Posted by: JMCSwan | Jan 1, 2009 6:41:37 AM | 2
Seems to me that the left is faulted with being intransigent if it doesn’t allow expression of the unaccommodating views of the far more intransigent right. [Does the right wing blogosphere accord similar privileges?] The perfect example is given in the Billmon piece itself. Did you bother to even read it?

To pass muster with O’Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn’t need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.
O’Beirne’s staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade.

Posted by: D. Mathews | Jan 1 2009 15:23 utc | 4

D. Mathews (Jan 1, 2009 10:23:57 AM | 4)
Please name me ONE person, just one, who has been banned from posting anything, any criticism, any perspective on my blog. Just one!!
Of course you are more than welcome to consider it a right wing blog, should you wish to do so, if that perspective makes you feel right, and even better self-righteous (ooooh now that’s a poisonous lovey dovey feeling lefties love); although how would you explain a right winger, married to a nigger, who spent lots of time supporting kinesthetic forgiveness and amnesty for the likes of jaan laaman, tom manning, marilyn buck; and who demanded a fair trial for Bin Laden, at the Hague by a jury of his peers, and should he have been required to be executed, then as per WALKING HER RIGHT WING FASCIST TALK, she’d would demand the same punishment, for herself.
Hey whatever, left wing right wing… call me whatever the hell you like; only thing is, most of the right or left wing planes whose other wing aint’ working so well’ appear to be flighing around in circles for the past 2,000 years… but hey go ahead…. getting ego sucked by supporting the slave and cannon fodder breeding STATUS QUO very popular…
Anyway…. clear you didn’t bother reading my banned and censored Moon of Alabama comments… but hey… as i said, my goal is problem solving, going to roots, when i find some who SERIOUSLY WALK THEIR TALK agree, great… till then; i share my impartial observations… and impartiality, which as have been noted, ain’t very popular on many left blogs, and to be fair on quite a few rightwing blogs. Cest la vie.

Posted by: JMCSwan | Jan 1 2009 16:26 utc | 6

What makes these guys neo-cons?
I wish to see more discussion (particularly among the lefties) of who exactly is a neocon, and do we gain anything by using this term.
Was everyone in the Bush admin a neocon? Is Obama a neocon? None of the distinctions between neo and paleo conservatism seem particularly useful.

Posted by: jawad | Jan 1 2009 17:06 utc | 8

any intellectual, any functionary who serves the interests of powere is in the final analysis, a neocon. their genus is unimportant. they are the enemy
in any case at every level, political, military, economic – they are wrong. demonstrably wrong
you need only eyes to see, eard to hear, a cerebral cortex that looks thru the clouds

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 1 2009 17:17 utc | 10

If someone can make a cogent case, based on historical evidence, that the Democrats have a substantively different foreign policy than the Republicans, I’d like to hear it.
It is too easy for people to bandy around words, like the current term of approbation, “neo-con,” without any true understanding of the true thrust and goals of US foreign policy, or an ability to distinguish between propaganda for public consumption and real objectives.
The rest of the world has always known that “Pax Americana” is an oxymoron. Americans are only reluctantly waking up to this reality.
If one wanted to understand the general goals of foreign policy, the first thing I would do is learn to think and read critically, so that one can spot euphemisms, code-words, etc., which fill the official discourse. (It is considered rather ill-mannered to baldly state, “We want to rule the world and we will do anything required of us to achieve this.”) Then, I would read Foreign Affairs regularly, which is as close to an official State organ as anything the Soviets ever had.
Obama’s July “final term paper,” which he had to ace in order to graduate to the Presidency (literally), “Renewing American Leadership” is still headlining the current issue:

The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew. We must bring the war to a responsible end and then renew our leadership — military, diplomatic, moral — to confront new threats and capitalize on new opportunities.

Sounds nice, but we already know how the rest of the world feels about having things “seized” from them through “military leadership” in order to “capitalize on new opportunities.”
In any event, there are three levels of propaganda, or official discourse. In general, the thrust of the propaganda message — the metaphors and phrases like “war on terror,” etc. used to channel people’s unfortunate urge to think rationally — flows from the highest to lowest levels, but each level has its own unique narrative and set of lies involved in buttressing the core beliefs upon which that narrative is founded. “Foreign Affairs” represents the highest level of discourse: that meant for global leaders’ consumption. The middle tier, as personified by newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, and Washington Post, and journals running the spectrum from the Weekly Standard to the New Yorker and the Nation are meant for the 20% co-ordinator class, who actually run the brutal machinery of capitalism: The ideas differ at the ends of the spectrum, but a belief in Capitalism and America’s leading moral role in the world is universal. This tier also encompasses much of the blogosphere, and economically and culturally is where many readers of MOA fall. The bottom rung, the poor fools who have to put their bodies to the wheel and sacrifice their very selves in order to keep the vast dynamo running, get the coarsest narrative and the grossest lies, along with an unending deluge of “entertainment” to allay the misery.
Billmon’s rather unremarkable remark is aimed squarely at the middle tier, who, opposed to the lower tier, actually understand a little about who the so-called “neo-cons” may be. That understanding, however dim and shadowy — that countries are ruled by their wealthiest and most venal members, who have interests, not morés or values — can be deflected, or channeled off, into arguments over partisanship, team identity, and partisan discourse. Perhaps, despite his brilliance, humour, and flair for writing, that was always Billmon’s function.
I find it simply amazing that Obama is so competent as to be able to literally vet thousands of political appointments, all of which the other team may challenge on a million groundless grounds, while on vacation in Hawaii. Bush, as we remember, needed Cheney to do this real work of government. And if Obama is NOT doing this work personally, then one may rightly ask who is really running the government behind the curtains, while the announcer/salesman-in-chief basks in Hawaii.
Let me make my next point with the utmost delicacy, for I am not knocking the person, but the liberal belief structure, which I believe to be even more deadly than that of the neo-cons. That is to say, the so-called neo-cons will bluntly state what they are about to do, and then proceed to do it: “We will bomb you to smithereens,” for instance. One can confront such an ideology head-on, and resist it. The other team will employ all sorts of humanistic justifications, which tug at the heartstrings, for its actions, “There is a genocide being committed” or “no one should have to live in bomb shelters,” and then proceed to bomb you to smithereens. This misleading technique is much more difficult to resist.
Here is a recent quote, which again, I examine purely for belief structure and its effects:

on a slightly positive note, i will say that i realized in the last day that my reaction to nearly everything happening in the world has become nearly knee jerk distrust and negativity. it’s wearing to live this way. i don’t know yet what it will mean to have a president obama, but it was as if a burden was lifted when i realized recently that there is a greater possibility for things to be different than there would have been with a president mccain. perhaps it comes from glancing at coverage of the obamas in hawai’i (where i once lived), but even that feels so much different than the news that surrounded the bush ranch. it’s a vibe thing which really doesn’t carry much weight, but while i know that the world is a tempest, i am thankful that we will have a respite from the neocons.
and on a more sober note, i just left the neighborhood deli where upon wishing my friend behind the counter a happy new year, we both remarked, whatever that means. his brother-in-law in gaza, lost three family members this week.

I must confess that I do not have the time or the means anymore to partake of corporate media, so I have no idea what the coverage of the Obamas in Hawai’i was like. (Probably no different than the coverage of the last “Camelot on the Cape.” Sure wish that the average American, many of whom could not even afford Christmas gifts this year, could afford such a regal respite.)
But the disconnect between Obama’s silent aquiescence of US complicity through military aid which bought the weapons used in Israel’s slow murder of the pathetically Ghettoized Palestinians and the friend’s loss of life in the same event, is chilling to me.
The world is a “tempest,” not because of the “neo-cons,” but because of a near-universal belief in “development,” universal growth, the surmountability of corporate produced externalities, and a pathological class of humans who misguidedly seek to affirm their humanity by violently clawing themselves to the top of the wretched pyramid, destroying everything below themselves with abandon. Surely, the events of 9-11, so quickly forgotten now, through the research of David Ray Griffin and so many others, reveal a section of government willing to kill members of its own class in order to further its goals, and able to get away with it. Obama, too, despite a more humanistic discourse, belongs to that class of human, imbued with that ghouish belief structure.
It is far harder to resist the depredations of Empire when “the vibes” are better. But it is infinitely more important.
Yes, it is “wearing” to respond to the machinations of the world’s rulers with “nearly knee jerk distrust and negativity,” but the alternative is to live a life a complicit ignorance and irrelevance.
And as our good comrade, r’giap, reminds us daily, the cure to this “wear” on our emotions is to balance that distrust of our leaders with a fulsome, effulgent love for our comrades and friends, and for the downtrodden and suffering of the world. That is the love which restores us, the love which humanizes us. That, after all — not endless sex, travel, entertainment, distraction, etc. — is the point of our brief sentient lives as humans on this round blue sphere spinning its silent course through the limitless bounds of time and space.
Let me end, with a quote by Paolo Friere, from his “Pedogogy of the Oppressed” p.89:

Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love.4 Love is at the same time the foundation of the dialogue and the dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task of responsible Subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domination. Domination reveals the pathology of love: sadism in the dominator and masochism in the dominated. Because love is an act of courage, not fear, love is a commitment to others. No matter where the oppressed are found, the act of love is a commitment to their cause — the cause of liberation. And this commitment, because it is loving, is dialogical. As an act of bravery, love cannot be sentimental; as an act of freedom, it must not serve as a pretext for manipulation. It must generate other acts of freedom; otherwise, it is not love. Only by abolishing the situation of oppression is it possible to restore the love which that situation made impossible. If I do not love the world — if I do not love life — if I do not love people — I cannot enter into dialogue.
4: I am more and more convinced that true revolutionaries must perceive the revolution, because of its creative and liberating nature, as an act of love. For me, the revolution, which is not possible without a theory of revolution — and therefore science — is not irreconcilable with love. On the contrary: the revolution is made by people to achieve their humanization. What, indeed, is the deeper motive which moves individuals to become revolutionaries, but the dehumanization of people? The distortion imposed upon the word “love” by the capitalist world cannot prevent the revolution from being essentially loving in character, nor can it prevent the revolutionaries from affirming their love of life. Guevara (while admitting the “risk of seeming ridiculous”) was not afraid to affirm it: “Let me say, with the risk of appearing ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love. It is impossible to think of an authentic revolutionary without this quality.” Venceremos — the speeches and writings of Che Guevara edited by John Gerassi (New York 1969), p. 398

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 1 2009 17:53 utc | 12

Malooga@12 Wow!
That was a well written post, interesting to read and the words of Che very inspiring.
As pessimistic and sarcastic as I like to be about humans, I truly must have some hope for our species or I wouldn’t waste time with sites like this when there is so much free porn to be had on the internet:)
There are as many examples of the greatness of humanity as there are horrors. I’m not sure what history will say regarding the current world situations. My guess is that, as always, it will depend on who is writing those stories.
Labels are just another way of turning politics into an Us vs Them sporting event where one side wins and the other loses.
Good politics is both sides feeling they have reached a compromise that treats each party fairly. Our problems start when one side feels it has a “right” to a better than fair compromise. That they are “owed.”
Happy New Year!
Dave

Posted by: David | Jan 1 2009 18:29 utc | 14

We “sectarians” should take bets when ol’ billmon self-censors himself into insanity defending his heirophant status in the Church of the O, otherwise known as dkos.
I’ll say the 100th week of the O is when billmon starts talking to the birds & local horses about heraclitus and whatnot.

