In a fascinating speech, Chomsky warns, "Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below."
Let's begin with the elections. The word that the rolls off of everyone's tongue is historic. Historic election. And I agree with it. It was a historic election. To have a black family in the white house is a momentous achievement. In fact, it's historic in a broader sense. The two Democratic candidates were an African-American and a woman. Both remarkable achievements. We go back say 40 years, it would have been unthinkable. So something's happened to the country in 40 years. And what's happened to the country -- which is we're not supposed to mention -- is that there was extensive and very constructive activism in the 1960s, which had an aftermath. So the feminist movement, mostly developed in the 70s - -the solidarity movements of the 80's and on till today. And the activism did civilize the country. The country's a lot more civilized than it was 40 years ago and the historic achievements illustrate it. That's also a lesson for what's next.
What's next will depend on whether the same thing happens. Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below. And the answer to what's next depends on people like you. Nobody else can answer it. It's not predictable. In some ways, the election -- the election was surprising in some respects.
Read on...
Peacenik is not very encouraged by Chomsky's speech. Why can't Chomsky be more upbeat?
Showing posts with label US election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US election. Show all posts
10/7/08
McCain does nothing as supporter calls Obama a "terrorist"
John Aravosis (DC) · 10/06/2008 04:35:00 PM ET ·
ANOTHER UPDATE from Joe: We'll hear it said that McCain can't be held responsible for what people in his audiences say. Right. Cause it's never happened before. Oh wait, it did. When an audience member asked, speaking of Hillary Clinton, "How do we beat the bitch?" McCain said it was "an excellent question." McCain fosters hatred and negativity by not standing up to it. He should know better. It's appalling and is destroying whatever is left of his reputation.
UPDATE: Ambinder heard it too. I'm just wondering what McCain's supporters are going to do next, now that McCain and Palin have convinced them that Obama is a terrorist. A reader writes in our comments:This is dangerous, very, very dangerous. There are nutjobs out there, with just a little bit of encouragement, will do something very bad. The Secret Service needs to take action to put a stop to this type of behavior now.
Read on...
Peacenik is never suprised by how revolting the electoral process is. Both in the U.S. and Canada. But labelling your opponent a terrorist is beyond the pale. Digby on Hullabaloo comments yesterday that the wingnuts will go nuts if they lose. Particulary after 30 years of propaganda blaming liberals for everything. Is the U.S. immune from violent cultural war? Peacenik doesn't think so.
UPDATE: Ambinder heard it too. I'm just wondering what McCain's supporters are going to do next, now that McCain and Palin have convinced them that Obama is a terrorist. A reader writes in our comments:This is dangerous, very, very dangerous. There are nutjobs out there, with just a little bit of encouragement, will do something very bad. The Secret Service needs to take action to put a stop to this type of behavior now.
Read on...
Peacenik is never suprised by how revolting the electoral process is. Both in the U.S. and Canada. But labelling your opponent a terrorist is beyond the pale. Digby on Hullabaloo comments yesterday that the wingnuts will go nuts if they lose. Particulary after 30 years of propaganda blaming liberals for everything. Is the U.S. immune from violent cultural war? Peacenik doesn't think so.
9/4/08
Logical consequences: When you believe in war, sooner or later you bring it home
by Robert C. Koehler September 4, 2008
How surreal it's been this week to watch the Republicans reap a small portion of the divine comeuppance due them, first from a hurricane, then from a pregnant teen-ager. Surely more of the same is on its way, but no one wins, because what is lying in a shambles around the McCain campaign is a harvest of suffering.
The bad ideas of the Republican right, or rather the consequences of those ideas -- from pre-emptive war to abstinence-only sex education to the merger of church and state to let's-drown-government-in-the-bathtub -- started taking over the Republican National Convention, bursting the levees of managed news and disciplined hypocrisy. Suddenly eight years of extreme cynicism began generating (it's a miracle) . . . bad press.
Peacenik was lucky he was quashing a big thirst at the pub last night and didn't have to watch the hatefest that was the Republican convention. The stage is set. Extreme right wing Republican party versus a Democratic party that at least talks about a few progressive positions. Are there enough sane, moderate, Americans willing to reject eight years of Republican rule? Peacenik thinks so.
Call it creative self-destruction, maybe.
How surreal it's been this week to watch the Republicans reap a small portion of the divine comeuppance due them, first from a hurricane, then from a pregnant teen-ager. Surely more of the same is on its way, but no one wins, because what is lying in a shambles around the McCain campaign is a harvest of suffering.
The bad ideas of the Republican right, or rather the consequences of those ideas -- from pre-emptive war to abstinence-only sex education to the merger of church and state to let's-drown-government-in-the-bathtub -- started taking over the Republican National Convention, bursting the levees of managed news and disciplined hypocrisy. Suddenly eight years of extreme cynicism began generating (it's a miracle) . . . bad press.
Peacenik was lucky he was quashing a big thirst at the pub last night and didn't have to watch the hatefest that was the Republican convention. The stage is set. Extreme right wing Republican party versus a Democratic party that at least talks about a few progressive positions. Are there enough sane, moderate, Americans willing to reject eight years of Republican rule? Peacenik thinks so.
