tariq ali lecture at marxism 2009

[click image, video, fifty minutes, h/t P U L S E]

A good one... a very good one.

dreams

Seems this morning was my weekly dream dump.

I have a bunch of sleep disorders. The sleep doctor, as you might recall, was grinning at the readout of my night in hell, hooked up to all the electrodes. The deal seems to be that I don't get enough Phase IV and REM sleep, but that they just overtake me when I'm too deprived. Sometimes it's a nap taking me so fast I barely have time to get to my bed, and sometimes it's tacked on to the end of my night's sleep. That's when I dream so much and so hard I can't climb up out of it, and when I get a big chance to sort through my Zen issues.

The first one, the one that I was determined to remember and kept trying to wake up to remember was me living in a beautiful old house with a young paraplegic man and a beautiful young lady something like the naked legs girl image I've posted here a couple times. I would spend mornings on the front porch with the man. We'd be in heavy consultation about everything, but he would have to leave for work and I would have to get up and move part way down the stairs so he could get his wheelchair turned around and then move back up behind him a little as he drove his wheelchair down the long steep stairs to go to work. It was amazing. He had very strong arms and would be clutching these hand brakes to perform the maneuver every morning. His most outstanding feature was that he was incredibly industrious, a tireless worker, indefatigable, but grievously handicapped.

After he'd gone one morning, I went back inside and upstairs toward my room, thinking I was alone, and talking aloud to 86's ghost about all the little bits of his stuff he'd left all over the house, when the girl popped out of her room to ask me why I still carried a torch for 86. I apologized for forgetting she was there, and started in trying to explain to her that I do not carry a torch for him, do not want him back, but trying also at the same time to consider if there were any truth to her notion. I told her he was a big part of my past, of me, and not really something I can just cut out, so I talk to him sometimes, not as in yearning for him, but simply addressing what exists of him, the 86 who can't drink himself to death, who can't be here or gone, and this dream cut off about here. I recall the sharp determination to remember it, and partially awoke several times amid the mad tumble of dream images, still with that determination.

Then I was back in the paradise where I lived in Mendocino for so long. The fat, pathetic, passive-aggressive human beer keg who lived out there too was busy driving all over the property in a little truck, and prospering in his own disheveled way. He greeted me, after all these years away and said there was a message for me on the work bench in his wood shop, and then the phone rang and it was his drippy, asthmatic, passive-aggressive sister wanting legal help, and I somehow, fantastically, agreed to take on the project for her, despite my complete loss of patience for either of them.

This placed me some miles down the coast in the village of Albion and I'd driven somewhat up Albion Ridge Road from the town to take in the view, go for a hike, but also with the objective of making a call for the asthmatic twit's legal problem. There was a hippie parked where I was parking and rummaging about in the back of an old Volvo wagon for artsy craftsy things across the street from a tiny new store. I went over to the store to check it out and found myself talking to an Asian man about my age who was a geologist and regularly hiked all over the area, and stopped to fill his maps with ground-truthed data. He was frankly and avidly coming on to me, and as he was doing so, another much older Asian man began doing the same. I wasn't exactly responding but was globally willing, and didn't want to commit myself to either or both and wanted both and neither left open also. Still there arose this pressure to choose, and I devised this way to seem to choose without choosing. I told the geologist to write down my phone number and this seemed to settle the question of my choice in his mind, and the much older Asian stepped back a bit. I did not write the number, but gave it out loudly so that the much older Asian got it too, except I kept messing up the number and we were running out of paper to write it down on. Every new time stating my phone number for them to hear came with a mixup of some vexing sort or other, and even when I absolutely gave it correctly, it was written down wrong. Finally, I blurted it out perfectly correctly a bunch of times, didn't check to see what got written down, exclaimed about having to see to the twit's legal need and fled.

