IMF FUND COMPENSATION AND PAYMENT RELEASE FOR LOTTERY-WINNERS, CONTRACTORS AND OTHER UNPAID-FUNDS
Dear Sir/Ma,
Your compensation fund is ready for you to receive to your would be nominated country and account which is $1,000,000 (One Million US Dollars). The IMF have your email address for this process as our organization confirmed this update today. Furthermore we require that you fill-in the details below to match-up your email address in our database.
This fund is deposited in your favor by The IMF USA Headquarters. We will refer you to the paying bank upon submission of details as shown here;
1. YOUR NAME:
2. CONTACT ADDRESS:
3. NATIONALITY/ORIGIN:
4. CURRENT COUNTRY:
5. DATE OF BIRTH:
6. MAN/WOMAN:
7. JOB TYPE:
8. MOBILE NUMBER:
9. EMAIL ADDRESS:
10. SINGLE/MARRIED
All information should be sent to imfpaymentoffice@aol.com
Congratulations and have a nice day!!!
Mr. David Lipton,
The IMF USA,
1900 Pennsylvania Ave NW,
Washington, DC, 20431
Email To: imfpaymentoffice@aol.com
Saturday, August 31, 2019
Re: GOODNEWS YOUR FUND IS RELEASED.
Monday, August 19, 2019
Once again, it's Chris Hedges time!
FYI:
Carl Jarvis
*******
Fear vs. Fear
Chris Hedges
Fear vs. Fear
Mr. Fish / Truthdig
The old rules of politics no longer apply. The only language understood by
Donald Trump and his coterie of con artists, billionaires, generals, misfits
and Christian fascists-and a Democratic Party that has sold us out-is fear.
Calling out Trump's lies and racism does not matter. Calling out his
nepotism and corruption does not matter. Calling out the criminality of his
administration does not matter. Calling out its incompetence and idiocy does
not matter. Calling out the abject subservience of the ruling elites to
corporate power does not matter. Trump and his Democratic Party opponents
are immune to moral suasion. The more we engage in this empty kabuki theater
with its predictable outlandish outbursts, usually from Trump, and
predictable outraged responses, usually from Democrats, the more certain are
government paralysis and corporate tyranny. The drivel and invective that
passes for political discourse is a giant hamster wheel that goes nowhere.
It masks the root causes of our political and economic decline and fractures
the population into warring camps that increasingly communicate through
violence, which is why the United States has suffered mass shootings with
three or more fatalities more than 30 times this year.
We will save ourselves only by pitting power against power. And since our
two major political parties slavishly serve corporate power, and have few
substantial differences on nearly all major issues from imperialism to
unfettered capitalism, we must start from scratch. The political
personalities, including those on the left such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar and Elizabeth Warren, are distractions. They have
no power within the Democratic Party, as Nancy Pelosi often reminds us. They
serve to reduce politics to personal feuds, the currency of the vast reality
show perpetrated for profit by corporate media. The daily back and forth by
these personalities diverts our attention from the rapid consolidation of
wealth and power by the ruling elites, the degradation of the ecosystem into
a toxic wasteland and the eradication of basic freedoms and rights. The
American political system is not salvageable. It will be overthrown in a
mass uprising-a version of which we saw recently in Puerto Rico-or vast
swaths of the globe will become uninhabitable and the rich will feed like
ghouls off the mounting human misery. These are the two stark options. And
we have very little time left.
The Democrats, if they had a functioning political party and were not owned
and managed by corporations, could easily displace Trump and demolish the
Republican Party in electoral landslide after landslide. From poll after
poll, as Charles Derber points out in his book "Welcome to the Revolution,"
we know what the majority of Americans want. A whooping 82% think wealthy
people have too much power and influence in Washington, with 70% singling
out large businesses as having too much power. Nearly 80% support stronger
rules and enforcement of regulations on the financial industry. Nearly half
of Americans think economic inequality is "very big," and 34% concede it is
"moderately big." Almost 60% of registered voters and 51% of registered
Republicans favor raising to $18,000 from $14,820 the maximum amount that
workers can make and still be eligible for the earned income tax credit. A
staggering 96% of Americans, including 96% of Republicans, believe money in
politics is to blame for the dysfunction of the American system. Close to
80% believe wealthy Americans should pay higher taxes. Nearly 60% favor
raising the federal minimum wage requirement to $12 an hour. Sixty-one
percent, including 42% of Republicans, approve of labor unions. Sixty
percent of Americans think "[i]t is the federal government's responsibility
to make sure all Americans have healthcare," and 60% of registered voters
favor "expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American."
Nearly 60% favor free early-childhood education, and 76% are "very
concerned" about climate disruption. Eighty-four percent support requiring
background checks for all gun buyers. Fifty-eight percent of Americans
believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
A genuine populism and New Deal socialism are the only hope of thwarting the
rise of neofascist movements. This, however, will never be permitted by the
Democratic Party hierarchy, led by figures such as Pelosi, Joe Biden and
Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who are acutely aware they
would instantly lose their power without the prop of hundreds of millions of
corporate dollars. They, and their corporate sponsors, will block all reform
even if it means another four years of Trump and the extinguishing of
democracy. The only thing they have to sell us is fear-fear of Trump and the
Russians. While Trump sells the fear of immigrants, Muslims, people of color
and those he brands as socialists. This is a toxic diet.
The greatest traitors in America are not Trump and his neofascist minions
shouting "Lock her up" or "Send her home," but a decadent, morally bankrupt,
self-identified liberal elite consumed by greed. They orchestrated the
social inequality that permits Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to
control more wealth than the bottom 50% of the American population. They pay
lip service to the climate crisis but have not done anything to halt the
sixth great mass extinction. The fossil fuel industry, under the Democrats
and Republicans, continues to pump carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The
polar ice caps disappear. The sea levels rise. The deforestation expands.
The clogging of the oceans with floating islands of plastic that poisons our
food chain is unchecked. No one among the ruling elites has any intention of
restraining a bloated, out-of-control military that consumes half of all
discretionary spending while half the country lives in poverty or near
poverty, the federal deficit looks set to exceed $1 trillion by the end of
this fiscal year and the nation's infrastructure disintegrates.
All meaningful resistance takes place outside the formal political
structures. The 10-day protest in April in London led by Extinction
Rebellion-which saw 1,130 people arrested as crowds repeatedly shut down
major parts of the city in demonstrating against the failure of the ruling
elites to confront the climate catastrophe-is what we must emulate.
Extinction Rebellion has called for a strike by workers around the world in
October, a strike in which thousands of arrests are anticipated.
We have exceeded the 350 parts per million of atmospheric CO2 that climate
scientists said was the level at which we still might have thwarted societal
collapse. Last July was the hottest in recorded history. We are currently at
415 ppm of CO2, with enough heat in the system to ensure 450 ppm of CO2
within a decade. A temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius above the
pre-Industrial Age measurement guarantees catastrophic climate disruptions.
"We're looking at the collapse of the world's agriculture systems," Roger
Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, told me when we spoke in
London. "Long before the sea level rises, we're going to have a world
economic collapse because we're not going to be able to feed ourselves.
That's what's shitting everyone. That's why people are in a panic. In the
U.N., in academia, in the elites, they're looking at this. They're pulling
their hair out. We have this repressed media space so it's not obvious to
everyone. I think this is the role of Extinction Rebellion-to break through
that repression. Once you break through it, people will say, yeah. The whole
thing is beyond bad."
"We need to insulate all housing stock," he said. "We need to turn over the
economy so that it's completely electrified. We need to have all the energy
coming from renewables. We need a social transformation, so the rich are
taxed and pay their fair share. We need to organize communities around
quality of life so that people can learn to adapt to these changes, these
traumatic changes. This is a matter of physics. It's not a matter of
political opinion. These changes are coming. It's far too late for massive
increases in temperature not to happen. What we're looking at now is whether
we're going to go extinct or not. I know that sounds like science fiction,
but it's true. We need to look at the figures. It's like going to the
doctor. This is cancer. You don't like it, that's fine, but it's not going
to stop you from dying. The only option is do you want to accept that this
is the situation? Or don't you? If you don't, you're going to die. If you
do, there is a chance. But you're going to have to get a move on it."
"We're saying this to everyone in society, not just to progressives," he
said. "Wake up! At the end of the day, we've all got kids. We've all got
young people we know. If we have any empathy or responsibility for the young
generation, it's all hands on deck. The most civilized way of dealing with
the situation is to come together as a country, as a world, in citizen
assemblies, and allow the ordinary people of the world to decide what to do.
After all, it's their lives."
By stepping outside the system, including in our voting patterns, we begin
to make the ruling elites afraid. Change comes from pressure. But if we are
not willingly to become outcasts, that pressure will never happen. It was
not the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, for example, led by Rep.
Ocasio-Cortez, that first proposed the Green New Deal. It was articulated 12
years ago by the Green Party, which called for massive job and public works
programs to transition our energy infrastructure to renewable energy. The
deal was promoted by Howie Hawkins when he ran for the governorship in New
York in 2014 and by Jill Stein during her 2016 presidential run.
The proposal for a Green New Deal by the Green Party has a fundamental
difference from what is touted by progressive Democrats. It does not argue
that structural change and a transition to renewable energy will come by
making alliances with corporate power. Instead, it insists that we bring
about a transformational change in our economy by crushing corporate power
and establishing a socialist system.
"The Democrats don't have real solutions," Hawkins, who is seeking the Green
Party nomination for the presidency, told me in New York. "Trump is a racist
scapegoater. He is a freeloading leech who doesn't pay his own employees,
contracts, taxes. He lies to the people. He needs to go. But if you replace
him with a Democrat, they're not going to enact 'Medicare for All.' They're
not going to do a Green New Deal. They are backing Trump, who now wants a
war for oil in Venezuela, while the planet is burning from burning oil. It's
madness."
"The historic role of third parties in this country is to raise issues that
major parties won't take up," he went on. "Like the Liberty Party and the
question of slavery. They were the abolitionists when the Whigs and the
Democrats didn't want to touch the issue. We can go for 150 years of history
and show how that's the case."
"We are not going to get to 100 percent clean energy if Exxon gets to
reinvest its earnings in more oil exploration extraction and sales," he
said. "The Koch brothers and all their interests in the oil industry, those
should be publicly owned. We take the earnings, because we'll use fossil
fuels during the transition, and reinvest it in renewable. That's the
socialist solution. You can get some socialist programs, like Social
Security or Medicare for All, which Bernie Sanders champions, but as long as
the capitalist oligarchy has power based on their concentrated ownership of
the economy, which translates into political power, they can roll it back."
"When I talk about a Green New Deal, I'm talking about an economic bill of
rights like [Franklin] Roosevelt called for at the end of his 1944 State of
the Union address," Hawkins said. "A job. Income. Health care. Housing.
Education. The civil rights picked that up with the [1963] March on
Washington for Jobs and Freedom, with the Freedom Budget, and the [1968]
Poor People's Campaign. But we still don't have it. The other part is 100
percent clean energy by 2030. We have to reorganize all sectors [of the
economy]-agriculture, manufacturing, the military, transportation-toward
sustainability. Or we'll never get to 100 percent clean energy."
Switch off the electronic images. Ignore the media burlesque. The endless
political shows, which turn presidential campaigns into mind-numbing,
two-year-long marathons, are entertainment. Do not trust anyone in power. We
will save ourselves by building mass movements to overthrow corporate power.
