But lest you forget, it is Israel and Netanyahu that are America's greatest threat because of all those damn apartment buildings.
Obama would be laughable if he wasn't president. (See 1 below.)
---
Words have meaning - I know because our president said so. Mike Adam(z) also has a serious problem with certain words and challenges what has come to be their PC meaning.
It's a little tongue in 'chic!' (See 2 below.)
---
Russia keeps arming Iran while 'laughable' Obama drones on!. (See 3 below.)
---
My friend Toameh does some revealing reporting. (See 4 below.)
---
Erdogan becoming like Chavez?
Obama recently placed his marker on Erdogan. In the past week Karzai has dissed Obama twice, Iran continues 24/7 to diss Obama, Putin makes a mockery of Obama's outstretched hand and now Erdogan is proving to be another diplomatic 'turkey.'
Welcome to the world of 'REALPOLITIK!' (See 5 below.)
---
Postmodernism , relativism and ipso facto out flops Obamaism! (See 6 below.)
---
Most of the articles and commentary in today's memo deal with a variety of topics but all have one thing in common. We are stuck with a president who reminds me and many, many others of what Steve Martin's black father said about him in the movie: "The Jerk." That boy don't know s--- from Shinola!
---
But if you think we have a problem just look at California. They will possibly re-elect Jerry 'Brown' a white version of our president. Brown will run as a centrist, say what the voters want to hear then do an about face when and if elected.
Since California is actually a large mental ward parading as a state perhaps we should forgive Californians for they know not what they do.(See 7 and 7a below.)
---
Dick
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Obama's Russian Disaster
By Kim Zigfeld
The point of President Barack Obama's much-ballyhooed "reset" of relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia was simple: Get Russia to stop supporting American enemies and use its influence to reduce the threat of nuclear terror being rained down on the West by the world's rogue regimes.
Obama was ready, willing, and able to betray Russian human rights activists by selling American values down the river in order do get this deal done, and he promptly gave them the cold shoulder. He was even willing to totally ignore Russia's horrific problem of race murder and its invasion of tiny Georgia for imperial conquest.
Last week, Obama learned the wisdom of Ronald Reagan's famous advice on Russia: "Trust, but verify."
Despite Obama's best efforts, including a unilateral withdrawal of the Bush anti-ballistic missile plan for Eastern Europe, Putin traveled to Venezuela, shook hands with a beaming Hugo Chávez, and announced (video here) that Russia would provide Chávez with both a nuclear energy capacity and a rocket program, the same as it has done for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran.
In the last five years, Putin has sold Chávez over $4 billion in weapons, from attack helicopters to assault rifles. In a truly unhinged statement, Putin claimed: "Our goal is to make the world more democratic." By this, Putin meant that undermining American interests and jeopardizing American national security will enhance the power and prestige of his KGB regime in Moscow, something he would like to assert will make the world a better place to live in.
Chávez was less subtle: "The Yankee empire doesn't want us to have one single little plane. We don't really care what Washington thinks."
The same result occurred in regard to Iran. Ignoring Obama, Russia announced that it would go forward not only with finalizing a major nuclear power plant for Iran, but also with providing the rogue state with a missile defense system to ward off an Israeli attack.
So the net result is this: Obama has forsaken the cause of freedom and democracy in Russia and signaled that former Soviet space is now Russia's playground. In return, he has received the makings of a new Cuban missile crisis in our hemisphere and all-out war in the Middle East.
When Obama announced the "reset" with Russia, he sent Hillary Clinton to Moscow with an actual prop "reset" button that used the wrong Russian word. It was a sign of things to come. Bad things.
Make no mistake: The Putin regime stands to benefit enormously from turmoil in Venezuela and Iran. Such disturbances, in addition to undermining American power, serve to unnerve world oil markets, driving up prices. Russia, a leading oil exporter, profits directly from such price increases.
And the hypocrisy coming out of Russia is as breathtaking as the provocation. A wave of terror attacks has swept Russia in recent days. First, two subway stations in downtown Moscow were hit by suicide bombers, causing three dozen fatalities. Then there was another in the city of Kizlyar, in the southern province of Dagestan, with a dozen more killed. Finally, a freight train was blown off the rails, again in Dagestan. Russia has responded, amazingly, by calling for solidarity from Western countries in a united struggle against Islamic fanatics.
But only weeks ago, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, likened by many analysts to a tarantula, invited Khaled Meshaal, leader of the Hamas terrorist organization, to Moscow. That Russians would have the audacity, while supporting Hamas, Iran, and Venezuela, to ask for Western solidarity on terror bespeaks the same sort of unhinged, oblivious nonsense spewed forth from the Russian government in Soviet times.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)The Wall of Hate
By Mike Adams
This week, April 5th through 8th, my university is doing something really neat. A bunch of organizations – including the NAACP, PRIDE, and the Black Student Union – are sponsoring a “Breaking Down Hate” week. Since the planned events only run Monday through Thursday it isn't really a “week”. Despite the preponderance of white people on our campus there doesn't seem to be enough hate to keep the anti-hate people busy all the way through Friday.
The printed flier for the “Breaking Down Hate” almost-week talks about a thing called the “Wall of Hate,” which has been a part of our campus diversity movement for three years. The flier invites students to “share insensitive, intolerant, and hateful words that (they) feel should no longer be accepted in (the campus) community with the WALL OF HATE.” After students write down the words, they spray paint over them as a symbol of the eradication of hate.
I've made fun of the wall of hate in the past. But I’m not making fun of it anymore. That’s just hateful. This year, I’m going to the “wall of hate” all four days of “Breaking Down Hate” almost-week. In fact, I'm going twice each day to write down a hateful word. My “Great Eight Words of Hate” are listed below. Each is followed by the reason why I chose to write each word before covering it with spray paint:
Colored. Few people realize that the “C” in “NAACP” stands for “colored.” Where I come from, the term “colored” is racially insensitive and hateful. Therefore, I think anyone who uses that term is a hater. In fact, I think the NAACP is potentially a hate group in need of a close second look by the IRS. I’m even considering writing the Southern Poverty Law Center to put them on notice of another potential hate group.
PRIDE. I read somewhere that pride cometh before a fall. And this group – People Recognizing Individual Differences Exist (PRIDE) – is a very proud bunch. They think it’s a great idea that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) declassified homosexuality as a mental illness (many years ago). But they celebrated the victory by coining the term “homophobia.” This was meant to say that everyone who disagrees with them on the issue of homosexuality has a phobia, or irrational fear. Could it be that PRIDE has an irrational fear of intellectual diversity? Why can’t they just recognize that individual differences of opinion about homosexuality exist?
Black. I really don’t like the term “black.” It’s so antiquated. Someday it will be considered as hateful as “colored.” I prefer the term “African American.” And I think the Black Student Union should change its name to something not only more sensitive but more accurate. Personally, I prefer the Union of African Students for Segregation (U-ASS). In my view, if you need to segregate yourself on the basic of race U are an ASS. And you are probably a racist.
Hate. I really hate the word “hate.” Whenever I hear that word it is coming from someone who is full of hate. For example, I was greeted by a thirty-foot sign last year at UMass (The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, which is not to be confused with U-ASS) saying "F*** Mike Adamz". When I asked who made the sign – which spelled my name with a “Z” – I was told it was the “Coalition Against Hate.” I rest my case. And I propose a coalition of un-bathed communists who are so stoned they can’t spell “Adams.”
Gay. Let’s just use the term “sodomite.” They are way too angry to be called “gay.” Plus, I’d like to be able to once again use the term “gay” without having people think about sodomy. For example, “Writing down a word and then immediately spray-painting over it? That’s gay!”
Choice. When I hear the word “choice” I know some feminist is about to kill a baby so she can increase her sex partners without decreasing her income. So I choose not to hear that word anymore.
Communism. The communists killed over 100,000,000 people in the 20th Century. That’s a big number. In fact, it’s 1/15,000 as big as this year’s federal budget deficit measured in dollars. So let’s replace this word with something else like “Social Justice.”
Tenure. Tenure is a really ugly word. After professors get it they aren’t as nice and spend most of their time sitting around and thinking of things to do, which are not related to the reason they were hired in the first place. Like writing down “hateful” words, spray painting over them, and calling it “progress.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)Iran gets fast sporting powerboat for arming with Russian torpedoes
Iran powerboat US warshipsBladerunner 51 breaks world speed recordsAfter laying hands on the record-breaking 61.5 mph speedboat, built for a British sporting adventurer, the Iranian navy plans to arm it with the reputedly fastest torpedo in the world, the Russian-designed Shkval (Squall), which moves at speeds of 360 kph. debkafile's military sources report Tehran is aiming for a seaborne weapon able to sink a US carrier in the Persian Gulf.
Blogs tracking the international weapons trade and the Financial Times reported Monday, April 5, that after purchasing the Bladerunner 51 powerboat from a Florida boatyard in 2005, the British sailor Neil McGrigor smashed the Italian-held record for the fastest circumnavigation of Britain in 27 hours 10 minutes.
Advertised for sale next year, the British government blocked it its purchase by Iran, which finally managed to purchase it under cover through South African agents in the face of an international embargo.
