The Clinton Talking Points

I whole-heartedly agree with Jerome's point in yesterday's "Deal With Defeat", but I don't think he took it far enough. Yes, Obama supporters should be prepared to lose West Virginia (as well as Kentucky), but so too should Clinton supporters be prepared[...]

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Lebanon: Yet Another Foreign Policy Opportunity
the Bush Administration Screwed Up

In February 2005, shortly after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, the pro-Syrian Lebanese government resigned.  The day it happened, I warned against any stupid pro-American triumphalism:

But whatever happens next in Lebanon, it would be a mistake to view it only through the lens of some kind of Middle Eastern "people power," a Cedar Revolution as soft and peaceful as the Velvet Revolutions of 1989 or the Orange Revolution of 2004.

Of course that's exactly what happened.  Within hours, what happened in Lebanon was being called the Cedar Revolution, and the Bush administration was taking credit for the change.  Over the next few days, bloviators like David Brooks were claiming that what happened in Lebanon was the result of the US invasion of Iraq.  The problem was that Brooks, like most conservative champions of neocon foreign policy, is a simpleton when it comes to understanding the politics of a complicated place like Lebanon.  One small piece of evidence is that he glowingly quoted Druze leader Walid Jumblat, who just a few months earlier had declared "we are all happy when U.S. soldiers are killed [in Iraq] week in and week out. The killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is legitimate and obligatory."

Oops.  

"Oops" can describe much of what's happened in Lebanon since early 2005.  To be ever-so-slightly generous to nitwits like Brooks, in 2005-2006 there was some cause for optimism about reform movements in the Arab countries and the Middle East.  As Economist Middle East editor Max Rodenbeck explains in a review of the new book by WaPo reporter Robin Wright, in those years there were signs of reform from Morocco and Egypt through Lebanon, Syria and Iran.  

The Arab spring, [Wright] says frankly, did not endure...Wright is surely correct in ascribing some part of the blame to America's inept and counterproductive Iraq policy. As numerous interlocutors in the region tell her, not only did the debacle promote extremism and further isolate pro-Western liberals, it alerted people to the terrible risks of toppling tyrants. The Iraq adventure, in Wright's view, may have been the biggest American policy failure of all time. It could yet prove to mark the end of an imperial America's influence in the region, much as France and Britain's catastrophic invasion of Egypt in 1956 demolished the colonial powers' standing and dangerously boosted the fortunes of Egypt's reckless leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. That is surely a sound judgment.

Our debacle in Iraq has also strengthened and emboldened Iran, and there's little we can do about it.  While many of the claims about Iran made by the Bush administration are B.S., it is true that Iran has become more bellicose, and whether or not they are are trying to weaponize their nuclear program, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad apparently wants people to suspect they are.  His standing in Iran has plummeted along with the economy, but he clings to power by stoking nationalism through the nuclear program.

Nobody knows the full extent of Iran's involvement in Iraq, but it clearly has strong ties to all of the Shia factions.  Last month, when Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki unsuccessfully tried to subdue the Shiite militias that control Basra, in particular that of Muqtada al-Sadr, it took the intervention of Iran to work out a compromise, suggesting that Iran dictates the balance of power within Iraq.  

Now we have Lebanon.  Instead of shutting up and quietly working with the new Lebanese government in 2005, Bush and his lackeys chose to claim credit for what was mostly an internal reaction to the assassination of Hariri, almost certainly perpetrated by shady forces from Syria.  (Whether the assassination was approved by, or even known by Syrian dictator Bashir Assad is less clear.)  Syria withdrew from Lebanon, but doing so removed a check on the actions of the Lebanese Shiite militia/social movement/political party Hezbollah.  Sure enough, with a year and a half Hezbollah was provoking Israel, with the result a several week war in southern Lebanon which seriously hurt both sides, but from which Hezbollah came out much better in terms of morale with its political base.  

UN resolutions have called on Hezbollah, which fields one of the most formidable fighting forces in the Middle East, to disarm and cede military control in the south to the multi-sectarian Lebanese Army.  The problem is that there isn't any power that can disarm Hezbollah, and it has no interest in forfeiting its military power.  Far from some Cedar Revolution, Lebanon has seemingly intractable problems that are rooted in how power has been apportioned between the sectarian groups since the 1940's.  It was highly unlikely that the withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon was going to usher in a new dawn of Lebanese political harmony, regardless of how badly it's population craves peace and a stable social and economic environment.  

With 18 religious groups recognized by Lebanon's government, the situation is complex, but roughly speaking the main divide in the country is between the Sunni Muslims and Druze on one side and the Shiite Muslims on the other side, with the sizable Christian population split between the two camps.  The Sunni/Druze faction controls the government by a narrow margin, but not by enough to really do much.  All sides agree that army chief Michel Suleiman should be president, but the Shia faction is blocking his appointment.  