I am not certain we will succeed. But I am certain that if we fail, we are
doomed.
Chris Hedges
Columnist
Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a
New York Times best-selling author, a pro
Carl Jarvis
*******
Fear vs. Fear
Chris Hedges
Fear vs. Fear
Mr. Fish / Truthdig
The old rules of politics no longer apply. The only language understood by
Donald Trump and his coterie of con artists, billionaires, generals, misfits
and Christian fascists-and a Democratic Party that has sold us out-is fear.
Calling out Trump's lies and racism does not matter. Calling out his
nepotism and corruption does not matter. Calling out the criminality of his
administration does not matter. Calling out its incompetence and idiocy does
not matter. Calling out the abject subservience of the ruling elites to
corporate power does not matter. Trump and his Democratic Party opponents
are immune to moral suasion. The more we engage in this empty kabuki theater
with its predictable outlandish outbursts, usually from Trump, and
predictable outraged responses, usually from Democrats, the more certain are
government paralysis and corporate tyranny. The drivel and invective that
passes for political discourse is a giant hamster wheel that goes nowhere.
It masks the root causes of our political and economic decline and fractures
the population into warring camps that increasingly communicate through
violence, which is why the United States has suffered mass shootings with
three or more fatalities more than 30 times this year.
We will save ourselves only by pitting power against power. And since our
two major political parties slavishly serve corporate power, and have few
substantial differences on nearly all major issues from imperialism to
unfettered capitalism, we must start from scratch. The political
personalities, including those on the left such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,
Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar and Elizabeth Warren, are distractions. They have
no power within the Democratic Party, as Nancy Pelosi often reminds us. They
serve to reduce politics to personal feuds, the currency of the vast reality
show perpetrated for profit by corporate media. The daily back and forth by
these personalities diverts our attention from the rapid consolidation of
wealth and power by the ruling elites, the degradation of the ecosystem into
a toxic wasteland and the eradication of basic freedoms and rights. The
American political system is not salvageable. It will be overthrown in a
mass uprising-a version of which we saw recently in Puerto Rico-or vast
swaths of the globe will become uninhabitable and the rich will feed like
ghouls off the mounting human misery. These are the two stark options. And
we have very little time left.
The Democrats, if they had a functioning political party and were not owned
and managed by corporations, could easily displace Trump and demolish the
Republican Party in electoral landslide after landslide. From poll after
poll, as Charles Derber points out in his book "Welcome to the Revolution,"
we know what the majority of Americans want. A whooping 82% think wealthy
people have too much power and influence in Washington, with 70% singling
out large businesses as having too much power. Nearly 80% support stronger
rules and enforcement of regulations on the financial industry. Nearly half
of Americans think economic inequality is "very big," and 34% concede it is
"moderately big." Almost 60% of registered voters and 51% of registered
Republicans favor raising to $18,000 from $14,820 the maximum amount that
workers can make and still be eligible for the earned income tax credit. A
staggering 96% of Americans, including 96% of Republicans, believe money in
politics is to blame for the dysfunction of the American system. Close to
80% believe wealthy Americans should pay higher taxes. Nearly 60% favor
raising the federal minimum wage requirement to $12 an hour. Sixty-one
percent, including 42% of Republicans, approve of labor unions. Sixty
percent of Americans think "[i]t is the federal government's responsibility
to make sure all Americans have healthcare," and 60% of registered voters
favor "expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American."
Nearly 60% favor free early-childhood education, and 76% are "very
concerned" about climate disruption. Eighty-four percent support requiring
background checks for all gun buyers. Fifty-eight percent of Americans
believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
A genuine populism and New Deal socialism are the only hope of thwarting the
rise of neofascist movements. This, however, will never be permitted by the
Democratic Party hierarchy, led by figures such as Pelosi, Joe Biden and
Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who are acutely aware they
would instantly lose their power without the prop of hundreds of millions of
corporate dollars. They, and their corporate sponsors, will block all reform
even if it means another four years of Trump and the extinguishing of
democracy. The only thing they have to sell us is fear-fear of Trump and the
Russians. While Trump sells the fear of immigrants, Muslims, people of color
and those he brands as socialists. This is a toxic diet.
The greatest traitors in America are not Trump and his neofascist minions
shouting "Lock her up" or "Send her home," but a decadent, morally bankrupt,
self-identified liberal elite consumed by greed. They orchestrated the
social inequality that permits Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to
control more wealth than the bottom 50% of the American population. They pay
lip service to the climate crisis but have not done anything to halt the
sixth great mass extinction. The fossil fuel industry, under the Democrats
and Republicans, continues to pump carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The
polar ice caps disappear. The sea levels rise. The deforestation expands.
The clogging of the oceans with floating islands of plastic that poisons our
food chain is unchecked. No one among the ruling elites has any intention of
restraining a bloated, out-of-control military that consumes half of all
discretionary spending while half the country lives in poverty or near
poverty, the federal deficit looks set to exceed $1 trillion by the end of
this fiscal year and the nation's infrastructure disintegrates.
All meaningful resistance takes place outside the formal political
structures. The 10-day protest in April in London led by Extinction
Rebellion-which saw 1,130 people arrested as crowds repeatedly shut down
major parts of the city in demonstrating against the failure of the ruling
elites to confront the climate catastrophe-is what we must emulate.
Extinction Rebellion has called for a strike by workers around the world in
October, a strike in which thousands of arrests are anticipated.
We have exceeded the 350 parts per million of atmospheric CO2 that climate
scientists said was the level at which we still might have thwarted societal
collapse. Last July was the hottest in recorded history. We are currently at
415 ppm of CO2, with enough heat in the system to ensure 450 ppm of CO2
within a decade. A temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius above the
pre-Industrial Age measurement guarantees catastrophic climate disruptions.
"We're looking at the collapse of the world's agriculture systems," Roger
Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, told me when we spoke in
London. "Long before the sea level rises, we're going to have a world
economic collapse because we're not going to be able to feed ourselves.
That's what's shitting everyone. That's why people are in a panic. In the
U.N., in academia, in the elites, they're looking at this. They're pulling
their hair out. We have this repressed media space so it's not obvious to
everyone. I think this is the role of Extinction Rebellion-to break through
that repression. Once you break through it, people will say, yeah. The whole
thing is beyond bad."
"We need to insulate all housing stock," he said. "We need to turn over the
economy so that it's completely electrified. We need to have all the energy
coming from renewables. We need a social transformation, so the rich are
taxed and pay their fair share. We need to organize communities around
quality of life so that people can learn to adapt to these changes, these
traumatic changes. This is a matter of physics. It's not a matter of
political opinion. These changes are coming. It's far too late for massive
increases in temperature not to happen. What we're looking at now is whether
we're going to go extinct or not. I know that sounds like science fiction,
but it's true. We need to look at the figures. It's like going to the
doctor. This is cancer. You don't like it, that's fine, but it's not going
to stop you from dying. The only option is do you want to accept that this
is the situation? Or don't you? If you don't, you're going to die. If you
do, there is a chance. But you're going to have to get a move on it."
"We're saying this to everyone in society, not just to progressives," he
said. "Wake up! At the end of the day, we've all got kids. We've all got
young people we know. If we have any empathy or responsibility for the young
generation, it's all hands on deck. The most civilized way of dealing with
the situation is to come together as a country, as a world, in citizen
assemblies, and allow the ordinary people of the world to decide what to do.
After all, it's their lives."
By stepping outside the system, including in our voting patterns, we begin
to make the ruling elites afraid. Change comes from pressure. But if we are
not willingly to become outcasts, that pressure will never happen. It was
not the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, for example, led by Rep.
Ocasio-Cortez, that first proposed the Green New Deal. It was articulated 12
years ago by the Green Party, which called for massive job and public works
programs to transition our energy infrastructure to renewable energy. The
deal was promoted by Howie Hawkins when he ran for the governorship in New
York in 2014 and by Jill Stein during her 2016 presidential run.
The proposal for a Green New Deal by the Green Party has a fundamental
difference from what is touted by progressive Democrats. It does not argue
that structural change and a transition to renewable energy will come by
making alliances with corporate power. Instead, it insists that we bring
about a transformational change in our economy by crushing corporate power
and establishing a socialist system.
"The Democrats don't have real solutions," Hawkins, who is seeking the Green
Party nomination for the presidency, told me in New York. "Trump is a racist
scapegoater. He is a freeloading leech who doesn't pay his own employees,
contracts, taxes. He lies to the people. He needs to go. But if you replace
him with a Democrat, they're not going to enact 'Medicare for All.' They're
not going to do a Green New Deal. They are backing Trump, who now wants a
war for oil in Venezuela, while the planet is burning from burning oil. It's
madness."
"The historic role of third parties in this country is to raise issues that
major parties won't take up," he went on. "Like the Liberty Party and the
question of slavery. They were the abolitionists when the Whigs and the
Democrats didn't want to touch the issue. We can go for 150 years of history
and show how that's the case."
"We are not going to get to 100 percent clean energy if Exxon gets to
reinvest its earnings in more oil exploration extraction and sales," he
said. "The Koch brothers and all their interests in the oil industry, those
should be publicly owned. We take the earnings, because we'll use fossil
fuels during the transition, and reinvest it in renewable. That's the
socialist solution. You can get some socialist programs, like Social
Security or Medicare for All, which Bernie Sanders champions, but as long as
the capitalist oligarchy has power based on their concentrated ownership of
the economy, which translates into political power, they can roll it back."
"When I talk about a Green New Deal, I'm talking about an economic bill of
rights like [Franklin] Roosevelt called for at the end of his 1944 State of
the Union address," Hawkins said. "A job. Income. Health care. Housing.
Education. The civil rights picked that up with the [1963] March on
Washington for Jobs and Freedom, with the Freedom Budget, and the [1968]
Poor People's Campaign. But we still don't have it. The other part is 100
percent clean energy by 2030. We have to reorganize all sectors [of the
economy]-agriculture, manufacturing, the military, transportation-toward
sustainability. Or we'll never get to 100 percent clean energy."
Switch off the electronic images. Ignore the media burlesque. The endless
political shows, which turn presidential campaigns into mind-numbing,
two-year-long marathons, are entertainment. Do not trust anyone in power. We
will save ourselves by building mass movements to overthrow corporate power.
I am not certain we will succeed. But I am certain that if we fail, we are
doomed.
Chris Hedges
Columnist
Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a
New York Times best-selling author, a pro
Re: [acb-chat] A conservative/libertarian/republican holiday
Interesting thought, Clifford. I chuckled at the $2,500 maximum,
thinking to myself that I don't know many folks who have $2,500 extra
to spend in a year, let alone in one weekend.
Whether the woman in the story was wealthy or poor, she certainly had
no business sense. When my wife's printer quit the other day, we did
not wait for some special deal. We went out, after pricing printers,
and bought one. The total price is the figure we entered in our
expense file. Part of the total was tax. Why should I balk at paying
the tax? I certainly don't demand to see the actual manufacturing
cost, or the percentage that went toward advertising, or the part that
was profit, or any of a multitude of costs applied to the final price.
But that's human nature. We focus on the single aspect that makes our
case, while ignoring all the rest. This goes for those "free
services", too. Most of us feel that our taxes should cover police
protection, fire protection and trash removal, among other basic
services, like K through 12 education.