In Jan 2009, US special forces stood ready to intercept the Iranian merchant vessel carrying it to the Revolutionary Guards headquarters in Bandar Abbas, but the operation was called off for some unknown reason.
The deputy commander of the IRGC, Gen. Ali Fadavi has boasted that no warship can escape from the Shkval torpedo whose speed makes it almost impossible for radar to pick up. This claim has not been tested, but the US Persian Gulf naval command is concerned that the Iranians are outfitting the former Bladerunner 51 to lead the Guards navy's fleet of fast boats in attacks on the big American warships and aircraft carriers deployed in these waters.
It is feared that big warships may prove vulnerable to "swarming tactics by small boats," a hypothesis never yet demonstrated in practice. US naval experts stress that in recent US naval exercises in the Persian Gulf, small boats, however fast, trying to attack large warships, were beaten down and destroyed by the helicopters mounted on the ships' decks. They stressed that the powerboats were no match for military helicopters.
At the same time, these experts admit that a surprise hit-and-run operation by an armed powerboat able to approach a warship undetected could be extremely damaging.
As one American source pointed out, although the US failure to keep Iran from laying hands on the record-breaking vessel, of which only two have been built, despite a four-year head start, bodes ill for the sanctions Washington is working so hard to get implemented against Iran. Tehran outwitted the world in the case of Bladerunner 51 and runs rings around the world powers and the last three rounds of international sanctions.
Monday, The Wall Street Journal revealed the entire extent of the US freeze on Iranian assets as no more than $43 m, which is roughly a quarter of Iran's per day oil revenue, scarcely a bump on the road of Tehran's advance towards a nuclear weapon capacity.
The penalties the Obama administration is considering for the next round of sanctions rest heavily on the same old assets freeze rather than measures that really bite.
While US intelligence and the Vienna-based nuclear watchdog claim Iran has encountered problems in running the centrifuges for enriching uranium, Tehran was revealed two days ago as beating former sanctions by cunningly acquiring French-made valves and vacuum gauges for uranium enrichment through a phony Chinese firm.
An unregistered Iranian firm, Javedan Mehr Toos, made the illegal purchase through the unregistered Chinese-based Zheijiang Ouhai Trade Corp from the French maker KD Valves-Descote, which was formerly owned by the US conglomerate Tyco International.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4) Senior Fatah Official: IDF deployment prevents us from exercising our right to launch armed attacks against Israel
Hat's off to Khaled Abu Toameh for providing the readers of The Jerusalem
Post with what is probably the most stunning and significant report relating
to the Palestinians this year.
Too bad the folks at the Post who wrote the headline that goes with the
story seemed to miss the point.
Here we have none other than "moderate" senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath
explaining that the "moderate" Palestinian Authority's "moderate" security
forces have every right to launch an attack today against Israel (using,
among other things, their American weapons) but that they can't because the
deployment of IDF makes this unworkable.
Yes.
That's what he says.
Follow his words: "... he stressed that this does not mean that the
Palestinians don't have the right to launch an armed intifada "against an
armed occupation and an armed settlement on Palestinian lands...obviously,
we have the right"
What's stopping the "moderate" PA from trying to slaughter Israelis?
Because it is not a nice thing to do to murder Israelis?
No.
Its because "According to Shaath, the option of an armed intifada under the
current circumstances, where Israel "fully occupies the West Bank and is
besieging the Gaza Strip, is impossible."
So we have some interesting policy question:
#1. President Obama is pushing PM Netanyahu to pull back the IDF from
various locations in the West Bank as a gesture to the same "moderate" PA
that is complaining that it would like to launch armed attacks against
Israel but can't because the deployment of IDF forces makes it impossible.
#2. Would these redeployments make the "armed intifada" possible?]
Fatah: We want a peaceful intifada
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
The new "popular intifada" that Fatah is planning in the West Bank won't be
an armed one, Nabil Shaath, a senior Fatah official, said on Thursday.
Shaath's clarification came a day after he and some of his colleagues in
Fatah called on Palestinians to escalate the "popular resistance" in protest
against the settlements, the West Bank security barrier and the decision to
build new homes in east Jerusalem.
"Apparently the Palestinian leaderships in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
are in control of the situation to make sure that the intifada is not
transformed into an armed confrontation," Shaath explained. "This was not
the case during the second intifada."
Shaath ruled out the possibility that the "popular resistance" would
deteriorate into an armed confrontation "in spite of continued Israeli
attempts to drag the Palestinians in this direction by using excessive force
to confront the protesters."
