[Peace-discuss] Common opinions - basis for a new politics?

[C. G. Estabrook]

I think you're quite right about the 2000 election. People forget that perhaps 
the most attractive part of Bush's 2000 campaign was his opposition to the 
Clinton/Gore administration's war on Serbia (about which Gore was even more 
bloodthirsty than Clinton).  Bush attacked Gore's "nation-building" - pointing 
out that it was a euphemism - and Gore had no answer except Clinton's lies about 
the war (which I satirized at the time in a piece that's still on the web -- ah, 
there it is: "Japan Bombs New Mexico"<http://www.tmcrew.org/news/nato/sat.htm>).

I don't agree about 9/11.  To me it's a counter-blow in the generation-long 
invasion of the Mideast by the US - one that the US did not take effective steps 
to prevent because it needed a casus belli other than the real one: control of 
resources. It was the "second Pearl Harbor" that the neocons wanted - and in 
this similar to the first one (and to, e.g., Fort Sumter). For practically the 
first time, "the guns were pointed in the other direction" - that's the  crazy 
conspiracy theory that recommends itself to me.

And I think you're right about free markets.  It's a incantation from the 
propaganda structure of Neoliberalism (as discussed by David Green on the last 
News from Neptune), which was surely a zombie in that it ate the brains of US 
academics and policy makers for a generation.  We can hope that Alice's splendid 
youthful optimism proves correct.  --CGE


E.Wayne Johnson wrote:
> I liked this article and agree fully with items 2-7, 9 and 10.
> 
> I was in China during the election of 2000, and would have stayed there for
> sure if Gore had won.  It was one of my contingency points.  I hated 
> Clinton's Imperialism and GWBush's humble foreign policy sounded good to me. 
> I didnt like the elder Bush but then  thought that the younger Bush would not
> be a continuation of Clintonian Wars abroad.  So much for that.
> 
> On item 2 I am presently fully convinced that not only did the US government
> know about the 9/11 attack, but there was massive collusion and orchestration
> which included the detonation of explosive and incendiary devices to effect
> the catastrophic demolition of the buildings. I have rather slowly come to
> this conclusion. Explanations other than "9/11 was an Inside Job" might be
> crazy conspiracy theories.
> 
> Regarding item 8, there has not been a free market in the US for a long time.
> I agree that Americans are deranged when not simply asleep.  Most Americans
> seem to be weak Zombies.  Alice says that weak Zombies fall down. That seems
> descriptive enough.
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu> 
> To: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at anti-war.net> Sent: Saturday, January 02,
> 2010 9:05 AM Subject: [Peace-discuss] Common opinions - basis for a new
> politics?
> 
> 
>> Published on Friday, January 1, 2010 by CommonDreams.org The Real Top Ten
>> Stories of the Past Decade by Robert Freeman
>> 
>> The media are awash with talking heads bloviating about the top stories of
>> the last decade.  The wired-in society.  The growth of organic food.  The
>> new frugality.  This is the ritual that reveals their true function in the
>> culture: pacification.  It's their way of signaling the masses that Bigger
>> Thinkers are looking after things, so go back to your Wii or Survivor or
>> Facebook reveries.
>> 
>> The amazing thing is how little is ever mentioned about the stories that
>> really mattered, those that affected the very nature of our society, its
>> institutions, and the relation of the people to their state and society.
>> 
>> Those stories paint a picture of danger, of a people who have lost control
>> of their government and the corporations that own it.  But you'll hear nary
>> a word about such difficult truths from any storyteller in the conventional
>> media.
>> 
>> So here, in no particular order, are my Top Ten Stories of the Naughties,
>> the ones that really matter.
>> 
>> [1] The Supreme Court hijacking the 2000 presidential election.  This isn't
>> even a historical controversy anymore.  Al Gore won the national popular
>> vote by 570,000.  And we now know he would have won the Florida vote as
>> well if the vote counting had not been stopped by the Supreme Court.  This
>> was literally a right wing judicial coup d' etat, so it's understandable
>> that it's never mentioned in the "right" kind of circles.
>> 
>> [2] Bush knew of 9/11 long before it actually happened.  Three years before
>> Bush took office, the neo-cons' Project For a New American Century called
>> for a "new Pearl Harbor" to galvanize the nation into a war to seize Middle
>> East oil.  And even before the event itself, Bush-as-president was warned
>> dozens of times of the imminent attack, the most notorious being the August
>> 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike
>> in U.S".  Amazingly nothing was done to prevent the attack.  But even less
>> is it advertised that Bush knew.
>> 
>> [3] Iraq was all premised on lies, yet we're still there.  Saddam Hussein
>> wasn't pursuing Weapons of Mass Destruction.  He wasn't involved in 9/11.
>> He wasn't engaged with Al Qaeda.  As with the 2000 election hijacking, we
>> know all these things.  And we know they were false at the time they were
>> proffered.  Yet, there we are, with no intent to leave, our very presence
>> spitting in the face of International Law and the international community
>> we so unctuously pretend to respect.
>> 
>> [4] The Global War on Terror.  Or more specifically, the ease with which
>> the "GWOT" has replaced the Cold War as the justification for the
>> ever-increasing militarization of society.  What happened to the post-Cold
>> War "Peace Dividend"? The U.S continues to spend more on the military than
>> all the rest of the world combined.  It continues to maintain over 700
>> military bases around the world. And it continues to manufacture excuses
>> for foreign interventions whenever weapons makers and military logistics
>> companies need more profits — which is forever.
>> 
>> [5] The fact that 2/3 of all economic growth went to top 1%.  John 
>> Kennedy's social contract had a rising tide lifting all boats.  But over
>> the last decade 2/3 of all economic growth has gone to the top 1% of income
>> earners.  Meanwhile the middle class has suffered a $13 trillion writedown
>> in wealth as a result of the housing collapse.  The banking bailout and the
>> health care "reform" debate showed as never before the extent to which
>> corporations have captured government and use it to redirect national
>> wealth to themselves and their owners.
>> 
>> [6] The Neo-Feudalization of the American economy.  The top 1% of wealth
>> holders own 41% of all the assets in the country while the bottom 40% own
>> absolutely nothing.  Meanwhile, workers are saddled with $12 trillion of
>> national debt, an effective indentured servitude that will bind them to
>> their corporate masters for the rest of their lives.  This is the working
>> definition of feudalism, where the rich own everything and everybody else
>> has nothing but their proffered labor and their obligations to their
>> masters.  The Hapsburgs, the Tudors, and the Bourbons would be jealous.
>> 
>> [7] The surrender of civil liberties.  Despite the Fourth Amendment 
>> supposedly protecting us against unreasonable searches and seizures, the
>> government can now read your email and listen to your phone calls without
>> any probable cause.  The Obama administration has gone to court to prevent
>> the re-institution of Habeas Corpus, suspended during the Bush
>> administration.  We are much less free, much less protected from
>> brutalization by our own government than we were just ten years ago.
>> 
>> [8] The failure of "the free market" to sustain prosperity.  The "free 
>> market" has long been an ideological dodge used to resist real government
>> regulation of the economy.  Still, the ideal was supposed to deliver
>> prosperity in a stable, sustainable matter.  Now we have the greatest
>> global economic collapse since the Great Depression, with the government
>> transferring $11 trillion to the banks to cover their sociopathically
>> greedy bets that went bust.  All in the name of deregulation, with future
>> regulation vigorously resisted.  Is this a deranged country or what?
>> 
>> [9] The collapse of the media.  We once imagined it would guard the hen
>> house. Yet that was an anomaly, a freak event around Vietnam and Watergate
>> when it slipped its leash.  Since then, sixty independent media outlets
>> have consolidated into five, all retailing the ideology of the powerful,
>> the perpetrators, laundering their lies, covering up the truth, and
>> harassing the truth tellers.  In every story mentioned above, the
>> mainstream media have worked to ensure that the people didn't know the
>> truth about the forfeiture of their government, their wealth, their
>> security, and their rights.
>> 
>> [10] The meaninglessness of elections.  This is the most embittering 
>> revelation of all.  Despite the greatest electoral majority since Johnson
>> crushed Goldwater in '64, Barrack Obama has betrayed everything he ran on.
>> In every case where he had the opportunity to confront power — in financial
>> bailouts, financial regulation, health care, wars and military spending,
>> utilities and global warming, national surveillance — Obama has sided with
>> the rich and powerful against the interests of the American people.  He has
>> probably engendered more cynicism, more disaffection with government than
>> any president since Richard Nixon.  It will deal a staggering blow to the 
>> hopes of mobilizing masses of people again for a real takeback of 
>> government.  And he's not even one year into it.
>> 
>> History paints decades with broad brushes-the Roaring Twenties, The 
>> Depression, World War II. Historians will look back on the Naughts as the
>> time when Americans Lost Their Country.  It was the decade when all the
>> institutions that they believed would protect them — the media, the courts,
>> Congress, the market, a messianic new president — in fact betrayed them. It
>> will forever more be a different country.
>> 
>> But not just yet.  Did I tell you about the big move to locally-grown 
>> produce?
>> 
>> [Robert Freeman writes on history, economics, and education. Email to: 
>> robertfreeman10 at yahoo.com.]
>> 
>> Comment
>> 
>> SeriousCitizen January 2nd, 2010 9:33 am:
>> 
>> This essay has a dramatic US-centric perspective. This essay essentially
>> says that we Americans have been too lazy or too stupid to control our own
>> institutions, and therefore we feel "betrayed" and are victims. The top ten
>> stories of the decade should include things like:
>> 
>> 1) We Americans killed one million Iraqis for no real reason and made four
>> million into refugees.
>> 
>> 2) We Americans bombed and invaded Afghanistan because we refused to accept
>> the Taliban government's offers to extradite Osama bin Laden.
>> 
>> 3) We Americans refused to curb our carbon consumption in accord with the
>> world community's agreement in the Kyoto Accord, and now millions of poor
>> people in other parts of the planet will starve or will find their
>> communities going underwater.
>> 
>> 4) We Americans made junk mortgage bonds, gave them AAA+ ratings, and sold
>> them all over the world.
>> 
>> 5) We Americans gave Israel the money and illegal weapons (like white 
>> phosphorus and tungsten bombs) to wage war against an impoverished and 
>> trapped population in Gaza, most of whom are children under age 15.
>> 
>> 6) We Americans violated the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners
>> because we had scared ourselves with our own propaganda.
>> 
>> 7) We Americans allowed our own cities to be attacked on Sept. 11 ... in
>> order to scare ourselves into waging war on the world and destroying our
>> own freedoms. This kind of list can go on and on. If we Americans do not
>> somehow control our own institutions and make them be lawful, honest, and
>> just, then we hurt and kill millions of people. We are not the victims of
>> our institutions' failings, we are the cause of our institutions' failings.
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/01-0 
>> _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list 
>> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net 
>> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>> 
> 
> _______________________________________________ Peace-discuss mailing list 
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net 
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss