Oct 02 2007

Looking For Allies

At Talk Left, Miss Devore wrote in response to a comment pooh poohing not funding the Iraq Debacle:

great idea

let’s just accept we have to continue a criminal pre-emptive war, whereby we are visiting unimaginable suffering upon people. let’s just say it’s an out-of-control frat party. ok, mebbe a million dead, another 2M displaced, an entire country trashed.

and you worry about Pelosi being fragged?

You don’t seem to get the arrogance.

the Senate supported partitioning Iraq.

you go and sit on some other country telling you what your bidness should be.

At pff, sabrina wrote:

. . . If ending the war is, as he claims, his primary reason for being involved, he could have joined forces with all the other blogs who really were working for the same thing, and saying the same things he was. . . . I would join forces with anyone (with the exception of a very few) and set aside all  former feelings about them temporarily, if together we could force this govenrment to stop this war. . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) So would I. I ask both of them what they suggest we can do. I am prepared to work with anyone to try and end the Iraq Debacle. I’ll be reading both of them where they write for suggestions.

I hope they see this diary and respond with their best ideas.

129 comments

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    • Armando on October 2, 2007 at 04:28
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    I hope it is seen as such.

  2. This is exactly what I was just talking about!

    Good on ya, A, good on ya.

  3. can we invite Ms. D back? what if there is something about the chemistry and conflct between the two of you that could shake this loose in a way others have been unable to do

    could you do it? put aside the old hostilities and work it?

    could you?

  4. strange bedfellows and getting up with fleas and making friends with the enemies of your enemies….very exciting.  😉

    but in all seriousness, i feel your frustration.  and it is more than a little hypocritical of people who cant get along with words on a screen to hope to affect a peaceful resolution of more concrete conflict…

    all i can offer is blessings on your endeavor…unless you want me to stop speaking to you and then ally with you….for practice 😉  (sorry, im committed to ending the occupation, but i just cant blather about you all over the internet…i have a life.)

  5. What about ANSWER?

    • Armando on October 2, 2007 at 05:15
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    As we read each other at different blogs, which is fine really:

    it seems he doesn’t understand

    my position. my remark was in response to another commenter at Talk Left saying that we were doing harm to Pelosi by trying to push de-funding. I totally support de-funding. And impeachment!

    and, fwiw–many of my comments have been stricken from Talk Left. Why would I want to return to a blog (DunkinDharma) that banned me for sticking up for myself? Like I am going to make some agreement to follow their rules? Besides, I hate the ponyboy shit and Notprofoundkitty’s bad writing. pinche’s fine with me, but melvin left; the latter two can be found elsewhere.

    My response. It is because I understood Miss Devore to be in favor of defunding that I identify her as a potential ally on that issue.

    An aside – it is true that her comments violative of the rules of Talk Left were deleted.

    As for the rest, I do not see the point in attacking each other on this point.

    If the answer is, at it seems to be, no, we can not be allies on the defunding issue, then I accept her answer and no more need be said about it.

    One last clarification, it is not my place nor do I have the power to invite anyone back on to this blog.

  8. You ain’t stopping shit.

    Reality check in 5 4 3 2 …..

    • Armando on October 2, 2007 at 06:01
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    Link:

    Well…some of us are banned
    so it’s a little hard to post over there.
    So why the hell doesn’t Armando come over here? . . .

    My presence there would distract from any issue I would care to discuss.

    I think it would be not only a waste of time, but counterproductive in the extreme.

    Let’s see who can prove how stridently for not funding we can be.

    I’ll go first – I was for defunding before anyone knew what defunding was. Top that?

  10. …tht if we can come up with 50,000 people willing to be tax refusers, we can bring the government to a standstill over Iraq.

    But no one ever likes my idea.

    • Armando on October 2, 2007 at 08:37
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    Link:

    Allies – we all went to DK looking for allies and what we found was suppression of the spirit that was needed to get things done.

    What to do now. Armando is still invested in the DK ‘model’ of blogging and it has failed, which shouldn’t be a surprise as they threw out all the rebels.

    It would mean starting all over from where we were before DK. Eliminating petty battles, which I never saw before DK. People were serious.  No one was thinking about themselves. If they had been, there would have been differences. But they all had a single goal and that was to stop the war. It didn’t work, but they didn’t stop.

    I remember when emails to Congressmembers actually worked because they didn’t know what to make of this new onslaught from citizens. Had it continued to build, who knows how much effect people could have had. The media would have had to deal with ordinary citizens.

    But DK came along with their forbidden topics, topics that really had people motivated, and their rules and stepped up to the microphone, pushing the ‘rebels’ out of the way. It was the rebel voices that scared them.

    Kos shut them up. At a time when the country needed an army of rebels he formed an army of pragmatists, scared of upsetting Nancy and Harry when they most needed to be scared.

    To gather together a force that would not cater to Politicians again, would be difficult. Politicians are not scared of bloggers anymore.  I still wonder if that was deliberate.

    That, to me, is the harm that was done by DK.  And the acrimony that still emanates from that site. It has spread throughout the blogosphere.

    To put all that aside and push DK out of the way, so that the PEOPLE are the ones who appear on tv, in the newspapwer pulling no punches – kos doesn’t represent the people, but the media has chosen him precisely because of that.

    They demonized the only people who actually got something done, like Cindy Sheehan.  IF they had joined forces with her instead of running her off the blog, that would have been powerful.

    Blogs had the potential to do things like spread information, organize people across the country. I remember how that happened with the world-wide marches against the war before it began.

    That was thrilling because we were talkiing to people in Europe and across the globe. All with a single goal. Over ten million people were on the streets and those who couldn’t be were online talking to them.

    Politicians need to hear a very different message than the one Kos has been sending them. 

    I don’t have any ideas about how to build that up the way it was going again. But I’ll think about it.

    My response – I am not invested in any blogging model anymore. I am committed to istening to anyone who has good ideas on  who has good ideas for pressuring to end the Iraq Debacle.

    I am not sure what to do now either. And I also will keep thinking about it.

  12. Resign from DD immediately in protest of their bannings.

    You are a smart guy, one of the smartest there is on national politics, but you really have never understood the power differentials on the blogs.

  13. Seriously I think there needs to be multiple prongs and I believe in the power of the positive so I’m trying to visualize peace.

    Also I’m thinking that the Dem candidates need to be pressed harder and made to understand that a third party – a peace party – might be the one thing that could derail a certain victory.

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