Whether urged on by the US and France, or acting on its own initiative, last week the ruling coalition decided to crack down on Hezbollah by going after it's phone grid.  Israel jammed cell phones in the zone where it fought Hezbollah in 2006, but Hezbollah coped by relying on a fiber-optic network it had constructed in the south that's independent of the national grid.  Since 2006 Hezbollah has secretively expanded the fiber-optic network to other areas of the country, to allow it to maintain contact between the south, Beirut, the Mount Lebanon region and the Bekaa valley.  In the event of a war with Israel, the government of Lebanon would not control the phone grid depended on by Hezbollah.  

Syria's role in Lebanon has been hard to discern in the last few years.  Iran is clearly closely tied to Hezbollah, but Jumblatt and others appear to have forged ties with Syria in recent years.  Syria is overwhelmingly Sunni, but the Assad clan that rules the country is Alawite, which is viewed by many Muslims, both Sunni and Shia, as an apostasy.  There are no religious affinities between Assad and Hezbollah, and some have speculated that Hezbollah's control of the airport would be required if it lost the patronage of Syria and had to fly in weapons and and people from Iran.  

Upon discovering that the phone system had been installed at Beirut's airport—the only international airport in the country—the government sacked the pro-Hezbollah head of security at the airport on grounds of spying, and demanded that Hezbollah dismantle the phone grid.  

Hezbollah's response:

Hezbollah and its allies decided on Wednesday and Thursday to make a show of force by quickly taking control of and closing Beirut's airport and seaport, and then shutting down all the Hariri-owned media (television, radio and newspaper). The message was clear: Hezbollah could take over all Beirut at any moment it desired. This was probably an inevitable moment, when Hezbollah felt it had to show the government the real balance of power between them.

Hezbollah also occupied neighborhoods across the city, demonstrating the impotence of the Army in controlling a sectarian dispute.  Hezbollah was able to rally it's forces in part by declaring the government a bunch of stooges of the US and Israel, which its audience was inclined to believe, since the US has been touting the government over each of the Shiite groups for over three years.  

Eventually the Army did intervene, by delaying implementation of the parliamentary decrees removing the head of the airport or dismantling the phone network.  Thus, Hezbollah retains the balance of power in Lebanon, just as Iran appears to have attained the balance of power over the Shiite forces in Iraq.  

Given Lebanon's vexed history since the 1940's, one can't honestly say that even if the US had handled the Lebanese situation more adroitly—by taking a smaller, quieter role instead of using internal Lebanese developments as evidence of the salubrious effects on Arab democracy supposedly brought about by our invasion of Iraq—that Lebanon would have avoided a power struggle between Hezbollah and the Sunni-Druze led government.  

But yet again, the Bush administration bumbled in to a complex situation in the Middle East, and made pronouncements that demonstrated its ignorance and dangerous naivety.  And once again, a situation arises where, because of our invasion and occupation of Iraq, we have no credibility to intervene diplomatically or help bring about a situation that would be both better for the local population and most likely less likely to empower declared adversaries of the United States.  

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Lebanon: Yet Another Foreign Policy Opportunity
Screwed Up by the Bush Administration

In February 2005, shortly after the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, the pro-Syrian Lebanese government resigned.  The day it happened, I warned against any stupid pro-American triumphalism:

But whatever happens next in Lebanon, it would be a mistake to view it only through the lens of some kind of Middle Eastern "people power," a Cedar Revolution as soft and peaceful as the Velvet Revolutions of 1989 or the Orange Revolution of 2004.

Of course that's exactly what happened.  Within hours, what happened in Lebanon was being called the Cedar Revolution, and the Bush administration was taking credit for the change.  Over the next few days, bloviators like David Brooks were claiming that what happened in Lebanon was the result of the US invasion of Iraq.  The problem was that Brooks, like most conservative champions of neocon foreign policy, is a simpleton when it comes to understanding the politics of a complicated place like Lebanon.  One small piece of evidence is that he glowingly quoted Druze leader Walid Jumblat, who just a few months earlier had declared "we are all happy when U.S. soldiers are killed [in Iraq] week in and week out. The killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq is legitimate and obligatory."

Oops.  

"Oops" can describe much of what's happened in Lebanon since early 2005.  To be ever-so-slightly generous to nitwits like Brooks, in 2005-2006 there was some cause for optimism about reform movements in the Arab countries and the Middle East.  As Economist Middle East editor Max Rodenbeck explains in a review of the new book by WaPo reporter Robin Wright, in those years there were signs of reform from Morocco and Egypt through Lebanon, Syria and Iran.  

The Arab spring, [Wright] says frankly, did not endure...Wright is surely correct in ascribing some part of the blame to America's inept and counterproductive Iraq policy. As numerous interlocutors in the region tell her, not only did the debacle promote extremism and further isolate pro-Western liberals, it alerted people to the terrible risks of toppling tyrants. The Iraq adventure, in Wright's view, may have been the biggest American policy failure of all time. It could yet prove to mark the end of an imperial America's influence in the region, much as France and Britain's catastrophic invasion of Egypt in 1956 demolished the colonial powers' standing and dangerously boosted the fortunes of Egypt's reckless leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser. That is surely a sound judgment.

Our debacle in Iraq has also strengthened and emboldened Iran, and there's little we can do about it.  While many of the claims about Iran made by the Bush administration are B.S., it is true that Iran has become more bellicose, and whether or not they are are trying to weaponize their nuclear program, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad apparently wants people to suspect they are.  His standing in Iran has plummeted along with the economy, but he clings to power by stoking nationalism through the nuclear program.

Nobody knows the full extent of Iran's involvement in Iraq, but it clearly has strong ties to all of the Shia factions.  Last month, when Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki unsuccessfully tried to subdue the Shiite militias that control Basra, in particular that of Muqtada al-Sadr, it took the intervention of Iran to work out a compromise, suggesting that Iran dictates the balance of power within Iraq.  

Now we have Lebanon.  Instead of shutting up and quietly working with the new Lebanese government in 2005, Bush and his lackeys chose to claim credit for what was mostly an internal reaction to the assassination of Hariri, almost certainly perpetrated by shady forces from Syria.  (Whether the assassination was approved by, or even known by Syrian dictator Bashir Assad is less clear.)  Syria withdrew from Lebanon, but doing so removed a check on the actions of the Lebanese Shiite militia/social movement/political party Hezbollah.  Sure enough, with a year and a half Hezbollah was provoking Israel, with the result a several week war in southern Lebanon which seriously hurt both sides, but from which Hezbollah came out much better in terms of morale with its political base.  

UN resolutions have called on Hezbollah, which fields one of the most formidable fighting forces in the Middle East, to disarm and cede military control in the south to the multi-sectarian Lebanese Army.  The problem is that there isn't any power that can disarm Hezbollah, and it has no interest in forfeiting its military power.  Far from some Cedar Revolution, Lebanon has seemingly intractable problems that are rooted in how power has been apportioned between the sectarian groups since the 1940's.  It was highly unlikely that the withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon was going to usher in a new dawn of Lebanese political harmony, regardless of how badly its population craves peace and a stable social and economic environment.  

With 18 religious groups recognized by Lebanon's government, the situation is complex, but roughly speaking the main divide in the country is between the Sunni Muslims and Druze on one side and the Shiite Muslims on the other side, with the sizable Christian population split between the two camps.  The Sunni/Druze faction controls the government by a narrow margin, but not by enough to really do much.  All sides agree that army chief Michel Suleiman should be president, but the Shia faction is blocking his appointment.  

Whether urged on by the US and France, or acting on its own initiative, last week the ruling coalition decided to crack down on Hezbollah by going after it's phone grid.  Israel jammed cell phones in the zone where it fought Hezbollah in 2006, but Hezbollah coped by relying on a fiber-optic network it had constructed in the south that's independent of the national grid.  Since 2006 Hezbollah has secretively expanded the fiber-optic network to other areas of the country, to allow it to maintain contact between the south, Beirut, the Mount Lebanon region and the Bekaa valley.  In the event of a war with Israel, the government of Lebanon would not control the phone grid depended on by Hezbollah.  

Syria's role in Lebanon has been hard to discern in the last few years.  Iran is clearly closely tied to Hezbollah, but Jumblatt and others appear to have forged ties with Syria in recent years.  Syria is overwhelmingly Sunni, but the Assad clan that rules the country is Alawite, which is viewed by many Muslims, both Sunni and Shia, as an apostasy.  There are no religious affinities between Assad and Hezbollah, and some have speculated that Hezbollah's control of the airport would be required if it lost the patronage of Syria and had to fly in weapons and and people from Iran.  

Upon discovering that the phone system had been installed at Beirut's airport—the only international airport in the country—the government sacked the pro-Hezbollah head of security at the airport on grounds of spying, and demanded that Hezbollah dismantle the phone grid.  

Hezbollah's response:

Hezbollah and its allies decided on Wednesday and Thursday to make a show of force by quickly taking control of and closing Beirut's airport and seaport, and then shutting down all the Hariri-owned media (television, radio and newspaper). The message was clear: Hezbollah could take over all Beirut at any moment it desired. This was probably an inevitable moment, when Hezbollah felt it had to show the government the real balance of power between them.

Hezbollah also occupied neighborhoods across the city, demonstrating the impotence of the Army in controlling a sectarian dispute.  Hezbollah was able to rally it's forces in part by declaring the government a bunch of stooges of the US and Israel, which its audience was inclined to believe, since the US has been touting the government over each of the Shiite groups for over three years.  

Eventually the Army did intervene, by delaying implementation of the parliamentary decrees removing the head of the airport or dismantling the phone network.  Thus, Hezbollah retains the balance of power in Lebanon, just as Iran appears to have attained the balance of power over the Shiite forces in Iraq.  

Given Lebanon's vexed history since the 1940's, one can't honestly say that even if the US had handled the Lebanese situation more adroitly—by taking a smaller, quieter role instead of using internal Lebanese developments as evidence of the salubrious effects on Arab democracy supposedly brought about by our invasion of Iraq—that Lebanon would have avoided a power struggle between Hezbollah and the Sunni-Druze led government.  

But yet again, the Bush administration bumbled in to a complex situation in the Middle East, and made pronouncements that demonstrated its ignorance and dangerous naivety.  And once again, a situation arises where, because of our invasion and occupation of Iraq, we have no credibility to intervene diplomatically or help bring about a situation that would be both better for the local population and most likely less likely to empower declared adversaries of the United States.  

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The Mothers Day Project Mid-Day Open Thread

The Mother’s Day Project:Although the Mother?s Day Project began a little over a year ago, I think of Mother?s Day as an anniversary marker for the journey that began in the spring of 2007.It was a simple idea. We would, all of us, join together to honor the mothers, daughters, wives and lovers - [...]

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ead/

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Update 08 Not in thirty years

[...]

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Coming Together: A Mini Manifesto

Now that even the corporatist beltway elite lackey media has slowly come to recognize the inevitability of the political version of the unbeatable New England Patriots losing the big one it's time to put the intramural pissing matches aside and to start reorganizing for a shot at the true target. The Hillary Rodham-Clinton campaign now faces fourth and thirty-two, has the ball at it's own twenty yard line, is down by eight and there are sixteen seconds left in the Super Bowl. It's not exactly officially in the books yet but the fat lady is humming and the opposing team has just administered the traditional Gatorade baptism to their head coach on the sidelines.

Outside of a certain demographic Rodham-Clinton's numbers were always juiced by the knuckle dragging hordes of extremist propaganda pimp Russian Limbaugh and his "Operation Chaos" and that the Hillemmings would accept this as help to crown their queen was a complete moral sellout based on selfishness and some bizarre sense of entitlement. It was the finger on the scale that has allowed the corporatist warmonger Clinton to continue this futile quest for the Holy Grail that long ago should have been over. Now it's time to drive the final stake through the heart, chop off Medusa's head, stuff her mouth with garlic and send her seething and entitled ass to the Senate to replace that pathetic little eunuch Harry 'Casper Milquetoast' Reid as Majority Leader with an attitude and one big hell of an axe to grind.

We should spare no fury and give no quarter in pursuing the ultimate task at hand that is the complete and total eradication of the extreme fascist right as a functional political entity in America. If the creeping fascism cannot be halted or at least slowed significantly then nothing else is really going to matter. It's that simple. This is a historic time and the ever more rapid collapse of the extreme right-wing model of friendly fascism built meticulously and at great expense since WW II and implemented by intelligence agencies plundering abroad and enslaving at home in the interests of the American elite and big business. The model of American extreme capitalism (I do not use the term 'free market' because what exists is not free in any sense of the word, it is only crony capitalism and socialism for the rich) is as predicted by so many who were simply decried as commies and persecuted by the state falling apart, it has now become cannibalistic and is unsustainable. The relentless ideology behind the drive for perpetual economic growth, a zero sum game with few winners and many suckers toiling to build temples for Pharaoh is a flawed premise at the very basic levels. The things that perpetually grow are cancers and viruses and at this stage it is obvious to all but the hucksters and those in denial that American capitalism has gone cancerous and has metastasized to financial markets throughout the world.

The financial sector has been gamed to the point of collapse by the economic chicanery of the same sort of scoundrels who George Washington once referred to as a "squadron of corrupt paper dealers" and Frankin D. Roosevelt called out the same unscrupulous bandits as "economic royalists". We stand on the verge of a complete systemic collapse, a grand implosion of historic proportions and a devastating wave of misery and poverty that is only gaining strength as it roars towards landfall, it will be the tsunami of the chickens coming home to roost and my friends it is coming very soon. To quote one who I personally find to be detestable on every level and who bears a large share of the responsibility for the hellstorm of woe that is currently battering the homeland, the late and lamentable Milton Friedman:

"Only a crisis -- actual or perceived -- produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable."

