BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?

Subject: RE: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 06:38 PM

DON'T STOP TO REST
(Song for Phil Ochs)
Steve Romanoff

Relax, relax in photographs of places where you've been,
Where nothing new can worry you, you've earned a rest, my friend,
The riot tears and rebel years have vanished with the din,
Of young bureaucrats and slapping backs and prizes they can win,

You've seen them all at city hall, you've seen them in the street,
You've seen them masquerading where the better people meet,
Convinced at last those days are past when they should give a damn
About the anguish in the world, about the future in their hands.

        You've heard the promise of the evil men
        Don't stop to rest or we'll come back again,
        If you remember then you ought to know,
        Don't stop to rest 'cause we've got far to go.

Come all you young-eyed citizens, a story I will tell,
Of how a Great Society was going all to hell,
But children who resembled you were brought up on a war,
Had had their fill of overkill and said they'd fight no more,

It cost them miles of marching and it cost them years of pain,
Before their fathers realized their kids were not insane,
But now we're all executives too busy to recall
The days of righting what was wrong, the words of writing on the wall.

        Chorus

Now don't misunderstand me 'cause I mean just what I say,
Old pledges made in passion still should mean something today,
You've done your bit, don't go and sit behind your groaning board,
And let the scrivener set down, you've given all you could afford.

        Chorus

Subject: RE: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: Bobert
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 06:18 PM

Yup... The Politics of Fear is some powerful stuff... That's why negative ads are so effective... People may say they hate all the negative ads on one hand but then respond to them exactly the way the ad-men knew they would...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: number 6
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 06:11 PM

thanks 999 .... as to the question "I also wonder where the American people were when the right to habeas corpus was removed" ... I'm somewhat bedaffled on that one .... I don't think people are as frightened as they should be ... I think they are angry, I think they are confused, but they are also in a state on numbness. I don't know, but maybe in the not so far off future Americans will wake up some morning find they are suddenly living in a totalitarian state and then they will ask themselves "how did this happen?"

anyway the following link shows that some people are very concerned about the NDA Act, and some are taking action ....

Why I'm Suing Barack Obama

an excerpt from that link .... "Fear is the psychological weapon of choice for totalitarian systems of power. Make the people afraid. Get them to surrender their rights in the name of national security. And then finish off the few who aren't afraid enough. If this law is not revoked we will be no different from any sordid military dictatorship. Its implementation will be a huge leap forward for the corporate oligarchs who plan to continue to plunder the nation and use state and military security to cow the population into submission."

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 05:51 PM

Agreed again, 999. (regarding 911) But I seldom even speak of it on this forum any longer, because there's no use even bothering. Many people here are in extreme denial about the real situation, just like many were in Germany in the 30s. Maybe they're scared. Well, they have good reason to be.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: Bobert
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 05:50 PM

We laying low... No reason to incite another hundred milllion$$$ worth of "Citizens United" hate money into the November election... Our only hope is that a 2nd term Obama will kick out the f'n jambs so we're privately and quietly hoping to just see the man re-elected... No poking as wasps nests right now...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: akenaton
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 05:46 PM

The Tea Party are being villified for "acting against their own interests".......but isn't this the nub of the issue? Isnt it about time we stopped acting selfishly/"in our own interests"?

We have a generation of young people with no place in society and no foreseeable future......and the causeO our fucking government,   who drove our economy into the wall...."in their own interests"

I dont care if the TP are perceived to be left, right, or centre....they are correct in selecting their target....it has all been smoke and mirrors, we have been lied to,robbed and treated like fools yet once again we go through the charade of democracy the phoney battle between left and right, when the real enemy are holed up in Washington and Westminster.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 05:05 PM

Good article, biLL. I don't take issue with any of it, and I also wonder where the American people were when the right to habeas corpus was removed. Where the media was. Where the Congress was. Where the President was. I hope more Americans than Rap read it (I'm thinking that Ian is a Brit/UKer), but I doubt that because those who MIGHT speak out are silenced because they are Democrats. The Tea Partiers at least had the guts to say what's on their mind despite half of them being certifiable. The Left? Show me such a thing anywhere.

When it was noted that 50% of the American congress is composed of millionaires, NO ONE GAVE A SHIT! I noticed people who often post to political threads don't as often, because the chickens are coming home to roost and there is no way they can defend Obama's policies or the EOs and Bills he's signed.

Let me harken back to 9/11. I'd like to know why Building 7 came down.   People have NO answer for that, but some people who should know better simply say, "Where's your tinfoil hat?" Note that doesn't answer the question. Why has that question never been answered is a mystery.

"The Report fails to mention the total collapse of 47-story steel-framed skyscraper Building 7 at 5:20 on the day of the attack."

The 9-11 Commission Report was nothing less than a cover-up, but it did accomplish one thing: It legitimized DHS and greatly empowered FEMA and the newer little darling, ICE. Now it's too late to speak. You can be accused of terrorism and be taken away--and NO judge can order that you be presented to the courts because there IS NO MORE HABEAS CORPUS!

Also, I am puzzled that I can locate no histories or anything about most passengers prior to 9-11.

I don't know what happened 9-11, but the smell of cover-up is all over it.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: gnu
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 03:33 PM

Wall Street failed in 1929. Inflation. Depression. War.

1973 oil crises. Inflation. People losing...

Wait... I've heard this somewhere before...

I am certainly no expert, but I have a gut feeling where all this is going... in poor peoples' guts and whether they have to eat it or take it up the ass it's gonna be rough.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: number 6
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 02:05 PM

Thank you LH ... I too agree that it is an excellent article and your post is right on .... I totally agree with your point #2. That is exactly what is happening as frightening as it is .... the situation in the U.S. is very similiar to Germany in the 1920's and we all know what happened there.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 01:10 PM

Excellent article, 6. I think he is quite right it what he says.

Here is a striking quote from that article:

Fukuyama: Obama had a big opportunity right at the middle of the crisis. That was around the time Newsweek carried the title: "We Are All Socialists Now." Obama's team could have nationalized the banks and then sold them off piecemeal. But their whole view of what is possible and desirable is still very much shaped by the needs of these big banks.

SPIEGEL: In other words, Obama and his influential advisors, like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, are themselves part of the "1 percent" that the Occupy Wall Street movement rails against.

Fukuyama: They are obviously part of the 1 percent. They socialize with these Wall Street gurus. Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein met with Geithner many times during the crisis. Such close contact clearly influences the world view of the White House.


And that is what I have been saying, that the Obama administration is serving the financial elites to the great detriment of the general public. And...the Republicans will do that too if they are elected, unless Ron Paul was elected...and he won't be. (If he was, some assassin in the employ of the financial elites would probably kill him.)

The American Left have, for the most part, utterly lost any real grasp of the situation, because they still imagine, naively, that Obama and the Democratic Party represent them and their liberal values. That is not the case. Neither major party in the USA represents liberal values. Both major parties are compliant tools of the banking and corporate elites who are enriching themselves while bankrupting the general public and the society and destroying the middle class. You can have 2 eventual reactions to this sort of thing if it goes far enough:

1. A socialist or communist populist revolution of the "have-nots" against the "haves".

2. A fascist takeover by the well-armed elites with the unwitting support of many frightened members of the poorer classes who rush to trade their civil rights for "security".

I regard the latter eventuality as far more likely to occur in the USA than the former.

*****

Richard - Fukuyama himself obviously spoke the word "ennunciation" to Der Spiegel. Some individual who transcribed his speech onto a keyboard so that it could appear on an Internet page mispelled the word as "annunciation". I hardly see how that typo impinges in any way on the real substance of the discussion. Typos are very common in these days of keyboard tapping. We all make them ourselves from time to time.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: number 6
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 12:16 PM

some excerpts from that article ...

"If income is relatively evenly distributed and there are not very sharp differences between rich and poor, you have a greater sense of community. You have a greater sense of trust. You do not have parts of the community that have superior access to the political system that they can use to advance their own interests ..."

"What you are going to see in a democracy with a weaker middle class is much more populism, more internal conflict, an inability to resolve distributional issues in an orderly way. In the United States right now, you do have this return of populism. It should be on the left, but actually most of it is on the right. If you talk to Tea Party members about their feelings regarding the government, they are very passionate. They hate the government. They think they have been betrayed by elites."

This is the one that Richard questions ..
"The Tea Party is a genuine grassroots movement, so I do not buy into these conspiracy theories that rich billionaires initiated it. When you go to one of these rallies of Ron Paul supporters, they are very passionate. They all tend to be young, and they have just got this libertarian idea in their minds that the government is really the source of all of our problems. So I think the convictions of Tea Party activists are sincere, they are not manipulated by billionaires. But it is true that they mobilize against their own economic interests and for the interests of elites they should despise. I still do not fully understand why they do that."

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: Musket
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 10:46 AM

Think of three timelines.

Ideology
Your own comfort
Atrophy

The first and second form an X with the last one forming a -

In other words, how bothered were you really? Mammon found the trinkets that flick your switch, and Hey Presto, you don't give a damn.

When's the next pint?

Subject: RE: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 10:24 AM

Who cares, man? We ain't got no kids in this war and we're too old to go and besides the Mercedes needs a tune-up.

Subject: RE: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 10:09 AM

Interesting if rather more based on assertion than analysis. I mistrust "learned" discussions in which "enunciation" is confused with "annunciation", though. Nonetheless, Fukuyama does well to point out that those supporting the Tea Party largely do so to their own harm, even if he is naive not to accept that the financiers of that party do so oust if sinister self-interest.

Subject: BS: Where Is the Uprising from the Left?
From: number 6
Date: 01 Feb 12 - 09:30 AM

A very interesting article from Der Spiegel .....

Where Is the Uprising from the Left?

biLL