Looking back over the week, the story that stands out the most regarding Iraq is War Criminal Colin Powell using Iraq as an endorsement of Barack.
The reaction to that -- a rush to defend Collie -- demonstrates that The World Is Full Of Hypocrites.
It's not just Leslie Cagan who wants to pretend to be an activist (she was talking up the Cuban Five) this week even though she's nothing but a trashy whore who used the Iraq War to raise her own profile and enrich her organizations and then disbanded them after Barack was elected -- immediately after -- and never found a moment to call out Barack.
She's far from alone.
It's why I'm in no hurry to rush to promote Black Agenda Radio lately. Missy Comley wrote an article that made me sad regarding Black Agenda Report. But then this week I just got angry as BAR offered the garbage of Melissa Harris Lacewell Parry or Alice Walker.
These are the choices?
Two lying whores for Obama?
And I'm sorry but Black Agenda Report needs to learn to do journalism. If they want to call out Melissa, call her out for the right reasons. Say the reasons that led Princeton officials to ensure that Melissa's job there was over.
You want to take on Melissa, you do it for real.
BAR's offended that Melissa has a job at The Nation. Everyone should be. Melissa went on Democracy Now! twice in January 2008. The first time she decieved the audience -- she presented as an independent commentator. She was, in fact, working for Barack's campaign and had been doing so for months. She would do the same thing on The Charlie Rose Show.
While whores act like that's no big deal (unless the other side does it), it is a huge ethical violation and the reason Melissa's not at Princeton now or at any other Ivy League institution.
So is BAR stupid or do they just not know how to land a punch?
I have no idea but Alice Walker is a sell-out who wanted to act like the Iraq War was the most horrible thing in the world when Bush was in office but lost all interest the minute Barack was elected.
If those are the choices, a dumb whore (Melissa) or an educated (if not enlightened) one, America's in a great deal of trouble.
And that was really driven home last week as various faux left sites rushed to defend Colin Powell and trumpet the endorsement of Barack as something wonderful and valuable.
Colin Powell should have the same shame attached him that Henry Kissinger does. You don't hear, "Henry Kissinger has endorsed . . ." That's because he knows he's a liability to any campaign. The same should be true of War Criminal Powell.
What a lack of spine among the left today. Not just the young, Leslie Cagan's retirement age, for instance. But what a lack of spine. That whores could get away with defending Powell from the left, that they wouldn't worry about being called out by their own readers, goes to just how spineless the left is.
There is World Can't Wait and that's really it. No other organization -- not IVAW, not CODEPINK, not A.N.S.W.E.R., not anyone else -- can claim to have maintained the same standards, to have behaved ethically and consistently in the last four years. We're lucky to have had World Can't Wait but how sad that that's all the left can point to with honest pride.
Being a lefty in the '00s was not easy. I was speaking out against Bully Boy Bush when he was as popular as Barack. I'd be speaking out in February 2003 against the impending Iraq War and have some one in the audience call out "terrorist lover" or "what about 9-11" or some other nonsense that had nothing to do with the Iraq War.
And I didn't insult those people. I'd either ignore it or try to make a joke (I'm very fast with a quip). If it was the latter, it was a joke to pull the person into the conversation and not to try to turn the crowd on the person or ostracize them in some way.
I didn't understand how someone could blindly accept these lies of war but I knew the media had sold them very well and non-stop so I blamed the media and gave the person a pass.
But being a lefty in the '00s wasn't just about verbal bombs tossed by the right wing. It was also about the fights within the left.
Where in the world did anyone get the idea that we all had to believe 100% in the same thing?
By all means, the left should believe in equality. But your opinion on some treaty didn't have to match mine. And the demonzation never ended.
There were the people -- and this includes at least four friends of mine -- who were convinced that Senator Paul Wellstone was murdered, that his plane was crashed intentionally.
If pressed for an opinion, mine would be "no, that's not what happened." But I wasn't there and it's really not the most pressing issue in my life or even on my top one million most pressing issues. But after that plane crash, it was divide up and pick a side.
There ae people who believe 9-11 was an inside job and people who believe it wasn't. We don't attack either side here and will not. We will call out and attack anyone who tries to silence someone. And if you take a position of I-don't-know-what-happened, it's very hard not to notice just how hard people like Amy Goodman work to discredit and silence those who believe a criminal conspiracy took place.
I haven't taken sides on the issue. Amy Goodman and others have. If they're so firm in their beliefs, why are they required to silence others?
I prefer Matisse to Botticelli and if someone wants to engage in a debate over that, I can back up my opinion. Now if I couldn't or if I didn't really believe that Henri Matisse was better, I suppose I would duck a debate on the issue.
It's amazing that these people were allowed to silence others and there wasn't a demand that they give up their microphones for trying to play thought police. Had they been called out as they should have been, they might not have done the same. They are the worst of Communism and they rule in secret bascially with one passing on a message to another about what will be talked about and who will be endorsed and on and on.
There's someone in indy media over a large outlet who thinks I've bashed him or her and done so out of spite. No, I've bashed you to get you to use your voice -- no luck there -- but if I wanted to destroy you, I'd share the e-mails we exchanged about how you can't defend this person or that person because it would mean that various outlets -- all of which you name in your e-mails -- would turn on you. And I'm not talking about a blogger here. I'm talking about an outlet with an online presence and a print publication.
Amy Goodman is nothing but a bully. And half of the people blurbing her or praising her in public -- names on the left -- can't stand her because of that.
But no one has the guts to call her out. If you're tired of her policing the left, call her out. She's not a brave journalist. She's never been a brave journalist. The b.s. about her and Allan Nairn was revealed to be b.s. when both went for Barack. There was no concern for the people of Indonesia then. They could blather on about Mark Penn and Hillary but they didn't want to talk to you about who Barack had on his side.
And, as we've noted before, 2008 reveled that there would never be a diversity of opinion on the left encouraged by the left media. From a sales point of view, from a web hits/clicks point of view, it would make great business sense to have a columnist for Barack, one for Hillary, one for Edwards, etc. A diversity of opinion would not only foster real debate but also bring in a diversity of readers. But we didn't get that. We got a universal choir singing for Barack.
That wasn't reality and you can trick a lot of young people who haven't lived long enough and please a lot of old fools who should know better, but that's not how it works -- not in real life, not in a publication.
Those who are supposed to be providing us with information are instead trying to tell us how to think. Stalin would be proud but they're building nothing to be proud of.
Each and every day, the left swallows more of its own tail and gets smaller and smaller and less and less important.
World Can't Wait's not destroying the left. Chris Hedges and Cindy Sheehan and other people who are telling the truth aren't destroying the left. But these other people who shift and change from hour to hour based on where Barack's polling is and what he needs today, they're destroying the left.
I wrongly thought that come 2012, we'd be seeing far less of this. I wrongly thought the media whores would be tired and give out. They're tired but feeding on their own anger allows them to keep on. At some point, the left's going to have a have an honest discussion.
Debra Sweet can lead it. I don't know who she can talk to other than World Can't Wait-ers because the rest of them have demonstrated what frauds they are. Naomi Klein babbling away in 2004 that we can't turn over the peace movement to the Democratic Party sounded sincere but it was just that she didn't care for John Kerry. When Barack came along, Naomi was not just turning it over, she was flat out lying. (Those I-saw-on-election-night fables will forever haunt her.) Katha Pollitt? She savaged Sarah Palin in her writings during the election and yet we found out via the Journolist e-mails that she was actually afraid of Palin because she thought Palin gave a great speech at the RNC. How the hell do you ever trust that opinion columnist again? And since when, if you think a political opponent gave a great speech, can't you just say that? "I'll never vote for Sarah Palin, but at the RNC, she gave a lively speech . . ." can be typed with no loss of blood or limbs.
Katha felt Sarah Palin gave an energizing speech but she never admitted that publicly and instead trashed her repeatedly. If you are an opinion columnist, you are selling your opinion and the assumption is that it is an honest opinion.
A very stupid commercial to get out the vote for Barack is done and various idiots rush to insist it's good.
No.
In a highly sexualized society, it is never good to try to sexualize another element. Equally true, sex for most of us is an experience we share with one other person, not the orgy that a national vote is. The commercial was homophobic by assuming that women would all want to sleep with a man. The commercial was sexist. (See Ann's "Shut up, Richard Kim, it's a sexist ad" and Marcia's "Well the men have spoken . . ." for more on that bad commercial.)
And carry it through, this young woman votes for Barack so she is sleeping with him, and that young woman does the same so she is sleeping with him, and . . .
Why do women always have to be encouraged to put out when 'thinkers' want to promote something?
That's the best you can do for get-out-the-vote? And that people would rush to praise this and insist that it's great and wonderful. Conservatives are correct, it is smutty. It also sexist and homophobic. And in a society where we are supposedly appalled as the sexualization of children, why we would now want to try to sexualize voting is beyond me?
Yes, Madison Avenue has used sex to sell many things. But I didn't think -- especially in the Occupy years -- that using the message points of Madison Ave. was what we were aspiring for on the left.
The Iraq War didn't become less offensive because Barack oversaw it. The Iraq War didn't become less outrageous because the Oval Office got a new occupant. The Iraq War has not ended. Today's violence yet again demonstrates that.
But we've become a left afraid to debate and a left afraid of information. I used to laugh to a friend who would call me in the 90s whenever news broke and ask, "What's our position?" There is no shifting position unless you're a souless pundit put on this earth to spin.
And the story of Iraq this week is the story of a bunch of fakes revealing themselves. Not the fakes like Leslie Cagan who didn't give a damn about Iraq and went running from the topic as soon as Barack was elected. But people who made mini-names for themselves online while Bully Boy Bush occupied the White House as they pretended to be appalled by the illegal war and the killing. When they rushed to defend Colin Powell last week, they made clear that they would embrace anyone -- regardless of their crimes -- if that person would embrace their current political crush. That is not how you build a movement. That is not how you build an ideology -- in fact, a cult of personality goes completely against the creation of political thought.
It's over, I'm done writing songs about love
There's a war going on
So I'm holding my gun with a strap and a glove
And I'm writing a song about war
And it goes
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Na na na na na na na
I hate the war
Oh oh oh oh
-- "I Hate The War" (written by Greg Goldberg, on The Ballet's Mattachine!)
The number of US service members the Dept of Defense states died in the Iraq War is [PDF format warning] 4488.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
iraq
i hate the war
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