In The Land Of Never Was: The last, desperate hours of Climate Chaos deniers‪ and capitalist rah-rahs‬

By Phil Rockstroh 

M. Bachmann, Palin, Rand Paul and many other icons of the Right personify the inherent denialist selfish nature of conservatism, but many Americans practice similar values without thinking themselves on the right, many even believe they are liberals (not that good either.)

“Large numbers, perhaps even the majority of people of the nation, have applied their energies and talents to avoiding change; they labor, moment by moment, day by day, to construct and dwell within a mundane, confining architecture that passes for normalcy. These types see change as a home invasion. They stand dour and vigilant, armed to their clinched teeth, guarding over their accouterments of mammon. Winged Liberty herself is seen as a demon, borne from Hell on leathery wings…”

Often, the world…forever unfolding, recombining, morphing, dying and transforming…changes before the mind can grasp the implications of the ongoing alterations. This is the basis of nostalgia, for memory freezes the world like an insect encased in amber.

Maturity dawns when you begin to look back at your life and long to be able to make amends for your blindness. Because changing the past is impossible, it follows to strive to possess a greater degree of self-awareness in the present. By this measure, we, the people of the U.S., insulated in the eternal present of our media hologramatic bubble and in the thrall of perpetual post-adolescent-level self-involvement, have some growing up to do.  

Circumstances change, people change, yet the people of the U.S. cling to an outmoded and ossified view of themselves, their nation, and the world at large…but events keep moving right along. For example, given the degree of danger, and by danger, I mean, global wide, species (including our own) devastation, begot by Industrial Age-engendered Climate Chaos — we cannot afford to go about business as usual.

On consideration of the path we are heading down, at exponentially increasing speed, uprising (engendered by mortification and propelled by outrage) would appear to be an appropriate course of action. If you were embarked on a journey across the high seas and discovered the captain and his officers were all suicidal madmen — then mutiny would be a viable option.

The data is in: The oceans of the earth are dying; the very air is bedizened with seeds of fire.

This is not gray beard, flapping in the meaningless breeze, prophecy; this is  verifiable, peer-reviewed science. The time for discussion and debate has passed. Only fools, cranks, and greed-besotted psychotics doubt the effect that trapped greenhouse gasses are reaping across the planet. We no longer have the luxury of indulging their corporate age form of blindness and insanity.

America, take a look out the window…risk taking in the passing scene.

However, rather than doing so, we draw the curtains tight and reach for the TV remote or a host of other insulating electronic devices that serve to circumvent self-examination. We turn away in denial or rage in belligerent ignorance, because we see the world moving on, and we cannot control the situation…no matter how many predator drones we have scouring the globe. Increasingly, we feel uneasy, for we see events are changing fast — and, as the momentum of events propel us through time, we are not yet ready to accept the fact, but know deep within us, that we cannot remain the people that we are.

Grasping the reality of one’s situation can be painful. Those in the U.S. still clinging to the tattered myths of late stage capitalism would be hurt and angry, if they came to realize the amount of corporate state propaganda that they have internalized…that has allowed for their exploitation by a ruthless, unaccountable few e.g., the fairy tale of upward class migration. Ergo, the relentless, all-pervasive manner in which well-funded operatives of the rightwing wage class warfare. For example, the noxious canard asserting welfare layabouts have sponged up your fair share of hard wrought earnings. In this way, the bigot whispers of the capitalist state have created a mean-spirited, punitive cosmology that serves to emotionally displace anger. And these tropes of demagogic displacement are quite lucrative to its accomplished practitioners e.g., Rush Limbaugh.

The winners/losers mythos of capitalism renders people sick with shame while its tendency towards class stratification promotes feelings of powerlessness and unfocussed rage; hence, many develop a compulsion to displace their frustrations. Withal, they evince the mindset of embittered slaves who have been told, and worse insist, that the corporatist/militarist boot on their necks is better termed a Liberty Massage; they seethe with displaced projections on people that they perceive to be layabouts, when, in fact, by these projections, they are displaying a type of envy. These perceived loafers (i.e., imaginary beings, who are, seemingly,  as troublesome, yet as hard to locate as fairy folk) are getting away with something — while you have to slave away, toiling for the obscene profits of a privileged elite who think those below them are fools for swallowing whole the propaganda they promulgate about this imaginary, miracle system known as free market capitalism, which never has worked (and never will work) as advertised, because it never has and never will exist. Moreover, given the reality of Democratic/Republican duopoly in place to protect the interest of the moneyed classes, we will not be able to vote our way out of this situation.

I know my assertion that one’s vote is worse than meaningless (Caveat: It is flat-out meaningful to those who rigged the game by providing the system with the illusion of being legit.) is bound to evoke, in some, feelings of angst, because the assertion points out the hopelessness of the situation. Good. Hope is the snake oil sold to suckers at the traveling medicine show/cheap carnival of this faux democratic republic. What the ruling elite fear is the audacity of hopelessness — because that is when citizens see through the illusions created by their exploiters and rise up and destroy the house of mirrors of the status quo.

Believing you’re contributing to the greater good by the act of voting in this big money-controlled, sham republic…is like donating your blood to a blood bank owned by vampires.

The last, best way that we, as a nation, can endure…is to challenge social convention and political boilerplate (each and every calcified cliché and soul-defying platitude) at all levels. Change arrives when heart and mind open to new understandings. There is a time-proven approach to this: Begin to admit the fact that our understandings involving ourselves and our place in the world have come to the end of the line…only an abyss yawns before us; that our actions are no longer viable, thus we must risk exposure to novelty. Naturally, grief will come with the letting go of shopworn habits and the death of cherished illusions; although, a rebirth of wonder and a renewal of vision will arrive as well.

“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, from Crime and Punishment

On an historical basis, those who cling to the exhausted verities of this fading epoch will be viewed in a comparable light to those obtuse denizens of the 16th Century who refused to let go (and ruthlessly strove to make miserable — or worse — those who challenged prevailing cultural illusions) of the fallacy of the ‪Geocentric model of the universe. Like their Flat-Earther forbearers, our present day virtuosos of denial (e.g., climate change skeptics and capitalist rah-rahs) their names and their demented dogmas will, in years to come, become axiomatic of hubris, denial, and catastrophic conceit.  ‬

When an individual clings to pride-petrified notions about himself, he is being held in the thrall of the viewpoint of a person who no longer exists; in the same way, when one parrots nationalistic platitudes, one dwells on a mental basis in a country that does not exists, and, in fact, never did.

The nations of the earth are teeming with people who dwell in The Land Of Never Was. (Shortly, these traits will be on grotesque, flag-waving, spandex-clad display during the coming Olympic games.)

The world is in constant flux and our understanding of it can never be wholly accurate. However, this does not mean we’re absolved from making the attempt, and we should not allow a convenient cynicism to hold us in its dismal thrall. By doing so, we diminish our lives and by extension the world.

To know the world, first, we must resolve to undertake a scrupulous inventory of our own beliefs and intentions, both on display and veiled deep within. Transformation begins to unfold as the result of an honest apprehension of one’s situation; tragedy descends from the habitual avoidance of doing so.

Still, as waning moments flow into the waxing present, change comes to pass, by means of a single new apprehension by a single individual.

A number of years ago, a man, a recovering drunk, told me what circumstances led him to cast aside the bottle. Most mornings, he said, in the grip of a hangover, to prevent his wife and young children from hearing his sounds of retching, he would slip from the house in order to vomit. It was his habit to shuffle to the backyard, drop to his knees, and, obscured by a row of scrub brush, he would do the deed.

One morning, while in the midst of his grim routine, he heard a rustling to his right. There, on his knees beside him, knelt his three year old son…imitating his father’s actions. Stricken with shock and anguish, the man vowed that he would not bequeath this legacy to his son.

Often, the knowledge that our selfish actions are placing those we love at risk can jolt us into awareness…can serve as a catalyst for change. In a universal sense, at this perilous juncture for humankind, it is imperative that we begin to love the world with the ardor, compassion, and sense of responsibility that rises within when looking upon the face of things beloved. We must embrace this task, because our planet, due to the blindness and selfishness inherent to late capitalism, is in deep trouble.

“Love is stronger than death and harder than hell” -Meister Eckhart

Large numbers, perhaps even the majority of people of the nation, have applied their energies and talents to avoiding change; they labor, moment by moment, day by day, to construct and dwell within a mundane, confining architecture that passes for normalcy. These types see change as a home invasion. They stand dour and vigilant, armed to their clinched teeth, guarding over their accouterments of mammon. Winged Liberty herself is seen as a demon, borne from Hell on leathery wings.

Pay little mind to their little minds. Write your story across eternal skies, as you put one foot in front of the next, sojourning in the direction of meaning. Yes, you’ll pass many of these poor souls as you proceed along, and they will detest you. Your mere presence threatens to reveal to them what they have forsaken in the name of safety…that their conception of what is normal, sane, decent, and patriotic has deadened their spirit. By merely passing by, you threaten to stir up the dust of their desiccated hearts.