So when we hear "Free Education:, we know instantly that we are
talking about college. We accept the fact that our taxes will cover
education through grade 12, despite some efforts to privatize it, even
though a high school education barely qualifies a graduate for most
entry level jobs. But we balk at paying for "higher education",
college or trade school, which is what it takes to prepare for decent
employment and future advances. We place the burden on the backs of
the student, or the student's families, as the cost of becoming a
contributing participant in our nation. So we provide some "free" tax
supported services, but the very future strength of our nation, our
economic and personal well being, we leave up to the students or their
families. A double tax! Students, our children, are paying a double
tax for their education. Not only is their personal life impacted
through the payment of taxes, but they become prey to the Bankster
Predators. It's interesting that folks say, "Free Education", rather
than talking about their children being held for ransom.
Some years back, I attended a community meeting where the main speaker
was one of Seattle's "movers and shakers". Among other concerns, he
told us that he believed that throwing money at public schools was
never going to solve the problems faced by public education.
I asked him if he had children, and where they went to school. He did
have children, and they attended a private school on the shores of
Lake Washington. I suggested that he actually was supporting my
belief that we needed to invest in building a school system for all
children, that was on a par with the school his children were enrolled
in. He told me that I did not understand the difference, and said,
"any other questions?" But as I returned to my seat, the folks
attending the meeting rose up and gave me a round of applause.
Still, I shake my head over this insanity of ours. We pay the
builders of weapons and bombs far more than we spend on building the
minds of the children who will become our future leaders.
Cordially,
Carl Jarvis
On 8/18/19, clifford via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:
> And why is it that you think this woman was a conservative or right wing
> person? There are a large group of liberals promising free college
> education and on and on and on.
>
>
>
> Clifford Wilson
>
>
>
> From: Frank Ventura via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org>
> Sent: Sunday, August 18, 2019 1:01 PM
> To: General discussion list for ACB members and friends where a wide range
> of topics from blindness to politics, issues of the day or whatever comes to
> mind are welcome. This is a free form discussion list.
> <acb-chat@acblists.org>
> Cc: Frank Ventura <frank.ventura@littlebreezes.com>
> Subject: [acb-chat] A conservative/libertarian/republican holiday
>
>
>
> Today is day 2 of the right wing holiday here in Massachusetts. It is the
> sales tax free weekend. This is the weekend that all of the right-wingers
> that don't believe in personal responsibility go shopping. On one of the
> local channels a reporter was at one of the home improvement big box stores
> interviewing a lady who sounded like she was in her late 50s or early 60s.
> The per-person limit on tax free purchases this weekend is $2500. She was
> telling the reporter that the way she was gaming the system and getting
> around the limit was buying her major appliances in multiple transactions.
> The reporter asked her what she would do if her house caught fire. She said
> she would call 911. Even though the folks around her didn't have microphones
> on them you could hear the laughter and snickers when she said that. I
> wonder if she ever realized how stupid she sounded. Goes to show that the
> right-wing doesn't know or care anything about personal responsibility.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---
> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
> https://www.avast.com/antivirus
>
>
>
thinking to myself that I don't know many folks who have $2,500 extra
to spend in a year, let alone in one weekend.
Whether the woman in the story was wealthy or poor, she certainly had
no business sense. When my wife's printer quit the other day, we did
not wait for some special deal. We went out, after pricing printers,
and bought one. The total price is the figure we entered in our
expense file. Part of the total was tax. Why should I balk at paying
the tax? I certainly don't demand to see the actual manufacturing
cost, or the percentage that went toward advertising, or the part that
was profit, or any of a multitude of costs applied to the final price.
But that's human nature. We focus on the single aspect that makes our
case, while ignoring all the rest. This goes for those "free
services", too. Most of us feel that our taxes should cover police
protection, fire protection and trash removal, among other basic
services, like K through 12 education.
So when we hear "Free Education:, we know instantly that we are
talking about college. We accept the fact that our taxes will cover
education through grade 12, despite some efforts to privatize it, even
though a high school education barely qualifies a graduate for most
entry level jobs. But we balk at paying for "higher education",
college or trade school, which is what it takes to prepare for decent
employment and future advances. We place the burden on the backs of
the student, or the student's families, as the cost of becoming a
contributing participant in our nation. So we provide some "free" tax
supported services, but the very future strength of our nation, our
economic and personal well being, we leave up to the students or their
families. A double tax! Students, our children, are paying a double
tax for their education. Not only is their personal life impacted
through the payment of taxes, but they become prey to the Bankster
Predators. It's interesting that folks say, "Free Education", rather
than talking about their children being held for ransom.
Some years back, I attended a community meeting where the main speaker
was one of Seattle's "movers and shakers". Among other concerns, he
told us that he believed that throwing money at public schools was
never going to solve the problems faced by public education.
I asked him if he had children, and where they went to school. He did
have children, and they attended a private school on the shores of
Lake Washington. I suggested that he actually was supporting my
belief that we needed to invest in building a school system for all
children, that was on a par with the school his children were enrolled
in. He told me that I did not understand the difference, and said,
"any other questions?" But as I returned to my seat, the folks
attending the meeting rose up and gave me a round of applause.
Still, I shake my head over this insanity of ours. We pay the
builders of weapons and bombs far more than we spend on building the
minds of the children who will become our future leaders.
Cordially,
Carl Jarvis
On 8/18/19, clifford via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:
> And why is it that you think this woman was a conservative or right wing
> person? There are a large group of liberals promising free college
> education and on and on and on.
>
>
>
> Clifford Wilson
>
>
>
> From: Frank Ventura via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org>
> Sent: Sunday, August 18, 2019 1:01 PM
> To: General discussion list for ACB members and friends where a wide range
> of topics from blindness to politics, issues of the day or whatever comes to
> mind are welcome. This is a free form discussion list.
> <acb-chat@acblists.org>
> Cc: Frank Ventura <frank.ventura@littlebreezes.com>
> Subject: [acb-chat] A conservative/libertarian/republican holiday
>
>
>
> Today is day 2 of the right wing holiday here in Massachusetts. It is the
> sales tax free weekend. This is the weekend that all of the right-wingers
> that don't believe in personal responsibility go shopping. On one of the
> local channels a reporter was at one of the home improvement big box stores
> interviewing a lady who sounded like she was in her late 50s or early 60s.
> The per-person limit on tax free purchases this weekend is $2500. She was
> telling the reporter that the way she was gaming the system and getting
> around the limit was buying her major appliances in multiple transactions.
> The reporter asked her what she would do if her house caught fire. She said
> she would call 911. Even though the folks around her didn't have microphones
> on them you could hear the laughter and snickers when she said that. I
> wonder if she ever realized how stupid she sounded. Goes to show that the
> right-wing doesn't know or care anything about personal responsibility.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---
> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
> https://www.avast.com/antivirus
>
>
>
Monday, August 12, 2019
education or conditioning?
What is it that we mean when we talk about Free Education for All?
Is it possible that we aren't talking about "education" at all, but
rather, Public Conditioning?
Have we been educated, or conditioned to conclude that the USA is the
keeper of world peace, or that we are the Melting Pot of the world, or
that democracy can exist alongside of Capitalism? Where do our
"facts" come from?
As a schoolboy, I never questioned the source of what was being
spooned into my head by my teachers. And much later I learned that
most of my teachers did not question the sources of the material they
were teaching, either.
There is a vast difference between providing information that will
cause a person to think, and a process of Conditioning a person to
accept information without question.
There is a great difference between training our children to become
loyal workers, and that schooling which develops Thinkers and Leaders.
As a nation, we have not arrived at our present place by accident.
But the question is, did we come here by way of our education? Or did
we come to this place by way of our conditioning?
Anyway, I wanted to be certain you all think about the quote presented
by Diego:
"We're developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective
about cereals and automobiles, but won't be able to think."
Rod Serling
Thank you, Rod.
Carl Jarvis, saluting the Ghost of a wise man.
Is it possible that we aren't talking about "education" at all, but
rather, Public Conditioning?
Have we been educated, or conditioned to conclude that the USA is the
keeper of world peace, or that we are the Melting Pot of the world, or
that democracy can exist alongside of Capitalism? Where do our
"facts" come from?
As a schoolboy, I never questioned the source of what was being
spooned into my head by my teachers. And much later I learned that
most of my teachers did not question the sources of the material they
were teaching, either.
There is a vast difference between providing information that will
cause a person to think, and a process of Conditioning a person to
accept information without question.
There is a great difference between training our children to become
loyal workers, and that schooling which develops Thinkers and Leaders.
As a nation, we have not arrived at our present place by accident.
But the question is, did we come here by way of our education? Or did
we come to this place by way of our conditioning?
Anyway, I wanted to be certain you all think about the quote presented
by Diego:
"We're developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective
about cereals and automobiles, but won't be able to think."
Rod Serling
Thank you, Rod.
Carl Jarvis, saluting the Ghost of a wise man.
Sunday, August 11, 2019
Re: [blind-democracy] Re: Venezuela: Another US Coup Attempt - and Why It Failed
If we look back to the pre USA days, immigrants came to America out of
desperation or persecution, and lived under the rule of whoever ran
the particular colony. Imagine how desperate people must have been to
leave their homes, in a time when most people had generations of roots
in the same place, and crammed into the stinking holds of leaky ships
and traveled many long days to reach an unknown land.
But the American Revolution was unique in many ways. In particular it
brought into existence a document that put the ruling of the nation
into the hands of the People. What our history books gloss over, or
ignore, is just who those "people" were, because the majority of folks
living here did not get to vote. It was an Oligarchy made up of the
White Landed Gentry. While they no longer trusted the King to rule
fairly, they certainly had no intention of allowing the "Rabble", the
"commoners" to determine the nation's fate. So, by my understanding
of what democracy is, we began this nation built on a lie, or at least
it was a different understanding of what democracy was all about.
Despite all the many distractions, the struggle has always been
between the moneyed, White landholders, and the Working Class.
Currently I'm reading a history book entitled, These Truths: A History
of the United States. It's on BARD. One of the things I notice as I
read, is that for the "Common" citizens there have been no "Glory
Days". Even though there was relief under Roosevelt's New Deal, a
great many people found little improvement. Especially People of
Color, immigrants, dirt farmers and slum dwellers.
While many of our European immigrants moved together for practical
reasons, and were thus easy targets for discrimination, it was mostly
their children and grand children who escaped into the general
population. Although so many of those later generations turned their
backs on their roots, it was the sacrifices of those original
immigrants that allowed them to gain the education and opportunities
they needed.
Certainly times were difficult back then, but are they any better
today? A Korean man and his Japanese wife bought the grocery store in
Quilcene. They lived carefully, and seemed to be making a go of it.
For 13 years they served the town, and then filed bankruptcy. In the
same tradition of sacrificing to give their children a better life,
these people had taken out large loans to pay for their sons
education. In the recent Great Recession, local businesses found
their customers were not spending at former levels. Several
businesses went under, a service station, the town tavern, the town's
long popular restaurant, and the grocery store.
