Friday, April 01, 2005
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
N+1 is a new literary/cultural magazine published twice yearly. In the Spring 2005 issue, George Scialabba skewers Christopher Hitchens quite well, I thought. (Sorry, no link available to the essay. Go out and buy the mag. to help it get off the ground.)
Thank You For Not Reading
by Dubravka Ugresic
A collection of short essays on writing, exile, globalization and publishing as a business from a Yugoslavian essayist and fiction writer who emigrated to the U.S. in 1993. A terse paragraph I liked:
"The contemporary colonizer is the market. The market vacuums up every resistance, takes into account every criticism and even anticipates it, turning it to its own profit. The market colonizes us without our being aware of it and does so with our own values, whether they are called identity, ethnicity, the right to difference, or anything else. It is hard to imagine effective reistance to money, media potentates, conglomerates, the monopoly of distribution chains, or "market fundamentalism" as such."
by Dubravka Ugresic
A collection of short essays on writing, exile, globalization and publishing as a business from a Yugoslavian essayist and fiction writer who emigrated to the U.S. in 1993. A terse paragraph I liked:
"The contemporary colonizer is the market. The market vacuums up every resistance, takes into account every criticism and even anticipates it, turning it to its own profit. The market colonizes us without our being aware of it and does so with our own values, whether they are called identity, ethnicity, the right to difference, or anything else. It is hard to imagine effective reistance to money, media potentates, conglomerates, the monopoly of distribution chains, or "market fundamentalism" as such."
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Friday, March 04, 2005
I'm reading the Everyman's Library selection of George Orwell's essays. Some nice stuff in here that speaks to our current situation. E.g., here's one from "Review of the Union Now" (1939):
"In a prosperous country, above all in an imperialist country, left-wing politics are always partly humbug."
"In a prosperous country, above all in an imperialist country, left-wing politics are always partly humbug."
Google has an interesting new pay-for-research page worth checking out. I guess if you have questions that you want someone to research, you can post the question and price you're willing to pay for an answer, and if one of the 500 researchers involved is interested, they'll try to get you an asnwer.
The Internet is advancing research in new and exciting ways. E.g., be sure to read the intro/preface of Banking on Baghdad by Edwin Black ... the same writer who wrote IBM and the Holocaust. The book is a slog, but his research strategy is mind-blowing.
Apparently, he's a professional archivist. In the introduction he describes his research methodology:
"To assemble this challenging story (the 7,000 year history of Mesopotamia), I recruited a team of some 30 researchers working in the United States, Canada, England, and Israel accessing original documents and obscure materials in some 20 archives and other repositories, as well as nearly 50 libraries in five nations. This includes the private files of British Petroleum, Turkish Petroleum, Anglo-Persian Oil Company, Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and Iraqi Petroleum, all of which are organically connected entities. The result was a trove of some 50,000 documents, plus hundreds of scholarly books and journal articles that ultimately yielded the dots that connected into a recognizable line. Ironically, in many cases, that line runs in circles. In Iraq, history not only repeats itself; the unstoppable repetition constitutes the very nature of its history—and likely its future."
"...At any given time, up to a dozen researchers were working in various archives and libraries in such cities as Coventry, London, Washington, or New York. Telephone calls in archives and libraries are strictly prohibited. Instead, we used cell phone text messaging, laptop computers and wireless PDA to share real-time discoveries about corporations, officials, and themes. For example, we might trip across an obscure executive’s name while reviewing documents in an oil company archive; that name was text-messaged out to others standing by at the Public Record Office and the British Library or other repositories where the lead was pursued, with new information coming back to track down further information in the oil company files. Sometimes this international exchange could be accomplished in just moments."
The Internet is advancing research in new and exciting ways. E.g., be sure to read the intro/preface of Banking on Baghdad by Edwin Black ... the same writer who wrote IBM and the Holocaust. The book is a slog, but his research strategy is mind-blowing.
Apparently, he's a professional archivist. In the introduction he describes his research methodology:
"To assemble this challenging story (the 7,000 year history of Mesopotamia), I recruited a team of some 30 researchers working in the United States, Canada, England, and Israel accessing original documents and obscure materials in some 20 archives and other repositories, as well as nearly 50 libraries in five nations. This includes the private files of British Petroleum, Turkish Petroleum, Anglo-Persian Oil Company, Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and Iraqi Petroleum, all of which are organically connected entities. The result was a trove of some 50,000 documents, plus hundreds of scholarly books and journal articles that ultimately yielded the dots that connected into a recognizable line. Ironically, in many cases, that line runs in circles. In Iraq, history not only repeats itself; the unstoppable repetition constitutes the very nature of its history—and likely its future."
"...At any given time, up to a dozen researchers were working in various archives and libraries in such cities as Coventry, London, Washington, or New York. Telephone calls in archives and libraries are strictly prohibited. Instead, we used cell phone text messaging, laptop computers and wireless PDA to share real-time discoveries about corporations, officials, and themes. For example, we might trip across an obscure executive’s name while reviewing documents in an oil company archive; that name was text-messaged out to others standing by at the Public Record Office and the British Library or other repositories where the lead was pursued, with new information coming back to track down further information in the oil company files. Sometimes this international exchange could be accomplished in just moments."
"To bridge the gap between cities, we created a private password-protected intranet site where files and information were posted so researchers in various cities could view them just moments after they were discovered. In many cases, we used books so rare that only one copy might be available in London’s library system, or only a few copies anywhere in the United States. For example, an obscure volume of published diplomatic papers of Iraq from the 1950s was found in St. Louis. Needed pages of this book and others were scanned by researchers and posted on their private websites. We could then print them in my Washington office."
"In addition, modern databases and digital collections allowed us to instantly search the actual page images for key words in diplomatic correspondence, newspapers and journal articles hailing back more than a century. This new digital capability is startling and has redefined historical research. Moreover, because researchers were located in various time zones, research could be done in the Pacific evening or European morning and be ready for us in Washington when we woke up."
Sunday, February 06, 2005
I just learned of these web sites created by two favorite sci-fi writers:
Bruce Sterling, and William Gibson
Bruce Sterling, and William Gibson
Friday, February 04, 2005
Tom Hartmann posted a piece about multinational corporate tax avoidance and how it is a strong indication that we are headed toward a new period of corporate feudalism.
I've been thinking about this for a while.
