JackRiddler
JackRiddler's JournalI agree with the OP. It's important to attach an exact one-word label to everybody.
There are so many people! When I try to count all the people, my brain hurts!
And there are so many words, too! Look at all those words and words!
It's so very hard to use more than word per person. I need a word, one word, that tells me right away if I love someone or if I hate him.
Oh, how I hate people who have bad words attached to them! Hate, hate, hate! It's fun. Every day, for two minutes.
So I'm glad someone is pursuing this important question.
But please don't confuse me with big, non-existent words like liberaltarian.
Apparently the rights of two million people in the prison system...
most of them caught up in the drug war for sales and possession offenses...
a disproportionate number of them minorities from a poor background...
or the resulting disenfranchisement of a large proportion of black men through felony convictions...
or the fact that prisons are also labor camps used to suppress all working people's wages...
or that millions of black and latino people are subjected to unreasonable search and seizure...
all of which has the drug war as one of the main pretexts...
matter even less to you.
Your statement is flat-out wrong. If it were merely making the absurd argument that it's all right to imprison people for possessing marijuana long as other peoples' rights (presumably yours?) are protected, that would be bad enough.
However the drug war has millions of victims, corrupts entire societies (especially police forces), forms the basis for enormous money laundering and offshore influence on politics, costs untold billions in state and federal funds, has devastated entire nations (Mexico and Colombia), funds narco-dictatorships and death squads, uses fear just like the "war on terror" to move politics to the right, and was condemned for all this last year by a commission of the UN consisting mostly of liberal and conservative former presidents of many of the most hard-hit countries! Oh yeah, the drug profits made possible by prohibition have also funded covert operations and paramilitaries around the world for decades, from the Kuomintang to the Contras to the Afghan mujahedeen (both when they were US allies and when they were enemies).
It is an epically disastrous and inhumane policy with effects that go beyond the already intolerable injustice of imprisoning people for their personal consumption choices (whether or not these are bad choices).
Sorry LynneSin, you shouldn't narrow this huge issue down to dismissable (if wrong) simplistic talking points.
"Missing Foundation," long defunct band...
but thanks to the symbol, the cult devotion to MF continues among many, most of whom have never even heard the music.
And it's a champagne glass. The symbol means, "The Party's Over." As in the party of the present civilization and empire. Which it is: the party, anyway, not yet the empire. The three sticks and the cross-stick mean, "Stop World War III." And in the late 1980s, they had tagged it around literally every single subway station in the New York system.
I have my opinion, as do you...
Like me and everyone else, you, too, decide what the "right thing" is, all the time.
You can bet that to Gaga or any other professional performer with agents and managers, there is no such thing as just being at a "New Year's celebration" on live national TV. To her, it was a negotiated, booked appearance for the purpose of advancing her career, first and foremost.
I don't really care about it, and as condemnations go, mine in this case is mild. Let her do what she likes. But it's not to her credit, and not very cognizant of our times.
Actually, she is no doubt cognizant of whom she is kissing, and of what he currently stands for to the world: the excuser of Wall Street criminality, the brutalizer of street protest.
If she presents herself as an advocate for the right thing in some cases (as in "Born This Way"
then she knows that conferring a kiss on this particular character is also a decision.
The real question that the Ron Paul candidacy poses for Democrats
Why is this racist, knuckle-dragging right-winger with the economic and labor policy of a 19th century robber baron outflanking the Democrats to the left on the essential issues of empire and the drug war?
Why aren't Democrats leading the way toward peace, reducing the gargantuan military budget, and changing the drug policy that destroys so many lives and drives the police state and the prison-industrial complex?
I submit this is why Paul inspires such exceptional rage among the uncritical defenders of Obama and the Democratic establishment. Because beyond these two essential issues (and his opposition to bank bailouts), his racist, right-wing views are indistinguishable from those of any other Republican presidential candidate. But his stands on war and drug policy serve to expose the Democratic establishment's support for continuing the perpetual foreign wars and the irrational war on (some) drugs.
Excellent summation, Kentuck:
"Making these observations is not support, it should shame the rest of the field in these areas..."
Instead of attacking Greenwald for stating facts about Paul, Democrats should be asking how it is possible that their own politicians are being outflanked by a right-wing yahoo on the most important questions of peace and justice -- ending the perpetual war for empire and ending the drug war (which also means reducing the police state and the prison-industrial complex)? Who can justify either of these insanities?
That's why Paul sends those Democrats who are in denial about their own party into a rage. He's a monster on pretty much everything else, but when it comes to war and drug war, he's far to the left of Obama.
Can you name a national Republican who will not pursue racist policies?
Can you name a Republican presidential campaign since Nixon's "Southern strategy" of 1968 that did not rely on race-baiting?
I don't vote for Republicans and I don't support racists, but explain to me how Ron Paul having racist supporters and putting out that rhetoric distinguishes him from the rest of the Republican pack. Seriously. Don't tell me there are "moderate" Republicans who don't play to the racist clientele. Are you old enough to remember the "Willie Horton" campaign?
Ending the war on drugs would greatly benefit minorities in this country, substantially roll back the police state and the prison-industrial complex that largely target black and latino people. Given that, can you name a Republican candidate who would be better for minorities than Ron Paul?
But the question you really should be asking is this: How did we get to this horrible point where the Democrats are outflanked on the two biggest questions of peace and justice - the perpetual wars for empire and the drug war - by a Republican who also wants to ban abortion and restore labor rights to their pristine 19th century state and do all those other horrible things Paul supports? How is it possible that the ostensible left is behind Paul on these issues? Why shouldn't Democrats give people the hope that they, too, might roll back the empire and end the insane drug war?
No, obviously, I do not "give Bush credit" and you can read it in the OP...
Did you know? There are actors other than Bush and Obama in this theater. Really!
As the OP says, Bush is a war criminal on the lam. Let us hope one day he'll wander into a jurisdiction with the courage to arrest and indict him. It is Obama's great failure, one that will bite us all many times in the future, that Bush's prosecutor is not the US Department of Justice.
Bush didn't write SOFA as he willed, but the circumstances of 2007 forced it on him. Presumably he would have wanted to undermine SOFA, but he wasn't around this year to do so. Hypotheticals are irrelevant.
Reality is that Obama tried to undermine SOFA, but Iraqi conditions did not allow it.
For that I give credit the Iraqi resistance to the war of aggression, and to the popular will of the people there that made their own government hesitate to allow immunity to US soldiers and extend the occupation.
I give credit to Manning as the alleged leaker of the US military war reports, and to Wikileaks for exposing covered-up atrocities commited by the US occupation, which put the Iraqi government under further pressure not to cave in to the US extension plans.
I give credit to the unpopularity of the war in the US and the enormous costs it has imposed on the American people.
Some touch of credit is due to the Obama administration for giving up on its attempt to do the wrong thing, and finally following the letter of SOFA. But to say simply that "Obama ended the war" or the occupation is a historic distortion. The end came on the schedule laid out in SOFA.
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