Religion, A Dictator.

     Because of America's brutal imperialist policies against Iran, some people will side with Iran, but we should never forget, Iran is just another corrupt authoritarian regime that wishes to control the people and enforce its own particular brand of dogma and ideology. Just like our own authoritarian states in the West, it has its secret police, it is riddled with corruption, it has its torturers, its large humanity killing prisons, its brutal minions who carry out the savage dictate of the regime. As in other states across the globe, there is no room for freedom and justice in their agenda. Corporate dictator, or religious dictator, is no choice at all.

This from asrananarchism:

       Only they who have lost their fear of death are in truly in love… My heart yearns for comrades who can hear my voice even though a more a dreadful and torturous prison awaits me for the crime of wanting to be a voice for the oppressed and my fellow inmates. Yet to be human is to endure the hardship of accepting responsibility, and there is no greater responsibility for the rebel than to stand with the oppressed. I must be the voice of people like Meysam, and thus refuse to fear Two Alef, 209, One Alef, and the regime’s other horrific prisons
        Meysam is an 18 year old youth from the Parand district who was arrested by agents of IRGC Tharallah military base for joining the protests against the increase in the price of gasoline that swept the country in November. Facing the charges of assembling and conspiring against the state, he is currently incarcerated in the 5th block of the Greater Tehran Central Prison. Despite his youth, Meysam’s hands are covered in callouses from being forced to be the sole breadwinner that his mother and sister depend on after losing his father to a traffic accident. He would work from dawn until midnight in the freezing cold of winter and the scorching heat of summer, delivering food on a motorcycle and pursuing his studies at night. After the sudden increase in the prices of gasoline, Meysam took to the streets to get his voice heard
       He says, “Even before the price increases, I was barely able to make enough to meet my family’s most basic needs. For me and others like me, traveling and leisure have always been out of reach like a mirage, but after the price increases, I can’t even afford the cost of rent, food, healthcare, and basic utilities. Who will answer our cries of agony with help?” Not only was there no help to be found, but his protestations were answered with blows from electric prods and batons. He was berated and tortured multiple times while his interrogator stood above him with a baton and electric prod and coerced him into confessing that he was taking orders from the United States and Israel and a member of so and so group dedicated to overthrowing the regime. Masyam asks “where the hell are America and Israel? I’ve never even traveled further than Shah Abdol-Azim’s Shrine! I just want to make enough income to live and an economy that isn’t corrupt. How does that make me an insurrectionist----

Read the full article HERE: 

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Death Throes Of A Psychopathic Fantasy.

      Quite a long article, but it does feel good to get it off your chest, this piece by Paul Edwards, rolls out a lot of my own thoughts over the years. Not that the rest of the capitalist countries of oligarchs, dictators and  representative democracies are not corrupt, just that America leads the world on brutality, greed, corruption and fabricating illusions. I also believe that the end of American savage self destructive imperialism will happen sooner rather than later, and boy, will that leave a mess, that we the people will have to clean up to survive, and attempt salvage the disaster and turn it into that better world. We should be preparing for it now.

 America bring democracy to Iraq.

       From The Greanville Post, by Paul Edwards:

