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Anti-War Click here to listen or download, beginning at 2:00 PM San Francisco time: Cindy chats on Liberty Radio with Scott Horton of Antiwar.com, a site devoted to the cause of non-interventionism and followed by libertarians, pacifists, leftists, "greens," and independents alike, as well as by many on the Right who agree with the opposition to imperialism. This is not just an idea from the political left. In 1952, Garet Garrett, one of the last of the Old Right "isolationists," said it well: "Between government in the republican meaning, that is, Constitutional, representative, limited government, on the one hand, and Empire on the other hand, there is mortal enmity. Either one must forbid the other or one will destroy the other." But the Empire's carnage continues.
Real people, real individuals - dying for nothing. They are our friends and our neighbors. It's not a movie scene we're talking about here. One of my goals is to personalize these wars. Obama declared the Iraq war over and said "we're going to call the troops that are there something other than combat troops so we can keep combat troops there." So it seems he's at least being honest about what a liar he is.
And speaking of lies, just look at the sensitivity being displayed by the Obama administration toward its captives in its Guantánamo concentration camp. The Miami Herald reports: Here's a new twist in the U.S. military's Islamic sensitivity effort in the prison camps for suspected terrorists at the Guantánamo Bay Navy base. Military medical staff are force-feeding a secret number of prisoners on hunger strike between dusk and dawn during the Muslim fasting holiday of Ramadan. The prison camps spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Bradley Fagan said Wednesday: . . . "Detainees who are fasting get their meals before dawn," disclosing only the hours of that day's feeding "in observance of the Ramadan schedule" -- before 5:26 a.m. and after 7:28 p.m." Isn't that just so special? He only force-feeds those held for years in indefinite captivity after the sun goes down during Ramadan. What exquisite tact, what a remarkable sensitivity to human rights, eh? Why, they ought to give this guy a Nobel Peace Prize!
Please be sure to use the "Click here" link above, and listen to today's discussions! Along the way, get Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient Major General Smedley Butler's woefully not-famous speech, "War is a Racket." And read it! Oh Precious and Precocious Preznit Presto Change-O: Courtesy of the Black Agenda Report, we have these comforting thoughts: It has long been clear that your idea of political victory required decisively defeating the Left of your own party. Everyone to your left is to be neutralized, while those to your right rate an open hand and endless concessions, which was evident from the very start of your health care "negotiations" with the drug and insurance industries. Success in war, not pursuit of peace, is your goal, one that will surely elude you - but not for lack of trying. You and finance capital began an early, thoroughly vetted, and white hot love affair that was anchored in mutual contempt for those who would challenge the rule of money. You have delivered the highest return on corporate campaign investment in the history of bourgeois democracy, allowing Wall Street to pocket at least $12 trillion in return for contributions of less than $1 million per investment house. (Goldman Sachs was top giver, at $994,795.) You were BP's biggest political campaign recipient: $71,000, an investment that boosted the corporation's value by billions - albeit temporarily - when you opened up offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Obviously, Goldman Sachs and BP considered you a "greater good," in terms of their interests, than John McCain. And they made out like bandits, confirming their assessment of your immense value to their side in the class war. The question is, how did lefties conclude that Big Capital's and Big Oil's "greater good" candidate was also the progressive side's fountain of Hope - or even a "lesser evil" - in 2008? Both camps placed their bets on you, but only one side could possibly win. You and your Democratic legislative allies have successfully shielded your Wall Street masters from anything worthy of the name financial reform.
This means finance capital and its "shadow," derivatives-based economy (nominally, ten times bigger than the "real" global economy) remain beyond the reach of meaningful public intervention by conventional methods. With the air knocked out of mainstream reformers' chests, Wall Street is poised for a Great Offensive against the political and social infrastructure of the United States. Finance capital is, at this stage of our system's decline, incapable of reproducing itself through productive investment, and so it must feed on existing producers or on the State. Since Wall Street has already broken up, consumed and exported much of the U.S. productive economy, that leaves the State and all of its parts. Far from acting as a brake on your vampire friends, You, Preznit Obama have lead the charge on corporate hijacking of public education, and signaled in January 2009 that all elements of the safety net, including Social Security, should be "on the table" - which can only mean some form of privatization. The pace of finance capital deterioration quickens, accelerating the timetable of the Right’s offensive. As their hunger grows, Wall Street's servants become more aggressive and demanding, and there is nothing in the Democratic Party, as presently constituted, to stop them. One truth remains: only a massed people can defeat massed capital. If the American Left is capable of bearing that in mind in the critical times ahead, it just might escape the cul-de-sac and make some modest contribution to our world.
But hey: what the *bleep* do I know, anyway?
Order it here: Myth America II: 20 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution
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Leonard Peltier's story is still available on our site! (Innocent Leonard Peltier is still stuck away, back in the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary - where he cannot read this passage and cannot listen to Cindy's newest show.) I do thank the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee (LPDOC) of Fargo North Dakota, who helped us publish Leonard's story. See our "Book Report" on Peter Matthiessen's masterpiece. (Please.)
The Leonard Peltier story: (click HERE) -->
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