Real Revolutionaries Don't Make The News

Very quietly, some media outlets acknowledged that on the same day the Tea Baggers were showing what they are really all about that the anti- war movement had also staged a protest against the Obama administration. Whereas the incoherent and badly educated white folks in the Tea Party protest made headlines with their antics towards members of congress, the much larger- some 10,000, plus thousands more nationally vs. a couple hundred reactionaries- barely made page 3 of most newspapers.
What is really telling is the fact that seven of the anti- war protesters were arrested for civil disobedience, while nary a Tea Bagger went off to jail, despite one of them spitting on a congressman, which is an assault charge is most states. Kind of tells you who the elites in Washington are really more afraid of.
Note to Tea Baggers: A real revolutionary doesn't defend the privileges of the establishment. None of your Left- wing counterparts are sponsored by an equivalent of Dick Armey or promoted by crazy people with chalkboards on FOX News.

a qualatative change

Well, after intense and nauseating debate, it looks as though the health care bill passed, accompanied by backflips from the cosmetic lefties and cries of disgust from our already worn-out friends, the Teabaggers. Seriously, though, who is sticking up for the rights of everyday people? It isn't Planned Parenthood. That half-hearted statement they made is enough to make me cry into my coffee. (I almost hope my comrades at the Bolshechix don't see it ... things have been disheartening enough lately as it is. Oh, and Dez E., I'll totally go to a unpermitted protest on Lake - even if we're the only ones who show up!)

Anyway, back to what I was ranting about ... oh, yes. None of these goddamn liberal social institutions are doing a goddamn thing for us right now. It's about freakin' time we started holding their leadership accountable and electing more radical people to take the helm. And if the institutions are so undemocratic that we can't change their leadership, then I say we build alternative organizations. Health care reform could have been seriously better. We could have had single payer for Chrissake. I mean, it's our work that makes all the money for our scum bag bosses and corporations, the least they could do is pay a ton of taxes and cover all our healthcare.

After all, there's a reason I haven't had healthcare since I graduated college - I can't afford it.

This Is A Victory? For Who?

In a propaganda move worthy of 1984's Ministry Of Truth, the reactionary punditry of the U.S.A. is manufacturing a victory out of the disasterous imperialist excercise known as Operation Iraqi Freedom ( few military operations have had such a juvenile and ironic name). Thumping their chests with nationalistic pride, the mouthpieces of the American elite practically cream in their pants when describing how their smirking idiot idol, George W. Bush, had defeated the evil "terr'ists" with the Surge. As if simply adding more troops to a battlefield was a stroke of genius that only Bush could think of." The Iraqis had an election!" they crow. " American casualties are the lowest since 2003!", they shout. " We won! We won! Democracy in Iraq has finally arrrived!", they boast.
I hate to fingerfuck your wet dream, guys, but if we take a peek behind the props of your carefully constructed Potemkin Village we find out the real reasons for this " victory" and who the real winners are.
Let's start with the Surge.
So President Fucknuckle decided to send in 20, 000+ more troops into Iraq in 2007. It sounds like a lot, but it really isn't in a country the size of Iraq. They weren't used in some grand offensive ala World War 2. What they did do was tighten up security in Bagdhad and other cities. This allowed the pro- government police forces and Shi'ite militias to roam around in the capital and other large cities and ethnically cleanse them. Are you familiar with the name John Negroponte? He became Bush's ambassador to Iraq three years earlier. Negroponte had considerable experience with insurgents who fought against Corporate America's interests- he was President Reagan's ambassador to Honduras during the 1980s and racked up considerable success for local capitalist pawns by funneling support to the Contras in Nicaragua and the death squads in El Salvador and Guatamaela. Was his appearence in Bagdhad,and the soon to follow organized torture, execution, and mutilation of the U.S. backed regime's opponents, and the subsequent Sunni exodus a coincidence? I really doubt it.
But hey, that's in the past- with our attention spans, it may as well have been a thousand years ago. The Iraqis had an election! Yaaaay! Democracy!
Yeah, well big fuckin' deal. After the invasion in March 2003, the U.S. government got the Iraqi police to hustle up an election as soon as possible, to show not the Iraqis, not the world, but the asshole protesters back in the States who had the bad taste to question why the fuck we were in Iraq if not to make energy company execs and war profiteers happy, that hell yeah, it was worth it. We brought freedom and shit. Now shut- up and don't doubt us anymore.
And all would have been cool, if that first election, and every one since then- including the latest- wasn't mired by fraud, coercion, and massive violence. A healthy democracy doesn't have armed thugs hustling you out of your house to vote for their guy, have you dodging body parts that are flying through the air from a car bomb because some other thugs don't like their guy, and then voting twice for their guy 'cause it is good for your health to do so.
This is a democracy so democratic that even murderers have a shot at being elected. And remember Moqtada al- Sadr? He is also in the new Iraqi parliament.
So who wins in this "victory"? The Iraqi Shi'ite politicians came out ahead. The Kurds won a little more independence. Iran did allright- they got allies in the Iraqi government. Dick Cheney and other war profiteers made out like bandits. The rest of us, Iraqis and Americans, were left holding the bill, which is still being paid off in our blood and our treasure.

Annoying Technical Pause

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Thank you for your attention. We now return to our regularly scheduled ranting.

This is how you get shit done, son.

People's always sayin', "America's so great, it's the bestest country in the whole wide world. We always do the right thing."

For eight years, I heard "My country, right or wrong!"

Strangely, all that talk ended when a black man took office. Even when Obama's policies looked strangely like Bush's, the Republicans ignored that and went on screamin' and hollerin' like the rodeo had come to town.

But complaints about the powerful right-wing interests in this country aside, I find a lot more hope for the future among the working people in other countries. We can really take a page out of the Greek playbook, for example, where millions of people across all industries repeatedly walk off their job in what is called a "general strike."

Have you even heard about a general strike before? It's not something we talk about in A-MER-ica, because it is a concept that threatens the control of the rich, whose strength lies entirely in the fact that they get people to work for them.

But this tactic of resistance against the ruling rich is somehow omitted from our general history. There were general strikes in Seattle in 1919. There was a series of strikes in response to the Great Depression in 1934 in Minneapolis, Toledo, and among the West Coast longshoremen. These strikes shook up "business as usual" and had the fat cats shitting their pants. You can always tell how effective social movements are, how much they threaten those in power, by the response. So far the Teabaggers have no class character and so play an entirely right-wing reform role. Any effective strike in the past, however, has been attacked by anyone from corporate lackeys to the National Guard - or even the United States Army.

It takes a leftist force that knows its shit - one that has a consciousness of the economic class it represents - to coordinate an effective general strike for long. Or to get these strikes out in the streets again and again. The Greeks know it's the policies of the rich that got them in this ugly mess. Not the rich on the "left" or the rich on the "right" - where the ruling class is concerned, these terms are mere window-dressing.

The people of Greece see their interests as workers are opposed to the interests of the rich. If only we in the "land of the free" could see how nationalist rhetoric hems us in and keeps us blind. Anyone telling us today that we are free, that we are strong, that we are brave and that we are the most beautiful, special snowflakes in the world is our enemy. It is those telling us to rise up, to walk off the job, to fight back, that we should be listening to.

O A@#hole, Where Art Thou?

I cannot even begin to express the contempt and outrage I have towards these two greedy and arrogant bastards. Nothing is more pathetic when one of these pudgy, pasty- faced suits in the Senate puff out their chests and act like they are the tough guys making the hard decisions. Let me tell you something Senators Bunning and Kyl, it doesn't take a man to crap all over people who are not rich and powerful. It doesn't take a tough guy to be a corporate toady. I think the word that applies here is douchebag. Or parasite. Or tool. Or... screw it, I will just let this little clip express how I and a comrade reacted to this story.