      Back in the days when the Deep State’s diktats commanded a modicum of credibility, its stated goal was worldwide military “full spectrum dominance”. Twenty years of grossly humiliating failure in its murderously ineffectual floundering has rendered that idea null, even to doctrinaire NeoCon wanks.
       Instead, the WWII term for total situational dysfunction and chaos is now so perfectly descriptive of our national Goon Show that it seems made for it. Back then, when a major planned operation went tits up, GIs described it as “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition” and the acronym stuck. Consider:
       America raped and bludgeoned half a dozen countries that never harmed it while financing two that injured it materially. That monumental destruction, and the funneling of billions to whore states Isreal and Saudi Arabia (much of it earmarked for death merchants Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Boeing) gorged the War Machine at the price of tens of thousands of young American’s lives, bodies, and sanity. Americans mostly don’t care, of course, but that, too, is a fubar indicator.
       In America’s chief industry and source of psychotic pride--making weapons of war--the genius of Capitalism has diligently devised ways to gouge more and more money for less and less quality in extravagantly non-performing turkeys. The motive, Putin observed, is that while Russia makes arms for defense, America does so to maximize War Machine profits. This is why America puts billions into endless iterations of gold-plated F-35s that break down and don’t work, and aircraft carriers that were gangbusters at Midway against Zeroes but are now just lumbering, gigantic pinatas Russia’s Kinzhal hypersonic missiles will blow the jujus out of in a Moscow minute.
       Russia’s hypersonic, non-ballistic missiles--its phenomenal Avangard inter-continental system (Mach 27) and the Kinzhal and Zircon land and sea-based missiles that operate above Mach 9 (6000 mph)--are untrackable and indestructable by US defenses, and are generations ahead of anything America is even testing. This data isn’t secret; it’s openly available and the US Military has it. Regarding the old days of bitter US/Russian weapons rivalry, Mr. Putin said, “They didn’t listen to us then; they’ll listen to us now.”
     America has lately performed the exquisitely difficult geopolitical maneuver of alienating all nations it considers friends while simultaneously actively provoking those it considers enemies. That extraordinary diplomatic Quadruple Axel had never yet been attempted, much less accomplished.
      America has undermined, abrogated, or withdrawn from the entire web of international nuclear arms control treaties, in addition to unilaterally and dishonestly sabotaging the nuclear JCPOA with Iran to the dismay of our “partners”. It did this at a time when it’s futile mayhem in the Arab world has made it the butt of the world’s derision, its Imperial hubris has alienated even its European vassals, and when Russia and China, which have been moderate and restrained in absorbing US rants and tantrums--knowing the mortal risk of brinksmanship as America can’t--have the resolve, if forced, to go all in and show this deluded Empire what real war is all about.
         In addition to its military and diplomatic faceplants, the US has appalled and estranged most of the world with its oafish, braindead denial of rapidly accelerating climate change, and is leading the omnicidal charge of gross polluting nations against all science and sanity toward a blistering, toxic, inundated, and perhaps even humanly uninhabitable earth.
        So much for our status in the world; America is the active definition of fubar at home. A blundering Capitalist Fascist tyranny burlesquing shamelessly as a democracy, run as a Mafia Family for its vicious oligarchs and owners, with a Kshatriya class of Deep State Security thugs managing its clownish Punch-and-Judy politics to mesmerize the rubes, it has baldly stolen every benefit, every right, every security, and every source of pride from its dull people and left them with porn, dope, toons, and cage fighting in place of hopes, dreams or aspirations beyond becoming one of their own exploiters.
       Our Capitalist ruling class, entrenched in absolute power behind a symbolic Potemkin Government of flunkies comprised of a contemptible claque of hicks, clods, whores, and sleazy, Cracker hypocrites--our Congress--that stages infantile foodfights to cozen the gullible, rapes and robs us with the blessing of a justice system that is the black embodiment of corruption. Pathologically greedy, Capitalists have abandoned production as a less efficient way to plunder the public good than financial chicanery, bank fraud, and tax crime. Poisoned by their disease, they lack even the foresight to alter their sick voracity in the face of the climate catastrophe that is driving mass extinction and may portend the end of humanity itself.
        After half a century producing nothing of benefit to the American people, our Congress, fiercely divided for melodrama’s sake on fairytale principles neither gang respects or adheres to, focused only on doling trillions in fiat money to its masters, is fully engaged in an exercise so ridiculous and debased that a rational nation would summarily dissolve and eliminate it.
        A criminal sociopathic President, impeached by a criminal, sociopathic Congress, not for high crimes in which they have been deeply complicit, but on two empty, trivial, puny premises, with the charade locked in insoluble stasis while the clueless country hurtles toward catastrophe: this is what is laughingly referred to as government in this sad, stupid, criminal nation.
        QED, Fubar is indisputably the term that applies. Perceptive cynics will take issue, saying that because great Capitalist thieves have both hands deeper into the national till than they ever have proves that the system is working as intended. On a superficial level the argument is defensible but behind the heavy protective armor of Imperial propaganda lurks the broad insider economic awareness that the day of dollar hegemony is at sunset.
          Russia and China are dumping treasuries by the hundreds of billions and buying gold in unprecedented quantities. Money cognoscenti are deeply troubled by enslavement to a currency supported only by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S.A., in which they now have no faith whatever. Decoupling from the dollar as the world reserve currency and adoption of a basket of currencies in its place will bring a devaluation jolt that will disintegrate our massive debt-disabled national financial junkyard and bankrupt us all.
           Back in the days of Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe, GIs not under fire at the Front could laugh at Army disasters and joke about the fubar. We don’t have that space: our Front is everywhere and we can’t escape it. The plain fact is it is terrifying to live in an evil, dying, decomposing Empire. There is no joy in exposing systemic failure of ones own. There is only a profound and wounding sadness in the awareness that your country is a horror, a criminal monster, and the source of so much misery and pain to so much of the world. It is pure grief to find that all you have believed, likely loved, and certainly identified with, is false and rotten at its core. Yet life and beauty have always survived the deaths of empires, and love never dies. History, as well as Dylan Thomas, assures us that “Death shall have no Dominion.

