GOP pulls tax bill and calls vote on Iraq pullout

House Republicans will call for a vote on the pullout on Iraq this evening after a call from hawkish Democrat Jack Murtha (D-PA) for the U.S. to immediately begin removing troops from Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.
Unlike the resolution Murtha proposed, which called for the removal of troops to begin immediately, the Republican resolution calls for all troops to be pulled out at once. Democrats say this dramatically changes the nature of Murtha’s original proposal.
The following email went out earlier from the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to members of her caucus. Democrats have now received a copy of the GOP resolution.

pdf file of resolution available thru link

Posted by: annie | Nov 18 2005 22:47 utc | 3

watching it now live @cspan
they are voting now

Posted by: annie | Nov 18 2005 23:02 utc | 5

Annie, please keep us posted on the real time C-span vote. I’m working and can’t access it right now…
tanks!
😉

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 18 2005 23:35 utc | 7

can’t tell from cspan but raw story has this headline w/pdf file i don’t know how to link. i read it and it says the resolution passed…. cspan is still showing murtha
can i scream?
“House vote on amended resolution ‘relating to US forces in Iraq’
211 yeas, 203 nays; Dems all voting nay…Developing”

Posted by: annie | Nov 18 2005 23:53 utc | 9

@annie
This one? House vote on amended resolution

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 18 2005 23:58 utc | 11

Where Are the Pentagon Papers?
Peter Hoekstra , on cue from Rove, Cheney and their sluts at the Weekly Standard are preparing to unload more forged documents to convince us Saddam had WMD.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 19 2005 0:23 utc | 13

I watched all of this fiasco. It is a dumb move by the rethugs, they have played a stupid hand, and Smit looked like an idiot. Her words were wrote down because you can’t talk badly of another house member. I still can’t believe Hacket came as close to beating her in such a rethug district, but, after that outburst I think she’s a real dumb ass.
The dems have won this one and they don’t even know it. Although, there were some real dipshit callers during the vote on the rule.

Posted by: jdp | Nov 19 2005 0:46 utc | 15

I still can’t believe Hacket came as close to beating her in such a rethug district,
it’s ohio for all we know hacket won.

Posted by: annie | Nov 19 2005 1:14 utc | 17

Absolutely amazing! The fire has returned. The congressional chambers have historically been a place of high drama, great debate, and vital emotional expression. The one party lockdown was so bleak, sad, colorless, desolate, and lifeless that I had to get involved. Now I’m glad I did. Friction creates heat and fire. It’s essential to life.
The thugs are on a long decline now and they will have to develop some smarts. I agree that they are totally blowing it now. This verifies my belief that they lack agility and cleverness. Brute thuggish force does have its limitations.
Public opinion against this war has now taken over and can’t go back. It’s firm evidence of the people’s power. The rest is detail as this unwinds.

Posted by: jm | Nov 19 2005 1:43 utc | 19

Guantánamo: the United States’s torture
Isabel Hilton
18 – 11 – 2005
The United Nations has cancelled its fact-finding mission to Guantánamo Bay, citing American obfuscation. Isabel Hilton reports from a London conference where ex-Guantánamo detainees reveal what the United States prefers to hide.
As prisoners in Guantánamo Bay reached the hundredth day of a mass hunger-strike, two United Nations special rapporteurs, who have been denied private access to prisoners in the United States prison camp, spoke out in London against the US’s failure to “meet the minimum international standards of independent fact-finding”.
– snip –
“To those who argue that the detainees are ‘bad people’”, he continued, “I would say that whether they are good or bad, the rule of law extends to them, because they are human beings. That is what distinguishes a system of government based on the rule of law from one based on the arbitrary exercise of power.
The rule of law cannot be applied selectively. A state cannot respect the rule of law in one place and not in another, to one group of people but not another. The rule of law is not to be turned on and off like a tap.”
– snip –
“The tip of the iceberg”
The rapporteurs have also requested access to other places of detention. There has been no reply from Afghanistan or Iraq, Novak said. In April, the US government asked them to concentrate on Guantánamo in order that they be granted access this year. “In the spirit of compromise”, said Novak, “we agreed to concentrate on Guantánamo Bay.” He stressed that the rapporteurs had not lost interest in other places of detention, including the secret places of detention that the CIA has called “black sites”.
– snip –
Listen to testimonies of ill-treatment and abuse from Badar Zaman Badar and Moazzem Begg, two ex-Guantánamo detainees, at the end of this article…