Well, we have our crisis right now and with the ideas of the extreme fascist right being exposed as the grand fraud that they have always been we also have an opportunity to produce real change. It is going to take work though and it is going to take no small degree of some swallowing of pride in the pursuit of the larger goal of total reform. As the man Bob Dylan once sang "Stop all this weeping, swallow your pride, you will not die, it's not poison". It is crucial that this opportunity be seized upon at this moment, it is not rhetoric to say that we now stand at the crossroads and which route we choose will either lead to our salvation or will force not only those currently alive but those as yet unborn to suffer terrible consequences. This is the time that we all have been waiting for, time to participate in something that truly matters on as large a scale as could possibly be imagined.

The religious wrong hasn't been the same since Jerry Falwell went to his glorious reward and has now been roasting on a spit in the bowels of Hades for a year now. The newest figurehead, Pastor John Hagee is to put it quite simply, a dangerous fucking lunatic whose bastard alliance with hard core Zionist war freaks pretty much has allowed him to be given a free pass as John McCain's spiritual leader while Reverend Wright was unfairly vilified and used as a bludgeon on Barack Obama. The free ride needs to end and Hagee and his minions need to be exposed as the terrifying danger that they truly are, how any overstuffed sack of shit tent preacher who suddenly hit it big can run such a pro-Israel con job when the biblical prophecy that he shills for when taken to it's ultimate end will kill more Jews than Hitler needs to be exposed as the vile Anti-Semite that he is. His tirades against Catholics should also be brought out into the open in order to expose the latest version of Father Coughlin.

Mr. Obama has energized young voters to go forth with a positive vision and with this as a given a right-wing machine is going to be sent out like a rolling ball of butcher knives, the negativity, slander, fear mongering and intimidation this fall is going to be like nothing ever seen before. As veterans of this sort of thing it is going to be up to us who blog, work as activists and are battle hardened to counter whatever the bastards in the establishment throw out. In a rare concept for those on the left it is imperative that we be the aggressors this time because at times you have to pick a fight in order to win it. We need to seize the initiative once and for all because the truth is on our side. The electorate is being squeezed by the war pimps, the globalists and the Wall Street looters and we cannot allow the demagogues of the fascist right to continue to win using their standard tactics of fear, smear and divide and conquer. With current trends as they are gas prices will be above $5.00 a gallon come November, the economy will be on the brink of another depression as prime mortgage and credit card defaults continue to soar despite the best efforts of the Plunge Protection Team and The Fed to run their own big con General Petraeus style propaganda surge and food prices will be at record highs. As the late great Saul Alinsky once said now is the time to "rub raw the sores of discontent" and to take advantage of growing unrest to mount a challenge against the entire fascist system of the corporate police state.

1: Be prepared to re-fight the Vietnam War - It is a certainty that the McCain campaign is going to do everything to make this a fight against Hanoi Jane and to rip off the scabs of Nam in order to do so. DO NOT cede any ground to McCain and the right on this one, he is first and foremost a WAR CRIMINAL and a self admitted one at that. Real heroes don't drop bombs and incendiary devices on civilians from the relative safety of the air. As futile and illegal as wars like Vietnam and Iraq are (which is another topic altogether) any one who wants to claim to be a war hero should have to look at the consequences of his kills and absolutely nobody who kills civilians should ever be allowed to hide behind the war hero shield as some sort of immunity talisman for his murderous actions. The right savagely and mercilessly swift boated John Kerry for his military service in 2004 and Mr. McCain should be treated equally, by affording him any respect for his cowardly actions during Vietnam is ceding the battle before the first shots have been fired.

2: Wage guerilla warfare against the pocket media - Infiltrating staged media events and then engaging in organized protest, challenging political figures with facts during their appearances, calling into talk shows and speaking the truth are all going to be necessary in order to get a message out that is not filtered through the corporate media. While I am not agreeing with the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement and do not wish to address those issues in this post they have been a successful nemesis to the neocons. Their tactics and their fervor in their activism should be an example to all who wish to bring about change.

3: Be Vigilant - Always be watchful, those who seek to maintain their places within the existing failed system will use any form of chicanery and trickery to do so.

4: Be ahead of the game, think and anticipate - Study the enemy's tactics and you stay if not one step ahead be ready to counter them when the time comes.

5: Focus on Economic issues - Hit economics hard because this is the one area where people are severely hurting right now. The Democratic party sold out to the corporatist DLC long ago and in doing so ceded this most valuable tool that transcends ordinary paradigms in order to secure their own place at the feeding trough. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to always turn the topic back to economics and blame the corporations, the energy cartels, big pharma, agribusiness and Wall Street for every bit of misery that the ordinary working American is currently experiencing. Populism is NOT a dirty word and it needs to be used as a tactic in this war against the establishment.

