NO REST FOR THE AWAKE - MINAGAHET CHAMORRO

For me, the most depressing aspect of the past US presidential campaign was the final debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. After months of trying to create stark contrasts between them, and trying to incite people to vote for them and not think of them as just being two slightly different flavors of the same soda, the façade fell fast and in an almost embarrassing fashion when the President and his challenger appeared to not only share the same talking points on foreign policy, but possibly share the same brain entirely. They looked more like long lost twins who had just found each other, rather than two distinct sides of the American ideological spectrum. This benefited Obama significantly, because Romney could not make the case that he offered something new in terms of how the US relates to the rest of the world. As a result the incumbency of Obama made him appear to be more solid, made it seem like the ideas they both supported belonged to him and

Because he has a way of speaking in very profound and insightful ways about the continuing importance of thinking critically about race, in a world that seems too eager to dismiss any attempt to talk about it. A case in point is his article below from The Nation. ****************************** The GOP's Blatant Racism Gary Younge January 10, 2012  The Nation In the British original of The Office the main protagonist, David Brent (US reincarnation: Michael Scott), wistfully recalls a tender moment during his favorite war film, The Dam Busters, involving the hero pilot, Wing Commander Guy Gibson. “Before he goes into battle, he’s playin’ with his dog,” says Brent. “Nigger,” says his sidekick, Gareth (Dwight in the States), recalling with glee the name of the dog. Brent flinches, eager to mitigate the slur. “Yeah!… it was the ’40s,” he says, “before racism was bad.” The problem with the illusion of a postracial society is that at almost any moment the systemic nature of

This is a very concise but still very insightful overview of Texas Congressman Ron Paul and his politics from Talking Points Memo. I have always liked Ron Paul as a Republican, because of the way he reflects a more consistent set of ideological stances as opposed to most of the other party who pander to various factions and thus use powerful drugs in order to rationalize that you can massively cut taxes and continually increase the defense budget. But in general, Paul has always been a racist and if he was running as a Democrat, that fact would never be forgotten. But in the Republican "great white hope" style of politics, it is still too early to tell whether or not being racist hurts you as a candidate or helps you. Check out the video below:

I was heartened last week to read the article that I've pasted below from two US Congressman, Democrat Barney Frank and Republican Ron Paul. Their article, which I found on the website The Huffington Post and is meant to be a call for reducing the amount of money that the US Government spends on its military. That amount is not only more than the military budgets of most other countries in the world combined, but it is also the majority of the US Federal budget in general (if you include the money spent on current wars). The presence or the absence of this conversation is one of the key indicators as to whether or not a society is militarized. If it is present and not just in faint traces, but is an actual subject of debate or societal contestation, then that means the society is not militarized. It may contain some elements or some tendencies, but the fact that militarization or issues such as war, peace and how much money the military gets are open topics means that the society a

Several months ago, when the American presidential campaigns were just beginning I remember an incredible excitement about Ron Paul and his impossible bid for the Presidency. As a shallow sort of figure, as a mere symbol, I admit though he was fun to watch. First off, he was the only Republican who was anti-war, and this made the early debates alot more interesting than they should have been. I mean, so often I found myself feeling monumentally stupid to even be caring about these early debates since the actual election was more than a year away, and the ways in which these campaigns are reported nowadays, everything is recorded and analyzed, but then quickly forgotten. Its surreal how the immense amount of reporting on these campaigns can actually reduce not just how much we care about them, but how much we can readily remember. Its as if the sheer amount of reporting combined with the knowledge of how incredibly far away the election is can lead to a cynical deluge. The constant bre