We are individuals and we champion the rights of individuals. We fight corporatocracy, the neo-liberal agenda, consumerism, manipulative "cultural" outlets, corporate media and entertainews. We are indigenous, gay, impoverished, unrepresented, real beings mistaken for consumers and reduced to target groups, the underclass of the world and the lost middle class of America.
We are The People and this is guerilla democracy.
We are culture jammers: you will find us shouting through the cracks in the communicative thresholds of those who seek to put the wrongs of power over the rights of individuals; who put self-service over social betterment. Protest fences will not cage our message. The corporate media will not silence our voices. Advertisements will not be the only graffiti in our neighborhoods. We reach you through the websites, billboards and airwaves of those we identify as the problem. We are here.
We are The People and this is guerilla democracy.
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 "Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder and it is the working class who fights all the battles, the working class who makes the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely sheds their blood and furnishes their corpses, and it is they who have never yet had a voice - in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. They are continually talking about their patriotic duty. It is not their duty but your patriotic duty that they are concerned about. There is a decided difference. Their patriotic duty never takes them to the firing line or chucks them into the trenches."
-- Eugene V. Debs
Published on Thursday, October 23, 2008 by TruthDig.com
by Amy Goodman
Change is at hand. Barring a repeat of the protracted Florida recount of 2000, there will be a victor soon in the U.S. presidential election.
With the economic crisis, change is something in your pocket that you want to hold on to.
The campaigns are not dealing in small change, though. Their coffers, particularly the Democrats', are swelling with larger and larger bundles of cash, ensuring that politicians will remain beholden to special interests and wealthy donors. Don't hold your breath waiting for the extended television discussions of this, because it's the broadcasters who profit the most.
Barack Obama broke records with recently announced September fundraising levels that exceeded all predictions, bringing in $150 million. Since Obama opted out of the public financing system, he can spend freely from his war chest right up to the election. John McCain accepted public financing and has limits imposed on his campaign, with $84.1 million in public money to spend in the general election. McCain is now outspent on advertising by the Obama camp by 4-to-1.
The Obama campaign has "flooded the zone" with advertising. It has a full-time "Obama Channel" on Dish Network. Ads have been inserted into video games like "Guitar Hero." The campaign has bought a full 30 minutes of prime-time airtime on NBC, CBS and Fox, six days before the election. Fox moved the start time of the World Series to accommodate the ad buy.
Obama's campaign is credited with receiving an unprecedented number of small donations from among its historic 3.1 million donors. Campaign manager David Plouffe says the campaign's average donation is under $100. A Washington Post analysis of Federal Election Commission data shows, though, that only a quarter of this vast number of donors fall into the "small" category (under $200), which is a smaller percentage than that achieved by George Bush in his 2004 run.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that tracks campaign contributions, the funds raised in presidential campaigns has skyrocketed. The 1976 campaign, the first campaign that included public financing, saw a total of $171 million raised (about $570 million, adjusted for inflation). The current campaign weighs in at close to $1.6 billion, and the group expects the total to reach $2.4 billion. While donations to candidates are supposed to be limited to $2,300 for the general election (an additional $2,300 is allowed for the primary season, per candidate), huge loopholes exist. Most notable are the "joint fundraising committees," in which the presidential candidate partners with his party to form a fundraising organization. McCain and the Republican National Committee's is called McCain Victory 2008 and can receive donations as high as $70,000, which then get distributed to the presidential campaign, the national party and to key state parties. Obama and the Democratic National Committee created the Obama Victory Fund, to which donors could give $28,500. As The Washington Post just reported, the Democrats found that sum too limiting, so they created the Committee for Change, which allows donors to give up to $65,500. That's a helluva lot of change.
Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, told me, "What is wrong with this is, after this election, the people have bundled and put together big pots of money are going to come back to whoever is elected, and they will be looking for access and influence."
The $2-billion presidential race also guarantees vast profits for the broadcasters, the national networks and the local television stations. Hundreds of television stations are using the public airwaves, imposing themselves between the candidates and the public.
Access to the public airwaves for political candidates should be free. Says Buzenberg: "Every local television station I have been to, I say, ‘How do you do in election years?' They say, ‘We buy new cameras, new sets.' It is a huge benefit to them. The commercial broadcasters are cleaning up this year like never before, and you'll never hear them questioning the system that allows so much money to come back to them."
Is public financing of campaigns dead? A year ago, Sen. Obama said, "I have been a longtime advocate for public financing of campaigns combined with free television and radio time as a way to reduce the influence of moneyed special interests." Regardless of who the winner is, the next president will enter the White House with a long list of major donors to thank.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
© 2008 Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!" a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America. She has been awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the "Alternative Nobel" prize, and will receive the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.
Published on Monday, October 6, 2008 by TruthDig.com
by Chris Hedges
The passing of the $850-billion bailout pulled the plug on the New Deal. The Great Society is now gasping for air, mortally wounded, coughing up blood. It will not recover. It was murdered by the Democratic Party.
We are on our own. And don't expect any help from Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who lobbied hard for the bill and voted for it. Ignore their rhetoric. Look coldly at the ballots they cast against us. We, as citizens, have only a handful of representatives left in Washington, most of whom were left sputtering in rage and frustration on the House floor. The sad irony is that some of them were Republican.
"This was the largest single act of class warfare in the modern history of this country," Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who led the fight in the House against the bailout, told me by phone from Cleveland. "It is a direct attack on the American people's ability to be able to stabilize their homes and their neighborhoods. This single vote will define the careers of everyone. We are back to taxation without representation, to markets that are openly rigged."
