April 14, 2006

by Bill Levinson

The anti-American Frauds for Saddam Committee, also known as the American Friends Service Committee, has shown its eagerness to surrender Iraq to chaos, barbarism, and civil war. AFSC is lobbying on behalf of terrorists and it is also the parent organization of Street Spirit, a newspaper whose stated purpose is to help homeless people but that is in practice filled with almost-stereotypical left-wing dogma and gum-beating.

The following should give the reader some insight into the mentality, such as it is, of the American Friends of Saddam Committee. http://www.afsc.org/iraq/guide/board-statement.htm

Statement of the American Friends Service Committee on the Immediate Withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Iraq

December 22, 2004

The AFSC Board of Directors, gathered in worship in Philadelphia, adopted the following minute:

The Board of the American Friends Service Committee grieves at the ongoing and increasing deaths of Iraqis, Americans, and others in Iraq, including as many as 100,000 civilian deaths and many more maimed.

We believe that an immediate end to hostilities is essential to stem the carnage.

Can you persuade the insurgents who are planting bombs and chopping off people’s heads and murdering female aid workers like Margaret Hassan to end the hostilities? Our Armed Forces would be delighted to stop shooting but it is difficult for them to do so when terrorists are trying to murder them and everybody else in the region.

We are convinced that the presence of U.S. troops is a destabilizing force in the region and contributes to the increasing loss of life.

We see; Saddam Hussein and his murderous sons were stabilizing forces. Well, Robert Heinlein pointed out that concentration camps are quite peaceful (because the inmates lack the means of resistance).

…We believe it is now clear that the continuing U.S. military presence in Iraq is counter-productive and wrong. The occupation has lost the trust of the Iraqi people. We abhor the violence—each day Iraq becomes less safe for the occupied, the occupiers, and those who seek to relieve the suffering.

Of course, it was quite safe under Saddam Hussein unless you were a Kurd or a political opponent, in which case you were gassed or thrown into a plastic shredder. If you were a woman, you might be raped by Uday Hussein and then thrown to his attack dogs when he tired of you.

We have struggled since the beginning of the occupation with the role of U.S. forces in Iraq. Our Quaker faith tells us that military solutions are always wrong.

And if you had been in charge from 1939-1945, you would be lampshades or bars of soap. The truth is that the AFSC can bleat about pacifism and war being wrong because it is nice and safe behind a wall of streel and explosives and our brave men and women in uniform who man that wall. The difference between non-pacifists and AFSC pacifists is a lot like that between hunters and anti-hunting activists. The former kill their own food while the latter pay meat packers and butchers to do it for them (while bleating platitudes about killing Bambi).

We contend, in fact, that pacifism is often an excuse for physical cowardice. A man (I use the term loosely) who declares himself a pacifist relieves himself of the traditional duty to protect his wife, children, and other family members for whose safety he is responsible. Which reminds me of a joke:

A criminal broke into the home of two American Friends Service Committee members. The scrawny unarmed 110-pound intruder drew a circle on the floor and ordered the 200-pound husband to stand in it with the warning, “Don’t you dare step out of that circle!” Then he proceeded to rape the man’s wife repeatedly. After he finally got tired and left, she demanded of her husband, “Why didn’t you do something?”

“I did!” he replied indignantly. “While he wasn’t looking, I stepped out of the circle three times!”

The U.S. must give way, so that the UN and other agencies, working with the Iraqi interim government, can bring peace and stability. The AFSC believes that the United States has lost the moral standing to achieve the necessary healing, but remains responsible to support financially those institutions and agencies which can do so.

“”Lost the moral standing???” 2000 of our soldiers DIED and another 20,000 have been wounded so the Iraqi people could vote and hold up their purple-inked fingers as signs of pride in their freedom and you two-bit AFSC pukes say we don’t have the moral standing to do the necessary healing???

The publication known as Street Spirit shows, in fact, just how degenerate the American Friends of Saddam Committee has become. Street Spirit came to our attention when it apparently severed its ties with a pro-homeless advocate because of her advocacy of Israel’s right to exist and her opposition to Palestinian terrorism and violence. This is hardly surprising given AFSC’s standard line of bleating, “Third World gooooooood, America and Israel baaaaaaaaaad” much like the sheep in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Perhaps AFSC should reassess its position on the “moral standing” of our Armed Forces because, in the absence of shepherds and sheepdogs, sheep tend to get eaten by wolves.

One might in fact contend that Street Spirit is a way for AFSC to use homeless people to spread left-wing propaganda that could just as well have been written by Lenin, Castro, Hanoi Hannah, or Jane Fonda (but the latter two are redundant). One of the publication’s missions is to give homeless people something to sell so they can earn a little money for themselves but a good part of its content consists of ultra-left-wing diatribes that could have come straight from the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984. This content includes left-wing gum-beating and whining that does not even do anything constructive to address the “social justice” issues in question.

