Our backs are against the wall. They laugh in our faces. They spit on our lives. They strip us of our dignity and scare us into servitude.
They break every promise. They lie through their teeth. They hate, they scorn and ridicule anyone not like them; rich, privileged, pampered and entitled. They claim to speak for us and represent us and work for our common good. But it is all the smoke and mirrors of backroom deals and pacts with the devil.
They have stolen our birthright and murdered our future. They have robbed us deaf, dumb and blind. They have left us for dead by the side of the road after they've trampled us with limos and battle-tanks. They have sucked us dry down to the marrow and demand we grind our bones into to dust to make potions, elixirs and brews to finance their eternal life of egregious vainglory.
They have taken freedom of choice and turned it into do or die. The last choice.
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We're all doing what we can...
I would hope that somehow the Democrats will learn a lesson from knowing they are going to take a serious beating in November, and do something about it.
They have 8 months to get the progressive and independent votes back.
Plenty of time to create and pass some useful legislation, like a universal single payer HCR bill, and plenty of time to charge, try and begin prosecution of Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the war criminals.
Why, I bet they could even get away with not prosecuting Obama as an accessory after the fact, as long as they prosecute the others, and defund the wars and start REALLY getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq.
And plenty of time to charge, try and prosecute Paulsen, Geithner, Bernanke, and Lloyd Blankfein, and the upper management of AIG, and break up Goldman Sachs.
If they do these things in the next few months they can win November with landslides, and Obama might even win a second term two years down the road.
Making Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public utilities would be icing on the cake.
Otherwise they are toast. And apparently republicans are worse. Somehow (scratches head in puzzlement).
In the hopes that someone here has kids or grand-kids, those rugrats either know about what i'm going to let you in on or it hasn't hit their school/campus yet to the point they can't socially exist without it.
Twitter will be a thing of the past soon as a new twitter-esque social network/microblogging service has emerged to a more mainstream prominence lately.
It's been around for a couple of years but 2009 is when it started coming into it's own. Check it out and play around with it.
I made mine and it's in the blogroll as "American Pirate". It's a more personal touch if you actually give a shit about what shennanigans i'm getting into next. I say that only because today is a day of "student activities" in NYC being run by SDS (tee hee!) so stay tuned....
But, mark my words, 2010 is gonna be a big year for Tumblr.
Think Iran's Twitter Revolt was impressive? Imagine if they had unlimited characters to text, ability to post photos and video on the fly, and even "geotag" where it was happening for those keeping an eye on developments.....or, I dunno, Human Rights groups needing evidence to collect about abuses....ahhh technology :-)
Yes, revolution, but as the title states, it's not what you may think. In this case, I say Revolution as in drastic change, and when I say change I mean the kind of change you can believe in.
On to the show. So you say you want a Revolution? How about a solar energy revolution?
Thomas Edison, one of history's greatest inventors said; "I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that." He was right then, in 1931, and he remains right today. The American people agree. Today, 92 percent of all Americans want our country to develop solar energy resources, and 77 percent believe the federal government should make solar power development a national priority.
- snip
It also would mean the creation of over a million new jobs.
An amateur video apparently taken with a cell phone has surfaced on YouTube that appears to contradict the Iranian government's claim that its security forces didn't shoot at protesters last Sunday during demonstrations that left at least eight people dead, including the nephew of opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi.
As first reported by The Los Angeles Times on Saturday, the video not only shows a gunman opening fire on demonstrators - it also gives an eye-opening look at a growing air of defiance by Iranian opposition.
A man in plain clothes is seen and heard opening fire on the crowd as another man can be heard shouting out "Dishonorable Basiji!" blaming a member of Iran's Basij militia for firing the shots.
With shots fired, you would expect the demonstrators to flee and seek cover, but instead, they decide to fight back.
"Attack!" someone in the crowd calls out, and the crowd runs off in pursuit of the gunman as the video, less than a minute in length comes to an end.
I'm sure most of you have seen this. It's a billboard sponsored by an as-yet unnamed businessman in Missouri. Perhaps you've seen some of the others highlighted in this diary at Orange too.
I find it incredibly offensive, but only because it's coming from the WingNut faction. I figure if the government targeted in these public advertisements actually cared to enforce the law against sedition then they'll do so before tomorrow morning. If not then it's open season and somebody up there approves. I mean, it's not like the feds don't know who paid for it, whose company billboard it's sitting on, and even who designed and printed it out and pasted it up. That's what all this post 9-11 spying on Americans is all about, isn't it? And the WingNuts love them some NSA spies rooting around in their email, business dealings, bank accounts and cell phone conversations. Or, they did when Shrubbie was POTUS, since he started it.
Which brings me to what is offensive here. It's coming from those who served as tireless cheerleaders for wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, for the blanket abrogation of Constitutional and human rights here at home, for war crimes, the rendition and torture of prisoners of war in blatant violation of Geneva, for limitless government spying on innocent citizens and, finally, for the unaccountable billions and/or trillions printed to bail out Wall Street, the banking sector and even the Fed itself when the IMF began its long overdue audit of America's books on The Day The Economy Fell. All the while unconcerned about trillions in deficit spending to support not just those illegal wars and the largest expansion of Big Brother in our history, championing Greed Gone Wild that brought this nation and the rest of the world to its knees.
(WARNING: This essay contains VERY graphic images. And in the interest of accuracy, please note the authors disclaimer:
Disclaimer: Some of these particular images below have had their validity questioned and lacking citation, the author of this essay wishes you to consider them to be used in this instance as "examples" of rape behavior by soldiers.
.
- promoted by buhdydharma )
The Anti-War Movement: Hippies had it Right.
God, how I miss OPOL.
"But you know, if you wanna end war and stuff, you have to sing loud," said Arlo. And end a war they did. It was not only by song, not only by protest, it was by the barrage of the REALITY of the horrors of war that woke the American People up to Vietnam.
It was the IMAGES.
I think that the American public doesn't want to look at the horrors anymore. It would make it too hard to exist. Too hard to breathe easy over their lattes, doing nothing about it. They are too worried about keeping their jobs to think about much else.
You see, if they saw CURRENT images, such as this, in Obama's Bagram, done by the US military, they would have to admit we are the barbarians we are supposed to stand against. We are the monsters.
Revulsion begets Revolution.
The First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem.
Disclaimer: Some of these particular images below have had their validity questioned and lacking citation, the author of this essay wishes you to consider them to be used in this instance as "examples" of rape behavior by soldiers. ~ Diane
Dude, now like the cat is out of the bag and like we know everyone but 'conservatives' and old people just want to have fun, I think you'll see more top-of-the-line revolutionaries come out of the closet of stonerdom and, you know, not be afraid to have our revolutionary fervor tempered by a joint or two on the way to the big protest march or strategic infrastructure demolition.
You say you want to change the world? Or even some small part of it? Everyone says to do that you must take power. State power is the appropriate tool for making change we're told, on all sides, by parties and politicians of left, center and right.
But if the world is run by people chasing after power to remake the world in their own image by taking power, then how does pursuing power to change things and remake them in our image introduce any true change in the system? That's the question John Holloway asks in his book Change the World Without Taking Power.
In the beginning, he advises, we must take an action every DDBlogger knows quite well: yell louder. In fact, scream.
So, I've seen some comments here and elsewhere (DKos) that mock the people calling out and protesting against the crooked GOP agenda of Lindsey Graham (and the Elitist pro-Establishment interests that he represents).
But you all should be rooting for the protesters here, and not accepting the U.S. Media line that the status-quo GOP agenda is somehow to be perceived as less "extreme".
For it is the well heeled LindseyGraham-GeorgeBush-RushLimbaugh Republicans who are the fascists, the Human Torture enthusiasts, the buddies of the Wall Street crooks, the racists, and the War Mongering World Empire murderers -- not the people shouting out in protest at Lindsey Graham.
The protesters of Lindsey Graham, who Graham himself decries for calling Bush a "War Criminal" (which of course he is), are largely Libertarians and old-school Constitutional Republicans that disapprove of the GOP War and Wall Street agenda.
I never really "chose" to be on the left side of the political spectrum. I just ended up there because the traditional left was more logical than right and center if you come at life from the point-of-view implied in the founding documents of the American Republic (alas, now past). In America the left is really fulfilling the role of conserving the ideas and ideals of the American Revolution. Generally we believe in the rule of law rather than the law of privilege. But most importantly we believe in using principles established during the enlightenment that reason and science should be appealed to in setting public policy. Religion does not work as a foundation for public policy because people differ in religious principles. We, in the West, did not invent reason but we were the first to realize that appeal to reason was the only way to wars like the Thirty-Years War which devasted much of parts of Europe (mainly Germany) much as Afghanistan is devasted now.
Much has been made by teabaggers in the healthcare debate that we need to "return to the country our founders envisioned". With all due respect to the founders who - as Enlightenment thinkers - got a lot of things right, this would be like asking Henry VIII for relationship advice.
Original article, by Ted Sprague and subtitled Millions of Iranians have come out on the streets demanding a change in regime. The movement that was first sparked off by "electoral fraud" has become a movement to demand complete democratic rights and against the dictatorship of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is an interview (conducted on July 2nd 2009) with Arash Azizi, an Iranian socialist, which was originally made to explain the situation in Iran to an Indonesian audience, via In Defence of Marxism:
Ted Sprague: Can you explain to our readers about the electoral fraud in Iran and the movement that has emerged out of it?
There is an element within the opposition to the current regime that has nothing to do with Mousavi, (or in fact, any of the present leadership), who want a secular, democratic and free Iran.
Way back in the olden days - 1968 - there was a nasty big war going on in a godforsaken little country in southeast Asia called Vietnam. In those days there wasn't an "All Volunteer Force" full of high school dropouts, petty criminals who bought off jail time by enlisting, way too many hopeless kids from the rust belt and impoverished heartland with no other options, etc.
In those days we Baby Boomers, the largest chunk of humans ever to gift the planet with our presence, were enjoying our youth and our freedom immensely with what our parents who fought World War II at home and abroad were able to buy us with their rewards for suffering through decades of economic depression and war. We were the best educated generation ever, a huge percentage of us went to college because our parents were hell bent on giving us all the opportunities they never had.
So in order to have an ample rotating pool of millions of young men to fight their war, they had a system called "Selective Service." Conscription. Now, this system and the Last Great Opium War it supported were not very popular with the young Boomers who got to be cannon fodder whether they wanted to or not. As resistance and protest against the war grew among the young and disrupted college campuses all over the country, the huge 'bubble' of humans that comprised my generation began looking really dangerous to the Powers That Be who like to run things from some basement in or near Washington, D.C.
The situation looked pretty grim to me too, though I tended to have a lot more faith in my generation than the wigs in D.C. did. I figured it would eventually come down to revolution, but I also figured we'd win. Sheer force of numbers. I joined the local NAACP Youth Council, thinking we were going to need the boomers who weren't WASPs, as much or more than we needed boomers who were. We also had some luck recruiting Native American kids, which I considered a very hopeful sign. Our revolution would need us all, so I actively went to work rounding up as many "all" as I could find. It being Oklahoma (Muskogee, in fact), they weren't hard to find.
My sister who was a year older had joined the SDS while away for her first year of college in Kalamazoo. She wasn't at all shy of trying to recruit me into the fold every time she came home on holiday. She too was convinced that a revolution by our generation was inevitable, and despite serious inborn intellect (she was Valedictorian in high school, eventually got a PhD in plant physiology), seemed totally under some kind of spell cast by some older people - pre-WW2-born Beatnik generation - who were trying really hard to manage the great desire for change and a better world for their own purposes. By manipulating us.
You might not have noticed consciously, but it already happened; and even though you might not be consciously aware of it, you know it on a different level. Do you want proof? consider this:
Remember $4/gallon gas? of course you do. It was the kind of horror that makes red-blooded Americans (As the inhabitants of the United States of America like to call themselves) question the meaning of life. It meant that we couldn't joy-ride any more. It took all the flavor out of parking and necking (or petting, if you were that advanced) even though those pursuits went out the window with the advent of bucket seats anyway.
It spelled the death of the Hummer. Suddenly, vehicles designed for the battlefield weren't so fashionable any more, except for certain people in Montecito; but we all know that Montecito is the graveyard of the elephants anyway. What recession? In Montecito, it doesn't exist out on the road. Of course, who knows what happens behind the electric gates and impenetrable hedges? And I have to say that one does see quite a few Priuses among the Bentleys (!) in Montecito, so it's not ENTIRELY devoid of consciousness.
Basically, the jump in gasoline prices sent shockwaves through the USA that affected everybody. No matter that the price of gas descended again; everybody knows that it could jump up anytime, and is, as we speak, rising again, ruled by the fickle winds of 'market forces'. The knowledge that events and people beyond our control could raise the prices to four, or even more, dollars per gallon has affected our whole way of life. We (Or some of us, anyway) actually THINK before we jump into the car; we wonder whether we really NEED to make a special trip to town for a hot pretzel; should we consolidate errands? does anybody else in the family need something that we can get while we're out?
I think that it's an excellent omen for Earth day. And besides, rest assured that as soon as the oil barons feel that they can raise prices, they will. Right now, certain people are saying something to the effect that "We can't raise them too fast, we've got to wait until this 'recession' is on the way to recovery, and then we'll raise them again!"
I hate to tell them, but the damage has been done. The Hummer factory is closed, which is the actual proof that the revolution happened; the Hummer was a stupid car for deluded people who bought the illusion that they needed a Hummer to A- Keep them safe in a crash B- make them feel like G.I. Joe C- some other 'statement' that the car manufacturers and oil sellers persuaded people to make.
So.... what makes you think that I hated Hummers from the beginning? and that I'm persuaded that the people who can't get rid of them will eventually just walk away from them the same way that some people are walking away from their mortgages on houses that are now worth less than the payments? And that four-wheel-drive cars are great... on a ranch in Wyoming, but not really necessary for a trip to Von's?
The funny thing is that all the stuff is still there. Houses, trees, food, things, they're still there. The only thing that changed is some abstract thing called "Value" that somebody decided things were worth.
And something very important really has changed; more people are planting gardens, more people are recycling, more people are car-pooling, as the pocket-book nerve gets pinched ever harder. There's signs of hope, of an emerging consciousness, of a real revolution. People are starting to realize that the things that they took for granted are actually gifts from the Creator that can disappear the next day, and that cheap consumer goods are not as much fun as getting together with one's family, friends, and society and doing things that don't necessarily require the burning of gasoline. Among other changes. I've tripled the size of my vegetable garden, and when I finish posting this (Which I posted on DKos, where it disappeared without a trace, probably because it wasn't RELEVANT enough, or whatever the people there judge to be relevant) I'm going out to plant more stuff; I don't want a single vacant space in that garden!
It's something out of a twisted wingnut fantasy: 25,000 identically-dressed, tough-looking men and a charismatic leader with a simple, strong motto (in this case, "Believe! Obey! Fight!") barge into the capital city and bully their way into a leadership role in the government. No complicated voting, no messy democracy, no stupid consensus; just a bunch of ballsy, take-charge kinda guys who know what's best for the nation and its historically-destined people - and woe unto he who disagrees with their image of what "the nation" ought to be...
And yet, like so many bizarre, terrifying, and ultimately uncivilized events, this one actually happened. Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we'll take a peek at Italy in 1922 - and if we're lucky, we'll even be able to discern how the shadowy rightists behind Santelli and the Teabaggers have moved beyond simply genuflecting before Zombie Reagan, and may now actually be trying to resurrect Benito Mussolini himself.
While youths in Athens protest by throwing Molotov cocktails, in Paris by toppling barricades, and in Budapest by hurling eggs at politicians, protesters in Berlin rage at their economic plight by targeting the most expensive cars -- symbols of German wealth and power.
This will be a historical look at the art of mind-changing. The political reality of the day requires that a lot of people change their minds about political realities, and especially about what is and what isn't "on the table" in terms of permitted political action.
So, what we need to do is understand what it takes to change people's minds; then, when we've figured that out, it's time to change some minds, and change the world. This essay will examine a number of historical figures who are relevant on the topic of mind-changing; and then it will surface for air by discussing the political platform it set up at the beginning and asking its reading audience: "what would change your mind?"
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
What to do when the government shoots at you?
