Afew weeks ago I wrote about the possibiity of building an
Iraq Moratorium Day. If any of my handful of readers have wondered why this blog had fallen silent, it’s because I found myself working with a diverse group of grassroots antiwar activists to lay the groundwork for just that.
Well now it IS here and it’s official:
September 21, 2007 is Iraq Moratorium Day
The official Iraq Moratorium Day website is now live! Continue reading
Posted in Activism, Antiwar, George Bush, Grassroots, Iraq, Moratorium, Organizing, Peace, Politics, Protest, Regime, United States, War
While The Agitator holds no brief for the doctrine of American Exceptionalism, this point is beyond dispute:
The notion of “American exceptionalism” became widely applied in the context of efforts to account for the weakness of working-class radicalism in the United States. The major question subsumed in the concept became why the United States is the only industrialized country which does not have a significant socialist movement or Labor party. That riddle has bedeviled socialist theorists since the late nineteenth century. Lipset
With the lack of a meaningful Labor or Socialist Party, the political representation of America’s working class has for generations fallen by default to America’s party of “everyone else”, the Democrats. From the time of the New Deal, the “liberal” wing of the Democratic party acquired some small tinges of a social democratic program, forged on the basis of an alliance with the once-powerful business unions of the AFL-CIO. As the place of the AFL-CIO in American society and its workforce has waned, so has the influence of working class interests. This month marks something in a watershed in the decline of working class influence in America. Two deals, secretly negotiated with the leadership of Democratic liberals who once epitomized that small social democratic influence, saw the interests of American workers sold short. The liberal lions have emerged in their new majority as staunch neoliberals.
“I’d ignore a lot of people that really was just wasting my time…”
Thus spake Congressman Charles Rangel, the Democrat who has represented Harlem in the US House for nearly 35 years, of the labor, small business, justice and environmental groups that had sought his assistance in blocking a proposed set of “free trade” agreements:
Rangel was the lead Democratic negotiator in talks with the Bush administration and Republican lawmakers aimed at clearing the way for approval of free trade pacts with Peru and Panama and easing the path for pacts with Colombia and South Korea.
Rangel has stressed his desire to restore bipartisan support for trade through an “American” trade policy, rather than a Republican or Democratic one.
In the interview, Rangel offered no apology for the deal that was struck and said the only thing he would do differently was to reach it “much faster. I’d ignore a lot of people that really was just wasting my time, and didn’t intend to support it all.” Alertnet
Posted in Class, George Bush, Globalization, Hegemony, Labor, Latin America, Neoliberalism, Politics, Trade, United States
UPDATE (J25) : It appears search engines are bringing people looking for information on Iraq Moratorium Day to this post. For more current and definite information about Iraq Moratorium Day, see my newer post or better yet, visit the official website of Iraq Moratorium Day and take the pledge to act on September 21!
UPDATE (M21): With the apparent decision of the Democrats to buckle to Bush on the Iraq supplemental funding bill, the need for the most inclusive and extensive antiwar mobilization possible is more evident than ever. Only we the people can stop the war.
<> According to syndicated columist Dale McFeatters:
In Washington, there’s a sense that whole issues of the war will come to a head in September…
The month was specifically referenced 15 times by Tony Snow and the White House reporters at the press secretary’s briefing last Thursday.
In September, members of Congress will be returning from their long August recess, when they will have heard an earful from constituents…September is the end of the federal fiscal year, and soon after that the Bush administration will have to submit another war-funding bill under vastly changed political circumstances.
Most importantly, in September the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, is to submit a report on the progress of the war and the effectiveness of the Baghdad security plan…September is shaping up as the make-or-break month on the war for the Bush administration.
When official Washington talks about “timelines” and “benchmarks” in Iraq, it is almost always something being demanded of their client regime in Baghdad. Have they this time, perhaps inadvertantly, just set “timelines” and “benchmarks” for the domestic political debate on the Iraq War? Can the antiwar movement use statements made now to finally hold the Washington establishment’s feet to the fire? Is it time to begin organizing for a national Iraq War Moratorium Day in September?
September 2007, meet October, 1969?
Posted in Activism, Grassroots, Iraq, Moratorium, Peace, Politics, Protest, Regime, United States, War
I thought I’d put this up just because I like it so much. Stunning poster art from the 1930s, from the Spanish CNT-FAI:
From this wonderful collection of Spanish Civil War posters.
It may be 70 years old, but there’s something extremely contemporary about that poster, both in style and substance. (I get something of the same feeling about the CNT-FAI generally.)
Mother’s Day Addendum
My late mother wasn’t the world’s greatest pianist, but she was an enthusiastic one, and did have a quite good singing voice. She had some old songbooks that she would play and sing from, and one of her favorites was a song that even as a small child I found moving and beautiful, a song from the Spanish Civil War. These are the lyrics as I recall them, and cannot help recalling them in her voice:
Spanish heavens filled with brilliant starlight
High above the trenches in the plain
With the dawning morning comes to greet us
Calling us to battle once again
Far off is our land
Yet proudly we stand
We’re fighting and winning for you
Freiheit!
It’s fair to call me cynical. In recent times, cynicism about the means and motives of our rulers has proven itself to be the most reliable predictor of their behavior.
Today the newswires and the netteries are alive with talk of “terror plots in Germany! Americans targeted! In the next month!” Americans yearn hopefully for news of raids by the Sicherhe Stas German security forces to thwart these fiends. Even the most cynical of Americans are saying “Bush is in trouble, crank up the Terra wolf.” But it occurs to me that my friends are being good Americans, that is, being “US-centric”, that events in Germany may just have something to do with events in Germany.
Perhaps the cause of being cynical is having more information than the average bear. I long ago realized I couldn’t rely on official information sources, and have learned to look elsewhere for information. keep reading and I’ll share with you what the “unofficial” sources are talking about wrt Germany.
“Finally we understand that in France work is freedom“
~ Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France (and Vampire L’etat C’est Moi.) Speaking to the Congress of his UMP party on January 14, 2007
I realize some of my fellow Americans may be concerned. How, they ask, can we allow ourselves to fall behind France (France!) in this critical dimension? How can we allow ourselves to be on the wrong side of a growing Thinly-Veiled Fascism Gap??? Friends, Merkins, countrymen, worry not, as this item dredged up from the archives of the New York Times (March 17, 1994) makes plain, Americans can do more than lend lip service to the great truth that “Freedom is Slavery” we can make it our reality for the foreseeable future:
The Mayor, a former United States Attorney in Manhattan, said New Yorkers were inclined to “see only the oppressive side of authority.”
“What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be,” he said at the forum, sponsored by The New York Post. “Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.”
~Rudolph “Il Douche” Giuliani, Likely Next President of the United States of America
We know that Mr. Sarkozy penned the introduction to the autobiography of Gianfranco Fini. The Agitator asks, does Mr. Giuliani deserve less, do his words ring less true to the original?
Finally we understand, that in America, work is freedom. Freedom is slavery. War is Peace. And Ignorance is Strength!
On Tuesday, May1, tens of millions of working people and their supporters took to the streets on International Workers’ Day to stand up for their rights and interests against the growing pressure of globalized corporate capitalism. In places as varied as Los Angeles and Istanbul, from San Luis Potosi to Zimbabwe to Teheran, demonstrators were met with stiff, even brutal, repression from the ruling regimes. The zeitgeist of our time is clearly moving in the direction of a unity between globalized corporate interests and repressive national regimes. There is only one force that can counter this encroachment on liberty and equality, still best summed up in that venerable clarion call: “Workers of the World, Unite!” This past Tuesday, workers on every continent did just that, and my roundup of Global MayDay 2007 is in the extended copy.
Posted in Africa, Anarchism, Asia, Canada, Class, EuroMayDay, Europe, Globalization, Hegemony, Immigration, Labor, Latin America, Los Angeles, MayDay, North America, Oceania, Politics, Precarity, Punk, Racism, Socialism, Syndicalism, United States, police brutality
I am beside myself. This post will not be one with my usual combination of facts and inspirational evocations. It is posted in rage at what happened in LA on Tuesday. There will be no pretense to objectivity.
Posted in Class, Immigration, Labor, Los Angeles, MayDay, Politics, Racism, United States, police brutality
While I’m less than thrilled with the utterly wimpy Iraq “supplemental”, and the associated cynical political calculus of the bill that Congress sent to the White House and Bush today vetoed, it is what it is, the closest thing to opposition to the Iraqnam debacle we are likely to see out of establishment politicians. For this reason, and also because it gives the antiwar forces another chance to demonstrate our broad, if not deep, support from the public, The Agitator endorses the national call for emergency anti-veto rallies that has gone out today from UFPJ, MoveOn and other mainstream antiwar organizations today.
Search here and here for local events in your area (hey! click on those links!), or you can organize your own using these resources.
Posted in George Bush, Iraq, Peace, Politics, United States, War
Today’s online memory hole works far more efficiently than George Orwell could ever have imagined. Remember “Mission Accomplished”? According to whitehouse.gov, it was never even there:
(hat tip to “MediaFreeze”)
Posted in George Bush, Iraq, United States, War