E.g. Take this passage from The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride Into the Secret Heart of BCCI by Jonathan Beaty & S.C. Gwynne (two Time reporters) -- which is the best introduction to that byzantine scandal (and highly entertaining):
"Though it was fundamentally a financial fraud, BCCI itself was not a bank in any conventional sense. Or, more precisely, banking was only a part of the global organism, the ingeniously constructed platform from which its other lines of business were launched. Taken collectively, it was more of an armed Renaissance city-state of Machiavelli's era than a modern corporation. This "bank" possessed its very own diplomatic corps, intelligence network, and private army, its own shipping and commodities trading companies. And BCCI itself was so thoroughly enmeshed in the official affairs of Pakistan that it was often impossible to separate the two. ... BCCI was bigger even than that: It was the unsettling next-stage evolution of the multinational corporation, the one the theorists had been predicting for years but which never seemed to be able to shed its sovereign boundaries. (General Motors and Mitsubishi are both good examples of this -- huge companies with holdings and operations all over the world that nonetheless persist in being fundamentally American and Japanese entities.) In taking that step, BCCI became truly stateless and very nearly invisible to the authorities in each country where it did business. The BCCI scandal shows what sort of frightening mischief can be made in a world where trillions of electronic dollars routinely wash in and out of international financial markets...Nor was BCCI a conspiracy. In much of what it did, BCCI reflected the way the world works. The organization was designed to mimic the way the world's largest corporations and banks move and hide their money."
(for more on BCCI, also see the Kerry Report).
I've been thinking about this for a while.
E.g. Take this passage from The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride Into the Secret Heart of BCCI by Jonathan Beaty & S.C. Gwynne (two Time reporters) -- which is the best introduction to that byzantine scandal (and highly entertaining):
"Though it was fundamentally a financial fraud, BCCI itself was not a bank in any conventional sense. Or, more precisely, banking was only a part of the global organism, the ingeniously constructed platform from which its other lines of business were launched. Taken collectively, it was more of an armed Renaissance city-state of Machiavelli's era than a modern corporation. This "bank" possessed its very own diplomatic corps, intelligence network, and private army, its own shipping and commodities trading companies. And BCCI itself was so thoroughly enmeshed in the official affairs of Pakistan that it was often impossible to separate the two. ... BCCI was bigger even than that: It was the unsettling next-stage evolution of the multinational corporation, the one the theorists had been predicting for years but which never seemed to be able to shed its sovereign boundaries. (General Motors and Mitsubishi are both good examples of this -- huge companies with holdings and operations all over the world that nonetheless persist in being fundamentally American and Japanese entities.) In taking that step, BCCI became truly stateless and very nearly invisible to the authorities in each country where it did business. The BCCI scandal shows what sort of frightening mischief can be made in a world where trillions of electronic dollars routinely wash in and out of international financial markets...Nor was BCCI a conspiracy. In much of what it did, BCCI reflected the way the world works. The organization was designed to mimic the way the world's largest corporations and banks move and hide their money."
(for more on BCCI, also see the Kerry Report).
Of course all companies strive to be like BCCI, because that is the system.
Recall that GE's famous CEO Jack Welch once said, "Ideally you'd have every plant you own on a barge" -- ready to move if any national government tried to impose restraints on the factories' operations, or if workers demanded better wages and working conditions.
And in 1972, Carl A. Gerstacker, then the Chairman of Dow Chemical Co., confided to a White House Conference on the Industrial World Ahead that he dreamed of buying "an island owned by no nation" and on "such truly neutral ground" he would locate the world headquarters of Dow so that "we could then really operate on the
How different is this vision from that of the British East India Company?
Sunday, January 30, 2005
If "information is the currency of democracy," as they say, then new media technologies are where the money is, according to Dan Gillmor, whose new book, We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, For the People is a useful overview of how blogging, RSS, and other tools are transforming mainstream media and democracy.
We all know examples -- e.g. MoveOn and the Dean 2004 campaign's effective use of small donors ("professional journalists, byand large, seemed baffled early on by the edge-to-middle politics Dean was using to his advantage. The top-down hierarchy of modern journalism probably played a role beccause editors probably couldn't relate any better to the notion of a dispersed campaign than to the idea of readers directly assisting in the creation of journalism").
The impacts of the new technologies should not be underestimated. Recall that it was the smart mobs used cell phones w/text messaging to organize the protests that brought down the Phillipine government in 2001). And so long as the military and police are hierarchical and centrally organized, they will continue to play an important part in the emergence of new, asymmetric warfare tactics used by global terrorists.
But they also have the potential to enhance democracy. The use of cybertechnology to provide feedback loops is well known as a potential threat to privacy, but it can also enhance democracy and security.
"For any problem there is a person or persons in a large population of educated people that don't see it as a problem. We need a feedback loop that can filter upknowledge and insight. For example: If You have seen a loophole in airport security and have a solution as to how to correct it, there should be a mechanism for getting that information to the people that can makethe change."
Many blog-readers are familiar with these arguments, but Gilmor's book is still a good overview, esp. for those who feel left behind, and since Gilmor is/was a journalist (he left his position at the News to promote his books and seems to spend most of his time at new technology conferences), his treatment is not the manifesto of some upstart activist with an axe to grind about the media, but an exploration of how journalism will necessarily evolve as a result of these technologies. A cogent argement from one who knows the media business from within and has his eye on technology.
One of the recurrent themes here is that journalists need to get out of their priviledge professional walls and "join the conversation":
"It boils down to something simple: readers (or viewers or listeners) collectively know more than media professionals do. This is true by definition: they are many, and we are often just one. We need to recognize and, in the best sense of the word, use heir knowledge. If we don't, our former audience will bolt when they realize they don't have to settle for half-baked coverage; they can come nto the kitchen themselves." but he's not unaware of the issues that arise concerning information and quality control: "I hope we can survive what's coming because I believe in the mission of journalism and fear that serious investigative reporting will diminish, and perhaps nearly disappear, if big newspapers and other serious outlets wither; what blogger will take on the next Watergate scandal the way The Washington Post did?"
They won't, but then again, that's why we have groups like the Center for Public Integrity, who manage to aggregate teams of professional journalists and the new technologies, regularly publishing cutting-edge in-depth investigations.
For no other reason, the web sites in this book are worth checking out, including Gizmodo (site that reports on high-tech gadgets), Earth911 (like Scorecard, but more expansive porthole to local environmental information), Poynter (key site for professional journalists), and Technorati (a blog monitoring and search service), Coases Penguin (essay by Hochai Benkler, a Yale U. law prof. who makes a stong case that open source organizations work better than the traditional capitalist structre of firms and markets in some circumstances). Kuro5hin (web site on tecnology and culture "from the trenches").If you don't know your online rights -- see Chilling Effects , the Electronic Freedon Foundation and the other sites he list in the appendix.
He has a useful chapter on the problems posed by battles over copyright and fair use (readers of Lawrence Lessig will be familiar with this stuff).
We the Media touches on issues that will not only change the media and our role in creating it, but many of our other favorite institutions, such as publishing and libraries:
"Book publishers have increasingly looked at online distriibution with fear, when they should see it as a practical step beyond antiquated printing and sitribution systems, and an opportunity to win new customers. They are supporting a system that mocks the First Amendment, on which they rely for their very existence; publishing, after all, is build on a foundation of free speech. Lending librariesin particular are in jeopardy if publishers take the same hard line that the music and movie companies have taken, because in a pay-per-view copyright regime, lending becomes impossible." (219)
We all know examples -- e.g. MoveOn and the Dean 2004 campaign's effective use of small donors ("professional journalists, byand large, seemed baffled early on by the edge-to-middle politics Dean was using to his advantage. The top-down hierarchy of modern journalism probably played a role beccause editors probably couldn't relate any better to the notion of a dispersed campaign than to the idea of readers directly assisting in the creation of journalism").
The impacts of the new technologies should not be underestimated. Recall that it was the smart mobs used cell phones w/text messaging to organize the protests that brought down the Phillipine government in 2001). And so long as the military and police are hierarchical and centrally organized, they will continue to play an important part in the emergence of new, asymmetric warfare tactics used by global terrorists.
But they also have the potential to enhance democracy. The use of cybertechnology to provide feedback loops is well known as a potential threat to privacy, but it can also enhance democracy and security.
"For any problem there is a person or persons in a large population of educated people that don't see it as a problem. We need a feedback loop that can filter upknowledge and insight. For example: If You have seen a loophole in airport security and have a solution as to how to correct it, there should be a mechanism for getting that information to the people that can makethe change."
Many blog-readers are familiar with these arguments, but Gilmor's book is still a good overview, esp. for those who feel left behind, and since Gilmor is/was a journalist (he left his position at the News to promote his books and seems to spend most of his time at new technology conferences), his treatment is not the manifesto of some upstart activist with an axe to grind about the media, but an exploration of how journalism will necessarily evolve as a result of these technologies. A cogent argement from one who knows the media business from within and has his eye on technology.
One of the recurrent themes here is that journalists need to get out of their priviledge professional walls and "join the conversation":
"It boils down to something simple: readers (or viewers or listeners) collectively know more than media professionals do. This is true by definition: they are many, and we are often just one. We need to recognize and, in the best sense of the word, use heir knowledge. If we don't, our former audience will bolt when they realize they don't have to settle for half-baked coverage; they can come nto the kitchen themselves." but he's not unaware of the issues that arise concerning information and quality control: "I hope we can survive what's coming because I believe in the mission of journalism and fear that serious investigative reporting will diminish, and perhaps nearly disappear, if big newspapers and other serious outlets wither; what blogger will take on the next Watergate scandal the way The Washington Post did?"
They won't, but then again, that's why we have groups like the Center for Public Integrity, who manage to aggregate teams of professional journalists and the new technologies, regularly publishing cutting-edge in-depth investigations.
For no other reason, the web sites in this book are worth checking out, including Gizmodo (site that reports on high-tech gadgets), Earth911 (like Scorecard, but more expansive porthole to local environmental information), Poynter (key site for professional journalists), and Technorati (a blog monitoring and search service), Coases Penguin (essay by Hochai Benkler, a Yale U. law prof. who makes a stong case that open source organizations work better than the traditional capitalist structre of firms and markets in some circumstances). Kuro5hin (web site on tecnology and culture "from the trenches").If you don't know your online rights -- see Chilling Effects , the Electronic Freedon Foundation and the other sites he list in the appendix.
He has a useful chapter on the problems posed by battles over copyright and fair use (readers of Lawrence Lessig will be familiar with this stuff).
We the Media touches on issues that will not only change the media and our role in creating it, but many of our other favorite institutions, such as publishing and libraries:
"Book publishers have increasingly looked at online distriibution with fear, when they should see it as a practical step beyond antiquated printing and sitribution systems, and an opportunity to win new customers. They are supporting a system that mocks the First Amendment, on which they rely for their very existence; publishing, after all, is build on a foundation of free speech. Lending librariesin particular are in jeopardy if publishers take the same hard line that the music and movie companies have taken, because in a pay-per-view copyright regime, lending becomes impossible." (219)
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Out of the Sea and Into the Fire: Latin American-U.S. Immigration in the Global Age
(Common Courage).
Kari writes regularly for Lip, ITT, the Reader, etc.
Not many people go to court for the right to pick up trash along the highway.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Kenneth Rexroth was known mostly as a poet. He was more the literary "Godfather to the Beats" than Burroughs. But he was actually a much better essayist, and probably made a far greater lasting contribution as a translator of Japanese and Chinese poetry. His essays reflected an encyclopedic base of knowledge and experience (he was also a painter, naturalist/mystic and political activist/anarchist who learned about all sorts of political tendencies by age 14 from hanging out and listening to the outdoor soapboxers in Hyde Park, Chicago). But most importantly, he never lost the ability to communicate directly, without affecting some kind of academic attitude. If you want a recommendation, I'd say read either his collected essays (World Outside the Window, 1987) or Classics, Revisited.
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Some good web sites for the paranoid to check out:
Prison Planet
Info Wars
also, now that the holidays are over, make sure you check out this Science of Shopping piece
and Don Rumsfeld's xmas tree
Prison Planet
Info Wars
also, now that the holidays are over, make sure you check out this Science of Shopping piece
and Don Rumsfeld's xmas tree
I've only just started to read Carlo Boggs' latest book, Imperial Delusions: American Militarism and Endless War, but I suspect that despite the fact that he doesn't reference it once, it owes a lot to a forgotten modern radical masterpiece: Permanent War: The Militarization of America by Sidney Lens. (1986).
Nearly two decades later, Lens' book seems as fresh as ever, and is as good a challenge to the American system of military power as any book I've read. And prescient:
"Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights predicts that the term terrorism may be used as justification for bypassing the Constitution in the same way that the term communism was used thirty years ago. It may be the shield under which the administration will try to regain the untrammeled right to intevene militarily overseas, to limit domestic opposition to foreign intervention, restrict further access to information about government activities, and lift restraints on intelligence agencies, raise their budgets, and mute criticism against them.