According to Shaath, the option of an armed intifada under the current
circumstances, where Israel "fully occupies the West Bank and is besieging
the Gaza Strip, is impossible."
However, he stressed that this does not mean that the Palestinians don't
have the right to launch an armed intifada "against an armed occupation and
an armed settlement on Palestinian lands."
He added: "We're not talking here about whether we have the right to do so
or not; obviously, we have the right, but we are talking about whether it
would be effective and whether we have the capabilities and desire."
The Fatah official, whose was one of the architects of the Oslo Accords,
said the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip had every right to use guerrilla
warfare against Israel because their area was "surrounded with mines, tanks
and surveillance balloons that can see every centimeter of the Gaza Strip.
He nevertheless emphasized that the conditions there did not allow for the
Palestinians to confront a "strong enemy."
Shaath said that the possibility of breaking the blockade and launching
armed attacks outside the Gaza Strip was now impossible - a fact which, he
noted, both Hamas and Fatah were well-aware of.
He said that in light of the heavy losses the Palestinians suffered as a
result of the use of weapons and suicide bombings during the second
intifada, as well as the ongoing power struggle between Fatah and Hamas, it
is impossible for Palestinians living in the West Bank to launch another
armed uprising.
Shaath revealed that Fatah was now carrying out a strategy that consists of
four elements in response to the current political stalemate: pursuing and
escalating the "popular resistance," confronting Israel politically,
economically and legally in the international arena, achieving national
unity with Hamas and building institutions of the future Palestinian state.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority's chief negotiator Saeb Erekat
reiterated on Thursday the PA's refusal to resume peace talks with Israel
unless the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu canceled plans to
build new homes in east Jerusalem and halted settlement construction in the
West Bank.
Erekat said that indirect talks with Israel, as proposed by US Middle East
envoy George Mitchell, would not take place until the plans to build 1,600
new homes in Ramat Shlomo and 20 in Sheikh Jarrah were scrapped. He said
that the PA was also demanding that Israel also pledge that it would refrain
from authorizing such plans in the future.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5)Israel: Erdogan, don’t become Chavez
By HERB KEINON
Israel, in a sharply worded response to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest rhetorical slam, advised him on Monday night “not to turn into another extreme leader such as Hugo Chavez.”
Erdogan should not try to integrate his country into the Arab world at Israel’s expense, a Foreign Ministry official said, in a rare direct response to one of Erdogan’s now almost routine attacks on Israel.
The official, reading from a ministry response, said Israel was not looking for a confrontation with any country, including Turkey. But, he said, the impression being created is that Erdogan wants to integrate his country into the Arab world “on Israel’s back.”
“We suggest he look for a more creative way to integrate both into the Muslim and Western worlds,” the official said, and “not to turn into another extreme leader such as Hugo Chavez.”
The official said Israel hoped that in light of Erdogan’s professed concern for Muslims all around the world, he would express sorrow at the long line of murders of innocent Pakistanis and Iraqis by terrorist organizations.
The official’s response came when he was asked for a reaction to Erdogan’s comments on CNN-Turk on Monday, in which the Turkish prime minister, discussing the recent tension in Jerusalem, said Ankara would come to the defense of Muslims around the world.
“We cannot be indifferent to the problems of the Islamic world or Jerusalem,” he said. He added that although Turkey was interested in integrating into the Western world, it has not turned its back on the East. “Arabs and Turks are brothers and we share the same values,” he said.
Turning to Gaza, Erdogan said the situation there was inhumane.
“We cannot watch the murder of children in Gaza with indifference,” he said. “We worry about the Gaza children, but our hearts are also for the children of Haiti and Chile.”
In a related development, the Turkish Embassy in Tel Aviv confirmed on Monday night that ambassador Ahmet Oguz Celikkol will be replaced in a few months by Kerim Uras, currently the deputy director-general for Middle East affairs at the Turkish Foreign Ministry in Ankara.
Celikkol will be returning to Ankara within a year of coming to Israel, his job made extremely difficult because of the public dressing down he was given in January by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon following a Turkish television series that depicted Mossad agents as child-killers and kidnappers. After that incident, according to diplomatic officials, Celikkol was obviously “not extremely happy here.”
Ayalon later issued a formal apology for the incident, following Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s threat to recall the ambassador.
The Foreign Ministry had no comment on Celikkol’s departure, saying that it was an internal Turkish matter. One official said that considering the circumstances, the move did not come as a surprise.
The move is part of a larger reshuffle in Ankara’s diplomatic appointments that will see about 20 ambassadors change jobs.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6)A Postmodern Presidency: A Pretentious Word for a World Without Rules
By Victor Davis Hanson
Given thirty years of postmodern relativism in our universities, we were bound to get a postmodern president at some point.
Postmodernism is a fancy word — in terms of culture, nihilist; in terms of politics, an equality of result and the ends justifying the means — that a lot of people throw around to describe the present world of presumed wisdom that evolved in the last part of the 20th century.
“After modernism” or “beyond modernism” can mean almost anything — nihilistic art that goes well beyond modern art (think a crucifix in urine rather than the splashes of modernist Jackson Pollock). Or think of the current English Department doggerel that is declared “poetry” (no transcendent references, echoes of classicism, no cadence, rhyme, meter, particular poetic language, theme, structure, etc.) versus Eliot’s or Pound’s non-traditional modern poetry of the 1920s and 1930. In politics, there is something of the absurd. The modern age saw life and death civil rights marches and the commemoration of resistance to venomous racial oppression; the postmodern civil rights marches are staged events at the DC tea party rally, as elites troll in search of a slur, or Prof. Gates’s offer to donate his “cuffs” to the Smithsonian as proof of his racial “ordeal.”
Genres, rules, and protocols in art, music, or in much of anything vanish as the unnecessary obstructions they are deemed to be — constructed by those with privilege to perpetuate their own entrenched received authority and power. The courage, sacrifice, and suffering of past American generations that account for our present bounty are simply constructs, significant only to the degree that we use the past to deconstruct the race, class, and gender power machinations that pervade contemporary American exploitive society. History is melodrama, a morality tale, not tragedy.
Relativism Everywhere
But the chief characteristic of postmodern thinking is the notion of relativism and the primacy of language over reality. What we signify and brand as “real,” in essence, is no more valid than another’s “truth,” even if we retreat to specious claims of “evidence”— especially if our aim is to perpetuate the nation state, or the primacy of the white male capitalist Westerner who long ago manufactured norms in his own interests.
“Alternate” realities instead reflect those without power speaking a “truth,” one just as valid as the so-called empirical tradition that hinged on inherited privilege.
The New National Creed
OK, so how does this affect Obama?
He was schooled in the postmodern university and operates on hand-me-down principles from postmodernism. One does not need to read Foucault or Derrida, or to be acquainted with Heidegger, to see how relativism enhances contemporary multiculturalism. Keep that in mind and everything else makes sense.
Try health care. By traditional standards, Obama prevaricates on most of the main issues revolving health care reform — from the fundamental about its costs and effects, to the more superficial such as airing the entire process on C-SPAN or promising not to push through a major bill like this on narrow majoritism. And recall the blatant bribes for votes to politicians from Nebraska to Louisiana. Look also at the enormous borrowing and cuts from Medicare that will be involved.
Well, those were not misstatements or misdeeds at all. You, children of privilege, only think they are, since you use antiquated norms like “abstract” truth to adjudicate the discomforting efforts of a progressive president.
He, on the other hand, is trying to force the privileged at last to account for their past oppressions (insurance companies that gouge, surgeons that lop off legs or tear out tonsils for profit, investors who private jet to the Super Bowl, or the lesser but equally selfish Joe the Plumber types who do not wish to “spread the wealth”) by extending care to the underprivileged. Your “Truth” about his past statements is something reactionaries evoke to thwart such progressive change; in fact, the constructed truth of Obama’s is that a child will now have regular check-ups. All the other “gotcha” games about abstract truth and falsehood are just semantics.
Mean Speech for Thee, But not for Me
Look at supposed hate speech. An empiricist would ignore Obama’s recent warnings about the new wave of right-wing tough talk from Limbaugh and Beck, and determine instead whether the president remembers the novel Checkpoint, or the award-winning film about killing George Bush, or the venom of a Michael Moore or Keith Olbermann.
That is, a traditional inquirer would weigh the furor of the right against left, in ascertaining whether hate speech is at all partisan or simply politics of all stripes. And he would remind the president that it was Barack Obama himself who asked of his supporters to “get in their face”and bragged “if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” and who used graphic examples in damning his opponents (cf. the taunt to Hannity (“he’ll tear him up”).
But you see, all this is not so. The postmodernist constructs a different reality. A person of color who is striving to level the playing field against oppressive interests speaks the “truth” to power. Of course, from time to time he draws on emotive language to drive home his points — quite unlike the cool, detached, and deliberate attack narratives of those seeking to protect corporate or entrenched interests.
When Obama attacks Beck, or Hannity, or calls for someone to bring a gun to a fight, or has Rahm Emanuel curse a fence-sitting representative, these protocols seem extreme only to those whose economic interests are threatened. Poor children in Detroit or in the barrios of El Paso don’t get the opportunity for tit-for-tat score-keeping, as if millionaires “think” they are entitled to the same “fair” treatment as their victims. When Limbaugh rails, it is to protect his Gulfstream 550; when Obama “distorts,” it is the expediency needed to wring from the wealthy salvation for the voiceless.
Racialism — no such thing!
Race is the same. A person of color can hardly, given the history of oppression accorded to non-whites, himself be guilty of dividing people by race.
So if Obama says “typical white person,” or entitles his book from the sloganeering of a racist preacher he courted for 20 years, or stereotypes rural Pennsylvanians, or dubs police as acting “stupidly” in matters of supposed racial confrontation, or has an attorney general who damns the country as “cowards” on race, or appoints a Supreme Court judge who thinks a “wise Latina” by virtue of race and gender has superior wisdom, or recruits a Van Jones who characterizes everyone from polluters to mass murderers by race (I could go on), well, all this is not at all racial stereotyping with an intent to deprecate.
Why? Because constructs of language, expression, and reality hinge on status and class. Obama is seeking to dethrone traditional nexuses of power. So when he, from time to time, muses on real racial inequality, reactionaries retreat to “objective” “standards” of reciprocity to thwart his proposed changes.
Take-overs — what Take-overs?
And those “take-overs”? Take-over from what to what?
An outraged managerial and capital laden class feigns victimhood when working folks at last have a say in how the nation’s profits are derived and enjoyed, originating from their own labor in banking, insurance, and auto production. All these retreats to “private” income, “my property,” “liberty,” “The Founders,” and the “Constitution” simply can be deconstructed to “don’t dismantle a system that is weighted in my favor!”
No wonder “they” construct all sort of scary “narratives” about the Postal Service, Amtrak, Social Security, Medicare, and other shared collective enterprises that are branded “insolvent” and “unsustainable,” despite serving the people — the economic gobbledygook talk from those who really mean they are not willing to transfer their own unfairly obtained capital to more deserving working folks through legitimate “redistributive change.”
The Voices of the Oppressed
Finally, examine foreign policy. Now many of us are upset that we court enemies and shun friends, and seem to be reaching out to the most authoritarian regimes imaginable, whether Putin’s Russia, or Iran, or Venezuela. Well, once again, that is only because you construct reality on the norms predicated upon your own comfortable globalized privilege — that, in fact, as Obama thankfully grasps, is a result of thousands of daily oppressions, both here and abroad, of which you are not even aware.
Consider the trumped-up crisis with Iran. We hold Ahmadinejad to our artificially constructed standards of “civil” discourse and “fair” play — forgetting (but not Obama) the 1953 Western-inspired coup, the profit-mongering of the global oil companies, and the neo-imperialist role of the United States in the Gulf. We hide all that with constructs like “the mullahs,” the “theocrats,” “Islamofascism” and other demonization rooted in class, gender, race, and religion.
If Iran had been behind a past U.S. coup, if Iranian warships were off the coast of California, if an Iranian coal company were buying and selling our national energy production, then we too might sound somewhat unhinged as we sought to employ language to offset our oppressor’s ill-gotten material advantages.
In an American constructed world order, we artificially adjudicate Iran a rogue would-be nuclear menace for wishing five or six small nuclear weapons to protect its vulnerable borders (American troops now abut them); we have thousands of such devices, and have used them, and yet are deemed “responsible” and “peaceful,” we of all people, who, as the president once reminded us, have alone used them on real people.
So what Obama has done is “contextualized” the world, and “located,” as it were, the seemingly hostile anti-American rhetoric of “enemies” into a proper race/class/gender narrative.
And what he has found is that nationalism and the construct of the state have fooled us into thinking that there are “allies” and “enemies,” when, in fact, these are mere labels used by the privileged to “exaggerate” “difference” that only enhances Western entrenched economic, racial, cultural and political hegemonies.
Once, thanks to Obama, we “unpack” that “reality,” then we can see that most Americans have much in common with Venezuelans, Russians, Iranians, Syrians and others who likewise struggle against the same enemies that brought us the 2008 Wall Street meltdown and now oppose health care reform, cap and trade, amnesty, and the take over of the automobile, banking, and insurance industries.
So a postmodernist looks at the Falklands and does not rely on archaic notions of “sovereignty” or a “history” of a prior war. Instead, one sees a postcolonial power once more claiming “ownership” of a far distant island, proximate to a Latin American people, with long experience with European and American economic and political exploitation. Presto — we are now “neutral,” which means we don’t see anything intrinsically convincing in Britain’s claims to the Falklands.
Note Israel. What are we to make of the Netanyahu humiliating smack down, the seeming indifference over the Iranian nuclear program, the nominations and appointments on the Middle East front of a Freeman or Power, the reach out to Syria and Iran, the interview with al Arabiya and the Cairo speech, the bow to a Saudi royal, the ritual trashing of George Bush juxtaposed to the praise of a Saudi king, the strange past outbursts of Obama advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski about hypothetically shooting down Israeli planes on their way to Iran, the ranting about Jews from the former spiritual advisor Wright, etc.
In short, the answer is that Israel is a construct of Western privilege — its democratic, capitalist, and Western customs hinge on the oppression of a vast “other” that is far more egalitarian, socialist, and antithetical to Western consumer-capitalism with all of its pathologies of race, class, and gender exploitation.
In that context, in archaic fashion, we struggle to damn any effort to end such hegemony and empower the voices of the oppressed. We are not, in fact, “allied” to Israel, but properly speaking instead should be to the underprivileged in the Gaza slums, to those without health care on the West Bank, and, yes, to the progressive Israelis of noble spirit who are trying to battle the reactionary Likudniks and instead do something about the tentacles of their own discriminatory state, whose capital is derived from exploited labor and resources of a silenced other.
Standards of What?
I could go on, but you get the picture of our first postmodern presidency. For 14 months we have tried to use abstract benchmarks like “did Obama contradict himself?,” “did Obama break another promise?,” “did Obama really think borrowing another $2 trillion won’t help to bankrupt us?,” “did Obama indeed think another entitlement ’saves’ money?,” “did Obama snub another ally and court another enemy?,” “did Obama apologize again?” — when, in fact, such linear thinking, such artificially constructed “norms,” such “facts” are nothing of the sort at all. To Obama, our first postmodern president, such facts and truth are mere signatures of privilege, and so he is offering us another — a postmodern — way of looking at the world.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7)Steven Greenhut: Jerry Brown: older, not wiser
By STEVEN GREENHUT
The once and perhaps future governor persists as a believer in government and unions.
Now that California Attorney General Jerry Brown is an official candidate for governor, we're getting to relive some California political history as pundits and reporters think back to Brown's first stint as governor (1975-83) along with some of the entertaining facets of his long and bizarre political career.
The basic Democratic and media line: Brown, who turns 72 on April 7, may be a bit of an odd duck, but he's a lovable guy who in no way threatens the state's business climate and who is smart enough not to raise taxes. In other words, don't worry; he'll be a fine governor.
Given the boring and craven candidates on the Republican side, Brown's intellect and lively diatribes no doubt will liven up a drab election, but I'm worried that Californians will shrug off Brown's crazy statements as inconsequential blasts from the past, overlook his record as governor and pay insufficient attention to his ongoing behavior as attorney general.
No doubt, the reminiscences make for great fodder. The New York Times recently recounted how Chicago columnist Mike Royko bestowed upon Brown the "Governor Moonbeam" nickname to reflect his nontraditional leadership of a state Royko termed "the world's largest outdoor mental asylum." California Watch recounted last week the infamous 1980 Dead Kennedys song, "California Uber Alles," a silly punk rock ditty that depicted Brown as someone who supposedly wanted to use fascist techniques to implement his liberal agenda ("You will jog for the master race; And always wear the happy face; Your kids will meditate in school; Mellow out or you will pay!; Die on organic poison gas!").
For those who care, Dead Kennedys front man Jello Biafra now thinks he might have been wrong about Brown after all.
Who can argue with moonbeams, mental asylums and Dead Kennedys songs? This is fun stuff. I heard Brown speak a couple of years ago to a heavily Republican crowd in Orange County, and the audience was eating up his stories and unique perspectives.
But as part of my effort to understand the real Jerry Brown, I went back and read the online archives of some of the "We the People" shows he hosted on a Berkeley public radio station in 1996-97 as well as some of the speeches he gave in the mid-1990s. He made some reasonable and provocative points at times (especially on the futility of the "war on drugs" and on the state's prison-industrial complex), but the transcripts are filled with diatribes against free markets and hosannas to unions and government intervention.
Here is Brown on welfare reform:
"The Republican members of the House and Senate indulged in a perverse excitement in sadistically cutting the very life-support systems out of millions and millions of defenseless people."
And here he is on inequality:
"The gap between rich and poor also keeps increasing because of computers, because of the declining power of unions and union membership, because of technology that replaces people in unskilled and semiskilled jobs, because of workers in foreign countries merged into the employment base of American companies, and because of the use of part-time workers putting people at a disadvantage and lowering their benefits. The focus ought to be on making low-income work pay more. And where there aren't those jobs, let the government step in like they did in WPA [Works Progress Administration], community service ... and all the rest of it."
There are many tired clichés about the evils of "industrial capitalism," about the need for a "living wage," about the ravages of the marketplace. Brown argued to me during his race for attorney general against Republican Chuck Poochigian in 2006 that he was simply stirring the pot as a radio host.
Indeed, Brown's defenders insist that, at his core, he is a fairly mainstream guy. In a recent Sacramento Bee column, Peter Schrag points to Brown's "uncanny ability to reinvent himself." Schrag reminds readers that Brown campaigned against tax-limiting Proposition 13 in 1978, then "after it passed called himself a born-again tax-cutter, embraced it, got the endorsement of Prop. 13 author Howard Jarvis and won re-election by a landslide." Schrag argues that Brown is running this time around as a sort of moderate Republican – someone who won't raise taxes, will help lure new jobs to the state and who will even "downsize government."
Brown no doubt will run this way, but would he govern this way?
My sense is that, despite all the reinventions and occasional good stuff – his embrace of school choice in Oakland when he was mayor (1998-2006), for instance – Brown remains the same anti-free-marketer revealed in his governorship and his 1990s radio shows. This is not some irrelevant, academic point. It goes to the heart of his governing strategy.
Indeed, the Brown campaign spokesman Sterling Clifford, told me that Brown "has always stood for the same things." He still agrees with the sentiments expressed in those quotations above, Clifford added, although he probably wouldn't use the exact same language today.
Take a look at how he has behaved as state attorney general, where he has used the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act, Assembly Bill 32, to wage a state-led campaign to force developers to build the high-density residential developments environmentalists prefer, so that more land remains open space. Brown has argued that wealthy and elitist Marin County, with its Draconian growth controls, is the development model for the state, and he's doing what he can to promote the types of environmental policies that will make it increasingly tough to start a business and own a home in this state.
I'm not sure how this amounts to governing like a moderate Republican. When he was governor, Brown governed as a slow-growther, whose anti-infrastructure campaign paved the way (or, actually, didn't pave the way) for the state's sometimes-gridlock level of traffic congestion. And it was Brown, don't forget, who legalized public employee unions and played a key role in creating the massive level of debt the state is bearing to pay for gold-plated retirements for public employees. It's no surprise that the state's powerful public-sector union, the Service Employees International Union, has vowed that electing him governor will be its "first priority."
Let's not get too caught up in this reinvention thing. Brown is now what he always has been – an opportunistic leftist who will moderate his views to get elected, but who believes that government has the answers to the state's problems, that unions aren't powerful enough and that the private sector is a hotbed of fraud and abuse and must be carefully controlled. Brown is brilliant and entertaining, but it's fair to ask, especially in these tough economic times and with the state's crushing business climate, whether these are the policies that the state's voters should be entertaining.
7a)While walking down the street one day a US senator is tragically hit by a truck and dies.
The Senator's soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.
"Welcome to heaven," says St. Peter. "Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so we're not sure what to do with you."
"No problem, just let me in," says the Senator.
St. Peter says, "Well, I'd like to, but I have orders from higher up. What we'll do is have you spend one day in hell and one in heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity."
"Really, I've made up my mind. I want to be in heaven," says the Senator.
"I'm sorry, but we have our rules", replies St.Peter.
And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell. The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a clubhouse and standing in front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him.
Everyone is very happy and in evening dress. They run to greet him, shake his hand, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people.
They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster, caviar and champagne.
Also present is the Devil, who really is a very friendly guy who has a good time dancing and telling jokes. They are having such a good time that before he realizes it, it is time to go.
Everyone gives him a hearty farewell and waves while the elevator rises...
The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on heaven where St. Peter is waiting for him.
"Now it's time to visit heaven," St Peter says.
So, 24 hours pass with the Senator joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing. They have a good time and the 24 hours in heaven passes by and St. Peter returns.
"Well, you've spent a day in hell and another in heaven. Now which will you choose for your eternity?" St Peter asks.
The Senator reflects for a minute, then he answers, "Well, I never would have thought it before, I mean heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be happier and better off .. in hell."
So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to hell.
Now the doors of the elevator open and he's in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage.
He sees all his friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and putting it in black bags as more trash falls from above.
The Devil comes over to him and puts his arm around his shoulder.
"I don't understand," stammers the Senator. "Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and clubhouse, and we ate lobster and caviar, drank champagne, and danced and had a great time. Now
there's just a wasteland full of garbage and my friends look miserable. What happened?"
The Devil looks at him, smiles and says, "Yesterday we were campaigning..
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment