[Peace-discuss] James Petras fulminates…

[C. G. Estabrook]

Interesting. That's the sort of reverse racism that caused a schism in AWARE
three years ago.  (And in the context, "calling a spade a spade" is funny to my
'60s ear...)  --CGE

Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> I thought you'd be sympathetic :-)=
> 
> I believe the refusal to lambast Obama for his various choices of advisors at
> the UFPJ has to do somewhat with not offending those African-Americans (many
> on the steering committee), so proud and happy that Obama was elected. Only
> Ali Abunimah of those on the podium called a spade a spade, infuriated that
> Obama supported the strangling of the Palestinians, especially in Gaza. Also,
> I can surmise that the relief of so many that the Bush regime was repudiated
> with Obama's election has tended to attenuate their impulse to then
> immediately attack the beneficiary. --mkb
> 
> On Dec 19, 2008, at 12:54 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> Why should Petras fulminate?  Obama is planning to kill a lot of people and
>> immiserate more, just as he said he would.  And Petras seems so upset at
>> the prospect that he can't even get straight why our rulers would do such
>> things.
>> 
>> He seems to ascribe it to stupidity: "They blindly back a small, highly
>> militarized and ideologically fanatical colonial state (Israel) against 1.5
>> billion Muslims living in oil and mineral resource-rich nations with
>> lucrative markets and investment potential and situated in the strategic
>> center of the world. They promote total wars against whole populations, as
>> is occurring in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia and, which, by all historical
>> experience, cannot be won."
>> 
>> That's wrong both as to cause and effect.  The Clinton-Bush-Obama regime
>> has in fact done rather well in achieving its real goals and will probably
>> continue to do so, despite the danger to humanity.  And they are generally
>> quite rational in the Weberian sense of fitting means to ends (with
>> occasional foul-ups, like the Coalition Provisional Authority, but they can
>> be corrected, with more deaths). They're vicious, not stupid, as the rest
>> of the (shoe-throwing) world recognizes.  But Americans who see that can be
>> strangled in the bath of propaganda.
>> 
>> I find myself quoting Thomas Pynchon a lot these days: "If you can get them
>> asking the wrong questions, you don't have to worry about answers."  --CGE
>> 
>> Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>>> Worth pondering. I would like to ask Petras whether would have preferred
>>> McCain.Palin to the here reviled Obama. I asked a panel at the UFPJ,
>>> which  included Tom Hayden, why there were no real progressives nominated
>>> to Obama's team, and received no answer. I thought this was a gross
>>> omission, because it must have implications for the anti-war movement.
>>> James Petras gives his interpretation of those implications. The panel at
>>> UFPJ were not willing to consider them.  (Maybe it was too late in a long
>>> session.) --mkb 
>>> <http://petras.lahaine.org/articulo.php?p=1766&more=1&c=1>
>> 
>> 
>> Yes, indeed, “our greatest intellectual critics”, our ‘libertarian’ 
>> leftists and academic anarchists, used their 5-figure speaking engagements
>> as platforms to promote the con man’s candidacy: They described the con
>> man’s political pitch as “meeting the deeply felt needs of our people”.
>> They praised the con man when he spoke of ‘change’ and ‘turning the country
>> around’ 180 degrees. Indeed, Obama went one step further: he turned 360
>> degrees, bringing us back to the policies and policy makers who were the
>> architects of our current political-economic disaster.
>> 
>> The contrast between Obama’s campaign rhetoric and his political activities
>> was clear, public and evident to any but the mesmerized masses and the
>> self-opiated ‘progressives’ who concocted arguments in his favor. Indeed
>> even after Obama’s election and after he appointed every Clintonite-Wall
>> Street shill into all the top economic policy positions, and Clinton’s and
>> Bush’s architects of prolonged imperial wars (Secretary of State Hillary
>> Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates), the ‘progressive true
>> believers’ found reasons to dog along with the charade. Many progressives
>> argued that Obama’s appointments of war mongers and swindlers was a ‘ploy’
>> to gain time now in order to move ‘left’ later...
>> 
>> The electoral scam served several purposes above and beyond merely 
>> propelling a dozen strategic con artists into high office and the White
>> House. First and foremost, the Obama con-gang deflected the rage and anger
>> of tens of millions of economically skewered and war drained Americans from
>> turning their hostility against a discredited presidency, congress and the
>> grotesque one-party two factions political system and into direct action or
>> at least toward a new political movement...
> 
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