[Austin-ghetto-list] USA through other eyes

[Roger Baker]

Michael Eisenstadt wrote:
> 
> Roger is now forwarding writings from the Wall Street
> Journal. He sure has changed his colors from those
> days when he used to hand out Trotskyist tracts
> downtown on Congress Ave.
> 
> According to the WSJ, it is the jews the Zionists who made
> the terrorists hate us. Sell out the Jews and maybe the
> Ay-rabs wont hate us so much. This line of thought could
> be anticipated from certain people. Indeed it has been
> a long time staple of the Wall Street Journal. I am
> shocked to discover that Roger is one of them.
> 
> Next time we have a party I shall take this up personally
> with the Roger person. Perhaps the Roger we knew in
> the past is now inhabited by someone else, a doppelganger
> or Dybuk. Perhaps not.
> 
> Mike the Zionist




According to Mike's thinking, I should take care to quote only from the
references that Mike E. considers politically correct -- and according
to his cartoon stereotypes of what my politics should be, and what I
should read?

But if I did that, then I'll probably start viewing the world in the
same gossip-columnist, People-Magazine-way that Mike seems to do. Would
that be good? I don't think so. (I don't mean to imply that Mike doesn't
have good qualities, but they obviously don't extend to discovering the
truth by being well-read).

Is the Wall Street Journal anti-zionist? It may be, but that comes as
news to me. I posted from the European Edition of the Wall Street
Journal, which may have a distinctly different editorial policy than the
US edition. Was the same story in the American edition? 

But the really important issue, from the standpoint of terrorism and its
sociology and the seriousness of its threat, is how the average truck
driver and teacher in Cairo thinks -- and we are not likely to get this
info from the mainstream media in the US. (I just saw in the web edition
of the Times of India that three of our special forces inside
Afghanistan have likely been captured. Is that being reported in the US yet?).

Besides terrorism, from the standpoint of security of our oil supply
over the next decade, Arab nationalism, as quite likely expressed
through Islamic fundamentalism, are quite important, as a new awareness
that we live in a big innerconneted world finally sinks into the
American consciousness. 

For examole, it is likely the delicate factor of the impact of our
anti-terrorist policies and actions on Arab sentiments that is keeping
us from bombing known Taliban held regions in Afghanistan now. Our
military policy is said to constitute a matter of unseen conflict
between cooperationist Powell and pro-war Rumsfeld. 

Who knows what American foreign policy is right now? I assume it is
based on the economic interests of the major US corporations, mixed
together with some degree of genuine wisdom and long-range vision, but
nobody can be sure. 

The results of whatever policy emerges from Chaney's bunker are only
announced to us through Bush's speeches cleared by Bush's handlers --
during those lucid periods when he is not raving about infinite crusades
against "evil-doers".
 
   
           ********************************************

But hey, I STILL read Trotsky (he wrote a book on terrorism, and always
made good sense as a political commentator, as Marx usually did too, and
still does), and I am proud to admit to handing out secular, humanist,
commie literature on Congress Ave., way back when. 

Whatever I would handed out would always tell the truth in my opinion
and reflect noble, if politically unpopular, human values based on peace
and justice and human cooperation, etc. (I favor the Green Party
nowadays and it is thoroughly committed to non-violence and other
progressive values; a Green speaker will speak today at the peace march
to the Capitol forinstance; I anticipate seeing few Democrats as such).

But Trotskyist literature? I can't remember that specifically for a fact
but it certainly seems plausible. My view of the world in practice has
changed in the direction of cynicism since then, but never my desire for
international human cooperation. 

I once tried to get the Communist Party on the ballot by gathering
petition signatures at 6th and Congress Ave.--- because I thought and
would still think today that Gus Hall deserved to be on the ballot
because his ideas and specific goals were much better than the those of
the Rupublicrats, and he just plain deserved to be on the ballot in a
civilized country. This was of course impossible to do in the context of
Texas politics and ballot requirements, even if socialogically
intertesting to the petitioner (me). 

And so this fact taught me that whatever lovable old largely-Jewish
Commies, in New York who ran the CP; the political survivors of the old
commie trade unions of the 1930's (I think Allen Ginzberg was a red
diaper baby, as they say, and many others) -- the guys running the party
around 1980 were, to put it bluntly, out of touch; crazy to give orders
involving a huge effort on the part of a few supporters in Texas,
without bothering to spend five minutes to check on the details.

-- peace, Roger