Humboldt Revolution

     I watched the vote go down on CSPAN in the House over the nonbinding Iraq troop redeployment (haha) measure HR 4156.  This was no bipartisan love fest like the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 which offers grants to vigilantes and snitches to find out who among us is the most pissed off about our Homeland Empire. That one passed 411 to 6.  HR 4156 was a real squeaker, sneaking by at the barest level 218 to 203.

      Our very own Blue Dog Mike Thompson got the big debate plum, delivering the final word before the completely assembled House in advance of the vote on 4156. He was a bit nervous but got several good rounds of applause.

     One of his applause winning riffs was his “rebuttal” to his opposite number, a white-haired Republican dude from Florida who scornfully attacked HR 4156 for its lack of substance – with nonbinding timelines that even so left troops and mercenaries all over Iraq. Thompson responded to great applause that if it was so innocuous why were the Republicans so hard-line about it?

      Thompson’s rebuttal deserved his Party’s approval since it killed a record of four birds with one stone.    Number one, he mocked the Republicans for their rigid and suicidal pro-Bush stand that WE ARE WINNING THE WAR, something that us Vietnam era activists heard every couple months for 10 years or so.

      Number two, he defended the fragile egos of the Progressives who were supporting this charade by insisting that there was something after all to HR 4156, if only a tweak of Bush’s Pinocchio-sized nose.  

       Number three, the fact that it was he, Mike Thompson, loyal member of the Blue Dog Caucus, doing the arguing reassured his fellow canines that this tweaking wouldn’t hurt the Empire a bit, honest.

        Number four, he saved face for the Party by handing the left wing anti-war Base (us) a tantalizing symbolic victory.  Just wait, it promised, until the Democrats had 60 Senators and a Lieberman Liberal for President. The Democrats obviously believe they have a real mind fogger here, a Cognitive Dissonance spectacular that will bring us base types dutifully to the polls in 2008. 

        Thompson did manage to get my enthusiastic applause when he  made the point that from the time that Congress knew it would have to withdraw troops from Vietnam until the time it actually did so 21,000 Americans soldiers died. This continues to distinguish him and Democrats like Murtha from the ChickenHawk opposition to whom The Troops are a renewable resource.

           Even Speaker of the House, Nancy Betrayus, made a decent speech, referring to her Oath of Office with a sense of urgency that could have been mistaken for an intention to put Impeachment back on the Dems rotten little table. In fact, an Urban Legend has Nancy B. offering to put Impeachment on the table if she got X number of hand written notes (c/o Cindy fpr Congress, 1260 Mission Blvd/ SF CA 94103). Lots of desperate people are biting on this (I may still drop Nancy a line.)

         I have to admit I haven’t been this involved in a TV vote since as a high school student I watched excitedly with my sister as JFK narrowly lost his VP bid to Estes Kefauver in 1956.   In this case, with a few minutes to go, one of the 5 Republicans who had put the measure at a victorious 218, shifted to NO and as the clock ticked down the handful of Dems who hadn’t voted swelled the NOs among Dems to a big 15. But finally with about 2 minutes to go one of the Dems went into the YES column.  I waited (anxiously?) for one of the Republicans to shift from YES to NO and defeat the measure. (The thrills and chills of parliamentary democracy.)

       Instead of defeat however the Orderly and Responsible Iraq Redeployment Act (sic sic sic) passed barely 218 to 203 with 4 Republicans adding to the winning total and 15 Dems joining the Republican losers.  These NOs included Progressives Kucinich and Pete Stark - with John Lewis sitting this one by voting Present and Julia Carson not voting.  The only staunchly anti-war Republican  -  Ron Paul - voted NO as well -  no doubt, like the Progressives, unable to stomach the cosmetic compromise of it all.   9 Blue Dogs, 3 New Democrats and 2 Democrats without a Caucus joined the Republicans (the math doesn’t quite add up because  Barrow from Georgia belongs to two Caucuses –Blue Dogs and New Democrats!)

            In any case, the narrow “Democratic Party victory” in passing this measure is evidence of the “power” of  the left wing antiwar “base” forcing these Machiavellian heroics.  Quite a feat to bring such unity to what is actually not a party but a coalition.  There are really THREE distinct Democratic Parties disguised as Caucuses: the Blue Dog Republican Lite Party, the Global Zionist New Democrat Party  and the Progressive Democrat American Party.

           It would have been remarkable – if   HR 4156 wasn’t so laughable – to see only 9 out of 46 members of  the Blue Dog Republican Lite Party (the BDRLP)  break ranks to come to the aid of their Empire. It wasn’t that long ago that  just about half of them voted to protect the Emperor and his eavesdropping FISA violations. Another one third supported  his assault on habeas corpus and affirmed his right to torture by voting for the Military Commissions Act.  Larger numbers of  Blue Dogs were no doubt willing to indulge themselves in a bit of uncharacteristic lese-majeste because of  their  realization that the Democratic Party Leadership, to which Thompson seems to have ascended, has the Progressives playing grammar school soccer while the opposition suits up for NFL level football.

