Old PT Barnum would fall into a dead swoon over this Three Ring
Circus featuring Sex as the centerpiece.
What an opportunity for those wanting the Limelight. Just point the
finger and cry, "Wolf!"
And yet, every accusation needs to be taken seriously, and have its
day in court. That means a desperate need for appointing judges to
those long vacant benches, and hiring more court attendants. Talk
about a boost to our lagging economy!
But once again, aren't we getting all caught up in the Sex aspect of a
much deeper issue? Tell me, is being groped by your fat old, gross
smelling boss any more insulting than being forced to go into debt in
order to obtain the education you need to enable you to work for that
slimy old Octopus? Is having some smirking, inebriated coworker never
looking higher than your chest, any more degrading than learning that
your bank is cheating you?
This nation is still in the grip of a terrible depression, with many
of us losing huge chunks of our life savings, and in spite of some
coverage, that depression has not begun to create the rage generated
by our "Fondling Fathers". And yet, they are symptoms of the same
problem. Disrespect! The manner in which we are treating, or being
treated, is brought about by our disrespect for one another.
Can you respect the company president who backs you into a corner and
shoves his warty tongue down your throat? Well, while you're
protesting this behavior, don't forget to protest the fact that his
company is padding costs, or sending jobs off-shore, or moving his
factories to Mexico. But which offense is more apt to ruin the
company president's reputation? And while he receives a slap on the
wrist and his fourth wife leaves him, for his indiscretions, he'll
receive the "CEO Man of the Year" award for his skill as a manager.
I am just as offended by a government that is allowing its children to
become debtors, disabled veterans to go months waiting for treatment,
elderly blind people living and dying lonely, forgotten lives because
their government has diverted money that could have made their lives
fuller, and prisons that have become Slave Camps.
I'm not suggesting that we go lightly on the macho predators, but I am
urging us to broaden our nets and see if we can't get to the bottom of
this offensive behavior. Let's begin treating one another, and
ourselves, with respect and honesty.
Carl Jarvis
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Re: [blind-democracy] Re: inappropriate sexual behavior
Good Thursday Morning, Bob, Bonnie, Miriam and all defenders of Truth
and Honor!!!
Old PT. Barnum would fall into a dead swoon over this Three Ring
Circus featuring Sex as the centerpiece.
What an opportunity for those wanting the Limelight. Just point the
finger and cry, "Wolf!"
And yet, every accusation needs to be taken seriously, and have its
day in court. That means a desperate need for judges and court
attendants. Talk about a boost to our lagging economy!
But once again, aren't we getting all caught up in the Sex aspect of a
much deeper issue? Tell me, is being groped by your fat old, gross
smelling boss any more insulting than being forced to go into debt in
order to obtain the education you need to enable you to work for that
slimy old Octopus? Is having some smirking, inebriated coworker never
looking higher than your chest, any more degrading than learning that
your bank is cheating you?
This nation is still in the grip of a terrible depression, with many
of us losing huge chunks of our life savings, and in spite of some
coverage, that depression has not begun to create the rage generated
by our "Fondling Fathers". And yet, they are symptoms of the same
problem. Disrespect! The manner in which we are treating, or being
treated, is brought about by our disrespect for one another.
Can you respect the company president who backs you into a corner and
shoves his warty tongue down your throat? Well, while you're
protesting this behavior, don't forget to protest the fact that his
company is padding costs, or sending jobs off-shore, or moving his
factories to Mexico. But which offense is more apt to ruin the
company president's reputation? And while he receives a slap on the
wrist and his fourth wife leaves him, for his indiscretions, he'll
receive the "CEO Man of the Year" award for his skill as a manager.
I am just as offended by a government that is allowing its children to
become debtors, disabled veterans to go months waiting for treatment,
elderly blind people living and dying lonely, forgotten lives because
their government has diverted money that could have made their lives
fuller, and prisons that have become Slave Camps.
I'm not suggesting that we go lightly on the macho predators, but I am
urging us to broaden our nets and see if we can't get to the bottom of
this offensive behavior. Let's begin treating one another, and
ourselves, with respect and honesty.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/30/17, Bonnie L. Sherrell <blslarner@olypen.com> wrote:
> I suspect you are right in thinking that those hoping to distract from our
> Orangeness's actions may be behind so many accusations against prominent
> men,
> Miriam. A group of right-wing folks tried to undermine the power of those
> accusing Moore by seeking to introduce a phony accuser to the mix,
> approaching a
> major newspaper. They overplayed their hand, and their plot was uncovered.
>
> They'd hoped to convince the newspaper that this was an actual incident,
> and
> then intended to unmask the paper as accepting a phony accusation to
> indicate it
> was too credulous, thus throwing the other accusations into question.
>
> Ms. Tweedon, whose accusations of inappropriate behavior started the claims
> against Franken, is herself a right-wing journalist, and her ties to Fox
> News
> are now being called into question.
>
> Am already upset about seeing this wave of accusations against people who
> are
> well loved but decidedly progressive.
>
> Bonnie L. Sherrell
> Teacher at Large
>
> "Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very
> wise cannot see all ends." LOTR
>
> "Don't go where I can't follow."
>
> We gave the Goblin King control of our nation!
>
>
>
>
and Honor!!!
Old PT. Barnum would fall into a dead swoon over this Three Ring
Circus featuring Sex as the centerpiece.
What an opportunity for those wanting the Limelight. Just point the
finger and cry, "Wolf!"
And yet, every accusation needs to be taken seriously, and have its
day in court. That means a desperate need for judges and court
attendants. Talk about a boost to our lagging economy!
But once again, aren't we getting all caught up in the Sex aspect of a
much deeper issue? Tell me, is being groped by your fat old, gross
smelling boss any more insulting than being forced to go into debt in
order to obtain the education you need to enable you to work for that
slimy old Octopus? Is having some smirking, inebriated coworker never
looking higher than your chest, any more degrading than learning that
your bank is cheating you?
This nation is still in the grip of a terrible depression, with many
of us losing huge chunks of our life savings, and in spite of some
coverage, that depression has not begun to create the rage generated
by our "Fondling Fathers". And yet, they are symptoms of the same
problem. Disrespect! The manner in which we are treating, or being
treated, is brought about by our disrespect for one another.
Can you respect the company president who backs you into a corner and
shoves his warty tongue down your throat? Well, while you're
protesting this behavior, don't forget to protest the fact that his
company is padding costs, or sending jobs off-shore, or moving his
factories to Mexico. But which offense is more apt to ruin the
company president's reputation? And while he receives a slap on the
wrist and his fourth wife leaves him, for his indiscretions, he'll
receive the "CEO Man of the Year" award for his skill as a manager.
I am just as offended by a government that is allowing its children to
become debtors, disabled veterans to go months waiting for treatment,
elderly blind people living and dying lonely, forgotten lives because
their government has diverted money that could have made their lives
fuller, and prisons that have become Slave Camps.
I'm not suggesting that we go lightly on the macho predators, but I am
urging us to broaden our nets and see if we can't get to the bottom of
this offensive behavior. Let's begin treating one another, and
ourselves, with respect and honesty.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/30/17, Bonnie L. Sherrell <blslarner@olypen.com> wrote:
> I suspect you are right in thinking that those hoping to distract from our
> Orangeness's actions may be behind so many accusations against prominent
> men,
> Miriam. A group of right-wing folks tried to undermine the power of those
> accusing Moore by seeking to introduce a phony accuser to the mix,
> approaching a
> major newspaper. They overplayed their hand, and their plot was uncovered.
>
> They'd hoped to convince the newspaper that this was an actual incident,
> and
> then intended to unmask the paper as accepting a phony accusation to
> indicate it
> was too credulous, thus throwing the other accusations into question.
>
> Ms. Tweedon, whose accusations of inappropriate behavior started the claims
> against Franken, is herself a right-wing journalist, and her ties to Fox
> News
> are now being called into question.
>
> Am already upset about seeing this wave of accusations against people who
> are
> well loved but decidedly progressive.
>
> Bonnie L. Sherrell
> Teacher at Large
>
> "Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very
> wise cannot see all ends." LOTR
>
> "Don't go where I can't follow."
>
> We gave the Goblin King control of our nation!
>
>
>
>
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Re: [blind-democracy] inappropriate sexual behavior
Can we say, "Witch Hunt"?
Of course we can!
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
Not that I am supporting pawing and groping and indecent liberties,
but don't we have an old slogan, "Innocent until proven guilty"?
Doesn't that mean guilty by a panel of our peers, in a court of law,
or by a judge or panel of judges?
As far as I am concerned, every person who crossed the line, forcing
their affections onto an unwilling subject, should be given a fair
hearing, and accept the determination handed down. But until then,
each accused person has the right, under our law, to profess
innocence, and to be so treated. That means we do not fire people or
force them to resign their jobs, until a verdict is reached.
Shades of The Salem Witch Hunt! Are we never going to learn that
conviction by hysteria can harm as many innocent people as it convicts
the guilty?
As a People, we Americans are leaning more and more toward accepting
the Word of the Mass Media as the final measure of Innocent or Guilty.
Bad enough that we have a legal system weighted toward the Wealthy,
learning of innocent people serving long sentences, or being executed.
What we need to do is to use these times when our attention is focused
on how we determine whether a person is guilty or not, to revisit our
entire legal system. Is Justice really blind? Who does the law
protect, and who does the law punish? Why are our prisons filled with
so many persons of color? Are persons of color really inferior to us
White folk? Are the rich less crooked than the rest of us? Since our
laws seem to favor the Rich, do we have statistics proving that they
are superior to those of us less wealthy?
Why should members of congress be forced out of their jobs when
accused of improper conduct, when the President, Donald Trump, is on
video declaring that his "Star" status gives him the right to grab
women's pussy's, and pass it off for "locker room talk"? Why has he
not been removed from his job? Are White, rich Men just made to be
treated better than us lesser Beings?
Even as we focus on the offending men, the women stepping forward are
beginning to feel the hostility of the American Public. This nation
has a history of shifting the blame onto the victim, the offended
woman.
When I was a boy, we learned that boys "sowed their wild oats". But
any girl who was forced into sexual relations by a young "Wild Oats
Sower" was considered "Damaged Goods" from then on. She should not
have allowed him to have his way with her. She dressed provocatively,
and was "Asking for it". Women who did contact the police and file
complaints of rape, were treated to humiliation by officials. In
fact, the woman's entire sexual history was on trial, while the man
protested that "she said she wanted me", and he was judged on only
current behavior.
We tend to see events based on our current experiences and upon our
current social conditions. The American Scene was much different 40
or 50 years ago. When a woman finally steps forward and declares that
she was pawed back in 1980, we view the act on our present
understanding, not on conditions as they existed then. The great
shame and embarrassment she would have undergone at the time most
likely kept her silent, along with the advice usually given women at
the time. But we also need to remember the world as it was for men.
In those days men were raised to believe that when a woman said, "no",
she might simply be playing "hard to get". So the man, if he's any
kind of man at all, pressed forward.
Because we have had a history of not talking about Sex, and our
responsibilities as men and women, we have a tangled mess. Sorting it
out by turning it over to the Mass Media is about as wrong a thing to
do as to hand it over to Donald Trump.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/29/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Every time I look at the computer, there's a new headline about another
> well
> known man who is being fired for inappropriate sexual behavior. Too bad
> Trump isn't among them. But seriously, will this really change anything?
> Maybe they should all be required to go through a rehabilitation program
> with each graduating when they're cured of their addiction. Of course, most
> of them have enough money so they don't need their jobs. Maybe they should
> all do what Al Franken did and just meekly apologize and keep working.
> Maybe
> they should be required to do volunteer work in hospital emergency rooms.
> But I'm tired of the headlines and the glee of women who think that now
> we've, as they put it, "turned a corner". I keep having the feeling that
> all
> these headlines about men doing what men have always done, are a means to
> distract people from the terrible changes being wrought by the Trump
> administration and the Republican congress. The media keeps saying that the
> congress hasn't accomplished anything yet, that Trump hasn't accomplished
> anything yet. That's certainly untrue.
>
> Miriam
>
>
>
Of course we can!
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
Not that I am supporting pawing and groping and indecent liberties,
but don't we have an old slogan, "Innocent until proven guilty"?
Doesn't that mean guilty by a panel of our peers, in a court of law,
or by a judge or panel of judges?
As far as I am concerned, every person who crossed the line, forcing
their affections onto an unwilling subject, should be given a fair
hearing, and accept the determination handed down. But until then,
each accused person has the right, under our law, to profess
innocence, and to be so treated. That means we do not fire people or
force them to resign their jobs, until a verdict is reached.
Shades of The Salem Witch Hunt! Are we never going to learn that
conviction by hysteria can harm as many innocent people as it convicts
the guilty?
As a People, we Americans are leaning more and more toward accepting
the Word of the Mass Media as the final measure of Innocent or Guilty.
Bad enough that we have a legal system weighted toward the Wealthy,
learning of innocent people serving long sentences, or being executed.
What we need to do is to use these times when our attention is focused
on how we determine whether a person is guilty or not, to revisit our
entire legal system. Is Justice really blind? Who does the law
protect, and who does the law punish? Why are our prisons filled with
so many persons of color? Are persons of color really inferior to us
White folk? Are the rich less crooked than the rest of us? Since our
laws seem to favor the Rich, do we have statistics proving that they
are superior to those of us less wealthy?
Why should members of congress be forced out of their jobs when
accused of improper conduct, when the President, Donald Trump, is on
video declaring that his "Star" status gives him the right to grab
women's pussy's, and pass it off for "locker room talk"? Why has he
not been removed from his job? Are White, rich Men just made to be
treated better than us lesser Beings?
Even as we focus on the offending men, the women stepping forward are
beginning to feel the hostility of the American Public. This nation
has a history of shifting the blame onto the victim, the offended
woman.
When I was a boy, we learned that boys "sowed their wild oats". But
any girl who was forced into sexual relations by a young "Wild Oats
Sower" was considered "Damaged Goods" from then on. She should not
have allowed him to have his way with her. She dressed provocatively,
and was "Asking for it". Women who did contact the police and file
complaints of rape, were treated to humiliation by officials. In
fact, the woman's entire sexual history was on trial, while the man
protested that "she said she wanted me", and he was judged on only
current behavior.
We tend to see events based on our current experiences and upon our
current social conditions. The American Scene was much different 40
or 50 years ago. When a woman finally steps forward and declares that
she was pawed back in 1980, we view the act on our present
understanding, not on conditions as they existed then. The great
shame and embarrassment she would have undergone at the time most
likely kept her silent, along with the advice usually given women at
the time. But we also need to remember the world as it was for men.
In those days men were raised to believe that when a woman said, "no",
she might simply be playing "hard to get". So the man, if he's any
kind of man at all, pressed forward.
Because we have had a history of not talking about Sex, and our
responsibilities as men and women, we have a tangled mess. Sorting it
out by turning it over to the Mass Media is about as wrong a thing to
do as to hand it over to Donald Trump.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/29/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> Every time I look at the computer, there's a new headline about another
> well
> known man who is being fired for inappropriate sexual behavior. Too bad
> Trump isn't among them. But seriously, will this really change anything?
> Maybe they should all be required to go through a rehabilitation program
> with each graduating when they're cured of their addiction. Of course, most
> of them have enough money so they don't need their jobs. Maybe they should
> all do what Al Franken did and just meekly apologize and keep working.
> Maybe
> they should be required to do volunteer work in hospital emergency rooms.
> But I'm tired of the headlines and the glee of women who think that now
> we've, as they put it, "turned a corner". I keep having the feeling that
> all
> these headlines about men doing what men have always done, are a means to
> distract people from the terrible changes being wrought by the Trump
> administration and the Republican congress. The media keeps saying that the
> congress hasn't accomplished anything yet, that Trump hasn't accomplished
> anything yet. That's certainly untrue.
>
> Miriam
>
>
>
Monday, November 27, 2017
Re: [blind-democracy] Richard Cordray Sets Up Titanic Struggle for Control of the Consumer Protection Bureau With Last-Minute Move
Hail Caesar! Hail Caesar!
As the mighty Republic morphed into the Roman Empire, the People
cheered and cheered. History really does repeat itself despite what
some folks want to believe. Just as the mighty Oak dies, falling to
age and disease, to rot and become food for the next seedlings to
begin reaching for their day in the Sun, so do Human's Nations. Too
many of us think that because the trappings are different, history is
going to be different. But the one ingredient that is constant is
Human Nature. So, even as that Mighty Roman Empire rolled over all in
its path, only to come apart at the seams, so will the Great American
Empire. That is, if our Species survive. Turning swords into
plowshares is one thing, but not so easy to do with nuclear's.
Carl Jarvis
> C First Look Media. All rights reservedTerms of use
> WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 12: Director of Consumer Financial Protection
> Bureau (CFPB) Richard Cordray testifies during a hearing before the House
> Financial Services Committee September 12, 2013 on Capitol Hill in
> Washington, DC. Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) blocked Cordray from
> delivering the CFPB's semi-annual report to the House until he was
> confirmed
> by the Senate in July, two years after President Barack Obama selected him.
> (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
> Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
>
> Richard Cordray Sets Up Titanic Struggle for Control of the Consumer
> Protection Bureau With Last-Minute Move
> David Dayen
> November 24 2017, 5:16 p.m.
>
> Signaling an epic fight over control of the Consumer Financial Protection
> Bureau, the agency on Friday named Leandra English as Deputy Director.
> English had been serving as Richard Cordray's chief of staff.
>
> Hours later, Cordray officially resigned. Under the statutory line of
> succession spelled out in the law that created the agency, the deputy
> director automatically replaces him, with full powers of the office, until
> the Senate formally confirms a new director selected by the president.
>
> President Trump had planned to name Mick Mulvaney, current director of the
> Office of Management and Budget, as interim director, wresting immediate
> control of CFPB without having to go through Congress. The administration
> would have relied on the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which allows the
> president to make appointments to federal agencies in certain cases. But as
> The Intercept reported earlier this week, there was a hitch in that plan:
> The temporary pick is not legally Trump's to make. (See the update below:
> Trump made the pick regardless late on Friday evening.)
>
> The appointment of English, just moments before Cordray's departure,
> suggests that CFPB will make the case that Trump can't appoint anyone on an
> interim basis, and that only the deputy director can replace an absent or
> unavailable director. The FVRA says specifically that it doesn't apply to
> agencies where "a statutory provision . designates an officer or employee
> to
> perform the functions and duties of a specified office temporarily in an
> acting capacity."
>
> If Trump decides to appoint Mulvaney or another interim director anyway, it
> could set up a titanic battle, with effectively two different people
> claiming leadership of the agency - one who expressly opposes its mission,
> and one who supports it. The courts would have to sort out the aftermath,
> determining whether Trump's appointee or Deputy Director English hold
> actual
> control.
>
> In recent days, top Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer,
> D-N.Y., had said that they agreed that the deputy director would serve as
> acting director in Cordray's absence. "Yes, that's our view," said Schumer
> spokesman Matt House, "and we've been in conversations with the offices of
> Sens. Brown and Warren on exploring ways to ensure the line of succession,
> as drawn up in law, is adhered to." Sherrod Brown is the top-ranking
> Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren,
> D-Mass., was the intellectual author of the agency prior to becoming a
> senator. She was also named by President Obama to set up the agency on a
> temporary basis before Cordray was confirmed.
>
> The deputy director position had been vacant since January 2016. David
> Silberman, the CFPB's associate director of Research, Markets, and
> Regulations, was serving in an acting capacity. Some Democrats and
> advocates
> had expressed concern that CFPB's legal argument was not as strong with an
> acting deputy director as with one named by Cordray. With Friday's
> decision,
> - in the ultimate news-dump position of the day after Thanksgiving -
> Cordray
> has strengthened CFPB's case on his way out the door. Silberman will stay
> in
> his associate director position.
>
> Cordray even referenced the statute that gives him his authority in his
> announcement.
>
>
> Accordingly, upon my departure, she will become the acting Director
> pursuant
> to section 1011(b)(5) of the Dodd-Frank Act. In considering how to ensure
> an
> orderly succession for this independent agency, I determined that it would
> be best to avoid leaving this key position filled only in an acting
> capacity. In consultation over the past few days, I have also come to
> recognize that appointing the current chief of staff to the deputy director
> position would minimize operational disruption and provide for a smooth
> transition given her operational expertise.
>
> Corporate lobbyists are already out in force objecting to Cordray's action.
> "The decision to choose who leads the country's consumer protection agency,
> and confusion that's been caused by Cordray's own 'succession plan,' should
> not be made by one individual," said Chris Stinebart, president and CEO of
> the American Financial Services Association, "and for this reason AFSA has
> long advocated for a bipartisan commission."
>
> Of course, the succession plan isn't Cordray's, it's part of the statute
> passed by Congress. And the one individual seeking to choose CFPB
> leadership
> is Donald Trump, who has installed acting heads of both the Office of
> Comptroller of the Currency and the IRS, seeding those agencies with
> loyalists immediately following a vacancy without having to wait for Senate
> confirmation of a replacement. Trump could still try to do the same with
> CFPB, but he would have to fight against a legal argument that the
> independent agency has its own line of succession. There's no reason to
> officially name a deputy director right now unless the agency plans to take
> up that fight.
>
> English is a career bureaucrat, having worked at the Office of Personnel
> Management and Office of Management and Budget before CFPB. She has worked
> at CFPB from its inception in 2010, first serving on the implementation
> team
> led by Elizabeth Warren at the Treasury Department. Later she rose to
> become
> deputy chief operating officer, acting chief of staff, deputy chief of
> staff, and chief of staff. "Leandra is a seasoned professional who has
> spent
> her career of public service focused on promoting smooth and efficient
> operations," said Cordray in a statement. "As deputy director, we will
> continue to benefit from Leandra's in-depth knowledge of the operational
> needs of this agency and its staff."
>
> Cordray was the only director of CFPB, beginning after a recess appointment
> in January 2012. He didn't get confirmed by the Senate until July 2013. His
> five-year term was going to be up next July. Cordray is expected to run for
> governor of Ohio. Under his leadership, CFPB recovered nearly $12 billion
> for consumers and issued a host of consumer protection rules.
>
> Update: November 24, 2017
>
> On Friday evening, several hours after Cordray's announcement, the White
> House released a statement confirming it plans to wage a battle over
> succession, ushering in the CFPB's era of two popes:
>
>
> "Today, the President announced that he is designating Director of the
> Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Mick Mulvaney as Acting Director of
> the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The President looks
> forward
> to seeing Director Mulvaney take a common sense approach to leading the
> CFPB's dedicated staff, an approach that will empower consumers to make
> their own financial decisions and facilitate investment in our communities.
> Director Mulvaney will serve as Acting Director until a permanent director
> is nominated and confirmed."
>
>
>
>
As the mighty Republic morphed into the Roman Empire, the People
cheered and cheered. History really does repeat itself despite what
some folks want to believe. Just as the mighty Oak dies, falling to
age and disease, to rot and become food for the next seedlings to
begin reaching for their day in the Sun, so do Human's Nations. Too
many of us think that because the trappings are different, history is
going to be different. But the one ingredient that is constant is
Human Nature. So, even as that Mighty Roman Empire rolled over all in
its path, only to come apart at the seams, so will the Great American
Empire. That is, if our Species survive. Turning swords into
plowshares is one thing, but not so easy to do with nuclear's.
Carl Jarvis
> C First Look Media. All rights reservedTerms of use
> WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 12: Director of Consumer Financial Protection
> Bureau (CFPB) Richard Cordray testifies during a hearing before the House
> Financial Services Committee September 12, 2013 on Capitol Hill in
> Washington, DC. Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) blocked Cordray from
> delivering the CFPB's semi-annual report to the House until he was
> confirmed
> by the Senate in July, two years after President Barack Obama selected him.
> (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
> Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
>
> Richard Cordray Sets Up Titanic Struggle for Control of the Consumer
> Protection Bureau With Last-Minute Move
> David Dayen
> November 24 2017, 5:16 p.m.
>
> Signaling an epic fight over control of the Consumer Financial Protection
> Bureau, the agency on Friday named Leandra English as Deputy Director.
> English had been serving as Richard Cordray's chief of staff.
>
> Hours later, Cordray officially resigned. Under the statutory line of
> succession spelled out in the law that created the agency, the deputy
> director automatically replaces him, with full powers of the office, until
> the Senate formally confirms a new director selected by the president.
>
> President Trump had planned to name Mick Mulvaney, current director of the
> Office of Management and Budget, as interim director, wresting immediate
> control of CFPB without having to go through Congress. The administration
> would have relied on the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which allows the
> president to make appointments to federal agencies in certain cases. But as
> The Intercept reported earlier this week, there was a hitch in that plan:
> The temporary pick is not legally Trump's to make. (See the update below:
> Trump made the pick regardless late on Friday evening.)
>
> The appointment of English, just moments before Cordray's departure,
> suggests that CFPB will make the case that Trump can't appoint anyone on an
> interim basis, and that only the deputy director can replace an absent or
> unavailable director. The FVRA says specifically that it doesn't apply to
> agencies where "a statutory provision . designates an officer or employee
> to
> perform the functions and duties of a specified office temporarily in an
> acting capacity."
>
> If Trump decides to appoint Mulvaney or another interim director anyway, it
> could set up a titanic battle, with effectively two different people
> claiming leadership of the agency - one who expressly opposes its mission,
> and one who supports it. The courts would have to sort out the aftermath,
> determining whether Trump's appointee or Deputy Director English hold
> actual
> control.
>
> In recent days, top Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer,
> D-N.Y., had said that they agreed that the deputy director would serve as
> acting director in Cordray's absence. "Yes, that's our view," said Schumer
> spokesman Matt House, "and we've been in conversations with the offices of
> Sens. Brown and Warren on exploring ways to ensure the line of succession,
> as drawn up in law, is adhered to." Sherrod Brown is the top-ranking
> Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren,
> D-Mass., was the intellectual author of the agency prior to becoming a
> senator. She was also named by President Obama to set up the agency on a
> temporary basis before Cordray was confirmed.
>
> The deputy director position had been vacant since January 2016. David
> Silberman, the CFPB's associate director of Research, Markets, and
> Regulations, was serving in an acting capacity. Some Democrats and
> advocates
> had expressed concern that CFPB's legal argument was not as strong with an
> acting deputy director as with one named by Cordray. With Friday's
> decision,
> - in the ultimate news-dump position of the day after Thanksgiving -
> Cordray
> has strengthened CFPB's case on his way out the door. Silberman will stay
> in
> his associate director position.
>
> Cordray even referenced the statute that gives him his authority in his
> announcement.
>
>
> Accordingly, upon my departure, she will become the acting Director
> pursuant
> to section 1011(b)(5) of the Dodd-Frank Act. In considering how to ensure
> an
> orderly succession for this independent agency, I determined that it would
> be best to avoid leaving this key position filled only in an acting
> capacity. In consultation over the past few days, I have also come to
> recognize that appointing the current chief of staff to the deputy director
> position would minimize operational disruption and provide for a smooth
> transition given her operational expertise.
>
> Corporate lobbyists are already out in force objecting to Cordray's action.
> "The decision to choose who leads the country's consumer protection agency,
> and confusion that's been caused by Cordray's own 'succession plan,' should
> not be made by one individual," said Chris Stinebart, president and CEO of
> the American Financial Services Association, "and for this reason AFSA has
> long advocated for a bipartisan commission."
>
> Of course, the succession plan isn't Cordray's, it's part of the statute
> passed by Congress. And the one individual seeking to choose CFPB
> leadership
> is Donald Trump, who has installed acting heads of both the Office of
> Comptroller of the Currency and the IRS, seeding those agencies with
> loyalists immediately following a vacancy without having to wait for Senate
> confirmation of a replacement. Trump could still try to do the same with
> CFPB, but he would have to fight against a legal argument that the
> independent agency has its own line of succession. There's no reason to
> officially name a deputy director right now unless the agency plans to take
> up that fight.
>
> English is a career bureaucrat, having worked at the Office of Personnel
> Management and Office of Management and Budget before CFPB. She has worked
> at CFPB from its inception in 2010, first serving on the implementation
> team
> led by Elizabeth Warren at the Treasury Department. Later she rose to
> become
> deputy chief operating officer, acting chief of staff, deputy chief of
> staff, and chief of staff. "Leandra is a seasoned professional who has
> spent
> her career of public service focused on promoting smooth and efficient
> operations," said Cordray in a statement. "As deputy director, we will
> continue to benefit from Leandra's in-depth knowledge of the operational
> needs of this agency and its staff."
>
> Cordray was the only director of CFPB, beginning after a recess appointment
> in January 2012. He didn't get confirmed by the Senate until July 2013. His
> five-year term was going to be up next July. Cordray is expected to run for
> governor of Ohio. Under his leadership, CFPB recovered nearly $12 billion
> for consumers and issued a host of consumer protection rules.
>
> Update: November 24, 2017
>
> On Friday evening, several hours after Cordray's announcement, the White
> House released a statement confirming it plans to wage a battle over
> succession, ushering in the CFPB's era of two popes:
>
>
> "Today, the President announced that he is designating Director of the
> Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Mick Mulvaney as Acting Director of
> the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The President looks
> forward
> to seeing Director Mulvaney take a common sense approach to leading the
> CFPB's dedicated staff, an approach that will empower consumers to make
> their own financial decisions and facilitate investment in our communities.
> Director Mulvaney will serve as Acting Director until a permanent director
> is nominated and confirmed."
>
>
>
>
Monday, November 20, 2017
Re: [blind-democracy] US gov’t orders Russia Today to file as ‘foreign agent’
On 11/20/17, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/20/17, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The claims by the American Empire and its Lackeys drive me crazy.
>> Talk about pointing the finger and claiming that others are guilty of
>> the same journalistic corruption being conducted by the Empire's Media
>> is a prime example of the failure of American journalists to expose
>> our own twisted Media's reporting.
>> I suspect that most Americans will not miss RT TV when it is finally
>> driven off the airwaves. Our Free Nation only allows news networks
>> that Love America.
>> It is becoming more difficult to gain a national platform for the
>> Loyal Opposition.
>> To paraphrase that old tune, "Bye bye Miss American Pie. Turned on my
>> TV and watched our Freedom Die".
>>
>> Carl Jarvis
>>
>> On 11/19/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
>>> http://themilitant.com/2017/8144/814455.html
>>> The Militant (logo)
>>>
>>> Vol. 81/No. 44 November 27, 2017
>>>
>>>
>>> US gov't orders Russia Today to file as 'foreign agent'
>>>
>>>
>>> BY SETH GALINSKY
>>> In an attack on freedom of the press and workers rights, the Department
>>> of Justice ordered Russia Today to register as an agent of a foreign
>>> power by Nov. 13. The Russian state-owned media company has operated in
>>> the U.S. since 2005.
>>> Faced with the possibility of up to five years in jail, a fine of
>>> $10,000 and confiscation of the news channel's assets, "we are forced to
>>> choose registration," said RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan.
>>>
>>> Under the 1938 Foreign Agent Registration Act, RT will have to post a
>>> disclaimer on its material and periodically turn over to the government
>>> its financial records and to disclose the names of all its employees.
>>>
>>> The Brookings Institution, a supposedly nonpartisan "think tank," backed
>>> the thought-control move. "RT is not a 'news service' in any meaningful
>>> sense of the term," it wrote. "RT has no regard whatsoever for basic
>>> journalistic values like objectivity or the pursuit of truth."
>>>
>>> But if disregard for pursuit of truth were the criteria for tossing
>>> aside the constitutional rights to freedom of the press, what bourgeois
>>> news media in the U.S. would still be in business?
>>>
>>> The Foreign Agent Registration law was passed on the eve of the second
>>> imperialist world war, along with the Smith Act and other anti-labor,
>>> anti-political-rights laws, adopted by the propertied rulers as they
>>> prepared to attack the unions and groups like the Socialist Workers
>>> Party as an integral part of their war efforts.
>>>
>>> Starting in 1940, the FBI began investigating members of the SWP under
>>> the Foreign Agent law, but never used it to concoct charges. Instead 18
>>> members of the party and leaders of the Teamsters union were convicted
>>> and jailed on frame-up charges of "conspiracy to overthrow the
>>> government" for their activities leading the union in Minnesota and
>>> advocating a revolutionary perspective for workers to fight to take
>>> political power.
>>>
>>> The rulers continued to use the Alien Registration Acts, including
>>> against the Communist Party, the growing movement against Jim Crow
>>> segregation and against supporters of the Cuban Revolution. In 1951
>>> well-known Black historian W.E.B. DuBois was charged but acquitted on
>>> charges of failing to register as a foreign agent. He was accused
>>> because of his collaboration with the pro-Moscow Communist Party.
>>>
>>> Cuban revolutionary Arnaldo Barrón, a founding member in New York of the
>>> July 26 Movement, was indicted and convicted in 1958 on charges of
>>> acting "as an agent of Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement of Cuba
>>> without having filed the registration statement required." The law is
>>> written to allow accusations of acting as an "agent" to be based on ties
>>> to any person or group based outside the United States, not just foreign
>>> governments.
>>>
>>> And failure to register as an "agent" of revolutionary Cuba was among
>>> the trumped-up charges Washington filed against Cuban revolutionaries
>>> known as the Cuban Five, along with false accusations of "conspiracy to
>>> commit espionage." The Five served between 13 and 16 years in U.S.
>>> jails, for defending Cuba from violent attacks by Florida-based
>>> counterrevolutionary organizations.
>>>
>>> The Militant has no brief for the political line of RT or Vladimir
>>> Putin's rule in Moscow. But we join wholeheartedly in protesting the use
>>> of this witch hunt law against them and the precedent Washington hopes
>>> to set to use against the working class and revolutionary parties as the
>>> class struggle heats up in years to come.
>>>
>>>
>>> Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
> On 11/20/17, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The claims by the American Empire and its Lackeys drive me crazy.
>> Talk about pointing the finger and claiming that others are guilty of
>> the same journalistic corruption being conducted by the Empire's Media
>> is a prime example of the failure of American journalists to expose
>> our own twisted Media's reporting.
>> I suspect that most Americans will not miss RT TV when it is finally
>> driven off the airwaves. Our Free Nation only allows news networks
>> that Love America.
>> It is becoming more difficult to gain a national platform for the
>> Loyal Opposition.
>> To paraphrase that old tune, "Bye bye Miss American Pie. Turned on my
>> TV and watched our Freedom Die".
>>
>> Carl Jarvis
>>
>> On 11/19/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
>>> http://themilitant.com/2017/8144/814455.html
>>> The Militant (logo)
>>>
>>> Vol. 81/No. 44 November 27, 2017
>>>
>>>
>>> US gov't orders Russia Today to file as 'foreign agent'
>>>
>>>
>>> BY SETH GALINSKY
>>> In an attack on freedom of the press and workers rights, the Department
>>> of Justice ordered Russia Today to register as an agent of a foreign
>>> power by Nov. 13. The Russian state-owned media company has operated in
>>> the U.S. since 2005.
>>> Faced with the possibility of up to five years in jail, a fine of
>>> $10,000 and confiscation of the news channel's assets, "we are forced to
>>> choose registration," said RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan.
>>>
>>> Under the 1938 Foreign Agent Registration Act, RT will have to post a
>>> disclaimer on its material and periodically turn over to the government
>>> its financial records and to disclose the names of all its employees.
>>>
>>> The Brookings Institution, a supposedly nonpartisan "think tank," backed
>>> the thought-control move. "RT is not a 'news service' in any meaningful
>>> sense of the term," it wrote. "RT has no regard whatsoever for basic
>>> journalistic values like objectivity or the pursuit of truth."
>>>
>>> But if disregard for pursuit of truth were the criteria for tossing
>>> aside the constitutional rights to freedom of the press, what bourgeois
>>> news media in the U.S. would still be in business?
>>>
>>> The Foreign Agent Registration law was passed on the eve of the second
>>> imperialist world war, along with the Smith Act and other anti-labor,
>>> anti-political-rights laws, adopted by the propertied rulers as they
>>> prepared to attack the unions and groups like the Socialist Workers
>>> Party as an integral part of their war efforts.
>>>
>>> Starting in 1940, the FBI began investigating members of the SWP under
>>> the Foreign Agent law, but never used it to concoct charges. Instead 18
>>> members of the party and leaders of the Teamsters union were convicted
>>> and jailed on frame-up charges of "conspiracy to overthrow the
>>> government" for their activities leading the union in Minnesota and
>>> advocating a revolutionary perspective for workers to fight to take
>>> political power.
>>>
>>> The rulers continued to use the Alien Registration Acts, including
>>> against the Communist Party, the growing movement against Jim Crow
>>> segregation and against supporters of the Cuban Revolution. In 1951
>>> well-known Black historian W.E.B. DuBois was charged but acquitted on
>>> charges of failing to register as a foreign agent. He was accused
>>> because of his collaboration with the pro-Moscow Communist Party.
>>>
>>> Cuban revolutionary Arnaldo Barrón, a founding member in New York of the
>>> July 26 Movement, was indicted and convicted in 1958 on charges of
>>> acting "as an agent of Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement of Cuba
>>> without having filed the registration statement required." The law is
>>> written to allow accusations of acting as an "agent" to be based on ties
>>> to any person or group based outside the United States, not just foreign
>>> governments.
>>>
>>> And failure to register as an "agent" of revolutionary Cuba was among
>>> the trumped-up charges Washington filed against Cuban revolutionaries
>>> known as the Cuban Five, along with false accusations of "conspiracy to
>>> commit espionage." The Five served between 13 and 16 years in U.S.
>>> jails, for defending Cuba from violent attacks by Florida-based
>>> counterrevolutionary organizations.
>>>
>>> The Militant has no brief for the political line of RT or Vladimir
>>> Putin's rule in Moscow. But we join wholeheartedly in protesting the use
>>> of this witch hunt law against them and the precedent Washington hopes
>>> to set to use against the working class and revolutionary parties as the
>>> class struggle heats up in years to come.
>>>
>>>
>>> Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
Re: [blind-democracy] US gov’t orders Russia Today to file as ‘foreign agent’
On 11/20/17, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com> wrote:
> The claims by the American Empire and its Lackeys drive me crazy.
> Talk about pointing the finger and claiming that others are guilty of
> the same journalistic corruption being conducted by the Empire's Media
> is a prime example of the failure of American journalists to expose
> our own twisted Media's reporting.
> I suspect that most Americans will not miss RT TV when it is finally
> driven off the airwaves. Our Free Nation only allows news networks
> that Love America.
> It is becoming more difficult to gain a national platform for the
> Loyal Opposition.
> To paraphrase that old tune, "Bye bye Miss American Pie. Turned on my
> TV and watched our Freedom Die".
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
> On 11/19/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
>> http://themilitant.com/2017/8144/814455.html
>> The Militant (logo)
>>
>> Vol. 81/No. 44 November 27, 2017
>>
>>
>> US gov't orders Russia Today to file as 'foreign agent'
>>
>>
>> BY SETH GALINSKY
>> In an attack on freedom of the press and workers rights, the Department
>> of Justice ordered Russia Today to register as an agent of a foreign
>> power by Nov. 13. The Russian state-owned media company has operated in
>> the U.S. since 2005.
>> Faced with the possibility of up to five years in jail, a fine of
>> $10,000 and confiscation of the news channel's assets, "we are forced to
>> choose registration," said RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan.
>>
>> Under the 1938 Foreign Agent Registration Act, RT will have to post a
>> disclaimer on its material and periodically turn over to the government
>> its financial records and to disclose the names of all its employees.
>>
>> The Brookings Institution, a supposedly nonpartisan "think tank," backed
>> the thought-control move. "RT is not a 'news service' in any meaningful
>> sense of the term," it wrote. "RT has no regard whatsoever for basic
>> journalistic values like objectivity or the pursuit of truth."
>>
>> But if disregard for pursuit of truth were the criteria for tossing
>> aside the constitutional rights to freedom of the press, what bourgeois
>> news media in the U.S. would still be in business?
>>
>> The Foreign Agent Registration law was passed on the eve of the second
>> imperialist world war, along with the Smith Act and other anti-labor,
>> anti-political-rights laws, adopted by the propertied rulers as they
>> prepared to attack the unions and groups like the Socialist Workers
>> Party as an integral part of their war efforts.
>>
>> Starting in 1940, the FBI began investigating members of the SWP under
>> the Foreign Agent law, but never used it to concoct charges. Instead 18
>> members of the party and leaders of the Teamsters union were convicted
>> and jailed on frame-up charges of "conspiracy to overthrow the
>> government" for their activities leading the union in Minnesota and
>> advocating a revolutionary perspective for workers to fight to take
>> political power.
>>
>> The rulers continued to use the Alien Registration Acts, including
>> against the Communist Party, the growing movement against Jim Crow
>> segregation and against supporters of the Cuban Revolution. In 1951
>> well-known Black historian W.E.B. DuBois was charged but acquitted on
>> charges of failing to register as a foreign agent. He was accused
>> because of his collaboration with the pro-Moscow Communist Party.
>>
>> Cuban revolutionary Arnaldo Barrón, a founding member in New York of the
>> July 26 Movement, was indicted and convicted in 1958 on charges of
>> acting "as an agent of Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement of Cuba
>> without having filed the registration statement required." The law is
>> written to allow accusations of acting as an "agent" to be based on ties
>> to any person or group based outside the United States, not just foreign
>> governments.
>>
>> And failure to register as an "agent" of revolutionary Cuba was among
>> the trumped-up charges Washington filed against Cuban revolutionaries
>> known as the Cuban Five, along with false accusations of "conspiracy to
>> commit espionage." The Five served between 13 and 16 years in U.S.
>> jails, for defending Cuba from violent attacks by Florida-based
>> counterrevolutionary organizations.
>>
>> The Militant has no brief for the political line of RT or Vladimir
>> Putin's rule in Moscow. But we join wholeheartedly in protesting the use
>> of this witch hunt law against them and the precedent Washington hopes
>> to set to use against the working class and revolutionary parties as the
>> class struggle heats up in years to come.
>>
>>
>> Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> The claims by the American Empire and its Lackeys drive me crazy.
> Talk about pointing the finger and claiming that others are guilty of
> the same journalistic corruption being conducted by the Empire's Media
> is a prime example of the failure of American journalists to expose
> our own twisted Media's reporting.
> I suspect that most Americans will not miss RT TV when it is finally
> driven off the airwaves. Our Free Nation only allows news networks
> that Love America.
> It is becoming more difficult to gain a national platform for the
> Loyal Opposition.
> To paraphrase that old tune, "Bye bye Miss American Pie. Turned on my
> TV and watched our Freedom Die".
>
> Carl Jarvis
>
> On 11/19/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
>> http://themilitant.com/2017/8144/814455.html
>> The Militant (logo)
>>
>> Vol. 81/No. 44 November 27, 2017
>>
>>
>> US gov't orders Russia Today to file as 'foreign agent'
>>
>>
>> BY SETH GALINSKY
>> In an attack on freedom of the press and workers rights, the Department
>> of Justice ordered Russia Today to register as an agent of a foreign
>> power by Nov. 13. The Russian state-owned media company has operated in
>> the U.S. since 2005.
>> Faced with the possibility of up to five years in jail, a fine of
>> $10,000 and confiscation of the news channel's assets, "we are forced to
>> choose registration," said RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan.
>>
>> Under the 1938 Foreign Agent Registration Act, RT will have to post a
>> disclaimer on its material and periodically turn over to the government
>> its financial records and to disclose the names of all its employees.
>>
>> The Brookings Institution, a supposedly nonpartisan "think tank," backed
>> the thought-control move. "RT is not a 'news service' in any meaningful
>> sense of the term," it wrote. "RT has no regard whatsoever for basic
>> journalistic values like objectivity or the pursuit of truth."
>>
>> But if disregard for pursuit of truth were the criteria for tossing
>> aside the constitutional rights to freedom of the press, what bourgeois
>> news media in the U.S. would still be in business?
>>
>> The Foreign Agent Registration law was passed on the eve of the second
>> imperialist world war, along with the Smith Act and other anti-labor,
>> anti-political-rights laws, adopted by the propertied rulers as they
>> prepared to attack the unions and groups like the Socialist Workers
>> Party as an integral part of their war efforts.
>>
>> Starting in 1940, the FBI began investigating members of the SWP under
>> the Foreign Agent law, but never used it to concoct charges. Instead 18
>> members of the party and leaders of the Teamsters union were convicted
>> and jailed on frame-up charges of "conspiracy to overthrow the
>> government" for their activities leading the union in Minnesota and
>> advocating a revolutionary perspective for workers to fight to take
>> political power.
>>
>> The rulers continued to use the Alien Registration Acts, including
>> against the Communist Party, the growing movement against Jim Crow
>> segregation and against supporters of the Cuban Revolution. In 1951
>> well-known Black historian W.E.B. DuBois was charged but acquitted on
>> charges of failing to register as a foreign agent. He was accused
>> because of his collaboration with the pro-Moscow Communist Party.
>>
>> Cuban revolutionary Arnaldo Barrón, a founding member in New York of the
>> July 26 Movement, was indicted and convicted in 1958 on charges of
>> acting "as an agent of Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement of Cuba
>> without having filed the registration statement required." The law is
>> written to allow accusations of acting as an "agent" to be based on ties
>> to any person or group based outside the United States, not just foreign
>> governments.
>>
>> And failure to register as an "agent" of revolutionary Cuba was among
>> the trumped-up charges Washington filed against Cuban revolutionaries
>> known as the Cuban Five, along with false accusations of "conspiracy to
>> commit espionage." The Five served between 13 and 16 years in U.S.
>> jails, for defending Cuba from violent attacks by Florida-based
>> counterrevolutionary organizations.
>>
>> The Militant has no brief for the political line of RT or Vladimir
>> Putin's rule in Moscow. But we join wholeheartedly in protesting the use
>> of this witch hunt law against them and the precedent Washington hopes
>> to set to use against the working class and revolutionary parties as the
>> class struggle heats up in years to come.
>>
>>
>> Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Re: [blind-democracy] Fight the Disease, Not the Symptoms
Chris Hedges writes: "Attack the symptoms and the state will be
passive. Attack the disease and the state will be ruthless."
******
> Fight the Disease, Not the Symptoms
> Published on
> Monday, November 13, 2017
> by
> Truthdig
> Fight the Disease, Not the Symptoms
> If we can mount sustained acts of defiance in the face of severe state
> repression, we have a chance.
> by
> Chris Hedges
>
> They seek a return to the polished mendacity of politicians such as Hillary
> Clinton and Barack Obama. They hope to promote the interests of global
> capitalism by maintaining the fiction of a functioning democracy and an
> open
> society.
>
> The disease of globalized corporate capitalism has the same effects across
> the planet. It weakens or destroys democratic institutions, making them
> subservient to corporate and oligarchic power. It forces domestic
> governments to give up control over their economies, which operate under
> policies dictated by global corporations, banks, the World Trade
> Organization and the International Monetary Fund. It casts aside hundreds
> of
> millions of workers now classified as "redundant" or "surplus" labor. It
> disempowers underpaid and unprotected workers, many toiling in global
> sweatshops, keeping them cowed, anxious and compliant. It financializes the
> economy, creating predatory global institutions that extract money from
> individuals, institutions and states through punishing forms of debt
> peonage. It shuts down genuine debate on corporate-owned media platforms,
> especially in regard to vast income disparities and social inequality. And
> the destruction empowers proto-fascist movements and governments.
>
> These proto-fascist forces discredit verifiable fact and history and
> replace
> them with myth. They peddle nostalgia for lost glory. They attack the
> spiritual bankruptcy of the modern, technocratic world. They are
> xenophobic.
> They champion the "virtues" of a hyper-masculinity and the warrior cult.
> They preach regeneration through violence. They rally around demagogues who
> absolve followers of moral choice and promise strength and protection. They
> marginalize and destroy all individuals and institutions, including
> schools,
> that make possible self-criticism, self-reflection and transcendence and
> that nurture empathy, especially for the demonized. This is why artists and
> intellectuals are ridiculed and silenced. This is why dissent is attacked
> as
> an act of treason.
>
> These movements are also deeply misogynistic. They disempower girls and
> women to hand a perverted power to men who feel powerless in the global
> economy. They blame ethnic and religious minorities for the national
> decline. They foster bizarre conspiracy theories. And they communicate in
> the Orwellian newspeak of alternative facts. They claim the sole right to
> represent and use indigenous patriotic and religious symbols.
>
> India, built on the foundations of caste slavery, has become one of many
> new
> neofeudal states, among them Turkey, Poland, Russia and the United States.
> Its neofeudal structure continues to carry out atrocities against
> Dalits-the
> former "untouchables"-and now increasingly against Muslims. India's Prime
> Minister Narendra Modi, who as the chief minister of the western Indian
> state of Gujarat oversaw a vicious anti-Muslim pogrom, has defended
> sectarian discrimination and violence even though this year he made a tepid
> declaration that "[w]e will not tolerate violence in the name of faith" and
> issued other unconvincing appeals for religious peace. As prime minister he
> has employed threats, harassment and force to silence those who decry human
> rights abuses and atrocities carried out in India. He attacks his critics
> as
> "anti-national"-the equivalent of "unpatriotic" in the United States.
>
> Modi, like his fellow demagogues in other parts of the world, including
> Donald Trump, speaks in the language of moral purity and promotes
> self-serving historical myth. Indians who eat beef-a huge number-are
> targeted, school history books are being rewritten to conform to right-wing
> Hindu ideology and its open admiration for fascism, and entertainers
> considered too political or too salacious are under attack.
>
> There are within America's corporate power structures individuals, parties
> and groups that find the hysterical, imbecilic and irrational rants of
> demagogues such as Trump repugnant. They seek a return to the polished
> mendacity of politicians such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They
> hope
> to promote the interests of global capitalism by maintaining the fiction of
> a functioning democracy and an open society. These "moderates" or
> "liberals," however, are also the architects of the global corporate
> pillage. They created the political vacuum that the demagogues and
> proto-fascist movements have filled. They blind themselves to their own
> complicity. They embrace their own myths-such as the belief that former FBI
> Director James Comey and the Russians were responsible for the election of
> Trump-to avoid examining the social inequality that is behind the global
> crisis and their defeat.
>
> The 400 richest individuals in the United States have more wealth than the
> bottom 64 percent of the population, and the three richest Americans have
> more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the U.S. population. This social
> inequality will only get worse as the weak controls that once regulated the
> economy and the tax code are abolished or rewritten to further increase the
> concentration of wealth among the ruling oligarchs. Social inequality at
> this level, history has shown, always results in these types of pathologies
> and political distortions. It also, potentially, presages revolution.
>
> The short-term political and economic gains made by the Democratic Party
> and
> liberal class in the last few decades came at the expense of the working
> class. The liberal class, because of its complicity in globalization, has
> destroyed its credibility as well as the credibility of the "liberal"
> democratic values it claims to represent. Enraged workers, lied to for
> decades by "liberal" politicians such as Bill and Hillary Clinton and
> Obama,
> delight in Trump's crude taunts and insults directed at the power structure
> and elites they loath. Many Americans are perhaps aware that Trump is a con
> artist, but he at least appears to share their disdain for the "liberal"
> elites who abandoned them.
>
> It will eventually become apparent to some, perhaps many, of Trump's
> supporters that he is cravenly in the service of the 1 percent and has
> turbocharged the corporate kleptocracy. The Democratic Party, busy purging
> Bernie Sanders supporters from its ranks, is banking on this epiphany to
> revive its political fortunes. The Democratic leadership has no real
> political strategy, other than to hope that Trump implodes. They are
> backing
> and funding opposition movements such as Indivisible and the women's
> marches, as well as the witch hunt about Russian interference in the 2016
> U.S. presidential election, all of which have as their sole focus removing
> Trump and restoring the Democratic Party to power. This form of resistance
> is sterile and useless.
>
> But there are other resistance movements-the most prominent being the
> battle
> by the water protectors at Standing Rock to block the Dakota Access
> pipeline-that attack the disease. It is easy to tell the resistance from
> the
> faux resistance by the response of the state. During the women's marches,
> Democrats, including Debbie Wasserman Schultz, were honored participants.
> The police were usually courteous and helped facilitate the marches;
> arrests
> were few and coverage by the corporate press was sympathetic. In contrast,
> during the long encampment at Standing Rock, which took place under the
> Obama administration, the nonviolent resisters were physically attacked by
> police, the National Guard and private security contractors. These forces
> used dogs, pepper spray, water cannons in subzero temperatures, sound
> machines, drones, armored vehicles and hundreds of arrests in their efforts
> to destroy the resistance.
>
> Attack the symptoms and the state will be passive. Attack the disease and
> the state will be ruthless.
>
> Once Trump's base begins to abandon him-the repression in Turkey under
> President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a good example of what will happen-the
> political landscape will turn very ugly. Trump and his allies, in a
> desperate bid to cling to power, will openly stoke hate crimes and violence
> against Muslims, undocumented workers, African-Americans, progressives,
> intellectuals, feminists and dissidents. He and his allies on the
> "alt-right" and the Christian right will move to silence all organs of
> dissent, including corporate media outlets fighting to restore the patina
> of
> civility that is the window dressing to corporate pillage. They will
> harness
> the power of the nation's substantial internal security apparatus to crush
> public protests and to jail opponents, even those who are part of the faux
> resistance.
>
> Time is not on our side. If we can build counter-capitalist movements that
> include the working class we have a chance. If we can, like the water
> protectors at Standing Rock, mount sustained acts of defiance in the face
> of
> severe state repression, we have a chance. If we can organize nationwide
> campaigns of noncooperation we have a chance. We cannot be distracted by
> the
> symptoms. We must cure the disease.
>
>
>
>
> © 2017 TruthDig
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Chris Hedges
>
>
>
>
> Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated
> from
> Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign
> correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books,
> including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should
> Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on
> America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy
> and the Triumph of Spectacle.
>
>
>
>
>
passive. Attack the disease and the state will be ruthless."
******
> Fight the Disease, Not the Symptoms
> Published on
> Monday, November 13, 2017
> by
> Truthdig
> Fight the Disease, Not the Symptoms
> If we can mount sustained acts of defiance in the face of severe state
> repression, we have a chance.
> by
> Chris Hedges
>
> They seek a return to the polished mendacity of politicians such as Hillary
> Clinton and Barack Obama. They hope to promote the interests of global
> capitalism by maintaining the fiction of a functioning democracy and an
> open
> society.
>
> The disease of globalized corporate capitalism has the same effects across
> the planet. It weakens or destroys democratic institutions, making them
> subservient to corporate and oligarchic power. It forces domestic
> governments to give up control over their economies, which operate under
> policies dictated by global corporations, banks, the World Trade
> Organization and the International Monetary Fund. It casts aside hundreds
> of
> millions of workers now classified as "redundant" or "surplus" labor. It
> disempowers underpaid and unprotected workers, many toiling in global
> sweatshops, keeping them cowed, anxious and compliant. It financializes the
> economy, creating predatory global institutions that extract money from
> individuals, institutions and states through punishing forms of debt
> peonage. It shuts down genuine debate on corporate-owned media platforms,
> especially in regard to vast income disparities and social inequality. And
> the destruction empowers proto-fascist movements and governments.
>
> These proto-fascist forces discredit verifiable fact and history and
> replace
> them with myth. They peddle nostalgia for lost glory. They attack the
> spiritual bankruptcy of the modern, technocratic world. They are
> xenophobic.
> They champion the "virtues" of a hyper-masculinity and the warrior cult.
> They preach regeneration through violence. They rally around demagogues who
> absolve followers of moral choice and promise strength and protection. They
> marginalize and destroy all individuals and institutions, including
> schools,
> that make possible self-criticism, self-reflection and transcendence and
> that nurture empathy, especially for the demonized. This is why artists and
> intellectuals are ridiculed and silenced. This is why dissent is attacked
> as
> an act of treason.
>
> These movements are also deeply misogynistic. They disempower girls and
> women to hand a perverted power to men who feel powerless in the global
> economy. They blame ethnic and religious minorities for the national
> decline. They foster bizarre conspiracy theories. And they communicate in
> the Orwellian newspeak of alternative facts. They claim the sole right to
> represent and use indigenous patriotic and religious symbols.
>
> India, built on the foundations of caste slavery, has become one of many
> new
> neofeudal states, among them Turkey, Poland, Russia and the United States.
> Its neofeudal structure continues to carry out atrocities against
> Dalits-the
> former "untouchables"-and now increasingly against Muslims. India's Prime
> Minister Narendra Modi, who as the chief minister of the western Indian
> state of Gujarat oversaw a vicious anti-Muslim pogrom, has defended
> sectarian discrimination and violence even though this year he made a tepid
> declaration that "[w]e will not tolerate violence in the name of faith" and
> issued other unconvincing appeals for religious peace. As prime minister he
> has employed threats, harassment and force to silence those who decry human
> rights abuses and atrocities carried out in India. He attacks his critics
> as
> "anti-national"-the equivalent of "unpatriotic" in the United States.
>
> Modi, like his fellow demagogues in other parts of the world, including
> Donald Trump, speaks in the language of moral purity and promotes
> self-serving historical myth. Indians who eat beef-a huge number-are
> targeted, school history books are being rewritten to conform to right-wing
> Hindu ideology and its open admiration for fascism, and entertainers
> considered too political or too salacious are under attack.
>
> There are within America's corporate power structures individuals, parties
> and groups that find the hysterical, imbecilic and irrational rants of
> demagogues such as Trump repugnant. They seek a return to the polished
> mendacity of politicians such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They
> hope
> to promote the interests of global capitalism by maintaining the fiction of
> a functioning democracy and an open society. These "moderates" or
> "liberals," however, are also the architects of the global corporate
> pillage. They created the political vacuum that the demagogues and
> proto-fascist movements have filled. They blind themselves to their own
> complicity. They embrace their own myths-such as the belief that former FBI
> Director James Comey and the Russians were responsible for the election of
> Trump-to avoid examining the social inequality that is behind the global
> crisis and their defeat.
>
> The 400 richest individuals in the United States have more wealth than the
> bottom 64 percent of the population, and the three richest Americans have
> more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the U.S. population. This social
> inequality will only get worse as the weak controls that once regulated the
> economy and the tax code are abolished or rewritten to further increase the
> concentration of wealth among the ruling oligarchs. Social inequality at
> this level, history has shown, always results in these types of pathologies
> and political distortions. It also, potentially, presages revolution.
>
> The short-term political and economic gains made by the Democratic Party
> and
> liberal class in the last few decades came at the expense of the working
> class. The liberal class, because of its complicity in globalization, has
> destroyed its credibility as well as the credibility of the "liberal"
> democratic values it claims to represent. Enraged workers, lied to for
> decades by "liberal" politicians such as Bill and Hillary Clinton and
> Obama,
> delight in Trump's crude taunts and insults directed at the power structure
> and elites they loath. Many Americans are perhaps aware that Trump is a con
> artist, but he at least appears to share their disdain for the "liberal"
> elites who abandoned them.
>
> It will eventually become apparent to some, perhaps many, of Trump's
> supporters that he is cravenly in the service of the 1 percent and has
> turbocharged the corporate kleptocracy. The Democratic Party, busy purging
> Bernie Sanders supporters from its ranks, is banking on this epiphany to
> revive its political fortunes. The Democratic leadership has no real
> political strategy, other than to hope that Trump implodes. They are
> backing
> and funding opposition movements such as Indivisible and the women's
> marches, as well as the witch hunt about Russian interference in the 2016
> U.S. presidential election, all of which have as their sole focus removing
> Trump and restoring the Democratic Party to power. This form of resistance
> is sterile and useless.
>
> But there are other resistance movements-the most prominent being the
> battle
> by the water protectors at Standing Rock to block the Dakota Access
> pipeline-that attack the disease. It is easy to tell the resistance from
> the
> faux resistance by the response of the state. During the women's marches,
> Democrats, including Debbie Wasserman Schultz, were honored participants.
> The police were usually courteous and helped facilitate the marches;
> arrests
> were few and coverage by the corporate press was sympathetic. In contrast,
> during the long encampment at Standing Rock, which took place under the
> Obama administration, the nonviolent resisters were physically attacked by
> police, the National Guard and private security contractors. These forces
> used dogs, pepper spray, water cannons in subzero temperatures, sound
> machines, drones, armored vehicles and hundreds of arrests in their efforts
> to destroy the resistance.
>
> Attack the symptoms and the state will be passive. Attack the disease and
> the state will be ruthless.
>
> Once Trump's base begins to abandon him-the repression in Turkey under
> President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a good example of what will happen-the
> political landscape will turn very ugly. Trump and his allies, in a
> desperate bid to cling to power, will openly stoke hate crimes and violence
> against Muslims, undocumented workers, African-Americans, progressives,
> intellectuals, feminists and dissidents. He and his allies on the
> "alt-right" and the Christian right will move to silence all organs of
> dissent, including corporate media outlets fighting to restore the patina
> of
> civility that is the window dressing to corporate pillage. They will
> harness
> the power of the nation's substantial internal security apparatus to crush
> public protests and to jail opponents, even those who are part of the faux
> resistance.
>
> Time is not on our side. If we can build counter-capitalist movements that
> include the working class we have a chance. If we can, like the water
> protectors at Standing Rock, mount sustained acts of defiance in the face
> of
> severe state repression, we have a chance. If we can organize nationwide
> campaigns of noncooperation we have a chance. We cannot be distracted by
> the
> symptoms. We must cure the disease.
>
>
>
>
> © 2017 TruthDig
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Chris Hedges
>
>
>
>
> Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated
> from
> Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign
> correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books,
> including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should
> Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on
> America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy
> and the Triumph of Spectacle.
>
>
>
>
>
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Re: [blind-democracy] Making Puerto Rico the New New Orleans - Steal the Schools and Give Them to Big Business to Run For Profit
Remember the Biblical warning? "As you sow, so shall you reap." The
American Corporate Empire(ACE) ruling class, through its emphasis on
Profit over Education, is teaching our children a lesson that will
come back to bite the Empire in its backside.
Self serving and Greed go hand in hand down that broad, smooth road to
self destruction.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/10/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> What I heard on yesterday's Flashpoints, was a story about a very well
> functioning community public school, cleaned up by the community, which was
> not permitted to re-open, while a badly damaged, poorly run school was
> re-opened. This was in San Juan.
> Miriam
>
> Making Puerto Rico the New New Orleans – Steal the Schools and Give Them to
> Big Business to Run For Profit
> Published on
> Friday, November 10, 2017
> by
> Common Dreams
> Making Puerto Rico the New New Orleans – Steal the Schools and Give Them to
> Big Business to Run For Profit
> Celebrating teachers who refuse to back down despite the forces of
> prejudice
> and commerce stacked against them
> by
> Steven Singer
>
> Mercedes Martinez, president of the Federacion de Maestros of Puerto Rico,
> was among those unionized teachers recently arrested protesting the
> attempted takeover of the island's public schools. (Photo: Courtesy of the
> author)
>
> Charter school backers can't help it.
>
> They see a bunch of black or brown kids displaced by a natural disaster and
> they have to swoop in to help…
>
> Help themselves, that is.
>
> They did it in 2005 to New Orleans schools after Hurricane Katrina. Now
> they
> want to do it again in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.
>
> "This is a real opportunity to press the reset button," said Puerto Rican
> Secretary of Education Julia Keleher.
>
> "…this [is a] transformational opportunity for us to start to think
> fundamentally differently about what it is to be in school, and how one
> goes
> about getting an education."
>
> IMG_8573
>
> A dozen years ago in Louisiana, that meant stealing almost the entire New
> Orleans public school system in the aftermath of Katrina. About 90 percent
> of the city's 126 schools were given to the Louisiana Recovery School
> District, which turned them all into charter schools.
>
> In effect, Louisiana state officials elected by the white majority stole
> control from local school boards elected by the city's black majority. More
> than 7,000 teachers most of whom were people of color and had been
> displaced
> by the hurricane found themselves replaced by mostly white teachers brought
> in from other parts of the country.
>
> Now, more than 10 years later, the New Orleans experiment has been shown to
> be a failure. Scores on standardized tests have improved (kinda), but the
> curriculum has narrowed, teacher turnover has doubled, disadvantaged and
> special education students have even fewer resources while schools fight
> over high achieving children, students spend hours being bused to schools
> far from their homes, communities have been erased, and parents have less
> control over how their own tax dollars are spent.
>
> That is what Keleher and others want to repeat in Puerto Rico – wrest
> control away from the public and give it to big business all wrapped up in
> a
> bow.
>
> Screen Shot 2017-11-09 at 12.34.02 PM
>
> Why?
>
> Public schools come with expensive perks like local control, transparent
> budgets and regulations to ensure all the money is being spent on students.
> It's much cheaper to run these districts with unelected bureaucrats,
> closed-door budgets and the ability to grab as much of the cash as possible
> and stuff it into their own pockets.
>
> It's not like anyone's going to complain. These schools aren't for rich
> white kids. They're for poor brown ones.
>
> It's just colonialism, 2017 style!
>
> IMG_8572
>
> Jeanne Allen thinks that's a great idea.
>
> The founder and CEO of school privatization lobbying group, the Center For
> Education Reform, said that charterization is the best thing that could
> happen to Puerto Rican schools.
>
> After dealing with the immediate effects of the hurricane, reformers
> "should
> be thinking about how to recreate the public education system in Puerto
> Rico." And she should know. Allen was also involved in the New Orleans
> fiasco turning that system over to big business.
>
> She added that charter school operators across the nation, including cyber
> charter school managers (whose schools often have even more wretched
> academic results), should be thinking about how to get involved in Puerto
> Rico post-Maria.
>
> Keleher has already begun laying the groundwork.
>
> Even though many Puerto Rican schools are only operational because of the
> work of teachers who have cleaned them up and have opened them despite
> being
> told not to by Keleher's administration, the Education Secretary has
> pledged
> to lay off massive amounts of teachers and permanently close more schools –
> even schools that are structurally sound.
>
> "Consolidating schools makes sense," Keleher said in October. "They can go
> out and protest in the streets, but that doesn't change the fact that we
> can't go back to life being the same as it was before the hurricane."
>
> Puerto Rican teachers aren't letting the vultures swoop in without protest.
>
> IMG_8571
>
> Just this week twenty-one teachers in the capitol of San Juan were arrested
> during a rally at the Education Department headquarters. They were
> demanding
> all structurally sound schools be opened immediately.
>
> "Our schools have served students well and although we recognize that it
> can
> be expensive to repair some schools, what we are asking is that schools
> that
> are ready be opened," said social worker Alba Toro just before the arrests.
>
> Administration officials are claiming the teachers were taken into custody
> because they physically attacked the civil servants, but witnesses say the
> protest was entirely peaceful.
>
> image
>
> According to Education Safety Commissioner César González, the protesters
> assaulted at least three security employees and a public relations employee
> while inside the building.
> However, protestors dispute this version of events. Eulalia Centeno, who
> was part of the group that went inside the building, but left before the
> arrests began, said that no violent acts were committed and that the
> protesters only demanded to see the secretary to request the opening of
> public schools.
>
> Seven weeks after the hurricane, less than half of the island's nearly
> 1,200
> public schools are open in any capacity. Though many schools endured severe
> storm and flood damage, others were repaired and cleaned to shelter
> hurricane victims and are ready to take in students.
>
> "Keleher is using the crisis as an opportunity to close hundreds of public
> schools, lay off senior teachers and privatize public education," says
> Mercedes Martinez, President of the Federacion de Maestros of Puerto Rico,
> an island teachers union.
>
> IMG_8570Martinez was one of the teachers arrested during the protest.
>
> When she was taken out of the building in handcuffs, her son was
> photographed leaning over a railing and patting his mother on the shoulder.
>
> This is what real heroes do.
>
> They refuse to back down despite the forces of prejudice and commerce
> stacked against them.
>
> Will we let the charter school vampires suck Puerto Rico dry?
>
>
>
>
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
> License
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
American Corporate Empire(ACE) ruling class, through its emphasis on
Profit over Education, is teaching our children a lesson that will
come back to bite the Empire in its backside.
Self serving and Greed go hand in hand down that broad, smooth road to
self destruction.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/10/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> What I heard on yesterday's Flashpoints, was a story about a very well
> functioning community public school, cleaned up by the community, which was
> not permitted to re-open, while a badly damaged, poorly run school was
> re-opened. This was in San Juan.
> Miriam
>
> Making Puerto Rico the New New Orleans – Steal the Schools and Give Them to
> Big Business to Run For Profit
> Published on
> Friday, November 10, 2017
> by
> Common Dreams
> Making Puerto Rico the New New Orleans – Steal the Schools and Give Them to
> Big Business to Run For Profit
> Celebrating teachers who refuse to back down despite the forces of
> prejudice
> and commerce stacked against them
> by
> Steven Singer
>
> Mercedes Martinez, president of the Federacion de Maestros of Puerto Rico,
> was among those unionized teachers recently arrested protesting the
> attempted takeover of the island's public schools. (Photo: Courtesy of the
> author)
>
> Charter school backers can't help it.
>
> They see a bunch of black or brown kids displaced by a natural disaster and
> they have to swoop in to help…
>
> Help themselves, that is.
>
> They did it in 2005 to New Orleans schools after Hurricane Katrina. Now
> they
> want to do it again in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.
>
> "This is a real opportunity to press the reset button," said Puerto Rican
> Secretary of Education Julia Keleher.
>
> "…this [is a] transformational opportunity for us to start to think
> fundamentally differently about what it is to be in school, and how one
> goes
> about getting an education."
>
> IMG_8573
>
> A dozen years ago in Louisiana, that meant stealing almost the entire New
> Orleans public school system in the aftermath of Katrina. About 90 percent
> of the city's 126 schools were given to the Louisiana Recovery School
> District, which turned them all into charter schools.
>
> In effect, Louisiana state officials elected by the white majority stole
> control from local school boards elected by the city's black majority. More
> than 7,000 teachers most of whom were people of color and had been
> displaced
> by the hurricane found themselves replaced by mostly white teachers brought
> in from other parts of the country.
>
> Now, more than 10 years later, the New Orleans experiment has been shown to
> be a failure. Scores on standardized tests have improved (kinda), but the
> curriculum has narrowed, teacher turnover has doubled, disadvantaged and
> special education students have even fewer resources while schools fight
> over high achieving children, students spend hours being bused to schools
> far from their homes, communities have been erased, and parents have less
> control over how their own tax dollars are spent.
>
> That is what Keleher and others want to repeat in Puerto Rico – wrest
> control away from the public and give it to big business all wrapped up in
> a
> bow.
>
> Screen Shot 2017-11-09 at 12.34.02 PM
>
> Why?
>
> Public schools come with expensive perks like local control, transparent
> budgets and regulations to ensure all the money is being spent on students.
> It's much cheaper to run these districts with unelected bureaucrats,
> closed-door budgets and the ability to grab as much of the cash as possible
> and stuff it into their own pockets.
>
> It's not like anyone's going to complain. These schools aren't for rich
> white kids. They're for poor brown ones.
>
> It's just colonialism, 2017 style!
>
> IMG_8572
>
> Jeanne Allen thinks that's a great idea.
>
> The founder and CEO of school privatization lobbying group, the Center For
> Education Reform, said that charterization is the best thing that could
> happen to Puerto Rican schools.
>
> After dealing with the immediate effects of the hurricane, reformers
> "should
> be thinking about how to recreate the public education system in Puerto
> Rico." And she should know. Allen was also involved in the New Orleans
> fiasco turning that system over to big business.
>
> She added that charter school operators across the nation, including cyber
> charter school managers (whose schools often have even more wretched
> academic results), should be thinking about how to get involved in Puerto
> Rico post-Maria.
>
> Keleher has already begun laying the groundwork.
>
> Even though many Puerto Rican schools are only operational because of the
> work of teachers who have cleaned them up and have opened them despite
> being
> told not to by Keleher's administration, the Education Secretary has
> pledged
> to lay off massive amounts of teachers and permanently close more schools –
> even schools that are structurally sound.
>
> "Consolidating schools makes sense," Keleher said in October. "They can go
> out and protest in the streets, but that doesn't change the fact that we
> can't go back to life being the same as it was before the hurricane."
>
> Puerto Rican teachers aren't letting the vultures swoop in without protest.
>
> IMG_8571
>
> Just this week twenty-one teachers in the capitol of San Juan were arrested
> during a rally at the Education Department headquarters. They were
> demanding
> all structurally sound schools be opened immediately.
>
> "Our schools have served students well and although we recognize that it
> can
> be expensive to repair some schools, what we are asking is that schools
> that
> are ready be opened," said social worker Alba Toro just before the arrests.
>
> Administration officials are claiming the teachers were taken into custody
> because they physically attacked the civil servants, but witnesses say the
> protest was entirely peaceful.
>
> image
>
> According to Education Safety Commissioner César González, the protesters
> assaulted at least three security employees and a public relations employee
> while inside the building.
> However, protestors dispute this version of events. Eulalia Centeno, who
> was part of the group that went inside the building, but left before the
> arrests began, said that no violent acts were committed and that the
> protesters only demanded to see the secretary to request the opening of
> public schools.
>
> Seven weeks after the hurricane, less than half of the island's nearly
> 1,200
> public schools are open in any capacity. Though many schools endured severe
> storm and flood damage, others were repaired and cleaned to shelter
> hurricane victims and are ready to take in students.
>
> "Keleher is using the crisis as an opportunity to close hundreds of public
> schools, lay off senior teachers and privatize public education," says
> Mercedes Martinez, President of the Federacion de Maestros of Puerto Rico,
> an island teachers union.
>
> IMG_8570Martinez was one of the teachers arrested during the protest.
>
> When she was taken out of the building in handcuffs, her son was
> photographed leaning over a railing and patting his mother on the shoulder.
>
> This is what real heroes do.
>
> They refuse to back down despite the forces of prejudice and commerce
> stacked against them.
>
> Will we let the charter school vampires suck Puerto Rico dry?
>
>
>
>
> This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
> License
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Friday, November 10, 2017
Re: [blind-democracy] Americanisation fragile
, as I've said before, you are a carbon copy of the Christian fanatic,
only you put Allah's banner on the top of your flag pole in place of
the Cross.
You wrote, "Allah blessed you
with numerous bounties to test whether you will be grateful or ungrateful.
This is His divine statute, glory be to Him."
And what about those several millions of Indigenous People already
caring for this bountiful land? Are you suggesting that Allah is
prejudiced against the American Indian? Did Allah "allow" White
Europeans to enslave Black Africans because the Europeans needed to
learn how to play nice to Blacks? Or had those bad Africans earned
the enslavement that crushed them for hundreds of years? Allah, may
He rest in peace, and God, let Him rest eternally, are simply Make
Believe Genies. They may be called on as friendly Genies if times are
good, and they can be sent back into their lantern when times are bad.
That makes more sense than pretending that Allah and God are allowing
one people to crush another in order to "allow" them an opportunity
to test their gratitude." Huh??? Say that again? This is exactly
the same babble that the Southern Radio Evangelist shouts to his
devoted Jesus Lovers.
If God and Allah are the best Gods we can dream up, what more proof do
you need to demonstrate that both come from within Man's limited Dream
World?
Carl Jarvis
On 11/9/17, Bob <ebob824@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The United States is a prominently spacious territory. It is close to be a
>
> continent. It is known for its unevidently tautened principles of
> democracy, justice and equality. However, these values are intemperately
> sniped with bigotry, xenophobia, racial segregation, pride, hate
> incitement, derision and mass impudence. Americans often have these concepts
>
> mixed up. Free speech and hate rhetoric, the right to bear arms and gun
> violence, liberty and travesty, pride and dignity. Politics torn your nation
>
> apart. Therefore, your imperial era is about to diminish. Allah blessed you
>
> with numerous bounties to test whether you will be grateful or ungrateful.
> This is His divine statute, glory be to Him. What brought Donald Trump to
> oval office? Despite what was being said about Russian meddling in past
> elections, Allah is willing to providentially penalise wrongdoers. Donald
> Trump is obviously rapscallion, racialist, bigoted, unreliable,
> unconscionable, propagandist, dishonourable, misanthrope, prurient,
> flamboyant, aweless and dissembler. He won against his rivals with
> exercising fallacious rhetoric. He abhorrently dissed each and everyone. He
>
> despicably affronted politicians, journalists and public figures. We heard
> his emphatically offensive remarks against many people. This is why educated
>
> Americans are so upset. They are taken aback of this unpresidential
> character to be elected. This is the divine manner. Allah says in the Koran
>
> what could be meaningly rendered as namely. And when We would destroy a
> township, We send commandment to its folk who live at ease, and afterward
> they commit abomination therein, and so the Word of doom hath effect for it,
>
> and we annihilate it with complete annihilation. This is a commentary based
>
> translation of verse sixteen in chapter seventeen. This verse matches your
>
> election conclusion in unrivalled precision. Donald Trump is enormously
> affluent and thence, he is eligible to lead a nation that is based on
> capitalistic tenets. He is deficient of basic adequacy to manage a nursery
> or a small shop. His character matches what I call typical nescience in
> imbecility. What arrogance does? Arrogance makes its bearer blinded to see
> the truth. When you speak disparagingly of other traditions, this is the
> beginning of your end. America's reputable status is on its edge to
> collapse. You may respectfully disagree with other people. However, it
> certainly becomes a problem when this disagreement turns into unsolicited
> conflict. You may criticise others or even debate their views on particular
>
> issues. Withal, it is a trouble if you desperately demand to intolerantly
> demonise others to relentlessly justify your hostile stance. Why don't you
> folks learn from Canada? Canada is notably recognised for its distinctive
> factors of practically promoting diversity and multiculturalism. What is
> multiculturalism in Canada? It is the doctrine that several different
> cultures rather than one can coexist peacefully and equitably in a single
> country. So, you could commonly encounter bits and bobs of everything. You
> don't have to forcefully be painted with certain colour to be welcomed
> there. This is the plain difference between Canada and the States. In the
> States, you have got to be Americanised in some form or another to be
> accepted. This is what I call, the dominating disease of racism. Abraham
> Lincoln emancipated slaves but unfortunately, he treated the symptom and
> disposed the disease. Slavery was the symptom but racial disparity is
> actually the disease. I will always repeat this assertion, racism has to be
>
> portrayed as a deadly sinful act. Otherwise, change won't occur anytime
> soon. As for the recently aggrieved mass shooting of Texas, controversial
> arguments about gun control rose again. Why many members of the National
> Rifle Association act carelessly about gun safety and regulation? Despite
> the recurrence of fatal mass shootings in various places, American
> legislative committees decline to significantly straighten the situation
> out. People aren't safe at Churches, concerts, malls, medical centres,
> campuses or school complex. Trump said in multiple occasions that he take
> cares of all Americans. Subsequent to New York's truck callous assault, he
> called for more intense procedures and extremely enforced vetting to insure
>
> potential terrorists aren't issued visas. However, he nearly acted
> heedlessly concerning the massive shooting incident in Texas. Isn't that a
> clear sign of double standard? This is the relentless prob I have been
> encountering with your justice system for consecutive decades. I knew for
> certain, many sensible and just Americans aren't so pleased with what is
> happening in their country. Americans became numb to such incidents.
> Terrorism in their minds is only affiliated with Muslims. They aren't
> stringent in their assessment. This is why I am often tempestuous with
> American set of standards. This disposal of practicing double standard is
> immensely prevalent. Whenever a white guy commits mass murder, he is
> incessantly labelled as mentally imbalanced. However, if a Muslim committed
>
> that crime, he would have been instantly classified as a dire Muslim radical
>
> and the incident would have been considered an act of terror. The portrait
> is now clearer than ever before. The question is, for how long will we lie
> to ourselves? It is distinctly plain that we aren't equal in their minds to
>
> the white citizen who happend to be born there. Despite their insistence to
>
> deny this conclusion, evidence for it are gigantically triumphal. I do not
> destine to unfairly extrapolate. I just desire to seek equatable justice. I
>
> attentively followed a three hours live coverage of the incident on Youtube.
>
> I think it was published by ABC Radio. The show host spoke reasonably and
> his remote guests were competently sane in their discussion. That is one of
>
> the reasons why I believe sensible Americans out there aren't generically
> satisfied with the current situation. The problem will firmly be fixed if we
>
> redressed what is in my so humble opinion, a grave misinterpretation of the
>
> second amendment. I rendered my entailment on its essence previously. I
> won't ingeminate this for now. I did not take the literal meaning of the
> text. I rather went deeper to the legal spirit of the statute to properly
> derive consistent discernment. It needs to be reviewed with further
> accuracy, accountability and unprejudiced temperament. Thank you so much for
>
> loyally reading this piece. I keenly look forward to hearing from you. Bob
>
>
>
only you put Allah's banner on the top of your flag pole in place of
the Cross.
You wrote, "Allah blessed you
with numerous bounties to test whether you will be grateful or ungrateful.
This is His divine statute, glory be to Him."
And what about those several millions of Indigenous People already
caring for this bountiful land? Are you suggesting that Allah is
prejudiced against the American Indian? Did Allah "allow" White
Europeans to enslave Black Africans because the Europeans needed to
learn how to play nice to Blacks? Or had those bad Africans earned
the enslavement that crushed them for hundreds of years? Allah, may
He rest in peace, and God, let Him rest eternally, are simply Make
Believe Genies. They may be called on as friendly Genies if times are
good, and they can be sent back into their lantern when times are bad.
That makes more sense than pretending that Allah and God are allowing
one people to crush another in order to "allow" them an opportunity
to test their gratitude." Huh??? Say that again? This is exactly
the same babble that the Southern Radio Evangelist shouts to his
devoted Jesus Lovers.
If God and Allah are the best Gods we can dream up, what more proof do
you need to demonstrate that both come from within Man's limited Dream
World?
Carl Jarvis
On 11/9/17, Bob <ebob824@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The United States is a prominently spacious territory. It is close to be a
>
> continent. It is known for its unevidently tautened principles of
> democracy, justice and equality. However, these values are intemperately
> sniped with bigotry, xenophobia, racial segregation, pride, hate
> incitement, derision and mass impudence. Americans often have these concepts
>
> mixed up. Free speech and hate rhetoric, the right to bear arms and gun
> violence, liberty and travesty, pride and dignity. Politics torn your nation
>
> apart. Therefore, your imperial era is about to diminish. Allah blessed you
>
> with numerous bounties to test whether you will be grateful or ungrateful.
> This is His divine statute, glory be to Him. What brought Donald Trump to
> oval office? Despite what was being said about Russian meddling in past
> elections, Allah is willing to providentially penalise wrongdoers. Donald
> Trump is obviously rapscallion, racialist, bigoted, unreliable,
> unconscionable, propagandist, dishonourable, misanthrope, prurient,
> flamboyant, aweless and dissembler. He won against his rivals with
> exercising fallacious rhetoric. He abhorrently dissed each and everyone. He
>
> despicably affronted politicians, journalists and public figures. We heard
> his emphatically offensive remarks against many people. This is why educated
>
> Americans are so upset. They are taken aback of this unpresidential
> character to be elected. This is the divine manner. Allah says in the Koran
>
> what could be meaningly rendered as namely. And when We would destroy a
> township, We send commandment to its folk who live at ease, and afterward
> they commit abomination therein, and so the Word of doom hath effect for it,
>
> and we annihilate it with complete annihilation. This is a commentary based
>
> translation of verse sixteen in chapter seventeen. This verse matches your
>
> election conclusion in unrivalled precision. Donald Trump is enormously
> affluent and thence, he is eligible to lead a nation that is based on
> capitalistic tenets. He is deficient of basic adequacy to manage a nursery
> or a small shop. His character matches what I call typical nescience in
> imbecility. What arrogance does? Arrogance makes its bearer blinded to see
> the truth. When you speak disparagingly of other traditions, this is the
> beginning of your end. America's reputable status is on its edge to
> collapse. You may respectfully disagree with other people. However, it
> certainly becomes a problem when this disagreement turns into unsolicited
> conflict. You may criticise others or even debate their views on particular
>
> issues. Withal, it is a trouble if you desperately demand to intolerantly
> demonise others to relentlessly justify your hostile stance. Why don't you
> folks learn from Canada? Canada is notably recognised for its distinctive
> factors of practically promoting diversity and multiculturalism. What is
> multiculturalism in Canada? It is the doctrine that several different
> cultures rather than one can coexist peacefully and equitably in a single
> country. So, you could commonly encounter bits and bobs of everything. You
> don't have to forcefully be painted with certain colour to be welcomed
> there. This is the plain difference between Canada and the States. In the
> States, you have got to be Americanised in some form or another to be
> accepted. This is what I call, the dominating disease of racism. Abraham
> Lincoln emancipated slaves but unfortunately, he treated the symptom and
> disposed the disease. Slavery was the symptom but racial disparity is
> actually the disease. I will always repeat this assertion, racism has to be
>
> portrayed as a deadly sinful act. Otherwise, change won't occur anytime
> soon. As for the recently aggrieved mass shooting of Texas, controversial
> arguments about gun control rose again. Why many members of the National
> Rifle Association act carelessly about gun safety and regulation? Despite
> the recurrence of fatal mass shootings in various places, American
> legislative committees decline to significantly straighten the situation
> out. People aren't safe at Churches, concerts, malls, medical centres,
> campuses or school complex. Trump said in multiple occasions that he take
> cares of all Americans. Subsequent to New York's truck callous assault, he
> called for more intense procedures and extremely enforced vetting to insure
>
> potential terrorists aren't issued visas. However, he nearly acted
> heedlessly concerning the massive shooting incident in Texas. Isn't that a
> clear sign of double standard? This is the relentless prob I have been
> encountering with your justice system for consecutive decades. I knew for
> certain, many sensible and just Americans aren't so pleased with what is
> happening in their country. Americans became numb to such incidents.
> Terrorism in their minds is only affiliated with Muslims. They aren't
> stringent in their assessment. This is why I am often tempestuous with
> American set of standards. This disposal of practicing double standard is
> immensely prevalent. Whenever a white guy commits mass murder, he is
> incessantly labelled as mentally imbalanced. However, if a Muslim committed
>
> that crime, he would have been instantly classified as a dire Muslim radical
>
> and the incident would have been considered an act of terror. The portrait
> is now clearer than ever before. The question is, for how long will we lie
> to ourselves? It is distinctly plain that we aren't equal in their minds to
>
> the white citizen who happend to be born there. Despite their insistence to
>
> deny this conclusion, evidence for it are gigantically triumphal. I do not
> destine to unfairly extrapolate. I just desire to seek equatable justice. I
>
> attentively followed a three hours live coverage of the incident on Youtube.
>
> I think it was published by ABC Radio. The show host spoke reasonably and
> his remote guests were competently sane in their discussion. That is one of
>
> the reasons why I believe sensible Americans out there aren't generically
> satisfied with the current situation. The problem will firmly be fixed if we
>
> redressed what is in my so humble opinion, a grave misinterpretation of the
>
> second amendment. I rendered my entailment on its essence previously. I
> won't ingeminate this for now. I did not take the literal meaning of the
> text. I rather went deeper to the legal spirit of the statute to properly
> derive consistent discernment. It needs to be reviewed with further
> accuracy, accountability and unprejudiced temperament. Thank you so much for
>
> loyally reading this piece. I keenly look forward to hearing from you. Bob
>
>
>
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Re: [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like this?
This is great! A topic we can all have an opinion on, and each of us
is exactly right. Of course there are hereditary factors that come
into play, like, you can't train a Mastiff to behave like a lap dog.
Unless you have one heck of a big lap. But dogs are basically dogs.
They come from long lines of human contact, and unlike so many of us,
they know not to bite the hands that feed them. Whether a dog is
taught to be a dog guide for the blind, or a service dog for a
disabled person, or a watch dog for guarding property, or a sheep dog
that herds the flock, the major difference is in the training. Sure,
generations of selective breeding has made it easier to train
different breeds for specific tasks, but keep in mind what happens
when a dog is not trained at all. When I was a boy during WW II,
German Shepard's were considered to be killer dogs. They were used by
the Germans as attack dogs, among other tasks. Bright and aggressive.
After the war lots of young macho guys made pets out of this breed,
both as personal guard animals, but also to demonstrate their
machoness. On several occasions I was either bitten or threatened by
out of control German Shepard's. Yet this was the breed selected by
Guide Dogs for their use in serving the needs of the blind.
Because of their high intelligence, they trained easily and remained
trained even under total neglect by their blind companions. The same
is true of any large breed of dog. Pit Bulls for example, are said to
be bred as fighting animals. Yet over the years I have known many
gentle, playful Pit Bulls. I also had a neighbor whose vicious Pit
Bull would break off his unbreakable chain and terrorize the
neighborhood. Once he chased the fellow across the street up a
ladder, climbing halfway up before his poorly trained owner got him
down. Another time I rescued a young woman pushing a stroller with
her baby, shouting for her to run into my house before the dog reached
them. We just slammed the door in the teeth of that monster. I
called the police and they dispatched a 90 pound lady cop who sat in
her car and honked her horn until the dog ran through the hedge and
into its yard. I was so mad that I called the police station and
ranted. After all the complaints regarding that dog, and they send
one officer, unarmed except with a gun, to defuse that wild mutt? And
the dog outweighed her! They ordered, for about the tenth time, that
our neighbor keep his dog on an unbreakable chain. But here's an
interesting sidelight. When the neighbor was in his yard, his dog was
off the leash and totally obedient. They could be inches from the
sidewalk as I passed by, and that dog simply stared at me without
moving a muscle. But I could read his mind!
Rusty lived behind us. An even bigger Pit Bull. We were tearing down
an old fence between our yards, when Rusty and his family returned
from shopping. Arms full of packages, the mother and her two
youngsters turned for just a second. Rusty saw Cathy and me standing
at the back of our yard. Like a brown streak, Rusty launched himself
over the downed fence and hit Cathy squarely in the chest, knocking
her to the ground. With forefeet on her chest Rusty began licking
Cathy's face.
Two big Pit Bulls, one well trained as a guard dog and the other
raised with love and not much in the way of discipline.
I must admit that I am not a good dog trainer. I spoil them, much as
I spoiled my children. But animals respond to love and gentleness.
Yes, my son-in-law has a Border Collie that instinctively herds most
anything herdable. He also loves to swim and to run. And he barks at
anything passing "his" yard. But he is so well trained that he can be
in a full leap and turn around if ordered to.
For people like me, which i suspect is most of us, I think we should
have to provide professional training for any medium or large dogs.
Again, the few "half breed" wolves and coyotes I've seen were well
trained and as obedient as any dog. Would I trust them around my 2
year old(assuming that this 82 year old fellow had a 2 year old
child)? No way. I have also seen the most well trained dogs snap
instinctively. One time, when I was running the Business Enterprises
training cafeteria, I was delivering a tray to a customer who had a
dog guide tucked under his table. That is, all of the dog except his
bushy tail. My foot came down on that tail and the teeth caught my
pants leg almost at the same moment. But that is probably what I
would have done if someone had stepped on my tail. No, small children
have so much trust built in to them that they assume they can do to
Fido what they do to their big fuzzy Panda Bear. And a poke in the
eye with some sharp object hurts just as much to a gentle dog as to a
vicious one. But we do like to lump things together and react to the
lump. Even so I repeat, professional training will resolve most dogs
behavior issues. And Wolves and Coyotes, too. But forget hugging
Grizzly Bears. Grizzly Bears are to adults what Big Dogs are to small
children.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/7/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
>
> German Shepherds are probably the most common breeds used for guide dogs
> of all. Labrador retrievers coming up second. And every German Shepherd
> I have ever encountered, guide dog or not, has been pretty gentle. It is
> those dogs that were bred especially for fighting, like the pit bulls,
> that you have to watch out for.
> On 11/6/2017 10:34 AM, MARY CONVY wrote:
>>
>> re German Shephards, the exception does not prove the rule.
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org> on behalf of Miriam Vieni
>> <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
>> *Sent:* Monday, November 6, 2017 10:04 AM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>> Well, my friend had a German Shepherd guide dog who was one of the
>> sweetest, gentlest dogs I've ever known. I have, however, known some
>> who were overly protective of their owners.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> *From:* blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] *On Behalf Of *MARY CONVY
>> *Sent:* Monday, November 06, 2017 8:12 AM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>> A woman in my neighborhood who is a police K-9 trainer says no German
>> Shepherd should be a house pet, let alone some half wolf/coyote. They
>> were bred to be working guard dogs and have that instinct, no matter
>> how much training you do. And to try to train their natural instincts
>> out is cruel.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> *From:*blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>
>> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>> on behalf of Roger
>> Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org
>> <mailto:dmarc-noreply@freelists.org>>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, November 5, 2017 9:22 PM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy@freelists.org>; Carl Jarvis
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>>
>> Half is a pretty big percentage. If they are really gentle I would say
>> that you are lucky. Half wolves and half coyotes and certainly full
>> blooded ones can be quite dangerous even if they were raised by humans
>> from infancy. And they present a dilemma too. If they have been raised
>> by humans you can't just release them back into the wild. They would
>> never survive. I remember reading about how some Alaska natives used to
>> prevent chronic inbreeding in their dogs. In small wilderness
>> communities it was not possible to completely prevent inbreeding, but
>> they did have a way of getting some wolf genes into the population. They
>> would tie up a female dog in heat in the woods and watch from a blind.
>> When a wolf came up to mate with her they would watch and then shoot the
>> wolf before it could attack the dog after mating. The litter would be
>> half wolves, of course. They would then watch the puppies and pick out
>> the gentlest ones and kill the more vicious ones. After several
>> generations of this they could trust the remaining puppies and not have
>> to watch so closely for viciousness. The half breeds are, of course,
>> more trustworthy than a full wolf, but those wolf genes have to be
>> watered down for one or two more generations before you can be really
>> confident about them. I would say that if the Facebook guy really has a
>> coyote he had better keep it chained up if there are small dogs or cats
>> in the neighborhood and the first time it loses its temper with him he
>> stands a good chance of getting a pretty bad bite.
>> On 11/5/2017 8:59 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
>> > Properly trained, a coyote can be a fine companion. They, like
>> > wolves, are very bright animals. I had a "half breed", half coyote
>> > and half some sort of Russian dog. She was a gentle pet. One of our
>> > clients has a half wolf, half collie or sheep dog. It looks very wolf
>> > like, but is also a gentle animal. In fact, he is trained to be our
>> > client's companion dog.
>> > It's mostly in the training, but some dogs resist training. I know
>> > that the dogs used by the Dog Guide Schools are carefully selected,
>> > and some are turned back due to their inability to meet the required
>> > standards.
>> > While I am not a good dog trainer, I do make a good dog companion once
>> > the dog has been professionally trained. I'm a firm proponent of
>> > insisting that all dogs over 30 pounds be professionally trained.
>> >
>> > Carl Jarvis
>> >
>> >
>> > On 11/5/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org
>> <mailto:dmarc-noreply@freelists.org>> wrote:
>> >> There is a guy on Facebook who says that his wife brought home a puppy
>> >> that she found. She said that it had been abandoned and that she found
>> >> it in the weeds on the side of the road. They decided to adopt it and
>> >> went through the whole procedure of getting its vaccinations and dog
>> >> tags and so forth. But he says that the older it gets the more he is
>> >> thinking that it doesn't act quite right and it doesn't look quite
>> >> right. He is getting more and more suspicious that his wife brought
>> home
>> >> a coyote. I wish I could see the picture. Several people have
>> >> commented
>> >> and a couple say that it looks a lot like pictures of coyotes that
>> >> they
>> >> have seen.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>>
>
>
is exactly right. Of course there are hereditary factors that come
into play, like, you can't train a Mastiff to behave like a lap dog.
Unless you have one heck of a big lap. But dogs are basically dogs.
They come from long lines of human contact, and unlike so many of us,
they know not to bite the hands that feed them. Whether a dog is
taught to be a dog guide for the blind, or a service dog for a
disabled person, or a watch dog for guarding property, or a sheep dog
that herds the flock, the major difference is in the training. Sure,
generations of selective breeding has made it easier to train
different breeds for specific tasks, but keep in mind what happens
when a dog is not trained at all. When I was a boy during WW II,
German Shepard's were considered to be killer dogs. They were used by
the Germans as attack dogs, among other tasks. Bright and aggressive.
After the war lots of young macho guys made pets out of this breed,
both as personal guard animals, but also to demonstrate their
machoness. On several occasions I was either bitten or threatened by
out of control German Shepard's. Yet this was the breed selected by
Guide Dogs for their use in serving the needs of the blind.
Because of their high intelligence, they trained easily and remained
trained even under total neglect by their blind companions. The same
is true of any large breed of dog. Pit Bulls for example, are said to
be bred as fighting animals. Yet over the years I have known many
gentle, playful Pit Bulls. I also had a neighbor whose vicious Pit
Bull would break off his unbreakable chain and terrorize the
neighborhood. Once he chased the fellow across the street up a
ladder, climbing halfway up before his poorly trained owner got him
down. Another time I rescued a young woman pushing a stroller with
her baby, shouting for her to run into my house before the dog reached
them. We just slammed the door in the teeth of that monster. I
called the police and they dispatched a 90 pound lady cop who sat in
her car and honked her horn until the dog ran through the hedge and
into its yard. I was so mad that I called the police station and
ranted. After all the complaints regarding that dog, and they send
one officer, unarmed except with a gun, to defuse that wild mutt? And
the dog outweighed her! They ordered, for about the tenth time, that
our neighbor keep his dog on an unbreakable chain. But here's an
interesting sidelight. When the neighbor was in his yard, his dog was
off the leash and totally obedient. They could be inches from the
sidewalk as I passed by, and that dog simply stared at me without
moving a muscle. But I could read his mind!
Rusty lived behind us. An even bigger Pit Bull. We were tearing down
an old fence between our yards, when Rusty and his family returned
from shopping. Arms full of packages, the mother and her two
youngsters turned for just a second. Rusty saw Cathy and me standing
at the back of our yard. Like a brown streak, Rusty launched himself
over the downed fence and hit Cathy squarely in the chest, knocking
her to the ground. With forefeet on her chest Rusty began licking
Cathy's face.
Two big Pit Bulls, one well trained as a guard dog and the other
raised with love and not much in the way of discipline.
I must admit that I am not a good dog trainer. I spoil them, much as
I spoiled my children. But animals respond to love and gentleness.
Yes, my son-in-law has a Border Collie that instinctively herds most
anything herdable. He also loves to swim and to run. And he barks at
anything passing "his" yard. But he is so well trained that he can be
in a full leap and turn around if ordered to.
For people like me, which i suspect is most of us, I think we should
have to provide professional training for any medium or large dogs.
Again, the few "half breed" wolves and coyotes I've seen were well
trained and as obedient as any dog. Would I trust them around my 2
year old(assuming that this 82 year old fellow had a 2 year old
child)? No way. I have also seen the most well trained dogs snap
instinctively. One time, when I was running the Business Enterprises
training cafeteria, I was delivering a tray to a customer who had a
dog guide tucked under his table. That is, all of the dog except his
bushy tail. My foot came down on that tail and the teeth caught my
pants leg almost at the same moment. But that is probably what I
would have done if someone had stepped on my tail. No, small children
have so much trust built in to them that they assume they can do to
Fido what they do to their big fuzzy Panda Bear. And a poke in the
eye with some sharp object hurts just as much to a gentle dog as to a
vicious one. But we do like to lump things together and react to the
lump. Even so I repeat, professional training will resolve most dogs
behavior issues. And Wolves and Coyotes, too. But forget hugging
Grizzly Bears. Grizzly Bears are to adults what Big Dogs are to small
children.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/7/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
>
> German Shepherds are probably the most common breeds used for guide dogs
> of all. Labrador retrievers coming up second. And every German Shepherd
> I have ever encountered, guide dog or not, has been pretty gentle. It is
> those dogs that were bred especially for fighting, like the pit bulls,
> that you have to watch out for.
> On 11/6/2017 10:34 AM, MARY CONVY wrote:
>>
>> re German Shephards, the exception does not prove the rule.
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org> on behalf of Miriam Vieni
>> <miriamvieni@optonline.net>
>> *Sent:* Monday, November 6, 2017 10:04 AM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>> Well, my friend had a German Shepherd guide dog who was one of the
>> sweetest, gentlest dogs I've ever known. I have, however, known some
>> who were overly protective of their owners.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> *From:* blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] *On Behalf Of *MARY CONVY
>> *Sent:* Monday, November 06, 2017 8:12 AM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>> A woman in my neighborhood who is a police K-9 trainer says no German
>> Shepherd should be a house pet, let alone some half wolf/coyote. They
>> were bred to be working guard dogs and have that instinct, no matter
>> how much training you do. And to try to train their natural instincts
>> out is cruel.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> *From:*blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>
>> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>> on behalf of Roger
>> Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org
>> <mailto:dmarc-noreply@freelists.org>>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, November 5, 2017 9:22 PM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy@freelists.org>; Carl Jarvis
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>>
>> Half is a pretty big percentage. If they are really gentle I would say
>> that you are lucky. Half wolves and half coyotes and certainly full
>> blooded ones can be quite dangerous even if they were raised by humans
>> from infancy. And they present a dilemma too. If they have been raised
>> by humans you can't just release them back into the wild. They would
>> never survive. I remember reading about how some Alaska natives used to
>> prevent chronic inbreeding in their dogs. In small wilderness
>> communities it was not possible to completely prevent inbreeding, but
>> they did have a way of getting some wolf genes into the population. They
>> would tie up a female dog in heat in the woods and watch from a blind.
>> When a wolf came up to mate with her they would watch and then shoot the
>> wolf before it could attack the dog after mating. The litter would be
>> half wolves, of course. They would then watch the puppies and pick out
>> the gentlest ones and kill the more vicious ones. After several
>> generations of this they could trust the remaining puppies and not have
>> to watch so closely for viciousness. The half breeds are, of course,
>> more trustworthy than a full wolf, but those wolf genes have to be
>> watered down for one or two more generations before you can be really
>> confident about them. I would say that if the Facebook guy really has a
>> coyote he had better keep it chained up if there are small dogs or cats
>> in the neighborhood and the first time it loses its temper with him he
>> stands a good chance of getting a pretty bad bite.
>> On 11/5/2017 8:59 PM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
>> > Properly trained, a coyote can be a fine companion. They, like
>> > wolves, are very bright animals. I had a "half breed", half coyote
>> > and half some sort of Russian dog. She was a gentle pet. One of our
>> > clients has a half wolf, half collie or sheep dog. It looks very wolf
>> > like, but is also a gentle animal. In fact, he is trained to be our
>> > client's companion dog.
>> > It's mostly in the training, but some dogs resist training. I know
>> > that the dogs used by the Dog Guide Schools are carefully selected,
>> > and some are turned back due to their inability to meet the required
>> > standards.
>> > While I am not a good dog trainer, I do make a good dog companion once
>> > the dog has been professionally trained. I'm a firm proponent of
>> > insisting that all dogs over 30 pounds be professionally trained.
>> >
>> > Carl Jarvis
>> >
>> >
>> > On 11/5/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org
>> <mailto:dmarc-noreply@freelists.org>> wrote:
>> >> There is a guy on Facebook who says that his wife brought home a puppy
>> >> that she found. She said that it had been abandoned and that she found
>> >> it in the weeds on the side of the road. They decided to adopt it and
>> >> went through the whole procedure of getting its vaccinations and dog
>> >> tags and so forth. But he says that the older it gets the more he is
>> >> thinking that it doesn't act quite right and it doesn't look quite
>> >> right. He is getting more and more suspicious that his wife brought
>> home
>> >> a coyote. I wish I could see the picture. Several people have
>> >> commented
>> >> and a couple say that it looks a lot like pictures of coyotes that
>> >> they
>> >> have seen.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>>
>
>
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Re: [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like this?
Roger and All Lovers and Haters of Face Book..and Twitter, too!,
Speaking for myself, Face Book could promise to send me a lovely Fairy
God Mother to sit on my lap and read the daily news while stroking my
cheek, and I'd take a pass. I know it's an irrational thing, but I
absolutely refuse to be "Liked" by some mystical Being that has no
ability to Like anything at all. And then they came up with Twitter,
and Tweet!!! My God(whom I doubt exists) Are we being led into some
little kiddie land? Can we say, "Goo Goo"? I refuse to be Liked,
twittered or tweeted.
Okay, I'm over it!
But getting back to where my feet touch the ground, it goes beyond the
silly handles we are being fed...did I mention "Google and Yahoo"?
Studies show that most Americans read at a Fifth Grade level. With
the senseless garbage we're being fed these days, I'd say Fifth Grade
is at least Two Grades too high. And I apologize to my Third Grade
Grand Daughter who reads at a Junior High School level.
But back to the present. Regardless of whether we join up with the
Pied Pipers of Wall Street, or not, we are on the broad road to the
end of democracy and that long dreamed of, "...Liberty and Justice for
All".
So I don't begrudge those who use Face Book or Tweet and Twiddle, it's
not going to change a thing. The folks who decide what is good for us
will go ahead, charming us and promising wonders if only we allow them
to "like" us, and we'll smile and grin all the way to the gas chamber.
But for now, I have a young double amputee with Diabetic Retinopathy
to visit. There are these times that I am reminded how much more
difficult life could be.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/6/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
>
> Miriam, pretty much every one of those sources that you post articles
> from have a presence on Facebook. I have some of them in my feed too.
> Frequently I see some of the same articles that you post here. Now how
> is it that the very same article becomes superficial when it appears on
> Facebook and it is not superficial when you post it here? By the way,
> sometimes you complain that certain articles from certain sites are hard
> to read and hard to copy. I think that if you got them from Facebook and
> used the M.Facebook site you would find them a lot easier to access with
> a screen reader.
> On 11/6/2017 6:34 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
>>
>> Well, that's a matter of opinion because to me, the sources that you
>> like provide superficial information and some of the information isn't
>> of interest to me or isn't useful to me. It's kind of like choosing
>> books. I'm on the DB Review list. People have a variety of tastes.
>> Some people recommend books that they love, but I would never want to
>> read. I like some books that most other people don't. But sometimes,
>> our tastes overlap. The same is true of information sources. I choose
>> mine very carefully. One example is the podcast feeds on my VR Stream.
>> There are people who have 50 or more feeds on their streams. At the
>> moment, I have 16. I've had some, discarded them, and replaced them
>> with others.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> *From:* blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] *On Behalf Of *MARY CONVY
>> *Sent:* Monday, November 06, 2017 5:31 PM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>> It is not a matter of liking different info than you do, but choosing
>> to expand my sources.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> *From:*blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>
>> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>> on behalf of Miriam
>> Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net <mailto:miriamvieni@optonline.net>>
>> *Sent:* Monday, November 6, 2017 5:16 PM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy@freelists.org>
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>> I guess that different people are interested in different kinds of
>> information. It's a matter of taste. I had a blind friend, a guy with
>> a PhD in psychology, who was not interested in reading newspaper
>> articles. He didn't trust journalists. He preferred to get his
>> information from talk radio. He was very interested in medical issues
>> and he liked to listen to doctors who had radio programs during which
>> they gave advice. He also had a police scanner in his apartment at one
>> point. He was, for many years, a lurker on this list, but he never
>> read the political articles that we posted. He was only interested in
>> posts related to blindness.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> *From:*blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>
>> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] *On Behalf Of *MARY CONVY
>> *Sent:* Monday, November 06, 2017 10:42 AM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy@freelists.org>
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>> Miriam, As with anything, the thing itself is not inherently good
>> or evil, but the way it is used. I am on twitter subscribed to a
>> million news sources. I get live notice of live streams of protests,
>> live police calls, 140 characters of news headlines that allows me to
>> look further into an issue or not, weather alerts, police alerts,
>> kidnapped kid alerts. It is a great source. I am on Facebook where
>> there are neighborhood pages and town pages of where I live and find
>> out instantly, for example, of a bear coming down my block, a woman in
>> great need after an abusive husband left, lost dogs, a family whose
>> teen was killed in a car accident and needed help, a man sitting in a
>> car on my block taking picture of kids. The police are on the site
>> and post neighborhood alerts. It is a wonderful source.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> *From:*blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>
>> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>> on behalf of Miriam
>> Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net <mailto:miriamvieni@optonline.net>>
>> *Sent:* Monday, November 6, 2017 9:52 AM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy@freelists.org>
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>> I'm certainly not on twitter. The idea of thinking that one can
>> adequately express an idea in 140 characters is ridiculous. It's just
>> a way to lash out at others or inflate one's ego, as far as I'm
>> concerned. Facebook is a huge money making operation and is not the
>> way I want to communicate with anyone!Even my kids who are 53 and 45
>> don't use it. And if I could manage it, and I almost do, I'd boycott
>> Amazon because I don't want a monopoly doing all the selling in the
>> world. I have ideas about right and wrong and I've tried to live my
>> values. But as society becomes more and more corrupt, it becomes
>> harder and harder to do so. I'll hold out, wherever I can.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> *From:*blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>
>> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] *On Behalf Of *MARY CONVY
>> *Sent:* Monday, November 06, 2017 8:04 AM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy@freelists.org>
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>> Miriam, Are you on Twitter? Why no Facebook?
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> *From:*blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>
>> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>> on behalf of Roger
>> Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org
>> <mailto:dmarc-noreply@freelists.org>>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, November 5, 2017 11:34 PM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy@freelists.org>; Miriam Vieni
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>>
>> It was just a personal post that was forwarded around and happened to
>> come my way. Maybe you wouldn't be on Facebook, but you have made plenty
>> of personal posts right here yourself.
>> On 11/5/2017 10:09 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
>> > I wouldn't be on Facebook to begin with. And the fact that people
>> would become involved in a story like that when really important and
>> horrible things are happening to people all over the world, many of
>> them caused by the government of the country where I live, is one reason.
>> >
>> > Miriam
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>
>> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] On Behalf Of Roger Loran
>> Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
>> > Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2017 8:02 PM
>> > To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy@freelists.org>>
>> > Subject: [blind-democracy] What would you do with something like this?
>> >
>> > There is a guy on Facebook who says that his wife brought home a
>> puppy that she found. She said that it had been abandoned and that she
>> found it in the weeds on the side of the road. They decided to adopt
>> it and went through the whole procedure of getting its vaccinations
>> and dog tags and so forth. But he says that the older it gets the more
>> he is thinking that it doesn't act quite right and it doesn't look
>> quite right. He is getting more and more suspicious that his wife
>> brought home a coyote. I wish I could see the picture. Several people
>> have commented and a couple say that it looks a lot like pictures of
>> coyotes that they have seen.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>
>
Speaking for myself, Face Book could promise to send me a lovely Fairy
God Mother to sit on my lap and read the daily news while stroking my
cheek, and I'd take a pass. I know it's an irrational thing, but I
absolutely refuse to be "Liked" by some mystical Being that has no
ability to Like anything at all. And then they came up with Twitter,
and Tweet!!! My God(whom I doubt exists) Are we being led into some
little kiddie land? Can we say, "Goo Goo"? I refuse to be Liked,
twittered or tweeted.
Okay, I'm over it!
But getting back to where my feet touch the ground, it goes beyond the
silly handles we are being fed...did I mention "Google and Yahoo"?
Studies show that most Americans read at a Fifth Grade level. With
the senseless garbage we're being fed these days, I'd say Fifth Grade
is at least Two Grades too high. And I apologize to my Third Grade
Grand Daughter who reads at a Junior High School level.
But back to the present. Regardless of whether we join up with the
Pied Pipers of Wall Street, or not, we are on the broad road to the
end of democracy and that long dreamed of, "...Liberty and Justice for
All".
So I don't begrudge those who use Face Book or Tweet and Twiddle, it's
not going to change a thing. The folks who decide what is good for us
will go ahead, charming us and promising wonders if only we allow them
to "like" us, and we'll smile and grin all the way to the gas chamber.
But for now, I have a young double amputee with Diabetic Retinopathy
to visit. There are these times that I am reminded how much more
difficult life could be.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/6/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
>
> Miriam, pretty much every one of those sources that you post articles
> from have a presence on Facebook. I have some of them in my feed too.
> Frequently I see some of the same articles that you post here. Now how
> is it that the very same article becomes superficial when it appears on
> Facebook and it is not superficial when you post it here? By the way,
> sometimes you complain that certain articles from certain sites are hard
> to read and hard to copy. I think that if you got them from Facebook and
> used the M.Facebook site you would find them a lot easier to access with
> a screen reader.
> On 11/6/2017 6:34 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
>>
>> Well, that's a matter of opinion because to me, the sources that you
>> like provide superficial information and some of the information isn't
>> of interest to me or isn't useful to me. It's kind of like choosing
>> books. I'm on the DB Review list. People have a variety of tastes.
>> Some people recommend books that they love, but I would never want to
>> read. I like some books that most other people don't. But sometimes,
>> our tastes overlap. The same is true of information sources. I choose
>> mine very carefully. One example is the podcast feeds on my VR Stream.
>> There are people who have 50 or more feeds on their streams. At the
>> moment, I have 16. I've had some, discarded them, and replaced them
>> with others.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> *From:* blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] *On Behalf Of *MARY CONVY
>> *Sent:* Monday, November 06, 2017 5:31 PM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>> It is not a matter of liking different info than you do, but choosing
>> to expand my sources.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> *From:*blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>
>> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>> on behalf of Miriam
>> Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net <mailto:miriamvieni@optonline.net>>
>> *Sent:* Monday, November 6, 2017 5:16 PM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy@freelists.org>
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>> I guess that different people are interested in different kinds of
>> information. It's a matter of taste. I had a blind friend, a guy with
>> a PhD in psychology, who was not interested in reading newspaper
>> articles. He didn't trust journalists. He preferred to get his
>> information from talk radio. He was very interested in medical issues
>> and he liked to listen to doctors who had radio programs during which
>> they gave advice. He also had a police scanner in his apartment at one
>> point. He was, for many years, a lurker on this list, but he never
>> read the political articles that we posted. He was only interested in
>> posts related to blindness.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> *From:*blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>
>> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] *On Behalf Of *MARY CONVY
>> *Sent:* Monday, November 06, 2017 10:42 AM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy@freelists.org>
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>> Miriam, As with anything, the thing itself is not inherently good
>> or evil, but the way it is used. I am on twitter subscribed to a
>> million news sources. I get live notice of live streams of protests,
>> live police calls, 140 characters of news headlines that allows me to
>> look further into an issue or not, weather alerts, police alerts,
>> kidnapped kid alerts. It is a great source. I am on Facebook where
>> there are neighborhood pages and town pages of where I live and find
>> out instantly, for example, of a bear coming down my block, a woman in
>> great need after an abusive husband left, lost dogs, a family whose
>> teen was killed in a car accident and needed help, a man sitting in a
>> car on my block taking picture of kids. The police are on the site
>> and post neighborhood alerts. It is a wonderful source.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> *From:*blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>
>> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>> on behalf of Miriam
>> Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net <mailto:miriamvieni@optonline.net>>
>> *Sent:* Monday, November 6, 2017 9:52 AM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy@freelists.org>
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>> I'm certainly not on twitter. The idea of thinking that one can
>> adequately express an idea in 140 characters is ridiculous. It's just
>> a way to lash out at others or inflate one's ego, as far as I'm
>> concerned. Facebook is a huge money making operation and is not the
>> way I want to communicate with anyone!Even my kids who are 53 and 45
>> don't use it. And if I could manage it, and I almost do, I'd boycott
>> Amazon because I don't want a monopoly doing all the selling in the
>> world. I have ideas about right and wrong and I've tried to live my
>> values. But as society becomes more and more corrupt, it becomes
>> harder and harder to do so. I'll hold out, wherever I can.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> *From:*blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>
>> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] *On Behalf Of *MARY CONVY
>> *Sent:* Monday, November 06, 2017 8:04 AM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy@freelists.org>
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>> Miriam, Are you on Twitter? Why no Facebook?
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> *From:*blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>
>> <blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>> on behalf of Roger
>> Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org
>> <mailto:dmarc-noreply@freelists.org>>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, November 5, 2017 11:34 PM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy@freelists.org>; Miriam Vieni
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Re: What would you do with something like
>> this?
>>
>>
>> It was just a personal post that was forwarded around and happened to
>> come my way. Maybe you wouldn't be on Facebook, but you have made plenty
>> of personal posts right here yourself.
>> On 11/5/2017 10:09 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
>> > I wouldn't be on Facebook to begin with. And the fact that people
>> would become involved in a story like that when really important and
>> horrible things are happening to people all over the world, many of
>> them caused by the government of the country where I live, is one reason.
>> >
>> > Miriam
>> >
>> > -----Original Message-----
>> > From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org>
>> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] On Behalf Of Roger Loran
>> Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
>> > Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2017 8:02 PM
>> > To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> <mailto:blind-democracy@freelists.org>>
>> > Subject: [blind-democracy] What would you do with something like this?
>> >
>> > There is a guy on Facebook who says that his wife brought home a
>> puppy that she found. She said that it had been abandoned and that she
>> found it in the weeds on the side of the road. They decided to adopt
>> it and went through the whole procedure of getting its vaccinations
>> and dog tags and so forth. But he says that the older it gets the more
>> he is thinking that it doesn't act quite right and it doesn't look
>> quite right. He is getting more and more suspicious that his wife
>> brought home a coyote. I wish I could see the picture. Several people
>> have commented and a couple say that it looks a lot like pictures of
>> coyotes that they have seen.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>
>
we are known by the company we keep
What's going on in the Middle East? Can it be that our good buddies,
the Saudi Arabians are meddling in the affairs of Lebanon?
Carl Jarvis
transcript
Saudi Prince Salman's Chess Game with Hezbollah in Lebanon
SHARMINI PERIES: It's The Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries
coming to you from Baltimore. Prime Minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri
resigned on Saturday,
in a pre-recorded broadcast first aired in Saudi Arabian television
and then in Lebanon. He said he believed there was an assassination
plot against him
and accused Iran and his Lebanese coalition partner, Hezbollah, of
sowing strife in the Arab world. SAAD HARIRI: I would like to say to
Iran and its followers,
that they will be losers in their intervention in the Arab affairs.
Our nation will wake up, as it did in the past, their hand in the
region will be cut
off.SHARMINI PERIES: Now joining me to analyze this unfolding
situation is Vijay Prashad. Vijay is now the executive director of the
Tricontinental Institute
for Social Research and is also chief editor of LeftWord Books. Vijay,
allow me to dive right in here and ask you what we know so far, and
you assessment
of Hariri's sudden resignation.VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, it should be said
that Lebanon has been in a very fragile state ever since the war broke
out in Syria.
And there's been a real attempt inside Lebanon for all the different
political factions to create some kind of stability despite the fact
that several
of them are on different sides of the Lebanese civil war. So it was
quite a feat that a kind of unity government was created with Saad
Hariri agreeing
to take the Prime Ministership, while Michel Aoun, who's an ally of
Hezbollah, became the president. This very fragile government then
moved forward and
in fact passed a budget, you know, just a short while ago. It looked
like things were quite stable in Lebanon as compared to the
neighborhood, and with
the Syrian war slowly winding down, things looked quite positive for
Lebanon. And then of course, Mr. Hariri was hastily called to Saudi
Arabia, from where
a first broadcast on Saudi television, he declared his resignation.
This really surprised not only his own allies inside Lebanon, but
also, the president
of Lebanon Michel Aoun, who in fact has refused to accept the
resignation, and has said he will only consider this resignation when
Mr. Hariri returns
to Lebanon. There is of course great speculation that Mr. Hariri is
being held in a kind of prisoner in Saudi Arabia, not being allowed to
return to Lebanon.
So the tension and crisis of course continues. This tension, I should
add, is part of the broad crackdown inside Saudi Arabia by the son of
the current
king, Mohammed bin Salman, who's arrested 11 important people inside
the kingdom, and has arrested and shut down basically three private
news outlets inside
Saudi Arabia.SHARMINI PERIES: Vjay, this week we saw a number of
people arrested in Saudi Arabia, this appears to be a crackdown on,
what does this crackdown,
or crisis, have to do with Hariri, if anything?VIJAY PRASHAD: It
should be, I think, seen that this turmoil inside Saudi Arabia is a
direct consequence
of Saudi Arabia having basically lost the goals that it had set for
itself in Syria and in Yemen, with the collapse of Isis, with the
reassertion of the
government of..., Saudi Arabia has basically seen its goals unmet
inside Syria. At the same time, it's war in Yemen, a very harsh war
where there has been
considerable has also come undone. Saudi Arabia has been lashing out
at Yemen, and in fact yesterday, put a total moratorium, an embargo,
on all ports
and airports of Yemen, not allowing aid to enter the country. So, this
crisis, in its neighborhood, the failure in Saudi Arabia, to execute
its ambitions
in Syria and in Yemen, the very deep crisis its own economy, with no
oil prices and so on, has created a legitimacy problem for the king of
Saudi Arabia,
particularly his son, Mohammed bin Salman, who has been in charge of
almost every aspect of Saudi rule. And what he has done in the last
few days, is gone
after every single other branch of the royal family, sons of previous
kings, nephews of the current king, the very rich in the country, has
arrested them.
It is being suggested inside Saudi Arabia that this was a counter coup
led by Mohammad Bin Salman, because he was afraid that some of these
princes and
others might have been mounting a coup against him, an unstable rule
that he has been managing, very poor execution of wars and so on, so
this was his
countercoup. Then wrapped up in this, perhaps in this tantrum around
the defeat of their ambitions in Syria is perhaps the forced
resignation of Saad Hariri
of Lebanon.SHARMINI PERIES: Now, the Lebanese Prime Minister, Saad
Hariri, and his father, who was assassinated in a car bomb back in
2005, they have very
close ties to Saudi Arabia, what hold might Saudi Arabia have on the
Prime Minister, and what do we know about what's happening to him now,
he's being
held in Saudi Arabia, some reports says against his wishes, what are
your thoughts?VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, there is one suggestion that Mr.
Hariri is being
held. Now, it is true that he has very close ties with the Saudis, so
did his father, and in fact, many people have suggested that this is
Saudi Arabia
trying to micromanage Lebanese politics. On Sunday, Mr. Nasrallah, the
head of Hezbollah, went on television in Lebanon and suggested as
much. He accused
Saudi Arabia of interfering in Lebanese politics. He suggested that
because Mr. Hariri made his announcement in Saudi Arabia, on Saudi
television, that
this was a direct evidence of Saudi interference in Lebanese politics.
So, one suggestion is that Mr. Hariri, totally beholden to the Saudis,
basically
had to do their bidding when they wanted to destabilize the government
in Lebanon and perhaps pressure the situation so that there is some
kind of war,
perhaps undertaken by Israel or others, against Hezbollah to start a
more regional war against Iran. That's one suggestion.The other
suggestion is that
Mr. Hariri has basically gone into exile in Saudi Arabia, unable to
manage the situation in Lebanon, I think frustrated by the victory of
the very closely
linked with Iran group, Hezbollah, and the defeat of the ambitions of
his bloc in the region. So whether he is being held captive, or he's
gone into exile,
either way, there is an attempt now by Saudi Arabia to put the
pressure on Hezbollah, to use Hezbollah, in a way, as perhaps a way,
to start a regional
war of the west, and Israel, against Iran, including of course, Saudi
assets.SHARMINI PERIES: Vijay, this morning there was an opinion, a
piece penned
in the Haaretz newspaper in Israel, asking "Is Saudi Arabia pushing
Israel into war with Hezbollah and Iran?" Your thoughts on that.VIJAY
PRASHAD: I think
that's a very good way to phrase the question. I think there's an
attempt by Saudi Arabia, having seen the United States unwilling to do
its bidding entirely
vis-a-vis Iran, I mean the Trump Administration has gone quite far in
its belligerence attempting to poke Iran, to prod Iran, to make Iran
do something
that would then welcome, allow the United States to attack Iran. But
that road seems to not be going forward, and I think that the Saudis
are now trying
to have a kind of proxy war against Iran, by pushing some kind of
conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.It needs to be said that
Hezbollah is a very disciplined
political outfit, and I very much doubt that they will take this bait
and go to war against Israel. Because also true, that since the 2006
war since Hezbollah
and Israel, which was essentially a stalemate, where Hezbollah was not
destroyed, which was the aim of Israel, now Hezbollah is much
stronger, given its
experience in fighting in Syria, and I think the Israelis recognize
that a war against Hezbollah is not going to be as asymmetrical, as
say the Israeli
wars against the Palestinians, that has Hezbollah will inflict major
damage on Israel. So I doubt very much that the Israelis will take the
bait, will
be as adventurous as the Saudis perhaps would like, and go to war
against Hezbollah, which they should perhaps think that as the Saudis
think, is a way
to get at Iran.SHARMINI PERIES: Vijay, I understand that the leader of
Hezbollah, Nasrallah, had very calming presence according to people on
the ground,
that he went on air right after this resignation was aired, and people
felt as if the country was in crisis, and apparently Nasrallah had a
very calming
presence. Does Hariri's resignation leave a leadership crisis in
Lebanon, and what will this mean for the politics and governance of
Lebanon?VIJAY PRASHAD:
Well I mean, Lebanon is an interesting place because its entire
government structure is sectarianism between the Christian Mennonites,
the Sunnis and the
Shia. So it's not a question that the resignation of Mr. Hariri will
collapse the government. It's also clear that in the last 15 years,
Lebanon has had
long periods where an illegitimate legislature has continued to
govern. In other words, where its term has ended, its continued to
hold office. So I don't
think there'll be some complete vacuum in Lebanon. I think other
forces will come in, the permanent bureaucracy is going to continue to
work, and besides,
it's a highly decentralized country. So things are going to happen. I
don't think this is going to make Lebanon fall into some kind of
abyss.I think the
real question here is going to be Mr. Hariri's bloc is going to do.
What his political party is going to do. He has not been the most
effective leader
of their political party, he is not perhaps as wily as his father,
he's much more susceptible to influence by the Saudis and others. So,
this might just
give an opening inside the future movement, which is his bloc, for
other people to come in and take power. So, let's see what happens,
what's interesting
is, that Mr. Nasrallah has basically given a timetable for his return
to make a comment. He's spoken on Sunday, he'll come back on Friday,
he recognizes
that this is a very quick moving series of events, and his
commentaries are going to be taken very seriously. So I think, let's
wait and see what happens
during this week.SHARMINI PERIES: And one final question, in terms of
Saudi Arabia's objective in all of this, give us a sense of what we
should be looking
out for over the next little while.VIJAY PRASHAD: Well I think that
Saudi Arabia's objective is basically driven by the fact that its
ambitions have been
routed and it wants somehow to poke Iran, and I'm very much hoping
that in order to prevent some kind of new cataclysmic war in West
Asia, that Iran holds
itself back, takes a mature attitude, that Hezbollah takes a mature
attitude to this crisis, no one gets provoked by Saudi actions. He has
now called the
king and his son, Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, have called the
leader of the Palestinian government, Mahmoud Abbas, to Saudi Arabia.
We shall see
what happens here, will Mahmoud Abbas make some kind of statement from
Riyadh? Will he also be arrested and held in Riyadh? It's to be seen
what is going
on, but what is very clear, is this is some sort of Saudi tantrum
playing across the region, and I hope other actors are sober minded in
their reaction
to it.SHARMINI PERIES: Alright Vijay, as always I thank you so much
for joining us today.VIJAY PRASHAD: Thanks a lot.SHARMINI PERIES: And
thank you for
joining us here on The Real News Network.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the Saudi Arabians are meddling in the affairs of Lebanon?
Carl Jarvis
transcript
Saudi Prince Salman's Chess Game with Hezbollah in Lebanon
SHARMINI PERIES: It's The Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries
coming to you from Baltimore. Prime Minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri
resigned on Saturday,
in a pre-recorded broadcast first aired in Saudi Arabian television
and then in Lebanon. He said he believed there was an assassination
plot against him
and accused Iran and his Lebanese coalition partner, Hezbollah, of
sowing strife in the Arab world. SAAD HARIRI: I would like to say to
Iran and its followers,
that they will be losers in their intervention in the Arab affairs.
Our nation will wake up, as it did in the past, their hand in the
region will be cut
off.SHARMINI PERIES: Now joining me to analyze this unfolding
situation is Vijay Prashad. Vijay is now the executive director of the
Tricontinental Institute
for Social Research and is also chief editor of LeftWord Books. Vijay,
allow me to dive right in here and ask you what we know so far, and
you assessment
of Hariri's sudden resignation.VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, it should be said
that Lebanon has been in a very fragile state ever since the war broke
out in Syria.
And there's been a real attempt inside Lebanon for all the different
political factions to create some kind of stability despite the fact
that several
of them are on different sides of the Lebanese civil war. So it was
quite a feat that a kind of unity government was created with Saad
Hariri agreeing
to take the Prime Ministership, while Michel Aoun, who's an ally of
Hezbollah, became the president. This very fragile government then
moved forward and
in fact passed a budget, you know, just a short while ago. It looked
like things were quite stable in Lebanon as compared to the
neighborhood, and with
the Syrian war slowly winding down, things looked quite positive for
Lebanon. And then of course, Mr. Hariri was hastily called to Saudi
Arabia, from where
a first broadcast on Saudi television, he declared his resignation.
This really surprised not only his own allies inside Lebanon, but
also, the president
of Lebanon Michel Aoun, who in fact has refused to accept the
resignation, and has said he will only consider this resignation when
Mr. Hariri returns
to Lebanon. There is of course great speculation that Mr. Hariri is
being held in a kind of prisoner in Saudi Arabia, not being allowed to
return to Lebanon.
So the tension and crisis of course continues. This tension, I should
add, is part of the broad crackdown inside Saudi Arabia by the son of
the current
king, Mohammed bin Salman, who's arrested 11 important people inside
the kingdom, and has arrested and shut down basically three private
news outlets inside
Saudi Arabia.SHARMINI PERIES: Vjay, this week we saw a number of
people arrested in Saudi Arabia, this appears to be a crackdown on,
what does this crackdown,
or crisis, have to do with Hariri, if anything?VIJAY PRASHAD: It
should be, I think, seen that this turmoil inside Saudi Arabia is a
direct consequence
of Saudi Arabia having basically lost the goals that it had set for
itself in Syria and in Yemen, with the collapse of Isis, with the
reassertion of the
government of..., Saudi Arabia has basically seen its goals unmet
inside Syria. At the same time, it's war in Yemen, a very harsh war
where there has been
considerable has also come undone. Saudi Arabia has been lashing out
at Yemen, and in fact yesterday, put a total moratorium, an embargo,
on all ports
and airports of Yemen, not allowing aid to enter the country. So, this
crisis, in its neighborhood, the failure in Saudi Arabia, to execute
its ambitions
in Syria and in Yemen, the very deep crisis its own economy, with no
oil prices and so on, has created a legitimacy problem for the king of
Saudi Arabia,
particularly his son, Mohammed bin Salman, who has been in charge of
almost every aspect of Saudi rule. And what he has done in the last
few days, is gone
after every single other branch of the royal family, sons of previous
kings, nephews of the current king, the very rich in the country, has
arrested them.
It is being suggested inside Saudi Arabia that this was a counter coup
led by Mohammad Bin Salman, because he was afraid that some of these
princes and
others might have been mounting a coup against him, an unstable rule
that he has been managing, very poor execution of wars and so on, so
this was his
countercoup. Then wrapped up in this, perhaps in this tantrum around
the defeat of their ambitions in Syria is perhaps the forced
resignation of Saad Hariri
of Lebanon.SHARMINI PERIES: Now, the Lebanese Prime Minister, Saad
Hariri, and his father, who was assassinated in a car bomb back in
2005, they have very
close ties to Saudi Arabia, what hold might Saudi Arabia have on the
Prime Minister, and what do we know about what's happening to him now,
he's being
held in Saudi Arabia, some reports says against his wishes, what are
your thoughts?VIJAY PRASHAD: Well, there is one suggestion that Mr.
Hariri is being
held. Now, it is true that he has very close ties with the Saudis, so
did his father, and in fact, many people have suggested that this is
Saudi Arabia
trying to micromanage Lebanese politics. On Sunday, Mr. Nasrallah, the
head of Hezbollah, went on television in Lebanon and suggested as
much. He accused
Saudi Arabia of interfering in Lebanese politics. He suggested that
because Mr. Hariri made his announcement in Saudi Arabia, on Saudi
television, that
this was a direct evidence of Saudi interference in Lebanese politics.
So, one suggestion is that Mr. Hariri, totally beholden to the Saudis,
basically
had to do their bidding when they wanted to destabilize the government
in Lebanon and perhaps pressure the situation so that there is some
kind of war,
perhaps undertaken by Israel or others, against Hezbollah to start a
more regional war against Iran. That's one suggestion.The other
suggestion is that
Mr. Hariri has basically gone into exile in Saudi Arabia, unable to
manage the situation in Lebanon, I think frustrated by the victory of
the very closely
linked with Iran group, Hezbollah, and the defeat of the ambitions of
his bloc in the region. So whether he is being held captive, or he's
gone into exile,
either way, there is an attempt now by Saudi Arabia to put the
pressure on Hezbollah, to use Hezbollah, in a way, as perhaps a way,
to start a regional
war of the west, and Israel, against Iran, including of course, Saudi
assets.SHARMINI PERIES: Vijay, this morning there was an opinion, a
piece penned
in the Haaretz newspaper in Israel, asking "Is Saudi Arabia pushing
Israel into war with Hezbollah and Iran?" Your thoughts on that.VIJAY
PRASHAD: I think
that's a very good way to phrase the question. I think there's an
attempt by Saudi Arabia, having seen the United States unwilling to do
its bidding entirely
vis-a-vis Iran, I mean the Trump Administration has gone quite far in
its belligerence attempting to poke Iran, to prod Iran, to make Iran
do something
that would then welcome, allow the United States to attack Iran. But
that road seems to not be going forward, and I think that the Saudis
are now trying
to have a kind of proxy war against Iran, by pushing some kind of
conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.It needs to be said that
Hezbollah is a very disciplined
political outfit, and I very much doubt that they will take this bait
and go to war against Israel. Because also true, that since the 2006
war since Hezbollah
and Israel, which was essentially a stalemate, where Hezbollah was not
destroyed, which was the aim of Israel, now Hezbollah is much
stronger, given its
experience in fighting in Syria, and I think the Israelis recognize
that a war against Hezbollah is not going to be as asymmetrical, as
say the Israeli
wars against the Palestinians, that has Hezbollah will inflict major
damage on Israel. So I doubt very much that the Israelis will take the
bait, will
be as adventurous as the Saudis perhaps would like, and go to war
against Hezbollah, which they should perhaps think that as the Saudis
think, is a way
to get at Iran.SHARMINI PERIES: Vijay, I understand that the leader of
Hezbollah, Nasrallah, had very calming presence according to people on
the ground,
that he went on air right after this resignation was aired, and people
felt as if the country was in crisis, and apparently Nasrallah had a
very calming
presence. Does Hariri's resignation leave a leadership crisis in
Lebanon, and what will this mean for the politics and governance of
Lebanon?VIJAY PRASHAD:
Well I mean, Lebanon is an interesting place because its entire
government structure is sectarianism between the Christian Mennonites,
the Sunnis and the
Shia. So it's not a question that the resignation of Mr. Hariri will
collapse the government. It's also clear that in the last 15 years,
Lebanon has had
long periods where an illegitimate legislature has continued to
govern. In other words, where its term has ended, its continued to
hold office. So I don't
think there'll be some complete vacuum in Lebanon. I think other
forces will come in, the permanent bureaucracy is going to continue to
work, and besides,
it's a highly decentralized country. So things are going to happen. I
don't think this is going to make Lebanon fall into some kind of
abyss.I think the
real question here is going to be Mr. Hariri's bloc is going to do.
What his political party is going to do. He has not been the most
effective leader
of their political party, he is not perhaps as wily as his father,
he's much more susceptible to influence by the Saudis and others. So,
this might just
give an opening inside the future movement, which is his bloc, for
other people to come in and take power. So, let's see what happens,
what's interesting
is, that Mr. Nasrallah has basically given a timetable for his return
to make a comment. He's spoken on Sunday, he'll come back on Friday,
he recognizes
that this is a very quick moving series of events, and his
commentaries are going to be taken very seriously. So I think, let's
wait and see what happens
during this week.SHARMINI PERIES: And one final question, in terms of
Saudi Arabia's objective in all of this, give us a sense of what we
should be looking
out for over the next little while.VIJAY PRASHAD: Well I think that
Saudi Arabia's objective is basically driven by the fact that its
ambitions have been
routed and it wants somehow to poke Iran, and I'm very much hoping
that in order to prevent some kind of new cataclysmic war in West
Asia, that Iran holds
itself back, takes a mature attitude, that Hezbollah takes a mature
attitude to this crisis, no one gets provoked by Saudi actions. He has
now called the
king and his son, Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, have called the
leader of the Palestinian government, Mahmoud Abbas, to Saudi Arabia.
We shall see
what happens here, will Mahmoud Abbas make some kind of statement from
Riyadh? Will he also be arrested and held in Riyadh? It's to be seen
what is going
on, but what is very clear, is this is some sort of Saudi tantrum
playing across the region, and I hope other actors are sober minded in
their reaction
to it.SHARMINI PERIES: Alright Vijay, as always I thank you so much
for joining us today.VIJAY PRASHAD: Thanks a lot.SHARMINI PERIES: And
thank you for
joining us here on The Real News Network.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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