Yes, and I appreciate that when you use the word, "we", you are expressing
your identification with, and concern, for all humankind. However, having
lived in a racially and economically integrated community for a good part of
my life, I'm not sure that some of the less fortunate people of color whom
I've encountered, would appreciate what you are attempting to communicate.
From the point of view of the dispossessed, you and I are in very different
positions in life from them. They would see any attempt to equate our
situations with their's, as being false. In the PTA, they had no problem
working together with more financially advantaged people on committees
because we all had children in the same schools. But when more advantaged
white people assumed leadership positions, there was a subtle change in
relationships. And whatever relationships were formed around school issues,
did not, unfortunately, move on to other areas of life.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, January 19, 2016 11:25 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: War Talk, Jingoism and White Supremacy at GOP
Debate
Good points, Miriam. You end by saying, "But neither Carl nor I are
suffering and so we should not allow our rhetoric to confuse us about the
reality of our situations."
This is true if we are looking at the situations of Miriam and Carl.
But we are living in, and part of a much larger Reality. The Bible reminds
us, "Even as you do unto the least of them, so you do unto yourself".
And of course there is the Golden Rule, ignored by many of today's self
proclaimed Christians. Despite our rush to embrace Self Indulgence in
today's greed driven Land, there exists a still small voice, crying out in
the wilderness. We can ignore the suffering of those we deem less fortunate
than ourselves, and follow that smooth broad road to Hell, or we can pause
and listen to the small, clear whisper calling for our help, roll up our
sleeves and step off our safe place and join the battle to save Humanity and
Planet Earth.
How each of us deals with this is up to our individual differences.
Suffice it to say, we will not win unless we find some way to make our
voices known.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/18/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm reading a work of fiction called The Nightingale right now. ItSyria.
describes what life was like in France during World War 2. Of course,
I've read the facts before in other fiction books and in non fiction
books. I've read more books that deal with what it was like to live
under a Nazi regime than I can count. I've also read a whole lot of
books that describe what it was like to live in Russia and China under
Communist authoritarian rule. The other day I read somewhere that the
way to help people understand what life is like for people who are
being oppressed, is to tell stories about individual people.
It helps folks understand on an emotional level, things that they
might gloss over if they were reading objective facts. I think that
this article related to describing what is happening to the
Palestinians. Anyway, as I was saying, I'm reading this book which
reminds me what real oppression is like, what it's like when there is
truly not enough food, when everyone who is wearing a yellow star is
pulled out of their homes in a French village, and loaded on buses,
and soldiers shoot anyone who interferes with the process. Black
people in our poor neighborhoods experience some of this, but not all
of it. Palestinians are experiencing it now. I know that neither Carl
nor I are hungry. We both are safe and warm in homes that we own.
Neither of us will be arrested because of our ethnicity, religion, or
disability. If we chose to engage in civil disobedience, we might be
arrested, but that would be a choice that we would have made. We are
both old enough so that we have seen our country go through a lot of
change, and also, we see how, in many ways, it has stayed the same.
Neither of us come from financially comfortable backgrounds, and both
of us benefited from a social welfare state to the extent that we
gained a higher education and worked in professional positions. We
live in an unequal society which is becoming more unequal. We live in
what Hedges calls an inverted democracy or some such thing, certainly
not a true democracy. But neither Carl nor I are suffering and so we
should not allow our rhetoric to confuse us about the reality of our
situations.
Miriam .
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2016 8:51 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: War Talk, Jingoism and White Supremacy
at GOP Debate
So, looks like a Mexican Standoff. Your list of, "Good", cancels my
list of, "Not so Good". I'm not going to try convincing folks that
voting for either Party is selling out the Working Class Americans.
But that's exactly what we're doing when we vote for the, "lesser of
two Evils".
What has become of the Party that represented the needs and the values
of Working Class America? Without doing a great deal of
investigation, I do know that it did Americans no favors when FDR made
a pact with the Dixicrats. In the short haul it gave him the votes to
stave off a revolution and save Capitalism. We Workers gained some
serious help, and it looked as if we were on the road to a real
People's Government. But FDR did not take the real power away from
the Ruling Class. What he did accomplish was to force the Ruling
Class to back off a bit and to return to the Workers some of what they
had taken from them. This in no way changed the balance of power.
Control still rested safely in the hands of the wealthy. They still
made huge returns on their investments, just not as huge as they had
been used to. But following the War, they once again began a steady
campaign, working to discredit labor unions, non whites, blue collar
labor, and Liberals.