"We buried the New Deal," he said of the vote. "Instead of Democrats going back to classic New Deal economics where we prime the pump of the economy and start money circulating among the population through saving homes, creating jobs and building a new infrastructure, our leaders chose to accelerate the wealth of the nation upwards. They did so in a way that was destructive of free-market principles. They ripped away all the familiar moorings. We are in an uncharted sea where the traditional roles of the political parties are being switched. The Democrats have unfortunately become so enamored and beholden to Wall Street that we are not functioning to defend the economic interest of the broad base of the American people. It was up to the Republicans to protect not just a so-called free market but the American taxpayer and attempt to block this. This is an outrage. This was democracy's Black Friday."
Obama arrived on the Senate floor Brutus-like to thrust a knife into the back of the working and middle class. He lobbied hard for the bill. He did so, according to some who met with him on Capitol Hill, because he feared that if he opposed the bailout and it triggered a market collapse it could cost him the election. Better to placate the thieves on Wall Street than stand up for the masses of enraged and swindled citizens.
Obama's betrayal is the betrayal of the Democratic Party. The Democrats gave us the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which ripped down the firewalls that were put in place by the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act. The 1933 act, designed to prevent the kind of meltdown we are now experiencing, established the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC). It set in place banking reforms to stop speculators from hijacking the financial system. With Glass-Steagall demolished, and the passage of NAFTA, the Democrats, led by Bill Clinton, tumbled gleefully into bed with corporations and Wall Street speculators. They achieved fundraising parity with the Republicans. They used institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a welfare gravy train. The Democrats, including Obama, are as compromised as the Republicans.
Obama's voting record in the Senate is in line with the corrupt Democratic mainstream, including Biden, who works on behalf of corporations and especially the credit card industry. Obama knows where power lies in the United States. It is not with the citizens, who with ratios of 100 to 1 pleaded with their representatives in Washington not to loot the national treasury to bail out Wall Street investment firms. Power lies with the corporations. These corporations, not us, pick who runs for president. You cannot be a candidate without their blessing and money. These corporations, including the Commission on Presidential Debates, a private corporation, determine who gets to speak and what issues candidates can or cannot challenge, from universal, not-for-profit, single-payer health care to Wall Street bailouts to NAFTA. If you do not follow the corporate script you become as marginal and invisible as Ralph Nader or Bob Barr or Cynthia McKinney.
Obama has always served his corporate masters. He opposed Rep. John Murtha's call for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and supported continued funding for the war. He voted in July 2005 to reauthorize the Patriot Act. He did not support an amendment that was part of a bankruptcy bill that would have capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. He opposed a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872, which allows mineral companies to rape federal land for profit. He did not back the single-payer health care bill HR 676, sponsored by Kucinich and John Conyers. He advocates the death penalty and nuclear power. He backed the class-action "reform" bill-the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA)-that was part of a large lobbying effort by financial firms, which make up Obama's second-biggest single bloc of donors. CAFA would effectively shut down state courts as a venue to hear most class-action lawsuits. Workers, under CAFA, would no longer have redress in many of the courts where these cases have a chance of defying powerful corporations. CAFA moves these cases into corporate-friendly federal courts dominated by Republican judges.
Obama's support for the bailout, however, is his most egregious betrayal. He had a brief, shining moment to prove he could lead, to capitalize on a popular revolt that cut across the political spectrum. He never attempted to address or mobilize the aspirations and passions of the vast majority of Americans. He was as craven, servile and cowardly as the party he represents. He returned to the campaign trail after Friday's vote as a slick and polished sales representative for our corporate state, telling us to calm down and accept the inevitable.
"Some of the most powerful speeches against this were given by members of the Republican Party who are on the political right," Kucinich said. "They did a superb job in poking holes in the underlying assumptions of the bailout. They say what they believe. Give me somebody who says what they believe and I can figure out how to get them to a new place. When people say one thing and do another it is very hard to be able to move a debate."
So let us honor, in our moment of defeat, the handful of elected officials who valiantly defied their party leaderships in the House to stage a remarkable revolt that at first succeeded. Kucinich is one. There were others-Brad Sherman, Marcy Kaptur, Peter DeFazio, Lloyd Doggett and Robert C. "Bobby" Scott. They are about all that is left of the old Democratic Party, the party that once looked out for the poor and the working class. Send them a note of thanks. They deserve it. And if you live in their districts make sure you get to the polls in November. They did not sell you out.
"We had two take-it-or-leave-it propositions and the second one was worse than the first," Kucinich said, referring to the plan that came loaded with pages of tax cuts. "Tax cuts are antithetical to a bailout. We never solved the problem. There were never any hearings on the bill. This premise, that we could prop up the stock market with a $700-billion investment and create some liquidity, was flawed. The problem is that banks do not want to loan to each other. It is not a liquidity problem. Banks are afraid they are going to collapse in short selling. There is a war going on between security firms and banks. Banks are under assault. They are not loaning. The dynamic is driven by the Accounting Standards Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Fed."
The root of the financial crisis, as critics of the bailout plan point out, is that millions of homeowners cannot pay their mortgages. The bailout, as the market decline on Friday following the vote illustrated, does not address the crisis. It solves nothing for the 10 million Americans who face foreclosure. It solves nothing for the growing numbers of unemployed and underemployed. It may well be the equivalent of tossing $850 billion of taxpayer money (including $150 billion in tax cuts) into a furnace and watching passively as our economy continues its plunge.
