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February 2008

Volume 21, Number 2
Activism

Olympia Protests
Peter Bohmer


Liberia Gulag
Dan Read


Peace Community
Teo Ballvé


Miami 5
Hallmark Stephen


N.O. Dollar Day
Darwin BondGraham


Antiwar Arrests
Max Obuszewski


Commentary

Letters
Readers & writers


Journal of 21st Yr
Lydia Sargent


PU-litzers
Jeff Cohen


2008: What's New?
Frank Scott


Waiting for War
Diana Johnstone


Ideological Profiling
Nikki Alexander


North Uganada
Bo Chamberlain


Skanska’s Practices
Agneta Enström


Iraq War Vet
Ryne Ziemba


Culture

Dylan & Wainwright
Michael Bronski


Charlie Wilson's War
Jeremy Kuzmarov


Deportation Nation
César cuauhtémoc garcía Hernández


Global Waterfront
Steve Early


Cartoonerama
Jen Sorensen


Features

Hidden Primaries
Laurence Shoup


Bali Roadmap
Anne Petermann


NYT on Kosovo
Edward Herman


Battleground Michigan
Chuck Glossenger


Zaps

Zaps
Various submissions


NOTE: Z Magazine subscribers and sustainers have access to all Z Magazine articles here and in the archive. The latest Z Magazine articles available to everyone are listed in the Free Articles box at the top of the table of contents, and are starred in the list below. Questions? e-mail Z Magazine Online.

2008: What's New?

By Frank Scott
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ZMO WEB-ONLY ARTICLE:

The Iraq war continues, with official opposition meekly calling for a responsible redeployment of troops. That’s like stopping crime by asking rapists to responsibly redeploy their genitals. The credit bubble has become a deflating balloon whose escaping gas promises far more lethal contamination before it is totally empty. While global awareness of environmental problems has advanced, our theocrats still preach the economic fundamentalism at the root of the problem, with only murmured complaints from Democrats as more beholden to capital than Republicans. And now the bad news.While there may be small differences on running the crippled economy, they amount to simply employing different decorators to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic.

After the November vote, no matter who moves into the subsidized housing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, slavish support for Israel’s endless assault on Palestine will continue. When dealing with the Jewish state, at the root of present war and threatening more, there is no difference between Huckabee and Clinton or Romney and Obama or Edwards and McCain. That may be the worst news since that policy has already caused so much devastation elsewhere that we forget, or more honestly deny, its impact on the 9/11 disaster and those which followed in Europe. For the agents of continued race war against Islam, the fire next time is to be in Iran, and if the fanatic Christian regime and its biblical brothers of the Zionist bloc have their way, hell may have its day. 

Could an independent presidential candidacy make a difference? Too soon to tell. Though pure libertarianism is nothing more than demented individualism, some think it makes more sense to support an honest conservative who wants to end war, than a dishonest liberal who’ll continue all wars. The crackpot realism which had many suppress their ideals and support the warrior candidate last time will see them lose again if they submissively line up behind the corporate shill with enough money to buy the nomination. It remains to be seen if those who oppose the war, but are without a party or a candidate, can be organized in support of an alternative with some hope of even minimal success in the short term. 

What’s needed is a long term focus that doesn’t reelect servants of the creators of our problems and foolishly expect them to bring about the radical changes needed to solve them. Neither of the ruling party factions will stop warfare or start health care for every one of us, as long as they remain dedicated to maintaining corporate welfare for only some of us. The serious concern about climate change is already being guided into feel good, cosmetic proposals having more to do with capital’s plan to green the market with advertising rhetoric, while avoiding the economic system’s role at the core of the problem. 

The increasing turmoil in our credit scheme to finance war and waste while denying just about everything else will only become more widespread. Our corporadoes work through their federal outlet store, the government, to produce immaterial finances for capital, while increasing material layoffs for what was once called labor and has now been relabeled a middle class. It is that shrinking population sector which joins the poor in being subjected to both economic assault and media perversion. We are constantly told, for example, that the president of Iran, holder of a doctoral degree, is an ignorant, hard line threat to one and all, while hearing uncritical repetition of the idiocies that spout from the menacingly empty head which rules the U.S. 

Intelligence leaks that showed Iran was not developing nuclear weapons were met with hyperventilating anger and hysterical disbelief by those who insist that nation is an enemy of all humankind. Although Iran has as much right as any nation to create nuclear weapons, especially given the nuclear arsenal in Israel, which is pledged to destroy Iran—contrary to the reverse propaganda believed by many here—the leak indicates dissension in the establishment. This is good news for those who seek an end to the slaughters in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine, but it also shows how powerless the antiwar opposition has become. We must rely on factions which serve the empire to get us out of a dreadful situation created by other factions which serve the empire. And the really bad news? They may be our only immediate hope.

Since the officially sanctioned opposition is no such thing and alternative candidacies are not yet operational, our only hope is to back those factions within the CIA, the Pentagon, and the intelligence bureaucracy who believe the empire must be maintained, but not under its present controllers. These establishment forces will probably support the official opposition provided in the presidential election, though we don’t have to go that far. But for the present, don’t hang by your lip waiting for the supposed liberal left to challenge the unholy alliance with Israel and pending war with Iran. In order to achieve those ends, we need internal opposition, and much more external clamor for impeachment and an economic change that means no war, anywhere. Always hope and work for the best, but always be prepared for the worst. Happy 2008? Let’s see.

Z 

Frank Scott writes political commentary that appears in the Coastal Post, the Independent Monitor, and on his shared blog. 


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