6: Make strategic alliances - The only way that the oligarchy run amok can be reigned in is by working together with those who have different ideologies but are also antiwar, pro American and want to see above else the restoration of civil liberties and a massive rollback of the police state. Progressives and liberals may think that libertarians and Ron Paul folks are all out there prospecting for fool's gold in Galt's Gulch but they are fighting against the same authoritarian octopus. Philosophical differences need to be set aside in order to unify under a common goal and then attack from different directions. There are a large amount of principled conservatives who are aghast at what the neocons, the theocons and the globalists have done to the Republican party and there could be nothing better than to see it recaptured by pragmatists, non-interventionists and anti-big government forces. Big government is a menace to all, we can see that now with the unchecked power of the Bush regime and to quote conservative icon Barry Goldwater: "A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away". I think that we ALL can truly appreciate that now after the wanton abuses of power of the Bush-Cheney junta and now the great beast needs to be reigned in and a traditional system of checks and balances restored.

7: Prevent election theft- Always remember that the corporations still control the machines. Be watchful and aware of voter suppression, racial discrimination, caging lists, goons stationed at precincts to challenge voters and report any suspicious activity to both local officials as well as get the information to a blog or organization that will make it public.

8: Be a counterforce to war machine propaganda- Prepare to flood local newspapers with editorials, letters, hit the message boards, blogswarm and engage the enemy at every opportunity.

9: Do not let race be used as a political tool- With Barack Hussein Obama being both black and having a Muslim sounding middle name look forward to the vilest type of racist slurs and terrorist insinuations yet. Denounce these tactics and hold those accountable for them through public shaming.

10: Denude the false idols- The Clintons are self-serving corporatist hacks, John Wayne was a draft dodging armchair patriot whose real name was Marion and who stayed in Hollywood and made movies while his peers were taking fire in World War II and Ronald Reagan was a dude ranch cowboy and B movie actor who sole out his fellow Hollywood associates during the McCarthy years and was recruited by the organized fascist right (with the Powell Memorandum as a game plan) to play the ultimate role of his life and then have the think tanks rewrite history to turn him into an American icon, a new father figure and the personification of all that was American. They were of course lies and Reagan needs to be remembered for his unspoken declaration of total war against the middle class.

11: Reclaim Our History- What Americans to believe to be our history is intentionally devoid of any honest examination of the sins of empire, we must dispose of the official state version that has been used to indoctrinate and suppress (largely through omission) the real truths of a country that is not as exceptionalist and well intentioned as we have all been led to believe: Howard Zinn has a great new educational tool out right now that is as easy to read as it is for novices to interpret. A People's History of American Empire is in graphic novel format, is cheap and easy to read. I would strongly recommend it to everybody especially to teach others who ordinarily do not have the time or patience for normal reading.

Our history has been scrubbed and sanitized by the economic royalists and the fascists to eliminate any mention of true heroes of the working class and of a real democratic society. The vast majority of those compliant little consumers that have for too long been churned out by a starved for funds and battered into submission school public school system that has been turned into a nationwide network of drone factories (one of the only things that we mass produce in America anymore) have never heard of those who sacrificed for those things that came to be taken to granted to the point where they are now being taken away.Where is there any mention given of Eugene Debs or of Joe Hill or of Saul Alinsky or of Mother Jones? What about General Smedley D . Butler who called out the blood barters with his tract War Is A Racket and his exposure of the Business Plot where wealthy traitors schemed about a coup against FDR? What is taught about Huey Long? I mean other than the widely accepted narrative of a power mad, corrupt tyrant instead of the man who scared the living shit out of the elitist establishment with his "Share Our Wealth" program that made the New Deal look like Reaganomics. Long stood up to entrenched interests and the moral rottenness of looter capitalism, he built roads, bridges, hospitals and schools as well as provided free textbooks and he even dared to take on the almighty Rockefellers and Standard Oil. Long railed against institutionalized corruption with his "every man a king" type of populism and he was making dangerous noises about running for president. The ending of the Huey Long story is all too predictable and familiar: he was of course assassinated.

And what of Hellen Keller? The little girl who overcame blindness and deafness and whose struggles with her handicaps are taught to American children as an example of how to overcome adversity as they are indoctrinated to the lies of a society that demands sacrifice and backbreaking work from the lesser classes as unquestioning slaves to the whims of the modern pharaohs on Wall Street. She has been sanitized, turned into a Horatio Alger version of the little engine that could while her later life as a social activist goes ignored. Hellen Keller would grow up to be a champion of women's suffrage, she would join the Industrial Workers of the World and to help to found the American Civil Liberties Union. She was a socialist who dared to speak out against the power base and their exploitation and for that sin her life has been through revisionist history turned into a perverse fairy tale and yet another myth to bolster the system that would make slaves of us all. The little engine that could was very quickly uncoupled from the rest of the train once the narrative switched tracks from one of inspirational value to one of social justice.

And there are others, there are many others who risked all to end child labor, to fight for equality and the forty-hour work week and unemployment protection and workers rights, workplace safety and a right to basic human decency but they go largely unheard of. It's time to revise history to be honest, inclusive and not only what the oligarchy chooses to dictate and indoctrinate to the population. This is of the ultimate importance for a people whose history is stolen from them have no future.

12: Debunk and discredit the charlatans- Major mouthpieces like Limbaugh can no longer be allowed to portray themselves as paragons of virtue and family values. Chickenhawks like William Kristol cannot be allowed to be given credibility as war cheerleaders, cynical politicians cannot be allowed to invoke and trash the good name of Jesus Christ while throwing open the temple doors to the moneychangers and lazy, celebrity obsessed scandal mongers cannot be allowed to masquerade as serious journalists.

13: Manage Language- Turn the tables and make the word "conservative" into as dirty a pejorative that the think tankers and their opinion managers have turned "liberal" into. With the country in ruins it is imperative that the blame be placed exactly where it belongs - with the hard right conservatives and especially the Republicans. Time to dip the elephant in shit and trot it out to lead the parade of clowns who have gotten us into this giant mess in the first place.

14 : Don't lose sight of the Big Picture- It is imperative to focus on the big picture this time, there will be gay marriage amendments, abortion amendments and other culture war stink bait on ballots across the country and to get mired in debates on this garbage is a waste of time. Let's face it, this is fighting the last war and there is no way that war will ever be won with narrow minded one issue voters and the get out the vote machine that has been built to exploit gullible wedge issue voters who dutifully goosestep from their bund meetings down to the local polling place to vote against their own economic self interests. These people can never be convinced to give an inch on the loser issues of abortion rights and gay rights so a better strategy would be to avoid those topics altogether, deprive them of their energy and to attempt to turn the focus to economics. Everybody is hurting now and it's only going to be worse come election season. Well meaning but simple-minded folks are justifiably bitter but the bitterness needs to be focused where it should be and that is against the globalists, the corporatists and the warmongers. These people can't get beyond the most general and emotional of concepts so stick with how they are being raped every time they gas up or visit the grocery store.

15- Reject the politics of fear: American fascism uses fear as fuel, watch for an escalation in neocon rhetoric, bogus terror threats, Osama bin Laden videos, heightened states of alert and those waving the bloody flag with cries for more war.

16: Reclaim Patriotism- For too long the right has been allowed to define what is patriotic and then wrap themselves in the flag while waging war against everything that America is supposed to stand for. Slapping a little metal flag pin on one's chest is not patriotic and displaying a magnetic yellow ribbon sticker does not mean that one supports the troops. There has been a total failure in standing up to the flag pin fascists and this needs to be stopped and those wearing the flag pins need to have their patriotism challenged by not standing up for the Constitution instead. Time to take back the flag!

Granted, it is one hell of a big rock to roll and the hill is a steep one but there is a desire for real and lasting change in the air right now and it needs to be seized upon, this is the opening of the window of opportunity. With the financial system in crisis, the big boys being bailed out while the rest of the country is basically being told to go to hell and the average family feeling the pain in a very real way that makes them suddenly open to some suggestions on how to do things differently as well as who to blame for their being shafted now is a time like no other to move swiftly and together. We need to cast off the yoke of the existing sham system, reject the phony paradigms, stop fighting each other and form up to transverse the beach and to storm the castle.

I will close now with a quote from Victor Hugo "Nothing else in the world... not all the armies... is so powerful as an idea whose time has come."

Time has come, now how do we respond?

Read The Full Article:
http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=21777

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Maureen Dowd: "Obama will never be at his best
around Hillary"

Sometimes Maureen Dowd's columns are more snark than substance. Today isn't one of them. She discusses the possibility of Hillary as vice president and raises a number of interesting points.

1) Is America read for that much change - i.e., a black man and a woman?

2) Bill. He's going to eclipse Obama every time he shows his face. Do we really need the press ignoring the president and running over to the vice president's spouse?

3) Hillary makes Obama less Obama. I'm going to quote Dowd on this one:

Hillary has a strange, unnerving effect on Obama, and whenever he is around her, he?s unable to do his best....

In the last few days, as Hillary has deflated and Obama and the Democrats have dashed for daylight, he has been more like his old self, flashing his all-is-right-with-the-world smile on the cover of Time, joshing and charming Democrats and Republicans as he wooed superdelegates on the House floor, taking on James Carville for insulting his manhood....

Obama will never be at his best around Hillary; she drains him of his magical powers....

She's right. Hillary is like that lover your friends always hate because they bring out the worst in you.

