
President
Knowledge Systems
Export, PA, USA

Robert Braunwart
Seattle, Wash., U.S.A.

Robert E. van Patten, Ph.D.,
P.E.
Consultant
Bellbrook, OH USA

Anne-Sophie Robilliard
Research Analyst
IFPRI
Washington, DC, USA

Roland D. Kelso
Pastor
Catholic Church
Ninomiya, Kanagawa-ken Japan

Ron Regan Jr
Somerville, MA, 02145 USA

Russell Hoover
Editor
American Book Review

The Liberal Challenge

2007-10-07T13:17:00.000-07:00

Some days it feels like the United States is driving top speed into its own demise. And then we read the news and listen to another spineless democrat politician make another empty promise about reining the whole thing. Like clockwork, ten minutes later, another blog post comes up from another liberal, frustrated and angry, try to articulate the cognitive dissonance of asking for stronger support of the Democrats for just one more cycle while acknowledging that the party isn't doing anything other than talking tough and caving quick.

Forget the devil and his administration, forget the critiques, let's zero in on the substance. Bush has no interest in "benchmarks" for success in Iraq because success means war (got it), hegemonic control (maintaining it, but losing grip by the minute), and the oil pump (got it). Ending the war means surrendering his fortunes. But the Liberals, who seem like a nice group of people caught up in a group hallucination, need to begin copping some benchmarks. No revolutionary alternative can be explored because they "just aren't realistic." Instead, we're told to stay within the two party system, register voters, write letters, contribute, and occasionally march. They get mad at Pelosi for saying that impeachment is off the table and then take everything but Pelosi off the table.

What has to happen for them to say enough is enough? Do children have to be raped, or threatened, in front of their parents as part of policy? Does the war need to continue to its fifth year? Does, for the second election in a row, the power brokers of the loyal opposition (sic) have to mount a candidate that talks about more war instead of less (e.g., Kerry's promise to fight the war better and this season's crop of fools blustering nonsense about Iran)? Does any sense of justice have to be respected on any level or does it have to just be a return to the illusions of habeas corpus? Is there a standard liberals can demand that is more than "better than cheney?"

Whatever the standards are, can we get the liberals to just agree to what those standards are with a date attached? If Giuliani or Obama gets elected and keeps the war on, can we expect a new strategy? Not that the rest of us should stop what we're doing, but there is something ridiculous about the liberal's anger at the path we're on and their steadfast refusal to consider more radical options, often dismissing them as "unrealistic."

Kerry got the nomination largely because he sold himself as the "electable" candidate. Lefties get lectured about not achieving anything by working outside the system. And all the while, the most technologically insane war machine chews up country after country. We're told to grow up and be realistic by kids in their twenties with Obama buttons for saying that we need much more than a candidate with a stump speech. For years, we've listened to this. Kos, and Atrios, and all the big libral bloggers need to listen to their own advice for Bush on Iraq: quantifiable benchmarks, clear schedules, objective analysis, and a clear and attainable goal.

I know, I know. There are a lot of people out there who aren't liberals and who are pissed. Instead of whining about the short bus, we should acknowledge the great unrepresented many. Of course, many of these liberal machines, from the Daily Kos community to Moveon, didn't exist mere years ago, and so why can't we build a similar machine? Why can't we lose the petty infighting and the eighty year old debates and get to work on building a new kind of machine? Why can't we?

Sharon Jones for War Tax Resistance

2007-10-07T12:36:00.000-07:00

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings on War Tax Resistance.

Shock Doctrine

2007-10-03T07:34:00.001-07:00

Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. So good. The book that goes along with it, from what I read, is as good as you'd expect.

Neither scientifically proven or impossible

2007-10-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

In the last 24 hours, our last post generated some discussion from interesting corners, so we thought we'd add a few extra notes. First, a few years ago, I remember reading an interview with one of the founders of 2600, the hacker magazine, on CNN. He was asked some preposterous question or another about what evils hackers could do and his reply stuck with me:

CNN: What percentage would you say are destructive as opposed to those in it out of intellectual curiosity or to test their skills?
Goldstein: This raises several points that I feel strongly about. For one thing, hacking is the only field where the media believes anyone who says they're a hacker. Would you believe someone who said they were a cop? Or a doctor? Or an airline pilot? Odds are they'd have to prove their ability at some point or say something that obviously makes some degree of sense. But you can walk up to any reporter and say you're a hacker and they will write a story about you telling the world that you're exactly what you say you are without any real proof.
So every time a movie like "Hackers" comes out, 10 million people from AOL send us e-mail saying they want to be hackers, too, and suddenly, every 12-year-old with this sentiment instantly becomes a hacker in the eyes of the media and hence, the rest of society. You don't become a hacker by snapping your fingers...
...The main problem is that when you make up such a word, no further definition is required. When you label someone with a word that says they're evil, you never really find out what the evil was to begin with. Murderer, that's easy. Burglar, embezzler, rapist, kidnapper, all pretty clear. Now along comes cracker and you don't even know what the crime was. It could be crashing every computer system in Botswana. Or it could be copying a single file. We need to avoid the labeling and start looking at what we're actually talking about. But at the same time, we have to remember that you don't become a hacker simply because you say you are.

There is a similar phenomenon with the word activist and the concept of activism. This has been written about before, but it bears repeating. We're caught up in the scene and signifiers of activism, but we're not actually contesting power. And this doesn't just extend to the individual, but also to a number of these big anti-war groups. Yet it's not over just because we've lost our way. And just because groups and people identify as antiwar, it doesn't mean that they are doing anything to really stop the war and especially does not mean that they should be looked at as indicators for how the antiwar movement is doing.
This isn't intended to sound like a "group A is a real anti-war group and group B is a traitor/enemy/whatever." This is a case of good people with good intentions trying to figure out how to end the war.

And here's where we go off the idealistic deep end. We can end the war period full stop. Social agency is a wonderful thing and as long as we're not combating nature itself (c.f. AIDS, volcanoes, lightning, impending mortality), We've done more than we thought possible (often not as well as we'd like) when it was still in future tense: ending slavery, overthrowing the empires, ending civil death for women, getting children out of the factory, et cetera. Now, I'm sure there's a little whiner in most of the people reading this who'll quickly point out that the slaves just became sharecroppers and leased convicts, the empires went through a revolving door into neo-colonialism, the patriarchy is still alive and well, and that there are millions upon millions of child laborers all around the world today because of this wretched mess we're in.
True. But we've still gotten a lot done that was thought impossible at the time and we're just not finished yet. At a Chris Day talk I saw years ago, he asked everyone to recite "I am the products of 500 years of resistance." We are the products of five hundred years of resistance and it isn't over and it probably won't be over for a little while (I'm thinking early February, but maybe March?). This is important. And we need to remind ourselves of this when we start saying things like "Maybe we need to seriously consider the possibility that, as of our current place in history right now, it's simply not possible for anti-war activist organizations to end this war." and "it is impossible at this point in history to stop these wars." Maybe, if we want to be specific, it IS impossible for "anti-war activist organizations" as they are currently conceived to stop the war, but nothing that is made by people cannot be stopped by people.
So, to sum up, we shouldn't conflate the possibilities of stopping the war with the results from today's antiwar groups and strategies and saying that we can't stop the war is a cop out. Just as disorganized as yesterday's post, but that's what you get when you write at midnight.

Voices and Silence: Ruminations on the Peace Movement

2007-09-30T19:59:00.000-07:00

This weekend, we went to a peace demonstration in D.C. We talked with a lot of people and had a good time, but also left with a lot of concerns about the direction of the anti-war movement and renewed confidence in some of our earlier misgivings.
We want the war to stop and we think the Democrats have proven, yet again for the really slow at home, that they have no intention on stopping it. At the last Democratic Presidential debate, all three of the front runners refused to promise that troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of their first term in 2013. This is insane. With the exception of one very nice Kucinich supporter I met at the rally, no one really thinks any of the other candidates have a decent shot and the republicans are all just as insane. Like always, no surprises here, the people of the country will have to stop the war.
Stephen Duncombe, author of Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, recently said in an interview in the Indypendent:

"Think about normal protests, which are a spectacle. The march on Washington: how does it work? We all get on a bus, we all go down to Washington, we get off the bus, we go on a route that has already been worked out with the police, we march literally around in a circle, then we listen to our leaders speak to us on bad sound systems, and then we march over to a designated civil disobedience area, sit down, and have the police arrest us. Now this is a spectacle of impotence. The police have essentially engineered everything for us and what the police haven't engineered the protesters have done. In fact, that's what the protester's job is: to make it a safe environment worked out in advance with the police. Now I worked on some of those, so I'm critiquing myself here.
The globalization protests worked completely differently. They were chaos. They were carnivals. They were street theater. They were planned, but they were planned by the participants, not with the police. And they were also highly effective. The shutting down of Seattle, what happened in Prague, what happened in London, and other cities around the world, were highly effective at getting attention drawn towards the World Trade Organization, GATT, NAFTA, and so on. 9/11 sort of put the kibosh on that and you saw the return of the repressed march-chant protest where we literally become spectators toward our own activity." (from original transcript)

And that sad spectacle was what we saw on Saturday. Souvenir guys sold peace protests t-shirts dated to remind us that we actually went to the peace protest like it was disney world or a serious basketball game. There have been upwards of twenty "major" demonstrations in DC and countless other ones around the world, literally involving millions of people. What have we produced? A million dead in Iraq, years of war, and a very real concern that the U.S. will attack Iran (tangential side note: we don't think the U.S. will attack Iran, but it still boils our blood). In Michael Moore's documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, there is a popular scene of Bush mis-speaking:

George W. Bush: There's an old saying in Tennessee. I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that says: "Fool me once...” [pause] "... shame on...”. [pause] "Shame on you...” [pause] "If fooled, you can't get fooled again."

Everyone loves this and loves to call Bush a moron for not learning from his mistakes, but the sad truth is that we've had about half a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq and the peace movement hasn't stopped any of it. Lefties love to point out that Liberals are nuts for believing that any of their knights of hope will stop the war and that the definition of insanity is "is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." But the Left is just an insane: we have no real vision for how to stop the war and it shows. Speakers on a stage and marching in circles is not working and hasn't been for some time. It is difficult to live in this time and place, but we have to get past these self-therapeutic rituals of illusory resistance. We say "No justice, No Peace," and nobody asks what that really means. We have had no justice; does "no peace" really mean shouting loudly on empty saturday streets?

There's a real battle over words like "normal" amongst the left and academia. Who is to say that transgendered isn't normal and that white middle-class guy is? While we accept the basic premise of this, the bus we went down on was populated by some of the most abnormal people one could find. One bore looked and sounded like the Comic Book guy from The Simpsons who kept droning on and on about Humphrey in '76, another guy wearing a permanent helmet and an air traffic controller headset seemed like he belonged in a group home, and a guy with a serious facial rash seemed enthusiastic about, I'm not joking, a possible Sam Nunn presidential bid. The same trot guy we always see, young, but getting a little older now, still hawking his papers and arguing his correct line. Of course, we also met a swell couple and talked to them for several hours and had a grand old time with a number of people we met. This isn't intended to be mean, but we bring up these examples because we think there is something important about this.
When the big anti-war demos began, we really thought that the best thing that could happen is if they stopped. We had just gotten off the explosion of the corporate globalization movement in the late nineties and it felt weak to return to the march, chant, argue with Trot paper sellers, and get back on bus routine. We thought that the groups organizing the marches, no matter how well intentioned, had to sign expensive insurance waivers to get permission to hold their marches and wouldn't jeopardize anything past pre-arranged Civil Disobedience and heated rhetoric from the stage. In the absence of this dog-and-pony shows, we imagined the anarchists and other independent lefties swooping in to create a carnival of resistance. There haven't been a lot of these big demos in the last few years, but no one has risen to take the place of the March-Chant-Protest spectacle. The baton has been passed to...
On the bus, we listened to a nice, well-intentioned bus captain talk to us about a new kind of movement. But the major groups (UFPJ, NION, WCW, ANSWER, TON, etc ad infinitum ad boredom) are bickering and fighting and can't even get their act together. She talked about a new kind of movement, but passed out the same weathered copy of some paper we put down after a only a few sentences of another tired old re-tread article. She talked about a new kind of movement, and we were told how important the day was, but the speakers had repeated the same old things and we called out the same old chants and got back the same old responses. And we looked around our tired bus coming back and something crystalized.
They say that Bush has 30% of the country who still like him, but he can't go much lower. Because these people will like him no matter what: because he's white, because they're afraid, because their minds are so traumatized into that bad space where you think bombing Iran will somehow keep everything holding on for that much longer, because just because. And these people will never stray; after so much wicked and stupid things Bush has done, their loyalty is branded into their very eyes and censors what they can possibly hear. They're the ones at the pre-screened rallies, thanking him for all he's doing. They're politically like Terri Schiavo: there, but not. The fools who don't know when to stop, take measure, and re-align back to a better path.
I'm a lefty and will be until I die. I think we can have a world of justice and freedom and that capitalism and its various sicknesses, man-made that it is, can be unwrought and a better society can be formed. I don't think there is a liberal solution possible: we couldn't reform our way out of the concentration camps and we can't lobby our way past the death squads. But looking around the bus, I felt too much of a connection between Bush's thirty percent, following blindly, and this antiwar moment, performing our anger, but resisting nothing. We owe it to ourselves to create the new strategy. Because this isn't working.

Review: Banished and the Elusive Promise of Reparations

2007-09-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

Last night, some of us went and saw Banished, the new documentary by Marco Williams. It's about the racial violence in the early twentieth century of racist white communities lynching and expelling blacks from their land. The subtitle of the film, How Whites Drove Blacks Out of Town in America, doesn't do it justice. While it makes the slam-dunk case that this forced exodus was truly a matter of racial cleansing, Banished is really a look at the issues surrounding reparations today.
Too often people say "really good" when they mean "great," and Banished is not a great film. It is, however, really good, and Williams's approach is solid, patient, and interesting to the end. He does a really good job of examining the interplay between white supremacy and identity. With a sure hand, and an almost understated sense of humor, Williams's piece is probably the best piece I've seen on reparations yet.
I'm not sure if he was actively complicit or simply an observer, but he manages to crack the shallow recital of apology and reveal it for the trite performance it really is. (I don't want to explain how he structures his argument, because people should go see the movie.) It's not a great film: it doesn't innovate a visual style or fully utilize all of the possibilities inherent in the medium. But what it lacks in visual ambition, it makes up for in a smart and solid examination of what reparations could mean. You should see it.

Recently, we also saw Manda Bala/ Send a Bullet. It's the kind of documentary that crackles the nerve endings and makes you sit up in your seat. Minutes in, we turned to each other and said "Oh, they have our attention." The first-time director, Jason Kohn, manages to blend Errol Morris with (I can't believe I'm typing this in a positive way) Howard Stern for an intense study of the various forces of corruption, crime, and their intersections in modern day Brazil. It fizzes out in its third act, failing to tie it together as neat as it wants to, but if every film failed this well, I don't think many of us would mind. In hindsight, with the sheer force of its eye, ear, and direction, we shouldn't be surprised that Kohn can't maintain it to fruition, but this is the most promising debut we've seen in a while. If Williams makes a journeyman contribution, Kohn's Send a Bullet comes off like like the top draft pick's debut loss. So what? He's still the one to watch.

To read at work? Chapter One of Oshinsky's Worse Than Slavery

Propaganda

2007-09-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

If only all propaganda could look like this. It's almost catchy.
And today's internal link to read while you're at work is African History in the Service of the Black Liberation by Walter Rodney. Enjoy!

A Critique of a Critique of the meta-Critique: Why No News is The News

2007-09-20T05:57:00.000-07:00

I don't always agree with Krugman, but his criticism of the meta-analysis is right on. He says, in part:

"One of my pet peeves about political reporting is the fact that some of my journalistic colleagues seem to want to be in another business – namely, theater criticism. Instead of telling us what candidates are actually saying – and whether it’s true or false, sensible or silly – they tell us how it went over, and how they think it affects the horse race. During the 2004 campaign I went through two months’ worth of TV news from the major broadcast and cable networks to see what voters had been told about the Bush and Kerry health care plans; what I found, and wrote about, were several stories on how the plans were playing, but not one story about what was actually in the plans.

There are two big problems with this kind of reporting. The important problem is that it fails to inform the public about what matters. In 2004, very few people had any idea about the very real differences between the candidates on domestic policy."

But how much of it has to do with the fact the there is essentially a consensus between the two major parties? They both strive to be business-friendly (supporting things like NAFTA and the WTO over the working and middle class), hawkish on foreign policy (no debate about bombing a country for what non-state actors have done), and neck-and-neck on domestic issues (with the Democrats making a big celebration out of the most minor deviations, like Don't Ask, Don't Tell, while continuing the mass incarceration craze). The only two issue they seem to disagree on is guns, and there by very little despite what the NRA keeps promoting, and abortion, where they seem to have a gentleman's agreement that one party has to be the choice party and the other party is the anti-choice party. As a frustrated Michael Moore pointed out, in the second Gore-Bush debate. for over thirty issues, the two candidates simply agreed.

There is a problem with the corporate media's obsession with politician personality and surface performance over their substantial policy proposals (and, god forbid, alternatives to the proposals), but when, for the last several years, the Republicans argue for more war and the democrats counter (!) that the war needs to be fought better, doesn't responding with theater criticism make sense?

Like Powell at the U.N., Bush trots out another general puppet

2007-09-10T17:13:00.000-07:00

Petraeus is Bush. Say it again and again, if you have to. The puppet might as well have Bush's hand sticking in his back for all the independence he has. Bush's credibility is shot on the war and Petraeus is his proxy, a new untarnished voice, to repeat Bush's script. And every journalist and politician who, in turn, repeats Petraeus's findings is either a moron or someone in on the take. Petraeus is just another prop at the photo-op over the wreckage.
This can happen because the corporate media, for all it's self-deprecatory apologies for cheerleading us into this war (though always in past tense), continues to fight for the war. This is the liberals' grossest moment, from the New York Times and Jon Stewart on down, their champions tinker with rhetoric and pander to argument, but only push responsibility and tell us to believe it means more war. It all indicts the left, a left that doesn't even exist, because we're not smashing this whole machine apart.

This moment is truly depressing in so many ways. We have the republicans panting blood from eating children wholesale and the internal hemorrhaging of a party run by career criminals and simplest minds. Democratic politicians, the naked army they have always been (Obama, the great hope™, threatening more war on the rest of the world, Clinton the Corporate Lawyer shamelessly pandering knowing full well she will leap right if she gets the primary, etc), trying their best to play "republicaner."
And still no left.
Let's take stock. The liberals, represented by Kos and his ilk, who write a good game, but who are the indentured servants of the democratic party - no more independent than junkies - and smart enough to know that the Party is a collosal failure, yet still hooked to the gills. Then you have the institutional left, old C.P. fronts, who are still yoked to the throat with party line, infighting, and the verse-chorus-verse of New York Times Ad-March on Washington-Paper Sales. I actually love and care for this last group quite a bit, but the same old song and dance gets tired after awhile and it's frustrating that instead of fifteen little groups, we can't have one or two bigger groups getting to work.
Then there are the anarchists, who seem to be permanently arguing a propaganda of the deed that says "Anarchism isn't going to work." Like a list serv flame war that meets in person, it is the politics of a mob who happened to attend Sarah Lawrence. Some promise all the fun of hardcore Maoist cadres with none of the actual discipline and others who're just seeking riot porn to star in or videotape. But reacting against the anti-practice of the university marxists means an anti-theory of spontaneity navigated by the radicaler-than-thou only after it has been authorized by the purer-than-thou and vetted by the colorfully dressed unimaginative ones. A generation of kids who wore the clothes of the seventies growing up in the nineties reduced to reenacting the sixties and afraid of the future.
Every once in awhile, I catch a glimpse of the promise and the excitement rekindles, but I didn't today. These are depressing times and we need to get our act together.

