British Legion Poppies

[nomadologist]

Leftists are too wary of being branded conspiracy theorists, deciding that arguing about MSM talking-points/commonsense and baiting 9-11-truthers is "more productive": see http://leninology.blogspot.com/2007/07/ones-divine-incipience.html

Even the copious documentation of CIA involvement in the drug trade is dismissed out of hand as nutty because it doesn't fit with established commonsense narratives -- tell Your Average American Citizen CIA introduced crack into the black community to destroy black radicalism and see what happens. Like asking some IT fatass to join in open class warfare is somehow MORE credible.

I don't even need documentation, I can just ask my uncle Rocco!

 

[Slothrop]

Maybe we should be more concerned about reducing Iraqis from rational sentient beings to piles of ash and viscera while we make non-statements and non-arguments out of hypothetical distinctions ("equally stupid") no one actually made.

Yeah, Tea. Every time you try to actually discuss the situation rather than just shouting OMG AMERICANS IS NAZIS!!!! another Iraqi baby dies.

 

[nomadologist]

Some real zingers in this thread.

Would be cool if some people who disagreed with Gavin, HMLT, Zhao, and me could come up with some documentation proving their point.

KTHNX

 

[Slothrop]

Some real zingers in this thread.

Meh. Shouldn't have got snarky, but it does bother me a lot the way that the left (as it expresses itself around here, and probably even worse as it expresses itself in broadsheets etc) tends to have this 'us and them' double standard, where the people who it's supposed to be defending are considered to be not responsible, products of their environment, innocent victims of capitalism / media brainwashing / whatever whereas all moral responsibility is held by the people it wants to criticize.

And yeah, it's been said before that maybe this sort of thing makes some sense when you're talking to world at large - if only to redress the balance against all the press that tries to tell us that the world would be fucked if it didn't have the US to sort out its problems for it, or that the poor are only poor because they're too lazy to better themselves - but if it becomes a dogma that's applied internally then it clogs up any sort of thinking or proper understanding of the issues.

 

[nomadologist]

Have you ever taken an economics class? Or heard the cliche "money is power"? The vast majority of the wealth holders and thus the power holders exist in the U.S. and allied nations in the first world. This affects the entire world economy and politics around the globe.

If this is not self-evident to people, I probably have nothing to say to them.

 

[nomadologist]

Meh. Shouldn't have got snarky, but it does bother me a lot the way that the left (as it expresses itself around here, and probably even worse as it expresses itself in broadsheets etc) tends to have this 'us and them' double standard, where the people who it's supposed to be defending are considered to be not responsible, products of their environment, innocent victims of capitalism / media brainwashing / whatever whereas all moral responsibility is held by the people it wants to criticize..

Who ever said this??

 

[Gavin]

NB to the Brits: The U.S. has basically nothing you would classify as "left" anywhere near the mainstream. I was going to point this out when Vimothy was on his "press vilifies Israel" tip a few days ago -- maybe this is conventional wisdom in the UK, but it is nowhere near the truth in the U.S. There is no coverage of protests, no left figures get any media time, Israel is almost never criticized, and even when someone like Mearshiemer (hardly a left-winger, the man voted for Bush) gets on TV to promote his book about the Israel lobby, they MUST have Abe Foxman on right afterwards to tarnish him as anti-Semitic.

I don't know what this "responsibility" doctrine is or where it is going -- I place responsibility for the illegal war and occupation of Iraq completely on the shoulders of the US/UK and their lackeys. I do not understand how Iraqis somehow share the blame for this, or somehow deserved it. The fetishization of individual responsibility of the sort like "this Iraqi could have decided not to pick up that AK and aim it at the American helicopter, then he would be alive and could provide for his family" is a red herring designed to distract from more important determining factors, such as there is a GIANT FUCKING WAR in that country for reasons completely unrelated to any individual, Dick Cheney included. I am not interested in making people into perfect victims to prove points, I am not interested in "balancing" the trash that passes for public discourse, I'm interested in pointing out the utter fucking atrocity in the Middle East that somehow manages to disappear when we start pointing fingers. I am not interested in figuring out how Iraqis who get turned to fleshy mush by uranium rounds had it coming. I am interested in stopping it, which doesn't happen until withdrawal of troops.

Not to single you out Slothrop, but a general question: would we take this "fair-n-balanced" approach (exactly what it is, this bullshit "Iraqis are faulty too" line) if we were to look at American slavery? Could we comfortable put responsibility on larger forces or would people complain that we weren't calling attention to slaves who actually WERE savages who needed the discipline of the overseer's whip? You know, removing all responsibility of the slaves -- that would be RACIST!

 

[Slothrop]

Who ever said this??

Look at the language that comes up whenever class in Britain is discussed - there was a thread a while back that started on chavs and ended up on free will. Working class kids who get involved in crime and thereby make it harder for other kids to escape from poverty are Victims and couldn't do anything about it and arguably don't have free will, whereas (say) upper middle class parents who send their kids to private schools to avoid a rough local comp are Guilty and should know better.

Not to single you out Slothrop, but a general question: would we take this "fair-n-balanced" approach (exactly what it is, this bullshit "Iraqis are faulty too" line) if we were to look at American slavery? Could we comfortable put responsibility on larger forces or would people complain that we weren't calling attention to slaves who actually WERE savages who needed the discipline of the overseer's whip? You know, removing all responsibility of the slaves -- that would be RACIST!

In the case of the slaves themselves, it's hard to see how much responsibility they can take for their situation. OTOH, it 's well known that there were black africans who were complicit in the slave trade. Obviously this doesn't absolve white european slave traders, slave owners and the whole web of people profiting from and driving the trade from being basically responsible for the atlantic slave trade, but it'd be bad for our understanding of the actual forces and processes involved if we airbrushed (say) the Oyo Empire out of history or said that they were forced to participate by 'circumstances' whereas white slave traders choose to participate out of greed, just to fit with our BLACKS = VICTIMS, EUROPEANS = PERPETRATORS message.

I know what you mean about the US media - I once lived with an otherwise fairly intelligent and liberal american who simply couldn't see any Israeli actions in the middle east as anything other than their proportionate and reasonable efforts to defend themselves from a bunch of muderous towelheads in the grip of a dangerous and violent cult. It was fucking scary.

 

[Slothrop]

I don't know what this "responsibility" doctrine is or where it is going -- I place responsibility for the illegal war and occupation of Iraq completely on the shoulders of the US/UK and their lackeys.

Yeah, I agree with that.

The fetishization of individual responsibility of the sort like "this Iraqi could have decided not to pick up that AK and aim it at the American helicopter, then he would be alive and could provide for his family" is a red herring designed to distract from more important determining factors, such as there is a GIANT FUCKING WAR in that country for reasons completely unrelated to any individual, Dick Cheney included. I am not interested in making people into perfect victims to prove points, I am not interested in "balancing" the trash that passes for public discourse, I'm interested in pointing out the utter fucking atrocity in the Middle East that somehow manages to disappear when we start pointing fingers.

Does it though? I don't think even Vimothy, let alone myself or Tea or anyone else on this board would argue that it's a fucking horrible situation or suggest that stopping it is anything other than a first priority.

I am interested in stopping it, which doesn't happen until withdrawal of troops.

But will it? If we aren't able to talk about who's killing who and why and whether maybe some of the people doing the killing at the moment are actually taking advantage of the situation (which, yes, America has caused) to start violently advancing their own agenda, how do we know that if american troops pulled out tomorrow the whole situation wouldn't actually get even worse - so America would cause an even bigger bloodbath than they already have.

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

-- tell Your Average American Citizen CIA introduced crack into the black community to destroy black radicalism and see what happens. Like asking some IT fatass to join in open class warfare is somehow MORE credible.

Mario Van Peebles' Panther from 1995 was one of the few films (whether doc or fiction) to properly address that very issue. The rest are here. The film is often broadcast on TV in European countries; what about the US?

[The structural problem of conspiracy theories, including 9/11, and the left's varied responses, will have to, er, wait a while ...]

 

[nomadologist]

Look at the language that comes up whenever class in Britain is discussed - there was a thread a while back that started on chavs and ended up on free will. Working class kids who get involved in crime and thereby make it harder for other kids to escape from poverty are Victims and couldn't do anything about it and arguably don't have free will, whereas (say) upper middle class parents who send their kids to private schools to avoid a rough local comp are Guilty and should know better.

Yes, the rich have more responsibility because they have MORE EDUCATION AND RESOURCES. What is it the Bible says? "To whom much is given, much is required"

EDIT: It's not that the poor don't have free will, it's that their lack of resources, financial and otherwise, LIMITS their mobility and range of choices in life.

 

[nomadologist]

I know what you mean about the US media - I once lived with an otherwise fairly intelligent and liberal american who simply couldn't see any Israeli actions in the middle east as anything other than their proportionate and reasonable efforts to defend themselves from a bunch of muderous towelheads in the grip of a dangerous and violent cult. It was fucking scary.

This is like a vast majority of Americans, as Gavin said.

No, HMLT, they show "New Jack City" instead.

 

[Gavin]

U.S. in Ignoring Dissident Black Cinema SHOCKA!

 

[Mr. Tea]

Maybe we should be more concerned about reducing Iraqis from rational sentient beings to piles of ash and viscera while we make non-statements and non-arguments out of hypothetical distinctions ("equally stupid") no one actually made.

Well what are YOU doing about any of this? I mean YOU, personally? Chained yourself to any railings lately? Gone on a hunger strike?

So what should 'we' do, exactly, about the Iraqis-being-reduced-to-ash-and-viscera business? Bring the troops home so they can just get on with it, presumably...
(cynically, perhaps, I'm starting to think this might well be the best course of action overall.)

 

[Mr. Tea]

"this Iraqi could have decided not to pick up that AK and aim it at the American helicopter, then he would be alive and could provide for his family"

AAAARGGHHH, will you PLEASE stop dogmatically repeating over and over and over again the doctrine that the 'Insurgency' is primarily an armed uprising against the American occupation and realise that most of its victims are themselves IRAQIS, and most of them civilians. Can you please do this? Is it really that hard?
Fucksake.

 

[vimothy]

Gavin and Zhao both have a vision of American power that dwarfs even my own.

(cynically, perhaps, I'm starting to think this might well be the best course of action overall.)

Me too.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Who ever said this??

About two thirds of people who post regularly on here.

 

[nomadologist]

Show me where.

 

[nomadologist]

NB to the Brits: The U.S. has basically nothing you would classify as "left" anywhere near the mainstream. I was going to point this out when Vimothy was on his "press vilifies Israel" tip a few days ago -- maybe this is conventional wisdom in the UK, but it is nowhere near the truth in the U.S. There is no coverage of protests, no left figures get any media time, Israel is almost never criticized, and even when someone like Mearshiemer (hardly a left-winger, the man voted for Bush) gets on TV to promote his book about the Israel lobby, they MUST have Abe Foxman on right afterwards to tarnish him as anti-Semitic.

I don't know what this "responsibility" doctrine is or where it is going -- I place responsibility for the illegal war and occupation of Iraq completely on the shoulders of the US/UK and their lackeys. I do not understand how Iraqis somehow share the blame for this, or somehow deserved it. The fetishization of individual responsibility of the sort like "this Iraqi could have decided not to pick up that AK and aim it at the American helicopter, then he would be alive and could provide for his family" is a red herring designed to distract from more important determining factors, such as there is a GIANT FUCKING WAR in that country for reasons completely unrelated to any individual, Dick Cheney included. I am not interested in making people into perfect victims to prove points, I am not interested in "balancing" the trash that passes for public discourse, I'm interested in pointing out the utter fucking atrocity in the Middle East that somehow manages to disappear when we start pointing fingers. I am not interested in figuring out how Iraqis who get turned to fleshy mush by uranium rounds had it coming. I am interested in stopping it, which doesn't happen until withdrawal of troops.

Not to single you out Slothrop, but a general question: would we take this "fair-n-balanced" approach (exactly what it is, this bullshit "Iraqis are faulty too" line) if we were to look at American slavery? Could we comfortable put responsibility on larger forces or would people complain that we weren't calling attention to slaves who actually WERE savages who needed the discipline of the overseer's whip? You know, removing all responsibility of the slaves -- that would be RACIST!

Gavin, you keep forgetting--them damn terrorists be living over thurrr.

 

[vimothy]

In the case of the slaves themselves, it's hard to see how much responsibility they can take for their situation. OTOH, it 's well known that there were black africans who were complicit in the slave trade. Obviously this doesn't absolve white european slave traders, slave owners and the whole web of people profiting from and driving the trade from being basically responsible for the atlantic slave trade, but it'd be bad for our understanding of the actual forces and processes involved if we airbrushed (say) the Oyo Empire out of history or said that they were forced to participate by 'circumstances' whereas white slave traders choose to participate out of greed, just to fit with our BLACKS = VICTIMS, EUROPEANS = PERPETRATORS message.

OTM