Who ain't a Salve? or Obamba's Beaten Army of Lovers

[Joseph Tracy]

On Dec 13, 2009, at 4:50 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

> I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this
> same ceremony years ago - "Violence never brings permanent peace. It
> solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated
> ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr.
> King's life's work, I am living testimony to the moral force of
> non-violence. I know there is nothing weak -nothing passive - nothing
> naïve - in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.
>
> But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot
> be guided by their examples alone.
How has he shown that he is the least bit "influenced" by King or  
Gandhi? He has only used them as props and symbols for his own  
political ambition, an ambition that has shown no alignment with the  
courage or truth-telling or care for the oppressed of these men.
> I face the world as it is, and
> cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people.
What a sick joke. Is he really saying Pashtuns with rifles threaten  
the US or Pakistan?
> For
> make no mistake: evil does exist in the world.
Evil is a potential in every human most effectively unleashed by  
warfare. Despite this mass murderer's projected notion that he has  
made Afghanistan safer for civilians , civilian deaths have increased  
on his watch.
> A non-violent movement
> could not have halted Hitler's armies.
Hitler's armies are not in question. We are the aggressors.
> Negotiations cannot convince al
> Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms.
General McCrystal admitted publicly that there are NO Al Quaeda left  
in Afghanistan of any military signifigance. Al Qaeda has left the  
building and Obama is using the same kind of lies Bush used in Iraq.
> To say that force is sometimes
> necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history;
> the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.
Force must be appropriate. Criminals should be treated as criminals  
by police actions.
>
> In light of the Cultural Revolution's horrors, Nixon's meeting with
> Mao appeared inexcusable - and yet it surely helped set China on a
> path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty, and
> connected to open societies. Pope John Paul's engagement with Poland
> created space not just for the Catholic Church, but for labor leaders
> like Lech Walesa. Ronald Reagan's efforts on arms control and embrace
> of perestroika not only improved relations with the Soviet Union, but
> empowered dissidents throughout Eastern Europe. There is no simple
> formula here. But we must try as best we can to balance isolation and
> engagement; pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity
> are advanced over time.
>
> After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the
> hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period
> continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the
> right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because
> they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the
> majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as
> men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities
> do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?
What act of "conscience" bailed out the bankers against the will of  
over 80 percent of American Citizens.
> — in which
> majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency
> is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least
> degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a
> conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects
> afterward.
When has this pathetic pimp  with his Harvard bullshit ever stood for  
conscience? He continues to hold humans who have been exonerated of  
wrongdoing in Federal custody despite the fact that they have been  
tortured. He continues to allow warantless spying, extraordinary  
rendition, drone attacks that kill civilians in direct violation of  
the Geneva accords( read them ; they are easy to understand) . He cut  
deals with  health insurance criminals and turned his back on  the  
majority of americans and doctors asking for single pay universal  
healthcare.

There are people who have given their strength and courage and risked  
their lives for peace. They would use the money for good. This speech  
is  bloody shit.
> It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so
> much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to
> assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough
> said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of
> conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made
> men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the
> well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and
> natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file
> of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys,(5)
> and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars,
> against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences,
> which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation
> of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in
> which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what
> are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the
> service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and
> behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or
> such as it can make a man with its black arts — a mere shadow and
> reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and
> already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral
> accompaniments, though it may be
>
> "Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
>  As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
>  Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
>  O'er the grave where our hero we buried."
>    The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as
> machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the
> militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus,(7) etc. In most cases
> there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral
> sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and
> stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the
> purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a
> lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and
> dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.
> Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and
> office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they
> rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the
> devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots,
> martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with
> their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most
> part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it. A wise man will
> only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be "clay," and "stop a
> hole to keep the wind away,"(8) but leave that office to his dust at
> least: —
> "I am too high-born to be propertied,
>  To be a secondary at control,
>  Or useful serving-man and instrument
>  To any sovereign state throughout the world."
>    He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them
> useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is
> pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.
>     How does it become a man to behave toward this American government
> to-day? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with
> it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as
> my government which is the slave's government also.
>
> What of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a
> broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to,
> weighed, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the
> archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly
> and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who
> ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains
> may order me about- however they may thump and punch me about, I have
> the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else
> is one way or other served in much the same way- either in a physical
> or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is
> passed round, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder-blades,
> and be content.
>
>
>
> Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden
> When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
> and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
> usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
> when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
> reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
> than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
> this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
> beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
> where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
> this man, superb in love and logic, this man
> shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric,
> not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
> but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
> fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.