and now?

from 2007: Reply to below:
Alas, so true, and why they want us to forget history.

In Hons and Rebels, my hero Decca Mitford writes:

[...] Esmond (Esmond Romilly, Churchill's nephew) sold an article to The Commentator entitled "Escape from England." He described the "atmosphere of grim depression and resignation" of England in the spring of 1939:
"People in England aren't excited or hysterical any more at the idea of the coming war. People are adjusting themselves to a kind of half-life -- a life where it's no good making plans, no good thinking at all of the future. ... People don't talk about politics very much, either. What's the use? No one can feel any more that they have the remotest control over what is happening. Their only role now is to do what they're told...."
He traced the machinations of the "Cliveden Set", from their support of Franco, "a gentleman fighting to regain some of the lost wealth and privileges of his class", to the betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich. He quoted typical dinner-table talk at gatherings of the rich Conservatives: "We could learn a great deal from Hitler in this country ... we need someone like Hitler over here." Contrasting this with Rotherhithe Street meetings for Spanish and Czech relief, he told us of the long, losing fight put up by millions of English people for an anti-Fascist foreign policy.
In conclusion he wrote: "After escaping from England, what shall I do if war breaks out? The answer is I shall go back ... to fight the grey of British Imperialism allied to Polish and Romanian Fascism against the black of German-Italian Fascism."

History. I'm not one to say our ignorance of it dooms us to repeat its mistakes. Instead, it tells us who we are, even if it's only something of the origin of our prejudices.

Keep heart. We can change. We do it one by one.

Deb

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from JB:

I always try to remember how the Presidency was stolen from the man who won the election, Al Gore, when the party opposing him used a strategy it used a generation or two before, in the Tilden defeat. Again, a candidate elected by the people, with the results overturned by machnations in the Electoral Congress, cooked via the corrupt Stte apparatus in Florida. The fraudulent results were sent to a Federal court, which (in response to massive subsidies) gave the Republican Party what it wanted. But we're a people with a marketplace mentality and the attention span of gnats. Because we don't remember anything, we don't learn anything and, as has often been observed, those who do not profit from history are condemned to repeat it.

But one is obliged to wonder what the national budget would be like had Gore been sworn in?

Alas, the progressive thrust of the Clinton legacy should never have been allowed to sag. It is eminently unfortunate that the court's decision about the Bush/Gore election wasn't challenged. It was even more unfortunate that the power behind the Democratic party and most progressive groups, waffled in the face of a phoney election that wasn't a mandate of any kind, and in the face of the 9/11 disaster, abandoned the moral authority of the People to a fear-mongering demagogue who used the anti-terrorist pretext to launch a war of adventure against a country that did not challenge us, in order to take conrol of their oil production. That it was allowed to happen is and was tragic--more tragic for us even than for the Iraquis--but even worse is the fact that the armed agression program was allowed to be put in motion, virtually unchallenged by the news media, and by both houses of the Legislature.

Money talks. People were bought off wholesale. And the War Party did what it always does, it looted the treasuries of domestic programs and created a phoney state of National Emergency by which the chief executive (without actually declaring a National Emergency) assumed war-time powers and used the Pentagon pump trillions into a half-privatized war effort designed to fill the coffers of those most often Texas-based corporations that give heavily and regularly to the Republican Party's slush fund, either as corporations, or in the form of unregulated personal contributions solicited from and gladly given by board members and high-eschelon executives in such companies -- through associations with other companies and banks. Its all about money. It has always been about money. The misfortune we endure is due, in part, to the failure of progressives among us who pretended it wasn't about money and with nothing more realisic to offer than a baby-fart of idealistic good will, allowed the flag lapel bage wearers to run away with the nation in the name of Hilbilly Religion. Don't you remember the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld first solution to Iraq's governmental problems? Dump a ton and a half of American cash on them in hundred dollar bills. Fly it in on a pallate, ship it into the green zone on guarded trucks, and leave it for the big boys in the feeding pen. And now the hippocrites complain the Iraqui government is corrupt. Hell, it was born in corruption; trained to it. Empowered by it. Still, we do not know how much of our tax money is funneled into the pockets of the Iraqui politicians. Enogh to allow them elaborate, month-long vacations, apparently, and in civil war-time.

What now? Now we have to face the fact that the Iraquis no matter in what constellation of power they present themselves to western countries, will not allow their government to coalese in order to grant Exon - Shell - British Patroleum, to fulfill the plans they outlined immediately after the invasion, to rob the Iraquis of their oil. (The Euphemism? That they would pay with oil for their deliverance by us from Sadaam Hussein.) A sordid joke. The Iraqui people will not surrender their country's national resources to foreign exploiters, even in the face of our bombs. Any Iraqui politician of either religion, Sunni or Shiia, would be dead wihin hours if they facilitated such a betrayal. (And by the way, the depth of deception used by the US government in portraying or pretending to portray the Sunni/Shiia rivalry as one needing a political solution reveals the profound supidity of the present administration. The rivalry between the two groups is religious in nature, and not political. We have stuck our greedy noses into a religious civil war that is centuries old and shows no signs of cooling down.)

The British have left Basra. it's the third time since 1916, and this time they weren't driven out by force (for a change. The last time the arabs dragged british bodies through the streets.) But, the Basra oil fields are virtually only a few miles south of the Iranian fields near the delta. The British who first drilled for and discoverd oil there, refused not only to negotiate the rate of pumping, but the amount of profit with the Iranian government. So firmly set in their arrogance were the British then they lived apart from the Iranians, among the Iranians, in racially and ethnically 'pure' conclaves with signs warning Iranians, beggars and dogs to stay out. But that is another story. Or perhaps only an early part of this one.

JB






-----Original Message-----
From: dmc
Sent: Sep 11, 2007 2:07 PM
Subject: and now?