Sand in My Shorts. Pebbles in My Shoes.
(Photo: Los Angeles Times)
Here's what's bugging me today:
*** Reconsidering The Death Penalty: I'm an abolitionist when it comes to the death penalty. Though, this piece in the L.A, Times, makes me reconsider my position. Wells Fargo bank seizes a $12 million Malibu beach front mansion from fellow crook Bernie Madoff. Then, instead of putting the property up for sale to a gaggle of willing buyers, one of the bank bureaucrats in charge of foreclosed properties apparently decided to keep the place for her own private use! Not content with quietly squatting in a mansion that doesn't belong to her, she throws a Gatsby-like party that includes parking a yacht off the backyard and ferrying her revelers back and forth in a skiff. Not sure what the party was celebrating, perhaps the record national poverty rate. Wells Fargo says it is "investigating." The hell with Wells Fargo. This requires an investigation by the D.A. and maybe the local U.S. Attorney if we can snag these bastards on some sort of federal funds technicality. Question: Is this a capital offense? (no pun intended).
*** Hugo Again: Earlier this week I plinked at Noam Chomsky's hare-brained notion that Venezuela, of all places, is leading the construction of a "peace zone" in Latin America. Now we have confirmation not only that Comandante Chavez is, indeed, buying a new fleet of Russian tanks but that he now also becomes one of only two world leaders to recognize the two Russian puppet states carved out of Georgia by the Mother Country's aggressive invasion last year (the other flunky is Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua who is now in an alliance with local and international religious fundamentalists while still posing as a revolutionary). While we're on the subject, here's a piece that ought to piss off a lot of naive folks. It's all about Chavez and Ortega's ongoing love affair with the Islamic fascists who run Iran and torture and kill all socialists, queers and commies. Before anyone starts slandering the author of the piece as a CIA tool, please note that he was a Latin American correspondent for the most left-wing (and I mean left, not liberal) paper in Germany.
Here's What I Like Today:
*** A Safe and Sane Commemoration of 9/11: Holy Jesus. First time in eight years we can mark the black day of 9/11 without the menacing presence of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, phony Homeland Security alerts and throbbing calls for national arrogance. Reason enough to have voted for Obama. Imagine the theatrics today if John McCain were in the White House. Enough said.
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Here's our NeonTommy piece of the day. A good report on the last minute stab at trying to stop the closure of scores of California state parks by Kim Nowacki.
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September 11th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Happy “Service To Our President” Day, Marc.
September 11th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
Isn’t it the falsely maligned Chomsky who often calls out those who have one standard they use to judge “official enemies” of the US, and another for the good old USA. It’s particularly silly for Marc to dwell on Chavez’s purchase of some Russian tanks while Coop lives in a country which leads the pack, in terms of arms spending, and refuses to sign onto the International court of justice. Since the admin that Marc supports clearly isn’t going to cut defense spending anytime soon, I expect him to soon inform us about how Obama is a threat to world peace! That Chavez, who, IMHO, is leading a genuine and noble project aimed at transforming society, takes steps to ensure that he doesn’t end up like Coops former boss, Allende (it being september 11th), should be applauded.
Marc repeats some bullshit mythology about Russia’s aggression towards Georgia when the reality, which you wont get some the State Department, is far more nuanced. He seems to forget that Georgian president Saakashvili sent Georgian troops into South Ossetia on a murderous rampage, killing hundreds of civilians themselves. This as well as the allegation– backed up by an EU inquiry–states that the war was indeed started by Georgian provocation seems to muddy Marc’s case. Oh well. Nuance and precision go out the window for Marc when he is presented with an opportunity to take gratuitous swipes at Comrade Hugo.
September 11th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Ahmed, OK. I promise not to “dwell” on subjects that make you uncomfortable. And of course you are correct, My living in a sinful country bars me from noticing the sins of others. I will say fie Hail Mary’s and refrain from self-manipulation for ten day to atone for my transgression.
Um. Ahmed………….. I wrote on this blog about just how nuanced, indeed, the Russian Georgian conflict was. The conflict was, as I noted at the time, clearly provoked by Georgia which in turn allowed the Russians an act of agression. But it’s no accident, as they say, comrade, that only TWO buffoons among all the world’s heads of state have recognized these overt Russian puppet states as sovereign countries. Why is that? Is the South African government and the Brazilian government and everyone else in the world as stupid and reactionary and obsessed with Chavez as I am? Or might there be a good reason not to endorse what is effectively foreign occupation by a Russia led by a decidedly reactionary and authoritarian Mr Putin? (Or am I now allowed to criticize HIM either because my own counnrty has a reactionary foreign policy. Indeed, comrade, it might be helpful if you could forward me a topic of permitted and nom-permitted topics to “dwell” upon).
As to Allende. Stay out of it, kid. To be direct, we hardly need you 35 years after the fact to offer your sage advice on how he might have survived. I can affirm you have NO Effin’ Clue as to what the internal conditions were in Chile in 1973 and what might or might have not led to success or failure. All you have are abstract formulas in your head. I will say this much, the Chilean coup and the death of Allende was NOT produced by him being insufficiently authoritarian. Allende had more political wisdom in his little finger than Chavez contains in his entire bloated head.
PLEASE don’t answer. But even within your completely knee-jerk dogmatic logic, I wonder how you make it work in your head that Chavez is somehow safer from a coup by buying the Venezuelan armed forces MORE armament. You really believe in that ideologically constructed world of yours that the officer corps of the Venezuelan military are Bolivarian Socialists and are ready to die and kill for Hugo Chavez? if that’s true, I wonder HOW that miracle happened? That Venezuelan military is the same outfit it has always been, and which has supported every corrupt buttwipe of a president that has come along this century. That Chavez has placated them, and lavished them with records arms purchases, authority, money, and, by the way, a record amount of alloted power in a government that is increaisngly dominated by the military means only that. He has for the moment placated them and purchased their loyalty until, of course, something better comes along.
You for sure have no idea, but Allende actually did some of the same things as Chavez did with the military, though he did NOT militarize his government the way Chavez has. He did, however, in the last months appoint several generals to his cabinet who served as key Ministers of Defense, Interior, transport, mining etc. I remember the starry-eyed like you back then saying this was proof that the Chilean military had been transformed in its world view. I cant tell you the number of dopes who believed that. I can honestly say I was not among those in the government who thought it was such a brilliant move. Guess we were right.
Study the cases of Peru and Bolivia’s “revolutionary” military administrations while ur at it and then tell me how smart Hugo Chavez is to beef up his ‘Boliviarian” military [insert laugh track here].
In any case, it will serve them well whenever they decide that Hugo is too much of a pain in the ass. They will shake him off like a bad case of the fleas. And the Russian tanks will be ready to mow down the Chavistas who will come into the streets to protest. Get real.
September 11th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Kind of reminds me of the time HC said that he “longed to swim on a Bolivian beach.”
I wonder how Chavez reconciles his embrace of the theocracy in Iran with his embrace of the Kirchner regimes in Argentina. These are the same Kirchners who have been pressing for the arrest of Ahmed Vahidi who is believed to be the mastermind of the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires that resulted in the death of 85.
One wonders why the Kirchners return that embrace.
September 11th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
I posted sometime ago on the issue of the constellation of elements that make up the Medusa’s head of problems that get in the way of a so called democratic infrastructure gaining traction in many Latin AMerican countries. Since the same ol arguments from the same limited perspective has reared again here I thought I’d hoist me up a Google on the theme I posited and found this abstract:
Intellectuals, Political Culture and the Roots of the Authoritarian Presidency in Latin America
PAUL C. SONDROL
Copyright 1990 Research Committee on the Structure and Organization of Government of the International Political Science Association
ABSTRACT
Curiously, few studies of the Latin American chief executive lend shape to the corpus of scholarly journals. What does exist concerning the presidency in Latin America consists largely of chapters in country studies covering formal-legal aspects of presidential power. Missing are examinations of the philosophical, intellectual, cultural and historical bases of presidential power. The paucity of research concerning the executive as it relates to the intellectual history and cultural milieu of Latin America is more confounding when it is readily apparent that Latin American pensadores have thought and written extensively about the presidency. Intellectual elites have played a major role as the vanguard of political and social movements in Latin America. This survey explicates and analyzes the intellectual and cultural roots of presidential power in Latin America in order to understand the institution’s authoritarian propensities.
>>>>>>>note the last two words.
I had mentioned months ago about the heady mix of indigenous cultures, colonialism and a Catholicism imposed by mostly Spain being the toxic brew and stew that breeds the penchant for despots…and that little soupcon has been topped off by American hegemony.
Grasping at the straw of Marxism would only be a logical reaction.
Its so tiresome to hear the debate about Chavez from a point of view that does nothing to understand who he is, where he comes from and ditto all the rest.
September 11th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
I also wonder, Marc, if you have ever commented upon the activism of many of the indigenous groups throughout the region.
This is where the hope is.