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3.5%, Is This The Tipping Point?

 Chile.

Ecuador.

        Across the world the young are turning against the enforced neo-liberalism that has brought so much hardship and misery to so many. From Chile, Haiti, Ecuador, to Lebanon, Iraq and Sudan and elsewhere, people are on the streets challenging the established authority and the symbols of this brutal exploitative system. In some states in is insurrection, and others growing mass protests. Can Chile be the spark that starts the fire?

 Lebanon.

Iraq.

    An interesting article By Medea Benjamin Nicolas J S Davies

         Uprisings against the decades long dominance of neoliberal “center-right” and “center-left” governments that benefit the wealthy and multinational corporations at the expense of working people are sweeping the world.
         In this Autumn of Discontent, people from Chile, Haiti and Honduras to Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon are rising up against neoliberalism, which has in many cases been imposed on them by US invasions, coups and other brutal uses of force. While the severe repression against these activists have led to more than 250 protesters killed in Iraq in October alone, the protests have continued to grow. Some movements, such as in Algeria and Sudan, have already forced the downfall of long-entrenched, corrupt governments.
        A country that is emblematic of the uprisings against neoliberalism is Chile. On October 25, 2019, a million Chileans – out of a population of about 18 million – took to the streets across the country, unbowed by government repression that has killed at least 20 and injured hundreds more. Two days later, Chile's billionaire president Sebastian Piñera fired his entire cabinet and declared, “We are in a new reality. Chile is different from what it was a week ago.”
        The people of Chile appear to have validated Erica Chenoweth’s research on non-violent protest movements, in which she found that once over 3.5% of a population rise up to non-violently demand political and economic change, no government can resist their demands. It remains to be seen whether Piñera’s response will be enough to save his own job, or whether he will be the next casualty of the 3.5% rule.
       It is fitting that Chile should be in the vanguard of protests sweeping the world in this Autumn of Discontent, since Chile served as the original neoliberal laboratory.
       When Chile’s socialist leader Salvador Allende was elected in 1970, after a six year covert CIA operation to prevent his election, President Nixon ordered U.S. sanctions to “make the economy scream.”
       In his first year in office, Allende’s progressive economic policies led to a 22% increase in real wages, as work began on 120,000 new housing units and the nationalization of copper mines and other industrial sectors. But growth slowed in 1972 and 1973 under the pressure of brutal US sanctions, as in Venezuela and Iran today.
        Allende was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup on September 11, 1973. The new US and Western backed leader, General Augusto Pinochet, executed or ‘disappeared’ at least 3,200 people, held 80,000 political prisoners in jail, and ruled as a brutal dictator until 1990.
         Under Pinochet, Chile’s economy was radically restructured by the “Chicago Boys”, a team of Chilean economics students trained at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Milton Friedman. US sanctions were quickly lifted and Pinochet sold off Chile’s public assets to US corporations and wealthy investors. The neoliberal program: tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, together with mass privatization and cuts to pensions, healthcare, education and other public services, was soon duplicated across the world.
          While the Chicago Boys pointed to rising economic growth rates in Chile as evidence of the success of their neoliberal program, by 1988, 48% of Chileans were living below the poverty line. Chile is currently one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America, and one of the most unequal.
        The governments elected after Pinochet, from “center-right” to “center-left”, have abided by the neoliberal model. The needs of the poor and working class continue to be exploited, as they pay higher taxes than their tax-evading bosses, on top of ever-rising living costs, stagnant wages and limited access to voucherized education and a stratified public-private healthcare system. Indigenous communities are at the very bottom of this corrupt social and economic order.
        The neoliberal consensus following Pinochet has triggered a disillusionment with the traditional political process, as voter turnout declined from 95% in 1989 to 47% in the recent presidential election in 2017.
       If Chenoweth is right and the million Chileans in the street have breached the tipping point for successful non-violent popular democracy, Chile may be leading the way to a global political and economic revolution. 

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America's Histroy In Latin America.

       There are still some people who believe that the US of A, that land of freedom and justice, is still trying, from the sidelines, to assist the people of Venezuela to reach the promised land by getting rid of that evil dictator Maduro. They spout that all the ills of that country stem from his dictatorial rule and enforcing that evil system of socialism on the people. Well I'm no lover of the Maduro government, or any government for that matter, but the American and Western puppets narrative doesn't hold up the test of history. America's actions in that part of the world are well documented as invader and regime changer by US assisted coups, support of vicious dictators and military juntas, as long as it suits American big business.

      What does that American history on Latin America look like? Well here is the list, not going as far back as the American invasion of the Philippines, 1899-1902, probably America's first imperialist war, but keeping more to the modern era.

