A Little More Audacity Please!

I haven't posted enough recently as the stress on unemployment and the work of putting out another Blue Collar Review have been taking up my time and limited energy. I agree with Bill Maher concerning our President though and appreciate his perspective and humor. Let's nope Obama is paying attention and lets let him know this is how we feel too.

Inconvenient Truths about "Real Existing’ Zionism"

In a worthwhile article exposing the history and internal ideological contradictions of Zionism, Jacques Hersh makes some well thought observations about the end of the Zionist experiment -- or at least the process of its transformation. In Inconvenient Truths about ‘Real Existing’ Zionism he points out the seeds of fascist nationalism that were there all along and how they were manipulated as an alternative to the popular Marxism of 19th and early 20th century Judaism. If there is a weakness in his analysis, it is his assertion early in the article that support for Zionism and the Zionist state is waning among diaspora Jews. While there is some weakening in progressive circles, the vast majority, in my observation, still cling to and are poisoned by Zionist nationalism based partially on the fear-mongering of anti-semitism fed by the Islamaphobia of the imperialist "clash of cultures."

Still, this is an excellent article worth reading for the information and historical and contextual information it holds.

What Change?

As the video below shows, we do not now have a government any more responsive or representative of us than we had under the Bush/Cheney administration. Don't expect health care from these contemptuous, corporate-beholden pigs. In other areas, Obama is continuing the Bush era policies of bailing out banks at home and of destabilization and outright murder of civilians around the world and especially in Pakistan. While it felt good to hear Obama assert that the US doesn't torture (just as Bush once did), it's still a lie as brutal torture in Guantanamo, Bagram, and elsewhere continues. As does censorship of abuse and so-called "military tribunals." So, where is the vaunted "change" we were sold? As the economy continues to slide into deeper depression many of us are desperately asking for change and as our desperation turns to anger, I expect the Obama administration will enforce order and strengthen the National Security State. Change inevitably will come from below but as the real nature of the new leadership unfolds, it is increasingly apparent that they are not the change we were hoping for and are, in fact, a continuation of the same rotten corporatocracy.

New Responsive Government

Many who voted for "change" were hoping for a new, more responsive administration but this is the reality:

The Virulent Cancer of Zionism

As AIPAC meets in Washington, rampant human rights violations, expansion of Israeli settlements and housing demolitions continue in Israel. Activist Ezra Nawi is among the latest of resisters jailed by the Zionist apartheid regime. Medea Benjamin, beat up there for protesting and abused by hate-spewing Zionists rightly asks, Who Will Stop the AIPAC Jews Before it is Too Late? Zionism continues to be a cancer on the Jewish psyche. Having just returned from a stay with relatives I saw the continuing indoctrination of children and the incorporation of Zionism as a part of Judaism, as if it was inseparable from that tradition. It is a disease which is relatively recent and has grown over the last 40 years. The hatred spawned by Zionism and the blind support of it among many mainstream Jews poses, if anything, a danger to them. It may be Hitler's final legacy that Jews surviving his extermination adopt an ugly fascism that finishes them off culturally and possibly as a people. It's past time for American Jews to wake up and smell the rottenness for what it is. Time to take the responsibility to reclaim our traditional ethics and eschew the vicious aparthied state that tries to pass itself off as "Jewish" if it isn't already too late.

The Fix Is In

The economic fraud and cover-ups continue under the Obama administration. The fraudulent basis of the present economic disaster and the continuing criminality are flushed out by William C. Black, a Wall Street Regulator on this Bill Moyers Segment. The obvious question is why Obama would choose Gaithner and others who are part of the scam to "fix" the problem instead of an honest operative without conflicts of interest like William Black or Joseph Stiglitz unless Obama himself is part of the cabal or made a deal with it upfront to insure his ascendancy to power. Meanwhile, we the taxpayers (those of us who still have jobs) will continue to bail out a sinking ship built on lies because no solution based on BS is viable.