They played on our fears and our vanity. We feared a Communist takeover.
We couldn't trust a Mexican or Negro or even a China man, or Filipino.
Office workers and small businessmen dressed and acted like their
Ruling Class Masters, turning up their noses at their Blue Collar
brothers. The "Middle Class" resented the fact that Blue Collar
workers were organized and often earned more than the White Collar
folk.
Anyway, I digress. My point remains, it doesn't matter who we vote
into this government of the Rich, for the Rich and by the Rich. Our
vote simply affirms their ownership of the government. And besides,
regardless of how we feel about voting for whom, we are steadily
losing our Rights and any little Freedom we still possess.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/18/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Yes, Yes. But if we'd had a Republican President elected in 2012,
we'd have private medical accounts instead of Medicare. Social
security would be on the way to privatization. We'd be sending troops to
stability. "We would have no Iran deal. We would not have regularized ourAll to take its place.
relationship with Cuba. We wouldn't have had the Dream Act. The
Affordable Health Care Act would have been repealed with no Medicare
For
conflicts.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl ;
Jarvis
Sent: Monday, January 18, 2016 2:33 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: War Talk, Jingoism and White Supremacy
at GOP Debate
Of course it matters who is elected president. I know this because
of the great efforts by Right Wingers to push a Republican into the
office, despite the grim choices. But wait just a moment. Didn't
the People make it clear in 2008 and again in 2012 that they wanted a
reduction in our World-Wide military buildup? So the People put in
the Prince of Peace, Barak Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
To date Obama has cancelled no wars, cut nothing from the Military
Budget, nor has he eased back on the harsh deportation of desperate
men, women and children.
During his loving 8 years, women have seen a great reduction in
health services. Blacks and Browns are still being brutalized on the
streets and slammed into the new private prisons, where they are used
as...well, as slave labor!
The "Middle Class", those workers too good to be part of the Working
Class, are losing ground, both in numbers as well as in earning power.
Health care for all is nowhere nearly covering all Americans, and for
those of us on Medicare, our Supplemental Insurance is rising despite
no increase in the Cost of Living.
The vaunted "recovery" seems to be only at the top, and there are
strong indications that 2016 will bring in another major recession.
States such as Michigan are getting away with murder...literally,
Since Ronald Reagan began the attack on the "Middle Class", our
working class as a whole, has lost thousands of factories and
millions of jobs to overseas competition.
But yes, it does matter who is elected. The problem is that there is
no way the right person stands a chance in Hell.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/17/16, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
So you think it doesn't matter if one of these guys wins the Presidency?
You
think there's really no difference between them and the Democrats?
Miriam
Cole writes: "Message seemed to be, white rich billionaires being
unfairly taxed, regulated and facing competition from Asian
businesses, which also isn't fair, and we're not being allowed to
sail into other people's waters with impunity, and our Middle East
and Asian allies are secretly screwing us over."
Republican presidential candidates (L-R) Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL),
Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) participate in the Fox
Business Network Republican presidential debate at the North
Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center on January 14, 2016
in North Charleston, South Carolina. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty
Images)
War Talk, Jingoism and White Supremacy at GOP Debate By Juan Cole,
Informed Comment
17 January 16
The GOP presidential debate last night veered even further right on
international issues, given the absence of Ron Paul, who represents
the Libertarian wing of the party that is less interested in foreign
wars.
Ted Cruz started off with a promise of war on Iran over the brief
detention of 10 US sailors who drifted into Iranian waters:
"And I give you my word, if I am elected president, no service man
or service woman will be forced to be on their knees, and any nation
that captures our fighting men will feel the full force and fury of
the United States of America."
As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, the more Neoconservative US media
were hoping to use the Iran incident to cast a pall on the nuclear
deal and the end of sanctions, and gin up war fever in the US. Why
an incursion of the US Navy into Iranian territorial waters and a
brief detention after which the sailors and their ship were released
should be an affront to the US as opposed to Iran is not clear. It
is also not clear what the US Navy was actually doing in Iran. Cruz
attacked Obama for not bringing the incident up in his State of the
Union address, but that was because Obama and John Kerry had
assurances from Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif that the
sailors would be released shortly. They could get that assurance
because Kerry and Zarif have a good working relationship coming off
two and a half years of intensive diplomacy. That, Mr. Cruz, is how
you resolve minor
Notdidn't invade.
with the "full force and fury" of your country, especially when it
is in the wrong in international law. And what the full force and
fury really means is that you intend to get US soldiers, sailors and
Marines killed for no good reason.
