Why would the new Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, offer tentative backing for a "surge" of additional troops in Iraq, albeit for a limited period? At this point, most Dems want a withdrawal; the only question is how rapid.
The commentary on Reid's remark has ignored the Saudi factor. As noted in a previous post, the Saudis, who did not favor the invasion, now do not favor an American withdrawal. If America leaves, Saudia Arabia will have to step in to protect Iraq's Sunnis, just as Iran will support Iraq's Shi'ites. Proxy war may give way to regional chaos.
The Saudis hold a commanding position: "We're not asking you; we're telling you." We need their oil and their money. The Saudis have already begun to shift major investments to Europe, and they may follow Iran's lead by switching to the Euro.
A Dennis Kucinich may feel free to ignore the Saudi factor, but someone in Reid's position has to take it into account.
(Some readers will no doubt take this post as an invitation to offer a recitation on the familiar theme of "Democrats are just as bad as Republicans." Even if I ask those readers not to do it, they will do it anyways, due to an inflexible response mechanism. When the audience makes you break out in hives, it's time to leave the stage.)
15 comments:
Nancy Pelosi said impeachment is off the table. Now Reid says this. It proves that the Ds and the Rs are the same party. If Gore had won, the last six years would have been completely the same.
Oh, you're not going anywhere, Joseph. The NWO Demopublicans are paying you very well to play gatekeeper. The parties are indeed two fins on the same fish.
why would you ask people not to do it.
you should just put a label at the top of your blog stating you only want comments from those who agree with your point of view.
what is your agenda anyways?
It is my understanding that the Middle East supplies less than 10% of US oil imports. In order, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and Nigeria are the largest exporters of oil to the USA. They provide somewhat much more than 50%. If by Saudi money you mean how much of our national debt do the Saudis hold, then there is cause for concern.
Anonymouses (Anonymi?)... it's almost Christmas. Please be nice.
It's okay, uni. They've helped me decide. Especially that "agenda" remark.
Get the fuck out of here, gatekeeper. You already made your pile from Bush so now it's time to retire to your country mansion and let some other gatekeeper have a crack at earning the big bucks. The only people who should be allowed to write are the ones who understand simple facts like steel melts at a temperature greater than caused by a jet fuel fire.
Say hi to your pals at the Bohemian Grove Christmas party. I wonder who's the sacrifice this year?
I encourage you to turn up your noise filters a bit, ignore the bleating and continue the great work you do here. I, for one, enjoy tuning in; although, I do admit relative lurker status in so far as returning commentary...
Absolute proof that there were bombs in the building.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcUQg3DadaA&mode=related&search=
I bet the NWO gatekeeper who runs this blog will delete this comment and try to hide the TRUTH. Professor Jones is the only one with any balls any other scientist who can't see the truth has probably been paid to lie.
Place your faith in the DemonRats? Fat chance. They took just as much money if not more from Haliburton and Enron and Abramoff. Supporting the Democrats is what the gatekeepers want us to do. The solution is don't vote at all.
Let's just shut down this lying paid-off tool. You're better off going over to Alex Jones and Jeff Rense and the others who tell the truth.
- Nestor
Hey anonymous coward - Does everyone who disagrees with you have to "get out of here?" Is anyone who offers a point of view contrary to yours a "gatekeeper?"
I've seen my share of REAL gatekeepers, as have others who actually know the difference. They reveal themselves over time, choosing carefully what to discuss or not, what comments to include or delete, etc. They NEVER inform you of this "screening" in advance, as Joseph has done on many occasions. No. They have way too much to hide, but I'm sure you know all about that.
I keep coming back to this site (sometimes to comment and sometimes just to lurk) for one simple reason. Joseph offers some of the most thought provoking analysis and commentary I have ever read, whether I personally agree or disagree. Yours on the other hand, sounds strident, simplistic, and well...desperate.
If you do not agree, go somewhere where your views will not be challenged or questioned. Go where no thought is required, and no real dissent is permitted.
Whatever you do, just go back under your bridge, you synchophantic troll.
--Sorry if I've overstepped, Joseph. I just hate these idiot bullies. You can't teach stupid.
Kim in PA
Kim, I bet you think that 14 Saudis and five Egyptians WHO ARE ALL STILL ALIVE pulled off the 911 attacks. So what is your explanation for the passport miraculously found at the WTC site?
I notice you don't try to answer that. And that makes YOU a gatekeeper.
Anonymous Coward - Miss the point much? Thought so...This post is not about your particular, single-minded interest. In fact, it's not about you at all.
Get some sleep Anon. All those disturbingly vivid dreams must seem real sometimes, but they are not. Ignore the voices and get help soon.
Buh-bye.
Kim in PA
Now that we finally got Cannon to stop censoring because we exposed him as the sorry-ass gatekeeper that he is, you think you can step in and play censor. In fact, it is people like you who should be forbidden from talking about anything until you admit the truth about MIHOP.
there are more of us than you can possibly guess and if you think you can censor us then all I can say is Bwah ha ha ha...
Now we learn that Barack Obama is in up to his hips in a FILTHY land deal with a gangster. And it looks like Hillary has another Whitewater just waiting in the wings and this time she won't get away with it. And we haven't even talked about Hillary's connections to Project Monarch.
Let's face it. The Democrats are probably even more crooked than the current crew.
Still think the Democrats are worth voting for? Check out this review of DIMES WORTH OF DIFFERENCE by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair:
If there is one thing that both sides in the "Anyone But Bush" (ABB) debate can agree on, it is probably that Jeff St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn's Counterpunch is the most visible and powerful voice in favor of rejecting John Kerry for president. In both the print and Internet editions, Counterpunch has been publishing articles on practically a daily basis making the case against "lesser evil" politics. Drawing from previously published Counterpunch articles and a lot of new material, the collection Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils is not only a timely contribution to the debate; it will have ongoing value as a probing analysis of how money, class and political power intersect in the American Empire.
One of the most enduring myths of the ABB camp is that a second Bush term will lead to the privatization of Social Security. Whatever the flaws of the Democratic Party, they can be relied on to stick their thumb in the privatization dike like the little Dutch boy. In defending Gore against Bush in the 2000 election, Nation Magazine columnist Eric Alterman wrote, "For Social Security, our most important instrument of collective, intergenerational solidarity and the single most effective antipoverty program in US history, a Bush presidency could mean the beginning of the end." (http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20001016&c=6&s=ealterman)
With diehard Democrats like Alterman, it is easy to understand how they might have been impervious to Clinton's own efforts to privatize Social Security. In the provocatively titled "How Monica Lewinsky Saved Social Security," British leftwing scholar Robin Blackburn investigates how a sex scandal saved retirees from being shafted by the Democrats rather than Evil Republicans. As author of the recently published Banking On Death Or, Investing in Life: The History and Future of Pensions, he is an authority on such matters. Blackburn's article is not only first-class investigative reporting; it is written with great panache and wit, as the opening paragraph reveals:
"Had it not been for Monica's captivating smile and first inviting snap of that famous thong, President Bill Clinton would have consummated the politics of triangulation, heeding the counsel of a secret White House team and deputy treasury secretary Larry Summers."
Digging through evidence that seems to have eluded the liberal media in 1998, Blackburn uncovers a high-level conspiracy to turn Social Security into an extension of the Mutual Funds industry. A top-secret working group had been convened by Clinton in order to come up with a bipartisan plan for privatizing one of the crown jewels of the New Deal under the rather neutral sounding rubric of "Special Issues."
The secret team was led by Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Gene Sperling, the head of the Council of Economic Advisers. It is of course no accident that John Kerry has drafted Sperling to his team of top economic advisers.
Before Summers assumed his post in Clinton's Treasury Department, he had distinguished himself as a World Bank economist, where he was always cooking up ideas to stick it to the poor. In an infamous memo, he proposed: "Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (less developed countries)?" There he also cooked up a notorious report titled "Averting the Old Age Crisis" that argued that Wall Street could do a better job than the government in looking after pensions. Summers hailed the example of Chile, which had privatized its own government pension system as one of the first conquests of the Pinochet dictatorship. Nowadays Summers serves as President of Harvard University, where his tenure has been marked by a well-publicized dressing down of African-American professor Cornel West for lacking scholarly accomplishments. West left Harvard in disgust.
Clinton was kept abreast with the deliberations of the "Special Issues" working group and even attended one of their meetings. But in July of 1998 the Monica Lewinsky scandal threw a monkey-wrench into their plans. As one team member put it,
"Toward the end of 1998, as the possibility that the President would be impeached came clearly into view, the policy dynamic of the Social Security debate changed dramatically and it became clear to the White House that this was not the time to take risks on the scale that would be necessary to achieve a deal on an issue as contentious as Social Security reform."
Who is to say that John F. Kerry would not consider an assault on Social Security himself, especially in light of his appointment of Gene Sperling, one of the secret team's co-leaders? If anything, a second term for Bush would probably be better protection since the American people have been geared to oppose a plan so associated with the Evil Republican Party. After all, it took a Democrat like Clinton to abolish Aid to Dependent Children, another program long associated with the New Deal.
Another enduring myth of the ABB camp is that the Republicans are racists and the Democrats oppose racism. To even suggest that African-Americans should vote for neither major party is to risk being crucified in some circles. As Ralph Nader spoke to the Black Congressional Caucus requesting their support, Congressman Melvin Watts heckled him, calling out that he was "another fucking arrogant white man" just for having the temerity to run.
For reasons that are obvious to Kevin Alexander Gray, these elected officials much prefer someone like Bill Clinton who they have anointed as "America's first Black president." Gray, a civil rights organizer based in South Carolina, takes these questions head-on in his contribution, "Clinton and Black Americans." Opening with the words of former Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater -- "[Clinton] has always wanted our love and wanted to share his love with us. It is not about the skin. It is about the spirit and the soul of this soul brother" -- Gray confesses that he was "mildly amused, a bit disgusted but not surprised" when Clinton was nominated to the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame as the only white member out of sixty-two.
How Clinton earned this goodwill escapes Gray. For a very small investment, Clinton seems to have benefited from a windfall black vote. Was it the fact that he mailed out postcards showing him posed with black families that did the trick? While some argue that his economic policies were a boon for African Americans, they fail to acknowledge that black-white income disparity remained fixed during his two terms in the White House. His partisans also point to the record number of Black appointees in his administration. On a cruder level, some point to his saxophone playing and even his affair with Monica Lewinsky as if having rhythm and being promiscuous are Black traits somehow.
For Gray, other images loom larger:
"In his first presidential race Governor Clinton ran for office supporting the death penalty at a time when the country was split almost down the middle on the issue. Then for good measure, he rushed back to Arkansas to oversee the execution of convicted killer Ricky Ray Rector, a brain-damaged black man. For years after his first election, I kept a picture of Clinton and Georgia Senator Sam Nunn posing in front of a phalanx of black inmates in white prison suits taken at Stone Mountain, Georgia. Historians generally give Pulaski, Tennessee, the dubious honor as the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. But Stone Mountain is hailed as the Klan's second home. The picture appeared in newspapers all across the south the day of the southern primaries in 1992. That picture is what Clinton has always represented to me."
However, the real indictment against Clinton must be based on what happened in the prison system during his two terms. Blacks were incarcerated at a rate even higher than in Reagan's terms. Discriminating between powdered and crack cocaine had a disproportionate impact on Blacks, as did the "three strikes and you're out" provision of the Crime Bill that passed when he was president. When he first came into office, one in four black men was in the criminal justice system. When he left, the number had increased to one in three. Ironically, when black felons were denied the right to vote in Florida, this had the effect of abetting George W. Bush's theft of the presidency.
For an interesting study of the demographic changes that have turned hippy settlers of California's Mendocino County in the 1960s into corrupt and corporate-friendly Democratic Party loyalists, one can turn to Bruce Anderson's "Notes From the Big Empty." Until recently, Anderson was the publisher of the Anderson Valley Advertiser, "America's best weekly newspaper", according to Alexander Cockburn. (We should mention that Swans publisher Gilles d'Aymery resides in Anderson Valley and is determined to stick it out there despite the presence of ex-hippy Democratic Party hustlers.)
Although the scene Anderson describes is not as violent as Roman Polanski's "Chinatown," it certainly competes in terms of amoral skullduggery. Mendocino County is huge geographically -- larger than Vermont -- but contains only 85,000 people. Many of them fled the Bay Area in the 1960s in search of cheaper property values and a place where they could get "back to the land." It was also a place where the cultivation of marijuana became a source of income for many of the new arrivals. For those who did not have the stomach for criminal activity, the next best way to stay afloat economically was to get jobs in the public sector. Thus mid-level government posts became dominated by flower children, who then rapidly became Democratic Party loyalists and elected officials since the party was favorably disposed to keeping bureaucrats employed and well-paid. To return the favor, many of these ex-hippies supported pro-business policies of the Democratic Party, including the despoliation of the country's chief assets, the land and water.
It turned out that the county's mostly Democratic-leaning winery owners were bent on using methyl bromide to sterilize the soil under the grapevines. It mattered little that the chemical would sicken the mostly Mexican workers who treated the soil. With the connivance of the wine bourgeoisie and their ex-hippy friends in local office, laws to curtail the use of the herbicides and pesticides were thwarted. Anderson points out:
"The wine industry, heavy consumers of pesticides and herbicides, is environmentally devastating and socially indifferent; they clearcut large swaths of land with a thoroughness the most demented logger can only dream of doing, then lay on the chemicals year round. Socially, the industry provides little to no worker housing for the immigrant labor upon which it depends. The wine industry, which seldom pays better than minimum wages for seasonal work, rises up as one to crush UFW organizing attempts like so many grapes, and fires any worker who complains without so much as promising anything resembling a fair hearing. Congressman Thompson, a Democrat who's interchangeable with Republicans on most votes, is the wine industry's national go-to guy."
The question of the Democratic Party has existed as long as there has been a radical movement in the United States. As long as it is perceived as a party of ordinary working people, blacks and others, an independent left will forever be marginalized. By the same token, when the left tries to work as a component of the Democratic Party, its impact will be lessened.
Illusions in the Democratic Party can be bolstered most successfully if its sordid past is swept under the rug. Since many Americans, including some official intellectuals, lack an interest in history, its origins in genocide and slavery remain hidden. Instead we end up with a burnished picture of a party that has been democratic with a small 'd' and egalitarian from early on.
With the exception of FDR's New Deal, there is little to support this view -- not to speak of Roosevelt's own often hostile attitude toward trade unions and his temporizing with fascism until Hitler overstepped his bounds. When Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described Andrew Jackson, the first Democrat in the White House, as a kind of precursor to FDR, he must have thought it was unimportant that Jackson represented the slavocracy and owned slaves himself.
Sooner or later, a new generation of radicals will find a way to connect with the working people, blacks, women and gay voters who stick with the party despite being abused and lied to. When that day arrives, the United States will be shaken to its foundation. Jeff St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn's new book will be an important weapon in this struggle to open the eyes of the American people.
(ADDED NOTE: I would look askance at that line about FDR temporizing with fascism. In fact he AIDED AND ABETTED Hitler, and he knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor before it happened, as all historians now agree.)
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