8/21/08
McCain's Warped Worldview
**No posts this weekend. Punditman is working on his tan somewhere, and Peacenik is heading north, into the wilderness.....**
by Robert Scheer from TruthDig.com
The world according to John McCain is one in which America is triumphant at home and abroad thanks to the Bush legacy, rolling to victory internationally and mastering its domestic economic problems. If daily news, like reports of the 10 French soldiers killed by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and the U.S. government's imminent nationalization of much of the American mortgage-lending industry, would seem to deny such a rosy scenario, then that only shows skeptics lack the courage that sustained McCain as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
by Robert Scheer from TruthDig.com
The world according to John McCain is one in which America is triumphant at home and abroad thanks to the Bush legacy, rolling to victory internationally and mastering its domestic economic problems. If daily news, like reports of the 10 French soldiers killed by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and the U.S. government's imminent nationalization of much of the American mortgage-lending industry, would seem to deny such a rosy scenario, then that only shows skeptics lack the courage that sustained McCain as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
There you have it encapsulated, the McCain campaign for president, an irrational melange of patriotic swagger and blindness to reality that is proving disturbingly successful with uninformed voters. How else to explain the many millions of Americans who tell pollsters they prefer a continuation of Republican rule when so many of them are losing their homes to foreclosure and the nation is devastated by out-of-control military spending?
Peacenik doesn't understand when he reads recent Zogby polls showing McCain leading in the presidential race. And Peacenik doesn't understand when he reads articles, like Scheer's, that point out that a big chunk of America supports McCain even though he promises more of the same. More of the same? More of the same? Peacenik stands by his early prediction that, in spite of everything, Obama will be the next president of the United States.
8/13/08
Georgia War a Neocon Election Ploy?
By Robert Scheer
Is it possible that this time the October surprise was tried in August, and that the garbage issue of brave little Georgia struggling for its survival from the grasp of the Russian bear was stoked to influence the U.S. presidential election?
Before you dismiss that possibility, consider the role of one Randy Scheunemann, for four years a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government who ended his official lobbying connection only in March, months after he became Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser.
Previously, Scheunemann was best known as one of the neoconservatives who engineered the war in Iraq when he was a director of the Project for a New American Century. It was Scheunemann who, after working on the McCain 2000 presidential campaign, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which championed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
There are telltale signs that he played a similar role in the recent Georgia flare-up. How else to explain the folly of his close friend and former employer, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, in ordering an invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, an invasion that clearly was expected to produce a Russian counterreaction? It is inconceivable that Saakashvili would have triggered this dangerous escalation without some assurance from influential Americans he trusted, like Scheunemann, that the United States would have his back. Scheunemann long guided McCain in these matters, even before he was officially running foreign policy for McCain’s presidential campaign.
In 2005, while registered as a paid lobbyist for Georgia, Scheunemann worked with McCain to draft a congressional resolution pushing for Georgia’s membership in NATO. A year later, while still on the Georgian payroll, Scheunemann accompanied McCain on a trip to that country, where they met with Saakashvili and supported his bellicose views toward Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Full Article...
punditman says...
The article above notes, "What a stark contradiction that the United States, which championed Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, now is ignoring Georgia’s invasion of its ethnically rebellious provinces."
This observation is no surprise to anyone who has ever read Chomsky. In fact, it is the usual hypocritical, propaganda-driven double standard we've come to expect from each and every US administration, obediently parroted by Western media outlets.
Is it possible that this time the October surprise was tried in August, and that the garbage issue of brave little Georgia struggling for its survival from the grasp of the Russian bear was stoked to influence the U.S. presidential election?
Before you dismiss that possibility, consider the role of one Randy Scheunemann, for four years a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government who ended his official lobbying connection only in March, months after he became Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser.
Previously, Scheunemann was best known as one of the neoconservatives who engineered the war in Iraq when he was a director of the Project for a New American Century. It was Scheunemann who, after working on the McCain 2000 presidential campaign, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which championed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
There are telltale signs that he played a similar role in the recent Georgia flare-up. How else to explain the folly of his close friend and former employer, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, in ordering an invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, an invasion that clearly was expected to produce a Russian counterreaction? It is inconceivable that Saakashvili would have triggered this dangerous escalation without some assurance from influential Americans he trusted, like Scheunemann, that the United States would have his back. Scheunemann long guided McCain in these matters, even before he was officially running foreign policy for McCain’s presidential campaign.
In 2005, while registered as a paid lobbyist for Georgia, Scheunemann worked with McCain to draft a congressional resolution pushing for Georgia’s membership in NATO. A year later, while still on the Georgian payroll, Scheunemann accompanied McCain on a trip to that country, where they met with Saakashvili and supported his bellicose views toward Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Full Article...
punditman says...
The article above notes, "What a stark contradiction that the United States, which championed Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, now is ignoring Georgia’s invasion of its ethnically rebellious provinces."
This observation is no surprise to anyone who has ever read Chomsky. In fact, it is the usual hypocritical, propaganda-driven double standard we've come to expect from each and every US administration, obediently parroted by Western media outlets.
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