Posted by: Outraged | Nov 19 2005 1:59 utc | 21

I believe you’re missing some of the point, Debs. It’s much more than the war. It’s the self expression of all the factions in the country…the politicians, the businessmen, the people and their families. The eerie silence we just experienced was the danger when we came so close to one party rule. No matter if both parties are flawed, it is still essential that there is a sharing of power. You are correct in much of your political view, although I think you inderestimate the portion that the common people possess. You refuse to see it and that’s that. But it can be felt.
There is an unmistakable excitement in the air in this country now, even though we know full well what a horrible system we are laboring in. But we will all learn by trial and error and it is essential that we recognize every infinitessimal good thing that happens.
Every moment, every situation is pregnant with good and bad.

Posted by: jm | Nov 19 2005 2:09 utc | 23

Absolutely.

Posted by: jm | Nov 19 2005 2:12 utc | 25

Murtha could be playing the game and a joint behind the scenes effort may be being made to come to a calmer occupation. But, I would have to say the real answer is it’s so partison in DC these days and the rethugs see their hold of the message slipping away, so the fight is on. The thugs will use every underhanded ploy to keep power they can muster.
They’ve had it great over the last ten years getting rich, running the country, etc, etc. They will only go down with the sound of rethug fingernails scratching across a chalk board.

Posted by: jdp | Nov 19 2005 2:21 utc | 27

I can’t help but feel who won in Ohio is as irrelevant as the charade you have all been witnessing.
really? the link was not regarding ’04 or the outcome of any officials .” Issues Two-Five were meant to reform Ohio’s electoral process, which has been under intense fire since 2004. The issues were very heavily contested. They were backed by Reform Ohio Now, a well-funded bi-partisan statewide effort meant to bring some semblance of reliability back to the state’s vote count
diebold is holding the voters hostage in ohio.just today diebold went to court in NC to bypass state election transparency laws in that state. i personally don’t feel whether my vote counts or not is irrelevant. when exit polls are reversed by 30 points it disgusts me, that kind of blatant theft represents how irrelevant the public has become in national choice or debate.
gruesome election process in ohio
PRE-POLLING: 61% Yes, 25% No, 14% Undecided
FINAL RESULT: 33% Yes, 66% No

Posted by: annie | Nov 19 2005 2:44 utc | 29

tallying up…..yeahs 210 nehs 202 resolution adopted…
am i ,hearing this right?

Posted by: annie | Nov 19 2005 2:52 utc | 31

@annie
Yep, personally I think the electoral process has now become so corrupted, without true independant verification, welcome to a ‘banana Republic, the will of the people re voting is pretty much largely a charade now … the victor is the most underhanded or cunning re manipulation … and since the Repugs hold most o’ the cards …

Posted by: Outraged | Nov 19 2005 2:58 utc | 33

rowan
Grundrisse and Phenomenology of Spirit

Posted by: slothrop | Nov 19 2005 3:27 utc | 35

Vatican Official Refutes Intelligent Design

Posted by: Outraged | Nov 19 2005 4:06 utc | 37

Pretty cool to watch Rep. Murtha, whatever his agenda, it was the truth he was speaking to, and that’s all that matters.
There are only two options:
Refuse to see that Chalabi is another rapturist dreamer, like all the Repug faith healers and snake oil salesmen, a smooth talker. Refuse to read the tea leaves, ignore the body counts, and then let’s spend *another* $300B poof! and throw another 150,000 troops to the wolves, and waste another 2050 lives to make sure Chalabi becomes Iraq Prime Minister for all of what, two years, before the place explodes in civil war anyways.
Or, throw away the crack pipe, and redeploy out of Iraq after the upcoming December elections, telling the Iraqi people and the world, you had your chance, and the US did what we could. You gotta pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps.
Nobody gets any more than that in life. Nobody.
Here’s the deal, though, with ‘stay the course’:
There is no way the US can sustain redirects in Fed budget expenditures of yet *another* $300B. Where the h–l would the money come from? SSTF?
There is no way the American people will suffer a military draft without wholesale insurrection and castastrophic domestic acts of terrorism.
But most of all, there is no way the US economy can survive another 1973 recession, not with $8T in budget deficits and global economic meltdown.
Face it Repugs, Rep. Murtha already has. You screwed the pooch. Three strikes, you’re out.
There is no longer a viable debate remaining.
Our time on stage ended. Mission Accomplished.

