Press Action ::: The Spinelessness of Lesser Evilism

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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

The Spinelessness of Lesser Evilism

The Democrats are spineless. It’s a familiar refrain we hear from some liberals and many leftists. When Democrats support rancid proposals of Republican presidents or fail to aggressively challenge the implementation of odious policies, the spineless term gets trotted out.

Only yesterday on Democracy Now!, Canadian author and social democrat Naomi Klein used the anatomical metaphor during a discussion of the Democrats’ reluctance to challenge the Bush administration on its handling of the $700 billion giveaway to Wall Street.

“So, essentially, what the Bush administration has done is said, you know, ‘We dare you to challenge us and be responsible for the great depression.’ And the Democrats, not known for their firm spines, have so far failed to challenge them in anything other than rhetoric.”

It would seem that since the Democratic Party very rarely has displayed a firm spine in its dealings with the Republicans or when confronted by repressive policy proposals in general — at least in the fashion that most of these liberal and left-wing observers would prefer — that it would be time to retire this fantasy.

Spineless implies the Democrats disagree with a particular policy but are afraid to voice their true opinion or stand up for their beliefs because they fear the American public will turn against them. The liberals and leftists who subscribe to this theory cannot appreciate the notion that the “spineless” Democrats simply may not hold the same political views as them.

Instead of spineless, a more apt description of the Democrats who support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who support the taxpayer giveaway to Wall Street and Corporate America, who support the “war on terror,” who support an expanded police state and who generally support repressive and destructive government policies might be heartless or soulless. Or perhaps the correct terms to describe these types of Democrats would be the same ones used to describe Republicans who support these policies. How about thuggish and authoritarian — or perhaps malicious?

Many of these liberals and leftists embrace the electoral strategy of voting for the lesser of the two evils running in presidential and congressional races. Inherent in this strategy is the belief that the policies of the person for whom they are voting are less evil than his or her opponent’s but are nonetheless evil in their own right. So, particularly for the Democrats who fall into the lesser-evil category, it would seem that there would be no cause for surprise when these Democrats, upon assuming power, adopt a legislative style that runs counter to the hopes and views of some liberals and many leftists.

During the same episode of Democracy Now!, host Amy Goodman interviewed former CIA and State Department analyst Melvin Goodman about Barack Obama’s choice of John Brennan, a former intelligence official under former CIA Director George Tenet, to lead the review of “intelligence” agencies and help make recommendations to the new administration on “intelligence” issues. Goodman offered this description of Brennan:

“John Brennan was deputy executive secretary to George Tenet during the worst violations during the CIA period in the run-up to the Iraq war, so he sat there at Tenet’s knee when they passed judgment on torture and abuse, on extraordinary renditions, on black sites, on secret prisons. He was part of all of that decision-making.”

At the end of the interview, Goodman noted that Obama has been working in Washington as a senator for only a few years and “obviously there are things he needs to know about national security, the CIA and the intelligence community. And obviously, he’s listening to the wrong people.”

But maybe Brennan is the perfect person to help Obama fill senior positions at the various “intelligence” agencies in Washington … because maybe Obama agrees with Brennan’s views on how to conduct the “war on terror.” It’s fairly obvious Obama is not listening to the people who Goodman believes would be most effective at running a new administration’s transition team for “intelligence” matters. But, as we’ve seen in his views on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Israel, warrantless eavesdropping, etc., Obama definitely falls into the category of a lesser-evil candidate. And what you get from a lesser-evil candidate who ends a winning an election may or may not be as evil as the alternative. But chances are the policies of a lesser-evil candidate who ends up winning the presidency are still going to be evil when he or she takes office.

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News Flash: Obama hypnotizes Zinn

Howard Zinn recently wrote an article that talked about what Obama should do, what he hoped he’d do. For example: “announce the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan” and “renounce the Bush doctrine of preventive war as well as the Carter doctrine of military action to control Mideast oil.” Also: “radically change the direction of U.S. foreign policy, declare that the U.S. is a peace loving country which will not intervene militarily in other parts of the world, and start dismantling the military bases we have in over a hundred countries. Also he must begin meeting with Medvedev, the Russian leader, to reach agreement on the dismantling of the nuclear arsenals, in keeping with the Nuclear Anti-Proliferation Treaty.” Then raise taxes on the rich and combine that windfall with the hundreds of billions of dollars freed from the military budget to “give free health care to everyone (and) put millions of people to work” and thus “transform” the United States and “make it a good neighbor to the world.”

