Blood on Your Hands
Maybe it takes a black-light like they use on the cop shows to tell who really has blood on their hands. Sen. Joe Lieberman thought the invitation to Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia was a mistake "because he comes literally with blood on his hands" , but I think that slimy wretch is drenched in the stuff. I read a letter to the editor in our local paper that says : "Reid, Durban, Pelosi, Murtha, Kerry, Kennedy, Clinton and Schumer , along with the rest of their ilk, have the blood of our soldiers on their hands." He believes himself to be clean, though it sounds as though he might be willing to draw a little of mine when he says : "Before we can defeat our foreign enemies, we must first defeat the enemy within." Remember, Strength Through Unity, Unity Through Faith! Im sure the government in Myanmar is using much the same language to quell dissent, with their own Department of Homeland Security denouncing the "terrorists".
I have written before about complicity, collaboration, collusion, compliance, duplicity,docility, conformity, acquiescence, obedience and passivity. These all describe our Age and yet somehow fail to acknowlege the malice and stupidity which also run rampant. Here is Colombia Pres. Lee Bollinger upbraiding his invited guest, establishing his own credentials for an admiring populace of cows: "Can you tell them (brave US soldiers) and us why Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq by arming Shia militia targeting and killing US troops?" Has the concept of hypocricy totally left the planet? Does he know what his own country is doing in his name?Guiliani can take Saudi Princes on a tour of Ground Zero? Toby Keith can now write anti-war songs? Does consistency have no meaning? Raoul Vaneigem described it as "the poverty of our daily actions." We all have blood on our hands. The question is, what are you going to do about it?
posted by troutsky @ 10:27 AM
14 comments
14 Comments:
If we all have blood on our hands, shouldn't you be working on not having it on yours rather than telling us about the blood on ours. Sometimes your generalizations of shared guilt tend to leave you out so you can pass judgment as an exception to your rule. I think your heart is in the right place and I agree with you on most of the things I can decipher, but your rap seems so full of condescending references to a socialist reading list and its jargon that I often have a hard time finding your original thinking in there.
I say this as a friend, take it or leave it … or tell me what a pompous hypocrite I am and dismiss me as a raging Rand nut!
It is incredible how much capitalists, and bourgeoise politicians care about Kurdish and labor rights in Iran.
Not at all greg, this blog is at least in part about me learning how to write and I appreciate your constructive criticism.If clarity gets lost in the idiom,Im failing and need to work on it but I plead not guilty to condescension.I also want to make clear that i absolutely include myself in this shared resposibility and guilt for failing that responsibility. I do more than some and much less than others to "resist" or refuse but the blood is there, crimes and injustice perpetrated in my name with my tax funding by a system I participate in every day.But I don't know how a Joe Lieberman can live with himself.
Trout,
Thanks for your understanding my comment in the light it was intended, it says loads about your integrity.
The thing I find missing is something I try to do in my rants to keep them relevant beyond individual idiosyncrasies and attitudes is to analyze the genetic level within me that reacts to the subject on a gut level that never heard of seventy-five levels between Karl and Groucho. It helps pierce buzz words and obviate rote defensive maneuvers.
In the same way, I find I no longer can be lied to because I don't care about anything that can be lied about enough to depend on the truth being told me. Now is always an open choice.
The problem is not with having blood on one's hand. A doctor saving a patient has blood on his or her hands as well. The problem is with spilling blood for NOTHING. For example, the Vietnamese Communists fighting a war with United States to prevent capitalist exploitation, only to invite capitalist enterprises 20 years later to Vietnam to set up sweatshops there...
Sonia: Stalinists don't lead wars in colonial countries against capitalism ie. socialism in one country. Vietnam only was a war for national liberation.
OT: Send me an email at my profile. John Peterson has interest in coming to Missoula to speak on Venezuela.
Ren,
Vietnam only was a war for national liberation.
But every Vietnamese who joined the Viet Cong did so believing that there wouldn't be any sweatshops in a Communist Vietnam.
Sonia:
Program of the National Liberation Front of South Viet-Nam
I. Overthrow the camouflaged colonial regime of the American imperialists and the dictatorial power of Ngo Dinh Diem, servant of the Americans, and institute a government of national democratic union.
The present South Vietnamese regime is a camouflaged colonial regime dominated by the Yankees, and the South Vietnamese government is a servile government, implementing faithfully all the policies of the American imperialists. Therefore, this regime must be overthrown and a government of national and democratic union put in its place composed of representatives of all social classes, of all nationalities, of various political parties, of all religions; patriotic, eminent citizens must take over for the people the control of economic, political, social, and cultural interests and thus bring about independence, democracy, well- being, peace, neutrality, and efforts toward the peaceful unification of the country.
II. Institute a largely liberal and democratic regime.
1. Abolish the present constitution of the dictatorial powers of Ngo Dinh Diem, servant of the Americans. Elect a new National Assembly through universal suffrage.
2. Implement essential democratic liberties: freedom of opinion, of press, of movement, of trade-unionism; freedom of religion without any discrimination; and the right of all patriotic organizations of whatever political tendency to carry on normal activities.
3. Proclaim a general amnesty for all political prisoners and the dissolution of concentration camps of all sorts; abolish fascist law 19/59 and all the other antidemocratic laws; authorize the return to the country of all persons persecuted by the American-Diem regime who are now refugees abroad.
4. Interdict all illegal arrests and detentions; prohibit torture; and punish all the Diem bullies who have not repented and who have committed crimes against the people.
III. Establish an independent and sovereign economy, and improve the living conditions of the people.
1. Supress the monopolies imposed by the American imperialists and their servants; establish an independent and sovereign economy and finances in accordance with the national interest; confiscate to the profit of the nation the properties of the American imperialists and their servants.
2. Support the national bourgeoisie in the reconstruction and development of crafts and industry; provide active protection for national products through the suppression of production taxes and the limitation or prohibition of imports that the national economy is capable of producing; reduce custom fees on raw materials and machines.
3. Revitalize agriculture; modernize production, fishing, and cattle raising; help the farmers in putting to the plow unused land and in developing production; protect the crops and guarantee their disposal.
4. Encourage and reinforce economic relations between the city and country, the plain and the mountain regions; develop commercial exchanges with foreign countries, regardless of their political regime, on the basis of equality and mutual interests.
5. Institute a just and rational system of taxation; eliminate harassing penalties.
6. Implement the labor code: prohibition of discharges, of penalties, of ill-treatment of wage earners; improvement of the living conditions of workers and civil servants; imposition of wage scales and protective measures for young apprentices.
7. Organize social welfare: find work for jobless persons; assume the support and protection of orphans, old people, invalids; come to the help of the victims of the Americans and Diemists; organize help for areas hit by bad crops, fires, or natural calamities.
8. Come to the help of displaced persons desiring to return to their native areas and to those who wish to remain permanently in the South; improve their working and living conditions.
9. Prohibit expulsions, spoliation, and compulsory concentration of the population; guarantee job security for the urban and rural working populations.
IV. Reduce land rent; implement agrarian reform with the aim of providing land to the tillers.
1. Reduce land rent; guarantee to the farmers the right to till the soil; guarantee the property right of accession to fallow lands to those who have cultivated them; guarantee property rights to those farmers who have already received land.
2. Dissolve 'prosperity zones' and put an end to recruitment for the camps that are called 'agricultural development centers.' Allow those compatriots who already have been forced into 'prosperity zones, and 'agricultural development centers' to return freely to their own lands.
3. Confiscate the land owned by American imperialists and their servants, and distribute it to poor peasants without any land or with insufficient land; redistribute the communal lands on a just and rational basis.
4. By negotiation and on the basis of fair prices, repurchase for distribution to landless peasant or peasants with insufficient land those surplus lands that the owners of large estates will be made to relinquish if their domain exceeds a certain limit, to be determined in accordance with regional particularities. The farmers who benefit from such land and distribution will both be compelled to make any payment or to submit to any other conditions.
V. Develop a national and democratic culture and education.
1. Combat all forms of culture and education enslaved to Yankee fashions; develop a culture and education that is national, progressive, and at the service of the Fatherland and people.
2. Liquidate illiteracy; increase the number of schools in the fields of general education as well as in those of technical and professional education, in advanced study as well as in other fields; adopt Vietnamese as the vernacular language; reduce the expenses of education and exempt from payment students who are without means; resume the examination system.
3. Promote science and technology and the national letters and arts; encourage and support the intellectuals and artists so as to permit them to develop their talents in the service of national reconstruction.
4. Watch over public health; develop sports and physical education.
VI. Create a national army devoted to the defense of the Fatherland and the people.
1. Establish a national army devoted to the defense of the Fatherland and the people; abolish the system of American military advisers.
2. Abolish the draft system, improve the living conditions of the simple soldiers and guarantee their political rights; put an end to ill- treatment of the military; pay particular attention to the dependents of soldiers without means.
3. Reward officers and soldiers having participated in the struggle against the domination by the Americans and their servants; adopt a policy of clemency toward the former collaborators of the Americans and Diemists guilty of crimes against the people but who have finally repented and are ready to serve the people.
4. Abolish all foreign military bases established on the territory of Viet-Nam.
VII. Guarantee equality between the various minorities and between the two sexes; protect the legitimate interest of foreign citizens established in Viet-Nam and of Vietnamese citizens residing abroad.
1. Implement the right to autonomy of the national minorities: Found autonomous zones in the areas with a minority population, those zones to be an integral part of the Vietnamese nation. Guarantee equality between the various nationalities: each nationality has the right to use and develop its language and writing system, to maintain or to modify freely its mores and customs; abolish the policy of the Americans and Diemists of racial discrimination and forced assimilation. Create conditions permitting the national minorities to reach the general level of progress of the population: development of their economy and culture; formation of cadres of minority nationalities.
2. Establish equality between the two sexes; women shall have equal rights with men from all viewpoints (political, economic, cultural, social, etc.).
3. Protect the legitimate interest of foreign citizens established in Viet-Nam.
4. Defend and take care of the interest of Vietnamese citizens residing abroad.
VIII. Promote a foreign policy of peace and neutrality.
1. Cancel all unequal treaties that infringe upon the sovereignty of the people and that were concluded with other countries by the servants of the Americans.
2. Establish diplomatic relations with all countries, regardless of their political regime, in accordance with the principles of peaceful coexistence adopted at the Bandung Conference.
3. Develop close solidarity with peace-loving nations and neutral countries; develop free relations with the nations of Southeast Asia, in particular with Cambodia and Laos.
4. Stay out of any military bloc; refuse any military alliance with another country.
5. Accept economic aid from any country willing to help us without attaching any conditions to such help.
IX. Re-establish normal relations between the two zones, and prepare for the peaceful reunification of the country.
The peaceful reunification of the country constitutes the dearest desire of all our compatriots throughout the country. The National Liberation Front of South Viet-Nam advocates the peaceful reunification by stages on the basis of negotiations and through the seeking of ways and means in conformity with the interest of the Vietnamese nation.
While awaiting this reunification, the governments of the two zones will, on the basis of negotiations, promise to banish all separatist and warmongering propaganda and not to use force to settle differences between the zones. Commercial and cultural exchanges between the two zones will be implemented the inhabitants of the two zones will be free to move about throughout the country as their family and business interests indicate. The freedom of postal exchanges will be guaranteed.
X. Struggle against all aggressive war; actively defend universal peace.
1. Struggle against all aggressive war and against all forms of imperialist domination; support the national emancipation movements of the various peoples.
2. Banish all warmongering propaganda; demand general disarmament and the prohibition of nuclear weapons; and advocate the utilization of atomic energy for peaceful purposes.
3. Support all movements of struggle for peace, democracy, and social progress throughout the world; contribute actively to the defense of peace in Southeast Asia and in the world.
Ren,
, Program of the National Liberation Front of South Viet-Nam
6. Implement the labor code: prohibition of discharges, of penalties, of ill-treatment of wage earners; improvement of the living conditions of workers and civil servants; imposition of wage scales and protective measures for young apprentices.,
Thanks for proving my point...
All along the Vietnam War, was about the labor code.
Troutsky: Would the president of Columbia University be as snarky to the leaders of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, as was towards Ahmadinejad?
In the 1930s, they had Nazi speakers, and protesters arrested.
With all of Ahmadinejad's reactionary talk, he never mentioned war. He wants a deal.
Sonia makes a valid point about soft power and the hegemonic nature of market relations. Why have soldiers die forcing in a system which a few clever ad men, marketers and PR guys can install bloodlessly? On the other hand,liberation also means having the autonomy to choose a system (even if you choose wrong) rather than have it forced down your throat.My wife spent six weeks in Vietnam last spring and she says it is a successful mixed economy.Waste of blood?
Ren: I believe you are correct about the pragmatic nature of Irans overture, unfortunately Ahmadinejad is the Pat Buchanan of Iran, an intelligent buffoon.
My wife spent six weeks in Vietnam last spring and she says it is a successful mixed economy. Waste of blood?
Strange words coming from someone named Troutsky...
liberation also means having the autonomy to choose a system (even if you choose wrong)
That liberation occured long before a single American soldier set foot in Saigon. Back then, in 1955, South Vietnam has chosen EXACTLY THE SAME SYSTEM that the united Vietnam has today... So yes, it was a waste of blood and the North Vietnamese were entirely responsible for that waste...
It reminds me of that scene from 'Schindler's List' where a Jewish woman engineer tells a Nazi officer that they are building something the wrong way. The Nazi kills her, but then tells the workers: 'build it the way she told you to'...
" unfortunately Ahmadinejad is the Pat Buchanan of Iran, an intelligent buffoon."
Wow. That is quite an insult. I'd really like to see some evidence from outside the filter of the zionist media to support that statement. His politics and his social justice programmes (which he has to submit through the supreme council) would seem to be right up your alley.
The whole gay, women's rights thing is outright BS propaganda being peddled by the warmongers. Iran's real crime is in not submitting to Wall St rape and not submitting to excuse Israel's final solution in Palestine i.e. genocide and expulsion.
Are you sure you are not just buying the middle road here? i.e. I don't support him but....
That's a cop out, Trout. Iran needs all right thinking people's support against the neocon craziness.
Bollinger is a craven pathetic muppet who played a part in the whole Emanuel Goldstein sham.
sonia, what the hell was the US doing there in the first place? the French, Japanese, Chinese? All the same crime.
cringing,I support the Iranian peoples right to self determination but find little to admire in their leaders. Same as in most cases. I think their "democracy" precludes any real autonomy, as does ours.
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