Posted by: slothrop | Jan 1 2009 18:47 utc | 16

Malooga, that was a beautifully concise description of how American power is structured. Whats missing in most analysis of American power is the “relativity” between the various networks of that power as a whole. This often leads people of all stripes of political disposition, to assume wrongfully, that American power flows from the political class. Or, that an Obama can wield the necessary clout to alter the course of the nation in any substantive way. The fact is, that the American political class, in relation to the economic and military class, is very very weak in terms of generating the necessary legislation to effect any significant change. The government of the United States (both sides of the isle) lives in abject fear of the economic and military elites and so, always acts accordingly, sparing no expense in deference to that power. This is a huge problem, because it leaves us with seemingly little or no alternative for ever of rearranging the power equation, when the political mode is unwilling or unable to assert any real authority over the economic or military. The United States is essentially a corporation, run with a corporate mentality and a corporate morality. As opposed to being, say, a Union, run in the interest of the people, with a morality of for the people. And sure, we can call that love of the people – or even go as far as Stan Goff, and embrace spirituality/religion as the (last) rightful alternative source of power.

Posted by: anna missed | Jan 1 2009 20:58 utc | 18

Let’s not forget the heavy usage of tactics such as the useful Stalin-esque Aesopian language* trick Malooga . Also, wrt to pedagogy take a look-see at my post in the new OT. Beware of the Neuromarketing of the generational incrementally dumbed down culture, citizen and dupe with propagenda, and The Most Important Future Military Technologies, military Brain Research, militarized Nanotech, and Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience, employing sociology and psychobiology to combat “terrorism”.
According to wikipeadia,

psychobiology[1] is the application of the principles of biology to the study of mental processes and behavior. A psychobiologist, for instance, may compare the imprinting behavior in goslings to the early attachment behavior in human infants and construct theory around these two phenomena.

that should scare the shit out of you.
Bifurcation is divided into two branches of ONE power base. In mathematical terms, bifurcation theory is a dynamical system, a bifurcation is a period doubling, quadrupling, etc., that accompanies the onset of chaos. It represents the sudden appearance of a qualitatively different solution for a nonlinear system as some parameter is varied. How’s that for structural analysis?
Not to mention, truthout’s article on, ‘Obama’s Betrayal of Public Education? Arne Duncan and the Corporate Model of Schooling’, a good description of psyops culture’s imprint on youth-. From that article with I can post, because typepad will spank me, we have the following,

“…promotes policies that eliminate most crucial health and public services and defines rugged individualism through the degrading celebration of a gun culture, extreme sports and the spectacles of violence that permeate corporate controlled media industries. Students are not at risk because of the absence of market incentives in the schools. Young people are under siege in American schools because, in the absence of funding, equal opportunity and real accountability, far too many of them have increasingly become institutional breeding grounds for racism, right-wing paramilitary cultures, social intolerance and sexism.[13] We live in a society in which a culture of testing, punishment and intolerance has replaced a culture of social responsibility and compassion.”

Henry Giroux, noted that in the infamous Eisenhower MIC Speech the original draft called it the Military Industrial-Academic Complex, you know, think tanks full of Industrial psychologists.
but I digress… When your acculturated in an invisible and virtual “total institution”. One can’t see the continuum.
the About the dumping/none dumping of the 90/160 whateveha, these mere Babbo’s. Babbo’s –in mob speak is a term for underlings who are considered to be useless.
In an ‘Administration’ — also mobspeak–, the Administration, The top members of the Family, usually composed of the boss, underboss, and consigliere often turn the grail over to the underboss for a while when things are going bad. Think rethugs and demorats. The bifurcation is divided into two branches of ONE power base. And when things are really hot, the consigliere drives the getaway car for a while.
Need I remind you lunar cats, that Chicago is mafioso town?
Nothing short of One cabal sending a message to another? Just an inside tribal silent mafia war? think the, ‘The Yankee and Cowboy War’* for the American dynasty. Only we’re way past Watergate.
Oglesby was a founder of SDS and edited the 1969 New Left Reader.
Even though Oglesby’s book is out of print, I notice many public libraries in my area have
circulating copies. Anyone still into FREE reading?
* Aesopian Language, is communications that conveys an innocent meaning to outsiders but holds a concealed meaning to informed members of a conspiracy or underground movement.
**The Yankee and Cowboy war: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate (1976) by Carl Oglesby

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 1 2009 21:21 utc | 20

Well, I don’t think Billmon has lost his mind; nor would I expect a person of integrity, like him, to support the Obama outfit, if it prooves to be more about continuity than change.
After these last days of horror in Gaza, I’m not going to set myself to argue against Malooga on many of the points he raised. In fact, I agree with what is essentially the nature of the political disease, as he describes it.
Let me raise a couple of points. The Billmon article focuses narrowly on the removal of O’Beirne and his ilk. The political signal the President-Elect is sending by zeroing in on O’Beirne is not without merit. And we should not be so politically abstruse as to claim we do not know what is meant by the term “neocon”. Before we wholly subscribe to the notion that Republicans and Democrats belong to one continuum, and they exist in effect, as one big neocon family, we should examine what the Republicans and Bush/Cheney have done, in terms of damage, and the political frame of the neocon.
I don’t for a minute believe that Obama or his administration will tolerate the destruction of the rule of law (or the damage already inflicted on it), or accept torture, extra-judicial murder, and party orthodoxy as a substitute for accountability and fundamental public interest. I think that on some level Malooga is ignoring the essence of those called neocons, and the crimes which they carried out in broad daylight, against the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights in particular, as well as a vicious partisanship, authoritarianism, and gutter methods and such appeals to political aggression and rancor as we haven’t seen since the Vietnam war.
There may come a time when I stop defending Obama; and I hope at the present time (provided it’s not tedious if I point out that he’s not actually president yet)–I just hope that I can continue to argue–with some intelligence for the new people being a damned sight better than the current leaders.
If Malooga fears that the deification of Israel in US foreign policy is a neocon value that’s validated in the other political camp; then I say yes, that scares the shit out of me too. But to extrapolate, and propose that the incoming administration will do as the neocons did, and be the very image of neocons is far from reasonable.