"We face a perfect financial storm," Kucinich warned. "The elements are the deficit spending for the war of 3 to 4 trillion dollars, the trillion and more tax cuts, the war itself and the lack of serious investment in the country. We are being hollowed out. We are going to see more unemployment and more people losing their homes. With $700 billion we could have made a real investment in the country, in jobs, in infrastructure and in homes. Instead, we got robbed."
Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C.
Chris Hedges is a leading writer on the subjects of religion, war and empire. His critically acclaimed books, such as "American Fascists," can be found here. Hedges' Truthdig column appears every Monday.
The march on Wall Street was great! Participation! Lots to say, but for now:
Wall Street Bull: 7000 pounds of bronze = 100 million dollars per pound, at bail out rates. We say, SELL!
Grab the bull by its bronzed balls—snip snip, don’t let it propagate!
This is beautiful like Jessica Lange. Rent Frances
Keynote Address by Jessica Lange:
Madame President, Board of Trustees, members of the faculty, students, families, friends, I wish to thank you for the privilege of being here today and addressing you on this wonderful occasion.
We gather on this beautiful morning in May to celebrate with you, the graduates. And to celebrate all your achievements, your successes, perhaps certain failures, your courage, your doubts, and your passion. To celebrate your commencement and to mark the beginning of a new chapter in your young lives.
This is a day to feel proud and to congratulate yourselves on your hard work and intelligence. And then, to simultaneously give thanks for the extraordinary opportunity that has been given to you, to acknowledge the professors you've been privileged to study with, to acknowledge the excellent education you have received in this rarified atmosphere, and then, of course, to give thanks to those who enabled you to be here.
The possibilities and the limitations now spread out before you, whatever field you have decided to go into, whether it be the sciences, the arts, the humanities. You have the opportunity to make a better world, to benefit mankind, to ease the suffering of others, to educate, to heal, to entertain, to illuminate. A new beginning, an arising. How glorious for you!
William Blake wrote, "My fingers emit sparks of fire with expectations of my future labours."
When I mentioned to a friend that I was writing a commencement speech, he asked me what my theme was. Now that really threw me. Nobody told me I needed a theme. I'm not great with themes, so I don't have one, per se. I hope you're not disappointed. I do wish I could be funny or profound; however, that's wishful thinking. What I have are some thoughts I'd like to share with you. So if it feels random, it probably is.
I look out at your faces and guess most of you graduates are about 22 years old. I think of the world I was living in at that age. Very different from yours and yet, ominously similar.
At 22, for me, the Vietnam war was in its seventh year. Nixon was employing round-the-clock bombing. We were destroying the infrastructure, the people, and the countryside of Vietnam to save it from the Communists.
History repeats itself.
Today, for you at 22, the Iraq war is in the sixth year. Thousands of American soldiers killed. Tens of thousands wounded. Hundreds of thousands Iraqis dead. The infrastructure and land destroyed to save it from (and this is a movable feast) first, tyranny, and then, terrorists.
Now, some of you may feel this is not the proper occasion to make mention of this. However, I would be remiss in addressing a group of young adults if I were to deliberately ignore the political realities that they are faced with.
We are all citizens of a troubled world, yet it is your generation that carries the weight of the future on your shoulders. We are living in an America that in the last seven and a half years has waged an unnecessary war, established prison camps, condoned torture, employed corporate armies, eliminated the right of habeas corpus, practiced extraordinary rendition, and believe me, this is only a partial list—I had to keep myself in check.
I don't wish to dwell on the misery caused by this administration, but that legacy is being passed down to you. It is a heavy burden to inherit and will require tremendous dedication and hard work to put it right again. You must determine if we are going to measure ourselves on the basis of military might and economic power or if there is perhaps something deeper—more essential in our national character—that needs to be awakened.
We must commit ourselves, wholeheartedly, to the pursuit of peace, equality and justice. This should be the realm of your dreams, the altruistic motivation you go forward with as you are moving towards a world unknown.
I believe you've come of age in a complex and confusing time. The commercial forces surrounding you, the absence of meaningful culture, the constant assault by media, fashion, and entertainment. We have become a society that is placated by gadgets, soothed by consumerism and the empty rewards of upward mobility, the celebration of mediocrity and false celebrity, the obscurations of modern life. We need a sea change.
So, I encourage you not to buy into it. Defy conventions and what is expected of you. Create your own definition of success. Don't let it be judged or guided by someone else's measurement, by someone else's expectations or limitations.
You are our hope. So cherish this time in your life. Remember who you are. Because, right now, you have it all: The power of your imagination, the velocity of your dreams, the language of innocence, and the passion of a beginner. Don't lose it. Don't let it evaporate or get stripped away or worn away. And, as time passes, if you find you've come far away from yourself, allow the breeze of humility to remind you of who you were—who you really are.
Henry James said, "To live is such an art..."
If, from my vantage point now, I could tell my 22-year-old self what I now believe is the most important thing in life (and one I didn't embrace fully at the time because I was young and willful and reckless), it would be—to be present. I would encourage you, with all my heart, just to be present. Be present and open to the moment that is unfolding before you. Because, ultimately, your life is made up of moments. So don't miss them by being lost in the past or anticipating the future. Don't be absent from your own life.
You will find that life is not governed by will or intention. It is ultimately the collection of these sense memories stored in our nerves, built up in our cells. Simple things:
A certain slant of light coming through a window on a winter's afternoon
The sound of spring peepers at twilight
The taste of a strawberry still warm from the sun
Your child's laughter
Your mother's voice
These are the things that shape our lives and settle into the fiber of our beings. Don't take them for granted. Slow down for them, they will take root. And someday 20-30-40 years from now, you may be going about your day when by chance the smell of bread baking or the sound of a mockingbird singing will stop you in your tracks and carry you heart and soul back to yourself. Moments of pure happiness, bliss—if you feel comfortable using that word—come upon you unexpectedly. Don't be too preoccupied to experience them.
