New from Cory Morningstar at politicalcontext.org

Go to politicalcontext.org and read Tar Sands Action and the Paralysis of a Movement --Cory Morningstar's investigative critique of the Tar Sands Action--the bourgeois environmental movement's obedient act of civil "unrest."

Just how non-serious were the protests against the Tar Sands project? This quote, in the article, from one of the arrested protesters pretty much says it all:

Getting arrested in the Tar Sands Action was fun and it felt like the right and responsible thing to do. The scariest part of it was navigating the D.C. Metro. No, that’s not exactly true. It was the anticipation of navigating the D.C. Metro that terrified me, not the actual navigation. … The female officer took my ID but stuffed my money back in my bra. Then they took my mug shot, handed me my ID and squeezed me into the paddy wagon with Kidder. It was very hot and close in there but we joked around with the cute police officers, told stories and had a pretty good time…. I was released at 12:46 p.m.

This is the first in a series of articles by Cory Morningstar on the Tar Sands Action as typical of the bourgeois environmental movement.

New at politicalcontext.org: "Corporate America Sends a Labor Day Message"

This is an incredible piece of investigative journalism by Walter Brasch. I've never been more proud to publish a piece on our web site.

Corporate America Sends a Labor Day Message

Walter Brasch chronicles how RR Donnelley, a $9 billion dollar corporation, ruined the lives of 284 loyal workers in Bloomsburg, PA.

Introducing: Focus on the Aftermath

An editorial at politicalcontext.org by my friend Alan Tauber, founder of an organization dedicated to keeping public awareness of disasters alive even when the mainstream media has moved on to the next news cycle:

Introducing Focus on the Aftermath

Libya: Raining on the Uncritical Parade

From Who really won in Libya? SocialistWorker.org:

No one who cares about justice will shed a tear for Muammar el-Qaddafi. He
was a tyrant, with the blood of many people on his hands. But no one who opposes
imperialism and its crimes can celebrate Qaddafi's downfall in these
circumstances.
The new government that will come to power in Libya won't
answer to the people of Libya and their desire for democracy and justice. It
will answer to imperialism--and that is a blow to the Arab Spring, which this
year showed the world the hope of an alternative to oppression, violence and
tyranny.

A Conservative Response to Those Who Would TAINT Saint Michele

Okay, so Michele Bachmann got a little confused and wished Elvis Presley a happy birthday on the anniversary of his death.
 
But the little conservative man on my shoulder (his name is Moe, I believe...) replies thusly:
 
"You liberals selectively apply 'truth standards' to deliberately play 'gotcha' with conservatives. Remember, Obama said he'd visited 57 states. So-called 'temporality,' like so-called 'science' is routinely applied selectively by liberals to mute God's higher truths, which are irreducible to the literalism of liberal academics. Also, Bachmann may have a low IQ, but that's meaningless, because 'IQ' is an artificial construct dreamed up by liberal 'social scientists' in order to justify things like eugenics and mandatory government-run education, which is the same as communist Nazism. Also, any attacks against Bachmann are, a priori, sexist. Finally, Bachmann is closer to God than you are, therefore, if she says today is Elvis's birthday, then it must be his birthday."

And that settles that.


"There is a higher truth!"



Progressives and Democrats: the agenda and mobilization arguments

Over at politicalcontext.org, I posted an article a few days ago about progressives defecting from the Democratic Party. It's been our most widely read and widely shared article so far, and it's inspired some Facebook commentary that is both vociferous and predictable: Why should we help the GOP win? Well, this argument has been hashed and rehashed for several election cycles. And I am not staking dogmatic ground here--the Context2012 project aims to make the public more aware of third parties; it's not a call to join them, necessarily. But still, I think there are some unanswered arguments on the part of Democratic loyalists:

The arguments that presently concern me the most are that Democratic Presidents (1) enact conservative agendas more effectively than Republican Presidents and (2) de-mobilize popular resistance to those agendas, whereas, Republican Presidents tend to mobilize widespread popular resistance. Social Security is the case in point: Bush wanted to destroy it and popular resistance prevented that. Obama is destroying it now, and Democrats are more concerned with defending Obama than saving Social Security.

Or, as Alexander Cockburn put it, in the excerpt from his recent Counterpunch essay that I linked to in my politicalcontext.org essay:

Indeed, the best outcome for the left in 2008 would have been a victory for McCain, Obama’s Republican opponent. McCain! But, you wail, he would have plunged America into new wars, kept Guantanamo open, launched an onslaught on entitlements, surrendered to Wall Street and the banks… McCain would have tried all these things, but maybe he would have quailed amid a storm of public protest. Under W. Bush’s two terms the spirit of opposition throve; the antiwar movement flourished; the labor movement was active; blacks militant. Amid a brilliant campaign mounted by the AFL-CIO, Bush’s hopes to gut social programs were dead within months of the start of his second term in 2004. But since 2008 a Democratic president has neutralized all these constituencies.

Even if not generally true, this seems indisputably true about Obama.

Special Report--Culture War Against Indigenous Alaskans 08/07 by SharedSacrifice | Blog Talk Radio

Tomorrow we're hosting this special report via podcast, at 12 noon mountain time, 2:00 PM eastern time:

Special Report--Culture War Against Indigenous Alaskans 08/07 by SharedSacrifice Blog Talk Radio

Gregory Vickrey talks to Norman Ayaugalria and Carl Wassilie about the violent culture war being waged against the Yup'ik in Emmonak, Alaska.

SPAM POETRY

I've been cleaning up spam from politicalcontext.org and, well, I've found it to be absurdly poetic. Here's an example (I took the stream-of-unconscious-bot writing and divided it into arbitrary "lines")...
Someone said

A person’s content

in addition to have to say

that just how amazing it’s.

But not only matter but what

centered you have preaching about it.

I most certainly will unquestionably reveal

the item utilizing my girlfriends

all of which will.

Kentucky Green Party Forms

(reposted from politicalcontext.org)

From Joseph Gerth at the Louisville Courier-Journal, interesting and encouraging news about the newest state Green Party:

Tired of Democrats and Republicans who don’t speak to the issues or solve the problems important to them, about 35 people gathered Saturday in Anderson County to form the Green Party of Kentucky...
Geoff Young, a retired state government worker, said he decided last fall that there needed to be a Green Party chapter in Kentucky. “People in Kentucky are becoming desperate for a real alternative to the two established parties,” he said. “Many people, including myself, feel that the two established parties don’t offer enough new ideas, enough ideas that work and do not propose solutions that will actually address Kentucky’s most serious problems.” The party supports policies that would improve the environment and is opposed to war, Young said.

The article also details the challenges faced by third parties in Kentucky, challenges we are familiar with here at politicalcontext.org as part of our context2012 effort to publicize and offer a voice to similar alternative political organizations. Ballot Access News reports that: "In Kentucky, if a group polls 2% of the vote for President, it is a qualified minor party for the next four years, and can nominate by convention, with no petitioning needed. The only parties that have attained that status, in the last 80 years, are the Reform Party 1996-2000, the Anderson Coalition 1980-1984, and the American Party 1968-1972." This statistic seems more reasonable than the apparently misreported 20% figure quoted by both the Courier-Journal article and Green Party Watch.

Kentucky is certainly a state needing some fresh political voices. The state's Democratic Governor, Steve Beshear, seems to be in bed with big coal. Like much of the rest of the country, unemployment in the state has increased not just dramatically, but critically. And, of course, Kentucky gave us Rand Paul. But oppressive conditions give rise to solidarity, and closed political doors in one house may well inspire hard-working activists to build a new and better house. Good luck, Kentucky Greens!

How bad is Tolkien, really?

I don't endorse this assessment, but I find it hilariously provocative:

Elf-besotted fans aside, why shouldn't Tolkien be granted admission to the literary pantheon? Well, for one thing, his detractors argue, his prose is unbearably archaic. "Sometimes, reading Tolkien, I am reminded of the Book of Mormon," writes [Harold] Bloom. Tolkien's verse--which litters the text of The Lord of the Rings--is generally accepted to be even worse.

--Chris Mooney, "Kicking the Hobbit."

The Residents - Perfect Love

"There's something I must tell you. There's something I must say. The only really perfect love. Is one that gets away."

cover lover: Jenny Owens Youngs & co. --> New Order

Fantastic interpretation of one of my favorite songs of all time.

cover lover: TMBG --> Chumbawamba

Two things about this cover: First, I wish TMBG had dug a little deeper and discovered some Chumba songs really worth disseminating into popular consciousness--like anything on Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records or even WYSIWYG

Second, though, even with their limited political consciousness, I think John and John get several things right in their "Tubthumping" cover even without overt awareness of it: the communal nature of the song, the distorted social values that accompany pub-hopping (Linnell distorts the audio during the drinking verses) and, musically speaking, a sense of the compartmentalized stories simultaneously playing out in the song. All in all, a decent cover.


They Might Be Giants covers Chumbawamba

the story remains the same if you'd take a look

Spot on vocals, appreciative crowd, great song. Sigh.

Calling BS on Obama on Libya

I think Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi is a sick joke of a leader--or at least wasted potential; perhaps he had a streak of anti-imperialism in him at one time before he learned to be an opportunist, but no true progressive would ever do what he's done to his own people, no way and no how. Cindy Sheehan and I went back and forth on this in a rather intense moment during my last interview with her (my fault Cindy), and I've even been critical of what I see as Hugo Chavez's Gaddafi-esque posturing. Maybe I'm a purist, a kind of moral Trotskyist. Whatever, I have no sympathy for the besieged Libyan leader.

But I agree 100% with Cynthia McKinney's assessment of the U.S.-NATO mission in Libya. It's illegal, immoral, stupid, ill-timed, ill-planned, one-dimensional, ignorant, clumsy, undemocratic, terribly wasteful, brutal, dishonest, hypocritical, and imperialist. It's absurd.

From her speech:

At a time when the American people have been asked to tighten their belts, teachers are receiving pink slips, the vital statistics of the American people reveal a health care crisis in the making, and the U.S. government is in serious threat of default, our President and Congress have decided that a new war, this time against the people of Libya, is appropriate. This comes at a time when the U.S., by one estimate, spends approximately $3 billion per week for war against Iraq and Afghanistan.  The President and Congress continue to fund the war against Libya despite the fact that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that the U.S. had no strategic interest in Libya; and despite the fact that the Senate Chairwoman of the Select Committee on Intelligence admits that the U.S. really does not know who the "rebels" are; while the rebels themselves, according to a Telegraph report of 25 March 2011, admit that Al Qaeda elements are among their ranks.  So while the apparatus of our government has been used for over ten years to inform the American people and the global community that Al Qaeda is an enemy of freedom-loving people all over the world, our President chooses to ally our military with none other than Al Qaeda elements in Libya and other people whom U.S. intelligence say they do not know.
Additionally, U.S. Admiral Locklear admitted to a Member of Congress that one of NATO's missions was to assassinate Muammar Qaddafi.  And, indeed, NATO bombs have killed Qaddafi's son and three grandchildren, just as US bombs in 1986 killed his daughter.  NATO bombs just recently killed the grandchildren of one of Qaddafi's associates in a targeted assassination attempt. Targeted assassination is not within the scope of the United Nations Security Council Resolution and targeted assassination is against U.S. law, international law, international humanitarian law, and international human rights law.  Targeted assassination is also a crime.  We certainly cannot encourage others to abide by the law when we so openly break it.
While in Libya, I witnessed NATO's targeting of civilians:  NATO bombs and missiles landed in residential neighborhoods, hit schools, exploded near hospitals, destroyed parts of the public broadcasting infrastructure, and narrowly missed killing students at Al Fateh University.  When civilians are targeted in war, or "low kinetic" activities, crimes are committed.
NATO practices in Libya are exactly like Israel's practices in Gaza:  fishermen are killed as they go about their fishing business, a naval blockade allows arms to flow to NATO's Libyan allies, but stops food, fuel, and medicine from entering non-NATO ally-held areas.  The entire population suffers as a result.  Collective punishment is illegal when Israel practices it against the people of Gaza and collective punishment is illegal when NATO practices it.
NATO and hyperbolic press accounts have introduced a kind of race hatred that the Libyan people have been trying hard to erase.  Approximately 50% of Libya looks like me.  Innocent darker skinned Libyans have been targeted, tortured, harassed, and killed.
The people of Libya have the right to self-determination.  They have a right to "resource nationalism."  They have a right to live in peace.  They have a right to determine their future and they need not exercise their rights underneath the shock and awe of NATO bombs and missiles.