I was brought up to believe that we are a nation so we can take care
of our citizens. But just what value is a government that only takes
care of those citizens who are wealthy enough that they don't really
need government support? What value is there in a government that
allows the Predators to use our children in order to enrich their bank
accounts? What use is a government that enlists our youth to defend
the privileged lives of the wealthy? We need to turn to the task of
caring for our own, and let the wealthy look out for themselves...as
they have done to us, lo these many generations.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/10/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> You know, I'm not sure that the American experience was revolutionary, or at
> least, not in the way that American propaganda says it was. People did
> emigrate here to have a better life, and they were welcomed when this
> country needed their labor, or rather, their labor was welcomed, not the
> people. But somehow, for many, the American dream that was sold to them
> worked. I think of all those European Jews who came to the lower east side
> of New York to labor in sweat shops, and ended up, decades later, as
> professionals, living in affluent suburban communities on Long Island or in
> Westchester County. It worked for them because of FDR's New Deal, because we
> had a social welfare state which really did help white working class
> immigrants become educated, often at no cost or at very little cost, and
> provided low interest home buyers' loans. That is the piece of the American
> dream that I know about from personal experience.
>
> By the way, your mention of Cuba reminds me that I've recently read several
> novels which include the current version of its recent history being
> provided to the book reading public. You know, the same thing was done
> regarding Israel. Well, the picture of Cuba being provided, shows a country
> of poor, deprived people who resent their government, but who stayed because
> they were patriotic. It describes the revolutionaries as either honest but
> misguided, or power hungry from the start. It provides a sympathetic picture
> of the people who left, very wealthy people, good people, who, through no
> fault of their own, lost everything and had to start over in Florida. It
> does provide a bit of negative information about Batista and a sense of the
> wish of some young men who mistakenly joined the revolution because they
> wanted things in their country to improve. This is sort of a rough summary
> of what was in those 3 or 4 novels, all of which, except for one, written
> within the past 7 or so years, There isn't a word about how the US embargo
> impacted the Cuban economy or about the kinds of public services that are
> available to the people. Not a word about how Cubans have helped so many
> countries in emergencies by sending medical help. When we talk about how
> the media manipulates American citizens, we forget about all of the ficdtion
> that people consume. It's not just movies. It's books.
>
> Miriam
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
> Sent: Saturday, August 10, 2019 11:18 AM
> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
> Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Venezuela: Another US Coup Attempt - and Why
> It Failed
>
> Hi Miriam,
> Philosophical on the outside, but raging on the inside.
> I recall when I first heard about the Monroe Doctrine, I believed that it
> was America's way of reaching a helping hand out to our friends in Central
> and South America.
> And in a way that was what the American Empire did, extend a helping hand
> that grasped everything it touched.
> When I remember how Working Class Cubans lived under Batista, and how the
> wealthy Cubans and their American backers screamed and swore revenge, I
> cheered Fidel Castro from the Sweatshop, the drapery factory where I labored
> at the time. Score One for the Underdog!
> Cuba, a small nation living off the shore of history's most bloated Empire,
> and surviving. Even with the boycotts placed upon it by the Empire's bully
> boys.
> And when Hugo Chavez turned Venezuela around, and other South American
> nations began to thumb their noses at the American Empire, I believed the
> worm had turned. But never count Greed out.
> As revolutionary as the American experience in democracy was, it was flawed.
> It was flawed because it never resolved the struggle of the People versus
> Greed. We need to gather our wisest minds and examine why Greed corrupts
> our every effort to live at peace with one another.
> We got ourselves into our present mess, and with enough effort and time, we
> can set a new course.
> Carl Jarvis, ever hopeful and forever smelling the roses.
>
> On 8/9/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>> Carl,
>>
>> While you are able to remain philosophical about this situation, I
>> have to tell you that I have been watching it develop step by step for
>> months and months through podcasts and articles and I am extremely
>> upset. Of course I know that the US has done this before, and Cuba is
>> a prime example. But to watch the mass media dishing out lie after lie
>> and the Democrats supporting all of it, while listening to the truth
>> being reported from reporters on the ground there like Max Blumenthal
>> and many others, is a real nightmare. All Amy did, was 2 interviews
>> with one Venezuelan government official. She managed to spend a whole
>> program plus another complete segment, not part of the program, on
>> Toni Morrison, and that's OK. But she's ignoring the murder of a
>> country and its people. The US has stolen Venezuela's oil and its gold
>> reserves. It is blockading it so food will be almost impossible to
>> get. The people most impacted, are the poor and the working class, the
>> people who support Moduro. It's a plot to destroy the people and hand
>> the country over to the white elite, just like Puerto Rico which is
>> such a horror, that I can't even begin to talk about it. And then
>> there's what's happening right here. And all of those people whom ICE
>> is hunting down, are here because of what the US has been doing to
>> their countries of origin for years. And the average American might be
>> mildly disturbed, but not horrified enough, to be out in the streets,
>> protesting. Do you remember that I said that I'm reading a book about
>> a journalist who was being investigated by the House Unamerican Activities
>> Committee because he was a member of the Communist Party? There are all
>> sorts of interesting historical tidbits in that book.
>> One of them is that the auto workers in Detroit were virulently
>> anti-communist. They wanted nothing to do with Communist labor
>> organizers and went on strike until one of them was fired from his
>> job. All this fantasy in which the political left indulges about how
>> the working class will welcome it with open arms. The white working
>> class supported the Vietnam war and a good percentage of it,
>> apparently, supports Trump. Just listen to the folks at his rallies.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
>> Sent: Friday, August 09, 2019 10:58 AM
>> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Venezuela: Another US Coup Attempt -
>> and Why It Failed
>>
>> In order to expand, every empire must use force.
>> Every empire must become more and more controlled by fewer and fewer
>> elite.
>> Every empire must force its workers into supporting actions that run
>> counter to the needs of the workers, in order to support the wants of the
>> elite.
>> Every empire reaches a point where it implodes through careless use of
>> resources and pure greed.
>> Every empire is so enthralled by its own image that it never sees its
>> own demise looming on the horizon.
>>
>> Carl Jarvis
>>
>>
>> On 8/9/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>>> Venezuela: Another US Coup Attempt – and Why It Failed By Keith
>>> Brooks, Reader Supported News
>>> 08 August 19
>>>
>>> "How come we're not at war with Venezuela? They have all that oil."
>>>
>>> was in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 30th, the day of the failed coup.
>>> There were eight of us, five from NYC, one Vermonter and one
>>> Canadian, along with the leader of our group, a Venezuelan with whom
>>> I had traveled to Venezuela once before, in 2012, when Hugo Chavez
>>> was still alive. Chavez was elected to power in 1999 leading what is
>>> known as the Bolivarian Revolution. Less than three years later, a
>>> 2002 U.S.-backed coup failed to overthrow him.
>>>
>>> I witnessed back then Chavez's wide base of support, and the reasons
>>> for
>>> it:
>>> a new constitution guaranteeing as human rights health, education,
>>> housing and social welfare, and the laws and projects designed to
>>> make those rights a reality. The results were impressive: one million
>>> new low-cost housing units, a dramatic drop in the poverty rate,
>>> infant mortality rate down from
>>> 19.1 per thousand in 1999 to 10 per thousand by 2012. Health Care was
>>> made free for all Venezuelans, reflected by an increase in life
>>> expectancy.
>>> Working hours were reduced to 6 hours a day and 36 hours per week,
>>> without loss of pay, while the minimum wage became the highest
>>> minimum wage in Latin America. In December 2005, UNESCO said that
>>> Venezuela had eradicated illiteracy. The malnutrition rate fell from
>>> 21% in 1998 to less than 3% in 2012.
>>>
>>> The national management of the oil industry in 2003 put Venezuela in
>>> control over its most valuable natural resource, and used it to fund
>>> many of the social reform programs. Venezuela has the world's largest
>>> oil reserves, which the U.S. has coveted ever since and admittedly
>>> seeks to control, as John Bolton made clear on Fox News: "It will
>>> make a big difference to the United States economically if we could
>>> have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil
>>> capabilities in Venezuela."
>>>
>>> So the Chavez presidency marked a new day of empowerment for
>>> Venezuela's poor and working-class people, overwhelmingly people of
>>> color. And there was always a sector of the population, mainly the
>>> very wealthy mainly white upper class, who hated Chavez and his
>>> openly socialist policies.
>>>
>>> So I went again this April because I wanted to see for myself if it
>>> was possible the impressions we are now given by the mainstream
>>> corporate media were true – was Venezuela really on the verge of
>>> civil war? Had the Venezuelan people turned against the Bolivarian
>>> revolution and President Maduro, who was elected to office after
>>> Chavez's death in 2013 and re-elected in 2018? Did the U.S.-supported
>>> opposition really have widespread mass support?
>>>
>>> The April 30th Failed Coup
>>>
>>> Back in January, a politician virtually unknown to Venezuelans named
>>> Juan Guaidó, long mentored by U.S. regime-change specialists,
>>> announced himself as the president of Venezuela after receiving a
>>> phone call from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. Guaidó, who was the
>>> head of the National Assembly, an unelected post, vowed that
>>> President Maduro would be gone by May Day. While blackouts of
>>> electricity rolled across Venezuela, Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo
>>> threatened U.S.
>>> military intervention if Maduro didn't step down.
>>>
>>> We were in Venezuela from April 26th to May 5th. On April 30th, the
>>> morning of the failed coup, we knew something was up as we ate
>>> breakfast in our hotel's restaurant which had an open-air terrace. I
>>> saw a woman banging on a pan standing on a balcony in the apartment
>>> house next door to the hotel, yelling out to others to join her in
>>> denouncing Maduro. No one else joined her. She went back in. We heard
>>> what could have been firecrackers or gunfire. But when we looked out
>>> onto the street, business seemed no different than any of the
>>> previous three mornings we were there – people on their way to work,
>>> students going to school, motorbikes and cars on the streets.
>>>
>>> By the time we left in our van for a housing conference at the Hotel
>>> ALBA celebrating the construction of two and a half million new
>>> low-cost housing units, we learned that there was a coup attempt, yet
>>> we had seen no sign of a military or police presence on the streets
>>> as one might expect if there was a major threat to the government. If
>>> you were in Caracas that day, outside the upper-class neighborhood
>>> where the attempt was made, you would never have known there was a
>>> coup attempt. During a lunch break in the conference, we were able to
>>> watch TV coverage on the attempted coup from both CNN and TeleSUR, a
>>> Venezuelan news outlet. Right in the lobby of the hotel our group
>>> quickly wrote a statement denouncing the Trump administration's
>>> efforts to overthrow the government, and we were interviewed by
>>> Venezuelan government television, which was featured in the news
>>> throughout the day. Our statement said in part, "We are a group of U.S.
>>> and Canadian citizens gathered to denounce the U.S. government's
>>> illegal and immoral actions against the people of Venezuela. We also
>>> oppose the U.S.
>>> sanctions which are not only illegal but are already causing immense
>>> suffering, especially through the denial of much needed medicines and
>>> adequate nutrition ..."
>>>
>>> While we soon learned that the coup had failed, it was not until
>>> later that we heard the incredibly farcical details of what had
>>> transpired.
>>> Some might remember U.S Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claiming the
>>> day before that Maduro was escaping to Cuba. In fact, Guaidó had been
>>> led – actually duped – to believe that high-level military officials
>>> were going to defect and join him outside the airport that morning,
>>> along with large numbers of soldiers.
>>> But almost all the soldiers who showed up – after being lied to that
>>> they were going to receive promotions – quickly ran back to the base
>>> when it was clear they had been tricked into appearing to defect!
>>> Within a short time, the same Venezuelan defense minister that Guaidó
>>> had expected to defect to his side went on national television
>>> surrounded by his generals to say that the military was standing
>>> strong with Maduro and that no coup had taken place.
>>>
>>> An estimated 2,000 Guaidó supporters did gather on an overpass to
>>> watch the highway below where 200 or so violent protesters were
>>> firing on the military and throwing Molotov cocktails near the
>>> airbase – as tens of thousands of Maduro supporters flocked to the
>>> presidential palace to defend it. Guaidó then went into hiding, but
>>> not before calling for the "mother of all marches" for the next day's
>>> May Day celebrations. His "mother of all marches" pulled out at best
>>> 3 to 4 thousand less than 1% of the estimated
>>> 400,000 our group marched with at the Maduro May Day rally, one of
>>> the largest pro-government mobilizations since the days of Chavez.
>>>
>>> It was quite striking even for a longtime activist like myself to
>>> witness the blatant lies and propaganda that saturate our media. It
>>> was like two different worlds as CNN, The New York Times, and
>>> mainstream media reported that a coup was underway in Venezuela. The
>>> NYT reported "a predawn takeover of a military base in the heart of
>>> the capital"– and that Guaidó had made a video appeal for an uprising
>>> from the "liberated" airbase – except they never got on the base. In
>>> another outrageous example, there's a film clip that has been aired
>>> of two military vehicles running into opposition protesters. What's
>>> not shown is what happened next, as the vehicles were surrounded by
>>> soldiers, with the occupants forced at gunpoint to get out and lie
>>> down on the ground! The truth is that the vehicles were driven by
>>> defecting soldiers who rammed into their own protesters to make it
>>> look like it was the government violently suppressing dissent. The
>>> drivers of the vehicle were arrested shortly after by the military as
>>> the rest of the news video clearly showed.
>>>
>>> "This is not the foolish country of yesteryear. This country has
>>> awoken, and that's one of the biggest changes that has taken place
>>> here in these 13 years, a cultural change" – Hugo Chavez, 2012
>>>
>>> So this trip did dispel for me any of the widespread notions spread
>>> 24/7 by the mainstream U.S. corporate media that Maduro and the
>>> Bolivarian revolution have lost popular support and that Venezuela is
>>> a country on the verge of a civil war. While the U.S. sanctions,
>>> along with plummeting oil prices, have created serious challenges to
>>> Maduro, popular support and enthusiasm for the Bolivarian revolution
>>> and the elected government remains.
>>>
>>> Has Venezuela become a dictatorship? Not if judged by the 2 or 3
>>> major newspapers I bought every day that were anti-Maduro (as were
>>> the daily anti-Chavez papers I bought on my 2012 trip), nor by the
>>> rallies called by the U.S. backed coupsters openly inciting violence
>>> and calling for the overthrow of the government. There is, in fact, a
>>> "loyal opposition" that ran against Maduro in the 2018 election, the
>>> leader of which, Henri Falcon, received 32 % of the vote and was
>>> actually threatened with sanctions by the U.S. for participating in
>>> the election! And it deserves mention that I saw marchers at the
>>> Maduro May Day rally evidently feeling comfortable enough to be
>>> wearing Falcon t-shirts. Even Maria Machado, a well known staunch
>>> Guaidó supporter, has stated that Maduro is not a dictator.
>>>
>>> The American people have been propagandized to believe that Trump is
>>> trying to overthrow Maduro out of humanitarian concern for an
>>> economic crisis caused by Maduro's incompetence in handling the
>>> collapse of oil prices over the last five years and to "restore
>>> democracy," a laughable rationale in light of the history: the U.S.
>>> has been trying to overthrow the Bolivarian revolution since the
>>> failed attempt against Chavez in 2002, and then there is the long history
>>> of U.S.
>>> coups and invasions of Latin America and around the world from the
>>> 1954 Guatemala coup, the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba,
>>> U.S. invasions of the Dominican Republic in 1965, the overthrow of
>>> Allende in 1973 in Chile, Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989, the
>>> removal of Aristide in Haiti in 2004, the Honduras coup in 2009 and
>>> many others. Any government that refuses to be under the thumb of the
>>> U.S.
>>> is a target for overthrow.
>>>
>>> While there is debate over how much Maduro's economic policies have
>>> played a role, it's not the fall in oil prices that have put
>>> Venezuela in crisis and threaten to destroy all the gains over the
>>> last 20 years – it's the sanctions where the U.S. uses its worldwide
>>> economic power to prohibit countries from doing business with
>>> Venezuela. Along with the U.S.-engineered electricity blackouts, and
>>> the failed coup attempts, sanctions have frozen and even confiscated
>>> billions of dollars of Venezuelan assets in banks around the world,
>>> blocked payments for Venezuelan oil, and facilitated other outright
>>> instances of what can only be called piracy. Sanctions are just as
>>> deadly as bombs and bullets, a form of economic terrorism whose
>>> explicit rationale is to escalate the suffering of the civilian
>>> population to get them to turn against their government. A recent
>>> study estimated
>>> 40,000 deaths caused by blockading the shipment of medical supplies
>>> like insulin, HIV medications, and other life-supporting supplies,
>>> such as an emergency food program.
>>>
>>> But all this has failed in the goal of driving the population into
>>> blaming and overthrowing the Maduro government; instead, as Chavez
>>> put it, this is an awakened country that largely understands the main
>>> role the U.S. has played in fomenting a crisis. From what I saw,
>>> Trump has actually united many of those opposed to and critical of
>>> Maduro to join in opposition to U.S. sanctions and military
>>> intervention, as Falcon and others have done.
>>>
>>> While the threat of direct U.S. military intervention is
>>> ever-present, our trip also brought home how it is too easy for
>>> liberals like Bernie Sanders, AOC, and others to oppose military
>>> intervention and avoid taking a stand against the sanctions. Among
>>> Democratic Party candidates running for the presidency, only Tulsi
>>> Gabbard has opposed the sanctions.
>>>
>>> It is also essential to establish that one does not have to defend
>>> Maduro to oppose this latest U.S. imperialist adventure and
>>> understand that the U.S.
>>> has ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT to sabotage the Venezuelan economy and impose
>>> murderous sanctions to strangle the population into submission. This
>>> didn't start with Maduro, and it is just the latest in the long list
>>> of U.S. coups and overthrows in Latin America and around the world.
>>>
>>> So What Can We Do?
>>>
>>> As we head toward the 2020 election, the issue of Trump's policies
>>> toward Venezuela – as well as Iran – should be front and center in
>>> the debates, yet the Democratic party and the mainstream corporate
>>> media seem to have a tacit agreement to say as little as possible on
>>> these two imminent threats of more U.S. aggression. And a number of
>>> Democrats and liberal media – Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer,
>>> Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, The New York Times, The Washington
>>> Post, Rachel Maddow, and PBS commentators – are among those leading
>>> liberal figures actually in support of Trump's right to impose regime
>>> change on another people's country.
>>>
>>> It's hard to see how this protracted siege of Venezuela will resolve
>>> itself, but the Venezuelan people are far from a demoralized
>>> population; rather they've been mobilized to resist with the
>>> formation of a people's militia of
>>> 2 million, training with the military and national guard. An
>>> infrastructure of resistance has been created that would make it more
>>> than difficult for any U.S.-installed neoliberal puppet regime to
>>> rule. It could just turn into a people's war, Trump's Vietnam, for
>>> the president who ran claiming he was going to end "all these foolish
>>> wars."
>>>
>>> As U.S. citizens it is our responsibility to demand that our elected
>>> officials stop the threat of war and end the sanctions on Venezuela.
>>> We have a particular responsibility to oppose our government's
>>> actions. Write letters to the editor, sign petitions, call your
>>> elected officials, take part in rallies and demonstrations, and
>>> challenge in whatever ways you can the "official story" we're fed by
>>> the corporate mass media. And I urge anyone interested to go to
>>> Venezuela and see for yourself what is going on.
>>> William Camarada, the Venezuelan who led the two trips I was on, is
>>> planning another highly affordable trip in August. For more
>>> information, contact cbalbertolovera@gmail.com or
>>> estebanbartlett@gmail.com or call 502 / 415-1080.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Email This Page
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Keith Brooks is a longtime anti-war and labor/community activist, a
>>> retired NYC alternative high school teacher, and a member of DSA and
>>> Brooklyn For Peace.
>>>
>>> Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
>>> Permission
>>> to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
>>> Supported News.
>>>
>>> e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
desperation or persecution, and lived under the rule of whoever ran
the particular colony. Imagine how desperate people must have been to
leave their homes, in a time when most people had generations of roots
in the same place, and crammed into the stinking holds of leaky ships
and traveled many long days to reach an unknown land.
But the American Revolution was unique in many ways. In particular it
brought into existence a document that put the ruling of the nation
into the hands of the People. What our history books gloss over, or
ignore, is just who those "people" were, because the majority of folks
living here did not get to vote. It was an Oligarchy made up of the
White Landed Gentry. While they no longer trusted the King to rule
fairly, they certainly had no intention of allowing the "Rabble", the
"commoners" to determine the nation's fate. So, by my understanding
of what democracy is, we began this nation built on a lie, or at least
it was a different understanding of what democracy was all about.
Despite all the many distractions, the struggle has always been
between the moneyed, White landholders, and the Working Class.
Currently I'm reading a history book entitled, These Truths: A History
of the United States. It's on BARD. One of the things I notice as I
read, is that for the "Common" citizens there have been no "Glory
Days". Even though there was relief under Roosevelt's New Deal, a
great many people found little improvement. Especially People of
Color, immigrants, dirt farmers and slum dwellers.
While many of our European immigrants moved together for practical
reasons, and were thus easy targets for discrimination, it was mostly
their children and grand children who escaped into the general
population. Although so many of those later generations turned their
backs on their roots, it was the sacrifices of those original
immigrants that allowed them to gain the education and opportunities
they needed.
Certainly times were difficult back then, but are they any better
today? A Korean man and his Japanese wife bought the grocery store in
Quilcene. They lived carefully, and seemed to be making a go of it.
For 13 years they served the town, and then filed bankruptcy. In the
same tradition of sacrificing to give their children a better life,
these people had taken out large loans to pay for their sons
education. In the recent Great Recession, local businesses found
their customers were not spending at former levels. Several
businesses went under, a service station, the town tavern, the town's
long popular restaurant, and the grocery store.
I was brought up to believe that we are a nation so we can take care
of our citizens. But just what value is a government that only takes
care of those citizens who are wealthy enough that they don't really
need government support? What value is there in a government that
allows the Predators to use our children in order to enrich their bank
accounts? What use is a government that enlists our youth to defend
the privileged lives of the wealthy? We need to turn to the task of
caring for our own, and let the wealthy look out for themselves...as
they have done to us, lo these many generations.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/10/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> You know, I'm not sure that the American experience was revolutionary, or at
> least, not in the way that American propaganda says it was. People did
> emigrate here to have a better life, and they were welcomed when this
> country needed their labor, or rather, their labor was welcomed, not the
> people. But somehow, for many, the American dream that was sold to them
> worked. I think of all those European Jews who came to the lower east side
> of New York to labor in sweat shops, and ended up, decades later, as
> professionals, living in affluent suburban communities on Long Island or in
> Westchester County. It worked for them because of FDR's New Deal, because we
> had a social welfare state which really did help white working class
> immigrants become educated, often at no cost or at very little cost, and
> provided low interest home buyers' loans. That is the piece of the American
> dream that I know about from personal experience.
