i read the whole codepink diary from Iran, and i couldn’t find any criticism of the iranian regime. On the contrary, code pink activists continuously praise the freedom enjoyed by iranian people and expecially by iranian women.

For instance, you wrote:
“As the parliamentarians reminded us earlier in the day, “We may not have all the rights women have in the US, but we have free health care and education.” That seems to have contributed to strengthening women’s voices in Iran and Dr. Roustani finished the night declaring, ‘Women will be the leaders in Iran.’”
After today, I can believe it. ”
http://codepink4peace.org/blog/2008/11/day-2-in-iran-jodies-diary/

And this is Mrs. Benjamin’s blog:
I” have been comparing the atmosphere here to that of Iraq under Saddam Hussein and here it is very different. People in Iraq were afraid to speak out against Saddam, people in Iran aren’t. In a first moment i thought that Mrs. Medea Benjamin meant that people in Iran aren’t afraid to speak out against Saddam ;-), but she added : “While most wouldn’t want to be filmed venting against their government, they talk to us in an amazingly open fashion, barely looking over their shoulders to see if anyone is listening.”
http://codepink4peace.org/blog/2008/11/day-1-in-iran-medeas-diary/
etc. etc.

Reading code pink blog, it would seem that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a paradise on earth and the land of freedom. Of course you and Code Pink have the full right to defend and praise the iranian theocracy, but you cannot say that you and your group criticize the ayatollahs’ regime.

And after your meeting with Ahmadinejad in New York you issued the following statement:
“It’s rare for a head of state to take time during an official U.N. visit to meet with the peace community, especially in a situation where the host government—represented by the Bush administration—is so hostile,” said Evans, co-founder of CODEPINK. “The fact that the meeting took place and was so positive is, in itself, a major step forward.”
http://codepink4peace.org/blog/2008/09/official-release-leading-codepink-activists-and-other-peace-organizations-meet-with-iranian-president-in-new-york/

Morevover, you were widely quoted as saying that Ahamdinejad is “really about peace and human rights and respecting justice.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Jodie+Evans++%22really+about+peace+and+human+rights&start=0&sa=N&filter=0
I don’t know if you really said it. But if you did, it seems to me that you didn’t blame him that much….

As regards Obama, code pink enthusiastically supported him and ecstatically hailed his election as a a victory for the peace movement:

These are your own words from your website:
Like the rest of the world, CODEPINK is emboldened by Sen. Barack Obama’s victory in a historic presidential election.
The victory came through the hard work of millions within the progressive peace and justice movement within the past six years, bolstered by a values shift among the majority of Americans and their growing demand and faith in change — including an end to war. It is a victory for the movement and inspiration for further change!
“Americans have stood up to say they know the cost of war in lives, dignity and money,” said Jodie Evans, CODEPINK cofounder. “Being against war is the winning decision. They are ready for change. War is so over.”
http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?id=4508

And this is obama’s official website:
http://answercenter.barackobama.com/cgi-bin/barackobama.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=130&p_created=1176309944&p_sid=iR7ileYi&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MiwyJnBfcHJvZHM9JnBfY2F0cz
Who are Senator Obama’s bundlers?
Raising from $50,000 to $100,000: [...]
Jodie Evans (Los Angeles, CA)

Well, you don’t like Clinton. So what? You supported Obama all the same.

You should read the comment by ‘Shabnam’ (whatever the real identity). It gives you a good sense of the kind of people who come to the defense of the theocracy in Iran, as well as to the defense of Pourzal. As can be gathered from the comment, they are FOR theocracy.

Iranian socialists are NOT anti-Islamic, per se; I am a ‘seyed’ after all, meaning, technically, a descendent of Prophet Mohammad, bless his soul; I’ll be the last person to tell people who to follow in their personal lives. I simply expect people to be just, civil and respectful of others’ rights and freedoms. People have a right to follow any religion they like, if they wish to remain religious-minded. If such beliefs bring some solace, then by all means individuals can follow whatever religion they like.

What we are against is any dictatorship, especially one based on organized religion; a dictatorship that dictates how we should behave, how we should think and how we should talk, or whether or not we have a RIGHT to talk, think or behave in a certain way, or be able to travel without our husbands’ permission, etc. We are anti-THEOCRACY, as any freedom-loving person would be.

People such as ‘Shabnam’/Pourzal, however, tell us we should shut the ‘F’ up and not criticize a state formation MOST deserving of criticism. A very interesting line of ‘logic’.

Code Pink (whose members hold themselves to be social justice activists on the left), by discoursing uncritically with the government of Iran, is lending legitimacy to a theocratic dictatorship, at the same time as they are blunting the justified criticisms (directed against that theocracy) by activists for social justice INSIDE Iran (as well as those in exile).

This line of action goes down the path of ‘no-criticisms allowed’ against a theocracy. Code Pink needs to look at who is leading their tour, and question whether or not it is healthy to be led by men whose most active connections are with the Iranian GOVERNMENT, not Iranian activists for social justice. Ask him if he knows a single political prisoner in Iran, and see what he answers; then thou shall know thy friends.

The 1960s in America were a complaint – primarily about the treatment of Americans.

The complaining was addressed TO those in power. That’s like the slave complaining to the master.

What every complainer wants is a redress of his situation – a redress implemented by the master.

The complainer defines success as “redress” and failure as “no redress”. By those measures the 1960s failed. They led directly to neoliberalism and neoconservatism, and the world (and America) became worse.

What exactly would success have looked like? An end to racism against American blacks and sexism against American women? Sure. A bigger piece of the imperial pie passed from capitalists to workers? Yep.

If that had happened, what would the world look like today? Could it be anything better than a marginal improvement? How much better would global warming be? Wasn’t it precisely the hideous nature of neoliberalism that is leading to a decline in world imperialism and world capitalism?

The 1960s in America were in NO way revolutionary. Even the violence of the 1960s was mostly directly at *regular people*, not at CEOs and heads of state.

Wasn’t the 1960s in America really a complaint that the golden age of capitalism was under threat? A complaint that the American Dream was fading?

Isn’t it precisely the capitalist American Dream that (at the time) was the biggest threat to the world?

The 1960s in America was not about revolution. It was about a “more fair” capitalist system – more fair for Americans maybe, but highly destructive in the world.

The 1960s were indeed revolutionary in many places around the world. But not in America.

There are only two ways to destroy capitalism. One is the “positive” way of replacing it with a better system. The other is the “negative” way of making it so monstrous that it self-destructs. What began in the 1970s following the “revolutionary” 1960s was an implementation of the negative way, of the ridiculous neoconservative and neoliberal ideologies. Ideologies that are so patently self-destructive that it gave considerable hope to revolutionaries. So here we are in 2008, in a strange situation of both great destruction and great hope.

The worst thing for a revolutionary is the “golden age of capitalism”.

First, stop looking at the left only. There is opposition to these same policies along very similar lines from the right. Check out the Libertarian party sometime. Oh, I know a great deal of work goes into making sure the left hates the libertarians and vice versa, but if you are willing to put that all aside and look, you’d find they oppose many of the same things we do (war, empire, corrupt government, crooked elections, etc).

Second, you apparently are only looking at voting results. First, I wouldn’t trust those anyways. Its very unlikely that the corporate vote counting computers would tally and the corporate media would report that large numbers of Americans don’t support the current regime.

But, if you look beyond that, you can see polls that say that some 80% of Americans feel we are ‘on the wrong course’. Right now, the problem is that they don’t see any movement or party that they feel can really change things. So, a politician runs around shouting ‘hope’ and ‘change’ into every microphone, and they flock to him in the mistaken belief that he is the course for change. The interesting bit will be as they quickly figure out that little or nothing is changing after this election.

If you talk to real Americans, you’ll find that most of them know things are going badly wrong. They know their lives are getting tougher, that jobs are harder to find, that they have to keep working harder and harder and working more jobs just to get by. If you talk to real Americans, you know most of them want these wars over and the troops to come home. They don’t get a real radical anti-empire message very often, so you won’t hear them talk in those terms. But it is very easy to get them talking about how America needs to be taking care of itself and not going around the world ‘in search of monsters to slay’.

There’s remarkably little education that needs to be done about the problems with today’s policies. Where there is much work needed is in trying to convince people there is an alternative they can follow. This is very similar to the situation in the Soviet Union before its fall. There, they quickly went from a controlled police state where people kept their heads down and tried to survive their own lives … to millions of people in the street demanding immediate change … and they did it in the course of a few months.

The same can happen hear as soon as people see what seems to be a viable course for change. That 80% that constantly tells pollsters we are going in the wrong direction can quickly be out in the streets acting to try to change that WHEN they see an opportunity to make that really happen. Until then, they’ll keep their heads down and try to survive as best they can.

I know this is way too simplistic for people who want to cry ‘the end is near’ when the prices go up, or who want to scoff at the notion that we will someday run out of oil when the price goes down.

The other thing I’ve heard said from peak oil theorists is that we won’t know we’ve seen the peak until we are already past it. The ‘peak’ won’t be ‘sharp’ like the peak of a triangle. Instead, its more like the slow gentle rollover of a high-speed highway as it goes over a hill. Stop the car sometime and stand by the highway and see if you can spot the precisely highest spot on the road. Its not so easy.

Same with the peak in oil production. The ‘peak’ is a slow gentle event that happens over a span of years. When we’ve past it, we’ll be able to look back and see it. But large rise and falls in the price of oil is very much predicted behavior for the time when we are on the top part of this curve.

(Now this will be over Deadbeat’s head who thinks the Black Panthers changed American!) The empire runs on energy, relatively cheap fossil. I’m not talking about ME/geopolitical stuff or Venezuela. I’m talking about energy.

Yeah Max it was WAYYYYYYYYYYYYY over my head. You need to take a listen to Larry Holmes and really school yourself.

How about this-

A meta-perspective here can be that if we believe that we need to rape the planet in order to get what we need, we can be sure it will destroy us in the long run.

So, empire is a non-cooperation paradigm. It is an dominance/suppression framework. And this implies role playing and not ‘being’ human, one to another.

If a person or society feels truly empowered, they will not feel the need to dominate and oppress. That is a fear based response to life.

I agree with your points. Although when it comes to energy, i think we are going to need to learn a lot more about the nature of energy in many different ways. Not to mention, the nature of power. Which i believe means ‘creativity’.

Our world-view has been constrained by an empire narrative. The established system is built for empire, not for democracy. As such it cannot provide change. The challenge we are faced with is 1) creating a new alternative progressive narrative to the one empire provides, 2) create through a self-organizing movement the change that needs to take place. Absolutely that change must begin with each of us. But our world emerges not through some kind of therapy, but through our actions and stories. It happens as we congregate and begin to recognize what is and can be.

I am certain change is quite possible. The tools are there. The will to change and to do it one story at a time is what it will take.

I don’t think we’ll simply rise up and tear down the empire. The empire, from what I can see, has the levers of power to, as I said, undermine nearly every overt threat.

But there are two things which can begin to change: our consciousness and the awareness of the possibilities through our narratives and frames. Understand the frame of empire – it is everywhere present – and introduce a progressive narrative in its place.

I’m not simply talking about “peak oil”. This is not a conspiracy as some would suggest. It is about the reality of limits. The world created by energy is a material one. Our cities, our transportation, our lights, our airconditioning, all of the material good produced and functioning are built on energy – fossil. Energy amplifies our existence. There is no argument there. That that energy is limited is but obvious. Oil fields peak. That’s real. That’s not a fantacy. To plunder the earth as if it is has an endless supply of quality fossil, whether oil, coal, or natural gas is just insane. The empirical evidence is everywhere. The price of a barrel of oil went form 140 USD to 56 USD in just over a month! There were no new oil fields discovered (in fact the rate of oil finds has diminished greatly over the last 30 years), there were no new refineries that came on line. These are facts.

That nature is treated as a commodity is the weak/vulnerable underbelly of Empire. The US Empire runs on fossil. It rules the world on fossil. This is not and cannot be refuted; except to say black is white and blue is green – which doesn’t make it so. Again, this is not a conspiracy and has nothing to do with geopolitics. It is a fact of nature. Net-energy is the only bottom line to Corporate capitalism – to empire. All the talk of “collapse” can only be real when the non-negotiable wall of net-energy is met. Oil cannot be substituted for by say – wind or solar. The empire is built on fossil; and the accommodation of oil and coal, and natural gas.

We, on the other hand, must begin to plan and lay the course for a new direction, a new narrative. Locally which is sustainable. We must secure our food and get off the superhighway of the global market place. We must think and be local, while building solidarity with other locations, on sound fair trade with local regions, and globally. This needs to be done within the frame and context of a new narrative. Not the one the Empire provides. The latter will only keep us where we’ve been for hundreds of years.

The time is now!!

I think that all of these steps that are , of course, progressive in nature are positive. The part where it always falls short, may have to do with getting to the larger, underlying issues, which goes back to how we view ourselves as human beings and how we frame and understand the steps taken. For example,

We could say that protests helped to end the Vietnam ‘war’. However,
we are still creating the same immoral wars. Not only do we still believe in war, but we don’t even need to justify it with rationalizations. So how far have we truly come?

Somehow, we are going to need to realize that what you do to another, you really do to yourself. It will need to be even more stridently apparant than it is already. We learn through repetiton, and when we don’t learn through subtle means, then life itself has a way of becoming ever more relentless.

Every time I think things must have gone far enough, i am always surprised once again…

but the changes brought about by [the 1960's] are not enough, dont you agree Deadbeat ?

“Change” brought about the ending of slavery in the United States was not enough either. Change brought about the women’s sufferage movement was not enough either. Change brought about by the union movement was not enough either. I don’t see your point.

What is true about the aforementioned is that it took some level a degree of solidarity to achieve those gains. But unfortunately for reason of government reaction to these movements as well as unfortunately at times racism within these movement cause these movements to dissipate and was unable to sustain itself because these narrow causes.

However I am not the one belittling the gains of these movement. Doing proper analysis and putting these movements — good, bad, and ugly, in their proper context means that we can celebrate these achievements against the powerful while learning from where they fell short.

My point is that solidarity among people of color with the Left is extremely weak. I highly recommending listening to Monica Moorehead from the “2008 Workers World Party Conference presentation. There she provide an analysis that is clearly missing from this discussion.

And indeed we are seeing the hollowing out of the empire (I am not entirely sure that we can call this an empire, but that is another argument), by the drying up of the traditional sources for energy.

Can you provide evidence that there is a “drying up of the traditional sources of energy” for one and two how this relates to the lack of solidarity on the Left? The price of oil went back down to ~$55.00/barrel down from over $100.00 and the price at the pump has scale back in some place to below $2.00. If the price was due to dwindling supplies then the price of gas would still had remained high despite the economic downturn.

The recent spike in gas prices was due to the War on Iraq and the ensuing speculation it caused on the future markets. In other words pure price FIXING. Unfortunately, a number of Leftist jumped on the high price of gas to sell us on the “Peak Oil” canard. There is clearly more to the “Peak Oil” canard then what the Left is selling here. Just like the Left selling of the “War for Oil” canard in order to obscure the role Zionism has played influencing U.S. Foreign Policy. It is this kind of DUPLICITY that is retarding solidarity on the Left.

Which is why once again I return to ANALYSIS.

What I am trying to express is that all of us should pause and direct our glances away from what is, which is unconquerable at present anyway, but develop other strategies. Gary.

And what “strategies” are those? That once again is my point of PLATITUDES rather than ANALYSIS. My strategy is to build SOLIDARITY with communities of color. Work with them on their issues and then you will have earned their trust. Once you’ve earned their trust then you can influence them on larger issues (such as “empire”). What matters to communities of color is RACISM and CLASSISM. Those two together will enable the Left to challenge Capitalism, Militarism and Zionism.

Here is my sense of the empire. First we must never lose sight of the US as empire, if you blink you lose. If we talk in empire terms like GDP and economic growth and prosperity, you’re lost.

The US empire is resilient on many front. It produces debt, deficits and money as if to defy gravity. In fact, when past empires crashed and burned because of debt, the US empire thrives on it. The stock market goes up and down in spite of most of what happens around it. The price of oil is up and down without regard to supply and demand.

The empire controls the all the levers of power. It can marginalize the opposition, put an African American in the white house and keep total control. It has the Declaration of Independence to provide a faux sense of democracy, while it rules from DC with a Constitution which was drafted by the gentry for the gentry. The full force of an unparalleled military has been at its disposal since the inception of this nation-state as it expanded, and destroyed. Built on genocide and slavery it made its way to the far east and elsewhere as the other empires faded into the sun set.

So, you might ask, if this Empire is so mighty, what’s to be done? Well the question is, where is it’s underbelly, it’s soft spot. Global warming? Hardly. Economic collapse is only possible if the very fuel of the empire is gone. Kaput!

(Now this will be over Deadbeat’s head who thinks the Black Panthers changed American!) The empire runs on energy, relatively cheap fossil. I’m not talking about ME/geopolitical stuff or Venezuela. I’m talking about energy.

All living organisms collect and store and use energy. Humans do, but our output is very limited. The American empire was fueld initially by horses and slaves. But these very also limited and required much care and attention.

When, during the industrial revolution, fossil became the basis for capitalization, production and wealth, it took off like a fury and is here today. Everything that is Empire was built on fossil – coal, natural gas, and oil. We know there is a limit to how much of natures miricle exists. There is a clear understanding that we cannot expend more energy than it takes to make fossil energy available for use. This is known as net-energy. What it takes in energy to extract energy is net energy.

The Empire’s economy runs on endless growth propelled by endless cheap energy. Without the latter the Empire chashes and burns. It is said that the Roman Empire (US Empire is modeled after it) came to the same end. At that time it was not fossil.

The Empire calls the shots. It will until it’s life line is cut. Alternative energy sources will never provide the kind of energy demand the Empire requires. It will take an utter deadstop in the upward growth patterns of the Empire. The Empire does not seem capable of making those adjustments.

Here’s where a progressive alternative is needed. Small, local sustainable living, participatory and democratically governed will be need to replace the unsustainable empire as it collapses. This is not left or right. It is not about racism (which is the Empire’s invention). This is about survival and doing so in a healthier fashion than Western civilizations have know (with the exception of blips in time).