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It seems to me that there are essentially two arguments against having gays serve openly in the military. One is undisguised bigotry ("We don't want fags in the army," etc.) The other is: The military's culture is very homophobic (Gee ... I wonder how it got that way?), so it would be best that gays either not serve, or that they "don't tell."

Neither argument is legitimate.

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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President Obama’s speech last night to a large extent relied on the infantilism of political discourse in the United States today. It is striking that for all the time he spent collecting “information” about the situation in Afghanistan, he declined to mention the fact -- widely and openly acknowledged by political elites -- that U.S. interests there go far beyond fighting the Taliban and “extremism.” Central Asia is an oil-rich region, and there are competing interests over various pipelines there, both those that have already been build and those that corporate interests would like to build and/or control. If this were not true, it is highly unlikely we would be sending troops into a country described as one “where empires go to die.” The Taliban was not behind the 9/11 attacks; al-Qaeda was, and the two are not the same. Obama is now every bit as culpable in war crimes as Bush/Cheney are. This is a purely imperialistic enterprise, it will bring more devastation and grief to the Afghan people, and it will result in many more dead, maimed and paralyzed American soldiers who do not deserve that fate.

posted 3 years, 6 months ago
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Scott, it seems to me that I'm being clear enough about the system I believe we should move toward. What you clearly want is a label, a name. You want it compartmentalized. Why is that important? I could say "socialism," but that word is so weighted with the baggage of 20th century disasters in which tyrants and mass murderers declared that they had "implemented" the ideals of Marx that virtually everyone today believes that "socialism" was "tried" in the Soviet Union, or that it exists in China or Cuba, and that, in the case of Russia, it "failed," and so we really don't need to talk about it anymore. Marx would have been as horrified by what happened in Russia as Jesus would be by what modern-day "Christianity" has become. I realize that's a different discussion. But with capitalism on its current trajectory -- not only economically, but politically and ecologically -- I think it is a discussion we ought to be having. No, it is the discussion we ought to be having, but there are obvious difficulties. Not the least of which is that we currently have a large number of people in this country who, amazingly, think that Obama is a "socialist."

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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Scott, thanks for replying. Your response, I think, presupposes a position that I did not take: That it is somehow possible to attain a flawless, perfectly ordered society. Capitalism is a "crapshoot" only to the extent that you will have a few winners and a lot of losers. It is a system where the market is exclusively oriented toward a fundamentally un-democratic goal: that a few make a vast amount of profit, at the expense of the majority that actually creates the wealth. Capitalism is not forever. It must be replaced by a system that is totally oriented toward the actual, objective needs of human beings. It is not necessary that Montsano makes billions of dollars for the few; what is necessary is that everyone have nutritious food to eat, and that it is produced in an ecologically sustainable manner. Call it whatever you like.

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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I hesitate to say anything, as I will invariably seem like the nut who's here to spoil the party, but: I do not see how efforts to end homelessness can be separated from a fight against capitalism, a system in which outrageous inequities, injustices and attacks on democratic rights are necessary ingredients. Certainly the work being done by the participants is sincere and worthy as far as it goes, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. It is time for working people to take the longer view, a historical one, and come to grips with the fact that capitalism -- a system enthusiastically supported by the Obama administration -- does not represent the "end" of history. A better world is possible, and we must take it upon ourselves to find a way toward it. From a historical and ecological point of view, capitalism cannot survive. From a moral point of view, it should not survive.

posted 3 years, 8 months ago
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