Then Maria Bartiromo threw this set of soft balls to Chris Christie:
"BARTIROMO: We know that recent global events have many people
worried
- Iran detaining American sailors, forcing them to apologize; North
Korea and its nuclear ambitions; an aggressive China; and a Middle
East that continues to deteriorate, not to mention ISIS is getting
stronger."
As noted, the detention of American sailors was their own fault and
they did commit a wrong so if they apologized that was only right
(what do you think would happen if 10 Iranian sailors came up near
the New York shore?).
China's "aggression" seems mainly to be doing landfill in their
territorial waters. China hasn't invaded anybody recently, whereas
the US has thrashed about invading numerous countries, and droning
the ones it
Rather than strengthening, Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) has lost 40% of its
territory; and it isn't clear what she means that the Middle East is
'deteriorating'
except that Israel is stealing a lot of Palestinian land in the
Occupied West Bank and killing Palestinians when they resist.
Christie responded that he would work with US allies. As far as I
can tell, Sec. Kerry has done that very intensively. What alliances
would Christie strengthen, exactly? Then Christie said, "It's a -
it's absolutely disgraceful that Secretary Kerry and others said in
their response to what's going on in Iran that this was a good
thing; it showed how the relationship was getting better." He
associated himself with Cruz's saber-rattling and underscored that
the GOP candidates saw the diplomatic resolution of the 16-hour
detention of US sailors who came into Iranian territory to be a
terrible waste of an opportunity for a war.
JEB! took on President Obama's attempt to calm the public the eff
down about
Daesh:
"Think about it. With grandiose language, the president talks about
red lines and nothing to follow it up; talks about ISIS being the JV
team, they form a caliphate the size of Indiana with 35 (thousand)
to 40,000 battle-tested terrorists. He's missing the whole point,
that America's leadership in the world is required for peace and
displaced?Yes but actually Daesh doesn't have territory the size of Indiana.intervention.
It is more like Oklahoma. And they've lost a lot of it in the past year.
And 35,000 fighters isn't very many. Iraq under Saddam Hussein had a
million-man army, which the US handily defeated. We should have our
hair on fire because of 35,000 juvenile delinquents in some dusty
desert towns in countries where the government collapsed (JEB!'s
brother made one of those governments collapse, by the way).
Then Donald Trump linked the Paris and Jakarta bombings to
immigration. But those were done by locals. Trump used the San
Bernardino shootings as a reason to stop immigration. But he didn't
refer to the Planned Parenthood shooting from around the same time,
done by a white guy whose family had been here for a bit.
John Kasich then broke from the consensus that the US has to
strengthen its alliances in the Middle East, by attacking Saudi Arabia.
"In terms of Saudi Arabia, look, my biggest problem with them is
they're funding radical clerics through their madrasses. That is a
bad deal and an evil situation, and presidents have looked the other
way.
And I was going to tell you, whether I'm president or not, we better
make it clear to the Saudis that we're going to support you, we're
in relation with you just like we were in the first Gulf War, but
you've got to knock off the funding and teaching of radical clerics
who are the very people who try to destroy us and will turn around
and destroy them."
Then Kasich quickly lost the Millennials by remembering that he used
to be worried about the spread of something called communism in
Central America back in the 1970s.
Then Kasich quickly backed off everything he said about Saudi Arabia:
"You see what the Saudi's - deliver them a strong message but at the
end of the day we have to keep our cool because most of the time
they're going right with us. And they must be part of our coalition
to destroy ISIS and I believe we can get that done."
So I guess the Saudis are our essential allies and generally good
guys but just have this one bad habit about which we have to stage
an
Chris Christie said he wanted to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria
but also to 'rebuild' the coalition against Daesh/ ISIS.
I'm puzzled. If you weaken Daesh, you strengthen al-Assad. If you
weaken al-Assad, you strengthen Daesh. And, what about al-Qaeda, the
third force in Syria. If you weaken the other two, doesn't it take
over?
JEB! pointed out to Donald Trump that the US has Muslim Gurkhas
fighting for our empire against Daesh and we would lose them if we
were mean to all Muslims.
Kasich took the same line, recalling the Gulf War (Millennials
scratching
heads): "It was a coalition made up of Arabs and Americans and
westerners and we're going to need it again. And if we try to put
everybody in the same
- call everybody the same thing, we can't do it. And that's just not
acceptable."
Isn't it disturbing that the argument is so nakedly instrumental,
and nothing to do with the Constitution or American values?
Even Kasich was against letting in Syrian refugees. But the US has
given T.O.W. anti-tank munitions to Salafi Syrian rebels through
Saudi Arabia, prolonging and intensifying the war. Some of those
weapons have gone to Daesh and al-Qaeda. So we should displace
people through our covert intervention but then not help out the
stability. "conflicts.Then Trump argued for a trade war with China.
Marco Rubio disagreed with him.
Cruz wants to abolish the IRS but will balance the budget and expand
the Pentagon.
My eyes glazed over.
Message seemed to be, white rich billionaires being unfairly taxed,
regulated and facing competition from Asian businesses, which also
isn't fair, and we're not being allowed to sail into other people's
waters with impunity, and our Middle East and Asian allies are
secretly screwing us over, and there are 35,000 armed fanatics in
the desert, and nobody has sent in the US Army, and there are all
these non-white people around here and while most violence may be
done by white people but it just won't be allowed in the case of
recent immigrants, and that has to be paused even though several of
the candidates had an immigrant parent or grandparent.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference
not valid.
Republican presidential candidates (L-R) Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL),
Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) participate in the Fox
Business Network Republican presidential debate at the North
Charleston Coliseum and Performing Arts Center on January 14, 2016
in North Charleston, South Carolina. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty
Images)
http://www.juancole.com/2016/01/war-talk-jingoism-and-white-supremac
y
-
at-gop
-debate.htmlhttp://www.juancole.com/2016/01/war-talk-jingoism-and-wh
i
t
e-supr
emacy-at-gop-debate.html
War Talk, Jingoism and White Supremacy at GOP Debate By Juan Cole,
Informed Comment
17 January 16
he GOP presidential debate last night veered even further right on
international issues, given the absence of Ron Paul, who represents
the Libertarian wing of the party that is less interested in foreign
wars.
Ted Cruz started off with a promise of war on Iran over the brief
detention of 10 US sailors who drifted into Iranian waters:
"And I give you my word, if I am elected president, no service man
or service woman will be forced to be on their knees, and any nation
that captures our fighting men will feel the full force and fury of
the United States of America."
As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, the more Neoconservative US media
were hoping to use the Iran incident to cast a pall on the nuclear
deal and the end of sanctions, and gin up war fever in the US. Why
an incursion of the US Navy into Iranian territorial waters and a
brief detention after which the sailors and their ship were released
should be an affront to the US as opposed to Iran is not clear. It
is also not clear what the US Navy was actually doing in Iran. Cruz
attacked Obama for not bringing the incident up in his State of the
Union address, but that was because Obama and John Kerry had
assurances from Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif that the
sailors would be released shortly. They could get that assurance
because Kerry and Zarif have a good working relationship coming off
two and a half years of intensive diplomacy. That, Mr. Cruz, is how
you resolve minor
Notdidn't invade.
with the "full force and fury" of your country, especially when it
is in the wrong in international law. And what the full force and
fury really means is that you intend to get US soldiers, sailors and
Marines killed for no good reason.
Then Maria Bartiromo threw this set of soft balls to Chris Christie:
"BARTIROMO: We know that recent global events have many people
worried
- Iran detaining American sailors, forcing them to apologize; North
Korea and its nuclear ambitions; an aggressive China; and a Middle
East that continues to deteriorate, not to mention ISIS is getting
stronger."
As noted, the detention of American sailors was their own fault and
they did commit a wrong so if they apologized that was only right
(what do you think would happen if 10 Iranian sailors came up near
the New York shore?).
China's "aggression" seems mainly to be doing landfill in their
territorial waters. China hasn't invaded anybody recently, whereas
the US has thrashed about invading numerous countries, and droning
the ones it
Rather than strengthening, Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) has lost 40% of its
territory; and it isn't clear what she means that the Middle East is
'deteriorating'
except that Israel is stealing a lot of Palestinian land in the
Occupied West Bank and killing Palestinians when they resist.
Christie responded that he would work with US allies. As far as I
can tell, Sec. Kerry has done that very intensively. What alliances
would Christie strengthen, exactly? Then Christie said, "It's a -
it's absolutely disgraceful that Secretary Kerry and others said in
their response to what's going on in Iran that this was a good
thing; it showed how the relationship was getting better." He
associated himself with Cruz's saber-rattling and underscored that
the GOP candidates saw the diplomatic resolution of the 16-hour
detention of US sailors who came into Iranian territory to be a
terrible waste of an opportunity for a war.
JEB! took on President Obama's attempt to calm the public the eff
down about
Daesh:
"Think about it. With grandiose language, the president talks about
red lines and nothing to follow it up; talks about ISIS being the JV
team, they form a caliphate the size of Indiana with 35 (thousand)
to 40,000 battle-tested terrorists. He's missing the whole point,
that America's leadership in the world is required for peace and
displaced?Yes but actually Daesh doesn't have territory the size of Indiana.intervention.
It is more like Oklahoma. And they've lost a lot of it in the past year.
And 35,000 fighters isn't very many. Iraq under Saddam Hussein had a
million-man army, which the US handily defeated. We should have our
hair on fire because of 35,000 juvenile delinquents in some dusty
desert towns in countries where the government collapsed (JEB!'s
brother made one of those governments collapse, by the way).
Then Donald Trump linked the Paris and Jakarta bombings to
immigration. But those were done by locals. Trump used the San
Bernardino shootings as a reason to stop immigration. But he didn't
refer to the Planned Parenthood shooting from around the same time,
done by a white guy whose family had been here for a bit.
John Kasich then broke from the consensus that the US has to
strengthen its alliances in the Middle East, by attacking Saudi Arabia.
"In terms of Saudi Arabia, look, my biggest problem with them is
they're funding radical clerics through their madrasses. That is a
bad deal and an evil situation, and presidents have looked the other
way.
And I was going to tell you, whether I'm president or not, we better
make it clear to the Saudis that we're going to support you, we're
in relation with you just like we were in the first Gulf War, but
you've got to knock off the funding and teaching of radical clerics
who are the very people who try to destroy us and will turn around
and destroy them."
Then Kasich quickly lost the Millennials by remembering that he used
to be worried about the spread of something called communism in
Central America back in the 1970s.
Then Kasich quickly backed off everything he said about Saudi Arabia:
"You see what the Saudi's - deliver them a strong message but at the
end of the day we have to keep our cool because most of the time
they're going right with us. And they must be part of our coalition
to destroy ISIS and I believe we can get that done."
So I guess the Saudis are our essential allies and generally good
guys but just have this one bad habit about which we have to stage
an
Chris Christie said he wanted to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria
but also to 'rebuild' the coalition against Daesh/ ISIS.
I'm puzzled. If you weaken Daesh, you strengthen al-Assad. If you
weaken al-Assad, you strengthen Daesh. And, what about al-Qaeda, the
third force in Syria. If you weaken the other two, doesn't it take
over?
JEB! pointed out to Donald Trump that the US has Muslim Gurkhas
fighting for our empire against Daesh and we would lose them if we
were mean to all Muslims.
Kasich took the same line, recalling the Gulf War (Millennials
scratching
heads): "It was a coalition made up of Arabs and Americans and
westerners and we're going to need it again. And if we try to put
everybody in the same
- call everybody the same thing, we can't do it. And that's just not
acceptable."
Isn't it disturbing that the argument is so nakedly instrumental,
and nothing to do with the Constitution or American values?
Even Kasich was against letting in Syrian refugees. But the US has
given T.O.W. anti-tank munitions to Salafi Syrian rebels through
Saudi Arabia, prolonging and intensifying the war. Some of those
weapons have gone to Daesh and al-Qaeda. So we should displace
people through our covert intervention but then not help out the
Then Trump argued for a trade war with China.
Marco Rubio disagreed with him.
Cruz wants to abolish the IRS but will balance the budget and expand
the Pentagon.
My eyes glazed over.
Message seemed to be, white rich billionaires being unfairly taxed,
regulated and facing competition from Asian businesses, which also
isn't fair, and we're not being allowed to sail into other people's
waters with impunity, and our Middle East and Asian allies are
secretly screwing us over, and there are 35,000 armed fanatics in
the desert, and nobody has sent in the US Army, and there are all
these non-white people around here and while most violence may be
done by white people but it just won't be allowed in the case of
recent immigrants, and that has to be paused even though several of
the candidates had an immigrant parent or grandparent.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