Posted by: tante aime | Nov 19 2005 4:13 utc | 39

Cheers, fauxreal, I’ll keep those in mind. With so much written about the French Revolution it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. On the other hand, it’s hard to be interested in any type of history without some interest in that Revolution.
I picked up Pakenham’s The Scramble for Africa at a used bookstore last night, which looks promising at least in subject matter.

Posted by: Rowan | Nov 19 2005 4:30 utc | 41

Here is the BBC Fallujah/Guernica video segment torrent hash from Dismal Science comments eariler if anyone is interested:
BBC Newsnight Report: The contribution of the blogger to war reporting WP-in-Fallujah
or if you prefer the hash #
7afc3cba51e1bf4bf8f8f9e2bc0a9e31096553ac
Note: My friends at greylodge created the torrent, much thanks to em.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 19 2005 4:37 utc | 43

@annie
Just been swimming with the kids so missed some of this but of course it shouldn’t be irrelevant that your vote can be turned around. However if the choice is between Tweedledum and Tweedledee then that needs to be fixed before your vote can be relevant. What I can see tho, is the same thing that makes jm’s view of the real conflict between the two parties largely pointless for anyone that isn’t wired into one of the two machines.
Yes they both want control and yes they will fight like cats and dogs to get it, but no they won’t do anything substantially different apart from put the money in different pockets, theirs.
I didn’t follow the link annie which I apologise for but nevertheless I can’t help but feel a much more fundamental change needs to occur if the world doesn’t end up back in an even worse place in a few years.
Diebold will have a different agenda from either the repugs or the dems. If they can play their cards correctly and abuse the limited power the repugs have already given them, they will very soon be in a position to offer any election to the highest bidder.
That link that Hannah put in the last open thread goes to an article on a bloke called Rendon who ‘sold’ the Iraqi invasion to the Amerikan people. He started life as a functionary on George McGovern’s campaign before becoming a Carter Commissar and then with assistance from Ham Jordan, getting his first CIA contract. But he’s not an intelligence specialist; he’s a good old inside the beltway demopublican spin doctor.
I wish it weren’t so Annie and like anyone I will take a cessation of this current slaughter ahead of just about anything else but although the repugs instigated this horror it was all of them, the whole crew of precious, self regarding, and pompous pricks who approved it and then sought to profit from it.
If we let that be forgotten it will happen again so fast we won’t have time to draw breath.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 19 2005 4:49 utc | 45

Perle says out with the Saudis
Richard Perle (who in 1970 was caught giving classified information to Israel) continues to advance the agenda Israel has for the United States.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 19 2005 4:58 utc | 47

Slothrop, I tend to read narrative history as primarily entertainment. I enjoy learning and extrapolating without having to puzzle out what the author means. Phenomenology or Hegel…sure, they could be read, but they’re not what I’m aiming at.

Posted by: Rowan | Nov 19 2005 5:24 utc | 49

Outraged,
Are you an Iraqi-American?

Posted by: Anonymous | Nov 19 2005 5:28 utc | 51

I am an Iraqi-American. I thought maybe you were. Huge compliment :*)

Posted by: Anonymous | Nov 19 2005 5:42 utc | 53

The captain of the SS Iraq has announced this evening, following urgent telegraph communique with the ship owners in New York, the following terms must be met at the scene of the disaster, before he would issue an order to abandon ship, now lying dead in the water:
[see ‘SS Iraq Strikes Iceberg, All OK’ earlier]
1) The men demonstrate they can handle security on the stricken ship without any outside aid;
2) Their ‘who shall live and who shall die’ process of drawing lots must remain strong;
3) All women and children have been relocated
to secure lifeboats, to survive the carnage;
4) The stricken ship show any sign of stability that it will float until salvage vessels arrive late in 2006 to tow it to the oil breaking yard.
Nevertheless, certain of elite passengers were already seen lining their lifeboat seats with gold. There are reports that a Monsieur Chalabi had already abandoned the ship in a private jet
and flown to Washington DC for political asylum.
Marine salvors give the vessel only about a 1% chance of floating through the end of the year.
SS Iran is standing by to purge any survivors.