Full article here

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Monday, November 17, 2008

News Flash: Obama Hypnotizes Zinn

By Mickey Z.

Let’s say the New York Times hired a charismatic black man in his late 40s to run the newspaper and this popular man promised change. And let’s say I wrote an article that talked about what this man should do, what I hoped he’d do. For example: reduce the business section to a page, add a labor section, start covering people’s movements and protests, refuse advertising dollars from corporations that pollute, and hire me to run the op-ed page. Justifiably, I’d be called delusional and I’d be ridiculed for even suggesting such insane expectations.

Let’s say Perdue hired a charismatic black man in his late 40s to run the company and this popular man promised change. And let’s say I wrote an article that talked about what this man should do, what I hoped he’d do. For example: renounce the chicken slaughter business, shift operations to selling organic, locally-grown vegan food, and donate vast amounts of money to farm sanctuaries. Justifiably, I’d be called delusional and I’d be ridiculed for even suggesting such insane expectations.

Let’s say America elected a charismatic black man in his late 40s to run the country and this popular man promised change. And let’s say Howard Zinn wrote an article that talked about what this man should do, what he hoped he’d do. For example: “announce the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan” and “renounce the Bush doctrine of preventive war as well as the Carter doctrine of military action to control Mideast oil.” Also: “radically change the direction of U.S. foreign policy, declare that the U.S. is a peace loving country which will not intervene militarily in other parts of the world, and start dismantling the military bases we have in over a hundred countries. Also he must begin meeting with Medvedev, the Russian leader, to reach agreement on the dismantling of the nuclear arsenals, in keeping with the Nuclear Anti-Proliferation Treaty.” Then raise taxes on the rich and combine that windfall with the hundreds of billions of dollars freed from the military budget to “give free health care to everyone (and) put millions of people to work” and thus “transform” the United States and “make it a good neighbor to the world.”

Well, Howard Zinn has written such an article (“Obama’s Historic Victory,” Nov. 12, 2008) but is anyone calling him delusional and ridiculing him for even suggesting such insane expectations? The tens of thousands of readers who look to Zinn as a trusted voice of wisdom and reason are being dangerously misled by an article that omits the reality that every indication points to Barack Obama doing the exact opposite of what Zinn writes. Zinn knows as well as anyone that not an iota of evidence exists that Obama would do anything approaching what is described above. For a man of Zinn’s stature on the Left to even hint of such a possibility is a shockingly irresponsible act and one that only contributes to the misguided perception that Obama’s election is somehow a victory for the progressive Left.

Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.

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Sunday, November 16, 2008

Some things are bigger than each of us

There was a time when slavery was believed too deeply entrenched in American culture to ever be abolished. The movement to end this “peculiar institution” was made up of individuals willing to recognize that some things in life are bigger than each of us. Whether they literally risked their lives by rescuing slaves and running the Underground Railroad or they did their part by sewing clothes and blankets for escaped slaves or, yes, writing books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the movement needed every single one of these brave humans doing their part—big or small.

Full article here

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In Search of Compassion during Prime Hunting Season

Here’s an excerpt from an impassioned anti-hunting piece published by Cyrano’s Journal Online and authored by David Irving:

Hunting is called a sport. In this so-called sport we pit 10,000 years of civilization and technological advance against creatures that have zero years of technology behind them and possess no means other than their natural instincts by which to defend themselves. The odds are enormously stacked against them. We put out cruel leg-hold traps, lay out decoys, spot and stalk, bait with rotting animal flesh, hide behind blinds or in tree stands, and hunt animals in fenced-in areas where it is impossible for them to escape. Except for expert marksmen, perfect shot placement is a rarity, especially for non-professional hunters and for shots taken at a distance. The consequence is that animals are often shot more than once to try to kill them. They die miserably. Many flee wounded into the woods, as noted above, where they also suffer prolonged, painful deaths. A biologist with the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish, and Parks estimated that more than 3 million wounded ducks go unretrieved every year.

For the full article, please click here (warning: disturbing graphic images accompany article).

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Saturday, November 15, 2008

Obama's First 100 Days Promise Bold, Radical Action

Press Action just received a draft copy of President-elect Obama’s agenda for his first 100 days in office. This draft agenda, received from a trusted source inside the Obama transition team headquarters in Chicago, outlines the top 10 priorities of the Obama administration, effective Jan. 20, 2009.