As an example, one contributor writes that the U.S. is an “Orwellian society” and then whines about not being able to hold jobs because he is fired or harassed for complaining about unsafe working conditions. http://www.thestreetspirit.org/March2006/orwellian.htm

I have had a chronic problem keeping jobs, and since 1981, I have held only about a dozen of them for longer than six months. …This overview of hazardous job conditions I’ve experienced is in the spirit of giving a share of the blame to uncaring corporations, and taking a portion of it off myself.

…Conclusion: If you want this job, kiss your lungs goodbye, and you can’t sue them because you signed the waiver. Adequate protection costs too much money. Money is God.

The article’s sole purpose seems to be to show that “Business is Evil” but it does nothing to solve the problem. Now the so-called “progressive” community considers us “fascist dogs” and “right-wing pigs” (both terms having been applied to us in the Indymedia community) but, in contrast to the so-called progressive who called the U.S. an “Orwellian society,” we actually care enough about worker safety to post information that might actually help the downtrodden workers. Although we are pro-business capitalist pigs, we will under no circumstances condone unsafe workplace conditions. That sort of thing is for the People’s Proletarian Paradise of Red China, not the United States. If money is God, then OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration) is God’s wrath and its fines cost employers who operate in this manner a lot of money. Here are two useful links for workers who are forced to work in unsafe conditions like the ones this Street Spirit writer describes.

http://www.osha.gov/dep/oia/whistleblower/index.html
and “How to file a complaint with OSHA”

Now take a look at “Resisting Abusive Corporate Power” http://www.thestreetspirit.org/Feb2006/corporate.htm Do people REALLY exist who write in this manner?

Corporate plutocrats such as J.P. Morgan, Dupont, and Goodyear Tire hated the New Deal and contrived a failed fascist plot to overthrow this Democratic president. Since then, Republicans have waged a stealth campaign to reconfigure national government into a corporatocracy.

A fascist plot to overthrow the President, and they were never prosecuted??? Of course the writer forgets that corporations provide jobs and economic opportunities, and many of the oppressed proletarian workers are also the bloodsucking capitalist pigs because of employee stock purchasing programs.

Now here is Terry Messman (editor of Street Spirit) himself.
http://www.thestreetspirit.org/Nov2005/legacy.htm

What, exactly, does this anti-Iraq war tirade have to do with helping the homeless? All the draft-related material in the Messman article is irrelevant because we have an all-volunteer army. This is merely the AFSC’s ongoing attempt to undermine our Armed Forces, in this case under the color of advocating for the homeless.

Finally, Street Spirit weighs in on the privatization of Social Security:

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/Feb2005/socialsecurity.htm

On January 11, the Bush administration held a large conference in Washington, D.C., to dupe the public into believing that Social Security is in a crisis and that only privatization of the program can solve this phony, manufactured crisis.

…On January 13, Vice President Dick Cheney joined the chorus of liars when he claimed, “The system is on a course to eventual bankruptcy.”

The dirty scheme to privatize Social Security is based on a pile of lies and deception, and everyone knows that this may end up being one of the worst scandals of the Republican Party. Handing Social Security over to corporate control will allow the profiteers of Wall Street an opportunity to fleece trillions of dollars from working-class Americans.

We think we can save Street Spirit a lot of work in the future. The following can be programmed in JavaScript or Visual Basic to produce an almost-limitless number of articles for this publication and they will all be as meaningful as those we have cited above.

“Long live the [select at least four words from Column A] struggle to SMASH the [select at least five words from Column B] oppressors of the [select at least four words from Column A].”

Column A
People’s
Proletarian
Downtrodden
Oppressed
Revolutionary
Feminist
Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual
People of Color
Socialist
Workers
Peasants
Progressive
Social Justice
Antiwar

Column B
Fascist
Republican
Right-wing
Running-dog-lackey
Neocon
Neo-Nazi
Zionist
Tsarist
Warmongering
Corporate
Monarchist
Capitalist
Imperialist
Yankee-pig
Bushite

Isn’t it easy it is to write for so-called progressive publications like Street Spirit? In any event, the above examples should give the reader a taste (have the sickness bag ready) of the leftist swill that is now pouring from the American Friends Service Committee. On a more practical note, the un-American Fiends for Submission to Islamofascism Committee is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt religious institution and there should be limits on the amount of Bush-bashing it is allowed to do. Complaints with factual evidence, which is best obtained from AFSC’s own Web sites, of substantial efforts to influence legislation (not to mention elections) can be sent to:

Internal Revenue Service
Exempt Organizations Examination Division
1100 Commerce Street
ATTN: SE:T:EO:E
Dallas, TX 75242