Facing up to the Times
Gramsci sees the role of the intellectual to clarify things. The pseudo-intellectual obscures things. David, one of my friends, reckons you get born, you get called an ‘intellectual’ then you die. Perhaps this says more about than the climate of anti-intellectualism than anything I can. (I just play pool a lot). Moreover, Noam Chomsky says “be honest, tell the truth, expose lies”. Yet somehow he accepts the official 9/11 (bin Laden)conspiracy theory over all others and nowhere sees the need for a new 9/11 investigation as though the 9/11 commission was the last word. This exactly the position of left gatekeepers who ought to be ashamed that they have no criticisms of that charade. I also note that the 9/11 truth ‘debunkers’ rely heavily on Nist and Popular Mechanics for to launch into their ‘conspiracy nuts tirades’. This effigy stonewalling is so tired that it only leaves one conclusion - no new investigation needed. What are these left oppositionists afraid of? Finding out that warmongers can commit criminal acts against their ‘own’ people? Why act as Legal aids to the administration.? A diversion from activism is a lame excuse, excusing no activism on the 9/11 issue. An activism that is non exclusive as gay and women rights or getting rid of Trident. It is really just a pathetic circular cop out used by the ‘economistic ‘ trend in the international labour movement, so firmly dealt with by Lenin polemically before the Russian Revolution.
Enough of Chomsky, he represents a dying breed of political bureaucrats. The left is going  the way of Christianity. Today organised religion has lost popularity but more its sway as secular issues become bigger priorities than religious themes, the left is more pitiful in a way. The left has made organisation itself the primary task. Not telling the truth. Lenin said if he had the choice between Marxism and the truth he would choose the truth. It is strange how Party-building can lose it’s raison d’etre.
Although the subprime contagion to the world economy may re-establish an older level of class struggle, traditional socialist themes have been downgraded due to the deindustrialisation of the US and the west in general. Theory became stagnant and guru-fixated.The decline of industrial militancy and the ascendancy of economic relativism have helped make the average wage slaves docile recipients of mass media propaganda in the imperialist countries in particular. If election results are the measure early socialists said they were. ie the general mood of the ‘masses’. Yet this compliance with authority is patchy and it reveals itself in some polls as semi-illusionary. For example, one poll states 36% of Americans want support the impeachment of Bush for war crimes.
Lately he(Bush) has warned of World War III, if nuclear weapon production is allowed to go ahead in Iran. For two and half years, the sounds of war have been beating and Bush has promised to do something before he steps down. The goalposts have moved the nuclear issue to supplying the Iraqi resistance back to the nuclear issue plus threatening Israel.
Iran is no threat to Israel and the president of Iran has been misquoted. It is Israel that has the policy of preemptive strikes against ‘potential’ enemies (demonised countries)such as Syria. It is little wonder the most recent peace talks have been boycotted.
Meanwhile the Iraqi resistance has held a unity conference, with twenty two Sunni and Shiite groups attending. This sort of confidence amidst UK withdrawals is surely a sign that things are far from well for the US in Iraq.
Yet Bush might ‘talk himself ‘ into this great misadventure which is bringing us closer to christian fundamentalist apocalyptic visions by meeting some of his neo-con advisers, who well may have been veered well off track by the Kennebunkport warning. An event that by passed those who cannot countenance false flag operations to use the words of Colin Buchanan as the M.O of the oligarical shadow government. My own guess is that Bush will back down at least  in this instance. There is much speculation. Nothing seems to be going right for Bush since the defeat of Israel in the Lebanon, and lack of cooperation by Arabs in the latest peace initiative is still to penetrate the US Admin’s Psyche and I think it will make some play in this direction if it can.
It is beginning to look as though Bush might be pushing war with Iran so far that whoever succeeds him will be in a bad position to back down. Already we have an even nastier version of Bush in Giuliani whose foreign policy advisers are trigger happy hawks par excellence (so to speak). There is Hillary Clinton a very nasty war mongering ’Democrat’.
It is shocking that the two favorite candidates  at this moment in time are both impeachable already. If there were only such a thing as preemptive impeachment.
This wishful thought is extremely unlikely in these fearful and irrational times.
An era despoiled by corporate greed, not only in the arena of oil but that of communication, where cell phone radiation has been introduced without proper independent safety inspection and industry guidelines that are not set in law.
Thomas Paine wrote the ”Age of Reason” in 1795 , in the turmoil of the French revolution and the American war of independence, over 300 years later we have reached the pinnacle of the “Age of Unreason”. We have come near a crossroads that tinkers with Armageddon through war and environmental crisis. Let us hope there will come a time (and we play some part in making it happen) when it will be frowned apon to use the ”embedded wow factor” that dominates economic reporting, that makes positive speculations on utterly negative details or minor ‘achievements’ and plays down crisis. This occurs with war and environmental reports too.
Reason, which was of the Zeitgeist in Paine’s time, in that it caste off feudalism and the divine rights of kings, has to be resurrected and more so the courage to apply it. The new slavishness has to be caste aside with the imagined divine rights of our war criminal leaders
Add comment October 18th, 2007 Edit
