I'm reading a work of fiction called The Nightingale right now. It 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'dAll to take its place.
have private medical accounts instead of Medicare. Social security
would be on the way to privatization. We'd be sending troops to Syria.
We would have no Iran deal. We would not have regularized our
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
conflicts.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 itsintervention.
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 stability. "
Yes but actually Daesh doesn't have territory the size of Indiana. 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 displaced?
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-supremacy
-
at-gop
-debate.htmlhttp://www.juancole.com/2016/01/war-talk-jingoism-and-whi
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 itsintervention.
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 stability. "
Yes but actually Daesh doesn't have territory the size of Indiana. 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 displaced?
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
