Marisacat

Gah… I saw this article by Chomsky listed at RCP and thought it might be of interest… I did wrest three grafs from it, but over all a disappointment.

One of the most interesting reactions to come out of 1968 was in the first publication of the Trilateral Commission, which believed there was a “crisis of democracy” from too much participation of the masses. In the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering into the public arena and having their voices heard. When they did, it was called an “excess of democracy” and people feared it put too much pressure on the system. The only group that never expressed its opinions too much was the corporate group, because that was the group whose involvement in politics was acceptable.

The commission called for more moderation in democracy and a return to passivity. It said the “institutions of indoctrination” - schools, churches - were not doing their job, and these had to be harsher.

The more reactionary standard was much harsher in its reaction to the events of 1968, in that it tried to repress democracy, which has succeeded to an extent - but not really, because these social and activist movements have now grown. For example, it was unimaginable in 1968 that there would be an international Solidarity group in 1980.

^^^^^

Hunting around for Mai 1968 imagery (the above is a poster from the period) I landed on this bracing site for the RESPECT party in Cardiff.

A little ways down the page is a long ramble of graffiti from Paris in 1968… and by ramble I mean it… but it is also loaded with whatever it is there is too little of today… Maybe just sheer exuberance for change. Having nearly killed the word, no big shock that it fails to excite… apologies to those for whom the current edition of change-selling works. As long as it is chorused by “USA!USA!” and molded by soapy religion, marked down for a fast sale, it won’t work.

In the decor of the spectacle, the eye meets only things and their prices.
Commute, work, commute, sleep . . .
Meanwhile everyone wants to breathe and nobody can and many say, “We will breathe later.”
And most of them don’t die because they are already dead.
Boredom is counterrevolutionary.
We don’t want a world where the guarantee of not dying of starvation brings the risk of dying of boredom.
We want to live.
Don’t beg for the right to live — take it. I
n a society that has abolished every kind of adventure the only adventure that remains is to abolish the society.
The liberation of humanity is all or nothing.
Those who make revolutions half way only dig their own graves.
No replastering, the structure is rotten.
Masochism today takes the form of reformism.
Reform my ass.

…

By stopping our machines together we will demonstrate their weakness.
Occupy the factories.
Power to the workers councils. (an enragé) Power to the enragés councils. (a worker)
Worker: You may be only 25 years old, but your union dates from the last century.
Labor unions are whorehouses.
Comrades, let’s lynch Séguy! [Georges Séguy: head bureaucrat of the Communist Party-dominated labor union]
Please leave the Communist Party as clean on leaving it as you would like to find it on entering. Stalinists, your children are with us!
Man is neither Rousseau’s noble savage nor the Church’s or La Rochefoucauld’s depraved sinner.

…

We refuse to be highrised, diplomaed, licensed, inventoried, registered, indoctrinated, suburbanized, sermonized, beaten, telemanipulated, gassed, booked.
We are all “undesirables.”
We must remain “unadapted.”
The forest precedes man, the desert follows him.
Under the paving stones, the beach.
Concrete breeds apathy.
Coming soon to this location: charming ruins.
Beautiful, maybe not, but O how charming: life versus survival.
“My aim is to agitate and disturb people. I’m not selling bread, I’m selling yeast.” (Unamuno) ::snip::

I really loved this bit, somewhere farther down in the scramble:

We want a wild and ephemeral music.
We propose a fundamental regeneration: concert strikes, sound gatherings with collective investigation.
Abolish copyrights: sound structures belong to everyone.
Anarchy is me.
Revolution, I love you.
Down with the abstract, long live the ephemeral.
(Marxist-Pessimist Youth) Don’t consume Marx, live him. I’m a Groucho Marxist.

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On the left there is Dany Cohn-Bendit, “Dany the Red”, a German national at the core of the foment in France , in the streets of 1968… Seeing his face in photos and posters again, I wondered what was up today, 40 years later… landed on this, he is a member of the EU parliament and leads the Greens.

^^^^^^^^

Last, still searching for imagery from ‘68, I landed, happily by chance, on a soccer site for Paris and found that a sports hall in St Ouen, a suburb of Paris, was named a few years ago for Tommie Smith, (scroll to nearly the bottom) one of the American athletes who raised the black power salute at their medal awards ceremony in Mexico.

During a press conference given by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the former declared : the Whites accept us shen we play jazz or beat records in athletics. But for them the Blacks are trained circus animals. We wanted to protest against the situation of our brothers in the USA where the citizens don’t receive the same treatment. Why should we watch the raising of a flag of a country where Civil Rights are not recognised ? We are not animals without brains …

All this took place thirty-six years ago.

Last year Tommie was asked “Would you do it again ?” during a press conference at the World Championships. Tommie Smith replied : I do it every day. That, it’s me, truly me. When I returned from Mexico, I was looked upon as if I had the plague. There was no-one to meet me at the airport. People avoided me. They were afraid in my company. I was twenty-three years old and I found it very difficult to find a job.

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HA!  After I put this together I realised that, phonetically, from the title and the top poster, “Mais, NON!” assembles itself… works for me!

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A militiaman, loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, carries his gun during a sandstorm and ongoing clashes with the Iraqi army on April 17, 2008 in the Sadr city Shiite district of Baghdad, Iraq. [Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images]

April 17, 2008 Sadr City, but of course could be any number of places where we foment war and desperation.  As arms dealers the world over stand up and CHEER!

********************

Unfortunately, when I found this art work related to the Mexican Dia de los Muertos I did not save the name of the artist, but the piece itself is called “Sprouted”…

I have had the (so called) Liberal SF Talk Radio on, off and on… catching the party lines. Not a pretty picture. The short hand, bottom line to all arguments is, VOTE [you creep], don’t equivocate... don’t go wobbly on us!.

***************************************************

… since Jeeesuhs! [The First, that is!] The big push, the eternal push is on… “where are they going to go?” “Choice, SCOTUS, the most important election”…. they roll it out. If the party had a heart or a brain (or even an operating reflux system) they’d gag on their own words.

Somewhere or other I caught commentary that “aides to Obama admit, it will be harder to unite than normally”. Oh I am so entertained! And Chuck Todd slipped and said on Charlie Rose Monday night, that “even if he does not win the GE, Obama will have accomplished what the Democrats need”…

I dunno, finished second, ankles broken, shattered in fact?? Play it again, Sam.

Who knows. The Dems cannot win for losing. BTW, that is not an ass backwards endorsement of Hillary. But both she and McCain are rogues, Obama is controllable. IMO.

I must say, Black Agenda Report has push back. Top to bottom on the page.

I’ve loved the fiction these past weeks and months, rolling around in re-used cooking grease, that the leadership, the establishment, the national level, the DC Dems are so not racist. It is only the little people trapped in forgotten towns, with retrograde brains — and let’s not even start that there was no independent, published commentary from the so called left of the aisle on the ugly opinions of Wright on brains by race. The reason why is that all that matters is elections. Don’t fuck with the game, science and everything else be damned. Very simple…

AND that reminds me of the between clenched teeth admission from Daschle (a lobbyist, which the media has conveniently forgotten) that the reservation, a counted upon vote for him, went for Thune. He gave the cleaned up version publicly, that ‘of course they may vote for whom they wish’. I doubt that is what he said at home the night he lost the election. I never put time in to get details, but it seems the reservation went to Thune and cut a deal (quite aside that Daschle’s fortunes were tied to Janklow, the former R governor then single rep whose personal fortunes changed due to vehicular homicide and he fell from power). Of what shape or type and did he ever make good… I have no idea. But the several thousand voters went for him. It made a difference.

I say, wise up! The choice, the game is between a Roberts/Alito or the breakaway, secular radicalism of … a Justice Kennedy. Yes, that was sarcasm.

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Oh! This is too good not to pull forward! (the big question, have denali and pinche tejano and paid asstroturfer donkeytale called peeder a racist yet? Cuz they have called everyone else a racist that is not toenail to tooth for ObamaRama):

lucid

Look, the righties have tarred her for 16 years precisely because they KNOW ALL TOO WELL that the 90’s were the BEST PERIOD for this country in THE LAST 50 YEARS. And they KNEW that anyone with their eyes on their wallet (their BASE) would gladly pay a bit more tax to go back to those years. they KNEW that Bill Clinton completely fixed and reversed the Bush deficit and here we have another one.
And so they KNOW that the idea of a fiscal conservative holding their noes and voting Hillary is a DISTINCT possibility and it may well spell the DEATH KNELL for the Republicans-as-Prednits meme they have tried to hammer home.

A PRGAMATIC liberal’s strategy would be to elect Hillary (DUH!) and then pressure her from the left in Congress. DUH!

but these fuckikng optimists think they can punch in some black nobody, completely BLIND to all history recent and otherwise of how people actually win office, and if that fantasy was to even come true, have that one Queen on the board with no supporting pieces on the hill and somehow make anything more of it other than another Carter disaster signle term presidency that leads us to another 12 years of Republican destruction.

And yes, AGAIN WITH FUCKING PROBLEMS WITH IRAN.

Disraeli’s warning is so fucking lost on these supposed interlectulals.

FUCK YOU FOR FUCKING UP THE WORLD WITH YOUR STUPID FUCKING OPTIMISM!

by peeder @ Wed May 07, 2008 at 02:28:01 AM PDT

Sorry for the length, but this comment was just too hilarious to pass up!

From hamburger hamburger hamburger promises promises promises…, 2008/05/07 at 10:04 AM

[does he seem a tad, oh I don't know, UPSET?, LOL Mcat]

******************

BTW, this is the thread from whence peeder’s bon mots are drawn …. and while i was there, trudging thru the reactionaries… there is this from Market Trustee:

*[new] Blue Dogs flexing muscle (0.00 / 0)

The Hill Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.), the House Democrats’ point man in negotiations on an overhaul of intelligence surveillance law, is keeping his eye on conservative Blue Dog Democrats who might defect on the issue under Republican pressure.
[...]If Congress does not approve an overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by Memorial Day, intelligence community officials will have to prepare dozens of individual surveillance warrants, a cumbersome alternative to the broader wiretapping authority granted by the Protect America Act, say congressional officials familiar with the issue.

Conservative and freshman Democrats are growing skittish. These lawmakers expect campaign opponents to accuse them of imperiling national security if Congress does not enact new intelligence surveillance legislation.
[...]
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has stepped back from the FISA talks and let Hoyer spearhead House talks with the Senate and executive branch. Some Democrats say privately that she has not shown much urgency to reach agreement with the White House.
[...]
“A number of Blue Dogs are working on a compromise between the House and the Senate,” said Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), a member of the Blue Dog Coalition and the former ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “I’m working with Hoyer and working with others. “Some other Blue Dogs are involved,” she added. “Blue Dogs are 47 votes; 47 votes will determine how this comes out.”

I wonder, what Barry’s position on FISA? I also wonder …still… who he will choose for a running mate. Pelosi sez, “the candidate, whoever he or she may be, should choose his or her own vice presidential candidate.“

I sure hope Barry picks a super-good VP.

by MarketTrustee @ Wed May 07, 2008 at 05:20:23 AM PDT

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His Veepessa will be chosen for him. It would not be any other way. They probably can choose their own rings and location for the reception… LOL — Mcat

******************************************************************

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama D-Ill., serves burgers to Alisha Cordell from Raleigh, N.C., during a lunch with supporters at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind., Saturday, April 12, 2008. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Exit poll info for Indiana and NC, via MSNBC

This just seemed so fitting…

8:35 p.m. | Brazile vs. Begala: From Kate Phillips: Whoa. A fight over identity politics just broke out among the CNN Democratic pundits, Donna Brazile and Paul Begala. Mr. Begala, a Clinton supporter, accused Ms. Brazile of suggesting that Mr. Obama could win without white blue-collar voters and Latinos. And he added that Democrats couldn’t win in November by just including “eggheads.” She shot back that she was tired of the divisions, tired of people calling it “my party,” not “our party.”