We need to slow it all down. I wonder sometimes why we can't just sit and do nothing. Why can't we enjoy idleness—the art of doing nothing. Perhaps it's not in our cultural DNA. We are goal oriented, result driven. Success is measured in how much we can get done.
We seem to have no time for stillness. What is this desperate need we have to fill the emptiness with iPods, Blackberries, cell phones, computers, video games, and television? Perhaps we should ask ourselves, how do we really understand pleasure and happiness? The Tibetan Buddhists have a saying, "Tomorrow or the next life—which comes first, we never know."
So I encourage you—don't keep anticipating that your life is up ahead of you. Don't always be waiting for the next thing. Don't put all your energies into some idea of the future. And with that in mind, you open the door to endless possibilities. Just allow life to take you on an adventure. Be receptive to the winds of change.
I graduated from high school in a worn-out little mill town in Northern Minnesota. Art was going to be my way out. I went to the University on a scholarship and entered the fine arts program. I imagined I would study—get my B.F.A., go on to get an M.F.A. Devote my life to painting. Then the second quarter of my freshman year the drawing class I wanted was filled. At the last minute I signed up for a photography class. My photography instructor introduced me to his friends, young photographers. They were leaving for Spain to make a documentary about flamenco Gypsies in Andalusia. And they asked me, did I want to come along? Yes, I said.
We lived in Europe for that year. When we returned to the States, we settled in New York. The early SoHo days. They had a friend they introduced me to—a modern dancer from the Merce Cunningham Company—who was starting an experimental theater company. She asked me if I wanted to dance with them. I said yes.
A man who had worked with the great mime master, Etienne Decroux, was in New York and came to give us classes. I fell in love with mime and when I learned Decroux still lived and taught in Paris, I decided to go study with him. With $100 in my pocket, I went to look for this old man. I lived in Paris for the next three years taking classes.
I felt I had finally settled in. I never imagined leaving Paris. At the school, I met some actors from New York. On a return visit to the States I ran into one of them. He asked if I wanted to come along to one of his acting classes to see what it was all about. "Yeah, yeah, why not?" I wasn't doing anything. I discovered an immediate passion for acting. It seemed to bring everything together for me. I decided to stay and study.
Suddenly, my life was in New York, working as a waitress and taking acting classes. I imagined it would be a long and steady process. I'd start auditioning, first for showcase theaters, then Off-Off-Broadway—work my way up until, finally, someday, maybe Broadway.
Then, one day, I was asked if I wanted to audition for a film. I would have to fly to Hollywood to do a screen test. It was like something out of an old movie. I didn't want to do film—my life was supposed to be in the theater. But it was winter in New York, I was broke, and my sister was sailing up the coast from Mexico and would be in California—I wanted to go see her. So I said, "yeah, why not? I've got nothing to lose."
They picked me up from my fifth floor walk-up in the Village, flew me to Los Angeles, and took me to MGM to do a screen test. I did it and they gave me the part. And so began a new and totally unexpected chapter in my life.
So, I guess the point I want to make is this—there was no way I could have ever anticipated or planned the twists and turns my life took in those six short years. Sometimes, you just have to let life take you on its glorious journey. And the best time to do it is now—when you're young and full of curiosity and have no fear. Don't constrain yourself with expectations of success. Success will be a by-product of the life you lead. All success is individual, and sometimes, as in my case, completely accidental.
So today you are setting off on your next adventure. You are beginning, and what makes beginnings so thrilling is the unknown. What is vital is this initial confrontation with the unknown and how you decide to embrace it. The world is waiting for you. Explore it through your own humanity. Be guided by your higher self. Don't be dissuaded or discouraged, but do allow yourself to be sidetracked if that's what you want. Get off the fast track, off the grid—go out and wander.
I hope that you will commit yourselves to the pursuit of peace—to the practice of tolerance and compassion. And be good stewards to our precious Earth. I wish you all the courage to have an adventurer's heart and a life lived in the moment.
Thank you.
Written by "The People"
Mainstream corporate media has a vested interest in seeing John Edwards out of the race (USA Today Squeezes Edwards Out of Race). With fewer and larger corporations controlling the media, His pro-individual rights / anti-corporation message threatens their unhealthy existence and challenges their irrational growth as a monoculture. To this end, they have served themselves well while providing a disservice to voters by framing the Democratic primary as a two-way race between Obama and Clinton.
For the most part, the little press coverage John Edwards has received has told us that no matter how appealing he is or how well he did in Iowa or how much his anti-corporate agenda gets to the heart of real radical change in America, he doesn’t have the money to run a national campaign. So, we should do as they are doing and dismiss him…now. After Edwards’ 2nd place finish in Iowa, reporters and pundits almost exclusively covered the 2-way race between the 1st and 3rd place finishers. What coverage the 2nd place finisher got was less than optimistic and future-fantastic rather than factual reporting:
· "Edwards's political career is probably over." New York Times columnist David Brooks (New York Times, 1/4/08)
· “The Democratic contest is a two-person race, dominated by Clinton and Obama. That leaves Edwards, a former North Carolina senator who is a close third, and Richardson, New Mexico's governor who is a distant fourth, waiting for a stumble or a political earthquake to create an opening for them.” Susan Page and Jill Lawrence (USA TODAY 1/7/08)
· "John Edwards I think has nowhere to go now...even with a second-place win, because he has no money." David Gergen (CNN, 1/3/08):
Whether this soothsayer bullshit spews from the uberbelly of a self-serving corporate media or from the reporter’s unappealing giddiness for the sport of political odds making (and when Tim Russert casts his crazy-eyed smile at us in anticipation of a Clinton/Obama knockdown that he likens, “to Ali/Frazier” why even ask why?), a half-conscious reporter might still try to substantiate that fluff with some factual fiber. The reason Edwards does not have the money is because unlike the Clinton and Obama campaigns that are corporately purchased, the Edwards’ campaign is publicly financed.
According to the money-driven, media-marketed state of political campaigning, John Edwards twice screws himself on behalf of individual citizens:
1. “The Free Media” screw—corporate media does not want his message to resonate so roundtables, print media, TV personalities posing as reporters and pundits (what Judy Woodruff calls, “the free media”) do not give him fair coverage. Responding to readers complaints about this, Newsweek cites reasons for not covering Edwards that would be valid for E-entertainment news:
"Edwards has clearly not received as much media coverage as Clinton and Obama..That said, I think his underexposure has less to do with money than with the "historic" nature of Clinton and Obama's candidacies (woman, African-American), as well as the "celebrity" status both had already attained when the race began. The media pays attention to those things…”
2. The free-market media screw—Edwards does not take big money from corporate PACS to finance his national campaign, yet any updated field guide will show that a trait of the future leader of the free world is a monstrous war chest with which to buy media time.
Chris Matthews and the roundtable, play odds makers for us if you will (and you know you will): Obama wins South Carolina and Michigan—Hillary loses and cries a sea of tears—after Barack Obama parts that sea with but a sincere yet audacious ray of hope from his unfurrowed brow and leads the American people into the promised land, can he really get the terrorists into that ravine and drown them, too, or are we asking too much?”
Some media criticism actually has been more telling about Edwards’ progressive agenda. Bless the buttermilky substance in the primitive mind of Glen Beck that simply won’t allow him to dress up his lunacy with clever words: "I listened to [Edwards] last night give a speech, and, I mean, why not just start wearing the Soviet star on your head and the Workers World Party?" (Jan. 9th, 2008 CNN Headline News).
When Chris Matthews said to Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's Mad Money, "You don't like [Edwards] because he's against free trade," Cramer undoubtedly shouted his reply: "He's a tort lawyer for heaven's sake. He's a -- that's the equivalent on Wall Street of -- he's [Russian communist leader Leon] Trotsky.” (Feb 25th Chris Matthews Show)
Progressives please take note: Corporate media is more than ok with Obama. It is Edwards they fear. Of the top 3 candidates it is Edwards who has an agenda that aims to shift the balance of power and influence from corporations back to individuals. Edwards is not Trotsky, not even Evo Morales or Kucinich. And he has flaws. He voted in 2000 for the China Free Trade Deal that hurt workers. He voted for the war (but has forcefully said that vote was wrong and has apologized for it). But he is far more than our best worst option.
Paul Krugman says, "Edwards has been forcing the pace on the progressive agenda.” Krugman criticizes Obama for spreading the conservative’s shock doctrine treatment of social security: “[Obama’s] basically buying into the rhetorical frame of the privatizers. And you don't want to do that. I'm actually quite shocked that he would do that.”
Ralph Nader endorses Edwards and chides Obama for his feel good emptiness.
Michael Moore says, “Edwards is the only one of the three front-runners who has a universal health care plan that will lead to the single-payer kind all other civilized countries have. His plan doesn't go as fast as I would like, but he is the only one who has correctly pointed out that the health insurance companies are the enemy and should not have a seat at the table.”
On Obama, Moore writes, “…since he joined the senate, he has voted for the funds for the war, while at the same time saying we should get out. He says he's for the little guy, but then he votes for a corporate-backed bill to make it harder for the little guy to file a class action suit when his kid swallows lead paint from a Chinese-made toy. In fact, Obama doesn't think Wall Street is a bad place. He wants the insurance companies to help us develop a new health care plan -- the same companies who have created the mess in the first place.”
Chris Matthews and the roundtable: it needs to be asked; say Obama wins big on super Tuesday…cleans up…clear winner, as if he isn’t already. Does he bypass the White House completely and ascend to Heaven in a Chariot of Gold? I say yes: he is unstoppable and divine. Play odds makers for us…
Unfortunately, many progressives have accepted the flawed corporate media frame within which Clinton and Obama are the only 2 viable Democratic candidates.
In a surprisingly opaque political maneuver that has to be called Un-Kucinich, Dennis Kucinich, the most progressive candidate with the greatest empathy for society as a whole, threw his Iowa support to Obama.
Bill Bradley recently threw his support to Obama, a move that runs counter to his thoughtful New York Times editorial, A Party Inverted, in which he advised democrats to stop banking on charisma.
“A party based on charisma has no long-term impact. Think of our last charismatic leader, Bill Clinton. He was president for eight years. He was the first Democrat to be re-elected since Franklin Roosevelt. He was smart, skilled and possessed great energy. But what happened? At the end of his tenure in the most powerful office in the world, there were fewer Democratic governors, fewer Democratic senators, members of Congress and state legislators and a national party that was deep in debt. The president did well. The party did not. Charisma didn't translate into structure.”
Yesterday, John Kerry ditched his former VP nominee (Edwards) and endorsed Obama. Know that Lieutenant John Kerry is aboard, “reporting for duty.” And already Kerry has refined that muddy mob zinger of “change” into a multi syllabic lullaby: “Barack Obama can bring transformation to our country.” Genius. The experience-laden old farts staffing the Clinton campaign may now wheel or scooter themselves into the Obama camp. Soft foods low in salt are now being served.
Planted on the erroneous premise that we have only 2 options—Obama and the unwanted one—progressive voices from Arianna Huffington, Frank Rich, David Corn from Mother Jones, Matt Taibbi, Keith Olbermann, Katrina Vanden Heuvel and Donna Brazile have all swooned in sync over the phenomObamanon and/or labored to defend The Frontrunner Obama from The Inevitable Clinton. Often, they just grab onto the phenomenon of Obama and use it to club Clinton’s campaign to death. There is no lack of coverage from the left or right about whatever evil and desperate thing she and her team of experienced old farts has to say about our fresh face of springtime and sunshine.
Yes, if we put those two in a room then Obama is the most progressive. But why close the door and only allow those two in the room? What would truly be progressive is for them to reject the mainstream media’s limited offering and present Edwards to us as a viable candidate. What would truly be newsworthy is for them to tell us what policies should lead us to any of these frontrunners.
In “Obama on the Rise”, Matt Tiabbi points out that what is clear to those who can sift out Obama’s velveteen words and see beyond his unpolarized radiance that makes us all 20 years younger and our smiles brighter, is that Obama is not all that progressive. But they have all caught a whiff of a fresh spirit. And spirit seems substantial enough to sell nowadays so they’ve opened up shop. It is embarrassingly akin to The National Review waxing about Reagan’s very being. Oh, morning. Oh, America.
I strongly believe that a progressive “spirit” would be healthier for the overall system than the privatized good from a conservative “spirit.” But here is the thing: when our epistemology about our most practical and worldly matters (policy) is based on subjective feelings and ethereal qualities, we move policy into a realm where there is no proof of the things that we say matter. Bullshitters call that realm Paradise because it is not a destination they can always find. Marketers, handlers, and PR masters call it home. If we decide to elect a president based on a spirit instead of clear policies, track record, facts and issues, then elections can be completely run by marketing groups. And marketers are really good at packaging what we don’t need or what is dangerous as something we feel we can’t afford not to buy on credit.  That which tickles our tummies can yield us a Reagan, an Obama, a W., a Kennedy, a Coke, some sneakers, a taco, hamburger or car. “Change?” Hell yes, “I’m lovin’ it” because it really feels like “it’s the real thing;” qualitatively, no less real than Coke.
In this realm, "Impossible Is Nothing" (Adidas) and immaterial bullshit is real enough to sell. Products that are functionally worthless can sell for small fortunes if they are marketed as transitional objects—gateways to more than they and we are. Now that a $15 watch can have mechanisms that perform with the accuracy of $5000 watches, marketing has taught us to buy a brand’s spirit for $4,985. Breitling sponsors balloon races and judging from their website, has an extreme group of precision flying aces ready to unload hell on someone’s ass. By owning a Breitling we can, in a very pathetic way, capture that adventurous spirit of flight for ourselves. Once on our wrist, it is there to lie to us and lie on our behalf to those we meet as we sit at computer workstations, dine out, watch sports and work out with trainers in gyms. Buried under this, not only can we lose sight of what a watch is but also lose track of who we are.
Every big brand sells beyond its worth this way. Any celebrity-endorsed product carries a hyper-inflated cost that we pay in order to possess or be closer to some aspect of that celebrity. Marketing’s firewall redirects our critical faculties away from a product’s actual worth, toward the produced story. It is poetic, pretty transparent and has no place in politics…and beyond. This is the selling of a junk bond communication whose yield pays out in a worthless currency. All of these tiny bubbles that we imagine to be solid matter will eventually burst.
Marketing and salesmanship explain why the face of Obama as a brand logo can make the Libertarian conservative Andrew Sullivan wet his pants with excitement:
“What does [Obama] offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it's central to an effective war strategy..."
Egad, how’s that for an odd bedfellow with a totally different idea about breakfast?
Happily, I report that this trend may be shifting: I don’t think that many people are buying a Huckabee just to get a bit of the leathery spirit and odor that is Chuck Norris. So, there is hope, or at least I have the audacity of hope that together, we will bring about this change. Feel that hit you?
I sincerely seek unity—more than red state blue state unity, I seek a unity of Life—a unity that recognizes and respects what is common between people of all nations and then goes further to recognize that the unit of humanity is a fraction in what is really a oneness of Life—that as Gregory Bateson said, “the basic unit of survival is man plus environment.” So I don’t give a shit about respecting diversity at the level of something as manufactured, inorganic, unhealthy, and diseased as a “partisan divide.” Betterment doesn’t come by finding the cold dead middle ground between extremists on both sides of a carpeted aisle or the 50-yard line between corporate greed and Life’s needs. Betterment comes from identifying, respecting and protecting the very soft and precious stuff that is common in all of us and then fighting those who would weaken, harm, or greedily manipulate this unity for self-service.
So, without abusing the poor girl, usher Hillary Clinton out of the room—don’t let her be the counterweight that leads us to Obama. Put John Edwards in the room with Obama. Between Obama and Edwards, Edwards is an agent of meaningful change and Obama is the fashion of change. (Don’t forget to ask yourself what “change” means in a year in which the incumbent cannot run.) Marketing won’t like me for it, but I am ready to stop allowing needs to be sold to me on spirit and feel—bye Nike, Puma, Obama, et al. I can recognize my own needs and though it takes a little digging, I can gather the facts needed to make informed decisions that will address real needs.
Chris Matthews and the roundtable, play odds makers for us: what are the chances that MSNBC’s own Keith Olbermann, a former Sportscenter host, could introduce Chris Matthews to a real sport so he could feel the inner tickle that gamesmanship and competition brings him during his leisure time and do real journalism at work? Odds?
Oh, and Mike Huckabee is a religious nut job
Published on Monday, December 10, 2007 by TruthDig.com
by Chris Hedges
The refusal to pay my taxes if we go to war with Iran, and the portion of my taxes spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if we do not cut off funding for these two conflicts, is not a means. It is an end. I do not know if my refusal, and the refusal of others, will be effective in halting these wars. All I know is that it is worth doing. The alternative, a complacency bred from cynicism and despair, is worse. Refusing to actively resist injustice and flagrant violations of international law, refusing to attempt to turn back the tide of American tyranny, is surrender. It is the death of hope.
Acts of resistance are moral acts. They begin because people of conscience can no longer tolerate abuse and despotism. They are carried out not because they are effective but because they are right. Those who begin these acts are few in number and dismissed by the cynics who hide their fear behind their worldliness. Resistance is about affirming life in a world awash in death. It is the supreme act of faith, the highest form of spirituality. We remember and honor the names of those who, solitary when they began, defied their age. Henry David Thoreau. Jane Adams. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Mahatma Gandhi. Milovan Djilas. Andrei Sakharov. Martin Luther King. Václav Havel. Nelson Mandela. It is time to join them. They sacrificed their security and comfort, often spent time in jail and in some cases were killed. They understood that to live in the fullest sense of the word, to exist as free and independent human beings, meant to defy authority. When the dissident Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was taken from his cell in a Nazi prison to the gallows, his last words were “this is for me the end, but also the beginning.”
Bonhoeffer, who returned to Germany from Union Theological Seminary in New York to fight the Nazis, knew that most of the citizens in his nation were complicit through their silence in a vast enterprise of death. He affirmed what we all must affirm. It did not mean he avoided death. It did not mean that he, as a distinct individual, survived. But he understood that his resistance, and even his death, was an act of love. He fought for the sanctity of life. He gave, even to those who did not join him, another narrative. His defiance condemned his executioners.
“Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence,” Thoreau wrote in “Civil Disobedience” after going to jail for refusing to pay his taxes during the Mexican-American War. “A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood.”
Those who recognize the injustice of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a war with Iran, who concede that these wars are not only a violation of international law but under the post-Nuremberg laws are defined as criminal wars of aggression, yet do nothing, have forfeited their rights as citizens. By allowing the status quo to go unchallenged they become agents of injustice. To do nothing is to do something. They practice a faux morality. They vent against war on the Internet or among themselves but do not resist. They take refuge in the conception of themselves as moderates. They stand on what they insist is the middle ground without realizing that the middle ground has shifted under us, that the old paradigm of left and right, liberal and conservative, is meaningless in a world where, to quote Immanuel Kant, those in power have embraced “a radical evil.”
“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate,” King wrote from another era as he sat inside a Birmingham jail. “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
This lukewarm acceptance, this failure to act, is the worst form of moral cowardice. It cripples and destroys us. When Dante enters the “city of woes” in the “Inferno” he hears the cries of “those whose lives earned neither honor nor bad fame,” those rejected by heaven and hell, those who dedicated their lives solely to the pursuit of happiness. These are all the “good” people, the ones who never made a fuss, who filled their lives with vain and empty pursuits, harmless no doubt, to amuse themselves, who never took a stand for anything, never risked anything, who went along. They never looked too hard at their lives, never felt the need, never wanted to look.
We face a crisis. Our democratic institutions are being dismantled. We are headed for a state of perpetual war. We are paralyzed by fear. We will be stripped, if we do not resist, of our few remaining rights. To resist, while there is still time, is not only the highest form of spirituality but the highest form of patriotism. It is, if you care about what is worth protecting in this country, a moral imperative. There are hundreds of thousands who have died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This number would be dwarfed by a war with Iran, which could ignite a regional inferno in the Middle East. Not a lot is being asked of us. Compare our potential sacrifices with what is being inflicted on and demanded of those trapped in the violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and soon, perhaps, Iran. Courage, as Aristotle wrote, is the highest of human virtues because without it we are unlikely to practice any other virtue. Once we find courage we find freedom.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.“
©2007 TruthDig.com
Published on Monday, October 15, 2007 by Truthdig.com
Outsourcing Torture
by Chris Hedges
The Bush administration has called for the respect of human rights in Burma, a pretty safe piece of posturing, but it remains silent as Egypt’s dictator, Gen. Hosni Mubarak , unleashes the largest crackdown on public opposition in over a decade. Our moral indignation over the shooting of monks masks the incestuous and growing alliance we have built in the so-called war on terror with some of the world’s most venal dictatorships.
Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 26 years and is grooming his son, Gamal, to succeed him, can torture and “disappear” dissidents-such as the Egyptian journalist Reda Hilal, who vanished four years ago-without American censure because he does the dirty work for us on those we “disappear.” The extraordinary-rendition program, which sees the United States kidnap and detain terrorist suspects in secret prisons around the world, fits neatly with the Egyptian regime’s contempt for due process. Those rounded up by American or Egyptian security agents are never granted legal rights. The abductors are often hooded or masked. If the captors are American the suspects are spirited onto a Gulfstream V jet registered to a series of dummy American corporations, such as Bayard Foreign Marketing of Portland, Ore., and whisked to Egypt or perhaps Morocco or Jordan. When these suspects arrive in Cairo they vanish into black holes as swiftly as dissident Egyptians. It is the same dirty and seamless process.
We have nothing to say to Mubarak. He is us. The general intelligence directorate in Lazoughli and in Mulhaq al-Mazra prison in Cairo allegedly holds many of our own detained and “disappeared.” The more savage the torture techniques of the Mubarak regime the faster the prisoners we smuggle into Egypt from Afghanistan and Iraq are broken down. The screams of Egyptians, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Afghans mingle in these prison cells to condemn us all.
We know little about what goes on in the black holes the CIA has set up in Egypt. But snapshots leak out. Ibn-al Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured by U.S. forces in late 2001, was an al-Qaida camp commander. He was taken to a prison in Cairo where he was repeatedly tortured by Egyptian officials. The Egyptian interrogators told the CIA that he had confirmed a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. The tidbit, used by then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in his United Nations speech, turned out to be false. Victims usually will say anything to make severe torture stop. Al-Libi was eventually returned to Afghanistan, although he has again disappeared.
Mamduh Habib, an Egyptian-born citizen of Australia, was apprehended in October 2001 in Pakistan, where, his family says, he was touring religious schools. A Pentagon spokesman claimed that Habib spent most of his time in Afghanistan and was “either supporting hostile forces or on the battlefield fighting illegally against the U.S.”
Habib was released a few days after The Washington Post published an article on his case. He said he was first interrogated and brutalized for three weeks in Islamabad. His interrogators spoke English with American accents. He was then bustled into a jumpsuit, his eyes were covered with opaque goggles and he was flown on a small jet to Egypt. There he was held and interrogated for six months, according to Joseph Margulies, a lawyer affiliated with the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Chicago Law School, which is representing Habib,.
Habib claims he was beaten frequently with blunt instruments, including an object that he likened to an “electric prod.” He was told that if he did not confess to belonging to al-Qaida he would be anally raped by specially trained dogs. Habib said he was returned to U.S. custody after his stint in an Egyptian prison and flown to Bagram air base, in Afghanistan, and then to Guantanamo Bay, where he was kept until his release.
Al-Libi and Habib are but two cases. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands more. These accounts of American-sponsored torture in Egyptian prisons are not new. They hardly make news. But the close cooperation between Egyptian and American security officials represents a frightening melding of despotisms, an international cabal of state-sponsored brutality and abuse. It does away with the concept of law and human rights. It mocks international protocols and treaties. It permits the despotic states we support, such as Egypt, to veer away from democratic structures and propagate, with our assistance, a more ruthless tyranny and brutality. It enrages and finally empowers those who oppose us to engage in the same behavior. It is dividing the world into competing spheres of intolerance. In this new world order there is nothing left to appeal to other than the mercy of someone standing over you with an electric prod.
Mubarak has in the past few weeks decided to shut down the last remnants of opposition. He has sent in riot police to arrest dozens of striking labor leaders, rounded up more than a thousand members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the largest opposition group, and tossed seven journalists into prison. The charges against the journalists range from misquoting Egypt’s justice minister to spreading rumors about the health of Mubarak to defaming his designated heir, Gamal. The detainees, as usual, complain of torture and beatings. And persistent rumors of death squads, bolstered by the “disappearance” of some of the regime’s most outspoken critics, have turned Egypt into a state that has mastered the art of internal and external extraordinary rendition.
The few lonely Egyptian voices and institutions that dared to speak out against the mounting repression have been silenced, including the Association for Human Rights and Legal Aid, which was shut down by the government last month. The government also recently arrested two political activists-Mohammed al-Dereini and Ahmed Mohammed Sobh, both members of Egypt’s tiny Shiite minority-after the men publicized testimonies from prisoners detailing torture in the Egyptian prison system. Egypt’s most prominent dissident, the sociologist Saad Edin Ibrahim, is in exile, too frightened to go home and repeat his own brutal experience in an Egyptian prison.
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights has confirmed more than 500 cases of police abuse since 1993, including 167 deaths-three of which took place this year-that the group “strongly suspects were the result of torture and mistreatment.” There are now 80,000 political prisoners held in Egyptian prisons. The annual budget for internal security was $1.5 billion in 2006, more than the entire national budget for health care, and the security police forces comprise 1.4 million members, nearly four times the number of the Egyptian army.
The United States has subsidized Egypt’s armed forces with over $38 billion in aid. Egypt receives about $2 billion annually-$1.3 billion in foreign military financing and about $815 million in economic and support fund assistance-making it the second largest regular recipient of conventional U.S. military and economic aid, after Israel.
We have nothing left to say to the Mubarak regime. The torture practiced in Egypt is the torture we employ for our own ends. The cries that rise up from these fetid cells in Egypt condemn not only the Mubarak dictatorship but the moral rot that has beset the American state.
We are losing the war in Iraq. We are an isolated and reviled nation. We are pitiless to others weaker than ourselves. We have lost sight of our democratic ideals. Thucydides wrote of Athens’ expanding empire and how this empire led it to become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. The tyranny Athens imposed on others, it finally imposed on itself. If we do not confront our hubris and the lies we tell to justify the killing and mask the destruction carried out in our name in Iraq, if we do not grasp the moral corrosiveness of empire and occupation, if we continue to allow force and violence to be our primary form of communication, if we do not remove from power our flag-waving, cross-bearing versions of the Taliban, the despotism we empower abroad will become the despotism we soon experience at home.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.“
©2007 TruthDig.com
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