Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

Guns and poses.

Rumor has it that the assault weapons ban is all but dead. There’s a surprise. It has, after all, been more than a stretch of weeks since the Newtown CT children’s massacre, so all of the will has drained out of our ever-reliable legislators. The rabid voices of reaction have once again gained the foreground and are pulling out all of the stops to keep open their option on tactical nuclear arms … or whatever military weapon system will next be successfully marketed to bullet-headed Americans. We knew we had a problem after Newtown, but I don’t think we realized just how deep that problem is.

Repeat offenderAssault weapons, high-capacity ammunition magazines, and a lack of regulatory oversight over who can purchase a gun and who can’t – these are all crucial components of this national crisis. But they are not the core of the problem. Our problem is far broader than our persistent gun lust – it is the easy resort to violence for which we Americans are best known. This takes many forms, from the epidemic of domestic abuse to retail gang violence in Chicago and other cities. We fetishize anger and violence, honor it, respect it. And we have little trust for our neighbors and the people beyond our immediate circles of acquaintance.

My home region was struck by gun violence over the past week and a half – the kind that gets you into the national headlines for a day or two. Some older guy, out of work, out of money, grabbed a shotgun and started shooting people seemingly at random in a barber shop and a car wash he frequented. He was eventually shot by the police, but not before he killed several, sent others to the hospital, and blew away a police dog. No, he didn’t have an assault rifle … but that right up the street from where he committed his heinous acts is a major manufacturing plant that produces AR-15 style rifles, including Bushmasters like the one the Newtown shooter used.

This guy’s simple solution was to kill at random, and plants like Remington Arms feed the national addiction to violence. Put those two pieces together and you have a recipe for the types of atrocities we see all too often in this country.

Next week: Iraq, ten years later.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Short memory

North Korea has unilaterally withdrawn from its 1953 ceasefire agreement with South Korea, cutting the emergency hotline between the two halves of this divided peninsula. The move has been roundly condemned as provocative and an indication of increasing cravenness on the part of third-generation great leader Kim Jong Un, whose government recently tested a nuclear device. As reported on NPR and other major news networks, this behavior is portrayed as almost innate, not rooted in anything other than blind aggression and dogmatic fealty to the North’s longstanding cult of personality and garrison state mentality.

All they know of us.
All they know of us.

Now, it is true that the North Korean state is an ossified, garrison state, very oppressive – a dungeon, even. I can’t defend it. But they didn’t arrive at this state of affairs without prompting. There is one thing they want: a non-aggression treaty with the United States. Because the war of 1950-53 was fought with the U.S. more than with South Korea, and that was a war of genocidal proportions, particularly for the North. The U.S. unleashed everything short of nuclear weapons on the North during that period, until no standing structures remained north of the 38th parallel. This after years of oppressive U.S. occupation of the southern half of Korea, which itself followed more than three decades of Japanese occupation.

When North Koreans talk about destruction, they know the meaning of the word. It is not an abstraction for them. After all, they share Poland’s great misfortune of being geographically located between two great powers, frequently at odds. Worse yet, they became ground zero of a growing cold war that was never hotter than it was during that three year period in the Korean peninsula. If they have nuclear weapons, it’s because they don’t want to be attacked. And if they take exception to the annual mock-invasion of the north conducted by Washington and Seoul, it is because they have a deep memory of the devastation of sixty years ago.

In America, we haven’t forgotten the Korean War so much as simply never known it in the first place, except for the dwindling number of veterans who fought there. It’s high time we stopped acting like an aggrieved empire and found a way to settle this conflict … before it explodes again.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Crock tears.

Rumor has it they used to wait until the person they despise was cold in the ground before excoriating them. Now, not so much. So Hugo Chavez, elected president of Venezuela three times (four if you count the recall) is called a “strong man” and “steadfast ally of dictators” who “showered the poor with social programs”. Rest in peace, anyone?

Chavez
Rest in peace.

I’m not surprised to hear this kind of claptrap on NPR news (known around my house as “Empire News”), particularly since their point man on Latin America – Juan Forero – is an abysmal reporter, incessantly critical of Chavez while giving a remarkably easy ride to Colombia (the last report I heard from him on Colombia, within the last six months or so, made no mention of human rights violations, intimidation, ongoing repression). He characterizes Chavez’s complaints against American imperialism as if U.S. economic and political domination of Latin America were some drug-induced hallucination by frenzied Bolivarian revolutionaries.

Forero’s principle complaints against Chavez, aside from his efforts to buy his people’s love with “showers” of social benefits, were that:

  • Chavez supported FARC, the guerrilla group operating in Colombia, according to the Colombian government (now there‘s a reliable source) and “interviews with former Colombian guerrillas” – or interrogations, perhaps?
  • Chavez had nasty friends, like Iran and Syria (and Bahrain? And Saudi? Oh, right … those are our friends.)
  • He called people names. (That never, ever happens here.)

NPR is not alone in this. It’s pretty much everywhere, even on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show (Maddow described Chavez as “clownish” I believe). NBC seems hyper-focuses on Venezuela’s oil, what’s going to happen to it, why that makes the country so important, etc. I think embedded in that rhetoric is the root of all this animus towards Chavez. Yes, he had some dictatorial tendencies, but he was certainly not a dictator. They despise him because he wouldn’t play the IMF game; because he was independent of Washington, unlike previous Venezuelan regimes. As with Cuba and Haiti, they hate him because he took Venezuela away from them. It’s got nothing to do with “democracy” and everything to do with empire and money.

If no one else will say it, I will. Rest in peace. Best of luck, Venezuelans … there’s trouble ahead.

luv u,

jp