>
> By the way, your mention of Cuba reminds me that I've recently read several
> novels which include the current version of its recent history being
> provided to the book reading public. You know, the same thing was done
> regarding Israel. Well, the picture of Cuba being provided, shows a country
> of poor, deprived people who resent their government, but who stayed because
> they were patriotic. It describes the revolutionaries as either honest but
> misguided, or power hungry from the start. It provides a sympathetic picture
> of the people who left, very wealthy people, good people, who, through no
> fault of their own, lost everything and had to start over in Florida. It
> does provide a bit of negative information about Batista and a sense of the
> wish of some young men who mistakenly joined the revolution because they
> wanted things in their country to improve. This is sort of a rough summary
> of what was in those 3 or 4 novels, all of which, except for one, written
> within the past 7 or so years, There isn't a word about how the US embargo
> impacted the Cuban economy or about the kinds of public services that are
> available to the people. Not a word about how Cubans have helped so many
> countries in emergencies by sending medical help. When we talk about how
> the media manipulates American citizens, we forget about all of the ficdtion
> that people consume. It's not just movies. It's books.
>
> Miriam
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
> Sent: Saturday, August 10, 2019 11:18 AM
> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
> Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Venezuela: Another US Coup Attempt - and Why
> It Failed
>
> Hi Miriam,
> Philosophical on the outside, but raging on the inside.
> I recall when I first heard about the Monroe Doctrine, I believed that it
> was America's way of reaching a helping hand out to our friends in Central
> and South America.
> And in a way that was what the American Empire did, extend a helping hand
> that grasped everything it touched.
> When I remember how Working Class Cubans lived under Batista, and how the
> wealthy Cubans and their American backers screamed and swore revenge, I
> cheered Fidel Castro from the Sweatshop, the drapery factory where I labored
> at the time. Score One for the Underdog!
> Cuba, a small nation living off the shore of history's most bloated Empire,
> and surviving. Even with the boycotts placed upon it by the Empire's bully
> boys.
> And when Hugo Chavez turned Venezuela around, and other South American
> nations began to thumb their noses at the American Empire, I believed the
> worm had turned. But never count Greed out.
> As revolutionary as the American experience in democracy was, it was flawed.
> It was flawed because it never resolved the struggle of the People versus
> Greed. We need to gather our wisest minds and examine why Greed corrupts
> our every effort to live at peace with one another.
> We got ourselves into our present mess, and with enough effort and time, we
> can set a new course.
> Carl Jarvis, ever hopeful and forever smelling the roses.
>
> On 8/9/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>> Carl,
>>
>> While you are able to remain philosophical about this situation, I
>> have to tell you that I have been watching it develop step by step for
>> months and months through podcasts and articles and I am extremely
>> upset. Of course I know that the US has done this before, and Cuba is
>> a prime example. But to watch the mass media dishing out lie after lie
>> and the Democrats supporting all of it, while listening to the truth
>> being reported from reporters on the ground there like Max Blumenthal
>> and many others, is a real nightmare. All Amy did, was 2 interviews
>> with one Venezuelan government official. She managed to spend a whole
>> program plus another complete segment, not part of the program, on
>> Toni Morrison, and that's OK. But she's ignoring the murder of a
>> country and its people. The US has stolen Venezuela's oil and its gold
>> reserves. It is blockading it so food will be almost impossible to
>> get. The people most impacted, are the poor and the working class, the
>> people who support Moduro. It's a plot to destroy the people and hand
>> the country over to the white elite, just like Puerto Rico which is
>> such a horror, that I can't even begin to talk about it. And then
>> there's what's happening right here. And all of those people whom ICE
>> is hunting down, are here because of what the US has been doing to
>> their countries of origin for years. And the average American might be
>> mildly disturbed, but not horrified enough, to be out in the streets,
>> protesting. Do you remember that I said that I'm reading a book about
>> a journalist who was being investigated by the House Unamerican Activities
>> Committee because he was a member of the Communist Party? There are all
>> sorts of interesting historical tidbits in that book.
>> One of them is that the auto workers in Detroit were virulently
>> anti-communist. They wanted nothing to do with Communist labor
>> organizers and went on strike until one of them was fired from his
>> job. All this fantasy in which the political left indulges about how
>> the working class will welcome it with open arms. The white working
>> class supported the Vietnam war and a good percentage of it,
>> apparently, supports Trump. Just listen to the folks at his rallies.
>>
>> Miriam
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
>> Sent: Friday, August 09, 2019 10:58 AM
>> To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Venezuela: Another US Coup Attempt -
>> and Why It Failed
>>
>> In order to expand, every empire must use force.
>> Every empire must become more and more controlled by fewer and fewer
>> elite.
>> Every empire must force its workers into supporting actions that run
>> counter to the needs of the workers, in order to support the wants of the
>> elite.
>> Every empire reaches a point where it implodes through careless use of
>> resources and pure greed.
>> Every empire is so enthralled by its own image that it never sees its
>> own demise looming on the horizon.
>>
>> Carl Jarvis
>>
>>
>> On 8/9/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>>> Venezuela: Another US Coup Attempt – and Why It Failed By Keith
>>> Brooks, Reader Supported News
>>> 08 August 19
>>>
>>> "How come we're not at war with Venezuela? They have all that oil."
>>>
>>> was in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 30th, the day of the failed coup.
>>> There were eight of us, five from NYC, one Vermonter and one
>>> Canadian, along with the leader of our group, a Venezuelan with whom
>>> I had traveled to Venezuela once before, in 2012, when Hugo Chavez
>>> was still alive. Chavez was elected to power in 1999 leading what is
>>> known as the Bolivarian Revolution. Less than three years later, a
>>> 2002 U.S.-backed coup failed to overthrow him.
>>>
>>> I witnessed back then Chavez's wide base of support, and the reasons
>>> for
>>> it:
>>> a new constitution guaranteeing as human rights health, education,
>>> housing and social welfare, and the laws and projects designed to
>>> make those rights a reality. The results were impressive: one million
>>> new low-cost housing units, a dramatic drop in the poverty rate,
>>> infant mortality rate down from
>>> 19.1 per thousand in 1999 to 10 per thousand by 2012. Health Care was
>>> made free for all Venezuelans, reflected by an increase in life
>>> expectancy.
>>> Working hours were reduced to 6 hours a day and 36 hours per week,
>>> without loss of pay, while the minimum wage became the highest
>>> minimum wage in Latin America. In December 2005, UNESCO said that
>>> Venezuela had eradicated illiteracy. The malnutrition rate fell from
>>> 21% in 1998 to less than 3% in 2012.
>>>
>>> The national management of the oil industry in 2003 put Venezuela in
>>> control over its most valuable natural resource, and used it to fund
>>> many of the social reform programs. Venezuela has the world's largest
>>> oil reserves, which the U.S. has coveted ever since and admittedly
>>> seeks to control, as John Bolton made clear on Fox News: "It will
>>> make a big difference to the United States economically if we could
>>> have American oil companies invest in and produce the oil
>>> capabilities in Venezuela."
>>>
>>> So the Chavez presidency marked a new day of empowerment for
>>> Venezuela's poor and working-class people, overwhelmingly people of
>>> color. And there was always a sector of the population, mainly the
>>> very wealthy mainly white upper class, who hated Chavez and his
>>> openly socialist policies.
>>>
>>> So I went again this April because I wanted to see for myself if it
>>> was possible the impressions we are now given by the mainstream
>>> corporate media were true – was Venezuela really on the verge of
>>> civil war? Had the Venezuelan people turned against the Bolivarian
>>> revolution and President Maduro, who was elected to office after
>>> Chavez's death in 2013 and re-elected in 2018? Did the U.S.-supported
>>> opposition really have widespread mass support?
>>>
>>> The April 30th Failed Coup
>>>
>>> Back in January, a politician virtually unknown to Venezuelans named
>>> Juan Guaidó, long mentored by U.S. regime-change specialists,
>>> announced himself as the president of Venezuela after receiving a
>>> phone call from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. Guaidó, who was the
>>> head of the National Assembly, an unelected post, vowed that
>>> President Maduro would be gone by May Day. While blackouts of
>>> electricity rolled across Venezuela, Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo
>>> threatened U.S.
>>> military intervention if Maduro didn't step down.
>>>
>>> We were in Venezuela from April 26th to May 5th. On April 30th, the
>>> morning of the failed coup, we knew something was up as we ate
>>> breakfast in our hotel's restaurant which had an open-air terrace. I
>>> saw a woman banging on a pan standing on a balcony in the apartment
>>> house next door to the hotel, yelling out to others to join her in
>>> denouncing Maduro. No one else joined her. She went back in. We heard
>>> what could have been firecrackers or gunfire. But when we looked out
>>> onto the street, business seemed no different than any of the
>>> previous three mornings we were there – people on their way to work,
>>> students going to school, motorbikes and cars on the streets.
>>>
>>> By the time we left in our van for a housing conference at the Hotel
>>> ALBA celebrating the construction of two and a half million new
>>> low-cost housing units, we learned that there was a coup attempt, yet
>>> we had seen no sign of a military or police presence on the streets
>>> as one might expect if there was a major threat to the government. If
>>> you were in Caracas that day, outside the upper-class neighborhood
>>> where the attempt was made, you would never have known there was a
>>> coup attempt. During a lunch break in the conference, we were able to
>>> watch TV coverage on the attempted coup from both CNN and TeleSUR, a
>>> Venezuelan news outlet. Right in the lobby of the hotel our group
>>> quickly wrote a statement denouncing the Trump administration's
>>> efforts to overthrow the government, and we were interviewed by
>>> Venezuelan government television, which was featured in the news
>>> throughout the day. Our statement said in part, "We are a group of U.S.
>>> and Canadian citizens gathered to denounce the U.S. government's
>>> illegal and immoral actions against the people of Venezuela. We also
>>> oppose the U.S.
>>> sanctions which are not only illegal but are already causing immense
>>> suffering, especially through the denial of much needed medicines and
>>> adequate nutrition ..."
>>>
>>> While we soon learned that the coup had failed, it was not until
>>> later that we heard the incredibly farcical details of what had
>>> transpired.
>>> Some might remember U.S Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claiming the
>>> day before that Maduro was escaping to Cuba. In fact, Guaidó had been
>>> led – actually duped – to believe that high-level military officials
>>> were going to defect and join him outside the airport that morning,
>>> along with large numbers of soldiers.
>>> But almost all the soldiers who showed up – after being lied to that
>>> they were going to receive promotions – quickly ran back to the base
>>> when it was clear they had been tricked into appearing to defect!
>>> Within a short time, the same Venezuelan defense minister that Guaidó
>>> had expected to defect to his side went on national television
>>> surrounded by his generals to say that the military was standing
>>> strong with Maduro and that no coup had taken place.
>>>
>>> An estimated 2,000 Guaidó supporters did gather on an overpass to
>>> watch the highway below where 200 or so violent protesters were
>>> firing on the military and throwing Molotov cocktails near the
>>> airbase – as tens of thousands of Maduro supporters flocked to the
>>> presidential palace to defend it. Guaidó then went into hiding, but
>>> not before calling for the "mother of all marches" for the next day's
>>> May Day celebrations. His "mother of all marches" pulled out at best
>>> 3 to 4 thousand less than 1% of the estimated
>>> 400,000 our group marched with at the Maduro May Day rally, one of
>>> the largest pro-government mobilizations since the days of Chavez.
>>>
>>> It was quite striking even for a longtime activist like myself to
>>> witness the blatant lies and propaganda that saturate our media. It
>>> was like two different worlds as CNN, The New York Times, and
>>> mainstream media reported that a coup was underway in Venezuela. The
>>> NYT reported "a predawn takeover of a military base in the heart of
>>> the capital"– and that Guaidó had made a video appeal for an uprising
>>> from the "liberated" airbase – except they never got on the base. In
>>> another outrageous example, there's a film clip that has been aired
>>> of two military vehicles running into opposition protesters. What's
>>> not shown is what happened next, as the vehicles were surrounded by
>>> soldiers, with the occupants forced at gunpoint to get out and lie
>>> down on the ground! The truth is that the vehicles were driven by
>>> defecting soldiers who rammed into their own protesters to make it
>>> look like it was the government violently suppressing dissent. The
>>> drivers of the vehicle were arrested shortly after by the military as
>>> the rest of the news video clearly showed.
>>>
>>> "This is not the foolish country of yesteryear. This country has
>>> awoken, and that's one of the biggest changes that has taken place
>>> here in these 13 years, a cultural change" – Hugo Chavez, 2012
>>>
>>> So this trip did dispel for me any of the widespread notions spread
>>> 24/7 by the mainstream U.S. corporate media that Maduro and the
>>> Bolivarian revolution have lost popular support and that Venezuela is
>>> a country on the verge of a civil war. While the U.S. sanctions,
>>> along with plummeting oil prices, have created serious challenges to
>>> Maduro, popular support and enthusiasm for the Bolivarian revolution
>>> and the elected government remains.
>>>
>>> Has Venezuela become a dictatorship? Not if judged by the 2 or 3
>>> major newspapers I bought every day that were anti-Maduro (as were
>>> the daily anti-Chavez papers I bought on my 2012 trip), nor by the
>>> rallies called by the U.S. backed coupsters openly inciting violence
>>> and calling for the overthrow of the government. There is, in fact, a
>>> "loyal opposition" that ran against Maduro in the 2018 election, the
>>> leader of which, Henri Falcon, received 32 % of the vote and was
>>> actually threatened with sanctions by the U.S. for participating in
>>> the election! And it deserves mention that I saw marchers at the
>>> Maduro May Day rally evidently feeling comfortable enough to be
>>> wearing Falcon t-shirts. Even Maria Machado, a well known staunch
>>> Guaidó supporter, has stated that Maduro is not a dictator.
>>>
>>> The American people have been propagandized to believe that Trump is
>>> trying to overthrow Maduro out of humanitarian concern for an
>>> economic crisis caused by Maduro's incompetence in handling the
>>> collapse of oil prices over the last five years and to "restore
>>> democracy," a laughable rationale in light of the history: the U.S.
>>> has been trying to overthrow the Bolivarian revolution since the
>>> failed attempt against Chavez in 2002, and then there is the long history
>>> of U.S.
>>> coups and invasions of Latin America and around the world from the
>>> 1954 Guatemala coup, the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba,
>>> U.S. invasions of the Dominican Republic in 1965, the overthrow of
>>> Allende in 1973 in Chile, Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989, the
>>> removal of Aristide in Haiti in 2004, the Honduras coup in 2009 and
>>> many others. Any government that refuses to be under the thumb of the
>>> U.S.
>>> is a target for overthrow.
>>>
>>> While there is debate over how much Maduro's economic policies have
>>> played a role, it's not the fall in oil prices that have put
>>> Venezuela in crisis and threaten to destroy all the gains over the
>>> last 20 years – it's the sanctions where the U.S. uses its worldwide
>>> economic power to prohibit countries from doing business with
>>> Venezuela. Along with the U.S.-engineered electricity blackouts, and
>>> the failed coup attempts, sanctions have frozen and even confiscated
>>> billions of dollars of Venezuelan assets in banks around the world,
>>> blocked payments for Venezuelan oil, and facilitated other outright
>>> instances of what can only be called piracy. Sanctions are just as
>>> deadly as bombs and bullets, a form of economic terrorism whose
>>> explicit rationale is to escalate the suffering of the civilian
>>> population to get them to turn against their government. A recent
>>> study estimated
>>> 40,000 deaths caused by blockading the shipment of medical supplies
>>> like insulin, HIV medications, and other life-supporting supplies,
>>> such as an emergency food program.
>>>
>>> But all this has failed in the goal of driving the population into
>>> blaming and overthrowing the Maduro government; instead, as Chavez
>>> put it, this is an awakened country that largely understands the main
>>> role the U.S. has played in fomenting a crisis. From what I saw,
>>> Trump has actually united many of those opposed to and critical of
>>> Maduro to join in opposition to U.S. sanctions and military
>>> intervention, as Falcon and others have done.
>>>
>>> While the threat of direct U.S. military intervention is
>>> ever-present, our trip also brought home how it is too easy for
>>> liberals like Bernie Sanders, AOC, and others to oppose military
>>> intervention and avoid taking a stand against the sanctions. Among
>>> Democratic Party candidates running for the presidency, only Tulsi
>>> Gabbard has opposed the sanctions.
>>>
>>> It is also essential to establish that one does not have to defend
>>> Maduro to oppose this latest U.S. imperialist adventure and
>>> understand that the U.S.
>>> has ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT to sabotage the Venezuelan economy and impose
>>> murderous sanctions to strangle the population into submission. This
>>> didn't start with Maduro, and it is just the latest in the long list
>>> of U.S. coups and overthrows in Latin America and around the world.
>>>
>>> So What Can We Do?
>>>
>>> As we head toward the 2020 election, the issue of Trump's policies
>>> toward Venezuela – as well as Iran – should be front and center in
>>> the debates, yet the Democratic party and the mainstream corporate
>>> media seem to have a tacit agreement to say as little as possible on
>>> these two imminent threats of more U.S. aggression. And a number of
>>> Democrats and liberal media – Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer,
>>> Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, The New York Times, The Washington
>>> Post, Rachel Maddow, and PBS commentators – are among those leading
>>> liberal figures actually in support of Trump's right to impose regime
>>> change on another people's country.
>>>
>>> It's hard to see how this protracted siege of Venezuela will resolve
>>> itself, but the Venezuelan people are far from a demoralized
>>> population; rather they've been mobilized to resist with the
>>> formation of a people's militia of
>>> 2 million, training with the military and national guard. An
>>> infrastructure of resistance has been created that would make it more
>>> than difficult for any U.S.-installed neoliberal puppet regime to
>>> rule. It could just turn into a people's war, Trump's Vietnam, for
>>> the president who ran claiming he was going to end "all these foolish
>>> wars."
>>>
>>> As U.S. citizens it is our responsibility to demand that our elected
>>> officials stop the threat of war and end the sanctions on Venezuela.
>>> We have a particular responsibility to oppose our government's
>>> actions. Write letters to the editor, sign petitions, call your
>>> elected officials, take part in rallies and demonstrations, and
>>> challenge in whatever ways you can the "official story" we're fed by
>>> the corporate mass media. And I urge anyone interested to go to
>>> Venezuela and see for yourself what is going on.
>>> William Camarada, the Venezuelan who led the two trips I was on, is
>>> planning another highly affordable trip in August. For more
>>> information, contact cbalbertolovera@gmail.com or
>>> estebanbartlett@gmail.com or call 502 / 415-1080.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Email This Page
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Keith Brooks is a longtime anti-war and labor/community activist, a
>>> retired NYC alternative high school teacher, and a member of DSA and
>>> Brooklyn For Peace.
>>>
>>> Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
>>> Permission
>>> to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
>>> Supported News.
>>>
>>> e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
Saturday, August 10, 2019
Re: [blind-democracy] Cuban Revolution shows workers can win
Once again I am deeply impressed by the strength of a people living
just off the shore of the world's most bloated Empire, and surviving
even the economic boycotts placed upon it.
Although politics and world events were not often discussed among the
women workers in the Drapery Factory where I worked, whenever Cuba or
Fidel Castro was mentioned, most of the workers, workers who were
slaving for $1.25 an hour, wage minimum at the time, they immediately
took up the cry that Castro should be captured and hung.
I asked what these under paid workers had against a man who took from
the rich and shared with the down trodden. But they knew that Castro
was a dictator and just seeking power. They read it in the daily
papers and watched it on the evening news. And none of them ever
questioned just who it was that owned the papers or the TV companies.
I clearly remember a discussion with one angry woman, damning Castro.
"They say Castro's men are raping women and little children" she
ranted.
"Where are you hearing this?" I asked. "It's all over the news!" she
insisted.
"How do we know if it isn't made up by Batista's supporters?"
"What are you, a Commie?" she shouted at me.
Okay, it wasn't a discussion after all.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/9/19, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
> https://themilitant.com/2019/08/03/cuban-revolution-shows-workers-can-win/
>
>
> Cuban Revolution shows workers can win
>
>
>
>
> ??Editorial
>
> Vol. 83/No. 29
>
> August 12, 2019
>
>
> Sixty-six years ago on July 26, workers and youth, led by Fidel Castro,
> attacked the Moncada military barracks in Santiago, Cuba. The brutal
> regime of Fulgencio Batista had seized power, cancelled elections and
> arrested or murdered those who challenged his rule. The attack ??? aimed
> at galvanizing popular opposition to the dictatorship ??? was defeated and
> many of the combatants, captured alive, were tortured and murdered by
> the regime???s thugs. But it signaled the opening of the Cuban Revolution
> and the forging of a revolutionary leadership.
>
> Five and a half years after the attack, the July 26th Movement led
> working people to overthrow Batista, deepen their struggles and go on to
> establish their own government, beginning the transformation of society.
>
> U.S. imperialism was shocked that the program of the revolutionary
> movement ??? put forward by Fidel during his trial for the assault on
> Moncada and widely promoted throughout the island ??? was not just pretty
> words, it was carried out.
>
> The large agricultural estates were nationalized and put under workers
> control or distributed to landless peasants. Factories were taken over
> by workers. A massive literacy campaign was launched to teach workers
> and farmers to read and write. Working people became masters of their
> own destinies. Hundreds of thousands have volunteered for
> internationalist missions to advance the struggles of workers and
> farmers elsewhere around the world, acting on Castro???s explanation that
> ???those not willing to fight for the freedom of others will never be able
> to fight for their own.???
>
> The U.S. rulers have never forgiven working people for not just changing
> the faces of those in power but transgressing against capitalist
> property and profits ??? especially of U.S. bosses. And they have never
> given up on their dream of restoring U.S. domination of the island.
> That???s why Washington???s economic war on Cuba never ends.
>
> What working people from the U.S. to Puerto Rico and across the globe
> can learn from the experience of the Cuban Revolution is as important
> today as the day workers and farmers in Cuba took power.
>
> As Jack Barnes put it in Cuba and the Coming American Revolution,
> working people of Cuba showed us ???that with class solidarity, political
> consciousness, courage, focused and persistent efforts at education, and
> a revolutionary leadership of a caliber like that in Cuba ??? a leadership
> tested and forged in battle over years ??? it is possible to stand up to
> enormous might and seemingly insurmountable odds and win.???
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Related Articles
>
>
>
> ???Cuban people will resist US embargo and violations of our sovereignty???
> NEW YORK ??? ???The Cuban people are determined to withstand the U.S.
> government???s policy of aggression,??? said Ana Silvia Rodr??guez Abascal,
>
> Cuban deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, at a July
> 27 meeting here to celebrate the Cuban Revolution.???
>
>
> In This Issue
>
> Front Page Articles ???Colonial rule, capitalist crisis fueled Puerto Rico
> protests
> ???Airline, auto bosses target workers to boost profits
> ??????Amnesty for immigrants is in interest of all workers???
