The last main event at the PA Progressive Summit this past weekend was a Senatorial Forum with Senator Arlen Specter and Congressman Joe Sestak.
During the Q&A with Sen. Specter, there was one man who spent the entire time standing with his back to the stage. It was rather obvious, one man standing while the rest of the room was seated. We caught up with the protester, Joe Ferraro, better known to the online world as Joe the Nerd, and got a chance to chat with him about what he was doing and why:
At what point do progressives stop being Democrats’ whipped dogs and start acting like a movement capable of putting the Dems in their proper place as the party of the people? David Sirota wrote today about Obama’s latest call to increase war spending beyond its already ludicrous proportions.
How many of the extreme right-wing and criminal policies of Bush-Cheney has Obama adopted? How many of those extreme right-wing policies has he exceeded? Last month, knowledge that Obama has gone a step further than Bush, authorizing the executive branch to murder American citizens on the flimsiest of rationales. This sh__ has GOT to end.
Yes the Charolette Iserbyte era of dumbing down is over, all hail the Clockwork Orange era. I do agree with the consensus that the most Satanically evil concept of global warming will be re-branded as a job creation effort.
Taking bets on who will place a hold on this nomination. Will it be the usual suspects, especially as to the Veterans Administration and National Security, or will it be another rising star of the “Strong on National Defense” group {just say ‘no’}?
SCOTT: Well, it certainly informs the vision of people around him. It was the neocon vision for the world. Brzezinski was certainly not a neocon, but on this point he sounds very much like them. You know, when [Paul] Wolfowitz and [Lewis “Scooter”] Libby were working for Cheney, when Cheney was secretary of defense back in 1992, they came up with this defense planning guidance draft which was later disowned, but it was the same thing, that we must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role. And then there was a JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] strategic document, Joint Vision 2020, which for all I know is still in force, calling for “full spectrum dominance.” And this is a quote from the document: full spectrum dominance means the ability of US forces operating alone or with our allies to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of military operations. I mean, this talk is just insane, but it is the language of geopolitics, and I think it’s the language that people learn in military schools. And that’s why it’s wrong to think it was just neocons. I’ve written something very recently and I’d like to quote it: all thought is socially conditioned, and at the center of large, highly developed societies, all bureaucratic thought is bureaucratically conditioned. But at the heart of dominant societies, this bureaucratic thinking slowly acquires the features of a dominance mindset, and those conditioned by this mindset come to participate in what I call the war machine. We saw it in Britain. And ironically, you know, when Britain started talking about global dominance, it was Sir Halford Mackinder, and the year was 1919, when Britain was already, after World War I, destined to no longer play the role that it played before. It’s a way, I think, of trying to keep the morale up. And I think that Brzezinski, when he wrote that book in 1997, he was worried that America would not be interested in playing the dominance role. And he, of course, is by background a Pole, for whom the great enemy in the world was Russia. And so he was trying to cheer America on to do things which it’s not capable of doing. His metaphor is The Grand Chessboard, which is, of course, a zero-sum model for world politics. The good sense of geopolitics is the way it’s been talked about by, say, Kissinger, when he says it’s seeking a mode of equilibrium in the world. And that, I think, is [inaudible] I think a better model than a chessboard for the world would be a canoe, an overloaded canoe with some very heavy players and it, and the art of geopolitics is to learn not to capsize the canoe.
JAY: And when you look at President Obama’s own statements during the election campaign when asked about foreign policy, he always rooted himself very clearly in what he said was the tradition of American pragmatic foreign policy, starting with Truman. He even included George Bush senior, Reagan. He never differentiated himself fundamentally, other than with George Bush junior. But the idea, even his opposition to the war in Iraq, had to do with that it was a stupid war that would weaken America’s ability to project power. So if you look at, in terms of Latin America, Afghanistan, his relationship with Russia, in terms of this either change of mindset or traditional, dominant theory of dominance, where do you put him after one year?
SCOTT: Well, as long as he’s trying to look forward to a second term, he’s going to fit into Washington. And I watched Brzezinski’s interview with you-a very good interview, I thought-and I can see how Brzezinski repeatedly said that he’s now no longer inside the system; he’s an outside adviser and remote from the way power decisions are made. I think that’s true. That allows him to be much wiser than he was when he wrote his book or when he had his famous interview with Le Nouvel Observateur in 1998. He is a wise man now, and almost by definition that means he doesn’t have as much influence. The wise are not the people who prevail in Washington. So that Obama, now that he’s at the heart of things, he’s got to live with his joint chiefs, he’s got to live with his Democratic Party. I mean, a lot of us like to think that democracy is the answer, but if we mean by democracy the two-party system that we have, the two-party system is very definitely part of the problem, because he is going to get attacked. If he does anything to pull back from Afghanistan, if he does anything that looks like he’s knuckling under to those outside forces there, he will be jumped on by members of both parties, who are, of course, all elected with the same money from the same big donors. We used to emphasize how the big donors came from the military-industrial complex, but we have to add to that now, having seen what’s happened in the last couple of years, they’ve come also from Wall Street and the big banks. They’re all part of the same -.
We tell ourselves a lot of stories. There’s nothing wrong with that; in fact we need them. But we should always be looking at what the story we’re telling is, and what the underlying stories are.
You see, my goal for DocuDharma is to make it a cool place to hang out. A no pressure zone where you can let it slip on occasion that you’re part of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party without having people get all in your face like you’re a Yankee fan. A virtual Cheers where everyone knows your name Norm! and you can ignore blowhards like Cliff.
Liveblogging is hard, but no harder than on many other platforms. You just have to remember to hit the ‘Refresh’ button on your browser instead of admiring your last bon mot for an hour or two.
On the other hand (appointment blogging) it sucks when you get no feedback from your audience.
Now I don’t seem to have a problem with that so much in part because I don’t care what people think, and also I’m perfectly comfortable expressing my interior dialog (and they called me mad at the institute). I talk to myself all day every day and twice as much on Sundays.
And I watch TV. All the time. I can’t remember the last time I turned it off.
Coming up in GroundHog Month are some major sports events that I think we can enjoy together-
Puppy Bowl, Curling, America’s Cup.
While I’m content to try and provide content myself, I think the Olympics is a little more than I can handle even on steroids and I’d like some volunteers.
Just days after being inaugaurated as America’s 45th President, Sarah Palin has announced that her administration will renew the enhanced interrogation programs that began after 9/11.
“We take very, very seriously the threat that potential terrorists expose upon our freedoms, so I decided that we shouldn’t take any options off the table. Now every police station in the country will be equipped to interrogate the thousands and thousands of terrorists that are hiding in our country. Until we know how many terrorists there really are in America my baby Trig and the rest of America can never be really safe, doncha know. And we can never really know until we start interrogating random Americans, who should have nothing to fear if they aren’t involved with the terrorists. Also, just think of all the new jobs this will create, since we are gonna need a lot of new police officers to deal with all the new terrorists we have to find. Today is a great day for freedom.” President Palin said with a wink towards the cameras.
As they say, “just one individual CAN make a difference.”
“Prof. Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law, University of Illinois College of Law, of Champaign, Illinois, U.S.A., has filed a Complaint with the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.), in The Hague, against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleeza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales (the Accused).” The Complaint is based on the “criminal policy and practice of ‘extraordinary renditions’ perpetrated upon about 100 human beings,” which practice represents “Crimes against Humanity” and are “in violation of the Rome Statute establishing the I.C.C.” * (emphasis mine)
Please accept my personal compliments. I have the honor hereby to file with you and the International Criminal Court this Complaint against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice , and Alberto Gonzales (hereinafter referred to as the “Accused”) for their criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition.” This term is really a euphemism for the enforced disappearances of persons, their torture, severe deprivation of their liberty, their violent sexual abuse, and other inhumane acts perpetrated upon these Victims. The Accused have inflicted this criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” upon about one hundred (100) human beings, almost all of whom are Muslims/Arabs/Asians and People of Color. I doubt very seriously that the Accused would have inflicted these criminal practices upon 100 White Judeo-Christian men. . . . .
[Note:A reading of the entirety of the Complaint can be found here.
