The Left
Make my day
The specifics of Obama’s alleged “move to the center” are complex, but I have to say I’m amused that lefties like Oregon artist Martha Shade, quoted in this NY Times piece, are abandoning Obama for the Green Party. (I say this as someone who voted for Nader in ’96 and ’00.) A person who hangs an “Occupation Is Terrorism” banner
The far left attacks
Via Gene at Harry’s, we find that left extremist John Pilger, an apologist for Palestinian suicide bombers and Hezbollah, a declared supporter of Iraqi insurgent fanatics, is now assailing Barack Obama as a warmonger, an Islamophobe, you name it. I love this bit: An Obama victory will bring intense pressure on the US anti-war and social justice movements to accept
Godard’s judgment
I’d never seen Jean-Luc Godard’s “Weekend” before last night, when I watched it twice, first without David Sterritt’s commentary, then with. It’s funny, the moral authority people still impute to Godard (and his role model Bertolt Brecht) on the subject of politics. The long passages of Maoist cant in “Weekend” are supposed to “get us thinking,” notes Sterritt, and yet
McWhorter on conscious rap
“Why The Roots make cool art, but lousy politics,” goes the headline of John McWhorter’s three-page discourse on “conscious hip-hop.” McWhorter’s a conservative fellow — I mean that literally, he’s a fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute — with a deep appreciation of rap but a contrarian take on the employment market, the prison-industrial complex and so forth. Lots of
Mbeki: “No crisis” in Zimbabwe
South African president Thabo Mbeki worsened his country’s AIDS crisis by clinging to scientifically discredited denialist theories; now he’s worsening Zimbabwe’s political crisis by engaging in denialism again. Robert Mugabe’s refusal to disclose the recent election results — and let’s call this by its proper name, electoral fraud — has been compounded by yet more state terrorism against the MDC
“A soldier of ideas”
It’s nice to start the morning with a hearty good riddance to Fidel Castro, who declares in his resignation that “I only wish to fight as a soldier of ideas.” It was observed in passing on NPR this morning that in Castro’s Cuba, people are forbidden to have Internet connections in their homes. Soldier of ideas? No, Castro is a
China persecutes baby; Galloway unmoved
Human rights advocate Hu Jia was recently jailed by the Chinese government. His wife and newborn daughter are under house arrest. Just a hint of things to come as China turns the screws on dissent in preparation for their whitewash Olympics. But along comes George Galloway, supposed defender of the oppressed, writing under the headline “China’s Olympics Will Light the
Political bits, bytes
~ Seems clear enough that the Clintonistas, not the Obamites, are playing dirty politics at this stage. BET founder Robert L. Johnson, one of the most cynical operators around, has lined up behind Clinton and touched off a firestorm with comments that seemed inteded to smear Obama. Johnson’s unsavory record as a propagandist for Social Security privatization, estate tax repeal