Corporate Liberals vs Principled Leadership

Sages and Visionaries have a way of not only expressing great ideals but of exposing hypocrisy. While slimey liberals like Charles Rangell show thier true colors in denouncing Hugo Chavez for "inuslting our President," and Nancy Pelosi in calling Chavez "a thug" he, unlike them, speaks for sane, reality based humanity in calling for a stronger, revamped United Nations based on democracy an a rational approach to the worlds problems. He calls for an end to the arrogant dictatorship that robs the UN of legitimacy saying, "It is unpractical and unethical to sacrifice the human race by appealing in an insane manner the validity of a socioeconomic model that has a galloping destructive capacity. It would be suicidal to spread it and impose it as an infallible remedy for the evils which are caused precisely by them .. ."

The Prole says, to hell with the two-faced liberal syncophants, let them know who we support, Viva Chavez!

Simpering Dems are Part of the Problem

Despite an unsuprising report from the House Intelligence Committee showing that Bush's invasion of Iraq creates and enflames terrorism making us all less safe and reports datailing the lies and manipulations by which this administration misled the US to invade Iraq, the Democrats continue their opportunistic simpering collaboration in its crimes.

The latest example is their compromising capitulation on legislation that robs US political prisoners and detainees of basic rights guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions. Even worse, this legislation paves the way for this criminal administration to claim immunity and legal protection for war crimes -- a pre-emptive pardon and the Dems are taking the bait. What's missing here is an opposition.

The entire "War on Terror" is a hoax perpetrated at great cost by this administration. Yes, a small and barely significant militia pulled off a great crime on September 11th 2001, (with or without the assistance of this administration) but it was a fluke of history. We could have rounded up the suspects with little difficulty without bombing Afghanistan. They never put adequate effort into capturing bin-Laden who is now suspected of being dead of natural causes. Without our invasion of Iraq, al Qaeda would probably have fallen apart by now. The actions of our neocon junta have strengthened them into a global movement and fed them with reasons for vengeance. Halliburton and the arms industry have made a fortune. The extreme right has used the fear generated to create a police state and push the worst kinds of legislation -- with the complicity of the Democrats who also need to be held accountable. Where does that leave us? We can continue to delude ourselves that some basice difference between the two "partys" -- really the two heads of the same corporate party, will allow us to change course simply by voting in spite of what even repug politicians know but faith based thinking will not save us. We have to demand more. We have to take this country back if it means shutting it down. We have nothing left to lose.

Cutting Analysis

I highly recomment this brilliant and biting analysis by Gore Vidal, but more importantly and to the point is a comment made by Malcom Martin:

"Now as capitalism enters its final stages politically, a nearly seamless transition to fascism is taking place. Or as Gore Vidal puts it, from republic to empire. The trappings of bourgeois democracy are a brake on the gas-oil junta’s profits and so they are being shredded. The Constitution and its Bill of Rights are being rendered meaningless by presidential signing statements and the theory of the unitary executive, extraordinary rendition, government surveillance programs and the like. Programs based on democratic principles like the public schools, Social Security, Medicare, affirmative action and welfare are being starved to death. The mass media and electoral machinery and both major political parties are now fully under the control of those in power. Bloodless coups in 2000 and 2004 installed George W. Bush in the White House and no future election will remove the candidate of the ruling class from power.

It would take a team of psychoanalysts to catalogue the many and varied mental pathologies of George W. Bush and his henchmen in the U.S. government. The point to keep in mind is that in this time and in this place the capitalist system needed people in power capable of carrying out insane and grotesquely inhumane policies, up to and including the coming nuclear attack on Iran. Capitalism, like the HAL 9000 computer onboard the spaceship Discovery in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, is out of the control of its makers. The system now has only human sentinels, best represented by the so-called Neo-Conservatives in ruling circles.

American bourgeois democracy is drowning. It will not be resuscitated. The liberal intelligentsia of the petty bourgeois spins its wheels in the mud of this reality. Now repentent patricians like Al Gore even see what lays ahead. Gore knows what is being done to the planets ecosystem and tries to sound the alarm with a film like An Inconvenient Truth. Lay out the incontrovertible facts of global warming, organize and agitate, and a tipping point will come that changes governmental policy. A younger Al Gore saw Dr. Martin Luther King do just that in his confrontation with racial injustice and clings to the memory along with the idea that rationality still has influence in American ruling circles. The real inconvenient truth is that even the great Dr. King could not generate an effective civil rights movement in 2006 and that the assault on the environment will not end until a stake is driven into the heart of capitalism.

The sad truth is that the petty bourgeois, for all its brilliant writers, and none is more so than Gore Vidal, cannot defeat the capitalist ruling class! They are a timid and passive group who, in this time for warriors, gather at the gates of the palace to nag and complain essentially to each other. There are scores of Internet websites, magazines, newspapers, radio programs and networks like AirAmerica Radio, and some small television networks where liberal, left, progressive, and other commentators show up to whine out loud. They rail against the outrages and inhumanity of the U.S. government and the Bush Administration. They point out the duplicity, the corruption, the hypocrisy, the inhumanity, and the utter criminality loosed in the world today but to no useful end since capitalism will not be reformed nor shamed to death. Pointing out the defects of capitalism has become as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. The ruling class brushes its liberal democratic critics off like gnats as long as they stay away from the third rail. But let one of these voices dare mention unity based on working class-consciousness and a mobilization to strike at profits and great danger would shortly thereafter visit.

No matter the danger, it must begin to be spoken by our warrior-poets: socialism is the only way humankind will live into the distant future on this planet. Only a working class in power will see to the end of this madness and willingly share our available resources to insure our survival on this planet. How to get to socialism is the only discussion left worth having."

Martin hits the nail squarely on the head. While we need many more warrior-poets, the best can be found in the the Blue Collar Review and in the online journal Pemmican.

Nobody Buying

Even as Bush Spoke at the UN in a vain attempt to unite the world behind another pack of accusations aimed at Iran, world leaders and many in Congress seem united against his administrations self defeating aggressive military policy.

Meanwhile, in the streets, the American People made their opposition clear.

Rebirth of Journalism?

MSNBC is big media -- that last place you expect to ear anything approaching real news or non-embedded opinion. I have begun to really like their news anchor, Keith Olberman however and his demand that Bush apologize to America is an example of why. This is not the first time he has taken Cheney/Bush to task salmming them with the reality of their crimes. He is worth watching as long as he lasts. The fact that he's still there means that impeachement may be closer than we think.

Gore Turns up the Heat on Global Warming

While I have never been a big fan of Al Gore, his efforts to bring attention to the greatest issue of our time are commendable. Today, in a speech at NYU, Gore called for a moratorium on CO2 emmissions. More impressive is his call emmissions to be taxed as an incentive to end them and the lifting of payroll and personal income tax which taxes on Co2 emissions would replace.

Fat chance that our corporate oligarchy would allow that and if they did, they would build in credits that would allow polluters tax breaks that could be passed on elswhere but it is a bold suggestion

A Clear View

There has and continues to be much obfuscation, denial and justification regarding Israel and the middle east. It continues to be the case that any criticism or Israel is viciously attacked as anti-semitism and increasingly, our own extreme right-wing is desperately trying to link Islamic resistance to western aggression with fascism in a ludicrous attempt to re-create "the good war." Senater Russ Feingold, has taken a principled stand objecting to the hypocrisy of this Cheny/Bush propaganda.

Some American Jews are speaking out and Steve Rosenthal does so quite eloquently and with a great deal of knowledge cutting to the truth and setting the record straight. Not only does Rosenthal cut through the oft repeated lies and mythology concerning Israel in the US media but he goes further in setting the record straight regarding the zionist state's relation to it's handlers in Washington. In ending the article he pre-emptively counters the charges of anti-semitism, takes the stand more American Jews need to take and makes a much needed call for sanity and a rational approach to intenational affairs -- from the article:

"Why has the U.S. supported Israeli occupation and repression of Palestinians and aggression against neighboring states? Some have argued that the "Israeli Lobby" has hijacked U.S. policy in the Middle East, but this explanation is false, scapegoats Jews, exonerates U.S. leaders and their imperialistic goals in the Middle East, and overlooks the fact that U.S. policies in the Middle East are scarcely different from U.S. policies throughout the rest of the world. Moreover, the great majority of ardent Zionist supporters in the U.S. are not Jews but right wing Christian fundamentalists, whose religious beliefs are manipulated to gain their support for U.S./Israeli aggression. The Israeli tail does not wag the U.S. dog. Israel carries out tasks that serve the economic, political, and military interests of U.S. corporate and political elites. Israel helps shore up anti-democratic rulers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan who suppress their own people while collaborating with the U.S. Israel provides weapons and training to pariah regimes that the U.S. wants to support, allowing the U.S. to pretend to object to those outlaw governments. Israel’s attack on Hezbollah is just the latest act of aggression that the U.S. out-sourced to willing and eager Israeli leaders.

I stand with Amira Haas and Uri Avnery and thousands of other Israeli Jews who spoke out and marched in Israel against the invasion of Lebanon. I stand with Jews in New York, San Francisco, and other cities who publicly demonstrated against the invasion. I stand with more than 1,000 U.S. Jews who have signed a petition that includes the following insights: "There is no Jewish safety in allowing the history of Jewish persecution to be leveraged in support of U.S. political and economic interests as these entail amassing funding for Israel’s military industry. Finally, there is no Jewish safety, nor Jewish claims to justice, reason, or equity, beyond Jewish commitment to the unconditional safety and liberation of the peoples of Palestine, Lebanon and the other Arab and Muslim countries currently under assault by Israel, the U.S. and its allies." Jewish Solidarity."

At this point in history, Israeli Jews and Americans Jews—and all Israelis and all Americans—have something new in common. We both have governments that launched aggressive wars on false pretexts and wasted the lives of thousands of people. We both must speak out or be dragged by our governments into even bigger and more deadly wars, which do not make us more secure and safe. We both must recognize that terrorists will be defeated not by deploying greater terror ourselves, but by embracing policies and values that enable people of all nationalities and religions to live together in equality."

The Mexican's know "Who"

Unlike it's backward neighbor to the north, the Mexicans are fed up with stolen elections. They are fed up with their corporate class selling out their nation. They've had it and they are in the streets. They aren't going home to watch it on TV. They are wearing out their shoes, not their keyboards. They are shutting their country down. They are taking it back. They are preparing to form a seperate, new government -- dual power, the legitimate surrounding the illegitimate. We could learn much by their example, which is why you're not reading about it in your corporate newspaper. Pay attention, we need to do the same, and we can.

Who?

Who are the fascists that call everyone else "fascists"? Who are the terrorists that keep us living in fear? Who's leash of paycheck to debt is attached to your throat? Who's pictures do you see on the federal note? Poetry may not have the answers but it has the power to make you know who -- Amiri Baraka asks, who blew up America . . .


and if there's any doubt left, I'll tell you myself, or better yet, you can
subscribe to the Blue Collar Review.

Another front for activist poets is the Guerilla Poetics Project where poets are siezing access to a locked down market to bring you the real deal.