The document is breathtaking in how the list of priorities goes against almost everything Obama promised (or avoided discussing) during his campaign for president. Kudos to Obama! Let’s hope the reactionary forces in Washington don’t derail these initiatives. Please distribute widely and do whatever you can to support Obama as he works to implement these bold, yet perfectly reasonable, initiatives when he takes office. If this is what he’s planning to implement during his first 100 days in office, imagine what he has planned for his remaining time in office. Here’s the list of priorities. Read it and weep with joy!

1. Immediately cease all military operations in Iraq. Order military commanders to ensure all combat military personnel are transported back to the United States within 30 days. Order military commanders to begin the process of dismantling any infrastructure constructed as part of the occupation of Iraq. U.S. civilian and military leaders must coordinate with Iraqi officials and the public on keeping in place any infrastructure that the Iraqis could use for their benefit. The dismantling of all infrastructure must be completed by July 1.

2. Immediately cease all military operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Order military commanders to ensure all combat military personnel are transported back to the United States within 30 days. Order military commanders to begin the process of dismantling any infrastructure constructed as part of the occupation of Afghanistan. U.S. civilian and military leaders must coordinate with Afghan officials and the public on keeping in place any infrastructure that the Afghans could use for their benefit. The dismantling of all infrastructure must be completed by July 1.

3. Order Department of Defense leadership to move forward with dismantling all U.S. military bases, posts, camps and installations currently located in other countries around the world. U.S. civilian and military leaders must coordinate with officials and the public from the host nations about keeping in place any infrastructure that the host nations could use for their benefit. The dismantling of all military infrastructure on foreign soil must be completed by Dec. 31.

4. Implement a restitution plan for the Iraqi people to compensate them for the destruction of their nation caused by the sanctions enacted in 1990 and the U.S.-led military invasion in 2003. A third-party organization will be selected to ensure every Iraqi adult receives $10,000 a year for the next 10 years to compensate them for the disruption of their lives caused by the sanctions, invasion and occupation.

5. Impose an immediate cut-off of all U.S. foreign aid to Israel. Request an emergency meeting of the United Nations to discuss an immediate response to Israel’s murderous occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Authorize emergency aid to the Palestinians, including food, medicine and other necessities, as well as military arms to allow them to defend themselves from Israeli occupation and repression. Inform the Palestinians and other nations in the region that they will have the full political support of the United States to defend themselves against Israeli aggression.

6. Order an immediate end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba and work toward restoring full diplomatic and economic ties with the nation. Implement a restitution plan for the Cuban people to compensate them for the deprivation to their nation caused by the embargo.

7. Order an immediate closing of the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba and the immediate release of all people detained at the facility. If no other nation will allow them entry, the former detainees must be given permanent resident status in the United States and must be given financial compensation for the amount of time they were detained.

8. Grant pardons and the immediate release to all people in U.S. federal, state and local prisons and jails for crimes related to nonviolent drug offenses. Work with Congress toward enacting legislation legalizing all drugs.

9. Suspend all activities at the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies until activities have been reviewed to ensure they comport with U.S. laws and civil liberties.

10. Create a top-level agency within the Department of Defense with a mandate to defend the environment inside the United States against destructive actions by humans, including destructive actions by fellow agencies within the Department of Defense. The agency also would have the mandate to work with other nations on attempting to clean up heavily contaminated toxic waste sites that have been abandoned by the U.S. military.

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Some Things Are Bigger Than Any of Us

By Mickey Z.

“One of the good things about everything being so fucked up—about the culture being so ubiquitously destructive—is that no matter where you look—no matter what your gifts, no matter where your heart lies—there’s good and desperately important work to be done.”
- Derrick Jensen

In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed and both Northerners and Southerners were now legally required to turn in runaway slaves. One year later, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin (or Life Among the Lowly) as a serial in an antislavery paper, The National Era. In 1852, the Boston publishing company Jewett published it as a book and, as they are wont to say, the rest is history.

Widely considered to be the first social protest novel published in the United States (and the first major novel to have a black hero), Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold more copies—with the exception of The Bible—than any book had ever sold in America until that point with sales reaching 300,000 copies in the first year.

Stowe’s graphic depiction of slave life—based on true stories—personalized the issue, reclaiming it from the sanitized domain of courtroom legalese. Her story outraged some and inspired many others. To her critics, she answered with A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1853 to provide documentation that every incident in her book had actually happened. Upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862, Abraham Lincoln remarked: “So you’re the little woman that wrote the book that made this great war.”

There was a time when slavery was believed too deeply entrenched in American culture to ever be abolished. The movement to end this “peculiar institution” was made up of individuals willing to recognize that some things in life are bigger than any of us. Whether they literally risked their lives by rescuing slaves and running the Underground Railroad or they did their part by sewing clothes or blankets for escaped slaves or, yes, writing books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the movement needed every single one of these brave humans doing their part—small or large.

What seems impossible and irreversible today can be addressed if we’re willing to wake up and do the hard work. If we’re willing to stop making excuses for the reprehensible leaders (sic)—both political and corporate—who profit from our complacency.

So, the next time you’re deciding between watching a Will & Grace re-run or updating your Facebook book, step up instead. Take a good, long look into heart and an even longer look at the choices you make all day, every day—not from place of guilt and shame but with a sense of revelation. Accept the challenge to be better human being, a more responsible earthling. It takes courage to perform self-examination. It takes courage to accept everything you know just might be wrong. It takes far more courage to do this than to volunteer to wage illegal and immoral wars.

Let’s face it: Things sucked under George W. Bush. Things will suck under Barack Obama. Things have sucked under every president. Nothing will change until we change our minds. We can’t be as indifferent as those before us. They didn’t think enough about future generations so now we have to work twice as hard. It sucks, I know, but this not an issue of fairness. It’s about survival.

Some things in life are bigger than any of us. The anti-slavery movement recognized this. Today, the entire planet is enslaved…to profit-seeking corporations and the corrupt politicians they own (yes, including the Pope of Hope). Are this generation’s abolitionists ready to step up and create change? Not ask for change, create change.

Why not embrace your outrage and frustration and let it challenge you, inspire you, and motivate you? Instead of channeling your ambitions toward climbing a mountain, running a marathon, or striving to make your first million before you’re 30, what greater goal could any of us ever aim for than to leave the planet much better off than how we found it?

You have nothing to lose but your chains…

Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.

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Do You Still Consider Yourself an Anarchist?

During the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Bill O’Reilly instructed one of his flunkies to confront Bill Ayres outside his home in Chicago about his ties to Barack Obama. Along with urging Ayres to repent for his work as a member of the Weathermen and Weather Underground, the O’Reilly flunkie asked Ayres if he still considers himself an anarchist.

Ayres didn’t answer the question or respond to any of the other on-camera taunts, except to ask the O’Reilly flunkie to respect his property as he headed to his front door.

I don’t know if Ayres has ever considered himself an anarchist. During a Democracy Now! interview with Ayres and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, which aired Nov. 14, Ayres didn’t say he was an anarchist nor did he say he sympathized with anarchists. However, many of the beliefs he expressed during the interview were grounded in anarchism: the notion of participatory, grass-roots democracy, and a radical restructuring of education away from highly supervised and surveilled education and away from the teaching of obedience and conformity.

Now, if Ayres had told the O’Reilly flunkie, “Yes, I’m an anarchist,” what difference would have it made? O’Reilly, members of the news media and the McCain campaign would have attempted to use the statement against Obama’s candidacy. But it’s doubtful the statement would have changed the course of the election, given how Obama successfully distanced himself from Ayres, as well as claims late in the campaign that he espoused socialist and Marxist economic policies.

Is there a lesson to be learned from this electoral episode? Have we transcended the old notion that socialism, communism and anarchism are antithetical to the American way of life? If Obama can easily deflect accusations of past associations with “anarchists” and absorb charges that his economic policies are tantamount to socialism, then perhaps these political philosophies are no longer viewed as objectionable by either the political elite or the American public.

However, it would be naïve for anyone to draw these conclusions, given how Obama’s policies, if you look beyond his campaign slogans of hope and change, remain deeply rooted in the past. It will be business as usual, except for a few cosmetic changes, under an Obama administration. If the economic and political elite in the United States had sensed a threat to their standing, there is no way Obama would have received the financing, favorable media coverage and support from the Democratic Party establishment necessary to win the election.

-Mark Hand

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A Song for Obama

By Mickey Z.

In my younger days, I considered the Village Voice to be required reading. But—like The Nation, Mother Jones, The Progressive, and so many other once useful publications—I no longer find the Voice to be relevant or remotely radical. However, it’s free in NYC and I ride the subways. Thus, I’ll sometimes grab a copy to peruse as I navigate the subterranean tunnels of transportation.

I end up regretting this move…every single time.

As I thumbed through the Nov. 12-18 issue, I came across a loathsome illustration of denial masquerading as a music article. “The Pleasant Dilemma of Hamell on Trial: A post-Obama protest singer deals with victory,” by Rob Harvilla was ostensibly about protest (sic) singer Ed Hamell (a.k.a. “Hamell on Trial”) and others of his liberal ilk but ended up as yet another paean to the beloved Pope of Hope.

Harvilla describes folk singers like Hamell as “seething, cynical, sarcastic, permanently embittered, militantly radicalized leftist.” (For the myopic Harvilla “militantly radical” simply means you hate Republicans and launch crude insults at people like Ann Coulter.)

Such performers, Harvilla declares, have found the days following Obama’s election to be “jubilant but deeply confusing times, the exhilaration of We Did It now undercut by the bewilderment of What Do We Do Now?” He offers this option: “stop bitching” as he thanks god Hamell no longer has to waste his “vast” talent “just bitching about the Republicans.”

Ed Hamell, for his part, displays his staggeringly profound grasp on global politics by adding: “If he (Obama) turns all this around and I don’t have to sing about it anymore, then good. I got plenty of other problems.”

Plenty of other problems indeed…but first: What is “all this” and how might the Chairman of Change turn it all around? If all this means the illegal war against Iraq that began on August 6, 1990—when the murderous UN sanctions were first imposed—and continues to this day, Obama has articulated a vague plan to turn it around: shuffle off some “combat troops” to rain hell upon Afghanistan (and perhaps Pakistan and Iran) and leave behind tens of thousands of US soldiers, the largest embassy the world has ever seen, and legions of private mercenaries.

Yeah, I guess there’ll be absolutely no reason for Ed Hamell to write a new protest song when Lord Obama maintains the death penalty, the PATRIOT Act, the fence on the US-Mexican border, and the subsidizing of Israeli war crimes. Gays can’t marry, single-payer is doomed, and the third term of the Clinton administration looms…but Hamell and his militant ilk can “stop bitching” now. For posers like them, all this doesn’t seem to include the reality that blacks make up roughly 12% of the American population but constitute 40% of the death row population. It doesn’t include an obscene military budget, corporate personhood, structural adjustment programs, and NAFTA.

The Obamatrons are not pushing their hero to end any of the following either: the bogus war on a tactic, corporate welfare, homelessness, sweatshops, factory farming, strip mining, deforestation, or giving away control of public airwaves, public land, and public pensions. Ninety percent of the ocean’s large fish are gone but somehow these are “jubilant” times for those deluded denizens of the Left ready to “stop bitching.”

They’d rather bask in the toxic glow of fantasy—choosing to believe their work is done because a mainstream politician who raised $640 million is gonna turn “all this” around. These folks have tainted the very concept of radical activism and deserve nothing but our contempt.

With 200,000 acres of rainforest destroyed every 24 hours, our work cannot be viewed as anywhere close to done. Or, to borrow from Eugene V. Debs, “while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.

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Who will I see tonight at Bluestockings?

(Anyone? Bueller?)

Since I have two new books recently published, I will be giving a talk at Bluestockings Bookstore tonight:

Saturday, November 15 @ 7:00 pm (sharp)

I hope you’ll join us, bring friends, and buy a book or two.

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Meanwhile, duty calls...

“Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience… Therefore [individual citizens] have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”
(from the Nuremberg Tribunal)

“Anyone with knowledge of illegal activity and an opportunity to do something about it is a potential criminal under international law unless the person takes affirmative measures to prevent the commission of crimes.”
(from the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal)

Ramsey Clark sez: “Sadly, I think most Americans don’t have an opinion about our foreign policy. Worse than that, when they do think about it, it’s in terms of the demonization of enemies and the exaltation of our capacity for violence.”

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Another poem of freedom

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Mickey Z. on YouTube:

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Thursday, November 13, 2008

A Song for Obama

In my younger days, I considered the Village Voice to be required reading. But—like The Nation, Mother Jones, The Progressive, and so many other once useful publications—I no longer find the Voice to be relevant or remotely radical. However, it’s free in NYC and I ride the subways. Thus, I’ll sometimes grab a copy to peruse as I navigate the subterranean tunnels of transportation. I end up regretting this move…every single time.

