What it takes to end a general’s career

Glenn Greenwald comments on what the media establishment cares about:

[General David Petraeus] has left a string of failures and even scandals behind him: a disastrous Iraqi training program, a worsening of the war in Afghanistan since he ran it, the attempt to convert the CIA into principally a para-military force, the series of misleading statements about the Benghazi attack and the revealed large CIA presence in Libya. To that one could add the constant killing of innocent people in the Muslim world without a whiff of due process, transparency or oversight. Yet none of those issues provokes the slightest concern from our intrepid press corps. His career and reputation could never be damaged, let alone ended, by any of that. Instead, it takes a sex scandal - a revelation that he had carried on a perfectly legal extramarital affair - to force him from power. That is the warped world of Washington.

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Now to make the democracy actually work

Many Americans I know assume that voting is the only method by which they participate in their government. This is incorrect. As Howard Zinn stated, "Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens." ["Election Madness" The Progressive (March 2008)] Politicians are highly susceptible to pressure asserted by social movements and by corporate power. If social movements are weak or non-existent, politicians will fall completely into the arms of corporations. Exhibit A is the rapacious yet mostly legal conduct of Wall Street banks over the past decade. Amy Goodman raised this point of the need for ordinary citizens to get involved in social movements to keep pressure on the president in a recent article at Common Dreams:

Someone asked [Barack Obama] what he would do about the Middle East. He answered with a story about the legendary 20th-century organizer A. Philip Randolph meeting with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Randolph described to FDR the condition of black people in America, the condition of working people. Reportedly, FDR listened intently, then replied: “I agree with everything you have said. Now, make me do it.” That was the message Obama repeated. There you have it. Make him do it. You’ve got an invitation from the president himself. For years during the Bush administration, people felt they were hitting their heads against a brick wall. With the first election of President Obama, the wall had become a door, but it was only open a crack. The question was, Would it be kicked open or slammed shut? That is not up to that one person in the White House, no matter how powerful. That is the work of movements.

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Preserving a corner of the world

Would you like to help preserve an ecologically pristine corner of the world? Here's a project you will appreciate: The Children's Eternal Rainforest. I'm personally involved with this organization, having conducted the interviews in this video and I composed the music. Take a look and you'll see that this Costa Rican Rainforest is an extraordinary treasure that can and should be preserved.

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Looking Forward?

As usual, Florida is still undecided, a mess. According to NPR, though, it is leaning heavily toward Obama, despite the shenanigans of the state GOP in suppressing the vote. I didn’t watch last night. Couldn’t. We went to bed early. But then Donna got up around midnight and woke me by a whoop of joy that I briefly mistook for anguish. To my small surprise and relief, Obama won. I will not miss the constant electioneering, the radio ads, the tv spots, the slick mailers. I will not miss keeping still in mixed groups about my politics (something I am not good at, but this election cycle it feels more like holy war than an election). I will not miss wincing every time some politician opens his or her mouth and nonsense spills out. (This is, of course, normal, but during presidential years it feels much, much worse.) I will not miss… Anyway, the election came out partially the way I expected, in those moments when I felt calm enough to think rationally. Rationality seemed in short supply this year and mine was sorely tasked. So now, I sit here sorting through my reactions, trying to come up with something cogent to say. I am disappointed the House is still Republican, but it seems a number of the Tea Party robots from 2010 lost their seats, so maybe the temperature in chambers will drop a degree or two and some business may get done. Gary Johnson, running as a Libertarian, pulled 350,000 votes as of nine last night. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, got around 100,000. (Randall Terry received 8700 votes, a fact that both reassures me and gives me shivers—there are people who will actually vote for him?) Combined, the independent candidates made virtually no difference nationally. Which is a shame, really. I’ve read both Stein’s and Johnson’s platforms and both of them are willing to address the problems in the system. Johnson is the least realistic of the two and I like a lot of the Green Party platform. More . . .

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