September 11th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Here’s what’s bugging me today:
*** Reconsidering The Death Penalty: I’m an abolitionist when it comes to the death penalty. Though, this piece in the L.A, Times, makes me reconsider my position. Wells Fargo bank seizes a $12 million Malibu beach front mansion from fellow crook Bernie Madoff. Then, instead of putting the property up for sale to a gaggle of willing buyers, one of the bank bureaucrats in charge of foreclosed properties apparently decided to keep the place for her own private use! Not content with quietly squatting in a mansion that doesn’t belong to her, she throws a Gatsby-like party that includes parking a yacht off the backyard and ferrying her revelers back and forth in a skiff. Not sure what the party was celebrating, perhaps the record national poverty rate. Wells Fargo says it is “investigating.”
LOL
Fall of Rome. Its perfect. Chalmers Johnson…Coming of the End of the American Empire.
September 12th, 2009 at 1:27 am
RANDY: you needn’t wonder why Chavez does anything in particular. If u link up to a live webcast of Venezuelan State TV in any Sunday, Hugo is up there for 3, 4, sometimes 5 hours at a stretch telling ribald jokes, defaming his opponents, singing and explaining to the toiling masses EVERYTHING in his head!
It doesnt cease to amaze me how the lessons of history dont get learned. How so many lefties cling to Chavez as a hero and close their eyes to the horrendously authoritarian experiments of the last 100 years and NOT see the warning signs with Chavez. Instead, it’s all America’s fault, of course. Whatever he does, we do worse so he does no wrong. Brilliant.
The Allende parallel is really priceless…the notion that Allende failed because he was too soft. I love it. The most common refrain I hear from the Idiot Left is that “he should have armed the people.” I often wonder how exactly that would have happened. He was elected within the framework of a constitutional democracy that already had a huge military including a militarized national police. Im curious how he would have armed the people. Should Allende have asked the military to be kind enough to turn their weapons over to the people led by the Socialist and Communist Parties? Or should he have secretly and illegally drained the treasury and ordered a billion dollars in arms, have them shipped to Valparaiso and then secretly distributed to trustworthy leftist militants so they could have been thrown into battle against a 100,000 man military armed with tanks, jets and cannons? Maybe that was his failure. Or perhaps by closing down the right wing media and jailing a few conservative opposition leaders (in violation of the law) the right wing military and CIA would have been frightened out of overthrowing him??????????
You understand Latin America. Please tell me on what friggin” planet do these dogmaticians live? I give up.
Anna: I have written about the indigenous especially in Ecuador. In Chile they have been really hosed. It’s an unbearably racist country where both the military and the succeeding civilian administratons see the Mapuches as some sort of collection of subhumans. Not a pretty sight/
September 12th, 2009 at 6:45 am
Not sure how a thinking adult can buy into Hugo. Just take a gander at some of the clips. Frontline had a great episode on old Hugo.
Sad state of affairs for “the left” when they get behind the likes of Hugo Chavez (or George Galloway, Amy Goodman, etc… a bunch of charlatans).
September 12th, 2009 at 8:30 am
Marc, thanks for following up on my question.
From all accounts– often from the diaries–what fired up Ernesto the most was the plight of the indigenous throughout Latin America.
I am not arguing or defending how things ended up for him only that what drove him–clearly–was a very human feeling. That he was from the more or less upper class, educated, of a certain time and context….what still separated him from the rest was a burning sense of injustice–and his assessment of the US involvement in Latin American certainly has been validated over and over by other academic treatises and condemnations.
Mainstream press or lefty commentators, except Naomi Klein in her huge article for the Observer in 2000, have paid little attention to the Zapatistas and to the efforts by all sorts of indigenous groups in Mexico and elsewhere to counter the subjugation and shitty treatment with grass roots cooperative activities.
All the whitely left does is carp about someone going off the deep end into Marxism and authoritariansim without looking at the genuinely human and constructive efforts that get little help from the chattering classes.
September 12th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Marc, as Chavez is, ethnically, more indigenous than not– it also has a huge impact on his attitudes and actions.
Apparently he went from a mud hut to Military school and learning to be a counter insurgent. With a lot of other influences along the way– not the least of which, I am sure, was a lot of the kind of colonial style racism.
The inherent racism throughout the Latin American countries is a huge hurdle to establishing something worth sticking.
Its a shitty mean racism that I have personally witnessed just in comments by some people I knew …one an Argentinian–very upper class and ditto of a Peruvian. Its worse than the South Africans in its own way.
September 12th, 2009 at 10:38 am
“Its a shitty mean racism….”
But not yours Anna.
September 12th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Anna,
Please don’t attempt to apply some rather sentimental arguments about “indigenous” groups in Latin America. Most indigenous groups are pretty damn reactionary in regards to gender and sexuality and most tend to abide by rigid hierarchies. Nothing to hold up as progressive, most are regressive and rather conservative when looked at honestly.