To emerge from the imprisonment of habitual thought…is to set forth into an uncertain world, to allow your heart to be pierced by time’s arrow.

It is through this wound — that is the womb bearing your rebirth — you will reemerge into life. You will navigate this novel landscape…learning its roads, paths and landmarks, and, as time passes, you will not only accept the reality that you cannot return to the irretrievable past, but you will be mortified at the very thought of being re-entombed in it.

 ______________

Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: phil@philrockstroh.com .  Visit Phil at FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/phil.rockstroh

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OpEds: The scientific finding that settles the climate-change debate

Eugene Robinson

It is within such historical and political framework that we must place pronouncements issuing from highly visible liberals like Gene Robinson or Krugman: useful as they are, they still studiously fail to castigate Obama and the Democrats for their treachery.±PG

By Eugene Robinson, The Washington Post

For the clueless or cynical diehards who deny global warming, it’s getting awfully cold out there.

The latest icy blast of reality comes from an eminent scientist whom the climate-change skeptics once lauded as one of their own. Richard Muller, a respected physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, used to dismiss alarmist climate research as being “polluted by political and activist frenzy.” Frustrated at what he considered shoddy science, Muller launched his own comprehensive study to set the record straight. Instead, the record set him straight.

“Global warming is real,” Muller wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal.

Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and the rest of the neo-Luddites who are turning the GOP into the anti-science party should pay attention.

“When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn’t know what we’d find,” Muller wrote. “Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that.”

In other words, the deniers’ claims about the alleged sloppiness or fraudulence of climate science are wrong. Muller’s team, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, rigorously explored the specific objections raised by skeptics — and found them groundless.

Muller and his fellow researchers examined an enormous data set of observed temperatures from monitoring stations around the world and concluded that the average land temperature has risen 1 degree Celsius — or about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit — since the mid-1950s.

This agrees with the increase estimated by the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Muller’s figures also conform with the estimates of those British and American researchers whose catty e-mails were the basis for the alleged “Climategate” scandal, which was never a scandal in the first place.

The Berkeley group’s research even confirms the infamous “hockey stick” graph — showing a sharp recent temperature rise — that Muller once snarkily called “the poster child of the global warming community.” Muller’s new graph isn’t just similar, it’s identical.

Muller found that skeptics are wrong when they claim that a “heat island” effect from urbanization is skewing average temperature readings; monitoring instruments in rural areas show rapid warming, too. He found that skeptics are wrong to base their arguments on the fact that records from some sites seem to indicate a cooling trend, since records from at least twice as many sites clearly indicate warming. And he found that skeptics are wrong to accuse climate scientists of cherry-picking the data, since the readings that are often omitted — because they are judged unreliable — show the same warming trend.

Muller and his colleagues examined five times as many temperature readings as did other researchers — a total of 1.6 billion records — and now have put that merged database online. The results have not yet been subjected to peer review, so technically they are still preliminary. But Muller’s plain-spoken admonition that “you should not be a skeptic, at least not any longer” has reduced many deniers to incoherent grumbling or stunned silence.

Not so, I predict, with the blowhards such as Perry, Cain and Bachmann, who, out of ignorance or perceived self-interest, are willing to play politics with the Earth’s future. They may concede that warming is taking place, but they call it a natural phenomenon and deny that human activity is the cause.

It is true that Muller made no attempt to ascertain “how much of the warming is due to humans.” Still, the Berkeley group’s work should help lead all but the dimmest policymakers to the overwhelmingly probable answer.

We know that the rise in temperatures over the past five decades is abrupt and very large. We know it is consistent with models developed by other climate researchers that posit greenhouse gas emissions — the burning of fossil fuels by humans — as the cause. And now we know, thanks to Muller, that those other scientists have been both careful and honorable in their work.

Nobody’s fudging the numbers. Nobody’s manipulating data to win research grants, as Perry claims, or making an undue fuss over a “naturally occurring” warm-up, as Bachmann alleges. Contrary to what Cain says, the science is real.

It is the know-nothing politicians — not scientists — who are committing an unforgivable fraud.
___________________
Eugene Robinson writes about politics and culture in twice-a-week columns and on the PostPartisan blog.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com

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99 Percent Spring: the Latest MoveOn Front for the Democratic Party

Select Archives—

The Guns That Smoked
by THE INSIDER, CounterPunch

A new social movement has arrived on the scene and it even has a sexy brand: “The 99% Spring.”

Combining the “99 percent” meme, made famous by the Occupy Wall Street movement, with the “Arab Spring” meme, made famous through the ongoing struggle for democratic rights in the Arab world, the organizers of the movement say they will attempt to carry the momentum created in these social movements forward in the coming weeks and months ahead.

This is exciting stuff, to say the very least.

The 99% Spring movement states its goal with stark clarity:

“In the tradition of our forefathers and foremothers and inspired by today’s brave heroes in Occupy Wall Street and Madison, Wisconsin, we will prepare ourselves for sustained non-violent direct action.

From April 9-15 we will gather across America, 100,000 strong, in homes, places of worship, campuses and the streets to join together in the work of reclaiming our country.

(Snip)

This spring we rise! We will reshape our country with our own hands and feet, bodies and hearts. We will take non-violent action in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi to forge a new destiny one block, one neighborhood, one city, one state at a time.”

Dozens of organizations have already signed onto the call for what looks to be a looming massive uprising.

On March 24-25 grassroots activist leaders, it appears, will be put through a training to lead the 100,000 rallying of the troops.

The revolution, it could be said, has begun!

Or has it?

Yet Another MoveOn.org Front Group?

Beyond the triumphant rhetoric lies a sober truth: “The 99 Spring” is yet another calculated and carefully planned MoveOn.org front group.

Smoking gun one: A WhoIs domain name search yields that The99Spring.com was created on February 9 and the Administrative Contact is none other than MoveOn.org Co-Founder, Wes Boyd.

Smoking gun two: The homepage of The99Spring.com includes a hot link that reads“Get Involved in the 99% Spring.” A click on the link takes you directly to a MoveOn.org “99% Spring Action Training” webpage, where you can either sign up for a listed 99% Spring Training in one’s respective locality, or create your own training.

Smoking gun three: A look at the bottom of the webpage shows the website was designed by Agit-Pop.com. Agit-Pop.com is the website for Agit-Pop Communications, a public relations firm which describes itself as “an award-winning one-stop creative studio delivering strategic messaging, cutting edge New Media and boots-on-the-ground campaigning to the progressive netroots.”

At the very top of its list of clients? MoveOn.org, but of course.

Smoking gun four: A conference call to prepare leaders for trainings will be lead by a MoveOn.org Field Organizer, David Greenson on March 14, according to a 99 Spring email blast.

Smoking gun five: The 99 Spring sent out an email with a subject line that read, “Become a 99% Spring Trainer” from Liz Butler and Joy Cushman. The question then is who are these two?

Butler, her LinkedIn page shows, is the Campaign Director for 1Sky, which in April 2011 merged with 350.org to become known simply as 350.org, the organization chaired by journalist and climate activist Bill McKibben.

Cushman, on the other hand, is the Organizing Director of the New Organizing Institute (NOI), a Democratic Party-aligned, MoveOn.org-aligned front group. NOI hit the ground running in 2004, according to the NOI website, explaining,

“Like the Leadership Institute on the right, the NOI would become the ‘go to’ place for technical and strategic training. We’d begin by training and placing newly trained Internet campaign professionals (online organizers, Internet directors) on dozens of 2006 campaigns. Candidates and organizations, frustrated by their own inability to generate [Howard] Dean or MoveOn[.org]-like results online, would be eager to accept these students, taught by ‘the best in the biz.’”

This portion of the website has since been scrubbed, but can be found via the WayBack Machine.

Eli Pariser, Board President of MoveOn.org, served on the original Advisory Board of NOI, as did MoveOn.org Co-Founder, Joan Blades.

James Ruckers was also included on the initial NOI Board of Directors, who now serves as Executive Director of MoveOn.org’s solidarity with people of color front group, Color of Change, which he co-founded with Van Jones in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Ruckers formerly served on MoveOn.org’s staff as Director of Grassroots Mobilization from the fall 2003 to summer 2005, according to NOI’s website.

A key original NOI staff member included Co-Founder Zach Exley, who now serves as Chief Community Officer at Wikimedia Foundation. Exley worked atMoveOn.org from January 2003–March 2004 and served as NOI’s President from January 2006-April 2010. He also served as Director of Online Organizing and Communications for the John Kerry for President campaign in 2004, all of this according to his LinkedIn account.

NOI’s Inaugural Training took place in late-February 2006 and was described as

“including individuals from Moveon.org, the Kerry and Dean campaigns, the Democratic National Committee, and leading internet consulting firms. NOI trainees did not simply learn the best practices of new organizing – they learned those practices from the best in the field.”

Trainers in the house that cold late-February included two MoveOn.org staffers: Tom Mattzie and Rosalyn Lemieux, who have since moved on (excuse the pun) to stints as a consultant and as a Partner at Fission Strategy, respectively. Exemplifying the revolving door of the Democratic Party non-profit foundation-funded front groups, Lemieux formerly served as Executive Director of NOI from August 2006-2007 before eventually moving onto her current stint at Fission.

Smoking gun six: Recent emails I obtained from the New Organizing Institute show that MoveOn.org and NOI are by-and-large, interchangeable, revolving door type entities that share lists, staff time, and common goals: electing Democrats, cloaked as supporting grassroots, democratic (with a lower “d”) political action.

These emails came from the NOI’s Cristina Sinclaire from the email address 99spring@neworganizing.com. According to her LinkedIn profile page, Sinclaire formerly served as Field Coordinator for the Maryland Democratic Party and as a Field Organizer for Obama for America in 2008 in Ohio, demonstrating her loyalty to the Democratic Party cause. Her Twitter page’s background picture is of a young Barack Obama.

Smoking gun seven: 350.org, it appears, is also “in on this game,” so to speak, as Bill McKibben has signed onto The 99 Spring’s “call to action.” Furthermore, 350.org organizer Joshua Kahn Russell, formerly of the Ruckus Society and Rainforest Action Network, also sent out an email blast on the 350.org list promoting The 99 Spring’s “week of action.” In that email, Russell writes,

“I met about half of you folks who were arrested at the Tar Sands Action last summer when I helped lead our nightly civil disobedience trainings to prepare for the action at the White House.

I’m writing you now, 6 months later, about an opportunity we have to expand and deepen the movement we helped build last summer, in coordination with a whole bunch of other organizations who are beginning to embrace the tools and strategy we put to work in Washington DC.

The opportunity is The 99% Spring, an initiative to train 100,000 people in peaceful direct action this April, empowering people all over the country with the skills and inspiration we need to transform the country. It’s wildly ambitious, and we’ll need to come together in a big way to pull it off.”

Russell proceeds to ask those on the list serve either to sign up to host a training, or volunteer as a trainer, the former request taking those on the list to MoveOn.org’s sign-up page.

Smoking Gun Eight: The Nation magazine self describes itself this way: “The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect, or body. It will, on the contrary, make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred.”

In reality, the Nation is heavily hyping MoveOn’s 99 Spring, made clear by the cover of its April 2, 2012 edition, which is a special issue dedicated to the cause.

As grassroots organizer Kevin Zeese points out, there is a genuine (as opposed to manufactured and illusory astroturf) Occupy Spring forthcoming, called for by the true grassroots. The Nation conveniently leaves that one out of its issue, of course.

“What makes The Nation ‘Occupy Spring’ issue — giving Occupy to the MoveOn types – is that there is actually is an American Spring going on,” said Zeese. “All over the country Occupy remains active and we have an upcoming event called National Occupation of Washington, DC, to begin the weekend of March 31 and April 1 that 25 Occupies have endorsed, which The Nation did not even mention.”

This skunk gets even more stinky. One of the featured contributors of this issue, penning an article titled, “Occupy is Dead! Long Live Occupy!” for this issue, was Ilyse Hogue. She is now a full-time writer at The Nation.

“With a spirit of inclusiveness that mimics the slogan, established institutions from MoveOn to National People’s Action to the United Auto Workers are investing collective resources into The 99% Spring, a massive training project that aims to train 100,000 people in nonviolent civil disobedience and economic literacy,” wrote Hogue in her article, a shameless plug for The 99 Spring.

According to her biography on the website, she “…is a social change practitioner, media consumer and analyst, and on-line engagement expert.” Hogue worked at a Democratic Party front group Media Matters for America in 2011 as a Senior Adviser before coming to The Nation in 2012. The smelliest tie of them all: from 2006- 2011, Hogue served as Director of Political Advocacy and Communications for none other than MoveOn.org.

Coming full circle, Hogue also serves on the Board of Directors of Rebuild the Dream, a Van Jones lead Democratic Party front group co-created in June 2011 with MoveOn.org, according to an article by The Nation’s Ari Berman. Rebuild the Dream, many will recall, was one of the key front groups attempting to co-opt Occupy Wall Street last fall, as uncovered by Kevin Zeese.

This skunk stinks!

Yeah, a Front Group, So What?

The eight smoking guns show quite clearly that The 99 Spring is a front group for MoveOn.org, and therefore, as investigative journalist John Stauber have shown in articles past, yet another case study of an attempt at co-option of multiple movements of radical protestation by MoveOn.

This time around, it’s both the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street. In times past, it has been the racial justice movement as seen through the lens of the group Color Lines, the Iraq War, and Occupy Wall Street.

In MoveOn.org’s short history, the front group has proven that co-option works, but co-opting Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring has been no easy task for it this time around.

It has been a particularly tough task because the Democratic Party, which it fronts for, is beholden to Wall Street and the Obama Administration whichMoveOn.org dutifully supports, plans on raising hundreds of millions of dollars from the 1-percent during his 2012 election campaign.

Furthermore, the Obama Administration has been largely responsible for supplying weaponry to suppress the Arab Spring, including in places such asEgypt, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, to name a few.

MoveOn.org has to tell overt lies in order to paint the Democratic Party and its President, Barack Obama, as a friend of democracy and working class. TheBig Lie, it can be said, is only believable for so long.

But ultimately, “So what?” says the cynic. “More of the same shit, just a different day.”

Not so fast, says activist and author John Stauber, an expert in exposing corporate and political front groups.

“What’s going on is very simple.  Massive amounts of soft money from unions, wealthy donors and foundations such as the Tides Foundation are flowing into NGOs willing to help support the re-election of Barack Obama, and this MoveOn front group is key to whipping liberals and progressive activists into line to attack Republicans for the cause.  The brand and energy of Occupy Wall Street are being coopted by MoveOn’s 99 Spring for this purpose,” he said in an interview.

“This reminds me of the AAEI coalition, another MoveOn front that worked with Nancy Pelosi in 2007 to see to it that the Iraq war was funded and used as a political stick to beat Republicans in 2008.  Or the massively funded Health Care for America Now coalition backed by MoveOn in 2009 which made sure that single payer health care was ignored while the White House pushed its pro-insurance industry legislation derided as ‘Obamacare’.   In this latest case, the so-called 99 Spring, MoveOn is enlisting other NGOs to create the appearance of a populist uprising from the Left, when it’s all about keeping the rabble in line and aimed at the Republicans to re-elect Obama,” he continued.

As will be seen throughout this series on foundation-funded Democratic Party aligned non-profit groups poisoning the genuine grassroots, MoveOn.org is far from the only culprit playing this rotten and cynical game.

Stay tuned.

The Insider is the pseudonym of an activist who works inside the Liberal Foundation-Funded Democratic Party-Allied Belly of the Beast. 



The Horseshit Whisperer

FROM OUR ARCHIVES—WEEKEND EDITION DECEMBER 9-11, 2011 
Pulling the Trigger on Trigger
by RANDY SHIELDS

The chief function of American presidents is to “break” unruly working class resistance to American capital whether in Middle Eastern deserts, Latin American jungles or the streets of Oakland and Cincinnati. Eight years of Bush/Cheney fear-training gave way to the current horse shit whisperer-in-chief whose vague soaring Rorschach rhetoric encourages his followers to believe they’re  getting their own personal nods and winks about what he believes and what he’ll do if he just gets a “chance.” And, often, when he gets the chance, he’s worse than Bush. To wit:

Just in case my liberal Democrat animal-lovin’ friends missed it: last week Barack Humane Obama signed a bill legalizing horse slaughter for human consumption in the United States after it was outlawed six years ago, thus betraying his 2008 campaign pledge (yawn) to keep it illegal.

 

Seventy percent of Americans wanted to keep horses off the menu but, in a flowering of demockracy — genus venus americanus flytrapus — the POTUS and the Congrossest kept their bipartisan unbeaten streak alive: the working class majority must never, ever get anything we want, no matter how tiny. Obama’s favorite movie is said to be “The Godfather” and, figuratively, he just put 200,000 horses’ heads each year into the beds and nightmares of anyone who cares about them. Hope and change you can tuck into. The particulars of this merciless outrage, including our old friend: private profit/socialized cost, can be found at  Our Compass.

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We regularly rerun articles of compelling and lasting interest. We wish the truths told in such articles had become obsolete, had been retired by social change and good leadership. Unfortunately that rarely happens.  This is one of such essays. 

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(Here’s some free advice for you Republican presidential yahoos: if you can put a pole ax in Obama’s hand and a thoroughbred horse on the other end of it, you’ll win the election. Poster: “Uncle Tom Obama wants YOU to go the knackers!” Remember all the letters congress received several decades ago when the military was gassing beagles? Give it a try, Mitt and Newt — it only requires that, for once, you refrain from out-gooning Obama. You can’t excoriate Obama because he didn’t waterboard the horses before he killed them.)

Vegan nags like me point out that horses shouldn’t be eaten any more than cows, chickens, pigs, fish, deer, whales or humans. Others correctly say that American capitalism’s current Death-Mask-In-Chief murders Pakistani, Yemeni and Afghan children on a regular basis so why be surprised when he pulls the trigger on Trigger.

So why is Obama’s marching of Mr. Ed into the terror and cruelty of the slaughterhouse any more irritating than numerous other things he does? It probably has to do with the fact that he keeps pretending, just like his liberal supporters keep pretending, that he and they are some kind of superior enlightened humane beings wholly unlike their barbarous right wing opponents who we’re supposed to be petrified of. It’s the liberals who shop around for both “humane meat” and “humanitarian”  “good wars” and other oxymorons — and that grates. The lack of revolutionary class/vegan-conciousness among people on the left — revealing their cowardice, shallowness, hypocrisy and stupidity, and the attachment they have to failure — is one of the biggest impediments to anything positive happening in America. What’s true of health is also true of ethics and revolution: you can’t buy it, you have to live it.

And now I have a special treat for you, an exclusive draft of a screenplay I’m  sending to Pixar called “Barack O’Celery.”

White liberal child: Mommy, come quick and look in the refrigerator! The organic Barack O’Celery is spoiled! He’s all slimy.

White liberal mom: Oh I know, honey, and we paid so much for him — what a waste. He was so fresh and healthy-looking when we bought him four years ago at the Whole Foods election market.

Child: Can we throw him out?

Mom: No, we’ll probably just keep him for another four years.

Child: Mommy, there’s some cockroaches  having a sit-in on the lower shelf, protesting the Barack O’Celery and he just pepper sprayed them! Everything in the refrigerator is ruined.

Barack O’Celery: Will you two shut up and close the door! I’m trying to build a coalition of carrots, radishes and kohlrabi to attack some bok choy — the security of this entire refrigerator depends on it!

Child (coughing): Mommy, he’s making a mess in there and the longer he hangs around, the whiter he gets.

Mom (coughing): God only knows what he’ll be like four years from now.

Child: Mommy, can we go riding today?

Mom: No, Barack O’Celery just killed your pony. I don’t know how he did it from inside the refrigerator – he had to really go out of his way — but he did it. Sorry, pumpkin.

Child (horrified): Liberal mommy, is that my dead pony wrapped up in the refrigerator?! I don’t think I can take four more years of Barack O’Celery! And you need to get the hell up out of here too!

Randy Shields can be reached at music2hi4thehumanear@gmail.com



The Day Before Mother’s Day, Don’t Tell Other People’s Children To Sign Up for War.

By Pinko the Bear

Michelle Obama, at Commencement in Iowa (2011)

I LIKE YOU MICHELLE OBAMA. You seem like a nice lady, good wife and good mother. By the way Michelle, Happy Mother’s Day. I hope your family shows you a little love and appreciation for all you do. Go ahead and enjoy it, you most likey deserve it. That said, I am spending part of my Mother’s Day responding to your words at the commencement address you gave yesterday at the University of Northern Iowa, and I have a bone to pick with you. A couple of bones, actually. Shall the picking begin?

I think it was very nice of you to take your time to visit them, wish them well in the working world -as if they will be able to find jobs – and to offer some motherly advice. It was sweet of you to recall how you had been received in Iowa just a few years ago while on the campaign trail for you fabulously energizing, charasmatic, hopeful and sincere sounding husband.

“People didn’t know a thing about me, yet they listened. They asked questions. They gave me the benefit of the doubt and a chance to show who I was. And that’s because people here in Iowa understand that everyone has something to offer.”

Yes, we didn’t know anything about you or your husband, really, so we listened. We were interested and then inspired. We were enthralled, enchanted and energized. You say Iowan’s gave you a chance to “show” who you were. Minor point here, but you only “told” us who you were and we were sold. Which brings me to my point. The bone picking part.

You told this graduating class and the other attendees, some 16,000 strong, that the military specialists that killed OBL showed the “very essence” of public service. Hmmm. Really?

I always thought public service meant something much different. My firefighters are public servants. The parks and recreation employees are public servants. EMT’s and ambulance drivers are public servants. The city mangager, city council, the folks at the city water works are public servants. The people who make sure my traffic lights turn red, yellow and green in the correct order, thereby actually keeping us safe, are public servants.

But military folk? Public servants? Perhaps those working in the VA or the Coast Gaurd are rightfully pegged as public servants. But trained killers? Assassination squads? People who sign up to kill foriegners for a steady paycheck, a promise of higher education and lifelong healthcare benefits are public servants? I think not. The only service they are providing is private. They serve private capital only. They serve capitalists only. They serve the well born, the well bred, the well to do and the closely held aggregated wealth of the ruling class. Must we go through an exhaustive review of all the ways the hired muscle has been used? Why don’t we just take a paragraph or two from General Smedley Butler?

“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”

or maybe this one?

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

No Michelle. Hired killers for private enterprise is not the “very essence” of “public service” And before you try to make the laughable argument that these men and women in uniform overseas are “keeping us safe” – oops, you already did – you might want to consider what the internal documents say about the consequences of invading and occupying other countries. These wars do not lead to increased safety at home. These wars lead to the killing of innocent men, women and children abroad. These wars have the complete opposite effect on the aggrieved populations than that which is propagated by progandists, regularly repeated and amply amplified by the fully faithful and completly complacent corporate mega-media conglomerates. Too much alliteration? Let me retry in a pithy sort of way. Killing people abroad creates blowback at home. 9-11 ring a bell? To hear you actually say otherwise shows us who you are. You told us who you were in Iowa a few years ago. Now we see who you are when you say things like this.

“Just imagine, a small group of brave men, dropped by helicopter, half a world away in the dead of night into unknown danger inside the lair of the most wanted man in the world. They did not hesitate, risking everything for us, for our freedom and security. And they did it not just as Navy SEALs. They did it as husbands, as fathers, as sons. Their families were back here, with no idea of their mission or whether their loved one would ever come home.”

I agree they are taking risks. I agree they are husbands, fathers and sons. Wives, mothers and daughters too. Interesting that your speechwriter left them out. I agree their families were back here, with no idea of their mission or whether their loved one would ever come home. But to say that they are doing this for our “freedom and security” is a bald faced lie, propaganda, and you should be ashamed of yourself for saying such a thing.

Were the kids sent to die in Viet Nam fighting for freedom and security? Were the soldiers sent to Central and South America by Reagan securing our freedom and keeping us safe? How about the Phillipines? Cuba? Haiti? Has there ever been a time when the Commander in Chief sent US citizens to risk life and limb in the protection of our freedoms and security? Ok, maybe the War of 1812, when we were actually invaded and attacked here at home by a foreign army. But since then, Michelle? Readers? The question answers itself.

The "Fighting Quaker", Lt. Col. Smedley Butler, USMC, was a soldier and a patriot in the old mould. He devoted the last part of his life to alerting Americans to the military's new mission in the service of business interests.

The last bone to pick is your call to the graduating class to “public service”. Yes. That sounds so very nice. Public Service. Public Servants. Very nice, indeed. Those kids, however, need to be clear on the meaning. As I pointed out above, being a warrior, a paid assasin, is not public service. It serves private corporate interests, needs and profits. Yes, public money is used to pay the troops, but that alone is not enough to qualify them as public servants. The qualifier is not who pays them, but who they are paid to serve. To implore these fresh graduates to explore public service after you had just painted public service as something it is not, is unnaceptable to me. Why didn’t you just tell it to them straight?

Our Empire is creating more and more people that need killin’ and we need your help. You are deeply in debt and have to get a job. There are no decent jobs for you since we have allowed deregulation and outsourcing to decimate the economy here at home. You should consider going to see a recruiter. We need more officers in our Empire as we have plans for even more expansion. The Empire is hiring! You are less free here at home (think Patriot Act) and certainly less secure as unemployed civillians. Well, you will be sorta’ free and sorta’ secure if you agree to work for Uncle Sam as part of the PEP or Peasent Extermination Program. Sign up now! Multi-Nationals need you and you need a job!

Michelle, that would have been the truth. What you gave those kids was pure propaganda. I will never say anything about your efforts to get kids off the couch, excercising or eating healthier foods. But I’ll be damned if I can sit by and say nothing as you prod the young into the service of the Empire. Shame on you for telling other mother’s children such rubbish. Do you not know what the Mother’s Day Proclamation of 1870 by Julia Ward Howe said?

Arise then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

“Say firmly: ‘We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We women of one country will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own, it says “Disarm! Disarm!” The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.’

“As men have forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his time the sacred impress not of Caesar, but of God.

“In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”

With more truthfulness in the future, there will be more happy mothers on future Mother’s Days!

go here to see the original AP

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gB4NM2JBKyYu3ezrMCo0ZYlO1g6Q?docId=3e0e8a70a9d747c8925c315847c8c2b6

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