Holy Sandinistas! Ayatollah Ortega Goes Over the Edge
It’s a tad ironic to think that 20 years ago, the same tiny impoverished Central American nation of Nicaragua that dominated U.S. news headlines has now turned completely absent from our national conversation for more than the past decade? Nica-who?
Two years ago, with only a minimalist flurry of headlines, Sandinista revolutionary leader Daniel Ortega was re-elected to the presidency after being voted out in in the early 90′s as the U.S.-backed contra war negotiated to an end.
There were actually some dolts on the American and Latin American Left who hailed Ortega’s victory as one of great significance — Nicaragua was moving to the Left again, we were told. He had gotten The Big Hug from Hugo Chavez and that apparently was enough to re-validate Ortega’s revolutionary credentials.
These folks seem to have slumbered through the 90′s and the first part of this decade during which those who cared to read would have learned that 1) Ortega was revealed as a serial molester of his own step-daughter 2) that upon leaving state power in 1991 the Sandis looted the state and privatized most of its goodies and industries for themselves 3) that Ortega had streamrolled all debate and opposition out of the Sandinista Party 4) that he had signed and formalized a working alliance with the extreme right wing party whose leader was eventually indicted for zillions in corruption 5) that while maintaining a revolutionary rhetoric his party had adopted economic heterodoxy and and become zealous anti-abortion Catholics and 6) that just about every member of Nicaragua’s rich intellectual class of writers, poets, thinkers and artists — from Sandinista Vice-President Sergio Ramirez to guerrilla commander and poet Gioconda Belli to poet and Minister of Culture Ernesto Cardenal and gobs of others — had run screaming away from the Frente Sandinista?
That made little impact on the knucklehead Sandinista solidarity groups that still run regular trips down to Managua to stock up on red and black buttons.
I spent plenty of time myself in Nicaragua during the 80′s and some of that with Ortega and his family. It was clear by the late 80′s that the revolution had gone off the tracks. When I went back in 2001 I found the place — and the Sandinistas– to be rather horrific. I wrote about it at length in this piece and included my chat with Ortega’s then-adult daughter who he had molested for the better part of a decade (Ortega however granted himself immunity from prosecution so he was free as a bird).
Yesterday, finally, correspondent John Carlin of The Independent in the UK filed a fine, if blood-chilling, follow-up on the second year of Ortega Redux. It’s all rather fascinating, if revolting.
Ortega now parades as a full-time Catholic and has erected little shrines to the Virgin on numerous street corners. He’s also been busy rigging the vote in local elections, barred international vote observers from attending his Zimbabwe like electoral show, and waged war on the remnants of the independent press which is led by the courageous journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro who I first met in 1980 when he was the editor of the Sandinista’s own daily paper Barricada.
Carlin captures it all neatly in his concluding three paragraphs:
It is all a far cry from the bright-eyed revolutionary days after the fall of Somoza, when the Sandinistas were the poster-children of the international left. They were young, romantic, idealistic. Despite the counter-revolutionary war financed and directed by Ronald Reagan’s “Yankee imperialism”, Managua was a festive place where it was not unusual late at night to run across comandante de la revolucion poetically confessing, having drunk a few nica libres (rum and cokes), the Sandinista dream of making the spirit of Paris ’68 come true, of perfecting the socialist model that Stalinism had betrayed.
Today in Nicaragua, two years after the Sandinistas’ return to power, there is no idealism, no poetry, no romance. The regime over which President Ortega presides is an anthem to brute cynicism. Or a parable of human weakness, the old story of what happens with idealists, always and everywhere, once they have tasted power. It is Animal Farm all over again. The threats against Carlos Fernando Chamorro, whose offices were ransacked by Sandinista thugs and whose father was killed by Somoza, have closed the Orwellian circle. The slaves have become like the old masters; Sandinistas, like Somocistas. The discourse is different from Somoza’s, but also more hypocritical, but the methods remain the same and the objective too.
The President and his acolytes live ever better as Nicaragua remains the poorest country on the Latin American mainland, and one of the most unequal. Mr Ortega, who pays lip-service to socialist rhetoric with barely more conviction than he does to the Catholic God, is converting Nicaragua into a banana caricature of that cruel place Orwell envisioned where “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.
Que lastima.
But then again he’s got the support of Hugo Chavez so it can’t be all bad, right?
November 22nd, 2008 at 1:02 pm
One of the flaws of the left’s “national bourgeois revolution” tendency during the Cold War was figures like Ortega.
November 22nd, 2008 at 2:49 pm
This is just another example of the long-term consequences of Tip O’Neill and the Democrats putting their party’s political interests ahead of U.S. interests. Democrats gave a green light to Marxists in Central America and a red light to Reagan trying to stop another Soviet friendly nation in our hemisphere.
So, here we are now. Thanks, Democrats.
November 22nd, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I hope this translates into something good for Marc.
If Marc doesn’t get more money, I hope Huffington blows it and has to crawl to Obama for a bail-out.
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Woody once again doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He should start by investigating the deal that Ortega made with convicted conservative ex-president of Nicaragua, Arnoldo Aleman.
Start here: http://tinyurl.com/6m4goj
In essence, Ortega, a man who many of us on the left believe has been only for himself for some time now, made a deal with a corrupt president who should have been politically anathema to him to ensure that their two parties wpould control the legislature.
Ortega may be a child abuser, he is probably quite corupt, but he was elected. Funding an illegal war by selling weapons to a terrorist state in exchange for hostages really has nothing to do with it. The FSLN has existed in Nicaragua for some time now. The Contra War would not have gotten rid of the FSLN.
As for giving a “green light to Marxists in Central America”, if Woody had any idea about how deeply corrupt Anastasio Somoza was and how he continued to loot his already poor nation when he was in power, how essentially fourteen families in El Salvador controlled the economy while millions suffered, perhaps he would get an idea as to why Marxism became popular in Central America and not rely on an unsourced opinion piece in place of facts.
Nothing occurs in a vacuum; not even the one residing between Woody’s ears.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:57 am
I know what happened to Woody’s mind: it was “disappeared”.
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:40 am
Randy is right. The Sandanista revolution itself was heroic, and it may well have developed into a mature democratic socialist society if not for the terorist offensive backed by the USA.
now though, Ortega is retrograde.
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:44 am
There is nothing that better exemplifies how low Ortega has sunk than his persecution of Ernesto Cardenal:
Ortega is becoming a bit of a pariah outside of his buddy’s domains:
Ortega is only for Ortega. I knew that in 1983 when he visited NYC for a UN function and spent 3K on eyeglasses paid for by a Diners Club card from the Nicaraguan UN mission.
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:44 am
Randy: why Marxism became popular in Central America
Simple. Because the Democratic Congress in the U.S. deliberately helped them. Quit trying to skirt the issue. Tip O’Neil and the Democrats were disgraceful.
November 23rd, 2008 at 10:39 am
Woody,
you don’t know what you’re talking about, specifically the history of crony capitalism (e.g. Somoza owned the Mercedes franchise in Nicaragua and all goernment cars were bought from his franchise) corporate thuggery (United Fruit for example) and the strong arm tactics used by successive US administrations on both sides of the aisle to pressure governments in Central America (e.g., the Reagan administration’s attempt to pressure Costa Rica for miitary support against the Contras, notwithstanding Costa Rica’s lack of a military).
Your comments demonstrate an utter ignorance of the history and politics of the region, including but not limited, your ignorance of the vicious discrimination against the indigenous people of Guatemala, your ignorance of the oligarchic system in El Salvador, the influence of United Fruit Company’s leaders on nations such as Guatemala and Honduras and the continual support for oppressive military governments during the 1980′s .
All you do is parrot right-wing talking points, without a second’s thought to any of the facts or the history.
November 23rd, 2008 at 11:54 am
Woody,
Have you ever traveled outside your county?
Were you set up in business by your father?
Do you ever eat fresh vegetables?
November 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 pm
I don’t parrot right-wing talking points. I come up with my own.
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:08 pm
“I don’t parrot right-wing talking points. I come up with my own.”
Yeah. Woody is something of a miracle actually, proving that a single right-wing monkey can, given enough time typing on the internet, reproduce the complete works of Boortz and Limbaugh.
