[Peace-discuss] [sftalk] [sf-core] More dead children on Obama's watch

Fri Apr 5 16:50:54 UTC 2013

While I appreciate the thought, I'll have to refuse the honorary doctorate, as it is misaddressed to someone named "Gherig." So, other than getting my name, rank, and argument all wrong, it was a brilliant response.

To address the point you utterly missed, you'll recall that more than a few members of the Occupy list objected at efforts to transform the list to The Daily Epistle from Chunks-o-Chomsky. Internet Goofus adds marginally related lists to a discussion; Internet Gallant removes them. 

@%<

On Apr 4, 2013, at 9:49 PM, "E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森" <ewj at pigsqq.org> wrote:

> Dr. Gherig,
> 
> I am shocked, I tell you, Shocked, when I read your
> calumnious remarks about the Occupy list.
> 
> I always found them to be very open-minded chaps, eager to exchange ideas,
> always ready to hear all sides of every argument.
> 
> Above all, they have a great sense of humour and
> are able to consider even self-deprecation cheerfully.
> 
> It's such a refreshing group and I am surprised
> that you dont feel welcomed among them.
> 
> You must have caught someone on a bad day or just
> simply misunderstood some offhand remark.
> 
> Groups like Occupy-CU give me great encouragement
> when I consider the future of America and the world.
> 
> Wayne
> 
> 
> On 04/05/13 0:01, David Gehrig wrote:
>> I've removed the Occupy list as they are unwilling to act the role of all-purpose soapbox.
>> 
>> On this list, I think most readers are sharp enough to spot it when someone pulls a fast presto-change-o (King Lear's phrase was "handy-dandy") between "liberal" and "neo-liberal," two terms that you seem to use interchangeably but are of course not interchangeable.
>> 
>> I think it's also clear that it would be quite easy to pick some issue and raise it to the status of unchallengeable political touchstone, with the associated declarations of "no TRUE leftist could be against X," in away that would leave your estimable self on the wrong side of the line in the sand. But what would that achieve, other than demonstrating that my pointing finger can point?
>> 
>> @%<
>> 
>> On Apr 3, 2013, at 7:58 AM, "C. G. Estabrook"<carl at newsfromneptune.com>  wrote:
>> 
>>   
>>> In American politics in our lifetimes, the left has been a mouse that roared. In this generation of vicious class war, carried on by what we've come to call the 1% against the rest, the left has in fact been the issue. In the most sophisticated propaganda regime in history, the effort has been to silence and negate the left, to pretend that there is no real opposition to the American tradition of "consensus history." The effort has a name - neoliberalism. But its quiet and well-funded campaign - implemented by efforts up to and including direct government suppression (cf. the fate of Occupy) - has been countered by the successes of Occupy and the contemporary anti-war movements, with the result that the language of class is once again part of the national consciousness.
>>> 
>>> The left in America means opposition to the class-oppression of capitalism, joined to the recognition that US wars are in the interests only of the capitalist class. Liberalism is an attempt to meliorate capitalism (from whatever motives, including the defense of the capitalist order) and eliminate the excesses of the foreign policy of the US, seen as basically sound. (E.g., the late Anthony Lewis, the liberal extreme of NYT columnists, held long after the US war in Vietnam that the greatest international crime since WWII had been "a blundering attempt to do good.")
>>> 
>>> The argument in this email thread began with John Stauber's important article, "The Progressive Movement is a PR Front for Rich Democrats"<http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/15/the-progressive-movement-is-a-pr-front-for-rich-democrats/>, which describes current liberal attempts to co-opt the left. It was just that sort of co-option of the anti-war movement that made Barack Obama president. (That he realized such a campaign would be necessary is clear from The Audacity of Hope: his lying pretense to be the peace candidate was his most audacious hope.) But liberalism and the left are not co-ordinate, as some of our friends would have us believe, but contrary.
>>> 
>>> Americans are only slowly becoming aware of the conscious neoliberal campaign from the 1970s to combat the emergence of an American left in the 1960s.  Neoliberalism meant to reverse the gains in social support - such as social Security and Medicare - that American capitalism had had to concede in the generation after WWII. A series of neoliberal administrations (Republican and Democrat), culminating in the current one, may well accomplish that goal, as it has destroyed unions and suppressed wages. And the neoliberal campaign has been quite conscious, if covert: see e.g. the Powell memo (1971) and Crozier et al. The Crisis of Democracy (1975) - the crisis being that the sixties had produced too much democracy...
>>> 
>>> Neoliberalism vs. the left is the battle by night that's going on in US politics, under the show of contests between safely neoliberal candidates like Romney and Obama. In spite of the corporate media, more Americans are realizing that the outcome of the latter makes little difference (cf. "hope and change" in 2008), but the outcome of the former is crucial. It's surely a mistake to pretend that liberals and the left are on the same side.
>>> 
>>> --CGE
>>> 
>>> On Mar 28, 2013, at 5:40 PM, David Gehrig<david-cu at nukulele.org>  wrote:
>>> 
>>>     
>>>> What Mike's trying to say is that not even Jeremiah was on an endless jeremiad.
>>>> Or, as Carlyle's non-existent Herr Teufelsdröckh apostrophized Voltaire: "Only a torch for burning, no hammer for building? Take our thanks, then, and -- thyself away."
>>>> I have to admit that at this point you're reminding me of the former leader of the unmourned San Francisco IMC, a would-be messiah who claimed to represent the "global justice movement." This global justice movement he invoked always agreed with him on every single point - and thus when he spoke he claimed to speak in the name of the entire planet. And anyone who disagreed with him he characterized as "working against the global justice movement" and therefore against the entire planet.
>>>> It soon became clear that the global justice movement was a mouse that lived exclusively in his, and only his, pocket, having appointed him alone as spokesman.
>>>> I see you have a mouse too, Carl, and it's called "the left."
>>>> @%<
>>>> 
>>>> On Mar 28, 2013, at 4:41 PM, "C. G. Estabrook"<carl at newsfromneptune.com>  wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>       
>>>>> Does the choir believe that the administration's military and economic policies - assassination and austerity for short - should be reversed?
>>>>> 
>>>>> I rather thought the choir lent "critical support" to those policies. E.g., drones should be used "responsibly," and judicious cuts should be made in "entitlements."
>>>>> 
>>>>> Does the choir believe that the chief magistrate should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, including murder and violations of the Constitution?
>>>>> 
>>>>> I rather thought they would not support a call for Obama to be imprisoned along with Bush in The Hague, both awaiting trial for war crimes. (And they should be joined by others.)
>>>>> 
>>>>> I think there are real differences between liberals and the left. Liberals think Obama is doing the best he can for the 99%, and the left sees him as the minion of the 1%.
>>>>> 
>>>>> There's a fairly clear choice between supporting and opposing the administration.
>>>>> 
>>>>> And I do think Obama fears public dissent and resistance, expressed in action and argument, and will do a great deal to nullify it.
>>>>> 
>>>>> He knows that such opposition is the only real check on the exercise of US military and economic power - other than the resistance of our victims.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Mar 28, 2013, at 12:17 PM, Mike Lehman<rebelmike at earthlink.net>  wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>         
>>>>>> ...
>>>>>> Carl,
>>>>>> Everyone of us is acutely aware of this sort of stuff. You're preaching to the choir..
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