New Republic Writer Calls for Death & Torture of Arundhati Roy & Stan Goff

[poe]

After having heard the 100 plus attendees cheer sentiments like "Money for Jobs and Education Not For War and Occupation," Frank became so riled up, he unloaded a deranged harangue about the suffering he would like to rain upon people daring to organize against this war. After Stan Goff, a former Delta Forces soldier and current organizer for Military Families Speak Out, expressed sentiments like "We ain't never resolved nothing through an election," Frank's jag began. Clearly too doughy to do it himself, Frank started to fantasize about a Teutonic strongman who could shut Goff up.

Frank writes, "What I needed was a Republican like Arnold who would walk up to and punch him in the face."

As the panel continued, every cheer and standing ovation seemed to set Frank deeper down a path of psychosis. After International Socialist Review editorial board member Sherry Wolf asserted that Iraqis had a "right" to rebel against occupation, Frank upped the ante in his efforts to intimidate anyone considering entry into the anti-war movement.

He wrote, 'these weren't harmless lefties. I didn't want Nancy Pelosi talking sense to them; I wanted John Ashcroft to come busting through the wall with a submachine gun to round everyone up for an immediate trip to Gitmo, with Charles Graner on hand for interrogation."
This piece is yet another effort to intimidate and silence people who aren't willing to toe the "party line" espoused by Democrats and Republicans alike that the death of 1,400 US troops and 100,000 Iraqi civilians is somehow justified. Frank's piece is an exercise in hate and intimidation. To be quiet in its face is to give ground in a period when we have precious little to give.

Therefore, this is a call for people to e-mail The New Republic and let them know what you think about humorous musings on killing Arundhati Roy or torturing Stan Goff. Let them know that a disgraced magazine will not intimidate us, especially one with the credibility of The National Enquirer. Let them know that we will publicly debate Tom Frank or any of their 20 something post-graduate hacks on the merits of this war anytime and any place. This is the only way to deal with darkness: shine as bright a light as possible -- right in it's face.
http://www.counterpunch.org/zirin01312005.html

[Old Mouse]

1. subscription required to get to the Tom Frank piece

but this needs some KICKING right now

[poe]

2. Yea hoping someone can come up with the whole story...

straight from the horses,uh yeah, ahem mouth. I forgot to renew my subscription so i have to rely solely on Foxy Knows Least to stay up to date on whirled events.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. It allowed me to register for free

there's not really much more to the article than what Zirin reported - just whingeing that he screwed up registering for the swanky Republican balls, so he had to slum it, covering the anti-Bush meetings in Washington instead.

But there's no context to excuse what he wrote. Zirin has accurately captured the tone - he just says "screw the left - they're wrong - let's torture and kill them". It would be typical fare for Free Republic. Even before he reveals himself as a pro-violence authoritarian, he shows that his basic political viewpoint is right wing:

To begin with, there were the posters on the wall: MONEY FOR JOBS AND EDUCATION, NOT FOR WAR AND OCCUPATION. Let's leave aside that the meter is somehow dissatisfying (nine syllables followed by eight--no flow at all). The main point is, if the shallowness of this statement bothers you, to what party do you look for comfort? To the Democrats, many of whom condemn building firehouses in Baghdad and closing firehouses at home? Or do you say to yourself, in that moment, "I don't much care for Newt Gingrich--nor does anyone else--but I bet he hates that goddamn poster as much as I do"? I know where I was leaning.

Then there was the pooh-poohing of elections--any elections. Former soldier Stan Goff (supposedly of the Delta Force, Rangers, and Special Forces) spoke at length about the evils of capitalism and declared, "We ain't never resolved nothing through an election." This drew loud, sustained applause. Nothing to get worked up about, I thought; just a leftist speaker spouting lunacy. But today it seemed particularly bad. It wasn't just that I was missing what might be lovely canapés (or perhaps spring rolls being brought about on trays with delectable dipping sauce); rather, it was the thought that the speaker was dismissing something that Afghanis of all ages had recently risked their lives to participate in, something Iraq's insurgents view as so transformative that they are murdering scores of Iraqis to prevent it. No, what I needed to counter this speaker was not a Democrat like me who might argue that elections were, in fact, important. What I needed was a Republican like Arnold who would walk up to him and punch him in the face.

But the worst came with the final speaker, a woman by the name of Sherry Wolf, who is supposedly on the "editorial board of International Socialist Review." She talked, and talked, and talked; terms like "architects of the slaughter," "war criminal," and "Noam Chomsky" wafted about the room; and my eyes grew so bleary that I ceased taking notes. But then she brought up the insurgents in Iraq. Sure they were bad, she admitted: "No one cheers the beheading of journalists." But, she continued, they had a "right" to rebel against occupation. Then she read from a speech by the activist Arundhati Roy: "Of course, (the Iraqi resistance) is riddled with opportunism, local rivalry, demagoguery, and criminality. But if we were to only support pristine movements, then no resistance will be worthy of our purity." In sum, Wolf said, the choice boiled down to supporting occupation or resistance, and we had to support resistance.

So there it was. I even forgot about the Constitution Ball for a minute. Apparently, we were to view the people who set off bombs killing over 150 peaceful Shia worshippers in Baghdad and Karbala as "resistance" fighters. And the audience seemed entirely fine with this. These weren't harmless lefties. I didn't want Nancy Pelosi talking sense to them; I wanted John Ashcroft to come busting through the wall with a submachine gun to round everyone up for an immediate trip to Gitmo, with Charles Graner on hand for interrogation.

"Money for jobs and education ..." might be argued to be shallow (it's a poster, what does he expect - a thousand word reasoned argument?) - but it is basically correct, as anyone in the centre or on the left should see. It reads more like a job application for Fox News - where he could claim to be "centrist" for their balance, because he had worked for the supposedly moderate New Republic, but they could rest assured that he enjoys seeing other people blown up as much as anyone there.

[CindyDale]

3. This is sooo typical

These "hate people" identify with weakness and hate themselves. So they project their identities on others and fantasize about strong, macho types acting out their anger.

[liberalhistorian]

4. What I want to know is where

are all of the MSM writers and their expressions of outrage that always seem to appear after left-wing nonsense. For instance, the National Review had a piece on DU and some of the more admittedly nutball statements on the Iraqi elections (and make no mistake, there are a LOT of really nutball statements being made on this board regarding the Iraqi elections).

So, where was their piece on the really wacko nutballery of Free Republic, like when they bashed MLK on his holiday? Where was their piece on how some fundamentalist leaders and groups were openly saying that the recent tsunami was a "message and punishment from God", and reveling in the fact that the majority of the victims were Muslim?

[LynnTheDem]

5. Yet rightwingnuts chant about "moral absolutism" and sneer at us "moral

relativists".

TORTURE; the rightwingnuts are FOR IT sometimes, and AGAINST IT at other times. So much for their "moral absolutism".

So much for their "moral" period.

[Tinoire]

6. The New Republic is one of the most vile POS publications out there

Having been such strong proponents for this & the coming wars, all this antiwar talk really gets to them; it's jeopardizing their vision of the Brave New Republic under a One World Government.

I wrote to them. Urgh. Don't think they'll care though since I made a big hoopla about canceling my subscription with them 6 years ago when they were getting so obvious about their disgusting thirst for the blood of the Palestinians. It went downhill from there. But like Bush, just when you think they can't sink any lower, there they are!

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. They are one of the faces of American fasicsm

[Tinoire]

8. And for so long disguised as a wolf in sheep's clothing

I'm relieved they've finally, clearly outed themselves. Did you see how young that kid Peter Beinart is? I was shocked!

Someone needs to get him in combat boots since he's so gung-ho for war. Did you notice he signed PNAC's draft letter?

I posted his bio earlier today: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1548220

[Swamp Rat]

9. Goddamn lizards and their two-bit thugs!

PNACers are pissed at Arundhati Roy for writing this article:

The New American Century
by ARUNDHATI ROY


In January 2003 thousands of us from across the world gathered in Porto Alegre in Brazil and declared--reiterated--that "Another World Is Possible." A few thousand miles north, in Washington, George W. Bush and his aides were thinking the same thing.

Our project was the World Social Forum. Theirs--to further what many call the Project for the New American Century.

In the great cities of Europe and America, where a few years ago these things would only have been whispered, now people are openly talking about the good side of imperialism and the need for a strong empire to police an unruly world. The new missionaries want order at the cost of justice. Discipline at the cost of dignity. And ascendancy at any price. Occasionally some of us are invited to "debate" the issue on "neutral" platforms provided by the corporate media. Debating imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That we really miss it?

In any case, New Imperialism is already upon us. It's a remodeled, streamlined version of what we once knew. For the first time in history, a single empire with an arsenal of weapons that could obliterate the world in an afternoon has complete, unipolar, economic and military hegemony. It uses different weapons to break open different markets. There isn't a country on God's earth that is not caught in the cross-hairs of the American cruise missile and the IMF checkbook. Argentina's the model if you want to be the poster boy of neoliberal capitalism, Iraq if you're the black sheep. Poor countries that are geopolitically of strategic value to Empire, or have a "market" of any size, or infrastructure that can be privatized, or, God forbid, natural resources of value--oil, gold, diamonds, cobalt, coal--must do as they're told or become military targets. Those with the greatest reserves of natural wealth are most at risk. Unless they surrender their resources willingly to the corporate machine, civil unrest will be fomented or war will be waged.

(snip)

This article can be found on the web at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040209&s=roy

[wasp in a wig]

10. Mr Frank,

your brown shirt's ready.

I hope TNR gives you a nice pink slip to go with it.

[Wind Dancer]

11. This is extremely disturbing. n/t

[artemisia1]

12. kick n/t.

[seemslikeadream]

14. The Invasion of Haiti - Anthony Fenton interviews Stan Goff

The Invasion of Haiti
Anthony Fenton interviews Stan Goff

by Stan Goff and Anthony Fenton

Fenton: What kind of background should one be familiar with when undertaking this type of investigation?

Goff: There's been a longstanding relationship between the Dominican military and the old military apparatus that developed after Papa Doc had his rapprochment with the Americans.

A lot of people think that Papa Doc was vaulted into power by the Americans, but actually, the opposite was true. The ideology of Papa Doc was one that grew out of a very xenophobic and nationalistic resistance against the Americans, and they in fact plotted a coup against him early on. There were two factions of the ruling class: one was was very much based on the old share-cropping land system and then there were the up and coming compradore class that were much more international and cosmopolitan in their outlook and they were the ones that were gaining the most from the military occupation - the 19 year military occupation from right after World War I, all the way up until the mid-30s, by the United States.

For 19 years the US Marines basically ran Haiti directly, and Papa Doc was vaulted into power in reaction to that because the Capitalist form of agriculture that was brought into Haiti was a real threat to this land tendency system, this share cropping system. This is really the social base of Papa Doc's movement was this landed class, the big land owners. One of the origins of the tonton macoutes was that this was a militia that he used to protect himself from an army that was still in many ways loyal to this competitor class, the compradors, and were politically unreliable until Papa Doc had time to affect his own transformation in the military.

This military that developed under Papa Doc had a relationship with the Dominican military. In fact , they sort of existed with one another as their raison d'etre. They both collaborated in a lot of ways: they collaborated in criminal enterprises, they collaborated in security issues, they collaborated politically, because both of them were sort of the armed enforcement wing of their respective states, and had a direct interest in stability on both sides of the border, and this relationship has lasted. The Dominicans themselves, the dominant Dominican elites, were not at all happy about Aristide, just as many members of the Dominican military were unhappy about Aristide dissolving the military {Aristide dissolved the military when he came back the first time}.


more
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=55&ItemID=5557

[txaslftist]

15. It sounds like polemic rhetoric...

until they actually start naming names and making lists and arresting folks. Then it doesn't matter what it sounds like, it's over.

This stuff is more dangerous than it looks, people.

[Toots]

16. If that had been written by a school child they would have been expelled

and quite possibly hauled off to jail. It is a indirect threat and needs to be treated as such.

[Swamp Rat]

17. kick

[Blue_Tires]

18. wow...

TNR has really become less than a shadow of itself