 American Invasions-coups in Latin America: 

Guatemala, 1954. Cuba 1959. Bolivia, 1963. Brazil, 1964. Dominican Republic, 1965. Chile, 1973. Uruguay, 1973. Argentina, 1976. El Salvador, 1980s. Nicaragua, 1980s. Grenada, 1983. Panama, 1989. Haiti, 1991. Venezuela, 2002 Haiti, 2004. Honduras, 2009. and on going Venezuela, 2019. With that track record in that art of the world alone, the badge of defender of freedom and justice, should burst into flames and roast that rotten and corrupt heart of America, big business.

  Let's not forget "Operation Condor"

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Venezuela Is Not Alone.

       Over the years the people of Central America have suffered immensely at the hands of Western imperialist capitalism. They have had American puppet governments imposed on them with savage ruthlessness, bloodshed was the building bricks of the new globalisation regime in that part of the world. At the moment Venezuela is in the news, creating the impression that all else is fine, just this nasty Maduro to sort out, and peace and tranquility will return to cover the land.
       However, far from it, the entire surface of Central America is in turmoil as global capitalism hits another of its recurring "crises". The power elites fight ruthlessly and savagely to hold on to their wealth and power, while the ordinary people face ever deeper spiraling poverty and the realities of violent repression. Venezuela is not alone, the whole region is in the midst of bloody turmoil.
      An extract from a well researched and informative article by William I. Robinson posted on NACLA:

"My neighborhood backs me...my neighborhood is Nicaragua." Student protester at an SOS Nicaragua protest against Daniel Ortega in Managua in May 2018 (Flickr/Jorge Mejía Peralta).

      Some three decades after the wars of revolution and counterinsurgency came to an end in Central America, the region is once again on the brink of implosion. The Isthmus has been gripped by renewed mass struggle and state repression, the cracking of fragile political systems, unprecedented corruption, drug violence, and the displacement and forced migration of millions of workers and peasants. The backdrop to this second implosion of Central America, reflecting the spiraling crisis of global capitalism itself, is the exhaustion of a new round of capitalist development in recent years to the same drumbeat as the globalization that took place in the wake of the 1980s upheavals.
         Lost in the headlines on Central American refugees fleeing to the United States is both the historical context that has sparked the exodus and the structural transformations through capitalist globalization that has brought the region to where it is today. The mass revolutionary movements of the 1970s and 1980s did manage to dislodge entrenched military-civilian dictatorships and open up political systems to electoral competition, but they were unable to achieve any substantial social justice or democratization of the socioeconomic order.
      Capitalist globalization in the Isthmus in the wake of pacification unleashed a new cycle of modernization and accumulation. It transformed the old oligarchic class structures, generated new transnationally oriented elites and capitalists and high-consumption middle classes even as it displaced millions, aggravated poverty, inequality, and social exclusion, and wreaked havoc on the environment, triggering waves of outmigration and new rounds of mass mobilization among those who stayed behind. Hence the very conditions that gave rise to the conflict in the first place were aggravated by capitalist globalization.
       Despite the illusion of “peace and democracy” so touted by the transnational elite in the wake of pacification, the roots of the regional conflict have persisted: the extreme concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of elite minorities alongside the pauperization and powerlessness of a dispossessed majority. With the 2009 coup d’état in Honduras, the massacre of peaceful protesters in Nicaragua in 2018, and the return of death squads in Guatemala, this illusion has been definitively shattered. The Central American regimes now face mounting crises of legitimacy, economic stagnation, and the collapse of the social fabric.

Well worth reading the full article HERE:

 

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Haiti, Revolt To Revolution??

       Across the globe ordinary people are in revolt against this brutal exploitative system of capitalism. However these types of revolts are not spread through our mainstream media, as far as they are concerned, it is hush-hush, keep it quiet, they only preach the pro-capitalist lies and myths. So you will not have had much info from them of the ongoing insurrection that is taking place and growing in that poverty stricken American imperialist controlled patch of the planet called Haiti. The people of Haiti have been in struggle against various imperialist interventions for years, mainly French and American.  Their struggle has been long and brutal, but far from diminishing, it is growing. Their struggle demands our solidarity.

This from It's Going Down: 

       Introduction, context, and report from Abolition Media Worldwide about the ongoing revolt and spreading insurrection in Haiti.

       Jovenel Moïse, the corrupt US backed president of Haiti, is faced with a rapidly spreading insurrection. The population had resoundingly rejected his claim to authority by repudiating the voting process, rising up during the elections, and now fighting for the president’s immediate removal.

The people in Haiti have been in near constant revolt since colonization and slavery. Resisting the French, the Americans, and the Duvalier dictatorship, Haitians have resisted all forms of subjugation, colonial and indigenous. After the US kidnapping of popular president, Aristide, the Haitian political system has been generally unpopular and, ultimately, a client of the US government.

Downtown PAP, #Haiti after police shot and killed anti-govt corruption protesters today. pic.twitter.com/NTc0004yaA

— HaitiInfoProject 📡 (@HaitiInfoProj) February 13, 2019

        Moïse was “elected” under the shadow of rebellion. Each step he took closer to political power was met with widespread popular disdain. His party, the right wing Tèt Kale (PHTK), was renowned for its corruption and incompetence. Moïse declared, “I alone have the solution for the question of corruption,” while he assumed power under an indictment for money laundering. He put several new PHTK politicians in positions of power while they were suspected of financial transgressions.

Context of the Revolt

       Last summer, the government implemented an IMF austerity program that raised the price of gasoline, diesel, and kerosene to almost 50%. This draconian attack was met with fierce resistance.

Leyogàn, #Haiti anti-govt corruptions protests Feb. 12, 2019. pic.twitter.com/aZnL5F6iLH

— HaitiInfoProject 📡 (@HaitiInfoProj) February 13, 2019

       As the resistance tapered off the scope of the capitalist attack on the poor became clear. The Venezuelan government established a fund called PetroCaribe that offered revenue for Haiti. The program was promoted as a program of “economic solidarity,” valued at $3.8 billion dollars. The fund was supposed to help restore the country after the hurricane, and generally increase the standard of living for the poor. This money, in actuality, was squandered and embezzled. The resistance to the state immediately intensified and has never subsided. What began as a movement against state corruption has now morphed into resistance against the president and his party. Militants are not articulating piecemeal demands but are calling for the overthrow of the ruling party.

Spread of the Insurrection

        On February 9th revolutionaries blocked the roads to the president’s home and stoned his property. Thousands of people poured into Port-au-Prince demanding the overthrow of the regime, and the state has begun killing protesters.

Protests underway in Cite Soleil, #Haiti today. "Together we can force Jovenel to go!" pic.twitter.com/aQEkhoETVl

— HaitiInfoProject 📡 (@HaitiInfoProj) February 12, 2019

      On February 12th, all 78 prisoners have escaped from Aquin Prison in southern Haiti, as the countrywide insurrection has left Haiti’s police force unable to respond. The prisoners were able to escape while the police were distracted by nearby protesters, demanding the overthrow of the corrupt right wing regime of Jovenel Moïse. The prisoners had initially left their cells for a scheduled shower, and escaped in the midst of a demonstration outside the prison and its adjoining police station. Barricades made by protesters had blocked police reinforcements sent from Les Cayes, a town nearly 34 miles (55km) away.

Flaming barricades in the community of Terre Rouge, #Haiti today as part of 6th consecutive day of national anti-govt/corruption protests. pic.twitter.com/PwaueSY2FV

— HaitiInfoProject 📡 (@HaitiInfoProj) February 12, 2019

        Earlier in the day in Port-au-Prince, revolutionaries responded to the murder of a protester by police by throwing rocks and molotov cocktails. Militants have set up flaming barricades to block roads around the country, and attacks against the police have been increasing.

Solidarity with the Revolt

         Anarchists, revolutionaries, and internationalists have a responsibility. When the poor is under assault, fighting to regain dignity, and overthrow right wing forces revolutionaries must move in tandem. As the US state is impulsively trying to organize a coup, and destroy the communal/revolutionary process in Venezuela it is also propping up a corrupt, far-Right government in Haiti that is directly looting the oil revenue that was gifted from Venezuela.

Four cars set ablaze today at the Biwo Etat Civil in Lalue, PAP, #Haiti. Protesters have skirmished with police all day as they use tear gas, water cannons and live ammunition to keep large crowds forming. At least one man reportedly gunned down near Presidential Palace by USGPN pic.twitter.com/bZkIUEzpB0

— HaitiInfoProject 📡 (@HaitiInfoProj) February 10, 2019

        Revolutionaries have an opportunity to increase international connections, participate in anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle, and combat the fascist momentum in the Americas.

     Revolutionary action against Haitian state institutions is of utmost importance now, and small acts of solidarity can have a huge impact. The time to act is now!

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Yes, Another Piece On Venezuela.

        I make no excuse for posting another article on Venezuela, for what we are witnessing in that country is the vicious hand of modern imperialism. It is being executed under a fog of misinformation, omissions, and lies, the outcome of which could be a blood bath of the ordinary people of Venezuela in the interests of the ruthless Western corporate juggernaut. The more information that becomes public the clearer we will be able to see the true situation. Such situations should never drop of our radar, knowledge of how the system works prepares us in countering its ruthless and brutish development.

From Black Rose Anarchist Federation
      The following is a statement on the current political crisis and U.S. backed coup underway in Venezuela produced by Solidaridad, a libertarian communist political organization in Chile. In the coming days we will be publishing an additional statement written jointly by anarchist groups in Brazil and Uruguay. For additional analysis we recommend our archive of articles and statements on Venezuela. Translation by Francisco C., Black Rose/Rosa Negra.

Original Link
A Public Statement on the Situation in Venezuela
        Venezuela is going through a profound crisis of which it is impossible to exempt the responsibility of the leadership of Chavismo: the failure in opening a path that allows the country to overcome the dependence of oil, the inefficiency in implementing measures that better the economic situation of the country, the bureaucracy that is drowning the popular initiative and the cases of corruption that affect officials who move key aspects of the economy. These are some of the unresolved problems.
      Nevertheless, this situation is within the framework of a polarization and conflict of classes where the Venezuelan right-wing, the loyal representative of the well-off sectors in the country in conjunction with diverse administrations from the U.S. government, has unfolded a destabilizing strategy intended to asphyxiate the Venezuelan economy contributing to the deterioration to the living conditions of millions of people. The objective of this effort is to undermine the popular support that has mainly sustained the process of change in Venezuela.
      Even worse, this right-wing, which presents itself as a democratic alternative and which hides its despise for the working class behind a false language that appeals to justice and respect to a constitution they had once insulted, operates in a criminal manner sharpening the levels of violence. Behind the figure of [self-proclaimed interim President] Juan Guaidó and the Voluntad Popular or Popular Will party, hiding behind the high-flown speeches amplified by the media has been an insurrectionary strategy which unfolded with armed attacks on military barracks, [1] destruction of health centers, [2] the burning of warehouses with food destined to vulnerable, [3] among other multiple actions of sabotage went on during these years. It came to the point where social leaders were being killed by hired hitmen [4] and to the burning alive of people simply for being Chavistas. [5]
        From what’s mentioned above we’ve learned that if the right gains power in Venezuela again, not only will it implement adjustment policies that include privatization of public enterprises, massive indebtedness with bodies like the IMF, and the opening of oil projects where private companies assume as principal shareholders, [6] but it will also be a government of revenge where the hate accumulated during these years will unfold brutally against organized sectors of the people who dared to dream of a country that would transition to non-capitalist ways of living together.
      The realization of a profound balance between Latin American progressives and in particular from the Venezuelan experience,even with all its contradictions and potential is a pending task for the left. Suffice it to say that many of these experiences have given way to political processes that directly harm the working class. Nevertheless, and despite the legitimate differences that we openly express with those who lead the Venezuelan process, the left and the people have to be emphatic in rejecting this new coup attempt – the ominous interference of the U.S and the other countries related to the destabilizing strategy which includes the government of [Chilean President Sebastián] Piñera and the political sectors who support its foreign policy all the way from Chile. Along with this we must demand the governments who quickly squared with the position of the United States to respect the rights of the Venezuelan people to its own conflicts without the interference of other states establishing as a minimum floor the non-recognition of the diplomatic delegations won over by Guaído.
       We manifest our solidarity with the people of Venezuela directly from our organization, especially with the fringes who even against the grain of the Chavista leadership and assuming all the contradictions of the change in process, protagonize [fight for] new experiences in building popular power that range from the takeovers of the land, the socialization of self-managed companies by its own workers or the government from below in rural and urban communities, [7] and obtaining spaces that prefigure the path of the people who fight against the ominous consequences of patriarchal capitalism we want to overcome.
Solidaridad, February 2019

      Notes [1]  https://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/MAM-53579
[2]  https://www.hispantv.com/noticias/venezuela/408335/ataque-incendio-hospi...
[3]
https://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/242996-50-toneladas-alimentos-quema...
[4]
http://www.resumenlatinoamericano.org/2018/08/03/asesinados-tres-voceros...
[5]
https://red58.org/cr%C3%ADmenes-de-odio-derecha-venezolana-quema-viva-a-...
[6]
https://www.elinformador.com.ve/2019/01/31/descargue-aqui-el-plan-pais-l...
[7] For an idea about the concrete experiences in building popular power in Venezuela we recommend you visit the following article written in 2016 written by two comrades of Solidaridad, “Political Situation in Venezuela: Crisis, Trends, and the Challenge of Class Independence.”

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Basra, Iraq's Spark Of Democracy?

     March 21st. 2003, the American imperialist military machine, with the support of its puppet allies, started operation "Shock and Awe", which rained down an unprecedented destructive barrage of modern weaponry on the people of Baghdad. The citizens of that country were being introduce to "democracy" Western style.

       Fifteen years of violence, corruption, exploitation, misery and death, and the country is still a quagmire of violence, death and battling power factions, some, of those factions that sing America's tune, backed by the West, others not.

       However the people are beginning to organise against the violence, corruption and inequality that the West spawned in that country. The protests in Basra have been ongoing for a couple of months now, and what is shaping is a mass protest that has dropped the barriers of religion and ethnicity. How long before the propped up puppet government asks its American master to go in and destroy this mass popular uprising, is another question. It is well worth reading the article in full, but here are a couple of extracts.

This from Enough is Enough:

      “Out Iran out out, Basra lives free” this is one of the main chant thousands of the protesters were shouting. The strong protesters back to the streets in the afternoon of Tuesday, 10/09 when the Prime Minister of Iraq, Haider al-Abadi failed to deliver his promises to meet people’s demands of July.

       Since the beginning of the protests on Tuesday,10 protesters killed and over 100 injured. They cut off the road of Umm Qasr on Wednesday, 04/09. Umm Qasr Port is part of the city of Umm Qasr and one of the couple ports in Iraq for entering goods to Basra and the rest of Iraq.

        The protests are getting bigger. They are very angry because they are lack of every basic service including clean water electric power. In this very hot weather while the temperature still reaches 50 degree people has no enough power. The concerns of people in Basra mentioned in my initial report of July still have not been taken in to the consideration by the Iraqi government.------

And:

     ----There are also unconfirmed reports of entering the US forces into the city of Basra watching the situation closely. Other reports are talking about fleeing most of the MPs, the chiefs of the political parties, heads of the companies and the directors of main services in the city. There is other report talks about fleeing government’s agents while some of the protesters found their places where they work and live.
      While I am not justifying violence from the protesters but the true is the police, securities and the Militias of the political parties have been very violent from the beginning of the protests in the afternoon of 04/09. There is other reason for the people in Basra to get very angry. They are very desperate and frustrated while for the last 15 years whoever came to power locally and centrally failed them. The people in Basra on one hand see themselves have been deprived almost of everything; on the other hand they see a tiny minority of their people have been beneficiary from the situation and living highlife.
      The true and the right thing is people in Basra regardless of their differences have been united, fighting back the local and central government for their legitimate and natural demands. It did not last long for them to realize the religion and the nationalism do not worth a single bread, single tablet, free education, free treatment, freedom and the rest of basic rights. 
      The protests and the demos have not been controlled by any political parties or any other side from the foreigners. They have so far rejected them because they have 15 years of experience with the regime. But they need to organize themselves in non-hierarchical independent groups in wherever possibly they can to coordinate their action against the state and its powers.

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk

 

The Glorification Of War, An Imperialist Trait.

        All I can say about this piece is, read it and share it, for it is not only a true picture of the American establishment, but a mirror of our own war worshipping privileged parasites that pontificate over our lives, with little or no value of those lives.Thanks Keith for the link.

Friends,

As we mark Memorial Day, I share an article I wrote at this time in 2014. Sadly, the US is lashing out more aggressively than four years ago and the world is an even more dangerous place as a result. As we relax and enjoy the long weekend, let's double down on our efforts for peace and justice. Solidarity,

Andy

Memorial Day and Everywhere is War

                                                                                                                                                           by Andy Piascik

            Summer approaches and the stench of war is all around. Or, as the great Bob Marley put it, Everywhere is War. Start with the commemorations over a five-week span of Memorial Day, Flag Day and Independence Day, all presented varyingly as celebrations of our war dead, symbols of our greatness, the freedoms we love so dearly and seek to export to every corner of the world and, perhaps most important, the unquestioned rightness of our cause.

            In reality, the celebrations are of imperialist war, with the talk about the hallowed dead just so much cover for the murderous nature of US foreign policy. Celebrating the dead – note that the dead celebrated are just the American dead, not any of the millions killed by US aggression or client states – is a no-lose proposition designed to render anyone who asks the wrong questions a traitor or a terrorist. The notion that the US regularly commits war crimes and that polished, well-educated men like John Kennedy and Barack Obama are war criminals is unthinkable; war criminals look like Osama bin-Laden and Saddam Hussein and those other nasty people far away, over there. 

World War One Centennial

            It’s also the summer of the centennial of the start of what in its time was known as the Great War, the greatest blood-letting in history except for that of the Second Great War barely two decades later. Of one thing we can be sure and that is that the lessons drawn from mainstream discussions of World War One will be all the wrong ones. Worse, the spectacle of the intelligentsia waxing eloquent about the horrors of war while unflinchingly cheering on the warmakers in Washington will be accepted by one and all of their kind as perfectly reasonable – as beyond discussion, in fact.

            In recent weeks, meanwhile, mainstream commentators have been shocked to discover that things in Iraq are not alright, in fact are worse than at any time since the second US blitzkrieg in 2003. Gee, who knew. Who knew that an invasion predicated on a lie of weapons of mass destruction, designed to secure control of massive oil supplies, would go wrong? The political class and intelligentsia didn’t, or at least they pretended they didn’t, but millions around the world who demonstrated against the invasion in the weeks before it was launched certainly did. And one of the points those demonstrators underscored was that a US invasion would fuel sectarian divisions and violence, precisely as has happened. Al-Qaeda, which did not exist in Iraq prior to the invasion, now flourishes while a new group, the Islamist State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), rampages through the country.

            The response of many elites in the US, naturally, is for more war. Calls from certain factions for a third US invasion are growing louder and, true to his preference for violence over diplomacy, Obama has sent a strike force to Iraq. Whether the people of the United States can come together as we did last summer when we rose up and prevented Obama from attacking Syria remains to be seen. We must at least try.

Disgraceful Treatment of Veterans

            Also on the war front is the Veterans Affairs’ disgraceful neglect of ex-soldiers in need of medical care. For years, political elites have been slashing benefits for veterans while increasing spending on weapons and cutting taxes for the Super Rich. That the problem came to a head with a Democrat in the White House is simply an accident of timing, and it is especially outrageous that the most enthusiastic cheerleaders of the illegal Bush-Cheney invasions, as well as reductions to the VA’s budgets and the tax cuts for 1%, now pretend that they care about soldiers.

            Equally farcical is the commencement of yet another round of hearings on the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. Such hearings would certainly be valuable if everything related to US actions in Libya since the launch of the 2011 assault were up for review, but there is virtually no chance of that happening. The deaths of tens of thousands of Libyans in yet one more illegal military strike, as well as the resulting chaos and violence in that country, is of no concern to those who long for the good old days of Bush-Cheney and are interested only in scoring political points.  

Bowe Bergdhal

            Then there is the saga of the much-vilified Bowe Bergdhal, a heroic young man who came to see the criminal nature of the US invasion of Afghanistan. The refusal of working class youth to fight for Empire is the ruling class’s biggest nightmare and the attacks on Bergdahl, like the show trial that convicted Chelsea Manning, show how far they will go to punish those in uniform who dare challenge their objectives. A hidden aspect of the movement that ended US carnage in Southeast Asia is that it was the widespread opposition of soldiers, both as embodied by organizations like Vietnam Veterans Against the War as well as active duty resisters, that decisively turned the tide.

            So alarming was this development that two massive disinformation campaigns were immediately launched: the myth of the hostility of the anti-war movement for returning soldiers that sought to drive a wedge between active duty and homefront resistance (see, for example, Jerry Lembcke’s outstanding book The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam); and the completely fraudulent MIA blitz (expertly exposed by Bruce Franklin in MIA, or Mythmaking in America) concocted by the Nixon Administration to shift attention away from the death and destruction wrought by the US to the plight of nonexistent prisoners of war. 

            Because preventing any similar development of resistance among soldiers is central to imperial objectives, discussion has largely avoided what Bergdahl actually said about his service in Afghanistan, including his telling declaration in a 2009 e-mail to his parents, as quoted by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!: “The future is too good to waste on lies and life is way too short to care for the damnation of others as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong. I've seen their ideas, I'm ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self righteous arrogance that they thrive in.” Rather than joining in the Bowe Bergdhal lynch mob, US soldiers everywhere, not to mention those with loved ones in the military, would do well to heed his words and experience.

The Supreme International Crime

            Lastly, the same standard that applies to the war crimes of others applies to the US. As articulated by Robert H. Jackson, chief US prosecutor at Nuremberg, a war of aggression such as committed by the US against Afghanistan and Iraq “is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from all other crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” In such a circumstance, what Bergdahl did was proper and, it could be argued, obligatory for anyone party to war crimes. So amidst the flag waving and speechifying that glorifies imperialism, we should support him and prisoners of conscience like Chelsea Manning. We should demand that all services veterans require be provided, that US bases around the world be closed, that soldiers be returned home and that the US cease its campaign of endless aggression. And as enticing as the military may seem in such desperate economic times, we should counsel young people to stay away no matter how bleak the alternatives may be.     

           

       Andy Piascik is an award-winning author whose novel In Motion was recently published by Sunshine Publishing.  He can be reached at andypiascik@yahoo.com.

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk