Columbia's De Genova responds -and it's worse than we thought!

To the Editor:
Spectator, now for the second time in less than a year, has succeeded to quote me in a remarkably decontextualized and inflammatory manner. In Margaret Hunt Gram's report on the faculty teach-in against the war in Iraq (March 27, 2003), I am quoted as wishing for a million Mogadishus but with no indication whatsoever of the perspective that framed that remark. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that your Staff Editorial in the same issue, denouncing the teach-in for "dogmatism," situates me in particular as the premier example of an academic "launching tirades against anything and everything American."

In my brief presentation, I outlined a long history of U.S. invasions, wars of conquest, military occupations, and colonization in order to establish that imperialism and white supremacy have been constitutive of U.S. nation-state formation and U.S. nationalism. In that context, I stressed the necessity of repudiating all forms of U.S. patriotism. I also emphasized that the disproportionate majority of U.S. troops come from racially subordinated and working-class backgrounds and are in the military largely as a consequence of a treacherous lack of prospects for a decent life. Nonetheless, I emphasized that U.S. troops are indeed confronted with a choice--to perpetrate this war against the Iraqi people or to refuse to fight and contribute toward the defeat of the U.S. war machine.

I also affirmed that Iraqi liberation can only be effected by the Iraqi people themselves, both by resisting and defeating the U.S. invasion as well as overthrowing a regime whose brutality was long sustained by none other than the U.S. Such an anti-colonial struggle for self-determination might involve a million Mogadishus now but would ultimately have to become something more like another Vietnam. Vietnam was a stunning defeat for U.S. imperialism; as such, it was also a victory for the cause of human self-determination.

Is this a tirade against "anything and everything American"? Far from it. First, I hasten to remind you that "American" refers to all of the Americas, not merely to the United States, as U.S. imperial chauvinism would have it. More importantly, my rejection of U.S. nationalism is an appeal to liberate our own political imaginations such that we might usher in a radically different world in which we will not remain the prisoners of U.S. global domination.

Nicholas De Genova
March 21, 2003
The author is an assistant professor of anthropology and latina/o studies.

Re #164-165: Oh ! So sorry you are ill, FRiend. I hope you get to feeling better soon.

I'll repost my #74 on this thread to catch you up . . .

Here is a link to the SF-IMC site where these FAR LEFT LIBERALS posted an actual pic (below) of one of their Support Saddam/Terrorists events recently and changed the image when I posted/linked it to an FR thread. The pic at the top of that link (of 2 Allied Soldiers TORTURING someone) was what they changed it to . . .

These folks at San Francisco Indy-Media are terrorist supporters . . .
Oh, the lurkers on FR from SF-IMC CANNOT change that picture (above) now since it is hosted by FR friendly sources ! Take that, FOOLS !! . . .

Brace yourself: Here is the pic in that link (what they changed their pic to) . . .

1_shoot_officers.jpg, image/jpeg, 639x479

Oh, and in case there was any doubt about that "Marxist Alert" -

Search Result 1 From: Labor Video Project (lvpsf@igc.apc.org)
Subject: May 3 Manifesto Conf BA

This is the only article in this thread

View: Original Format

Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Date: 1998/04/25

Commemorate The 150th Anniversary Of
The Communist Manifesto  1848-1998

The Relevance Today
 Of The Communist Manifesto 

Sunday May 3, 1998  9:30 AM To 6:00 PM
New College Cultural Center
766 Valencia  St., San Francisco, CA

Conference Panels:

9:30  AM     The History Of Society Is The History of Class Struggle
11:00 AM     The Technological Revolution, Capitalism And The Working Class
1:30  PM     The Destruction of Borders, The Global Working Class & Trade Wars
3:00 PM Religion, Idealism and the Method of Dialectical Materialism
4:30 PM Lessons Of the First International For The Working Class Today

List Of Speakers:

Ahmet Yazgan, Barbra Epstein, Ralph Schoenman,Steve Zeltzer, Nick De
Genova, Tom Condit, Jennifer Rycenga, Htun Lin, Ron Brokmeyer, Barry
Sheppard, John Alan, Jack Heyman

Discussion/Debate/Analysis

$10 Donation  $5.00 Unemployed And Strikers

 Sponsored By
1998 Manifesto Commemoration Committee
For Further Information Call
(415)282-1908
Email united@labornet.org
------------------------------------------------------------

Sol is Spanish for Sun. It is not the moon.

Sure some words depend on useage. When a new slang comes along it becomes a word. When you're talking about continents, you can't simply disolve millions of square miles of land and the millions of inhabitants that live on them.

Is a Costa Rican an American? Yes. Is a Chilean an American? Yes. They have a right to a continent every bit as much as we do. You can't simply erase that reality.

Ask yourself. Has axe become ask? Has nuculer become nuclear? No, they haven't. They are simply mispronounciations, mistaken perceptions. The thought that American means a United States' citizen is also a misperception.

I am a citizen of the United States. Call me an American and it means nothing to me. There is no loyalty to America. There is loyalty to the United States. However, the socialists are pleased as punch when you do this, because they wish for nothing more than to see the borders of the United States blurred, a continental entity to replace it.

When that happens you'll have Mexicans, Canadians, Costa Ricans, Bolivians, Columbians and others sitting on the trade, military and other councils that will govern us.

Thanks for the comments.

ROFL!

Hey, I found this a second ago, check it out.

He was even stupider in 1991

January 11, 1990

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH:

If you were a college student and the President of the United States
invaded your campus newspaper with a letter asking to support his war,
you might not be alarmed. And if, 48 hours later, he invaded your mailbox
with a draft notice, and if you were told to report to the induction
center in two weeks, you might wonder how this whole thing ever got
so out of hand. And if several weeks later your mother received a
letter and a box that couldn't be opened, the time for alarm and wonder
would be passed. No one should hesitate about what is to be done.
And that is why we do not hesitate now to make clear to you our
unconditional opposition to this war. We hold _you_ responsible for what
you are doing half-way around the world, and we will not be fooled by your
attempt to create the fiction of popular support for this impending
genocide. Neither the troops in Saudi Arabia nor the draft age
"potential troops" in this country are willing to believe your lies.
As you say, "the facts are clear." Granted, Saddam Hussein perpetrated
the human rights abuses to which you refer. We are not surprised that
you are very well acquainted with the details, since you supported these
actions until August 1990 when you saw better use of this dictator as
your new-found enemy. Apparently, such atrocities only trouble you when
you find it convenient to condemn them as a means to whip up war hysteria.
Your hawkish propaganda cannot conceal your own atrocious foreign and
domestic policies. The irony sickens us as you send more money to
Salvadoran death-squads on the same day as we receive this pathetic plea
for our blind faith. You want us and need us to see you as good and pure,
but we can't ignore your bloody history. In Chile. In Nicaragua. In Panama.
In Lebanon. In Grenada. In Libya. In El Salvador. In South Africa.
Yes, indeed, the facts are clear. As are your intentions in the Middle
East. This war is not about good and evil. This war is intended to
secure the continued control of the oil resources of the Middle East
by multinational corporations. It is about the security of their
profits. This war is also about the restoration to power of the Kuwaiti
Emir who has nothing to do with the aspirations of the people of the
region; the monarchy was installed by British colonialists. It is a
cynical joke to call such regimes "emerging democracies." The war is
further more about the likely acquisition of permanent military
installations in Saudi Arabia, which the United States has sought for
decades. It is about the reassertion of U.S. military dominance
confronting the decline of U.S. global economic and ideological hegemony.
You write that your concern is with the promise of a "New World Order."
Here, you speak candidly. Your vision of this new order, however, has
nothing to do with the interests of the great majority of humanity. You
seek unquestioned, unchallenged global domination which was never wholly
accessable during the cold war. Hence, you have escalated a local conflict
into an historic crisis. The threat to peace comes from your relentless
aggression. If we do not follow the dictates of our inner moral compass
and stand up for human life, we dread to think of what _you_ will do.
You are morally bankrupt and expect us to pay your debt -- with our lives.
The choice is unambiguous, indeed. We refuse to allow you to sacrifice
the lives of tens of thousands on both sides of the conflict. A genocidal
war against the Iraqi people is inherently racist. Likewise, the racist
character of the war is betrayed by the preponderance of African American
and Latino youths who now find themselves on the front lines. A "poverty
draft" has driven countless poor and working class youth into the military.
Let us remember all the fine men and women whose lives are in the balance,
nearly one hundred of whom along with unnumbered Iraqis have perished from
this escapade. We must bring them home now. We are committed to resist
your war.

Drafted by,

Nick DeGenova, Jonathan Fine, Jonathan Goldman, Judy Wise

University of Chicago.

Follow up to your post from USA TODAY...

Front-line troops disproportionately white, not black Numbers refute long-held belief
By Dave Moniz

and Tom Squitieri
USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- The American troops likeliest to fight and die in a war against Iraq are disproportionately white, not black, military statistics show -- contradicting a belief widely held since the early days of the Vietnam War.

In a little-publicized trend, black recruits have gravitated toward non-combat jobs that provide marketable skills for post-military careers, while white soldiers are over-represented in front-line combat forces.

The tilt toward white combat troops is recognized by many senior commanders and a small group of scholars who study the military.

''If anybody should be complaining about battlefield deaths, it is poor, rural whites,'' says Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University in Illinois.

When Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., called recently for the return of a military draft, he evoked images of inequality raised during the early years of the Vietnam War, when black soldiers died at rates much greater than their share of the U.S. population.

Though Rangel is right that blacks and lower-income Americans still serve in disproportionate numbers, that fact misses another significant trend. While blacks are 20% of the military -- compared with 12% of the U.S. population -- they make up a far smaller percentage of troops in combat jobs on the front line.

In a host of high-risk slots -- from Army commandos to Navy and Air Force fighter pilots -- blacks constitute less than 5% of the force, statistics show.

Blacks, especially in the enlisted ranks, tend to be disproportionately drawn to non-combat fields such as unit administration and communications. They are underrepresented in jobs shooting rifles or dropping bombs.

Examples:

* Of the Army's 45,586 enlisted combat infantryman, 10.6% are black.

* Of the Air Force's 12,000 pilots, 245, or about 2%, are black.

* In the Navy, 2.5% of the pilots are black.

Senior Air Force officials say they are troubled by the number of black pilots and plan to do better.

* The Army's enlisted Green Berets are among the least diverse groups in the military. Only 196 of the Army's 4,278 enlisted Green Berets -- fewer than 5% -- are black.

The reasons for the racial divide are unclear, but several theories have emerged, including lingering racism in some quarters of the military and a tendency among black recruits to choose jobs that help them find work in the civilian sector.

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