Impending Change in US Cuba Relations

The relationship between the US and Cuba seems to be warming as the obsolescence of the embargo becomes increasing apparent and costly to the US. Here is an insightful and informative look inside the process from the recent reflections of Fidel Castro:

It is not known how many people in the United States write to Obama and how many different issues they put to him. Obviously, he cannot read all the letters and tackle every issue, because neither the 24 hours of the day and the 365 days of the year would be enough. What is a fact is that advisors, backed up by computers, electronic equipment and cell phones, reply to all the letters. Their content is recorded and the replies, supported by many statements made by the new president during his nomination and election campaign, exist beforehand.
In any event, letters have their influence and weight in U.S. policy given that, in this case, it does not concern a corrupt, lying and ignorant politician like his predecessor, who despised the social advances of the New Deal.
That is why my attention was caught by a dispatch from Washington, published yesterday, April 14, by the DPA news agency.
"A group of retired high-ranking U.S. officers have urged President Barack Obama to support and sign a Congressional initiative to end the ban on travel to Cuba for all Americans, arguing that the embargo of the island does not serve Washington’s political and security aims.
"’The embargo has inspired a significant diplomatic movement against U.S. policy,’ note the 12 high-ranking retired officers, who include Barry McCaffrey, the ‘drug tsar’ during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and Colin Powell’s former chief of staff Lawrence B. Wilkerson, in a letter made public in Washington today.
"’As military professionals, we understand that America's interests are best served when the United States is able to attract the support of other nations to our cause,’ the officers state in the letter, sent to Obama on Monday, the day that the U.S. president announced the end of restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuban Americans, but not for all of the country’s citizens, as progressive sectors are demanding.
"In the view of these officers, the bill called the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act, submitted to the House of Representatives by Democrat Bill Delahunt, is an important first step toward lifting the embargo.
"A type of policy, they add, ‘more likely to bring change to Cuba’ and also to change Washington’s international image.
"’Around the world, leaders are calling for a real policy shift that delivers on the hope you inspired in your campaign,’ the officers sustain.
"’Cuba offers the lowest-hanging fruit for such a shift and would be a move that would register deeply in the minds of our partners and competitors around the world,’ they add.
The news, located among 315 pages of cables seemed to be somewhat insignificant. However, it approaches the crux of the problem that promoted four Reflections in less than 24 hours related to the Americas Summit, which begins in 48 hours.
In the United States, politicians launch wars and the military has to make them.
Kennedy, inexperienced and young, decreed the blockade and the Bay of Pigs invasion, organized by Eisenhower and Nixon, who knew less about wars than he did. The unexpected setback led him to new and misguided decisions which culminated in the October Missile Crisis, from which, however, he emerged gracefully but traumatized by the risk of a thermonuclear war, which was very close, as the French journalist Jean Daniel told me. "He’s a thinking machine," he added, in praise of the president, who had deeply impressed him.
Later on, enthused with the Green Berets, he sent them to Vietnam, where the United States was supporting the restoration of the French colonial empire. Another politician, Lyndon Johnson, took that war to its final consequences. In that inglorious adventure, more than 50,000 soldiers lost their lives, the Union squandered no less than $500 billion when their value in gold fell 20 times, killed millions of Vietnamese and multiplied solidarity with that poor Third World country. Military service had to be replaced by professional soldiers, distancing the public from military training, which debilitated that nation.
A third politician, George W. Bush, protected by his father, executed the genocidal Iraq war that accelerated the economic crisis, making it more acute and profound. Its cost in economic figures rises to trillions of trillions of dollars, a public debt that will fall on new generations of U.S. citizens in a convulsed world full of risks.
Are those affirming that the embargo affects the security interests of the United States right or not?
The officers who wrote the letter are not appealing for the use of arms, but to the battle of ideas, something diametrically opposed to what the politicians have done.
In general, U.S. military personnel who defend the economic, political and social system of the United States, have privileges and are very well remunerated, but they are concerned at not becoming involved in the theft of public funds, which would result in discredit and a total lack of authority in terms of their military undertakings.
They do not believe that Cuba constitutes a threat to U.S. security, as others have attempted to portray us to U.S. public opinion. It was the governors of that country who converted Guantánamo base into a refuge of counterrevolutionaries or émigrés. Worse than that, they converted it into a torture center which they made famous as a symbol of the most brutal negation of human rights.
The military is also well aware that our country is a model in the war on drug trafficking and that no act of terrorism against the United States has ever been permitted from our territory.
As the Congressional Black Caucus was able to confirm, including Cuba on the list of terrorist countries is the most dishonest act ever made.
As well as Senators Lugar, Delahunt, the Caucus and other influential members of Congress, we thank those who wrote the letter to Obama.
We do not fear dialogue; we do not need to invent enemies; we do not fear a debate of ideas; we believe in our convictions and with them, we have learned to defend and will continue to defend our homeland.
With the fabulous advances in technology, war has turned into one of the most complex sciences.
That is something that U.S. soldiers understand. They know that it is not a matter of order and command in the style of the old wars. Today the adversaries quite probably never see each other’s faces; they can find each other at thousands of kilometers of distance; the most lethal weapons are fired by programs. Man barely participates. Decisions are calculated beforehand and lacking in emotion.
I have met a number of them, now retired, who have dedicated themselves to the study of military science and wars.
They do not express hatred or antipathy toward the little country that has fought and resisted confronting such a powerful enemy.
There currently exists in the United States a World Security Institute with which our country has contacts and academic exchanges. The one that existed 15 years ago was the Center for Defense Information (CDI). A CDI delegation made its first visit to Cuba at the end of June 1993. From that date to November 19, 2004, there have been nine visits to Cuba.
Up until 1999 the delegations were, in the main, made up of retired military officers.
In the October 1999 visit the composition of the delegations began to vary, reducing the presence of military personnel. From visit No. 5, all the delegations were led by the eminent researcher Bruce Blair, a security policy expert, specialized in control and command nuclear forces. A consultant professor at Yale and Princeton Universities. He has published countless books and hundreds of articles on the subject.
In that way, I came to know officers who assumed important roles in the U.S. armed forces. We didn’t always agree with their points of view, but they were always amiable. We had wide-ranging exchanges on historical events in which they had participated as soldiers.
The visits continued in 2006, but I had had the accident in Santa Clara and later fell gravely ill.
Of the 12 retired officers who signed the letter to Obama, one of them took part in those meetings.
I knew that in the last meeting that took place they said, in all frankness, that the military had no intention of attacking Cuba militarily; that there was a new political situation in the United States, derived from the weakness of the administration given its failure in Iraq.
It was clear to the compañeros who met with the U.S. delegation that they felt badly led and were ashamed at what was happening, although nobody could offer any guarantees on the political adventurism of the president of the United States, which he maintained up until the last day of his administration. That meeting took place at the beginning of March 2007, 14 months ago.
Bruce Blair must know much more than me on the thorny issue. His brave and transparent conduct always impressed me.
I did not want these data to remain in the archives awaiting the time when they would be of no interest to anybody.

From increasing military actions in Afghanistan and Pakistan to refusing to prosecute those who tortured and ordered such crimes to not considering single payer health care, Obama has in many ways been a disappointment. This is not to say that he is all bad but that he falls far short of expectations and proimises. No surprise for those of us who realize that only a candidate with whom the corporate oligarchy was comfortable would have a chance at the Presidency. Still, for those less jaded, Naomic Klein writes:

Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.

This is a good thing. If the superfan culture that brought Obama to power is going to transform itself into an independent political movement, one fierce enough to produce programs capable of meeting the current crises, we are all going to have to stop hoping and start demanding.

The first stage, however, is to understand fully the awkward in-between space in which many US progressive movements find themselves. To do that, we need a new language, one specific to the Obama moment. Here is a start.

Hopeover. Like a hangover, a hopeover comes from having overindulged in something that felt good at the time but wasn't really all that healthy, leading to feelings of remorse, even shame. It's the political equivalent of the crash after a sugar high. Sample sentence: "When I listened to Obama's economic speech my heart soared. But then, when I tried to tell a friend about his plans for the millions of layoffs and foreclosures, I found myself saying nothing at all. I've got a serious hopeover."

Hoper coaster. Like a roller coaster, the hoper coaster describes the intense emotional peaks and valleys of the Obama era, the veering between joy at having a president who supports safe-sex education and despondency that single-payer healthcare is off the table at the very moment when it could actually become a reality. Sample sentence: "I was so psyched when Obama said he is closing Guantánamo. But now they are fighting like mad to make sure the prisoners in Bagram have no legal rights at all. Stop this hoper coaster-I want to get off!"

Hopesick. Like the homesick, hopesick individuals are intensely nostalgic. They miss the rush of optimism from the campaign trail and are forever trying to recapture that warm, hopey feeling-usually by exaggerating the significance of relatively minor acts of Obama decency. Sample sentences: "I was feeling really hopesick about the escalation in Afghanistan, but then I watched a YouTube video of Michelle in her organic garden and it felt like inauguration day all over again. A few hours later, when I heard that the Obama administration was boycotting a major UN racism conference, the hopesickness came back hard. So I watched slideshows of Michelle wearing clothes made by ethnically diverse independent fashion designers, and that sort of helped."

Hope fiend. With hope receding, the hope fiend, like the dope fiend, goes into serious withdrawal, willing to do anything to chase the buzz. (Closely related to hopesickness but more severe, usually affecting middle-aged males.) Sample sentence: "Joe told me he actually believes Obama deliberately brought in Summers so that he would blow the bailout, and then Obama would have the excuse he needs to do what he really wants: nationalize the banks and turn them into credit unions. What a hope fiend!"

Hopebreak. Like the heartbroken lover, the hopebroken Obama-ite is not mad but terribly sad. She projected messianic powers on to Obama and is now inconsolable in her disappointment. Sample sentence: "I really believed Obama would finally force us to confront the legacy of slavery in this country and start a serious national conversation about race. But now whenever he seems to mention race, he's using twisted legal arguments to keep us from even confronting the crimes of the Bush years. Every time I hear him say ‘move forward,' I'm hopebroken all over again."

Hopelash. Like a backlash, hopelash is a 180-degree reversal of everything Obama-related. Sufferers were once Obama's most passionate evangelists. Now they are his angriest critics. Sample sentence: "At least with Bush everyone knew he was an asshole. Now we've got the same wars, the same lawless prisons, the same Washington corruption, but everyone is cheering like Stepford wives. It's time for a full-on hopelash."

In trying to name these various hope-related ailments, I found myself wondering what the late Studs Terkel would have said about our collective hopeover. He surely would have urged us not to give in to despair. I reached for one of his last books, Hope Dies Last. I didn't have to read long. The book opens with the words: "Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up."

And that pretty much says it all. Hope was a fine slogan when rooting for a long-shot presidential candidate. But as a posture toward the president of the most powerful nation on earth, it is dangerously deferential. The task as we move forward (as Obama likes to say) is not to abandon hope but to find more appropriate homes for it-in the factories, neighborhoods and schools where tactics like sit-ins, squats and occupations are seeing a resurgence.

Political scientist Sam Gindin wrote recently that the labor movement can do more than protect the status quo. It can demand, for instance, that shuttered auto plants be converted into green-future factories, capable of producing mass-transit vehicles and technology for a renewable energy system. "Being realistic means taking hope out of speeches," he wrote, "and putting it in the hands of workers."

Which brings me to the final entry in the lexicon.

Hoperoots. Sample sentence: "It's time to stop waiting for hope to be handed down, and start pushing it up, from the hoperoots."

Teabagged at the Gates?

Many cities, including my own, saw these large rallys yesterday. Angry folks "wanting their country back," decrying government spending and "socialism." Where did this army of uninformed stooges come from? We know the Libertarians aren't that organized. It seems the organization behind it is freedomworks a group founded by republican Dick Armey and funded by by tobacco, pharmaceutical and banking interests.

Joe Conason writes:
If conservative leaders no longer even try to offer serious solutions to national problems, nobody should underestimate their capacity or their will to mobilize angry Americans. Behind the April 15 “tea parties” rallying against President Barack Obama’s economic program—promoted as a new phenomenon by Fox News Channel and right-wing bloggers—stands a phalanx of Republicans whose ideology is all too familiar.

At the apex of the tea party movement, aside from such Fox revolutionaries as Rupert Murdoch, there is a well-funded organization known as FreedomWorks, headed by a former politician named Dick Armey. His past career should be instructive to any starry-eyed citizens who believe that they have at last found the true right-wing revolutionary path.

Back when the Republicans first gained control of Congress more than a decade ago, Armey, a former economics professor at a small Texas college, was hailed as the author of the Contract With America and led the Republicans as House majority leader until his retirement. He rose to power on the strength of a “tax revolt” against President Bill Clinton’s first budget, which raised rates on the wealthiest Americans to trim the enormous deficit he had inherited from the first Bush administration. That summer, Armey warned of an economic apocalypse—and his party won the midterm election before his predictions could be proved embarrassingly wrong.

As anyone with a functioning memory should know, the Republicans under the leadership of Armey and his cronies Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay proceeded to rack up excesses in spending and boodling that made the old Democratic congressional leaders look quite stingy. When he was asked once why he and his GOP comrades were chomping so much more federal pork than the Democrats ever did, he replied bluntly: “To the victors go the spoils.”

Like so many self-styled populists of both parties in Washington, Armey packed his own golden parachute when he left Congress. At the same time that he took over the leadership of the “grass-roots” group that eventually became FreedomWorks, he also joined a major corporate lobbying firm. The Web site of DLA Piper, one of the capital’s biggest bipartisan law and lobbying outfits, boasts of Armey’s influence among his colleagues. As it happens, he specializes in homeland security, a major growth industry with billions wasted annually on corporate boondoggles. After all, his final legislative masterwork was to chair the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, and he was the prime sponsor of the legislation that created the Department of Homeland Security. Of course, he isn’t listed as a lobbyist, but instead is called a “senior policy advisor.”

As for FreedomWorks, which has claimed a national membership of some 700,000 conservative activists, its operations have long smelled of Astroturf, or artificial grass roots. Most of the money that funded Armey’s activism in the past was provided by tobacco, pharmaceutical and banking interests—and there is no reason to think that has changed.

Nor is the ideological bent of the tea party’s host in any sense new. When last heard from in 2005, Armey was busily conjuring phony grass-roots support for Social Security privatization. That effort led to a notorious episode involving a FreedomWorks employee who showed up at the Bush White House, where she was introduced as a “single mom from Iowa” endorsing the president’s private-accounts scheme.

Buzzing beneath the furious rants of the tea party protests, it is not hard to hear the same old right-wing rhetoric about taxes and deficits and the same old schemes to cut the taxes for the wealthiest citizens, deregulate the economy and despoil the environment. The difference between the heyday of Armey and now is that we have suffered the results of those policies in practice and reject them. The Republican Party’s appeal and conservatism as a movement are lower than ever.

Months of furious propaganda on talk radio and Fox News has achieved nothing so far, according to nearly every survey. Barack Obama’s approval ratings remain close to 66 percent, with most Americans trusting him and believing that the country is on the path to renewal. This president has long benefited from ineffectual and discredited adversaries—and Armey is no exception.

The danger is that these easily manipulated, knownothings of today may be the precursor for more dangerous armed mobs down the road. History shows that power concedes nothing without a fight and that the most ignorant sectors of the population can be rallied with nationalism and religion against progress.

How the US Became a Banana Republic

Crony capitalism in its hubris got us here. Our economy, parodying the crises formerly seen in developing countries, remains in freefall largely because it has been all but taken over by the finance sector which continues to run things. Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the IMF, provides a good analysis of the crisis in The Quiet Coup. His solutions echo the austerity programs inflicted on developing countries and, from the point of view of saving capitalism, may be sound. What he fails to consider is the inevitable double whammy on already failing economies of impending climate change, and the results of citizen reaction - especially when manipulated by those in the ruling class who refuse to take the dictated bitter medicine, ie, a possible rise of dictatorial fascism much of which is already legally in place. In order to avoid a calamity of untold proportions resulting in a brutal police-sate distopia, Obama must break with the ruling economic elite, sever the influence of finance over policy, nationalize and re-regulate banking and build the foundations for an economy that can withstand and adapt to the very different scenario of the future. Even if he is willing to do that, he may not be powerful enough to overcome the entrenched power of these corrupt interests. Meanwhile the right is busy building its angry base of hate groups. The corporate media can be counted on to spread fear and reaction.

We must use the short time allotted us to push Obama in a realistic direction and build support for real progress. We must also do all we can to build our own mutually supportive communities around progressive principles. We too must prepare for the worst.

Addressing the Real Crisis

It is good to see the large turnout of climate protesters at the Power Shift gathering in Washington. As important as the economy is at this moment, it is dwarfed in importance by the reality of the global ecological crises which looms. We will not be the first civilization to collapse due to climate change though on a global scale we will be the largest. Today's youth will have to deal with survival in the new and awful world we've created. Unless this administration takes on adapting our nation to the very different conditions we will soon be facing, there won't be a United States in another 70 years. No issue is more vital and it is intimately tied to the economy as well. Saving the system as it is may work in the very short term but it guarantees disaster down the line.

Obama's Address -- A Prole's Critique

OK, so maybe Obama does "have a clue" at least about domestic issues. In his speech to the Congress and nation last night he addressed many of the issues that most concern us and I think he is on the right track. He also does well at putting the Repugs in a tight spot by preemptively countering their predictable criticism and setting the trap for their own self isolation.

A few critical questions -- I think it is great that he asks "every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training." but how can we afford to do that? An investment in funding job retraining programs for displaced workers would be a wise investment sure to pay off in taxes and economic growth but I didn't hear that and many of us won't qualify for traditional loans, especially if we are already unemployed. Let's "Leave No Adult Behind."

Healthcare -- I applaud his intent and await the possibilities but tax breaks on insurance policies and electronic records won't do it. We need a single payer program

Social Security -- He scares me on this one. We don't need a Repug lite approach of "creating tax-free universal savings accounts for all Americans." SSI is already a tax-free universal savings account for all Americans and it would take far less money to keep it solvent indefinitely than he is committing to bailing out the banks!

As for his foreign agenda -- he still may not have a clue. I'm glad he is still committed to getting us out of Iraq but his incursions into and bombing of Pakistan only strengthen Al Qaeda and further destabilize Pakistan strengthening militant Anti-Western Islamists. His escalation of our occupation in Afghanistan is unwise and unwanted there and while he is closing Guantanamo, the Bagram gulag in Afghanistan is far, far worse. And yes, we do torture though I hope he means we have stopped. His support of Israel as it moves to the racist right also shows a lack if insight that sets the stage for further US backed atrocities.

All in all, it was a pleasure to hear an intelligent and articulate leader and that does give me some hope but we will have to stay on his case. It was my pleasure to stumble into the opportunity to converse with my local Senator, Senator Mark Warner last week where I pointed out our need to retool for a different era with a new public power grid and rail system and how that would also create jobs. I also pushed the idea of publicly funded skill re-training for displaced workers and he seemed genuinely interested and responded positively to the idea. Of course he's a politician but he is one of the better ones. I hope I planted a bug that will have some results.

If He Only Had A Clue

He could get it fixed on Wall St.
create real jobs on Main St.
and select a better crew,
He'd end blank checks to Israel
and bring some peace to that hell
-- if he only had a clue

He could make the Congress line up
if he pressed them all to sign on
but instead he tries to woo
the right-wing crooks who hate him
and will still block and berate him
-- if he only had a clue

He could deal with all the Repugs
imprisoning the worst thugs
and save the constitution too
but instead he will continue
their imperialist venue,
-- if he only had a clue

He could close down all our gulags
and end so-called "renditions"
but this he will not do--
He could bring the world together
and address the changing weather
-- if he only had a clue

Crimes Against Humanity

As the deadly assault on Gaza continues, the crimes perpetrated by Israel mount. The latest is the bombing raid on the headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency as well as the al-Quds hospital. It is also beyond doubt that white phosphorous weapons are being used against the Gazan population -- a crime against humanity. By its silence, the incoming Obama administration is guilty of aiding and abetting those crimes.

Good Gaza Coverage from Link TV

The Prole on the Street

Here in Norfolk, I have been involved in protests against Israel's assault of Gaza, the last on December 30th and another to happen later today. This evenings vigil brings in the local Islamic community with other religious and community organizations in a show of solidarity with Palestinians.


Also in keeping with the times I have a New t-shirt available at Partisan T-Party: