<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><i><div>…Last weekend I was on this peace and justice panel in
Urbana, IL and this old time militant working class activist
from central Illinois gets up and says (among other things) that "<em>people
think they got a black president with Obama but all they've really got
is a green president – green as in money, not the environment.” </em>“Obama,”
the activist added, “is<em> just another ruling class asshole</em>."
There was a brief hush around the room as everyone digested the comment
and then it was like, "yeah, right on. You said it brother."</div><span style=""> …<br></span><div><br></div>…This last assault <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">[ that capitalism entailing a relentless profit-addicted,
“cost-externalizing” business assault on livable ecology.] </span>has reached the point where it is I
think fair to say along with the great Hungarian Marxist Istvan Meszaros
that “if there is no future for a radical mass movement in our time,
then there can be no future of humanity itself.” We have come to a point
where the really dangerous and unrealistic utopianism – the truly
fantastic belief – is to think that we can advance the human and
democratic prospect without getting rid of the eco-cidal rich and their
filthy rotten profits regime, with its underlying unelected and
interrelated dictatorships of money and empire. "</i><div><i>…</i></div><div><i><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span style="">…I want to conclude with a
quotation from a young ex-soldier named Mike Prysner – a comment he made
while speaking to Iraq Veterans Against the War last December.<span style=""> </span>After characterizing the Iraq occupation as
Washington sending “poor and working in this country “to “kill poor and
working people in another county [and] to make the rich richer,” Prysner
focused on the real threat to “homeland security” in the United States.<span style=""> </span>"I threw families on to the street in Iraq,” Prysner
said, “only to come home and see families thrown on to the street in
this county in this tragic and unnecessary foreclosure crisis.” Prysner
related his realization “that our real enemies are not in some distant
land. They're not people whose names we don't know and whose culture we
don't understand. The enemy is people we know …people we can identify.
The enemy is a system that wages war when it's profitable. The enemy is
the CEOs who lay us off from our jobs when it's profitable. It's the
insurance companies who deny us health care when it's profitable. It's
the banks who take away our homes when it's profitable. Our enemy is not
5000 miles away. They are right here at home.” “Without racism,”
Prysner noted, “soldiers would realize that they have more in more in
common with the Iraqi people than they do with the billionaires who send
us to war.” (See Prysner’s remarkable speech at </span><span style=""><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8"><span style="color:
purple;">www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8</span></a></span><span style="">)<span style=""> </span></span><span style=""><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><p><strong><font face="verdana,arial,helvetica"></font></strong><font size="4"> "Had he and I but met<br>
By some old ancient inn,<br>
We should have sat us down to wet<br>
Right many a nipperkin! </font></p><p> <font face="verdana,arial,helvetica" size="4"> "But
ranged as infantry,<br>
And staring face to face,<br>
I shot at him and he at me,<br>
And killed him in his place.</font></p><p> <font face="verdana,arial,helvetica" size="4"> "I shot
him dead because – <br>
Because he was my foe, <br>
Just so – my foe of course he was; <br>
That's clear enough; although </font></p><p> <font face="verdana,arial,helvetica" size="4"> "He
thought he'd 'list perhaps, <br>
Off-hand like – just as I – <br>
Was out of work – had sold his traps – <br>
No other reason why. </font></p><p> <font face="verdana,arial,helvetica" size="4"> "Yes;
quaint and curious war is! <br>
You shoot a fellow down <br>
You'd treat if met where any bar is, <br>
Or help to half-a-crown."</font></p></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span style=""><o:p> </o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span style="">That’s
how actually radical American activists, workers, soldiers, and
intellectuals have felt and thought since the first labor struggles in
this country and up through the Haymarket Martyrs and Joe Hill and
Eugene Debs and Howard Zinn to the present day. In the 164 words I just
read, the young veteran Mike Prysner spoke more genuinely radical,
root-and-branch truth than the great bourgeois speechifier Barack Obama
has spoken in the hundreds of all-knowing, stealthily conservative
orations he has given over the last eight years. Thank you very much. </span><span style=""><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">See <a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/socialism-by-paul-street">http://www.zcommunications.org/socialism-by-paul-street</a> for Street's discourse on <b>Socialism</b>.</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">--mkb</span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"> </span></o:p></div><div style="margin-top: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 0in; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br></span></div></i></div><br />--
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