Hi Paul, Pangeae, llm1017, brad and friends.. I am going to try to answer brad question: How do at the same time attempt to undermine the projection of the ideology of the "war of/on Terror", while seeking to rearticulate and project our own ideological ideals? How do we justify our inability to fully support the Dems, and how do we support, yet not condone the methods of the "them"? How do we seek to expose the contradiction and bring about the correct social alleviation of it? I am not sure you can undermine the projection without attacking democrats regardless I think the best way to counter the ideology is to link it to fascism as much as possible. Another way to counter the ideology is to link the US with Al-Quaida.. I dont know if you noticed, but the last Al-Quaida video is somewhat suspicious, the terrorists look well rested, yet they have entire armies looking for them.. they are clean, fresh from having showered,in fact they they are so fresh you could guess the CIA make-up artists had no problem doing a good job making the video straight from the CIA's offices. If you note a bran new Al-Quaida logo is being seen.. -on the left- pay attention how clean #2 al-quaida boss (Ayman al-Zawahri ) is, I would be surprised he wears GWB cologne.. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060902/wl_nm/securtiy_qaeda_tape_dc_4 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5309376.stm I think it is the best approach since everyone knows there is more links of Bushes to the Bin- Laden than Hussein ever had.. Also I dont think Al-Quaida can be stupid enough to ask westerners to convert to islam, the video seem to work hand in hands with Bush (pseudo) islamofascist US-made conspiracy..

 

( llm1017: nice post Ill try to remember what you said about riches successes..)

"Social Justice" does not exist anywhere in the world. The closes one gets is maybe Norway, which has made a run at distributing it GNP in a "Socially Responsible" manner.

The only kind of true justice that should matter to any Democratic nation is "Economic Justice". Yes "Freedom" is important to happiness but so what if your society allows the rich to steal from the worker to give it to the poor, so the rich can get richer, as we live in fear of war - poverty - and old age.  

The only reason why the rich exist anywhere is because tax/social policy creates them and allows them to flourish. All people miss that critical point.

No human being anywhere in the world should be allowed to have so much wealth as to cause world havoc. Bin Laden is a prime example of what one nut job with money can accomplish. Bush is another - the Pope - the House of Saud - BP -Exxon -an so on.

Greed destroys the peace, kill millions as millions more are allowed to die. I propose A-Mare-ika tax all wealth exceeding $5Million at 100%. 

The demofacists we are forced to elect rule our country and do so with the support of millions of government paid/employeed facists - who have job rights - pensions - and healthcare all guaranteed by privately employeed taxpayers. Give the rest of us that same guarantee see what happens.

535 wise men in lock step all going in the wrong direction!

Clearly, there is no Democracy governing A-Mare-Ika. We are not a Republic either. The Republic fell under the control of liability avoiding rich people who parade around as artificial "corporations" which are legal criminal gangs of rich people. 

Corporate Capitalism rules the day. Free enterprise is the great myth of A-Mare-Ika. Democracy does not exist anywhere in the world. 

"...one nation under GOD with liberty and justice for"...THE RICH.    End of story!!!!!!!!!

Rich people intimately understand this absolute truth.

There is no difference between being poor or the working poor. If your not living off your investments - you're poor - period. 

Financial dependence causes fear. That fear is used by the wealthy to control the poor.

Christians - Muslims - Jews... manipulated puppets of Corporate Capitalism. Killing one another for an Irrational Belief all for the benefit of the criminal gangs of rich people aka Corporations. 

Based on the name of these currents one would think they were on different wings of the political spectrum. But they're not. They go hand in hand as war and death go hand in hand. In some ways it's the ckicken and egg argument. Neoliberalism means "free" market-forces, Washington Consensus, war against unions et cetera. In short, corporate-driven capitalism US-style. Neoconservatism means a very aggressive foreign policy and strong support for socalled free-trade. The US Army clears the way for "free markets" (this really means US corporations take over markets they before did not have access to). We have seen/are seeing this in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we saw it in Kosovo before Bush. Bill Clinton isn't normally included as a "neocon", but his foreign policy pretty much fits right in. One of the main goals of the NATO-led war against Kosovo was to open up new markets. The same as in Iraq. This was put into the Rambouillet Accords for Kosovo, and into various de facto dictats from Bremer in Iraq. If Hillary Clinton runs as presidential candidate and wins I don't see much change - certainly not in foreign policy. She's just as hawkish as Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Rice (and the rest of the bloodthirsty killers currently occupying the White House against the will of the American people, as demonstrated through two electoral frauds). I'm not sure who will run against her, and it probably doesn't matter much either. Whoever it is, it will be a hawkish monster that only cares for US Empire. The rhetoric and speeches may change a bit, but there won't be a progressive revolution. Unless the two parties will allow a miniscule of democracy - such as a third party on the ballot properly and allowed in the presidential debates - it looks like the US will be run by criminals. These criminals don't see people at the other end of the bombsight - they only see natural resources they want their hands on, demolished countries they can rebuild by giving contracts to US corporations, and money that can change hands from the demolished country to the US by "free-market forces". The future doesn't look bright. Let's just hope "the Other America" will grow even bigger in the next two years so they can push the Democrats away from the far right. PS: I liked your comment on the US (v America) as America obviously is a lot bigger than the US.

