CAVEATS: Facebook is not working well for those who are still trying to change the world. As a big corporate vessel, it is neither reliable nor the best platform to exchange the many vital messages that the vanguard of humanity needs to see to sort out options and strategies. It is also a communications channel that, capitalist to the core, may vanish suddenly, unapologetically, a victim of market whims. All activists must take this into account and make provision for new venues, which we hope will materialize soon. Meanwhile, use it wisely.
Overheard on Facebook. Ponder, and circulate.
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Paul Street commented:
There's nothing more tiresome than listening to snotty senior fake-progressive professional class campus town know-it-all Know Nothing Obamanot-Clintonoid-Indivisible-Schumer-Pelosi-Loebsack (D-IA) Dems cluck and whine and bitch and moan and piss and rant (between bragging fests over their latest or coming European vacation) about Herr Donald. The Orange-Tinted Beast is their baby, their Frankenstein, their outcome, their legacy. They and their dismal, dollar-drenched working class-hating elitist neoliberalism is what brought us to this ugly precipice. They elected this monster. They are the Walking Dead Llberal Class and now they are cashing in on their betrayal with one globetrotting big carbon footprint jaunt after another, whining about big bad Trump every fun-filled step of the way. God how they suck.
Paul Street
I was such a fool as a young man. I never imagined things could get this dire in the U.S. and the world. I mean, I knew it intellectually -- and not just at the level of socialism or barbarism. There were plenty of dire ecological warnings (I think especially of Barry Commoner's Closing Circle, which made a big impression on me in the late 1970s) already by the end of the post-WWII "golden age" telling us it was "socialism or barbarism if we're lucky" (as Istvan Meszaros put it in 2001). But at some level I didn't believe it or just didn't want to and didn't process it fully. A natural defense mechanism, I suppose. But damn, we are in deep trouble as a species and have nobody to blame but ourselves and maybe at most a generation to move off this insane exterminist profits system or it really is curtains.
Simply can't recommend Paul Street's review of "Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama", the new biography by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Garrow. The reason is obvious: I haven't read Garrow's book yet.
I know it's pedantic. But how can you know if a reviewer's assessment of the book's strengths and weaknesses are accurate until you can compare their opinions to your own?
That said, Street has written a very good essay on Obama's "distinctly non-transformative and failed presidency.” The book contains a quote from one of Obama's oldest friends that says,
“Barack is a tragic figure: so much potential, such critical times, but such a failure to perform…like he is an empty shell…"
And that is a correct assessment. When future generations assess the wreck of the American Empire, they'll most likely assess Obama the way current historians perceive Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan: When the country needed a strong president, they went with the flow.
Among other things, Obama's decisions to (1) cripple the DNC's effectiveness by placing featherduster Debbie Does Wasserman as chair, and (2) anointing Hillary Clinton as his successor and doing everything possible to clear the field for her. Clinton's flaws and ineptness elected Darnold Turnip; Obama is primarily responsible for that.
The essay is well worth reading. If you can justify the time needed to finish a 1,460-page bio, Garrow's book probably is too.
Paul Street's review of Obama's biography by Garrow.
"Was this personal weakness and cowardice? The deeper reality is that Obama’s “deeply conservative” beliefs reflected an either calculated or heartfelt allegiance to neoliberal “free market” ideals and related pragmatic and “realistic” ruling- and elite professional-class values inculcated and absorbed at Harvard Law, in the corporate-captive foundation world, and through his many contacts in the elite business sector and the foreign policy establishment as he rose in the American System. Along with a bottomless commitment to the long American imperial project, those power-serving beliefs were written all over Obama’s conservative late 2006 campaign book The Audacity of Hope (Obama’s second book and his second book mainly about himself – see my critical review of it on Black Agenda Report in early 2007 here), whose right-wing and imperial content Garrow ignores. They also raised their head in the famous 2004 Democratic Convention Keynote Address (see my critical reflection on that oration at the time here) that did so much to make Obama an overnight national and even global celebrity – another document whose right-leaning ideological nature escapes Garrow’s attention."
Paul Street ....even now the ObamaLust lives on among so many Dems. Garrow has clearly escaped it, good on him, but I find his remarkable volume too focused on psychological flaws at the expense of class, empire, ideology, and even really race, deeply understood.
This system kills millions with bombs, missiles, artillery, bullets, bayonets, navy destroyers, aircraft carriers, drones, torture prisons, attack helicopters and the like; it kills more with the strokes of pens, financial spreadsheets, automation, parasitic debt and interest, standardized tests, credit ratings, "deregulation," de-unionization, segregation, wage-slavery, overwork, insurance premiums, tuition inflation, privatization. capital strike, carbon addiction, profit calculation, and victim-blaming neoliberal market ideology --- with social and economic inequality and exploitation and soullessness and their various vicious doctrinal justifications in school, media, church, the workplace, government, politics, and across daily "life." Capitalism kills, kills, kills, and kills some more. It drives millions to suicide and other forms of madness. It isn't done until it exterminates everything because it is literally hard-wired to wipe out livable ecology and the common good. At the risk of sounding Christian, it is evil. It's not a mid-wife to a better world. It's a malignant cancer that has brought us to the absurd and idiotic point where 8 fucking people have as much wealth between them as the bottom half of humanity atop a planet on the growth-addicted brink of "anthropogenic" (really capitalogenic) geocide.
Danica Niketic (The Greanville Post )
Andre Vitchek's plea to us all!
Please heed this plea for any and all countries of this planet.
"My only request, my appeal to all those people all over the planet who know nothing or very little about this part of the world in general and about the Philippines in particular, would be:
‘Please do not pass judgements based only on what you read in your own language and especially in English, and from the sources that have been, on so many occasions, and so thoroughly discredited. Come by yourself, come and see and listen. Like Venezuela many years ago, what is taking place in the Philippines is ‘an unknown territory’, an absolutely new concept.
Something different and unprecedented, is developing, taking shape. This is like no other revolution that took place before. Do not take part in ridiculing it, do not help to choke it, do not do anything damaging before you come and see for yourself, before you face those pleading eyes of the millions of people who were defenseless and abused for so long and who are all of a sudden standing tall, facing life with great hope and pride”.
Do not participate in depriving them of their own country. For the first time, after centuries of brutal colonialism, it is truly theirs. I repeat: for the first time. Now!
Do not deprive them of hope: it is all that they have, and it is much more than anything they ever had in decades and centuries.
Fidel Castro used to say: “Revolution is not a bed of roses.”
Revolution is a tough, often very hard job. It is never perfect; it could never be. To destroy any deeply rooted evil system takes guts, and inevitably, blood is spilled.
Duterte is not as ‘poetic’ as Fidel. He is a Visaya, a brilliant but rough, candid and an outspoken man. Often he is hyperbolic. He likes to shock his listeners, followers and foes.
But who is he, really? Who is this man who is threatening to close down all US military bases, to reach permanent peace with the Communists and Muslim insurgents, to realign his foreign policy and ideology with China and Russia, and to save the lives of tens of millions of poor people of the Philippines?
In search for the answers, let’s listen to those who really matter – the people of the Philippines.
Let’s silence the toxic waterfall of insults and selected pieces of ‘information’, coming from defunct Western media outlets; let’s silence it by adopting ‘Duterte’s outrageous but honest lexicon: “You propaganda media of the West, you animal, fuck you!”"
Source:
http://21stcenturywire.com/…/philippines-president-duterte…/
The Obama Legacy: Dead Muslims and Betrayed Liberals
Roland Vincent shared a link.
Being black is not the same as being liberal.
Liberals turned blind eyes to Obama’s war crimes and we deluded ourselves that a black man wouldn’t sell out to corporate interests.
What we got with Obama was a president closer to Ronald Reagan than to Bernie Sanders.
Obama killed more people than did George W Bush.
Obama prosecuted more whistleblowers than all US presidents combined.
Obama approved oil drilling in the Arctic.
Obama pronounced Chelsea Manning guilty before she ever went to trial.
Obama signed the Denying Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act for Monsanto, which prevents states from requiring GMO labeling.
Obama spent a trillion dollars on nuclear weapons.
Obama used the power of his office to try to push the TPP down America’s throat.
Obama bombed 7 countries with which we were not at war.
Obama killed civilians, including Americans, with drones.
Obama deported more people than any president in history.
Like most progressives, I regret having voted for him. Twice!
Tom Riviere shared a link.
I thought that Buffoon Trump said; that N.A.T.O is out of date ? Now he says; that some of the countries are behind on payments? Who would want to invest in this program when you never know which country America will attack next as a pretext to Drill,Kill,Spill and Loot.....Be Warned! It's dangerous to be America's enemy and it's fatal to be their friends..
Luciana Bohne shared Anthony Cartalucci's post.
The truth has become so obvious, so evident, so documented that only the willfully blind can't see it.
The "Islamic State" can't reach into Asia, including taking an entire city in the Philippines...
... or acting in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia...
... without substantial state sponsorship.
The US and Saudi Arabia are fueling the spread of ISIS through fake mosques/madrasas, fake human rights advocacy to prevent targeted governments from targeting these networks, and outright covert/overt subversion.
http://journal-neo.org/…/isis-touches-down-in-the-philippi…/
Trump did not scrap Article 5 of NATO; Bill Clinton did
Western European NATO allies were shocked that Trump meeting in Bruxelles recently did NOT re-affirm the "collective defense" clause of Article 5 of the founding charter of the pact.
"Trump Declines to Affirm NATO's Article 5," writes The Atlantic
Have they forgotten that they themselves violated the spirit and the letter of Article 5 when they agreed to bomb Yugoslav air force flying over Bosnia in 1994--first war action since NATO's foundation in 1949? That they agreed by that action to act as "humanitarian interventionists" in clear abuse of Article 5 and violation of the UN Charter? That they attacked the state of Yugoslavia, which had not attacked any NATO member state nor was a NATO member?
NATO's agreeing to bomb in Bosnia, Yugoslav territory, shredded the collective-defense clause of Article 5. Article 5 was then incinerated by the NATO bombing of Serbia for 78 days, March-June 1999.
This was no collective self-defense. This was putting NATO at the service of US objectives ANYWHERE. They agreed in fact to operate in a OFFENSIVE capacity outside Western Europe, NATO's domain, which had been the sole territory NATO was formed in 1949 to DEFEND.
For 78 days, 1100 airplanes effected 38,000 sorties, dropping 23,000 bombs and missiles. 75% of the planes and 90%of the bombs and missiles were furnished by US. The US supplied the network of communication, the line of command, control, and intelligence of operations.
Later, the Pentagon noted (and obviously COMPLAINED) that
"of the 2000 targets hit in Serbia by NATO planes, 1999 were chosen by the US and only one by the Europeans."
So, you see, dear Western European NATO allies, Trump speaks with the voice of the Pentagon who considers you "useless" and a waste of US "investment." I'm sure this hurts your pride in being allied with "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today," (MLK) but did you not know that the US has no friends but only "interests"?
You agreed to be used, and now you're being discarded--"you" European members that is; NATO will live on as the American military legion abroad, and you will pay, but you will no longer have the justification of bombing people in "self-defense"--nor any authority of your own.
So, Germany will offer you the chance to form a European army of your own? PAH-thetic. What you gonna do--seize the US military bases in Europe? You're all mad--and the maddest of all is the US, which you served, collecting crumbs from the master's table.
You are indeed "obsolete"--useless, as far as the Pentagon White House is concerned. AND IT WAS BOUND TO HAPPEN. I couldn't be happier, you subordinate vassals of a criminal imperialist state, which bombed the chemical plant at Pancevo, releasing dioxin--and used depleted uranium weapons on Yugoslavia, which had neither threatened you nor done you any harm.
Collective self-defense, Article 5, was it? You hypocrites...
Comments
The "Goldberg Plan" to oust Duterte is a copy of the plan to oust Assad--the same that ousted Mossadegh in 1953, Allende in 1973, and so many, many others.
Anyway: "The primordial reasons why would they want to remove Duterte are his decisive Pivot to China and Russia and his highly effective war on drugs.
The first measure has dealt a destructive blow to the Clinton-Obama “Pivot to Asia” doctrine to mitigate the growing influence of China in the region.
The second one, dented the CIA drug sales in the country, in a big way.
Luciana Bohne : "Nothing tells you how close fascism is than the liberal establishment siding with the police state. From 1920s Italy to 1970 South Africa to US NOW, this is a historical record. In truth, Liberals fear the masses--and though Trump is no threat to capitalism, the unwashed masses that voted for him are. They may even learn who their real enemies are and organize properly--and then where will the peaceful, genteel, "educated" classes be?
No noise, no uproar, no change--not from outside. That's the life preferred by the falsely (and barely) conscious--except for their comfort.
Time to re-read Camus' The Plague."
"I just spotted a sponsored post by the Intercept saying:
"Exclusive: Russian government hacking may have penetrated further into U.S. voting systems than was previously understood."
They support White Helmets while demonizing President Duterte, and I guess now they are complicit in the colonizing agenda against Russia. Or maybe that's what they've been saying all along since the sponsor paid for the US backed Ukrainian coup. I don't know. I don't care about what they say." ~ Hiroyuki Hamada
Luciana Bohne shared Mint Press News's photo.
Shamed.
Mint Press News with Meraj Mastan.
Remember the viral photo of Omran from Aleppo, Syria? Turns out we didn't get the whole story of how that photo was taken...
Luciana Bohne shared SouthFront's post.
It's not funny, really, but . . . it is. How many have that picture of the boy embedded in their minds and will never read his father's true story? That's how propaganda lies works.
SouthFront DON'T MISS THIS ONE!
The dad of the the boy whose photo was used by the mainstream media in a propaganda war against the Syrian-Iranian-Russian alliance tells the truth about this case. https://southfront.org/video-msm-propaganda-turns-against-…/
Nobody is going to murder Corbyn physically.. He's not Aldo Moro, bringing Euro-communists (a sanitized bunch) into the executive. They will kill him politically. Later. If his cabinet opposes the imperialist wars.
Snap out of it.
The Trump presidency could only emerge from the putrefied sewers of the liberal state in decay, spreading cholera. Clinton and Obama were amorally, cheerfully, and confidently perverse in their warmongering, and Bush Jr was a committee of war criminals.
Things are not looking good for the next one. Tough act to follow, but I'm sure some antediluvian species of deadly rat will be found.
6 June 2017 The Fake News: CNN stages a demonstration in London to report on later.
Luciana Bohne shared Sputnik's post.
Hope those hideous billboards--chapels of the temple of capitalism--will bloat, burst, and float away. Still, not quite your Venice on the Hudson/East River.
This is just what #NYC will look like if global temperatures increase by just two degrees Celsius (WARNING: This video puts you at a high risk of believing in #ClimateChange). https://sptnkne.ws/e8X6
Patrice Greanville is editor in chief and founding editor of The Greanville Post. Publisher of the first US radical media review, Cyrano's Journal, he has been fighting corporate lies and confusion for almost five decades, and the job keeps getting worse.
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