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:27 pm
I don’t parrot right-wing talking points. I come up with my own
Poppycock. You display zero knowledge of the history of Central America. Your knee jerks faster than your neurons transmit.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Zero knowledge of Latin American history is no prerequisite for posting on this blog, as demonstrated by huevón mal cagado at 1:08.
November 23rd, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Sergio, I’m almost convinced you’re more useless than Woody, who at least makes a good punching bag. Your obsession with reg is disturbing, albeit in an entertaining/freaky David Lynchian sort of way.
Don’t you have some loony A.N.S.W.E.R. protest you need to prepare for? After all, the overthrow of the U.S. “empire” certainly could use your brilliant input.
November 23rd, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Randy, your phony and undeserved arrogance doesn’t faze me. I am right about the Democrats helping the Sandinistas, whether or not you are smart enough to know it.
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Gee, Woody, and are you right about who set up the Shah, Pinochet, Bin Laden and Saddam.
What does your dad do, Woody?
Who is he a bag man for?
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:18 pm
What phony right wing preacher man does your family help prop up?
November 24th, 2008 at 12:55 am
Anna. Why are you trying to reason with Woody? This is not about the Democrats or Republicans. It is not about policy or ideology. It is about authority and sexuality.
November 24th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Randy, your phony and undeserved arrogance doesn’t faze me. I am right about the Democrats helping the Sandinistas, whether or not you are smart enough to know it.
Written with all the intellectual rigor of someone sticking their thumbs in their ears and waving their fingers and tongue at me.
No arrogance on my part; just knowledge.
November 24th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Randy, I gave the valid references to Democrats blocking help to the Contras, which helped the Sandinistas. You didn’t counter them except by saying that I’m ignorant. That’s your knowledge?
Anna, it’s none of your business, but my father died of a heart attack when I was young. However, I suspect that the Democrats have kept voting his ballots.
November 24th, 2008 at 7:22 am
You provided an unsourced screed. That’s all. You provide no historical context to anything.
Your ignorance is showing.
November 24th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Yeah, the Borland Amendments must be a mystery to you. My bad.
November 24th, 2008 at 8:46 am
The, ‘Fourteen families, ” oligarchy in El Salvador line was always a bit of an exaggeration, heard all the time in the CISPES mileau esp. when appealing to liberal Christians. (A cite for y’all by a hard core right-wing opponent of CISPEs back then, who dug up a lot of facinating detail, by J. Michael Waller, “The Third Current of Revolution: Inside the North American Front of El Salvador’s Guerrilla War Introduction by Ambassador Edwin G. Corr (who takes issue w/Waller’s politics).
I see Jordy is still credulous. Leninists like the FSLN leadership can never be democratic socialists.
From Google Books. http://books.google.com/books?q=fourteen+families+in+El+Salvador+controlled+the+economy
Understanding Central America: Global Forces, Rebellion, and Change – Page 96
by John A. Booth, Christine J. Wade, Thomas W. Walker – Political Science – 2006 – 285 pages
El Salvador entered the national period with most of its economy built around
… henceforth known (inaccurately) as the “fourteen families,” controlled a …
Limited preview – About this book – Add to my library – More editions
November 24th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Um, Boland not Borland. See Crossroads: Congress, the President, and Central America, 1976-1993 by Cynthia J. Arnson, Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990 by Robert Kagan, and Our Own Backyard: The United States In Central America, 1977-1992 by William M. LeoGrande (Paperback)
November 24th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Recommended by Larry Bensky of Pacifica Radio,
Everybody Had His Own Gringo: The CIA and the Contras by Glenn Garvin of the Miami Herald.
Recommended by Stephen Schwartz,
The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua by Timothy C. Brown (Hardcover – Feb 2001). A revisionist analysis portraying the Contras in a fashion that s/b infuriating to leftist sectarians who never got to the point of viewing the FSLN, FMLN, etc. critically.
November 24th, 2008 at 9:48 am
GM–nooooooo its everyone else engaging Woody as if what he writes has any point.
I am just asking him personal questions for fun…and because he invariably reveals something of himself when I do. GM… I busted Woody ages before you started with your earnestly ironic theraputic posts.
When he posts in relation to the political discussion he vomits forth the same urps in every single post and yet everyone keeps trying to “re educate” him. Its mystifying.
November 24th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Mein gott: The situation in South America is not a mystery.
1. Indigenous population conquered
2. Colonialism
3. Rebellion-Marxism as the lightning rod to form various factions of revolt around
4. Inevitable corruption when you have a population oppressed for generations
5. US and foreign interests in exploiting natural resources
6. Filthy underhanded practices to sabotage efforts for any population to form some semblance of a Democratic government–funding corrupt leaders and groups etc, ad nauseum
7. Result: Oppression and economic shackles still reign
and the “Left” still argues over which acronymous group was funded or run by whom.
This is Africa, Middle East, The Americas.
The details are meaningless.
The discussion should be about innovative SOLUTIONS rather than drawing room debates over how this Leftie group was coopted or not or who sold out whom.
What is going to stop this old cycle of disenfranchised populations being pawns in colonial smash and grab is the implementation of sustainable land and water use practices because everyone’s survival is going to depend on it.
November 24th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Yeah, Boland Amendments. Thanks. Are you the Michael Pugliese who wrote “The Homeowner’s Guide to Mold?”
I briefly looked up some of your references. It would be helpful if you summarized your points about them rather than merely referenced the books. I presume that Larry Bensky of Pacifica Radio doesn’t mingle in the same circles as me.
There is this quote from the Crossroads reference: The Iran-contra committees convened, as Inouye put it, to “examine what happens when the trust which is the lubricant of our system is breached by high officials of our government” and “to find the facts lest we repeat the mistakes.”
What about breaching the trust of the American people by the Democratic Congress aiding communism in Central America and doing everything to halt aid to freedom fighters? Didn’t we learn anything from Cuba?
More from that reference.
I don’t mean to discuss the Contra issue again, but Ortega is where he is today becaue the Democrats refused to properly deal with him under Reagan. (It makes one wonder what Saddam Hussein would be doing today if the Democrats had their way.)
One problem with referencing books written by or recommended by liberals is that liberals explain history in a way to express their particular political points of views rather than objectively.
November 24th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Woody,
I’m aware of what the Boland Amendment was. It was the law and this law was broken by the Reagan administration.
Do you honestly believe that Central America was a pastoral scene out of a Renaissance painting before the Sandinistas came on the scene?
This is the source of your ignorance: you show no awareness of context. Nicaragua was more like a feudal kingdom than a country when Somoza was in power. No amount of military power would have prevented a revolution there. We had no right to support proxy wars in Central America to remove governments we opposed any more than these governments had the right to support a proxy war to remove our government.
If you want to fight Marxism, the most effective would be to create a just and fair society, in which all members regardless of background can participate. Supporting a vile status quo that bleeds its nation dry for an elite few was far too typical in Central America for far too long.
I repeat, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Michael Pugliese,
Regardless of how many families made up the controlling oligarchy in El Salvador, the fact remains that the nation was unjust economically, politically and socially. If an elite feels it needs to kill unarmed bishops, priests, nuns, women and children to protect its interests, IMHO it has forfeited its right to exist.
November 24th, 2008 at 11:24 am
I don’t mean to discuss the Contra issue again, but Ortega is where he is today becaue the Democrats refused to properly deal with him under Reagan.
Oh well since you put it in boldface, that makes it true.
(It makes one wonder what Saddam Hussein would be doing today if the Democrats had their way.)
If you took off your blinders, you would have the sense to ask what Saddam would be doing today if the Reagan administration had not supported him with weapons and credits in the 1980′s.
The self-awareness train passes Woody by and he refuses to get aboard.
November 24th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Reagan was forced to choose between Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini to protect U.S. interests in the mideast at that time and in the war between the countries. You, I suppose, favored Khomeini and, perhaps, would have liked to help Iran develop their nuclear capabilities. I wonder where that would have gone.
But, this is about Ortega, and clearly the Democrats in Congress supported the wrong side, clearly and only for political power.
November 24th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
You, I suppose, favored Khomeini and, perhaps, would have liked to help Iran develop their nuclear capabilities
Proof?
Reagan was forced to choose between Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini to protect U.S. interests in the mideast at that time and in the war between the countries.
No one forced him to do anything. Lots of countries stayed out of it.
But, this is about Ortega, and clearly the Democrats in Congress supported the wrong side, clearly and only for political power.
You brought up Saddam. You also still demonstrate that you don’t know the difference between an opinion and a fact.
November 24th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Randy, your second response of “No one forced him to do anything.” is pretty stupid. Do you think that the President of the U.S. is supposed to do nothing when vital U.S. interests are at stake? Unlike Obama voting present, Reagan made the tough choices, even when the choices weren’t pretty.
It’s pretty stupid, too, to admonish me that something is an opinion and not a fact over a statement that I made as to “what might have been.” Of course, suppositions are opinions. The difference between you and me is that I know the difference between a fact and a informed opinion over something for which historical facts do not exist. It never hurts to think about “what might have happened” when looking back a choices and trying to learn from them.
Proping up Ortega was a bad choice by the Democrats for our nation and a good choice for their power politically. What would have been the noble approach to take?
Please don’t respond. I don’t think that I can take any more of reading such illogical comments from you.
November 24th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
The difference between you and me is that I know the difference between a fact and a informed opinion over something for which historical facts do not exist.
This is what I referred to regarding your opinion masquerading as fact:
clearly the Democrats in Congress supported the wrong side, clearly and only for political power
There are plenty of us who believe that we don’t have the right to support proxy wars in other nations, including the use of . We’re just as patriotic as you and love our country just as much. Some of us are just not comfortable with funding a war conducted by drug dealers. Mores the pity that you are apparently comfortable with that.
As for my not responding, spare me the condescension. Your metier is name calling when you have nothing and, once again, you have nothing.
November 24th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
And just for the record, it is possible to find both Ortega repulsive and the Contras equally repulsive. It is a common and typically lame argument from the right that if ytou oppose one, you support the other.
November 24th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Oh for fuck’s sakes–Woody would just disappear yourself?
Randy Paul why are wasting precious life force having this discussion with Woody?
How can you take someone seriously who makes this sort of statement:
Woody Says:
November 24th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Reagan was forced to choose between Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini to protect U.S. interests in the mideast at that time and in the war between the countries.
Why do you guys engage with him? To hone your debating skills should you find yourself beamed down into a Sarah Palin rally?–and asked to be the opposition speaker?
Every fucking thread is someone trying to state the obvious to Woody.
There is no prize for telling Woody he is an idiot. This is a guy who defends Palin and thinks she’s smart. Is this who you want to demean yourself in conversation with?
C;monnnnnnn. Have some self respect.
The only conversation worth having with Woody is getting him to reveal personal information. I think of him as a lab specimen.
November 24th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
Anna Churchill, you’ve revealed enough personal information about yourself to let us understand why you are as mentally sick as you are.
Anna, you seem a little overly preoccupied about me. Get some professional help–and, quit fantasizing about me. I don’t mean to hurt you, but it would never work out between us.
November 24th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
“Anna Churchill, you’ve revealed enough personal information about yourself to let us understand why you are as mentally sick as you are.”
I’m not really on the best of terms with Anna C, but this comment is rather absurd, even for Woody and that’s obviously quite a statement on its own. Beyond being insulting it simply makes no sense. Anna’s family was involved in activism or were persecuted by blacklisters therefore she is “mentally sick”? I’m going to regret this invitation but perhaps Woody can jump in here and explains what he means. As for the Contras, there’s a very extensive report written in the late 1980′s which is probably avaliable on the web, authored by the predessor of human rigths watch detailing the grave crimes committed by Reagans freedom fighters including targetting of civilians, rape, indiscriminate killing and other forms of kindred barbarity. It makes for graphic and disturbing reading. Perhaps Woody who freely accusses his foes of supporting terrorism would like to go over the reports finding tonight.
ps sergio could you please provide some translation for the gringos and others on this thread?
November 24th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
I apologise in advance for posting this, but there’s a very brilliant, albeit immensely depressing Gideon Levy piece over at Haaretz which cuts against some of the more surreal claims Anna C has made about the Israeli peace camp. It’s a must read
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1039470.html
November 24th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
AC,
That’s my last word on it.
Ahmed,
Don’t you know that if Reagan or another Republican does it, it’s alright?
November 24th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Oh god, Ahmed. I have not made any surreal claims about anything. To you just suggesting an Israeli or Jew has any sympathy or empathy towards the Palestinians is to puncture your hot air balloon of pity and paranoia. You twist and misead anything said.\
You are a one note band, man. Get a fucking life.
I never claimed any expertise about the situation. My only interest has been in the psychological forces that brought it about. You are as boring as Woody and just as stuck in a rut.
I don’t give a fuck about the whole situation, frankly. Because people like you and the intractable breast thumping on the other side to match yours makes me puke. I only feel badly for those on both sides that want the killing the stop and who are the victims of egos, stupidity and hysteria.
And I don’t give a flying fuck about one more talking head writing one more pice of fucking meaningless shit.
You are so caught up in what some asshole writes–one more expose of the horror. Use your fucking imagination. You need someone to tell you people are corrupt, venal and mean? That the situation has corrupted everyone?
Try just thinking for yourself, Ahmed, and imagine some sort of solution–a way out. Deal with reality. Everyone is going to have to compromise or DIE. Get it?
You want to keep fanning the flames and pouring salt on wounds and pointing to the atrocities rather than working with groups who will find some way to put a lid on it and get people out of harms way and begin to gain some traction.
Real guerrilla tactics involve manipulating the other side.
Think outside the box, Ahmed. And don’t sneer at “the Israeli peace camp” You fuck yourself and those you claim to care about when you do.
And don’t lump everyone together. There are people in that “Israeli peace camp” that are holocaust survivors who have had their grandchildren blown up by suicide bombers who SYMPATHIZE with the Palestinians. So fuck you.
YOU and your bourgeois whining and citing of fucking magazine articles all day long is so pathetic.
What is it you want, Ahmed? And why would you waste your time reading anything in Haaretz? Fucking hell.
Think for yourself, man. You love to whip yourself up into a frenzy rather than actually understanding anything.
November 24th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Sorry, Ahmed, and when i accused you of fanning the flames and pouring salt on wounds that goes ditto for the Israeli side that uses that as an excuse to commit its atrocities.
Just want to make it clear that from my point of view two atrocities dont make anything but another atrocity.
November 24th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Woody, compared to you what I have related makes me an aristocrat.
Everyone on this forum has, in one way or another, told you you are a sick fuck.
I only relate you as a sick fuck who doesn’t deserve any respect.
November 24th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
I rather imagine your family tree has a few people in white sheets and pointy hats.
would you care to deny it?
November 24th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
PS by the way, thank you, Ahmed for your left handed support.
And I don’t think of my parents as having undergone “persecution”…and neither did they. They stood up for what they believed in as many did. They were not physically harmed nor did we starve. There was great comraderie and they knew a lot of interesting people.
And Woody’s attempt to tar me with the brush of derrangement because I made the case that my members of my family were patriots–as opposed to the subversive anti American ideological fascism Woody’s people engage in–is just Woody being the little fascist troll that he is.
Having to hide the family album because of all the photos of all the male members of Woody’s family shown at their clan bar mitzvahs must be really humiliating.
November 24th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Anna, I’m not wasting time with you.
November 24th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
A “What Would A Progressive President Say” piece written for WaPo over a year-and-a-half ago by Melody Barnes, who President-elect Obama has appointed as head of his Domestic Policy Council:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/19/AR2007011901125.html
November 24th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Woody. That is the most honest thing you have ever said. You are not wasting time with her because she is a women.
November 24th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Martin is going to win that Senate seat in Georgia…
Wilderness coming to yer back porch Woody.
Quite depressing, these latest reports out of Managua.
Did one of those ‘touring’ junkets in ’89.
Met half of my UC Santa Cruz classmates in the Bluefields.
The children in Nicaragua were way too little.
My best drinking, evah, with wounded female Sandinista officers…
Impressive fly over by the Nicaraguan air force.
Both helicopters.
Ortega is blessed by Chavez.
Fooking losers.
Couldn’t have been what Carlos Fonseca had in mind.
http://tinyurl.com/6zxbk4
November 25th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Holiday words of wisdom for Woody:
Don’t believe everything you think and
Stop changing if you vomit
November 25th, 2008 at 8:05 am
…and just say no to crack:
http://redheadedgoddess.multiply.com/journal/item/210/The_Blessing_of_the_Snow_Fairy
November 25th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Rob Grocholski: Martin is going to win that Senate seat in Georgia.
Martin might steal it, like the Democrats did in the Washington state governor’s race and will do in the Minnesota senate race, but he won’t win it.
I see Jim Martin as the resurrection of Max Cleland, and we don’t need another “yes man” for Democrats in that position when he’s supposed to be representing Georgians.
We’re not used to people actually having to campaign for national office here, so the ads are somewhat of an eye opener. They are awful from both sides and both sides are lying through their teeth.
I predict an easy win for Saxby Chambliss. The black voters went out for Obama, but their turnout in runoffs is historically bad.
November 25th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Heh, Woody, no I haven’t written any books, certainly not ones on household mold. (I usually get queries about whether I am the “Michael Pugliese, ” who played piano on John Cage records or am related to some Argeninian Tango king, Osvaldo Pugliese.’
Re:To Michael Pugliese,
Regardless of how many families made up the controlling oligarchy in El Salvador, the fact remains that the nation was unjust economically, politically and socially. If an elite feels it needs to kill unarmed bishops, priests, nuns, women and children to protect its interests, IMHO it has forfeited its right to exist.
Ah, even though I went to UC Santa Cruz (’81-’85, graduated w/ a B.A. in Sociology) where empiricism, positivism and essentialism were anathmatized, facts do matter. It was/is indeeed an oligarchical class structure in El salvador but, um the LEFTIST text I cited by Booth et. al. and others from that google search (from other leftist academics more than sympatico w/the FDR/FMLN, as I was, being on the periphery of CISPES) say, it was far more than 14 Families.
as to the other comment to me…well read widely from neo-cons like Robert Kagan to neo-marxists like James Dunkerley, you will get a fuller picture/analysis than just reading from a narrow range of Manichean ideologues…which Anna Churchill and Woody both are. Anna strikes me as the type of batty Stalinoids I’ve known who still defend Stalin’s slaughter of the Kulaks and call Trotsky a Fascist. Toodledoodoo.
November 25th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Actually, at that time I relied on Amercias Watch and AI. I read the Massacre atEl Mozote. As it turns out an empirical study after the war clearly showed that 90% of the atrocities were conducted by the government. I certainly hope you don’t want to launch a defense of ARENA or say that my criticism of them needs more nuance . . .
November 25th, 2008 at 11:55 am
“To you just suggesting an Israeli or Jew has any sympathy or empathy towards the Palestinians is to puncture your hot air balloon of pity and paranoia.”
Ridiculous. What a weird point to make after I linked to a brave Israeli journalist who has for years, week after week, covered the very real consequences of the occupation for the lives of Palestinians.
“I never claimed any expertise about the situation”
No you haven’t and it shows. I think that there’s something to be said for the use of moral force and emotion when articulating ones experience and point of view . I listened the other day to Desmond Tutu on Democracy Now, painfully talking about the criminal blockade of Gaza, the real consequences people living there and our own complicity. It was quite a moving experience. On the other hand, Anna is all about vague clinches and pompous shows of emotions, rooting none of her rhetoric in anything substancial
“I don’t give a fuck about the whole situation, frankly”
If this is true can you please stop all the bloviating.
“You love to whip yourself up into a frenzy rather than actually understanding anything.”
If this isn’t a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black
August 23rd, 2009 at 12:05 am
Buy Tamiflu…
…
October 29th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
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January 21st, 2011 at 8:29 am
Channel surfing and caught a line from Corrie “it just felt right. It was either spit it out or choke on it”. Said by a young ginger guy
February 17th, 2011 at 8:21 am
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