The hallmark of a libertarian redneck: misanthropy

One of the hallmarks of a libertarian redneck is their misanthropy toward other Americans. To their minds, everyone except for them is unenlightened, in the dark politically, outright stupid. They mock the massive protests for women’s rights, against the Muslim ban, against the fascists & white supremacists as just assemblies of liberals too lowbrow politically to collaborate with.

A redneck is what a redneck is: usually do-nothing blowhards & grandstanders of not much use to building a movement to stand against racism & war because they’re just so superior. Give me a liberal any day because they get off their asses to take a stand & don’t just sit at their computers mocking.

“Everyone and their cat knows that Pakistan supports militants in Afghanistan and provides safe havens to them as well. The establishment proudly calls it the “strategic depth.” Nationalists here should stop feigning disbelief.

Friends abroad please don’t feel sorry for Pakistan after what Trump has said. Pakistan was never the victim to begin with, Afghanistan was. The military establishment never respected the sovereignty of Afghanistan and always wanted a client regime in the war-torn country. They have always tried to create the spectre of India in order to hide their own myopic policies towards Afghanistan.

“We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting,” he said. “That will have to change and that will change immediately.”

Sometimes even the devil ends up saying the truth and there’s simply no reason to refute the quote above.

For a long time, Pakistan has played a duplicitous game with the US, so now it’s only the case of chickens coming home to roost for the policymakers here.”

–Usman A Khan Tahir, editor of Pakistan Today

Shame on Cuba for attending the 59th International Fair in Damascus. The trade show & cultural exchange had been suspended since the revolution began in 2011 so Assad could gather allies & focus on crushing the revolutionary upsurge against his dictatorship. Syria claimed 23 countries participated including the rogue’s gallery of Russia, China, Iran, India, Argentina, Venezuela, Iraq & Egypt. Does Cuba really want to take its place among those countries?

There is that expedience question & surviving in a hostile capitalist world but if Cuba really does stand for human freedom it would be a whole lot less isolated & certainly less compromised if it rendered legitimacy to freedom struggles rather than to brutal dictators. Let’s just say that the more Cuba equivocates on Palestinian self-determination, supports ruthless dictators like Assad, & remains silent on war, the more it is running out of cachet & becoming a hack.

Boston march against fascists & white supremacists

Boston Aug 19 2017 (Stephanie Keith:Reuters) Aug 22 2017

This is the rally in Boston, MA on August 19th in response to the fascist & white supremacist show of force in Charlottesville. Media, which always lowballs the number of protesters, estimated a crowd of 40,000. It may have been double that.

What’s significant about this march is that Boston is one of the most segregated cities in the US & in the 1970s had outright violence against Black children over the desegregation of public schools. When I lived there after 1978, even public pools were segregated. I was repeatedly threatened with violence at my workplace for socializing with Black co-workers; I was unable to have breakfast or walk down the street with any after our night shift finished for fear we would be assaulted. I was once stopped in my car by a policeman who told me to turn around since I was driving into the Black neighborhood & would be in danger when I had often done door-to-door political work there without a single incident.

The political irony is that the antiwar movement was always immense in Boston. We could put out a call for an emergency rally & within hours thousands would show up. That changed after the Gulf War when the antiwar movement around the country receded to a trickle.

Things have changed in Boston & around the country since the 1970s & since the decline of the antiwar movement. This anti-fascist mobilization along with the thousands who rallied in several cities in every state show the potential for rebuilding a massive antiwar movement that yokes the struggle against racism in this country to the racism of US wars–an uncompromised movement that makes no exception for Syrian & Russian bombing of civilians. Given Trump’s plans for escalation of war in Afghanistan, we have no alternative.

(Photo of Boston march by Stephanie Keith/Reuters)

When Obama became president, there were so many who said stop blaming him for Bush’s wars. It became tedious to respond to as Obama extended the number of US wars. Now with Trump, the new political force of libertarian rednecks refuse to condemn his actions on anything & instead blame protesters who didn’t protest Obama. The utter puerility of such politics masks several political problems but the worst is passivity in the face of war.

That was one helluva war-mongering speech by Trump. He’s too stupid to lay out such a strategy so what he said represents the US Pentagon. What stuck out most to me was the belligerent stance toward Pakistan which has been an ally of the US in Afghanistan & the inclusion of India as a key player in Afghanistan. That can only foment greater conflict between those countries & endanger the people of Pakistan & Kashmir. Mostly this new strategy is an escalation of violence & extremely threatening to the people of Afghanistan. Trump made clear that the Pentagon plans on conducting much of this escalation in secret.

What this means practically & imperatively is that antiwar forces in the US, Pakistan, India, & Kashmir must actively collaborate with each other & with antiwar forces around the world to push back this thrust in defense of the people of Afghanistan. We can no longer allow the Afghans to suffer, especially after the US dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb in the world in their country last April. An injury to one is an injury to all is a survival strategy, the iron law of social transformation, not an assertion of noblesse oblige.

Afghans are our brothers & sisters, not our enemies nor terrorists. We must stand united & committed to their defense.

Dreading Trump’s announcement of more US troops in Afghanistan. The antiwar movement is too weak & compromised by support for Assad & Putin to give a massive enough response. But protests around the country in response to the show of force by fascists & white supremacists show there is enormous potential to rebuild the movement.

They’re saying the solar eclipse gives you a spiritual connection to the cosmos. Have I missed a chance to ask for a hit on the lottery? Or can I stand in front of a picture of the eclipse on my TV & wish upon that star?