No subject

Doesn't Ban Torture."=20

SOME of the facts in the article may be all right, but the POLITICS are
completely wrong, and most of all, the political tone and stance that
Obama's ban on torture is a meaningless and empty gesture.=20

"When President Obama declared flatly this week that 'the United States =
will
not torture' many people wrongly believed that he'd shut the practice =
down,
when in fact he'd merely repositioned it.

"Obama's Executive Order bans some -- not all -- US officials from =
torturing
but it does not ban any of them, himself included, from sponsoring =
torture
overseas.

"Indeed, his policy change affects only a slight percentage of =
US-culpable
tortures and could be completely consistent with an increase in =
US-backed
torture worldwide."

The reality is that Obama's executive order does not "reposition" U.S.
torture, at least in no explicit way. It has nothing in there about =
handing
over the waterboarding or shock cables to non-employees of the U.S.
government. If there were, an experienced journalist like the author =
would
have quoted it. This is, in reality, what the author *believes* will =
happen.
But the presentation as factual reporting of the CONCLUSION the author =
wants
readers to draw shows this is a venting of leftist frustration at what =
the
author views as Obama's hoodwinking of working people, RATHER THAN an
attempt to convince anyone.

The issue of whether the United States should be allowed to openly and
shamelessly carry out torture is not an insignificant one. Saying that
banning torture by U.S. personnel is meaningless is like saying that =
banning
the death penalty is meaningless -- capitalism is a murderous system, =
and
will continue to murder using everything from malnutrition to killer =
cops,
and so on. This is such a classic example of ultraleft idiocy that I am
embarrassed to say Louis referred this article to the list.

But just as significant as the ultraleft error involved in the abstract =
are
certain social realities. And this is the very heart of the matter, =
which I
wrote about earlier in the post, which is the tone and stance you take =
above
all towards the Black community and what it sees as its victory and its
president. The stance implicit in the article is that Obama's arrival at =
the
presidency is in no sense an advance for the Black cause. That's a
non-starter. It's like writing on the morning after the slaves are freed
that this is meaningless because Blacks will still be oppressed and
exploited.=20

Black folks in the United States just celebrated getting one of their =
own,
for the first time, as president. By the time this blog article was =
posted,
he'd been in office just under than one hundred hours. A fairly well
respected leftist journalist, Allan Nairn, writes it for his blog, from
whence it goes to counterpunch, and from there to BOTH Marxmail and the
Democratic Underground, as well as many other internet spaces.=20

You've got a bunch of people on the left, viewed as mostly white --both
liberals and radicals-- dumping on Obama on the feeblest possible =
foundation
--that in his order addressing the well-known, hot-button issue of U.S.
personnel using torture, he does not address something the huge majority =
of
Americans don't even realize is going on-- U.S. complicity with and even
sponsorship of torture by the security forces of other countries.=20

This subject could and should have been addressed when Obama signed his
order, but not by a denunciatory blast asserting (with no evidence) that
Obama merely "repositioned" U.S. torture but one educating people about =
the
history of "indirect" U.S. torture, explaining things like the school of =
the
Americas and calling on Obama to make clear that this is ALSO banned =
now, or
explaining he should extend the order to cover that also.

*  *  *

THESE are the sorts of concerns Walter was raising, and, frankly, Louis =
and
others seem to me to have become fairly detached from concrete political
realities in this country when they say, well that just means pimping =
for
Obama and you're out of here. Like Sartesian's idiotic attribution to =
Walter
of the view that lifting the abortion gag makes bombing Pakistan ok.

But more fundamentally, we've had at least 50 posts in less than a week
about Walter's views and his expulsion, NONE of which Walter has been
allowed to comment on or respond to ON THIS LIST. Louis commented on the
DSP's uncomradely attitude in not fostering what I'd call a comradely =
spirit
of free and open discussion on the left (which is much more than just
respecting certain formalities). I'm fairly certain Walter would not =
have
commented or responded, at least not directly, but that is entirely
irrelevant to my point. And it has to do with the idea that this isn't =
just
a mailing list, like those of distant relatives and various others one =
might
keep to send Christmas cards and birth announcements to, but a political
community.=20

What this avalanche of posts about THIS unsubbing of Walter shows is =
that
the community has been deeply wounded by it. That would not be true if
Louis's stated reason --that Walter's simply jumped the fence, gone way
beyond/outside the range of view generally represented on this list-- =
were
true.=20

Joaquin