Marx was in favor of modernization and if you read his texts he did not have kind opinions of any societies that had a hint of feudalism or tribalism. When the myths about indigenous groups are unpacked, be they “sustainability” or egalitarianism, the radicalism fades away. It really is a patronizing First World Pacifica kind of view.
September 12th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
You understand Latin America. Please tell me on what friggin” planet do these dogmaticians live? I give up.
The planet of Dilettanta, I believe.
As for arming the people, anyone who says that should read Ariel Dorfman’s book Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey. The passages where he writes about practicing using a pistol demonstrates the utter futility of that against a Prussian trained military.
September 12th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Alright, let’s make it simple.
Why doesn’t Craven Coop’ interview Chomsky (whom he “knows personally”) — asking him directly: “Why do you feel ‘Venezuela, of all places, is leading the construction of a peace zone in Latin America?’” (a phrasing I doubt Chomsky used).
Then expand the discussion to Venezuela in general.
Post the audio on this site, and let the chips fall where they may (that is, let viewers of this blog decide whether or not NC has much to say on the subject — which I suspect he does).
J
September 12th, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Joe… First of all, I doubt if you can meet my professional fees, so I think I will decline your assignment. Second, I don’t really care what Chomsky’s answer would be. His assertion is a priori absurd. Chomsky’s views on venezuela are readily available through this new web tool called Google. And believe it or not I have other things to do than to do personalized podcasts for an anonymous and insulting commenter.
As I have told others, you want to play here in my living room, all cool and you can be as harsh as you want in your analysis and response to what I write. Call me names, though, and I will kick ur butt out of here. “Got it?”
Randy: Dilettanta, eh? And here I thought it was Uranus. Or more precisely, theirs.
September 13th, 2009 at 1:08 am
You’re right. The notion that “the region has the capacity to unite and form a ‘peace zone’ in which foreign militaries are forbidden to operate” is a priori absurd. How could anyone even consider the region sans extensive US military presence and influence?
(Chomsky reportedly mentions “the region” — not Venezuela.)
But what were dealing with here is an offhand remark (reported indirectly). Chomsky has actually written little on Venezuela specifically, as a Google (or Bling, or Clusty, or Ask) search reveals.
The only thing absurd here is to not “really care” what Chomsky thinks. He knows more about the history of US imperialism in the region (for example) than even you.
His latest (very brief) piece is on Bolivia.
For starters, why don’t you address/critique it?
J
September 13th, 2009 at 8:53 am
GM your assumption about what I think about indigenous groups is as stupid as you generally are…
The one thing they have is a sense of community which allows them to organize which many have…organically in many parts of the world.
And since when doesnt white so called European influenced society not exhibit racial, gender, caste, class bias and tribalism. what planet have you been on?
Effectiveness to change anything comes when people have the ability to form networks of support.
Most all societies are full of shit by our new pretty sausage grinder standards of what is democratic and just.
No time here to go into the not so subtle manifestations of how warped both American, British and often European cultures are and how the tribalism still manifests…been to a town hall meeting on health care lately?
A Sarah Palin rally?
And by the way everyone in the First World is scrambling like mad to get back to “community” style living…regionalism…dumping the suburbs which they say will become the new ghettos as those that can will flock to live in better design dense settlements with town centers or village like sensibility. All of what Schumacher wrote about is now being taken up.
What Marx has to do with your argument in the context of my mentioning him I dont know. I only said given the horrors and exploitation that Che saw on his own continent and given the horrors of the industrial revolution that drove Marx to write what he did and the manifestation of those horrors as they overtook the 20th Century Marxism was an idea that people grabbed at.
Ideologies come and go. We now understand things have to be on a human scale and the breaking things down to communities where people have some ability to be accountable is what matters.
This is being done all over America in ways you obviously are clueless about. Spontaneously, organically. In places like Kansas…
September 13th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
“Most indigenous groups are pretty damn reactionary…”. Name names. The indigenous groups in the Americas were fairly advanced at the time Europe came into contact with them. There is no reason to assume that their traditional culture iis not still respected to some extent. For example, there were matriarchal societies that had loose federal style arrangements with their neighbors. Try the book ’1491′ if you’re interested. I’m not aware of Zapitista society being reactionary.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:33 am
I remember when you guys were insulting me and trying to ridicule me at this site many months ago when I raised the reality of Hugo Chavez teaming up with Russia militarily and buying weapons from them. Oh, it’s just a navy exercise, that’s all. The left even celebrated his “election” as an in-your-face slap at Bush.
Now, who was right?