The main thesis of Lens' book is fairly obvious. But he states the obvious very well: The National Security State has created an institutional framework for the subversion of the system of checks and balances on which the nation was founded. This is something new in American life. While pre-World War II governments had frequently violated democratic principles, it was only in the postwar period that an institutional framework was created to legitimize subversive behavior. (79)
Everything changes, everything stays the same:
"When President Truman decided to finance Greece's war against communist guerrillas in 1947, Arthur Vandenberg, Republican leader of the Senate, warned him that it would be necessary "to scare the hell out of the country [i.e. , the United States]," if he wanted to get congressional approval. The advice was most useful in promoting the permanent war. .... General Douglas MacArthur, no dove, warned in a speech to the Michigan State Legislature in 1952 that "our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artifically induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear." (125)
There's a certain kind of morbid satisfaction in reading gems like that. After all, it's not exactly Michael Moore being quoted here.
In later chapters, Lens expands from an examination of the role of the lawless Executive branch and the military-intelligence complex to examine the broader societal context and consequences. What emerges is a picture of the emerging American fascism that is even bolder under Bush:
"Adjacent to the militarist establishment itself and running parallel to it are a number of constituencies which have either monetary or ideological interests in the militarization of America. One of the largest is the Christian fundamentalist movement which takes seriously such right-wing notions as that of a Heritage Foundation report that "individual liberties are secondary to the requirement of national security and internal civil order."
Meanwhile, others sort of suffer from a sense of psychic numbing:
"The qualitatively greater scope for violence in this era of permanent war and nuclear bombs has compounded the psychological problem. Robert Jay Lifton of Yale, winner of the National Book Award for his study of Hiroshima survivors, speaks of the "psychic numbing" of young people who took part in the air raid drills of the 1950s, and to an extent the rest of us. "It came out," Lifton says, "in dreams, in fantasies, and then the suppression of that terror .. in which one tried to put it aside." In adult life these same people, according to Lifton, manifested "a kind of moving back and forth between numbing and a certain amount of anxiety ...." A second symptom, which he noted in children but which applies to adults as well, "is the sense that nothing can be depended on to last, that the threat of extinction renders life unimaginable. This 'new ephemeralism' includes doubts about the lasting nature of anything and similar doubts about the authenticity of virtually all claims of achievement." ... Not all social problems are due to the militarization of America. Lifton, for instance, is careful to point out that such ills as juvenile delinquency existed long before the present era. But "the imagery of extinction adds to existing effects and intensifies them. Every existing relationship is under a shadow. The tendency to violate law is intensified, because of the feeling that everything is temporary." (204-205)
Existential angst and acid, Beatniks, Punk, Metal, you name it -- all have some futility and nihilistic excuse in the system. "It's all connected, man."
Lens was no nihilist himself. He was, in fact, a union activist and writer who cranked out some great books. This one -- intended as a discussion document for a conference against militarism --came out as Iran-Contra was breaking (he died shortly after it came out). He bridged his intellectual rigor with activism.
Nearly two decades later, Lens' book seems as fresh as ever, and is as good a challenge to the American system of military power as any book I've read. And prescient:
"Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights predicts that the term terrorism may be used as justification for bypassing the Constitution in the same way that the term communism was used thirty years ago. It may be the shield under which the administration will try to regain the untrammeled right to intevene militarily overseas, to limit domestic opposition to foreign intervention, restrict further access to information about government activities, and lift restraints on intelligence agencies, raise their budgets, and mute criticism against them.
The main thesis of Lens' book is fairly obvious. But he states the obvious very well: The National Security State has created an institutional framework for the subversion of the system of checks and balances on which the nation was founded. This is something new in American life. While pre-World War II governments had frequently violated democratic principles, it was only in the postwar period that an institutional framework was created to legitimize subversive behavior. (79)
Everything changes, everything stays the same:
"When President Truman decided to finance Greece's war against communist guerrillas in 1947, Arthur Vandenberg, Republican leader of the Senate, warned him that it would be necessary "to scare the hell out of the country [i.e. , the United States]," if he wanted to get congressional approval. The advice was most useful in promoting the permanent war. .... General Douglas MacArthur, no dove, warned in a speech to the Michigan State Legislature in 1952 that "our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artifically induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear." (125)
There's a certain kind of morbid satisfaction in reading gems like that. After all, it's not exactly Michael Moore being quoted here.
In later chapters, Lens expands from an examination of the role of the lawless Executive branch and the military-intelligence complex to examine the broader societal context and consequences. What emerges is a picture of the emerging American fascism that is even bolder under Bush:
"Adjacent to the militarist establishment itself and running parallel to it are a number of constituencies which have either monetary or ideological interests in the militarization of America. One of the largest is the Christian fundamentalist movement which takes seriously such right-wing notions as that of a Heritage Foundation report that "individual liberties are secondary to the requirement of national security and internal civil order."
Meanwhile, others sort of suffer from a sense of psychic numbing:
"The qualitatively greater scope for violence in this era of permanent war and nuclear bombs has compounded the psychological problem. Robert Jay Lifton of Yale, winner of the National Book Award for his study of Hiroshima survivors, speaks of the "psychic numbing" of young people who took part in the air raid drills of the 1950s, and to an extent the rest of us. "It came out," Lifton says, "in dreams, in fantasies, and then the suppression of that terror .. in which one tried to put it aside." In adult life these same people, according to Lifton, manifested "a kind of moving back and forth between numbing and a certain amount of anxiety ...." A second symptom, which he noted in children but which applies to adults as well, "is the sense that nothing can be depended on to last, that the threat of extinction renders life unimaginable. This 'new ephemeralism' includes doubts about the lasting nature of anything and similar doubts about the authenticity of virtually all claims of achievement." ... Not all social problems are due to the militarization of America. Lifton, for instance, is careful to point out that such ills as juvenile delinquency existed long before the present era. But "the imagery of extinction adds to existing effects and intensifies them. Every existing relationship is under a shadow. The tendency to violate law is intensified, because of the feeling that everything is temporary." (204-205)
Existential angst and acid, Beatniks, Punk, Metal, you name it -- all have some futility and nihilistic excuse in the system. "It's all connected, man."
Lens was no nihilist himself. He was, in fact, a union activist and writer who cranked out some great books. This one -- intended as a discussion document for a conference against militarism --came out as Iran-Contra was breaking (he died shortly after it came out). He bridged his intellectual rigor with activism.
Friday, December 10, 2004
The editor of Too Much Online, a newsletter about CEO greed, has a new book out: Greed and Good.
As those who know me can attest, I've read a lot of corporate reform books.
This one could aptly be described as the Moby Dick of CEO pay. Incredibly comprehensive explanation of why skyrocketing CEO pay is not justified and is the main engine of inequality and much injustice in our society.
As those who know me can attest, I've read a lot of corporate reform books.
This one could aptly be described as the Moby Dick of CEO pay. Incredibly comprehensive explanation of why skyrocketing CEO pay is not justified and is the main engine of inequality and much injustice in our society.
Looking for independent news from Iraq ....written by Iraqis?
An Iraqi-American friend told me that Azzaman is a good, independent site.
An Iraqi-American friend told me that Azzaman is a good, independent site.
Sunday, December 05, 2004
If you thought Chicago's mobster reputation died with Al Capone, think again, gumbah.
Robert Cooley's new book, When Corruption Was King is an inside-view of The Outfit in the 1980s and 1990s. The former first Ward bagman and mob attorney-turned-squealer's account is, like most mob stories, predictably entertaining, horrifying, distasteful.
These 1st Ward Guidos are not people you'd want to go outta your way to meet. The pictures of one guy that they hung up on a meathook and tortured with a blowtorch kinda give you an idea why.
But there's more here. It's also a story about city government. Big city courts and politicians who are full of petty corruption. In Chicago, that's the system.
Robert Cooley's new book, When Corruption Was King is an inside-view of The Outfit in the 1980s and 1990s. The former first Ward bagman and mob attorney-turned-squealer's account is, like most mob stories, predictably entertaining, horrifying, distasteful.
These 1st Ward Guidos are not people you'd want to go outta your way to meet. The pictures of one guy that they hung up on a meathook and tortured with a blowtorch kinda give you an idea why.
But there's more here. It's also a story about city government. Big city courts and politicians who are full of petty corruption. In Chicago, that's the system.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Need a break after the election? Check this stuff out:
1) Play Bush's Brain
2) Check this video out.
oh, and fuck the south
1) Play Bush's Brain
2) Check this video out.
oh, and fuck the south
Friday, November 05, 2004
Let's see.
Halliburton and the oiligarchy and war profiteers running our foreign policy,
Diebold running our elections,
Sinclair telling us who to vote for...
Maybe it's time we organized a Campaign Against the Corporate Colonization of America.
What possibilities. Think of the campaign slogan: "CACCA: because now we're in a world of shit."
Halliburton and the oiligarchy and war profiteers running our foreign policy,
Diebold running our elections,
Sinclair telling us who to vote for...
Maybe it's time we organized a Campaign Against the Corporate Colonization of America.
What possibilities. Think of the campaign slogan: "CACCA: because now we're in a world of shit."
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Why I voted for John Kerry.
I voted (absentee) for Kerry even though I vote in a "safe state" (Illinois), because I think it's important to get rid of Bush not just by electoral college, but also by as large a popular vote as possible. I think we need to send a strong message about the war in Iraq and his policies at home, regardless of Kerry's failure to stake out a decisive position against the occupation.
The Dems have much to answer for w/re to Iraq. Yet the election is not about their policies -- like mid-term elections for previous presidents, it's about Bush's policies. It's a referendum on his crusade for Empire.
Under the current circumstances, I don't think voting for a third party at the top of the ballot sends an effective message when the election is that close. I'm all for building a Third Party that reflects the aspirations of the majority of people in this country who feel shut out of any meaningful participation in this corporate-dominated system, and think the Greens are embarking on the right path in that regard, but do we really need to go back to Organizing 101? We need to build from the ground up. And until we're ready to put a capstone on a populist organizing process, the presidential election will not be about establishing a viable third party (down-ticket choices may be another issue, and to the Greens' credit, they clearly recognize this.)
But if anything, this year's presidential election is not about whether we want a third party, but about whether we think we should have at least two parties so that there's enough struggle among the elites that it creates more space for the rest of us to organize at the grassroots and on the margins.
Obviously the Democrats are so deeply involved in the economy of death that it will be hard for them to slow the momentum toward world war. But with all their faults, I still think there's value in having two parties rather than one, with a rubber stamp president on top of a one-party Congress. If Bush wins, within four years we could look like Mexico, with a one-party patronage system, a polarized class system (hollowing out the middle class), with the second and third parties occassionally punching through but not sustaining an effective challenge to the dominant party, except perhaps in different regions of the country.
=-=-=-
Astute observers of the American political system have criticized the two parties for being more alike than different for decades. This isn't something new that began with Clinton and was first asserted by Nader after the lessons of NAFTA... e.g., I'm not sure the current situation is much different than it was 35 years ago during Vietnam, when IF Stone wrote:
"The two-party system is like those magic black and white squares which look like a staircase at one moment and a checkerboard the next. Sometimes the two parties seem very distinct and sometimes they seem very much alike."
So, until the Greens or someone else represent a serious challenge to the two-party system my vote goes to the candidate who forces at least some debate in Washington.
Looking ahead, it's still too early to tell how significant the Greens' efforts will become in the next decade. They are certain to grow and could become a significant force (optimistic scenario), but so far it looks like the 500,000 registered Greens are predominantly from liberal urban, Democratic regions. So until they can build a significant populist base among conservatives and others that currently gravitate toward conservative social and political causes, their prospects might for all good intentions only serve to divide progressives even further. This is not an insignificant issue in the long run. It's far from clear that the new Century's "populist moment" will be more socialist than fascist. And the Greens, much to their credit, seem to know that. Still, they have yet to make significant inroads elsewhere.
Let's go back to the immediate topic: this year's presidential election. Despite the cogency of Ralph Nader's positions on the Middle East and the fact that Kerry has not signaled any policies that would indicate a significant difference from Bush, I don't see Nader's campaign as an alternative for a number of reasons.
For one, his is not a movement candidacy. I'm not just referring to the fact that many recognized movement leaders have come out for Kerry (i.e. the ones Ralph dismisses as the scared "liberal intelligentsia"). It's more than that: Ralph is not accountable to an organized base. So, although he has much better positions than from Bush and Kerry, it seems a bit hollow to suggest his candidacy offers a significant alternative.
The real problem for Nader is that he has been far from cogent w/respect to the overall purpose of his campaign. This is the extraordinary thing, because normally when it comes to pushing his positions there are few that are as meticulous as Ralph is in marshalling the facts to make his case. He is scrupulous in double-checking assertions (I know, I've experienced his careful fact-checking). He is encyclopedic in his understanding of the law, economics, politics, etc.
But most people believe he went off the rails at the beginning of the campaign when he said he would steal more votes from Bush than Kerry. As John Nichols suggests in a Nation piece, it doesn't calculate. And he's stubbornly refused to drop that assertion.
His willingness to take support from the Republicans to get on the ballot in Michigan suggests he really believes there is little difference between the two parties and that you "can't spoil a system that's already spoiled" as the campaign's ugly T-shirts say. But why would the Republicans have helped him get on the ballot in places like Michigan if they believed that? Does he think he's fooling them? Perhaps he believes the attacks from the "liberal intelligentsia" will scare all of his progressive supporters away to Kerry and that in the end, he will receive more Republican votes because the only ones left to vote for him will be right-wingers still disenchanted with Bush.
No one would ever challenge Ralph for asserting that corporate crime costs us more than violent street crime. Not just because it's true, but because that's what he's good at -- the issues. But elections are not just about issues. They're about credible leadership. And when he says something that defies common sense, let alone the views of many pollsters who make it their life's business to scrutinize the data, and gets called on it (e.g. by Zogby), you'd think he'd adjust his tune, so that people write off that early tactical blunder as a bad note. But he hasn't.
Meanwhile, given a chance to project a vision that differs from the two parties, he has too often used the bully pulpit instead to air his resentments about the Democrats' heavy-handed efforts to keep him off the ballot (see "Complacency is Not Democracy", Ralph Nader Washington Post, 10/9) rather than direct his fire at Bush. I've come to expect more from Ralph -- something that lifts our aspirations rather than something that bogs us down with narrow complaints about how the game of politics is played -- which unfortunately reinforces his critics' assertion that it's all an ego-feeding proposition.
After Ralph failed to convince the Greens to endorse his candidacy with that last-minute choice of Peter Camejo as his running mate, and some unecessary sniping at Michael Moore and the CBC, things really looked like they were headed south.
Yet it seemed to me that he still had an opportunity to make the whole thing worthwhile. Steve Hill and Rob Ritchie spelled it out in their 7/21 piece on IRV in Common Dreams: push for Instant Runoff Voting in key states where he was considered a potential spoiler.
If you're not familiar with IRV and other ways to enhance our elections system (like public funding of elections, fusion balloting, cumulative voting, etc.), you should be. (See the Illinois-based Midwest Democracy Center for more information. We need more groups like this.)
The fact is, Nader/Camejo were too busy fighting with the Dems and trying to get on as many ballots as possible to focus on a strategey that would have lasting value. They can blame the Dems all they want for blocking their access to the ballot, but to what purpose? Why not stop fighting for ballot access in those last few states and instead concentrate their resources and efforts in the only two swing states where the Dems control the state legislature (NM and WV)? Send the vanloads of volunteers there, who would have an easier time talking to people, educating them about IRV (rather than getting bogged down with defensive cult-of-personality arguments about Ralph's superior positions on the issues or what his personal motives may or may not be in running in a campaign that has no chance of winning), and make it clear that it was up to the Dems to make the campaign a non-issue by passing IRV.
That would have challenged the two party system in a way that would have established a useful precedent for the long run. It would suggest to other independents and third-party candidates how to use their campaigns to pry open a system that's closed. It would suggest that Ralph still has a surprising ability to lead in ways that the "scared liberals" are afraid to.
I suppose if I had voted for a Third Party candidate, it would be for the Greens, because I think they are sincere in looking down the road beyond 2004 to the longer term, are connected to the peace movement, and believe in building from the ground up. David Cobb, to his credit, has been explicit that people in so-called "battleground states" should "vote their conscience" (i.e. for Kerry if it looks like it's going to be that close). He has also campaigned in a way to support local candidates and defined his candidacy as movement-driven, which is the way to go. That shows growing strategic maturity on Cobb and the Greens' part. They are on the cusp.
But that reminds me that in 2000 the Nader/LaDuke slogan was "Vote your Conscience, Not Your Fears." (I assume everyone saw LaDuke's endorsement of Kerry?) Well, in 2004, my conscience reflects my fears of a Bush second term.
As for Kerry, I agree that he's likely to disappoint voters who expect him to make extraordinary changes if he wins (though there are few people, as far as I can tell, who feel this way). Even if he wanted to, it will be difficult for him to accomplish much, with the right wing media attacking him every step of the way and Congress still controlled by the Republicans. He's not charismatic enough to pull it off.
I'm not trying to make excuses for him before he (hopefully) gets inaugurated. Still, my expectations are low -- I vote for him as a speedbump against creeping fascism, just as David Korten intimates in his piece in Common Dreams. Let's at least have some jockeying at the top while we try to figure out how to build something more substantial from the ground up, the key challenge described by Joel Rogers in this Nation piece.
The challenge if he wins will be to build a strong enough force that Kerry begins to view it as providing enough shored-up space for him to take the right actions if he's interested and, if not, somehow force him to tack in the direction we want anyway.
Nader, by the way, could play an important part in that process, by focusing on issues that Kerry has signaled his support for, such as the humongous challenges we face w/regard to energy security, which Ralph has so much knowledge and experience with, as he has w/re so many other issues. As it looks right now (and there's a piece in the Nov/Dec. Mother Jones that spells this out) the technologies to wean ourselves of growing energy dependence are not available to avoid significant disruptions. But we'll be that much worse off with four more years of the oiligarchs. So what do we want for the coming decades? Transition or all-out war and serious upheaval when the oil runs out (not to mention global warming, etc.)?
The point is, we shouldn't write Kerry off before he comes into office. I wonder if people prejudge him the way they assumed Bush wouldn't be so bad because he talked about "compassionate conservatism." (Which I always thought was a kind of trojan horse -- "friendly fascism" with a c). E.g., everyone seems to accept the assertion that Kerry has had an unremarkable record on the Hill and won't be a strong leader who grapples with these difficult questions.
While I agree that Kerry has taken some bad positions, I'm not so sure he doesn't have it in him. Shouldn't he be given some plaudits for the yeoman's work he did during Iran Contra, as Robert Parry spells out in his book? While Bush was apparently over at Camp David (according to Kitty Kelly) snorting coke, Kerry was up on Capital Hill trying to nail the death squads who brought it in the country with his father's support. Sure he backed off in the end, but was that by his choice? (When the leadership blocked his Congressional investigation into BCCI, he encouraged Jack Blum to continue to pursue it through Morganthau's office). Going against people like Clark Clifford is not exactly a way to build a purely opportunistic career resume is it? Should we have expected him to sacrifice his career at that point?
No one suffers from the illusion that we are going to get a major shift immediately if Kerry wins. Especially in Iraq. He has not asserted anything indicating he will try to pull the troops out as fast as possible, that he will not establish the 14 permanent bases planned (and being built) in Iraq. So the neocon plans may be advanced during his administration. But I'm not so sure that he's as guided by that ideological blueprint, and if the military families who are now leading protests against the occupation (much different than Vietnam) press him, and the economic stresses on the empire become too great, I wonder if he would shift. We should be ready to back him if he does.
The challenge to turn things around is ours, given the limits of his power to move the ship of state very quickly. The vice we need to put him in -- between the outside pressure from other countries and the pressure from below here at home -- might provide Kerry enough cover to move in the direction we want, if he's willing and skillful at using it effectively. That's a much more hopeful scenario than the messianic apocalypse that's possible if Bush expands the war.
I don't buy the philosophy of vindictive righteousness that "Bush should pay for the mess he made" and that the economic collapse and coming anarchy in Iraq would be better if it happened on his watch so people finally see how bad the Republicans really are and would begin to want real change, because I'm not sure that's how it works. It could continue to spur people in just the opposite direction -- toward a lust for righteous conquest.
-=-=
As for voting for a third party in battleground states, I'm doubtful that the kinds of vote-swapping or vote-partnering that have been suggested by some who want to get rid of Bush while voicing their concerns about Kerry and the two-party system could gather enough momentum at this late stage to a strong message about the state of our democracy and the two-party system. I wouldn't discourage anyone from doing it if they know someone they trust to follow through, but in a year of electronic voting machines and all sorts of obvious manipulation and intimidation, it's hard to imagine this will be very popular. Do you blame people for not trusting someone they don't know to actually live up to their word, esp. when there's no way to verify it? It we're serious about third parties, then let's do it in serious ways.
I voted (absentee) for Kerry even though I vote in a "safe state" (Illinois), because I think it's important to get rid of Bush not just by electoral college, but also by as large a popular vote as possible. I think we need to send a strong message about the war in Iraq and his policies at home, regardless of Kerry's failure to stake out a decisive position against the occupation.
The Dems have much to answer for w/re to Iraq. Yet the election is not about their policies -- like mid-term elections for previous presidents, it's about Bush's policies. It's a referendum on his crusade for Empire.
Under the current circumstances, I don't think voting for a third party at the top of the ballot sends an effective message when the election is that close. I'm all for building a Third Party that reflects the aspirations of the majority of people in this country who feel shut out of any meaningful participation in this corporate-dominated system, and think the Greens are embarking on the right path in that regard, but do we really need to go back to Organizing 101? We need to build from the ground up. And until we're ready to put a capstone on a populist organizing process, the presidential election will not be about establishing a viable third party (down-ticket choices may be another issue, and to the Greens' credit, they clearly recognize this.)
But if anything, this year's presidential election is not about whether we want a third party, but about whether we think we should have at least two parties so that there's enough struggle among the elites that it creates more space for the rest of us to organize at the grassroots and on the margins.
Obviously the Democrats are so deeply involved in the economy of death that it will be hard for them to slow the momentum toward world war. But with all their faults, I still think there's value in having two parties rather than one, with a rubber stamp president on top of a one-party Congress. If Bush wins, within four years we could look like Mexico, with a one-party patronage system, a polarized class system (hollowing out the middle class), with the second and third parties occassionally punching through but not sustaining an effective challenge to the dominant party, except perhaps in different regions of the country.
=-=-=-
Astute observers of the American political system have criticized the two parties for being more alike than different for decades. This isn't something new that began with Clinton and was first asserted by Nader after the lessons of NAFTA... e.g., I'm not sure the current situation is much different than it was 35 years ago during Vietnam, when IF Stone wrote:
"The two-party system is like those magic black and white squares which look like a staircase at one moment and a checkerboard the next. Sometimes the two parties seem very distinct and sometimes they seem very much alike."
So, until the Greens or someone else represent a serious challenge to the two-party system my vote goes to the candidate who forces at least some debate in Washington.
Looking ahead, it's still too early to tell how significant the Greens' efforts will become in the next decade. They are certain to grow and could become a significant force (optimistic scenario), but so far it looks like the 500,000 registered Greens are predominantly from liberal urban, Democratic regions. So until they can build a significant populist base among conservatives and others that currently gravitate toward conservative social and political causes, their prospects might for all good intentions only serve to divide progressives even further. This is not an insignificant issue in the long run. It's far from clear that the new Century's "populist moment" will be more socialist than fascist. And the Greens, much to their credit, seem to know that. Still, they have yet to make significant inroads elsewhere.
Let's go back to the immediate topic: this year's presidential election. Despite the cogency of Ralph Nader's positions on the Middle East and the fact that Kerry has not signaled any policies that would indicate a significant difference from Bush, I don't see Nader's campaign as an alternative for a number of reasons.
For one, his is not a movement candidacy. I'm not just referring to the fact that many recognized movement leaders have come out for Kerry (i.e. the ones Ralph dismisses as the scared "liberal intelligentsia"). It's more than that: Ralph is not accountable to an organized base. So, although he has much better positions than from Bush and Kerry, it seems a bit hollow to suggest his candidacy offers a significant alternative.
The real problem for Nader is that he has been far from cogent w/respect to the overall purpose of his campaign. This is the extraordinary thing, because normally when it comes to pushing his positions there are few that are as meticulous as Ralph is in marshalling the facts to make his case. He is scrupulous in double-checking assertions (I know, I've experienced his careful fact-checking). He is encyclopedic in his understanding of the law, economics, politics, etc.
But most people believe he went off the rails at the beginning of the campaign when he said he would steal more votes from Bush than Kerry. As John Nichols suggests in a Nation piece, it doesn't calculate. And he's stubbornly refused to drop that assertion.
His willingness to take support from the Republicans to get on the ballot in Michigan suggests he really believes there is little difference between the two parties and that you "can't spoil a system that's already spoiled" as the campaign's ugly T-shirts say. But why would the Republicans have helped him get on the ballot in places like Michigan if they believed that? Does he think he's fooling them? Perhaps he believes the attacks from the "liberal intelligentsia" will scare all of his progressive supporters away to Kerry and that in the end, he will receive more Republican votes because the only ones left to vote for him will be right-wingers still disenchanted with Bush.
No one would ever challenge Ralph for asserting that corporate crime costs us more than violent street crime. Not just because it's true, but because that's what he's good at -- the issues. But elections are not just about issues. They're about credible leadership. And when he says something that defies common sense, let alone the views of many pollsters who make it their life's business to scrutinize the data, and gets called on it (e.g. by Zogby), you'd think he'd adjust his tune, so that people write off that early tactical blunder as a bad note. But he hasn't.
Meanwhile, given a chance to project a vision that differs from the two parties, he has too often used the bully pulpit instead to air his resentments about the Democrats' heavy-handed efforts to keep him off the ballot (see "Complacency is Not Democracy", Ralph Nader Washington Post, 10/9) rather than direct his fire at Bush. I've come to expect more from Ralph -- something that lifts our aspirations rather than something that bogs us down with narrow complaints about how the game of politics is played -- which unfortunately reinforces his critics' assertion that it's all an ego-feeding proposition.
After Ralph failed to convince the Greens to endorse his candidacy with that last-minute choice of Peter Camejo as his running mate, and some unecessary sniping at Michael Moore and the CBC, things really looked like they were headed south.
Yet it seemed to me that he still had an opportunity to make the whole thing worthwhile. Steve Hill and Rob Ritchie spelled it out in their 7/21 piece on IRV in Common Dreams: push for Instant Runoff Voting in key states where he was considered a potential spoiler.
If you're not familiar with IRV and other ways to enhance our elections system (like public funding of elections, fusion balloting, cumulative voting, etc.), you should be. (See the Illinois-based Midwest Democracy Center for more information. We need more groups like this.)
The fact is, Nader/Camejo were too busy fighting with the Dems and trying to get on as many ballots as possible to focus on a strategey that would have lasting value. They can blame the Dems all they want for blocking their access to the ballot, but to what purpose? Why not stop fighting for ballot access in those last few states and instead concentrate their resources and efforts in the only two swing states where the Dems control the state legislature (NM and WV)? Send the vanloads of volunteers there, who would have an easier time talking to people, educating them about IRV (rather than getting bogged down with defensive cult-of-personality arguments about Ralph's superior positions on the issues or what his personal motives may or may not be in running in a campaign that has no chance of winning), and make it clear that it was up to the Dems to make the campaign a non-issue by passing IRV.
That would have challenged the two party system in a way that would have established a useful precedent for the long run. It would suggest to other independents and third-party candidates how to use their campaigns to pry open a system that's closed. It would suggest that Ralph still has a surprising ability to lead in ways that the "scared liberals" are afraid to.
I suppose if I had voted for a Third Party candidate, it would be for the Greens, because I think they are sincere in looking down the road beyond 2004 to the longer term, are connected to the peace movement, and believe in building from the ground up. David Cobb, to his credit, has been explicit that people in so-called "battleground states" should "vote their conscience" (i.e. for Kerry if it looks like it's going to be that close). He has also campaigned in a way to support local candidates and defined his candidacy as movement-driven, which is the way to go. That shows growing strategic maturity on Cobb and the Greens' part. They are on the cusp.
But that reminds me that in 2000 the Nader/LaDuke slogan was "Vote your Conscience, Not Your Fears." (I assume everyone saw LaDuke's endorsement of Kerry?) Well, in 2004, my conscience reflects my fears of a Bush second term.
As for Kerry, I agree that he's likely to disappoint voters who expect him to make extraordinary changes if he wins (though there are few people, as far as I can tell, who feel this way). Even if he wanted to, it will be difficult for him to accomplish much, with the right wing media attacking him every step of the way and Congress still controlled by the Republicans. He's not charismatic enough to pull it off.
I'm not trying to make excuses for him before he (hopefully) gets inaugurated. Still, my expectations are low -- I vote for him as a speedbump against creeping fascism, just as David Korten intimates in his piece in Common Dreams. Let's at least have some jockeying at the top while we try to figure out how to build something more substantial from the ground up, the key challenge described by Joel Rogers in this Nation piece.
The challenge if he wins will be to build a strong enough force that Kerry begins to view it as providing enough shored-up space for him to take the right actions if he's interested and, if not, somehow force him to tack in the direction we want anyway.
Nader, by the way, could play an important part in that process, by focusing on issues that Kerry has signaled his support for, such as the humongous challenges we face w/regard to energy security, which Ralph has so much knowledge and experience with, as he has w/re so many other issues. As it looks right now (and there's a piece in the Nov/Dec. Mother Jones that spells this out) the technologies to wean ourselves of growing energy dependence are not available to avoid significant disruptions. But we'll be that much worse off with four more years of the oiligarchs. So what do we want for the coming decades? Transition or all-out war and serious upheaval when the oil runs out (not to mention global warming, etc.)?
The point is, we shouldn't write Kerry off before he comes into office. I wonder if people prejudge him the way they assumed Bush wouldn't be so bad because he talked about "compassionate conservatism." (Which I always thought was a kind of trojan horse -- "friendly fascism" with a c). E.g., everyone seems to accept the assertion that Kerry has had an unremarkable record on the Hill and won't be a strong leader who grapples with these difficult questions.
While I agree that Kerry has taken some bad positions, I'm not so sure he doesn't have it in him. Shouldn't he be given some plaudits for the yeoman's work he did during Iran Contra, as Robert Parry spells out in his book? While Bush was apparently over at Camp David (according to Kitty Kelly) snorting coke, Kerry was up on Capital Hill trying to nail the death squads who brought it in the country with his father's support. Sure he backed off in the end, but was that by his choice? (When the leadership blocked his Congressional investigation into BCCI, he encouraged Jack Blum to continue to pursue it through Morganthau's office). Going against people like Clark Clifford is not exactly a way to build a purely opportunistic career resume is it? Should we have expected him to sacrifice his career at that point?
No one suffers from the illusion that we are going to get a major shift immediately if Kerry wins. Especially in Iraq. He has not asserted anything indicating he will try to pull the troops out as fast as possible, that he will not establish the 14 permanent bases planned (and being built) in Iraq. So the neocon plans may be advanced during his administration. But I'm not so sure that he's as guided by that ideological blueprint, and if the military families who are now leading protests against the occupation (much different than Vietnam) press him, and the economic stresses on the empire become too great, I wonder if he would shift. We should be ready to back him if he does.
The challenge to turn things around is ours, given the limits of his power to move the ship of state very quickly. The vice we need to put him in -- between the outside pressure from other countries and the pressure from below here at home -- might provide Kerry enough cover to move in the direction we want, if he's willing and skillful at using it effectively. That's a much more hopeful scenario than the messianic apocalypse that's possible if Bush expands the war.
I don't buy the philosophy of vindictive righteousness that "Bush should pay for the mess he made" and that the economic collapse and coming anarchy in Iraq would be better if it happened on his watch so people finally see how bad the Republicans really are and would begin to want real change, because I'm not sure that's how it works. It could continue to spur people in just the opposite direction -- toward a lust for righteous conquest.
-=-=
As for voting for a third party in battleground states, I'm doubtful that the kinds of vote-swapping or vote-partnering that have been suggested by some who want to get rid of Bush while voicing their concerns about Kerry and the two-party system could gather enough momentum at this late stage to a strong message about the state of our democracy and the two-party system. I wouldn't discourage anyone from doing it if they know someone they trust to follow through, but in a year of electronic voting machines and all sorts of obvious manipulation and intimidation, it's hard to imagine this will be very popular. Do you blame people for not trusting someone they don't know to actually live up to their word, esp. when there's no way to verify it? It we're serious about third parties, then let's do it in serious ways.
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