Re: [Peace-discuss] James Petras fulminates…

[Morton K. Brussel]

I thought its origin was from card games, like Bridge. --mkb


On Dec 19, 2008, at 11:41 AM, E. Wayne Johnson wrote:

> Mort,
> I was severely criticized when I sat on an animal care committee  
> over at the University for using
> the expression "calling a spade a spade" as some misguided and  
> misinformed administrators
> felt that I had used a racist term.  (They didn't appreciate my blunt
> critique of their lack of discernment in management either, so  
> criticizing my language
> presented them a convenient diversion.)
>
> The expression about spades dates back to the ancient Greeks and  
> refers to
> some lack of sophistication in one's description of a hog trough.
>
> But some think it refers to a racial slur that dates from the  
> 1920's. No amount of googling and etymology would change the minds  
> of these
> administrators...
>
>
> 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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