     All this goes a long way to explain  Thompson’s otherwise unaccountable behavior as a Progressive Blue Puppy  (voting with the Progs while hanging with the Dogs). His two-faced game is apparently paying off in influence in both directions.   He is able meanwhile to keep providing politically (and commercially) correct pork barrel for the district as well. For our part we here at the base can continue to challenge him Monday mornings at his local offices and by working for anti-war candidates in the primary and in the election. But the careerist mentality of Thompson and his colleagues in the face of rampant fascism demand that we develop strategies of civil resistance.   It’s clearly pointless to pin our hopes on the Progressives whose 70 members (including 24 crossovers from the 41 member Black Caucus) seem motivated by the same fear of The American People, so to speak, that pervades the Democratic Party leadership in general. A clean break with the system a la the Mexican Zapatistas looks more like the answer.    Paul Encimer   Box 162  Piercy CA 05587

As the movement to end the war fires up, our Congressman Thompson
dutifully re-iterated his stand to get out of Iraq sometime. The last date
he picked was Sept. 31, 2006, which symbolically or not, does not exist in
the calendar. Now is the time for him to join his party’s Progressives who
have demanded a 6 month timeline. (Obscenely, this means another 500 dead
American soldiers and another couple hundred thousand Iraqis.) As for
impeachment, the constituents at a Ferndale town meeting early last year
reportedly heard Thompson admit that he would vote for it.
Thompson  has shown a hesitance to really get out front in a
leadership role on the crucial issues of War and Impeachment. This has
caused a Congressional district-wide oversight committee to come into being
with the Jan. 4 demos at his local offices. A crucial demand is that
Thompson spend time during the Feb. recess by scheduling a string of town
meetings in the district, including places like Fort Bragg, Arcata-Eureka,
and Garberville. A few hours spent in a variety of towns fielding questions
and comments from his constituents would set in motion, I believe, a radical
make-over worthy of cable TV.  Thompson might emerge looking a lot more like
Barbara Lee of Berkeley than one of those Blue Dog Dixiecrats he hangs out
with in Congress now.
But perhaps the fundamental need here is a Community Backbone
movement. First we demonstrate our backbone as a community, then we send
some backbone to Congress. We can’t expect more from Congress than we
ourselves are willing to deliver. Jan 27 and Jan.29 would be good days to
show our community backbone, shaking it well in demands for immediate
withdrawal from Iraq and for the Cheney-Bush impeachment.
The hanging of Saddam Hussein makes the impeachment of George Bush a
moral imperative..  Impeachment continues to put fire in the eyes of those
of us who want the current regime brought to justice. If we don’t impeach
Bush or force him to resign, it may take a World Court decades to nail him.
By then he should have passed Clinton in the number of Iraqi deaths he has
caused (Clinton bagged a million, 600,000 of them children.) There will be a
plenitude of other deaths for G-Dub’s docket, too, all on our consciences.
G-Dub’s standing as a war criminal is certainly on a par with that of
Milosevic or Saddam. The litany is lengthy:  aggressive war, falsified
evidence, violations of the law of the land and international law, torture,
arbitrary detention, invasion of privacy, signing statements, Military
courts,  etc. etc.. His buddy Cheney will I think fall faster than Agnew
once a look is taken into the economics of the war. (It would be best to
take the two - Cheney-Bush  -  together as a package so as to insure the
irony of a Congress member - Pelosi - as our next President. But the
important thing is to demand accountability here and now  for real Class A
felonies.)
Such impeachment action might simultaneously preserve and improve the
Constitution. Preserve, because the Presidency needs to be reigned in more
than it did when the radical Republican Reconstructionists shook the throne
of Andrew Johnson. Improve, because impeaching Bush would put a radical
limit on the Imperial Presidency such that it would offer a parliamentary
check on its ability to continue doing evil, much as Jefferson’s impeachment
attempts to clear out the nest of Federalists in the federal judiciary would
have accomplished had it been successful.
Nonetheless, this is not a political crisis, it’s not a moral crisis,
or a constitutional crisis. It’s a fork in the road. The high road is
impeachment/resignation, the low road is accommodation.  We don’t want a
repeat of IranContra where the aging Emperor is let off the hook as he
mumbles that he can’t remember (Gerald Ford set the standard when he claimed
he couldn’t remember instigating the genocide of the E.Timorese.)
In Bush’s case there’s no excuse because the mental problems of this
president have more to do with an enlarged reptile brain than with senility.
G-Dub is still dangerous, very dangerous because the Congress has for so
long given tacit, wink/wink approval to the Imperial Presidency to the point
that Congress members no longer think they can exert the power they have.
The murders of luminaries like the Kennedys and MLK, Wellstone and lesser
lights, makes every House or Senate member think they could be such a
target.  But the Emperor can’t kill the entire Senate can he, like in the
days of Rome? But if it is that serious, perhaps the Congress will at least
act in self-defense   -  if we offer them the protection of a vital street
movement.
Paul Encimer

“Americans haven’t yet discovered the barbed wire at the end of Disneyland,” said an old German leftist, leaving the US for home in 1948.

The billion dollar wall “against the Mexicans” makes it hard to ignore the barbed wall at this point.

The Mexicans call it a new capitalist Berlin Wall.  From this perspective, NAFTA was forced upon us to seal Mexican labor inside Mexico where it can be preyed upon at US’ corporate leisure.

The problem is that there is booming demand for a serf/servant class in the US coupled with an unwillingness to even pay minimum wage for this kind of work.  In order for the corporate elite to have its cake and eat it too, we spend tax money to build an anti-immigration Maginot Line to satisfy a beleagured white male working class.

However, with the bill of rights going, going gone! the wall is also a needed link in a Maximum Security Homeland Prison State. Someday only too soon European and Global news services will feature pictures of machine-gunned US citizens hanging in the barbed wire at the top…trying to get out of the country!