4) There's a fourth reason to dump Hillary, one that Dowd doesn't mention. How can you be for "change" and then put the name "Clinton" on your ticket. We've had a Bush or a Clinton on the ticket since 1981. Thirty years is enough.

5) And finally, one more point Dodd doesn't raise. Do Obama really want to take another four years of this woman? Do we?

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Americablog/~3/288361172/maureen-dowd-obama-will-n
ever-be-at-his.html

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RE: Definition of "Whitosphere" at Wikipedia
Protologism Section

I have posted the following entry for "whitosphere" at the Wikipedia's Protologism (new words) section. Since there are all sorts of new and strange words in this section, I see no legitimate reason that the term "whitosphere" should be removed from this section by editors there.

Anyone can participate in editing this section, just by starting an account that requires only the selection of a user-name, password, and the submission of a working e-mail address.

If anyone wants to do a bit of research to buttress the claims made in the new Wikipedia Protologisms entry for "whitosphere", the section could use a couple of citations documenting

• the segregation of American neighborhoods,
• the percentage of Blacks participating as delegates at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.
• Some highly demonstrative examples of how the word has been used at AfroSpear and afrosphere blogs.
  

* * * * *

• whitosphere: (also spelled "whiteosphere" at times) is the part of the blogosphere that is populated primarily or exclusively by white people. The term was coined by Francis L. Holland, Esq. at MyDD on or about February 9, 2007, in the context of a heated debate between white and Black bloggers over the documented lack of Black participation at white Democratic Party participants' blogs. The term subsequently was adopted by hundreds of Black bloggers and their readers as a concise and poignant way to describe a complex and hotly debated political phenomenon: the de facto segregation of whites and Blacks online.

  For example, in an article for the Washington Post staff-writer Jose Antonio Vargas quoted the organizer of the 2007 YearlyKos national bloggers' conference as saying, "It's mostly white. More male than female . . . It's not very diverse."

  Vargas further reported:

  Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, who is part Latina, attended a panel on Friday called "The Changing Dynamics of Diversity in Progressive Politics," organized by Cheryl Contee, an African American woman. Ancona works for Vote Hope, a California-based activist group, and said one reason she came to Yearly Kos was to get an answer to this question: "Why is the blogosphere, which is supposed to be more democratic, reinforcing the same white male power structure that exists?" A Diversity of Opinion, if Not Opinionators, Jose Antonio Vargas, Washington Post, August 6, 2007.

Explaining the sociological and political premises underlying the term "whitosphere," Francis L. Holland, Esq. said in an article entitled, "Is the term 'Whitosphere' a Fair Descriptor for the White Blogosphere?":

The term "white neighborhood" is very commonly used in America to describe a neighborhood that is predominantly or overhwhelmingly white. The prevalence of this term in our language is a reflection of the degree to which Blacks and whites have historically lived, and continue to live, in segregated neighborhoods in America, due historically to legal, structural, customary and financial restrictions placed by whites on where Blacks and other minorities could go and where we could live. researchnews.osu.edu/archive

Because the term "white neighborhood" describes where whites live, and the "blogosphere" is the part of the World Wide Web that is characterized by its resident blog population, therefore the term "whitosphere" is used to denote that part of the blogosphere that is characterized by the fact that it is predominantly or almost exclusively populated by whites.

The term "whitosphere" reflects the absence of Blacks at white blogs, an absence particularly striking relative to the prominence of Blacks in appropriate reference populations, e.g. Democratic Party primaries and Democratic Party general election voters. For example, the whitosphere blog MyDD has 1.5% - 1.7% Black participants while DailyKos has as few as 4.5% Blacks. See MyDD Demographic Survey and the article entitled, "What is Your Race & Ethnicity - Poll - (Demographic Tuesdays)" at DailyKos.

Meanwhile the Democratic Party is twenty percent Black, and twenty percent of the delegates at the Democratic National Convention are Black. "Is the term 'Whitosphere' a Fair Descriptor for the White Blogosphere?", Francis L. Holland, MyDD, February 9, 2007.

Read The Full Article:
http://francislholland.blogspot.com/2008/05/re-definition-of-whitosphere-at.html

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FDL Book Salon Welcomes Jeffrey Feldman: Outright
Barbarous

The American right wing faces a serious public relations problem, which is that their ideas, honestly presented, would largely fail to capture enough people?s enthusiasm to win elections. It?s a built-in downside when your philosophy elevates the[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2008/05/11/fdl-book-salon-welcomes-jeffrey-feldman-outrigh
t-barbarous/

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Iraq Papers Mon: Sadr at a Croassroad

A sudden ceasefire agreement that was reached - on Saturday - between the Maliki government and the Sadrist Current, and was immediately followed by "the Lion's Roar," the codename of a new government campaign to take over Mosul.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/5807

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