Saturday 4 July 2009
Since the American Revolution, each generation of progressives has expressed an American patriotism rooted in democratic values that challenged jingoism and “my country — right or wrong” thinking. They rejected blind nationalism, militaristic drum beating, and sheep-like conformism. Throughout the United States’ history, they have viewed their movements — abolition of slavery, farmers’ populism, women’s suffrage, workers’ rights, civil rights, environmentalism, gay rights, and others — as profoundly patriotic. They believed that America’s core claims — fairness, equality, freedom, justice — were their own. America now confronts a new version of the Gilded Age. In the midst of a recession, the gap between rich and poor is still widening. Americans are feeling more economically insecure than at any time since the Depression. They are upset by the unbridled greed and political influence peddling demonstrated by banks, drug companies, insurance companies, and other large corporations. They are angry at the growing power of American-based global firms who show no loyalty to their country, outsource jobs to low-wage countries, avoid paying taxes, and pollute the environment. Progressives Take Back the Flag ☀
What the Right can’t get is that tyranny doesn’t come from government; it comes from the concentration of power. It makes no real difference whether the concentration is public or private. When power is concentrated in government, private interests become its puppet. When power is concentrated in private hands, government becomes its puppet. Either way, the people lose. The U.S. federal government was set up so that power would be diffused through the three branches and among Washington and the states, and in this way power in government wouldn’t concentrate in any one place and become too strong for citizens to control. But in their monomaniacal quest to destroy government in the name of “liberty,” the Right left government vulnerable to takeover by non-governmental powers that are not answerable to citizens at all. By fighting a phantom tyranny they have gone a long way toward creating a real one. The Mahablog ☀
Gandhi led the Indian people in a non-violent but complete freedom from a much more powerful occupying force; Martin Luther King, Jr, was inspired to use these same techniques in the American civil rights movement; and Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu did the same in South Africa. Today the people of Tibet, led by the Dalai Lama have halted violent means of securing their freedom and in so doing have shown the Chinese invasion for the travesty that it is while providing spiritual and inspiration for people of all nations. But what if the practice of non-violence resistance had extended further back and had been employed in the Americas? Would the French revolution been less bloody? Would a non-violent American revolution changed our understanding of conquest and freedom and altered interactions with native American populations and with our neighbors to the south and north? Paul Raushenbush ☀
Top Honduran military lawyer: We broke the law ☀
In an interview with The Miami Herald and El Salvador’s elfaro.net, army attorney Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza acknowledged that top military brass made the call to forcibly remove Zelaya — and they circumvented laws when they did it.
It was the first time any participant in Sunday’s overthrow admitted committing an offense and the first time a Honduran authority revealed who made the decision that has been denounced worldwide.
”We know there was a crime there,” said Inestroza, the top legal advisor for the Honduran armed forces. “In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there is a crime. Because of the circumstances of the moment this crime occurred, there is going to be a justification and cause for acquittal that will protect us.”
Zelaya was ousted in a predawn raid at his house Sunday after he vowed to defy a court order that ruled a nonbinding referendum to be held that day illegal. The leftist wealthy rancher had clashed with the attorney general, the Supreme Court, Congress and the military he commanded.
But instead of being taken to court to stand trial for abuse of power and treason, the military swept him out of bed at gunpoint and forced him into exile.
Comedians Mourn Palin's Resignation ☀
Moments after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin announced her resignation from office, comedians from coast to coast held candlelight vigils to mourn what one comic called “a devastating loss.”
Friday 3 July 2009
It should be recalled that the American Republic was founded on the principle that there should be a democratic deficit. James Madison, the main framer of the constitutional order, his view was that power should be in the hands of the wealth of the nation, the more responsible set of men who have sympathy for property owners and their rights. And Madison sought to construct a system of government that would, in his words, “protect the minority of the opulent from the majority.” That’s why the constitutional system that he framed did not have co-equal branches. The executive was supposed to be an administrator, and the legislature was supposed to be dominant, but not the House of Representatives, rather the Senate, where power was vested and protected from the public in many ways. That’s where the wealth of the nation would be concentrated. This is not overlooked by historians. Gordon Wood, for example, summarizes the thoughts of the founders, saying that “The Constitution was intrinsically an aristocratic document designed to check the democratic tendencies of the period,” delivering power to a “better sort” of people and excluding “those who were not rich, well born, or prominent from exercising political power. Noam Chomsky ☀
American troops were not welcomed with flowers in Iraq but their departure from cities and towns has been. Iraqis celebrated National Sovereignty Day Tuesday as U.S. troops were yanked out of populated centres and put into remote bases. Haroon Siddiqui ☀
Fireworks really suck ☀
Meanwhile, the professional fireworks display is an exercise in pomposity, aggression, triumphalism, and hubris. The pyrotechnician—and, more importantly, his patron—intends to ornament the night sky beyond the powers of God himself. He means to inspire awe for little purpose other than to demonstrate his power. The first great fireworks nuts in the Western world were Peter the Great (who put on a five-hour show to celebrate the birth of his first son) and Louis XIV (who, with a specially equipped sundial, used them to tell time at Versailles). Fireworks are imperialist and, as we used to say in school, hegemonic. That they are popularly believed to be populist entertainment does not say much for the populace.
Resistance to oppression is often based on a love that leads us to value ourselves, and leads us to hope for more than the established cultural system is willing to grant … such love is far more energizing than guilt, duty, or self-sacrifice. … Solidarity does not require self-sacrifice, but an enlargement of the self to include community with others. Sharon Welch ☀
And so now we find ourselves in a world in which the public is manipulated – Rushkoff cites a Republican strategist who campaigned to change the terms ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’, ‘estate tax’ to ‘death tax’ and ‘third trimester abortion’ to ‘partial birth abortion’, in order to gain leverage for his Party’s issues. We find ourselves in a world in which the news is manipulated – with VNRs ‘or video news reports… a complete, prepackaged story made by a company or a cause, beamed to news stations around the world for them to broadcast as if it were one of their own reports’. And the best alternative to Rushkoff we have is celebrating ‘brand You’ – Rushkoff cites consultant Tom Peters who said ‘It’s time for me – and you – to take a lesson from the big brands, a lesson that’s true for anyone who’s interested in what it takes to stand out and prosper in the new world of work… We are the CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.’ Understandably, Rushkoff has a lot of issues with the whole idea of ‘Brand You’, saying, ‘The problem is that no matter how well we play, the real corporations will necessarily beat us. This is their realm. Corporations will always be better at being corporations than people will. They don’t need to eat, sleep, or worst of all, feel. They do not age or suffer doubt.’Although Rushkoff isn’t blown away by the new administration in the US (‘Part of what got Obama going was big investment from Wall St,’ Rushkoff told us, ‘his views are consonant with theirs’), he does prefer it to the ‘full on guns in face old school Roman oppression’ of the Bush/Cheney era. But the idea is not to look to Government or indeed big business for the answers. ‘There is a way out,’ he explains in Life Inc. ‘But it means getting off the artificial playing field or corporatism and touching terra firma. Only by disconnecting from corporatism and its dehumanising, delocalizing, depersonalising and devaluing biases can we muster the strength and find the tools through which a people-scaled society might be constructed – or reconstructed.’ ‘Full on guns in face old school Roman oppression’ ☀
Police crackdowns may encourage drug use ☀
TOUGH policing of the illegal drugs market may have the perverse effect of making drugs more affordable and thereby encouraging people to use them, according to a new model of the dynamics of this market.
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