“Stop the division,” she said heatedly, “stop trying to split us into groups.” And she contended that Mr. Begala’s insistence that Senator Clinton’s coalition was broader was not accurate. She became more irritated, saying she felt as though these divisions suggested “I can’t stand in Hillary’s camp because I’m black or I can’t stand in Obama’s camp because I’m a woman.”

As for white blue-collar voters, she said she’d been out drinking beers with Joe and Jane six-pack to try to woo them long before others.

It’s from Kit Seelye’s Live Blogging the races……………. Issue them matching light blue Everlast outfits. Gloves. Go for it!

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Every year on the first Thursday of May, Italians in the central city of Coculla place snakes on the statue of Saint Domenico, which is then paraded through the city. Saint Domenico is believed to be the patron saint for people who have been bitten by snakes. [Reuters]

yeah yeah it says “Saint” but we all know they appropriated from the ancient religions…

I am considering writing in Mary Magdalene in November… As for Tuesday… No idea. The latest polls that I am seeing (RCP has them all),

Indiana: Suffolk, Clinton by 6 — Zogby, Obama by 2.

North Carolina: Insider Advantage, Obama by 3 — Zogby, Obama by 8

Al Hunt of Bloomberg, one of the older, “liberal” reporters who dissolves to a sugary sweat puddle for Obama, seems to have a bit of insider extra access… claims that based on charts and counts he was shown following Super Tuesday, that, except for winning Maine and losing PA by 10 rather than 5, they had it all charted out… Not sure I quite buy it. It was pretty clear to me that night in TX, on an open air stage, that Obama had expected to win there. I think they expected to win NV as well. And not just by delegate counts later… Supposedly their miscalculation in PA haunts them in terms of Indiana:

Elements of Racism

Likewise, in the industrial towns of western Pennsylvania, like Johnstown, home of U.S. Representative John Murtha, a powerful Clinton supporter, Obama lost not by the eight-point margin his team had anticipated, but by 46 points.

There may have been some element of racism among these culturally conservative voters, who support Democrats if they think the politician is strong and empathetic toward their struggles; Obama appeared neither.

This makes his camp nervous about this week. In the Feb. 8 document, his team projected four-point Obama victories in two Indiana districts; the overwhelmingly white 8th district bordering on Illinois, and the 3rd, a middle- and working-class area of northern Indiana.

There was a laugh or two:

This is a campaign that hasn’t won anything in some eight weeks; it’s a candidacy and message that seems tired.

Not to worry! If he wins both tomorrow all will be forgiven!

Some of this is beyond their control: Who could have predicted the candidate’s own narcissistic pastor would do such harm — it had to be deliberate — to a congregant?

GMAFB! I read last February [2007] of Wright’s displeasure at the disinivite, his tangle with the NYT (they printed his long, rambly, messy letter in reaction to their follow up article on the announce day and his planned invocation… LOL they weren’t on board, at that point!), that in his past he had traveled to Libya with Farrakhan… it was clear he was volatile and his history too effing messy for First Presidential Friend/Father. Joe Conason wrote in January 2008 that Wright was a possible upcoming liability. Meanwhile Obama has written the shifting text for the Republicans to use in the commercials. Even to a spring 2004 declaration that he attends every Sunday, 11 am.

But, you know, best field operation since Hannibal. Those pesky shitting elephants not withstanding. And those Alps…

Oh well. Nobody, to my eyes, is coming out of this credible (not sure anyone went into it credible either, LOL). Esp not older white male media.

There was an interesting moment the night of her PA win. Bill joined her on the stage, they hugged (who knows what it means) and they turned to face the cheering crowd. It hit me as a stunning, consummate moment: This is who we are, this is what we do.

Despite my distaste for Obama, I hope he wins both, but the Clintons may have battled back.

[Sorry, I long ago dropped to pure sarcasm with an overlay of disgust for this cycle...]

***************

Add on, like the delegates…

Maybe they can just wash down Denver when it is over (this should remind people of the selection of Boston and what ensued):

AGENDA-SETTER - ANOTHER REASON DEMS WON’T STRIP OBAMA - Charles Hurt, D.C. Bureau Chief of the N.Y. Post: ‘Anyone interested in peeking ahead to see how this whole Democratic primary debacle ends, mark down this date: Aug. 28. It’s a date you’ll hear a lot about in the coming months as Democrats try sorting out the mess they’ve made of what should have been their easy shot at the White House. The date is not important just because it’s the grand finale of the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

***’This coming Aug. 28 also is the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s seminal ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. The famous 1963 speech will be on the tip of every tongue during the convention, in which party leaders will decide if they really want to strip the nomination from a man who holds the lead among earned delegates. …

***’If Democratic leaders choose to award the nomination to Obama, that speech will become a rallying cry for the party. But if they deny him the nomination because they fear that his brown skin could make it difficult to win white, working-class Democrats in key states, King’s speech will become a haunting reminder of what they have wrought.’

(via Mike Allen Politico email)

If I EVER get an urge to vote for this fucking party, I am going to chain myself to the house. And remind myself that Obama was too lily livered to go to the King Memorial this year, nor able to say anything even remotely decent following the Sean Bell verdict.

“We’re a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down,” said Obama, when asked about the case by reporters in Indiana. “Resorting to violence to express displeasure over a verdict is something that is completely unacceptable and is counterproductive.”

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Not to be missed, from near the end of the last thread…

bayprairie
|

either markos scored some really good acid

TX-Sen, Pres: Texas is in play all around
by kos

or he’s trying to motivate the whacks to give up some quarters to his good bud, noriega.

believe me, texas ain’t in play in 2008.

this bit is one to remember. what an offensive little twit he is.

Clinton supporters are being a bit ornery here, but given it’s mostly women supporters, they’ll have to choose between holding the grudge all the way into November and letting McCain deliver a solid anti-Choice Supreme Court in the next four years

fuck you kos. this texan’ll be laughing in voting booth whilst skipping over noriega on the ballot.

From How many “firewalls” have we breeched? How many chances to “put her away” have come and gone?, 2008/05/05 at 12:37 PM

***************************************************

Before a large crowd gathered for an unrelated event, Sen. Barack Obama readies to leave his vehicle in Khayelitsha Township, South Africa for a meeting with AIDS activists. [Tribune photo by Pete Souza / August 21, 2006]

I think it was the former Nixon-in-retirement intern, Monica Crowley on with McLaughlin who first invoked Fatal Attraction for Hillary’s ability to pop back up. Oh I laughed pretty hard at that. Monica had it right. Others have since used the comparison, but I think Monica was first…. She also said that Hillary’s route to the nom is to ”club the baby seal to death”. Another good one!

What comes of Tuesday… who knows. He should win NC by at least her margin in PA, probably more… and she needs to win, by how much I surely do not know, in Indiana.

I read last night that he has yet to visit KY, but she has been in there several times. Sometimes I just wonder at how he and his go about things. He also hit his first assisted living center, otherwise known as collection of old people, this week, his first since Iowa, according to an aide.

LOL I’d say good luck!, but not getting into wishing either of these chumps easy days, not even sarcastically…. May they congeal.

hmmm… I’d be a tad careful about so broad, and arbitrarily inclusive, a term as “people of color...

‘Old South politics’

Todd Shaw, a University of South Carolina political science professor, agreed, citing a groundswell of black disenchantment with both Bill and Hillary Clinton.

They’re particularly annoyed by Bill Clinton’s performance during the South Carolina primary and by Clinton supporter James Carville’s description of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Latino, as “Judas” for endorsing Obama over Hillary Clinton.

