CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Billionaires only come to the rescue in movies and comic books. Elon Musk is no more likely to save the day than Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne. People only believe he’s a hero because Hollywood has trained us to look for heroes, but Hollywood only does that to keep us searching for heroes outside ourselves.
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JOHN GERASSI—Che Guevara had no illusions about what this will mean in Latin America. He wrote: “The present moment may or may not be the proper one for starting the struggle, but we cannot harbor any illusions, we have no right to do so, that freedom can be obtained without fighting. And these battles shall not be mere street fights with stones against tear-gas bombs, nor pacific general strikes; neither will they be those of a furious people destroying in two or three days the repressive superstructure of the ruling oligarchies. The struggle will be long, harsh, and its battlefronts will be the guerrilla’s refuge, the cities, the homes of the fighters–where the repressive forces will go seeking easy victims among their families–among the massacred rural populations, in the villages or in cities destroyed by the bombardments of the enemy.”
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GLENN GREENWALD—I want to share a story about Cabo Daciolo. It has nothing to do with the election. Vote for whoever you want. David and Daciolo only met a few months ago, when they found themselves in the same party. A friendship quickly formed. David talked a lot about their bond. Since David was admitted to the ICU two months ago, Cabo Daciolo hasn’t stopped calling to ask about David, send prayers, give comfort. He went to David’s room in the ICU to pray with and for David – including just days before his election day. Few in Brazil’s political world have done as much. He did all this without seeking any attention. Indeed, he told me he didn’t want any media attention. He didn’t want any publicity.
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PEPE ESCOBAR—Meloni does confound primitive, crypto-“Left” American “experts”, who blame her at best for “semi-fascism” – and thus more dangerous than Marine Le Pen or Viktor Orban. Then she gets immediate redemption because at least vocally she proclaims to be anti-Russia and anti-China. But then again, the temptation to burn her at the stake is too great: after all she’s appreciated by Steve Bannon, who proclaimed four years ago that “you put a reasonable face on right-wing populism, you get elected.” And she keeps terrible company: Berlusconi is dismissed by the woke/neoliberal Americans as a “Putin buddy” and Salvini as a “firebrand nationalist”.
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Bruce Gagnon discusses the danger of Sweden and Finland joining NATO; the $40B gift to Ukraine is almost as large as Russia’s entire military budget of about $60B. And, we compared the US economy to the Russian economy: a “Tale of Two Countries.”