Posted by: tante aime | Nov 19 2005 5:52 utc | 55

@?
IIRC, in ‘The Devil’s Own’, a story of doomed fate, societal and personal tragedies, the money quote was, words to the effect:

‘Good triumphs, and happy endings only happen in hollywood, American dreams … the Irish, they are used to tragedies …

Peace. Salaam. Shalom.
PS

‘All wars are civil wars … for all men are brothers’

Posted by: Outraged | Nov 19 2005 6:11 utc | 57

I do like the Bob Dylan line:
Something is happening and you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mr Jones?
That’s exactly how I feel about this country right now. I can’t for the life of me, figure it out.

Posted by: jm | Nov 19 2005 6:29 utc | 59

@slothrop
Now, I did read Karl Marx. Specifically, I read Das Kapital (in English) when I was 15 years old. That was 38 years ago, so I am sure that given my youth and the great length of time since reading this, I may be missing some detail. However, IMO, what should have remained with me after the passage of time is the “essence” of the book. What I can remember of Das Kapital is that it is a turgid tome setting out in pounds, shillings, and pence, how the capitalists were stiffing the working class in 19th Century Britain. Of course, coming from a poor working class family, I was reading Marx at this age along with, as I recall, a 3 volume tome on the life of Bronstein, as my education on track for a life as a revolutionary.
It was something simple that a friend said to me that gave me pause to think. Something like “try standing outside the shipyards and talk about this revolutionary crap and see how far you get”.
Thankfully, I am no academic (never finished school), so I was able to continue my education without conforming to any “school of thought”, so I will venture an opinion that is unlikely to be welcome by anyone.
Karl Marx was a bit of a hack and a plagiarizer of Engels. The minutiae of the works of either of them is irrelevant. How many books should anyone read cover to cover – and to what benefit? (At the moment, I am still trying to find time to read Adam Smith cover-to-cover).
Can I ask that we try to keep discussions relevant to ideas. Ideas that can be clearly and succinctly delineated in short posts without the need to buttress the argument by citing authoritative sources. If a discussion on ideas has any merit it should be able to stand by itself. If we have to introduce the works of 19th century dilettantes, can we make them relevant to the real world. Not that you are likely to find any shipyards these days, but maybe a litmus test could be the staff carpark at Walmart. (Can you tell me why someone who has worked hard all his life should support estate taxes so that he gives an inheritance to the state and not to his children?)
Sorry. I don’t like to be long-winded. You asked for ‘one good reason’ not to read Marx and Hegel? How about, life’s too short. You’ve read them. Tell us how their ideas fit with today’s reality.

Posted by: DM | Nov 19 2005 6:45 utc | 61

DM,
I’m an iconoclst and I agree with you. You can’t draft some intellectual construct of governance, try and apply it to reality, and ever expect it to work. Some personal misguided erection. These people were lost. The only political reality today is the system that doesn’t exist yet. The one that is being born right now from experience.

Posted by: jm | Nov 19 2005 6:54 utc | 63

That’s Cynthia McKinney, Georgia 4th; Jose Serrano, New York 16th; Robert Wexler, Florida 19th.

Posted by: Anonymous | Nov 19 2005 7:08 utc | 65

OK time for a slight change of debate. Upthread Unclescam has put a link to a BBC vid of an interview with two media talking heads discussing the role of bloggers and the lameness of the MSM reportage of Iraq.
I don’t intend to deconstruct this vid but it’s interpretations do nothing but confirm giap’s view on the ‘new improved bliared bbc’
however a one of the talking heads in particular makes some good points until he is silenced and as bloggers of a sort we should consider what is said then really consider what has been going down in Tunisia last week .
Now the bottled net history I’m gonna try and retell is exceedingly arcane and litigious and I strongly suggest ppl really interested in it do a google or whatever. Thing is there is even more dross than usual thrown up by search engines when you try and get to the bottom of this baby.
The net domain addresses structure is controlled by an organisation called Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
Originally a non-governmental organisation set up by academics and university librarians and computing buffs to regulate domain name allocations and ensure that IP addresses(which are numbers) and domains interacted seamlessly.
those who spent time on the net in the early to mid 90’s will know that despite the obstacles that primitive equipment could engender the net was an anarchic but friendly sort of a joint with ICANN’s forerunner contributing cheerfully to the liberation of information. Although the domain name regulation office was located in the US it wasn’t a particularly Amerikan construct. In fact it’s appeal to many was it’s internationalism.
However as soon as the net showed it’s true potential for generating a dollar the usual suspects got in Clinton’s ear and about the same time as software was placed under the auspices of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) Clinton nominated his choices to the board of the new improved Network Solutions Inc soon to be renamed ICANN, and they set about their work.
The first problem was the issue of provenance. Before google and search machines got so capable domain names were considered the best way to generate traffic and a host of people who wanted a popular website registered domains that shared the same name as a popular brand or trademark.
First thing the new improved Clintonised structure did was strip those names off of the holders who had frequently held provenence for longer than the new claimant was aware of the existence of the internet.
this piracy was supported by the MSM who created the myth of the cybersquatter. The whole thing kinda reminds me of how free grazing was destroyed by the tactics of the large station owners or the way the US banks conspired in the 1920’s to take land off the descendants of homesteaders and form it into larger more ‘economic’ units owned by them and their mates.
As far as I can tell/remember the next step was to sell off Network Solutions Inc along with responsibility for .com addresses to site validators Verisign and rename the rest ICANN
Same old same old but now a number of people are asking why it is that the US controls the internet.
Various models for an independant international body have been suggested but ICANN concerned about their balliwick have been saying that leaving the power with them is the only way to ensure the net is free from political interference.
In fact they appear to mean non amerikan political interference. Most thinking people wouldn’t give a toss about the nationality of the agency as long as that didn’t impinge upon the decision making.
That isn’t the case with ICANN and they are not particularly effective or efficient either as the sex dot com debacle demonstrates.
The blue was on in Tunisia .
If a stalemate has been reached it will be temporary, a lot shorter than 5 years, while the corporatists work out the next strategy and the wannabe information controllers plan their next move.
i can’t suggest too stongly that MoA barflies make themselves familiar with all facets of this vital decision because what should be a win/win situation does have the capability of being corrupted into a lose/lose one.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 19 2005 7:54 utc | 67

p.s. while I was constructing the above; debate around all those old german blokes was on and although I can write my share of it I can’t read turgid prose, particularly when it is 100 years old and reeks of the values of middle class males
There’s probably nothing wrong with Marx, Engels and all the other thick book writers per se but thay lived in a different time and place than me so much of what they say “goes straight through to the ‘keeper”.
For me being a leftie has always been about ensuring the needs and aspirations of non-elites get a fair go once we know that the needs and aspirations of other non-elites get a fair go as well.
Yeah not very structured but I don’t find social structures to be much more than a straitjacket.
And as they say “if the straitjacket fits…”
DM’s talk about estate taxes has merit when applied to us mere mortals but a pirate like rupert Murdoch (yeah an extreme example) shouldn’t be able to perpetuate his monopoly without having to put a fair whack back into the communities he built his empire from.
this was the original arguement for death duties and they were intended to apply mainly to the rich but as demands of the Keynsian economy became more rapacious and politicians greedier the thresholds weren’t bumped up with inflation and everyone got hit.
Don’t really have an estate tax here although I think if someone leaves you a big wad of cash less than 6 months before they die it isn’t treated as a gift and can attract income tax.
but we don’t have any capital gains tax either which is great if you’re an ordinary individual in this silly property ‘boom’ soon to bust. Of course it also means the weasels who have been driving the boom and profiting from it don’t pay a brass razoo to the society they are milking.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 19 2005 8:22 utc | 69

Excellent debs is dead, just excellent,a profound comment that I have been thinking about, but haven’t been able to articulate. You just unpacked everything I haven’t been able to conceptualize w/regards to the situation we find ourselves in w/regards to cyberspace and who controls it.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 19 2005 9:04 utc | 71

@Rowan your link is not working, can you try again? Sounds interesting.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 19 2005 9:24 utc | 73

Bring it, Uncle!
Thank you!

The key to resistance, in our view, is to develop a critical pedagogy that will enable the working class to discover how the use-value of their labor-power is being exploited by capital but also how working class initiative and power can destroy this type of determination and force a recomposition of class relations by directly confronting capital in all of its hydra-headed dimensions.
. . . It will not be easy, but neither will living under an increasingly militarised capitalist state where labour-power is constantly put to the rack to carry out the will of capital. Whilst critical pedagogy may seem driven by lofty, high-rise aspirations that spike an otherwise desolate landscape of despair, where pock-marked dreams bob through the sewers of contemporary cosmopolitan life, they anchor our hope in the dreams of the immediate present. Here the social revolution is not reborn on the foam of avant-garde anti-foundationalism, which only stokes the forces of despair, but emerges from the everyday struggle to release us from the burdens of political détente and democratic disengagement. It is anchored, in other words, in class struggle.

Even Marxists, or Post-Marxists, or the “International Makhnovist Support Apparatus of the Einsteinist Tendency” [something I saw at wikipedia earlier] do not expect the masses to bone-up on Marx. Instead, they would replace and supplant the capitalist elites and their functionaries with one sort of “vanguard of the proletariat” or another, with all of its attendant functionaries and pontificants. Not exactly bonafide, truly-democratic “people power” either way.
Call me a counter-revolutionary lacky and put me in line for Slothrop’s firing squad. But I just don’t see there being any way of hoisting a “vanguard of the proletariat” into power here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. anytime soon.
You’d have to hire Frank Luntz and the Rendon Brothers! But even they couldn’t put enough lipstick on that pig. Not even with the Chinese Frickin’ Army at your disposal — and you’d need an army to impose it because it ain’t going to be “popular” — is this going to happen.
Can academics develop and implement a liberating pedagogy? I certainly hope so. We certainly need it.
It is going to be a non-violent, grass-roots, popular agenda, eeked-out completely within our existing constitutional and democratic framework, that real reform and change is going to come in our lifetimes. And it’s going to be “American-style,” red-white-and-blue, balloons, banners, and bunting, too. Sorry, but it’s true. Bring your Marx with you, but you are going to have to step inside this box or will only continue to pout and plot and moan on the sidelines.
Theoretical and ideal vs. get real.
Going to go read McLaren and more of Kate Millett. Thanks again, Uncle.
But I am also going to volunteer to work for verified and run-off voting initiatives in my state, and for whichever progressive (even Democratic) candidate who is going up against the “accepted-money-from-Abramoff” Republican in my district.

Posted by: manonfyre | Nov 19 2005 9:47 utc | 75

when applied to us mere mortals but a pirate like rupert Murdoch (yeah an extreme example) shouldn’t be able to perpetuate his monopoly without having to put a fair whack back into the communities he built his empire from.
This sort of conundrum is what any debate about “capitalism” Vs. “socialism” has to address. Just as most neocons have likely never read Strauss, few socialists have actually read Das Kapital. You can forget about this vanguard of the proletariat nonsense (I think the Bolsheviks have had their shot at that). George W should be proof positive that there is no intellectual approach taken by the monied class, so there is no need either for the sneering condescension directed toward the working class, or the arrogance that they need a vanguard.
The “old” Labour Party in Britain had their go at mixed-model socialism (super-tax at 95% etc.) Didn’t take long for that to break down. R-giap would be agog and Mao would be spinning in his grave if they knew how many millionaires there are in Shanghai.
Manonfyre is correct. If America is going to change then it has to be American style. I cringe every time I hear words like proletariat, bourgeoisie, masses ..
Australia used to have a reasonable term. “A Fair Go”. Giving everyone a “fair go” must be the fundamental underlying concept of a fair society.
We can debate Keynesian economics, monetarist policy, whatever. But this has to come back to a “fair go”. How can an economy work with “preservation of capital”, prevention of monopolies, incentive, fairness, compassion. I don’t recall ever having read of, or heard of, anyone even trying to seriously come to terms with some of these issues, let alone come up with a serious model. Although I did see an episode of South Park yesterday, where they all boycotted the “Walmart”, and spent all their money at Pete’s Drugstore, with the inevitable ending.
Can anyone come up with a storyboard for an economic model that they would like to see ? (running time: 20 minutes).

Posted by: DM | Nov 19 2005 11:24 utc | 77

Somebody tell me, why not read Marx and Hegel? One good reason?
You’re not Prussian, and this is not the 19th century. Marx and Hegel are required reading in college because their view of dialectical history is widely accepted. That’s why we talk about left and right, hawks and doves, gay and straight — as if all knowledge consisted of bipolar dissonance.

Posted by: Wolf DeVoon | Nov 19 2005 13:28 utc | 79

The debate over the use of white phosphorus in the battle of Fallujah took a new twist when it emerged the US Army teaches senior officers it is against the “laws of war” to fire the incendiary weapon at human targets.
A section from an instruction manual used by the US Army Command and General Staff School (CGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, makes clear that white phosphorus (WP) can be used to produce a smoke screen. But it adds: “It is against the law of land warfare to employ WP against personnel targets.”
US Army rules say: ‘Don’t use WP against people’

Posted by: GM | Nov 19 2005 14:43 utc | 81

slothrop- what makes you assume any of the historians listed above are conservatives who promote a view of history approved by them? that’s a false assumption on your part.
and again, fwiw, the “left” and “right” constructs stem from the french revolution and where ppl sat during the debates about the future of France…the radicals sat on the left side of the hall while the conservatives sat on the right.
as far as history as narrative…of course that’s what it is…and it is many different narratives, not just one.
Marx had a narrative of history and a theory about its progression.
Marx and Hegel are part of the history of ideas. It is important to acknowledge their views in order to understand history, but it isn’t necessary, and I would argue it’s simplistic to put them upon a pedestal as tho they are the only voices that have anything to contribute to the ongoing, constantly revised thinking according to, as Althusser understood in his writings about ideology, where someone is in time and place.
in the future, hopefully the ideas about what women are about will be understood differently, as it is now understood differently, depending upon the ideology to which you subscribe, rather than it was in other eras.
try to imagine a world in which women’s sexuality, for instance, is not a source of anxiety for fathers because females have as much access and control over resources as do males…and a world in which childcare is as important as bombing a nation to ruin…and in which a group of people can care as much about the survival of your child as you do, just as you care about theirs.
imagine if males and females could have sex because they loved each other, not because the male owned Trump towers and the female had silicone implants and made that old man feel like he had value other than the bucks in his pocket.
imagine a world in which the elderly were valued because of their wisdom derived from experience, where advertising didn’t drive the idea of important issues…

Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 19 2005 17:31 utc | 83

no? what was Marx’s interpretation of the progress of history, if not a narrative?
good of you to encourage primary source material…but it’s not necessary to debunk other sources. and primary source material, such as the Bible as a way to understand America’s puritan culture, needs to also be understood in its historical context…the narrative of protestantism vs catholicism in the west, for instance.
btw, a wonderful aside…the Attis myth, mentioned above, is related to the Phygrian cap…the red cap that looks like a flaccid penis and became a symbol of a freedman (from slavery) in Rome, and was adopted by the sans-culottes in France during the revolution to show their identification with liberty, equality and fraternity.
“Regeneration” rather than life/death/rebirth per se, was also a big topic in the debates over the revolution in France.
You could also see the adoption of that symbol of a castrated god/human as a symbolic move toward accepting the assassination of the monarcy in France.
to me, this is like seeing The Nation’s cover of Bush as Alfred E. Newman, with the button “worry” on his lapel, as a way to make visible what the elite, including media would like to obscure about Bush…and to empower Americans to cast Bush as unworthy of respect or the office of prez.

Posted by: fauxreal | Nov 19 2005 18:07 utc | 85

The work Thom Hartmanns has outliined in Unequal Protection is a viable avenue of reform. And William Greider’s Opening Paths to a Moral Economy. Both “from the belly of beast” initiatives.

Posted by: manonfyre | Nov 19 2005 18:34 utc | 87

As per usual I sleep while the debates are ragin’.
How about this there are no bad books that shouldn’t be read because even a low life like Hitchens can let you see how a sicko mainchancer’s mind works.
But there are also no great ‘bibles’ that MUST be read because all of us are human and fallible so we need to apply our own scrutiny to others thoughts to ensure that we aren’t taking on any more biases than we already have.
I have slowed down a lot on all forms of reading off line because I am finding the printed word just too fixed. The subjective nature of a writer’s opinions means that the printed word holds onto it’s prejudices for the whole time it exists.
On the other hand online people’s words shift as time and circumstances change, just as their opinions and beliefs do.
How can we know that Karl Marx would still believe in 2005 that which he was so certain of in 1870?
A simple numerical momentum re-assures me that at least some of what I take in from the interweb will be wheat and not all chaff.
That is that there are as many people alive on this planet right now as the sum total of all the people who have lived and died up until this point. It is numerically certain that there must be at least one person out the with the linguistic ability of Shakespeare or the critical thinking of Hegel or the sense of light of van Gogh.
Although the chances are only certain numbers of them will ever be acclaimed, just as in the past, that doesn’t put any aspersion on their ability. But best of all they will be operating from a frame of reference that I will more likely to understand than someone who died a hundred years ago simply because they will have shared some of the experiences I have and will have witnessed some of the same events I have.
And no I’m not saying don’t read dead poets I’m saying at the moment I am getting more out of bouncing ideas around the ether than I am out of the fixed ideas in books.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 19 2005 18:47 utc | 89

The Rolling Stone Story on Rendon’s PR campaign to sell the invasion of Iraq and the slaughter of it’s citizens to Amerikans really got to me.
The bit which hurt the most was the revelation that a lot of the grunt work was done by Paul Moran described by Rolling Stone as an Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist. Others who have lived in OZ may feel the same sense of betrayal as I because the ABC is a publically funded organisation that provides a really diverse range of Radio and TV programming to all parts of Australia and not just those deemed by the private media to be ‘economically viable’.
I have had friends who were/are ABC employees and I know that to a person they would all be appalled by this revelation.
I was so angry I wrote to a close family member who doesn’t work for the ABC but does spend a lot of time covering ‘news’ for another TV network, basically saying C’mon! Who do ya really work for?. He answered, unfortunately confirming Moran’s duplicity and giving some indication of the depth of penetration of the media by the security services:

“Yeah Aussies who worked with Moran told me his spy status was an open secret before the war.
Moran was hanging round the ABC office before the war and I vaguely remember him. As I recall he was a cameraman though, not a reporter.
Apparently a lot of the techos who work with satellite uplinks (which Moran often did) are in fact intelligence personnel, although you might never know it. Moran’s wife was a serb. A friend of mine brought Moran’s body back from northern Iraq and is convinced, however, the bomb which killed him was an accident. He had been about to leave the area but stayed back for just one more shot when the car came down the road and exploded. It’s ironic the trouble he helped to cause came back and killed him however.
Interestingly, one of our managers worked as a techo with uplinks in Asia. he made my life difficult in London and nobody seems to be able to get rid of him.”

The really sad bit is despite all the evidence to the contrary Moran’s family combined with factions within the ABC continue to deny his double life

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 19 2005 20:27 utc | 91

“What is required is NOT to force liberal pluralism, conservative values, multiculturalism, or holistic ideas on anybody, but to foster the conditions — both interior and exterior — that will allow individuals and cultures to develop through the [developmental] spiral at their own rate, in their own way.”
~ Ken Wilber, “A Theory of Everything”

Posted by: manonfyre | Nov 19 2005 21:29 utc | 93

On our current and near term history:
The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World, by John Ralston Saul
Just caught this guy on CSPAN. Pulls the wool from our eyes.

Posted by: manonfyre | Nov 19 2005 22:52 utc | 95

We also need to remember that votes can really only be successfully stolen in a close race.
i absolutely agree w/you about dumping all the hacks parading as politicians. unfortunately some of these latest numbers are anything but close,maybe it will take more ‘staggering’ revelations like these to turn the tide. btw scoop out of NZ has been leading the pack on our election screwups.

For the official vote count to square with the pre-vote Dispatch poll, support for the Issue(2) had to drop more than 22 points, with virtually all the undecideds apparently going into the “no” column.
Issue Three going down to defeat in perhaps the most astonishing reversal in Ohio history, claiming just 33% of the vote, with 67% opposed. For this to have happened, Issue Three’s polled support had to drop 28 points, again with an apparent 100% opposition from the previously undecideds.
The reversals on both Issues Two and Three were statistically staggering
The Dispatch poll showed it with 31% support, 45% opposition, and 25% undecided. Issue Four’s final margin of defeat was 30% in favor to 70% against, placing virtually all undecideds in the “no” column.

for an afternoon breathalyzer Atheist Sues to Take God Motto Off Money

SF, calif. – An atheist who has spent four years trying to ban the Pledge of Allegiance from being recited in public schools is now challenging the motto printed on U.S. currency because it refers to God.

Posted by: annie | Nov 19 2005 23:37 utc | 97

crooks and liars has got video of some highlights in the house yesterday “order in the house , order in the house” includes jean schmidt.
hm, my breathalyzer link and text about the atheist suing to get in god we trust off the $’s didn’t show up.

Posted by: annie | Nov 19 2005 23:51 utc | 99