“The comment plays very badly with African-Americans and Latinos,” Shaw said. “They remind them of ‘Look what we’ve done for you; you should stay in line.’

That doesn’t sit well with voters of color. They view it as Northern machine politics or Old South boss politics.”

Hunter Bacot, an associate professor of political science at Elon University in North Carolina, saw another piece of political history haunting black Obama backers.

“There’s a sentiment among blacks that they’ve been taken for granted by the Democratic Party,” Bacot said. “If Obama loses, it’s as though their candidate’s victory was overturned.” ::snip::

I see it so differently. Why did Richardson not endorse before his state was up at bat? NM is clearly a battle ground state, now to it’s third election. Someone, I think it was Bush, took it by 366 votes in ‘00. Battled back to improve that in ‘04 to several thousand votes. I made jokes at the time that Richardson was MIA hunting for votes… as it hung in the balance. One thing is clear, Richardson, unlike Rendell and Strickland, cannot deliver his state. In this primary battle, it hung in the balance even longer than MO did (and he had the Carnahan, such as it is, and McCaskill, such as it is, grid. I won’t go so far as to call it a machine but they have influence in conservative Dem / DLC districts)… where he won by 1% finally and she pulled out NM by a similar slice.

Where has Obama reached out, I mean, really done field work for the Hispanic vote? He certainly had the money. He lost state after state with large Latino share of the electorate. In Illinois, where his people say he is “loved” by the Latinos… he and Hillary split it down the middle. 50/50.

So I’d be a tad careful of “people of color” doing anything as a monolith about, or for, Obama. In fact, one thing I see from this primary and caucus process and its early whispers for the shape of the GE, a chance to forge bonds with and between black and brown is damaged. The Uniter blew thru town and division was not healed. Shocking.

As for “get in line”…. let’s not kid. Some plain old political hardball was played by the Obama camp (I must say he washes his hands a lot) around SC. I don’t care what they do, either Hillary or Barack, but the Obama camp clearly told black elected officials, people like John Lewis, to ‘get in line’. By now John Lewis must have whiplash… having compared Obama to the whole of the Civil Rights movement. When two weeks before, on The News Hour with Rev Lowry, he defended Johnson of BET and his craven words. But a primary challenger rose and Lewis made his move.

One last thing… Obama, in the NW region of Indiana this week went to land owned by his “3rd and 4th great grandfather” on his mother’s side. However, I think he would have served himself on many fronts if he and the Dems had not relentlessly painted his grandparents as all but latter day Dust Bowl, blown ever ceaselessly west to Hawai’i… and they’ve let his mother be assumed to be an eternal grad student, who married men of color and went on Food Stamps when not married. Those are real lives, they just are not full pictures of his white relatives. I believe he would have helped himself if, by now, he had said his grandmother was something of a trail blazer, along with a Japanese woman, one of two first female VPs for the Bank of Hawai’i. But she has been drawn as “a typical white person” of her era — and a soft racist.

His mother became bored by dinners with other corporate couples and the golf exploits of Lolo Soetero, who was an oil manager then executive. She became involved in forging early micro loan interventions in Indonesia, consulted with the US Embassy, later as an anthropologist, consulted with the World Bank, Ford Foundation and USAID for her expertise. (Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times have written extensively of Obama’s back ground. Also the Honolulu Advertiser in interview with Maya Soetero-Ng)

Too late.

What a weak bunch on view. We are so skrewed.

Because, of course, we were all chomping at the bit to know this (via Mike Allen/Politico email)…

NO O

- Politico’s Carrie Budoff Brown and Jeffrey Ressner report that Oprah is unlikely to join Senator Obama on the campaign trail until the general election: “At this late stage in the primary campaign, Obama no longer needs help attracting thousands of people to an event. His challenge now is proving his policy credentials and personal appeal to constituencies that have favored Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, spending the last two days in Indiana in small forums with working-class families, senior citizens and farmers. The image he’s trying to project is more Terre Haute than Hollywood.”

And, I wonder if the Chicago Tribune did Obama any favors… front paged is a slew of articles on Wright, and how Obama came to that church.

I heard lst night on the Ifill PBS This Week (or whatever it is called) from Babington at the AP that Bill will be in 9, that is NINE, small towns in NC today (or tomorrow)… where, despite media highlighting his scrambled sentences and less savory verbal excursions, apparently he is loved and enjoyed. No accounting for taste, LOL, I guess. And I suppose it may have something to do with the Zeleny article, finding NC “a tightening race”.

Jerry Meek, chairman of the state Democratic Party, credits the tightening in the race to the Wright contretemps as well as the Clinton family’s three-way march across North Carolina.

Malibu Beach - Sunday Morning - October fires 2007 - Reader photo - LAT

Unfuckingbelievable… regrets within the political cycle. How rare. Trippi, that paragon, wishes he had convinced Edwards to stay in. I guess he would be the ultimate middle way. Male but not black, white but not female.

Or something.

TNH is in some extended ecstasy over the shelling of Somalia … and another [all too] predictable kill of an Al Qaeda figure… Of course the uncounted civilians who fall, lose their homes, small businesses, livestock, or their lives in our fostered and paid for civil war… a search and destroy for “Islamists”.

Putting that aside, there is Pepe Escobar, up today at Tom Dispatch, Iran Under the Gun… here is a snip:

Geography is destiny:

Whenever I go to the holy city of Qom, bordering the central deserts in Iran, I am always reminded, in no uncertain terms, that, as far as the major ayatollahs are concerned, their supreme mission is to convert the rest of Islam to the original purity and revolutionary power of Shi’ism — a religion invariably critical of the established social and political order.

Even a Shi’ite leader in Tehran, however, can’t simply live by preaching and conversion alone. Iran, after all, happens to be a nation-state at the crucial intersection of the Arabic, Turkish, Russian, and Indian worlds. It is the key transit point of the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Indian subcontinent. It lies between three seas (the Caspian, the Persian Gulf, and the sea of Oman). Close to Europe and yet at the gates of Asia (in fact part of Southwest Asia), Iran is the ultimate Eurasian crossroads. Isfahan, the country’s third largest city, is roughly equidistant from Paris and Shanghai. No wonder Dick Cheney, checking out Iran, “salivates like a Pavlov dog” (to quote those rock ‘n roll geopoliticians, the Rolling Stones).

Members of the Iranian upper middle classes in North Tehran might spin dreams of Iran recapturing the expansive range of influence once held by the Persian empire; but the silky, Qom-carpet-like diplomats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will assure you that what they really dream of is an Iran respected as a major regional power. To this end, they have little choice, faced with the enmity of the globe’s “sole superpower,” but to employ a sophisticated counter-encirclement foreign policy. After all, Iran is now completely surrounded by post-9/11 American military bases in Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iraq, and the Gulf states. It faces the U.S. military on its Afghan, Iraqi, Pakistani, and Persian Gulf borders, and lives with ever tightening U.S. economic sanctions, as well as a continuing drumbeat of Bush administration threats involving possible air assaults on Iranian nuclear (and probably other) facilities.

The Iranian counter-response to sanctions and to its demonization as a rogue or pariah state has been to develop a “Look East” foreign policy that is, in itself, a challenge to American energy hegemony in the Gulf. The policy has been conducted with great skill by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who was educated in Bangalore, India. While focused on massive energy deals with China, India, and Pakistan, it looks as well to Africa and Latin America. To the horror of American neocons, an intercontinental “axis of evil” air link already exists — a weekly commercial Tehran-Caracas flight via Iran Air.

Iran’s diplomatic (and energy) reach is now striking. When I was in Bolivia early this year, I learned of a tour Iran’s ambassador to Venezuela had taken on the jet of Bolivian President Evo Morales. The ambassador reportedly offered Morales “everything he wanted” to offset the influence of “American imperialism.”