mtbrad. Yes if corporate neoliberal Democrats come back into office, many Americans will be horribly confused and think that something they think is a left will be in charge. Amazing numbers of [U.S. of] Americans thought Clinton was left even though he governed to the right of Nixon. I used to get hate mail that tried to connect my radical writings to supposedly leftist Bill Clinton. It's just totally absurd like much, perhaps most of U.S. political life. People are horribly messed up thinking about politics and ideology in the U.S. and that''s no accident of course. The confusion is intitutionally mandated. Mass idiocy is the policy of concentrated power. I don't think neoliberalism ever really went away so not sure I like the phrase "back to neoliberalism." Core neoliberal ideas (which seem largely just a repackaged version of vicious neoclassical bourgeois political economy ala Ricardo and Malthus and the rest of those slimey bastards)still operate though I suppose neconservative foreign policy tends to work against aspects of the "free trade" globalization project. I mean one of the first thing the Neocon occupiers did in Iraq was impose neoliberal principles by the barrel of a gun. Another thing to think about is the extent to which neolibralism and neoconservatism are wedded at the hip. The soulless hyper-alienating operation of the classic capitalist principles (drowning all precious moral and community commitments in Marx and Engels' "icy waters of egotistical calculation") under neoliberal guise tends to encourage blood and soil (proto-fascistic) neoconservatism/fundamentalism along with ongoing European neo-fasism and Islamic fundamentalism...which Bush and Rumsfeld have now taken (hilariously) to call "Islamofascism" --- a term popularized to some extent by the loathesome alcholic ex-leftist Christopher Hitchens (who recently penned a feature article about the history of fellatio in Vanity Fair.) It's a scary-ass world right now, consistent with Rosa Luxembourg's dead on warning: "socialism or barbarism." Thinking of imminent ecological collapse, Ivan Meszaros says "socialism or barbarism if we're lucky." On the rest of the world, I don't know; many of them will certainly be relieved to have centrist Clinton/Kerry/Obama types in power and they'll have some good reasons for that. The fact that Clinton is a darling in Europe is not encouraging.

My last comment was not a question and a theoretical proposition addressed only at Paul, it is open to all. I merely tend to aim my question at the blogger.

Paul, I have been recently thinking alot about what will come after the, already dead but does not know it yet neo-conservative movement. My general theory is that we will see a return to neo-liberalism, which is not really all that interesting, what is, is I think the general public, including many liberal, will view this as a giant victory for "progressives". In essence we will praise the policies that we were so against just five or six years ago. It is the basic good cop, bad cop strategy. Also wondering if you think the rest of the world will buy into the good cop as much as I think the US polity will?

Corporate America runs our government.

IRAQ was and will continue to be about money/oil.

Bin Laden was little more than an agent of "Big Oil" disruprting world markets by taking down the Trade Center on 911. The knee jerk reaction by US power brokers was predictable.

I say Bin Laden is the one who should boast "Mission Accomplished'.

 A-mare-ika is coming apart. All one needs is to stop the flow of oil to the US and our citizens starve. $3.00 gas is tanking the US economy. The housing maket is imploding.

We are not invincible.

Suyi E 1a: First, I must admit that I find all mainstream polls suspect. I've seen too many questions that ask my political affilation with the only options ranging from 'Very Liberal' to 'Very Conservative' to not realise that the respondents are replying within a particular context. I'll be more easily swayed by polls when they are conducted and released by a radical movement. BLOGGER RESPONSE: Oh sure the mainstream polls are messed up and this relates to the conservative ideological preconceptions of who runs and design them. That's why I am even more encouraged by the degree of progressive sentiment that they tend to capture. I'd like to see radical polls too but not likely since polling is a really big capital intensive operation and radicals don't generally have the money for such activities and are not likely to spend on it when they have so many basic prior priorities. Suyi E, 1b: My question/point is this: if a majority of the people never liked Bush, don't have conservative opinions (making the provision that the 'masses' aren't able to identify what liberal, conservative, radical platforms are) why do we (radical activists) focus on bashing conservatives? Shouldn't we instead focus on pushing the 'masses' over the bump from their social democratic position and into a radical (and presumeably, engaged) position? BLOGGER: Well how about about bumping them from just privately expressing opinions to pollsters to actually acting on opinions (even just "social democratic" ones)in the public sphere and in collective ways? My biggest problem with getting too excited about polls is that they just capture passive opinion, which is part of why power elites can govern in such bold defiance of the will of the citizenry insofar as it is captured by polls. One thing missing here is the project of building/re-building institutions to make progressive opinions relevant to actual politics and policy and something more than a private sentiment expressed to a pollster or at a dinner party or something. People need institutions and organizations to act effectively. One of the great stories of U.S. history in the last third of the the last century and into this century is the savage withering --- and couterrevolutionary assault on --- the organic institutions (trade unions, political organization, independent press, etc,) that used to mediate between ordinary working people and policy (see William Grieder's book Who Will Tell the People [1986]), Left intellectuals/critics will and i think must always subject the existing administration and party in power to ruthless, fact- and morality-based criticism, noting relevant contradictions between the rhetoric and reality of policy, etc....I think that's pretty much all the original post does here so not comfortable with suggestion (or more) that it's "bashing." Suyi E, 2: I know you have mentioned before that in academia your biggest problem was with liberal/progressives who "set the boundaries of debate." I feel that Liberals/Social Democratics are the last line of defence for the capitalist system; the last concession that the ruling elite will agree to so they can lick their wounds and slowly diffuse opposing movement. Now the polls appears that the majority of the population tends to be social democratics even if they aren't self-concious and act on it. So our main enemy isn't the government nor Bush but apathy and liberals. BLOGGER: I sometimes horrify progressive friends and family by expressing the opinion that maybe liberals are actually the main enemy. But that opinion of mine tends to neglect among other how truly awful and dangerous the American proto-fascistic, arch-plutocratic and messianic militarist Right is. I did a piece before the 2004 elections titled "Kerry is Coke But Bush is Crack" and I meant it. I am a very left Marxist who calls himself a left anarchist on Tuesdays, Thursdays and now Saturdays and I have written numerous scathing pieces on "liberal" and Democratic darlings (including two major assaults on Barrack Obama)and values but I refuse to be cavalier about the danger represented by the right or about the socioeconomically and racially selective nature of the price that is paid for the implementarion of their hideous policy agenda. I'm not going to rehearse the standard intra-left debate, which recurs with every "quadrennial extravaganza" (Chomsky's term for our big corporate-crafted presidential selections)but for my position you can use search functions to see what I wrote during and after the November 2004 travesty (when I pulled no punches on Kerry but rejected the "no difference" argument, as did Chomsky and Albert and others on the hard left) Suyi E. 3: This is will be an important reorientation. Instead of having marches to govenrment buildings/corporate buildings protesting government action we instead walk through suburbs and ghettos protesting the apathy and complicity with the status quo - and we show them them how to get involved. Instead of having coalitions with liberal organizations (I must confess that after learning more about the Spanish Revolution, I have been turned off by coalitions) we try to debate those organizations and make them radical. Instead (or in addition to) of having a Conservative watch in ZMag, we have a Liberal Watch making note of where they have set their boundaries for "respecatble opinions." Instead of making the government or corporation 'better', we organize and relating in new ways. BLOGGER: There should be a Liberal Watch. I'm also for confronting people with their apathy, especially in privileged spaces. I'm probably not likely to spend much time acusing people of apathy in the ghettos; people there are under constant assault, including mass arrest and incarceration ...something lost on white activists from relatively privileged bakcgrounds that want inner city minorities to join them in getting arrested as if they haven't already been arrested enough times (some people aren't itching for yet another confrontation with the cops). The key insitutitons still need to be targeted and in fact not just marched to but occupied and shut down and taken over and radically restructured. Suyi E., 4. Does this focus make us 'sectarian'? I don't think so... Radicals have always been situated on the left and it appears that liberals and social democratics are our natural allies. However, I feel that the chasm between capitalism and parecon is just to big and everytime we and liberals/social democratics are struggling for the same goal, say ending the War on Iraq, we should be at pains to differentiate our reasons for opposition from theirs. BLOGGER: Absolutely. Liberal imperialists oppose the war because it's not working for the broader project of American dominance; radical anti-imperialists oppose it because its wrong, racist, murderous, illegal, and...well, imperialist.They reject global dominance as a worthy goal.This is a big difference to say the least, beyond ultimate compromise. We can work with such liberals but only to a certain practical point(working up a timetable for withdrawl, for example) and then of course it breaks off; they'll be lining up with future imperial crimes. In fact they already are. I think their basic corporate-imperial criminality is more effectively exposed when they are in office and not posing as an outsider "left"....a curious reason to prefer having them in rather than out of ruling-class state executive suites.

First, I must admit that I find all mainstream polls suspect. I've seen too many questions that ask my political affilation with the only options ranging from 'Very Liberal' to 'Very Conservative' to not realise that the respondents are replying within a particular context. I'll be more easily swayed by polls when they are conducted and released by a radical movement.

Still it appears that a majority of every population has always held what may be termed 'Social Democratic' views. Sure propaganda works; there will be a spike in public fear of crime when violent crime coverage increases even though the crime level is still the same, we see a majority against 'welfare handouts' and the same time as majority supporting 'increased assistance to the poor'.

My question/point is this: if a majority of the people never liked Bush, don't have conservative opinions (making the provision that the 'masses' aren't able to identify what liberal, conservative, radical platforms are) why do we (radical activists) focus on bashing conservatives? Shouldn't we instead focus on pushing the 'masses' over the bump from their social democratic position and into a radical (and presumeably, engaged) position?

I know you have mentioned before that in academia your biggest problem was with liberal/progressives who "set the boundaries of debate." I feel that Liberals/Social Democratics are the last line of defence for the capitalist system; the last concession that the ruling elite will agree to so they can lick their wounds and slowly diffuse opposing movement. Now the polls appears that the majority of the population tends to be social democratics even if they aren't self-concious and act on it. So our main enemy isn't the government nor Bush but apathy and liberals.

This is will be an important reorientation. Instead of having marches to govenrment buildings/corporate buildings protesting government action we instead walk through suburbs and ghettos protesting the apathy and complicity with the status quo - and we show them them how to get involved. Instead of having coalitions with liberal organizations (I must confess that after learning more about the Spanish Revolution, I have been turned off by coalitions) we try to debate those organizations and make them radical. Instead (or in addition to) of having a Conservative watch in ZMag, we have a Liberal Watch making note of where they have set their boundaries for "respecatble opinions." Instead of making the government or corporation 'better', we organize and relating in new ways.

Does this focus make us 'sectarian'? I don't think so... Radicals have always been situated on the left and it appears that liberals and social democratics are our natural allies. However, I feel that the chasm between capitalism and parecon is just to big and everytime we and liberals/social democratics are struggling for the same goal, say ending the War on Iraq, we should be at pains to differentiate our reasons for opposition from theirs.

 

Yet here, you respond as a 14 year old, equating Republicans with fascists and blaming the world's ills on them. I could not find "better" people than fascists to equate american republicanism with.. :).. well its not just a matter of opinion but rather a diagnosis. ( if you look at all the major wars the past 80 years or so, the US has always its nose there and always it is the US whom started the conflict. This is apart from sponsoring dictators..)

My guess is that English isn't his mother-tongue. It is probably French based on a few comments here and there. His English is better than my French.

Cryano, again I ask, how old are you, what is your native tongue, and your level of education? In your pictures you posted you looked to be in your 40ies. Yet here, you respond as a 14 year old, equating Republicans with fascists and blaming the world's ills on them.  This is anti-intellecutal language and immature at best.

Thank you Paul for illucidating me on the war on poverty and refocusing attention on the cost the indochinese campaigns had on US ability to create a modern society.

But the cost of us money and indochinese blood in those campaigns were reversed by sovjet money and afghan blood from 79 onwards.

And then the budget would have ballanced, if not for competing monotheist memes and different systems of cultural defence and modernisation );-I

anonymous, many attitudes changed for sure,but I am more concerned with the changes happening in the late 70s with the help of americas TV. take the unwanted pregnancies you specified; this can increases the number of unwanted republicans, republicanism being a disease more nocive than syphillys and Aids. America still brag about eliminating polio while their cases of republicanism (fascism) has increased to unacceptable levels, Also, I cant see the point of bragging about eradicating polio when considering americans may have help replace the polio virus with AIDS while pursuing a vaccine. Getting ride of cat and dogs would have bring more success eradicating polio than the polio vaccine..now because of aids epidemic canada has difficulty with sustaining a viable health care system and our population have to be less promiscuous.. you can thanks republicanism and profeeters to make our life less safe..

Paul, you didn't really mention anything specific. You broadly said that attitudes have changed since the 1960s.  Isn't that to be expected?  While the sexual revolution may have freed people from suffocating/abusive relationships, don't you think it also brought an increase of unwanted pregnancies and STDs?  AIDS?  What about the syphillis out break in Chicago amongst the gay population two years ago? 

Next to last "Anonymous": Sixties struggles reflected and advanced significant improvements in mass U.S. opinion toward the making of foreign policy (please note that the so-called and quite healthy "Vietnam Syndrome" is alive and well), towards people of color, towards people of non-mainstream/nonstraight sexual orientation, towards sexuality in general, towards ecology, towards mind expansion and personal autonomy, and towards authority on the whole. The positive changes were real and substantial and perhaps somewhat surprisingly lasting. Yes, there were real limits that we know about very well. You bet. There is an ongoing permanent corporate and miltiarist and evangelical counterrevolution against past left and democratic gains. There is also a great elite/corporate appropriation and perversion and commdification of of the Sixties (and everything else)..sure. Terrible. But those who didn't live through and participate in the changes (I was a somewhat politicized but mainly baseball and hockey-obsessed grade-schooler) will have a hard time grasping the depth and degree of progressive change that occurred and which survives....an understanding that helps one sustain hope through seemingly impossible (always an illusion the power elite seeks to impose)times.

Second (last) "Anonymous": the "War on Poverty" was "strangled in its cradle" by the incredibly expensive and mass-murderous War on Vietnam (as Michael Harrington and Martin King and others readily observed)...it never got far enough off the ground to crush "communist sympathies" (not quite the flavor the 1960s New Left)which actually came out (insofar as they were present) from under McCarthyite illegalization during the Sixties

A bit more than a hundred years ago Bismarch cruched the socialdemocrats by social reform.

LBJS war on poverty must have cruched communist sympaties, and communism has been illegal for all practical purposes in the united states.

If either of these gentlemen were acting on humanitarian, and not practical principles we will never know. One can guess though.

That the worker demands were met, created our current day riches and even capitalists are grateful for these systemic changes in retrospect.

Interesting that you say the broad "leftist" victories of the 1960s came at a peak of prosperity.  Please tell us, other than Civil Rights, what victories you mean?  LBJ's war on poverty? 

Something in this technology here seems to allow the order of comments to get screwed up at times. The book I'm doing is on metropolitan racism and will focus on Chicago. I agree with pangaea's reflections on European culpability, and the broader problem of corporation capitalism/empire and with his sense (which I find uncontroversial) that the occupation of Iraq was/is a dream come true for Osama and his ilk (I've long suspected 9/11 was meant to provoke something very much like the insane messianic undertakings conducted by the Washington cabal). Suyi E I agree with your interesting reflections on post-WWII America. Look at Ira Katznelon's latest book When Affirmative Action Was White (2005)for some reflections on the fact that the black situation and racial inequality got absolutely worse between WWII and the 1960s rebellion but you are quite right I think to note that the broad Sixties upheaval (which I take quite seriously...I think it was a big deal with real victories on the left) came at a peak of prosperity. Besides the racially and relatedly socieoeconomically selective pain it is so cavalerily willing to impose on disadvantaged people, one problem with the backlash approach ("things have to get worse before they can get better")in the U.S. today is that the balance of institutional and ideological forces are such that a real worsening of material conditions (already bad enough for many Americans) might just produce a drift toward really even more horrifying rightwing authoritarianism....if that's psosible and it probably is. Sorry to be such a downer on a Friday afternoon. Off to a belated happy hour.

To first commenter: I am neither an historian nor a teacher.This is by choice, though I might be a candidate for a low-level Ward-Churchilling were I still engaged in the weird world of higher education.

"By any means necessary" is not in this post, but... uh...now that you mention it. Actually, I'm starting to wonder if anyone in the more intelligent sectors of the military-industrial-intelligence-assassination complex is starting to think that way. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are just total distasters for the American Empire, which is why we've heard some voices on the left (Cockburn and even Kolko in 2004 [see the sixth paragraph in the 2004 Counterpunch article]) seemed to embrace their continued proto-fascstic and mesianic-militarist rule over that of more sophisticated/ corporate-liberal system managers like say a John Kerry.

Darth Cheney and Lord Dumbya et al. are doing more to speed the unravelling of U.S. hegemony than a million anti-empire activists could achieve; if only they weren't so damn dangerous to the continued existence of the human race. There's gotta be a few strategically placed folks inside the Empire who know how to put Malcom's slogan into effect against such dangerous bumblers. To argue that the occupation of Iraq isn't illegal is just plain childish. The rest I'll leave to others if they want any of it.

Keir, I am doing less for ZNet (and everyone else) because I am in the latter stages of (no, not syphlis)a book; it's just constant toil. Should be done in a month. Alex, I am with you on each of the specifics you mention (ending the war, fighting corporate education, public funding of candidates [nobody talks about that any more]) and yes we need always to organize the big movement and "overhaul" around specifics that have resonance with people. I agree. Corporate education is a big one in "global" Chicago where there's this huge school privatization campaign ("Renaissance 2010") underway and of course the corporate mayor and his corporate education chief (white private K-12 grad [University of Chicago Laboratory School {my K-6 alma mater, I confess}] and Harvard power forward the six and a half foot Arne Duncan) and their corporate sponsors (led by the noxious Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago) are deeply into displacing black and Latino kids (along with whatever poor whites kids they can still find anywhere near the Loop) from cherished zones of gentrification so they can build upgraded new "Renaissance" (small/charter/contract) schools to serve as "real estate anchors" in expanding corporate-downtown-proximate neighborhoods where its all about keeping the new global professional class happy and in the city and spending money and boosting the exchange value of land along the way; forget about land and housing's use value to the demonized nonwhite others being pushed further from the core on the European model. You know there's actually public funding for aldermanic candidates in LA and NYC (since at least the mid-1990s) and my understanding was that it allows some more grassroots politicians to get into office and shake things up a little in big global city politics. Corporate money may actually speak louder at the local and state levels than at the federal level was my sense when I used to study money and politics.

You've got one helluva representative of the military industrial complex right in downtown Chicago: The Boeing Corporation, which helps those noble guardians of freedom ----the U.S. Armed Forces and the Israeli Destruction Force ---- act on the "any means necessary" maxim with such lovely items of democracy-promotion and Arab slaughter as the Blackhawk Helicopter, the F-16, and the Stealth Bomber. Why don't Chicago antiwar activists converge on Boeing (west Loop), which got just tens of millions of dollars (in the forms of tax breaks and subsidies) from corporate-"Democratic" Mayor Daley (who says "I respect this President" and proudly enlists his son in the military and may actually be a Republican) and from Illinois ---- the deal was greased by grotesquely misleading promises of large-scale job creation for the urban masses...a complete joke --- just to locate its blood-soaked headquarters in the Midwest Metropolis, whose civic and commercial elite is so proud of $500 million Millenium Park and Chicago's officially proclaimed "global status," symbolized by its magnificent ability to "attract" such mass-murderous, multinational masters of war as the Boeing Corporation and all of this even as thousands of the city's children live in "deep poverty" ---at less than half the federal government's notoriously inadequate poverty level.

you were working? me who tough you were vacationing on some cuban beach entertaining some of fidel's girls..(cuba is perfect for lying down on the job ).. Pangeae wrote: Just take Hillary Clinton (crazily called a "moderate") compared with George W(ar) Bush. Their rhetoric and policy is pretty much the same. I say: The US has been run by psychopath for a number of years that cared more about their own pockets than common people, by all means this is betrayal and trahison of ordinary american interests..

Don't put words in my mouth. Read what I wrote instead. Try it. It's a good excercise. It's not just the Arabs that would like to be part of the civilized world, as you call it. I would like to be part of the civilized world too. Killing people and nations just to make a buck isn't my idea of a civilized world. There are extremist Christians and there are extremist Muslims. bin Laden is an extremist Muslim and Bush is an extremist Christian. If you call bin Laden a fundamentalist you must also call Bush a fundamentalist. The rhetoric is pretty much the same. Call a shovel a shovel. Do you really think the Arab world is an empire? What countries outside the Arab world do they control then? Are they draining resources from these countries? Are they brutally oppressing the people in these countries? Are they bombing the people of these countries? Today there is one empire in the world - namely the US empire. There are no others. When the US empire falls I hope no other empire will replace it, but China or the EU will probably replace it I think. Both are better than the US, but an empire is an empire. It is atrocious by nature.

One of the problem with Al-Quaida is you don't know who control this organization; it could be just Bin Laden or it could be jointly run by Bin Laden and the CIA. Another problem is the minute you mention bIn laden, you associate the word with oil fortune and the Bush familly..GB sr himself was head of CIA at one point of time. You are right in a spy game where too many people have money interests. I don't think people should be make a connection between normal morderate arabs in revolt and trained group of terrorists that were trained ( and Infiltrated) by the CIA.

You're correct, Muslim fascists do want to spread their special brand of nationalism through out the world.  If you think muslim fanaticism, however, is spreading because of the United States, you're sadley mistaken.  You are ignoring the roots of the Shia/Sunni rift and the roots of Wahabi (sp?) Sunniism and it's political offspring, the Muslim Brotherhood.  By extension, you are incorrectly attempting to analogize the political and economic policies of centuries old Western European empires and a totalitarian/socialist centered Eastern empire with the U.S. 

It's also interesting that you in essence argue those on the "fringes" of a civilization should remain so.   You of course know the racist Arab belief that no non-muslim should be in a position of authority or status over a muslim in Arabia.  Some even say Mohomad spread that belief in his bloody conquest of Arabia.  (The root of Al Qaida's beliefs.) Not all Arabs, of course, believe that.   The fact remains, the majority of the muslim world doesn't want to be "left alone."  They do want to be part of the civilized world.  But defenders of the Arabian Empire, whether they be religious or totalitarian, are lashing out at their edges, oppressing their majority.  The two World Trade Center attacks a decade apart, and even last week's shooting at a Los Angeles JUF indicate that sometimes they even lash out beyond the edges of their empire.  And yes, Saddam Hussein was widely known to support, sponsor, and aide and abed the Arab and muslim ideologies that carried out and continue to carry out similar acts of violence. 

So why do you choose one empire over another?

 

 

If Al Qaida's goals were to drive US forces out of the Arab world, they indeed seem to be losing. But if their aim is to create jihad between muslims and christians worldwide, they are much closer to success, although still quite a bit off. As with Bush and the guys pulling his strings, I think Al Qaida also are using religion as a means to an end - to get people to support their cause. Bush is using it to get control of the Middle East and their resources. Al Qaida is using it to stand up against the US. I think one of Al Qaida's goals is to destroy the US empire. In this regard they seem fairly successful so far. The Iraq quagmire is extremely costly, and there's no way out unless the US will allow democracy, which they won't. Another goal is probably to radicalize the Muslim world into the extremist ideology of Al Qaida. I think it's called Wahabism. But this is probably just a secondary goal - a means to an end. If people blindly follow orders and don't think, it's much easier to control them. This is what Al Qaida are trying to achieve in the Arab world, and this is what Bush and Blair is trying to achieve in the Western world. They are basically using the same technique. Spread fear to control people. It has been used for centuries, and is unfortunetely very effective. If there is anything good coming out of the disaster called George W. Bush, it is that he has reduced the lifetime of the US empire. The emperor has no clothes. The whole world now see what the US foreign policy really is about. This is why the elite and intellectual circles are slowly turning against him. He is starting to be a burden for the US empire. I've written about this before, but I really do think their empire is crumbling - in the same way that all empires before have crumbled. The costs of having standing armies in the outskirts of the empire are rising. This will weaken the empire over time. This again means that the oppressed people that used to see the empire as unbeatable lose this feeling. They will stand up against the empire as they see it is weak and may fall. When enough people stand up against it, it will fall. This happened to the Roman Empire, it happened to the Spanish Empire, it happened to the British Empire, and it happened to the Soviet Empire. It is now happening to the US Empire. The wars in Iraq and Lebanon serve as good examples of this. Superious technological armies can't even control populations fighting back with quite primitive weapons using guerilla warfare. Unless the US get a "moderate" president next time around, their empire may well fall within decades. Perhaps there's already too much damage done to salvage it. The truth is out.

I'm confused. Now this might seem like nitpicking but I think it's very important so bear with me here.

How exactly has the invasion and occupation of Iraq furthered Al Qaeda's ultimate goal? Isn't their main goal driving out the U.S. Army? Didn't they instead get a greater number of U.S. and some European soldiers? My point is that their actions appear to be counter productive.

Or did I get their main goal wrong?

While people point to Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World they seem oblivious to the fact that we live in a worse dystopia. Just wrap your mind around that fact:

We actually live in the worst dystopia.

Like you, I am quite young and I am desperate to see a revolution before I die - actually it is debatably if we have ever truly lived seeing as few people have ever experienced true freedom. So just keep in mind that there is someone else like you if you are looking for hope. I don't think the prospects for a revolution (not a progressive one but an anarchist one) are dire. The anarchists of Spain laid the groundwork in thirty years - and they got really close. It is unfortunate that we, not they, have to learn from the disastrous mistakes but still a revolution can be achieved...

I'm not sure if the biggest chance for change will come from a real economic disaster. I must question if there have really been any rosy periods.People often speak of the U.S. middleclass society but what about that book detailing American's best kept secret: The hidden Working Class Majority? When you look closely at the '50s and '60s you see the official view of the suburban nation and the grumbling students but, on your peripheral vision, aren't there poor people, black ghettos, immigrant farm hands etc. And if we shift the focus to them it appears that they have always been the majority.

I think it's very easy to slip into the notion that if only gets a little bit worse then people will rise up and there will be a revolution and, slowly, the true history of how bad things were[are] gets drained from the collective memory. Always keep your copy of A People's History of the United States (and check out A People's History of Ancient Rome, A People's History of Science, History as Mystery) to give you perspective. Else, we'll see the phenomenon of progressives forgetting that MLK evolved into a Social Democrat and MLK himself being ignorant of the Hellen Keller and Emma Goodman and...

I meant (in my grammatically flawed way) "wildest ambitions" for the short term results of the Sept 11 attacks. Cleary not Al Qaeda's ultimate goal of a United Arab world (read transcripts of what Bin Laden actually says) which of course includes the elimination of western presence in the region and the elimination of Israel. All of the reasons I cited are steps toward achieving that goal.

The attacks, unlike what our leadership would have us believe, were designed to have a particular political effect. The attacks, as the good and evil crowd believes, were not the result of Jihadist blood lust; they were symbolic and political. Similarly, the train bombings in Spain directly before their elections were intended to turn public support against the war in Iraq. By causing Spain to withdraw from Iraq Al Qaeda was able to further alienate the US from it's Allies and also to deepen its ownership of the Iraq crisis. The point is that Al Qaeda has a political agenda and it acts in ways that help to further it. The US invasion of Iraq has helped to further Al Qaeda's ultimate goal for the reasons I cited.

You said:

Also attempted our failed oil grab has had the effect of fulfilling Al Qaeda's wildest ambitions when they planned the September 11 attacks. 1. Drain our treasury 2. Undermine any pretense of US morality 3. Alienate us internationally 4. Get rid of Sadaam: a secular impediment to creating a United Islamic empire 5. Create a chaotic space in which to target us troops 6. Foment the hatred of the Arab world toward the west 7. There are more Im not thinking of someone please help

Actually Al Qaeda's "wildest ambitions" are the removal of U.S. army bases from Saudi Arabia, stopping U.S. support for Israel's colonization of Palestine and generally changing the U.S. and European foreign policy in the Middle East. Those are valid ambitions and, as you can see, the terrorists (Al Qaeda not the U.S.) have failed horribly. Note: the reasons you did pick out are, yes, also part of Al Qaeda's agenda and it is partly why I'm not in solidarity with Bin Laden and his group.

You really should write more, I simply love your phrases and names such as Darth Vader o/ Out of curiocity, what's your forthcoming book about? (if you can say anything at this point that is) Unfortunetely I think the prospects for progressive change are dire at this point. Corporations are strangling the truth in every way possible, and their henchmen (called politicians nowadays) are doing the job for them in the "public" domain. It feels like trying to tear down a montain by yelling at it. Biggest chance for real positive change will come from a global economic disaster as I see it. Only then will people open their eyes, and take action. This is what we see across the world. Where people are poor, they take action, where they are generally reasonably decent off, they don't care. Whatever the decision, it has to be argued economically. If it's taking care of the landscape, one can't use arguments such as biodiversity, but potential income from tourism. This seems to be true across the spectrum, and is a result of the society we live in. There needs to be fundamental changes in pretty much every aspect of life. I am really looking forward to the day when being called a capitalist will endanger your political life (and hope I will live to see it, despite my young age). I hope corporations will be a thing of the past, and I hope hunger, malnutrition and wars will be a thing of the past one day. This is unlikely I will experience (or my grandchildren's grandchildren for that matter), but I hope it will one day be a reality. If the current administration doesn't push us over the edge, this is possible, even likely, if democracy one day means something besides rhetoric. There is so much horrible suffering in the world, and all the peoples of the world can thank past and present imperial powers for it, and past and present economic world orders. Currently the US is the major party to blame, but Europe is far from blameless. Just to take one little example, the dying out of pretty much all life in the Victoria lake due to the British setting out a fish that has eaten all other life as it had no competition (Darwin's Nightmare). Whenever man tries to tamper with Nature, disaster comes out of the other end. The supremely biggest problem facing the world today is the corporate-driven capitalism. Get rid of this, and all other problems are bleak in comparison. It is however an immense task. To the two-party system in the US, which in reality is one party with two "wings". A monster with two heads is more appropriate. If we remove the Ds and Rs behind their names, how can you distinguish what party the various politicians are from? Just take Hillary Clinton (crazily called a "moderate") compared with George W(ar) Bush. Their rhetoric and policy is pretty much the same. The only difference in foreign policy is that Clinton says the strategy of the Iraq war is wrong. Not the war itself, just strategic actions. Perhaps more difference to domestic policy, but the differences are really minor. It's like picking between the Devil and the Devil's advocate. They're both monsters. And this we call democracy! An alien looking down at us would laugh themselves silly, and be gobsmacked. If it wasn't so dead-serious, we would all laugh ourselves to sleep each night.

The first anonymous post was sadly comical, the logic was so shallow and the assumptions so insipid it almost seemed like a caricature of a David Horowitz rant. Anyway in response, Sadaam was a dick but he held the f-in country together. Are our torture chambers really more noble than his? Also attempted our failed oil grab has had the effect of fulfilling Al Qaeda's  wildest ambitions when they planned the September 11 attacks.

1. Drain our treasury

2. Undermine any pretense of US morality

3. Alienate us internationally

4. Get rid of Sadaam: a secular impediment to creating a United Islamic empire

5. Create a chaotic space in which to target us troops

6. Foment the hatred of the Arab world toward the west

7. There are more Im not thinking of someone please help

On a different note; Paul, you do good work.

About your comments on the current state of democracy and the prospects for revolution, I have a couple of thoughts. I think that in a society with more and more information and less and less meaning, the prospect of "mass involvement" in politics would seem bleak indeed, especially when for a substantial portion of the population meaning is being found in a fundamentalist religious context and a blind devotion to martial power. I think that only truly dire circumstances could inspire the multitudes to march in the streets-folks may poll anti-war but what are they willing to do about it-and demand not only an end to the apocalyptic war on terror but also an end to corporate education, the prison-war-media-industrial complex, and private funding of political candidates.  Im not sure if ending these particulars would count as a "major overhaul" but it would be a decent start.

What kinds of circumstances could inspire widespread non-violent action and civil disobediance within the United States? Such circumstances may be brewing. A future filled with crushing debt, a lagging economy, dilapidated infrastructure incapable of adjusting to a new energy economy, a decimated civil society, unending war, and grave environmental problems may just be enough to impel a fat, lazy, frightened, and self-absorbed population into action.

Alex

Rogers Park Chicago

Paul, you really should be posting more. This is good stuff. At first I was wondering why you were giving so much air time to arrogant war criminal GW but then I realized his own words take him down almost as powerfully as any commentary on them. After reading that kneejerk pap from your first commenter I had to go back and find where you make the "by all means necessary" statement; that you didn't comes as no surprise, although by any means necessary certainly applies. We're within a hair's breadth of annihilation of our species (regularly annihilating others) and of course no mere change of administration will change that. Someone mentioned to me recently that Scott Ritter had told him personally "amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics" and I would be interested to see responses from the more vision-oriented ZNet writers to that statement. Keir The Hague

Paul, as a "historian" and "teacher," don't you think it is a bit irresponsible of you to call for the removal of the President by any means necessary?  Those are very strong words with implications far and wide. 

Also, as a historian, you should be wise enough to not use rhetoric such as "illegally" occupied Iraq.  The fact is, Iraq has never complied with the peace treaties surrounding the first Gulf War.  Thus, Gulf War II is finishing the job from the early 1990s.  The implication that war is "illegal" is to ignore history and documented fact.

As far as the war on terrorism goes, the public is illinformed as to Hussein's support for terrorist groups such as the PLO and Hamas, and it's harboring of Abu-Nidal. I would suspect that supporters of Z-net would not mind the last because of his ties to marxism. Further, the Baath Party's roots in facsist ideology is well documented.  By implication, if one is against the war in Iraq, one is for terrorist groups and fascist regimes.  Hussein's goal was also to shift the hegmony of the middle east from Saudi Arabia to Iraq.  This would be disasterous for all the documented reasons.  To ignore what Iraq was doing under Hussein implies a "who cares" attitude to a very important region of the world.

Iran has been widely known to support Hezzbolah for years.  Now that Hussein has been removed from Iraq, the Iranians have the opportunity to assert influence based on religious ideology.  Based again on the well documented events occuring in Iran with regards to their nuclear technology, suppression of opposition groups, support of Hezzbolah, and rhetoric in regards to destroying the west, it would be foolish to be against any action to taken against Iran.