> ??????Cuban people will resist US embargo and violations of our
> sovereignty???
> ???Democrats??? Mueller expos?? falls flat as clashes in party sharpen
> ???Florida prison officials??? ban on ???Militant??? attacks Bill of Rights
>
> Feature Articles ???Yazidis in Iraq still displaced two years after
> Islamic State???s defeat
>
> Also In This Issue ???Joyce Meissenheimer was ???on right side of
> history???
> ???US gov???t plans to restart death penalty, target workers
> ???Black lung at highest rate in decades among miners
> ???Ohio college posts bond over ???racism??? smear of bakery owners
>
> Editorials ???Cuban Revolution shows workers can win
>
>
>
> Books of the Month ???How capitalism is revolutionizing parts of Africa
>
>
>
>
>
> 25, 50 and 75 years ago
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ?? Copyright 2019 The Militant?? -?? 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor -?? New
>
> York, NY 10018?? -?? themilitant@mac.com
>
>
> Cookies
>
> This site uses cookies to improve your experience. Learn more.
>
> Okay, thank
>
> --
>
>
> ---
>
> George Carlin
> ??? Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the
> universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is
> wet, and they have to touch it to be sure. ???
> ??? George Carlin
>
>
>
>
>
>
just off the shore of the world's most bloated Empire, and surviving
even the economic boycotts placed upon it.
Although politics and world events were not often discussed among the
women workers in the Drapery Factory where I worked, whenever Cuba or
Fidel Castro was mentioned, most of the workers, workers who were
slaving for $1.25 an hour, wage minimum at the time, they immediately
took up the cry that Castro should be captured and hung.
I asked what these under paid workers had against a man who took from
the rich and shared with the down trodden. But they knew that Castro
was a dictator and just seeking power. They read it in the daily
papers and watched it on the evening news. And none of them ever
questioned just who it was that owned the papers or the TV companies.
I clearly remember a discussion with one angry woman, damning Castro.
"They say Castro's men are raping women and little children" she
ranted.
"Where are you hearing this?" I asked. "It's all over the news!" she
insisted.
"How do we know if it isn't made up by Batista's supporters?"
"What are you, a Commie?" she shouted at me.
Okay, it wasn't a discussion after all.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/9/19, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
> https://themilitant.com/2019/08/03/cuban-revolution-shows-workers-can-win/
>
>
> Cuban Revolution shows workers can win
>
>
>
>
> ??Editorial
>
> Vol. 83/No. 29
>
> August 12, 2019
>
>
> Sixty-six years ago on July 26, workers and youth, led by Fidel Castro,
> attacked the Moncada military barracks in Santiago, Cuba. The brutal
> regime of Fulgencio Batista had seized power, cancelled elections and
> arrested or murdered those who challenged his rule. The attack ??? aimed
> at galvanizing popular opposition to the dictatorship ??? was defeated and
> many of the combatants, captured alive, were tortured and murdered by
> the regime???s thugs. But it signaled the opening of the Cuban Revolution
> and the forging of a revolutionary leadership.
>
> Five and a half years after the attack, the July 26th Movement led
> working people to overthrow Batista, deepen their struggles and go on to
> establish their own government, beginning the transformation of society.
>
> U.S. imperialism was shocked that the program of the revolutionary
> movement ??? put forward by Fidel during his trial for the assault on
> Moncada and widely promoted throughout the island ??? was not just pretty
> words, it was carried out.
>
> The large agricultural estates were nationalized and put under workers
> control or distributed to landless peasants. Factories were taken over
> by workers. A massive literacy campaign was launched to teach workers
> and farmers to read and write. Working people became masters of their
> own destinies. Hundreds of thousands have volunteered for
> internationalist missions to advance the struggles of workers and
> farmers elsewhere around the world, acting on Castro???s explanation that
> ???those not willing to fight for the freedom of others will never be able
> to fight for their own.???
>
> The U.S. rulers have never forgiven working people for not just changing
> the faces of those in power but transgressing against capitalist
> property and profits ??? especially of U.S. bosses. And they have never
> given up on their dream of restoring U.S. domination of the island.
> That???s why Washington???s economic war on Cuba never ends.
>
> What working people from the U.S. to Puerto Rico and across the globe
> can learn from the experience of the Cuban Revolution is as important
> today as the day workers and farmers in Cuba took power.
>
> As Jack Barnes put it in Cuba and the Coming American Revolution,
> working people of Cuba showed us ???that with class solidarity, political
> consciousness, courage, focused and persistent efforts at education, and
> a revolutionary leadership of a caliber like that in Cuba ??? a leadership
> tested and forged in battle over years ??? it is possible to stand up to
> enormous might and seemingly insurmountable odds and win.???
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Related Articles
>
>
>
> ???Cuban people will resist US embargo and violations of our sovereignty???
> NEW YORK ??? ???The Cuban people are determined to withstand the U.S.
> government???s policy of aggression,??? said Ana Silvia Rodr??guez Abascal,
>
> Cuban deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, at a July
> 27 meeting here to celebrate the Cuban Revolution.???
>
>
> In This Issue
>
> Front Page Articles ???Colonial rule, capitalist crisis fueled Puerto Rico
> protests
> ???Airline, auto bosses target workers to boost profits
> ??????Amnesty for immigrants is in interest of all workers???
> ??????Cuban people will resist US embargo and violations of our
> sovereignty???
> ???Democrats??? Mueller expos?? falls flat as clashes in party sharpen
> ???Florida prison officials??? ban on ???Militant??? attacks Bill of Rights
>
> Feature Articles ???Yazidis in Iraq still displaced two years after
> Islamic State???s defeat
>
> Also In This Issue ???Joyce Meissenheimer was ???on right side of
> history???
> ???US gov???t plans to restart death penalty, target workers
> ???Black lung at highest rate in decades among miners
> ???Ohio college posts bond over ???racism??? smear of bakery owners
>
> Editorials ???Cuban Revolution shows workers can win
>
>
>
> Books of the Month ???How capitalism is revolutionizing parts of Africa
>
>
>
>
>
> 25, 50 and 75 years ago
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ?? Copyright 2019 The Militant?? -?? 306 W. 37th Street, 13th floor -?? New
>
> York, NY 10018?? -?? themilitant@mac.com
>
>
> Cookies
>
> This site uses cookies to improve your experience. Learn more.
>
> Okay, thank
>
> --
>
>
> ---
>
> George Carlin
> ??? Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the
> universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is
> wet, and they have to touch it to be sure. ???
> ??? George Carlin
>
>
>
>
>
>
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
Is Donald Trump merely a Pied Piper?
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2019 08:10:22 -0700
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Today
To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
No question about it, the War Clouds are gathering. But we need to
remind ourselves that Donald Trump is nothing more than the Carnival
Huckster, shouting out, "Come one, come all. Ladies and Gents. See
the Two Headed Political Party do the Side Step Tango. Watch the
World's greatest Double Talker, Mitch the Mouth, proving we can have
our cake and eat it too...if you don't mind eating his slobber. And
yes, above your very heads are those amazing tight rope walkers, the
Republican members of our very own US Senate, demonstrating the skill
of walking a fine line without falling to either side."
It's all very entertaining, if you like that sort of stuff, but it
begs the question. The question is, do we want to be part of the most
oppressive, violent expansionist empire in the history of the human
race?
And with it comes the question, Do we believe that we are a White
Race, superior to all other Races? And, if we think we are, do we
believe that we are being threatened with extinction?
The difficulty in getting at honest answers is that the very
information we rely upon has been twisted so as to create a "Fairy
Tale" history. The American history has Pilgrims sitting down to
share Thanksgiving dinner with the gentle Indians. It shows a new
nation that is billed as the Melting Pot of the World. It shows young
boys walking barefooted to one room school houses and growing up to
live in mansions, looking out over their sprawling factories, filled
with happy workers. Pioneers in covered wagons are seen rolling off
to the Gold Fields in California, where the Mexican residents welcome
them with open arms. "From Sea to Shining Sea" we sing...and beyond.
If we ignore what is going on around us, if we buy into that Make
Believe History, then one fine day we will be shocked when our great
American Empire implodes and is devoured by "Out-landers"
, and the void will be replaced by the next violent Horde of Empire Builders.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/6/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> NPR says that Trump is going to El Paso today to give his condolesnces. If
> I
> were in that city, I'd refuse his visit. It's his fhetoric that is the
> cause
> of the shooting there as well as the increase in domestic terrorist
> attacks.
> I'd publicly tell him that he isn't welcome. That would be resistance.
>
> I also hear that the US plus all its dependent lackies, are increasing
> sanctions on Venezuela so that the people will suffer so intensely that
> they
> will revolt against their democratically elected government and accept the
> US puppet who has been waiting to take over. However, that is not how NPR
> reported the story. NPR said that sanctions are being increased to remove a
> dictator.
>
> I also hear that China is rebelling against US military ships , I think
> it's
> ships, being stationed off its coast.
>
> Miriam
>
>
>
From: Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2019 08:10:22 -0700
Subject: Re: [blind-democracy] Today
To: blind-democracy@freelists.org
No question about it, the War Clouds are gathering. But we need to
remind ourselves that Donald Trump is nothing more than the Carnival
Huckster, shouting out, "Come one, come all. Ladies and Gents. See
the Two Headed Political Party do the Side Step Tango. Watch the
World's greatest Double Talker, Mitch the Mouth, proving we can have
our cake and eat it too...if you don't mind eating his slobber. And
yes, above your very heads are those amazing tight rope walkers, the
Republican members of our very own US Senate, demonstrating the skill
of walking a fine line without falling to either side."
It's all very entertaining, if you like that sort of stuff, but it
begs the question. The question is, do we want to be part of the most
oppressive, violent expansionist empire in the history of the human
race?
And with it comes the question, Do we believe that we are a White
Race, superior to all other Races? And, if we think we are, do we
believe that we are being threatened with extinction?
The difficulty in getting at honest answers is that the very
information we rely upon has been twisted so as to create a "Fairy
Tale" history. The American history has Pilgrims sitting down to
share Thanksgiving dinner with the gentle Indians. It shows a new
nation that is billed as the Melting Pot of the World. It shows young
boys walking barefooted to one room school houses and growing up to
live in mansions, looking out over their sprawling factories, filled
with happy workers. Pioneers in covered wagons are seen rolling off
to the Gold Fields in California, where the Mexican residents welcome
them with open arms. "From Sea to Shining Sea" we sing...and beyond.
If we ignore what is going on around us, if we buy into that Make
Believe History, then one fine day we will be shocked when our great
American Empire implodes and is devoured by "Out-landers"
, and the void will be replaced by the next violent Horde of Empire Builders.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/6/19, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
> NPR says that Trump is going to El Paso today to give his condolesnces. If
> I
> were in that city, I'd refuse his visit. It's his fhetoric that is the
> cause
> of the shooting there as well as the increase in domestic terrorist
> attacks.
> I'd publicly tell him that he isn't welcome. That would be resistance.
>
> I also hear that the US plus all its dependent lackies, are increasing
> sanctions on Venezuela so that the people will suffer so intensely that
> they
> will revolt against their democratically elected government and accept the
> US puppet who has been waiting to take over. However, that is not how NPR
> reported the story. NPR said that sanctions are being increased to remove a
> dictator.
>
> I also hear that China is rebelling against US military ships , I think
> it's
> ships, being stationed off its coast.
>
> Miriam
>
>
>
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)