As I thumbed through the Nov. 12-18 issue, I came across a loathsome illustration of denial masquerading as a music article. “The Pleasant Dilemma of Hamell on Trial: A post-Obama protest singer deals with victory,” by Rob Harvilla was ostensibly about protest (sic) singer Ed Hamell (a.k.a. “Hamell on Trial”) and others of his liberal ilk but ended up as yet another paean to the beloved Pope of Hope

Full article here

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Poem of freedom

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Event Alert:

The folks at Bluestockings Bookstore have penciled me in on:

Saturday, November 15 @ 7:00 pm (sharp)

I hope you’ll join us, bring friends, and spread the word far and wide.

FREE

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Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Driving Mister Barack

By Mickey Z.

As you know, the Empire has selected a new emperor. The Mafia has chosen a new don. The corporation has hired a new CEO. Are you brimming with hope yet? Read on…

According to Reuters, (Nov. 11, 2008), President-Elect Barack Obama has urged President-Select George W. Bush to take “measures to help the ailing (automobile) industry on top of a $25 billion loan packaged approved in September.”

I could easily discuss—yet again—the unspoken reality that America’s version of capitalism relies entirely on socialized costs and privatized profits and all those who righteously decry Big Government are choosing to ignore the massive state subsidies that created and maintain Corporate America and “our way of life.”

But Earth’s problems are far worse than state capitalism wearing a transparent free market mask. The auto industry Mister Barack and his merry band of Democratic comrades so desperately want to bailout and revive is and has been one the primary causes for our planet’s environmental and social degradation.

Does the Chairman of Change know or care that during the last century, an area equal to all the arable land in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania was paved in the U.S.? This area requires maintenance costing over $200 million a day and the surreptitious cost of the car culture totals nearly $500 billion a year in the U.S. alone, much of that going to the sustentation of a military presence in the Persian Gulf.

An Obama aide said Mr. “Yes We Can” has suggested “accelerating implementation” of the current auto industry loan package and “exploring avenues that exist under current law.”

Does Bilkin’ Barry the Baby Boomer ever think about how cars create 7 billion pounds of un-recycled scrap and waste annually? With approximately one billion discarded tires littering our increasingly paved landscape, let his loyal Obamatrons meditate upon this: Every tire loses one pound of rubber per year, spewing minute grains of rubber into the stratosphere and then back down to find a new home in our water and/or our lungs. Has anyone told the Pope of Hope about the innumerable eco-systems exterminated in order to make way for highways, off-ramps, parking lots, strip malls, and other auto-centric structures?

I could go on (and on) while BHO begs GWB to identify “someone in charge of the auto issue who would have authority to bring about reforms that would lead to a viable auto industry.”

Here’s the equation: A viable auto industry = a non-viable global eco-system.

Along those lines, there was other news on November 11…but it did not make the Reuters wire. The North American Earth Liberation Front (ELF) Press Office announced: “We have one message for the incoming Obama Administration: act to protect the environment or the ELF will.”

Sounds like change we can believe in…

Mickey Z. can be found in this corner of the Web: http://www.mickeyz.net.

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Protesting Obama's Inauguration

Protesting the inauguration is about protesting two things.

(1) First, it is a protest against the policies being inaugurated, which have been quite clearly spelled out and articulated, so this idea that we need to “wait and see” is grossly misguided. Obama has stated in no uncertain terms where he stands on key issues such as Israel and Jerusalem, Afghanistan, gay marriage, unions and teachers and education, “Rubinomics”, expanding the military in size and mission, and many other issues. If our principles and our willingness to stand up for them are subject to the whims of “propriety,” they aren’t really principles at all.

The idea that because a large number of people are hopeful doesn’t change the facts about where Obama clearly stands on many issues, and when in the past has widespread public support for a particular leader or bad set of policies served as a supposedly legitimate reason for us to set aside our beliefs and actions for the sake of appearances? At best, it’s disingenuous and seems to suggest a degree of embarrassment over how we truly feel and our willingness to fight for what we believe in.

(2) Second, it is a protest against a specific institution and position of great power that has always been wielded with a heavy hand and little regard for the harm and damage it causes—indeed, that harm and damage are usually intentional. The presidency, no matter the name or color of the person sitting in the office, is part of a hierarchical structure of leadership and dominance with the intent of enforcing U.S. interests and expanding the national security state.