Posted by: Copeland | Jan 1 2009 22:16 utc | 22

I’m sorry Malooga. I should just address my response to you, in the heading of my post, and will try to remember in future, so as not to repeat your name so often though the post, which I think is bad style on my part. I do admire your learning, analysis, and all around grasp of facts. I don’t think I’m obsessing or focusing too much on the point that Obama is fighting to assert himself as president on a system that is not very flexible. I admired the last long post you wrote (on another thread) where you used a lot of humor. I respect you with regard to many points. I hope you know that.
Understand, it’s not so much the sharp criticism against Obama that bothers me. In fact I think that’s helpful. But it hurts I think to cry doom and fie for shame on a government that has yet to get its foot in the door.

Posted by: Copeland | Jan 1 2009 22:47 utc | 24

because there’s no politics on the street, or close to it.
Indeed. Of course that’s because the biopolitics of the robber barons are smarter MoAnkeys AmIrite?
One of billmons fav movies if I recall right is ‘planet of the apes’. Well, let talk about domesticated primates shall we?

1. Start with a cage containing five apes. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put stairs under it. Before long, an ape will go to the stairs and start to climb for the banana. 2. As soon as the ape touches the stairs, spray all of the apes with cold water. After a while, another ape makes an attempt with the same result – all the apes are sprayed with cold water. 3. Turn off the cold water. If, later, another ape tries to climb the stairs, the other apes will prevent it even though no water sprays them. 4. Now, remove one ape from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new ape sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the apes attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. 5. Next, remove another of the original five apes and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The other newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm. 6. Again, replace a third original ape with a new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four apes that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest ape. 7. After replacing the fourth and fifth original apes, all the apes which have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no ape ever again approaches the stairs. Why not? BECAUSE that’s the way it’s always been done around here.

Talk about your incrementally generational occupational psychosis…
And as we unravel the great experiment, the enlightenment, that city on the hill as b, wrote about of late…
George Taylor: A planet where apes evolved from men? There’s got to be an answer.
Dr. Zaius: Don’t look for it, Taylor. You may not like what you find.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 1 2009 23:49 utc | 26

