[Peace-discuss] [Peace] Fw: Money Can't Vote
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Thu Oct 21 23:01:20 CDT 2010
Outta sight...
On 10/21/10 9:50 PM, E.Wayne Johnson wrote:
> What does it mean? don't mean...........
> The conclusion that mr. crumb came to in his usual irascible skepticism and
> analysis of the
> human situation and the personal war on existential terror was that the most
> important thing
> and the most useful thing was to do nothing.
> By the way, a correction and apology.. Although the "Ruff-Tuff Cream-puff"
> made his debut in "Despair" (1969),
> the "Kick Their Ass Take Their Gas" mantra appeared in "The Ruff-Tuff
> Cream-Puffs Take Charge",
> "Hup No. 1" (1987), also reprinted in "R. Crumb's America".
> From Mystic Funnies #2 (1999):
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Gregg Gordon <mailto:ggregg79 at yahoo.com>
> *To:* E. Wayne Johnson <mailto:ewj at pigs.ag> ; C. G. Estabrook
> <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>
> *Cc:* Peace-discuss <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> *Sent:* Thursday, October 21, 2010 11:49 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Fw: Money Can't Vote
>
> Huh! That's a strange take. The quote I've been using lately is: "The
> surest way for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing." To each
> his own, I guess.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag <mailto:ewj at pigs.ag>>
> *To:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>>
> *Cc:* Gregg Gordon <ggregg79 at yahoo.com <mailto:ggregg79 at yahoo.com>>;
> Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>>
> *Sent:* Thu, October 21, 2010 10:33:50 AM
> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Fw: Money Can't Vote
>
> That bumpersticker mantra is older than you imagine.
>
> "Kick their ass! Take their Gas!" was on the t-shirt of the horn-tooting
> protagonist in R. Crumb's "It's the Ruff Tuff Creampuff",
>
> (who appeared in [Fall into the Depths of] Despair Comix, 1969)
>
> "The best solution anyone has found is to sit and do nothing".
>
> On 10/21/2010 11:08 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>> That quite remarkable contempt for the political perspicacity of your
>> fellow citizens is all too typical of the political class in this
>> country, but it's not very democratic.
>>
>> The federal government doesn't quite agree with you. That's why it
>> spends so much time and money on "the manufacture of consent" (and why
>> snake-oil salesmen like Obama get ahead). The public has to be managed,
>> not indulged, they think - it's their only real enemy, as Vietnam showed.
>>
>> That after all was Jefferson's view: he thought that people "are
>> naturally divided into two parties: (1.) Those who fear and distrust the
>> people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the
>> higher classes. (2.) Those who identify themselves with the people,
>> have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and
>> safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests."
>>
>> I'm a democrat, so not a Democrat. --CGE
>>
>>
>> On 10/21/10 9:51 AM, Gregg Gordon wrote:
>>> I don't disagree with any of that. So what? And as for wars for oil,
>>> maybe you better hope they /keep/ lying about it, because if Americans
>>> were confronted with that stark reality, most of them might be down with
>>> it. When Alan Greenspan said so publicly, there was no big outcry.
>>> Barely lasted a full news cycle. I remember seeing a bumper sticker
>>> when the Iraq war started: "Kick their ass. Take their gas." I think
>>> that's basically where most Americans are on the issue, and the main
>>> reason the Iraq war has become so unpopular (people were 2-1 in favor at
>>> the time, if the polls can be believed) is that the cheap gas never
>>> materialized. We're still paying through the nose. Most people support
>>> resumed drilling in the Gulf right now. They don't care if it turns
>>> into the Rancho La Brea tar pits. They want gasoline for their cars. I
>>> saw a poll just within the last week -- can't remember exactly, but
>>> something like, would you be willing to pay an additional 4 cents a
>>> gallon for, I don't know -- lower CO2 emissions or something. The
>>> majority said, "No." So that's where you need to start -- not with the
>>> Democrats. I think the Democrats are about the left party that the
>>> American left deserves right now. We've been ineffectual and inept.
>>> That's our reward.
>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
>>> *To:* Gregg Gordon <ggregg79 at yahoo.com>
>>> *Cc:* Jenifer Cartwright <jencart13 at yahoo.com>; Peace-discuss
>>> <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>>> *Sent:* Thu, October 21, 2010 9:03:01 AM
>>> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Fw: Money Can't Vote
>>>
>>> On the Carter administration, see the famous interview his National
>>> Security Adviser gave to Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998:
>>> <http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html> (in English)...
>>>
>>> "Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic
>>> fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
>>> "B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or
>>> the collapse of the Soviet empire? /Some stirred-up Moslems/ [sic] or
>>> the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?..."
>>>
>>> It's true that the US has been committing crimes in order to control
>>> Mideast oil since the Truman administration, when we saw that we could
>>> displace an exhausted Britain in the region. First, British oil
>>> companies were replaced with American ones, and concomitantly the US
>>> began the policy - which Obama continues - of controlling the countries
>>> of the region by alliance, subversion, or aggressive war (= what we were
>>> busily condemning German leaders for, at Nuremberg).
>>>
>>> Benchmarks are our destruction of democratic government in Iran (1953),
>>> which Americans have forgotten but the Iranians haven't; adoption of
>>> Israel as our "cop on the beat" (as the Nixon administration said) after
>>> they launched their 1967 war to destroy secular Arab nationalism; our
>>> sponsorship of Saddam Hussein in the Iraq-Iran war, 1980-88; our covert
>>> sponsorship of the religious-based Hamas to undercut the secular PLO;
>>> and Clinton's murderous sanctions on Iraq (by which he killed as many
>>> people as Bush did, many of them children whose deaths were "worth it,"
>>> according to Clinton's Secretary of State).
>>>
>>> The US has consistently demanded control of Mideast energy resources
>>> since WWII, not because we need them - the US was a net exporter of oil
>>> until recently, and now imports less than 10% of the oil we use at home
>>> from the Mideast, mostly from our ally Saudi Arabia - but because
>>> control of world hydrocarbon supplies gives us an advantage over our
>>> real economic rivals, the EU and East Asia (China and Japan). That's
>>> what Obama (and other presidents) is sending Americans to kill and die
>>> for, so it's obvious that he like the others has to invent excuses,
>>> especially when two-thirds of the US public, even though they're being
>>> lied to, thinks the war a bad idea.
>>>
>>> When Al Qaeda launched their criminal raids on US cities in 2001, they
>>> were clearly and consciously staging a counter-attack to more than a
>>> generation of US crimes in the Mideast. They said at the time that
>>> there were three reasons for their counterattack: (1) the sanctions on
>>> Iraq, called "genocidal" by successive UN overseers; (2) the suppression
>>> of h the Palestinians by America's chief client, Israel; and (3) the
>>> occupation of Saudi Arabia (and the Muslim holy places) by American
>>> troops after Bush I's Gulf war, in 1991.
>>>
>>> It's not just those who point out that the Obama administration is, by
>>> and large, Bush's third term who note the continuity of US policy in the
>>> Mideast, which Obama if anything has intensified - as he said he would,
>>> as far back as his campaign for the Senate, when he discussed "surgical
>>> strikes" on Iran, still I think a real possibility, along with open war
>>> with Pakistan. BHO is down with the program, and only a few are
>>> criticizing it - of course many more in the country that in Congress.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10/21/10 8:05 AM, Gregg Gordon wrote:
>>>> Well, that strikes me as quite a stretch to lay responsibility for the
>>>> Iraq and Afghanistan wars on the back of Jimmy Carter. I could take
>>>> your logic just a small step further and put it on FDR. Or William
>>>> McKinley. Or James K. Polk. Plus it ignores the question of why three
>>>> subsequent Republican presidents failed to end it, as your premise
>>>> indicates they should have done. It is a sad fact that since the
>>>> disastrous and misguided McGovern campaign (God bless him), Democrats
>>>> have been so bullied and intimidated by charges of being anti-military
>>>> (not that there's anything wrong with that) that they too often feel
>>>> compelled to prove they have gonads. I thought Clinton kept Saddam
>>>> around just to have somebody to bomb when he needed to look tough.
>>>> That's murderous and deplorable and certainly won't get him into
>>>> heaven, but that's the political landscape we find ourselves in. Deal
>>>> with it. Anyway, wealth and power breed arrogance. Americans, like
>>>> the British, Spanish, Romans, and every great empire before us, think
>>>> we should have our way just because God obviously loves us so. (If He
>>>> didn't, we wouldn't be an empire.) That's human nature, and liberals
>>>> are just as susceptible to it as conservatives. More often than not,
>>>> Democratic militarism just takes the form of seeing to it that veterans
>>>> actually receive the benefits they've been promised, for which they get
>>>> no credit whatsoever. And "spineless" is not the same as "evil" in my
>>>> eyes. The "spineless" need to be encouraged. The "evil" need to be
>>>> stopped. Who can blame the Democrats for being spineless? Who's got
>>>> their backs? The left?
>>>> I'm a Bernie Sanders kind of guy. I don't really consider myself a
>>>> Democrat, but I caucus with them because I think the alternative is so
>>>> much worse. But if you /really/ can't see /any/ difference between,
>>>> say, Karl Rove and Dennis Kucinich, I'm not going to waste any more
>>>> time arguing with you. You're not serious.
>>>>
>>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
>>>> *To:* Gregg Gordon <ggregg79 at yahoo.com>
>>>> *Cc:* Jenifer Cartwright <jencart13 at yahoo.com>; Peace List
>>>> <peace at lists.chambana.net>; Peace-discuss
>>>> <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>>>> *Sent:* Wed, October 20, 2010 11:09:24 PM
>>>> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Fw: Money Can't Vote
>>>>
>>>> First, Iraq and Afghanistan are both part of what the Pentagon calls
>>>> "The Long War" (for oil) in the Mideast. So far, the US has killed a
>>>> million people in Iraq under Clinton (whose Secretary of State said
>>>> that the tens of thousands of dead children were "worth it"); a million
>>>> under Bush; and apparently hundreds of thousands in AfPak under Bush
>>>> and his third (Obama) term.
>>>>
>>>> That falls short of the perhaps 4 million we killed in SE Asia, but of
>>>> course Obama's escalated murders in SW Asia are in no way justified by
>>>> being fewer in number than Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon's in Vietnam.
>>>>
>>>> It's difficult to determine when the Long War begins, but it takes a
>>>> tick up in the Carter administration when Carter (and Obama's) adviser
>>>> Zbigniew Brzezinski sends Osama bin Laden and friends into Afghanistan
>>>> (before the Russian invasion) "to give the Russians a Vietnam of their
>>>> own," as he said at the time, in the most expensive CIA operation to date.
>>>>
>>>> If a Republican administration after 2012 brings Obama's AfPak war to
>>>> an end, then we'll have a third example of a Democratic war concluded
>>>> by Republicans in as many generations. But that may not be likely. The
>>>> news suggests that the Obama administration is looking to expand the
>>>> war with an attack on Pakistan and/or Iran. It certainly isn't looking
>>>> to abandon the world's greatest energy-producing region.
>>>>
>>>> Control of Mideast energy resources has been a cornerstone of US
>>>> foreign policy since 1945. Obama is simply lying when he says the war
>>>> is to "stop terrorism" - it obviously increases terrorism - but he has
>>>> to lie, because the only Constitutional authority he has to wage war in
>>>> the Mideast is Congress' "Authorization for the Use of Military Force"
>>>> of September 2001 - which is directed against terrorism.
>>>>
>>>> Something positive to do: years ago, there was a great debate in
>>>> America, "How do we get out of Vietnam?" The best answer was given by
>>>> Herb Caen: "Ships and planes." Load up the troops and bring them home.
>>>> The Russians did - and survived and prospered from the end of their war.
>>>>
>>>> Eventually we did, but it took two presidents' being driven from office
>>>> and (even more important) a revolt of the American conscript army to
>>>> do it.
>>>>
>>>> Regards, CGE
>>>>
>>>> On 10/20/10 7:15 PM, Gregg Gordon wrote:
>>>>> So I conclude from your statement that you don't consider either Iraq
>>>>> or Afghanistan to be "major" wars. So why are you so worked up about
>>>>> them? I think you're just still mad at Lyndon Johnson.
>>>>> And please, don't accuse me of being some kind of racist who doesn't
>>>>> mind us murdering brown people. That is /so/ lame. It's just that
>>>>> not all of us see the world in as simple terms as you seem to. Simple
>>>>> solutions are nice, but they're mainly for the simple-minded.
>>>>> All I'm saying is if you're so gung-ho on stopping the war, why don't
>>>>> you come up with something positive to do (as opposed to sniping from
>>>>> the sidelines) that might help get us closer to that goal? We'll all
>>>>> get behind you.
>>>>>
>>>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
>>>>> *To:* Gregg Gordon <ggregg79 at yahoo.com>
>>>>> *Cc:* Jenifer Cartwright <jencart13 at yahoo.com>; Peace List
>>>>> <peace at lists.chambana.net>; Peace-discuss
>>>>> <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>>>>> *Sent:* Wed, October 20, 2010 5:10:40 PM
>>>>> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] [Peace] Fw: Money Can't Vote
>>>>>
>>>>> You are aware, are you not, that America's major wars since WWII -
>>>>> called by synecdoche "Korea" and "Vietnam" - were started by
>>>>> Democratic administrations and ended by Republican administrations.
>>>>> Since the current Democratic administration has greatly expanded the
>>>>> killing in AfPak, it's hard to argue that they're going to reverse
>>>>> their policies. Voting for them is an acquiescence to those policies.
>>>>>
>>>>> To say of Obama and the Democrats, "Let them kill some Asians, because
>>>>> they might do some good someplace else," is at best a counsel of
>>>>> despair, if not an outright criminal attitude. Particularly when it
>>>>> seems that they're doing precisely the wrong things elsewhere, too -
>>>>> not surprisingly, because they're working for the owners of the banks,
>>>>> the insurance companies, the oil and construction companies, etc. --CGE
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 10/20/10 4:48 PM, Gregg Gordon wrote:
>>>>>> Maybe because there are other important issues that she /does/ agree
>>>>>> with him on. The only way you're going to find a candidate you're in
>>>>>> 100% agreement with is to run for office. If support for the war is
>>>>>> an absolute deal breaker for you, fine. Not everybody sees it that
>>>>>> way. But if you think the war will end sooner if more Republicans
>>>>>> get elected, I think you're out of your mind.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>>> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
>>>>>> *To:* Jenifer Cartwright <jencart13 at yahoo.com>
>>>>>> *Cc:* Peace List <peace at lists.chambana.net>; Peace-discuss
>>>>>> <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
>>>>>> *Sent:* Wed, October 20, 2010 4:33:52 PM
>>>>>> *Subject:* Re: [Peace] [Peace-discuss] Fw: Money Can't Vote
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This guy supports the war. I can't see why anyone on an anti-war list
>>>>>> would contribute to him.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 10/20/10 4:28 PM, Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
>>>>>>> Another request for help...
>>>>>>> I love this guy!
>>>>>>> --Jenifer
>>>>>>>
>>>
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