Many more partial emergences from the wild dreamscapes later, I got up with these two intact. Now I'm going to be considering them for a while, and maybe writing about what I made of them, or what might be made of them, and maybe there will be more right here, or maybe a link to where I've done it, and maybe not. I don't know yet.

el salvador? -- UPDATED

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Flight with ousted Honduran president diverted to El Salvador

Diplomats reach out for solution to Honduras coup
BY LAURA FIGUEROA AND FRANCES ROBLES
5 minutes ago

TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS -- The flight that was carrying ousted President Manuel Zelaya has been diverted to El Salvador because it lacked permission to land, Honduras' top aviation official announced Sunday.

In a nationwide address that interrupted local programming, aviation official Alfredo San Martin said no plane without permission to land would be allowed to touch down in any Honduran airport. If heads of state are aboard, he said, they should request permission before coming.

''In that sense, the information we have up to this moment... is that plane that transported the citizen Manuel Zelaya has been redirected to the Republic of El Salvador,'' he said.

The president of the United Nations joined the desposed president as he attempted to return to his country a week after military soldiers removed him from office in the early morning hours.

Zelaya will return to Tegucigalpa Sunday afternoon with U.N. General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto and an envoy of other Latin American leaders, he announced at a televised press conference held outside of the home of the Ecuadorean ambassador to the U.S. in Washington D.C.

''I'm going to return to my people,'' Zelaya said in an interview aired on Venezuelan TV station TeleSur.

The return trip was scheduled despite the fact that Honduras' new government has vowed to prevent Zelaya's plane from landing. Should he enter the country, authorities have promised to promptly arrest him.

''I think that if 1,000 heads of state are accompanying him, if those people are not invited to this country as heads of state, then they are simple citizens and they have to respect Honduran laws,'' said Ramón Custodio López, the nation's human rights ombudsman. ``If a plane of any nationality tries to land here, no matter who is aboard, if they do not have permission to land, they cannot land.''

Security around Tegucigalpa's airport was beefed up with military guards blocking off the area, as helicopters fly overhead. American Airlines, Taca, and Delta all suspended flights to and from the country. Only Continental continues to offer service.

Zelaya and D'Escoto will head directly to Tegucigalpa, while another plane bound for neighboring El Salvador will carry several Latin American president's including Argentina's Cristina Fernández, Rafael Correa from Ecuador, Fernando Lugo from Paraguay, and José Miguel Insulza, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States.

Custodio stressed that the president of Argentina and the U.N. official were not invited to the country as diplomats or heads of state.

''Honduras has the right as a sovereign state to have its air space respected,'' he said at a press conference held Sunday at the presidential palace.

Carlos Sosa, Honduras' former ambassador to the OAS, said in a press conference Saturday night that Zelaya's flight would land in the Central American nation between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. Honduras is two hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

In a taped messaged aired over local radio and TV stations Saturday, Zelaya urged Hondurans to await his arrival at the airport.

Saturday afternoon more than 10,000 pro-Zelaya supporters marched throughout the streets of the capital city until they arrived at the airport in a show of support. They vowed to return again Sunday when Zelaya was rumored to return.

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UPDATE, 5PM: TRUCKS BLOCK RUNWAY, VIOLENCE ERUPTS IN HONDURAS

[Could have landed at a U.S. Military base and been driven home....]

you probably don't want to hear this

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Maybe the Brits' angle?

Or the NYT's?

seriously major bust of groupthink propaganda machine

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I mean major.

And, recall, now, if you will, please, that Obama has been very approving of it.

How to make some extra cash online....

tomorrow

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Insulza already went to Tegucigalpa and held a press conference and spoke to the congress. Huge pro-Zelaya crowds were in the streets. And Granma has published today's message of non-violence from Zelaya, who will be arriving in Tegucigalpa tomorrow with a plane-load of other dignitaries.

Facts and Opinion

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Crossing the Rubicon in Latin America
Honduran Coup: Target Left?
By ROGER BURBACH

The coup against Manuel Zelaya of Honduras represents a last ditch effort by Honduras’ entrenched economic and political interests to stave off the advance of the new left governments that have taken hold in Latin America over the past decade. As Zelaya proclaimed after being forcibly dumped in Costa Rica: “This is a vicious plot planned by elites. The elites only want to keep the country isolated and in extreme poverty.”

Zelaya should know, since his roots are in the country’s large, land-owning class, having devoted most of his life to agriculture and forestry enterprises that he inherited. He ran for president as the head of the center-right Liberal Party on a fairly conservative platform, promising to be tough on crime and to cut the budget. Inaugurated in January, 2006, he supported the US-backed Central American Free Trade Agreement, which been signed two years earlier, and continued the economic policies of neo-liberalism, privatizing state held enterprises.

But about half way into his four year term, the winds of change blowing from the south caught his imagination, particularly those coming from Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, the largest regional power fronting on the Caribbean. With no petroleum resources, Honduras signed a generous oil subsidy deal with Venezuela, and then last year joined the emergent regional trade bloc, ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. Inspired by Venezuela it now has Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Dominica and Ecuador as members. Simultaneously, Zelaya implemented domestic reform policies, significantly increasing the minimum wage of workers and teachers’ salaries, while stepping up spending in health care and education.

The upshot is that a reform-minded president supported by labor unions and social organizations is now pitted against a mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite that is accustomed to controlling the Supreme Court, as well as congress and the presidency. It is a story often repeated elsewhere in Latin America, with the United States almost always weighing in on the side of the established, entrenched interests.

The Honduran elites were outraged that a member of their class would carry out even modest reforms. They began to portray Zelaya as a demagogue, and demonized Hugo Chavez as trying to take over the country. When Zelaya announced that he would hold a plebiscite on June 28 to see if the country wanted to have the option in the upcoming November presidential elections to vote for the convening of a constituent assembly that would draft a new constitution, the political establishment would have none of it. They incorrectly claimed that Zelaya was trying to stand for re-election. In fact the possibility that a president might serve a second term could only emerge in a new constitution that would not be drafted until well after Zelaya left office in January, 2010. The elites did however have reason to fear a new magna carta, since this is the path that Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador have used to draft new constitutions to begin transforming their countries political, social and economic structures.

The political establishment decided to nip this process in the bud by quashing the plebiscite scheduled for Sunday, June 28. The Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional and the military refused to help distribute the ballots. Then Zelaya fired the head of the army, General Romeo Vasquez, and led workers and social movement activists to seize ballots stored at an air force base for distribution. On Sunday at 6AM, the day of the plebiscite, the military sent a special army unit to seize Zelaya in his pajamas and to deport him to Costa Rica. The next day the Supreme Court levied charges of treason against Zelaya, and the Congress elevated its president, Roberto Micheletti to be the interim president of the country.

The rest of the Americas, and most of the world, reacted with outrage against the coup. The Organization of the Americas convened an emergency session and voted unanimously to call upon the coup makers to restore Zelaya to power. Regional organizations like the Group of Rio also denounced the coup, while the European Economic Union and the World Bank announced that they were suspending economic assistance to Honduras. Even the governments of Alvaro Uribe of Colombia and Felipe Calderon of Mexico felt compelled to denounce the coup.

What explains this virtually unanimous opposition to the coup? Most of Latin America still remembers the dark days of the 1970s and 1980s when three-quarters of the continent’s population fell under military rule. Countries like Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil still bear the scars and traumas of this period, and do not want to contemplate any opening that would allow their militaries to begin interfering once again in the political sphere.

The United States is also opposed to the coup, with President Obama denouncing it, saying it set a “terrible precedent” and that “We do not want to go back to a dark past” in which coups often trumped elections. He added: “We always want to stand with democracy.”

Many observers are suspicious of how solid the US stand against the coup is. Obama given his emphasis on multilateralism, may have had little choice, knowing that his predecessor George W. Bush had roiled Latin America when he rushed to endorse the last coup attempt in the region against Hugo Chavez in October, 2002.

The State Department has taken a more tepid stance. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked if “restoring the constitutional order” in Honduras meant restoring Zelaya, she would not say yes. The New York Times reports that she did not take to the Honduran president when she met him on June 2 at the meeting of the OAS in Tegucigalpa. Zelaya annoyed her by asking her to a private room late at night to have her meet and shake hands with his extended family. In a more formal meeting Zelaya brought up his plans for the referendum on June 28 with US officials taking the position that it was unconstitutional and would inflame the political situation.

Washington also has a very close relationship with the Honduran military, which goes back decades. During the 1980s the US used bases in Honduras to train and arm the Contras, Nicaraguan paramilitaries who became known for their atrocities in their war against the Sandinista government in neighboring Nicaragua. John Negroponte who became the czar of intelligence during the Bush administration after serving as US ambassador to Iraq, first achieved notoriety when he served as US ambassador to Honduras in the early 1980s and granted US approval to death squads run by a special Honduran military unit against domestic opponents.

On Wednesday, the OAS meeting in Washington called for the restoration of Zelaya to office by Saturday, July 4. The head of the OAS, Jose Miguel Insulza of Chile, along with the president of the UN General Assembly Miguel d’Escota of Nicaragua, and Presidents Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and Rafael Correa of Argentina and Ecuador respectively have said they will accompany Zelaya on his return.

But it is doubtful if he will be allowed to return by the coup leaders. For Micheletti and Vasquez, the Rubicon has been crossed and they cannot abandon power without suffering consequences. Any aircraft trying to descend with this list of dignitaries would require air-landing clearance by Honduran authorities and this would likely be denied. The key may well be whether the Obama administration is willing to bring inordinate pressure to bear on its historic allies or use its military air power to impose the deadline for Zelaya’s return. And if the external pressure gets Zelaya back in office, will he be allowed to get the vote for a constituent assembly that the country so badly needs to become a progressive society?

Roger Burbach is the director of the Center for the Study of the Americas (CENSA) and a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and author of The Pinochet Affair.

Not, I think, if we can help it....

independence day house-cooling parties

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liars

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I just got done skimming a propagandist piece of crap from the AP:

Iran and North Korea are defiantly pursuing nuclear weapons programs despite international penalties. Iran has taken a hard and deadly line against postelection protesters, while North Korea fired seven ballistic missiles off its eastern coast on America's Independence Day. The North also has raised the prospect of a long-range missile launch, possibly toward Hawaii. The U.S. has positioned more missile defenses around the state.

And, then, bip-bam, I see this:

No sign Iran seeks nuclear arms: new IAEA head
Fri Jul 3, 2009 2:23pm EDT
By Sylvia Westall

VIENNA (Reuters) - The incoming head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday he did not see any hard evidence Iran was trying to gain the ability to develop nuclear arms.

"I don't see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this," Yukiya Amano told Reuters in his first direct comment on Iran's atomic program since his election, when asked whether he believed Tehran was seeking nuclear weapons capability.

Current International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei said last month it was his "gut feeling" Iran was seeking the ability to produce nuclear arms, if it desired, as an "insurance policy" against perceived threats.

"I'm not going to be a "soft" Director-General or a "tough" Director-General," Amano told Reuters, when asked how he would approach Iran and Syria, both subject to stalled IAEA probes.

Amano, a veteran Japanese diplomat, won over the agency's member states on Friday, including developing countries which had tried to thwart his bid for the politically-sensitive post.

Amano is regarded as a reserved technocrat who would de-politicize the IAEA helm after 12 years of direction by ElBaradei, an outspoken Nobel Peace laureate. He retires in November.

Diplomats say the IAEA cannot afford weak leadership or a governing body polarized between nuclear "have" and "have not" nations at a time of danger to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Amano was only narrowly elected as Director-General on Thursday, but the win was sealed by acclamation at a closed-door meeting of the IAEA's 146 members on Friday.

INDEPENDENCE

"The Director-General of the agency is an independent person. I will continue to be independent from any group, any region," Amano told reporters after the meeting.

Amano got the strongest backing from Western states keen for the IAEA to toughen steps against the spread of nuclear arms. But his rise has worried developing nations who see the non-proliferation maxim being used as an excuse to deny them a fair share of nuclear know-how.

Iran has exploited such tensions, winning sympathy in the developing world, by arguing that to stop uranium enrichment as major world powers demand would violate its sovereignty, stunt its energy development and perpetuate inequality.

The enrichment process can be configured to produce fuel either for nuclear power plants or weapons. Iran insists its programme is only aimed at producing nuclear power.

To produce a nuclear weapon Iran would have to adjust its enrichment plant to yield bomb-ready nuclear fuel and miniaturize the material to fit into a warhead -- steps that could take from six months to a year or more, analysts say. It would also have to kick out IAEA inspectors and leave the NPT.

Amano told reporters he would do his utmost to implement IAEA safeguard agreements in Iran and Syria. He also said there was hope for future agency work in North Korea, which told IAEA inspectors to leave in April and which has since carried out a nuclear test. It fired four short-range missiles on Thursday.

"I expect sincerely that (six-party diplomatic) talks will resume because only dialogue is the way for a solution," Amano said. "Upon the decision of...talks, I expect that the IAEA will be able to play an important role in the verification of nuclear issues in North Korea."

The fascist media is really, really getting on my nerves. And I can't chill with movies for all the crap machine-gunning over Wasillagate. I've asked the neighbor kid to line me up some buckets of ice water to get through the holiday weekend. You probably will start seeing the steam clouds rising any minute now.

notsilvia thinking in iceland

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wasillagate is ruining my movie night

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Gotta keep pausing to make sure the trolls don't get too far outta hand over there.

Mark my words! Don't get caught up in this.

[I sure hope Joaquin Phoenix doesn't go all Michael Jackson on us. Hope it's just a phase. He is a no kidding great actor. And Gwyneth Paltrow doesn't suck as an actress either. Of all the wonderful things there can be about movies, good acting and good writing are the very most important. Other stuff can be wrong, but not those. This was not a great movie, but it was a good one, and they managed to fit it into the stupid under-two-hours kryptonite case without sacrificing anything much. That may be coming up on as important as the acting and writing nowadays.]

attention, attention, attention

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We've got an Israeli sub with nukes through the Suez. We've got Russian troops on the Georgian border. We've got the Western press making it look as though the regime in Iran is shooting protesters. We've got Obummer making cocky-ass, *-like, provocative slurs on Putin just ahead of his trip to Russia. We've got Russia [and China] against the new bullshit sanctions on Iran being discussed.

We have a totally fucked economy, a president who does whatever he's told, smoothly, and we're getting our butts kicked in Afghanistan.

On top of supporting the failing coup in Honduras, which I only hope they don't want badly enough to start another wholesale slaughter.

John Pilger on the coup [first 10 minutes]:



We're right at the point where we have to start playing very nice or go all in.

Which do you suppose they will pick?

So don't just kick back and let yourself be entertained by this Pig Lips melodrama.

i'm getting some relief on my honduras coup fears and frustrations

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Plus, John Pilger on the coup [first 10 minutes]:



These save me having to formulate my notions about what's what and spare me having to be detailed about why I haven't been able to rely on Al Giordano for so much as half a sentence throughout this ordeal. He needs the Obama chip removed from his brain. That's just all there is to it.

basij were shooting in self defense

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Western media just left out the part about the rioters throwing molotov cocktails at them....

Extra Credit

the hero of 'the reality-based community' falls from grace

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It has come to my attention that just about every conservative and wingnut outlet has publicized this, but I haven't found it anywhere in the left-leaning media. Helen hasn't stopped making cogent observations, which we loved and revered and megaphoned across cyberspace when * and Fudd were doing it. Now that it's Obama? Not so much. In fact, not at all!

Have you learned to SPELL "hypocrisy" yet?

Anyone who watched that press briefing knows Helen Thomas was, again, dead bang on it, and I am appalled to report that I didn't find anything from the liberal side of the tubes in the first two Google pages I checked for mention of this interview.

your privacy just ain't happenin'

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For my Iranian readers, the image link is a YouTube on how anyone can hack into your cell phone calls and text messages, including getting all the numbers involved, and here is a Telegraph piece on other ways you are not alone in the 21st Century.

Sorry if you've been having trouble loading this page this morning. The clock link site is down and it doesn't seem to be a short one. So I took off the clock and so the page should load fine now. I will restore it when/if the site comes back up.

bye-bye pig lips

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You just better hope she isn't resigning to go for her crash course in presidenting at the School of the Americas.

Seriously.

'there is no u.n. in israel'

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Short message from Cynthia in Israeli prison....

o'hubris slings insult and receives a courteous reply

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Insult: “It’s important that even as we move forward with President Medvedev that Putin understand that the old cold war approaches to U.S.-Russian relations is outdated — that it’s time to move forward in a different direction. I think Medvedev understands that, I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new."

I think 44's carrying on in the footsteps of his mentor, 43.

oh, here they are

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Notice how the reported stats have shrunk even as we're losing more jobs? Better information:



Banks failing at an alarming clip....

u.s. backing honduran coup, updated

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Welcome RAW STORY visitors. Sorry, if Dragg, my unfriendly cyber-stalker has inconvenienced you. The gig here is that you click the image for the piece I'm referencing, usually. That's not always immediately apparent to some. If you'd like to see what else I have on the Honduran coup, here you go. Thanks for stopping by.

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I'd like to remind you that Uribe -- who got his constitution changed just as Zelaya was attempting to do -- was meeting with the president as he was refusing to meet with Zelaya or any of the other Latin American presidents asking for meetings. I'd like to remind you that while the OAS and UN have made tough resolutions against this coup and withdrawn ambassadors and sanctions start on Saturday if Zelaya is not restored, we have only broken off joint military operations and our ambassador is hosting Mrs. Zelaya. We're "concerned" and we don't recognize the new government, but are not about to be harsh about it or anything.

And Jeremy Scahill would like to remind you why President Zelaya's actions were legal....

Al Jazeera's latest....

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State Department press conference call, making it clear as mud... sounding as though it supports Zelaya, but never saying that, just stuff about constitutional government for Honduras....

[State Department Official] We think that President Zelaya’s decision to postpone his earlier decision to return to Honduras on Thursday was a wise one. It’s important that the OAS be given an opportunity to engage in its diplomatic initiative to try to create a space so that President Zelaya’s return brings with it a peaceful restoration of democratic and constitutional order.

Honestly, Hillary or Joe could just get on a plane with Zelaya and deposit him back where he belongs, and that would be an end to it. If they're calling it a coup, and the OAS and UN are behind Zelaya's reinstatement, there just is NO impediment to doing the right thing.

israeli scumbags

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[Micheletti] expressed concern over the withdrawal of ambassadors from many nations, including all members of the European Union, but noted that Israel and Taiwan have already recognized his government and that 'international backing will grow.'

bubba probably kept it in his pants

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But ends up revealing, again, that he's breaking the laws for nonprofit foundations....

entrenched fascism, death of the constitution

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You should listen to the stultifyingly calm interview at the end of this post, and you should read the piece they talk about near the end of that interview.

oh, just go make another blockbuster and shut up

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must be in the 'optional' column on the presidential job description

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I still try to find ways Obummer is doing well. This was one of them. Of course, California labs have the jump on the rest of the country because the Governator made sure to protect that.