Worst Man for the Job
What the Hell is Obama Thinking?

3/01/2014

Nothing is quite as nauseating as watching the hypocrisy and hubris with which President Obama 'warns' the Russian president not to 'interfere' in Ukraine, telling the Russians there would be 'costs to pay.' It's a surreal move, echoed by his equally creepy and out-of-touch consigliore and chief "diplomat," the morally bankrupt John Kerry. Astonishing in its audacity and lack of regard for history, truth or facts, this bellicose blather seems aimed only at the idiots over whom he presides, the fools and tools in congress and the press, and his bought-and-paid-for lackeys in European capitals.

Outside the bubble, the sabre rattling is alarming and threatening. Having stood the issue completely on its head, No Drama Obama ignores how it looks to Russia, China and anyone with a skeptical mind. It is so jarring that it leaves only two options: is he crazy or does he really want war? That's why the Russian Senate, offended to the core, asked President Putin to recall the US ambassador over Obama's remarks.

[PHOTO: Kharkov, Ukraine: Russian flag raised over government building]

How oblivious or arrogant do you have to be to spend $5 billion dollars destabilizing a country (the actual total is undoubtedly much higher), have your diplomats caught on tape planning a coup, bring a gang of fascist thugs to power on Russia's doorstep--whose first order of business is to outlaw the Russian language, conduct a purge of opposing parties, threaten the Russian-speaking population, threaten to restore Ukraine's nuclear status and provoke and threaten Russia non-stop... and have the *balls* to lecture anyone about interfering? Oh, add to the pot that you have done the same exact thing in several other countries in the past few years alone. It simply boggles the mind.

Continue poking Putin by suggesting he is being a "bully" when he moves to protect the Russian naval base, protect Russians, and listen to the wishes of the elected government of the region who ask for his support, as as new protests erupted across eastern Ukraine rejecting the putschists in Kiev, with  Russian flags being raised over government buildings and protesters brandished signs saying "In Russia We Have Brothers. In Europe We Are Slaves" and "Where We Are, It is Also Russia." This is called an 'invasion' by the people who bought and organized a fascist coup. Bizarro World.

But why do I focus on Obama? After all, he is little more than an irrelevant placeholder president, a sort of ventriloquist's dummy for the vested interests and forces that put him where he is. Furthermore, I am not a fan of any Great Man theory of history that implies superhuman powers to people instead of historical forces. Accordingly, I don't really go in for ad hominem attacks, which seems to be the only stock-in-trade of the western media, whose searing, eternal question seems to be who is the next Hitler.




Maybe it's because I'm in the grip of the question the rest of the world is pondering: is he crazy or does he really want war? I can't get past wondering whether he is sleepwalking through his presidency, having given over control of his administration to a foreign policy apparatus gone wild--or if he indeed believes the hypocritical warmongering crap that escapes his mouth. In short, Either he eats babies for breakfast or he has no clue that he is being led by the nose by psychopaths.

It's important because in either case he is perhaps the most dangerous man who has ever held the office. His chief flaw is *exactly* the puzzle piece that is *least* amenable to being a leader at this historical juncture. It is a horrific perfect storm, and one that has allowed him to blunder disastrously close to World War III on at least two occasions.

The measure of the man has always told us he was an extremely glib politician. On watching an early speech of his, my wife was shocked at what all the fuss was about, and actually quoted King Herod out loud to the TV: "Take him away/ He's got *nothing* to say!" Yeah, she's funny like that. But still, glibness isn't always hollowness. We got more of a glimpse when he joked casually about sending drones after any boys who had designs on his precious daughters. Later, referring to the boys he actual did mow down with his drones, he joked to aides--equally casually, we assume--that he never thought he 'would wind up being so good at killing people.'

But the clincher for me is one memory still haunts me from campaign 2008: a late rally in some Florida dump where Clinton explained (actually apologizing for going off script) that Obama was The Guy because he had said to the council of elders behind closed doors--you tell me what's the right thing to do and I'll sell it. At the time I did a double take, and it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. This is not a leader, a president, or even a thinker at all, but a glorified and willing Pitchman-in-Chief, a sort of real life Clayton Bigsby selling an ideology he is too blind to see.

It was a bit of the mask slipping... and it was incredibly ominous. I felt it and said so to my wife at the time, but she had checked out long before. Never thought he was anything more than a charlatan and a whore - from the first time she heard him, actually. Damn, I envy her clarity sometimes. It's like they made a clone of Truman in a test tube, only this time not a hick... scary. Jimmy Burns led Truman around on a leash, and this misplaced trust in Wise Men led to war crimes such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, among others.

In another famous example, Kennedy stupidly let the Bay of Pigs invasion proceed, as he was advised by 'wiser men' who told him it was already in the pipeline. However, he wisely vetoed air support, realizing that is was a stupid plan laid out by zealots. Obama has neither the balls nor the intelligence to pull off any such thing. There was a flicker over Syria in August, but it appears to have been a mirage brought on by Russian missiles and wiser generals. He has the fatal flaw which makes all smart men stupid: heeding the counsel of fools and those with their own secret agenda masquerading as Wise Men.

The zealots who have his ear have been in power for a long time, and they are the kind of fanatics who avoid scrutiny in public and accountability even to themselves, so stupid or proud that they still see chasing the Russians out of Afghanistan as their greatest triumph, and take no responsibility for having created, from the ground up, the very concept of militarized global jihad.

[PHOTO: Ukranian Anti-Maidan slogan: We will not live under Banderism. We will not forget the deed of our grandfathers. Ukraine, Stand up!" ]

Even cutting him the most possible slack, he listens to them--and that makes him delusional, a hollow man issuing idle threats. As logic dictates, it is the US who should be worrying about costs, starting with billions to set the coup in motion. That will turn out to have been a pittance.

He is now a dangerous man being counseled by dangerous men. Just today, listening to his smug, arrogant self humiliate a heckler, someone trying to shout a tiny bit of truth through the noise, is truly chilling. The trouble is, Obama may not be lying. He really doesn't know what the guy is talking about, and doesn't know that this is the plan--at what may be the most dangerous moment in history--and will go along with whichever three loudest advisers tell him is the right thing. The saddest and scariest part is that he doesn't even seem to know it--a true button pusher. Soulless.

But this is a measure of the man. At a friendly, fundraising event, with full control and no opposition, he could have said anything he wanted, could have made some sensible retort. Instead he chose to be mean and demeaning, calling the guy a drunk and implying that he is crazy. So now I have to add Bad Man to my list. No lie lives forever, and some day is uppance will come, as Stewie Griffin says. He richly deserves the place he has earned in history, and I have lost interest in splitting hairs:.enabler, dupe or antichrist--take your pick.

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(c) 2014 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to danielpwelch.com. Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School.. Translations of articles are available in in up to 30 languages. Links to the website are appreciated.

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Preparing for War with Russia

 

 

I've been writing for many years about US-NATO efforts to militarily surround Russia.  The oil-i-garchy wants to get ahold of the natural gas (the world's largest supply) that sits on Russian territory.  It also wants full control of the Arctic region now that climate change will make it possible to drill for oil there.  Russia has a huge northern coastal border with the Arctic and thus stands in the way of western oil control.

Already the war drums are sounding after Russia moved more troops into Crimea to protect its Navy base and the large pro-Russian population in the region.

Writing yesterday in Foreign Policy Admiral James Stavridis (Ret) called for NATO to immediately increase " all intelligence-gathering functions through satellite, Predator unmanned vehicles, and especially cyber" and to sail "NATO maritime forces into the Black Sea and setting up contingency plans for their use."  This is full-blown war talk - with Russia. Admiral Stavridis was Supreme Allied Commander at NATO from 2009 to 2013. He is currently dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

If Stavridis is saying these things you can just imagine what plans are underway inside the Pentagon and at NATO HQ in Europe.

The Russians know that they are being set up.  Reporting for Asia Times, Pepe Escobar wrote, " Even before neo-con Victoria 'fuck the EU' Nuland’s intercept, [Russian intelligence] had already identified the wider mechanics of the CIA-style coup – including Turkish intelligence financing Tatars in Crimea... And what will the Tatars in Crimea do? Stage a jihad? Wait: the “West” will surely try to FINANCE THIS JIHAD."

It's Syria all over again, this time right on the Russian border.

Except this time the US-NATO are messing with a country that has the capability to fight back.  This is how world wars get started.  The Russians are not going to idly sit by and watch US-NATO set up a right-wing fascist state right on their border.  Hitler tried that during WW II and at least 20 million died defending the Soviet Union.  Ever since then the Russian people have been 'sensitive' about defending their immediate borders. 

The decision adopted on March 1, by the Federation Council, upper house of the Russian parliament, which allows Putin to send troops to Crimea, an autonomy within neighboring Ukraine, aims to protect life and security, Irina Yarovaya, chair of the Security and Anti-Corruption Committee in the State Duma (lower house of parliament), said.

“Terrorism is the most dangerous crime around the world. But it is fascism and terrorism that have proclaimed their power in Ukraine and pose a real threat to the life and security of Russian citizens living in Ukraine and undoubtedly to the brotherly people of Ukraine,” she said.

“We have repeatedly warned the international community and the US against interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine,” she said, adding “some European and US politicians bear direct responsibility for the crisis in Ukraine, for the bloodshed and for the coup.”

She believes that Obama’s latest statement on Russia “has fully exposed the US policy of brutal interference in the sovereign rights of other countries and aggressive imposition of its interests.”

Of course the Obama administration is saying that Russia is violating international law by moving more troops into Crimea.  Obama is threatening Russia with "severe consequences".  And now you can be sure that NATO is indeed preparing 'contingency plans'.

The open question is how will the American people react to all of this.  They rightly opposed Obama's desired cruise missile attack on Syria.  Will they be as wise about planting the cancerous NATO flag on Crimean soil?

Clearly Putin and Russia have been thoroughly demonized in the passive minds of most American citizens.  But will they shake the cobwebs from their brains and see the absurdity and sheer recklessness of US-NATO saber rattling on the doorstep of Mother Russia?

Now is the time for all peaceful people to speak out.  Before the real shooting starts.

 

 

Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
globalnet@mindspring.com
www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/  (blog)

 

Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.  ~Henry David Thoreau

The Class Struggle Continues

"a glorified and willing Pitchman-in-Chief, a sort of real life Clayton Bigsby", Worst Man for the Job....
had never heard of him :-)   LOL!!!!  hilarious

click on photo for comedy central video:

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Poet’s Corner- Claude McKay-If We Must Die-In Honor Of The 95^th Anniversary Of The Communist International- Take Five

 

 

…they had heard that a group of White Guards, a first detachment on horse, maybe from the dreaded mercenary Czech Legion that were running amok from Siberia to the Urals, paid for by who knows who, some said the English, some said the French, or worst maybe the dreaded Cossacks, who needed no outside pay but only their  Ataman’s word to bend contemptible peasant heads to size, and who took no prisoners, none, were heading their way, heading right for their line of defense in the city. Ready to take back Kazan for the asking, or so those Whites thought. Kazan fallen then the road to Moscow lay wide open and perhaps the end of the Soviet experiment in that dragged on second year, 1918, of hellish civil war.

But Commissar Vladimir, assigned that title because he was a little more literate, and a little cooler under pressure having faced the enemy before Moscow in the early days of the revolution, than the vast bulk of  lumpish peasants under his command was ready for them. That lump, that ageless, vast undifferentiated lump, mostly from Monsieur Orlov’s land around Omsk, who had signed up to fight and to die for the land, their land from what they had heard, listened to him unlike the city boy reds from Moscow and Saint Petersburg (now the secular Petrograd but name traditions die hard in the country). Listened to Vladimir  and his band of comrade brothers, five in all, (and one sixteen year old sister, one stray Red Emma, they called her who learned of revolution and sex, young love smitten sex even in war-torn Kazan  with young Zanoff, in that exact order while in their company and proved as fierce a fighter both ways, according to that same Zanoff, as any man). Listened as they, the comrades, harangued the last remnant from the old Orlov estate who survived the bloody endless Czar war  and who swore, swore a blood oath on their tattered red flag, the previous day that they would retreat no further, that here was their stand, their last stand if necessary, but no more moves away from Moscow.     

It had not always been that way with them, not even with Vladimir, not by a long shot. They had all farmed, like their fathers going back eons before them, the same fruitless task (for them) land for Orlov, the richest landowner in Omsk, and had never lifted their heads when the Social Revolutionaries had come before the war and during that last revolution, the one back in 1905, with glad tidings (and before them other city radicals, narodniks or something like that, had spoken to their fathers and grandfathers). They just shoveled the dirt, kept shoveling, and kept their heads down.

Then the war came, the bloody world war as it turned out, and the Czar’s police (Orlov’s really but in the name of the Czar so the same thing) came and “drafted” them into some vast ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-armed peasant force which proved no match for the methodical Germans as they were slaughtered by the millions in and around those foul trenches. And still they kept their heads bent, Vladimir and his four Orlov surviving farm brothers the only healthy alive ones left from the twenty-two that had started out from Omsk in the summer of 1915. Kept them bent until the February revolution stirred things up although they held to the front line trenches even then since no one told them not to leave and in the fall of 1917 they had just followed their fellows out of the trenches and went home. Not the first ones out, nor the last but just out. Went home to farm Orlov’s land again they figured with bent heads again.  Even when the Bolsheviks took power in November and decreed the land of Orlov’s theirs they kept their heads bent. It was not until Orlov, his agents, and his White Guard friends came back and took the land, their now precious land, theirs, that they roared back. And they had joined one of Trotsky’s red brigades passing through on a recruiting drive. They had moved here and there as the lines of battle shifted but mainly back, mainly retreats or break-ups since then and hence the blood oath, and no more retreats. The peasant slows in them had been busted, busted good. 

Just then a messenger came to their line, a messenger from the river in front of Kazan, from the wind- swept Volga. The message said that Trotsky himself , Trotsky of the phantom armored train rushing to this and that front, seemingly everywhere at the same time, that put fear in the hearts of whites and reds alike, had decided to fight and die before Kazan if necessary to save the revolution, to save their precious land. Vladimir and his comrades, including Red Emma, Red Emma who if the truth be told despite her tender years of sweet sixteen was the best soldier of the lot, and should have been the commissar except those lumpish peasants would not have listened to her, reaffirmed their blood oath. They were not sure of Lenin, thinking him a little too smart, and maybe he had something up his sleeve, maybe he was just another Jew, he looked the part with that bald head of his, but stout-hearted Trotsky, if he was willing to die then what else could they do.   If they must die they would die in defense of Kazan, and maybe just maybe somebody would hear of their story, the story of five peasant boys and a pretty red-hearted city girl as brave as they, and lift their heads and roar back too….    

[Vladimir, Vladimir Suslov (whose grandson, Misha, would become a high Soviet dignitary in the 1980s) also deserves some additional mention so one does not get the impression that they had dug deep into the bottom of the barrel and he was all they could come up with from the loutish lumpish peasant mass that decided, decided almost just yesterday, that they should first raise their heads and then actually go out and fight for their land, come hell or high water. No Vladimir, even as a child was a leader of the boys, the peasant boys who spent more time avoiding work and hiding in the woods than bending to the plow. And contrary to his stolid appearance (added to, and aided by, those miserable years in the trenches) which endeared him to his fellows, made him appear older than his thirty years, he was a good reader,  and could write some, including fancying himself a minor peasant poet. Like he told the political commissar of his unit one night when things had dusted up it paid to NOT appear too much brighter than the fellows or else you would be treated like poor Red Emma, Nana, who actually had the heart, the heart of a red warrior princess. And so Vladimir led, led by just being a little ahead, being a little bit better able to read maps, and people and get his fellows out of more than a few scrapes. Of such men revolutions flourish, for a time. Then the grandsons, the Mishas, come along and think they have done it all themselves. ]  

 [Red Emma, real name Nana Kamkov, deserves a better fate that to written off as some play thing for some loutish peasant boy, Grisha  Zanoff by full name, no matter how Red Army brave he was just that moment and no matter how peasant handsome he was, and he was, to Nana’s eyes. Nana had come off the land as a child, as fate would have it Orlov’s land, when after the last revolution, the one in 1905, the government encouraged capitalist exploitation of the land in order to break down the backward-looking peasant communes. Her parents had abandoned the land had travelled to live in Kazan and her father had set up shop as a locksmith, a good one. Nana had gone school and had been an outstanding student if somewhat socially backward (she had not been like the other girls boy-crazy) and desperately wanted to become an engineer although the family resources precluded such a fate.

One day in the summer of 1917 at the height of the revolutionary fervor she ran across a Bolshevik agitator in Kazan (later killed in Kiev fighting off some White Guards in that location) who told her, young impressionable her, aged fourteen, no more, that if the Soviets survived she would be able to pursue her engineering career, hell, the Bolsheviks would encourage it. From that time she had been a single-minded Red Guard soldier performing many dangerous tasks until the Whites threatened Kazan and she was trapped in the city and had joined Vladimir’s remnants as a result. And there she spied Grisha among his soldiers, loutish, foolish Grisha, although handsome she admitted. Perhaps it was the time of her time, perhaps she still had a little foolish schoolgirl notion to be with a man just in case things didn’t work out and she was killed, or worse, executed but one cold night she snuggled up to the sleeping Grisha and that was that. She was teaching him to read better and to think about things just in case they weren’t killed, or worse executed. Practical young woman, very practical. And so young Nana enters the red pantheon, and maybe she will drag Grisha along too.]               

 

If We Must Die

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.If we must die, O let us nobly die,
 
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
 
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

 

***Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Neil Young's I Believe In You  

 

Peter Paul Markin comment December 2013:

A while back, maybe a few years ago, I started a series presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By where I posted some songs that I thought would get us through the “dog days” of the struggle for our socialist future. Posted at a time, 2009, when it was touch and go whether there would be some kind of uprising against the economic royalists (chastised under the popular sobriquet “the one-percent”) who had just dealt the world a blow to the head through their economic machinations. Subsequently, while there were momentary uprisings, the response from the American and world working classes has if anything entrenched those interests. So as the dog days continue I have resumed the series. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs selected; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this kind of formation would mean political death for any serious revolutionary upheaval and would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.

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WE WANT THE WORLD AND WE WANT IT NOW!

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

My old friend from the summer of love 1967 days, Peter Paul Markin, always used to make a point of answering, or rather arguing with anybody who tried to tell him back in the day that “music was the revolution.”  Meaning, of course that contrary to the proponents (including many mutual friends who acted out on that idea and got burned by the flame) that eight or ten Give Peace A Chance, Kumbaya, Woodstock songs would not do the trick, would not change this nasty, brutish, old short-life world into the garden, into some pre-lapsian Eden. Meaning that the gathering of youth nation unto itself out in places like Woodstock, Golden Gate Park, Monterrey, hell, the Boston Common, or even once word trickled down, Olde Saco Park, would not feed on itself and grow to such a critical mass that the enemies of good, kindness, and leave us alone would sulk off somewhere, defeated or at least defanged.

Many a night, many a dope-blistered night before some seawall ocean front Pacific Coast campfire I would listen to Markin blast forth against that stuff, against that silliness. As for me, I was too into the moment, too into finding weed, hemp, mary jane and some fetching women to share it with to get caught up in some nebulous ideological struggle. It was only later, after the music died, after rock and roll turned in on itself, turned into some exotic fad of the exiles on Main Street that I began to think through the implications of what Markin, and the guys on the other side, were arguing about.

Now it makes perfect sense that music or any mere cultural expression would be unable to carry enough weight to turn us back to the garden. Although I guess that I would err on the side of the angels and at least wish they could have carried the day against the monsters of the American imperium we confronted back in the day.                 

Thinking about what a big deal was made of such arguments recently (arguments carried deep into the night, deep in smoke dream nights, and sometimes as the blue–pink dawn came rising to smite our dreams) I thought back to my own musical appreciations. In my jaded youth I developed an ear for roots music, whether I was conscious of that fact or not. Perhaps it initially started as a reaction to my parents’ music, the music that got them through the Great Depression of the 1930s and later waiting for other shoe to drop (either in Normandy or at home waiting in Olde Saco), and that became a habit, a wafting through the radio of my childhood home habit. You know who I mean Frank (Sinatra for the heathens), Harry James, the Andrews Sisters, Peggy Lee, Doris Day and the like. Or, maybe, and this is something that I have come closer to believing was the catalyst, my father’s very real roots in the Saturday night mountain barn dance, fiddles blazing, music of his growing up poor down in Appalachia.   

The origin of my emergence into roots music first centered on the blues, country and city with the likes of Son House , Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Elmore James, then early rock and roll, you know the rockabillies and R&B crowd, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck, Roy, Big Joe and Ike, and later, with the folk revival of the early 1960’s, folk music, especially the protest to high heaven sort, Bob Dylan, Dave Von Ronk, Joan Baez, etc. As I said I have often wondered about the source of this interest.

I am, and have always been a city boy, and an Eastern city boy at that. Meaning rootless or not meaningfully or consciously rooted in any of the niches mentioned above. Nevertheless, over time I have come to appreciate many more forms of roots music than in my youth. Cajun, Tex-Mex, old time dust bowl ballads a la Woody Guthrie, cowboy stuff with the likes of Bob Wills and Milton Brown, Carter Family-etched mountain music (paying final conscious tribute to the mountain DNA in my bone) and so on.

And all those genres are easily classified as roots music but I recall one time driving Markin crazy, driving him to closet me with the “music is the revolution” heads when I mentioned in passing that The Doors, then in their high holy mantra shamanic phase epitomized roots music. That hurt, a momentary hurt then, but thinking about it more recently Markin was totally off base in his remarks.

The Doors are roots music? Well, yes, in the sense that one of the branches of rock and roll derived from early rhythm and blues and in the special case of Jim Morrison, leader of The Doors, the attempt to musically explore the shamanic elements in the Western American Native- American culture that drove the beat of many of his trance-like songs like The End. More than one rock critic, professional rock critic, has argued that on their good nights when the dope and booze were flowing, Morrison was in high trance, and they were fired up The Doors were the best rock and roll band ever created. Those critics will get no argument here, and it is not a far stretch to classify their efforts as in the great American roots tradition.  I argued then and will argue here almost fifty years later when that original statement of mine was more prophetic the Doors put together all the stuff rock critics in one hundred years will be dusting off when they want to examine what it was like when men (and women, think Bonnie Raitt, Wanda Jackson, et. al) played rock and roll for keeps.

So where does Jim Morrison fit in an icon of the 1960s if he was not some new age latter day cultural Lenin/Trotsky. Jim was part of the trinity – Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix who lived fast, lived way too fast, and died young. The slogan of the day (or hour) - Drugs, sex, and rock and roll. And we liked that idea however you wanted to mix it up. Then.

Their deaths were part of the price we felt we had to pay if we were going to be free. And be creative. Even the most political among us, including Markin in his higher moments, felt those cultural winds blowing across the continent and counted those who espoused this alternative vision as part of the chosen. The righteous headed to the “promise land.” Unfortunately those who believed that we could have a far-reaching positive cultural change via music or “dropping out” without a huge societal political change proved to be wrong long ago. But, these were still our people.

Know this as well if you are keeping score. Whatever excesses were committed by the generation of ’68, and there were many, were mainly made out of ignorance and foolishness. Our opponents, exemplified by one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal, spent every day of their lives as a matter of conscious, deliberate policy raining hell down on the peoples of the world, the minorities in this country, and anyone else who got in their way. Forty plus years of “cultural wars” in revenge by his protégés, hangers-on and their descendants has been a heavy price to pay for our youthful errors. And Markin would surely endorse this sentiment. Enough.

The Latest From The Rag Blog

Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://theragblog.blogspot.com/

Markin comment:

I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. So the remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left militants.

Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.

*******

Manchild, Rag Bloggers, Vintage Television | Leave a comment

Bob Feldman :
A People’s History of Egypt, Part 16, 1953-1954

Posted on February 10, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Nasser forces resignation of General Naguib; no mass Jewish emigration during this period.

Prime Minister Gamal Abdel Nasser with Egypt’s first president, Gen. Mohammed Naguib, 1954.  Image from Wikimedia Commons.

By Bob Feldman | The Rag Blog | February 10, 2014

[With all the dramatic activity in Egypt, Bob Feldman's Rag Blog "people's history" series, "The Movement to Democratize Egypt," could not be more timely. Also see Feldman's "Hidden History of Texas" series on The Rag Blog.]
In response to the new Egyptian military regime’s political repression, the Democratic Movement for National Liberation [DMNL] and other left groups of Egyptian civilians formed in Alexandria the United Revolutionary Front in February 1953; and in April 1953, a branch of the United Revolutionary Front was formed in Cairo, prior to the United Revolutionary Front renaming itself as Egypt’s National Democratic Front [NDF].
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Bob Feldman, Egyptian History, Egyptian Jews, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Gen. Mohammed Naguib, Israel, Middle East, People's History of Egypt, Rag Bloggers, Revolutionary Command Council, World History | Leave a comment

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http://theragblog.blogspot.com/

Markin comment:

I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. So the remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left militants.

Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.

*******

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Harry Targ :
Progressives need to remember that history is complicated

Posted on January 28, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

In the words of Pete Seeger, “Though it’s darkest before the dawn, These thoughts keep us moving on…”

Arlo Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Image from Last.fm.

By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | January 28, 2014

[This essay by Harry Targ first appeared at The Rag Blog on October 20, 2010. Moved by the passing of Pete Seeger, Harry reflects, "As we mourn the loss of our movement treasure, we each recall what Pete Seeger has meant to us." Also see Rag Blog remembrances of Pete Seeger by Steve Russell, Lamar Hankins, and Harvey Wasserman.]
I became a radical in the 1960s. I kept putting off being active until the late ’60s but I slowly involved myself in the anti-war movement. When I started teaching around this time I noticed that many students became instant radicals; 19 year-old- kids going from lack of political awareness to militancy in a matter of weeks.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged American History, Arlo Guthrie, Folk Music, Harry Targ, New Left, Pete Seeger, Progressive Movement, Rag Bloggers, Sixties, Social Change | Leave a comment

The Latest From The Rag Blog

Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://theragblog.blogspot.com/

Markin comment:

I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. So the remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left militants.

Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.

*******
, Whistleblowers | 1 Comment

Steve Russell :
Fallujah on fire again

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Had the Iraqis been willing to sign the Status of Forces Agreement, our troops would as we speak be lined up to bleed over Fallujah for a third time.

The Marines were told to take Fallujah. Twice. “OO-RAH” was their response.  Image from TheSleuthJournal.

By Steve Russell | The Rag Blog | January 29, 2014

The  New York Times reported that Al Qaeda has taken control of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, for the first time since the U.S. Marines hauled down the Stars and Stripes over the memory of the Second Battle of Fallujah at the end of 2004, having first spilled their blood earlier in the year in the indecisive First Battle of Fallujah in April.
It was a nasty bit of business, taking Fallujah, and it inspired a famous song written by Billy Joel and performed by Cass Dillon.
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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Fallujah, Hamid Karzai, Iraq History, Iraq War, John Kerry, Lance Corporal Dominic Esquibel, Middle East, Rag Bloggers, Status of Forces Agreement, Steve Russell, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Marines, U.S. Military, Vietnam War | Leave a comment

The Latest From The Rag Blog

Click below to link to The Rag Blog  

http://theragblog.blogspot.com/

Markin comment:

I find this The Rag Blog website very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, and who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. So the remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least any that  would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the  last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left militants.

Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.

*******


, Whistleblowers | 1 Comment

Steve Russell :
Fallujah on fire again

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Thorne Dreyer

Had the Iraqis been willing to sign the Status of Forces Agreement, our troops would as we speak be lined up to bleed over Fallujah for a third time.

The Marines were told to take Fallujah. Twice. “OO-RAH” was their response.  Image from TheSleuthJournal.

By Steve Russell | The Rag Blog | January 29, 2014

The  New York Times reported that Al Qaeda has taken control of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, for the first time since the U.S. Marines hauled down the Stars and Stripes over the memory of the Second Battle of Fallujah at the end of 2004, having first spilled their blood earlier in the year in the indecisive First Battle of Fallujah in April.
It was a nasty bit of business, taking Fallujah, and it inspired a famous song written by Billy Joel and performed by Cass Dillon.
Continue reading →

Share:

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Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Fallujah, Hamid Karzai, Iraq History, Iraq War, John Kerry, Lance Corporal Dominic Esquibel, Middle East, Rag Bloggers, Status of Forces Agreement, Steve Russell, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Marines, U.S. Military, Vietnam War | Leave a comment