typepad has rejected my comment, so will try to do it in sections. here’s the first.
how lovely to return to moa only to find your remarks misunderstood and ridiculed – albeit in the spirit of intellectual discourse and illustrating a point of view. happy new year, malooga. as i wrote my comment i thought about you and how it was a ripe invitation for a bludgeoning. sadly, i was correct. zebras and stripes and all that. more sadly, your remarks remind me very much of how some people become stuck in ideology that they cling to out of fear or need for identification. i wasn’t planning to spend much time online today, but after receiving an email from r’giap pointing me to something he had written, i thought why not browse a bit and was curious to hear people’s reactions to billmon’s diary. reading your comment with my morning tea, i decided i didn’t want the first day of 2009 to be marked by responding to you and moved on to other haunts. at dkos heathlander had written an excellent diary on gaza and i ended up wading through the commments. it was then that the parallel became apparent. like the commentators there who populate the i/p diaries stuck in zionist ideology, malooga is similarly stuck in a repetition of screeds against the naive american left. in this case he chose to use my remarks to make his case and in the process misunderstood and mischaracterized them. this also does not surprise me as i have seen malooga do it before. unfortunately, i have noticed through the years that many of his arguments similarly lack integrity. they might sound good and in some ways actually be sound, but if you are familiar with what he is discussing and if you look a bit closer, you will notice that inevitably there is something out of whack. when malooga’s remarks still urked me while out walking with my namesake, conchita, i decided i would return to moa and respond.
in this case, malooga assumed that i partake of the corporate media and chose to ignore the personal significance hawai’i has for me as a former home. i don’t own a television and haven’t for at least several years. my information is from emails i received from someone more intrigued by obama’s private life than i. however, in this instance they piqued my curiosity. it has been interesting to observe both what obama chose to do in hawai’i and how it was interpreted by others not as enmeshed in the hawai’ian lifestyle. reading about obama bodysurfing at sandy’s and taking his daughters for shaveice brought a smile to my face and my heart because these things have significance for those of us who know them. when i bodysurfed sandy’s, relatively fresh to the island, i ended up in the “washing machine” with more sand in my bathing suit than on the beach, that is after i was able to pull it back on. i learned healthy respect for the break there and the locals who had mastered it. sandy’s is for locals not haole girls like me. obama is clearly a local. now, shaveice: shaveice is also as local as it gets, and as obama said “really good.” unlike malooga, i liked seeing this accessible, everyman side of obama in his hometown. as for his “regal respite,” i don’t know exactly which where he stayed in kailua, but i do know the town, having spent many a day with friends lucky enough to grow up there on its lovely beaches, and it is as middle class as west roxbury, maybe moreso. i would be surprised if the house they rented was not both lovely and modest. there are other much more elite neighborhoods on the island. what malooga doesn’t know about the obama’s stay in hawai’i is that he has lived pretty much like many from the windward side of oahau – shaveice, body surfing, working out at the marine base in nearby kaneohe, spreading his grandmother’s ashes over the pali, golfing at a public course. i like this in him and contrast it with what we have read in the past about the bushes in crawford, particularly when cindy sheehan came to visit.
but i digress, my point is to say that malooga didn’t understand and didn’t care – he took my words and used them to bolster his negativity and i resent that. i have no idea what obama will be like as a president, but unlike malooga i am willing to give him a chance. as i wrote last night, i believe there will be a qualitative difference between what we get with obama as president as compared to depths of hell we would have reached with mccain. will it be perfect? highly unlikely, but better – imo, immeasurably so. obama has already disappointed on fisa and i would much rather have heard him stand behind the palestinians this past week, but thinking about it realistically i knew he would remain silent. he has chosen to speak up about local issues, but not international. i am with alex in hoping that behind the silence will be support for the palestinians, but with hrc as sos, i don’t have enormously high hopes.
so, malooga, bottomline is i think you are stuck, stuck in a place where you can only see the negative, a place from which you choose to strike out at those who have hope and dare to think even slightly optimistically. you talk about love, but where is your love? you take billmon and the “middle tier” to task for what they do, but what do you do exactly – besides write your screeds? i don’t post at moa as often as i once did and there are various reasons. the primary reason is that between work, school, and activism i am too busy. i agree with your assessment that the essence of making change or “revolutionizing” is love. but what love is there in your barrage of criticism? and to ridicule me because i said i am weary from always expecting the worst? how dare you? who do you think you are? did you think for a moment that some of us have been working damn hard to make change? probably not. you are too busy screaming about the system rather than try to change how it works, or god forbid, work within it. i see it differently. in your eyes, that might be construed as living “a life [of] complicit ignorance and irrelevance.” but i do challenge you to answer which you think is more productive. i look at what i have to work with and what can realistically be accomplished and work towards that goal, building coalitions and sharing ideas with others who are willing to work, not just sit around and complain on a blog.
will my efforts make a difference? i don’t know, but that doesn’t stop me. we didn’t accomplish impeachment, but that doesn’t mean we won’t accomplish prosecution. the love that you talk about i see in people who are coming together to try to make that happen – not out of vengeance, but in the name of the rule of law. in the last few weeks i have seen people from various parts of the blogosphere and activist groups come together to build a petition directed to eric holder asking him to appoint a special prosecutor. recently, ari melber, writing for that “middle tier” magazine, the nation, came on board. if we can build this further, it may actually make a difference. we also managed to make this issue the second question posed to obama and his team on change.gov. shoot this down – as i expect you will – but these are people who are actively working to make change because, while they acknowledge the negative aspects of this country, they are love and work to preserve the positives. i think with obama we stand more of a chance of succeeding at this than mccain or those vague “neocons.”
lastly, only because this stuck in my mind. “christmas gifts”? what, you spend all those words arguing against capitalism and then resort to complaining that people couldn’t afford christmas gifts? what about healthcare or mortgage payments or rent?? your middleclass background sneaks out. i’d say there’s a lot more at stake here than christmas gifts.

Posted by: sharon | Jan 2 2009 1:19 utc | 28

and the third and final:
please also forward the petition to others – holder has responded and we have his attention. it is up to us to make certain that the support is undeniable. between the petition and our presence on change.gov, we stand a chance of reversing the trend of the last eight years. take a moment for a little hope, optimism, and love and go to democrats.com and sign.

Posted by: sharon | Jan 2 2009 1:22 utc | 30

thanks sharon

Posted by: annie | Jan 2 2009 2:23 utc | 32

sam, if you had gone to democrats.com you would know that the petition does not mention republicans, but instead begins:

Dear Attorney General-Designate Eric Holder,
We the undersigned citizens of the United States hereby formally petition you to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute any and all government officials who have participated in War Crimes.

first, the petition is directed to holder not obama. at this point, we have no idea yet how obama and holder will work together. we can assume that holder will follow gonzales who misunderstood his job and placed his loyalty to bush over his responsibility to the citizens of the u.s. or we can expect holder to recognize his responsibility or respond to our request and appoint a special prosecutor to investigate and if warranted indict on a non-partisan basis. i don’t know holder well enough to know how he will act, but i am pleased that he acknowledged us and i like what he had to say to the acs. bottomline, we can do nothing (but gripe about it on a blog) or we can make an effort to stand together and publicly call for accountability. we all know what doing nothing will achieve, but we don’t know what doing something will – only one way to find out.

Posted by: sharon | Jan 2 2009 3:56 utc | 34

sharon: maybe using your comments was a bit of a personal strike, but i think Malooga’s post is the most spot-on assessment i’ve read in quite some time.
If you think Holder, who helped pardon a billionaire, is going to risk his life going after the criminals who have held office for the past eight years, then by all means pour yourself into that endeavor.
Billmon calling out neocon rethugs is in essence an omission of Rahm, Joe, Hillary, and other ziohawks who will work their asses off to keep any humane consideration of palestinian rights bottled up and on the shelf.
Something else Malooga said echoes a discussion Uncle and I have been having lately. Malooga says:
neo-cons will bluntly state what they are about to do, and then proceed to do it: “We will bomb you to smithereens,” for instance. One can confront such an ideology head-on, and resist it. The other team will employ all sorts of humanistic justifications, which tug at the heartstrings, for its actions, “There is a genocide being committed” or “no one should have to live in bomb shelters,” and then proceed to bomb you to smithereens. This misleading technique is much more difficult to resist.
i unfortunately totally agree.
while prosecution of war criminals would be great, the madness is moving too fast, so now it’s team Dem that must be held to the fires of hell they stoke, albeit with more deceitful articulations of “humanistic” intent.
let’s face it, Israel has made a brilliant strategic decision to launch this current slaughter during the Christmas/New Year break, less than a month before Obama is sworn in, and by the time that finally happens, the tanks will have already rolled in
to Gaza. who knows how far things will escalate in the coming weeks.
well-intentioned Dems colored with progressive hues must understand they’ve been spectacularly duped, just like 2006 when Nancy & co. fucked over the anti-war movement, only this time by a talented orator who has simultaneously waved the carrots of hope and change while taking every opportunity to calm the nerves of the elites who bankrolled him.
Oh yeah, one more thing. I wouldn’t really blame Holder for not wanting to prosecute, considering people who cross these fuckers have a funny way of dying prematurely. Same reason I don’t expect Obama to do anything other than take his orders. those are some pretty daughters he’s got. i’m sure he’d like to see them grow up.

Posted by: Lizard | Jan 2 2009 5:14 utc | 36

sharon:
sam, if you had gone to democrats.com you would know that the petition does not mention republicans, but instead begins:
Wrong!!! I did go to democrats.com and here is the heading:

Encourage Obama to Appoint a Special Prosecutor for Bush Administration

It is exceedingly clear who that is directed at. Here’s a portion of the text:

Under the Geneva Conventions, the United States must prosecute Dick Cheney for war crimes.

Leaving those details off the actual petition sure makes it looks good though. How honorable of you?

Posted by: Sam | Jan 2 2009 6:38 utc | 38

sharon:
First off, I made very clear that I was not attacking a person — you in this instance — but a belief structure, and what I believe the effects of that structure to be.
I’m sorry if I have hurt you personally; that was certainly not my intention.
It is my belief that the purpose of a site such as MOA is to be able to engage in respectful but spirited debate about political and social issues. Debate meaning people can disagree, even adamantly so, and strive to bring their best evidence to the case.
You state that I “took my words and used them to bolster his negativity.” I took your words at what I understood them to mean and used them to make several political — not personal — points.
You say that “many of his arguments similarly lack integrity.” That is fine. I do not post from an outline, but think out my response as I am writing. I use writing to clarify my thoughts. And I post to this blog specifically to receive criticism, not accolades. I respect people here and am happy to hear of the contradictions, omissions, oversights, exaggerations, etc. that others find in my ideas. Over the years my thinking has evolved. It will continue to evolve. And I’m sure that I have posted any number of crappy posts in the past. I never really wrote anything in my life before I stated posting here. I generally can’t stand my old posts either, but I strive to do my best when I am writing.
It is true that most of what I have written lately has been highly critical of the left, but I have written far less, and less vehemently than Alexander Cockburn, Justin Raimondo, Arthur Silber, or James Petras, for instance. Silber’s powerful, coherent thinking has deeply influenced me over the past two years, as I have mentioned before. But most find him deeply distasteful too.
You and I have different responses to power. Clinton used to vacation where I spent many romantic summers with my first girlfriend at a point when I was not very politically involved, sort of liked the guy, and had voted for him, and my response was, “Oh no. Now whatever is left of what I liked is surely destroyed by the rich and powerful.”
Perhaps Obama took a very nice vacation with friends and family. I do not use personality as a criteria to judge the effects of those who wield power; I believe it utterly irrelevant, even if the information is accurate, which in this media-conscious age, it rarely is. I judge the powerful by the direct effects of their actions. Lincoln was a deeply morose man….probably never windsurfed in his life….suffered from severe dyspepsia…..
You state, “i believe there will be a qualitative difference between what we get with obama as president as compared to depths of hell we would have reached with mccain.” I disagree. But as this is purely speculative and can never be proved, I consider the issue moot. I try to support my claims with the opinions of C. Wright Mills and William Domhoff, who both spent their careers studying the structure and mechanisms of power, and it is always easier to discuss things when we are all working from the same sources.
I do believe that there would be a quantitative difference if a third-party candidacy had garnered, say, ten million votes, a similar percentage to what Eugene V. Debs got in 1920. Again, this is not a moot point, as we have an evidentiary record to examine in this case. Debs was a real anti-war candidate, a socialist, a threat to the established order, and was jailed because of it. His activism helped improve the conditions of working people all over America.
I used the term “Christmas gifts” because it compared with a vacation, both being discretionary expenses, but you are correct: a non-discretionary expense like rent, food, and healthcare contrasts more powerfully.
I make no bones of the class I was born into, namely, a somewhat privileged layer of the middle-class, my dad being a Chemical Engineer working hard for the empire. I got to travel through Europe at a young age. I have moved steadily downscale ever since. And yes, I do feel a tension between how I used to live and how I live now. Renting and having to move every six months leaves one very insecure and makes it hard to develop personally. But such poverty is largely of my making as I have turned down lucrative and powerful jobs, such as reporting for NPR, because it conflicted with my values.
Finally, your activism. That is something I admire very much, and I believe that I have mentioned it in the past. I do not believe that you have a chance in hell in achieving your objectives, baring a large citizen’s movement arising which does not yet exist. Nevertheless, as I wrote here a year and a half ago (and later found that I.F. Stone had expressed very similar opinions), that makes your work even more important. Anyone can fight the fights that they are certain to win. It takes a special type of dedication to fight the fights you are sure to lose. And it is only by fighting and losing that you pave the way for someone to follow in your footsteps and eventually win.
As far as what I do, the activism I have been involved with has largely been on a local county-wide basis. After working for many years in the natural foods industry and then in community radio, I find myself more drawn to work for the poor and homeless. I have been involved in a House of Hospitality, based upon the Catholic Worker model. And yes, I have clashed with people locally. There is a very large split between the poor and wealthy where I live. And Capitalism, by promoting this schism, by enforcing scarcity, for instance, in job opportunities, promotes infighting over crumbs. All the Democrats are in favor of more spending for the military and nuclear weapons for the jobs it brings to this county. Many middle class people who own two cars and take as many vacations as they want are upset about global warming. But rather than forgo their own air travel, as George Monbiot recommends in order to have the greatest impact, they advocate gas taxes on the poor, who are barely surviving. I had that argument with deanander once here.
Yes, my view of the world is very, very dark lately. And this has been, to a large extent, because of my activism, and seeing how difficult it is to get people to think systemically and holistically rather than single issue pot shots, often at odds with other progressive activists. I study how the ruling class controls us, and this is a major, and very effective, tactic of theirs.
It is also because I do not believe that the earth gives a shit who President of the US is, just as recycling your plastic bottles every week might make you personally feel better, but will do absolutely nothing to “save the planet,” whatever that is suppossed to mean these days. Ultimately, it will be the earth which will have the final veto power over how this planet is run.
I’m sorry if the darkness I see disturbs people. All I can do I share my reality as I see it. I don’t have to post here if people are disturbed by my posts.
P.S. I do not see quoting Paolo Freire and signing petitions to be mutually exclusive acts;-)

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 2 2009 6:47 utc | 40

Sorry for the double post.
As far as love is concerned, there are two Buddhas who personify the compassion underlying seeming harshness:
Fudo
Acala Vidyârâja is one of the Vidyârâjas (Myôôs) class of deities, and a very wrathful deity. He is portrayed holding a sword in his right hand and a coiled rope in his left hand. With this sword of wisdom, Acala cuts through deluded and ignorant minds and with the rope he binds those who are ruled by their violent passions and emotions. He leads them onto the correct path of self control. Acala is also portrayed surrounded by flames, flames which consume the evil and the defilements of this world. He sits on a flat rock which symbolizes the unshakeable peace and bliss which he bestows to the minds and the bodies of his devotees.
In his upward search for Bodhi and in his downward concern for suffering beings, he represents the beginning of the religious quest, the awakening of the Bodhicitta and the beginning of his compassionate concern for others. It is for this reason that the figure of Acala is placed first among the thirteen deities.
His vow is to do battle with evil with a powerful mind of compassion and to work for the protection of true happiness.
Manjusri
Mañjusri Bodhisattva (Monju) holds in his left hand a sutra by which he dispenses wisdom to people, and in his right hand holds a sword for cutting off delusion.
There is an old saying that the wisdom of Mañjusri (Monju) lies in putting together three heads, which are better than one. The figure of Mañjusrii (Monju) Bodhisattva is greatly endowed with wisdom, and in his right hand he holds the scriptures that confer that wisdom, while he also holds a sword that can cut off delusion. Bodhisattva refers to a living person who seeks enlightenment. In reality, the Bodhisattva practices Buddhism in society and is a buddha that acts on behalf of the Nyorai in saving people. Mañjusri (Monju) Bodhisattva cuts off the mistaken ideas of the world as well as evil thoughts and actions, corrects the ignorance and delusions of people, dispenses true wisdom, and delivers joy to human society.
Manjusri was especially honored at Shasta Abbey, where I was in training to become a monk many, many eons ago.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 2 2009 7:27 utc | 42

The Washington Journal provides us with a tale on another former bunker inmate.
Alberto Gonzales wrote a book in which he absolves himself of any guilt in the crimes perpetrated under his watch – but can’t find a publisher.

“What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?” he said during an interview Tuesday, offering his most extensive comments since leaving government.
During a lunch meeting two blocks from the White House, where he served under his longtime friend, President George W. Bush, Mr. Gonzales said that “for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.”

Not only that, he can’t find employment either.

The Harvard Law School graduate, onetime corporate lawyer and Texas judge also hasn’t been able to land a job. He has delivered a few paid speeches, done some mediation work and plans to do some arbitration, but said law firms have been “skittish” about hiring him.

The site on which I came across this story, Values Australia, made this remark:

John Yoo, of course, is not suffering, as he ought. Nor are Rumsfeld or Cheney. Nor is Douglas Feith who got himself a plum job at Georgetown University, “as a Professor and Distinguished Practitioner in National Security Policy, for a two year stint despite strong objections from the student body and faculty. His contract was not renewed due to strong opposition from members of the faculty…” But he’s got another job with the Republican wing-nut think tank, the Hudson Institute.
Speaking of torture, 3 Quarks Daily reviews an article which seems to ask the right question. All this time the Bush and proto-Obama administrations have been struggling with the question, “Yes, but if we close Guantánamo what do we do with the inmates?” The much more pertinent question is, “What do we do with the torturers?” That doesn’t mean just the waterboarders but also those who advocated and defended torture and raised legal justifications for, or obfuscations of, torture.
The detainees will disperse to various places around the globe or be caught up in the American prison system. But the torturers will take their attitudes and moral justifications, their psychological states and sometimes distress back into the mainstream of the military establishment and civilian society. Those who commanded, authorised and supported what they did remain untouched and so that mindset is unchallenged and unpunished and therefore, in effect, validated in the political/military establishment as appropriate policy for consideration and an appropriate attitude towards “others”.
That is, the damaging effect of torture on American civil society is going to be far greater than its effect on individual detainees and the cost far greater than any hoped-for gains in national security.
In the same way, the greatest cost to America of the war in Iraq has not been the billions or trillions of dollars that have been spent, or the human cost in the lives of dead soldiers, but the well-documented effect on the country of the return into American society of the hundreds of thousands of physically and psychologically wounded soldiers who have survived and returned.

I couldn’t agree more.

Posted by: Juan Moment | Jan 2 2009 11:14 utc | 44

first chance i have had to return and do want to take a moment to respond.
alex and juan moment, you are correct. sam, i apologize to you in particular for my hasty remark. i spoke too quickly about the petition if viewed in literal terms. it took some time to write the petition – a collaborative process to which a number of people contributed. it began as a longer, more complex document and was simplified for expediency – getting people to read it and sign on. at the time it was launched, cheney had not yet implicated the dems. we have all suspected their complicity for sometime, but it would have been a stretch to include them in the petition. somehow i think you would agree from a marketing standpoint. however, do i think any one of the people who contributed to writing the petition or bob fertik at democrats.com would object to a special prosecutor including dems in his/her sights? absolutely not. the push for accountability has never been a partisan issue.
as an aside, one of the people who has been actively promoting impeachment for the last few years and now prosecution, including the petition, took on the enormous task of researching, preparing, and submitting an ethics violation against pelosi this fall. others exposed her duplicity during her book tour. and of course, shirley golub and cindy sheehan campaigned against her. i helped lead a primary campaign against jerry nadler this summer based on an impeachment platform. there were similar challenges all over the country. it is clear that many of the dems in office need to be replaced. and it is clear that the system is dysfunctional.

Posted by: sharon | Jan 3 2009 3:33 utc | 46

lizard, about holder and whether or not he and obama will prosecute. none of us knows. he does have an enormous task ahead of him, whether or not he chooses to prosecute. we are fortunate in the push for prosecution in that we have credible insiders also stepping up for it in the name of a return to the rule of law. the person who has been sending out the email blasts about the obamas in hawai’i happened to have sent me an article from the washington independent about the gutting of the department of justice that has happened over the last eight years and what challenges holder faces when he takes office. for example:

As internal government reports and congressional hearings have documented, the Bush Justice Department over the last eight years expelled or ignored attorneys that it didn’t agree with and replaced them with inexperienced lawyers hired more for their ideology than their qualifications. Many of those promoted and implemented conservative agendas that in some cases turned out to be illegal. Those lawyers who were given career positions can’t simply be pushed out by a new administration, however – and they could make it difficult for Obama to implement a new agenda.

as for well-intentioned dems realizing they’ve been duped, it will be interesting to see. they all conspired to elect a dem president and achieve a 60 seat majority in the senate, and in the process sacrificed the rule of law. the ones that actually care are now urging prosecution. my next task will be to begin to lobby the senate judiciary committee to support prosecution. the petition will help to make the case, as well as the fact that the number one question on change.gov is about holder appointing a special prosecutor. whether or not the 111th congress and the next administration is up to living up to their constitutional duties remains to be seen. we are doing all we can to make it incumbent upon them and doing what we can to involve the middle tier media as part of our strategy.

Posted by: sharon | Jan 3 2009 4:25 utc | 48

whoops, just realized, in 48 i meant sam not alex. alex, i do agree with your points for the most part.

Posted by: sharon | Jan 3 2009 4:33 utc | 50

r’giap@47
there are days so dark – i want my sickness to take me because witnessing & participating in this world as i am condememned to do – is just too unbearable.
r’giap, with all due respect, I urge you to consider the implications of this sentiment & I have absolutely no doubt that you will find a way or many ways to challenge it.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Jan 3 2009 15:00 utc | 52

Every being has a complete right to its own feelings.
Indeed…
What An Asshole #24- Barack Obama

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 3 2009 17:56 utc | 54

all I can say about the Obama brouhaha is that he showed his cards to me when he voted to gut FISA. This after promising he would filibuster the legislation. that is unconscionable imo and not something I can ever forget nor forgive. I did not vote for Mr Obama though I really wanted to before his decision to render FISA obsolete, I did not vote for Mccain either if that makes any difference.
However, I am willing to give the man a chance. Expectations are very high for him from many billions of people on the entire earth. He will have to be so very clever and somehow do the right thing without letting on to the PTB. He does have a lot more power than did previous presidents and Biden can simply move into a ready made shadow government so a small avenue would be available. Perhaps he will feel beholding to the millions of former slaves who voted for him and were so genuinely happy to see him win, perhaps he will offer the little people a fighting chance given his own rather humble background. I want to believe that all of the things he has done that I don’t agree with were absolutely necessary for him to even get where he is, there is a great deal to the saying “in order to do something you first have to get elected”.
those of us who are not right wing authoritarians have made life difficult for ourselves, we know of many things that we find very unpleasant and each of them are quite important. we can let ourselves get wrapped around the axle and end up not fixing or solving any one of those things. Attacking Obama for the sake of attacking him helps no one. Lay out the reason for not agreeing and propose a different solution. If you can make a sound case you should then move forward with that. I know Sharon (aka Conchita) has been actively seeking impeachment for little boots. It will probably never happen but at least she tried.
so bottom line, while the loony left is collectively wringing their hands and feeling really bad about the plight of others, the RWA are taking care of business. They remain focused like a laser beam on immediate short range goals and good old personal greed works better than lofty ideas of equality and compassion. the left sorely needs something that works as well as greed. suggestions anyone?

Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 3 2009 20:47 utc | 56

can’t recall the ending of 1900 — it’s been a long time (did it involve a horse?) — but sutherland was in over-the-top deranged-lunatic-mode in that film (e.g., the scene w/ the cat)
on alinsky – skip the reveille book
ironically, his ‘rules’ were a big influence on another organizer outta chicago – obama
but then so was ronnie reagan’s ‘revolution’

Posted by: b real | Jan 4 2009 5:24 utc | 58