Meanwhile, a fierce energy competition is developing among the Turks, Iranians, Russians, Chinese, and Americans — all placing their bets on which future trade routes will be the crucial ones as oil and natural gas flow out of Central Asia. As a player, Iran is trying to position itself as the unavoidable bazaar-state in an oil-and-gas-fueled New Silk Road — the backbone of a new Asian Energy Security Grid. That’s how it could recover some of the preeminence it enjoyed in the distant era of Darius, the King of Kings. And that’s the main reason why U.S. neo-Cold Warriors, Zio-cons, armchair imperialists, or all of the above, are throwing such a collective — and threatening — fit.

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I see that bayprairie just posted the Glen Ford article from Black Agenda Report at the end of the last thread, so will add it here:

bayprairie
|

Obama’s ‘Race Neutral’ Strategy Unravels of its Own Contradictions
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

The world views of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Sen. Barack Obama were incompatible from the start, just as the mythical American Manifest Destiny world view is directly at odds with the facts as perceived by Blacks in the United States. Wright finally forced Obama to choose sides in the conflict of racial/historical visions, and in doing so, performed a service on behalf of clarity. Obama lashed out in a startlingly personal manner, calling Wright a “caricature” of himself and linking the minister to forces that give “comfort to those who prey on hate.” Rev. Wright exposed the flimsy tissues of so-called “race neutrality” in a nation founded on racial oppression.

“Obama positioned himself at the political/historical fault line alongside the defenders of the Alamo and American Manifest Destiny.”

Things fall apart; some things, like an ill-tied shoelace, sooner than others. Barack Obama’s strategy to win the White House was to run a “race-neutral” campaign in a society that is anything but neutral on race. The very premise - that race neutrality is possible in a nation built on white supremacy - demanded the systematic practice of the most profound race-factual denial, which is ultimately indistinguishable from rank dishonesty. From the moment Obama told the 2004 Democratic National Convention that “there is no white America, there is no Black America,” it was inevitable that the candidate would one day declare the vast body of Black opinion illegitimate.

devastating

…Obama had belabored the same theme in his Philadelphia speech on race, a few weeks earlier - a widely applauded piece of oratory that was at root an exercise in moral equivalence that equated white and Black grievances in the U.S., as if history and gross power discrepancies did not exist. Obama is as quick as any smug corporate commentator to dismiss as the ravings of extremists and those who “prey on hate” the very idea that U.S. imperialism is an historical and current fact. Chickens cannot possibly come home to roost in terroristic revenge as a response to American crimes against humanity, since “good” nations by definition are incapable of such crimes. It is beyond the pale to contemplate that the United States has Dr. Deaths on its covert payrolls dealing in ghastly biological warfare - the AIDS genesis theory.

In order for his race-neutral strategy to appear sane, Obama must constantly paint a picture of an America that does not exist. This cannot be accomplished without mangling the truth, assaulting the truth-tellers, and misrepresenting America’s past and present.

Since Obama’s candidacy is predicated on minimizing the pervasiveness of racism in American life, it is necessary that he cast doubt on the legitimacy of those with race-based grievances. Otherwise, he would be morally compelled to abandon his neutrality and side with the oppressed minority. Thus, he announces in Selma, Alabama that Blacks “have already come 90 percent of the way” to equality - a non-truth by virtually any measurement. He says the “incompetence was color-blind” in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, thereby deracializing all that occurred in New Orleans from the moment the winds died down to this very second. He claims that 1980s Ronald Reagan voters had understandable grievances due to “the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s,” in the process cleansing the Reagan victory of any racist content.

Race neutrality requires that Barack Obama become a cleanup boy for racists, historically and in the present day. At the same time, Obama is driven to loath most those people and facts that might lead to divisiveness. America’s worst enemies are not the racists, but those who point out the facts of racism…

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hmmm as long as no one plugs us in and hits “PULSE”.. but, my, things feel tentative.

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