Obama is the natural progression of ascendancy, and has fully embraced the expansion of the national security state and the enforcement of U.S. hegemony and strategic interests around the world. He’s demonstrated that he absolutely understands, accepts, and intends to exercise to the fullest extent the powers and “duties” of the presidency. It is a position of power inherently at odds with the principles and politics of the left, and in it’s existing state always will be.

Protesting every inauguration, regardless of who is being crowned, is a symbolic gesture to speak out on that day of national torch-passing. It’s important that among the throngs of cheering Kool Aid drinkers and other such benders of knee, that the left stand up against the position itself and all that it represents.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to think we are not capable of articulating within our protests the fact that we don’t fail to recognize a subtext to this election. Yes, it is indeed surprising to see this nation electing its first black president, a man named Barack Hussein Obama and who had a Muslim father, in just the second election since the Sept. 11th attacks and just 4 years after an election filled with fear-mongering and hatred. Yes, it is indeed miraculous that there are people who watched the election returns who had parents who were once slaves, or grandparents who were once slaves. The deep emotional impact is not something we are oblivious to. We can see and understand these subtexts, and we can make clear that we don’t seek to undermine those aspects that have such meaning for so many people.

But we need to also make clear why we are opposed to Obama’s positions, why he represents policies and beliefs that we strongly oppose, why those policies and beliefs are horrible and a continuation of the same oppressions and are devoid of true justice.

It does not make us irrelevant. We become irrelevant the moment we stop acting on our beliefs, the moment we line up with the liberals and progressives who are already clamoring for the left to sit down and shut up, and who have already forsaken any notion of real progress and change when they dismiss our concerns and anger regarding Obama’s terrible policy positions.

If the single fact that Obama is black in and of itself is a supposed reason to turn our backs on our principles and to fail to take an action that we clearly WOULD take if he were white but held the same positions, then it seems the values and hopes and goals of the left can be bought pretty cheaply, indeed. And then we are irrelevant.

-Drew Poe

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Driving Mister Barack

As you know, the Empire has selected a new emperor. The Mafia has chosen a new don. The corporation has hired a new CEO. Are you brimming with hope yet? Read on…

Full article here

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Subway Loudspeaker Poem

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Event Alert:

The folks at Bluestockings Bookstore have penciled me in on:

Saturday, November 15 @ 7:00 pm (sharp)

I hope you’ll join us, bring friends, and spread the word far and wide.

FREE

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Mickey Z. on YouTube:

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New article: What would Swayze Do?

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Simple Math (on Veteran's Day)

Obama = THIS
Biden = THIS
McCain = THIS
Palin = THIS
Bush = THIS
Clinton = THIS
Republicans = THIS
Democrats = THIS
Our culture = THIS

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Yet another subway poem

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Event Alert:

The folks at Bluestockings Bookstore have penciled me in on:

Saturday, November 15 @ 7:00 pm (sharp)

I hope you’ll join us, bring friends, and spread the word far and wide.

FREE

+++

Mickey Z. on YouTube:

Like what you see on this blog? Then please make a donation

+++

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Monday, November 10, 2008

What Would Swayze Do?

By Mickey Z.

In the classic 1989 film, Roadhouse, thespian Patrick Swayze inhabits the role of James Dalton, head bouncer at a seedy establishment called the Double Deuce Club. Dalton is armed with a PhD in philosophy from New York University and his three rules of bouncing:

1. Never underestimate your opponent
2. Take it outside
3. Be nice until it’s time to not be nice

Note to those striving for enduring social change: It’s time to not be nice.

Being nice got us a nation that pats itself on the back for its freedom and democracy while relegating most of its citizenry to a life of debt, a life without sufficient health insurance, a life of wiretapping and color-coded terror warnings, a life of undrinkable water, polluted air, and inedible food (sic), etc.

Being nice means the US constitutes less than 5% of the world’s human population but is home to 25% of the world’s prison population. Being nice means US women are paid 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. Being nice got us believing that coal is clean, nukes are green, and we must vote for Barack ‘cause the Republicans are mean.

Yeah, being nice resulted in the Legend of Barack Obama™—the most remarkable example of programming and conditioning since the yellow ribbon sticker—while those who refused to guzzle the Obama Kool Aid™ are shoved off to the far corners of Left World.

But, rest assured, as Swayze promises: “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”

Mickey Z. can be found in this corner of the Web: http://www.mickeyz.net.

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