Petraeus is bush and there is no left, repeat if you have to. We need to ignite a left and get rid of the the whole system that bush rides.

On the Anniversary of the murder of Sacco and Vanzetti

2007-08-22T05:34:00.000-07:00

On the anniversary of the state murder of Sacco and Vanzetti, we're just including a few quick links from History Is A Weapon. The first is the brief mention in the People's History at the end of War is the Health of the State.

The second is much rarer. Sacco and Vanzetti were members of the radical Galleanist anarchist tendency. HIAW has the Galleanist manifesto, Plain Words. Correct us if we're wrong, but we're the first spot on the internet with it and it is a great short read.

The Plight of the Liberals

2007-07-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

We wrote a poem:

An Empire complex—where to begin?
We can start with an epigram thorough and hearty.

Why are we stuck with this mess that we're in?
Bush's quagmire, Iraq; the liberals', the Democratic party.

Complicity

2007-07-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

Before we get to the death of Lady Bird Johnson, let's examine the impending (metaphorical) death of another onerous loser: McCain's spectacular dreams, for higher power coming crashing to earth. It is remarkable that on the day his top aides quit and the crowds murmur that he's bleeding money out of a slipshod operation, he announces that his two campaigns, against the people of Iraq and towards his presidential aspirations, are going just dandy. While it is tempting to draw further parallels, we must be careful: his campaign for president is teetering on failure, but the venture in Iraq is a criminal enterprise. So while we're weakly rooting for someone better for president, our hearts and minds go out to the Iraqi people and we have no joy in celebrating the butchery McCain has designed and abetted for them.
This is important to point out because a lot of commentators, and liberals especially, buy into this claptrap about the war "not going well." A presidential campaign can go well or it cannot go well; this rape and murder of a nation can never "go well." Ever. So while we will get drunk on cake and celebrate when McCain eventually bows out (and we'll recall his simultaneous statements on his dual Titanics), it is important to be clear about where the parallels lie and where they just obfuscate the obvious truth.
Speaking of obfuscation, CNN should fire their puppet Sanjay Gupta*, who out-and-out lies repeatedly and clearly willfully, in his libeling of Michael Moore and his new film SiCKO. If the first clip of Moore being ambushed on Wolf Blitzer isn't enough to make your blood boil, Gupta's blatant disregard for the truth on the Larry King follow-up is fairly outrageous. Of course, firing Gupta doesn't solve the real problem: Fox News is as bad as CNN. Maybe people think it should read the other way around (i.e., CNN is as bad as Fox), but if they're equal, why split hairs? Fox gets hammered time and again, deservedly so, for its racist, sexist, war-mongering demagoguery. Yet CNN regularly features the racist salvos of Glenn Beck and the racist capitalist droolings of Lou Dobbs, just to mention the worst of the pack. Yet liberals who dis Fox cop to CNN as if it's better.
Obfuscation and propaganda didn't start with the cable news channels and it doesn't end with them, either. We can look no further than the gross obit of Lady Bird Johnson who just seems so sweet and charming after being written up in her New York Times obit. The Times has the temerity to suggest that, well let me just quote:

"She was an early supporter of the environment and, in championing highway beautification, worked to banish billboards and plant flowers and trees."

Lady Bird Johnson's husband held a bloody shift conducting one of the most criminal and evil chapters in the history of humans on this earth, the american war against the people of Indochina. I've never heard hide nor hair of her criticism of these crimes at all. In particular, LBJ personally authorized the use of Agent Orange, an anti-life herbicide that obliterated miles and miles of vegetation and killed millions of animals and people. Her steadfast resolve in defending and standing by the scum that was her husband is clear in the obit, but nowhere is pronounced her complicity and the blood on her hands for any of this. As we like to say around here, Hell Burns Hotter Tonight.

*Call 404-827-1500 and press #2 to tell them.