The Largest Minority

June 21st, 2009 @ 12:57am by Manila Ryce

When you combine two legends in their respective genres - Communist rapper Boots Riley and anarchist guitarist Tom Morello - you’ve got a dangerous mixture of passion and creativity poised to reclaim American youth culture from the bourgeois entertainment industry and their one dimensional focus group creations. Get Breckin Meyer to play the antagonist for your video and things are guaranteed to get awesomely weird.

After following up his role in Rage Against the Machine with the more mellow Audioslave and a subsequent solo career, Morello once again takes up his beloved role in Street Sweeper as the front and center DJ who uses a guitar rather than turntables. To compliment that foundation, Boots delivers the ammunition like only a genuine rapper who’s perfected his craft can, spitting thoughtfully condensed imagery with every line.

This is the soundtrack of the revolution. Bump it loud enough for the walls of capitalism to come crashing down (lyrics available below the fold).
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June 20th, 2009 @ 6:35am by Manila Ryce

If the submissions from liberal bloggers for the 93rd edition of Carnival of the Liberals is any indication of the health of our so-called “liberal movement” in America, then I’m sad to report we’re in tough shape. Hardly any that I received were critical of the Democratic Party. They were either laughable neo-con diatribes about the Socialist menace of the Obama Administration or lazy articles about Sarah Palin being ridiculous, which is as easy as shooting moose in a barrel. What we were looking for, and what you’ll find below, are honest leftist critiques of the current power structure, which happens to be Democratic at the moment. Unfortunately, most of the liberal blogosphere seems content on kicking their feet up for the next four years.

As a liberal not beholden to any party, it seems to me as though Democrats deal in piecemeal reform while Republicans move in huge world-changing steps. The idea that it’ll take an entire Obama presidency just to undo some of what George Bush fucked up is proof of that. We may take 1 triumphant step forward during a Democratic presidency, but are then pulled back 10 steps during a Republican presidency. Piecemeal reform sedates our fervor, allowing liberals to accept what they can get rather than fight for what they deserve. Marriage equality, single-payer health care, environmental protection, and troop withdrawal are all moral issues which can not be compromised in order to appease conservative and/or corporate interests.

It’s time to demand huge changes in our country. If we can’t do it when the Republican Party is in utter disarray then it will never happen.

• And nothing exemplifies the necessity for some of that classic liberal audacity more than the issue of health care. Guest blogger and fellow potty mouth Allison Kilkenny takes a look at Kennedy’s health care bill, explaining why anyone claiming to be a representative of the American people who then fights against a single-payer system should be severely beaten (and perhaps treated in Canada to dispel their single-payer fears?).
• Next is BuelahMan, who’s ended his long-standing feud with the corporate whores at YouTube to bring us a video commentary from Bill Maher concerning the failings of the corporate whores in the Obama Administration.
• But what about Iran? After all, that’s what all the twits are talking about these days. Well you’re in luck because The Unrepentant Marxist exposes the double standard of Obama’s disapproval of Iran, yet odd approval of other despotic regimes which benefit our capitalist interests in the region.
• Speaking of despotic regimes we’re comfy with, Obama’s speech in Cairo was hailed as a step forward by the Left. Prominent anti-war activists Jeremy Scahill and Anthony Arnove take a look after said speech at how the administration is Rebranding War and Occupation.
• A more recent speech was given by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he finally allowed for the creation of a defenseless and divided Palestinian State with illegal settlements and without East Jerusalem. Hooray! Obama applauded the continued legitimization of annexation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing as a “step forward” for the peace process. I wonder what a step backward looks like. Can you goose-step backwards?
• While we’re on the contradictory pro-war leftist tip, it is with great pleasure that I introduce an article by Cindy Sheehan on After Downing Street regarding “faux-gressive” organizations. Cindy was widely supported by the Left until she started criticizing Democrats for the same crimes she criticized Republicans for. She has since been marginalized by hypocrites who once touted her as a courageous voice of peace.
• And if we’re going to celebrate the idea of millions of people mobilizing for change after years of oppression, we would be remiss not to also mention the struggle of the people of Latin America with an article about the Obama Administration’s attempts to subjugate more brown people and reign in revolution with a continuation of Bush-era policies. Nice dress though Hillary. I bet they can still smell the sulfur.
• If you have the strength to wade through the latest pics of Lindsay Lohan’s tits and apolitical comedy clips, you may find an actual article on The Huffington Post. This is one of them.
• Barney Frank is an Uncle Tom. Oh no he didn’t!
• And last but not least we have a humorous article from The Onion because satire sometimes tells the truth in ways we’re unable to.

This Way to the Egress.

I hope you all enjoyed the carnival ladies and gentlemen. Please consider hosting a Carnival of the Liberals yourself. It’s a fun time, it’ll make you popular, and you’ll start growing hair in weird places.

June 19th, 2009 @ 4:39am by Manila Ryce

Delivering a sermon during Friday prayers at Tehran University, Khamenei backed the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the president after the June 12 election.

“Candidates were put forward into public eye, everyone could judge for themselves … they have identified the person they wanted,” he said.

Khamenei refuted accusations of vote rigging, and insisted the poll was an “absolute and definitive victory”.

Ruling out fraud behind Ahmadinejad’s victory, he said “the Islamic establishment will never manipulate people’s votes and commit treason.

“The legal structures and electoral regulations of this country do not allow vote rigging.”

He said that any doubts concerning the results must be investigated through legal channels and called on supporters of defeated candidates to cease street protests, adding, “otherwise they will be responsible for its consequences, and consequences of any chaos”.

Farzad Agha, an Iranian analyst, told Al Jazeera: “This clearly is a threat to the demonstrators and supporters of the opposition candidates … He is saying that if you continue we will deal with you.”

read more…

June 18th, 2009 @ 3:26am by Guest

More bullshit from the party that convinced Americas the rule of law would be restored if they were given your vote. The picture below may remind you of another wiretapping crook, but this crime is actually a hundred times worse than Watergate.

The chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee came to the defense of the National Security Agency today, saying that the federal agency didn’t commit flagrant abuses in its program to intercept American’s phone calls and emails — but stopped short of denying that the agency had overstepped its bounds or broken the law.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) responded to comments made by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), chair of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, in a New York Times story, that he was ”increasingly troubled by the agency’s handling of domestic communication.”

The Times reported that the NSA’s “recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged,” and that that there are “legal and logistical difficulties” with the Agency’s monitoring of domestic communications.

The NSA has the “ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis,” the Times said — even though the agency’s mandate is to monitor communications between the U.S. and foreign points.

“Some actions are so flagrant that they can’t be accidental,” Holt told the newspaper.

In a hearing today, Sen. Feinstein said: “Everything that I know so far indicates that the thrust of this story — that there are flagrant actions to collect content of this collection [sic] — just simply is not true to the best of my knowledge.”

According to the Associated Press, Holt is standing by his remarks to the Times. His spokesperson, Zach Goldberg, confirmed today that the House Representative had “nothing to add or retract.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) of the Senate Judiciary Committee criticized Attorney General Eric Holder, for refusing to declare that the warrantless wiretapping program started under the Bush administration is against the law. Holder testified before the committee today.

“I was disappointed by Attorney General Holder’s unwillingness to repeat what both he and President Obama had stated in the past – that President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program was illegal,” Feingold said in a statement. “For an administration that has repeatedly stated its intention to restore the rule of law, this episode was a step backward.

“While the Attorney General restated his belief that the program was inconsistent with the FISA statute, his testimony today, and the administration’s delay in withdrawing the Bush Administration’s legal justifications for the program, are troubling,” Feingold said.

Earlier this year, the Justice Department said it had limited the NSA’s practice of monitoring domestic communications.

source

June 16th, 2009 @ 7:30pm by Manila Ryce

I’ve never seen this interview before so props to Phalary for posting it on her own blog.

Tupac was named after Túpac Amaru II, an Incan revolutionary who led a Peruvian uprising against the Spanish. While early pioneers like NWA may have laid the foundation to put Cali on the map, Pac had a revolutionary spirit strong enough to shape the entire personality of the West Coast to this day.

Fallen Rock & Roll legends are often referred to by their last names by fans as a sign of respect. In contrast, the hip-hop community honors its heroes with affectionate abbreviations like “Pac” or “Biggie,” as if they were close family and not unapproachable gods. So great is this undying affection for Pac that the man and the art are intertwined as two parts of one whole. To love hip-hop and not love Tupac is an unforgivable contradiction.

While the media described Tupac’s philosophy of “Thug Life” as a call for criminal conduct, it was actually a philosophy of liberation which encompassed many classically liberal principles such as the right to food, health care, education, and self-defense. Tupac was not satisfied with legitimizing a thieving American power structure by asking it for handouts like a slave. Rather, he advocated standing up to your oppressor as an equal and taking what you are entitled to.

“The tragedy of Tupac is that his untimely passing is representative of too many young black men in this country. If we had lost Malcolm X at 25, we would have lost a hustler nicknamed Detroit Red. If Martin Luther King died at 25, he would’ve been a local Baptist minister who had not yet arrived on the national scene. And if I had left the world at 25, we would have lost a big-band trumpet player and aspiring composer — just a sliver of my eventual life potential.” - Quincy Jones

June 16th, 2009 @ 1:03am by Guest

originally posted at Lenin’s Tomb

I think it’s a consensus on the liberal-left in the US and UK that the Iranian elections were fixed. If they are right, we are watching a bloodless coup turn into a bloody one, as protesters have been beaten and are now being shot at and killed by cops. One of Mousavi’s supporters alleges he was told that a coup was coming. If they are not right, we are still faced with a state busily beating and killing the opposition. The Iranian state is still detaining ‘reformist’ MPs, censoring newspapers, shutting down access to social networking sites (although people are still finding ways to Twitter), and behaving as if for all the world it had every reason to act guiltily. It is not inherently implausible that Ahmadinejad got 63% of the vote, and it has to be shown that there was a fix. The fact that Ahmadinejad used state oil revenues to fund programmes for the poor can be approved or derided, but it arguably gave large numbers of people an interest in voting for Ahmadinejad against his more explicitly neoliberal rival. It gave him a base among some of the working class and bazaaris. Still, it is hardly implausible either that some vote-rigging went on, if only to make the win decisive enough to avoid a run-off.

So, the first question that occurs is, why should the ballots be rigged? This is skated over in a lot of the commentary as if the answer were obvious - Mousavi advocated reform, duh! However, Mousavi is hardly a dangerous candidate for the Iranian ruling class: rather, he represents a powerful faction of it. True, he was once on the ‘Islamic Left’ back in the 1980s, and it was due to the support of the left-leaning majles that he was made prime minister against Khomeini’s preferences. Today, however, he is a centrist allied to the ‘Modern Right’. His solutions to Iran’s problems of accumulation and development are impeccably neoliberal. This is why he got the backing of the old crook, cynic, capitalist and Iran-Contra arms dealer, Hashem Rafsanjani. He supports privatization, and wants to reform Article 44 to assist the process. He supports strong counter-inflationary policies. Of course, he would like to take a slightly less ‘hard line’ with respect to the US. Indeed, like other would-be ‘reform’ candidates, his campaign tried to channel Obama - with some success since his wife, who spearheaded some important reforms in the late 1980s, was cast as the Michelle Obama of the campaign. Still, he isn’t an outsider by any means. His candidacy wasn’t struck off, while those that offend the Council of Guardians usually are. He wasn’t excluded from the debates, as far as I can find out. He wasn’t excluded from the polls, some of which put him ahead, and some behind. Why should he have suddenly become so dangerous that the Iranian state, or powerful sectors within it, would risk a stupid fix? The answer could only be that by tapping a popular demands for reforms, the candidacy might have unleashed a movement that seriously frightened some factions in the ruling class.

The next question is, what can come of the protests? Whatever the motivations of Mousavi, we have an enormous number of people on the streets, with a clear demand for political reform. They took to those streets, reportedly ignoring warnings that the police were carrying live ammunition. This means they are brave, certainly, and also confident in their numbers. Already, Khamenei has ceded the question of investigating the elections, which it seems clear he didn’t want to do. The Iranian state may kill people, but these protesters are already starting to win. They can make gains far beyond the very limited promises that Mousavi made in order to excite progressive layers. (As far as I can tell, Mousavi was mildly critical of some state repression of television channels, and promised to ‘review’ legislation that could be harmful to women - hardly a tribune of the oppressed). So, whatever the truth about the claims of a fix, these protests can do nothing but good. They may, in addition to getting rid of some particularly onerous forms of oppression, open up a space in which the left can operate more freely, and in which the labour movement can assert itself more forcefully.

source

June 14th, 2009 @ 1:09am by Manila Ryce

June 9th, 2009 @ 1:00am by Guest

A CNN headline, reporting Obama’s plans for his June 4 Cairo address, reads “Obama looks to reach the soul of the Muslim world.” Perhaps that captures his intent, but more significant is the content hidden in the rhetorical stance, or more accurately, omitted.

Keeping just to Israel-Palestine — there was nothing substantive about anything else — Obama called on Arabs and Israelis not to ‘point fingers’ at each other or to “see this conflict only from one side or the other.” There is, however, a third side, that of the United States, which has played a decisive role in sustaining the current conflict. Obama gave no indication that its role should change or even be considered.

Those familiar with the history will rationally conclude, then, that Obama will continue in the path of unilateral U.S. rejectionism.

Obama once again praised the Arab Peace Initiative, saying only that Arabs should see it as “an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities.” How should the Obama administration see it? Obama and his advisers are surely aware that the Initiative reiterates the long-standing international consensus calling for a two-state settlement on the international (pre-June ‘67) border, perhaps with “minor and mutual modifications,” to borrow U.S. government usage before it departed sharply from world opinion in the 1970s, vetoing a Security Council resolution backed by the Arab “confrontation states” (Egypt, Iran, Syria), and tacitly by the PLO, with the same essential content as the Arab Peace Initiative except that the latter goes beyond by calling on Arab states to normalize relations with Israel in the context of this political settlement. Obama has called on the Arab states to proceed with normalization, studiously ignoring, however, the crucial political settlement that is its precondition. The Initiative cannot be a “beginning” if the U.S. continues to refuse to accept its core principles, even to acknowledge them.

In the background is the Obama administration’s goal, enunciated most clearly by Senator John Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to forge an alliance of Israel and the “moderate” Arab states against Iran. The term “moderate” has nothing to do with the character of the state, but rather signals its willingness to conform to U.S. demands.

What is Israel to do in return for Arab steps to normalize relations? The strongest position so far enunciated by the Obama administration is that Israel should conform to Phase I of the 2003 Road Map, which states: “Israel freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).” All sides claim to accept the Road Map, overlooking the fact that Israel instantly added 14 reservations that render it inoperable.

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