[lbo-talk] [Marxism] What's missing from the Democratic convention?

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Thu Aug 28 13:49:29 PDT 2008



>
>
> http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/28/dnc/
> Thursday Aug. 28, 2008 10:35 EDT
> What's missing from the Democratic convention?
>
More to the point: Who's missing?

This is the NYT list of speakers at Obama's coronation party: "Today at the D.N.C.: Besides tonight’s main event — Senator Obama’s acceptance speech — other speakers include former Vice President Al Gore, Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Gov. Bill Ritter, Jr. of Colorado, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, Democratic National Committee Chairman Governor Howard Dean, Representatives Ed Perlmutter, John Salazar and Diana DeGette of Colorado and candidate for Senate Mark from Colorado.

Note who's not on that list--only the most respected Democrat in the world, former president and Nobel Peace laureate Jimmy Carter! Note also that neither Michelle or Hillary was allowed to invite the most respected First Lady in the world. No, not even Rosalyn was there!

And why not? The answer should be obvious--AIPAC AIPAC AIPAC. Carter committed the unforgivable sin--telling the truth about the Zionists' imposition of apartheid against the people of Palestine. The treatment of Jimmy Carter is the mildest of foretastes of what awaits the Palestinians under an Obama administration. Even with Lieberman as veep McCain will be no worse. In this election there will be no "Lesser Evil," just two obedient servants of the worst criminals in international politics. More than ever the Democratic Party must be smashed if a progressive alternative is ever to emerge in US politics. Nader/ Gonzalez in '08!!!


> As one would expect them to be, virtually all of the prime-time
> speeches
> at the Democratic Convention have been -- from a rhetorical
> perspective
> -- very well-crafted and well-delivered. Bill Clinton's speech, in
> particular, deserves all the plaudits it is receiving, both in terms
> of
> content and delivery. But as competent, well-executed and even
> dramatic
> as the Convention has been, at least as striking is what has been
> missing.
>
> First, there is almost no mention of, let alone focus on, the sheer
> radicalism and extremism of the last eight years. During that time,
> our
> Government has systematically tortured people using sadistic
> techniques
> ordered by the White House; illegally and secretly spied on its own
> citizens; broken more laws than can be counted based on the twisted
> theory that the President has that power; asserted the authority to
> arrest and detain even U.S. citizens on U.S. soil and hold them for
> years without charges; abolished habeas corpus; created secret prisons
> in Eastern Europe and a black hole of lawlessness in Guantanamo; and
> explicitly abandoned and destroyed virtually every political value the
> U.S. has long claimed to embrace.
>
> Other than a fleeting reference to such matters by John Kerry in a
> (surprisingly effective) speech which most networks did not broadcast,
> one would not know, listening to the Democratic Convention, that any
> of
> those things have happened. Even our unprovoked and indescribably
> destructive attack on Iraq, based on purely false pretenses, has
> received little attention. Those things simply don't exist, even as
> part
> of the itemized laundry list of Democratic grievances about the Bush
> administration. The overriding impression one has is that the only
> things really wrong during the last eight years in this country are
> that
> gas prices are high and not everyone has health insurance. Those are
> obviously very significant problems, but they are garden-variety
> political issues which don't begin to capture the extremism that has
> predominated in this country under GOP rule, and don't remotely
> approach
> conveying the crises on numerous fronts the country faces.
>
> (clip)
>
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Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all things...it consents and does not consent to be called Zeus."

Herakleitos of Ephesos



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