RE: [Peace-discuss] James Petras fulminates.

[LAURIE SOLOMON]

I am inclined to agree with your analysis for the most part. It is not just
the UFPJ; but it also applies to the general population and more
specifically to the liberal and progressive segments of that population.
Ultimately, I would not be at all surprised to see Obama go into a phone
booth and come out as the Black Clinton.  It will not be the first time that
Blacks and other minorities have been screwed by one of their own.  In that
regard, they have achieved equality with Whites who are often screwed by
their own.  What is so damn intriguing about the process is that it takes
place repetitively over and over again; talk about near sightedness and
short term memories.

-----Original Message-----
From: peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net
[mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Morton K.
Brussel
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2008 10:17 AM
To: C.G.Estabrook
Cc: peace-discuss Discuss
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] James Petras fulminates.

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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